Lakesh rose from behind the desk, but he didn't fire his Bushmaster, fearful of hitting Domi. Squinting against the chemical fog, he saw that the invaders wore rebreathers, transparent respiration masks that covered their nostrils and mouths with goggles to protect their eyes. Slender flexible tubes corkscrewed from the lower edges of the mask and stretched to epaulets on their shoulders. He guessed the epaulets contained small emergency oxygen tanks

  The billowing cloud of vapor dimmed the few overhead lights still shedding illumination, so it was almost impossible to track the invaders. Banks, Philboyd and a few others squeezed off several rounds from their SA-80s, shooting into the cloud at different angles, trying to bring the shifting shadows into target acquisition.

  Lakesh glimpsed Domi dropping her Combat Master's sights over one of the armored men lunging out of the gate room. She squeezed the trigger. The bullet slammed through the back of the interloper's head, jerking him forward like a puppet on a string.

  The next barrage of rounds from the surviving invaders crashed into a computer station, tearing metal loose and sending sparks cascading high into the air. Cursing, Lakesh shifted his weapon, targeting a man's upper body He squeezed the trigger of his machine pistol, firing it one-handed.

  The three bullets hit the man in the shoulder and spun him around like a top. Lakesh missed with his next burst, then fired again, hitting the man above the neckline of his breastplate, crushing the spine and ripping out his throat in a geyser of blood.

  A bullet whipped past Lakesh's face, and he felt rather than heard the little slap of displaced air. It had missed him by no more than an inch and it had come from the general direction of the security detail.

  "Cease fire!" he shouted. "You'll hit each other! Cease fire—"

  Lakesh inhaled a bit of gas and for a handful of seconds he bent over the desk, gagging himself blind. Through the jiggling, burning water in his eyes, he caught glimpses of shapes moving through the billowing chemical vapors, spreading out all over the command center.

  Dropping to all fours, Lakesh breathed through his throat. His eyes leaked tears and he felt sick to his stomach. He crawled forward, toward the main entrance. An invader having as much trouble seeing as the defenders stumbled to a stop no more than three feet away. He caught sight of Lakesh and brought his assault rifle to his shoulder. Lakesh lifted the Bushmaster first, firing a 3-round burst, the bullets hammering into his chest and knocking him down, flares sparking from the impact points.

  Farrell shouted, trying to organize a flanking maneuver, but his words clogged in his throat as he succumbed to a coughing fit. Autofire drove the defenders back, the rounds tearing through desks and computer terminals. Another invader crossed Lakesh's blurry line of vision and he fired. The armor stopped the rounds and most of the blunt trauma, but the zigzag line of bullets stitched the man from hip to shoulder, sending him staggering out of sight.

  A brilliant blue flash pulsed in the room, synchronized with the characteristic crackle of the quartz cremator. Lakesh shouted for everyone to get down. He heard a brief scream, then a mushy explosion. He bit back a cry of horror when he felt something hot and wet slap the back of his neck.

  Crawling quickly, he made it to the door, but before going out into the corridor he called Domi's name several times. He received no response. By the sound of it, the battle had resolved itself into a hand-to-hand slugging match. Cries of pain, half-gagged curses, the crash of bodies slamming into furniture and the meaty impact of flesh against flesh replaced gunshots.

  Slowly he rose, squinting through the vapors. Shadow shapes shifted all around him, and he drove the butt of the Bushmaster at one. He missed and nearly fell. Then a rush of bodies knocked him sprawling out into the corridor. He lost his grip on his machine gun, hearing it clatter out of reach. Metal-shod knees pressed into his stomach and a pair of large, gloved hands closed around his neck and squeezed.

  Lakesh heaved, bucked and twisted, blinking back tears to see a distorted face bobbing over him. The interloper was by far the stronger and he easily resisted each of Lakesh's efforts to throw him off. Lakesh hammered at him with his fists, but he struck only his armored chest.

  "I got 'im!" the man crowed in triumph. "I got Lakesh!"

