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III. darvell: darplex; rolny lodge

It’s amazing, Ari thought a week later, as he made his way through the tidy streets near Darplex Spaceport, what you can do with maps and a comm-code listing.

The child’s history book Llannat had picked up—purchased for her, she said, by the overly impressionable guard in the course of a courtesy tour—had located them on the planet’s surface. Working from the maps in the back, Beka and the Professor had been able to plot a hoverbike course to Darplex that skirted the settlements and the main roads. Once they’d slipped into Darplex proper, setting up shop in a deserted warehouse had been simplicity itself. The neatly stenciled authorized personnel only sign Jessan had added to the front door was enough to keep out law-abiding Darvellines.

But the real find of that first day’s expedition had been Jessan’s commercial comm-code listing. The little directory hadn’t covered the entire planet, but it did cover Darplex and the surrounding administrative district, of which the small foothill town had been an outlying part.

Ari had been flipping through the directory’s pages that morning by the campfire, while the rising sun burned the fog off the mountainside and his sister and Llannat Hyfid grinned at each other like a couple of idiots. A bit unnerved by their sudden accord, he had given the columns of fine print in the comm-code listing more attention than he might have otherwise.

“Licensed Establishments,” he had muttered under his breath.

“Bars,” explained Jessan. “A bit of well-deserved comfort for the hardworking members of the upper pay-grades. At least, that’s what it says in the guidebook.”

“I see,” Ari said. That explained some of the names—the Upper Eight Inn, the Six-Up Uffa Shop, and innumerable Top Three Pubs, Restaurants, and Lounges. And . . . “Hey, wait a minute.”

Beka looked over at him, her face taking on the sharp-edged hunter’s expression he’d come to associate with her Tarnekep persona. “Find something interesting, big brother?”

“Maybe,” he said. “There’s only one Five anything in this whole listing.”

‘”Five,” said Llannat. “What was Munngralla’s shop in Namport called, Ari? ‘Five Points Imports’?”

Jessan raised a skeptical eyebrow. “The Quincunx, here on Darvell?”

The Professor looked thoughtful. “That does raise an interesting possibility. But even if the establishment truly is a Quincunx front, that organization always charges whatever the traffic will bear. For anything we might require from them, the price would be very high indeed.”

Ari couldn’t help looking smug. “Not for a member.”

Beka stared. “You?

“That’s right,” he said. “Courtesy of Munngralla,” he explained to Jessan and Llannat; and then, to Beka, “A long story. I’ll tell you sometime.”

“You’d better,” she said. “But you know the recognition codes and everything?”

“Right again.”

“In that case,” the Professor said, looking as close to delighted as Ari had ever seen him get, “we are in a position to eliminate several intermediate steps and quite a bit of cargo handling from the basic plan—assuming, of course, that you are willing to contact the Quincunx on our behalf.”

“Sure,” he had said. “Why not?”

Right now, though, as he strode along under the white glare of the nearby portside dock lights, he could think of any number of reasons why not. Even in his most nondescript set of civilian clothes, he felt about as inconspicuous as a landing beacon. The ride across Darplex on the public shuttle had been even worse. He’d sat on a hard plastic seat between a pair of fresh-faced, wholesome-looking Darvellines, and forced himself to read the uplifting sayings on the placards above the shuttle windows as a means of self-sedation.

Training—Your Key to Advancement,” he quoted glumly to himself as he walked along. Beka was right about this place. It’s right out of a holovid horror show.

The Top Five Lounge shared a three-story building with the Paperwork Reduction Office (Port Branch) on the top floor, and something at street level that called itself a Class Four Privilege Shop and appeared to specialize in light household accessories. The main entrance slid open as Ari came up, revealing a wide stairway leading to hinged glass doors off a second-floor landing.

If this place isn’t a front, thought Ari, I’ve had it.

He climbed up the stairs, pushed open the door, and went in. No ID checker materialized. In fact, the place looked deserted. Ahead of him, a long corridor paneled in dark wood ended in an archway leading to the left. The arch opened onto a larger room with a long bar set against the far wall. Beyond that room, through another archway, Ari could glimpse white-draped dining tables. But aside from the man behind the front bar, the Top Five Lounge appeared empty.

It’s early yet, thought Ari. Father always did say port-side never got really interesting until after midnight.

He went up to the bar and took a seat. The bartender came over and asked, “What’ll it be?”

Here goes, thought Ari. “I’ve traveled a long way for the sake of a proper word.”

“Coming right up,” the bartender said without blinking, and began to mix a drink from the bottles behind the bar.

