by Various
“Maybe they didn’t have the time.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I’d bet everything that they did.”
“Easy for you to say. We don’t have anything.”
“Face it, Robin: Burgoyne’s people and Burgoyne hirself are out looking for Muck and Soleta right now. They can last for a while, but it’s a spaceship, for God’s sake. There’s only so many places they can go.”
Robin was aware that there was something being left unsaid hanging in the air.
“So?”
“What if they came to us?” she muttered to Robin.
“If Burgoyne comes to us, we just say we haven’t seen them since the night of the dinner. S/he can’t prove—”
“No, no.” She shook her head. “I mean, what if Muck and—”
“No.”
“Robin—”
“Uh uh.”
“Robin!”
“Are you insane?” Robin demanded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think you are.” She was raising her voice and she caught herself, concerned that somehow what she was saying would echo and carry to unsympathetic ears. “Look, it was one thing when it was bending rules, sneaking around in the ducts, showing him McHenry. Even then we came damned near to getting into serious trouble. If you’re right about what you’re saying, then they’re fugitives. We help fugitives, we get blown out the airlock, presuming that Burgoyne lets us live that long.”
“But we have to do something—”
“No. We don’t.”
And then, to Robin’s utter shock, Elizabeth grabbed her by the front of her shirt and yanked her forward so that they were almost nose to nose.
“I am so sick of your whining. Of your defeatism. Of your saying that you dream of a better place, of a better life, where Terrans have rights and freedom, but you don’t do a damn thing to make it come about.”
“I dream of one place. I have to live in this one.”
“What about making it better? What about us making it better?”
“We’re just two people, for God’s sake!”
“Sometimes that’s all it takes!”
She released Robin then, albeit with a slight shove so that she fell back onto her buttocks. They sat there, a distance between them that was far greater than the few feet of floor that separated them.
That was how they were when Muck and Soleta found them.
At first they said nothing. They all just stared at each other. Soleta, crouched, looked around, and then said laconically, “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
Ignoring her, Robin said, “You could get us killed, you know. Showing up here.”
“The hell with you,” Soleta shot back. “I just lost my father.”
“I barely remember mine,” retorted Robin. “Be grateful for what you had.”
At first Elizabeth thought Soleta was going to reach across to Robin and strangle her. Instead, much to her surprise, Soleta lowered her head and said, very softly, “That is…a valid point.”
The change was so marked that Robin, obviously feeling guilty, said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Soleta waved it off as if it were of no relevance. “There will be time to mourn him later…” and then she added ruefully, “…maybe. ‘Later’ may see me dead, though, so it’s difficult to be certain.”
“You want me to bring you back to McHenry, don’t you,” Elizabeth said without waiting for him to tell her.
“Yes,” he replied. “The ducts are a maze. I was lucky enough to find my way back to you. There’s no way I’d be able to retrace the path you took me on earlier.”
“You went out through the main door,” Robin reminded him. “You must remember where that was.”
“The main door will be guarded.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I would guard it. So I have to assume that Burgoyne will do the same.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Seems reasonable. But what do you think will happen differently if you seek out McHenry now? You weren’t able to get to him. You’ll still be on the outside looking in.”
Muck looked significantly at Soleta. “I think it will work out differently this time.”
“Why?” Now she shifted her attention to Soleta. “What are you not telling us?”
“I have…” Soleta paused, and then said simply, “…certain talents. Muck thinks this McHenry creature might be of aid. And, frankly, I don’t have any better ideas.”
“Will you help us?” asked Muck.
Elizabeth looked from Muck to Robin and back to Muck. “Yes, all right.”
“Elizabeth…” Robin moaned.
“Don’t start.”
“Fine. But then you’re doing it on your own. You don’t need me along anyway.”
“And you’ll do what?” demanded Muck. “Stay here and hide?”
“I’ll stay here and live, if that’s okay with you.”
“That’s fine,” Elizabeth said sharply. “I’m going to go and get things done. You just stay here and dare to dream.” Then she nodded to Soleta and Muck and said, “This way.”
Moments later, Robin Lefler was alone. Alone with her dreams. She sat with her legs curled up and her arms wrapped around them. Then she felt a stinging sensation in the corners of her eyes and wetness running down her cheeks. She was truly astounded, for she had thought that she had long ago cried out all the tears she had to cry. Annoyed, she drew her hand across her face and wiped them away, cursing Elizabeth Shelby. Cursing Muck. And cursing Soleta. Nowhere in her excoriation did she reserve any harshness for herself, which was ironic considering she was truly the only one with whom she was really angry.
19
O nce again Elizabeth Shelby led the way. Muck watched the confidence with which she moved, the determination. Here was a woman who had been beaten down all of her life, much like him. And now she was risking her life for someone who was still, relatively speaking, a stranger. Which, he remembered, he had done for Soleta when they first met. It gave him a sense of kinship with Elizabeth that he didn’t fully understand.
Soleta followed without a word. Her breathing was a bit labored from the exertion, but otherwise she was silent.
