“I won’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re afraid of. She’s given too much—all of you have—for that. But if she threatens what we’re trying to do now, I won’t have any choice but to put her back into stasis.”

“No! Please!” Isis gripped his arm tightly. “That … that would be almost worse than killing her, Colin!”

“I know,” he said gently. “I know what it would do to me, and I don’t want to. Before God, I don’t want to. But if she fights me, I won’t have a choice. Try to make her understand that, Isis. She may take it better from you than from me.”

The old woman looked at him with tear-bright eyes and her lips trembled, but she nodded slowly and patted his arm.

“I understand, Colin,” she said very softly. “I’ll talk to her. And I understand. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

“Thank you, Isis,” he said quietly. He met her eyes a moment longer, then squeezed the hand on his arm very gently and rose. An obscure impulse touched him, and he bent to kiss her parchment cheek.

“Thank you,” he said again, and left the command deck.

“Colin?”

Colin looked up in sudden relief as Horus stuck his head in through his cabin door. The old man had been more than two hours overdue the last time Colin checked with Nergal’s operations room.

“About time you got back,” he said, and Horus nodded and gripped his hand, but his smile was odd, half-way between apology and a sort of triumph.

“Sorry,” Horus said. “I got tied up talking to one of our people. He’s got a suggestion so interesting I brought him back with me.”

The old Imperial gestured to the tall man behind him, and Colin glanced at the newcomer, taking in the hard-trained body and salt-and-pepper temples. The stranger’s nose was almost as prominent as Colin’s, but on him it looked good. He also wore the uniform of the United States Marine Corps and a full colonel’s eagles, but the flash on his right shoulder bore the crossed daggers and parachute of the Unified Special Forces Command.

Colin’s right eyebrow rose as he waved his guests to chairs. The USFC was the elite of the elite, its members recruited from all branches of the service and trained for “selective warfare”—the old “low-intensity conflict” of the last century—and counter—terrorism. Labels meant little to Colin. Insurgent, terrorist, guerrilla, or patriot. As far as he was concerned, anyone who chose violence against the helpless as his means of protest deserved the same label: barbarian, and the USFC was the United States’ answer to the barbarians.

Like their ConEuropean, Australian-Japanese, and Russian counterparts, the men and women of the USFC were as adept at infiltration, information-gathering, and covert warfare as they with the conventional weapons of the soldier’s trade. Unlike the rest of the US military, they were an integral part of the intelligence community, as much policemen and spies (and some, Colin knew, would add “assassins”) as soldiers. Not that it kept them from being elite troops. USFC personnel were chosen only after proving themselves—thoroughly—in their regular arms of service.

“Colin, this is Hector MacMahan. In addition to his duties for the USFC, he’s also the head of our Terra-born intelligence network.”

“Colonel,” Colin said courteously, extending his hand again and reading the four rows of ribbons under the parachutist and pilot’s wings—both rotary wing and fixed. And the crossed dagger and assault rifle of the USFC’s close combat medal. Impressive, he thought. Very impressive.

“Commander,” MacMahan said. Then he grinned-slightly; his was not a face that lent itself to effusive expressions. “Or should I say ‘Fleet Captain’?”

“Commander will do just fine, Colonel. That, or Colin.” His guests sat, and Colin moved to the small bar in the corner as he looked back and forth between them. “You do seem to recruit only the best, Horus,” he murmured.

“Thank you,” Horus said with a smile. “In more ways than one. Hector is my great-great-great-great-great-grandson.”

“I prefer,” the colonel said without a trace of a smile, “to think of myself as simply your greatest grandson.”

Colin chuckled and shook his head.

“I’m still getting used to all this, Colonel, but I was referring to your military credentials, not your familial ones.” He finished mixing drinks and moved out from behind the bar. “I’m impressed. And if your suggestion was interesting enough for Horus to bring you back with him, I’m eager to hear it.”

“Of course. You see—thank you.” MacMahan took the drink Colin extended, sipped politely once, then proceeded to ignore it. Colin sat back down in his swivel chair and gestured for him to continue.

“You see,” the colonel began again, “I’ve been giving our situation a lot of thought. In my own humble way, I’m as much a specialist as any of you rocket jockeys, and I’ve nourished a few rather worrisome suspicions of late.”

“Suspicions?” Colin asked, his eyes suddenly intent.

“Yes, Com-Colin. I’m in a unique position to study the terrorist mentality, and I’ve also had the advantage of Granddad’s input and Nergal’s surveillance reports. That’s one reason I’m a colonel. My superiors don’t know about my other sources, and they think I’m a mighty savvy analyst.”

Colin nodded. The northerners’ intelligence network—especially the old battleship’s carefully stealthed sensor arrays—would be tremendously helpful in MacMahan’s line of work, but the ribbons on his chest told Colin the colonel’s superiors were right about his native abilities, as well.

“The point is, Colin, that Anu’s people have been digging deeper and deeper into the terrorist organizations. By now, they effectively control Black Mecca, the January Twelfth Group, the Army of Allah, the Red Eyebrows, and a dozen other major and minor outfits. That’s ominous enough, if not too surprising—they’ve always been right at home with butchers like that—but what bothers me are certain common ideological (if I may be permitted the term) threads that have crept into the policies of the groups they control.

“You see,” he furrowed his forehead, “these are some pretty unlikely soulmates. Black Mecca and the Army of Allah hate each other even more than they hate the rest of the world. Black Mecca wants to de-stabilize both the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds to such an extent their radical fundamentalists can establish a world-wide theocratic state, while the Army of Allah attacks non-Islamic targets primarily as a means of forcing an unbridgeable split between Islamics and non-Islamics. They don’t want the rest of us; they’re a bunch of isolationists who want to shut everyone else out while they attend to their concept of religious purity. Then there’s the Red Eyebrows. They grew out of the old punker/skinhead groups of the late nineties, and they’re just plain anarchists. They—”

MacMahan stopped himself and waved a hand.

“I get carried away sometimes, and the etiology of terrorism can wait. My point is that all these different outfits share a growing, common interest in what I can only call nihilism, and I don’t think there’s much doubt it stems from Anu’s input. His goals are becoming, whether they know it or not, their goals, and what’s scary about that is what it says about his own mind set.”

The colonel seemed to remember his drink and took another sip, then stared down into it for several seconds, swirling the ice cubes.

“My outfit’s always had to try to think like the enemy, and I have to admit it can be almost enjoyable. I hate the bastards, but it’s almost like a game—like chess or bridge, in a way—except that I haven’t been enjoying it much of late. Because there’s a question that’s been bothering me for the last few years, and especially since Horus told me about you and Dahak: just how will Anu react if he decides we can beat him? For that matter, how would he react to simply knowing that Dahak is fully operational?