Llannat stared at the row of pictured faces. We’ve been sold out.
The breath caught in her throat, almost choking her. Don’t panic, she told herself. Just get out of sight before one of those guards turns around.
She faded back around the corner of the open door. Away from the evidence of betrayal, her breathing eased a little. That’s better. Now get out of here and warn Ari.
She made her way down the short hall to the blockhouse entrance. When she got there, her heart sank: the exit door was locked, with a cipher-lock keypad set into the wall next to the jamb.
What’s the odds, she asked herself, that it’s the same code to get out as to get in?
Shrugging, she punched in the sequence that had opened the door from the other side. The door remained shut. No joy, she thought, with resignation—and then the door’s numeric display started flashing off and on. “Incorrect access code, report to key operator,” bleated the annunciator. “Repeat, incorrect access code, report to key operator.”
Oh, no. Now I’ll have to do something really fancy.
Llannat turned her back on the babbling cipher lock, ran forward a few steps to get momentum, and jumped for the ceiling.
Several seconds later, one of the two guards came out of the monitor room and headed toward the blockhouse door.
So this is what the world looks like to a spider, thought Llannat, as the guard walked down the hall beneath her. The Adept held herself suspended above the hallway with her back snug against the low ceiling, kept up by the pressure of her hands against the wall in front of her and the pressure of her Space Force standard issue boots against the wall behind. From that precarious vantage point, she watched the guard punch in a sequence of numbers on the keypad of the cipher lock. The annunciator’s hammering voice fell silent.
The man turned and started back down the hallway. Llannat’s muscles trembled with the effort of maintaining her position, but she didn’t dare try floating on the currents of power while keeping herself unseen. The most she could do was to sneak in a little help every few seconds . . . just enough to keep her arms and legs from giving way, nothing anybody would notice.
The guard stopped and glanced upward.
Llannat forced her mind into the self-effacing patterns of calm and tranquility. The ceiling, she thought. All you notice is the ceiling.
The guard shook his head as if to clear it, and walked on forward until he was directly beneath her. “Nothing down here,” he called toward the control room, “and the door’s locked. What do you think we ought to do?”
The voice from the control room sounded resigned. “The way things are today, we don’t have much choice. We’ll have to call in a Class Two Contact Alert.”
I don’t like the sound of that, thought Llannat. She relaxed the pressure of her hands and feet, letting herself drop from the ceiling onto the shoulders of the unsuspecting guard. His knees buckled, and he hit the concrete floor with Llannat on top of him. She rolled with the fall, and drove the heel of her hand upward into his chin as soon as her arm came clear.
The guard went limp. Llannat came to her feet in a fighting crouch, gripping her staff with both hands. She took a step into the next room.
Inside the control room, the second guard let out a yell and grabbed for his blaster. Llannat struck out at him with her staff, a clumsy swashing stroke that nevertheless connected with the guard’s weapon. The bolt went wild as the heavy blaster flew through the air and clunked to the floor out of reach.
Disarmed, the man stared at her. She fixed his eyes with her own and projected Don’t move! with all the power at her command. He stared for a few seconds longer, then spun around and reached for a switch on the main control panel.
Enough! she thought, and swung the staff against his skull.
Ari lay on the close-mown ground next to the blockhouse wall. He still held the energy lance in one hand, but he’d removed the bulky, now-useless earphones and stowed them in the backpack. From time to time he inched forward to peer around the corner at the door through which Llannat had entered.
She’s been gone too long, he thought. Something’s up.
Without warning, a burst of green light flashed around the edges of the doorway, and the panels grated halfway apart. Llannat’s head and shoulders appeared in the opening.
“Ari—get in here! We have big trouble!”
He scrambled to his feet and sprinted for the door, scraping sideways through the narrow aperture. In the close atmosphere of the blockhouse he recognized the sharp smell of air ionized by a blaster. A man lay flat on his back in the short passage, stirring like a sleeper trying to wake. Ari strode past him to the control room, and took in the banks of monitors, the row of flatpix posted on the wall, and the body sprawled across the control panel.
“Death and damnation—what happened in here?”
“Your precious contact sold us out,” she said. “We’ve been walking into a trap the whole time.”
“I can see that,” said Ari. “Right now, we need some answers, quick.”
Llannat’s eyes went to the guard lying out in the hallway. “I don’t know if I—”
Ari shook his head. “We haven’t got time for the subtle stuff.” He shrugged off the backpack and slung the energy lance out of the way across his shoulders. “Be ready to back me up.”
