The air outside the Greentrees Lounge hit Ari like a wet towel. Clouds obscured the night sky, and a warm mist hung in the air and made hazy circles around the streetlights. Despite his relative abstinence at dinner, Ari found himself light-headed—probably, he decided, some sort of interaction between the Tree Frog Export Dark and the Uplands Reserve. He shrugged and started walking.
Greentrees and Munngralla’s curio shop were on opposite sides of town, with the port area sprawling between them. Ari took the long way around, swinging in a half-circle through streets that were for the most part lighted but empty. Even in a galactic backwater like Nammerin, portside on a LastDay night could get rough—and while the Mark VI blaster could probably settle any trouble that didn’t answer to mass and strength alone, the combination would be sure to get him noticed.
The CO’s entitled to a little discretion, he thought. And anyhow the long way is faster.
The district of seedy rooming houses and small shops where G. Munngralla’s Five Points Imports did business was far enough away from the spaceport to close down at night. Most of the storefronts in the buildings along the muddy streets had grillwork up over their darkened windows—this wasn’t a district that could afford security force fields and all-night displays. Streetlights here came one to a corner, making the intersections into puddles of bright light that never reached far enough to illuminate the middle of the block. The random glow from upstairs windows cast odd blocks of light and shadow onto the rutted streets; but not even that light reached the sidewalks under the shop awnings.
Ari kept one hand near the bolstered blaster and moved as quietly from shadow to shadow as he knew how. He might not be able to disappear from plain view in broad daylight like his brother Owen the apprentice Adept, but he’d learned to hunt like a Selvaur in the forests of Maraghai, stalking the fanghorn and the rock hog on foot and bringing them down barehanded.
Now he moved in silence down the street leading to Munngralla’s shop, and cast his mind back to the hunting lessons of his adolescence. *Watch everywhere, youngling,* Ferrdacorr had told him. *And listen, always. You humans have no noses, but better eyes than the Forest Lords—and you personally, at least, have something that passes for a sense of hearing.*
Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening in the street itself. Something scaly and four-legged was digging through an overturned trash barrel; and upstairs in the building on the next corner a woman’s voice berated somebody named Quishan for an unspecified, but apparently habitual, offense. But Five Points Imports was as quiet and dark as its neighbors to either side.
Ari reached out a hand to give the door a gentle push—mechanical hinges could make more noise than a feedback regulator about to go down hard—and got no result at all. Munngralla had locked up the shop.
Careless of him, thought Ari. He checked his chronometer. I’m right on time. And then, still standing with one hand reaching out to touch the doorknob, He’d never be that careless. Not with a deal coming up that might lead to a long-term contract. Somebody else must have locked the door.
He moved closer to the door, and put one ear to the crack between it and the jamb. Deliberately, he blocked out the scrabbling and rustling from the overturned trash barrel, the shrill voice with its accusations against the luckless Quishan, and the ever-present rumble from the port . . . and listened.
He heard nothing at first, then something: a distant, arrhythmic thumping and bumping from deep within the shop. If Munngralla had good soundproofing in his back rooms and upstairs apartments—which as the local agent of the Quincunx he more than likely did—those bare hints of noise implied that all hell was breaking loose somewhere.
Then Ari was sure of it, because faintly through the other sounds came a deep, ragged-edged roaring—the war cry of a Selvaur outnumbered but refusing to go down.
“Right,” Ari said aloud, and took hold of the doorknob again. One quick, sharp jerk, and the door swung open without further trouble. Munngralla would have to repair the doorjamb and replace the lock.
Inside the shop, the noises were more distinct, though still muffled. Ari ran for the beaded curtain at the back of the shop, snatching up a pugil stick from the display rack as he passed. By night, the beaded curtain hid a solid metal door—thick enough for soundproofing, but still not strong enough to hold against a well-placed kick. It caved inward, leaning drunkenly from the only remaining hinge. Ari slid past it and into the back hall.
He ran up the steps three at a time, to where a slanting rectangle of light shone out into the upstairs hallway. The last door wasn’t locked. Munngralla must have come upon the intruders before they could secure that final barrier against unexpected interruption. As Ari reached the last step, a body flew out the open door and slammed against the opposite wall.
From the looks of it, Munngralla was still fighting. Ari hefted the pugil stick, let loose his own version of Ferrda’s fighting-roar, and charged in.
