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I do not know, Tisiphone replied unflinchingly. I swear that I will try, but I am less skilled at healing than hurting, and what I have done to you grows stronger with every hour. Already it is more powerful than I believed possible, perhaps powerful enough to destroy us both, yet I have lived long enough-perhaps too long. I will do what I may, and if I fail, her voice turned gentle, we will end together, Little One.
No! Megaira's protest was hot and frightened. You can't just kill her! I won't let you!
"Hush, Megaira," Alicia whispered. Her eyes closed again-not in terror this time but in gratitude-yet she felt her sister-self's pain and made herself speak gently. "She's right. You know she is; you're part of me. Do you think I'd want to live as that?" She shuddered and shook her head. "But I'm so sorry to do this to you, love. You deserve better, unless … Do you think-is our link different enough for you to-?"
I don't know, tears glittered in the AI's soundless voice, and it doesn't matter, because I won't.
"Please, Megaira. Don't do that to me," Alicia begged. "Promise you'll at least try! I don't … I don't think I can bear knowing you won't if I … if I …"
Then you're just going to have to try real hard not to. You're not going anywhere without me-not ever.
"But-"
It is her right, Little One, Tisiphone said quietly. Do not deny her choice or blame her for it. The fault is no more hers than yours.
Alicia bowed her head. The Fury was right, and if she tried to force the AI, she would only twist the time they still had with pain and guilt.
"All right," she whispered. "All right. We've come this far together; we'll go on together."
Megaira's warm silence enfolded her, answering for her, and fragile stillness hovered on the bridge, filled with a strange, bittersweet sense of acceptance. What she was becoming could not be permitted to live, and it would not. That had to be enough, and, somehow, it was.
It was odd, she thought almost dreamily, but she didn't even blame Tisiphone. She would have died long since if not for her, and the Fury's pain was too genuine. If Alicia had become something else, so had Tisiphone, and the bond which had grown between them no longer held room for resentment or hate.
The stillness stretched out until the Fury broke it at last.
In truth, Little One, my promise to you may not matter in the end. I have not yet told you what I have learned.
"Learned?" Alicia stirred in her chair.
Indeed. While Megaira dispatched Procyon's AI, I sought a mind which could tell us more. I found one, and in it I found the truth.
Alicia snapped back to full alertness, driving the residual flicker of madness as deep as she could, and felt Megaira beside her in her mind.
The Fleet perso
"We already knew that, but why? What can they possibly gain from it?"
The answer is simple enough, the Fury said grimly, for he who truly commands them is the one called Subrahmanyan Treadwell.
For just an instant the name completely failed to register, and then Alicia flinched in disbelief. "The Sector Governor? That-that's crazy!"
There is no question, Little One. It is he, and his objective is no less than to place a crown upon his own head.
"But … but how?"
He has requested massive reinforcements to "crush the pirates." Indeed, he has been promised the tenth part of your Fleet's active units and perhaps a third of its firepower. Once they arrive, Admiral Gomez will be relieved or die-it matters little to him-and replaced by Admiral Brinkman.
For a time, the pirates will prove even more successful. Their raids will spread across the border into the Macedon Sector, which is but lightly held, until they seem an irresistible scourge. And when the terror has reached its height, when the people of both sectors have come to believe the Empire ca
"But the Emperor won't stand for it!" Alicia protested sickly.
Treadwell believes he will. That is the reason he seeks such naval strength. Surely the Emperor will realize that a civil war-and it would require nothing less, once Treadwell's plan has played itself out-will but invite the Rishathan Sphere to intervene? And remember this: none save Treadwell and his closest adherents will know what actually passed. All will believe, even the Emperor and his closest advisers, that he truly dealt, firmly and decisively, with a threat to the people he is sworn to protect. These sectors lie far from the heart of the Empire. Will the Emperor be able to rally sufficient public support for a massive operation against a man who but did what had to be done in so distant a province?
