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V. darvell: downtown darplex; the citadel

“I wonder how the others are making out,” said Jessan.

Beka picked up the red optical-plastic eye patch from the table and fitted it into place. “Ari learned how to hunt from the Selvaurs on Maraghai,” she said. “And Llannat’s an Adept. They’ll do okay.”

Jessan brought his blaster up and took aim at the playing card taped to the far wall of the abandoned warehouse. A red tracer beam flashed across the intervening space. “Three out of five . . . I hope you’re right.” He aimed and fired again.

“Four out of six,” Beka said, taking her knife from the table and slipping it into its forearm sheath. “You’re getting the feel of it, I think. Of course I’m right.”

The Khesatan took another shot at the card. “Five out of seven. I’ll quit while I’m ahead.” He lowered the blaster, frowned at it a moment, and then slipped it into its holster. “The real question, of course, is how much the stun-bolt attenuates with distance.”

Beka’s own blaster belt hung on the back of the warehouse’s only chair, next to the black velvet Mandeynan long-coat Tarnekep Portree would be wearing against the late-afternoon chill. She picked up the blaster rig and strapped it on.

“Those models will give you a full stun out to the limit of their effective range,” she said, bending over to tie the leather thong that kept the holster snug against her thigh. “They don’t have the accuracy of an Ogre Mark Six, or even a Space Force Standard, but when it comes to pouring energy out the muzzle, you can’t beat them with a stick.”

“So why did you switch?”

“I learned on a Mark Six,” she said, straightening up again. “This one, in fact.”

Tarnekep Portree’s Mandeynan cravat—a long strip of white spidersilk and delicate lace—lay on the table along with a comm link, a gold and topaz stickpin, and the hand-sized disk of grey plastic that was the collapsor grenade. She picked up the piece of cloth and started to wrap it around her neck.

Jessan came closer. “Here. Let me help you with that.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need . . . ”

“I know you don’t,” he said. His hands were already busy arranging the strip of material. “Let me help anyway.”

She stopped arguing. Jessan gave the cravat a final tuck, fastened the folds in place with the topaz stickpin, and then stepped back a pace to survey his handiwork. He tilted his head a little to one side like an art critic appraising the latest item in a fashionable gallery.

“Well?” Beka said.

“I’d call the general effect epicene but nasty.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Actually, I rather like it.’”

The tips of his fingers, their touch warm in the chill of the empty warehouse, still rested on the side of her throat. She smiled back at him in spite of herself.

“And what does that say about you?”

He gave a soft laugh. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that on Khesat decadence is considered one of the higher art forms?”

She thought about it a moment, while his hand moved from her neck to trace the line of her cheekbone just below the red plastic eye patch. “No,” she said finally. “Nobody ever did.”

“Well, it’s true,” he said, and kissed her.

His lips were warm against her own, like the touch of his hand on her face. She leaned against him, opening her mouth to his—and pulled away, swearing under her breath, at the sound of a first hammering on the warehouse door.

The hammering steadied into a pattern: three quick, two slow, three quick. The recognition code.

“Damn,” she muttered again, moving away from Jessan and slapping the door switch. “If that’s Ari I’ll kill him myself for his lousy timing.”

But it wasn’t Ari. When the doors parted, Llannat Hyfid stood in the gap—her staff in her hand, her breath coming in ragged gasps, and her black coverall dirt-stained and disarrayed.

“Nivome’s on to us,” she said, before Beka could speak. “He’s heading for the Citadel. And Ari’s up there dodging fighters in an unarmed aircar.”

Beka grabbed the black long-coat and pulled it on. With quick, automatic gestures she shrugged the heavy velvet into place across her shoulders and shook out the lace cuffs of her loose white shirt.

“You two take the aircar and look for Ari,” she said, snatching up the comm link and the collapsor grenade and shoving them into the long-coat’s capacious pockets. “I have to go after the Professor. Vector us in on the Rolny as soon as you’ve got him in view.”

