“But, Ramer—”
“Move.”
Cursing to himself, Asan had no choice but to comply. They hurried down the curving corridor, their footsteps echoing on the metal deck. A ship’s bell chimed somewhere in the distance. Asan’s brain was spinning so fast he was almost dizzy.
Fool, fool, fool. You stretched too far with that one. As soon as he’s had a chance to think, he’ll connect all those loose threads you left hanging and link you right back to Omari.
But underneath his exasperation, Asan kept a cold, angry eye upon Ramer’s narrow back just a stride ahead of him. If he had a jen-knife he knew exactly where he’d plant it. One quick thrust. He’d counted on Ramer to join him against the GSI.
But that was the first lesson learned in the bleak alleys of the damned: never count on the inner man, because you won’t find him. Seeking the inner man, the compassion, the sense of fair play, and the honesty will get you killed.
Asan looked up. They were stepping into a conference room already occupied by three armed guards and the two observers, one black and young, one white and older. The pattern of the younger man instantly put Asan on his guard. That one was a mental. He could hear tone qualities and speech inflections most people could not. He could hear a lie. He could sense a quickened heartbeat. He could damned near read minds. And he was doubly dangerous because correct or not, his impressions went down on record as fact on which the observers could act without seeking further authority.
Asan snapped his rings into a hard, impenetrable shield. He was in real trouble now. All Ramer had to do to guarantee his position forever was to tell them about Asan’s use of Standard, his knowledge of human culture, his familiarity with the Galactic Space Institute, and his access to Blaise Omari’s closest secrets. That would put Ramer firmly on the books and make him safe as never before.
Unease spread through Asan. He could not stop himself from glancing at Ramer, seeking to control him. But the blanket beam was on in this room. He could protect himself, little more.
No, Ramer. Demos and the four moons of Lli take you, don’t do it. Don’t sell your shabby little soul to them!
“Sirs,” said Ramer, pulling himself erect in full military stance. His face was eager. “I have success to report.”
“Oh?” The older observer looked bored. He shuffled through the stack of flimsies before him on the table. “Not by these accounts. The prisoner is remarkably resilient to the TANK.”
“Yes, Dr. Liebtz. But progress has been made. During the rest period, certain chemicals, were administered through the food.”
Liar, thought Asan furiously.
“An earlier attempt to do so failed.”
“Yes, sir. But not this time. During the walk here, the prisoner grew talkative and confirmed knowledge of the existence of Omari. He said…shall I recount verbatim, sir?”
Liebtz exchanged a glance with the other observer. Zaula had called him Mike.
“Proceed,” said Liebtz.
Asan closed his eyes. He couldn’t let Ramer speak. There were worse things than a TANK session, and once alerted the observers wouldn’t quit. They’d never let him die, either.
He gathered his rings, struggling a little under the distracting effect of the blanket beam. It was going to hurt, but—
“The prisoner said that he was—”
Asan struck, putting all his strength into what should have been a simple blow, ignoring the agony within his own mind as the beam intensified. He felt himself washed in blue fire, and Ramer screamed. Then there was a moment of blackness.
He blinked it away to find himself weak and breathless on his knees, his head pounding as though his temples were being skewered by a stake. He saw Ramer lying crumpled on the floor. Mike knelt beside him, shaking his head. Liebtz was standing nearby, frowning. The four guards surrounded Asan, weapons pointed only inches away.
Asan drew in a deep, careful breath, feeling nothing but a cold sense of regret. Not that he’d killed, but that it had been necessary to do so.
“Prisoner.”
It was Liebtz who spoke. His voice was thin and precise like a laser-scalpel. His gray eyes were cold beneath the jutting eyebrows. Asan met that gaze steadily until Liebtz shifted his away.
“He cannot be contained. The blanket beam was on maximum,” Mike was saying. “Too dangerous.”
“I agree.” Liebtz glanced at the guards. “Kill him.”
And the muzzle of a strifer was pressed to Asan’s skull.
