The Cause of Death

by Roger MacBride Allen

  "Hello? You there? Bindulan sent me--and we have to get out quick!"

  The voice roused him, and he turned to Hannah. "Do we buy it?" he asked. "Do we trust her?"

  Hannah was about to speak, but before she could reply, the voice called again. "Is you Jamie Mendez and Anna Foxson? Is you? We got to go now!"

  Strangely enough, Hannah managed to find a way to laugh at that. "Now I'm sold," she said. "Someone might have guessed or found out you contacted Bindulan, though I don't quite see how. The bad guys might even have known enough to call us by name. But getting my name wrong--somehow, that's pretty convincing." She turned toward the voice, and called out in a voice calculated to carry, but not too far. "We're coming! We're coming." She scrambled to her feet, grabbing whatever gear she could, and slogged back down the slope toward their visitor's vehicle.

  Jamie couldn't follow. Not at first. Not after he had come so close to taking that shot. He shut his eyes, swallowed hard, and forced himself to breathe deep, once, twice, three times. Then he forced his eyes open, reslung his weapon, gathered up the gear bags Hannah had left behind, and trotted along behind her.

  He caught up with Hannah just as she reached the vehicle. Their visitor--no, their rescuer--was standing up in front of her seat, her hands still on the controls. Without the benefit of his weapon's night-vision equipment, he couldn't see much of her. All he could tell for sure was what he had guessed already: she was Pavlat, female, youthful, and dressed in a style that denoted a person of high rank.

  "Good, come, quick, now," she said, gesturing toward the inside of the vehicle. "I am Zahida. Bindulan be my great-uncle." Her English was sketchy, but something in the way she spoke gave Jamie the impression that she was more fluent than she sounded--just out of practice. Her accent was actually quite good. He placed it as American Southern California, with an overlay of Hispanic influence--pretty close to his own, for that matter.

  "Thank you for--" Hannah began.

  "Later! Later! Now we go!" said Zahida, cutting her off.

  The vehicle was a big open-topped affair, with a perching stool for the driver--more a padded back support for a standing driver than a place to sit down--and the rest of it just an open bed with a padded floor, and a padded waist-high panel-wall wrapped around its edge. They tossed in their gear bags and climbed aboard--and discovered that the floor and side panels were a great deal more comfortable than they looked. It was more like sitting on a big couch than a truck bed.

  "Hang on," Zahida said, "because now we go."

  There didn't seem to be much to hang on to, but Jamie braced himself as best he could for a sudden lurch forward--then tumbled into Hannah and half the luggage when they gunned in reverse, back the way they had come, the flat-truck bouncing and crashing and splashing along as it straddled the bottom of the ditch.

  "Sorry for that!" Zahida called out over the noise. She swiveled her perch stool around, and the control panel came about as well--though she didn't seem to make any use of it. The vehicle was driving itself, running its last route in reverse. "Much less deep behind," she went on, "but hole--hole?"

  "Ditch?" Hannah suggested.

  "Yes! Ditch I think is deeper going on first way. Better to go back." Zahida fluffed her ears out and flattened them against her head, and, using a human gesture, shook her head ruefully. "My English is got way too rusted."

  Jamie didn't much care about the banging and jostling. They were down. They were on the ground. They had been picked up by someone they might imagine trusting. Not safe, exactly--but at least they had some hope of staying alive long enough to--

  A flare of light, from nearby.

  WHUMP--WHUMP--WHUMP.

  More flashes of light, not as bright, and more dull, flat, booming noises, and echoes of the first blast bouncing around in the ditch and around the whole spaceport.

  "Gralz talkrit fitz-palp!" Zahida said, or at least that was what it sounded like. Jamie certainly hadn't learned those words of Pavlat from the speed-learner, but it didn't take much to guess they weren't generally used in polite society. "They are here now already," she announced. "Now we got problems." She brought the flat-truck to a jarring halt, then drove forward a bit, slowly, turning the vehicle a short way, carefully easing them up out of the landing-field side of the ditch. "We need to see," she said, just edging the top of the flat-truck up out of the ditch.

