“What’s the status?” she asked, sinking into the command chair. There was a tired smell of cigarettes and stale coffee, under the artificial freshness.
“They’ve gone to Force Condition Eight,” the general said. “Full mobilization. Evacuations in progress; nearly complete, in fact. Nothing overt, not yet; we’re matching, of course. No panic . . . ” Unspoken, the knowledge that the civil defense measures were inadequate passed between them. Yes, yes, General. I did my best. Pray that we will not see how far short of enough that is.
“And they’re continuing that crazy broadcasting. The experts say the only thing it’s going to affect is the homing sense of pigeons. Evidently that’s in the same range, planetary magnetism or some such. And . . . yes, Denver says the Project people in the Sacajawea did match velocities with the Mamba.”
Hiero nodded. She had always felt that name was a little ill-omened; Sacajawea had led Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the northwest. Heroic, if you looked at it from a Euro-American perspective, but even if the family did not talk about it, there were indios in the Hiero background. And from their point of view, of course—she forced her mind back to the present. Best not to think too much of the past, here and now. That way lay thinking that somehow she could have prevented this.
“They’re—” He frowned. “That’s odd, they’re making a Priority A broadcast, from the shuttle.”
She snorted. “Get me Orbital One. Split screen, and call up the Sacajawea broadcast.”
Reason fought with sick dread. It made no sense; the balance had not changed. Von Shrakenberg was still in power over there, and still a rational man, for a Draka. They had been counting on that, on him keeping the Militants out until the Alliance was ready . . .
How could they have found out about the Project? she thought; that was enough to send a stab of pain from the incipient ulcer through her stomach. “Milk,” she said. No. It must be more. They would know we are not ready.
“Madam President, we’re having a little trouble with the link to Orbital One,” the comtech said, puzzled. “The signal’s odd. Here’s the Project broadcast.”
It was Brigadier Lefarge. She sat bolt-upright at the sight of his expression. “To all Alliance bases and personnel. To all Alliance bases and personnel. The Domination has engaged in a”—his voice paused, as if searching for words—“an act of biopsychological—”
She felt a sudden quietness spread from the tech’s desk, rippling out. “Put them on central screen and get Orbital One,” she said. Oh, my children. “Now. Vamous . . . ”
The communications desk of the orbital battle station came on, but there was no one behind it. Silence, then a flicker. Then the image on the screen jumped, to the command deck. A man turned to look at them, and Carmen Hiero crossed herself reflexively. There were screams, and one of the techs started vomiting on her console. The man on the screen wore the uniform of an Alliance general; there were deep nail gouges down the side of his face, and an eye hung loose on a stalk along his cheek.
“Urr,” he said, advancing on the screen pickup. They could see the body behind him, broken and floating in the zero-G chamber. Little else, too much blood was coming from the throat. More floated around the general’s mouth. “Aaaaa.” The mouth swelled enormous, and a slick grating sound came through the speakers; the sound of teeth on crystal sandwich. The general was trying to gnaw his way to the command room on Earth. Wet mouth on the screen, and the teeth were splintering now. Chewing, with shreds of tongue hanging between the jagged ends. “Ah. Ah. Gggggg.”
Below her in the War Room the tech was screaming again, but now he was standing, tearing out handfuls of his hair. The president lifted her hands against the sight, and the fingers turned on her. They smiled, showing their fangs. Burrowed toward her face and began to feed, smiling.
Pain. That was the first thought. Then, absurdly: So this is what madness is.
She stood, floated upward, landed on feet that rooted themselves deeper than the world. That was terrible, because she must run, she must hide. The Anglo girls at Mount Holyoke had sprinkled brown sugar over her sheets again and—
—She was walking down the corridor toward the elevators, and the wall kissed her shoulder wetly. A tech was kneeling in a corner, hands locked around her feet, shivering with a tremor that sent waves of blue into the air in time with her whimper. Hiero pulled her own hands away from her face, feeling the tendrils stretch and pulse. A man stumbled toward the tech and squatted before her. He had a fire ax in one hand, and a mass of bloody tissue in the other; the spurting wound between his legs showed what it was. He held it out to her, and Hiero wanted to weep with the numinous beauty of the motion that smelled of pomegranates.
Instead she walked into the elevator and keyed for the surface. It shot upward and inward, compressing her into a fetal curl. Bones snapped and flesh tore as it masticated her, rolling her into a ball that it spat out into the corridor. Tissue and fragments flowed together and she crawled along a carpet that moaned in pain and writhed away from her. Something grabbed her and jerked her upright. Insect-stick limbs, oval body, buzzing wings, centered in a face she knew. What is this monster doing with Roderigo’s face? she thought, and felt rage seep wetly out her stomach. Words spattered around her, heavy with evil oils. She lunged forward and it ran, ran before her out onto a balcony beneath a sky that shivered and thundered.
Light blossomed, and there was a moment of total clarity as her melted eyeballs ran down her cheeks. Then—
SEABED, ANGOLAN ABYSSAL PLAIN
MALVINA SSN-44
NOVEMBER 4, 1998: 1005 HOURS
“Damned fragmentary, Captain,” the Exec said. The lines scrolling up the screen were the longwave relay from Hawaii. “What the hell does that mean?”
“The first part’s an all-points from some Space Force johnny,” Jackson replied, rubbing one hand across the other. She felt a little off, as if things were blurring at the edges. Christ, I can’t be coming down with the flu now of all times. “The stuff after that is completely garbled. Rerun the first, the comp ought to have decoded it by now.” That was NavCommand for you, nothing better to do than cryptography.
Wanda Jackson read the report over once and then again, then turned her head to look at the Exec. Her hand reached for the controls, and she keyed the general circuit.
“Now hear this,” she said. “All hands. This is the captain speaking. All hands will proceed to the nearest medicomp and take the maximum waking trank dose, immediately. Remain calm. Once you have taken the medication, report to sickbay by watches.”
The Exec handed her an injector; she pressed it against her neck and felt a cool bite. A wall of glass came down between her and the world, imposing an absolute calm. That was close. The sick feeling at the edge of her vision was still there, but now she could feel it as something apart from her. The captain touched another control, this time to sickbay.