Somehow they sensed it and evaded by breaking through into the maintenance section again and reaching A deck, where thousands of terrified people were jammed up. There was nowhere else to go, since the shuttles could only take off a few hundred a minute, and there were nowhere near enough shuttles in the whole system to take off this overload of panicked people.

Captain Blake and his team had reached Orbiter Three by this point, and they managed to get to the break-in point within a few minutes, but by then dozens more were dead and a panicky mob was running down the corridors while the things hacked at it from the rear, pulling people down and stabbing them through the chest.

Blake and Cormondwyke setup a curtain of fire. The screaming mob flung itself flat on the deck. The things retreated, holding each corner as long as possible unless heavy fragmentation grenades were used to push them back.

Other squads were sent to take positions behind them.

Eventually they were pinned down in Crazy Lou's, a restaurant complex featuring four distinctive "eatery modules"- upscale-Franco, Mexamerican, Hot-Wok, and sushi-arranged around a circle. There was one main entrance, and the outer wall was of pseudo stucco and strong enough to deflect the plastifrags.

At this point it was a standoff. Blake fired antipersonnel gas into the restaurants, but the things ignored it.

Blake completed a full security cordon surrounding the restraplex and sat back and waited. He knew it would be a ticklish job to winkle these critters out.

Fortunately for him the decision was shifted upstairs.

Chang's shuttle docked with Orbiter Three, and she took over command of the situation from Blake.

Heidheim was plugged in by video and was none too happy with the situation.

His constant presence in her ear was making Luisa Chang feel pretty savage. She'd been off duty, waiting for the end in the arms of a handsome man, and now this!

This was a Fleet problem now anyway. The dirtsiders had taken care of the aliens on their side; the Fleet should take care of the topside problem.

That thought was even more disturbing. Heidheim might destroy the orbiter and take the Empress WU outsystem. Especially if he realized that Tohoto and Scopus Central were poised to use the Starhammer on the entire system.

Empress Wu could escape the holocaust as long as there was a few minutes' warning. Enough time to engage the Baada drives and complete time phase-shift, but Heldheim would probably prefer to initiate before things got dangerous. So he would look for the easiest way out of the situation.

She shook her head; time to concentrate on the immediate problem.

They came out of the elevator on B deck and clapped on respirators. The air was heavy with the stink of AP gas.

Blake and Cormondwyke were waiting for her. What video they had was from an armored "rat" that had scuttled inside Crazy Lou's restaurants. Tables and chairs and equipment had been torn free and stacked up in a mass in the central rotunda. A quick movement to the left at the limit of the camera's range. The rat swiveled. A bipedal form was upon it and then the rat stopped sending video as a chair came slashing down upon it.

"Phew, that was fast."

Blake nodded. "Damn things are pretty fearsome in this situation. No Shark."

"Well, Captain, that's where we come in, isn't it?"

"We can't get at them without taking casualties. Lots of casualties, I'm afraid."

"Gas has no effect?"

"None whatsoever as far as we can see."

"We'll have to get some men in there and take them out personally."

"Casualties."

"What do you suggest, Blake?"

"Hold them in there until they die or surrender."

There was no time for that, but she couldn't let Blake know. "What if there's another outbreak? We don't know how much of this we're facing. What if these two get out again?"

"How much?" he reacted as if stung.

"We don't know, Captain, we don't know what the fuck we're up against here. Because of some damned ITAA-haters in South Kara we don't know what to do or where they'll strike next."

"Shit, if we have to go in and get them we're going to take casualties. You should see the body of Officer Suderian. Looks like he was cut up with swords."

"Yeah, I know, their hands and fingers are like knives when they close them up."

Heldheim was badgering her.

"Chang, what are you going to do? I want some effective action taken immediately. I want that orbiter cleansed of this alien filth and I want it done now.'"

"Admiral, we're just debating how to go about doing it. It's going to cost lives, though."

"Colonel, how you do it! don't care, just hurry up. You know what I will have to do if you don't suppress this thing damn quickly. You also must be aware of what Scopus Central is thinking. I have a class-A warship and a crew of three hundred to think about in such a case."

Three hundred set against the billions who would die. She shrugged. Fleet officers were strange, and none were stranger than admirals.

"I understand, Admiral; we who are about to die salute you."

Chang cut out her end. Heidheim snorted and withdrew into silence at his own end.

"All right, Captain Blake, to horse. We've got to take them out now. Who do we have to take point?"

Blake looked at her with leveled eyes.

"Cormondwyke!" he snapped.

And a minute later Cormondwyke led the squad straight at the front door.

Their skeletals crashed in unison as they got moving.

They smashed through the doors. The thing with Suderian's gun opened up, but the plastifrags were no good against battle armor.

One of the creatures was visible in the Hot-Wok; it slid through a door into the kitchen area.

Cormondwyke jumped in pursuit.

In the kitchen the thing turned at bay. It shoved a refrigerator at Cormondwyke as he came through the door and pinned him back against the wall. Woks came crashing down on the floor, and then Gustin burst in and raked the thing with gunfire and knocked it away before it could crush Cormondwyke.

