A hand signal brought her HQ grenadier up on the other side of the passage, and she unhooked a small device from her armor harness, then nodded.

The grenadier opened up on full auto. It was a mixed belt, mostly smoke and pyrotechnics with only a handful of light HE, for they wanted prisoners, but it did its job. Anyone beyond that hatch was hugging the deck as flash-bangs and anti-laser vapor exploded in his face when she tossed the sensor remote with a smooth, underhand motion. It bounced across the deck, unnoticed under the cover of the grenades, and she smiled the cold, distant smile of a drop commando as she keyed it alive.

Ah! She oriented her remote perspective, tallying threat sources and taking careful note of the plasma rifle, then nodded to the grenadier a second time. He ripped off another burst; then Tannis Gateau flowed into the hatchway with the uncoiling deadliness of a bushmaster, and her battlerifle's powered mounting was an extension of her own nerves. Her target was invisible behind the last of the grenade bursts, but the rifle rose without an instant's waste motion, and she squeezed off a five-shot burst of twenty-millimeter caseless. The rounds left the muzzle at eighteen hundred meters per second; the ten-millimeter sub-caliber projectiles reached their target virtually instantaneously and cut its legs from under it.

Even most drop commandos found it difficult to direct aimed fire from a remote sensor, but Tannis Gateau was an artist. Answering fire ripped back at her despite the blinding effect of me grenades, and she ignored it. She knew it was unaimed; they couldn't see her, but her eyes were in their midst.

Her rifle was a magic wand, spewing agony and death with merciless precision, and for once there was no pity in her. Her ammo belt burned through the feed chute in five- and six-shot bursts, and the answering fire ebbed. A last spattering of penetrators whined off her armor, and she went through the hatch like a panther, already calling for the medics.

-=0=-***-=0=

"My God."

Ben Belkassem's words hung in the sickbay air, and he wondered if they were a curse or a prayer. He sank back into his chair, as nauseated as Tannis Gateau had been as she came down from the tick.

Sir Arthur Keita said nothing, only stared down at the woman in the hospital bed. Tannis's fire had sliced away her legs like a jagged scalpel, but no one pitied her. She lay there, smiling a bemused, cheerful smile, and Keita wanted to strangle her with his bare hands.

Rachel Shu was the only member of the renegades' field staff to be taken alive. He knew he should be grateful, that no one except James Howell himself could have given them more information, but simply listening to her fouled him somehow. She carried an invisible rot with her, a gangrene of the soul all the more terrible for how ordinary she looked, and she'd explained it all with appalling cheerfulness under the influence of Ben Belkassem's drugs.

Under normal circumstances, no imperial subject could be subjected to truth drugs outside a court of law— which, Keita knew, wouldn't have stopped Ben Belkassem or Hector Suares for a moment. For himself, the brigadier was just as happy that no laws had been broken. Bent, perhaps, but not broken. Shu had been taken in the act of piracy; as such, she had no rights. Keita could have had her shot out of hand, and he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to! But she was far too valuable for that. His medicos would cosset and pamper her as they would the Emperor himself, for her testimony would put Subrahmanyan Treadwell and Sir Amos Brinkman in front of a firing squad.

He stepped back from the bed as from a plague carrier and folded himself into a chair opposite Ben Belkassem. Tannis Gateau was a white-faced ghost at his side, and silence hung heavy until the inspector broke it. "I can't—" He shook his head. "I heard it all, and I still can't believe it," he said almost Wonderingly. "All these months hunting for the cold-blooded bastards behind it, only to find this at the end of them."

"I know." Keita's lips worked as if he wanted to spit on the deck. "I know," he repeated, "but we've got it all. Or enough, anyway." He turned to Inspector Suares, standing at Ben Belkassem's shoulder. "We won't need Clean Sweep after all, Inspector."

"I can't say I'm sorry," Suares said, "but this is almost worse. I don't think any sector governor's ever been convicted of treason."

"There's always a first time," Keita said grimly. "Even for this, I suppose." He shook himself. "I'll speak to Admiral Leibniz myself; I don't want this going any further than the people in this room until we reach Soissons." He inhaled deeply, then summoned a sad smile.

"This may even help, in a way." The others looked at him in astonishment, and his smile grew a bit wider. "We'd never have gotten this far without Alley, Tannis." He nodded at Ben Belkassem. "Add it to what the Inspector has to say, and we may get that shoot on sight order dropped."

Tannis's face lit with sudden, fragile hope, but Ben Belkassem sucked in air as if he'd been punched in the belly. Keita turned at the sound, and his eyes narrowed as he saw the inspector's face.

