by Timothy Zahn
"Hopefully, I can do most of it with my elbows and knees," Merrick said. "Let's go." He stepped up onto the lip of the cylinder and pressed his elbows against the sides.
And stopped as a horrible thought suddenly occurred to him. "Oh, hell," he said softly.
"What?" Zoshak asked sharply.
Merrick looked up into the darkness. "Do you know if there's a cap on the tube somewhere inside the Palace? Or does the cylinder go all the way up into the roof?"
"There's a cap at the fourth-floor communications room," Zoshak said. "Why?"
"How sturdy is it?"
Zoshak stared at Merrick, his expression hardening as he got it, too. "It's quite substantial," he said. "Certainly as substantial as the cylinder itself."
"Then we're in trouble," Merrick said, a tightness settling into the pit of his stomach. If the top was capped, and his fingertip lasers weren't powerful enough to cut through the metal . . .
"No, it just means you'll have to travel upside down," Zoshak said briskly. "Sit down and slide your feet upward into the cylinder."
Merrick made a face. But the other was right. Sitting down beside the cylinder, he lifted his legs up into the opening, straightened his hips and back, and pushed himself up into a handstand with his legs as far up the cylinder as he could get them. He got his balance, then walked backwards on his hands and got his palms up onto the cylinder lip. "This is as far as I can go on my own," he told Zoshak, blinking against the dizziness as the blood rushed to his head.
"Hold still." Zoshak squatted down facing Merrick and got his hands underneath Merrick's shoulders, squeezing his palms into the narrow spaces between neck and arms.
And to Merrick's astonishment he lifted the Cobra the rest of the way out of the gap up into the cylinder. "Can you hold there a moment?" Zoshak murmured.
"I'll try," Merrick said, pressing his forearms and shins as tightly against the cylinder walls as he could. "How's this?"
"Perfect." Quickly, Zoshak let go of Merrick's shoulders and climbed into the shaft beneath him. With his feet straddling the lip, he reestablished his grip. "All right. Hmm. This will be difficult."
"Hang on—let me try something," Merrick said. Shifting around so that his back was pressed against the tube, he tried pushing against the wall with his forearms. To his mild surprise, he slid upward a few centimeters. "Looks like you won't have to push me the whole way," he said, sliding himself up another few centimeters.
"Try using your feet, too," Zoshak suggested. "Press with the edges or soles and then bend your knees inward."
Merrick tried it. This time he moved nearly twice the distance of his first two tries. "Probably as good as it's going to get," he said, resettling his elbows and knees and repeating the operation. "Okay. Let's go."
The trip was agonizing. Merrick was able to turn most of the work over to his servos, which at least relieved the strain on his muscles. But there was no such protection for his hands, and the rough metal slowly but steadily rubbed them raw. Combined with the constant thudding of blood in his head, it made for a more miserable experience than anything he'd gone through since graduating from the Academy. Closing his eyes, trying to focus on his forearms instead of his slowly disintegrating hands, he kept going.
It was therefore something of a shock when he stretched out his legs that last time and bumped his feet into something solid. "We're here," Zoshak whispered.
"Right," Merrick said, settling himself against the wall and trying to clear his head. First step, the thought seeped through his pounding skull, was to see if any Trofts were nearby. Pressing his ear against the metal, he keyed in his auditory enhancers.
And found himself in the center of a soft but bewildering tangle of sounds and voices. "Well?" Zoshak prompted.
"Quiet," Merrick said, fighting to untangle the cacophony. From the sheer number of conflicting noises it almost sounded like the Qasamans and Trofts were having a dinner-dance party. Yet everything was oddly muted, as if the partygoers were afraid the neighbors would hear.
And then the obvious answer penetrated his numbed brain. The metal cylinder was funneling sounds to him from all four levels of the building. More importantly, the fact that everything sounded quiet even with Merrick's enhancements going implied that the fourth-floor area around him and Zoshak was in fact deserted.
Or it just meant that the Trofts babysitting that particular communications room were being very quiet.