Chapter 10
The blare of a warning klaxon broke up the execution. Liebtz stared at the red alert flashing in the center of the door. The guards pulled away from Asan except for the one behind him who kept a hand on his shoulder.
“What the devil is happening?” demanded Liebtz.
“That klaxon means changeover,” said Mike, scrambling away from Ramer’s body. “We’d better find restraints. Guards, secure the prisoner!”
Asan had been counting ever since the klaxon first sounded. Ten seconds now to slam. Only the black had a chance of getting into the webbing he was pulling down from the ceiling. The old man wasn’t space-experienced; he was too slow. The guards knew what to do, but they were stupid beefs still trying to make sure Asan didn’t try anything. Asan snorted to himself and reached for the webbing dropping down near him. There was a time to make a break and a time to keep from ending up as pulp on the deck.
He had to shake off that one guard who was still determined to keep hold of him. Asan, one arm hooked into the webbing, whirled and glared at him.
“Fool!” he shouted in Standard. “If we’re under attack, it’ll be nothing but slam and jump from here on out. Turn loose, damn you!”
The guard’s mouth sagged open in surprise, then he scrambled like the others for a harness. There weren’t enough to go around. He turned on Asan and grabbed him.
“I’ll take that, flin.”
Asan was struggling to snap the buckle across his chest. The harness was too small for him, but he wasn’t giving it up. He curled up his legs and kicked out at the guard, knocking him back in a flailing sprawl. Deflate your lungs, Asan told himself, hearing the vil-thread straps strain as he tried to force the buckle to catch.
But he’d already run out of time.
The lights flickered, and he grunted as g-force squashed him hard. It was a bad time not to have any air in his lungs, because his chest felt about five centimeters thick now and there was no way to get a breath in. He fought panic, gritting his teeth as his lungs burned. His eyes felt like they would burst from the pressure, and he shut them, telling himself his face wasn’t being remolded, telling himself that he wasn’t going to ooze through the straps in a few more seconds, telling himself that he could hold his breath just a little longer.
The Dorian Grey squawled as she slammed into normal space, her speed slowing to a crawl in comparison to what she’d been going minutes before. The ship canted sharply in a roll that sent Asan swinging dangerously close to the wall.
Engineering specs had made sure that no human would hit a wall during emergency maneuvers, but Asan was bigger than a human. On the second roll he slipped halfway out of his harness. His hip crashed into a bulkhead rib with bruising force. Pain numbed him. He lost his hold and fell to the deck, rolling helplessly into a chair base bolted to the floor. He clung to it.
Some of the other men were on the floor too, the ones who hadn’t made it into harness. The deck tipped in a new direction, and Asan slid headlong through someone’s blood, his hands outstretched desperately in front of him to cushion the impact of hitting the opposite wall. The jolt was hard enough to snap his left wrist.
The pain went in a white-hot bolt up his arm, and the rest of his body turned cold. A clammy sweat broke out over his body.
The deck tipped again, and he screamed.
Somehow he managed to clamp his left arm against his body as he went rolling again. A distant explosion rocked the ship. The lights and gravity cut out.
> Over the shouting and moans of pain, Asan could hear his own heartbeat abnormally loud and fast. He floated up, and fresh worry filled him. He didn’t want to get too far away from a hard surface in case auto-repair circuits managed to get the gravity back.
But the blanket beam was gone as well. He felt relief. His rings snapped out and formed, a little shaky in places, but functioning again. He closed off the shooting pain in his wrist, holding the shattered bones immovable, and created dim light in the room to get his bearings.
“What the hell is happening?” shouted Mike. “What’s he doing?”
Asan saw the black floating in harness at the safe end of his tether. A pad and stylus tumbled past Asan. Other bodies were off the floor. Asan frowned as he found himself over the table.
Around him the ship felt dead. For a moment he listened to the hostile silence of space; but, no, there was a faint throb of power somewhere below in the engines. Asan reached out carefully, being sure not to propel himself in the opposite direction he wanted to go, and grabbed hold of the edge of the table. He pulled himself down and reoriented himself before he let his light go out.