Ari controlled a grimace as a splash of pink liquid from an unlabeled bottle was followed by a sprinkling of green powder out of a jar with a label he’d never seen before. I don’t believe it. I’ve hit on one of the local cocktails.

Still, Ari wasn’t too surprised when a man slid onto the stool beside him. He did feel a small twinge of suppressed astonishment at the sight of the man himself. Most humans who could match Ari for height tended to be scrawny ectomorphic sorts, but the big Darvelline gentleman in the well-cut evening suit carried enough muscle on him to be Ari’s twin.

“Good evening,” said the new arrival, whose discreet nametag read H. Estisk, Manager. “How’d you like to bring your drink back to the private office?” The manager turned to the bartender. “No charge. It’s on me.”

Without waiting for another word, the manager turned and walked off. Ari scooped up his just-delivered glass and followed him into an office that held a desk, two chairs, and a shelf full of order books and supply catalogs. A half-finished tumbler full of something reddish brown, over ice, stood on one corner of the desk.

Estisk sat, and indicated the other chair to Ari. “Well, now,” the manager began. “What can we do for you?”

Let’s try another check. “There are five things I need to start with, and more later.”

“We deal in fives of all sorts,” the manager replied. “But you’re the first one of us to come through in a long time. Sorry about all the mystery, but the barman’s only a local. I told him a ‘Proper Word’ was a kind of drink, and said if anyone ever asked for one to signal me.”

Ari sipped the concoction. It wasn’t bad, if you didn’t look at the color for too long. “The first thing I’ll need is five ID cards, spaceport passes, and all the papers to allow me and four others free travel in the city. I didn’t run into any spot checks on the way over here, but I think I got a few grey hairs worrying about it.”

“No problem on the ID and travel papers—but I have to tell you there are no spaceport passes. Port access is by personal recognition only.”

“That’s all right,” Ari said. “When can I get the papers and ID?”

“Come by my daytime shop,” Estisk said. “That’s the tool-issue point in Building One-two-five three-four, Outer Ring. If you can get there by nine tomorrow with flatpix of everybody you want a card for, I can have them for you by ten.”

“What’ll it cost?”

The manager looked thoughtful. “For a brother just enough to cover my own expenses. Do you have any local cash, or would you like to try barter? The right off-world stuff can get you high prices around here.”

I’ll bet, thought Ari, remembering some of his father’s free-trading stories, but he shook his head. “I have cash.”

Estisk smiled. “I won’t ask how you got it. In that case, the price is twenty marks for each ID and privilege card, and ten marks for travel permits and quarters cards.”

“Right,” Ari said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, and bring the rest of my shopping list with me.”

“Excellent,” said Estisk. The manager lifted his glass. “Well, brother, here’s to a profitable association for us both.”


A few days later, metal grated on metal as the doors of Warehouse 307 slid open and then shut again with a clang. Ari crawled far enough out of the aircar’s engine pod to get a view of the newcomers—his sister and the Professor, as he’d expected. Anybody else would have drawn some sort of reaction from Nyls Jessan and Llannat Hyfid, busy studying a holoplan of Rolny Lodge over at the watch desk.

“Where’s Ari?” Beka asked.

“Right here,” he said, leaving the aircar completely and joining the others around the desk. “I wanted to make certain our getaway vehicle was ready for a suborbital burn. Did you two find the stuff you were looking for?”

“Of course,” said the Professor. “Did you get the information from your contact?”

“I did,” Ari said. “But you aren’t going to like it.”

“Just tell me,” said his sister, “and let me decide if I like it or not.”

“All right,” he said. “The entire estate is surrounded by an immobilizer force field, and the controls are in the gatehouse—behind the field, of course. Nobody gets in who isn’t on that day’s access list.”

Beka bit her lip and frowned at the holoplan. “Stocking the woods with hunter/killer robots wasn’t enough, was it? Llannat, could you manage . . . ?”

The Adept shook Her head. “Not an immobilizer. Sorry.”

“Damn,” said Beka. “I know it’s not your fault—but it’d take Gilveet Rhos himself to bring down an immobilizer any other way. We may have to settle for an ambush after all.”

The Professor gave them a small half-smile. “I think not. I taught Gilveet everything he knows . . . but not everything I know. The force field won’t give us any problems.” He pulled a small grey box from his shirt pocket and handed it out to Ari. “Here are your decoy transponders.”

“Thanks,” Ari said. “Any trouble finding them?”

“No trouble at all,” Beka said. “Transponders, ID, the aircar—that connection of yours does good work. All right, Professor, let’s go over the plan once more before we leave.”

“Very well, my lady,” said the Entiboran. “If you will all observe the holoplan—at first light, I will take down a section of the force field here, to the northwest. Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi and Mistress Hyfid will go over the wall of the hunting preserve and make their way to the house, neutralizing the robots as they go. They will remain by the main house as lookouts and guards, signaling us that the way is clear.”

