by Timothy Zahn
"You're right," he said, his voice shaking openly now. "All right—I've got everything locked down."
"Make sure you didn't miss any of the windows, even small ones," I warned. "I'll call you when I've figured out what we're going to do. You'd better wait in the meditation room, where there aren't any windows."
"What about the coral?"
"You may have to abandon it," I said.
"No," he said flatly.
I rolled my eyes. People and their possessions …"Fine," I said. "Then go ahead and start packing it for travel. Don't touch it, though. I've heard of people getting badly poisoned with scratches from Modhran coral."
"I've got some gloves right here," he said. "But it's going to take a couple of days at least to work up the documentation to get it off-planet."
"Even given the fact you've already got that documentation started?"
There was another short pause. "How did you know?"
"Because you were clearly the one who swore out that arrest warrant for me," I told him. "You were hoping the cops could keep me off your back long enough for you to sneak your coral off New Tigris. How far did you get on the paperwork?"
He sighed. "Not far enough," he said. "It'll still take at least two days."
"Maybe I can come up with a shortcut," I said. "I'll be there to help as soon as I can." "Make it fast."
"I will," I promised. "Wait a second," I added as a sudden thought struck me. "Before you start packing, go get the biggest hammer you own. If things get too tight, you may have to destroy the coral."
"Are you insane?" he demanded. "Do you know how much I paid for the stuff?"
"More than your life is worth?" I asked pointedly. "Remember, if there's nothing in your house worth stealing, there's no reason for anyone to murder you for it."
He hissed out a breath. "You're right," he said reluctantly. "It's just that …no, no, you're right."
"We'll try to keep it from coming to that," I assured him. "But you'd best be ready. Just in case."
I broke the connection. "What's going on?" Karim asked.
"Our playmates are trying to change the game," I told him, looking at Rebekah. She was still sitting in front of the boxes, still looking scared but determined. "How are you doing?"
"All right," she said. "He's not going to—"
"What the frinking—?" a slurred voice said from across the room.
I looked over the bar. McMicking was staring in feigned horror at the dead Fillies he'd just shot. Before I could say anything, he heaved himself up off the floor and began staggering toward the door.
Leaving his reader lying on the floor. "Karim—stop him," I ordered.
Karim was already hurrying toward the would-be escapee, clearly intent on making sure a paying customer didn't wander outside and get himself killed. Slipping around the end of the bar behind him, I angled over and retrieved McMicking's reader.
McMicking put up a good fight, in a shambling, uncoordinated-drunk sort of fashion, muttering incomprehensibly the whole time. By the time Karim managed to get him turned around and walking toward the relative safety of the bar, I was back in place beside Bayta, checking out the data page McMicking had left for me.
It didn't look good. The real-time locators on the Fillies' six rental cars showed that four of them were traveling across Zumurrud District in the direction of Veldrick's house. The other two cars, presumably those of the dead walkers lying on our floor, were still in their original places in the Modhri's detector array.
Karim reached the bar and started maneuvering McMicking past Bayta and me toward the far end. "Don' wanna be here," McMicking muttered. His eyes caught mine with a look of silent urgency. "Wanna go home. Wanna go home now."
"You can't go home," Karim said. "It's not safe."
"It's not exactly safe here, either," I put in. "Maybe we should just let him go."
"What, through the middle of a fire zone?" Karim countered with a snort.
"They didn't shoot Dawid when he left," I reminded him. "They seem to have a pretty good idea of who their targets are."
"He stays here," Karim said firmly. Brushing past us, he guided McMicking to the other end of the bar.
Bayta moved close to me. "What is it?" she asked quietly.
"The Modhri's doing it again," I told her. "Giving us the choice of sticking with Rebekah or nailing Veldrick's stash of coral."
I tapped the reader's display. "Only this time he's also tossing Veldrick's life into the pot."
Bayta looked at Rebekah. "We aren't abandoning her," she said.
