by Eric Flint
On the screen, the rocket-plane had landed and, as it cooled, the hatch opened. A thousand questions filled Jommy's mind as his heart swelled. He saw Kathleen and the President emerge and immediately guessed that something terrible had happened at the summit. He didn't know why they had come here, or what they had been through, but now they had two more allies.
He was already sprinting toward the hidden lift and its controls. "I'm going up there myself to meet them."
* * *
Safe again deep below ground, Jommy held Kathleen in his arms. The girl felt wonderful. "I thought you were dead, Jommy! Oh, I was sure of it—your thoughts were cut off. The last image was pain, such agony that I couldn't stand it! And then nothing."
When Kathleen had seen that his tendrils were sheared off, she began to sob and clung to him even more tightly. He squeezed her and tried to calm her shudders. Her tendrils were alert, able to pick up any thoughts—but he was a blank to her. He would always be a blank from now on. She still felt the emptiness, though he was right there in front of her.
But then she had looked at him with her beautiful eyes, and she kissed him. "At least you're alive, Jommy. That's better than anything I'd hoped."
Down in the redoubt, Joanna watched the reunion with proud resignation. Jommy could tell she still had deep feelings for him, but the tendrilless woman knew he would never love anyone but Kathleen.
President Gray had shadows under his eyes. He looked more defeated now than at any time since John Petty had exposed him as a slan. At least the slan hunter was no longer with them.
"I'm glad to see you alive, Jommy, but this is a bittersweet reunion, to say the least. The summit meeting was a disaster. I had hoped to find some common ground, but the tendrilless had no interest in common ground. I explained about the tendrilless slans and how all of our babies born within the next few generations will have their tendrils again."
Both Jommy and Joanna listened eagerly to the story. Anthea also responded with amazement to hear the truth about the tendrilless, that she and Davis had been among them, entirely unknowing.
"I take it Jem Lorry didn't believe you, then?" Joanna said with a smirk. "I'm not surprised—there's a man who embodies the worst of tendrilless prejudice. A long time ago, he and I were matched."
"What does that mean?" Kathleen asked.
"We were genetically programmed to marry each other. The Tendrilless Authority had studied our parentage, and they selected me for him, and him for me. Fortunately, we both had to complete many years of service before we were approved. While Jem infiltrated the government here, I worked with tendrilless operations in the Air Center. Fortunately, I got to know the man well enough to abhor him. Even though we supposedly had the same goals, if we'd been married, I would have killed him on our wedding night. I could not stomach Jem Lorry."
"Not many of us could," Kathleen said. "He wanted to . . . to breed with me as well."
"I would say he's inhuman, but he'd take that as a compliment," Gray said. He explained about Jem Lorry's treachery, and Petty's double cross, and the attacking squadrons of tendrilless and secret police ships. "It was a massacre. We barely escaped with our lives."
"Granny's dead, Jommy." Kathleen lowered her gaze. "She went out trying to defend her home. She used her shotgun—"
Jommy hung his head. The twisted old woman had forced him to do many terrible things, but she had also saved him in her own warped way. In the last few years, as he had guided her away from corruption, she had begun to redeem herself.
Gray continued, "If you hadn't left your rocket-plane in the hangar, we would have been part of the rubble there, too. The whole ranch is destroyed. There was nothing left but burning wreckage when we flew out of there."
When Kathleen lifted her chin, she looked very brave and Jommy loved her more than ever. "At least Lorry was killed, a victim of his own treachery—and Petty, too."
Jommy could find no sadness in his heart upon hearing that news. "One less slan hunter to worry about."
Then, from outside the main chamber, they heard a rumble and a crash. Jommy spun toward the large-bore tunnel that his disintegrator had burned through the ground. A small armored vehicle with thick tires rumbled down the passage and crashed out into the middle of the base. Jommy and his companions scrambled for safety as the armored vehicle fishtailed to a halt. Jommy saw the hammer-and-web insignia of the secret police on its side.
A battered-looking John Petty kicked open the vehicle's door and barged out. He stood up, his black jacket torn and bloodied, his face smeared with soot, his hair wild. He glared at Gray and Kathleen, and when he spotted Jommy, his expression became an even more twisted look of displeasure. "Doesn't anyone ever stay dead?"
"Speak for yourself," Kathleen said.
The slan hunter reached inside the vehicle and dragged out another body, dumping it unceremoniously on the sealed stone floor of the hideout. As the body flopped face down, arms sprawled out, Jommy could see that the man had been shot in the back.
It was Jem Lorry. Joanna looked at the body, but without grief.
"No, he's not a present for you," Petty said. "He's a trophy for me. Maybe I'll have him stuffed and mounted in my own base from which I'll guide the recapture of Earth—for humans.
"I killed Lorry while the tendrilless continued to attack the ranch. I shot him just to spite them! I grabbed one of the secret police vehicles that had already been deployed, but its driver was shot in the crossfire."
"So you just drove off?" Jommy asked.
