by Rick Partlow
Caleb Mitchell didn't answer, didn't look over from the copilot's station. He stared at the deactivated viewscreen as if the future were displayed there instead of dim blankness. His right fist thumped rhythmically against his thigh in a motion he couldn't quite control, in a tic that had only gotten worse as the weeklong spaceflight had dragged on interminably.
"They're not down there alone," Deke repeated for what had to be the tenth time in the last hundred hours. "Kel won't let anything happen to them."
Cal watched the time count down in his neurolink feed from the ship's computer. Ten seconds to transition.
I got her into this, he thought, repeated more often over the last few days than even Deke's empty reassurances. She just wanted to go home. She wanted to start a family, after all this time, and I dragged her back into this.
Reality shifted and they were back in the universe, nearly half a million kilometers out from Anansi, between her and her star, Eshu. The world was homelike, he thought, with about the same distribution of water to land as Canaan and the unmistakable blue-green glow of a living planet. He could hear, in the background, the ship's computer negotiating with the port authority, paying fees and providing documentation and permits for their weaponry, along with interlock codes to disarm them. Fake interlock codes provided by the DSI of course, but what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.
He ignored the byplay, accessing the ship's communications systems and bouncing a signal off the orbital satellites.
Savage, this is Mitchell, he broadcast over his neurolink, using the encryption they'd established back on Highland. Conner and I are insystem, and we have intelligence that Kah-Rint has hired mercenaries for a military strike in Toliara. Do you read?
There was a long pause, longer than the lightspeed lag could account for. For a moment, Cal thought this whole trip had been for nothing; maybe they had already taken care of the situation and were flying back to Highland. It had been impossible to tell how far behind the mercenary crew they'd been; they'd left 72 hours after them, but there was a certain elasticity of time in Transition Space. They could have arrived a week after them or a day before.
No shit. The inflection the neurolink gave the digital "voice" was clipped and tense. On it---you're too far out to help. Kah-Rint is at the port; contact Sgt. Andersen and see if you can keep him from rabbiting.
What about my wife and brother? Cal demanded, gut clenching.
Heading for them now. I'm in the shit...can't talk. Get the fucking Tahni.
Deke was staring at him now, a questioning look on his face, as the planet began to fill the viewscreen.
"We can track his location," he reminded Cal. "It'll take us a while to get there, though, even if I burn straight in and tell the air traffic control systems to fuck off."
Cal forced his fists to unclench and tried to make his brain work. Everything inside of him wanted to tell Deke to head straight for Kel's location and to hell with Kah-Rint. But he'd agreed to do this, agreed to work for the General because he knew it had to be done. If Kah-Rint got away, a lot of innocent people would die. He knew what Rachel would want him to do.
"Call Sgt. Andersen," he rasped, the words catching in his throat. "Head for the port."
* * *
Rachel Mitchell tried very hard to force her eyes open, knowing in some part of her consciousness that was currently hard to access that it was vital she do so. She vaguely realized that she was lying on her back and she knew that was bad for some reason. She reached out, trying to find purchase to help herself roll over, but flinched back when she felt something stinging hot.
The shock was enough to snap her eyes open and her brain out of its concussed fog. The room was on fire...no, the house was on fire, flames licking at the walls of the hallway and roaring somewhere near the front entrance. Bodies were burning out there, blackening even as she watched and she made herself look away, look around her instead. The doorway was charred and the tapestries on the wall, the chair by the door were both aflame. Bits of burning fabric were floating fitfully around the room and it was one of those scraps that had stung her hand.
The overturned table still guarded her position. No, that was wrong...their position. Pete! He was there, down on a knee, coughing in uncontrolled spasms against the smoke rolling in. She was coughing too, though she'd been too dazed to realize it. She scooted closer to him, putting a hand on his arm. He wasn't burned and he she didn't see any blood; he just looked a little shaken up.
"Are you okay?" she asked him and her voice sounded far away. There must have been an explosion.
