by Timothy Zahn
"Colonel?" Wei whispered urgently.
"Hold your fire," Holloway murmured. "Maybe they'll be happy with wrecking the aircar and go away."
Melinda swallowed, jolted back to the deadly realities of the situation. These weren't just a new species of self-starfaring aliens come here for her to examine.
These were the Conquerors. They were here to kill.
Four more of the aliens had joined the first two, the newcomers waiting beside the craft as the first pair picked their way across the rubble to the side of the aircar. They looked inside, and through the pulsating wind from the rotors Melinda could hear them saying something. An amplified voice answered back. "Well, they know we got out," Holloway murmured beside her. "Let's see how badly they want to find us."
The answer was quick and decisive. Within a few seconds the vehicle had lifted smoothly back into the sky, rising ten meters before coming to a halt. Fanning out, the six Conquerors on the ground started toward the trees where Holloway had thrown the decoy disk.
"Shouldn't we open fire?" Wei asked tensely, his knuckles tight where he gripped his assault gun.
"All in good time," Holloway told him, squinting upward at the hovering vehicle. "You and I will try to take out the copter. Set for full antiarmor, then whistle Crane and Bremmer that they're to hit the ground troops when we open fire."
"Yes, sir," Wei said, lifting his whistle and launching into a short series of blasts.
The Conquerors stopped, dropping down into half-crouched stances, their heads darting back and forth as they searched for the source of the sound. Melinda tensed, but the odd pitch of the whistle seemed to defeat their efforts to locate it. Wei finished his message, and for a moment the Conquerors remained where they were - again, Melinda thought, almost as if deliberately inviting attack. But again Holloway held his fire, and after a moment they straightened up and continued their cautious march toward the trees.
"Sir?" Wei hissed nervously.
"Get ready," Holloway said. He threw a glance at Melinda, and she was struck by the underlying calmness in his face. "Brace yourself, Doctor; this is going to be noisy. Wei, on zero. Three, two, one, zero."
The two assault guns erupted in unison, shattering the quiet of the forest with the vicious stutter-bark of explosive shells cycled together with what sounded like small missiles. An instant later the sound was echoed from across the woods as the other Peacekeepers and civilians opened fire.
Melinda pressed closer to the ground, squeezing her eyes shut, cringing as the multiple thunderclaps of explosions pounded against her ears and head. Through the noise she could faintly hear shouts; through her closed eyelids she could see flickers and flashes of brilliant light -
And then there was a violent crash that picked her up and slammed her to the ground again.
And silence.
Cautiously, she opened her eyes and lifted her head a few centimeters. Sprawled on the ground in her line of sight were the unmoving forms of the nearest Conquerors, their jumpsuits spattered with very humanlike red blood. Beyond them the crumpled form of the copter lay canted and burning against the ground perhaps thirty meters behind their wrecked aircar. Crane and Bremmer, along with the three civilians, were making their way across the open land toward the copter. "Is it over?" she asked, not realizing until she said it how inane the question probably sounded.
But if Holloway agreed with that assessment, he didn't say so. "For the moment," he said. "No, stay put - we're holding backstop position. You hurt?"
"Just a little shaken," she said, coughing on the words. The air was thick with acrid smoke from the explosions and fire, burning her nose and lungs. "What happens now?"
"If they're all dead, we head for the canyon," Holloway told her. "They might have backup on the way; and if they didn't before, they probably do now."
Melinda looked over at the pressure bandage on Wei's sprained ankle. "It's going to be a long walk."
"The alternatives aren't any more pleasant," Holloway countered. "Keep quiet, and watch."
Across the clearing the Peacekeepers and civilians had reached the downed Conqueror copter. Much of the smoke had blown away now, and Melinda could see dozens of what looked like thin cracks crisscrossing the milky-white surface. One of the Peacekeepers - the pilot Bremmer, Melinda tentatively identified him - fired a short burst at the side of the craft, blowing the door off. "Take it careful," Holloway muttered under his breath. "Slow and careful." Lowering his assault gun slightly, Bremmer stepped to the hatchway and eased his head in for a look inside -
And with a shout jumped back away from the copter as a Conqueror staggered out.
