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The old fa sense of loyalty to their community that made the kind of enforcement that Flattery demanded impossible from within Security command re and formation of their combat bond, then deployed them to Kalaloch and its shuttle launch site for "police work" They were one another&039;s only family, an Island adrift in a sea of enees away from home
Survive your tour, advance your rank, retire to an office at the Preserve - this was the universal goal
The young captain was afraid, and he wasn&039;t afraid often When he was afraid, heads rolled He and his tea their countdown to ho to return home to, and he intended to rotate on schedule He intended that his men rotate back home with him, alive For a year his district had been Kalaloch and the SLS His squad&039;s actions had drawnthat year either the site or his men had been under fire daily
Today the captain faced Beatriz Tatoosh froht what a pity it would be to have to kill her
Beatriz did not knohat the captain thought, but fear dried out her hts and fan out along the bulkhead backing the studio
The captain pointed out each of the live cameras to three of his uns and without a word each took careful ai of weapons It was difficult to see as happening because of the glare in her eyes The large monitor at the back of the studio cleared, then displayed a tape of the last launch, a tape cut by Beatriz and her present teaht
"Dak," she alerted her floor aze left theher She re her a sh the labyrinth of the launch site He half-smiled now, and nodded at her, and with that nod his three men executed her three cameramen
At the first shot she was stunned at the suddenness of it all, the audacity as much as the horror At the second shot it was the smell of death itself that stunned her At the third shot she faced the immediacy of her own death She also faced the captain, as no longer s how hard everyone was breathing just then, how the second guard stood over her dead cana"
"Shut up, man," the third one said "It&039;s done Just shut up It don&039;t change nothing here at all"
"All right!"
The captain fanned his fingers out from his left palm and the rest of the squad sealed off the studio area She started to tre it so that the captain wouldn&039;t see
Ben was right! replayed through her mind And ill know?
Beatriz watched the replay of herself on theone of his ritual visits to the launch site The expression on her face onscreen, one of admiration and deference, now made her sick to her stomach Even so, her eyes stayed on the screen, rather than face the unbelievable reality unreeling in her studio
Through the shock and the tre she heard Harlan&039;s voice froh a Zavatan chant for the dead She remembered that the skinny cameraman with the fanlike ears on number three was Harlan&039;s cousin The security who had shot hi him by the feet to the wall The cameraman&039;s head bumped over the sprawl of cables across the deck, the hole in his chest burned so clean it barely bled
The three assassins took wider positions in the roouards in a very shts The captain scanned the studio once, then turned to Beatriz He indicated the red lights on the triangulators
"The red light ?"
She did not answer She felt it was important that he didn&039;t hear her voice quaver She could not take her eyes from his eyes
He did not smile this time, nor did he nod
"Finish them," he said Then he nodded at Beatriz, "Except for her"
The screa, the curses with Flattery&039;s name on them silenced in the few moments it took the captain to walk her to the hatchway It seemed that she walked forever, because there were the bodies of her crew to step over, and her legs were so uncharacteristically unsteady
"Now see what you have done," Brood said to her He squeezed her upper arm and shook her "See what a mess your broadcast has made"
She couldn&039;t speak or she would cry, and she didn&039;t want to cry for him She slapped away his touch when he took her arm to steady her The last body she had to step over to reach the hatchas the irl&039;s
What was her name? Beatriz felt a new panic rise I can&039;t blank out her nam !
