by Timothy Zahn
She nodded and headed off after the other two, sweeping the autocab shelter with the kwi as she ran. The shooter was almost certainly out of the kwi‘s limited range, I knew, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
I returned my attention to the main event, to find that two more cops had gone down for the count. So far, fortunately, the shooter seemed to be sticking with snoozers. I wondered if and when that would change.
“Hold still,” Bhatami growled in my ear, his voice barely audible over the chattering of the gunfire. I felt his hands at my wrists, and a second later I was free. “Here,” he added, pressing my Beretta into my hand.
“Thanks,” I said, peering around the side of the car. Three of the five cops still standing had taken refuge behind the van and were pouring a controlled stream of thudwumpers at the autocab shelter. The two cops who weren’t busy laying down suppression fire were on the move, running hunched over toward the shelter, veering wide to both sides to keep out of their comrades’ line of fire.
I held my breath, waiting for the shooter at the shelter to notice the flankers and open fire on them. But either he’d completely missed their approach, or else the cops’ fire had him too thoroughly pinned down. Either way, fifteen more seconds and they would have him.
An unpleasant tingle went up my back. This was too easy. It was way too easy. “Call them back,” I urged, grabbing Bhatami’s shoulder. “It’s a trap.”
“What kind of trap?” he demanded, throwing a frown at me.
Before I could answer, a car with no lights shot suddenly into view from the parking area to our left, gunning straight for the two running cops.
“Look out!” I shouted. But it was too late. The car slammed into the first cop, probably before he was even aware of its presence, hurling him through the air to skid to a broken halt almost at the feet of his comrade. The second cop had just enough time to brake to a halt and try to get out of the way before he too was run down. The impact threw him into the tall chain-link fence at the spaceport’s perimeter. He bounced off the fence and lay still.
The police gunfire had faltered during the attack. Now, with a snarled curse from someone, the barrage began again, this time targeting the car.
Ignoring the hail of thudwumpers hammering his vehicle, the driver backed the car up a few meters. Braking to a halt, he opened his door, reached out to snatch the first dead cop’s gun from the pavement, and lobbed it to the Filly hidden at the autocab shelter. With the kind of perfect coordination only the Modhri could achieve, the shooter’s hand darted out at exactly the right time to the right spot to catch the weapon. Even before the pass was complete, the car lurched forward again, headed for the other dead cop’s gun.
But the brief respite was all the rest of the cops needed to get the range. As the car surged toward the fence, I saw the driver jerk like a broken marionette as multiple rounds hammered his head and torso. He slumped over the wheel as the car rolled to a stop.
And then the driver’s-side back door opened, and from my crouching position I saw a hand dart down from the rear passenger seat. It grabbed the remaining gun off the pavement, swiveled it around, and began shooting under the car at us.
“What the hell?” Bhatami gasped as one of the three remaining cops gave a choked gasp and sprawled onto the pavement. “He can’t shoot that way.”
“Tell him that,” I retorted. Of course the Modhri could shoot blind that way—he had both the other shooter and Comet Nose to triangulate his aim for him.
I frowned as the thought suddenly brought Comet Nose to mind. I looked over at the pavement where I’d dropped him a minute ago.
He was gone.
“Watch it!” I warned, looking around. There was no sign of him. Had he faded into the night to our rear, heading away from the battle on some other errand? Or had he curved back around to follow Bayta and Rebekah? I looked through the glassed-in front of the spaceport building, but there was no one visible.
And then, with a lurch, Veldrick’s van pulled away from the curb. Cutting hard around the group of parked police cars, it roared off across the parking area, leaving the two cops who’d been crouched behind it completely exposed to the two Filly shooters. The cops reacted instantly, scrambling for new defensive positions behind the police cars. But once again the Modhri’s group-mind coordination was faster. Before they’d made it even halfway, both of them dropped to the ground.
And our side was now down to two: Bhatami and me. “I think it’s time to call in some backup,” I told Bhatami.