He nodded, trying to stop coughing long enough to answer. "Plasma projector," he gasped, eyes narrowed like he could shut out what was around them. "They took out the front wall...they'll be coming in."
Another memory tugged at her and she looked quickly over to the bathroom where Lyra and the Matriarch had been sheltered. She sighed in relief as she saw that the little chamber was still intact and the two Tahni seemed to be okay. Lyra was crouching in a corner, a gun in her hands, while the Matriarch was curled up inside the protection of a thick, metal tub of some sort. She assumed it was for washing; she'd heard of them but never actually seen one before.
Satisfied that they were safe for the moment, she looked around until she found her borrowed rifle on the ground beside her and snatched it up, checking quickly to make sure it hadn't been damaged. Then she touched a control on her 'link.
"Colonel Savage," she called, "can you hear me?"
No answer. In the hallway outside the room, she saw shadows moving but heard nothing above the crackling of the flames. She pulled the stock of the rifle against her shoulder, checking that the spare magazines were still in her jacket pocket.
"Colonel Savage, we're in the back room in the main building," she said quickly, hoping he could hear. "We've got the Tahni Matriarch with us; that's their target. They're coming for her and we need immediate support."
Nothing. Gunshots exploded in the front room; some of the defenders were still alive. Lightning cracked as laser pulses answered and burning buildfoam showered the air with glowing embers.
"Too late for backup," Pete said. "At least they won't have explosives: too hard to smuggle them past the port authority." A pause. "Unless they bribed them big enough."
She snuck a look at his face. The set of his eyes seemed fatalistic, as if he'd already accepted that there was no hope.
"We're not going to die here," she told him with a conviction she was surprised to feel.
She wasn't sure if he'd heard her; he didn't respond and the impact of laser shots was getting louder in the front room. There were screams, wrung from throats subtly different from a human's, and human screams as well. Then the first of the mercenaries made it through the gauntlet of the front room, his grey body armor scorched in places, a splash of blood across one arm and a coat of carbon scoring across the emitter of his pulse carbine.
Rachel didn't even think about it; she was only aware she'd fired when the old-fashioned slugshooter's stock slammed into her shoulder. The round was powerful, meant to take out big game. The man's chest armor might still have stopped it, but she was using an optical sight hooked to her night vision goggles and she put the big bullet right through his helmet's faceplate. Blood splashed back through the splintered polymer and the mercenary pitched backwards with a spastic shudder as his nervous system shut down with violent finality.
She reminded herself to touch the button to load another round, felt the action work inside the receiver as it stripped the next caseless cartridge off the top of the box magazine. Something deep inside her head was whispering "you just killed a man." She ignored it. If they'd wanted to stay alive, they should have taken up another line of work.
She braced for another rush on the door, but this time they were being more cautious; a swathe of energy pulses sliced through the doorway at waist level, forcing her and Pete to duck down behind the sewing table. Rachel felt her guts drawing up inside her as t
he air seemed to catch fire above her head, the static electricity from the ionization making her hair stand on end. Buildfoam exploded in short-lived gouts of flame behind them as material that couldn't burn did, ever so briefly. Then a pulse of light energy and ionized atmosphere actually scored the edge of the table and she screamed at the searing pinpricks of pain from bits of molten metal that landed on her back.
The pain galvanized her and she rolled off to the side of the barricade, training her rifle at the door, just above the body of the man she'd shot. She saw Pete moving out of the corner of her eye, taking the other side with a handgun extended in a two-handed grip. The emitter of a pulse carbine edged around the corner, the merc behind it trying to use the optics of his weapon to look around the corner. She trained the scope of her rifle just to the left of the door and fired.
The round spent much of its energy penetrating the buildfoam; what was left wasn't enough to penetrate the merc's armor, but it was enough to hurt. The hired assassin stumbled forward, off balance and cursing; Rachel was touching the button to load another round when Pete opened fire and put a rocket-propelled slug right through the mercenary's faceplate. The woman tumbled over some debris in the hallway and went down.