She mounted one of the wailing hoverbikes as she spoke, cut in the nullgravs with a backkick of one booted heel, and switched on the engines.

“Get out of the way!” she shouted at the Adept over the bike’s high-pitched humming, and released the brakes.


Llannat was gone, and the end of the tunnel was coming.

Out with the sky above him, Ari pulled up, then cut left between two blocky grey buildings. The heavier, more powerful fighters might have the advantage in the open air, but down in the canyons of the city the prize would go to the better pilot.

Ari half-smiled. If I can’t outfly this pair of dirtsiders, he thought, I’ll leave the family, change my name, and take up farming.

A near-miss rocked the aircar, and Ari veered left to duck behind a tall building. Workers looked up from desks and tables to stare out the windows at him as he flashed past.

High above the streets, the two fighters circled like frustrated birds of prey, waiting for him to break clear. Ari wondered for a moment at the promptness with which the atmospheric craft had shown up. That promptness argued a high degree of training on the part of Darvell’s planetary defenses—training, and possibly a timely warning passed on by the manager of the Top Five Lounge.

That last thought had a rightness about it that appealed to Ari. He smiled again.

He was certain, now, of what he should do: first, lure the air cover away from Nivome and the Citadel, and then get to the Quincunx man. He knew what sort of sentence the Brotherhood would pass on someone who used their name and their password to bait a trap, but it was likely to be a long time indeed before the Quincunx could get a working agent onto Darvell to take care of the problem.

But that didn’t matter. As Ferrdacorr had taught him long ago, some things you had to take care of yourself.


The warehouse echoed to the sound of Beka’s departure, and Jessan watched unmoving as the hoverbike roared out of sight. The last he saw of its rider was a fluttering of black velvet on the wind—the open long-coat and the black-ribboned queue of light brown hair, streaming out together behind the captain as she rode.

Good luck, Beka, thought Jessan, and then shook his head. By the time Llannat had finished gasping out her bad news, Beka Rosselin-Metadi had all but vanished. Only Tarnekep Portree remained—Tarnekep, who had walked into the fire of a dozen blasters for the sake of a clear shot at his enemies.

Jessan shook his head again, and shivered. He felt a hand touch his arm, and looked around.

“We can’t stand here waiting,” Llannat said. “Ari’s in trouble too, remember?”

He drew a deep breath. “I remember. Go on and get in the aircar. I’ll pilot.”

The blaster made an unfamiliar weight on his hip as he climbed up and slid behind the controls. Like his friend Ari, he wasn’t accustomed to going about armed. Everything changes, he reflected as he fired up the aircar’s engines. Even that.

On the other side of the cockpit, Llannat was already strapped into the copilot’s seat. Jessan brought the aircar forward through the warehouse doors in a scream of turbines, and lifted free as soon as they were clear. The ground fell away and the warehouse district spread out beneath them, an aerial vista of chunky grey buildings in a close-set network of narrow streets, with the rails and pylons of the cargo transit system stretching out over everything.

“Get on the comm,” he said to Llannat. “See if you can raise Ari.”

He heard the sound of Llannat disengaging the comm link from the copilot’s side of the console, and then her steady alto voice saying, “Ari, Ari—where are you? Come in, Ari.”

The speaker returned only silence. Jessan took his attention away from the aircar’s control console long enough to glance over at Llannat. The Adept looked unhappy.

She’s got more on her mind than just the comm link, Jessan thought. Aloud, he asked, “What happened back there?”

“We walked into a trap.”

“And out again?”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Guess again. We flew.”

“Ah,” said Jessan. “Whose aircar did you steal?”

“One of the Rolny’s.”

“Any casualties?”

“Two dead.”

Jessan whistled. “Already? Ari isn’t messing around.”

“Ari didn’t kill them,” Llannat said. “I did.”

“Would you mind repeating that?” asked Jessan. “I thought I heard you say that you killed them.”

“That’s right.”

The Adepts were fighters, back in the Magewar, Jessan reminded himself. It looks like they still are.

