For the first time in millennia, Tisiphone faced another as powerful as herself, a mortal mind which had stolen the power of the Furies themselves, and that power had driven it mad.
Vice Admiral Rebecca Horth sat silently, lips pressed firmly together, as the renegade alpha-synth evaded her SLAMs. More forts were firing now, and some of them, at least, were coming closer … but not close enough.
She checked the converging vectors again and frowned. The dispatch boat would pass within a few thousand kilometers of Soissons on its course to meet the alpha-synth, but if the alpha-synth maintained its present deceleration, it would pass well behind the planet when it crossed Soissons's orbit. Which made no sense, unless … .
She stiffened in her chair and started punching new numbers into Tracking's extrapolations, and her face paled.
Ben Belkassem stood silent, chewing the inside of his lip raw, and smelled the tension about him. The dispatch boat's velocity was down to seventy-two percent of light-speed, but Alicia's more powerful drive had Megaira down to barely .88 C despite her far shorter deceleration period.
No one spoke, and he wondered if Keita suspected what he did. Probably. Did Tannis? He glanced at the major's white, strained features and looked away. She might not admit it to herself, but she must be beginning to.
He returned his gaze to the plot. Thank God he'd left Megaira the O Branch codes. At least they could talk to each other without Defense Command-and Treadwell-listening in.
"What the-?" Lieutenant Anders twitched in surprise and looked up at his supervisor. "Sir, Bogey Two's just made a second turnover! She's stopped decelerating and started accelerating again."
Emotionless computers considered the changed data, and Anders gasped.
"Oh my God-she's on a collision course for Orbit One!"
Tannis groaned as Megaira turned end-for-end and aligned her Fasset drive on the point in space Orbit One would reach in forty-two minutes and sixteen seconds. It turned the drive into a shield against the heavier fire of the inner fortress ring-and at the moment she reached Orbit One, the alpha-synth would have regained virtually all the velocity she'd lost. Alicia would be moving at .985 C when she rammed.
Fifty-seven minutes after it had been sent, Keita's desperate message converged with Megaira's receivers.
Alicia looked up incuriously as a com screen blinked to life. She recognized the face, but the person who had known and respected-even loved-that man was dead, and the powerful voice meant less than the brutal vibration lashing Megaira's over-stressed hull.
"Alley, I know what you're doing," the voice said, "but you don't have to. We have independent confirmation, Alley; we know who you're after, and I swear we'll get him. You've done enough-now you have to break off." Sir Arthur Keita's eyes pled with her from the screen and his voice was raw with pain yet soft. "Please, Alley. Break off. You don't have to kill nine thousand people. Don't turn yourself into the very thing you hate."
Alley? It was Megaira's pleading mental voice. Alley, they know about Treadwell. You don't have to-
"It doesn't matter! They knew about Watts and let the bastard live! You think someone like Treadwell won't have something to trade them for his life?!"
But Uncle Arthur's given you his word! Please, Alley! Don't make me help you kill yourself!
Alicia only snarled in response. She turned her eyes from the screen where Keita's face still begged her to relent. She closed her ears to his voice, and deep at her very core, where even she could no longer hear it, a lost soul sobbed in torment. She locked her attention on Orbit One, ignoring the SLAMs still flashing towards her. All that mattered was that distant sphere of battle steel. Her smoking bloodlust craved the destruction to come-and the last, dying fragment of the person she once had been embraced it as her only escape from what she had become.
"She's not breaking off," Tannis whispered, and Keita nodded. Ten minutes had passed since Alicia must have received their message, and Megaira held her course unflinchingly. He glanced at the plot. The dispatch boat had crossed Soisson's orbit eleven minutes ago, and the range to Megaira had fallen to thirty light-minutes. The handful of warships in the system were converging on the alpha-synth, but none of them could reach her in time.
He closed his eyes, then turned to the dispatch boat's commander.
"I need two volunteers. One in the engine room and one on the helm. Put the rest of your people into your shuttle and get out of here."
The lieutenant looked up in confusion, but Ben Belkassem understood.
"I'm a pretty fair helmsman, Sir Arthur," he said.
"What-?"