It would be nice if they just kept coming in one by one, she thought with a giddiness brought on by desperation, but she knew that wasn't going to happen. Someone back in the other room would figure out what was going on and...
"Get in there!" Pete was yelling in her ear before she'd noticed him move, pushing her towards the bathroom where Lyra and the Matriarch had taken shelter.
She was about to object that there wasn't room in there for all four of them, but he already had her on her feet and both of them nearly on top of Lyra. She could see the Tahni's mouth opening to protest when the room behind them exploded and Rachel wound up toppling onto the big Tahni female, both of their rifles clattering to the tile floor. Something seemed to suck the air out of the little chamber, replacing it with an inrush of searing heat and crackling static electricity; there was a light just beyond the door that was so bright Rachel could see it with her eyes squeezed shut and a roar like she'd climbed into a shuttle engine.
It was the blast from a portable plasma projector, she knew; the same weapon the mercs had used to blow through the front entrance. They must have pulled their people back and shot it through the wall. It had been aimed at an angle away from the bathroom or none of them would have survived it.
Rachel ignored the searing ache in her lungs, ignored the flashburns she could feel like on the back of her neck, and made her body work despite it. She pushed off of Lyra, getting her feet beneath her and grabbing for her rifle. They'd be coming now, rushing back in to mop up what was left after the plasma blast. She stumbled out of the bathroom, falling into a crouch just the other side of the door, going on a gut feeling that the mercenaries would see the bodies at the door and have an idea where she'd been firing from originally.
She didn't have long to wait. They came in a rush, four of them at once, firing from the hip to suppress any opposition. The coruscating flashes of the laser pulses would have blinded her without the protective coatings of her enhanced optic glasses; with them, she saw the distinctive outlines of each of the shooters, described by computer interpolation. The rifle's muted bark was lost in the crackling roar of the pulse carbines' devastation, but its effects were unmistakable: the short, stocky woman to the right of the pack coming through the door dropped her weapon and clutched at her chest, her momentum carrying her forward and to her knees.
Things went so fast from that point that she could barely follow them. She was reloading the rifle, knowing deep down that she might not have time to get off another shot, when she saw the next man in the entry group spin and fall. It had to be Pete shooting from behind her, or maybe Lyra...
No, the gunfire was coming from behind them! A dark, blurry form smashed through what was left of the interior wall from the hallway and slammed into the remaining two hired guns hard enough to send both sprawling. The form solidified and clarified with a scrape of rough-soled boots on buildfoam dust and she could see Keller Savage standing in the middle of the room, his generic spacer-style clothing shredded in places and spattered with blood, his face nearly expressionless.
Savage tossed aside his pulse carbine and extended his implant talons so quickly it seemed that they'd always been there. The two mercenaries were trying to get to their feet, but he didn't give them the chance. Rachel winced and looked away. She saw Pete watching with a look that could have been satisfaction, the corner of his mouth curling up. Lyra was watching too, her face twisted into something Rachel couldn't interpret; it could have been horror, or fear, or disgust, or some emotion she didn't even have the words to express.
"He's a friend," she assured the young Tahni female. Well, an ally anyway.
The disgusting ripping-meat noises ceased and Rachel looked back to Savage. He was standing over the bodies, blood dripping off his hands and sleeves, his eyes dark and hooded and looking very much like the Tahni demons he and the other Glory Boys had impersonated during the war.
"Some of my guys are out front," he told her. "We didn't get them all, but the ones left are running."
"Colonel Savage," she said hurriedly, suddenly remembering the reason she'd come to the Holding in the first place, "Kah-Rint is here! In Toliara!"
"Yeah, I know," Savage said, then grinned tightly. "Fortunately, so's your husband."
