by Timothy Zahn
I had made it through our barricade and was unlocking the door when Karim came in through the window. “What are we doing?” he asked, throwing a frown at McMicking. “And he’s supposed to be behind the bar.”
“We’re moving out, and I was curious to see how far he would get,” I told him. “Not very, as you see. Grab a box and let’s get this show on the road.”
Despite my own assurances to the others, I nevertheless half expected the Modhri to have some stunt waiting up his sleeve. But the streets remained quiet as Karim and I loaded the boxes into his car trunk. Things remained equally quiet as we then loaded in Bayta, Rebekah, and Karim. “Remember, find a nice quiet hiding place near the spaceport and wait for my call,” I told Bayta as I handed Karim back his P11.
“How long do we wait?” Karim asked. “In case—” His lips compressed briefly.
“In case I get myself killed? Half an hour,” I said, picking a number out of the air. I actually had no idea how long it would take for McMicking and me to deal with the four walkers converging on Veldrick’s house. “If you haven’t heard from me by then, I suggest you head out of town and find somewhere to go to ground until you do hear from me.”
“I know some places,” Karim said, his face grim in the glow of the streetlights. “Good luck.”
“You too.”
He drove off, leaving me standing in the silence of the street. “You want me to get us a car?” McMicking asked through the window.
“No need,” I said, feeling my throat tightening as I watched Karim’s taillights disappear around a corner. Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong. But I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“You want us to walk?”
I shook the vague apprehension away. “Of course not,” I said, heading back into the bar. “You figure out which of the Fillies’ cars is the closest. I’ll get the keys to both of them.”
A minute later we were striding along the deserted walkway toward one of the encirclement cars the Fillies had left behind a couple of blocks from the bar. “How do you want to work this?” McMicking asked as we walked.
“As quickly and cleanly as possible,” I told him, feeling the back of my neck tingling as I threw a careful look into each alley and doorway that we passed. This still wasn’t adding up. “We can’t afford to let the situation settle into a stalemate.”
“Agreed,” McMicking said. “So you’ll drop me about three blocks from Veldrick’s house and go the rest of the way in alone. Hopefully, you can draw the Modhri’s attention while I come in from behind.”
“His attention and his fire?” I suggested dryly.
McMicking shrugged. “Would you rather I go in and you play backup?”
“I appreciate the offer,” I said. Backup . . . “But since he already knows what I look like—”
And suddenly, it clicked. “Oh, damn,” I muttered, coming to an abrupt halt.
“What?” McMicking demanded sharply, his gun coming up to ready position, his eyes darting around.
“We’ve been played,” I said, my mind spinning with possibilities and implications. “Remember Rebekah saying that the Modhri needs Veldrick’s coral for whatever he needs to do vis-à-vis the Abomination?”
“Yes, of course,” McMicking said. “That’s presumably why the Fillies took off so quickly when you told Veldrick to be ready to hammer it to powder.”
“Presumably, yes; actually, no,” I said. “If that was the whole story, he should have gone equally frantic when you and I broke into Veldrick’s home earlier this evening.”
“Good point,” McMicking said darkly. “So why didn’t he?”
“Because he doesn’t need Veldrick’s coral,” I said. “The Fillies have an outpost of their own tucked away.”
McMicking swore under his breath. “Aboard their torchyacht.”
“Bingo,” I confirmed grimly. “Obvious, in retrospect. The Modhri couldn’t have expected to find a ready-to-use outpost waiting for his walkers on a Human world.”
“Unless he found out from the other walkers who’ve been snooping around,” McMicking pointed out.
“Right, but by then the Fillies were probably already on their way with their own coral in tow,” I said. “It’s not like there are a hundred places between the Filiaelian Assembly and New Tigris where you can safely stash a Modhran outpost.”
“So why are we breaking our necks to get to Veldrick before he destroys his coral?” McMicking asked.
