by David Weber
“Get the team ready,” he said. Qwezyr looked at him, and he shrugged. “I don’t like it,” he told her quietly, “and I trust Fyrmalyk’s judgment, but who knows how Earthians think? I sure as Dwomo don’t, and we need to be ready whatever happens.”
* * *
FYRMALYK JYRKHOLTARN HAD never heard of “chemical sniffers,” and she had no idea that the remote hidden in the landscaped courtyard’s carefully shaped shrubbery had detected the propellant of the eight-millimeter automatic holstered under her hospital kilt. But she knew the female Earthian wasn’t supposed to be wandering around the garden. She was supposed to be helping her partner keep an eye on the Earthian doctor until their scheduled departure.
The Earthian bodyguard’s mirrored visor was lowered, hiding her face and her eyes. Her rifle was slung, but her right hand rested on the butt of a pistol which probably made Fyrmalyk’s automatic look like a child’s toy.
The special operations starth forced her nasal flaps to remain calm, but her heart raced. The last thing they needed was to have the Earthians changing up the schedule! No one had explained to her exactly why the timing was so critical, but she didn’t need anyone to give her a map.
* * *
“WHATCHA GOT, FANNI?” Tomas Alvarado’s voice said in Somogyi Fanni’s cochlear implant.
“Looks like just an orderly on her lunch break,” Somogyi replied, taking in the small, slender Sarthian female, the crumpled paper bag on the bench behind her, and the half-eaten piece of some brightly colored local fruit in her right hand. The Sarthian stood on the far side of the courtyard, looking at her across the waist high—on Somogyi, not a Sarthian—fountain splashing at its center.
“Little early for lunch,” Alvarado said thoughtfully.
“Might be supper, depending on her shift,” Somogyi pointed out.
“Guess it could be,” Alvarado agreed with a chuckle, but his tone remain serious. “You see anything that could have pinged the remote?”
“Negative. Think it’s a glitch?”
“I think I’m not going to assume it’s a glitch. Make a sweep. Let’s make sure somebody didn’t leave an explosive surprise under one of the benches.”
“Roger that,” Somogyi agreed with feeling and keyed her visor’s multimode sensor function as she started forward.
* * *
“GOOD MORNING.” FYRMALYK put a careful note of shyness into her voice as she greeted the Earthian. “Can I help you, Sir? Or Ma’am?”
She let her nasal flaps flutter in obvious embarrassment as she deliberately “flubbed” the Earthian’s gender. The innocent youngster was one of her better personae, and she knew she did it well. It was a little harder to remember that this time as the alien’s head swiveled, and she found herself looking at that blank mirror of a visor.
“No, I’m fine, thank you,” the Earthian said. Her translated voice sounded as normal as any Earthian’s voice ever did, despite the closed visor. “Tell me,” she continued, “have you been here long?”
“I just came out to eat on my lunch break,” Fyrmalyk said.
“Has anyone else passed through in the last few kysaqs?”
“No,” Fyrmalyk said cautiously.
“I see,” the Earthian said, and Fyrmalyk drew an unobtrusive breath of relief as the alien shook her head in understanding.
* * *
“SOMETHING A LITTLE weird here, Tom,” Somogyi said quietly over the com.
“Define ‘weird,’” Alvarado said tautly.
“Got a kid here. Seems like a nice enough sort. But the emotional overlay’s … off somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
“She seems polite, helpful,” Somogyi replied. “Looks pretty relaxed, too, to me. But the overlay’s reading an awful lot of anxiety. And the software says she’s fibbing to me about what she’s doing out here.”
“Don’t like that.”
“Me neither,” Somogyi agreed, moving casually farther into the courtyard. “Could just be that she’s not on break. Maybe she’s worried we’ll tell her supervisor she’s playing hooky from her job.”
“You want to put any money on that?” Alvarado asked cynically, un-slinging his rifle.
“Not so much, no,” Somogyi said. She moved another ten yards into the courtyard, sweeping the ornamental plantings with her helmet sensors and finding exactly nothing. Then she turned her head casually in the Sarthian’s direction.
* * *
FYRMALYK WATCHED THE alien, wishing fervently that she had a better grasp—in fact, any grasp—of Earthian body language.
