by Jake Elwood
Commandoes with rocket packs. It was the fastest way to get to the top of the cliff and across the rough terrain to the house.
"Damn it." She stood frozen for a moment, then made herself run forward. She would be hard to spot, and already the bulk of the house was hiding most of them from her sight. She would be pretty much invisible until they were right on top of her.
The chill she'd felt earlier was a distant memory now. Sweat trickled between her breasts and made her hands slick as she scrabbled her way up the next ridge of rock. She tore off Sykes' jacket and dropped it on the rock as she hurried forward, her breath coming in quick, painful gasps.
She clambered up one last ridge and reached the level of the house. A roar filled the air and she threw herself down behind a boulder. She peeked around as humanoid shapes appeared in the air around the house, each one balancing on a pillar of fire.
Men and robots blended together, the men in black clothes and bulky, dark body armor, the robots painted a matching black. One robot remained in the sky, moving in lazy circles above the house. The rest of the commandoes landed all around the building. A man touched down no more than six or seven paces from Cassie's boulder, but his attention was on the house.
Commandoes shrugged off their rocket packs and lifted stun rifles. Three men converged on the door. One man knelt to examine the panel with Cassie's dangling lockpick. Before he could touch it, however, the door slid open and a fist-sized object bounced out. It was a stun grenade, and it exploded in a flash of white light. Cassie squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a tingle across her forehead as the edge of the stun field hit her.
When she opened her eyes the three men were down, and several more were shaking their heads, trying to throw off the effects of the blast. The fallen men were stirring, struggling to rise. There was a stun-resistant layer to the body armor, then.
Laser fire lanced through the doorway from inside, scorching into the fallen men. Their armor stopped most of it, but one man fell limp. Another man screamed and rolled aside, clutching his leg, smoke trickling between his fingers.
A pair of robots advanced on the door, firing a barrage of stun blasts into the house. A third robot joined them, and they crowded through the front door. Just as the last robot vanished from sight a loud 'POP' made Cassie flinch. There was a burst of light from the doorway, and she smelled ozone. A robot toppled backward, his metallic head and shoulders appearing in the doorway.
Zap grenade. So much for the combat bots. She grinned nastily. Jerry was putting up a good fight.
She didn't see the shot that nicked a commando half a dozen meters to one side. He clapped a hand to the side of his face and bellowed, and another man blasted away at the living-room window with a stun rifle. The stun bolts splayed uselessly across the glass, and another laser shot came through, scorching the man's armor. He lowered his rifle and ran for the only cover in sight, the front wall of the house.
The man with the face wound lowered his hand. There was a nasty burn along the side of his jaw, but he would live. Even as she thought it, Cassie saw the next laser blast hit him full in the face. She had a quick impression of flesh burning and blackening before he collapsed unmoving on the rock.
The commando in front of Cassie dropped to one knee, making himself a smaller target. He levelled his stun rifle at the house, for all the good it would do. He glanced back, likely looking for better cover, and his eyes widened as he spotted Cassie. He was swinging the stun rifle around when she shot him between the eyes.
The man dropped, and Cassie held her breath, waiting for the others to react. There was a man with his back to the wall of the house, a wounded man sitting against the wall near the front door, and a third commando standing beside the door, his back to the wall. None of them were paying Cassie the slightest attention. As she watched, the man standing by the door glanced toward her, saw the man she'd shot, and did a double-take. He pressed himself tighter to the wall and looked at the nearest window.
She was still unseen.
A shadow crossed the rock in front of her, and she swallowed a curse. She'd forgotten the robot still circling above.
A glance up showed the robot as a dark shape against the afternoon sky. It was directly above her, the rocket pack a white-hot circle that made her squint. As she watched it drifted in a slow circle. It hadn't seen her.
A concussive explosion brought her gaze back to the house. Smoke billowed from a hole in the side of the building. Another explosion tore a gaping hole in the front of the house, and as she watched, men poured into the house through both holes. In moments the only commandoes in sight were the corpses and the injured man by the front door.