It was Nephertiti, yes, Nephertiti Someone pretty and dark-skinned, like herself, ide eyes She told herself to remember this, to remember it and to see that somehow, sometime the world would know
"You&039;re a cool one," the captain told her "You probably saorse than this at Mesa two years back"
She stopped in the hatchway and turned, still not speaking
"I saw you there, too," he said "I saw both you and your boyfriend bounced ass over teakettle when that ht it"
She nodded, started to say, "So did we," but nothing came out of her throat but a croak
For the first time she noticed his nania at his left breast: "Brood" Her only wish right noas that she would live long enough to see Captain Brood die
He turned back to the studio and its seventeen dead warain at herself on the monitor The tape replayed an intervieith Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster of Current Control He was one of the few hu of the hyb tanks twenty-five years ago He was so tall she&039;d had to stand on a box to do the interview She had ht to the new orbital coht with Ben Within a&039;eee this place down, seal it off, then get all their production shit aboard"
He bowed to her then, opened the hatch for her and said, "We&039;re expecting the replacements for your crew any minute They are my men, and will do as they&039;re told My squad and I will travel along, to see that you do, too"
The mind at ease is a dead mind
- Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control
Dwarf MacIntosh floated in the turretlike chamber of Current Control and surveyed the planet below for the birth of a certain squall at sea It happened at about this time every day that a swirl of clouds est wild kelp bed It was so; it told hih the behavior of the kelp was completely loco Today, humans didn&039;t make much sense to hilass extravagance of materials and workmanship that MacIntosh had fabricated for hi Current Control in the orbital station
I&039;d have taken the job anyway, Mack admitted, but only to himself "Kelpe He couldn&039;t have allowed any of Flattery&039;s goons such an easy throttlehold on the kelp Besides, he felt much more comfortable in orbit than he did on Pandora&039;s surface
Like Flattery, Mack had been cloned, raised and trained in the sterility of Moonbase, in the hyperregimentation and clonophobia of Moonbase His whole life, until hybernation, had been spent orbiting an Earth that, for him and for all clones, never existed In those days, Flattery had openly pined for a life Earthside, but even then Dwarf MacIntosh looked outward, past Earth&039;s measly system to the possibilities beyond
From his turret Mack observed and charted many of these possibilities He named them, but not the few special names he saved for his unborn children He had spent the past two years above Pandora, refusing the usual R&R rotations groundside In that tile star that would lead them Earthward He liked it that way
Dwarf MacIntosh awoke from hybernation on Pandora one day in indescribable pain and found hi In spite of the planet&039;s horrors he was in his own heaven a to that little wretch of a planet and most of them died there Alyssa Mars well, she died, too She died the day Moonbase started i her for backup OMC
Mack and Flattery shared a drea further into the void Mack felt it a pity, in a way, since he had never liked Flattery, even during training with him back at Moonbase Their differences had coement of the kelp
If Flattery had any idea of e&039;ve done, of what the kelp i
"Dr MacIntosh, shuttle&039;s set for launch"
Mack handed himself out of the turret and with one foot-thrust sailed across the huge control room to his personal console Spud Soleus, his first assistant, busied hilance at the number six display told Mack that the kelp in the SLS sector was perforht display was a different story, however The great kelp bed down-coast of Victoria was still a writhing tangle No telling how hters were lost in there He punched up another batch of coffee
"What&039;s the delay?"
Spud shrugged his skinny shoulders, keeping to his console
"They said so about replacements for the news crew You know Flattery, can&039;t do anything without crowing to the press"
"Who&039;s been replaced?" he asked He felt his heart ju to see Beatriz Tatoosh again He&039;d thought about Beatriz Tatoosh daily froo His dreahts left off, and he had dreamed up the hope that she could make a permanent base aboard the Orbiter
"Don&039;t know," Spud said "Don&039;t knohy, either Everything was cool just a while ago for Newsbreak Did you see it?"
MacIntosh shook his head
"Yeah, you were in your turret The Tatoosh wo That "
"Yeah," Mack said, "he&039;s a little goody-goody for me, but he means well He&039;s sure been on the Director&039;s tail lately"
Dwarf could see Spud&039;s frown reflected in one of the dead screens
"It&039;s not a good idea to get on the Director&039;s tail," Spud said "Not good at all If you didn&039;t see the Newsbreak, then you didn&039;t see yourself, either"