Melinda gasped. But even as the Conqueror grabbed the edge of the doorway and pulled himself upright, Bremmer took a step forward and jabbed the muzzle of his assault gun hard into the alien's upper torso. The Conqueror might have gasped - Melinda couldn't tell for sure - and staggered backward. One of the civilians jumped in behind him, bringing his weapon over the alien's head into a choke hold against his neck. The Conqueror reached up to the gun, but for all his obvious straining was unable to budge it.
"Watch it," Holloway muttered. "Real careful. Get him on the ground before you search him." Across the way Bremmer handed his weapon to Crane and stepped up to the alien -
And in that instant the Conqueror struck.
Melinda didn't see clearly what happened, only that Bremmer abruptly jerked back and to the side, his neck erupting into a spray of blood as he fell to the ground.
"Get away from him!" Holloway shouted, snapping up his assault gun.
But too late. Even as someone screamed - even as Crane dropped the second weapon that was encumbering him - the Conqueror twisted his head to the side beneath the pressure against his neck... and this time Melinda had a horrifyingly clear view of the attack. From the alien's mouth something knifelike lanced out, slicing cleanly through the neck of the man behind him. There was another scream, this one gurgling horribly, as he collapsed into a heap. The Conqueror grabbed for the assault gun now sliding loosely down his torso -
And then Crane opened fire, and the Conqueror seemed to explode into fragments and a spray of blood.
Melinda stared at the scene, her whole body shaking violently, her stomach twisting and sick as it hadn't been since her first year of medical school. She'd seen the documentaries on the wars the Peacekeepers had been involved in over the past thirty-seven years - the wars and the police actions and the pacifications. But neither that nor her medical training had prepared her for this. This was dangerous, bloody, and real.
And in the deepest core of her being she understood, perhaps for the first time, that she was truly and genuinely in the middle of a war.
She took a shuddering breath. Yes, she was in a war. But she was also a doctor in a war, with all the responsibilities that went along with that. Including her promise to Holloway. "I'm going over there," she said, standing up. "There might be something I can do."
"Sure," Holloway said, his voice angry and bitter and not believing for a second that there was any hope at all for the two men. "Wei, stay here. Keep a sharp eye."
They made it across the scarred ground without incident. To discover that there had indeed been no urgent need for the trip.
"Dead?" Holloway asked.
Melinda nodded, standing up again. Her heart was still pounding, but at least her stomach was settling down a little. The trick was to try to think of this as clinically as possible. To see them as medical subjects, not as murdered men. "Slashed carotid arteries," she said. "Both of them." She looked at Crane. "Did you see what happened?"
He shook his head. "Happened too fast. Some kind of weapon - came out of his mouth - "
"Hold it," Holloway cut him off, his eyes gazing hard at nothing in particular.
Melinda frowned. And then she heard it too: an all-too-familiar humming sound -
"Cover!" Holloway barked, grabbing her arm and pulling hard. Yanked off balance, Melinda fell to the ground, rolli
ng partway over to bump her shoulder into the side of the downed copter. Holloway threw himself protectively on top of her as the others hit the scorched ground beside them.
And with an angry blast of hurricane wind three more Conqueror copters shot past overhead.
From the trees came the stutter-bark of an assault gun as Wei opened fire. One of the copters twisted to the side, shivering under the barrage as multiple explosions scattered bits of white from its underside. Above her Melinda could hear Holloway shouting something, his weight shifting and his elbow digging painfully into her ribs as he swung up his assault gun. All three copters were firing now, brilliant flickering bursts of laser fire tracking toward Wei's position in the trees. Melinda shrank back against the hot side of the downed copter as, all around her, Holloway and the others also began firing. One of the copters swung back around toward this new threat, ignoring the explosive shells raking across its side, its lasers lancing across the ground toward them. Melinda half closed her eyes, wondering how it would feel to die -
And with a flash of blue-white fire, the side of the copter blew out. Twisting over like a wounded animal, it plunged to a shattering impact on the ground. The other two copters abandoned their attack on Wei, swinging around just as twin blurs of black and white screamed past overhead.
