The door slid aside and Captain Thorne entered. Mark had never seen a more exhausted-looking human being. Thorne, too, was still dressed in dirty fatigues, only the plasma mirror pack discarded from its half-armor. The gray hood was pushed back, brown hair plastered flat to its head. A circle of grime in the middle of Thorne's pale face marked the hood opening, gray twin to the circle of red on Quinn's face from her mirror-field overload burn. Thorne's movements were hurried and jerky, will overriding a fatigue close to collapse. Thorne leaned, hands on the conference table, mouth a grim horizontal line.

"So, could you get anything at all out of Tonkin?" asked Quinn of Thorne. "What the computer has, we just saw. And I don't think it's enough."

"The medics got him waked up, briefly," reported Thorne. "He did talk. I was hoping the recorders would make sense of what he said, but . . ."

"What did he say?"

"He said when they reached this building"—Thorne pointed—"they were cut off. Not yet surrounded, but blocked from a line to the shuttle, and the enemy closing the ring fast. Tonkin said, Norwood yelled he had an idea, he'd seen something 'back there.' He had Tonkin create a diversion with a grenade attack, and guard a particular corridor—must be that one there. Norwood took the cryochamber and ran back along their route. He returned a few minutes later—not more than six minutes, Tonkin said. And he told Tonkin, 'It's all right now. The Admiral will get out of here even if we don't.' About two minutes later, he was killed by that projectile grenade, and Tonkin was knocked loopy by the concussion."

Framingham nodded. "My crew got there not three minutes after that. They drove off a pack of Bharaputrans who were searching the bodies—looting, looking for intelligence, or both, Corporal Abromov wasn't sure—they picked up Tonkin and Norwood's body and ran like hell. Nobody in the squad reported seeing a cryochamber anywhere."

Quinn chewed absently on a fingernail stump. Mark did not think she was even conscious of the gesture. "That's all?"

"Tonkin said Norwood was laughing," Thorne added.

"Laughing." Quinn grimaced. "Hell."

Captain Bothari-Jesek was sunk in her station chair. Everyone around the table appeared to digest this last tid-bit, staring at the holomap. "He did something clever," said Bothari-Jesek. "Or something that he thought was clever."

"He only had about five minutes. How clever could he be in five minutes?" Quinn complained. "Gods damn the clever jerk to sixteen hells for not reporting!"

"He was doubtless about to." Bothari-Jesek sighed. "I don't think we need to waste time rationing blame. There's going to be plenty to go around."

Thorne winced, as did Framingham, Quinn, and Taura. Then they all glanced at Mark. He cringed back in his seat.