Page 59 of Dark Destiny: The Fates' Bargain

"Yaaf! It's me, Tomek!" A pause while Yaaf presumably confirmed it was him. "I have a room all to myself, and it has a box of cars, they're tiny and so shiny, and a castle with knights, and Mama says I don't have to share unless I want to, and there's a big television, and I'm watching a movie about a cat and a mouse, and it's very funny." He took a breath. "Can you come so I can show you my room?"

Sullha watched her son listen to Yaaf's response, watched his face go through its rapid changes, cloudy then sunny, then cloudy again.

"Oh." Disappointment. "But we're coming to see you tomorrow." Sunny again, blazing. "With Mama and Nana. I'll bring my cars to show you." Another pause. "Okay. Okay! Bye, Yaaf!"

He thrust the phone back at her, transaction complete, and bolted back toward his movie.

She returned the phone to her ear. "You made his day, or rather night."

"He made mine." Yaaf had gone quieter. "He speaks to me as if I have always been there. As if I am simply a person in his life."

"You are a very important person in his life. He also started calling my mother Nana, and she doesn't correct him."

The silence that followed was full of unsaid things and shared memories. She listened to him breathe, and she thought about a stone shelf at the cove, and a wet deck, and all the places they had stood close together and not given voice to the thingbetween them. They had said it to each other in so many words, and saying it again should have been easier, but it wasn't.

22

KIAN

The whole team was assembling in Kian's office again. Once everyone was settled around the conference table, Turner consulted his notes for a brief moment, then set his yellow pad down and looked at Kian, waiting for the go-signal.

"We are all eager to hear your plan," Kian said.

Turner nodded. "I assume all of you agree that we need to eliminate whoever is threatening Losham's position."

"Do we?" Toven asked. "I'm sure the list is extensive. How are we supposed to do that?"

"At the minimum, the list includes all of the junior brothers and senior commanders who were passed over for Bertram. Following our instructions, Losham nominated Bertram as general of the Brotherhood's army, and we hope he is loyal, or as loyal as anyone in that nest of vipers is to anyone other than Navuh. That's good for Losham, but bad for everyone who believed that position would go to them. Now they have to answer to a chief of staff whom none of them had considereda candidate until Losham selected him. The junior brothers feel that their rights have been subverted and they are not happy."

Turner glanced at Lokan and Kalugal. "Am I right so far?"

The question had been presented more out of courtesy than Turner actually needing Kalugal and Lokan's confirmation of his assessment.

Lokan nodded. "With the seniors gone, the juniors expected to be promoted, and some of them were, but others were not, and the most important position went to an outsider. I have no doubt they are plotting to get rid of Losham."

"Therefore, the need to eliminate them," Turner said. "And the plan is simple. We get the juniors who pose a threat and all other commanders that Losham indicates as adversarial in one spot, and we terminate them in one fell swoop."

"I'm sure it's perfectly clear in your head," Kalugal said. "But us simpletons need a more detailed explanation."

Kian chuckled. Kalugal was the last person he would think of as a simpleton, but perhaps that was why he felt confident to call himself that.

Turner leaned back in his chair. "Step one of the plan: Losham summons Bertram to his office on the resort side. In person."

"The tunnel's still down," Kalugal said.

"That's the point. Bertram will have to travel overland, mostly using unpaved tracks. It's a doable but unpleasant journey that will take him a long time to complete. Step two of the plan is Losham commanding Bertram to convene the troublesome commanders and junior brothers for a video conference with him. He can call it a strategy session, a loyalty summit, orwhatever pretext he can come up with that will sound legit and not raise suspicions."

Kian smiled. "Then we attack and blow that location to kingdom come?"

"That's right," Turner said. "Losham gives us the coordinates of the building ahead of time, we program them into the guided missiles, just as we did with the connecting tunnel, and the munitions navigate to that location with a maximal possible error of plus or minus three meters. The only thing we will need to confirm before we launch them is that everyone we intend to target is indeed present in the room. Losham can do that while he is hosting the call, as he will have a live visual feed on everyone in attendance. That will leave only the question of how much ordnance we'll need directed at the structure to assure none of the immortals in that room will be able to regenerate after the explosion."

Onegus crossed his arms over his chest. "We will need to know how deep underground that conference room is. The Brotherhood's military headquarters are located mostly below ground, but not deep. They built them like that not to withstand a bombing but to hide the infrastructure from passing ships, and later, from overhead air traffic. Cooling was also a consideration."

Turner nodded. "We need information on the fortifications of the structure as well, and Losham can provide that."

"A partial collapse, or even a total collapse, may not be sufficient to kill them all," Lokan said. "You bring a building down on immortals, and all you've done is put them in stasis under the rubble. The bombing needs to be massive."

"Correct." Turner tapped his pad. "The typical kinetic force needed will not suffice here. We're not trying to crush them. We're trying to disintegrate them, and preferably to incinerate the remains to nothing. We will calculate the ordnance needed for the task."