The Selvaur stood with his back to the far wall of a cabinet-lined workroom, swinging a length of metal shelving in murderous arcs that kept his attackers from closing. Munngralla’s enemies—whoever they might be—hadn’t stinted on the manpower. Not counting the casualty out in the hallway, Ari saw at least five humans still pressing the fight with clubs and knives.
He swiped the butt end of his pugil stick across the back of the nearest skull. The man collapsed onto the tile floor, fouling the footwork of two other attackers as he fell. Munngralla caught one of them along the side of the head with his length of shelving, and Ari heard the crack of shattering bone. That man also went down, his head bloody. The leading edge of Munngralla’s piece of shelving showed a red stain.
One of the men turned and came at Ari with a knife angled low to slash across the gut. Ari blocked with the butt of the pugil stick, striking the knife man’s forearm so hard that the wood shivered against his hands like an electronic shock.
The knife hit the floor with a metallic clatter. The man went grey-white but kept coming forward.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Ari, who had no desire to get the man’s left-hand knife in the belly at close quarters. He smashed the haft of the pugil stick against the man’s nose. The knife man screamed once before going down.
Blood from the man’s broken face made the stick slippery under Ari’s fingers. He shifted his grip a little and moved in toward the only attacker still standing. Munngralla swung his piece of shelving into the man’s ribs as Ari cracked the same man over the head from behind.
Then the sound and heat and smell of a blaster bolt tore through the air, and Munngralla let out a roar of pain.
Ari swore. They’d both forgotten the second of the two men who had stumbled earlier. Smaller than the others, and possibly more prudent, he’d rolled sideways and come up under one of the worktables. Firing from that refuge, he managed to get off a second shot, but the bolt went wild as Ari tore the table loose from the floor and hit him with it.
Nobody fired any more blasters after that, and only Munngralla moved. The big Selvaur dragged himself to his feet, and Ari saw that most of the grey-green scales along his left arm and side had been burned away.
“It’s going to be a day or so in accelerated healing for you, I’m afraid,” Ari said, as soon as he had breath.
*Never mind that,* growled Munngralla. *We have to get out of here fast.*
“You think somebody called Security?”
*I know what was on the shelf that idiot hit with his second bolt,* said the Selvaur. *Heat starts the reaction—we’ve got about five minutes before it all explodes.*
“I wondered why they held off so long with the fireworks,” said Ari. Habit already had him checking to see if any of their fallen adversaries were alive. Most of them looked past help, but both his first victim and the man he and Munngralla had taken out together were still breathing. “We can’t leave these two here.”
*Why not?*
*Because I said not,* snarled Ari, in Selvauran. *Are the Forest Lords hunters, or do they murder like the thin-skins?*
The Selvaur grumbled an obscenity, but nevertheless picked up one of the survivors with his good arm, as lightly as if the limp body were a rag doll. Ari knelt to lift the second surviving attacker. It took more of an effort than he’d expected, and his head spun as he rose again to his feet. He closed his eyes for a second or so, and the dizziness subsided.
That’s what you get for mixing Galcenian brandy with Nammerin beer, he told himself. File that away for future reference . . .
*Come on!* roared Munngralla from the hall outside. *The whole upstairs is going to blow in about two minutes.*
Ari took a firm hold on the unconscious man and started out after the Selvaur. At the top of the stairs, he paused. “What about the tholovine?”
*Under the counter,* snarled Munngralla from the foot of the stairs. *But we haven’t got all night.*
“I know, I know,” Ari said, starting down. The staircase looked steeper and more rickety than it had when he was charging up it a few minutes ago. A streak of drying blood ran down the plastered wall opposite the stairwell. It looked like that early casualty who’d come flying out through the door had made it away under his own power.
In the shop, Munngralla paused only long enough to shift his burden and pull a small, tidily wrapped brick from behind the Changwe temple gong before running on out through the ruined doorway. Ari followed at a breathless lope.
He jumped off the raised sidewalk to get a running start for the far side of the street—and then, in a roar of sound and a blinding light, came the explosion. Scraps of brick, plaster, and flaming wood rained down, setting the shop awning afire in several places. Five different burglar alarms in nearby shops went off in a jangling discord. Someone in the next building started having hysterics. And all up and down the block the doors flew open, discharging people in every imaginable state of dress and undress.
Ari picked himself up from his knees in the mud. The man he’d brought out still breathed, for a miracle; Ari half-carried, half-dragged him the rest of the way to the far sidewalk. Munngralla was already there, sitting on the edge of the raised walkway and watching the flames reaching skyward from the blown-out windows of his shop.
