Surgeon-Commander Lorna Tem had been expecting her visitors. Now her monitors showed they were already in the medical complex, approaching her suite of theatres and offices. She sat at her desk, surrounding herself with case notes and surgical records.
They entered without preliminaries, without courtesy.
The usual security retinue came first, then the odious Springer-Soames siblings Valentina Atlanta and Bodan Severyn. Tem leaned back in her seat, affecting studied nonchalance. The security detachment stood aside as the siblings walked up to her desk. Their weapons were not pointed directly at Tem, but neither were they pointed away from her.
“Is there a problem?” Tem asked mildly.
Valentina leaned over the desk, fists clenched on the surface. “Falcon. What did you do to him?”
Tem blinked. “Do to him?”
“You were given express orders,” Bodan said, flanking his sister, his face flushed red with anger. “You were told to alter his DNA. You were told to embed the logical pathogen.”
“I did as I was instructed.”
“Then why isn’t it working?” Valentina’s mouth, astonishingly, was dripping drool, a silken line of it reaching Tem’s desk. “There’s been enough time! We know from tests on captured Machines that our pathogen strikes at a latency in their deep instruction core. Falcon must have made contact by now. Why haven’t the Machines petitioned for surrender?”
“Maybe your pathogen was too effective,” Tem answered, playing for time. “If it spread like wildfire, as you must have hoped . . . Perhaps their command and control structures collapsed before they had time to respond?”
“No,” Bodan snarled. “It could never have been that effective, not that rapidly. And even so, we’d have some inkling of it by now. Some message from Falcon, however confused. Some confirmation that the agent is working.”
“Mm . . .” Tem tapped a stylus against her open case notes. “Then perhaps you botched the design.”
“No!” Valentina shrieked. “No! The design was perfect. Flawless. We tested, over and over.”
“Then I’m at a loss.”
“Our entire strategy depended on this intervention,” Bodan added, baring his teeth to the roots.
“Oh, don’t be too downhearted,” Tem said. In the face of the Springers’ astounding display of raw anger—they had no experience of being defied, she supposed—Tem worked to maintain her mask of calm imperturbability. An adult dealing with children. “Perhaps you even wanted it to fail, so you could see if the Machines manage to fight off your killer moon—”
Bodan snarled, “Oh, you’re a psychoanalyst now?”
Valentina shook her head. “But she’s right. The Io operation will proceed; even the Machines’ full resistance will be overcome. As for Io, the phased evacuations have already begun. Shuttles are on standby. Surgeon-Commander, in twelve hours you will abandon this complex.”
“Twelve hours? That’s barely time to begin moving my most critical patients.”
Valentina frowned. “Who said anything about moving patients? Only your staff are to be evacuated. Perhaps some of the more valuable equipment. You will disconnect life-support, euth the remaining cases—do whatever you will with them.”
Now it was beyond Tem to keep up a cool facade. “You can’t do this. No military priority justifies—”
Valentina straightened up. “Twelve hours, Surgeon-Commander. There’s a seat on a shuttle reserved for you, but please don’t imagine you are indispensable.”
“I won’t leave my patients.”
Valentina smiled, in control once more. “Very well. But think carefully, Surgeon-Commander. Your life depends on it.”