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her lap tenderly, as Edwards labored to regain his breath and get to his feet.
Kyle's eyelids fluttered. "Minmei..."
"Shh-hh."
There was no saving him; she kept her trembling hand at his chin, so he
couldn't see the melted fabric and bloody mess that was his chest. Kyle
coughed, "The war was almost over. We'd won."
"We'd won." She nodded. "You won it for us, Kyle." She was about to faint,
holding a human body that was half blown open, but she found reserves of
courage from someplace she had never delved into before, and smiled down at
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him instead.
There was a final, galvanic bit of life to him. "Tell me you love me, Minmei.
Let it be the last thing I hear. Please."
Once, she would have hung back from conceding that, but she had suffered so
much since joining the Sentinels...it seemed that last words were all she knew
anymore.
"I love you, Lynn-Kyle. Now and forever."
Minmei locked her mouth to his, and felt Kyle go cold and lifeless. She held
him close, rocking as she embraced his head, crooning a little children's song
he had taught her a thousand eons ago.
There was the sudden grip of bloody hands, and Edwards dragged her away from
Lynn-Kyle's corpse. He was speaking into a rover commo unit through his
smashed face. "Rally here! Rally here! Make pickup at this location at once!"
There was a burst of static as someone acknowledged from the assault units.
Minmei knew she was still a captive and that Edwards might still win the day,
but all of that was unimportant to her now.
I'm not a prisoner anymore. I have my own part to play now.
She glanced around the room, and everything she saw seemed to be an edged
weapon or a bludgeon. Edwards, still trying to arrange for a rendezvous, was
suddenly troubled when he saw Minmei's slow smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Strange, that the "Loki" of the Sentinels campaign should have a namesake so
renowned in Earth's scientific history. But the Human Tesla invented polyphase
systems, dynamos, oscillators, and so much more, whereas there is no record of
his Invid counterpart making any contribution whatsoever-beyond the
abominations that are already so notorious.
Simon Kujawa, Against All Worlds: A Biography of Tesla the Infamous
"What's your hurry, Jack?"
Karen tried to make it sound joking, but some of her concern slipped through
nevertheless. Jack paused, there in the Ark Angel passageway, to face her.
"Tesla's due to speak to the leaders," he said in an emotionless voice.
"I'm making final arrangements, and I'm very pressed for time, so if you don't
mind-"
"What are you now, that big slug's errand boy? she sneered. "Does he keep you
busy kissing his feet? Is that why you and Gnea are holed up down in that
compartment with him all the time?"
Wrong tone, girl, she told herself. But she couldn't help it. She was angry at
him for avoiding her, she was suspicious of all the time he was spending
together with Miss Teenage Amazon, and she was worried about what
Tesla might be cooking up. And she was PO'd at herself for caring so much
about Jack Baker.
He had that same distant, dispassionate look he had been wearing lately,
studying her like she was something on a microscope slide. "You're an idiot,"
he said, and about-faced and marched off on his way.
She fought the urge to go after him and put his lights out. Violence never
solves anything unless you happen to live in certain parts of New
Jersey, as someone-W. C. Fields?-put it.
There was some slight reassurance in the fact that Tesla was about to make his
long-postponed appearance before the Sentinels elite. Rick Hunter had decided
he wasn't going to put up with any more stalling, and had in fact been in the
process of organizing an armed contingent to drag the Invid before a board of
inquiry-even if it meant clapping Gnea and Burak and Jack Baker in irons and
giving the alien scientist a taste of the business end of a cattle prod.
But Tesla's relayed announcement-that he had something of great importance to
lay before the leadership forestalled all that. There were a hundred different
scuttlebutt theories about what was about to happen, and some of them were
awfully disquieting.
But apparently Jack Baker wasn't about to clarify anything. Karen Penn found
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that she had curled her hands into fists. Idiot, huh? She went after him with
every intention of dumping him on his keister.
It surprised her almost as much as it did Jack Baker when, grabbing his elbow
and dragging him around on his heel, she kissed him instead of belting him.
She put one hand behind his head and the other on his cheek and went toil.
It wasn't the first time they had kissed, but Karen made it something that
said a lot more than the friendly/competitive necking they had occasionally
done in the past. She knew then that Jack definitely wasn't his normal self;
it was like kissing some unyielding stranger.
But then the kiss changed, and for a moment Jack felt stirrings of his true
self and his own free will. He put his arms around Karen and kissed her back,
as astonished crewmembers of various species detoured around the two or
stopped to stare. A few whistled and cheered and applauded.
Tesla's mindlock reasserted itself, though, and Karen felt Jack go distant and
emotionless. He held her at arm's length, his hands on her shoulders. The kiss
had left her breathless, but he was behind some strange emotional barrier once
more. The interplay of his features told her that there was a struggle going
on somewhere inside.
"Let's see you shrug that one off, Jack," she whispered to him, her hands
pressed to his cheeks. He lurched free, staggering a bit, and continued on his
way. There were a few sniggers from the sidelines. Karen spun to face the
onlookers.
"What're the bunch of ya doing standing around leering! Haven't you perverts
got sex lives of your own?"
Her temper was well known. In five seconds she had the whole passageway to
herself.
My god! Maybe we should shoot him right now, before it's too late! That was
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