His reply was lost in a sudden thunder of gunfire from the two Fillies’ positions. Real gunfire this time, not just snoozers. I ducked lower behind the car, wincing as the thudwumpers slammed into the engine compartment and shattered the windows, showering the two of us with bits of glass. “—the hell are they doing?” I heard Bhatami snarl over the racket.
“Keeping us busy,” I shouted back, silently cursing my own lack of anticipation. Of course the Modhri had restricted himself to snoozers up until now—with the cops crouched behind the van, his precious crateloads of coral had been in his line of fire. With the van now out of the way, his walkers were free to switch to thudwumpers and do their best to put us out of his way permanently. I glanced at the van, bouncing at full speed across and through the modest landscaping around the spaceport parking area as Comet Nose whisked the coral out of the battle zone.
I caught my breath. No—Comet Nose wasn’t driving away from anything. He was driving toward something. Specifically, toward a shadowy figure running stealthily across the parking area. Was McMicking finally joining the party?
And then the headlights brushed across the figure, and I saw that it wasn’t McMicking, but Karim.
The cacophony of shots from the two Fillies was joined by the distinctive bark of Karim’s RusFed P11 as he opened fire at the vehicle heading toward him. But for all the effect the shots had he might as well have been throwing confetti. With no need for Comet Nose himself to see where he was going, he could crouch low behind the dashboard with the whole engine compartment to block Karim’s shots.
I swiveled my Beretta around, resting it across my left wrist, and opened fire on the van’s cargo compartment. If I could put a couple of thudwumpers into the coral, maybe the walkers would go catatonic long enough for Karim to get out of the way.
I was still firing when the van caught Karim a glancing blow, throwing him sideways to the ground and sending his gun spinning off into the night.
I winced with sympathetic pain. The impact had been relatively light, and there was a fair chance Karim had survived it. But that state of affairs wouldn’t last long. All the Modhri had to do was pull the van around in a quick circle and roll over him to finish the job.
I peered helplessly out into the darkness surrounding the spaceport. McMicking had to be here—he was too good to have missed out on the probability that the Modhri would have set up for a full-fledged attack. Not Larry Hardin’s top troubleshooter. He had to be lurking somewhere on the fringes of the battle, maybe with a homemade mortar and lob bomb, maybe with a cozy sniper’s position and a hypersonic rifle. He was the surprise, last-minute flanking move that the Modhri wouldn’t be expecting and would have no way of blocking.
Only our last minutes were rapidly running down, and Karim’s absolute last minute was nearly here.
Where the hell was he?
The van shifted direction, and I waited tensely for it to circle around and finish off Karim. But instead the vehicle veered in the opposite direction, curving around and heading back toward the spaceport proper. “Looks like he’s coming back for his friends,” Bhatami said. “We’ve got one last chance to nail him.” Rising from his crouch a few centimeters, he braced his gun hand on the car’s trunk, pointing it toward the shelter.
And with a sudden snarl of pain, he lunged forward, slamming his chest against the car’s rear bumper, and fell heavily to the ground.
I dropped to one knee beside him. To my surprise, it was his ankle, not his chest, that
was busy spurting blood onto the pavement. The Filly in the car had managed to land a shot under not only his own vehicle but also under ours as well.
“Never mind me,” Bhatami gritted out between clenched teeth as he clutched at his wound. “Nail the haramzas.”
“In a second,” I said, shoving my gun back into its holster and gingerly pulling back the blood-soaked pant leg. There was a pulsing rhythm to the flow, which meant the shot had nicked an artery. If I went charging off after the Fillies now, Bhatami would bleed to death where he lay. “Where do you keep your med kits?”
“You hear me?” Bhatami snapped. “I said—”
“Never mind—I’ll find it,” I cut him off, eyeing the nearest police car. It was about four meters away, across the business end of the Modhran shooting gallery. Setting my teeth, I gathered my feet under me and sprinted to the car.