Tannis broke off, eyes widening, and stared mutely at Keita. The brigadier gazed back, sad eyes unflinching, and she bit her lip.
"Go with them, Tannis," he said gently.
"No. Let me talk to her! I can stop her-I know I can!"
"There's no time … and there's only one shuttle. If you don't leave now, you can't leave at all."
"I know," she said, and he started to make it an order, then sighed.
"Admiral, that dispatch boat's shuttle just separated."
Admiral Horth tore herself away from the intensifying fire ripping ineffectually towards the alpha-synth and checked her plot as the shuttle arced away from the dispatch boat's base course. It was fourteen light-minutes from Soissons, still streaking for the far side of nowhere at sixty-five percent of light-speed, and no shuttle could kill that kind of velocity. Which meant its crew must be counting on someone else's picking them up … and must have a very urgent reason for abandoning ship.
The dispatch boat's vector curved very slightly, and Horth swallowed in sudden understanding. Its course had been roughly convergent with the alpha-synth's from the start; now the match was perfect, and the dispatch boat was no longer decelerating.
A blue dot swelled ahead of Megaira on Alicia's mental plot, far larger and more powerful than any SLAM. Her nostrils flared and she bared her teeth as hate boiled within her. She knew what it had to be-and that, unlike a SLAM, it possessed onboard seeking capability.
She hunched down in her command chair, eyes bloodshot and wild, but her course never deviated. She would reach Treadwell or die trying, and dying would be a triumph in itself.
Sir Arthur Keita glanced at the chronometer. Ben Belkassem had the helm. The dispatch boat's skipper had taken over Engineering, and Tannis manned the communications console. No one else was aboard, and they had eight-point-nine minutes-under seven, given relativity's dictates-to live. It seemed unfair, somehow, to be robbed of those few, precious seconds by Einstein's ancient equations, but he pushed the thought aside.
"Talk to her, Tannis," he said softly.
"Alley-it's Tannis, Alley."
Alicia's eyes jerked back to the com, and her wrath faltered. A strange sound hung in the air, and she realized it was herself, the unbroken, animal snarl of her rage. She sucked in breath, frowning in slow, painful confusion as she peered at the screen. Tannis? What was Tannis doing here?
"I'm on the dispatch boat ahead of you, Alley," Tannis said, and Alicia's heart spasmed. Tears gleamed on Tannis's face and hung in her soft voice, and a tattered fragment of the old Alicia writhed under them. "Uncle Arthur's with me, Sarge-and Ben Belkassem. We … can't let you do this."
Alicia tried to speak, tried to scream at Tannis to get out of her path, to let her by to rend and destroy, to run for her own life, but nothing came out, and Tannis went on speaking as the hurtling vessels raced together at a closing speed one and a half times that of light.
"Please, Alley," Tannis begged. "We know the truth. Uncle Arthur knows. We've brought the warrants with us. We'll get him, Alley-I swear we will. Don't do this. Don't make us kill you."
Agony stabbed Alicia. She wanted to tell Tannis it was all right, that she had to be killed. Death didn't twist her with anguish and startle tears back into her glaring eyes at last. It was Tannis's voice, Tannis's sorrow, and knowing the only way that unarmed dispatch boat could kill her.
"Please," she whispered to the bulkheads. "Oh, please, Tannis. Not you, too."
But her transmitter was dead; only Megaira and Tisiphone heard her anguish, and Tannis drew a deep breath on her com screen.
"All right, Alley," she whispered. "At least it won't be a stranger."
Alicia DeVries staggered up out of her command chair and pounded the com with her bare fists. Shattered plastic slashed her hands bloody, and her animal shriek of loss drowned even the howl of Megaira's tortured drive. She ripped the unit from the console and hurled it to the deck, but she couldn't kill the memory, couldn't stop it, couldn't stop knowing who she was about to kill, and hatred and loss and grief were an agony not even death could quench.
"She's not going to break off," Keita whispered through bloodless lips, and Tannis sobbed silently in agreement.
Ben Belkassem only nodded and adjusted his course slightly.
The being called Tisiphone had no eyes. She had never wept, for she had never known sorrow, or compassion, or love. Those things were alien to her, no part of the thing she had been created to be.