Jessan slid shut the access plate and crawled out from under the aircar. “Well, Llannat, I think that just about does it . . . Llannat?”
No answer. The alley was quiet. Jessan looked around. A black-clad body lay facedown in the alley ahead.
“Oh, no.”
He ran forward to the junction, skidding down onto his knees by the body. It wasn’t Llannat. The unknown wore black robes instead of the Adept’s plain black coverall, and someone had smashed in his face. A molded mask of black plastic hid what was left of his features. A short ebony staff lay on the pavement next to the unknown’s body.
Jessan checked for a pulse: none. Not surprising—the poor bastard probably choked on his own blood.
He sat back on his heels and looked around. Another blackrobe lay nearby, as dead as the first.
Slowly, Jessan stood up. “Llannat!” he called out. “Llannat!”
Nobody answered. He looked down the main alley toward the street—nothing. No bodies, no tracks, no blood. He drew his blaster. Holding it at the ready, he ran down the other alley to the next fork and checked to right and to left.
The right-hand alley dead-ended in a ground-transport loading dock, its doors down and locked. In the other direction, he could see a hint of green somewhere beyond the alley’s mouth. He turned left.
He stopped where the alley opened out into the main road. The greenery turned out to belong to a little park across the street. Inside the park, two black-clad figures sprawled on the close-trimmed grass, surrounded by a small knot of people. One of the bodies wore black robes like the first two—but the other—
Jessan reholstered his blaster and strolled across the street to the edge of the crowd.
“Let me through,” he said. “Let me through. I’m a medic.”
He kept on walking forward as he spoke, and the circle parted. The smaller of the two bodies was Llannat Hyfid, all right. He knelt and put a hand to her neck. Her pulse was thin and weak, but it was there.
She’s alive. I don’t see her staff anywhere, though. He checked the second body: no pulse, no anything. Dead. Time to get out of here, I think.
“Anybody see what happened?” he asked the crowd in general.
“There wasn’t anybody there at all,” said a voice from the back somewhere. “Then all of a sudden, there they were.”
“Yeah,” said another voice. “Like they fell out of the sky or something.”
Interesting . . . but not what I’d call useful. We still have to make it to the aircar before Security gets here.
He bent over and put his mouth next to the Adept’s ear.
“Llannat,” he called softly. “Llannat, we have to go now. Wake up, Llannat. Please wake up.”
Her eyelids flickered a little, and her lips moved. Jessan bent closer.
“Ari?” she asked.
“It’s Jessan,” he said. “Wake up. We’ll go find Ari. Wake up. Ari needs you.”
Her pulse grew stronger, and her breathing deepened. She began to stir.
“Get back, everyone,” Jessan ordered. “Give her air.”
The crowd moved back a little. He slid his arms under Llannat’s knees and shoulders, and stood up.
“Hey, wait a minute,” someone said. “You shouldn’t move her.”
Jessan sighed. There’s always somebody. “I have to get her to the hospital,” he said. “My vehicle’s over that way.”
A shadow glided over the grass as he spoke. He glanced up, and saw an aircar with Security markings circling to make another pass.
“NOBODY MOVE,” bellowed a voice from the sky. “STAY WHERE YOU ARE OR I WILL OPEN FIRE.”
Jessan looked at the alley—only a street’s width away, but too far to run while carrying another. He kept on walking.
“HALT OR I SHOOT.”
Jessan froze in midstreet.
Maybe I can break for the alley once they ’ve grounded, he thought, without much optimism.
“Put me down,” said a faint voice. “I can walk.”
“You’re probably lying,” he muttered, lowering the Adept to her feet. “But what choice have we got?”
He put one hand on his blaster, and the other around Llannat’s shoulders. “The alley, on three.”
The aircar circled over them again. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS.”
“One . . . two . . . three!”
They dashed for the alley. Jessan supported Llannat as much as he could. He hated to think what reserves of energy the Adept must be drawing on to match his pace.
