The Widowmaker Reborn: Volume 2 of the Widowmaker Trilogy

by Mike Resnick

  His antagonist was stretched out on the floor, pistol in hand. He walked over, rolled the body on its back with the toe of his boot, and thoughtfully studied the youthful face.

  There was a sudden noise, and he noticed that Cassandra had entered the area.

  “I saw all the lights go out, and I kept waiting for some signal that you were all right,” she said. “I didn't want to walk into any gunfire.”

  “You did right.”

  She indicated the weapon that was still slung over his shoulder. “Why didn't you simply spray the room with the imploder?”

  “Look around you.”

  “I don't understand,” she said, surveying her surroundings.

  “I'd have hit a weight-bearing wall.” She looked puzzled. “These walls hold up the building,” he explained. “It would probably have collapsed on me—and even if it hadn't, I don't need the Oligarchy coming after me.”

  “Why would they care?”

  “I can get away with melting an antenna, but if I turn an entire spaceport into silly putty, I'm going to have the Navy on my tail for the rest of what figures to be a very brief life.” He paused. “I assume the spaceport is secure?”

  “No one tried to get out,” she said.

  “Yet.”

  “Ito and Blue Eyes are waiting out front. They didn't take any prisoners.”

  “Check the west wing; I don't trust that dragon.”

  “Has he ever lied to you?”

  “Not that I know of,” answered Nighthawk. “But it only takes once.”

  She shrugged. “Where will you be?”

  “Trying to locate the computer that talked to our ship—the one that has my name and the ship's registration number in it.”

  He found it before she returned, and used the imploder so that it was totally destroyed and there was no chance of experts later reconstructing the machine's memory.

  “Two dead women, and nothing is stirring,” announced Cassandra a moment later. “I suppose there could be some people hiding somewhere, but...”

  “We can't spend all night looking for them, so we'll have to assume they don't exist,” said Nighthawk. He looked around. “Okay, we're done with Phase One. We've landed, we've made it past Customs, and no one can identify us. Let's go.”

  They walked outside and joined Kinoshita and Blue Eyes.

  “So far so good,” said Nighthawk. “Now we pay a visit to the Governor.”

  “There's a hell of a military vehicle sitting empty just across the road,” noted Blue Eyes. “That baby could run through anything Hill's men throw at us.”

  “Forget it,” replied Nighthawk. “We want a nice, simple, private vehicle.”

  “Why, when we could approach him safely in something like that?” persisted the dragon.

  “Because something like that has probably got half a dozen communication devices, and since we don't know any of the codes or passwords, we'd be giving ourselves away before we went a mile.” He paused. “Try to remember: if it comes to firepower, we're totally outgunned. We're trying to sneak in, not cut a swath through Hill's army.”

  Kinoshita stared at another vehicle. “By the same token, I assume we don't want a taxi?”

  “I'd prefer not to use one,” said Nighthawk. He looked around. “You see anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Then we'll have to steal it. The second we get it moving, melt the radio.”

  Kinoshita frowned. “With the imploder?”

  “One blast and you'd melt the whole car,” said Nighthawk. “Use your laser.”

  “Uh ... I think we're going to have a little problem here,” said Kinoshita as they approached the vehicle.

  “What is it?”

  “This isn't like anything I've ever driven,” said Kinoshita. “I mean, it looks like most of the vehicles I'm used to, but the panel is configured differently, and it sure doesn't seem to run on fusion.” He peeked in through the window. “Hell, I don't even know how to start the damned thing.” He turned to Blue Eyes. “You ever drive anything quite like this on any of the worlds you've been to?”

  The dragon shook his head. “It shouldn't be too hard, though. How different can it be?”

  “Different enough,” said Kinoshita. “Unlike the other one, this isn't armored. You make any kind of mistake, however slight, and you've given us away. I mean, hell, the closer we get to Hill's mansion, the less leeway the guards will give us before they decide to shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “Enough talk,” said Nighthawk, opening a door. “Get in. I'm driving.”