The force of the explosion, and the frantic overburdened run, made Ari’s head start spinning again. He laid his man down on the wooden sidewalk next to the man Munngralla had carried out, then sat down himself and waited for the vertigo to stop.
“What,” he asked aloud as soon as he had breath, “was all that about, anyway?”
*They didn’t like the way I operate.*
“Complaining to the Small Business Board wasn’t good enough for them, I suppose.”
The Selvaur gave a sardonic growl of laughter and pushed himself to his feet. *We’d better leave before Fire and Security show up.*
“What about—?” Ari flapped a hand at the two casualties stretched out behind them on the sidewalk.
*Let Security handle them.*
“I suppose that is easier that explaining,” agreed Ari. Rising seemed to take almost more effort than he had energy for at the moment, and his head reeled. “Damned if I’m ever going to touch your local booze anymore.”
*Come on—we haven’t got much time left.*
The sound of an aircar’s engines came to them on the night breeze, and Air shook his head. “Correction. We don’t have any time left. Here they come.”
But the scoutcar that settled on its nullgravs in the center of the street had Space Force markings. The side door slid open and a dim figure appeared, beckoning wildly.
“Come on—hurry!” shouted Llannat Hyfid from the open door.
“Here’s our ride,” said Ari to the Selvaur, and ran for the aircar with Munngralla at his heels.
On Galcen, the first blue shadows of evening gathered over Prime. From the old waterfront district beside the bay, the twilight spread up through the government buildings and commercial towers of the city proper, then out into the sprawling suburbs and over the city-beyond-the-city that was Prime Spaceport Complex.
The commerce of the civilized galaxy passed through Prime Complex—water-grain from Nammerin, raw minerals from Lessek, wool from the Galcenian highlands, passengers from everywhere. The Republic’s Space Force maintained its central administrative headquarters there as well. South Polar Base might do better for planetary defense, but when it came to keeping an eye on the rest of the galaxy, Prime was the only place to be.
In keeping with Prime’s importance, the Officers’ Club there boasted the best food of any Space Force base on Galcen, which wasn’t saying that much—and the best wine cellar of any base in the galaxy, which was saying a great deal. Commander Pel Florens, whose ship left orbit in the morning for a long, dry patrol of the Mageworlds border zone, had already accounted for most of a bottle of prewar Infabede red while listening to his onetime Academy roommate Jervas Gil.
Commander Gil, an undistinguished-looking officer whose medium height, medium weight, and thinning hair of a medium shade of brown tended to fade from memory almost before he left the room, was not happy. He had confined himself to plain water from the table carafe, and to three cups of cha’a, strong and dark—not from preference, but because he had the duty—while he unburdened himself to his friend.
“I tell you,” he said, “it isn’t fair. I was set up.”
“What’s not fair?” Florens asked, a bit muzzily.
Commander Gil’s head, if not happy, was clear. He signaled to the waiter for another cup of cha’a and enumerated his grievances.
“Here I am—career Space Force, first ground tour in five years, and what do I get? Flag Aide to the Commanding General! Career enhancing, right? Guaranteed my own command after this, right? Wrong! Dead people don’t get command, and by the time this is over, I’ll be dead.”
Florens poured the last of the Infabede red into his wineglass. “Cheer up. It can’t possibly be as bad as a Mageworlds patrol.”
“Oh, yes, it can,” said Gil. “All day, telling sweet little old ladies that General Metadi absolutely does not speak at flower shows. When I’m not arranging surprise inspections. Or writing holiday greetings to the troops. Or talking to the holovids, I’d take two Mageworlds tours back to back and I’d smile if it meant I never had to talk to another reporter.”
He glanced at his chronometer, gulped the last of his cha’a, and stood up. “Hate to leave you like this, Pel, but I want to get some sleep before I go on watch. If somebody starts a war between midnight and zero-eight-hundred Standard, I’m the lucky son of a bitch who gets to wake up the General.”
The flames of G. Munngralla’s Five Points Imports lit up the Med Station scoutcar, hovering on its nullgravs above the muddy street of downtown Namport. Ari and Munngralla hit the door at a run and hurled themselves into the aircar’s cargo bay. Llannat slammed the door back across the opening and dogged it shut. “All right, Jessan,” she shouted, “go!”
The aircar sprang forward and up, leaving the confusion in the street below to dwindle out of sight. Ari pulled himself up to a sitting position on the floor of the cargo bay, and saw Llannat already working over Munngralla’s blaster burns with antibiotic cream and bandages from the aircar’s kit.