The ship came around, slowly, shuddering as though her port engines were gone. That she’d been attacked was obvious. Whether she was the victor or the loser remained to be seen.
Let it be pirates, he prayed. Let them win and take us all as slaves for an illegal auction block. Pirates he could deal with. These might even belong to Lin Ranje, and in that case…
No, hold on. He was making stupid assumptions. Even at maximum speed, the Dorian Grey couldn’t be far out of the Uncharted Zone. And not even Ranje’s people ventured this deep into GSI territory. Asan sighed. He’d better count on random unknowns and be ready for anything.
The lights returned without warning, momentarily dazzling him. Asan braced himself, and sure enough, the gravity followed a few seconds later. Bodies crashed to the deck, and the men in harness swung wildly. Moans filled the air. Someone was sobbing. Asan could smell sweat, the many shades of fear, and the iron-based sweetness of human blood. The ship lurched as though in one more effort, then stopped dead.
There was a long moment of silence. Asan still sat braced in his chair, his left wrist clamped against his chest, sweat pouring down his face. His hip ached, and he felt battered all over. The aches from his session in the TANK returned, making him groggy.
He waited, estimating what might be happening on the bridge and how long it would take them to try anything else if they were going to. Maybe McKey should captain this old tub in tandem. If he’d let himself be hijacked this easily he was unworthy of service to the Institute.
Asan’s lips curled in a mocking smile. He released his hold on the table and glanced around. “I think we’re through,” he said.
No one on the floor made much effort to move. The one surviving observer unbuckled himself from his harness and snatched up a strifer off a dead guard. He circled the conference table and aimed the weapon at Asan. His dark face glistened with sweat and there was a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Back to unfinished business,” he said. He sounded breathless and had to swallow a couple of times. But the strifer didn’t waver. “Your execution as a—”
“Pan’at cha, Mike!” said Asan in exasperation.
The man’s head jerked. “Don’t call me Mike. I’m Powers. And you’re not going to do to me what you did to Ramer.”
“I won’t, if you’ll put the strifer down.”
Powers’ eyes narrowed. He stared at Asan a long moment. “You’re speaking Standard. You know what a strifer is. But we’re logged as the first-contact expedition to KX-5.”
Anger made Asan say sharply, “The planet is Ruantl. You have no right to assign it a GSI designation.”
“Well, well,” said Powers softly. “You know about the Galactic Space Institute too. You are a remarkably well-informed alien.”
“I am Tlartantlan,” said Asan, knowing the observer was using mental now. He was being reckless in talking so much but he didn’t care. “Once ruler over an empire vast enough to make the GSI seem puny in comparison.”
“Sure,” said Powers with a grin. “You’re mighty all right. We just walked right in and took over with one application of a chem-bomb.”
“I said once. No longer.”
Asan sat there apparently relaxed, but inside he was gathering himself to move. No one else still alive in the room cared much about anything right now. So it was just Asan against Powers. He could take the man although the strifer made it risky. Asan hoped that if he kept Powers talking long enough the pirates or whoever they were would have time to board the ship and take over. He was confident he could talk his way around them.
“You know the people we’re looking for,” said Powers. “Omari and Saunders—”
“Dead.”
Asan lifted a hand; the strifer jerked. Holding his breath and cursing himself for forgetting not to move, Asan slowly lowered his hand to his lap. A muscle began leaping in Powers’ jaw.
“But you knew them. You learned Standard from them. You learned to think of the Institute as an enemy from Omari.”
Asan raised his brows. “You have given me no reason to believe otherwise.”
To his surprise, Powers lowered the strifer. “Believe me, we looked you over before we came in. In our experience a show of strength up front is the best way of dealing with primitive cultures.”
“Don’t recite GSI propaganda to me! You surveyed Ruantl and found the mineral deposits. That’s why you came swarming in. Ruantl will be just another planet stripped of rights and resources—”
The clatter of footsteps outside stopped him. Powers turned his head a fraction, then swiftly aimed his strifer at Asan, who hadn’t moved. The door opened, and Asan held his breath. It would either be McKey or strangers.
