by Timothy Zahn
But I’d promised Cameron that I would watch over his daughter, and the reflexes just kicked in on their own. With my right hand I slapped the thug’s gun off target, then spun around on my right heel to drive my right elbow into his solar plexus as I grabbed for the weapon with my left hand.
It was about as close to a complete failure as anything I’d ever tried in my life. My elbow struck an unyielding slab of body armor, my snatch for the gun missed completely as he twitched it aside out of my reach, and before I could regain my balance to try something else he’d taken a long pace backward and was looking at me with the sort of expression you might use for a particularly interesting new species of insect. About the only thing that kept it from being a complete failure was that I didn’t fall flat on my face in the process.
I braced myself, waiting for the inevitable flurry of shots and the searing pain that would accompany them. But once again, my reflexive thought was out of step with reality. “Interesting,” Antoniewicz said, his voice cutting calmly across the sudden tension. “You were right, Ryland. He is something of the heroic type, isn’t he?”
“And seems to have soft feelings for Ms. Cameron, besides,” Brother John agreed. He was openly gloating now, I saw, though whether that was at my failure or his own cleverness I couldn’t tell.
“The only feelings I have for her are ones you couldn’t understand,” I growled back with the ill temper of a man who’s just completely humiliated himself. “Loyalty, for one. Or any of the other sympathetic emotions human beings have for each other. Of course, in your case, I use the term ‘human being’ in its loosest possible sense. You’re a lot less human than most of the aliens I know.”
The gloating vanished from Brother John’s face, the handsome face turning suddenly ugly. “Listen, McKell—”
“Enough,” Antoniewicz cut him off, giving me the same interesting-insect look his bodyguard had. “Whatever the details of his character flaws, it’s clear now that McKell would not wish harm to come to the lady.” He lifted his eyebrows slightly. “That is clear, is it not?”
I looked at Tera. Some of that earlier defiance was still simmering in her eyes, but the face behind them had gone noticeably pale. The aura of death and evil surrounding Antoniewicz was starting to get to her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, giving bluff and bluster one last try.
I might as well have saved myself the trouble. “Don’t play stupid, McKell,” Antoniewicz reproved me. “It doesn’t suit you. Will you release the locks you put on the Icarus’s systems? Or do my men take Ms. Cameron back to the engine room?”
The ship, I noticed dimly, suddenly felt very cold. “Let me offer an alternative deal,” I said, my tongue feeling sluggish in my mouth. Antoniewicz was starting to get to me, too. “If you’ll let Tera, Ixil, and me leave here unharmed, I’ll ungimmick the ship and give you something that’ll be far more valuable to you than all three of us put together.”
“He’s stalling,” Brother John said contemptuously. “He hasn’t got anything left to bargain with.”
“On the contrary,” I said. “I have Arno Cameron.”
“You can tell us where he is?” Antoniewicz asked.
“I can do better than that,” I said, trying hard to ignore the suddenly stricken look on Tera’s face. “I can deliver him to you. Right now.”
The atmosphere was suddenly electric. “What are you talking about?” Brother John demanded, looking around as if expecting Cameron to pop out of the alien hull. “Where is he?”
“He’s hiding in the smaller sphere,” I said, settling for the simplest explanation. Giving them the complete story would only confuse the issue. “I can go in there and get him.”
“Really,” Antoniewicz said, his voice suddenly cold. “Do you think us fools, McKell? My people checked every cubic centimeter of this ship before I came aboard.”
“Maybe everything out here and in the engine section, but not the small sphere,” I said, shaking my head. “Not visually, anyway. That place is a mess of cables and wires—they’d have been hours at it. What did they use, body-heat sensors and motion detectors?”
“And a few other specialized devices,” Antoniewicz said, eyeing me speculatively. “You realize, I trust, that Cameron dead is not a bargaining chip.”
“He’s not dead,” I assured him. “There’s an area in there that sensors can’t reach. All that alien machinery, I suppose.”