  “You?” repeated Kinoshita. “But you haven't driven a vehicle in a century! You have no idea how this works.”

  “I was in one just like it the last time I was on this world. I watched what the driver did.”

  He sat behind the panel, carefully touched the right screens in the right order, and the vehicle suddenly hummed with life.

  “Well, I'll be damned!” said Kinoshita.

  “I wouldn't be at all surprised,” replied Nighthawk as the vehicle took off through the murky Periclean night.

  31.

  They'd gone a little more than nine miles when Nighthawk pulled the vehicle off the road and parked it behind a row of thick bushes.

  “What now?” asked Blue Eyes.

  “Now we walk.”

  “How far?”

  “Maybe a mile, maybe a bit less.”

  “And you don't want to attract attention by driving the rest of the way, right?” continued the dragon.

  “That's right.”

  “You don't think they're going to notice the four of us walking up to the front door?”

  “First,” answered Nighthawk, “we're not walking up to the front door, and second, I think they're going to have other things on their minds.”

  “Such as?”

  Nighthawk activated his communicator and set it to Friday's channel.

  “You still there, Friday?”

  “Yes,” replied the alien's voice.

  “Any problems yet?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Count to twenty and give ‘em hell—and then get your asses out of there.”

  Nighthawk didn't wait for a response. He deactivated the device and recommenced walking in the direction of the Governor's mansion.

  Twenty seconds later the horizon was lit up by a series of explosions. They circled to the east, each brighter and louder than the last.

  “Where did he get his hands on so many explosives?” asked Blue Eyes.

  “He's very creative,” replied Nighthawk dryly. “Come on. Stop staring—it's not a fireworks display. We've got serious work to do.”

  “Shouldn't we wait until they empty out the mansion?”

  “Everyone who's going has left already,” answered Nighthawk. “Cassius Hill's not going to leave himself totally defenseless.”

  “Look!” said Kinoshita, pointing to the northeast. “That looks like laser fire! There are snipers out there!”

  “That means Tuesday Eddie got through,” said Nighthawk, increasing his pace.

  “So that accounts for Tuesday Eddie and Friday,” said Blue Eyes. “And I know Big Johann was jamming their transmissions. But where is Pallas Athene and her group?”

  “Around,” said Nighthawk.

  “You still don't trust me?” demanded the dragon.

  “It's not a matter of trust. If you're captured, you can't tell what you don't know.”

  “And what if you're captured?”

  “I won't be,” replied Nighthawk with such absolute calm and certainty that Blue Eyes was suddenly afraid of him.

  “Is that it?” asked Kinoshita as the huge mansion came into view.

  “That's it,” said Cassandra coldly. “I've waited a long time for this day.”

  Blue Eyes started walking, prepared to use the extensive landscaping for cover, but Nighthawk laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Wait,” he said.

  “What for?” responded the dragon
. “We're sitting ducks out here.”

  “This whole place is honeycombed with security devices,” said Nighthawk.

  “Then how—?”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  Cassandra stared at the ground ahead of her, and finally looked up. “There's a web of sensors throughout the yard. They're about a foot off the ground so animals won't set them off. I'm wearing infra-red lenses, so I can see them. Walk exactly where I walk, and you should be all right. When we get to where they're too closely aligned to walk between them, I'll crawl beneath them until I get to the power source and deactivate them.”

  She began walking in a complex route, turning every few steps, showing them how to avoid the unseen sensor beams, every now and then warning one of them that he was getting too near a beam. Finally, when they were perhaps two hundred yards from the house, she gestured them all to kneel down and wait for her signal.

  She got onto her belly and slithered beneath the beams that only she could see. In a moment she was one with the darkness, and even Nighthawk, who possessed excellent night vision, couldn't spot her.

