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Jommy boldly pushed his way toward the door of the command-and-control center. “I

have a means of escape—my advanced car is hidden in the forest on the other side of the river.

Trust me.”

“A car?” Petty looked at him in disbelief. “But Centropolis is under attack.”

“The
whole planet’s
under attack, and the tendrilless won’t stop until they’ve crushed our

cities. But my car is armored with ten-point steel and full of new inventions. If anything can

withstand the bombardment, that vehicle can. But if we don’t act soon, we’ll all just be

bloodstains in the rubble.”

When another terrific explosion shook the reinforced walls of the palace, it was enough to

help make up Petty’s mind. Gray thrust his hands forward. “Uncuff me, and let’s get out of

here.” The slan hunter grudgingly did so.

As they left the command-and-control center, Petty yelled for his guards to get to safety. He

wanted to be sure that his supporters—the men who would do whatever brutal action he

required—were not all killed in a single attack. The slan hunter was sure to need them later on,

and he could summon any remnants that remained from around the country.

Overhead, the attacking tendrilless forces began their full-scale bombardment to destroy

the palace.

CHAPTER 11

«
^
»

Though she was herself a tendrilless, Joanna Hillory was not part of the vanguard fleet during

the attack. An operative trained to live and work among human beings, she excelled in being a

spy, not a soldier. Her people had used her well, and she had helped them set up their plans for

this conquest.

But that was before Jommy Cross had changed her mind. Now, remaining behind on Mars,

Joanna had other plans of her own.

She was an attractive woman with a full figure, as tall as most men. Her brown hair was

kept short and curled, close to her head. She wore clothes that gave her freedom of movement,

with few concessions to human standards of beauty. As a spy, it had been important for her to

keep a low profile, though her appearance was enough to turn heads and even earn her an

occasional wolf whistle from men on the streets of Earth.

While the bombardment continued on Earth’s primary cities, Joanna received a summons

to stand before the seven-member council in the glass-ceilinged Martian city. Cimmerium

seemed practically empty as she walked along the wide balcony roads along the edges of the

cliffs. Towers extended out into the sheer gulf of the canyon, rising up toward the flat

crystalline ceiling.

Joanna touched a pearlescent ID scanner mounted outside the vaulted doorway to the

Authority chamber. Recognizing and approving her, the door controls unlocked with a hiss,

then silently swung inward, beckoning her inside. She had always been a favorite of Altus

Lorry, the head of the Tendrilless Authority.

Inside the rainbow-filled chamber, dim sunlight was intensified by prismatic angles,

flooding the chamber with warmth and reminders of paradise, the way Earth would be once

they conquered it.

Centuries ago, during the first Golden Age of Mankind and before the devastating Slan

Wars, true pioneers had begun terraforming Mars. Humans had bombarded the red planet

with comets, thickened the atmosphere, added liquid water in the low-lying canyons, filling

Mare Cimmerium with enough liquid to turn it into a small, shallow sea. They had released

algaes and bacteria, which worked on the once-sterile environment for more than a thousand

years as the breeds of humanity fought against each other, tried to destroy each other.

By the time the tendrilless slans came seeking refuge, Mars was a much more hospitable

place. The air was thick enough to capture the sun’s distant heat. Water vapor long locked in

frozen layers underground began to percolate upward. The bacteria and algae continued to

convert hydrated water molecules and break down minerals to release oxygen.

Cimmerium became a complex settlement. Buildings were made from reinforced glass

produced by melting the inexhaustible supplies of Martian sand, and before long a shining

metropolis clung to the walls of the deep canyon.

While it was comfortable here, the half-terraformed Martian environment was still less

hospitable than Earth. In a half-facetious comment, Jem Lorry had once growled a suggestion

that President Gray and some of the more intractable humans should be sent back
here
in exile,

so they would know what had made the tendrilless strong for so many generations.

The biggest mystery concerning the tendrilless civilization, Joanna knew, lay in finding

their hated step-brothers, the hidden slans, who had persecuted and tried to eradicate the

tendrilless. All that had changed however, when she’d met Jommy.

Back when she’d been on assignment on Earth, Jommy had broken into the secret

tendrilless headquarters at the Air Center. On the run from the law, Jommy and an old crone

he called Granny had the sheer unexpected bravado to steal a tendrilless spacecraft, but Joanna

had intercepted them.

Jommy was a clever young man, certainly her equal in strength and mental abilities. She

had interrogated him, sure that Jommy worked for a large enclave of true slans, though he

insisted he was acting alone, that his mother had been shot dead by slan hunters when he was

only nine years old; his father, a great slan scientist, had been killed when he was six.

When Jommy told her that there didn’t need to be war between the races, she had thought

him incredibly naïve. But his earnestness was infectious, and
he
was fervently convinced.

Afterward, the more Joanna thought about what he’d said, the more she considered his plans

and his determination to follow them, she actually started to believe that he might have a

chance to achieve his utopian dreams.

Maybe the tendrilless were wrong, after all. When Jommy was nearly caught again after

sneaking inside Cimmerium, Joanna herself arranged for him to get away, to race back to Earth

and warn President Gray of the imminent attack. She had remained behind, hoping to convert

a few more allies among the tendrilless.