"I wasn't suggesting we do," I said, frowning at the display. On the other hand, if four of our six Fillies were heading for Veldrick's house, and the other two were lying dead at our feet, that ought to mean there was no one out there in the street pointing guns at us.
Unless the Modhri had other walkers on New Tigris we didn't know about.
I looked over at Karim as he settled McMicking onto the floor. McMicking might have a handle on that, if I could get Karim out of earshot for a couple of minutes.
Fortunately, there was an obvious way to do that. "Karim, I need you to go get your car and bring it here," I said, digging the keys out of my pocket. "It's parked about half a block north."
He gave me a disbelieving look. "You want me to do what?"
"It'll be all right," I said, showing him the reader. "See? Here are the real-time tracking marks for four of the Fillies' rental cars. That means all the survivors of the group have left."
He peered at the display. "What makes you think they don't have a few other friends?"
"Trust me," I said, trying to sound like I believed it.
He looked at Rebekah, then back at me. "All right," he said. He hesitated a heartbeat, then set his P11 down on the bar. "If they do have friends, there's no point in giving them another weapon. Back in a minute."
He skirted the edge of the bar and crossed to one of the broken windows. For a long moment he gazed out into the night. Then, getting a careful grip on the edge of the window, he hauled himself up and over the sill and disappeared out into the night.
"He won't let the coral be destroyed, you know," Rebekah warned quietly.
"Who won't?" I asked, gesturing McMicking over to us.
"The Modhri," she said. "If Mr. Veldrick tries to destroy it, the Eyes will kill him."
"I thought he just needed the coral to find you," McMicking said as he came up to us.
Rebekah shook her head. "He also needs it for …what he needs it for."
"Glad we cleared that up," I said, turning to McMicking. "Do you know if there are any other non-Humans on New Tigris at the moment?"
"There aren't," he said. "There were a few groups coming in and out over the past few months, but the last of them left about six weeks ago."
"Just after our Fillies came in?"
"About then," he confirmed.
"What about the other two torchyachts we saw at the spaceport?" Bayta asked.
"One is mine, the other is the Fillies'," McMicking told her. "According to the port records, they're still paying rent on it." He looked at Rebekah. "Must have figured that when they left, they'd need to leave in a hurry."
"Then this is our chance," I said, lowering my voice. I didn't know whether or not the polyp colonies inside the dead Fillies could still hear, but I wasn't going to take any chances. "With the walkers on their way to protect Veldrick's coral outpost, we've got a clear shot at the spaceport. I say we load Rebekah, Rebekah's boxes, Bayta, and Karim into Karim's car and send them on their way."
"What about Mr. Veldrick?" Rebekah asked.
"Unless the Modhri gets impatient, I should be able to get there fast enough to get him out," I said, skipping over the fact that McMicking and I had to go there anyway to pick up the coral.
"What about Customs?" Bayta asked.
"Not a problem," McMicking said. "Just have Karim park somewhere outside the spaceport and wait."
There was the hum of a car
engine, and I looked through the window to see Karim pull his car to the curb in front of the bar. "Bayta, you're on guard duty," I said, holstering my Beretta. "Shoot anything that moves out there that isn't us."
She nodded and headed to the left-hand broken window, the kwi held ready. "Keep an eye on the cars," I added to McMicking, handing him back his reader. "If the colonies in the dead Fillies can still hear, there's no way we're going to be able to hide the transfer from him."
He nodded and staggered his way over to the other of the broken windows, flopping down heavily in one of the chairs where he had a reasonably good view of that part of the street, picking up one of Rebekah's boxes, I headed for the door.
I had made it through our barricade and was unlocking the door when Karim came in through the window. "What are we doing?" he asked, throwing a frown at McMicking. "And he's supposed to be behind the bar."
"We're moving out, and I was curious to see how far he would get," I told him. "Not very, as you see. Grab a box and let's get this show on the road."
