She was right, he thought, but if he admitted it she'd go right ahead and get herself killed.
"Look, assume you get Procyon. I'm not as sure you can do it as you are, but let's accept that you kill Howell and his staff. You'll also be killing the only confirmation of what you've just told me! I may be able to get Brinkman and his underlings, but how do I get whoever's behind him?" He saw the fire in her eyes waver and pressed his advantage. "They may be tapped in at a level even higher than Brinkman-maybe even at court back on Old Earth-and if it starts unraveling out here, you can bet Brinkman will suffer a fatal accident before we pick him up. That breaks the chain. If you hit them by yourself, you may guarantee the real masterminds get away!"
He makes a point, Little One, Tisiphone murmured. I swore we would reach the ones responsible for your planet's murder. If we settle for those whose hands actually did the deed, you may die and leave me forsworn.
"I don't care if he's right!" Alicia snarled. "We've finally got a clear shot at the bastards! I say we take it!"
Ben Belkassem thrust himself back in his chair, eyes huge as he realized who she was arguing with, and made himself sit silently.
Yet what if he speaks the truth? Would you settle for underlings, leaving those who set this obscenity in motion untouched? Knowing they may plot anew, murder other families as they did those whom you loved?
Alicia closed her eyes, biting her lip until she tasted blood, and the Fury's voice was almost gentle in her brain.
You sound more like myself than I do, Little One, but I have learned from you, as well. We must strike the head from this monster if we seek true vengeance … and if we would not have it rise again.
"But-"
She's right, Alley, Megaira broke in. Please. You know I'll back you, whatever you decide, but listen to her. Listen to Ferhat.
Tears burned the corners of her eyes, tears of pain and hate not even Tisiphone could fully mute, of frustration and need. She wanted to attack, needed to attack, and she had a target at last.
So what would you do? she demanded bitterly.
Lend me your voice, Little One, the Fury said unexpectedly, and Alicia's eyes opened in surprise as she heard her own voice speak.
"Alicia wishes to strike now, Ferhat Ben Belkassem." The inspector stiffened and sweat popped on his forehead at the strange timber of Alicia's voice. "She believes, and rightly, that we must strike our foes now, while we know where we may find them. Yet you counsel otherwise. Why?"
Ben Belkassem licked his lips. He'd told Alicia the truth; he couldn't quite accept that she'd been possessed by a creature from mythology, but he knew it wasn't Alicia speaking. Whoever-whatever-had entered her life, he was face to face with it at last, unable even to pretend it didn't exist, and terror chipped away at his veneer of sophistication, revealing the primitive behind it to his own inner eye.
"Because-because it isn't enough … Tisiphone," he made himself say. "At the very least, we need outside confirmation of the ships they have from witnesses no one can sweep under the rug because they're 'crazy.' That would lend at least partial credence to the rest of what Alicia-to what the two of you have just told me. And we have to hurt them worse than you can, destroy more of their ships and shatter the raiding force so badly they'll need months to reorganize while we go to work from the other end."
"Well and good, Ferhat Ben Belkassem," that dispassionate, infinitely cold ghost of Alicia's contralto replied. "Yet we have but our good Megaira. You yourself have said we dare not seek aid from the Franconia Sector, and no other can reach hither before our enemies depart their present rendezvous."
"I know." He drew a deep breath and stared into Alicia's eyes, seeing her own will and mind within them, behind that other's words. "But what if I could tell you where to find a naval force that could go toe to toe with the 'pirates'? One that doesn't have a thing to do with the Fleet? And one that's right here, already in the sector?"
"There is such a force?" the icy voice sharpened, and Alicia's eyes widened as he nodded.
"There is. You were going to drop me off at Mirabile-why not take me to Ringbolt, instead?"
Chapter Sixty
The battleship Audacious hung in geosynchronous orbit above the heat-glass scar of Raphael, and Simon Monkoto paced her bridge. His eyes no longer burned with hate; they were as hard as his face, filled with a bitter determination cold enough to freeze the marrow of a star.
He knew his people were growing restive as they waited for him to find a way to take the offensive, but none of them had complained. Professional warriors all, they accepted that warriors often died, yet they also knew this wasn't just about Arlen. It was about the civilians who had died with Arlen, as well. About the murder of a city and the radioactive filth the warhead had blasted into Ringbolt's atmosphere. Mercenaries tended to be loyal first and foremost to their own, but they understood justice … and vengeance. That was why the other outfits had responded in such strength.
He paused by the master plot, studying the light codes. Meaningless to the untrained eye, they told Monkoto everything at a glance.
The Ringbolt System was alive with ships. Most were small-cruisers or lighter-but they included a solid core of heavy hitters. The Falcons, Westfeldt's Wolves, Captain Tarbaneau and her Assassins… . He couldn't have picked a more battle-hardened group, yet they, like his own Maniacs, expected the great Simon Monkoto to Do Something. They owed him, and they wanted the people who'd done this thing, but there was a limit to how long they could sit here losing money. Unless the El Grecan government agreed to put them on the payroll, they'd have to start pulling out soon, and -
A soft buzz drew his eyes to the gravitic plot. He stepped closer, then stiffened as the preposterous nature of the incoming Fasset signature penetrated. Whatever it was, it was moving faster than a destroyer, yet its drive mass was greater than a battleship's!
More buzzers began to sound as other eyes and brains made the same observation. Additional sensors sprang alive, battle boards blinked green and amber eyes that turned quickly to red, and Simon Monkoto smiled.
That was an Imperial Fleet drive, but the ships that murdered Raphael had been Empire-built, as well.
"You don't think you could've come in just a bit more discreetly?" Ben Belkassem asked politely from the chair Alicia had installed beside her own on Megaira's bridge. "They're probably in hair-trigger mode, you know."
"We don't have time to be inconspicuous," Alicia said absently. She wore her headset this time, and readiness signals purred to her from her weapon systems. She didn't want to use them, but if she had to … .
"Howell won't stay at the rendezvous more than another three weeks," she continued, "and it's a two-week trip from here even if we could make it a straight shot-which we can't. We have to come in on a Wyvern-based vector, or they'll know we're not Alexsov the instant they pick us up. That gives us less than two days' leeway, and I'm not going to lose them now."
"But-"
"Either your friend Monkoto helps us, or he doesn't," she said flatly. "Either way, I'm going to be at AR-12359/J within the next nineteen standard days." She looked at him, and that same, strange hunger flickered in her eyes. "Tisiphone, Megaira, and I aren't going to miss our shot. Not now."
He closed his mouth. Ferhat Ben Belkassem didn't frighten easily, yet there were times Alicia DeVries terrified him. Not because she threatened him, but because of the determination that burned in her like fiery ice. People had called her mad, and he'd disagreed; now he was no longer certain. She wouldn't stop-couldn't stop-and he wondered how much of that sprang from Tisiphone, whatever Tisiphone truly was, and how much from herself.