But now, with the formidable Colonel Koul Grakal-Ski supporting her.... In one violent move, he had just resuscitated a corpse.

She looked at his back as he fiddled with the trinkets on her desk, the uniform accentuating his breadth of shoulder.

After a minute, he turned to face her.

"What if I manufactured a trip that you and the Colonel needed to take? One that would result in capture by the rebels? Would you do it?"

Lith hesitated.

"If you can prove you're Fusion, the rebels will let you go," he insisted. "But I'm sure they'll take care of the Colonel for you. There's a substantial bounty on her head."

Grakal-Ski packaged it all up so neatly. A way to accomplish her task and get away, while leaving him in charge of the Nineteen. A win for him, a win for her. And if she refused, she knew she'd be turned over to the Perlim authorities as a Fusion spy. It was like cutting a deal with a scorpion.

"All right." She didn't even realise the words had left her mouth until she saw the smile widen on his face.

She had wanted to refuse. She couldn't.

"Very good, Lieutenant. In that case, I'll be in touch." He walked to the door and paused just as he reached it, sending an oblique look her way. "And Lieutenant, please don't discuss this with anybody. It can take hours to clean blood off these walls."

Even from a distance, the spraen taunted him.

Koul forced himself to calmly walk back to his quarters, even though he was nursing a heady mix of anger and excitement.

So, some amateur terrorist Fusion group thought Sie was a critical resource. True, the commander was brilliant and ruthless. Koul himself had pored over her record. It had been solid but lackl.u.s.tre until the defeat in Territory Thirty-Five more than two and a half years ago. There had been sparks of sound tactical thinking leading up to that debacle, blossoming into a terrible searing flame when she was rea.s.signed to the Eight. He had seen it happen before. Not often, but occasionally a combat officer found his or her true calling only when he or she was knee-deep in blood and looking death in the face. It was a baptism forged in the underworld itself.

After her battlefield conversion, Sie quickly became the poster-child for Central Control. Koul had heard of her formidable reputation. By that stage, who hadn't? But what did he care? All he had to do was wait out his incompetent commander at the time, Senior Colonel Samnett, and ascend to leadership of the Nineteen after the man's inevitable court-martial.

It was there, a bright shining light, the pinnacle of his career, the pennant to shove into his in-laws' faces. Until Cheloi Sie arrived and s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from him.

Koul reached his quarters, entered and locked the door behind him. He needed privacy to ensure his thinking was crystal-clear.

Despite what Sie's loyal adjutant, Swonnessy, thought, he had nothing to do with the Colonel's accident several months ago. But that didn't mean the seed of an idea wasn't planted in his mind. He already knew he couldn't get rid of the Colonel through conventional channels. His personal anguished pleas to Central Control had fallen on deaf ears and he was afraid he was starting to sound like a whining pup. Maybe if he switched to less direct methods....

With the identification of Lith Yinalna as an enemy of the Empire, an entirely new strategy had opened up.

Lith Yinalna, a Fusion spy. How much more delicious it would be to use the Fusion to destroy his greatest enemy. He could destroy her, using Yinalna as the catalyst, all while keeping his own hands clean.

One blot marred the glorious horizon. If people found out that it was Yinalna who betrayed the Nineteen's commander, delivering her into rebel hands, obvious questions would be asked. Matters might lead back to him and the fact that he was the one who had moved her from Blue sector to HQ in the first place.

Koul bit his lip, thinking. It would be better all round if, like her commander and perverted lover, Yinalna also met with a fatal accident. He would have to think more on how best to achieve that but maybe the rebels might take care of the problem for him. After all, what rabble leader would take time to verify the ravings of an hysterical woman?

Lith Yinalna.

Who had sent her on such a mission in the first place? Didn't they see that she had no spine for taking a life? No matter. Fate had dealt him a strong hand of cards and he wasn't about to fritter away such a rare advantage. If everything went according to plan, she didn't even need to aim a weapon or pull a trigger. All she had to do was follow one simple order. Nothing clumsy and nothing that could be traced back to him.

Koul smiled.

It won't be long now, Taelsa my love. Just wait a little while longer and I'll come home to you covered in glory.

I promise.

Chapter Ten.

Day 1,530 of the War: "So what do you think will happen, Rumis?"

The young man picked up one of the two small gla.s.ses of life-water on the Colonel's desk and took a sip. He looked deeply unhappy.

"I think my sister will marry him and I'm not even there to vet her choice."

It was after dinner and Cheloi and her adjutant had retired to her quarters for one of their occasional sessions of light drinking and heavy talking.

The Colonel smiled. "So you think the war has dragged on too long?"

"I think all wars drag on too long." He sighed. "But yes, this one bites especially deep."

"There are some who say," Cheloi chose her words carefully, "the Empire should come to some diplomatic negotiation with the Menon. Maybe even change their status from va.s.sal to semi-autonomous."