* * *
“GUN!” SOMOGYI SAID as her sensors picked up the unmistakable shape of a handgun under the timid young Sarthian’s kilt.
* * *
FYRMALYK MIGHT NOT know how to read Earthian body language, but she’d kept her eyes unobtrusively on the hand resting on the butt of the Earthian’s sidearm.
* * *
“PISTOL UNDER HER kilt and—” Somogyi began.
* * *
THE EARTHIAN’S FINGERS curled around her weapon.
It was the only sign she gave, and a corner of Fyrmalyk’s brain recognized a fellow professional.
* * *
THE SARTHIAN VANISHED. Her knees buckled, and she dropped straight down, disappearing behind the solid bulk of the fountain, and Somogyi dove for the ground on her side of it even as her own sidearm cleared its holster.
“Oswald!” she snapped, and her phone’s AI automatically shunted the transmission to the central command channels.
* * *
“TALK TO ME, Fanni,” Alvarado said, his voice tense. “What’s going on?”
“The Sarthian made a move on me,” Somogyi said. “I’m trying to catch her.”
She worked her way around the fountain to where she’d seen the Sarthian go to ground, but the young female was gone. If she wasn’t there, that meant—
CRAAAAACK!
Somogyi was halfway through spinning around to look behind her when the round hit her, and her left shoulder blade exploded in a white-hot ball of pain. The eight-millimeter bullet aided her spin, and she threw herself to the side. A second round ricocheted off the pavement next to her as the female’s point of aim couldn’t keep up with her sudden change of direction.
“I’m hit—” she called, but then she slammed into the ground and anything else she would have said was lost in a scream as her shattered shoulder crashed against the concrete.
“Hold on!” Alvarado urged. “Help is on the way!”
Somogyi knew whatever help was coming would be too late—for her, anyway—and rolled onto her back to face her assailant. Somehow, she’d held onto the pistol, and she tried to aim it, but the Sarthian was faster and fired again. Pain exploded in Somogyi’s right leg, and she jerked as she fired. Instead of hitting the Sarthian in the chest area, the round went higher and through the young female’s head, blowing off most of her crest as it exited.
* * *
CRAAAAACK!
“Oh, excrement!” Fist Weyrkyn snarled as the unmistakable sound of a pistol shot exploded through the lounge’s door.
CRAAAAACK!
“Go!” he barked. “Go, Dwomo dammit! Send Code White, Gersyl!”
“Yes, Sir!” the radioman acknowledged, and as Weyrkyn followed Thirty-Six Qwezyr and the rest of the team out the door, he heard Gersyl speaking into the microphone of the big backpack field radio.
“Code White. Team Razdyr, Code White. I say again, Razdyr is Code White!”
* * *
“I’M HIT TWICE,” Somogyi said with a grunt as she tried to sit up. “Shoulder and leg, but I got her.” She took a look at her downed assailant. “She’s dead.”
Somogyi saw the fountain two meters away—it seemed much farther—and began pushing her way towards it. She could brace her back against it until the rapid response team arrived. She wouldn’t be a hundred percent combat effective, but maybe she could be seventy percent … at least until she passed out from blo
od loss. Her leg was useless—the bullet had hit the bone and broken it—and it took all of her discipline not to scream again as she worked her way over to the fountain with one arm and one leg.
“Stay there,” Alvarado said. “We’re en route.”
“No,” she panted through her teeth. “Stay under cover. May be more of them.”
“Mierda! You’re right—there are more! I have motion on Alpha Three, Alpha Four and Alpha Seven. You’re surrounded! I’m coming to help!”
Seven and Three were on opposite sides of the courtyard; if they were bad guys who knew she was there, she was trapped. It was possible the Sarthians were first responders coming to investigate the shots fired … but it was also very possible that the movement was from other members of the young female’s team. Somogyi dropped the nanite injector she’d just pulled from her first aid kit and grabbed her pistol again. With her shoulder damaged, the rifle was impractical. Motion to her left made her spin in that direction, but it drove her damaged shoulder into the side of the fountain. Pain blossomed again, clouding her sight. Through the pain she could see rifles in the hands of the newcomers—rifles that were aimed at her!
