by Timothy Zahn
She had, however, clipped the hair in a few strategic places, which had altered his appearance more than he would ever have expected from such relatively small changes.
The whole process had taken nearly an hour, after which she’d turned him over to Hobwell. Before becoming a producer, it turned out, he’d been a line director, and he’d proceeded to spend another half hour coaching Lorne on how to alter his stance and walk to project an entirely different persona.
The final result was a person Lorne himself barely recognized. Which was exactly what he’d hoped for.
Even more importantly, Reivaro’s facial-recognition programs apparently didn’t recognize him, either. In the forty-two hours since Lorne had bounced his impromptu way into Archway he’d made three excursions out of Polestar Production’s guest apartment, which Hobwell had lent him, spending a total of four hours out in the open. So far none of the Marines he’d passed had given him a second look.
Maybe they’d concluded he’d gone to ground, either because he was waiting for his mother to join him or because he was trying to recruit assistance from the general populace. Or maybe they decided his flamboyant entry must have left him injured or unnerved.
Certainly their easy and bloody victory on the steps of Yates Fabrications five days ago would have skewed their opinion of Cobra abilities and resolve. Especially given how meekly the rest of the region’s Cobras had surrendered after the carnage.
Lorne rather hoped that was what the Marines were thinking. Four hours of wandering the city had given him several targets to choose from, and a rude awakening would do Reivaro some good.
Early on in their take-over of Archway, the Marines had commandeered the former Cobra HQ, a modest two-story building in the west-central part of the city. Lorne had thought that Colonel Reivaro might have reconsidered that decision and moved to some place either more defensible or at least less well-known to his enemies. But Lorne’s second reconnoiter had shown that the Dominion still had a presence there, complete with a pair of combat-suited Marines standing guard outside the main entrance.
Even if the circumstances had been normal, with DeVegas province’s full Cobra contingent up and running, two Marines would have been a formidable deterrent to attempted entry. The parrot lasers built into their epaulets had an instant and lethal response to anything their inbuilt computer/sensor system recognized as a threat. For anything the computer didn’t automatically react to, the Marine could lock and fire the weapons with a flick of his eyelids. On paper, those two Marines standing rigid attention on either side of the door should be able to hold off an army.
But the system had one crucial weakness: it couldn’t target something coming in from directly overhead. Lorne had already used that design flaw against them once.
Time to do it again.
Across the street from the Cobra HQ, facing it from about twenty meters away, was a three-story apartment complex. Lorne ambled toward the Cobra building on the apartment building’s side of the street, noting with bitter-edged amusement that all his fellow pedestrians were also avoiding the Marines’ side. Vehicular traffic on that particular stretch was also sparse, with most drivers apparently choosing to detour around the block rather than drive past the Dominion stronghold.
Which was just the way Lorne wanted it. The fewer civilians in the area, the less the chance one of them would be injured by his impending attack.
Lorne reached the cross street that passed along the side of the apartment building and turned down it. Just before the edge of the building cut off his view of the two Marines, he looked up into the sky, lifting his hand as if to block off the late-afternoon sunlight. With his hand still up, he threw the Marines a final, furtive look, the kind a nervous citizen might give to his conquerors.
And with that glance he put a target lock on the ground midway between them, a second lock on the pavement five meters upwind of the entrance, and one more on the window of the room Reivaro had been using as his office. He passed out of view of the Marines, took two more steps—
And came to a halt, digging the first of his three grenades from his coat pocket. He hadn’t yet tried his new throwing trick with multiple targets, but he knew his nanocomputer could handle sequential attacks with every other weapon in his arsenal, and it was reasonable to assume it could do the same here. Assuming he’d gotten the angle of the arc right when he pretended to shield his eyes—and having paced the attack and distance off earlier he should have it right—his nanocomputer ought to have no problem dropping the grenades precisely where Lorne wanted them.
Shifting the first grenade to his right hand and getting the second ready in his left, he looked at the top of the apartment building, leaned back and to his right, and threw.
As it had back at Matavuli’s slit trench, he’d barely begun the throw when his nanocomputer sensed the movement, correctly ascertained his intent, and took over control of his servos. A fraction of a second later, Lorne felt the sudden stress on his arm, shoulders, chest, and legs as the strength of the effort was magnified a hundredfold. His arm whipped over his head, and as his hips and legs automatically shifted to correct a brief imbalance he watched with awe as the grenade sailed upward. It missed the edge of the eave by a whisker and disappeared over the roof.
He had the second grenade in the air just as the first sailed out of view, and the third was on its way before the second cleared the eave.
And by the time the first concussive blast shattered the city’s tense calm he was on the move again, ambling back the way he’d come, hoping to catch a glimpse of his handiwork.
He got it, but just barely. His second grenade, one of his two remaining smoke bombs, hit the pavement just as he spotted the two Marines lying on the pavement where the concussion blast had sent them sprawling. Even as the third grenade came arcing down toward the window of Reivaro’s office, the thick plumes of smoke blanketed the whole area. There was a flash of muted light through the roiling cloud, but Lorne couldn’t tell whether or not the last grenade had broken the window or just expended its energy on the wall beside it.