Antoniewicz glanced at Brother John, turned back to me. “All right,” he said. “Tell me where he is. I’ll send one of my men in after him.”
“It’s very hard to find the place,” I said. “Besides, if it’s anyone but me, he’ll probably put up a fight. That could damage something.”
“Possibly even Cameron himself,” Brother John murmured.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Antoniewicz said in a tone that said there would be no further discussion on the matter. “Tell us where he is.”
I sighed. “That’s not necessary,” I said reluctantly. “I told him that when it was safe to come out I’d either come personally or else send in one of Ixil’s ferrets. There’s an entrance in the engine room that should be open.”
“Good,” Antoniewicz said. He was all calm again now that he’d gotten his way. “Send him.”
I looked at Ixil and nodded. He nodded back, and Pix scampered down his leg and headed up toward the wraparound. “You’d better tell whoever you have in the wraparound and engine room not to stop him,” I warned.
“There’s no one back there,” Antoniewicz said. “I presume Cameron will be coming out the same way?”
“No, he’ll come out here,” I said, pointing to the covered access hole beside Tera’s computer. “There’s a better access panel over there.”
“Open it,” Antoniewicz said, flicking his eyes to one of the bodyguards. “While we wait, McKell, you can start fixing my ship.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Furtively, with the feeling of someone about to rub salt into his own raw flesh, I looked over at Tera. Knowing that, however painful it was going to be, I had to see how she was taking this.
I was prepared for rage, for fear, for even borderline hysteria. But there was none of that in her face. Not anymore. Her face was instead totally drained of emotion, as dead as Antoniewicz’s eyes, the face of someone facing the end of all things with the certain knowledge that there was nothing left to be redeemed from the ashes. The strong industrialist’s daughter, the proud and defiant royal personage—all of that was gone. There was nothing left but fatigue, and a young woman facing the inevitability of her own death.
“I trusted you,” she said quietly.
I turned my eyes away. It hurt just exactly as bad as I’d expected it to. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I did what I had to.”
I estimated it would take about ten minutes for Pix to make it to the center of the sphere and trip the star-gate mechanism. I took my time unlocking the seals I’d put on the Icarus’s helm and nav systems, with the result that nine of those minutes were gone by the time I walked back down to where Antoniewicz and the others were still waiting. “They can get started now,” I told Antoniewicz, nodding up at the techs. “I locked down the computer and engine controls, too, but I can’t undo that until the helm and nav have been fired up and done their self-checks.”
“Then you should go up there so as to be ready for that occurrence,” Antoniewicz said, gesturing up toward the computer and the two bodyguards standing watch over the now open access panel. “You’ve cost me far too much time as it is.”
“It’ll take another few minutes before I can get started,” I told him. “In the meantime, I wanted to give you a warning.”
His eyebrows lifted in obvious amusement. “Indeed? Something to do with you and the others, no doubt?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve heard rumors that Geneva has folded under Patth pressure and forbidden all Earth citizens and associates to give aid to the Icarus.”
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“And you think such orders apply to me?” Antoniewicz said, even more amused.
“Not your core people, no,” I said. “But a lot of your looser associates might get cold feet under that kind of pressure, particularly those quiet government and military contacts you’ve got who will now have management or senior officers looking over their shoulders. Add to that the Patth reward, which is probably doubling every six hours, and even you might have trouble moving and hiding the Icarus.”
“I’m quite aware of the challenges involved,” Antoniewicz said. “That was precisely why I came myself, bringing only those most loyal to me.” He gave me another of those micrometer smiles. “That’s also why I’ll be taking the Icarus to one of my private estates when we leave here.”
I glanced at Ixil. “I see,” I said. “I presume you’ll be dropping Ixil and Tera and me off on the way?”
He frowned, another micrometer-level expression. “Who said anything about dropping you off anywhere?”
