“What do you mean,” demanded Llannat, “you think you can pull out before we hit the pavement?”
“Relax,” Jessan said, his eyes on the altimeter. “It worked fine in the simulator.” The ground was very close now. Only three more seconds, he promised himself. Two. One. Now.
He leveled out a hundred feet above the surface of the avenue. The street lay empty beneath him. All the everyday traffic had pulled over by now, or turned off onto side streets. But the gang of Security bikes and hovercars was coming in his direction and putting on speed.
He nosed the aircar into another, shallower dive. This time, he kept his attention on the targeting computer. When the cross hairs met the cluster of small blips and started flashing red, he felt with his thumb for the firing button set into the control yoke, and pressed it all the way down.
Streams of colored fire shot out from beneath the air-car’s wings—Energy guns, he thought, very nice—and carved long smoking pits into the road ahead of the Security enforcers. He kept on firing as the aircar passed over the oncoming vehicles, and then pulled up into a steep climb. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him a flaming tangle of men and metal in the road below.
“Not bad for a first try,” he said aloud. He felt irrationally cheerful. “Let’s go see if we can slow down the Rolny.”
“I don’t think so,” Llannat said. “Look.” He glanced in her direction for the first time since he’d said good-bye to Beka over the dead comm link. The telltales on the Adept’s side of the instrument panel were blinking red.
“Just when I was starting to have fun,” he complained. “Find me a good spot to set down, will you?”
“Off to port,” Llannat said at once. “Behind those trees.”
He looked out the cockpit window. “Near the building?”
“Left of that. In the alley.”
“Got you.”
Jessan pulled left and began to nose down. Landing proved to be trickier than he’d thought, mostly because the aircar’s control panel locked up during the last few feet of the approach. Still, he managed to set the craft down with several yards to spare before the alley ended in a stone wall.
“A bit bumpy,” said Llannat, unstrapping.
“Everybody’s a critic,” he said. “You don’t like it, you try it next time.”
“Thank you very much,” the Adept said, “but no. Let’s get out and start troubleshooting.”
Beka Rosselin-Metadi laughed under her breath as the aircar swooped down and past her. That has to be Jessan, she thought, listening to the energy guns ripping up the pavement. Showing up in style.
She put the Khesatan put of her mind. They’d have time for that later, if later came at all. For now, the Citadel loomed ahead of her, so big and close she’d have needed to tilt her head backward to see the top, and Nivome’s cavalcade was coming into view on the intersecting boulevard.
“My lady!” shouted the Professor over the noise of the bikes. “Your siren!”
Siren? she wondered, and remembered that she was riding a stolen Security vehicle. She found the switches, and brought both the siren and the amber noselight on-line.
The siren’s mechanical wailing crescendoed in her ears. She gave the throttle another twist forward. The avenue down which she rode still had half a dozen blocks to run before ending in a traffic circle around the base of the Citadel, but the huge structure rose up in front of her like a wall of black marble, blocking more and more of her vision as she drew closer.
Getting out of here’s going to be worse than getting in, she thought. I hope Jessan stays handy with the air support.
She was at the traffic circle now, with the Professor still keeping position on her right. Together they leaned into the turn, swooping along toward the point where Nivome and his escort would enter the circle from the intersecting road.
The Rolny and his men were closing fast. She slacked off a little on the power to the hoverbike, not wanting to beat the Rolny and his guards to the meetpoint and have them behind her on the circle.
We’re going to catch Nivome after all, she thought. Just barely, but we’re going to catch him.
So far, the Professor’s notion of using siren and lights had paid off. The outriders hadn’t taken alarm at what they must be tagging as downtown Security enforcers showing up to join the cavalcade. A few seconds later, Nivome’s hovercar and its flying wedge of guards shot onto the traffic circle only a few lengths ahead of Beka and the Professor.
“Now, my lady!”
Beka pulled her Mark VI from its holster with a yell, and gunned the hoverbike’s engine. The vehicle surged forward beneath her, and then she and her partner hit the rear of the Rolny’s cavalcade at full speed.
She fired three times and connected twice before the guards realized that their reinforcements were shooting at them, and began shooting back. All around her, hoverbikes veered and skidded out of control under their killed or wounded riders. She counted more than two guards down—many more—and yelled again. The Professor, as usual, hadn’t missed.
She kept on firing, pressing her hoverbike forward through the milling pack, ducking close to the control bars as energy bolts began to zip over her head. Not all of Nivome’s outriders were trying to miss their buddies; one bolt singed the hair on her neck, and hit a man beyond.
Nivome, she told herself, still firing—picking targets now, not like the half-random shooting she’d done to keep heads down back at the barricade. The important thing is getting a clear shot at Nivome.