The Adept raised the blaster she’d taken from the unconscious guard and moved away a few steps to provide cover. Ari pulled his own blaster—one of Beka’s old government-surplus models, but good enough for a man who wasn’t planning on making a career out of jobs like this—and stepped out into the hall.
He went down on one knee beside the guard. Taking the man’s earlobe between forefinger and thumbnail, he gave the flesh a savage twist. The guard’s eyes opened and focused on Ari’s face. Ari grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirtfront and surged to his feet, pulling the smaller man along with him and slamming him up against the wall.
The Darvelline’s boots dangled a good foot and a half above the floor. Ari shoved the muzzle of his blaster into the man’s belly just above the gleaming belt buckle.
“All right, you,” Ari said. “Talk. Where’s Nivome?”
“Up at the Lodge,” gasped the Darvelline. His eyes went from Ari to Llannat and back again. “Who are you guys?”
“Fool!” roared Ari. “Don’t you recognize Black Brok, Terror of the Spaceways, and his Sinister Sidekick Serina?” Behind him, he could hear Llannat stifling a half-hysterical giggle. He ignored her. “Nivome’s in the Lodge—where?”
“Garage,” said the guard. “Getting ready to go.”
Ari gave the man a one-handed shake. The Darvelline’s head swung forward and then hit the wall with a thud. “Go where?”
“Citadel.”
“He’s telling the truth, Brok,” Llannat said. “Take a look at the monitors.”
Still holding the Darvelline at arm’s length against the wall, Ari glanced into the control room. In the farthest monitor to the left, he could make out the image of a long, armored hovercar pulling out through a wide garage door. A pack of armed outriders in blast-resistant vests and helmets formed up their hoverbikes on the vehicle as the car moved forward.
“You’re sure they’re heading for the Citadel?” he asked.
She nodded. “I heard these two talking about it earlier.”
“Then we’ve got to alert the others before he gets there,” said Ari. He shook the guard one more time and let him drop. The Darvelline slid to the floor and didn’t try to stand up again. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” said Llannat. Lifting the captured blaster, she put a long burst of scarlet energy into the guts of the control panel. She took out the monitor screens and the comm unit the same way. Last of all, she blasted the rogues’ gallery of betraying flatpix into smoking tatters.
“Good idea,” Ari said.
The Adept gave him a brief smile as she joined him in the hall. “Thanks,” she said. “I thought you’d approve.” She held out the captured blaster. “You’d better take this for now—you’re better than I am at that sort of thing.”
“Right,” said Ari. “Let’s get out of here.”
Holding a blaster in each hand, he turned to where the guard lay huddled against the wall. “If you value your life,” he told the Darvelline, “stay where you are. Come on, Serina—‘Spaceways and Away’!”
Without looking to see if Llannat followed, he headed out the door of the blockhouse and made for the main Lodge. The Adept came up abreast of him after a few steps.
“ ‘Brok and Serina,’ ” she said. In spite of everything, she sounded amused.
“It’s all I could think of,” Ari said without breaking stride. He set a good fast pace as the two of them headed for the nearest wing of the low, sprawling complex that was Rolny Lodge. So far, nobody in the main house had reacted to their presence, but he didn’t know how long that bit of luck was going to last.
All we’ve got going for us now is surprise, he thought, as they rounded the corner of the house, and not much of that.
The plans had been right about one thing, at least—the garage was right where it should be. The long door through which the hovercar had made its exit earlier was sliding down as Ari and Llannat approached. Ari hit the ground and rolled through the narrowing gap.
He came out of the roll on his knees, firing both blasters. Most of the coverall-clad workers inside the garage headed for shelter among the Lodge’s collection of aircars and hovercars. A few hesitated—until Llannat charged straight at them, staff upraised and the air about her blazing up into a corona of bright green flame.
The unarmed mechanics and controllers scattered as the door at Ari’s back finished its closing cycle with a clang. He fired a few more bolts into the recesses of the garage before he realized that with the exception of himself and Llannat, the parking bay was empty.
Next to him, the Adept stopped. The green aura that had surrounded her flickered and died. “Looks like they all ran out the back.”
“Looks like,” he agreed. “How about giving Beka and Jessan the bad news while we’ve got the chance?”
Llannat pulled the comm link out of the breast pocket of her jacket and switched it on. A high, ear-piercing ululation rilled the empty bay. She winced and turned off the link.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nivome’s got a jammer going someplace on the estate,” said Ari. “Set for our frequency. Just one more thing our friend forgot to tell us. Come on, let’s grab ourselves some transport and get out of here.”