  The deep-throated boom of Domi's Combat Master reverberated from the operations complex. A crimson spray erupted from the bridge of the invader's nose. His grip around Lakesh's neck loosened, and he slowly slid to one side. Elbowing the dead weight from his body, Lakesh rolled away and got to his feet.

  From what he could see through the gas-shrouded murk, the command center was engulfed by screaming chaos. He couldn't discern who was who. He turned, scanning the floor for his Bushmaster. Two yards from the entrance to operations, the passageway was bisected on both sides by the security bulkheads. Before he could locate his weapon, he heard Domi's voice rising wild and shrill. He caught only a fragmented glimpse of her using her knees and elbows to break free of an invader's grasp. Then a gloved hand chopped at the side of her neck and she dropped out of sight.

  Concern for the girl making him reckless, Lakesh bounded back into the operations center. He had taken only a few steps when a hand closed around his neck from behind, squeezing with an agonizing pressure. His nervous system was almost overwhelmed by the sudden pain. He clawed at the wrist but his fingernails scraped futilely on metal segments. He felt a round object pressing against the base of his skull and realized instantly it was the lens on the palm of Maccan's gauntlet.

  Panicky images of his skull exploding filled his mind, and he struggled madly to pry Maccan's alloy- shod fingers apart. He back-kicked desperately. Maccan's hand mercilessly crushed tendon, muscle and ligaments against his vertebrae. Distantly, with a detached sense of horror, he heard the dry creak of bone.

  Through clenched teeth he forced himself to husk out, "Don't dare kill me—never figure out how to operate interphaser—"

  Maccan snorted, either in amusement or disgust, and flung Lakesh aside as if he weighed no more than a dummy filled with straw. He landed on his left side, the impact knocking what little breath he had left out through his nostrils and mouth. He lay where he had been tossed, his face against the littered floor of the operations room, trying to cough, to move, to breathe. He heard and felt glass crunching beneath him. He gasped in lungfuls of the gas-tainted air, choked and gasped again. His head throbbed in cadence with his pulse. The world spun and tilted around him.

  Then voices were snarling, shouting and cursing all around him. Rough hands hauled him to his feet.

  Lakesh blinked his eyes against the chemical-induced tears swimming in them. All he could see in the smoky murk was the gray armor of the invader's hard suits. He found himself standing in the center of a tight circle of foes. He couldn't help but smile in grim satisfaction when he noticed the smallness of the circle. He counted only three of the hard-suited invaders. His people had acquitted themselves well—more than well, in exemplary fashion, despite the fact that he saw only Philboyd and Banks standing up. He assumed Auerbach still cowered beneath a desk and hadn't been spied.

  "What's so fuckin' funny?" a furious male voice shouted.

  Lakesh looked at the man, white with rage and humiliation, and said nothing. But his smile widened. The back of the invader's hand smacked across Lakesh's mouth, his teeth cutting into his lower lip. He reeled backward and spit crimson at the man's feet.

  Maccan strode to him, his eyes glowing like red-hot coals. Their crimson intensity put Lakesh in mind of the mouths of furnaces—or apertures to Hell. "Raise the security shields."

  Lakesh turned his smile into a smirk, despite the pain it caused him "Blow it out your ass."

  Maccan's eyes widened and Lakesh felt his throat constrict. He suddenly remembered Maccan's psionic assault on Kane and he steeled himself to receive a telepathic attack. Instead, the helmeted man turned away and made a short, sharp gesture with his gauntleted hand. "Bring her, Shayd."

  The scar-faced woman stalked forward, dragging a struggling Domi. Her respiration mask was missing and the flesh around her left eye was puffy, fast swelling shut. Judging by her bare-toothed grimace of anger, she held Domi responsible. She twisted both of the girl's arms in painful hammerlocks, holding her hands up between her shoulder blades. The girl refused to cry out or to meet Lakesh's eyes. Tension coiled in the pit of his belly.

  "Raise the security shields," Maccan repeated. He sounded almost bored. "Please."

  Lakesh refused to answer, keeping his face impassive.