Overhead, the Security aircar whipped around in a tight turn and started firing down at them. Jessan drew his blaster and fired back, still running.
Energy bolts chewed up the pavement to either side of them as the aircar passed by overhead and climbed away, trailing black smoke from a hit to its underbelly. The aircar made a rollover at the top of its loop and headed back toward them for another run.
I’ve been here before, thought Jessan, staggering into the alley with Llannat in tow. In the Professor’s game room. And I didn’t like the way it ended.
They plastered themselves against the wall as the Security aircar made a second pass, then stumbled on down the alley to their own craft.
“Blast,” said Jessan, panting. “We can’t take off with our nose against the dead end like that. Feel up to helping me turn this boat in place?”
“No time,” Llannat said.
“Blast,” Jessan said again. The Adept was right: he could hear sirens converging on the area from all directions.
“Get in the aircar anyway,” Llannat said.
“But we don’t have room for takeoff!” he protested, helping the Adept into the cockpit ahead of him as he spoke.
“Don’t worry. Switch on the engines when you think it’s time.”
“When I—right.”
Llannat closed her eyes and placed both hands on the aircar’s instrument panel. The console started to vibrate, and its readouts and telltales blinked from green to amber to red to green again. A moment longer, and the whole aircar began to shake. Then, slowly, it lifted straight up.
Energy fire came down the alley from behind them.
I think it’s time.
Jessan hit the main engine ignition switch. At the same instant, he fed forward power. The craft began to move through the air, building speed until true lift took over.
He put the aircar into a climb and looked over at Llannat.
“Now what?” he asked.
The Adept had collapsed back into the copilot’s seat. Her face was mottled and her jacket was soaked with sweat. She didn’t open her eyes as she spoke. “Set course for Warhammer.”
“What about Beka and the Professor?” he demanded. “What about Art, if it comes to that? You were worried enough about him five minutes ago.”
“We can’t help them here. Please, Jessan . . . ”
Almost angrily, he punched the ’Hammer’s coordinates into the aircar’s little on-board navicomp. “All right. We’re heading home.”
He pushed the throttle all the way forward and banked the aircar into a turn. The Citadel, looming black and featureless on the horizon, slid from the cockpit’s front windows around toward the side as he added, “But we don’t lift from Darvell without the captain.”
Llannat didn’t respond. The Citadel disappeared from the side window, and reappeared in the rear monitor. In the tiny screen, the tip of the black ziggurat blazed for a second with a burst of brilliant light. Heavy smoke followed, billowing out to hang over the Citadel like a low-flying cloud.
“Now that looks interesting,” Jessan said. “Check it out, Llannat—Llannat?”
He glanced over at the Adept. I ought to have my license revoked, he thought. Labored breathing, shivering, cold sweat—she needs to be flat on a hospital cot, not running around Darplex levitating aircars.
“What we want now,” he said aloud, “is the autopilot. Get this bird headed for home, and I can forget about playing daredevil flier and go back to taking care of casualties.”
He reached out to lock in the automatic controls, but his hand never got there. Alarms began pipping all over the console instead, and seconds later colored light boiled in the air outside the cockpit windows.
Fighters, thought Jessan. He cut right to ruin the other pilot’s firing solution, then left to regain track. I wish I were better at this.
“Up the stairs,” the Professor had said.
Beka took the metal staircase two steps at a time, the Mark VI ready in her hand. Something moved on the upper landing, and she fired.
Beka Rosselin-Metadi sometimes missed; Tarnekep Portree never did. The hunter/killer robot disintegrated in a shower of white sparks and fragments of hot metal, and Beka kept on running.
She reached the landing. The door out to the corridor began sliding open. She fired into the gap as it widened, then took the door in a low dive, firing again as she came up.
A man lay in the hallway, his torso a mess of bone and seared meat. A second Security guard crouched in the shelter of his partner’s body. He fired, and the blaster bolt whined over her head into the now-closing doorway.
She held her fire. The security man half-rose to get a second shot at her; she pressed down the firing stud on the Mark VI and held it there. When she released it, the second man was as dead as the first.
