Chapter Thirty
“We’ve waited a long time for this moment, haven’t we?” Lamani tapped his wrist comm, and the two aides barreled into the office. “Mr. Aymes and I will have a conversation, but he will not be leaving. Secure the office and floor with additional guards.”
Now he recognized the significance of their broad foreheads, deep-set eyes, bad dispositions—they were Odgidian. The Lamis-Odg guards hurried out.
Carter focused on the terrorist mastermind he’d hunted for a decade. No one would ever guess he wasn’t human. “Their surgery wasn’t as good as yours.”
Lamani’s lip curled into an unBensonlike sneer. “My position demanded a far greater forfeit. When the last planet surrenders, I shall undergo a surgical reversal, but I will not completely regain what I have sacrificed.”
His entire skull had been reshaped. Cybermed could rebuild his cranium, but the services would not be offered. Let him spend the rest of his life—whatever remained of it—looking like the humans he despised so much.
The terrorist raised his arms. “Ickto omi Lamani, Hoorat ahno Okanta uya Yagnoni,” he said in the harsh, guttural Odgidian language. “I am Lamani, the prophet and incarnate of the Great One. Believe in me, follow me, and you will enter the Great Beyond. Doubt, and you will spend eternity beneath the sand with the iwani.”
“The Great One is useful fiction, isn’t it?” Carter said. “Using superstition to coerce your people.” He didn’t buy for an instant Lamani shared his people’s belief in the Great Myth—or that he embodied their ideation. The lucid, intelligent, calculating gleam in his eyes revealed the truth. “You’ve cost your people everything. Lamis-Odg will not win this one,” he said. “The planets will not fall. Your world will be destroyed.”
Lamani laughed. “That is your fiction.” He pushed back from the table. “So what gave me away? I assume you just figured out my identity, or you would have been here sooner.”
One did not reveal the source of one’s information to a terrorist, and he didn’t want Lamani to doubt his control over Beth. She was safe, but the other clones still faced danger as long as the destruct sequence could be activated by a tap to Lamani’s wrist comm.
Carter jerked his head at the artwork. “Your mural provided the answer. Even a bleeding-heart, naïve do-gooder like the secretary general wouldn’t place an image of a nonAOP member, a terrorist nation planet, as the artistic focal point of his office.” Like hiding in plain site as the very public Benson Vincere, the mural served as a bold testament to Lamani’s brash ego.
The terrorist glanced at the wall then back at Carter. “You are perceptive. Your keen observation is part of what has made you such a worthy adversary. Thousands of people have passed through this office, and you are the only one to notice that detail.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, it means I’ll have to change the mural, not that it’s likely anyone else will notice—and even though it will cease to matter soon. However, a Terran idiom applies: Better safe than sorry.”
Carter started to rise to his feet.
“Ah—ah! Stay where you are.” Lamani patted the bulge on his hip.
He sat back down.
Brock pinged him. We’re on site. The team is getting into position. The lobby looks like a war zone.
Wait till you see the secretary general’s floor. Watch for Lamis-Odg guards. They’ve undergone facial reconstruction. What’s the status of the clones?
We got them all. They’re quarantined in an electronic transmission-proof chamber, but we weren’t able to round them up discreetly. Reports of abduction have been called in to local authorities. Public fallout will be significant. You okay?
I’m chatting with Lamani. He’s armed.
Noted. Hang tight. We’re on our way. T minus two.
Carter adjusted his wrist comm. He had two minutes until the Cy-Ops team arrived.
“You have someplace you need to be?” Lamani smirked. “You want to know what I believe?” He swept out his arm. “I believed this day would arrive, that you and I would meet for this chat. It was inevitable. You were always there, dogging my steps. With every failed invasion, every thwarted insurgency, you were there. In the background, out of sight, but you were there. I do not know what invisible army you command, but I don’t doubt you have one.”
His face morphed into something ugly. “You captured my sons. You supported the rebellion seeking to usurp my authority, you killed my generals, you isolated my allies, you infiltrated my space stations, my outposts, my homeland.
“It ends now. Goodbye, Carter Aymes.” Lamani grabbed the weapon on his hip and fired as Carter squeezed off a shot from the blaster concealed in the MiniComm on his wrist.
The photon stream from Lamani’s weapon hit Carter in the chest, knocking him out of the chair. His blast threw the terrorist against the mural.
The door burst open, and Kai Andros, March Fellows, and Brock Mann stormed in.