Yet it was even more complex than that, Alicia reflected as her obedient hands guided the skimmer along the Jefferson Field approach route and their admiral's markings and transponder took them through the unmanned, outer checkpoints. Even while a tiny part of her fluttered like a panicked bird against Tisiphone's control, another part was perfectly content. It was the part which always heaved a sigh of relief once the briefings were over and the mission began. They were moving, they were committed, and the predator within her purred with the elation of the hunt. Her brain hummed and wavered with conflicting impetuses, yet her thoughts and actions came crisp and clear and cold, and she'd never felt anything quite like it in her life.

Now what? she asked as they approached the inner security gate.

Drive through, Tisiphone responded, and her own will stirred sleepily.

That's not a very good idea. You may have snabbled up an admiral's skimmer, but I don't have the papers to match it.

It does not matter.

You're crazy! This gate's got real, live sentries, Lady!

But they will see nothing. Have you forgotten the nurse?

Damn it, they don't rely on just their eyes, and this thing is armed! Their sensors are going to go crazy!

Let them. We need only a few moments of confusion.

No way. Alicia began to slow the skimmer. We're out of the hospital. Let's pull back and rethink this before we get in so deep we-

Her thought shattered in white-hot anguish, and she grunted as her eyes went blind. The pain and blindness vanished as quickly as they had come, and her brain writhed in useless revolt as her body obeyed the Fury's will. She felt the skimmer surge forward under maximum power, blazing through the security gate, and the alert sentires saw nothing at all. She caught a glimpse of them in the aft display, spinning towards their com links in total confusion as lights flashed and sirens whooped, but her hands were on the controls, whipping the skimmer higher and wheeling for the shuttle pads.

Let me go! she screamed, and wild laughter flooded her mind.

Not now, Little One! The game has begun-there is no going back!

I'm not your puppet, damn you!

Ah, but you are. The Fury's voice paused, then resumed a bit more tentatively, as if puzzled by her resistance. This is what you asked of me, Little One. I swore to give it to you, and I shall.

This is my life, my body! The sense of content had vanished, and her rousing will battered at Tisiphone's control. She gritted her teeth, smashing with fists of outrage, and fresh pain surged. She panted with the ferocity of her struggle, gasping in triumph as her hands began to slow the skimmer, then cried out as Tisiphone struck back furiously.

You must not! Not now! This is to lose all at the last moment!

"Then let me go, goddamn you!" Alicia gritted through clenched teeth. Her anguish-tight voice was strange and twisted in her own ears, but somehow she knew she must speak aloud. "I want myself back!"

Oh, very well! Tisiphone snapped, and the skimmer swerved wildly as the Fury abruptly released all control. Alicia moaned in relief-then yelped as a plasma bolt whipped past her canopy. She hurled the skimmer into a screaming turn, still in the grip of the tick, and a second miss sent a parked air lorry's hydrogen reservoir fireballing into the darkness.

I trust you are satisfied now? Tisiphone remarked, but Alicia was too busy to respond as she writhed in a mad evasion pattern. More plasma slashed past like lethal ball lightning, and she punched up the skimmer's light screen. It wouldn't do much against a direct hit, but it should fend off a near-miss.

Fires glared in the night as she turned the vehicle almost on its side, trading lift for evasion. Warehouses belched flames under the fury of her pursuers' fire, and she swerved down a narrow opening between freight carriers and loading docks. The com unit yammered with demands for her surrender and warnings that deadly force would be employed if she refused. Not that she'd needed that, she thought as the flames vanished astern and her scanners reported atmospheric sting ships closing from the north. Closer to the ground, security skimmers were howling in pursuit. They'd overshot when she whipped to the side, giving her a small lead to play with, but they were just as fast as she, and they knew the base far better.

At least she had decent instrumentation, and she cursed as she picked up still more security vehicles. They were outside her, and she swore again as she checked her map display. She still didn't have the least idea what Tisiphone was up to, but the pursuit had cut her off from retreat. They were closing in, driving her deeper into the base in what looked entirely too much like a preplanned security maneuver. There had to be something nasty waiting for her, yet the only place left to go was directly towards the shuttle pads, exactly as Tisiphone had originally planned.

She wrenched the skimmer through another turn, half her mind watching the sting ships' traces. They'd responded quickly, but it would still take them a couple of minutes to get here, and the pads loomed ahead of her.

"All right, Lady," she gritted, punching commands into the auto-pilot. "If you can still make us invisible, this is the moment."