No shots rang out. With my skin crawling in gruesome anticipation, I wrenched the door open and ducked down into its limited protection. “Under the front passenger seat,” Bhatami called, his voice already sounding weaker.
I reached under the seat and pulled out the shiny white box. Tucking it under my arm, I turned around and braced myself for the return run across the shooting gallery.
And as I did so, there was a horrendous crash from the spaceport fence.
I looked through the car window. Comet Nose had driven the van through the fence and was now bouncing across the landing area. Behind him, running for all they were worth, were the two remaining Fillies from the shelter and the car.
Suppressing another curse, I ran back to Bhatami’s side and popped open the medical kit. The all-purpose emergency bandage was right on top; ripping it out of its sterile plastic envelope, I wrapped it around Bhatami’s ankle and squeezed the activation disk. The tiny red lights went on as the catalytic reaction inside the bandage began swelling the material, sealing off the entire area around the wound. “Go,” Bhatami breathed. “Maybe you can still stop them.”
“Right.” Away to the south, I could see the faint flickers of red and blue light that marked the approach of the backup forces that I wished had been here three minutes ago. Pressing a pain-med hypo into Bhatami’s palm, I headed for the hole in the fence.
I had just reached it and started through when there was a flat crack from somewhere in front of me and a bullet whizzed past my head.
I threw myself down and to the side, landing painfully on a tangled flap of the fencing that Comet Nose’s impact had torn free. Another shot ricocheted off the pavement beside me. This time I spotted the shooter crouched at the corner of the spaceport building. I fired three shots, and had the satisfaction of seeing him jerk violently and then fall to the ground.
But my sense of accomplishment was short-lived. I’d made it to his position and confirmed he was dead when, across the field, one of the torchyachts rose into view on its Shorshic force thrusters. Still lifting, it swiveled ponderously around and headed across the sky.
I raised my gun, then lowered it again, the taste of defeat in my mouth. I’d been able to keep the Modhri away from Rebekah at Karim’s bar, and had blocked his effort to bring his outpost and her boxes together in the police evidence room.
But this time he had me. Even if Bhatami was willing to let me go without further investigation—and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t—the Modhri would still get to the transfer station ahead of us. At that point, he would simply arrange for his coral and Rebekah’s boxes to be shuttled over to the Tube together. Whatever the Modhri had in mind, a nice little hundred-kilometer trip together in a shuttle’s cargo compartment would probably do the trick.
We could, of course, bypass the transfer station entirely by sneaking around behind the Tube and pulling the backdoor entry we’d used on a couple of previous occasions. But I doubted that would really help us any. The Modhri could simply split up his own coral boxes between the transfer station and the Tube and be ready to pounce with either the minute we showed our faces.
Besides, once we reached the Tube we still had to actually go somewhere, and once in the Quadrail system the Modhri had a very definite edge in numbers. All Bayta and I would have would be the kwi, and given the Modhri’s obsession with Rebekah I doubted that would be enough.
We would just have to come up with some other clever trick. Unfortunately, at the moment I didn’t have the faintest idea what that might be.
And in the meantime, I still had a few other hurdles to clear before we could get off the planet. Holstering my Beretta, I headed back to see how Bhatami was doing.
I had just reached the mangled section of fence when the whole landscape lit up around me.
I spun around, my first reflexive thought that the torch-yacht had somehow exploded. But the light was already fading, and as I squinted through the afterimage I realized that the ship had merely cut in its ion-plasma drive for half a second or so. It was already back on its normal atmospheric thrusters before the rumble of the brief high-energy pulse rolled over me.
I was still wondering what that was all about when I reached Bhatami. The rest of the backup crowd had arrived in my absence, and a pair of medics were getting the lieutenant settled onto a stretcher. A few of the cops eyed me warily as I came up, but no one actually pointed a gun in my direction. “How’s he doing?” I asked the medics.
“He’s doing just fine,” Bhatami said. His voice had that slightly distant quality that often resulted from a system full of pain meds. “I see they got away.”