That had been Joanna’s desperate secret, which she’d kept close to her heart for days now.

The Tendrilless Authority would command her immediate execution if they suspected her

involvement. Jem Lorry had launched his major attack before she could make any headway

against his stubborn beliefs.

Joanna had learned not to underestimate Jommy, however. She hadn’t yet admitted even to

herself that she was in love with him.

As she walked forward to face the council members behind their high bench, she drove

back her fear and anxiety. They couldn’t possibly know what she had done.

Ahead of her, she heard a shrill, petulant voice challenging the more ponderous, deeper

tones of Altus Lorry. “You miss the primary question, Father. The occupation fleet has just

launched, but by the time they get to Earth, the vanguard ships and our tendrilless ground

troops will have completed much of the work. Think about the next step. We must decide

whether to leave a handful of humans alive as our slaves and perhaps even experimental

subjects—or should we just save ourselves the trouble and exterminate them all?”

“Those are not the only two options,” Altus said with maddening calm. “Your hatred blinds

you. If we mean to take over Earth, it makes no sense to destroy everything. What is the sense

in that? Why should we rebuild from scratch, pick up every broken piece?”

Another Authority member added, “The humans must be resoundingly defeated, we agree,

but mass extermination is not logical.”

“It would be logical if you’d bothered to live among them,” Jem grumbled. “Try watching

them every day, smelling them, observing their habits, knowing that you must keep your true

identity a secret or else they would lynch you! They are like animals living in a primitive society

that long ago went stagnant.”

Hearing her approach, Jem turned, and his eyes lit up with a fervor he had kept carefully

hidden while playing his political role in the President’s palace. “Joanna, you can speak on my

behalf! You’ve lived among them as much as I have. Explain to my”—he struggled with his

words—“my esteemed father and his fellow Authority members that we can assure our future

only by ensuring that humans are not part of it.”

She gave him a calm smile. “How can I speak on your behalf, when you are fundamentally

wrong? Such a wholesale slaughter would accomplish nothing but give you a brief rush of

personal vengeance.” Amused by the shocked expression on his face, she turned her gray-eyed

gaze up at the seven council members. “Authority Chief Lorry, you are wise to advocate

caution and forethought.”

Old Altus gave her a kindly and satisfied nod, while Jem fumed, as if she had just betrayed

him.

Joanna continued, “Would you rather spend our efforts consolidating a new government

for tendrilless slans—or engage in an endless pursuit to eradicate all of the humans in hiding?

You would force them into creating resistance cells, possibly even drive them into an alliance

with the true slans. Imagine the debacle.”

“They would still never be strong enough against us!” Jem insisted.

“Irrelevant. Either way, it would waste a great deal of our time.”

Realizing he would never convince them, Jem stalked out of the Authority chambers with a

disappointed glare at Joanna.

When she saw how the council reacted to her, Joanna convinced herself that they did not

suspect her collusion with Jommy Cross. Her secret was safe.

“Please forgive my son,” Altus said. “He has obsessed on humans for too long. I still hold

out hope for him, and I give him chance after chance, but sadly we may have to remove him

before he causes irreparable damage.”

She gave a noncommittal nod. The Authority Chief had always been kind toward her, even

to the point of expressing his desire for political matchmaking between Joanna and his son,

though she had recoiled at the notion. “You summoned me here, sirs?”

“We need you to take care of a very specific threat,” Altus said. “An important threat.”

“What threat is that?”

“His name is Jommy Cross.”

Her heart skipped a beat, and she was sure she paled, but Joanna fought not to show any

reaction. “He is just one slan, a young man presumably working alone.”

“Cross has quite remarkable talents. He was here in our city, as you well know, but he

escaped. He escaped
you
, he escaped us, he escaped the greatest security measures in all of

Cimmerium.”

Another Authority member interrupted, “That in itself proves he is a danger. Cross

returned to Earth in time to warn them of our attack, and it was only sheer luck that political

turmoil there kept the humans from preparing themselves. We do not wish to trust to such

luck again. Cross must be stopped.”

Realizing she hadn’t been breathing, Joanna inhaled, waited a long second to calm herself,

then exhaled. They weren’t accusing her of anything. “And what is it you would like me to

do?”

“Take one of our fastest scout ships and go to Earth. In the midst of our assault, we order

you to hunt down and seize Jommy Cross.”

CHAPTER 12

«
^
»

By the warm candlelight in the shelter of the library, Anthea held her baby, quietly

breast-feeding him as she listened to the buzzing roar of attacking aircraft outside. But she was

more afraid of
people
than falling bombs. She closed her eyes and tried to figure out what to do

next. She had no one in whom she could confide. The candles flickered, casting a warm but

somehow medieval glow throughout the stacks of thick tomes.

Today she had been confronted with the unexpected and unreasoning hatred of total

strangers. All her life she had heard news broadcasts about the insidious schemes of “evil

slans.” The secret police had spread hatred and fear.

Before, it had all meant little to her. She and Davis were just a normal married couple with

good jobs—Anthea in a bank, her husband in a sporting goods store. They’d been happy with

each other, and they anticipated a long and fruitful life, looked forward to starting a family.

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