They all tried to be as quiet as possible. Every so often, from a distance, they could hear the echoes of running feet, or orders being shouted. They were able to hear enough to tell them what Soleta and Muck had already suspected: The ship was about to attack Danter. An excuse. All of this an excuse, just to satisfy the Praetor’s paranoia, Soleta thought grimly. She found herself hoping to survive this experience so that she herself could return to Romulus, find the Praetor, and strangle him with her bare hands.
Elizabeth stopped where she was and then pointed a few feet ahead. Muck recognized the grating that he had previously dropped through to get to McHenry. He nodded and began to slide toward it.
As he reached for the grating, Elizabeth leaned forward unexpectedly and planted her lips against his.
The movement caught him off guard. Soleta gave a disapproving grunt from behind, but Muck didn’t hear her. Instead he was, just for a moment, swept away in the warmth of the kiss.
Then Elizabeth pulled away. She gazed into his eyes, and he into hers, and there was something there, a connection that called to him in a way that he had never experienced with Soleta or with anyone else.
Elizabeth didn’t speak but instead mouthed the words, You can do this. I believe in you.
And suddenly his preternatural sense of danger warned him.
He yanked back, clearing the grate, just as the utility duct seemed to explode with noise. Something was pounding in through the bottom of the duct, repeated blasts, and he realized that they were finely honed blaster shots—far more effective over distance than disruptors.
He twisted his upper body, but one of the blasts ripped a wound across his right bicep. He heard a moan behind him. Soleta was clutching at her right shoulder, green blood spreading from a vicious wound.
Elizabeth said nothing. H
e looked to her. She stared at him with lifeless eyes, the top of her head blown off from a shot that had entered right below her chin.
In that instant, Muck went insane.
He smashed through the grating, sending it crashing to the floor, and dropped to the ground directly after it. Burgoyne was there, holding the smoking blaster, and three of hir men were backing hir up.
“I’m going to have your blood for breakfast, fool,” Burgoyne said. “Impressive how you handled that fall, though. I would have thought—”
Muck didn’t hesitate. He grabbed up the fallen grating, drew his arm back, and flung it forward with all his strength. Burgoyne, eyes widening, dropped to the floor. It sailed over hir head, spinning end over end, and lodged squarely in the skull of one of hir men, nearly bisecting his brain into its separate hemispheres. The guard went down without uttering a word.
Muck yanked out the disruptor that he had removed from the guard who had earlier tried to stop him. Soleta still had the other one, and Muck had no idea if she was alive or had bled to death overhead. Barely a second had passed since Burgoyne had witnessed the brutal death of one of hir people, and in that moment of stunned lack of reaction, Muck was already moving. He threw himself to the left, dodging a blaster shot from one of the guards, and returned fire. He missed the guard he was aiming at completely. Luckily he struck the one he hadn’t been aiming at, who was blown backward and slammed against the null sphere. The guard he’d missed fired back, and the rapidly moving Muck barely avoided having his head blown off. The shot came so close that he could feel his hair sizzle. He returned fire and blew out the man’s legs. The man went down screaming, and Muck got off one more fast shot that silenced him.
He whipped the disruptor around just as Burgoyne got a bead on him.
They stood there, frozen, both of them, a moment etched in time, both with their weapons aimed. Neither of them would miss.
“This,” said Burgoyne, “would be the ideal situation for us both to throw down our weapons and have it out hand-to-hand.”
Muck said nothing.
Burgoyne fired at point-blank range. There was no way for Muck to avoid it.
He avoided it just the same.
Burgoyne’s surprised expression lasted just long enough for Muck to bring the butt of his disruptor around and smash it into hir face. Burgoyne let out a startled, angry howl even as the weapon slipped out of hir fingers. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs, and Muck tossed aside his disruptor.
Burgoyne released an outraged roar and clawed at Muck. Hir claws raked into his torso, shredding his shirt. Muck didn’t feel it. His fists were flying as if they had minds of their own.
He wasn’t even seeing his opponent. He was seeing Elizabeth lying there, dead, staring at him with eyes that he imagined to be darkly accusing him of causing her demise. He saw Soleta lying there, grabbing at her shoulder. He saw the image of his father sneering, of the Praetor exiling him, and he saw the face of every bastard in the pit who had tormented him or abused him. All of them were circling him, and he had already gone insane with grief and fury, reckless in his moves, uncaring of what happened to him. Now his mind simply departed his body, and his muscles continued to function without guidance of any part of his brain except the deepest, fiercest, most primal instincts.
And his heart rate still never sped up, nor did his breathing increase. He was a bizarre combination of berserk and methodical.
It look him long moments to realize that Burgoyne had stopped clawing at him, stopped moving, stopped breathing. The world was a haze of red, and when that haze began to dissipate, he slowly held up his hands and looked at the blood and gore that covered them.
He raised the hands and put them to either side of his face, like a perverse lover’s embrace. Then he smeared them back and forth, creating a mask of blood on his face. He looked like something that had once crouched behind a primitive fire, staring balefully toward the edge of the woods where glowing eyes would look back from the forest depths…and be afraid to approach him for fear of what he would do. When he was satisfied that his face was sufficiently adorned, he licked the rest of the blood from Burgoyne’s hands, and then allowed them to drop lifelessly to the floor.