There was only one way to find out. Keying down his audio enhancements again, Merrick tucked his right leg down as far as he could out of the way and aimed his left heel at the edge of the cylinder's cap. "Watch your eyes," he warned Zoshak, and fired.
The familiar blue light blazed, and a second later a rain of metal sparks began to burn into Merrick's legs and hips, joining the pressure in his head and the throbbing in his palms. Squeezing his eyes shut, ignoring this fresh source of pain, he swept his leg around the edge of the lid, slicing it free of the cylinder. The blue light vanished as he shut down his laser.
And without warning Zoshak put his hands on Merrick's shoulders and shoved, and Merrick found himself flying straight up out of the cylinder like a cork from a champagne bottle, his feet knocking aside the severed lid on the way. He had just enough presence of mind to grab the upper edge of the cylinder with one hand as he passed, checking his upward motion before he could slam feet-first into the ceiling and swiveling himself into a circle that landed him more or less upright on the floor.
Fortunately, his nanocomputer was more alert than he was, and bent his knees to absorb the impact. Snapping his hands up into firing position, blinking to clear his vision, he looked around.
He was in a small room with an electronics-laden wraparound desk pressed up against two of the walls. Above the desk were rows of monitors like the ones he'd seen down in Akim's subcity command center, all of them currently dark. The cylinder lid he'd knocked off had landed on the desk, hopefully with a minimum of noise.
Still, even if the Trofts had finished checking these upper floors, it was unlikely that they'd simply abandoned them. "Where's the entrance to the safe room?" he asked Zoshak as the latter pulled himself out of the cylinder.
"Two rooms to the left, behind a blue and white tile mosaic," Zoshak said, pointing. "I just hope the Shahni are up here, and not in the second-floor safe room."
"Well, this is where they cut the cables, anyway," Merrick pointed out as he crossed to the door. "Otherwise we'd have run into dangling cable ends two floors down. Be quiet a second."
He pressed his ear to the door and keyed his enhancers. Nothing. "Sounds clear," he said. "I'll go check it out."
"Be careful," Zoshak warned. "There may be a roving patrol."
"Probably," Merrick said grimly. "You find the Shahni and get them ready to travel."
The Shahni apartment levels, as Merrick had noted earlier from Akim's floor plans, had been designed with an open layout: wide hallways opening smoothly into lounges, dining areas, and media rooms, with only the various sleeping rooms closed off from the general space. What the floor plans hadn't shown was the fact that the wide corridors were liberally sprinkled with sculptures on carved or molded pedestals, many of them partially recessed in half-cylindrical or semispherical wall niches. Other sections of wall were covered with colorful, intricate tapestries or more of the tile mosaics that Zoshak had mentioned. Quietly, Merrick moved along the colorful displays of the main corridor, his senses alert for trouble.
He was halfway to the elevators when he heard the soft sounds of rhythmic footsteps coming his way.
He looked around. To his left was one of the hanging tapestries, to his right a large vase on a pedestal within a half-cylindrical floor-to-ceiling niche. Getting a grip on the pedestal, he pulled.
The combination was heavier than it looked, and he had to brace one foot on the wall and use his servos to get the thing to move. He pulled it about fifteen centimeters out into the hallway and then slipped around behind it. Set int
o the ceiling directly in front of the vase was a directed light, which a quick fingertip laser shot blasted into darkness, putting Merrick's hiding place into partial shadow. Another quick slash with the lasers cut a vertical line in the tapestry across from him and then added enough of a horizontal cut at the top to suggest a hidden doorway had been opened and then hastily and imperfectly shut. Crouching down, he set one palm against the vase and the other against the midpoint of the pedestal and prepared himself.
Ten seconds later, the footsteps grew louder as the Trofts came around one of the corners, then faltered as the aliens spotted the dead light and the damaged tapestry. For a moment the footsteps stopped completely, and there was a moment of indistinct muttering as one of the soldiers called it in. Be overanxious, Merrick urged them silently. Be overanxious, and just a little bit careless.