"Dear God," Alicia whispered. She licked bloodless lips, trying to grasp the truth, but the sheer magnitude of the crime was numbing.
"Megaira, did you get any of this from Procyon's computers?"
No, Alley. Even the brash AI was subdued and shaken. I didn't have time for data searches.
It would not have mattered, Megaira. There was no data for you to find. The details of the plan have never been committed to record-not, I venture to say, unreasonably.
"Yeah." Alicia inhaled deeply. The numbness was passing, and the flame of her madness guttered higher. She ground her heel upon its neck, driving it back down, and shook herself.
"Okay. What do we do with the information?"
Tell Ferhat? Megaira suggested hesitantly.
"Maybe. He'd believe us, I think, though it's for damned sure no one else will. I mean, who's going to take the unsupported word of a madwoman who talks to Bronze Age demons over that of a sector governor?"
I suppose I should resent that, but I fear you are correct.
"Yeah, and even if Ferhat believes us, he needs proof. They could never convict on what we can give them, and I doubt even O Branch would sanction a black operation against a sector governor."
Agreed. And that, Little One, is why my promises to you may stand meaningless in the end. I see only one way to destroy this traitor.
"Us," Alicia said grimly.
Indeed.
Now wait a darn minute! Do you two actually think we can get to a sector governor? What do you want to do, nuke the damned planet?!
It will not be necessary. Treadwell dislikes planets. His quarters are aboard Orbit One.
Oh, ducky! So all we have to do is fight our way in and punch out a six million-to
"Are you saying you can't do it?" Alicia tried to make her voice light. "What happened to all that cheerful egotism when we busted out?"
Out is easier than in, Megaira said grimly, and you know damned well they'll have reworked their systems since, just in case we come back.
"So we can't get in?"
I didn't say that, Megaira replied unwillingly. I'll know better when I finish repairs-remember, that battlecruiser shot the hell out of me-but, yeah, I imagine we can get in. Only, if we do, I don't think we'll get out again, and I doubt anything I ever had was heavy enough to take out that fort. I certainly don't have anything left that could do the job.
"Oh yes, you do," Alicia said very softly. "The same thing that could have taken out Procyon."
Ram it? There was less shock in the AI's voice than there should have been, Alicia thought sadly. Like her, Megaira saw it as the possible answer to her fear of what she might become. I think we could do it, Megaira said at last, slowly. But there are nine thousand other people on that fort, Alley.
"I know."
Alicia frowned down at her hands and her shoulders hunched against the ice of her own words.
"I know," she whispered.
Chapter Sixty-Four
The black-and-gray uniformed woman looked up as a quiet buzzer purred. A light blinked, and she slipped into her synth-link headset and consulted her computers carefully, then pressed a button.
"Get me the Old Man," she said, and waited a moment. "Admiral, this is Lois Heyter in Tracking. We've got something coming in on the right bearing, but the velocity's wrong. They're still too far out for a solid solution, but it looks like our friend hasn't been able to hold the range open as pla
She went back to her plot, and the close-grouped ships of war began to accelerate through the deep gloom between the stars. There was no great rush. They had hours before their prey dropped sublight-plenty of time to build their interception vectors.
James Howell glared at the enemy's blue dot and muttered venomously to himself.
He'd fired off over half the squadron's missiles, and he might as well have been shooting spitballs! It was maddening, yet he'd given up on telling himself things would have been different if Procyon's cyber-synth had survived to run the tactical net. To be sure, Trafalgar's AI was less capable than the dreadnought's had been, but not even Procyon's could have accomplished much against the alpha-synth's fiendish EW.
He knew that damned ship was badly damaged; the debris trail it had left at AR-12359/J would have proved that, even if its limping acceleration hadn't, yet it refused to die. It kept splitting into multiple targets that bobbed and wove insanely, and then swatted down the missiles that went for the right target source with contemptuous ease. What it might have been doing if it were undamaged hardly bore thinking on.