Cormondwyke emerged, with nothing worse than a bloody nose, from behind the fridge.

The thing had crawled under and behind the stove.

Jose came in behind Gustin. The two of them knelt down and fired plastifrags under the stove, which in the Hot-Wok was long and narrow, without ovens.

The thing crashed through garbage cans and a rubber flap door opened.

Gustin and Jose rose up and advanced, firing as they went.

The thing's body was lying on the floor, smashed beyond use by plastifrags. Sharp spines were rising under the skin, and with a sudden explosive effect the body was abandoned by another thing, with an off-white coloration, like braided worms or snakes. Jose and Gustin emptied their magazines into it, after which it moved no more.

The other one they found hidden in an oven in the Brasserie.

Cormondwyke pulled down the door and tossed in a grenade, and then closed the door again. The explosion shook the Brasserie, but the oven contained the frags and most of the smoke.

When they pulled down the door again the thing was utterly dead and the parasitic monster within it was dead as well.

Chang reported to Heidheim and told Povet to tell Tohoto that the orbiter problem had been neutralized.

Darel Hopester was there, filming everything.

"Is this it now? Did you kill all of it?"

Chang had a horrible thought.

"I hope so, Darel, excuse me." She turned aside and beeped for Heidheim.

"Yes, Colonel Chang, I saw it, your people did a good job clearing up that mess."

"Thank you, Admiral, but I'm concerned. Our enemy always uses a diversionary attack to cover his main move. I don't think this was the main move."

"What makes you think otherwise, Colonel?"

"There was no point to this attack. It's the same as the attack on Doisy-Dyan. They didn't hold the objective, they didn't achieve anything concrete, but they did divert our attention while they infiltrated in CK City."

"So what's next, Colonel?"

"Admiral, I think you should order an emergency shakedown of the Empress Wu."

Heidheim sniffed audibly; dirtsiders trying to tell him what to do with his own ship, the nerve, the sheer bloody nerve of it.

"Thank you for your observations, Colonel, but I think my ship is sufficiently secure."

"Can you be certain, Admiral?"

"Of course, of course. Chang, I think you can go off duty again. I expect there'll be new orders for you from Scopus Central very shortly. Heidheim out."

Luisa wanted to scream. But she wouldn't. Instead she reached for a call to Tohoto. There was no time to waste if she was right.

And if she was it might already be too late.

"Jean, while I'm talking to Tohoto get Captain Ton of the Shaka on line if you can."

"Right away, Colonel."

CHAPTER FORTY.

THE PLEASANT BUT FIRM-MANNERED YOUNG ORDERLY PASSED Caroline Reese the word that it was time to get ready. The Shaka was within shuttle range and she was to be moved at once.

Dully, Caroline got to her feet and followed the orderly out of the brig. Technically she was supposed to be handcuffed to the orderly, but under the circumstances he had decided not to bother. She wasn't about to try and make a break for it; there was nowhere to go to, anyway.

The ITAA-issue gray overalls felt cold and dry on her skin. She knew that this was all she'd be wearing for decades from now on. It was a saddening thought, but then, she'd had a lot of those just lately.

Suicide would be easier than this. But somehow she couldn't bring herself to seriously contemplate suicide just yet. There'd be plenty of time for that later.

The Shaka would take her across the vastness of deep space to Scopus Central, in the heart of the cluster. There she would face more interrogation, then a trial and then many decades of imprisonment.

She could imagine the grim life with its spartan meals, narrow cell, and harrowing boredom. ITAA prison was designed to be primarily punitive, not rehabilitative. ITAA crimes were not the sort committed by the troubled or the poor.

It was incredible to her that all this trouble had flowed from a single bad decision. A thing so slight that it made her want to rage against the fates. Why, she wanted to shriek, why did she meet that damned Count Karvur? Why had she ever listened for a moment to his mad dreams?

They rode a small security elevator to deck five. There they could transfer to a larger elevator to the shuttle dock.

They waited. Elevators were coming up, it wouldn't be long. A red light began flashing on the wall. A red chevron-shaped light that was set three meters up. There were others. Suddenly, with shocking loudness, an alarm blared.

"What's happening?" she said, a terrible dread suddenly alive in her.

The orderly didn't know.

"Condition red!" a loudspeaker shouted. "Condition red!"

People were scrambling. There was gunfire, loud, shattering, from a hallway off the elevator bank.

People were running in the opposite direction.

An emergency hatch burst open on the sidewall. Several men in ITAA uniform staggered out.

"It's all over on deck four, you can't go down there," they yelled.

"Get on the elevators. . . don't go down!" Elevators opened, people rushed in. Reese found herself inside, the orderly still outside.

The doors closed and she rose. Why was it "all over on deck four"?

Voices babbled around her and the dread increased. Something very weird had happened on deck four; something was killing people down there.

None of the men from deck four was in the elevator car, however, so there was nothing more specific yet.