“You’re a bit early,” he said. “Not that I’m objecting, you understand.”
“She had a feeling,” came Jessan’s voice from the pilot’s seat. “So we decided to hustle on along. And it does look like you’ve surpassed yourself. What was it—arson?”
“Nobody told me, either,” Ari said, struggling to his feet and making his way up to the empty seat next to Jessan. He collapsed onto the upholstery with a groan, his head ringing. “Damn, I’m tired.”
“Don’t go to sleep yet,” said Jessan. “We have a contact on an intercept course—and he’s not transmitting a Security identifier.”
Ari remembered the blood trail down the staircase. One of the attackers had managed to call for help, and get it.
He cursed under his breath—and then cursed again, more quietly, at the stab of headache that followed. “Try to shake them,” he muttered. “They aren’t very nice people. And I think they’re mad at us.”
Jessan answered with something Ari couldn’t catch. The headache and vertigo were hitting him now with redoubled force, and a deafening roar filled his ears. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat, and was only dimly aware of the aircar’s increasing speed.
There’s more to this than mixing beer and brandy, he thought with an effort. The aircar heeled sharply, throwing him sideways against the safety webbing. He groaned.
A hand—cool and professional—touched the side of his face. “You’re worse off than Munngralla,” Llannat Hyfid’s voice said from behind him. “Why didn’t you tell us you’d been hit?”
“Wasn’t.” After his head stopped echoing the syllables, he added, “Thought it was the beer.”
“If you’re drunk,” said Llannat, “I’m a Magelord.”
*He’s not drunk.* The grumble of Munngralla’s Forest Speech was almost inaudible through the roaring in Ari’s head. *But it was the beer.*
The hand dropped away from Ari’s face. He sensed, rather than heard, the Adept turn back toward Munngralla.
“Poison? Which one?”
*Mescalomide.*
“How do you know—never mind. We’ll handle it.”
“Mescalomide’s a blood agent.” Jessan’s voice, oddly faint and worried. “He needs a stimulant.”
“He needs a complete blood change. What we’ve got is a stimulant.”
“I know, I know . . . damn!”
The aircar heeled again.
He heard Llannat’s voice. “Keep this damned thing steady for a few seconds, will you?”
The aircar leveled off, and Ari felt Llannat’s fingers pushing up his sleeve. Something cold and sharp pricked his skin, the arm ached for a second or two, and then the chilly sharpness withdrew. Almost at once, his head began to clear.
If I don’t die in the next few minutes, he thought, I’m going to spend the next few weeks feeling truly rotten.
He opened his eyes and squinted at the control panel. He could see the readouts, all right, with an unpleasant, stimulant-induced clarity. “We’re not doing too well.”
“You’re not doing so good yourself,” said Llannat. “You’re close to checking out on us.”
“I’ll try not to.” He ignored the dull ache in his skull and focused on the control panel. “Right now, we’re all in bad shape.”
“I know,” said Jessan quietly. “I’m not good enough to shake them, either.” He paused, and then asked, “Are you up to handling the controls?”
Ari shrugged, and wished he hadn’t—the motion made his headache worse. “I could give it a try, if you don’t mind a rough ride.”
Llannat grabbed his shoulder. “You’re in no condition—”
But Jessan was already unbuckling his safety webbing. “Give him another shot of stimulant. I’m no Adept, but I have a bad feeling about those guys behind us.”
Ari slid into Jessan’s vacated seat. He glanced at the controls and readouts, barely noticing Llannat swearing under her breath as she pushed up his other sleeve and jabbed the needle into a vein. The Sarcan scoutcars used by the Medical Service had the same instrumentation and basic airframe as the Sadani armed scouts; right now he wished this particular Sarcan had a Sadani’s gun as well. “One of you better get on the comm link and start yelling for help.”
“I already tried,” said Llannat. “No joy. Somebody’s jamming our frequencies.”
The row of lights on the lock-on indicator under the long-range scan went out, then turned on again one by one.
“Somebody’s also lighting us up with fire control,” said Ari. He checked the location of the pursuit on the Position Plotting Indicator scope. “Stand by!”
He tilted the aircar’s nose toward the zenith and fired the jets up to maximum. The little aircar stood on its tail and headed skyward.
The Thrust Level Indicator lights shone amber as Ari struggled to gain altitude. On the long-range scanner, the image of the pursuing craft overshot the point where the medical aircar had begun its climb, and skidded clumsily as it began its own climbing turn. The Sarcan’s lock-on indicator went back to its random analysis pattern—the fix was broken.