Everybody nodded and looked solemn. The Professor continued. “At dusk, Lieutenant Commander Jessan will bring the aircar down the cleared corridor and up to the house. The captain and I will accompany you on hover-bikes.”

The Professor pointed to one side of the main lodge. “You will land the aircar here, next to the dining area, where Nivome will be at his evening meal. The rest of us will ground our hoverbikes next to the wall. The captain will place a collapsor grenade against the side of the house and activate it. Lieutenant Commander Jessan—”

“Right here,” said the Khesatan. “I follow you so far.”

“Excellent. You will have your blaster set to stun. When the wall goes, your only task will be to take our target and immobilize him. Your blaster, and yours alone, will be set to ‘stun.’ Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi will enter the building, and pick up the Rolny while the captain and I provide covering fire. As soon as we have the Rolny in hand, we will retreat to the aircar, launch back to the ships, lift off under cloaking, and enter hyperspace from the nearest jump point.”

“And then,” Beka said, with a twitch to her knife hand that brought the blade flashing out of its forearm sheath and plunged it into the center of the holoplan, “we can think about planning something . . . nice . . . for Gentlesir Nivome the Rolny.”


Ari watched the air above the high stone wall. A pebble hung there, caught in the immobilizer field and barely visible in the grey light before dawn. Any minute now, he thought.

The pebble dropped.

Go.

Ari caught the top of the wall with both hands and swung himself up to lie along it. He looked back down at the deserted street, and saw Llannat draw herself together and jump.

She landed in a compact crouch a few feet away from him. Together, they surveyed the interior of the hunting preserve. The ground inside was considerably lower than the street beyond the wall—too far down, thought Ari, even for him to jump. About the Adept, he wasn’t sure.

None of the hunting preserve’s tall Darvelline conifers grew within reach of the wall. The Rolny’s groundskeepers had seen to that. One tree, though, grew closer than the rest. Ari smiled to himself and drew his feet up under him. Gauging the distance, he leaped for the tree trunk.

He caught it, and slid down until his boots hit a branch that felt solid enough to take him. Turning back toward Llannat, he held out an arm in her direction. She nodded, and sprang forward and down from her crouched position to catch his extended hand. For a brief and disquieting moment, he felt no awareness of supporting her weight before she settled onto the branch beside him.

Without a word, he climbed down the conifer, and she followed. They lay still in the underbrush while the sun came over the horizon and the forest grew brighter around them. As soon as they had enough light to work with, Ari nodded to Llannat and stood up, unslinging his heavy energy lance and shrugging his backpack into position.

Using the skills that Ferrda had taught him, he faded from tree to tree until at least fifty yards separated him from Llannat. He pulled a set of earphones out of the backpack and settled them onto his head, placed the sun ahead and to his left and the wall to his back, and began to drift toward the house.

Morning wore on, and the air grew warmer. He kept up his gradual stalk through the woods of the Rolny’s hunting preserve, alternating long periods of immobility in the cover of shadow or underbrush with quick, silent crossings of open ground. Somewhere off to his right, he knew that Llannat Hyfid was doing much the same.

By the time the sun was nearing its zenith, he’d started to sweat. Good thing robots don’t have noses, he thought. Unless they’ve come up with a model that can run tests on the fly for particle concentration in parts per million . . . let’s not think about that, shall we?

He heard a crackling in the underbrush. Not Llannat—the Adept hadn’t made a sound since the hunt began. An animal?

His ears caught the faint squeak of metal on metal, and he tensed. Not an animal. First contact.

A black-painted security robot floated on its nullgravs across the sun-dappled ground between the trees. The robot’s sensor pod rotated as it moved. The Quincunx man had been right: this wasn’t one of your call-the-guards robots, or even an immobilize-and-capture model. This was a true hunter/killer, with blunt boxes of armor-piercing and anti-air modules showing under its sensor pod.

He heard a clicking sound from the far side of the glade.

That’ll be Llannat, he thought, as the robot began floating toward the sound. His headset came to life, interpreting the signal the robot was sending.

“This is FY eight-six. Grid Posit seven three eight eight five five. Suspicious noise. Investigating.”

Ari raised the energy lance in his hand, took aim at the base of the sensor/command pod, and fired. A shower of sparks fell from the base of the sensor pod; the robot continued forward until a tree checked its progress.

Llannat stepped around from behind the tree and stood next to the robot. Ari took one of the Professor’s little boxes out of his backpack, and punched FY86 and 738855 into the command transmitter he wore on one wrist. He caught Llannat’s eye; she nodded, and switched the robot off as he switched the box on.