He would be able to tell once the smoke cleared. But he knew better than to stick around that long. The various pedestrians on the streets around him were on the move now, most of them running away from the sound of the triple blast, while a handful of the courageous, curious, or stupid ran toward the commotion. Lorne joined the former group, catching up to a clump of eight that had happened to form and attaching himself to their perimeter.
It was just as well he hadn’t lingered. The mass exodus had made it barely thirty meters before a half dozen Dominion aircars zoomed into view, converging on the area from all directions. Maybe the Marines hadn’t been caught napping, after all.
Still, Reivaro had definitely missed a bet. From what Lorne could see of the aircar search pattern, it looked as if the Marines were scouring the rooftops, clearly making the assumption that that was where the thrown grenades had come from.
They were still searching the roofs and the nearby alleys when Lorne and the crowd disappeared from their view.
#
Castenello had warned that the Dorian’s delay at the ambush net would cause Commander Ukuthi to give up and move on from his designated rendezvous point. Barrington had insisted that the Troft would instead be patient and wait.
To Barrington’s quiet relief, he was right.
“Your arrival, I began to doubt it would occur,” the Troft said after the two ships had established contact. “An interesting saga, I see there must be one.”
“An interesting saga, there definitely is,” Barrington told him darkly. “We ran into some friends of yours on the way here.” He leaned a bit closer to the CoNCH speaker, listening hard for Ukuthi’s response.
“Friends of mine?” Ukuthi asked. As best as Barrington could tell—and his best was admittedly not very good—there was genuine puzzlement in the Troft’s voice. “Understanding, I do not have it.”
“Someone set up a flicker
net between here and Aventine,” Barrington said. “We figured they were trying to stop the next Dominion ship traveling that route, so we waited around to help out. You’re saying those weren’t your allies?”
“The truth, it is far from that,” Ukuthi said, and this time there was a genuine-sounding grimness to his tone. “I believe they were from the unknown demesne I spoke about once before.”
“Which demesne was that?”
“The demesne which first contracted with the Tua’lanek’zia demesne to attack Qasama and the Cobra Worlds,” Ukuthi said. “The Tua’lanek’zia demesne was the one that then brought the Drim’hco’plai and my own Balin’ekha’spmi in to assist.”
“Ah,” Barrington said, as if he’d lost track of who was who in this mess. “If I remember right it was the Drim’hco’plai who had you pinned down at the Hoibe’ryi’sarai home world. Is that correct?”
“It is,” Ukuthi confirmed. “I had the thought they might seek to intercept a ship of the Dominion of Man.”
“And you didn’t bother to mention that to me?”
“Your forgiveness, I ask it,” Ukuthi said. “In truth, I expected the attack to occur closer to Qasama. That was why I requested you rendezvous with me here, instead of at Qasama itself, that we might complete the journey in united convoy. I intended to warn you of the possible threat when here we met.”
“If you were worried, why didn’t you just suggest we fly together from the Hoibie homeworld?” Barrington countered.
“I knew you would wish to deliver a report to your companions at Aventine early in the journey,” Ukuthi said. “I therefore gave you a course that would take you within short messaging distance before guiding you here.”
“I see,” Barrington said. “One moment.”
He tapped the mute key and looked at Garrett. “Opinion?”
“It fits the facts as well as any other theory,” Garrett said, frowning in concentration. “It does rather imply he’s been manipulating us from the start, though.”
“Which we’d already considered a possibility,” Barrington pointed out. Still, the internal consistency of Ukuthi’s story meant there was nothing they could definitively hang around his neck as a lie. At least, not yet.
But at this point Ukuthi and his manipulation were only second place on Barrington’s priority list. Time to deal with the one in first.
He tapped off the mute. “We’ll be discussing this in more depth in the future,” he told Ukuthi. “Right now, I have a shipful of injured men who need medical attention that’s beyond my ability to provide. I need Qasama’s coordinates, and I need them now.”
“Of course,” Ukuthi said, sounding vaguely surprised that it was even a question. “The Qasama system is approximately one day’s journey along the final vector that brought you here to me. The final coordinates, I am sending them to you now. As I said, my purpose was to bring you here was merely so that we could unite and complete the voyage together.”
“Then let us do that,” Barrington said, twitching his eye to tap into the data stream. The coordinates Ukuthi had promised were there and had already been coded into the helm. The proper course was laid in, and engineering reported the Dorian’s drive was ready to kick them back into hyperspace. “We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”
“Readiness, we have it,” Ukuthi assured him. “Provide me with a countdown, and we shall drape the cloak of darkness together.”
Barrington pursed his lips. Drape the cloak of darkness. An interesting turn of phrase. Was that how all Trofts spoke of hyperspace, he wondered, or was it unique to Ukuthi?