Cassie looked up at the circling robot. It was making her nervous. The stupid thing could spot her any second. She glanced at the injured man. All his attention was focused on the door beside him and the hole in the wall beyond that. He was oblivious to her.
She looked up. The robot was still circling. She waited until the robot had its back to her, then lifted her laser gun and fired. She ignited in the air behind it, then tracked in. The robot would be armored and difficult to damage with a hand laser. The rocket pack, however, was another matter entirely.
The laser touched the bulk of the rocket pack. A spurt of smoke appeared, then a little gout of flame. Suddenly flame erupted from the side of the rocket and the robot went spinning off to one side, completely out of control. It dropped behind the house, and she heard a distant boom as it crashed.
The front door slid open, and the injured commando stiffened. It was a commando who came out, though, dragging a dead man in commando gear. Another commando came out behind him, holding a limp figure by the ankles. A tall, broad-shouldered man hung slack between two commandoes. They dropped him on the ground and one man stood over him, gun ready, while the other man returned to the house.
It was Jerry. He was alive, too. He had to be. Why else would they post a guard over his body? They had come looking for her, and they'd found him instead.
She watched commandoes drag immobile robots out of the house and told herself to sneak away. She might still be spotted as they took off. They might still take her. The edge of the ridge was only a meter or two behind her. She could slip down and be completely out of sight.
If that was me over there, and Jerry was here behind this rock, what would he do? She scowled as she realized the truth. He would rescue me. More likely, he'd get shot trying. But that wouldn't stop him from giving it his best shot.
The idiot.
"Crap," she muttered. Then she took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the little laser gun, swung her arm up, and started shooting.
The response from the commandoes was immediate. Men dropped flat, guns swung up, and stun blasts pelted into her boulder. She shrunk down, and a man ran into her peripheral vision, shoving his arms into the harness of his rocket pack to provide high cover.
Cassie wriggled backward, keeping the boulder more or less between her and the commandoes, until her legs were over empty space. A close miss turned her right side numb, and the little laser gun dropped from her hand. She ignored it, squirmed farther, and felt herself fall from the ridge of rock. She landed hard, only her left side hurting, and lay there trying to fight off the stun while the roar of rocket packs echoed around her.
No commandoes appeared above her. With no way to tell how well she was armed or if she had friends, they were choosing to retreat. She listened to the fading rumble of their rocket packs as her right arm and leg finally came back to life. "I'm sorry, Jerry," she whispered. "I tried my best."
She spent a long minute working her way along the ridge of stone before she poked her head up again. If they'd left someone to ambush her, the commando was well-hidden. "Roger? Can you tell how many commandoes just flew off?"
"Sorry, Cassie," he said in her ear. "The satellite is out of range."
She scanned the area around the house, torn between caution and urgency, then scrambled up over the ridge. She trotted
over to where she'd dropped the laser and scooped it up, then jogged toward the house.
Jerry still lay where the commandoes had dropped him. There was a harness on the rocks beside him. They had planned to carry him away, but they'd given up. The fallen robots lay in a metallic heap in front of the house, abandoned as well. Only the dead men had been removed.
"I scared them off," she said aloud, hardly daring to believe it. "They didn't know I was alone." They didn't know it was me, either, she realized. I was the prize they were after. If they'd known it was me they would have come after me like avenging angels. They would have gotten me, too.
She knelt by Jerry and took his hand. It was still warm. She put two fingers on his wrist, looking for a pulse, not expecting to find one.
His fingers tightened on her hand, and she jumped. His eyes were closed, but the lids twitched as she watched. Other than a bruise on his cheek and a scrape along his jaw, he seemed unhurt. They hadn't bothered to kill him before they fled.
"Jerry, you lucky son of a bitch," she said. "I guess I saved you. Now what am I going to do with you?"
