Free The Vengeance of the Tau by Jon Land

give. Kamir looked over at Melissa helplessly.
    “By hand, then! By hand!”
    The two other workers joined Kamir reluctantly and began to hoist on the line. It resisted at first and then started to rise. Melissa watched them from the midst of a nightmare.
    “Daddy, can you hear me?” she said into her headpiece.
    Nothing.
    “Daddy, can you hear me?”
    Not even static.
    “Oh, God …”
    Lips trembling and breath heaving, Melissa tore her headphones off and rose to her feet. Kamir and the two workmen had the cable coming up very fast now; too fast, as if her father had grown somehow weightless. No, he had fallen and somehow snapped the cable line in the process. His communication equipment had shattered and that was why he had not been able to reply to her calls. That was it; that had to be it. And as soon as Kamir retrieved all of the cable, she would suit up herself and rescue her father. She would—
    “Tanrl yardimcimiz olsun!”
    One of the workmen had plunged to his knees in a position of prayer. The other ran screaming for the rope ladder that would lift him free of the excavation. Only Kamir remained to pull the rest of the cable up. He backpedaled, staggering, then leaned over and retched. Melissa came forward on feet that seemed made of steel. Kamir’s position blocked her from sight of whatever had been lifted from the chasm.
    “No, miss, don’t.”
    It was too late. Melissa had drawn up even with him. She looked down. Her world wavered. She threw her head back for a scream that never came. It seemed to her that her breath had been torn away. She sank to her knees, gasping.
    Before her, the remains of her father lay on the rim of the rectangular entryway. She recognized his shredded safety vest, now drenched in blood. The upper part of his torso was still tucked within the vest, though it, too, had been badly torn. The right half of his stomach was there as well, along with his neck and a portion of one of his arms.
    The rest was … gone.
    No legs, no head. Sinewy entrails and intestines hung down from the torso, dripping blood and gore.
    The Dream Dragons, Melissa thought as she sank to her knees.
    Dream Dragons …
    But this time they hadn’t come from nightmares at all. This time they were real.
    And they were still down there.

Part Two
Dream Dragons
    Germany: Tuesday, eight P.M.

Chapter 8
    FRIEDRICH VON TIKE stared fixedly at his favorite Impressionist painting as he listened to the voice of the man sitting opposite him.
    “ Herr Von Tike, my company and I have been loyal to you ever since the merger,” Lars Heidelberg said earnestly. “We’ve gone along with the layoffs and cost-cutting procedures. But this we cannot overlook.”
    “Is that a threat, Herr Heidelberg?”
    “Not at all, sir. What is being threatened here is the very survival of the many villages on the shores of the Rhine that will be destroyed if this flow of pollutants from our company is not halted.”
    Von Tike fingered the report Heidelberg had brought with him. “I find your data unconvincing.”
    “How many cases of cancer will it take, Herr Von Tike? How many abnormal births? This company could never survive the backlash. No company could.”
    “And do you suppose, Heidelberg, we could more easily survive the kind of retooling your report calls for? Listen to me, I purchased your company and all the others so I could expand production, not slow it. If those victims of our progress elect to sue, we will settle their cases as generously as we are able.”
    “These are simple people. Even if they made the connection, they are hardly likely to …” Heidelberg cut his own words off, realizing.
    Across from him, Von Tike smiled. “Precisely, Herr Heidelberg, precisely. I think you have grasped my point at last.”
    Heidelberg rose and leaned across Von Tike’s desk. “ Herr Von Tike, I beg you, sir, not to do this. I beg you to close these plants until the proper modifications can be implemented.”
    “Your