  He made himself as comfortable as he could on the cool, damp lawn and contented himself with watching the now-sporadic explosions and increasing laser fire. After what seemed an hour, but was probably closer to ten minutes, Cassandra walked back and joined them.

  “It's safe now,” she whispered. “At least until we're inside the house.”

  “Then what?” asked Kinoshita.

  “Guards, alarms, robots,” she said. “You name it, he's got it.”

  “I assume you have a plan?” said Blue Eyes to Nighthawk. “Other than sending me up to the roof, I mean?”

  “You know what you have to know,” said Nighthawk.

  “Damn it, I have a right to know what's going on!” persisted the dragon. “Why do I have to climb up to the roof? Cassandra says there are alarms in the house. The house is all lit up, so infra-red lenses won't help. How are you going to get around them?”

  “I'm not,” responded Nighthawk.

  “You're just going to blithely walk through the house setting them all off?”

  “That's right.”

  “You're crazy!” snapped the dragon.

  “You're welcome to think so,” said Nighthawk, “but keep your voice down or you'll get us all shot before we even enter the mansion.”

  Blue Eyes glared at him, but didn't say anything more, and Nighthawk led his little party toward the house. When he was some eighty yards distant, he saw a number of troops on the driveway leading to the front entrance, and he changed directions, circling around to the back.

  There were two uniformed men standing guard at the back of the mansion. Nighthawk put his finger to his lips, then gestured his group to stay put. He began sneaking up on the men, patient as Job, silent as death. When he was some twenty feet away, he pulled out a knife and hurled it into the throat of one man while leaping from the shadows onto the back of the other. A quick twist of the head, a loud snap!, and then all was still again.

  Nighthawk signaled his party to join him, and a moment later they were all huddled in the shadows just outside the rear entrance.

  “Blue Eyes, Ito, get these men out of sight.”

  They dragged the two guards off behind a row of thick, neatly-trimmed shrubbery, then returned.

  “You still plan to just walk right into the house?” demanded Blue Eyes.

  “Yeah,” said Nighthawk. “After Cassandra reconnects the outside alarm system.”

  “Reconnects it?” exclaimed the dragon. “Why?”

  “So I can set it off.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “As you've pointed out, there's no way to get into the house without setting off dozens of alarms. So, since we can't avoid setting them off, the only thing to do is make the guards ignore them.”

  “How?”

  “By setting off every outside alarm as well. Then these will just be one more set of alarms on the blink.”

  “You think he'll buy that while there are bombs going off and sniper fire, and his radio transmissions are being jammed?”

  “Not initially,” replied Nighthawk. “But eventually he'll have to, when his men check the grounds and can't find anyone setting off the alarms.”

  “And how are you going to accomplish that?”

  “I'm not,” said Nighthawk. “You are.”

  “Me?” demanded the dragon. “I want to be in on the kill!”

  “You're going to make the kill possible,” replied Nighthawk. He pointed to a staircase. “There's a set of stairs leading to one of the bedroom balconies. Once you're up there, you shouldn't have any trouble reaching the roof.”

  “You've been telling me since we left Sylene that I have to be able to get on the roof. I assumed there was some secret entrance up there.”

  “I wish there was.”

  “So I get onto the roof. What then?”

  “Then you fire this"—Nighthawk handed him a sonic pistol—"randomly in every direction.”

  “A Screecher? I'll be spotted in three seconds!”

  “No, you won't,” said Nighthawk. “There's no light, and no explosion. The guards will be too far away to hear the hum ... but the sensors are sensitive enough to react to it.” He paused. “I want you to hit every area with that thing, to set off every system they've got. Don't hit any guards, just alarms. Especially toward the front of the mansion; that's where I want most of them congregated.”

  “And then you just walk in the back door and set off more alarms—and nobody pays attention?”

  “That's the general idea.”

  “You know, it might work,” admitted the dragon. Suddenly he tensed. “How do I get down after the place is teeming with guards?”