Llannat opened her mouth to say something—what, he never knew. The shrill whooping of a security alarm filled the garage, and a disembodied voice near the ceiling began to recite, “Intruder Alert. Intruder Alert. All hands man your intruder stations.”
The lights in the parking bay went out.
“Damn it,” Ari said. “They’ve cut the power.”
“Don’t move,” said Llannat’s voice a few feet away. Seconds later, a ball of green light appeared above her outstretched hand.
“Not bad,” Ari said. “Can you do something about the main door controls?”
She shook her head, “Not in the time we’ve got. I don’t even know where they are.”
“All right, then. We do it the hard way.”
Ari made his way to a small aircar close to the rolling doors and opened the side hatch. Reaching inside, he felt around on the control panel until he located the landing-light switch. He flipped it on, and powerful beams of white light shot out from the leading edges of the aircar’s stubby wings.
He tossed the spare blaster ahead of him into the cockpit and followed it up with the energy lance. Then he climbed in himself and started checking over the controls by the landing lights’ reflected glow.
He found the starter switch. “Jump aboard,” he told Llannat. “We’re leaving.”
He put the brakes full on, set the fuel mix for full rich, and fired up the jets. The turbines whined as he increased throttle. The aircar began to slide forward despite the brakes.
“Ready to launch,” he said. “Stand by!”
“Wait! I’m not strapped in!”
“Then hold on!”
Ari released the brakes.
The aircar jumped forward. With a shuddering jar, it hit the hangar doors and burst through. The doors wrapped like a tent across the nose of the craft, obscuring the windscreen. Blinded, Ari pushed the aircar’s nose down to maintain ground contact, and felt the craft lurch to starboard as the wreckage of the doors tore free.
His eyes burned as bright outdoor light flooded the small cockpit. Directly ahead, he saw the outline of an armored gun position, its turret swinging toward them as the gunner inside brought his weapon to bear.
“Ari—”
“I see him.”
Ari pulled back a fraction to gain altitude and then cut hard right, following the curve of the drive. For a second or two, he thought the starboard wing was going to drag the ground—but the aircar came around and leveled out just above the gravel.
Not far ahead, manicured lawn gave way to the dense woods of the hunting park, and the drive made a sharp left turn into the trees. Ari didn’t attempt to make the turn. He cut the jets instead, and pulled the nose of the car straight up.
The aircar went into a steep climb, crashing through small branches on its way skyward. Velocity fell off rapidly; soon the aircar stalled and its nose began to fall.
Ari twisted to the left in a half spiral, so that by the time the craft was pointing at the ground he was lined up with the next leg of the drive. He increased thrust back to maximum and pulled the nose up. The aircar leveled out again heading down the drive, mere feet above the gravel.
“Very nice,” murmured Llannat. She sounded rather breathless. “But what do we do for an encore?”
He didn’t answer. The next corner, a half-right, was drawing nearer, and going straight up wouldn’t work this time. The tracery of branches overhead had grown heavier; he felt like he was flying down a tunnel.
So let’s try sideways, he thought, and swung the tail around to put the aircar into a skid. At the last moment, he made a sharp right roll, so that the aircar was flying down the drive with its belly foremost.
He felt himself pressed down into the seat. Then lift took over and the aircar slowed. He rolled the craft back to the horizontal, and they came out headed down the new direction. Judging by the way the shrubbery flashed past, their speed had hardly diminished.
But shrubbery wasn’t the only thing flashing past. Heavy blaster bolts lit up the undergrowth around them.
“Find the weapon controls!” he called over to Llannat above the roar of the engines and the whine of energy fire. “Make them keep their heads down!”
“I think we’re unarmed.”
He reached down with his right hand and picked up the energy lance. “Use this.”
He felt the weapon taken from his grip, and seconds later heard the sound of shattering glass as Llannat drove the lance butt-first through the window.
Good, he thought, as careful, unhurried energy-fire started up from the other side of the aircar. But just once I’d like to do this in something that could shoot back.
Ahead of them on the long drive, he saw a small group of figures: the trailing elements of the caravan guarding Nivome. At the same time, the high outer wall of the estate came into view. Ari pushed the throttle forward again, but this time got no answering roar. The aircar’s engines had already reached maximum thrust.
All the same, the aircar gained rapidly on the large black hovercar and its group of outriders. The last two hoverbike riders in the column skidded to a stop and laid their bikes down in the dirt perpendicular to the road. They stretched out prone behind their bikes and began firing their blasters toward the oncoming aircar.