The robot sank to the ground. Over his headset, Ari heard the decoy’s transmission: “This is FY eight six. Grid Posit seven three eight eight five five. Investigation complete. Situation normal. Resuming patrol.”

One down, six to go.

Ari resumed his quiet walk toward the house.


Seven down, thought Llannat some time later, as the last of the hunter/killer robots sank to the forest floor. And that’s all of them.

She looked back toward Ari, but he’d vanished once more among the trees. It was amazing, she thought, how close the big Galcenian came to not being there at all. If she stretched out her awareness to catch the patterns of power at work in the hunting preserve, she could sense him—but only as a quiet, slow-moving presence, like a Selvaur on the hunt.

She continued her own progress, effacing herself as Master Ransome’s apprentice Owen Rosselin-Metadi had taught her to do. She was good at it—not in Owen’s class, but good—and unless the Rolny had an Adept-level sensitive working Security for him, nobody was going to notice a small, almost negligible figure in a black coverall making her way from one patch of shadow to the next.

The hair rose on the back of her neck—threat, her Adept-trained senses whispered, menace—and seconds later a human in camouflage clothing walked into her field of vision. Like Ari, he carried an energy lance and a comm link, but he was noisy. His movements were those of a city dweller, untrained for work in the deep woods; his footsteps and breathing echoed in the quiet of the hunting preserve.

Nobody mentioned live guards, she thought. Now what?

She cast about once again for Ari’s presence. For a moment she couldn’t sense him anywhere, and came close to panic. Then she felt a faint reflection of the familiar, rocksteady aura, and traced it to a stand of berry bushes off to her left.

Once she had him located, she could see him. His aura intensified suddenly—he’d spotted her in turn. She raised her eyebrows and projected strong inquiry.

He wasn’t as receptive as Jessan, who could pick up subvocals, but something seemed to get through. He made a “go on forward” gesture with one hand. She nodded and let herself become even more inobtrusive than before, then slipped past the guard like an unheeded thought. When she looked back at the berry bushes, Ari was gone.

Still self-effaced, she moved on toward their goal. The trees began to thin out; she could glimpse bits of manicured lawn ahead, and then something grey and rectangular that turned out to be a concrete blockhouse.

Her neck prickled again. That wasn’t on the plans.

The grass was clipped short around the blockhouse for a greater distance than a man could cover in a rush. She let her mind become still, until she had no more presence than a patch of shadow on the landscape, then crossed the open area to flatten herself against the concrete wall. Ari joined her a few seconds later.

She looked up at him. “I don’t like this,” she murmured, backing the thread of sound with subvocal projection. As long as he could hear anything at all, he should be keeping open enough for meanings to get through—and his hearing, she knew, was acute. “I think I’ll go in and see what’s there.”

Without waiting for a reply, she glanced around the corner of the blockhouse. A uniformed man was approaching the squat concrete building from the direction of the Lodge. Good, she thought, and drifted out shadow-fashion in a curving path that finished behind the newcomer. She closed in to follow a pace behind him, matching him step for step and motion for motion—becoming, as her masters had taught her, a shadow indeed.

The man reached the blockhouse door, and tapped out a sequence of keypresses on the cipher lock. The door slid open. He stepped in, turning to look back the way he had come. Still a shadow, she pivoted around and back with him.

Satisfied that all was clear, the man toggled the door shut after him and continued on down a short corridor to a second, open door. This time, one of his shadows stayed behind.

From her position near the main entrance, Llannat watched the man enter what looked like some sort of control room. She could glimpse security monitors and readout panels, plus another uniformed Darvelline already on watch. She moved up to the inner door and listened.

“How’s it going?” she heard the newcomer say.

“No change. We know they’re inside—the robots have been switched slicker than anything—but they haven’t reached the live guards yet. I just got done talking to post six, and he says nothing’s gotten past.”

Llannat peeked around the corner. The two men lounged at ease in front of a bank of monitors showing views of the house and grounds.

“What do you think’s going on?” asked the first one.

The second shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a drill of some sort.”

“I’ve never seen a drill like this,” the first guard said dubiously. “Especially not with shoot-to-kill orders.”

“I don’t make the rules,” the second man said. “I just follow them. What’s going on up at the Lodge?”

“They’re about ready to head out. He’s going to make for the Citadel.”

This sounds bad, thought Llannat, and risked looking further into the control room. From the new angle, she could see what had been hidden before: ID flatpix, five of them, blown up to life size and tacked to the wall above the monitors.

The Professor. Beka Rosselin-Metadi. Nyls Jessan. Ari. And herself.



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