  Maccan smiled coldly, then stepped over to Domi, extended his gauntlet-clad right hand, positioning it close to her head, fingers spread wide. Tiny skeins of electricity sizzled along the fingers, and Domi's eyes followed their thready arcs.

  "I knew men like you of old," Maccan stated conversationally. "Warriors, noble chieftains of a brave people. You would rather die than betray their trust or bow to torture."

  Maccan paused, his smile widening to a wolfish grin, exposing only the edges of his teeth.

  "But to stand by and watch pain inflicted on one of those who are under your protection—" He made a tsk-tsk sound of pity and shook his head sorrowfully.

  With the deliberate swiftness of a striking snake, Maccan's hand darted forward and clasped the upper portion of Domi's head, the round lens pressing against her forehead. Her white face twisted, contorted, lips writhing back over her teeth in a silent shriek. She squeezed her eyes shut as a ripple spread over her piquant features. Her petite form shuddered violently. Lakesh received the distinct impression she was too consumed by agony to even scream. Blood suddenly sprayed from both delicate nostrils.

  Lakesh strained against the arms holding him. "Enough, damn you! Stop! I'll do what you want! Stop!"

  Maccan didn't remove his hand. He continued to grin at Lakesh as Domi's body went into spasms. Her eyes rolled back into her head, showing only the whites. Saliva drooled from her slack lips, mixing with the blood streaming from her nose and over her chin.

  Lakesh threw himself against the arms pinioning him but was unable to break their grip. He knew Maccan's device was disrupting Domi's molecular structure, breaking it down, battering every bone, organ and cell in her body. In a matter of seconds, Domi would be dead.

  "Stop!" Lakesh roared, his voice hoarse with anguish. "I give you my word—I'll do whatever you say!"

  Maccan nodded graciously, as if he had finally heard the words he wanted to hear and pulled his hand away from Domi's head. She slumped forward, sagging limply in Shayd's hands, her head lolling loosely on her neck. Maccan said, "You may let her go now. I think both she and Lakesh have been made more tractable."

  Shayd released her hammerlock on Domi and allowed the girl to fall heavily to the floor. She lay unmoving, curled up in a ball. Lakesh stared at her, barely able to form words due to the terror clouding his mind He could scarcely detect signs of respiration. "Will she be all right?"

  "I really couldn't say," Maccan answered dismissively. "Now, for the third and final time—open the security shields."

  Lakesh squinted through the thinning clouds of vapor until he saw Banks standing with the bore of a rail pistol pressed against the side of his head. Neukirk held the weapon. "Friend Banks," Lakesh said wearily, "if you will do as Maccan demands, I will be very appreciative."

  Banks cut his eyes sideways, glaring at Neukirk. He seemed to be on the verge of arguing, then he wheeled away from the rail gun and marched to an intact computer station. He tapped a numerical sequence into a keyboard, and within a few seconds came the squeak and creak of hydraulics as the bulkheads began to rise.

  Maccan cautiously peered around the edge of the doorway, looking both ways. A burst of gunfire filled the corridor with a staccato drumming. A spark jumped from the top of his helmet and he hastily withdrew his head. With a rueful smile creasing his lips, he touched the small dent on his headpiece with his left hand. His eyes acquired a deep yellow hue.

  "Some of your people are laying in wait for us," Maccan said softly.

  "I'm not surprised," Lakesh retorted.

  Gesturing to the woman called Shayd, then over to Neukirk, Maccan snapped, "Once Lakesh and I are out, if you hear anything remotely resembling a gunshot, kill everyone in here, then go through the rest of this place. Kill every person you see—man, woman, child or otherwise."

  He swept his gauntleted hand imperiously toward the prone body of Domi. "Starting with her."

  Shayd touched the welt around her eye and flashed Lakesh a savage grin. "Be happy to."

  Maccan beckoned to Lakesh with a forefinger to join him at the doorway. When he did, Maccan placed his right hand on the back of his neck. The pent-up energies pulsing within the lens felt like a weak static discharge playing up and down his spine. "Instruct your people to let us pass unmolested. Otherwise you will live just long enough to know the hostages here have been put to painful deaths."