Despite my own assurances to the others, I nevertheless half expected the Modhri to have some stunt waiting up his sleeve. But the streets remained quiet as Karim and I loaded the boxes into his car trunk. Things remained equally quiet as we then loaded in Bayta, Rebekah, and Karim. "Remember, find a nice quiet hiding place near the spaceport and wait for my call," I told Bayta as I handed Karim back his P11.
"How long do we wait?" Karim asked. "In case—" His lips compressed briefly.
"In case I get myself killed? Half an hour," I said, picking a number out of the air. I actually had no idea how long it would take for McMicking and me to deal with the four walkers converging on Veldrick's house. "If you haven't heard from me by then, I suggest you head out of town and find somewhere to go to ground until you do hear from me."
"I know some places," Karim said, his face grim in the glow of the streetlights. "Good luck."
"You too."
He drove off, leaving me standing in the silence of the street. "You want me to get us a car?" McMicking asked through the window.
"No need," I said, feeling my throat tightening as I watched Karim's taillights disappear around a corner. Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong. But I couldn't put my finger on it.
"You want us to walk?"
I shook the vague apprehension away. "Of course not," I said, heading back into the bar. "You figure out which of the Fillies' cars is the closest. I'll get the keys to both of them."
A minute later we were striding along the deserted walkway toward one of the encirclement cars the Fillies had left behind a couple of blocks from the bar. "How do you want to work this?" McMicking asked as we walked.
"As quickly and cleanly as possible," I told him, feeling the back of my neck tingling as I threw a careful look into each alley and doorway that we passed. This still wasn't adding up. "We can't afford to let the situation settle into a stalemate."
"Agreed," McMicking said. "So you'll drop me about three blocks from Veldrick's house and go the rest of the way in alone. Hopefully, you can draw the Modhri's attention while I come in from behind."
"His attention and his fire?" I suggested dryly.
McMicking shrugged. "Would you rather I go in and you play backup?"
"I appreciate the offer," I said. Backup …"But since he already knows what I look like—"
And suddenly, it clicked. "Oh, damn," I muttered, coming to an abrupt halt.
"What?" McMicking demanded sharply, his gun coming up to ready position, his eyes darting around.
"We've been played," I said, my mind spinning with possibilities and implications. "Remember Rebekah saying that the Modhri needs Veldrick's coral for whatever he needs to do vis-à-vis the Abomination?"
"Yes, of course," McMicking said. "That's presumably why the Fillies took off so quickly when you told Veldrick to be ready to hammer it to powder."
"Presumably, yes; actually, no," I said. "If that was the whole story, he should have gone equally frantic when you and I broke into Veldrick's home earlier this evening."
"Good point," McMicking said darkly. "So why didn't he?"
"Because he doesn't need Veldrick's coral," I said. "The Fillies have an outpost of their own tucked away."
McMicking swore under his breath. "Aboard their torchyacht."
"Bingo," I confirmed grimly. "Obvious, in retrospect. The Modhri couldn't have expected to find a ready-to-use outpost waiting for his walkers on a Human world."
"Unless he found out from the other walkers who've been snooping around," McMicking pointed out.
"Right, but by then the Fillies were probably already on their way with their own coral in tow," I said. "It's not like there are a hundred places between the Filiaelian Assembly and New Tigris where you can safely stash a Modhran outpost."
"So why are we breaking our necks to get to Veldrick before he destroys his coral?" McMicking asked.
"It's worse than that," I said, pulling out my comm. "If he's got coral at the spaceport, you can bet he's moving a couple of the Fillies there, too."
"All four cars are headed to Veldrick's."
"All four cars' trackers are headed to Veldrick's," I said sourly, punching in Bayta's number. "That doesn't necessarily mean the cars themselves are. How hard would it be to pull the trackers out of the cars and load them aboard a couple of autocabs?"
McMicking's hand closed around my comm, canceling the call. "Don't call her," he said. "One of the walkers might be watching them, and a sudden change of direction would tip him off that we were on to this new wrinkle."
