He knew what they had to be planning. Only one thing made sense of his orders, and it was the craziest thing they'd tried yet.
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 inner portals opened, admitting the cutter to the hollow heart of the enclave, and Ramman balanced on a razor edge of agonized indecision.
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 stunned even Ganhar. The shock had been still worse for his degenerate tools; dying for a cause was one thing, but even the most fanatical religious or political bigot must pause and give thought to the body blow international terrorism had just taken.
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? Inanna's suggestion that age had compelled them to attack while they still had enough Imperials to handle their equipment made sense up to a point, but the latest round of disasters had been executed out of purely Terrestrial resources. It took careful planning to blend Terran and Imperial efforts so neatly, which suggested the entire operation had been worked out well in advance. Which, in turn, suggested some long-range objective beyond the destruction of replaceable barbarian allies.
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 Inanna stepped through it.
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 antennae quivered, and he waved her courteously to a Louis XIV chair under a seventh-century Tang Dynasty tapestry.
"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 Inanna really had picked a stunningly beautiful one this time.
"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.
"It's done lots more than that. In fact, you've been sitting here sweating like a pig because you know you're about one more bad report away from—pffft!" She snapped her fingers, and he winced.
"Your grief is moving, but I doubt you came just to warn me in case I hadn't noticed."
"True. True." She smiled cheerfully. "You know, I've never liked you, Ganhar. Frankly, I've always thought you were in it out of pure greed, which would be fine if I weren't pretty certain your plans include winding up in charge yourself. With, I'm sure, fatal consequences for Anu and myself."
Ganhar blinked, and her eyes danced at his failure to hide his surprise.
"Ganhar, Ganhar! You disappoint me! Just because you think I'm a little crazy is no reason to think I'm stupid! You may even be right about my mental state, but you really ought to be a bit more careful about letting it color your calculations."
"I see." He propped an elbow on his desk through the holo map and regarded her as calmly as he could. "May I assume you're pointing out my shortcomings for a reason?"
"There. I always knew you were bright." She paused tauntingly, forcing him to ask, and he had no choice but to comply.
"And that reason is?"
"Why, I'm here to help you. Or to propose an alliance, of sorts, at any rate." He sat a bit straighter, and a strange hardness banished all amusement from her eyes.
"Not against Anu, Ganhar," she said coldly. "Whether I'm crazy or not isn't your concern, but make one move against him, and you're a dead man."
Ganhar shivered. He had no idea what that icy guarantee might rest upon, but neither did he have any desire to find out. She sounded far too sure of herself for that, and, as she'd pointed out, she was hardly stupid. Assuming he survived the next few weeks, he was going to have to recast his plans for Commander Inanna.
"I see," he said after a long pause. "But if not against him, then against who?"
"There you go again. Try to accept that I'm reasonably bright, Ganhar. It'll make things much easier for us both."
"Jantu?"
"Of course. That weasel has plans for all of us. But then," her smile turned wolfish, "I have plans for him, too. Jantu's in very poor health; he just doesn't know it yet. He won't—until his next transplant comes due."
Ganhar shivered again. Brain transplants were ticklish even with Imperial technology, and a certain number of fatalities were probably unavoidable, but he'd assumed Anu decided which patients suffered complications. It hadn't occurred to him Inanna might be doing it on her own.
"So," she went on pleasantly, "we still have to decide what to do with him in the meantime. If he ever left the enclave, he might have an accident. I'd considered that, and it would've been a neat way to get him, Kirinal, and you, wouldn't it? You're in charge of external operations... he's your worst rival... who wouldn't've wondered if you two hadn't arranged it?"
"You have a peculiar way of convincing an 'ally' to trust you," Ganhar pointed out carefully.
"I'm only proving I can be honest with you, Ganhar. Doesn't my openness reassure you?"