Mutineer's Moon

That plan had gone out the airlock when the mutiny failed, but there were still possibilities. Indeed, the present situation seemed even more promising.

He knew Anu and, possibly, Ina

If the Imperium had fallen upon hard times, why, then Anu’s plans for conquest might be practical after all. And the first stage was to forget this clandestine nonsense and take control of Earth openly. A few demonstrations of Imperial weaponry should bring even the most recalcitrant degenerate to heel. Once he could recruit a properly motivated batch of sepoys and come out of the shadows, Jantu could hammer out a decent tech base in a few decades and set about gathering up the reins of galactic power in a tidy, orderly fashion.

But first there was Ganhar, and then Anu. Ina

He smiled happily, never opening his eyes, and began to hum a bouncier, brighter ditty.

Ramman watched the tu

And dangerous. He should never have agreed, but the orders had been preemptive, not discretionary. And if the whole idea was insane, he was still in too deep to back out. Or was he?

He scrubbed damp palms on his trousers and closed his eyes. Of course he was! He was a dead man if the “Chief” ever found out he’d even talked to the other side, and his death would be as unpleasant as Anu could contrive.

He clenched his teeth as he contemplated the bitter irony that brought him to this pass. Fear of Anu had tempted him to contact the other side in a desperate effort to escape, yet that same contact had actually destroyed his chance to flee. First Horus and then his bitch of a daughter had steadfastly refused to let him defect, far less help him do it!

He made himself stop trying to dry his hands, hoping he hadn’t already betrayed himself. He should have realized what would happen. Why should Horus and his fellows trust him? They knew what he was, what he had been, and how easily trusting him could have proven fatal. So they’d left him inside, using him, and he’d let himself be used. What choice had he had? All they had to do to terminate his long existence was wax deliberately clumsy in their efforts to contact him; Anu would see to it from there.

He’d given them a lot of information over the years, and things had gone so smoothly he’d grown almost accustomed to it. But that was before they told him about this. Madness! It would destroy them all, and him with them.

He knew what they had to be pla

But what if they could pull it off? If they succeeded, surely they would honor their word to him and let him live. Wouldn’t they?

Only they wouldn’t succeed. They couldn’t.

Maybe he should tell Ganhar? If he went to the Operations chief and gave him the location of his drop, helped him bait a trap for Jiltanith’s agent … surely that should be worth something? Maybe Ganhar could be convinced to pretend it had all been part of an elaborate counter-intelligence ploy?

But what if he couldn’t? What if Ganhar simply turned him over to Jantu as the traitor he was?

The huge i

Ganhar rubbed his weary eyes and frowned at the holo map hovering above his desk. Its green dots were fewer than ever, its red dots correspondingly more numerous. His people had maintained direct links with relatively few of the terrorist bases the degenerates had hit, but the fallout from those strikes was devastating. In less than twenty-four hours, thirty-one-thirty-one!—major HQs, training, and base camps had been wiped out in separate, flawlessly synchronized operations whose efficient ferocity had stu

He sighed. His personal position was in serious jeopardy, and with it his life, and there was disturbingly little he could do about it. Only the fact that he’d warned Anu something might be brewing had saved him so far, and it wouldn’t save him very much longer.

His civilian minions’ inability to stop their own soldiers or even warn him of what was coming was frightening. Nergal’s people must have infiltrated the military even more deeply than he’d feared, and if they could do that much, what else might they have accomplished without his noticing?

More to the point, why were they doing this? Ina

Ganhar got that far without difficulty; unfortunately, it still gave no hint of what the bastards were up to. Drive his sources as he might, he simply couldn’t find a single reason for such a fundamental, abrupt change in tactics.

About the only thing his people had managed was the identification of one of the enemy’s previously unsuspected degenerate henchmen. Not that it helped a great deal, for Hector MacMahan had vanished. Which might mean they’d been intended to spot him, and that—

The admittance chime broke into his thoughts and he straightened, kneading the back of his neck as he sent a mental command to the hatch mechanism. The panel licked aside, and Commander Ina

Ganhar’s eyes widened slightly, for he and the medical officer were scarcely friends—indeed, about the only thing they had in common was their mutual detestation for Jantu—and she’d never visited his private quarters. His mental ante

“Good evening, Ganhar.” She sat and crossed her long, shapely legs. Well, not hers, precisely, but then neither was Ganhar’s body “his” in the usual sense, and Ina

“Good evening,” he replied. His voice gave away nothing, but she smiled as if she sensed his burning curiosity. Which she probably did. She might be unswervingly loyal to a maniac, and it was highly probable she was a bit around the bend herself, but she’d never been dense or unimaginative.

“No doubt you’re wondering about this visit,” she said. He considered replying but settled for raising his eyebrows politely, and she laughed.

“It’s simple enough. You’re in trouble, Ganhar. Deep, deep trouble. But you know that, don’t you?”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” he admitted.