"We have to warn them," I insisted.
"We will," he assured me. "I'll go now."
My first thought was to remind him that Bayta and Rebekah were my responsibility, not his. My second thought was to remember that he knew that. "All right," I said. "You probably shouldn't take the other Filly car."
"I wasn't planning to," he assured me. "Watch yourself." He angled across the street, heading toward a pair of parked cars.
I started walking again toward the Filly car that had been our original goal, resisting the urge to also find an alternative mode of transport. The most important thing I could do right now was keep the Modhri thinking I'd fallen for his trick.
The second most important thing was to get Veldrick out of his mess so that I could get back to the spaceport and get Bayta out of her mess. The mess I'd put her into.
I picked up my pace. As I did so, I flipped the Beretta's selector switch to the right-hand half of the clip, the one with killrounds in it.
The Modhri was playing this game for keeps. It was about time I started doing the same.
TWELVE :
Under normal circumstances I would have approached Veldrick's house cautiously, parking a couple of blocks away and moving in on foot. But the circumstances here weren't normal. Veldrick's life was in danger, with Bayta's and Rebekah's about to be. There was no time for skulking around in the shadows.
Besides, since there was probably still a chunk of coral in my borrowed car's trunk, it wasn't like the Modhri didn't already know I was on my way.
I braked to a stop by Veldrick's yard, to find the front door of his house standing wide open. Leaving the engine running, I popped the door and dived out.
I barely made it. From behind a wide, multitrunked tree at the edge of Veldrick's lot line came a muted flash and a thudwumper slammed into the door a dozen centimeters from my hip.
My momentum was already taking me toward the rear of the car, so that was where I went, grabbing the end of the bumper as I reached it and pulling myself around behind the trunk. Even as I dropped into a crouch a second shot blew through the driver's window.
I pressed my back against the rear bumper, looking quickly around the rest of the neighborhood as I drew my Beretta and thumbed off the safety. The logical way for the Modhri to have split up his remaining forces, I knew, would have been to send two of the Fillies to the spaceport to intercept Bayta a
nd Rebekah, and the other two here to ambush me.
Unfortunately, that was my logic, which wasn't necessarily the Modhri's. I might be facing a single shooter here, or two, or maybe even three, depending on how much trouble he was expecting from me and how badly he wanted to permanently remove me from the game.
The shooter behind the tree fired again, this shot taking out the front left tire. I rose from behind the car high enough to squeeze off a round at him, stayed there just long enough to persuade any second or third shooters that I was presenting a good target, then ducked down again.
But if there were any others, they didn't avail themselves of the golden opportunity. The Filly behind the tree was the only one who fired as I dropped back into cover. This time his shot hit the pavement two meters to the left of the car and ricocheted off into the darkness.
I looked around some more, feeling the clock ticking down with each passing second. Sooner or later, no matter how messy the Modhri's diversion was, the cops were going to free up enough personnel to come find out what all the shooting was about. Even if they didn't, there might be someone in the neighborhood with a hunting rifle. I needed to get into Veldrick's house, and fast.
But I didn't dare try a sprint across that much open ground until I knew how many opponents I was facing and their approximate positions. The shooter fired again, this shot burying itself somewhere in the front of the car. The engine's idle sputtered a bit, then recovered, and I waited for the second shot that would silence it for good.
But the shot never came. Instead, the tree-based shooter fired again to the side, bouncing the shot off the pavement a couple of meters to my right.
It was a shot that made no tactical sense whatsoever. He wasn't trying to kill me—those side shots hadn't even grazed the car. He might be trying to keep me pinned down while a partner worked his way behind me, but even then the shots should have been much closer to me.
Unless he was already shooting as close to me as he dared.
I looked sideways at the trunk I was leaning against. Back in Karim's bar, the Filly walkers had gone paralytic when McMicking torched that police car half a block away, a police car that had contained a chunk of Modhran coral.