“Only two of them,” I said. “What’s left of the third is over by the corner of the building.”
Bhatami nodded and gestured weakly to one of the cops loitering nearby. “Sergeant, take a couple of men and check it out.”
“Yes, sir,” the cop said, and headed away.
“We have any police presence on the transfer station?” I asked Bhatami.
He shook his head. “Irrelevant question,” he said. “You see that flash a minute ago? No—of course you saw the flash. That was their ion-plasma taking out our communications laser.”
I grimaced. “I don’t suppose you have a backup.”
Bhatami puffed derisively. “On New Tigris?”
“I didn’t think so,” I said. So our last chance of putting even that much of a roadblock in the Modhri’s path was gone. If he’d done the job properly, the laser would be out of commission far longer than the five days it would take the torchyacht to reach the transfer station.
“But at least they didn’t get Rebekah,” he went on. “Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. The Modhri didn’t have her yet, anyway. “She’s a popular girl, isn’t she?”
“Everyone who knows her likes her,” he said simply.
“Really,” I said, a wisp of something unpleasant curling through me.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Her and Lorelei both.”
The medics finished their prep work and rolled the stretcher into position behind the ambulance. “What happens to me now?” I asked.
“Not much,” Bhatami said. “You’ll need to come down to the station and make a statement about this evening’s activities. I understand that along with Mr. Veldrick, we have two more bodies at Karim’s bar.”
“Those were self-defense,” I said, peering across the parking area toward where Karim had been run over.
Bhatami caught the look. “He’s already been taken away in another ambulance,” he said. “He’ll need to make a statement, too, once he’s sufficiently recovered.”
“Of course,” I said, wishing I’d had a chance to work out a common story with Karim. “What about the two murdered police officers?”
Bhatami’s gaze hardened. “We’ll check the weapon used by the Filiaelian you say you shot just now. If it’s one of the ones stolen from Sergeant Aksam or Officer Lasari, you’ll be in the clear. If the two that got away took those particular weapons aboard the torchyacht with them—” He shrugged slightly. “Things might take a little longer.”
Inside my pocket, my comm vibrated. McMicking, telling me he’d finally finished whatever puttering he’d gone off to do and was ready to come to our aid? “Hello?” I answered.
“Are you still at the spaceport?” Bayta’s voice came.
“They’re about to take me downtown,” I said. “You and Rebekah all right?”
“We’re fine,” she said. “You need to come over here before you leave. Rather, you need to come to Mr. Veldrick’s van. It’s over by where the Filiaelians’ torchyacht was parked.”
“My hosts may not want me taking a walk just now,” I pointed out.
“They will,” Bayta assured me. “You’ll want a couple of them with you.”
I looked at Bhatami. “Bayta has something on the field she wants me and a couple of your officers to take a look at.”
He frowned but gestured. “Go ahead. Darrian, Joachem—go with him.”
With the two cops in tow, I retraced my steps through the hole in the fence. On the way we passed the three others Bhatami had sent to examine the Filly body I’d tapped on my final futile attempt to stop the torchyacht. “You carry a Glock?” one of them called to me, holding up a familiar-looking gun in his gloved hand.
“Usually,” I said. “You’ll note I’m not the one who’s been shooting that one.”
He grunted and dropped the gun carefully into an evidence bag. One of his partners, I noticed, was similarly bagging another sidearm, probably one of the guns appropriated from the dead cops the Modhri had run over earlier. I spotted the nose of Veldrick’s van half hidden behind one of the two remaining torchyachts, and my escort and I headed over.
We reached the vehicle to find the rear loading door wide open and the crates of coral gone. Wondering which of those completely unsurprising facts Bayta had found so interesting, I walked around the rear of the van to its other side.
And stopped. There, lying motionless on the pavement, were the two Fillies I’d last seen heading for their torchyacht. Their hands had been strapped securely behind their backs with plastic cargo ties, and in the reflected light from the spaceport building I could see the small wet stains of snoozer wounds.