She fired several times, and might even have hit a couple of them, but then another rifle fired from behind her. She barely felt the rounds that ripped through her chest.
* * *
ALVARADO LOOKED AROUND wildly as a fusillade of shots crackled viciously outside.
“What?” Yamazaki asked. “What’s going on?”
“I need someplace to stash you while I go help Fanni,” Alvarado replied. He was faced with a corridor of closed doors, and, besides the one that led into the lecture hall, he had no idea what was behind any of them. Alvarado knew only one thing—he had to get Yamazaki somewhere safe!
A door opened behind him, and he spun around to find Sarthians pouring from the lecture hall. Most of them saw Alvarado and went running in the opposite direction, but some—probably seeing the wide-open passageway behind him—came running in his direction.
“Other way!” he yelled, leveling his rifle at the oncoming Sarthians. When they kept coming, he raised the muzzle of his rifle slightly and the corridor’s ceiling erupted in a haze of dust as he fired a couple of rounds over their heads.
“Turn around, or I will shoot you!” Most of the Sarthians stopped and turned, but one kept coming. “I mean it!” he added.
“No!” Yamazaki yelled. “Don’t shoot him!”
“If he doesn’t stop, I’ll have to!”
“No,” a voice said in Qwernian from behind him. Something hard and metallic pressed into his neck below his helmet. “He was talking to me.”
Alvarado turned to find at least eight Sarthians pointing rifles at him, along with a ninth who pointed a pistol at his face. While there was a chance his helmet visor might stop the pistol’s bullet, with that many rifles aimed at him, from that close, he knew he had no choice. Besides, one of them also held a bead on Yamazaki’s head, and Alvarado knew there was no way he could stop the soldier from killing the doctor.
He lowered his rifle, and the Sarthian with the pistol took it from him.
* * *
DR. YAMAZAKI SIGHED; his warning to Alvarado had been misinterpreted. He watched as the Sarthian trooper disarmed Alvarado, taking both his rifle and pistol, as the Sarthian who’d been fleeing towards them came to a stop next to Alvarado.
“Well done,” the Sarthian, who had been sitting in the front row of Yamazaki’s presentation, said. He reached up to unsnap Alvarado’s helmet and removed it, then took the pistol from the trooper who was pointing it at Alvarado. The Sarthian doctor looked over at Yamazaki for a second, then put the barrel of the pistol to Alvarado’s temple and fired.
Alvarado’s head snapped back, and he collapsed to the floor. It only took a second for blood to begin pooling.
“Now,” the Sarthian doctor said, “will you come along with us willingly, or will I have to shoot you, too?”
* * *
“IS IT REALLY necessary to leave this early, Ståle?”
Fikriyah Batma’s tone was plaintive, but her black eyes twinkled at Sergeant Ståle Floden as she stepped out onto the spacious veranda of the palatial mansion Clan Ruler Juzhyr had made available for her on Diplomats’ Row. They were barely two blocks from the Imperial Palace, which made it a very prestigious address indeed, but she’d been offered an even more prestigious one—Abu Bakr’s old suite in the Palace itself. She’d turned the offer down, arguing that such prestigious quarters should be reserved solely for Abu Bakr, not his assistant. What had happened to other “Earthians” over the last few local weeks had nothing at all to do with that decision on her part, of course.
She’d only gotten back on-planet and into the mansion a few hours ago, and now they were leaving it again, thanks to Myrcal’s demand that Abu Bakr—personally—return to Kwyzno nar Qwern. Could ou talk to her? Oh, no! Of course not! It had to be Abu Bakr, and she wished she could think that was a good sign. Unfortunately.…
“Well, I suppose how early we leave depends on exactly what you want, Ma’am.” The towering Floden—the E-5 was a good thirty-two centimeters taller than Batma … and she was as tall as any Sarthian she’d ever met—never looked at her. Those icy blue eyes, the same shade as his native Norwegian fjords, were too busy scanning the peaceful street scene before them.
“Really? I get a vote?” she teased.
“Of course you do, Ma’am. You get to vote on when you want to arrive. I get to vote on everything else.” He shrugged, those eyes still never stopping their steady sweeping motion. “You said you wanted to be on the ground to meet Ambassador Bakr. So—”
He waved one hand gently at the steps leading from the veranda to ground level.