Then he stood and looked at the null sphere that still held McHenry. Without hesitation he reached down, picked up the disruptor, aimed, and fired.
It had no effect at all. The blast just bounced off harmlessly. Firing with the blaster he picked up from Burgoyne’s dead hands had the same lack of result. Whatever the hell this stuff was made of, it was certainly constructed to withstand assault from standard weapons.
“Muck…”
He almost didn’t hear the voice calling to him. He looked up.
Soleta was peering down at him through the hole that the grating had left behind. She was clearly in agony, but just as clearly she was still alive.
He waited to feel some sort of reaction to that development.
He felt nothing. He registered that she had survived, at least for the time being. Beyond that, there wasn’t any sort of response. A distant part of him wondered why that was, but not with any concern. Rather it was more of a “Hmmm. That’s interesting” passing thought, considered for half a heartbeat and then tossed aside as irrelevant.
Soleta frowned when she finally managed to make Muck out down there in the darkness. She wasn’t able to discern at first what was wrong with his face. When she finally realized, she gasped and managed to say, “Are…are you all right? Are you bleeding?”
“No.”
“But…your face…”
“I’m fine,” he said. It wasn’t said in a reassuring manner so that she wouldn’t be concerned. He simply stated fact, his voice flat and disconnected. “Come down here.”
“How? I—”
“Fall.”
She hesitated, but then gritted her teeth and—in an impressive show of faith—hauled herself forward, insinuating her head and torso through the hole. Seconds later, she tumbled down toward him like a dead weight.
Muck watched her fall, took a few steps over, and caught her effortlessly. Even so, she instinctively threw her arms around his neck until she was certain that she was safe in his arms. She stared into his bloodied face as if she didn’t recognize him.
“Can you stand?” he asked, and without waiting for her to respond, put her on her feet. Soleta wobbled and put out a hand to him to steady herself. He didn’t take it. She almost fell over because of it. Finally she forced herself into proper balance and stared at him in confusion, unable to understand what in the world had happened to him. Nor did she understand why he didn’t ask after her health other than to inquire if she could stand. She had a gaping wound in her shoulder, her right arm was hanging limp at her side like a piece of detritus, and the entire upper half of her tunic was soaked with green. Yet he didn’t seem to care.
They were startled by the sound of the doors to the chamber opening. There, in the doorway, was the chief engineer, Kalinda. She took a couple of steps in, clearly concerned about something, and then she froze in place when she saw Muck and Soleta, not to mention the bodies that were scattered on the floor.
Muck didn’t hesitate. He raised his gun and shot her before Soleta could even get out the words, “Muck, no!”
The blast from the disruptor struck Kalinda in the chest, lifting her clear off her feet and sending her slamming into the far wall. She made an awful thud when she hit it and then slowly sank to the floor, her head lolling to one side.
“We could have used her!” shouted Soleta.
“We didn’t need her.”
“You don’t know that! She could have given us information! Or served as a hostage! Anything!”
He looked at her coldly and said, “Her brother killed your father. She deserved what she got. They all do. No mercy.”
“Muck—”
“No mercy,” he repeated coldly. “The sooner you understand that, the better chance you’ll have of surviv
ing.”
Frightened and exasperated, Soleta suddenly noticed that Kalinda was still breathing. Apparently Thallonians were made of fairly sturdy stuff; the disruptor shot would have killed most others. She chose not to draw Muck’s attention to that fact; he might well have walked over and broken her neck.
Muck, meantime, seemed to have forgotten about Kalinda entirely. Instead his attention was completely focused on the floating McHenry. “Can you reach him?” he asked.
“I’ll try.”
He didn’t appear satisfied with that answer, but he simply nodded.
Soleta tentatively placed one hand against the smooth surface of the null sphere and reached deeply, deeply into herself. That was the key to a proper meld: to get a solid sense of herself, of all that she was, and then send that self outward into the mind of another. The problem was that she was accustomed to being in physical contact with her subject. From a distance, her abilities were stretched or even useless. Nevertheless she did everything she could to reach out and get some sort of sensation or connection with McHenry.
At first there was nothing. The slightest, faintest stirrings, but beyond that, she couldn’t perceive a thing. She continued to probe. She had a mental image of herself, of her essence, floating through the liquid toward McHenry, but she couldn’t get close to him. She wasn’t sure if it was simply the distance, or perhaps there was even some sort of barrier that was preventing her from reaching him.
She had to fight down her sense of frustration. Such emotions would impair her ability to accomplish what she had set out to do. She refocused herself, but still she couldn’t seem to get through to him.
She withdrew, lifting her hand from the sphere, and turned to Muck. His face was a mask of disapproval. She ignored it and instead said, “You said you felt as if you were making a connection with him before?”
“Distant. Vague. Nothing useful.”
“Come here.” He paused. “Come here,” she repeated more forcefully.
He stood closer to her. She extended her other hand and placed it against Muck’s temple. Automatically he started to pull away. “Don’t,” she said sharply, and Muck overcame his instinct and remained where he was.