  And there was plenty to see. They were about three hundred meters from the remains of the Lotus. The whole of the lander was engulfed in flame, all of the smaller blazes merged into one grand inferno. Nor was it hard to see what had caused the change. Two military ground vehicles were parked between them and the ship, and Pavlat on both vehicles were using short-range low-caliber mortars, lobbing round after round of incendiaries into the blazing wreck.

  "Destroying the evidence," Hannah said.

  "Yes," Zahida agreed, and said nothing more, plainly entranced by the flames.

  Jamie looked away from the blaze and at his companions--and realized with a start that he could see them quite plainly. If any of those guys happen to look this way, with those nice bright flames lighting us up--"Friend Zahida! Please! Get us back down out of sight!"

  "What? Oh! Yes!" She shifted to reverse and backed them slowly down the rise, plainly worried about losing traction in the soft and muddy ground. Jamie gave thanks once again that the Pavlats liked their vehicles quiet. Not that it was likely to have made much difference, with the roaring of the fire and the noise of the incendiaries going off.

  They almost got out of sight in time--but not quite. Jamie heard the faint and distant cough of a semi-silenced mortar firing from in back of them. He turned and looked over his shoulder, and saw a third military-style vehicle coming up, still far enough away that they could see the dim reddish flash of another round being shot off a second or two before the sound of the mortar being fired could reach them.

  The upcoming vehicle must have spotted their silhouette against the fire. The sound of the second mortar round being fired reached them at almost the same moment that the first round came howling in, off to their left. It slammed into the bottom of the drainage ditch and exploded with a roar, the incendiary charge sizzling and popping angrily, though there wasn't much chance of its being able to set a mud puddle on fire.

  But a round like that could certainly set them on fire if it managed to hit Zahida's flat-truck. It took less than half a heartbeat for Jamie to see that it was up to him to deal with the situation, if for no other reason than he was the only one with a weapon to hand.

  "Get us away from this part of the ditch again!" he shouted at Zahida, trying to find the words that would explain things clearly even if her English was rusty. "They see us against firelight, know we are in this part of ditch."

  Zahida understood instantly, reversed them back, then gunned the truck forward again to get away from where they had been seen. She steered the car back down into the center of the ditch and started driving into the darkness and gloom.

  But that wasn't the way to escape. Driving along in the ditch couldn't keep them safe for more time than it took the locals to shine a light down into it. Besides, she would have to drive slowly and carefully along a muddy trench, without her lights. Their attackers could drive a lot faster with their lights on, up on the concrete of the landing field. The bad guys could easily outflank them, chase them down, and surround them.

  They couldn't run fast enough to get away. They had to fight back, knock out the three vehicles on the spot, then get out of there fast, before reinforcements showed up.

  But the days full of cram-study aboard the Hastings had taught him that there were times when all-out attack was perfectly legitimate, even obligatory--and other times when the only honorable course was to sit there quietly and die--with dishonorable action subject to severe and nasty punishment. If he got it wrong--well, he had also learned about how the Pavs meted out justice. There were worse ways of dying than a nice clean firefight in a spaceport ambush.


  He had to ask, and never mind how strange the question might seem. "Zahida--I must know." He gestured toward their attackers. "They shoot at us, try to kill us. It is allowed, legal, and honorable for us to shoot back, defend ourselves?"

  Zahida looked back at him from her driver's seat, her ears fanned out to their maximum extension, a plain sign of astonishment. "But, yes. Of course. This is no inheritance duel! And they violate the Thelm's Hand. Yes, if you have gun, we shoot back!"

  "I have gun," Jamie echoed grimly, glad that Zahida clearly had no idea how he had almost used that gun. He didn't follow the references to inheritance and the Thelm's Hand, but that could wait. "Stop your flat-truck," he called to her.

  "What? What for?" Zahida said. "We need to run, get away. We shoot back if they catch up with us."

  "Not if they catch. When," Jamie said sharply. "They are faster and have friends. We fight, then run."

