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"Colin!" Jiltanith whispered, and clutched her father's arm.
"He's all right, 'Ta
"Nay!" Her fingers tightened like talons. "Father, thou knowest him too well for that, as I! He will not flee so long as any of his folk do stand exposed to such danger!"
"I'm sure—" Horus began, but she shook her head spastically and threw off the covers. She swung her feet to the floor and stood, already reaching for her clothing.
"I must go to him! Mayhap, were I there, I—"
"No, 'Ta
"I tell thee I am going." Her voice was chipped ice, but he shook his head, and her tone turned colder still. "Gainsay me in this at thy peril, Father!"
"Not me, 'Ta
Her eyes locked with his, and her fear for her husband struck him like a lash. But he refused to look away, and a dark, terrible sorrow, like a premonition of yet more loss, twisted her face.
"Father, please," she whispered, and he closed his eyes, unable to face her pain, and shook his head once more.
"I'm sorry, 'Ta
"Dahak is correct," Vlad Chernikov said. "We dare not send any additional sca
"God." Colin closed his eyes, propped his elbows on the conference table, and leaned his face into his palms.
"The evacuation will begin in twenty-five minutes," Adrie
"Some additional transport'll begin arriving in about ninety-three hours," Hatcher's image said. "Mother sent out an all-ships signal as soon as I got the word. We'll have another six planetoids within a hundred and fifty hours; anything after that'll take at least ten days to get here."
"How many can we get aboard the available ships?" Colin asked tautly.
"Not enough," Hatcher said grimly. "Dahak?"
"Assuming Dahak is used as well, and that we move as many as possible to existing deep-space life support in-system but beyond lethal radius of the weapon, we will be able to lift approximately eighty-nine percent of the Birhat population from the planet," the computer responded. "More than that will be beyond our resources."
"Mat-trans?" Colin said.
"On our list," Adrie
"We don't have three weeks!"
"Colin, all we can do is all we can do." Gerald Hatcher didn't look any happier than Colin, but his voice was crisp.
"We've got to take that bomb out," Colin muttered. "Damn it, there has to be a way!"
"Unfortunately," Dahak said, "we ca
"Horus! What the hell is going on?" Lawrence Jefferson had commed from Van Gelder Center, Planetary Security's central facility, not his White Tower office, and like many of the people swarming about behind him, he looked as if he'd dressed in the dark in a hurry. Horus wondered how he'd gotten to Van Gelder so quickly, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Big trouble, Lawrence," he replied. "Get as many of your people as you can to the mat-trans facility. We're going to have thousands of people coming through from Birhat, starting in about—" he checked his chrono "—twelve minutes."
"Thousands of people?" Jefferson shook his head like a punch-drunk fighter, and Horus bared his teeth.
"Some lunatic's put a bomb under the Palace, and the damned thing's got an active antitampering system," he said, and watched Lawrence Jefferson go bone-white. The Lieutenant Governor said absolutely nothing for a moment, then shook himself.
"A bomb? What sort of bomb? It sounds like you're evacuating the entire planet!"
"We are," Horus said grimly. "This thing's probably powerful enough to take out all of Birhat—and Mother."
"With a single bomb? You're joking!"
"I wish I were. We've been looking for the damned thing for months. Well, now we've found it."
"What about the Emperor?" Jefferson demanded.
"He's hanging in until the last minute, the damned young fool! Says he won't leave until he can get everyone else out."
"And Jiltanith?" Jefferson asked quickly, and Horus smiled more naturally.
"Thanks for asking, but she's safe. She's still in White Tower, and she's staying here, by the Maker, if I have to chain her to the wall!"
Jefferson closed his eyes for a moment, mind racing, then nodded sharply.
"All right, Horus, I'm on it."
"Good man! I'll be down to give you a hand as quick as I can."
"Don't!" Horus raised an eyebrow at the Lieutenant Governor's quick, sharp reply, and Jefferson shook his head angrily. "Sorry. Didn't mean to bark at you. It's just that you can't do anything down here that I can't do just as well, and from your tone of voice, Her Majesty isn't too happy at staying here on Earth."
"That," Horus agreed, "is putting it mildly."
"Well, in that case you'd better stay there and keep an eye on her. God knows no one else on this planet has the seniority—or the balls!—to tell her no if she orders them out of her way. Besides, it's going to be a madhouse down here when refugees start coming through. I'll feel better with both of you tucked away someplace nice and safe, where whoever's behind this can't get at you in the confusion."
"I—" Horus started to reply, then stopped himself and nodded unwillingly. "You may be being paranoid, but you may also be right. I can't see why anyone would want me dead if they can't get 'Ta
"Exactly." Jefferson gave him a grim smile. "And if he's a lunatic, who knows what he may do if he thinks the wheels are coming off?"