Petty shrugged. "I expect the fighting's mostly done there, now, though I don't know who would have emerged as the winner."
"Secret police traitors or tendrilless invaders—I'm not sure I prefer either side," Gray said.
Jommy glared at the slan hunter. "How did you know to come to this base?"
Kathleen turned quickly to Jommy. "I didn't tell him. And he couldn't have read your father's notes or translated the code."
Petty seemed amused. "Why go through so much trouble? I've always known about this base. In fact, my secret police and I extracted plenty of useful things from right under your nose, President Gray."
Jommy marched toward the slan hunter, who ducked back into his armored vehicle and emerged holding a powerful pistol. "Not one step closer, Cross. I've been aware of your mind tricks all along."
"Mind tricks? You don't have to worry about those anymore," Jommy said.
Petty noticed his severed tendrils at last and let out a loud guffaw. "Well, there's a bit of poetic justice!"
Jommy would not be swayed, though. "This was my father's lab, and we learned about it from his notes and records. So how did you know about this base?"
Holding his weapon, the slan hunter looked at them coldly. "Yes, it was your father's lab, and that's how I know about it. I killed your father."
CHAPTER 40
The revelation came louder than a gunshot in Jommy's ears. A crimson static formed around his vision, closing in like thunder clouds made of boiling blood. He finally forced words out of his tight throat. "I already had plenty of reasons to hate you, John Petty, but now you've given me more than enough rationale to kill you." He stalked forward, consumed with a sick rage.
Jommy had never learned the exact circumstances of his father's death. His mother had said that he was shot in the back, but she refused to speak more of it. Jommy just remembered being on the run with her for three years as she tried to keep her little boy alive at all costs. Peter Cross had made it possible for them to survive.
"Yes, I killed him." The slan hunter swung the pistol in his right hand, aiming directly between Jommy's eyes. He found the young man's reaction to the revelation hilarious, as well as his current inability to fight back. "My secret police and I massacred all the slans in this secret base. It was one of the last mutant nests that we had to eradicate. Why do you think you found only empty enclaves in all your searches? Because my secret police knew about them all and wiped them out! We ransacked th
em, left a few of them as bait. Believe me, any slans still left alive after the raids—like you and your mother—were basically irrelevant to us."
Jommy took another step closer, as if Petty's weapon couldn't harm him.
Gray was cooler, spoke in a harder voice. "And how exactly did you manage this, Mr. Petty? As chief of the secret police, you were working for me. Why did you not give reports to your president?"
"Oh, it must have been in a memo somewhere . . . or maybe I just forgot." He grinned. "Peter Cross knew he was hunted. All slans knew they were hunted, and we spent years trying to track their movements. We managed to kill the occasional slan loner, which gave us great publicity, but we just couldn't seem to capture one alive for a suitable interrogation." He looked at Jommy. "But we got wind of your father's movements and staged an elaborate trap. We set up an ambush with more than a hundred secret police, because we knew what a challenge he would be." Petty's eyes took on a far-off gaze as he remembered his glory days.
"When we finally spotted him, we closed in, cutting off what we thought were all of his routes of escape. Finally, when we had a good shot, I ordered one of my snipers to take him out. But you slans are fiendishly difficult to kill." He shook his head. "Cross took the bullet in his shoulder. He was bleeding badly, but he made his way into one of the tall buildings. We followed him, but he somehow got into the basement levels, then took a lift to a high floor, then ran back a dozen flights of stairs, found a fire escape.
"At first the blood droplets made him easy to track, but his gunshot wound healed so swiftly we lost that advantage. Three of my secret police cornered him in a garage just before he was about to dash into the streets. Cross killed all three of them, broke the necks of two, stole their weapons, and shot the third. Quite impressive, actually."
"So my father got away," Jommy said, grimly pleased.
"In a sense, yes. But that was part of the plan. I was never so gullible as to believe we would actually catch him so easily."
"Easily?" Anthea cried. To a woman who had lived a normal life in Centropolis, the brutal tactics of the secret police were a revelation. "Against a hundred fully armed men?"
"Yes, easily. These are slans we're talking about, lady. That's why they're such a threat to our way of life."
"Your way of life," Joanna said with a sniff. She still looked willing to fight for Jommy, even if he did love someone else.
"What do you mean it was part of the plan?" Kathleen pressed.
Still seething, Jommy maintained his silence, looking for an opportunity to spring upon the slan hunter and disarm him.
"The sniper's bullet contained a micro-tracer. I intended for him to escape, because as wounded and frightened as he was, Cross fled to the protection of his other slans. Oh, he dodged us for more than a day, leaving false leads, eluding the obvious trackers that I allowed him to see. All the while, though, we had the signal so we could follow him. He went right to this laboratory base."
"Even so," Gray said, "this is a fortress. The slans held it for centuries out of the view of normal humans. You couldn't just have walked in."