The two Corvines had arrived.
The copters swung around again, their lasers trying to track the fighters. But the Corvines had already cut into impossibly tight turns and were coming back around again in some kind of double flanking maneuver. The copters fired, missed, fired again -
And disintegrated together in twin bursts of flame as the Corvines roared past.
The fragments hit the ground, the thunder of the explosions faded away, and then there was silence except for the ringing in Melinda's ears. "You all right?" Holloway asked, his voice sounding faint and distant despite the fact that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek.
"You keep asking me that," she chided, her own voice sounding no clearer than his did. Considering all her eardrums had been through, she was probably lucky she could hear anything at all. "What now?"
"We get out of here," he said, rolling off her and getting to his feet. "Crane, go check on Wei. The rest of you - "
"Colonel Holloway?" a voice called.
Holloway looked to the left. "Over here," he called back.
Melinda stood up as a man in Peacekeeper uniform came around the side of their protective copter, his assault gun held ready. "Colonel," he said, and even through her dazed ears Melinda could hear the relief in his voice. "Thank God, sir - we thought they'd iced you. We've got an aircar around back that way."
"Thanks," Holloway said. "Any status reports yet?"
"I haven't heard anything, sir," the other said. "Everyone's keeping off the radio. I know the Conquerors have taken the settlement, though, and that some of the other transports in that last batch are overdue. The Corvines have gone off to run cover for the search ships."
"All right," Holloway said grimly. "Let's get going before they need to bail us out again. Send someone to go give Crane a hand." He glanced at Melinda. "And have someone pick up one of those Conqueror bodies over there - grab whichever's in the best shape. Get a couple of their weapons, too."
Three minutes later they were in the air again. Melinda found herself looking past the dirty, powder-stained men to stare at the body bags that had been hastily piled in the rear of the craft. The war had indeed begun... and she was indeed here in the middle of it.
"Sorry you didn't leave when you had the chance?" Holloway asked quietly from beside her.
She turned to look at him. Those cool brown eyes were studying her closely. Maybe trying to decide if she was going to be more trouble than she was worth in the coming days. "I'm sorry any of this had to happen at all," she said. "I wish we could all have started by talking instead of shooting."
"We did," he reminded her bluntly. "It was the Conquerors who came out shooting."
"Maybe we scared them."
"Or maybe they just aren't interested in talking," Holloway countered. "There are all sorts of people, Doctor, humans and nonhumans alike, for whom talking just slows down the process of taking whatever it is they want. You run into one of them... well, you're a doctor. You know that sometimes there's only one way to stop a rabid animal."
He looked past her at the body bags. "Let's just hope the politicians have the guts to do it before anyone else has to die."
Melinda looked at the body bags again, a shiver running up her back. "You're talking about CIRCE."
"Damn right I am," he said. "I don't know what the geniuses at NorCoord are waiting for, anyway. I'd have started reassembling the thing the day the Jutland force was hit."
"Political considerations, probably," Melinda said. Pheylan had gone into a CIRCE kick, she remembered, when he was a child. Something he'd said then...
"You'd know more about that than I would," Holloway grunted. "Maybe this will finally get them off their soft seats and doing something."
"Maybe," Melinda said. "Colonel, you were in supreme command of the Peacekeeper forces on Dorcas, weren't you?"
"Still am," he said. "For whatever it's worth. Why? - you want the job?"
"No," Melinda said. "I was just wondering if you'd have known if any of the CIRCE components were being stored here."