Blasters whined and spat above the roar of engines. She and the Professor were in the middle of the pack now, riding with it, coming nearer and nearer to the long black hovercar.
You aren’t getting away from me, Nivome. You killed my mother, but you didn’t quite kill me. That was your big mistake, Nivome, because now I’m coming after you.
The hovercar veered left. She followed, drawing closer to the target—and realized, too late, that the entire cavalcade had turned off the traffic circle and was speeding down the Citadel’s entry ramp.
Heavy doors at the foot of the Citadel yawned open. The hovercar and its attendant swarm entered, bearing Beka and the Professor with them, and the blast doors closed behind them all.
“Well, well, well,” said Jessan, and wriggled out from under the grounded aircar.
He brought out his find, a small cylinder with hose fittings on either end, and showed it to the Adept. “Tell me—what do you make of this?”
Llannat poked at it with one finger. “It says ‘Filter’ on it. What’s the trouble?”
“It’s the source of the leak in our control lines, that’s what’s the trouble. And look at this—”
Jessan worked a grimy fingernail under one end plate, and levered off the bit of plastic. Llannat picked it up and turned it over in her hand a couple of times, her frown deepening.
“I’m no mechanic,” she said at last. “But this looks wrong.”
“Give the Adept five points,” Jessan said. “That’s not a filter at all.”
“So what is it?”
He shrugged. “Looks more like an inertial switch than anything else. I think it was put there to sense a high-gee maneuver and break the vacuum line.”
“Sabotage,” the Adept said. “Can you fix it?”
He shrugged again. “I think so. Given time.” He turned back toward the aircar. “And I don’t know how much of that we’ve got. I’ll get busy. You stay out here and keep watch.”
“Sure thi—”
The Adept’s voice cut off in midword. He spun back around in time to catch her as her knees folded. She sagged in his grip for a few seconds; then the faintness seemed to pass, and she shrugged his hands away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Sorcery,” she said. “Magework and dark sorcery. And I can’t find Beka and the Professor at all.”
The blast doors crashed shut.
There’s no way I’m going to get out of this one, thought Beka, as the Rolny’s hovercar came to a stop. But Nivome buys it first.
She cut engine power to the bike, and raised her blaster for a shot at the windows of the hovercar. A beam of red light burned a hole through the cuff of her long-coat, and another beam passed by her head so close she could smell the charged air. She stood up in the bike’s stirrups for a better aim, and fired.
The bolt from the Mark VI hit the passenger-seat window of the hovercar and dissipated in a splash of crimson light.
“Force screen! You bastard!”
“My lady! Down!”
The Professor jerked on the hem of her long-coat, pulling her off the hoverbike and onto the floor. She hit the concrete in time to see two red bolts and a green one flashing through the space where she had stood.
She scrambled up to her knees under cover of her still-hovering bike. Next to her, the Professor crouched, firing around his own vehicle as more energy bolts whined and zipped overhead.
Suddenly, the noise of the blasters began to fall off and die, giving way to a low hissing sound. She looked up and saw thick white vapor issuing from unseen openings all about the entry bay. One curling tendril of mist touched a group of the Security men. They choked and fell forward.
Intruder gas, thought Beka. Only one chance left.
The fog rolled closer. She dropped her blaster and groped in her coat pocket for the collapsor grenade. If I can just set the detonator before that stuff gets us . . . and if a collapsor’s any good in an open space . . .
Her fingers closed on the disk of the collapsor. She pulled it out and began to enter the arming sequence. Nivome’s hovercar was out of sight, hidden in the fog. Don’t breathe, she told herself. Just get the code set, and everything will be all right.
The Professor’s hand closed on her wrist before she could complete the sequence. “No, my lady.”
She stared, unbelieving, as the device in her hand cycled back to zero.
Beside her, the Entiboran rose to his feet. The white fog touched him and writhed about him. Her own chest burned with the effort not to draw breath, and she waited, despairing, for her partner to stagger and fall. Instead, he raised an empty hand and called out, “Enough!”
The fog halted, then billowed and dispersed as if torn by a high wind. The lights in the entry bay flickered and went out. In the silent dark, the long black car hovered on its nullgravs inside a nimbus of light, a corona discharge of pale orange fire that crackled outward to the floor and walls.
The heavy vehicle lifted toward the ceiling, pitching and yawing as it rose. What am I seeing? Beka thought, remembering at last to breathe. At her elbow, the Professor stood with one hand upraised, the play of unworldly light on his features changing her Entiboran copilot into something disturbing and unfamiliar.
What is he doing?
Out in the center of the bay, the hovercar was still rising. Slowly, it began to rotate around its vertical axis. The metal side panels curled away from the frame, and the doors peeled open a fraction at a time. With a silent explosion, all the glass in the windows flew outward in a sparkling cloud.