It was neither.
A trio of free raiders stepped in fast, each armed with illegal SCALEX flamethrowers that seemed to fill the room. Asan could smell the heat within those long, perfed muzzles.
Washed with the cold shock of recognition, Asan saw each man with odd clarity. Two of them were humans. The third was a Vyarian half-breed who had massacred all the customers in a bar one evening on a wager that he could peel forty skulls in less than ten minutes. He’d won the bet in eight, then eaten the man who challenged him to it.
Asan stared at that face narrowed to a powerful claw at the chin and flared wide above the eyes to a thick mass of bone that protected a treacherous Vyarian brain. He did not have to see the sinew-corded limbs, the spine knobs, the scalp-belt, or the gold-braided hair tassels growing from each elbow to recognize Kor.
The Vyarian had been his last pickpocket victim. Thin, lanky, and starving, one fugitive vat boy who was nimble and quick enough to survive as a crowd thief got cocky one day and dared cut a hair tassel for its gold braid. Kor had turned on him with a bloodcurdling roar, overtaken him before he’d run a dozen steps, and snapped his legs with the ease of a child breaking twigs. That would have been the end of him, just another Vyarian meal in an alley in the back streets of a dingy Institute city, if Udge Enster hadn’t come along and put a stop to it.
“Martok wants a boy,” he’d said calmly, hooking his thumbs in his belt and puffing out his cheeks to spit. “You going to eat the only one we’ve managed to catch, Kor?”
“My meat,” Kor said sullenly. He held up his elbow to show the mutilated hair tassel.
Udge frowned and gave a low whistle. “Either the boy’s addled or he’s got guts for brains.” He stared at BLZ-80-4163, who was crouched on the stone pavement, sick with pain and terror. “The length of that hair means how old a Vyarian is. Whackin’ on that takes away his age, his honor, his strength. You know that?”
“Didn’t want the hair, just the braid,” mumbled BLZ-80-4163 sullenly. He glanced at the Vyarian and shrugged. “No offense.”
Udge threw his head and laughed. It was a bellowing guffaw that shook his whole body. A
fter a moment Kor joined in with something that sounded like a cross between a wheeze and a growl.
“What’s your name, boy?” asked Udge finally, wiping his eyes.
There was no way he would speak that hated number. Right now it was hidden beneath a smear of mud along his jaw. He thought a moment, his wits returning as he realized he was safe from Kor.
“Tobei,” he said at last.
“Right.” Udge clapped him on the shoulder. “You belong somewhere?”
“No.”
“Wrong. You belong to Martok. Pick him up, Kor, and bring him along. If Martok likes him, we can finally blow this dust-ball.”
From that moment on, he’d been one of the free raiders, trained in piloting, weaponry, spying, and identity changes. Until he grew up and branched out on his own. Until he became Blaise Omari, navigator on the SIS Forerunner and part-time blackmarketeer. Until he crash-landed on Ruantl, and his life changed totally.
Asan drew an unsteady breath. Where Kor went, Udge wouldn’t be far behind. The coincidence seemed unreal, too good to be true.
For a moment there was silence in the room, then Mike Powers seemed to pull himself together.
“Pirates!” he said with loathing. “You realize the penalty for—”
“Can that, flin!” shouted one of the raiders. “Drop the pop and plaster.”
Powers stared at him. “What?”
In a low voice, Asan said, “Put down the strifer and stretch out on the floor.”
Powers glanced at him, frowning, then resolution flickered across his dark face. He swung back to face the raiders, his strifer coming up.
“No!” shouted Asan, jumping to his feet.
But he was too late. The raider had been expecting Powers to try it. The flamethrower belched once, engulfing Powers in a stream of fire that melted down the conference table behind him.
Cursing, Asan threw himself back as fast as he could, seizerting to the far corner of the room. Even then, he felt the scorching nearness of the flames. He materialized almost in a bulkhead, panicked, and slumped to his knees in relief when he came out okay. His heart was beating a frantic rhythm inside his chest. He couldn’t quite catch his breath.
Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two Page 12