“That was the deal,” I reminded him, frowning in turn. “I would give you Cameron in exchange for Tera.”
“Ah, yes,” Antoniewicz said. “I forgot.” He craned his neck to look at the helm. “Yodanna?” he called.
“Helm coming up now, Mr. Antoniewicz,” one of the techs called back.
“What about the rest of the ship?”
“Checking now, sir, but it looks promising.”
Antoniewicz looked back at me. “For such a clever man, McKell, you’re amazingly stupid sometimes,” he said. “Ms. Cameron is far too useful as insurance for her father’s cooperation for me to release her. As for you and your alien, the two of you are far too dangerous to keep around any longer than necessary.” He looked up again. “Yodanna?”
“Yes, sir,” the call wafted its way back down to us. “I’ve got the sequence he used. We can unlock the computer and engine systems ourselves.”
Antoniewicz looked back at me. “And I would say that the moment of obsolescence has arrived sooner than expected,” he said quietly. “I always offer a man the chance for final words, McKell. Have you any?”
A ripple of breeze brushed past my hair. “No last words, Mr. Antoniewicz,” I said firmly, standing up straight and closing my eyes. “Go ahead and shoot.”
Even with my eyes closed, it was like a strobe light had gone off in my face. A multiple strobe light, a dozen flickering bursts of light like the prophet Elijah calling fire down from heaven. I heard a gasp from somewhere beside me, a startled reflexive scream from Tera, an equally startled curse from Brother John.
And then, silence. Cautiously, wary of another round of flashes, I eased open my eyes.
Antoniewicz was standing rigidly exactly where I’d left him, his face utterly expressionless. Everett had turned completely white. Brother John’s face was white, too, his expression that of a man walking through a graveyard in the dead of night.
Which was, I decided as I looked around, an extremely apt analogy. All around us, this most loyal group of Antoniewicz’s bodyguards were sprawled on the deck where they’d stood, their weapons for the most part still clutched in rigid hands, the tops of their heads smoking with the nose-curling stink of burnt hair and skin and bone. Fire from heaven, indeed.
From Tera’s direction came a sudden choked gasp—apparently, her vision was just now clearing up from the aftereffects of that multiple stutter of laser fire. “It’s all right, Tera,” I assured her quickly, crossing to her side. “Just relax. It’s all over.”
“But—” She broke off, looking back over her shoulder at the entrance to the wraparound.
“Not there,” I told her, pointing above us. “There.”
Even having known what to expect, I had to admit the sight was something to behold. There were twelve of them grouped together in a tight knot in the center of the sphere, starting now to drift off in various directions toward the hull under the influence of the alien grav field. Their squashed-iguana faces were only partly visible through their helmet faceplates, the body-armored ferrets crouching on their broad shoulders adding a surrealistic touch of the ridiculous to the scene.
But there was nothing either surrealistic or ridiculous about the heavy military combat lasers in their hands, or in the steady professional grip with which they pointed them at Antoniewicz, Brother John, Everett, and the three techs.
“They’re Royal Kalixiri commandos,” I said into the stunned silence, just in case my audience was too shy to ask the question themselves. “Loaned to us by the one government in the Spiral that no longer has anything to lose by defying the Patth.”
Tera was still staring up at them. “But—you said—where’s my father?”
“He’s safe,” I told her. “The Icarus isn’t a stardrive, you see. It’s a stargate, connected to a duplicate somewhere hell and away across the galaxy. Your father accidentally triggered it and got bounced to the other end.”
“The other end has Kalixiri in it?” Everett demanded, his voice distant and confused.
“Hardly,” I said. “Or rather, it didn’t until a couple of hours ago. The Kalixiri were waiting here when we landed, hidden down in the trees—that’s the main reason I insisted on parking the ship so close in under the branches. Once it was dark, and once I’d chased Everett out and put on the hatchway floodlights so that the glare would mask their movements, they used a collapsible ladder and the latch grooves on the starboard side to climb onto the engine section, go in through that dorsal hatch, and from there into the small sphere and down the rabbit hole to where your father was waiting.”