Something rolled under her hand as she pushed away from the floor and stood up: the first guard’s blaster. She tucked the Professor’s staff out of the way under her belt, and picked up the blaster with her free hand.
More movement—hunter/killers, floating into action at either end of the hall. She fired both blasters. One robot exploded and the other went wild, caroming off the walls and firing at random.
“ ‘Down the hall,’ ” she recited, like an incantation. “ ‘Door on the left.’ ”
A half-dozen strides, and the door was in front of her. She took out the lockplate just as the Professor had taught her, with a precision burst from her right-hand blaster. The doors started to slide apart.
She brought the two blasters up waist-high, and stood in the open doorway firing at everything that moved. She didn’t stop until the room was still.
Beka went inside. Dead men and burnt-out security monitors were everywhere. The room smelled of blaster fire and burning electronics. A mobile fire-extinguisher unit emerged from its cubbyhole and began scuttling about amid the corpses, spraying the smoking comp units with inert gas. She watched it work for a second, and then shot it as well.
“Let the damned place burn,” she muttered, looking about at the wreckage. “ ‘Two rooms . . . ’ ”
The sign on the far door read, simply, director. She walked up to it and shot out the lockplate. The door slid open.
A man sat behind a massive desk on the far side of the room, in front of an allegorical tapestry representing the Sundering of the Galaxy. “You didn’t need to do that,” he said. “The door wasn’t locked.”
Unless all the flatpix and Jessan’s memory were lying, this was Nivome the Rolny. She took a step into the room and looked about. Nivome kept his hands flat on his desk.
“Ah,” he said. “Tarnekep Portree. I’ve heard of you. In fact, I’ve developed more than a casual interest, ever since you were spotted on-planet.”
Go ahead and talk, she thought, still checking out the room. Her blasters never wavered from their target. See how much good it does you.
“For the last year or more, Captain Portree,” Nivome continued, “you’ve delighted in interfering with our plans. May I ask why? Who could possibly be paying you enough?”
She had the holoprojector spotted now, and shot it out by way of answer. Nivome and the desk both vanished.
The tapestry remained; she took a moment to set her right-hand blaster to low stun, then strode up to the wall hanging and yanked it aside. She wasn’t surprised to see another door behind it.
Pulling aside the tapestry must have sent some kind of signal, because this door opened before she could even touch it. A blaster bolt flashed out, taking her low in the right side.
Beka fired back, right-handed, and the man who had shot her crumpled. She looked at the unconscious body.
It was Nivome for real, this time. Except for the two of them, the room was empty. She walked over and prodded the Rolny’s motionless form with the toe of her boot.
“I ought to kill you right now, you son of a bitch. But I want to give you to someone for a present.”
She tucked the spare blaster into the waistband of her trousers. The movement hurt; she felt blood starting to seep out of the wound in her side as the cauterizing effect of the blaster bolt wore off.
She pulled Tarnekep Portree’s lace-trimmed handkerchief out of her coat sleeve and stuffed the delicate fabric in between the wound and her shirt to stop the bleeding. Her fingers came away red and sticky. She looked at them, and the reality of the situation hit her at last.
There’s no way I can possibly get out of here.
Beka thumbed her blaster setting back to full, and pointed the weapon at Nivome. Then she lowered it again.
No, not yet. There’s still one move they might not be expecting. But I can’t do it alone.
She switched the blaster to her other hand and reached into the pocket of her long-coat. She found the comm link, and keyed it on.
“Ari,” she said. “Ari, this is Bee. I’m in trouble. Please get me out.”
Ari shifted positions in the pilot’s seat of his stolen aircar, trying to find some way to sit that didn’t make his cracked rib hurt even worse.
Blinking hard, he checked the instruments again. He was having trouble seeing out of his left eye, and the read-outs kept blurring when he tried to bring them into focus. Level flight . . . good attitude . . . low altitude . . . no contacts on the scope . . .
