The Jesus Incident (Destination: Void #2)

The prophets of Israel who preached the idea of the nucleus of ten good men required for a city's survival, built this concept on the Talmudic idea of the Thirty-Six Just Ones whose existence in each generation is necessary for the survival of Humankind.

- Judaism's Book of the Dead, Shiprecords

UNTIL SHE saw him sprint across the east plain, a Hooded Dasher close behind, Legata did not know Thomas was at the Redoubt. She stood at the giant screen in the Command Center, the hum of late dayside activity going on all around. Oakes and Lewis were conferring off to her left. The big screen had been set on a scan program, ready to lock onto any unusual activity. She took over the controls and zoomed in on the running man. The Dasher was only a few leaps behind him. The scene was outlined in the harsh cross-light of the evening suns.

"Morgan, look!"

Oakes rushed to her side, stared up at the screen.

"The fool," he muttered.

Thomas swerved abruptly to the left, made a desperate leap off a dangerously high rock onto the sand at the high tide mark. The Dasher leaped after him, misjudged and landed in a patch of dead kelp washed up by the surf. It immediately began gulping rags of kelp while Thomas ran off down the beach. Another Dasher appeared behind him then, dropping from a high rock, running as it landed. Thomas dodged around a boulder and sped off along the high tide mark. His boots kicked up globs of damp sand. There was no doubt that he heard the Dasher closing on him.

"He'll never make it, no one can," Oakes' trembling voice betrayed his nervousness.

Afraid he won't get away? Legata asked herself. Or afraid he will?

"Why did you turn him out?" she asked. She kept her attention on the figure darting and weaving away from her, and she remembered that nightside meeting with him outside Colony's Lab One. She found herself silently urging him on: Into the surf! Dodge into the water!

"I didn't turn him out, my dear," Oakes said. "He must've escaped." Oakes turned and called out to Lewis across the room. "Make sure nothing's been left open to the outside."

"He was a prisoner. Why?"

"He and the TaoLini woman came back from their undersea venture without Panille, a wild story about hylighters rescuing them. That requires more than simple debriefing."

Lewis came up to stand beside Oakes. "All secure."

Thomas had swerved toward the water once more, diving under ragged scraps of dead kelp. He surfaced draped with the stuff, and the second Dasher remained behind to feed on the scraps. Thomas was visibly tiring now, his stride irregular.

"Can't we do anything for him?" Legata asked.

"What would you have us do?" Oakes asked.

"Send a rescue party!"

"That area's full of Dashers and Flatwings. We can't afford to lose any more people."

"If he was foolish enough to go outside, he takes his own chances," Lewis said. "Isn't that the rule for running the P?" He stared at Legata.

"He's not running the P," she said, and she wondered if Lewis had somehow learned about her own mad run.

"Whatever he's doing, he's on his own," Oakes said.

"Ohhh, n...." The gasp escaped her as the black figure of another Hooded Dasher, two Flatwings close behind it, took up the chase. Thomas was staggering now and the Dasher closed rapidly. In the last blink, as the Dasher stretched for the final blurring leap, it swerved abruptly aside. A mass of tentacles dropped from the air and a hylighter soared across Thomas, scooping him up.

Oakes worked the screen controls, zooming back for a general view. Someone behind them said: "Would you look at that!" It was almost a sigh.

The hills and cliffs inland from the Redoubt displayed tier upon tier of hylighters, great mobs of them gathered in a siege arc beyond the range of the Redoubt's weapons.

"Goodbye, Raja Thomas," Oakes said. "Too bad the hylighters got him. A Dasher would've ended it quickly."

"What do the hylighters do to you?" Legata asked.

Before Oakes could answer, Lewis turned to the room and said: "All right, everybody. Show's over. Back to work."

"We only have evidence from some demon carcasses," Oakes said. "They were sucked dry."

".... wish we could've saved him," she said.

"He took his chances and he lost."

Oakes reached out to the controls, his finger poised over the scan program, stopped. He stepped backward to bring the whole screen into view. The hylighter carrying Thomas had lost itself in the distant mobs. The great billowing bags now danced on the air, underlighted by the orange glow of the suns, their sail membranes rippling and filling.

Legata saw what had stopped Oakes. More hylighters were coming up, climbing higher and higher, filling in the sky.

"Ship's eyes!" another voice behind them said. "They're blocking out the suns!"

"Split screen," Oakes said. "Activate all perimeter sensors."

It took several blinks for Legata to realize he was addressing her. She flipped the switches and the screen went gray, then reformed in measured squares of the different views, a locator number under each. Hylighters englobed the sky all around the Redoubt - over the sea, over the land.

"Look there." It was Lewis pointing to a screen showing the base of the inland cliffs. "Demons."

They became aware then that the entire rim of cliffs, as far as the sensors could reach, writhed with life. Legata felt certain that never before had such a mass of teeth and claws and stings assembled in one place on the face of Pandora.

"What are they doing?" Oakes asked, and his voice trembled.

"They look like they're waiting for something," Legata said.

"Waiting for orders to attack," Lewis said.

"Check security!" Oakes barked.

Legata keyed for the proper sensors and the screens flickered to re-form with views of the clean-up work on the damage left by the E-clone revolt. Orders from whom? she wondered. Crews were busy in every screen, mostly E-clones guarded by armed normals. Some worked in the open courtyard where the Nerve Runners had left nothing alive; others toiled along the shattered sections of the perimeter where temporary barriers had been erected. There were even some heavily guarded crews outside. No demons or hylighters interfered.

"Why aren't they attacking?" Legata asked.

"We seem to be at a stand-off," Lewis said.

"We're saving our energy," Oakes said. "My orders are not to shoot them at random. We cook them now only if they come within twenty-five meters of our people or equipment."

"They can think," Lewis said. "They think and plan."

"But what are they planning?" Legata asked. She noticed that Oakes was going paler by the blink.

Oakes turned. "Jesus, we'd better do some planning of our own. Come with me."

They left, but Legata did not notice. She remained at the screen, working through the outside sensors. The whole landscape had turned into a golden dazzle of suns and hylighters, black cliffs as warm with demons, and a surging sea capped with white foam and spray.

Presently, Legata turned, realized that Oakes and Lewis no longer were in the Command Center.

I'll have to act soon, she thought. And I have to be ready.

She worked her way through the activity in the Center, opened a main corridor hatch and hurried toward her own quarters.