For a long moment Holloway just stared at the body bags, his face rigid. "Oh, hell," he murmured at last.
Melinda's heart seemed to skip a beat. "Is one of them here?"
"I don't know," Holloway said, his face still tight. "Local commanders never do. But if it is, there's only one likely place it could be."
"Back at the garrison?"
"Not quite that bad," he said. "But bad enough. There's a small automated tectonic-monitoring station in the hills just north of the settlement that some NorCoord agency put in a few years back. At least, that's what they told me it was. If it's really the storage point for a CIRCE component - " He shook his head. "The good part is that it's well enough snugged in underground that the Conquerors probably won't know anything's there. The bad part is that we can't get to it without having to practically walk into their arms."
"So what do we do?"
"I don't know," Holloway conceded. "But it's not exactly a priority. First job for us is to dig in and get ready for whatever the Conquerors decide to throw at us. If we survive... well, we'll see then what we can do."
18
From the strangely shaped control board wrapped around Hill came a shrill warble, jarring Cavanagh out of a light and troubled doze. "What is it?" he asked, straining to see in the dim light of the indicators and subsidiary displays. "Hill?"
The warbling cut off. "It's all right, sir," Hill said, his silhouette moving across the tiny colored lights as he shifted in his seat. "Just a proximity warning, Mrach style. We're coming up on Phormbi."
Cavanagh squinted at his watch. Seven hours, approximately, since that mad scramble out of Mig-Ka City. "Do we know where we're going?"
"Yes, sir, the Northern Wooded Steppes. There's a map and a little bit about the place on the computer here. With your permission I'm going to key the auto-entry to bring us in on the night side. Try to avoid whatever they've got in the way of a traffic pattern."
"Fine," Cavanagh said, rubbing his eyes. Between the interrupted sleep on Mra-mig and all the adrenaline surges since then, he was feeling desperately tired.
"Kolchin? You awake?"
"Yes, sir," the other's voice came softly. "I think Fibbit's still in that cold-sleep of hers. You want me to try to wake her?"
"Don't bother," Cavanagh said, his ears still ringing from that proximity alarm. Either that cold-sleep was incredibly hard to break, or else Duulian hearing was on a par with Duulian night vision. "Hill, do you have any idea what the landing procedure's going to be like?"
"None at all, sir," Hill said. "I've never been to a Yycroman world before. But I'm sure one of the interdiction
ships will be able to tell us."
"Let's hope it's short and quick," Kolchin said. "Could be awkward if word of our departure from Mra-mig arrives while we're still up here chatting."
"At least we know the news couldn't have beaten us here," Hill pointed out. "That's something."
"Yes," Kolchin said. "Lord Cavanagh, I've been thinking about what happened back there at the hotel. Your suggestion that what we saw was a power struggle between Mrach factions?"
"Yes. And?"
"Another possibility's occurred to me. That red card Bronski showed you - could it have been a forgery?"
Cavanagh frowned into the darkness. "Interesting thought," he agreed. "I've never seen one up close before, and I didn't take the time to examine this one."
"Same here," Kolchin said. "But that might explain why the Mrachanis didn't send a representative up with him. And why he didn't haul us away when he had the numbers on his side."
"And perhaps explain the incident at the elevators," Cavanagh added slowly. "If Faction A issues official red cards, but Bronski was actually working for Faction B, Faction A might have sent the Bhurtala to bring him in."
"But why would a NorCoord diplomat be working for the Mrachanis?" Hill objected.
"We only have Bronski's word that he's a NorCoord diplomat," Kolchin reminded him. "If he can forge a red card, a diplomatic ID isn't going to be a problem."
"All of which brings us back to the man in Fibbit's threading," Cavanagh said. An odd and not entirely pleasant thought had suddenly occurred to him. "New line of thought, Kolchin. What are the chances that the whole Bhurtala thing at the hotel was a setup? That the Mrachanis fed us this tip about Phormbi and then deliberately let us escape?"