Rumis laughed. "Is that a trick question, Colonel? If the Emperor does that, he might as well hold elections on every one of his planets. Or join the Fusion." He laughed again. "That would be funny, wouldn't it? The sops wouldn't know what to do with us."

She pinned a look of sceptical consideration on her face. "The Fusion is a big galactic body. I don't think they could have grown so much, achieved so much, if they were a bunch of cowards."

"Not cowards," he corrected. "Hedonists. I wasn't born into the Empire so I could see it crumble into the grasp of those selfish pleasure-seekers."

She nodded slowly. "You're probably right."

Her door chimed and, after a quick flick at her console, Koul entered.

"Colonel," Cheloi greeted, "what a surprise."

"I brought some late despatches," Koul explained with an incline of his head. His left hand held several flimsies.

"Bring them here. Would you care to share a drink with us?"

Koul looked from one officer to the other. "Why not?"

"Excellent." Cheloi walked to the bureau to get another gla.s.s. "We were just talking about that perverted body called the Fusion." She returned to her desk and poured a shot for her second-in-command, taking the opportunity to refill the other two stubby containers as well. "We've decided that they're formidable but soft."

Koul pulled the second chair in front of the desk towards him and sat down. Reaching for the gla.s.s, he sipped deeply of his drink, draining half of it in one swallow. He lifted an eyebrow in appreciation.

"That thinking, Colonel, if you forgive me for saying so, is a little too simplistic."

Cheloi sat back, watching him. "Oh?"

Rumis grinned, deeply dimpling his cheeks. "Are you a Fusion sympathiser, Colonel Grakal-Ski?"

Koul didn't rise to the bait. "I don't have to be a sympathiser in order to respect them, Major. You may see the Fusion as soft and flabby, but they are also cunning and multi-tentacled. It doesn't serve the Empire well to belittle our strongest foe."

"But they haven't made a single move against us," Rumis argued, "beyond hurling sanctimonious sermons at our heads. Doesn't that indicate they don't have the stomach for a fight?"

"What it indicates," Koul replied, enunciating each word clearly, "is beyond any of us in this office to speculate upon."

Her door chirped again.

"Busy night," she murmured.

Her aide entered and Cheloi had to hold herself still to stop from reacting. She looked into those hazel eyes and tried to convince herself again that, yes, she had done a good thing in terminating their brief relationship. No, not just good but necessary. Lith was easily as corrosive to her resolve as the strongest acid.

She watched as the Lieutenant looked from one face to another.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"That's quite all right, Lieutenant," Cheloi answered. "We're just debating the finer points of interstellar politics. How may I help you?"

Thankfully she was far enough away that Cheloi couldn't catch her intoxicating scent or she would have been over the desk, crushing the young officer against the wall, before anyone could draw a breath.

"You asked for a report from the field hospitals, Colonel." Lith held up a e-pad. "I have it here."

"Fine"

For the third time, the door beeped, and Cheloi threw a hand up in exasperation. "Rumis, are you expecting anyone?"

"No, Colonel."

"Koul?"

He shook his head but continued to sip the remainder of his life-water.

"Come in."

It was one of the junior officers from Communications. With a startled glance, he looked from one face to another then hurriedly handed a note to Cheloi, saluted quickly and exited.

Cheloi looked down at the small sheet in front of her and frowned.

"Vanqill wants to meet me tomorrow. He says he has urgent business he needs to discuss."

"Can't he come here?" Koul asked.

"Seems not. And he says it's too hot to even send encrypted. He emphasises that it's of the utmost importance that he speak to me in person." She scanned the short series of numbers that accompanied the message. "At a set of coordinates he supplied."

She hesitated for a moment then looked up. "Lieutenant, sign out a skimmer for tomorrow morning. Make it one of the latest models. We'll take it low and fast."

"Do you need me along?" Rumis asked, his body tensed as if it was about to vault out of the chair.

Cheloi shook her head. "I can handle him." She lifted her gla.s.s with her free hand. "Let's find out what Sub-Colonel Vanqill has to say that can't be trusted to our regular despatches."

Day 1,531 of the War: Cheloi referred to the navigation e-pad on her lap and frowned. She raised her head and pointed to the left.

"Maybe he's waiting further west. d.a.m.n this dust!"

They were travelling through one of the driest border areas of the Nineteen. The skimmer, speeding fast and low, kept throwing up clouds of fine desiccated brown soil that obscured everything but the way directly in front of them, kept clear by jets of compressed air.

"I'm going to have Vanqill's b.a.l.l.s for this," she muttered, "asking for a meeting this far out. What could be going through that man's head?"