  "Who fights them? With what?" she demanded. "You? With that?"

  Jamie didn't need to know much about Reqwar Pavlat culture to understand the meaning behind the way she gestured at his multigun. Suddenly he was angry--at her, at whoever was shooting at them, at the murk and confusion over what they were supposed to do on Reqwar, and even at the BSI for dumping him into this mess. And even at himself, for what he had nearly done to Zahida--and what he was about to do to the three assault cars up on the landing field. "Yes," he said, his voice hard, cold, holding the anger in.

  "If he says he can, he can," Hannah announced flatly. "Do what he tells you to do, and we all live through this. Stop the vehicle."

  Her tone of voice made it plain she meant to be taken seriously. Zahida hesitated momentarily, then brought the car to a sudden halt. "Now what?" she asked.

  Jamie looked back the way they had come. The ditch was too deep for him to see over the edge, but he could see where the glow from the burning of the Lotus was brightest. He pointed toward the glow. "Reverse, and as soon as we're at a spot where you're sure you can do it, get us up out of the ditch and back on the landing pad."

  "Go back there and they kill us!"

  "Go forward and they kill us just as much," Jamie said. "But if we go back and fight them--maybe we have a chance to live. Go back, go back up to the landing pad. Don't stop moving. I will drop off the truck. Drive in a circle around the burning vehicle," he went on, gesturing with both hands to make sure she understood, rusty English and all. It was no time to try out his speed-learned Pavlat standard for the first time. "Not a perfect circle." He moved his index finger in a jittery wheeling pattern. "Go back and forth, make it hard to track you. As you circle, you will be hard to see as you go in and out of light and dark, in and out of smoke. While they are watching you, I will shoot at them. Understand?"

  She stared at him, motionless, expressionless, for one, two, three heartbeats, then spoke. "I understand." Without waiting for further orders or explanations, she flipped them into reverse and went back the way they had come.

  Jamie shifted over to the forward corner of the flatbed, off to one side of the driver's stool. The flat-truck bounced and shuddered and splashed through the ditch as he struggled to get his suit helmet off. He'd do a lot better shooting without it. Finally, the helmet came free, and he tossed it down into the bed of the truck. He steadied himself as best he could against the back supports and shut his eyes, trying to steady his emotions as well.

  The flat-truck hit a bump big enough that it nearly threw him clear earlier than planned and brought him back to the present moment, where he very definitely needed to be.

  "Here we are going!" Zahida announced as they came to a stretch where the ditch was a bit shallower. She veered the flat-truck hard over to the left and shifted it back into forward. It slammed into the slope and slithered and swiveled upward, wheels skidding and drive engines straining hard enough that they could actually be heard. Then, suddenly, they were up and over, the front end of the flat-truck crashing down onto level ground.

  Time froze. Nothing was in motion, and there was no sound. The assault vehicle that had fired on them was heading for the spot where they had shown themselves. The other two assault vehicles had turned away from the ruins of the Lotus and were converging on the same point.

  The Lotus was a pillar of pure fire, a torch tearing into the sky. Smoke billowed out from the wreckage, and the wind whipped it around into knots and tendrils that vanished and reappeared and shifted and shifted again moment by moment.

  There were no other vehicles visible, or any other lights closer than halfway to the horizon. Maybe, maybe, maybe, if they were able to knock out these three assault vehicles, they'd have a chance to escape.

  Zahida's flat-truck bounded through another pothole, and the illusory moment of frozen time was gone. Sound, speed, motion, smoke, smells all seemed to come alive again, all at once, as she aimed her flat-truck straight for the Lotus and gunned the engine.

  Jamie barely had time to judge his drop. He went over the side and landed hard on the ground, just shy of the paved landing field itself. He rolled sideways and came up in the approved prone-firing position. His weapon was in his hands and the ammo selector set to PENETRATING EXPLOSIVE ROUND before he had fully come to rest.