Silence filled the cockpit for a few moments. Llannat seemed to have given up on the comm link as a bad job. Then Jessan heard her draw a sharp breath.

“Look,” she said. “Over there.”

He glanced away from the controls and followed her pointing finger toward the horizon, where a snarl of fighter craft circled like carrion birds above a column of black smoke.

“Somebody’s crashed,” he said. “Can you tell if—”

“No,” she said. “He—goes away—when he’s hunting.”

“Right,” Jessan said. If Ari’s Quincunx contact had played them false, the big Galcenian would certainly be hunting now. If he was still alive.


Beka leaned the hoverbike into another turn. How long, she wondered—how long had it been for the Professor, waiting for Ari to signal from Rolny Lodge, before Nivome’s Security troops decided to end the charade and move in? She bit her lip in frustration, and fed more power to the hoverbike’s engines.

From up ahead came the zing of a blaster, and a few seconds later an ambulance rushed past her in the opposite direction, its siren keening. Relief surged through her, and she laughed aloud into the wind. Small-arms fire and casualties—the Prof’s still in there fighting!

The sound of energy weapons grew louder. She rounded another corner and saw a clot of emergency vehicles in the street ahead, parked behind a temporary barrier marked security zone—do not enter. Beyond the barrier, Security enforcers crouched for cover around corners and behind walls, firing down the street ahead of them. The enforcers had their heads well down, and with good reason—red fire flashed back at the Security men as she bore down on the barrier.

She marked the source of the fire with a tight smile, and took her right hand off the bike’s controls to free her own Mark VI from its holster. The Security barrier rose up front of her. She pulled back one-handed on the hoverbike’s control bars and jumped the barricade, firing her blaster into the nearest group of enforcers as she came up and over.

One of the bolts took a man in the back before he could turn. He fell facedown onto the pavement. Some of the others slewed around, warned by his fall or by the noise of the onrushing hoverbike. One or two fired—but they’d crowded themselves when they took cover from the blaster-fire up ahead, and the shots went wide.

Too bad, thought Beka, without sympathy. She dodged her bike through the security lines, skidding from side to side and firing as she came.

Then she was past them, and saw the muzzle of a blaster poking around a door jamb over on the right-hand wall. A bolt zipped down the street toward a second Security barricade set up at the far corner.

Beka let out a yell. That was the Professor in the doorway, and no mistake. He turned toward her and brought his blaster up to bear. She yelled again and he changed his aim to fire down the street behind her. She pulled to the right and bore down on the slight, grey-haired figure.

The Entiboran held out a bent arm—his left—and fired again down toward the security barrier with the blaster in his right. Beka veered as close to the wall as she dared, and extended her own right arm, also bent at the elbow.

“Grab on!” she shouted.

Don’t drop your blaster, now, she reminded herself, and then their arms interlocked.

She came close to losing the weapon just the same. At the speed she was going, even the Professor’s light weight was almost enough to pull her sideways off the bike. Then the Professor swung himself up onto the pillion seat, and she was firing her blaster at the Security enforcers ahead as the bike swept them both away toward the far barrier.

The sound of her blaster became a two-note chord as the Professor added his fire to hers. With most of her own attention given to steering the bike, she knew that she wasn’t accomplishing much herself beyond putting out an impressive amount of sound and light. A sudden falling-off in the fire from up ahead told her that the Professor was making an impression of an entirely different kind.

The barricade loomed ahead of them. No way I can jump this one, thought Beka. Not carrying double.

“Hold tight!” she shouted to the Professor, and crashed through it instead. Then, with the barrier a pile of broken wood and plastic behind her, she gave the hoverbike’s engine full power and concentrated on getting as far away from the scene as possible.

Several minutes later, she and the Professor were cruising down a wide parkway at little more than the speed of the surrounding traffic. Even carrying double, the bike moved nimbly among the hovercars and nullgrav transports. Far behind them, sirens wailed as the Security enforcers who’d been at the barricades gave chase—but the same traffic that masked the hoverbike’s progress impeded the ones who followed.