Petty smiled again, waving his pistol. "That was when the second fortuitous event happened. I had decided to make a full frontal assault, even if it cost me a few hundred men. A small price to pay for eradicating the last slan nest." He shrugged. "But we didn't have to do that. Once we knew where Cross had gone underground, we were able to set up careful surveillance. After weeks of constant monitoring, a young slan, barely thirteen years old, slipped away from the hideout late one night. We'd been waiting for an opportunity exactly like that. We sprang our trap.
"We exploded a canister of sleep gas directly in front of the kid. It would have knocked out an elephant, but it barely slowed him down. His reflexes were dulled, but still he fought. We dropped electrified nets on him. More than a dozen of my slan hunters piled on to the fight. It took three more anesthetic darts to bring him down. A thirteen year old! We whisked the kid away to our interrogation chambers. Armored vaults, sealed self-contained rooms inside the grand palace where my scientists could do their classified work. Even President Gray didn't know about them." Petty smiled.
"Yes, we discovered one of the vaults in the rubble." Joanna Hillory gave him a cold smile. "We even found people still inside—two-and-a-half of them, to be exact. They weren't in very good shape."
"And what did you do with this captive?" Gray demanded, getting back to the discussion.
"We tortured him, of course. We used every extreme interrogation technique we knew, and finally we broke the kid's will. Your father and his fellow slans didn't even know they had a traitor in their midst."
"How . . . how did you break him?" Kathleen asked. "What did you do to the poor young man?"
"We used drugs and sleep deprivation. We tested sonic pain-amplifiers. But the most effective thing was to apply raw electrical wires to his tendrils. The shock proved quite excruciating. After two days of that, the slan boy was a puddle of jelly, willing to do anything we demanded, ready to believe anything we promised him."
"You're a monster," Anthea growled.
"I'm a success story. That was exactly what my job entailed—wasn't it, Mr. President? You always turned a blind eye when it served your purposes."
Gray didn't answer.
"The traitor provided us with the access routes and security codes we needed. We staged our great assault, fifty of my most trusted slan hunters, fully armed and ready. I also had a backup plan, five hundred officers ready to come charging in the event we started to fail. But that wasn't necessary. Our young traitor did his job perfectly, opening the way for us. The slans thought they were safe, cozy in their beds, when we barged in. Ah, it was wonderful!"
Jommy didn't take his eyes from Petty, but Anthea looked around the large chamber, the burn marks and bullet holes on the walls and floor. "So you just killed them all," she said, barely a whisper.
"I won't say that it was easy. The slans put up one hell of a fight—I lost twenty of my men—but gunfire eventually brought them down." The slan hunter turned his grin toward Jommy. "I remember your father. He was hard at work in his laboratory trying to understand the antique machinery of Samuel Lann. Demonic machinery. Who knows what strange apparatus that is?" He indicated the tall humming equipment. "Cross was one of the last to fall, and I was quite impressed at how well he fought, considering he had a bullet lodged in his shoulder."
Gray crossed his arms over his chest. "Quite an operation, Mr. Petty. How come I never heard about it?"
"I'd intended to make a grand announcement, to show the world how the slans were still hiding among us, but then I realized how much I could learn from this underground base, so I kept the operation under wraps. We removed the bodies of my men, but left the dead slans where they were. Bait. We knew the slans would come back, eventually."
"But you left all this technology here," Gray said. "Why didn't you report it?"
"We had already found plenty of slan redoubts—like the place where Jommy met Kathleen."
"Where you shot her dead," Jommy said.
"Oh, stop complaining about that. She's fine now. The truth is, my teams had already analyzed so many of the hideouts, we knew what to expect. My experts spent days down here studying notes, copying technology, but most of it was incomprehensible. Just like all the other places. Eventually I just left this place behind. The slan bodies were beginning to smell, and it was hard to concentrate on the work." His face contorted in a grimace.
"You just left them here to rot?" Kathleen was appalled.
"It helped maintain the veracity of the scene. I maintained a careful watch on the base. It was like a piece of cheese in a mousetrap, and I knew that sooner or later more slans would come." He gestured to all of them standing there. "Now look at the mice I caught! I just didn't expect that the world would end in the meantime."
Even without his tendrils, Jommy had been tempered by his ordeals, like fine steel. He squared his shoulders and looked th
e slan hunter in the eye. "Using traitors, and torture, and overwhelming weapons—you seem to be extremely good at beating people when you have an unfair advantage."
"I'm extremely good at winning. That's what counts."
"So you can't win in a fair fight, that's what you're saying?"
"It's never a fair fight against slans."
"It's a fair fight now." Jommy pressed forward so close that Petty had to step back, still holding up his gun. "My tendrils have been cut off. I have none of the mind powers you're so afraid of. It's just me and you. Your secret police killed both of my parents. You shot Kathleen, the woman I love." He raised his fists. "Will you fight me now?"
Petty laughed yet again, but this time it had a nervous undertone. "Why on Earth should I do that? I've already won."