* * *
The Tahni who'd spent most of his life as K'tann-len-Renn-Tan and the last fifteen years as Kah-Rint cursed the gods he no longer believed in and tossed the tablet aside. It clattered off the pavement with the trivial echo of cheap, disposable plastic. He quickened his pace and left it behind along with its infuriating images from his remote drone cameras at the Tahni Female Holding. The streets of Toliara were dark and nearly empty but for him and the four bodyguards who accompanied him, but there were lights ahead as they neared the spaceport.
"Is the ship ready?" he asked into the pickup of his 'link. "We'll be there in minutes and I want to be cleared with the port authority by the time we arrive."
There was no response and he cursed again, this time drawing a curious look from his senior bodyguard. The male was large and dangerous, though not overly cerebral; but even he could see that this operation had been a disaster. Kah-Rint wished he could have gotten away with a human bodyguard; humans would often work for money and not care who paid it. Tahni were different---well, most Tahni, he reflected with an ironic humor he'd learned from the humans.
"The Matriarch lives?" the big male who called himself J'tan-Kin asked from his position just to Kah-Rint's right. His eyes were invisible beneath the night vision glasses he wore: commercial models to attract less attention.
"Thanks to some ill-timed paramilitary intervention," Kah-Rint admitted readily. "But it's not a total disaster. The deaths of so many females at the hands of humans will cause distrust, and we can always count on the Commonwealth to overreact in any situation." He gave a sound of impatience. "We just have to get out of here and live to fight another day."
J'tan-Kin shot him a suspicious look. "That is a saying of the humans."
"We learn from our enemies," Kah-Rint replied smoothly. If there was anything he'd learned over the last fifteen years, it was how to speak with the oily subtlety of the humans. "They did win the war, after all."
He tried calling his pilot again, again with no success. The male was notorious for not carrying his 'link with him and like most Tahni, he refused to get an implant communicator for religious reasons. Things like this always seemed to happen at the worst time---the humans even had a saying for it, something they called "Murphy's Law."
They rounded a corner and the port was there, still a kilometer away but already looming large, its pale, buildfoam walls shining bright under the glare of the spotlights that surrounded the installation. He shoved down his irritation, reassuring himself that he would be on t
he ship soon and headed somewhere safer than this. It had been necessary to come here personally, to make sure the seeds were sewn before the mercenaries set things in motion, but he didn't like being so exposed. Years of working from the shadows had made him uncomfortable in the light.
There was much light ahead at the port. Kah-Rint slowed his pace, his insides twisting slightly at an instinct not lightly earned.
"J'tan-Kin," he instructed, stepping to a halt and hugging the shadows along the wall of a shuttered workshop, "send one of your men to make sure the ship is secure and report back."
The commander of his guards detailed one of the four to patrol ahead, then watched the tall, rangy male break into a loping run down the deserted streets. J'tan-Kin turned back to him, eyes dark and unreadable.
"Do you think the enemy know of our ship?" he asked.
"No. But I didn't think they knew of the mercenaries either, and yet..." Kah-Rint made a gesture of exasperation. "There is no good in stumbling forward blindly."
"Spread out there," J'tan-Kin said to the remaining two guards, indicating the far side of the street. "Keep your optics on and watch for drone signatures."
The two males lumbered off, reminding Kah-Rint of massive herd beasts he'd seen on some of the colony worlds, leaving him with J'tan-Kin, backs against the wall and deep in the shadows. They'd waited in silence for what seemed like forever but was probably only a few minutes when Kah-Rint heard the chief bodyguard call over his 'link to the underling he'd sent to check on the ship. There was a moment of silence, and the big male scowled.
"Report," he said again. "Gaol-Dak, report in immediately." Another hesitation, then J'tan-Kin shot Kah-Rint a dark look and slammed a fist into the wall behind him. The buildfoam shuddered, a layer of dust coming off of it. He sucked in a deep breath and visibly composed himself before pulling a large handgun from a holster concealed inside his tunic. "We have to assume the ship is compromised. We should head back to the safe-house."