We must have hit the noon rush hour, thought Beka. She felt the Professor tap her on the shoulder. “Captain!” he shouted over the wind and the engines. “Where to?”

“The Citadel!” she yelled back. “We have a job to finish.”

The sounds of the chase behind them had faded almost to nothing, and her quick glance over her shoulder had shown the pursuit far away, almost out of sight. But now, from close behind and to their right, the sound of a lone Security siren cut through the rumble of traffic.

Damn it, thought Beka, I didn’t come all the way to Darvell to get arrested for speeding!

But the Professor was tapping her on the shoulder again. “He’s alone—get his bike!”

Beka nodded. A few moments later, another quick glance to the rear showed the approach of a single rider on a hoverbike with Security markings. She held her own course for a moment longer, and then pretended to see the other vehicle’s flashing amber noselight for the first time.

The Security rider came up on her left and drew even with her. He gestured for her to pull over. She hit the thrust reversers and cut hard right instead. The rear of her bike skidded left and slammed into the side of the Security vehicle.

Jarred by the impact, the rider lost his grip. Beka threw herself sideways and seized the control bars of his bike. She swung her body across the gap between the two vehicles, kicking out with her legs and knocking the Security rider from his seat. The first hoverbike, controlled now by the Professor, pulled away out of danger. Beka landed in the saddle of the Security bike in time to watch the enforcer hit the pavement and roll out of sight under an oncoming hovercar.

She looked back over her shoulder one more time. The Security enforcers from the barricades were still far behind, but starting to make headway through the downtown traffic. It wouldn’t be long before somebody thought to call a general alert and get all nonessential vehicles off the streets of Darplex.

If we’re still out here by then, Beka thought, we’re sunk.

Letting go the right control bar, she reached into her pocket, pulled out the comm link, and keyed it on. “Jessan,” she said into the pickup. “Come in, Jessan.”

She heard a whine and a crackle, and then a voice. “Jessan here. Who’s calling?”

“Portree. Do you have the target in sight?”

“Better than that—I have you and the target both. Turn right at the next corner.”

“Thanks. Any word from Ari?”

A pause. Then: “Nothing.”

Her eyes stung for a moment, and she blinked hard. It’s this damned wind. Blast it, Ari, why did I ever want to take you with me to Darvell?

She swallowed. “The big guy can take care of himself,” she said into the pickup. Her voice sounded tight and hard—Tarnekep’s voice, not her own. “See you do the same, do you hear me? Portree out.”

She clicked off the comm link and shoved it back into her pocket in time to grab both control bars for the approaching corner. She rounded it without slacking speed, heeling over so far into the turn that her bike lay out almost flat on its side. Over on the other bike, the Professor did the same without a word.


“Take care, Tarnekep,” murmured Jessan—but he was speaking to a dead link, and he knew it.

He handed Llannat the pickup and put the aircar into a steep left bank. The move gave him a good view of the ground below, and of the four broad boulevards that divided Darplex into quadrants. Where the boulevards met at point zero-zero, a featureless black ziggurat rose up from the earth like a mountain.

“The Citadel?” asked Llannat.

“Just like the Satrap’s Palace on Jedahaa V,” Jessan said. “Only bigger and in worse taste.”

Down below, a pack of outriders and a long black hovercar headed at speed up one of the broad streets leading to the black ziggurat. Up another—a wide parkway lined with heroic statuary—two hoverbikes dodged in and out through downtown traffic. About six blocks behind them followed a moving knot of bikes and hovercars, all with flashing amber lights.

“Security,” said Llannat, from the copilot’s seat. “And gaining fast.”

“Not for long,” Jessan said. As he spoke, he reached out a hand to the console and switched on the targeting computer.

“You’re planning to use the guns?” Llannat asked. She didn’t sound disapproving, Jessan noted. Just thoughtful.

“That’s right,” he said. He pushed the aircar into a dive. “I’m not in Ari’s class, but—”

“But you have a license,” finished Llannat.