She plucked the lockpick from the front door panel and shoved it into a slot by the door of the hovercar. The car balked for ten seconds or so before the door popped open. She slid behind the controls, felt the car rise beneath her as the hover field kicked in, and moved the car over to where Jerry lay. Every centimeter she had to lift him was going to hurt, so she killed the hover field.
Heaving him up and into the car was not easy, and he was going to have a bruise or two to show for it. He ended up with his face mashed into the passenger seat and his butt in the air. She pushed his legs in, then had to jam her foot against his hip and shove hard to get the hatch to close on that side.
The gate swung open as the hovercar approached. She hesitated momentarily, then turned toward the town. She needed protective cover more than she needed distance. She travelled no more than a kilometer before the first police skimmer flashed past overhead. A pair of hovercars with flashing lights and screaming sirens went past next, mercifully ignoring her.
Keeping herself from hurrying wasn't easy, but she managed to keep her speed within legal limits. Once she reached the first buildings of Swan Bay and found some traffic to merge into, her tension began to ease.
It spiked right back up a moment later when Roger announced, "The ship is grounded."
"What?"
"Police order," he told her. "I can see roadblocks on the major roads, too."
"Crap." She slowed the car, cruising along, her face a mask of calm while she thought furiously. "What are the odds of taking off anyway?"
"Not good," Roger said promptly. "They've put a grapple on the hull."
"Damn it." She parked at the curb and turned to look at Jerry. "You!" She prodded his leg where it stuck up beside her. "Jerry. Wake up." She leaned over and dug an elbow into the nerve cluster on his thigh. "Shake it off, damn you."
He groaned.
"Quit being such a baby. It's just a stun shot. Possibly several. Anyway, snap out of it." She pressed harder with her elbow, and he flinched, then thrashed with his leg. Cassie saw a pedestrian gaping at her and straightened up, moving the hovercar back into the street. She drove at random while Jerry moaned and muttered.
"Wha… Wha's going on?"
She looked at him. His face was beet red from being upside-down. She could see one eye, fixed on her. His legs waved some more, and one arm pawed helplessly at the seat.
"Cassie? Where am I?"
"Swan Bay," she said. "We need a place to hide out."
"Up."
"What?"
"Me… up," he mumbled. "Can you help me up?"
"Tell me where we can hide or I'll help you back into a coma." She took her eyes off the street long enough to glare at him.
"Crab and Kraken."
"What?" She shot him another glance. "Speak sense, or you'll never be right-side-up again."
"Hotel," he said. "Cliff road."
She tapped the screen on the dash of the hovercar, and a smiling face appeared. "How can I help you?"
"Take me to the Cracking Hotel," she said.
"Crab and Kraken," Jerry corrected.
"The Crab and Kraken Hotel," she told the car.
"Certainly!" The steering handles moved under her hands, and she let go, surrendering control to the vehicle.
The Crab and Kraken was made to look like some sort of medieval fortress. The car stopped in front and Cassie, feeling more than a little self-conscious, had to get up, walk around the car, and open the door for Jerry. He spilled out, landing in a messy heap on the sidewalk, and groaned and yelped as his limbs straightened out.
"Shut up," Cassie whispered, trying to haul him onto his feet. Between the stun blasts and his contorted position during the drive he was in rough shape, and it was quite a while before he could stand, leaning heavily on the car. At last he straightened up and stuck a hand in his pocket. He came out with a key fob and leaned in to touch it to the dash of the car. When both doors were closed and he and Cassie were out of the way, the car glided off to find the hotel parking lot.
The hotel, mercifully, was largely automated. There was no one on hand to notice their antics. Jerry led the way to a bounce tube and they rose to the fourth floor, the top of the building.
He had a modest room, a typical hotel room with a few token medieval touches. The walls were swirled to look like plaster, and a shield and a pair of plastic swords decorated one wall. Jerry sprawled across the bed, draped an arm across his eyes, and groaned. "I feel awful."
"You've had a busy day," Cassie told him.