The soldier finished his report. Merrick held his breath; and then they were there: two Trofts, dressed in the same helmets and armored leotard outfits Merrick had seen on the aliens at the airfield control tower. Both had their lasers pointed at the tapestry, ready for something to coming jumping out at them from behind it. One of them turned his head to check out the niche across the hall.
And as he jerked with surprise, Merrick shoved with all his servos' strength against the pedestal and vase, hurling them across the hall.
The impacts knocked both soldiers off their feet, slamming them into the tapestry and the solid wall behind it. One of them managed to get off a wild shot before he hit that burned harmlessly into the floor.
And then Merrick was beside them, ripping open their faceplates and punching hard into their throat bladders. Hefting the heavy pedestal up into his arms, he hurried down the hallway toward the elevator. If the backup hadn't been coming before, it was definitely on its way now.
The stairwell door beside the twin elevators was alive with the sounds of racing Troft feet when Merrick reached it. He set the pedestal against the door, using another nearby pedestal to help wedge it in place. The elevators showed no sign of activity, but he gave each of the doors a quick spot-weld just in case, then headed back toward the safe room.
The camouflaged door was standing partially open as he came around the final corner. He was nearly there when Zoshak slipped out of the safe room, a compact but deadly-looking submachine gun gripped in his hands. "What was that noise?" he asked, peering past Merrick's shoulder.
"That was the roving patrol," Merrick said. "It's not roving anymore." Stepping past Zoshak, he pulled the door all the way open. "Are our guests about ready to—?"
He broke off. Akim had said that two of the Shahni were trapped in here. Only it wasn't just a pair of old men standing silently in the hidden room. The two old men were accompanied by an old woman, a young man and a young woman, and two boys of perhaps six and eight.
"What the—?" Merrick grabbed Zoshak's arm as the other came up beside him. "I was told we were rescuing two Shahni."
"We are," Zoshak said grimly. "And yes, they're ready."
"What about the others?"
"There's no time," Zoshak said stiffly. "They must remain behind."
Merrick stared at him, his mouth dropping open in astonishment. "They're what?"
"There's no time," Zoshak repeated. "Quickly, now, before more aliens arrive. Your Excellencies?"
One of the Shahni stepped forward. The second paused to squeeze the old woman's shoulder and then followed. "Wait a minute," Merrick protested. "We can't just leave these people here to die."
"We have no choice," the second Shahni said firmly. "There is insufficient time to bring everyone through the escape route Djinni Zoshak has prepared."
"Then we'd better find some other way out for them," Merrick said harshly. "Plan Saikah starts with blowing up the Palace, remember?"
"And so we will serve our people," the young man said. His hand, Merrick noted, was tightly gripping the young woman's.
"Are the children to serve the same way?" Merrick demanded.
"They are sons of Qasama," the young man said, letting go of the woman's hand and resting one hand on each of the two boys' shoulders. "They will do what is necessary."
"There is no other way out," the first Shahni said impatiently. "And we waste time."
Merrick focused on the boys' faces. Both were trying very hard to be as brave and determined as their parents, but the younger one was clearly teetering on the point of tears.
The only route now into or out of the Palace is through the main doors, Miron Akim had said, and the first Shahni had now confirmed it. Unfortunately, it was an exit currently blocked by multiple layers of armed Trofts.
Merrick's old spine leopard hunting squad might have been able to cut through them all. But the squad wasn't here, and Merrick didn't have a hope of defeating that many enemies, especially not once the element of surprise was gone.
Which meant he had to somehow get the Trofts to leave on their own.
"Can you get the two Shahni out by yourself?" he asked, turning back to Zoshak. "Piggyback them down on your shoulders or something?"
"What nonsense is this?" the first Shahni growled. "You have been ordered to bring us out. You will obey that order. Now."
Merrick kept his eyes on Zoshak. "Carsh Zoshak?"
Zoshak looked at the two children. "It would be difficult for the one directly above me," he said hesitantly. "He would carry much of the weight of the second upon his own shoulders."
"We waste time—" the first Shahni said.
"What are you proposing?" the second Shahni interrupted.