“That’s right,” said Jessan, his eyes on the targeting computer as the aircar screamed downward. “And I might even be able to pull us out of this before we hit the pavement.”


Losing the pursuit hadn’t taken long. The game of follow-the-leader had ended in a corridor so narrow Ari took the little aircar through it standing on one wing. The fighters had tried the same trick, and a column of black smoke on the distant horizon marked how well they had succeeded. Ari grounded the stolen aircar near the workshop that had been his Quincunx contact’s daytime address, and looked around.

A sign met his eyes: landing zone reserved for level nine and above. That brought a smile. Whatever Nivome’s private aircar might or might not be, it undoubtedly had all the right tags and stickers to roost undisturbed in this particular spot.

He picked up the comm link Llannat had left behind, then laid it down on the copilot’s seat with a shake of his head. What he had to do next would go better without interruptions.

He climbed out of the aircar, stretched his shoulders, and made his way without conspicuous haste to the tool-issue point in Building 125-34, Outer Ring. As on his earlier visits, the front room was empty when he entered. A buzz-plate on the wall over the big workbench had a sign underneath reading, touch once for service.

Ari palmed the buzzer. After a few seconds, H. Estisk emerged from the storeroom in the back, wearing his daytime uniform and a smile.

“Welcome again, brother. What else can I do for you?”

“Two things today,” said Ari, smiling back. A Selvaur would have taken note of the canine teeth the smile revealed, and walked warily—but Estisk wasn’t one of the Forest Lords, though he was big enough for one. “Let’s start with a weapons suite for a Gosy One-twenty-eight aircar.”

Estisk looked thoughtful. “Tough to do on short notice.”

“How about some bolt-on air-to-air weapons?” asked Ari. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“Nothing here,” Estisk said. “But I can get some by tonight. Now, about the second thing—”

“New plans for the Rolny Lodge grounds,” Ari said, stepping closer. “The real ones, this time.”

Estisk didn’t blink or change expression, but a blaster appeared as if from nowhere in the big Darvelline’s right hand.

Ari cuffed it away. “Fight.”

Estisk didn’t even seem to notice that the blaster was gone. With one fluid motion, he aimed a fist at Ari’s jaw.

The swing connected, but Ferrdacorr had never pulled his punches in training. Ari rode with the blow and twisted under it. He grabbed Estisk’s arm and helped the Darvelline into a classic shoulder throw.

Estisk, too, must have had good teachers. Hitting the floor should have stunned the big man, but he went with the throw rather than resisting it as an amateur might, and rolled to his feet in a balanced guard position.

Ari smiled again. He drew his blaster slowly, watching the other man all the while, and threw the weapon aside.

*Howl at the moon and die, traitor,* he said in the Forest Speech, and lunged forward to grip the other man by the wrist.

Estisk slipped the hold, following his escape with a leg sweep to the back of Ari’s knee. Ari went down, rolling under a table to avoid the smashing downward kick that skinned past his ribs, and came back to his feet.

Estisk vaulted the table to face him. The two men stood unmoving for a few seconds, taking each other’s measure. Ari guessed that he might have an inch or two on the Darvelline in height and reach, but Estisk had a broader chest and carried more muscle in his shoulders and upper arms. Now the Darvelline used that muscle to good advantage in a series of closed-fisted blows, right and left, to Ari’s chest.

Ari blocked and slipped the blows with his arms. Remember what Ferrda taught you, he thought. Let the other guy tire himself out before you strike.

The out-of-rhythm blow that smashed into the side of his skull came as a complete surprise, rocking his head back and flashing a bright white light in front of his eyes. But Ferrda’s training held. Ari counterpunched and landed a heavy blow to the other man’s ribs under his extended arm, so hard that his opponent gasped for breath.

Ari shook his head to clear the fog away. As it lifted, something dark and formless stirred inside him and came to life, and he recognized the anger that had never really left him since his mother died. This time, he welcomed it, and let it grow.

“Come on and fight me—brother,” he said, smiling again at his opponent across the little space of ground that separated them. “This is going to be good.”



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