"How did I end up in your car?" He took the arm from his eyes and looked at her. "Wait a minute. That was Sykes' car, wasn’t it?"
She nodded. "Do you remember the goon squad attacking the house?"
He started to nod, then winced and put a hand to the side of his neck. "Are you sure you had to put me in the car upside-down? I've got a lump the size of a stun grenade here." He massaged the spot where his neck met his shoulder.
"I got you out of there at great risk to myself," she told him. "I refuse to apologize."
"Fair enough." He kneaded his shoulder, then lowered his hand. "I remember the fight. They blew the walls, men were coming in, I shot one, and then everything went dark."
"I was outside," she said. "I did a little shooting, and they panicked."
He blinked. "They what?"
She shrugged, grinning in spite of herself. "They scattered like a bunch of chickadees. I think they assumed I was a whole squad of cops. After all, what kind of lunatic would take on a dozen commandoes single-handed?"
That made him chuckle. "Only lunatics like you and me, I guess."
She felt her grin turn into a sour frown. "Don't get any ideas," she told him. "I still don't like you."
"I realized that when I woke up upside-down." He drew up one leg and massaged the spot where she'd dug in her elbow. "What did you do to my leg, by the way?"
"I think that was the goon squad. Never mind. What were you doing there?"
"I've had the place staked out for several days," he said. "It was a long shot, but the rumors are that either you stole some kind of Ancients tech, or you know where a whole Ancients city is. The professor is the galaxy's leading authority on the Ancients, so I went to see him. He wasn't in, so I left a few spyders around the grounds. One of them spotted you, and I went over to see if I could catch up to you." He sat up on the bed, then groaned and flopped back down. "I guess somebody else had the same idea."
It didn't even cross my mind to check for spyders. I'm getting sloppy. "Clever," she told him. "But you screwed up. You set off some kind of alarm when you broke in. That's what brought the goon squad in." She was by no means sure of it, but it was gratifying to see his eyes widen in alarm.
"Anyway, never mind that," she said. "We need to figure out what to do next. My ship's in orbit, but the lander is locked down by the cops."
"Oh
. Well, we should probably take my ship, then."
She sat on the edge of the bed. "You have a ship?" Stupid question, Cassie. How do you think he got here? "Never mind. Of course you have a ship. Where is it?"
"Docked at the free-trade station." She vaguely remembered reading about the station, a satellite in a high orbit with tariff-free shopping. "I have a pretty good AI. I could get her to pick us up."
Cassie felt herself bristle. My AI is good too, she wanted to say. It was the cheap second-hand ship that was the problem.
"Of course," he said, smirking at her, "you probably don’t want to come along. I seem to recall you ditching me on Bruma. I guess you don't really want my help."
She glared at him.
"All right, all right. Do you still have the kid with you?"
Cassie nodded.
"I've got lots of room. My ship's a six-seater. We'll manage, so long as you packed light." He rolled onto his side and swung his feet to the floor, grunting. "Ouch. You and those commandoes really tuned me up."
"Hey, I rescued you!"
"I know, I know." His hand massaged the base of his neck. "It's a rescue I won't be forgetting any time soon, I assure you."
"Don't push it, you…" She saw the grin on his face and ground her teeth together. "Shut up. Let's just get out of here." Hotels would be some of the first places the cops would look for the perpetrators behind the mayhem at Sykes' house.
He nodded and stood. "I'll get Suki to touch down at the landing field. We'll jump on board and get out of there before anyone can stick a grapple on her."
Cassie nodded and headed for the door. And froze as a chime sounded. She looked at Jerry.
He shrugged. "We're not going out the window," he said. "Might as well see who it is."
If it's the cops, we're sunk. If it's bounty hunters, we're dead. We've got one small laser gun between the two of us. She moved to the door and touched the security panel.
A lone bot stood in the hall, a generic humanoid servant model in a waistcoat and dark trousers. Cassie looked at Jerry, shrugged, and opened the door.