“Ari,” said a voice from somewhere in the cockpit. “Ari, this is Bee. I’m in trouble. Please get me out.”
“Dammit, Bee,” he muttered. “You always pull these crazy stunts, and then expect me to take care of you.”
His jaw hurt and his head felt thick. Something was wrong. He was alone in the aircar—that was it. He shouldn’t be listening to a sister who wasn’t there, and who sounded scared.
“Ari!” came the call again, through the ringing in his ears. “Ari, are you there?”
The voice seemed to be coming from right beside him. He turned his head that way, grimacing as several more sets of muscles protested the move, and squinted at the copilot’s seat. Nobody there. Maybe I am crazy.
Then the afternoon light shone through the cockpit window and glinted off something small and metallic lying on the seat cushions: the comm link he’d left there when he went into Building 125-34 to settle accounts with Estisk. He picked up the comm link and keyed it on.
“Beka, this is Ari. Where are you?”
“I’m in the Citadel, at the top. Come get me?”
She was scared, he realized—scared or angry, or maybe both. “Sure thing, Bee. How do I find you?”
He heard his sister laughing over the comm link, and the sound made the hairs on his neck stand on end.
“Watch for my signal, big brother. You can’t miss it.”
The link clicked off. Ari turned the aircar and headed for the Citadel.
Nobody bothered him. The aircar’s built-in identification devices must be signaling that it had permission to enter that airspace—one of the advantages to stealing the head man’s personal runabout.
He put the aircar into a climb, bringing it up to the altitude of the black ziggurat’s upper levels. Suddenly, he saw a flash. One wall on the topmost floor crumpled outward, falling down and away like an avalanche. A cloud of thick black smoke hung in the air for a few seconds before beginning to drift on the wind.
“You’re right, Bee,” he said aloud. “I couldn’t miss it.”
He toggled the side cargo door open, and turned the aircar into the smoke.
Beka clicked off the comm link and stuffed it back into her pocket. She pulled out the collapsor and peeled off the film covering the device’s adhesive surface.
Do it right the first time, she told herself, pressing the flat disk hard against what she hoped was an outside wall. One try is all you get.
She dialed the collapsor up to maximum power, then set the timer and entered the arming sequence. The glowing red numbers on the readout started their march down to detonation. She hadn’t allowed herself much leeway; reinforcements would be showing up any minute now, and none of them would be for her.
You’ll die before I do, she thought, looking at the Rolny’s unconscious form. But maybe—if I’m lucky—not just yet.
She crouched by his head and slapped him across the face with her free hand, back and forth until he grunted and started to come out of his stun.
His eyes blinked open; she made certain that the first thing he saw was the muzzle of her blaster. She kept it trained on him as she stood.
“Get up,” she said. “We’re going for a little walk.”
Nivome staggered to his feet. “Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it.”
“There’s not that much money in the universe,” she told him. With a sudden motion, she grabbed Nivome’s wrist in her left hand, twisting his arm up between his shoulder blades. She pressed the muzzle of her blaster into the small of his back.
“Walk,” she ordered.
The Rolny walked. Together, they moved out through the false office and the security room, and into the corridor.
Beka flattened herself against the wall, holding Nivome in front of her like a shield. Down the hall, someone peeked around a half-open door, and seconds later a blaster bolt sizzled against the wall by her head.
“Don’t shoot, you idiot!” Nivome shouted. “It’s me!”
“Very smart,” said Beka, sending a return beam down the hallway. “You may just live past today after all.”
But I wouldn’t bet the family silver on it, if I were you, she thought, waiting for the sound of the collapsor. Only a few seconds left to go.
The grenade went off with a sound like a mountain blowing itself apart. She wrenched Nivome back around, and shoved him ahead of her through the doorway.
The shock of the collapsor blast had thrown the sliding doors apart all the way back to the rear office. Where the wall had been was now a cloud of dense smoke . . . but the cloud was shot through with sunlight, and from somewhere outside she could hear the sound of an aircar’s engines.
Still pushing Nivome before her, Beka went forward toward the light.