said. “We get our choice of two universes—but neither one of them’s ours.”
The major smiled and patted Amy on the shoulder. “That’s right,” he said. “I’ll let you think about it.” He looked around the room, gave everyone a cheerful grin that was only slightly patronizing, and strolled out.
Amy glared after him, and muttered, “Where’d they find that stupid prick?”
Pel shrugged. “Same place as all the others, I suppose,” he said. “Wherever that is.”
Susan suddenly spoke, for the first time since entering the room.
“I’m going with Raven,” she said. “And I’d advise you both to consider joining us. I don’t have any power over you, Mr. Brown, but as your attorney, Amy, I strongly recommend you take my advice.”
The other three all turned to stare at her.
“Susan, are you…what are you talking about?” Amy demanded.
“Amy, just think it over.”
She turned and marched out.
Baffled, Pel and Amy and Ted watched her go.
Chapter Two
We’ve no need of them,” Raven repeated.
“We don’t need them here, either,” General Hart replied, “and they might be useful to you. Our telepaths tell us they have the most amazing assortment of odd information tucked away in their heads; this Earth of theirs seems to make a fetish of spreading information every which way, whether it’s needed or not.”
“And what know they of my world?” Raven protested. “Not so much as a newborn babe at the nurse’s breast!”
Hart shrugged. “So? My men aren’t much better.”
“Soldiers?” Raven waved that away, the natural gesture stiff because of the bandaged fingers of his left hand. “A soldier’s a soldier, man—an they know their jobs, we’ll find use for them in Stormcrack and in Shadow’s lands. But the Earth-folk…”
“Are you bothered because two of them are women?”
Raven, pacing by the wall-map, glanced at the general. “Aye,” he said, “there’s that, and I admit it freely. ’Tis no place for a woman, in the midst of battle.”
“One of your own party’s a woman,” Hart pointed out.
“Elani? Nay, she’s a wizard; ’tis another matter entire.”
“Looks like a woman to me,” Hart said.
Two rooms away a telepath listened in on the conversation, and on the thoughts of the participants. Proserpine Thorpe had been reading the minds of those around her, sometimes whether she wanted to or not, since her earliest childhood; she was rarely surprised by the lies and deceptions of non-telepaths dealing with one another. Even so, the cynicism underlying this particular discussion was more than she would have expected.
General Hart really didn’t care about any plans to destroy Shadow, had no interest at all in the people the mysterious evil had harmed or killed; he just wanted to get rid of all the extra-universal troublemakers before some idiot politician or ambitious underling found some way to exploit them and make him look stupid or ineffective. He didn’t really completely believe in other universes, or that this Shadow thing posed a serious threat; this whole business had happened because nobody kept a close enough eye on that overzealous geek Copley, who should never have made Major, and that pompous civilian fraud Bascombe, the so-called Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs—a post in the Department of Science that existed only because Bascombe had invented it and pulled sufficient strings to get it for himself.
But Copley was out of the way now, thanks to a burst appendix, and Bascombe would be harmless enough by himself once these foreigners were disposed of. If Hart had a chance to send along a couple of his own unwanted subordinates as well, that would be just fine, even if it meant losing a couple of dozen men from his command. The Empire had plenty of soldiers, after all; sending a few on a ridiculous mission was no great loss.
And he seemed quite certain that whoever was sent would be lost.
For his part, Raven cared about almost nothing except destroying Shadow—not so much because of what it had done to thousands of innocents, though to give him credit he did feel a certain regret and anger at such needless cruelty, but because Shadow had harmed him, his family, and his honor. Had Shadow never touched Stormcrack Keep, Raven would still have opposed it, but only from a safe distance.
That was hardly a shock; after all, Raven was, as Prossie had known for weeks, a barbarian.
As it was, though, with his younger brother ruling Stormcrack Keep as Shadow’s puppet, Raven was willing to sacrifice anyone and anything, including Stormcrack itself, to defeat Shadow and avenge himself. He did not care in the least that Amy and Susan might be in danger if they ventured back into his native reality; he cared, rather, that they would be useless, and that their presence might be an inconvenience him, and increase the risks of the party as a whole.
However, he would, in the end, agree to anything General Hart proposed, because it was General Hart who controlled access to the gate between universes—at least for the moment. Once back in his own land Raven would be free to ignore any plans and promises made at Base One—and he intended to do just that. He thought General Hart’s plan for a small, fast-moving strike force that would penetrate Shadow’s fortress and assassinate Shadow to be utter nonsense. Shadow, he knew, was a magical being, and if confronted directly must be fought with magic—though its creatures could be slain with sword or spear, certainly, he doubted that Shadow itself would be bothered by anything so mundane.
Raven’s own plan was to gather whatever magic he could and fling it against Shadow until something got through.
To Raven, as the telepath had seen before, “magic” included not just the magic of his own universe, but any force that he did not comprehend, including Imperial science and Earthly technology.
If he took this proposed Imperial raiding party in, and brought back a few survivors who would attest to the need for other weapons against Shadow, then perhaps the Empire would provide those other weapons. Perhaps, if their “science” could do nothing, they would at least provide the men and swords to dispose of Shadow’s creatures.
So he was agreeing to Hart’s plan, even while he knew it was absurd, in order to draw the Empire into more direct conflict with Shadow.
Prossie knew that according to the rules the Empire set for telepaths, which required the immediate reporting of any sort of treason, or deception of government officials, or other anti-Imperial thought that a telepath might accidentally uncover, she should tell General Hart—but the general already assumed that the whole thing was a suicide mission. He misjudged Raven’s motives for agreeing, thought the man was acting out of some silly romantic notions of courage, honor, and chivalry, but Hart knew that the proposed attack was insane and impossible.
He was deliberately trying to get Raven and the others killed, to get them out of the way. He liked the idea of keeping Shadow there as the Empire’s enemy; it made the military more important if there was a serious foe out there somewhere, rather than just occasional rebels and outlaws to be suppressed.
So