  He didn't go to the night scope at once but instead stayed with ambient light as he checked the scene. The headlight of Zahida's flat-truck came on, throwing new light and shadows on the landing pad. She was bearing down on the Lotus, veering just slightly away to the right, setting up to drive around the wreck in a tighter circle than Jamie would have suggested.

  She was definitely drawing the attention of all three assault vehicles. All of them had been streaking toward the ditch, but now all three slowed down and turned to meet her. The one closest to the ditch, the one that had fired on them already, came to a complete halt.

  And none of them had taken the slightest notice of Jamie. That was the whole idea. He had three targets, spread out over about 180 degrees of view, none of them moving fast.

  He had to pick which one to go for first. The one closest to the ditch had come to a dead stop. If he missed with his first shot, all three vehicles would be alerted and start to do evasive driving--and all three would be shooting back. Jamie made a snap decision. Kill the easy one, the sure thing, first, and be sure of only two enemy vehicles coming for him over a ninety-degree field of incoming fire, instead of risking three vehicles over twice as wide a field. Jamie brought the night scope up to his face, put his finger on the trigger, exhaled, and fired at the motionless vehicle in the moment between two heartbeats.

  The multigun kicked back violently, and the heavy-caliber round slammed into its target. The penetrating round burrowed deep into the assault vehicle and exploded, instantly touching off secondary explosions as the truck's power supplies overloaded and stored ammo blew up.

  Jamie shifted to his left. The two remaining assault vehicles were still coming round in their turns, one of them nearly all the way about and the other pointed straight at him. The one that had completed its turn was more of a threat to Zahida and Hannah, although it was a harder target. He aimed his weapon again and fired. He scored another hit deep in the engine compartment, but this time there were no helpful secondary explosions. Either his luck wasn't as good the second time out, or else the crew of that vehicle was more careful about storing explosive ammo.

  It didn't matter. Even if the second AV hadn't blown up, it had caught fire. Jamie used the night scope's image-enhancement mode to see one crewman fall off, a second drop to the ground, drag himself clear, then collapse--and a third who was clearly visible, slumped over and motionless in the cab of the burning vehicle. Jamie knew, in that moment, that it would be that image, that memory, that would stay with him.

  The cough of a mortar round being fired brought him back to more pressing concerns. Without thinking or looking, he rolled right, fast, three times, four times before--BLAM!

  The mortar struck and exploded right where he had been. They must have commanded its autot
argeting system to locate the source of the weapons fire and shoot back at it. It had been plain foolishness on Jamie's part to stay in one place long enough to fire two shots at different targets. He had almost been inviting them to triangulate in on him.

  The dirt and rocks and mud and bits of exploded mortar rained down on him, and he felt as if someone had just kicked him in the head--which was near enough to the truth. He heard the hissing and sizzling of an incendiary round trying to set fire to wet earth. They hadn't had time to switch to explosive rounds, and that had saved him. A high-explosive shot the size of that incendiary would have killed him for sure--and dug a crater big enough to bury him.

  He looked up, and saw that the remaining AV had given up any thought of chasing Zahida and was bearing down on him. He was too shook up by the near miss to set up a precision shot quickly. He fired an unaimed penetrator round in the general direction of the last remaining AV. It struck the ground and blew up about a hundred meters shy of the oncoming vehicle. The blast didn't do any damage, but it did throw up a nice cloud of dust and smoke that would shield him for a second or two. It also distracted the AV long enough for Jamie to shift position again, settle in, preaim his weapon, and wait for the last enemy vehicle to punch through the wall of smoke and head straight for him. But he instantly regretted firing that shot, even if it did do him some good.

  The multigun rifle was a superb weapon, but it had a distinct disadvantage. In order to make room for all the gadgetry, and to allow it to fire multiple types of ammo, it could only load a limited number of each type of round. Jamie was down to his last penetrator round. The multigun would automatically default back to standard rifle rounds the next time he fired. He would have the choice of firing standard rounds in hopes of getting lucky and hitting something vital, or else of spending three or four precious seconds to shift over to explosive rounds that would be the next best thing after the penetrators.