Alex and Cind tried to soothe him as he headed back inside. There was nothing left to do now—except brace for the backlash.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The children of the Altaics didn't die without a fight.
More than twenty-five thousand students had packed the campus when Iskra's forces struck. It started as a feint at the barricade. Sixty club-wielding cops charged the ten-meter-high jumble of rubble.
Caught unaware, the students were rocked back. A squad of cops burst over the side and hammered around them, cracking skulls and breaking limbs.
A pair of young Suzdal broke in among them. Bodies slithering under the blows, sharp teeth ripping at tendons. The cops were driven back. They pretended to regroup for another charge.
The young barricade defenders screamed for help. Hundreds came rushing to the rescue.
At the Pooshkan Action Committee headquarters, Milhouz and the other young leaders heard the screams.
"We've been betrayed," he shouted.
"Come on. We have to help!" Riehl said, voice breaking with alarm. She headed for the door along with Tehrand and Nirsky.
Milhouz didn't respond. He had just caught a glimpse of something out the window. Through a long alleyway between the Language and the Cultural Arts buildings, he spotted the silhouette of a tank, moving down the road that paralleled Pooshkan.
"Milhouz!'' Riehl shouted again. "Come on. We've got to stop them!"
Milhouz saw the blur of another armored track go by at speed. He calmed himself and turned to Riehl. She was hovering at the door along with Tehrand and Nirsky.
"I'm going to try Ambassador Sten one more time," he said. "Threaten pure hell if he doesn't stop this."
He moved toward the com line the engineering students had installed and shot a look over his shoulder at his companions. "Go ahead," he said. "I'll be right with you."
The three rushed out.
Milhouz stopped. He turned his head to study the open door, head tilted like a feral animal. He waited a moment, listening to more screams of help from the barricades.
Then he ran to the window and opened it, flung a leg over the sill—and jumped.
At the barricades, the cops were retreating again—this time under a heavy cascade of rocks and timber and pieces of rebar.
Riehl and the two other student leaders raced onto the scene. There were cries of recognition.
At the top of the barricade, young beings were waving for them, calling their names, urging them to help rally the students for the next assault.
Riehl looked wildly back for Milhouz. Leadership was demanded, now, dammit!
"Must go to top," Nirsky chirped.
"Up. Up. Up," Tehrand snarled.
Still hoping her lover would show up at any minute, Riehl ran forward. Young hands grabbed her, hoisted her high, and passed her from hand to hand. Up. And up. Tehrand and Nirsky followed behind her.
She was set on her feet. Riehl peered down at the massed cop force. She turned to face the students and lifted an arm high, fist clenched.
"Freedom for the Altaics!" she screamed.
The students took up the cry. "Freedom! Freedom!"
Above the melee Riehl heard the sound of heavy engines. She turned to see the cops parting ranks, revealing first one armored track. Then another.
The big vehicles lumbered forward. Double-timing behind them came soldiers. Weapons at ready.
The first track stopped. Turret clanked up.
An explosion... then another.
Canisters of tear gas arced high and plunged into the mass of students. There were shouts of pain and terror.
Eyes streaming with tears, Riehl held her ground. She shook her fists at the tracks.
Almost on cue, both tracks charged—hitting the barricade full force and cracking through it as if it were paper.
Debris burst upward.
Riehl saw the sharp piece of rebar coming at her, tumbling through the air in slow motion.
"Milhouz!" she screamed.
The rebar took her through the throat. She did a slow doll's fall off the crumbling barricade.
The soldiers opened fire.
Tehrand and Nirsky died where they stood.
Some students fled the onslaught. Others held their ground, only to be chewed apart by the soldiers' fire, or to be crushed under the tracks. Still... many apparachniks did their parents proud.
But in the end the soldiers flung them aside and poured onto the campus, firing magazine after magazine into the crowd. The last of the student holdouts finally broke and ran wildly for cover.
The soldiers followed.
As night fell there were still sounds of gunfire coming from Pooshkan. But not concentrated fire. Only single reports—as the soldiers hunted down the children of
Jochi and shot them. One by one.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Poyndex felt one moment of incredible power.
He had given the Eternal Emperor orders—and the man had obeyed.
Then he caught himself. You are a clotting fool—and worse. I thought you had changed yourself, cut that blind ambition out of your soul like it was a tumor.
With all his strength, Poyndex closed his hand on the rusting barbed wire in front of him. The jagged metal knifed into his finger and palm. After a minute, he released his grip and examined his bloody hand. Let it infect if it is going to, he thought fiercely. Let it swell and fester. Because this crude hunger for real power you feel has almost destroyed you once. And there will not be a second chance.
Poyndex told his body he felt no pain from his hand, and shut off that nerve center's screaming. He looked across the wire, down at the Umpqua River, swirling in spring flood.
This is, he thought, the second time I have been on Manhome, the planet Earth. The first was serving the privy council, which I did well. Especially here, short-stopping that assassination team Sten led. What would have happened, what would have been different, if I had been more alert to the changewinds, and not stopped him? If I had let the privy council die?
You would not have been doing your duty.
True. But might that not have prevented... other events?
Who could tell, he thought. Then I would have remained just a colonel, just head of Mercury Corps. Perhaps I would never have come to the attention of the Eternal Emperor when he returned, even though that spotlight hardly showed me in the best light. Perhaps I would have been purged into retirement after the Emperor took power, as so many others have been.
Do not allow yourself to second-guess the past. Learn from it... but do not think it could be or should be changed. The present and the future are more important—especially this return to Earth. This comes close to the moment of triumph.
That proposal the Emperor had given him had been very thorough, for all its brevity:
It was necessary for a certain surgical operation to be performed on the Eternal Emperor. Something artificial was to be removed from deep inside his body. But the operation must be planned and conducted without the Emperor ever realizing what was going on.
To Poyndex, that was simple. He had, as he had told the Emperor, dealt fairly frequently with enemy agents who had suicide orders conditioned into them—from physical devices to programmed deathtrauma to the hardest to defuse, psychological bombs that ordered the agent's personality to self-destruct.
He had warned the Emperor that the plan would be initiated without the Emperor knowing the exact moment it began, given the suspected nature of the device in his body. Certain events would occur. The Emperor must not question them, or allow his mind to feel alarmed. He must accept whatever happened as if it were common and natural.