The Ascension Factor

Captain Brood and his squad had been reared in a Merman compound near this Kalaloch district. Brood himself had been schooled privately in the mathematics of logic and strategy — that was standard operating procedure for anyone anticipating an executive position with Merman Mercantile. Brood himself preferred the more direct solutions of physical pressure to the subtleties of politics. His superiors shrugged it off as a phase, agreeing that Brood got results where others failed.

The old families, Islander and Merman alike, retained a strong sense of loyalty to their community that made the kind of enforcement that Flattery demanded impossible from within. Security command removed Captain Brood's team to Mesa for their training and formation of their combat bond, then deployed them to Kalaloch and its shuttle launch site for "police work." They were one another's only family, an Island adrift in a sea of enemy. Everyone was kept three villages 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't afraid often. When he was afraid, heads rolled. He and his team were short-timers at one month remaining, just starting their countdown to home. The captain had something 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's actions had drawn more citations than a dress suit could hold. During that year either the site or his men had been under fire daily.

Today the captain faced Beatriz Tatoosh from the back of the studio, and he thought what a pity it would be to have to kill her.

Beatriz did not know what the captain thought, but fear dried out her mouth when she saw his squad enter behind the lights and fan out along the bulkhead backing the studio.

The captain pointed out each of the live cameras to three of his men. They pulled away from their squad, drew lasguns and without a word each took careful aim at a cameraman.

Beatriz heard gasps, curses, the arming of weapons. It was difficult to see what was 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 team.

We're not going out live! she thought.

"Dak," she alerted her floor man, "check the monitor."

When her gaze left the monitor it caught the young captain watching her. She remembered seeing him before, his dark eyes flashing her a smile as he led his squad through 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, who was no longer smiling.

She remembered thinking how hard everyone was breathing just then, how the second guard stood over her dead cameraman and said to the first, "Shit, man, that was no signal. "

"Shut up, man," the third one said. "It's done. Just shut up. It don'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 tremble, then concentrated on controlling it so that the captain wouldn't see.

Ben was right! replayed through her mind. And who will know?

Beatriz watched the replay of herself on the monitor, interviewing the Director during one 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 trembling she heard Harlan's voice from the back of the studio, speeding through a Zavatan chant for the dead. She remembered that the skinny cameraman with the fanlike ears on number three was Harlan's cousin. The security who had shot him was now dragging him by the feet to the wall. The cameraman'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 room. Fifteen people were being held by nine guards in a very small studio with some very hot lights. The captain scanned the studio once, then turned to Beatriz. He indicated the red lights on the triangulators.

"The red light means the camera is on, correct? It is still recording?"

She did not answer. She felt it was important that he didn'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."