Few of the shots hit, and even fewer managed to inflict damage. Either they’re bad shots, Ari thought, or we’ve got them really scared.
He could hear Llannat returning the fire with the energy lance. She wasn’t connecting either that he could see, but the lance’s powerful bolts of energy tore up clods of earth all around the pair of outriders, and filled the air with smoke and dirt. Already shaken, and with their aim obscured, the two riders ducked involuntarily as Ari brought the aircar thundering over their heads.
The leading bikes in the flying wedge had cleared the gate, and the hovercar was approaching it. Ari chuckled to himself.
“What’s so funny?”
“You can own a whole planet, but you can’t bribe the laws of physics,” he said. “We’re going to close with him before he makes it through.”
The long black hovercar flashed through the gate and out onto the city streets of Darplex, with the aircar only feet behind it and scarcely higher above the ground. Behind them, the gatekeeper brought the force field up again: too late by a split second to catch the aircar, but in plenty of time to shut off the rest of the cavalcade.
Ari cut the aircar left, then right, out into the open, and brought the copilot’s side of the aircar parallel to the hovercar. From the corner of his eye he could see Llannat on her knees in the other seat, leaning out the broken window to take aim.
“Go ahead!” he shouted. “Shoot!”
The Adept fired a burst from the energy lance.
She hit the car, but the armored vehicle showed no damage. Around it, the remaining outriders were firing as they rode. One beam drilled a hole through the aircar’s port cargo door, and the rush of air across the opening set up an eerie keening sound inside the cockpit.
Llannat leaned even further out the window and fired another burst. She seemed to be getting the hang of the unfamiliar weapon—this time, one of the hoverbikes exploded into flames and tumbled over and over, sending the rider flying through the air.
Ari cut right again, putting them directly above the hovercar. He dropped. The bottom of the aircraft hit the roof of the hovercar with a thump.
He lifted, then dropped again. Once more he smashed into the top of the car. Then a hollow boom shook the air in front of them, and a brilliant light filled the cockpit.
Ari looked up. There was a shadow against the sun. It grew larger and became an atmospheric fighter craft. He saw a twinkling along the wings of the fighter, and a series of explosions rocked the atmosphere around the unarmed aircar.
He pulled back and left on the control yoke, climbing out of the line of fire so that the fighter’s next burst exploded around the hovercar itself. The strange pilot realized his error and turned to dive toward Ari.
A second fighter flashed into view, firing as it came. Llannat leaned out the window with the energy lance and fired a burst in that direction.
“Hold on!” yelled Ari. “We’re going up!”
He pulled back sharply on the yoke, pulling the aircar into a loop. When the car was inverted at the top of the loop, he flipped upright again and nosed down into a shallow dive to gain speed. Now the two fighters were below him, but already snarling upward.
He glanced over at Llannat. The Adept was still there, firing out the broken window at the cockpit of the nearest fighter. He had no idea what she’d used for a handhold during the turn. As far as he could tell, she’d never put on the safety webbing.
“What do we do now?” she asked, still firing.
Never underestimate an Adept, he thought. Llannat’s ability to stay aboard during the aerobatics of the past few minutes had finally given him something that passed for an idea.
“You’ll have to go find the others and tell them what’s happening,” he said aloud.
“How?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “Get back into the cargo bay, and slide the door open. Leave the lance and the comm link up here with me.”
“Anything you say.”
She headed back toward the cargo bay. Ari pushed the aircar into a steep dive and began to spiral toward the ground.
He pulled out near street level. Tall buildings made blurry grey streaks to either side, and the air was bright with mingled energy fire and projectile explosives as the two fighters came astern of him and started firing.
He began to jink the little aircar about at full throttle, just above the rooftops—pulling up a bit, rolling to a new altitude, and then pushing down again. The two fighter pilots didn’t much like following his smaller craft through the urban maze, but although he drew ahead, he couldn’t shake them.
Never mind, he thought, and held his course away from central Darplex toward the crowded, utilitarian structures of the warehouse district. Soon.
A few seconds later, he found what he was looking for. In the sections of Darplex bordering on the spaceport compound, moving the Rolny’s freight to market took precedence over landscaping. Here, the narrow streets went beneath, not over, the more important cargo lines. The mouth of one such underpass opened up ahead, and he shot into it without hesitation.
The energy fire from behind him stopped abruptly.
“Llannat!” he shouted, in sudden dimness. “Jump!”