  “Just be patient,” said Nighthawk.

  “For how long?”

  “Ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour,” said Nighthawk with a shrug. “It depends on conditions inside. But either I'm going to kill Cassius Hill, in which case the whole planet will be after me and you can probably climb down and walk to the spaceport in broad daylight; or else he's going to kill me, and then you can testify that I forced you to do all this and swear everlasting fealty to him.”

  “He'll never believe me.”

  “Then you'd better hope I kill him, hadn't you?” responded Nighthawk with a smile. “Now get your ass up there, and don't start shooting until you see my signal.”

  Blue Eyes began cautiously climbing the stairs, muttering to himself. When he reached the balcony, he balanced precariously on the railing for a moment, then laboriously pulled himself onto the roof. He felt a surge of vertigo, lay as flat as he could, and waited until it passed. Finally he withdrew the sonic pistol, got carefully to his feet, and located Nighthawk, who was standing in the shadows just past the rear entrance.

  Nighthawk waited for Cassandra to join him. He asked her something, she nodded her head, and he looked up at Blue Eyes, raised his hand above his head, and dropped it.

  Wondering how he had gotten himself into such a situation, Blue Eyes trained the sonic pistol on a point some two hundred yards from the front door and pulled the trigger.

  The response was deafening.

  32.

  As the guards streamed out of the house, looking for the intruders, Nighthawk motioned Cassandra and Kinoshita to keep to the shadows. Then, when Blue Eyes had set off at least a dozen different alarms, he walked in through a side door, spotted a security camera, and blew it away.

  “Not you,” he said, as Kinoshita followed him.

  “Why not?”

  “I told you before. You're the one who has to survive and get the money back to Deluros VIII. I can't take a chance on you getting killed inside the mansion.”

  “So where do you want me?”

  “See that room on the second floor, the one with all the lights on?”

  “Yes. Looks like he's got bars on the windows and the balcony door.”

  “Th
ose bars are to keep people out, not in. It's Hill's office. Stay within sight of it. When I get the money, I'll toss it down to you.”

  “And if the yard is swarming with guards?”

  “Then I'll find some way to distract them while Cassandra gets the money to you.” He handed the molecular imploder to Kinoshita. “And if it gets really hairy, use this.”

  “I'm still not happy about this,” said Kinoshita. “You could use me inside.”

  Nighthawk shook his head. “You'd be one more person I'd have to protect.” Nighthawk briefly noted Kinoshita's hurt expression. “I'm sorry. I don't have time to be diplomatic.”

  He stepped aside as Cassandra entered, then closed the door behind him.

  “Can he keep clear of the guards?” she asked as they walked through the small room.

  “He's a good man. He'll stay clear.”

  Nighthawk paused before the door.

  “What's on the other side of this?” he asked.

  “A corridor. It leads to a staircase on the left, and a library and eventually the summer kitchen on the right.”

  “Summer kitchen?” he repeated.

  “Where the staff cooks for outdoor functions. It used to be outside, but the insects on Pericles are not only large, they can be incredibly aggressive, so my father had it enclosed a few years ago.”

  “Are we likely to run into any guards in the corridor?” asked Nighthawk.

  “Ordinarily, I'd say no. But with alarms going off all over and the building's security board lit up like a Christmas tree, I can't be sure.”

  “All right,” he said. “Stand back and let me go first.”

  “I'm armed too,” she protested. “And don't forget—this is my battle.”

  “I'm going to be as blunt with you as I was with Kinoshita,” said Nighthawk. “If there's more than one guard out there, you haven't got a chance. I'm the Widowmaker. This is what I do for a living. I guarantee it'll take more than two or three men to bring me down.”

  She seemed about to protest, realized that he was right, that his decision to go first was practical rather than noble or falsely heroic, and she stepped back.

  “Open,” muttered Nighthawk, and the door dilated. He stepped through, weapons in hand, and put a burst of laser fire through the security camera.