Deirdre's face solidified into a pitiless mask. "Don't tell me—another civilian benefit of military atrocities."

"Hey, I don't commit atrocities!"

Deirdre turned from him. "You kill people for a living."

Kai spun her around. "Listen to me, really listen!I do what I am called upon to do. If that results in the death of another human being, I regret it more deeply than you know."

"Yet you keep on doing it." She tried to wrench herself free of his grasp, but his hold on her upper arms was too tight. "You keep on killing like it feeds a hunger in you."

"When I was very young, my father told me, 'Killing a man is not easy, and never should be.' He wasn't talking about tactics, he was talking about the toll it takes on your spirit. Killing is not something I revel in. It is something I hate."

At the mention of his father, Kai felt her go stiff, then felt the fight drain out of her. My God, it is my father! What could he have done to her?He released her and she crossed her arms over her chest, shivering as in a cold draft. She drifted off to stand near the light bulb and Kai squatted in her shadow. Now is not the time to ask her about my father. I've got to get us out of here.

He reached down and snaked a length of garden hose from beneath a rat's-nest of heavy nylon cable and mangled bed springs. He glanced over at the water heater, then down at the hose. I have all the things I need ... Might just work, if she's willing to cooperate.

* * *

Demi-Precentor Khalsa keyed up Deirdre Lear's file and sighed as the computer layered colors onto her picture. There was something about her that infectedhim, just as it had the first time he saw her. The way she moved and the light, polite laughter that rolled musically from her slender throat. From the first, she had appeared in his dreams—and then to find her herein his office.

Fate, he thought, was compensating him for having dumped him on such a backwater world.

And you are spurning its gift!It struck him like a physical blow that the object of desires ComStar should long since have trained out of him was in his hands, and he had stuck her in a dark, dank hole with a young, virile man to comfort and chase away her fears. How could I be so foolish?

As his fantasy world started to implode, the demi-Precentor mentally chastened himself and moved to remedy the situation. "I can segregate her from Jewell and make sure she is not taken off to the Reeducation Center." The memory of an earlier visit to that facility made him shudder. "No, she should not be wasted there."

Khalsa heaved himself up out of his chair and quit his office. At the door heading down into the basement, he waggled a finger, causing two ROM guards to follow him down the wooden stairs. He crossed to the door and flicked open the little viewport, but saw nothing.

With a frown, he stepped over to the light switch. "The light is out, but the switch is on." The ROM guards stepped closer to look through the viewport, and Khalsa flicked the switch up and down several times. "They've broken the bulb!"

As Jewell usurped the demi-Precentor's place in his erotic fantasies about Deirdre Lear, the ComStar bureaucrat quivered with rage. Giving the light switch a last flip, he pointed at the door. "Open it! Open it!"

In the 1.27 seconds it took from Kai's activation of the cut-out switch connected to the light, to the power drain knocking that whole city sector from the power grid, the damaged myomer actuator contracted. It went from a gelatinous consistency to one of spun steel as it snapped taut, cracking both the pillars to which it had been bound with nylon cables. When the power died, the myomer relaxed, too soon for it to bring down the house, but not soon enough to prevent it from accomplishing the task for which it had been prepared.

The water heater, filled up to the crack in its side with water, launched forward like a stone from a slingshot. As it left the myomer, it began a slow rotation, with the lower, heavier section lagging slightly behind the upper part. Kai saw the cylinder slam into the door, blasting the half-rotted wood into a cloud of splinters. He heard one man's muffled scream of pain, then another snapping sound.

The projectile continued its flight, skipping off bodies and the cellar corridor until it hit the far wall and crumpled. Water gushed from the crack and slowly spread back along the floor. In the glare of battery-powered emergency lights, it looked like an oversized beer can that had been mashed underfoot.

Squinting against the harsh illumination from the emergency black-out lights, Kai shot forward and leaped from the room. With a snap-kick to the chest, he sent the demi-Precentor spinning into the far wall. As the corpulent man collapsed in a moaning heap, Kai plucked the autorifle from the first ROM guard's dead hands, then stripped off his ammo belt. He looped it over a shoulder, then looked toward Deirdre. "C'mon, do it!"

Motion above him caused him to backpedal and bring the autorifle up. A ROM guard at the head of the stairs jerked his trigger at the same moment Kai tightened down on his. Both guns filled the cellar with smoke and strobing muzzle-flashes. The ROM guard's throat exploded in a spray of blood, then his nearly severed head lolled to the side as his body toppled back into the hallway above.

Kai felt the impact of three bullets as they hit his chest.

Knocked off his feet, he crashed back against the wall. His head hit hard and sizzling rainbow lights exploded before his eyes. As darkness began to close in around him, he tried to fight it off, but blacked out nonetheless.

When his eyes snapped open again, Kai knew from the smoke still drifting upward and the single, bloody rivulet dripping down step by step that he'd only been out for a second or two. The pain in his chest that came with each breath reminded him of the ROM guard's marksmanship.

Deirdre dropped to her knees beside him. "Oh God, I've got to get you to some place where I can operate."

Kai rested his left hand on her shoulder. "Just help me up."

"You can't. You have to lie still. Massive chest trauma." She bent over him and peered into his eyes. "Pupils are slightly dilated. You must be in shock."

"I'm just in pain." He patted his chest with his right hand. "I've got my cooling vest on, remember? Ballistic cloth. It stopped the bullets, but I think ribs got bruised."

"Or broken. Be careful." She helped him to his feet and pulled the ammo belt from the second ROM guard without his asking. "How do you feel?"

"Rocky. I blacked out for a second." He shook his head to clear it, but was less than satisfied with the result. "We have to get out of here."

She looked down at the ComStar staffers. "The first guard's dead. His neck is broken. The other two are just out cold. Are you going to finish them?"

He looked at her as if she were mad and mounted the stairs. "They're no threat. Let's move." Hugging his left arm to his ribs, he worked his way up the stairs with the autorifle's muzzle leading the way. At the first-floor landing, Kai crouched near the body of the man he'd shot, but saw no one. He signaled Deirdre to follow him and cut down the hallway to the demi-Precentor's office.

They ducked inside and Deirdre shut the door behind them. "Why are we here? Let's just go!"

Kai walked over to Khalsa's desk. "Can't. I made a promise." He scooped Dave Jewell's holographs into the small pack he'd brought to the ComStar center. He checked it and smiled when he saw his pistol and the survival knife still in their place.