“So then … Pix?”
“Actually, I worked rather hard to maneuver Mr. Antoniewicz into insisting that Pix go in instead of me,” I said, looking at Antoniewicz. The dead look had been replaced now by a clear and violent lust for death. My death. But then the Kalixiri were landing on the deck around him, and the commandos and armor and heavy lasers were between him and the rest of us, and he’d lost his chance forever. “When Pix went across, he took with him his visual memories of the number, weapon-status, and approximate placement of the men they’d have to take down. Popping in from nowhere, and in the last place anyone would expect an attack to come from, the whole thing was almost literally a duck shoot. The only real question was whether they’d get here before Antoniewicz decided I wasn’t useful anymore and had me shot.”
I looked at one of the commandos as he walked toward me, an empty spot on his shoulder showing where Pix had been sitting. Pix himself, I noted, was already settling onto Ixil’s shoulder. “Speaking of being in time, Commander, what’s the status of the lodge?”
“It has been taken,” he said, his voice flavored with a thick regional accent. “I have only now been so informed.”
“What are you talking about?” Brother John demanded. “You said—”
“Well, they didn’t all go down the rabbit hole,” I explained apologetically. “A second group was hidden somewhere in or near the lodge to take care of anyone you’d left outside the ship. Once the commander learned from Pix’s memories that Nicabar and the others were being held hostage there, he knew to call in the details to the reserve troops as soon as they popped in here.”
Tera looked at Brother John, then back to me. “But I thought you worked for these people,” she protested. “You said you owed them a half-million commarks.”
“So I did,” I acknowledged. “And so I do. But you see, I was working for someone else long before Brother Johnston Scotto Ryland came out of the woodwork and smilingly mortgaged my soul. For that matter, long before I even ran up the debt that attracted him to me in the first place.”
And then, finally, she got it. “You mean—?”
“Yes,” I said, straightening up into an almost-forgotten military attention. I had my pride, too … and it had been a long time since I’d been able to say this to anyone at all. “I’m Major Jordan McKell, EarthGuard Military Intelligence, detached on Special Covert Branch duty. May I also introduce my boss: Colonel I
xil T’adee, Kalixiri Special Command for Drug Enforcement. Our job these past twelve years has been to work our way inside the Spiral’s worst drug and gunrunning organizations and try to bring them down.”
I turned to Antoniewicz. “And as I said before, Mr. Antoniewicz,” I added quietly, “I’m very pleased to meet you. Badgemen all over the Spiral have been waiting a long time for you to come out of your hole so that you could finally be arrested. I’m honored you chose to do it for me.”
CHAPTER
25
It was not exactly what you would call a cheerful group that was gathered around the table in the lodge dining room a little after dawn the next morning, but it beat to hell the atmosphere that had been there the last time around. Partly it was the smaller and more intimate nature of the assemblage, with Shawn and Chort off somewhere being debriefed, Ixil directing the group looking over the Icarus, and Antoniewicz and his assorted plug-uglies long gone under heavy Kalixiri guard. The fact that Cameron had had time for a shower probably helped a lot, too.
“I hope you know how close you came to getting your neck broken last time we were in here,” Nicabar commented, picking carefully at the Kalixiri military delicacies the occupation troops had whipped up. It was a far cry from Chort’s gourmet Craean stew, but the taste was adequate and it was certainly filling enough. “When you turned that plasmic on me I figured all that talk about Everett was just you stalling while you waited for your pals to arrive.”
“You’d never have made it even halfway to my neck,” I told him. “Antoniewicz’s thugs would have cut you down in a heartbeat if you’d tried anything. Including going for your gun, incidentally, which is why I drew on you in the first place.”
He snorted gently. “I thought I was being reasonably subtle about it.”