"I'm proposing that Djinni Zoshak bring you both out," Merrick told him, "while I attempt to do the same with the others."
"You think you can carry all five of them upon your shoulders?" the first Shahni scoffed. "This is foolishness. I insist you carry out your orders."
Merrick turned to face him. "Technically, Your Excellency, I'm not—"
"It can be done," the second Shahni again interrupted. "I will take center position, above Djinni Zoshak's shoulders, with Shahni Melcha's weight upon me."
"Thank you, Your Excellency," Merrick said, turning back to Zoshak. "Can you do it?"
Zoshak's lips were pressed tightly together, but he gave a short nod. "I believe so," he said.
"Then get them to the cylinder and get in," Merrick said. "I'll be there in a minute to help them in behind you. Any idea how long before Plan Saikah starts?"
"Approximately ten minutes," Zoshak said, motioning the two Shahni toward the door.
"Can you find out more exactly?" Merrick asked.
"It would require me to transmit the request," Zoshak warned. "The invaders have already shown they can detect those signals."
"That's okay," Merrick assured him. "In fact, at this point, the more transmissions out of here, the better." He gestured to the young man. "I'll need some kind of timer," he continued. "It doesn't have to connect to anything, but it has to have a visible countdown display. Is there anything in here you can rig up to do that?"
The young man glanced at the two Shahni, as if for confirmation that he was allowed to talk to this upstart stranger. "There's an assembly timer in the lounge," he said. "It calls the Shahni to meetings, marking the time remaining until the opening prayer."
"But the display has repeaters throughout the building, including the lower floors," the young woman put in. "The invaders may see it."
"Perfect," Merrick told her. "Carsh Zoshak?"
"Twelve minutes and thirty seconds," Zoshak reported.
"Set the timer to hit zero twelve minutes and thirty seconds from now," Merrick instructed the young man. "Then return here, and leave the door open so I can get back in. Come on, Djinni Zoshak—let's get you and the Shahni out of here."
They headed back toward the communications room. "I hope you have a plan," Zoshak warned quietly. "I don't know how you see things on your world, but here we're expected to obey orders precisely. We were told to rescue the Shahni. That's all that matters."
/> "And you are rescuing them," Merrick reminded him. "As for how we do things on the Cobra Worlds, we absolutely do not abandon anyone if there's a chance of saving them."
"Even at the risk of your own life?"
An echo of the brief battle in the control tower elevator flashed through Merrick's mind. Before that, he'd never fully appreciated the ramifications of the fact that war meant he would have to kill.
Just as he had never before appreciated on a gut level that he might also have to die.
But he certainly couldn't confess such fears and doubts in front of a dedicated soldier like Zoshak. Personal and national pride both demanded Merrick maintain some shred of dignity here. "Yes, even then," he said, trying to sound strong and fearless. "What other purpose does a soldier have?"
For a moment Zoshak was silent. Merrick winced, wondering if the other had penetrated his deception and was wondering what kind of coward he was traveling with. "We've been told you demon warriors come from a soft people," the Qasaman said at last. "It appears we were wrong."
Merrick snorted quietly, Governor Treakness's contempt for the Cobras flashing to mind. "Don't fool yourself—my people have plenty of softness," he said grimly. "But we still have a few pockets of strength left."
The two Shahni were waiting in the communications room when Merrick and Zoshak arrived. The first was gazing down into the open cylinder, an incredulous look on his face. "You expect us to travel through this?" he demanded.
"It is passable," Zoshak assured him as he hopped up onto the desk and slipped his legs into the cylinder. Pressing his feet firmly against the sides, he stood upright and slid smoothly downward until only his head was visible. "Shahni Haafiz, you'll need to climb up onto the desk and place your feet on my shoulders," he said. "Mind your hands—the cylinder edge is sharp in places."
Haafiz looked at Merrick. "Your assistance," he ordered.
"Certainly." Merrick stepped forward and held out a hand. "Lean on me, Your Excellency."
Haafiz took hold of Merrick's forearm and hoisted one foot up onto the desk.