  Lakesh swallowed hard and nodded in agreement. He allowed Maccan to push him out into the passageway. Almost immediately he heard the metallic clatter of firearms being raised, from his left and right. Looking to the left, he glimpsed Wegmann, the slightly built, balding engineer, positioned at a corner, sighting down a rifle. On his right, he saw at least three other gun barrels protruding from around a bend in the corridor.

  "I've made an agreement with our visitors," Lakesh announced loudly. He despised the way the acoustics in the passageway seemed to amplify the tremor in his voice. "I'm taking him to the workroom and then we'll be returning here, whereupon he and his companions will leave."

  In a low voice, he inquired, "You will leave, right?"

  The corners of Maccan's lips quirked in a smile. "Of course."

  They began walking down the wide corridor, adopting a casual gait as if they were just two friends out for a stroll. Maccan's spurs made a jingling, somewhat nerve-racking accompaniment to their footfalls. Maccan did not speak and at first Lakesh was just as glad.

  They passed a quartet of redoubt personnel. Lakesh was dismayed, but not overly surprised to see DeFore standing among them. She followed their progress with angry eyes and the barrel of a Colt Scamp machine pistol.

  "Say the word, Lakesh," she breathed. "Say it and I'll drop him."

  Metal-encased fingers tightened on his neck, and Lakesh winced. Between clenched teeth, he said, "This is Maccan. You remember what Brigid, Kane and Grant had to say about him"

  The medic's eyes widened, the anger suddenly displaced by fear. She lowered her weapon and stepped back, allowing them to pass. She asked, "Does anyone need medical attention?"

  "Too damn many," Lakesh replied bleakly. "Thanks to our visitor."

  As they continued down the corridor, Maccan commented, "Ah, this reputation of mine gets out of hand now and then."

  "Do you think so?" Lakesh asked with mock innocence. "I'd say it's richly deserved."

  Maccan shrugged. "Perhaps. Sometimes it's to my advantage, other times it can be a damn nuisance. But if you'd known me two thousand years ago—"

  "I probably would have found you just as intolerably obnoxious as I do now."

  Fire seemed to ripple out of the gauntlet lens, a force that streaked along the length of his spine. For a sliver of an instant Lakesh had the impression of being stung simultaneously by a hundred wasps, all up and down the buttons of his backbone. The flaming agony seemed to erupt from the nerve roots outward. The pain vanished immediately, before he could drag enough breath to cry out.

  "Understand?" Maccan asked him in a low tone, sibilant with menace.

  Lakesh said quietly, "Understood."

  The gauntlet patted the back of his head. "Good boy,'

  They turned a corner and entered the workroom adjacent to the armory. Rows of drafting tables with T-squares hanging from their sides lined one wall.

  Maccan removed his hand from the back of Lakesh's neck. "Show me your miraculous device."

  Lakesh walked to a long, low trestle table and pointed to an object that resembled a very squat, broad-based pyramid made of smooth, dark metal. Side panels were open and revealed a confusing mass of circuit boards and microprocessors gleaming within. The pyramid was barely one foot in overall width, its height not exceeding ten inches. From the base protruded a small power unit and a keypad.

  Maccan eyed it critically, crossing his arms over his chest. "So this is your interphaser."

  "Interphaser Version 2.0," Lakesh corrected.

  "It's what brought you to the Moon." It was a question rather than a statement. Lakesh didn't feel like responding to it one way or the other. He had spoken the truth.

  The interphaser was the second version of a device that evolved from the Totality Concept's Project Cerberus. More than two years before, he had constructed a small device on the same scientific principle as the mat-trans inducers, an interphaser designed to interact with naturally occurring quantum vortices. Theoretically, the interphaser opened dimensional rifts much like the gateways, but instead of the rifts being pathways through linear space, Lakesh had envisioned them as a method to travel through the gaps in normal space time.

 

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