“It’s worse than that,” I said, pulling out my comm. “If he’s got coral at the spaceport, you can bet he’s moving a couple of the Fillies there, too.”
“All four cars are headed to Veldrick’s.”
“All four cars’ trackers are headed to Veldrick’s,” I said sourly, punching in Bayta’s number. “That doesn’t necessarily mean the cars themselves are. How hard would it be to pull the trackers out of the cars and load them aboard a couple of autocabs?”
McMicking’s hand closed around my comm, canceling the call. “Don’t call her,” he said. “One of the walkers might be watching them, and a sudden change of direction would tip him off that we were on to this new wrinkle.”
“We have to warn them,” I insisted.
“We will,” he assured me. “I’ll go now.”
My first thought was to remind him that Bayta and Rebekah were my responsibility, not his. My second thought was to remember that he knew that. “All right,” I said. “You probably shouldn’t take the other Filly car.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” he assured me. “Watch yourself.” He angled across the street, heading toward a pair of parked cars.
I started walking again toward the Filly car that had been our original goal, resisting the urge to also find an alternative mode of transport. The most important thing I could do right now was keep the Modhri thinking I’d fallen for his trick.
The second most important thing was to get Veldrick out of his mess so that I could get back to the spaceport and get Bayta out of her mess. The mess I’d put her into.
I picked up my pace. As I did so, I flipped the Beretta’s selector switch to the right-hand half of the clip, the one with killrounds in it.
The Modhri was playing this game for keeps. It was about time I started doing the same.
TWELVE
Under normal circumstances I would have approached Veldrick’s house cautiously, parking a couple of blocks away and moving in on foot. But the circumstances here weren’t normal. Veldrick’s life was in danger, with Bayta’s and Rebekah’s about to be. There was no time for skulking around in the shadows.
Besides, since there was probably still a chunk of coral in my borrowed car’s trunk, it wasn’t like the Modhri didn’t already know I was on my way.
I braked to a stop by Veldrick’s yard, to find the front door of his house standing wide open. Leaving the engine running, I popped the door and dived out.
I barely made it. From behind a wide, multitrunked tree at the edge of Veldrick’s lot line came a muted flash and a thudwumper slammed into the door a dozen centimeters from my hip.
My momentum was already taking me toward the rear of the car, so that was where I went, grabbing the end of the bumper as I reached it and pulling myself around behind the trunk. Even as I dropped into a crouch a second shot blew through the driver’s window.
I pressed my back against the rear bumper, looking quickly around the rest of the neighborhood as I drew my Beretta and thumbed off the safety. The logical way for the Modhri to have split up his remaining forces, I knew, would have been to send two of the Fillies to the spaceport to intercept Bayta and Rebekah, and the other two here to ambush me.
Unfortunately, that was my logic, which wasn’t necessarily the Modhri’s. I might be facing a single shooter here, or two, or maybe even three, depending on how much trouble he was expecting from me and how badly he wanted to permanently remove me from the game.
The shooter behind the tree fired again, this shot taking out the front l
eft tire. I rose from behind the car high enough to squeeze off a round at him, stayed there just long enough to persuade any second or third shooters that I was presenting a good target, then ducked down again.
But if there were any others, they didn’t avail themselves of the golden opportunity. The Filly behind the tree was the only one who fired as I dropped back into cover. This time his shot hit the pavement two meters to the left of the car and ricocheted off into the darkness.
I looked around some more, feeling the clock ticking down with each passing second. Sooner or later, no matter how messy the Modhri’s diversion was, the cops were going to free up enough personnel to come find out what all the shooting was about. Even if they didn’t, there might be someone in the neighborhood with a hunting rifle. I needed to get into Veldrick’s house, and fast.
But I didn’t dare try a sprint across that much open ground until I knew how many opponents I was facing and their approximate positions. The shooter fired again, this shot burying itself somewhere in the front of the car. The engine’s idle sputtered a bit, then recovered, and I waited for the second shot that would silence it for good.