And what good will that do? Tisiphone sniffed. As you yourself have pointed out, they will still have us on their sensors, and-

Just shut up and do it! Alicia snapped, and hit the eject button.

The pilot's canopy blew off, and the ejection seat's tiny counter-gravity unit flung her high. She gasped with the shock of it, but her hands were on the armrests, riding the control keys.

The maneuvering jets flared, and she swallowed a hysterical cackle. This, by God, was seat-of-the-pants flying! The jets lacked endurance-they didn't need it, with the counter-grav to do the real work-but they were designed to dart away from a plunging wreck or make a last ditch effort to evade hostile fire. That gave them quite a kick, and the seat was made of low-signature materials, almost invisible to the best sensors. She sent herself flying towards Pad Alpha Six and pirouetted in midair to watch their stolen skimmer execute her final command.

The vehicle rocketed upward in a desperation escape attempt as the security skimmers closed in at last, and bursts of fire followed it. Not just plasma cannon, which were relatively short-ranged in atmosphere, either. The security people were playing for keeps, and the red and white flashes of high explosive converged on the wildly careering hull, but Tisiphone seemed to have worked her magic, for no one was shooting at her. An explosion flowered amidships, and the skimmer shuddered, shedding bits and pieces but still climbing vertically, almost out of sight from the ground. More hits splintered armorplast and alloy, and then a sting ship screamed in.

Alicia winced as twin bores of eye-searing light blazed. Those weren't plasma bolts; the skimmer was high enough for them to use heavy weapons on it, and it vaporized in a sun-bright boil as the HVW struck at seventeen thousand KPS.

Crap, those people aren't kidding!

No, they are not, Tisiphone replied tartly, then relented. Still, this was very clever. No doubt they will think you died in the skimmer.

As long as none of them noticed us punching out. Alicia hit her keys again, killing the jets and powering down the counter-grav. They landed in the shadow of the freight pad, and she shucked the safety harness. And now that we're here, just what the hell do we think we're doing?

Escaping. I have arranged an appropriate vehicle for the purpose.

A cargo shuttle? Alicia was sprinting for the pad stairs even while she protested. That's not going to get us very far.

It will get us far enough-and have I said anything about a cargo shuttle? Tisiphone replied as Alicia cleared the stairs and rocked to a halt.

"Oh, shit," she whispered, and closed her eyes as if that could make it go away. When she opened them again, the fully-armed Bengal-class assault shuttle was still sitting there.

It is amazing what one can arrange through computers.

You are out of your mind! That thing costs sixty million credits! They'll never let it go-and I've never handled one in my life!

You are already pre-flighted and cleared to lift in two minutes, and I checked carefully, Little One. You are fully qualified on Leopard-class shuttles, and while the Bengals are larger, the major changes are in payload, sensors, and increased armament, not flight controls.

But I haven't flown anything in over five years!

I am sure it will all come back to you. But for now, I suggest we hurry. Our launch window is short.

"Oh, God," Alicia moaned, but she was already dashing for the ramp. She had no choice. Tisiphone was out of her mythological mind, but whether Uncle Arthur believed in her or not, the Fury had done too many fresh impossible things. Alicia would never get out of observation after this!

The shuttle interior was cool, humming with the familiar tingle of waiting flight system. It was like coming home, despite the madness, and she charged through the troop section towards the flight deck. A freight canister-a very large freight canister -was webbed to the deck, and she almost stopped when she saw the codes on it.

There is no time. You may examine it later.

B-but that can't really be-

Certainly it can. You may need your weapons, so I ordered it prepped and loaded aboard.

Alicia moaned again as she flopped into the pilot's couch and reached for the headset. This couldn't be happening. Trained mental reflexes brought up the synth-link, reached out to the flight computers, but underneath them was a bubble of wild laughter.

So far, in a single night, she'd escaped custody, assaulted a fellow cadreman, stolen a skimmer worth at least twenty thousand credits, crashed through Fleet security onto a restricted military reservation, refused to stop when so ordered, and caused the destruction of said stolen skimmer and damage to sundry base facilities as the direct result of lawfully empowered personnel's efforts to apprehend her-and none of that even compared to what she was about to do. Talk about grand theft! This shuttle alone represented a good sixty million of the Emperor's credits, and if that canister really contained a suit of Cadre battle armor, the price tag was about to double. They'd build a whole new jail just so they could put her under it!