"What?" he asked sharply

"Alicia," Ben Belkassem whispered. "My God, Alicia!"

"What about her?"

"She knows. Dear God in heaven, she knows about Treadwell!"

Keita twitched in surprise. "That's ridiculous! How could she?"

"The computers." Ben Belkassem's hands gestured in frustration as they eyed him blankly and he tried to put his racing thoughts into words. "Procyon's computers! When Megarea took out the AI, Alicia tapped into the net along with her!"

"What are you talking about?" Tannis demanded. "That's—I don't think that would be possible for a trained alpha synth pilot, much less Alley! Even if she could, Shu just told us Treadwell wasn't in the computers."

"Don't you understand yet?" Ben Belkassem snarled so fiercely Tannis stepped back. "She's not crazy—not the way you thought! Tisiphone is real!"

Tannis and Keita exchanged quick glances, then turned wary eyes upon the inspector, as if they expected him to begin gibbering any moment, and he forced his anger and frustration back down.

"You weren't listening to me earlier," he said urgently. "I told you what she did to Alexsov. She didn't question him, she read his mind. Call it telepathy, call it rogue psi talents, call it any damned thing you want, but she did it!"

Keita sank back in his chair, Tannis drove her hands deep into her pockets and hunched her shoulders, and Ben Belkassem nodded slowly.

"Exactly. You may think Tisiphone is a product of Alicia's own mind—I don't. I sat across a dinner table and talked to her, for God's sake! I don't know what she is, but she's real, and she really can read minds ... among other things. Think about how Alicia broke out of the hospital and stole Megarea. Think about how she tracked down the pirates, damn it!"

"All right," Keita said at last. "All right, let's grant that Alicia—or this Tisiphone—can read minds. If she didn't get it from Alexsov, where could she have gotten it since?"

"From Rendlemann." Ben Belkassem pointed at Shu. "Remember what she said about what happened to him when Megarea took out Procyon's AI? That was Tisiphone. It had to be."

"Oh, come on!" Keita protested. "The man was linked to a crashed AI!"

"Oh?" Ben Belkassem turned to Tannis. "What normally happens to a cyber synth operator when that happens, Major?"

"Catatonia," Tannis said promptly. "He goes out like a light." "Then why did they have to sedate Rendlemann to hold him down?"

"Crap!" Tannis breathed. "He's right, Uncle Arthur— that's totally outside the profile. If Alley really can read minds now ..."

There was a long moment of silence, and then Keita sighed.

"All right. Suppose she can—and did. Why the sudden concern?"

"If she knows about Treadwell, she's going to go for him," Ben Belkassem said flatly.

"Wait—just wait a minute!" Tannis protested. "What do you mean 'go for him'?"

"I mean she and Megarea—and Tisiphone—will try to kill him. She doesn't know we got any of Howell's staff alive. As far as she knows, she's the only person who knows the whole truth, and everyone thinks she's crazy. She thinks no one would believe her—that she has to get him herself."

"But she can't," Tannis said reasonably. "Treadwell's on the Soissons command fortress—she knows that."

"And she doesn't care. My God, it was all I could do to stop her from going after Howell by herself!"

"But it would be suicide. Alley would never do anything like that. I know her."

"You knew her," Ben Belkassem corrected grimly. He folded his hands tightly and stared down at them, choosing his words with care. "She's not crazy the way you thought she was, but— " He paused and inhaled deeply. "Major Gateau, Sir Arthur, there's something else going on inside her now. It wasn't there at Soissons. There's a ... fanaticism. I saw it after Wyvern. She was fine before she found out about Alexsov and Brinkman, but then—"

"What are you saying, Ferhat?" Keita asked quietly.

"I'm saying she doesn't care about anything but destroying the 'pirates.' Nothing else is real to her anymore. She'll kill herself to get them ... and she'll kill anyone else who stands in her way."

"Not Alley," Tannis whispered, but it wasn't a protest. She was pleading, and Ben Belkassem hated himself as he nodded. Keita stared at the inspector, and his mouth tightened.

"If you're right—I'm not certain you are, but if you're right—there are nine thousand other people on that fortress."

"I know."

"But could she even get through the defenses?" Suares asked.

"She already got through them once. She cut right through the middle of Howell's entire squadron. I don't know if she can get through them again. I wouldn't bet against it ... but I doubt she could get back out alive."

"She wouldn't want to." Tears sounded in Tannis's voice. "Not Alley. Not after killing nine thousand innocent people." A sob caught in her throat. "If she could do that, she's turned into something she wouldn't want to live."