Or was Ukuthi simply waxing poetic because he’d heard that humans responded well to poetry? “Thirty-second countdown on its way,” Barrington said. “Do you have it?”
“I have it,” Ukuthi said. “At Qasama shall we see each other next.”
“At Qasama,” Barrington confirmed.
Or possibly they would see each other earlier than that, he reminded himself. Possibly at the next trap Ukuthi had set up for them, in fact. Right now, there was still no reason to trust him. Nor was there any specific reason not to trust him.
At least, not yet.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The black turned to gray, became wild and discordant colors, then went to black again. Then it did it all again. It was like a carnival ride for the brain, and sometimes Merrick rode it like there was nothing else in the universe that he needed to do.
Other times, he rode it as if letting go would erase all the colors from his mind forever.
He’d lost track of how many times the cycle had repeated itself when, to his weary surprise, he awakened to a world of normal colors and a dazed but more or less normal mind.
And along with the colors and sanity, an incredibly intense thirst.
He blinked his eyes a few times as he looked around. He was in a room in what seemed to be some sort of house, with muted sunlight coming in through small, high windows. Outside the windows seemed to be forest, though the image was obscured by a layer of grime on the glass. The room’s furnishings were sparse: the bed he was lying on, a small table at his side, and a single chair. All of the items were dark wood, and all of them looked rough and hand-made. In contrast with the almost amateurish furniture, the walls were covered in exquisite, highly detailed tapestries.
“You’re awake,” an unfamiliar voice came from behind him.
Merrick twisted his head around, a brief stab of dizziness washing over him as he did so, to see a young woman walking toward him from a half-open door. He craned his neck a little more, hoping to get some idea what was on the other side of the door, but all he could see were more tapestries. “Where am I?” he croaked. His voice was startling, far worse than just his massive thirst should have accounted for.
“My home,” the woman replied as she came around the side of the bed he was lying on. She was blonde, the typical Muninn coloring, and a bit on the short side. “What do you hear today?”
Merrick frowned. That was an odd comment. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just you, I guess. Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “Often during your illness you claimed to hear things that weren’t there.”
“What sort of things?”
“Sometimes it was the masters’ flying boats,” she said. “Other times you heard predators on the prowl nearby.”
“And you looked and saw that nothing was there?” Merrick asked, suppressing a grimace. He must have been using his audios during one or more of those iridescent nightmares, without enough awareness or self-control to keep from blabbing about what he was hearing.
“Looked?” she echoed, her lip twisting. “Certainly we didn’t bother to look. Not after the first time you proved to be wrong. My time is too precious to waste on a madman.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Merrick said. Belatedly, he realized part of the reason for his odd-sounding voice: his audios were running at a strange and unbalanced setting, as if a child had gotten into his brain and started throwing switches at random. Carefully, he reset them to proper levels. “I appreciate your hospitality,” he added. His voice was still hoarse, but at least it was no longer freaky. “My name is Merrick. May I ask yours?”
“I know who you are, Merrick Hopekeeper.” She gave a little snort. “And let me be honest about my hospitality. If your friends hadn’t insisted, I would have thrown you out days ago.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been a burden,” Merrick said. “It was never my intent.”
The woman’s face softened, just a little, and clearly grudgingly. “I don’t doubt it was not your idea,” she conceded. “Though let us be clear that it was your own clumsiness that first occasioned your arrival. I am Alexis Woolmaster.”
“I’m honored to meet you,” Merrick said, his stomach tightening as something she’d said suddenly penetrated his lingering fogginess. She would have thrown him out days ago? How long had he been here, anyway? “May I ask how long it is that I’ve been imposing on you and your home
?” he asked carefully.
“You were brought in the night three days ago.” She gave another snort. “You frightened the sheep. For that alone I would have sent you away.”
Merrick looked back toward the dim light coming in through the windows. Three days. Three days. While Anya and Kjoic did—
Did what? Sat in the forest and waited for him? Or had they given up and set out for Svipall on their own?
Or had one of his captors gone to get them? He had some vague memory of someone talking about that before the kaleidoscope cycles began, but had no idea whether or not it had happened. “You said my friends insisted I be permitted to stay,” he said. “Are those friends here now?”
“They are,” a new voice came from the doorway.
Again, Merrick turned his head to look, again fighting back the vertigo. This one was a man, older than the young woman facing him, wearing a camouflage sort of outfit of mottled brown, green, and gray. A memory clicked: this was the same middle-aged man who’d been with the group that brought him here after his encounter with the bersark field outside Svipall.
More to the point, it was the man who’d said he was going to find Anya and Kjoic.
“You may leave us, Alexis Tucker,” the man said.
For a moment he and the woman locked eyes, and Merrick wondered if she was going to remind him whose house this was. Then, with a slight compression of her lips, she slipped past him and disappeared through the doorway.
The man watched until she was gone, then pulled the chair over beside the bed and sat down. “I am Ludolf Treetapper,” he said, his eyes flicking briefly down Merrick’s body. “I see your mind has returned to reason.”