“But he’s not even going to land for another twenty or twenty-five minutes, and it’s only five minutes to the airport,” she pointed out.
“Yes, Ma’am, it is,” Floden agreed, forbearing to mention that he’d told the Qwernian Army gauntlet—the equivalent of a Planetary Union major—who was the Terran diplomatic mission’s official liaison that they’d be leaving only ten minutes before Abu Bakr’s arrival. He didn’t think Batma would have complained about his “misleading” the Qwernians (lying was such an ugly word) after the earlier attacks—she was a lot less trusting than some, like Theodore Berke, for example—but it was so much simpler to not find out.
* * *
“THE EARTHIAN FIKIRYAH is leaving early, Tysan,” Lance Swaygan announced, and Myrcal MyrFarZol swallowed a curse.
“Is your team in position to seize her now?” ou asked sharply.
“We have an entire company in place—two platoons each in the mansions on either side of the Earthian’s residence,” Swaygan replied.
“So your team is in position to seize her?” Why was it the military could never give simple yes or no answers?
“Yes, Tysan. They’ll have to emerge from their hides first, though, and if the Earthians are alert, they’re bound to see them coming.”
“That doesn’t sound like very good planning on someone’s part, Lance,” Myrcal observed in a chill tone.
“It’s not ideal, no, Tysan.” Swaygan’s nasal flaps were tight. “It’s the best we could do, however. We had to breach the basements’ walls and infiltrate our people in through the storm drains to avoid any Earthian aerial reconnaissance. We’re actually lucky we were able to gain access at all.”
Myrcal recognized the controlled anger in Swaygan’s tone and ous nasal flaps rose in a placating smile.
“I didn’t mean to sound as if I were criticizing, Lance,” ou lied. “I suppose I’m feeling a few preshow jitters of my own.”
“Understandable, Tysan.”
“Will it make any difference in the end?”
“Probably not, Tysan. A lot depends on the timing, of course. If she’s on the ground at the airport by the time Ambassador Abu arrives, they should both be in the open at the critical moment, and we have two full bat
talions earmarked for that.”
Myrcal shook his head a bit impatiently. The notion of using Abu Bakr’s honor guard to capture him had been ous idea, after all. Well, ous chief of staff’s, anyway.
“It would certainly be less problematical to take both of them there than trying to overwhelm her escort in the city confines,” the lance continued. “I’m sure we can do it. I’m just not sure how many casualties we’ll take or how long we’ll have before the Earthians’ quick response teams arrive.”
Myrcal shook ous head in understanding, hiding a fresh flash of irritation at yet more qualifiers. The military mind did have a tendency to cover its excreter, didn’t it?
* * *
“EIGHTEEN MORE MINUTES to Kwyzo nar Qwern, Sir,” Malachi Dvorak said.
“Oh, joy,” Abu Bakr responded.
“Hey, look at it this way,” Malachi said. “If it’s a pain for you, those poor bastards out there probably haven’t enjoyed it very much, either.”
He twitched his head at the passenger compartment’s visual display. No one really needed it, since all of them could tie directly into the sensors’ feed and watch it on their corneal implants, but humans—and especially humans who’d grown to adulthood before the invasion—liked more “conventional” displays. At the moment, that display showed the dozen Qwernian Army Air Force Shyrmal fighters accompanying the Airaavatha. The entire notion of an “escort” of air-breathing, propeller-driven aircraft was ridiculous, but the Qwernians had insisted that the Empire’s honor required them to ensure their Earthian guests’ safety against any threat.
The Shyrmal was a single-engine fighter that was actually fairly impressive for a prop-driven aircraft. Its cruise speed, however, was about twenty-five kilometers per hour slower than the Airaavatha’s current leisurely—for it—pace. In fact, they were within twenty kilometers per hour or so of the fighters’ maximum level speed, which had to be galling to their pilots. After all, they knew the Airaavatha was an IFV that maneuvered like a homesick rock compared to Earthian aircraft. Worse, at this speed, their maximum endurance was only about thirty minutes, even with auxiliary fuel tanks. The Airaavatha was on its second set of Shyrmals, and the current escort was due to be replaced in about five minutes.