But the shot never came. Instead, the tree-based shooter fired again to the side, bouncing the shot off the pavement a couple of meters to my right.
It was a shot that made no tactical sense whatsoever. He wasn’t trying to kill me—those side shots hadn’t even grazed the car. He might be trying to keep me pinned down while a partner worked his way behind me, but even then the shots should have been much closer to me.
Unless he was already shooting as close to me as he dared.
I looked sideways at the trunk I was leaning against. Back in Karim’s bar, the Filly walkers had gone paralytic when McMicking torched that police car half a block away, a police car that had contained a chunk of Modhran coral.
The trunk release was inside the car, directly in my attacker’s line of fire. Fortunately, a carefully placed round into the trunk’s lock worked just as well. The lid popped open, and I caught a glimpse of a metallic box about the size of one of Rebekah’s cargo boxes in the center of the trunk.
An instant later, all hell broke loose.
The Filly behind the tree shifted to quick-fire, his shots suddenly screaming past my head with the desperation of someone with nothing to lose. Simultaneously, a second fusillade began, this one coming from inside Veldrick’s open door. Forcing back the reflex to throw myself on the pavement and scramble for the safety of the far side of the car, I lifted my Beretta and fired two rounds into the box.
Abruptly, the gunfire stopped. I fired one more round into the box and then took off at full Olympic sprint toward the house, shifting to the snoozer half of the Beretta’s clip as I ran. Halfway across the lawn, I came within sight of the Filly who’d been shooting at me from behind the tree, now standing stiff and shaking, his gun clenched uselessly in his hand. I fired two snoozer rounds into him on the fly, and charged full tilt into the house.
The Filly inside the foyer was just starting to recover. I sent another pair of snoozers into his torso, dropping him to the floor before he could get his hand under enough control to bring his gun to bear. I glanced at the door, saw that it was undamaged, and closed and locked it behind me. Then, striding past the crumpled Filly, I headed into the meditation room.
Veldrick was lying on the floor near his coral display area, marinating in a pool of his own blood. The coral itself was gone, as were two of the six Quadrail shipping crates McMicking had pulled out earlier. The other four boxes were still here, sealed for travel.
I checked Veldrick’s pulse, just to make sure, then got out my multitool and pried off the top of one of the crates. There was a chunk of coral inside, resting in a few centimeters of water. That wasn’t enough water to keep the coral happy for any serious length of time, I knew, but it would be enough for me to get it to the spaceport and aboard McMicking’s torchyacht. Once it was there, he could fill the crates the rest of the way to the top and head out for the Quadrail and, ultimately, his rendezvous with Hardin’s buyer.
A quick search of the house took me to Veldrick’s garage, where I found a fancy sport van with its rear loading door open and the other two Quadrail crates inside. Returning to the meditation room, I lugged the other four crates to the garage and loaded them aboard. Then, climbing in behind the wheel, I opened the garage and headed into the night.
I waited until I was driving north on Broadway toward the spaceport before I called McMicking. “What’s your status?” I asked when he came on.
“No trouble so far,” he said. “They’ve gone to ground and are holding.”
“Good,” I said, freshly conscious of the crates of coral bouncing along behind me. I didn’t know whether the polyp colonies could hear me when the coral wasn’t completely submerged, but this was no time to take chances. “I’ve got Veldrick’s coral here in the car with me.”
“Good,” McMicking said, the subtle change in his voice telling me that he’d caught the implication. “Any trouble?”
“Plenty,” I told him. “The good news is that I snoozed both of my Fillies, which should leave us only two to deal with. Have they shown their faces recently, by the way?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” McMicking said. “Probably won’t, either. Why scour the countryside when there’s a perfectly good choke point at the end of the line?”
“Why, indeed?” I agreed grimly. “The bad news is that they got to Veldrick before I did. He’s dead.”