Nothing remained now of the still-rotating hovercar but its frame and engine. Three men clung to the seats inside the twisting frame—one in the driver’s position, and two in what had once been the passenger compartment. One of those two she did not know; but the other—
Nivome, she thought, and raised her blaster to fire.
The Rolny’s companion lifted a black-gloved hand, and the two men in the back of the hovercar vanished.
The hovercar hung suspended in midair a moment longer. Then the Professor closed his fist and brought his arm back down to his side. The hovercar crashed to the floor and started burning. Silence filled the entry bay.
Beka shoved the collapsor grenade back into her pocket, retrieved her abandoned Mark VI, and pushed herself up onto her feet. She cast an uneasy glance over at the burning wreckage before turning to the Professor.
“What now?” she asked.
He pulled the ebony staff from under his belt. “We take them in their hiding place,” he said. “Are you with me, girl?”
Beka stared at her copilot. He’s never spoken to me that way before—it’s always been ‘Captain,’ or ‘my lady,’ with him. Whatever he just did . . . changed him.
And saved my life. Again.
“I’m with you,” she said to her partner. “Let’s go.”
Ari and Estisk circled each other amid the wreckage of the tool-issue point in 125-34 Outer Ring. Ari’s muscles burned, and his left eye didn’t want to focus. Across from him, Estisk was bleeding freely from the nose, and seemed to be favoring his right foot when he moved.
Ari brought the edge of his hand down against the other man’s collarbone. Estisk grunted in pain, but the bone didn’t break, and the Darvelline retaliated with an elbow strike to Ari’s belly.
Panting, Ari fell back, but not quite far enough. Estisk wrapped one arm around Ari’s neck and began slamming the other fist into his ribs like a hammer.
Ari grabbed for the hand on his shoulder, caught it, and twisted under. Estisk turned with him—it was turn, or go down with a dislocated shoulder. As the Darvelline came round, Ari let go and lashed out with a kick that took the other man in the right kidney.
Estisk stumbled forward into the half-demolished workbench and caught himself on the table edge. Ari stood his ground, waiting. Slowly, Estisk pushed himself back around to stand with his hands braced against the bench behind him.
Ari eyed the sagging Darvelline. Isn’t he ever going to go down? That kick would have put most guys into the healing pod for a week.
Without warning, Estisk launched himself forward, swinging a twelve-inch length of pipe snatched up from the workbench. Instinctively, Ari blocked up and out. The impact made his left hand and wrist go numb, but the pipe crashed onto his forearm instead of his skull.
Before Estisk could pull the pipe back for another swing, Ari reached over with his right hand, grabbed the other man’s wrist, and bent arm and pipe backward together toward Estisk’s right ear. At the same time, his nerveless left hand lay in the crook of Estisk’s right elbow, pulling down. Between the two, either the arm would break, or Estisk would yield to the pressure and fall onto his back.
And then—what was it Ferrda used to say? *Jump on his head until he stops moving*? Ari laughed a little between his clenched teeth. Sounds like a good idea to me.
But Estisk still had a lot of power in his barrel-like chest. The hand holding the pipe reached his ear, went a little farther back, and then stayed there.
Ari pushed harder.
A crashing pain exploded in Ari’s right side—Estisk had dropped the pipe from his right hand to his left, then smashed it upward into Ari’s floating ribs.
Ari let go his hold on Estisk’s arm and fell back. A kick came from out of nowhere toward his chest. He caught the ankle and heaved upward.
The Darvelline hit the ground hard, and rolled upright.
Ari stared, feeling a sharp pain in his side with every indrawn breath. What the hell does it take to keep this bastard down?
Estisk smiled through bloody lips, and gestured to Ari to come closer. “Come on, then—brother. I thought you wanted to fight.”
Llannat pushed herself away from the side of the aircar. Jessan was busy under the belly of the craft; she couldn’t see him, but she could hear him talking himself through the repairs in High Khesatan. From the few words she could catch, the repair job looked like taking a while.
But time was running out. She didn’t worry about the fighter craft still circling overhead, or the sirens howling in the streets. She could hide two people and one small aircar from a search like that. But the Mage-smell hung in the air like the reek of a slaughterhouse, heavy and growing closer.
Time. She had to buy time for Jessan and the others.
You’re as ready now as you ever will be, she thought. Quit stalling and show Master Ransome he didn’t make a mistake when he gave you a staff and called you an Adept.
She left the aircar behind and walked down to the point where the long alley branched out into two wider streets. Stepping into the center of the junction, she lifted her staff overhead in both hands, holding it high against the deep blue of Darvell’s midafternoon sky.
Magelords! she shouted with wordless intensity. Magelords—here is an Adept! Come to me!