Jessan cleared his throat. “Ari, the base is the other way.”
“I know. The bad guys expect us to be going there. Why should we make things easy for them?”
“I’ll tell you why,” said Llannat from behind him. “I can’t keep giving you stimulant shots forever. If you don’t get to the Med Station for proper treatment inside of about ten minutes, you’re a write-off.”
“I hear you,” said Ari. The second aircar was gaining again—it looked like a private job built purely for speed. The Sarcan’s lock-on indicator blipped at him as the weapons systems astern tried again for a fix.
“Let’s do something else this time,” he said. “Hold on.” He cut power and emissions, pushed the controls all the way forward, and began a ballistic dive.
Ari was flying blind now, trying not to give himself away with his own electronic signals. And again, the lock-on broke.
“Why hasn’t he fired on us yet?” asked Jessan.
“Maybe because he wants prisoners,” said Ari. “Or maybe because we’ve been dodging him every time he locked onto us.”
*But mostly because he has TurboBlaster 25s and they’ve got nothing for range,* added Munngralla.
“How do you know that?” Llannat asked.
*Because I sold them to him.*
“You sold—who is he?”
*Disgruntled customer.*
“Oh.”
Still accelerating under the pull of gravity, they flashed downward past the other aircar as it climbed. But the pursuit was more alert this time. The mysterious aircar pushed over into a dive as they dropped past, and began gaining on them again.
“Oh, hell,” said Ari. “Time to do something desperate.” He switched on the engines to put the aircar into a power-dive straight for the surface. “Follow me, you bastards, and let’s see who falls apart first.”
The thin red line that indicated the location of the ground reappeared at the bottom of the altimeter. The second craft was sticking close behind, and the lock-on indicator pipped again as the first of the Dangerous Altitude lights lit up. Ari maintained his vertical dive. A burst of light came from astern, and the aircar shook with the whump of a grazing hit.
“That was close,” said Jessan. “You might consider dodging them again.”
“Not yet,” said Ari, his eyes on the altimeter. By now, six of the Dangerous Altitude lights had lit. “Not yet.” The dark of the planet’s surface filled the main window. A seventh light flashed on. “Now!”
He pulled back on the controls, wrenching the aircar out of its power-dive and into a vertical climb. Once again, the other pilot overshot the turnpoint. But this time he hit mud and rocks instead of air, and a column of flame rose up through the forest canopy.
“Should have watched his height instead of watching me,” said Ari, and put the aircar back onto the approach to base.
A klaxon hooted. The energy level indicator showed in the red zone, a hair above empty. “Damn! That hit ruptured the fuel tank. I’ve got to land this thing now.”
Setting the aircar down on the closest flat piece of ground was harder work than he’d expected, but he managed. “End of trip,” he said, leaning back against the seat. “The base perimeter should be right through those trees. Sorry about cutting things so close.”
He shut his eyes. The stimulants and the adrenaline boost of the chase had already begun to fade, and the backlash was setting in. He fumbled with the buckles of the safety webbing, but Llannat’s capable hands took over and released him.
“You have to get to Emergency right now,” she said. “Can you walk?”
“Never mind that,” said Jessan. “Get on the comm link, and tell them to send out some orderlies with a stretcher.”
Llannat tried the comm link. “It’s still down,” she said.
Jessan took over the link, and tried again. “Damn. I don’t like this. Llannat—take Munngralla and walk the perimeter until you find a gate or a guard or a comm booth, and tell them to send help. I’ll stay here with the Terror of the Spaceways, and try to keep him from checking out for good.”
“No,” said Llannat. “You go with Munngralla while I stay here—please. I have a feeling about this.”
The aircar’s cargo door slid open with a metallic scrape and a heavy clunk. Ari heard Jessan and the Selvaur climb out and go crashing off through the underbrush. The door didn’t slam closed behind them, and after a few moments he turned his head enough to see back into the cargo bay.
Llannat stood in the open door of the unlighted bay, looking out at the night. Her right hand went to the clips beside the door and recovered the staff she had stowed there. She held it loosely at her side, but something in her posture made the hairs rise on Ari’s neck.
She spoke—not in a whisper, which would carry, but in an almost subvocal murmur. “Whatever happens, stay in the aircar.”
“What’s wrong?” Ari asked.
Llannat replied without turning her head, and in the same low murmur as before. “A bad smell in the winds of the universe, my friend. Somebody earnestly desires your death.”