There was a soft hiss from the comm. “That’s not going to go down well at the head office.”
“At this point the head office is the least of my concerns,” I said bluntly. “The Modhri’s already tried to frame me once for murder. I have a bad feeling this is attempt number two.”
“Meaning we need to get you off the planet before the balloon goes up,” McMicking said. “Okay. Get to the spaceport as fast as you can and wait there for me. I’ve got a few resources I can pull together, but it’ll take some time.”
“Got it,” I said, frowning down the softly lit street ahead of me. Did he really have some trick up his sleeve, or had that last comment been solely for the Modhri’s benefit?
At this point, though, it hardly mattered. Getting off New Tigris with Bayta and Rebekah in tow was still the plan du jour, and whatever McMicking had planned would have to work around that. “Just make it snappy,” I warned. “The timeline is running a little thin.”
“I’ll be as fast as I can,” he promised. “Hang in there.”
“Right.”
I keyed off, then punched in Bayta’s number. “Everything all right?” I asked when she answered.
“So far,” she said. “What about you?”
“A couple of small problems, but nothing I can’t handle,” I told her. No point in telling her about Veldrick now. “I’m on my way. Give me a few minutes to check things out, and I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come in, the way I did on Veerstu.”
“Veerstu?” she asked, sounding puzzled.
“Yes, Veerstu,” I said, leaning a little on the last word.
“Oh—right,” she said. “Be careful.”
“You, too.”
I didn’t know how sensitive the Modhran coral’s hearing Was back there in the rear of my van, so just to be on the safe side I tapped the edge of my comm right beside the off button, hopefully making the same sound as I would if I’d actually turned the thing off. Then, with the comm still transmitting, I closed it and put it back into my jacket. On Veerstu, I’d done things a bit differently, but the effect here would be much the same, allowing Bayta to eavesdrop on whatever happened from now on. If and when the Modhri decided to get cute, at least this way she and Karim would instantly know about it.
There were no other vehicles waiting as I pulled into the circular drive in front of the main spaceport building. Through the glassed-in foyer I could see a youngish man at the Customs counter, looking slightly bleary-eyed as he worked. Confe
deration regs required there be someone on duty or on call at all times, but at this hour I’d expected to have to wake someone up.
I parked Veldrick’s van in front of the door and got out, scanning the parking area and the autocab stand as I did so. There was no sign of our last pair of Filly walkers. I turned back to the spaceport door, mentally running through my repertoire of sweet talk, bluster, and threats. It was going to take something unusually impressive for me to talk six crates of illegal Modhran coral past a Customs official at this time of night.
The door had just swung open for me when I heard the sound of approaching car engines. I turned, my hand automatically slipping into my jacket for my Beretta.
And as I did so I was hit by a barrage of lights: the stabbing white of headlights, along with strobing flashes of red and blue.
“Freeze,” a voice ordered from behind me.
Carefully, I turned around, my hand still inside my jacket. Lieutenant Bhatami had appeared from some nook or cranny inside the spaceport and was striding through the foyer toward me, flanked by a pair of cops with guns in their hands. Bhatami’s own sidearm was still in its holster, but his hand was resting on the grip.
“Hello, Lieutenant,” I greeted him, easing my hand out of my jacket and holding it out to demonstrate its emptiness. “What brings you here at this ungodly hour?”
“My job,” Bhatami said as the three of them reached me. Behind me, the police cars had braked to a group halt, and I could hear the sounds of multiple doors opening as they spilled their own collection of cops onto the circular drive. “Hands behind your back, please,” the lieutenant added as his two fellow cops veered off and approached me warily from both sides.
“What’s going on?” I asked, doing as he ordered. One of the cops stepped close and cuffed my wrists together at the small of my back.
“Let’s start with what you’re doing here,” Bhatami said, stepping close to me and pulling my Beretta from its holster. “Odd time of night to be leaving the planet.”