She heard a rustling in the alley ahead of her. A masked figure stepped out from among the stacks of shipping crates. The newcomer held a short, dark staff in one black-gloved hand.
“So it’s true,” he said. “We have an Adept in our midst.”
“A very young and foolish Adept,” added a voice to Llannat’s right. She resisted the urge to turn her head for a glimpse of the speaker.
“How long has it been,” the new voice went on, “since an Adept was rash enough to walk openly on the streets of Darvell?”
“Longer than either of you would know,” a third voice said, and another tall, black-robed figure came forward out of the shadows in the alley to her left. “Not since the wars, at least. But I remember.”
Like the first speaker, the newcomer wore black robes and mask, and held a short black staff in the Magestyle one-handed grip. Holding her own staff two-handed before her, Llannat turned half-right, bringing the second, hitherto unseen speaker into view. This one, too, was robed and masked in black.
Three of them, she thought. I never expected to face this many. But many or few, she still knew better than to let them choose their own time and manner of attack. She threw a sudden blow toward the rightmost of the three, taking his staff against hers while the green fire of her power flared up to illuminate the air around her.
The man she had targeted spun to divert her blow. She turned with him, putting all three of the blackrobes in front of her as she had intended, with their backs to the grounded aircar. Beyond them, in the cul-de-sac, Jessan was for the moment inaudible as well as invisible.
Good, she thought. She’d pulled the hunters away from him for a little while at least. Let him finish the repair work. Then I can break away from whoever’s left and we can both get out of here.
Then the time for thinking was past. The blackrobe to her right, the nearest of her three opponents, attacked with a backhanded blow to her leg, trying to pull her out of line and give his fellows an opening. Llannat dropped the tip of her staff and allowed his blow to slide off it. When he withdrew, she followed with an attack of her own, aiming the butt of her staff at his solar plexus.
He turned to avoid the thrust, and the enemy on Llannat’s left attacked in the moment when she stood extended. She stepped backward, turning to meet and block the stroke.
So far, her staff had served her well. But staffwork alone couldn’t help her now. Just as she had done back on the Professor’s asteroid, she drew a deep breath and opened herself to the universe.
Strength came to her—not the rush of well-being she had known before, but a calm, steady certainty. Using both ends of her staff, she threw three blows in quick succession at the man on her right, aiming for the head, the leg, and the head again. Her opponent stumbled back a pace; she feinted toward the man in the center, then came back to press down the right-hand blackrobe’s weapon with the center of her staff.
If she pushed the blackrobe’s ebony rod down far enough, she could shove the center of her staff up into his throat and take him out of the fight. But before she could complete her move, she felt the patterns of power shifting around her. The opponent on her far left was making ready his own assault.
She whipped her staff under the right-hand blackrobe’s defense, bringing it up and leftward in time to block the new attack, and then countered with a blow of her own that diverted at the last moment to smash against the biceps of her central opponent. He cried out in pain, and his staff dropped to the ground with the loss of strength in his hand.
“First touch to you, Adept,” said the tall Magelord, the latecomer to the crossroads, as the wounded man fell back a pace and went down on his knees in pain, grasping his injured arm with his good hand. “Shall we go on?”
Llannat said nothing.
The two unwounded men circled her slowly to left and right. The tall one swept his staff upward; she turned, dropping to one knee as his blow came smashing down, and swung her own staff in a flat arc into his diaphragm. He crumpled forward.
The patterns of power changed again as he fell. She pulled her staff back toward her and brought the center up over her head into a horizontal block. Wood struck against wood as she caught and stopped a blow from behind.
She somersaulted backward, forcing the only Magelord still standing to leap over her or be knocked down. He jumped; she rolled to her feet, pivoting into a guard position as he hit the ground and spun to face her. He lunged. She turned a little to let the ebony rod go past her, and whipped the butt of her own staff forward and up into his masked face.
The wood caught him below the jaw, shattering the plastic mask and the bone and flesh beneath. He went down, clutching his face, and the blood ran out between his black-gloved fingers.
Of the three who had come out to answer her challenge, now only the one she had first wounded remained—oddly fitting, she supposed, since he had also been the first to appear. He had regained his feet, and held his staff in his good hand.
Llannat came to guard position with her staff before her. Her opponent let his arm fall to his side. Llannat stayed in guard, having learned from an expert how fast that one-hand grip could move the short rod up and into action. The Mage gave a faint laugh.
“You’ve done well so far, Adept,” he said. “Can you do as well with this?”
He gestured, and she felt a hand close on her throat.
“Adepts understand the structure of the universe,” said the other’s mocking voice. “But we Magelords control it.”
The grip on her throat tightened. Illusion! she insisted, and threw herself open to the flow of power. The unseen hand loosened its stranglehold and fell away.
“Very good—for an Adept,” said the Mage. “But we’ve only just begun.”