More bolts of disruption slashed at him, splintering the paving, but his own people knew what was happening. Their stealth fields were in phase with his, letting them see him, and they spread out under whatever cover they could find while their weapons raked the buildings fronting on the plaza. They were shooting blind, but they were throwing a lot of fire, and he was peripherally aware of the grav gun darts chewing at stonework, the shivering pulsations of warp grenades, and the susuration of more energy guns trying to mark him down.
Amanda's left thigh was a short, ugly stump, but no blood pulsed from the wound. Her Imperial commando smock had fastened down in an automatic tourniquet as soon as she was hit, yet she was no Imperial, and she was unconscious from shock—or dead. His mind flinched away from the possibility, and he scooped her up in a fireman's carry and sprinted back up the street.
Devastation lashed at his heels, and he cried out in agony as an energy beam tore a quarter pound of flesh from the back of one leg. He nearly went down, but his own implants—partial though they were—damped the pain as quickly as it had come. Tissues sealed themselves, and he ran on frantically.
A warp grenade's field missed him by centimeters, the rush of displaced air snatching at him like an invisible demon, and he heard another scream as an energy gun found Frank Cauphetti. He spared a glance as he went by, but Frank no longer had a torso.
Then he was around the corner, his surviving teammates closing in about him, and the four of them were dashing through the night.
"Shouldn't we follow them, 'Hansu?"
"Sure, Tarban, you do that little thing! You and your damn gabble just cost us a complete kill! Not to mention Hanshar—that bastard with the energy gun cut him in half. So, please, go right ahead and follow them... I'm sure their cutter pilot will be delighted to vaporize your worthless ass!"
There was silence over the com, and Shirhansu forced her rage back under control. Maker, they'd come so close! But at least they'd gotten two of them, maybe even three, and that was the best they'd done yet against an actual attack force. Not that it would be good enough to please Anu. Still, if they cleaned up their report a little bit first...
"All right," she sighed finally. "Let's get out of here before the locals get too nosy. Meet me at the cutter."
Chapter Nineteen
"How is she?"
Tamman looked up at Colin's soft question. He sat carefully, one leg extended to keep his thigh off his chair, and his face was worn with worry.
"They say she'll be all right." He reached out to the young woman in the narrow almost-bed, her lower body cocooned in the sophisticated appliances of Imperial medicine, and smoothed her brown hair gently.
" 'All right,' " he repeated bitterly, "but with only one leg. Maker, it's unfair! Why her?!"
"Why anyone?" Colin asked sadly. He looked at Amanda Givens' pale, plain face and sighed. "At least you got her out alive. Remember that."
"I will. But if she had the biotechnics she deserves, she wouldn't be in that bed—and she could grow a new leg, too." He looked back down at Amanda. "It's not even their fault, yet they give so much, Colin. All of them do."
"All of you do," Colin corrected gently. "It's not as if you had anything to do with the mutiny either."
"But at least I got a child's biotechnics." Tamman's voice was very low. "She didn't get even that much. Hector didn't. My children didn't. They live their lives like candle flames, and then they're gone. So many of them." He smoothed Amanda's hair once more.
"We're trying to change that, Tamman. That's what she was doing."
"I know," the Imperial half-whispered.
"Then don't take that away from her," Colin said levelly. "Yes, she's Terra-born, just like I am, but I was drafted; she chose to fight, knowing the odds. She's not a child. Don't treat her like one, because that's the one thing she'll never forgive you for."
"How did you get so wise?" Tamman asked after a moment.
"It's in the genes, buddy," Colin said, and grinned more naturally as he left Tamman alone with the woman he loved.
Ganhar cocked back his chair and rested one heel on the edge of his desk. He'd just endured a rather stormy interview with Shirhansu, but, taken all in all, she was right—they'd been lucky to get any of Nergal's people, and the odds were against doing it twice. Tarban's blathering com traffic had given them away this time, but now that the other side had walked into one trap, they damned well wouldn't walk into another. They'd cover any attacking force with active scanners powerful enough to burn through any portable stealth field.
He pondered unhappily, trying to decide what to recommend this time. The logical thing was to withdraw a few fighters from offensive sweeps and use them to nail any of Nergal's cutters that came in with active scanners, but Ganhar had developed a lively respect for Hector MacMahan—who, he was certain, was masterminding this entire campaign. The equally logical response would be obvious to him: cover Nergal's cutters with his own stealthed fighters to nail Ganhar's fighters when they revealed themselves by attacking the cutter.
The very idea reeked of further escalation, and he was sick of it. They couldn't match his resources, but they knew where they were going to strike, and they could concentrate their forces accordingly; he had to cover all the places they might strike. He couldn't have overwhelming force anywhere, unless Anu would let him back off on offensive operations and smother all possible targets with their own fighters.
Which, of course, Anu would never do.
He rubbed his closed eyes wearily, and his thoughts moved like a dirge. It was no good. Even if they managed to locate Nergal and destroy her and all her people, there was still Anu. Anu and all of them—even himself—and their endless futility. Anu was mad, but was he much better off himself? What did he think would happen if they ever managed to leave this benighted planet?
Like Jantu, Ganhar had reached his own conclusions about the Imperium's apparent disappearance from the cosmos. If he was wrong, then they were all doomed. The Imperium would never forgive them, for there could be no clemency for such as they—not for mutineers, and never for mutineers who'd gone on to do the things they'd done to the helpless natives of Earth.
And if there was no more Imperium? In that far more likely case, their fate might be even worse, for there would still be Anu. Or Jantu. Or someone else. The madness had infected them all, for they'd lived too long and feared death too much. Ganhar knew he was saner than many of his fellows, and look what he had done in the name of survival. He'd worked with Kirinal despite her sadism, knowing about her sadism, and when he replaced her, he'd devised this obscene plan merely to stay alive a bit longer. She and Girru would have loved it, he thought bitterly. This slaughter of defenseless degenerates...
No, not "degenerates." Primitives, perhaps, but not degenerates, for it was he and his fellows who had degenerated. Once there might even have been a bit of glamour in daring to pit themselves against the Imperium's might, but not in what they'd done to the people of Earth and their own helpless fellows.
He stared down at the hands he had stolen, and his stomach knotted. He didn't regret the mutiny or even the long, bitter warfare with Nergal's crew. Or perhaps he did regret those things, but he wouldn't pretend he hadn't known what he was doing or whine and snivel before the Maker for it. But the other things, especially the things he had done as Operations head, sickened him.