Lith let the Colonel's words wash over her, hoping the white noise would soothe her jangled nerves and fill the rip inside her. It wasn't working. She poured as much concentration as she could into piloting the skimmer, leveraging what flat ground she could to maximise their speed, before moving to the more shielded rocky terrain. Under any other circ.u.mstances, without the tension tagging along for the ride and squeezing her head whenever it had the chance, she might have even enjoyed the irregular manoeuvring between tors.

In the end, it was all for the best, she kept telling herself. What was she thinking getting intimately involved with the woman she had sworn to kill? There would be other people in her life, other men or women to fall in love with. Ones that she might even consider as a life partner, rather than a hurried screw in a f.u.c.king war zone!

Her knuckles tightened on the controls. She was so filled with anger, she wondered how her body could contain it. She wanted to hit the controls with the heel of her palm but knew that would start a discussion for which she was ill prepared. She had been so proud of her strength and sense of conviction. Yet, at a critical point, she had let her own desires rule over her head. And, worse still, it had taken the self-restraint of a ma.s.s murderer-not a rational and moral being like herself, but a f.u.c.king ma.s.s murderer!-to put a stop to it. Lith didn't know who she despised more, the Colonel or herself.

The sun was arcing through the sky and the temperature was rising steadily outside the skimmer's air-conditioned bubble, adding to her unease. Her mind segued back to the strangely-intimate meeting in the Colonel's quarters the night before: the concentration of senior officers and the look on Grakal-Ski's face when the courier interrupted them. Even though the message from Vanqill in Green sector seemed to arrive as a surprise to all, she wondered about the glint she saw in his eye. Was this the opportunity he had alluded to in their previous meeting? Was she actually leading Cheloi into a trap?

And if she was, what could she do about it? As the sub-Colonel had pointed out, capture by rebels was an elegant solution to both their problems. She would be set free the moment her Fusion credentials had been confirmed. Perhaps she could even negotiate a quiet exit off the planet with the rebels as a reward for delivering Sie into their hands. Grakal-Ski would gain command of the Nineteen and the Colonel....

It had to be done. She had promised Nils and the rest of the faction.

"I'll give it ten more minutes," Cheloi was saying, "then we're turning back. We're too close to the boundary of secured territory as it is."

Lith opened her mouth to confirm the order...and their world blew apart.

The dust obscured the source of the missile but Lith felt the hard shock of impact on the underside of the skimmer's right side that sent the vehicle spinning through the air. She could only clench her fists, holding onto the controls with white knuckles, while scenery flashed chaotically before her eyes. They were airborne, she could make no sense of the blurry colours flying past, then they impacted the earth with a crunch that shattered part of the skimmer's clear bubble.

The blast echoes died down to an eerie silence and Lith thought she had lost her hearing completely. Then, as if coming back from a distant place, she heard the sounds of small stones rolling off the underside of their vehicle. An underside now baking in the hot sun. A large arc of the pa.s.senger bubble kept the skimmer at a precarious lean, stopping them from being buried completely under the immense weight of metal but, as she blinked her eyes clear of dust, Lith saw small cracks appear where the ballistic gla.s.s met the ground. It would only be a matter of time before several tonnes of metal came crashing down on them.

While she was still thinking that, someone was working at her harness, fingers deftly releasing the lock points. Still stunned, she looked over and focused on the Colonel's face, grim and forbidding as she freed the clasps. The world had morphed into some kind of hyper-clear scene where Lith could even trace individual, glinting motes of dust dancing in the air between them. At the same time, every action seemed mired in some kind of clear gel, slowed down to a fraction of normal speed. Lith had time to look down as she heard the clack of her harness fall free, wondering why it was taking so long for the straps to separate from the central locking mechanism. She wanted to tell the Colonel that it was all right, she could do it herself but her mouth refused to cooperate.

"Come on," the Colonel directed tersely. At the sound of her voice, everything jerked back to normal. The colours faded, the action sped up and the sound in Lith's ears was her own laboured breathing. They both dropped unceremoniously to the concave arc of the bubble and, feeling herself pushed, Lith crawled out from under the skimmer through a large jagged hole in the canopy, her body sc.r.a.ping against the uneven edges of the gla.s.s. She scrambled away on all fours, only rising to her feet when she was free of the vehicle.

Both women looked back at the upturned vehicle when they were a few metres away. Not even a tremor rocked the metal sh.e.l.l. Cheloi narrowed her eyes.

"I wonder if I can work the radio free before"

A sharp snapping filled the air. With another crash, the skimmer collapsed to the ground. Scuds of fine dirt engulfed them.

"Maybe not." The Colonel's laconic voice penetrated the clouds of dust.

"We could have been killed," Lith choked out, holding her throat while she coughed. She waved her hand around her face until the air started to clear.

The Colonel shook her head. "That was a tipper missile, not an incendiary. And a low-impact one at that. Whoever fired that," she looked around at the surrounding boulders and up into the sky, "wanted survivors."

"What do we do now?"