“My name is Usan Joyl. Who are you?”
Myri felt her jaw drop. “Usan Joyl?”
The Duros shook his head. “No, that’s me.”
Trey glanced back in their direction. “Who’s Usan Joyl?”
“I am.”
“He’s ... He’s ...” Myri felt herself on the verge of stammering. She tried to clamp down on her emotions. She’d grown up surrounded by famous people, but most of them weren’t artists. “He’s a master of false identity preparation. Maybe the most famous one alive. Though we didn’t know for sure that he was alive. He disappeared years ago. We assumed he’d made himself a new identity and retired.”
The Duros kept his voice pleasant. “I’ll never retire. I’ll die before I retire. But I’m only famous within certain societies. Who are you?”
“I’m ... I’m a protégée of Booster Terrik. I was named for his daughter. I own six fleecing records on the Errant Venture.”
“Ah.” Usan Joyl at last sounded satisfied. He stood, bowed, sat again. “Allow me to present my grandson, Dashan. He is as adept as I was when I was four.”
The younger Duros snapped his head around to stare at the older. Myri thought he was glaring. But he merely said, “You’d been to jail twice by the time you were my age. My record is clean.”
“Things were different then, child.” Usan turned back to Myri. “Can we offer you some caf?”
“No. I assume you’re a prisoner of General Thaal. Can I offer you some escape?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Flanked by two clusters of patchy, waist-high grasses, Scut sat staring at the square building thirty meters away. He kept very still, blaster rifle across his lap, macrobinoculars to his eyes, moving only to sweep his field of enhanced vision across the terrain before him.
Wheet.
That was a whistling noise, not the wind, not human, coming from well past the building.
A response came from the north: Whooo.
Wheet.
Whooo.
Scut frowned. He hadn’t heard these noises before. He slowly scanned leftward, looking for their source.
Wheet.
Whooo.
He didn’t worry about the bluehair spiders creeping up on him while he was concentrating on events farther away. They already had. Twice now while he was aware of it, perhaps more times when he wasn’t, spiders had walked cautiously up to him, had begun to step up on him ... and then had apparently decided they didn’t like the feel of the ambience suit cloth. They had turned and wandered away at an unconcerned pace.
Wheet.
Whooo.
There, motion—something had moved, closer than his depth of field. Scut adjusted his optics, bringing his point of focus back toward him twenty meters. But there was nothing to be seen on that patch of ground, though Scut was sure he’d found the correct place.
He remained motionless.
From a dark spot on the ground, right at the center of his macrobinocular view, a creature rose into place. It was furred, rodentlike, with long incisors and stubby arms that ended in paws like spindly hands. It was perhaps thirty centimeters long, and it sat up out of a hole in the ground as though it had been raised by a tiny turbolift.
It opened its mouth, and that noise emerged: Wheet.
A call came in response from off to the south: Whooo.
Scut grinned. It had to be a pop-dog, the original variety. Was that a mating call, an all-clear, a We’re fine here, how are you cry to a distant nest? And could he, Scut, get a tissue sample before they left?
The pop-dog lowered itself into its hole.
From behind, a huge, heavy hand came down and clamped onto Scut’s right shoulder.
Myri, Trey, and the Joyls kept to the rail trench all the way back to the motor pool chamber. It was slow going—Usan Joyl was not a young man, and his knees did not permit fast passage—but they moved steadily.
When the motor pool chamber was visible ahead, Trey, in front, waved to stop the others. He peered at the trench ahead, clearly troubled.
Myri, in back, scooted up to join him. “What is it?”
He pointed to a spot on the trench’s right side. There, a circular metal hole a centimeter in diameter could be seen. He tugged his right glove down and held his bared wrist over the hole. Then he withdrew and gestured for Myri to do the same.
When she did, she felt cool air on her skin.
Trey groped around on the floor. “All four bolts holding that panel to the trench side are gone. I swear, there was no panel undogged like that when we came this way.”
“Are you sure?”
“Not absolutely sure, no.” Trey drew his blaster pistol from its holster.
Myri did likewise, and moved a few meters back to have a better angle on Trey and the panel.
With his free hand, Trey gripped the top of the panel and tugged. The panel leaned open, revealing a black, open space beyond.
Trey aimed, clearly saw nothing, and relaxed. He carefully pushed the metal panel until it fit snugly where it had been before.
Troubled, he holstered his weapon. “Sorry.” He resumed his crawl, leading the others on toward the motor pool.
They reached the near edge of that chamber without incident. Myri glimpsed movement in the trench ahead, though it was hard to make out because of the dimness of the glow rods. Two figures, nearly flat against the trench floor, worked their way toward Myri and Trey. After a moment she recognized them: Jesmin and Bhindi.
Myri raised her head to look beneath the parked landspeeders and other vehicles nearby. She saw no sign of Turman. Perhaps he’d finished and concealed himself.
Jesmin and Bhindi crawled the last few meters to reach them. They stared past Trey at the Duros men. Bhindi glanced at Myri. “Report?”
“Leader, meet the witnesses. Witnesses, meet Leader.”
The Joyls offered low-energy waves of their hands.
Bhindi nodded. “Good. We have some, too. Not living. We’re going to cook the general in his own juices. Where’s Two?”
Myri shrugged. “Unknown.”
“If that long-winded attention magnet delays our extraction—”
“See, here’s another one.” Trey sounded irked. He pointed to the side panel to Bhindi’s left. “I know there were dog-bolts in that one before.”
Jesmin disappeared. Myri saw the blur of motion suggesting that the woman had leapt straight up from a crawling position, but she vanished so suddenly she could have been a hologram image suddenly terminated.
The same instant, the panel Trey was pointing at fell over, slamming into Bhindi, knocking her sideways. It clanked to the permacrete floor; the noise echoed off distant walls. Two black-clad human men rolled out from the tunnel it had concealed.
One was lean, angular, and fair-haired; he covered Bhindi with his blaster pistol. The other was more muscular and lithe, his hair dark and curly; he covered Myri with his own weapon.
The fair-haired man glowered but kept his voice low. “Don’t move!” He whispered the words, but it was a high-volume whisper, like steam escaping from a faulty caf brewer.
Then Jesmin leaned down from overhead and pressed her own pistol barrel to the top of the fair-haired man’s skull. “You, either.”
Bhindi stared at the man. Her eyes widened. “Sharr?”
The fair-haired man stared back at her. “Bhindi?”
Myri looked at the man covering her. “Kirdoff!”
He peered back at her, just as bewildered. “Rima? Is this your natural color?”
“Blasters down, everybody, before somebody fouls up irretrievably.” Bhindi glared in all directions.
The man she’d called Sharr nodded. “Do it.” Everyone holstered blaster pistols.
“Five, incoming?” Bhindi asked.
Jesmin rolled back over the lip and dropped silently into the trench. “No one coming yet. But that clank ...”
Sharr glared at Bhindi. “This is a Wraith operation.”
Bhindi nodde
d. “You guessed right. So you and your little friend—”
“Guessed, hell. This is a Wraith operation, and you’re about to foul it up.”
Irritated, Bhindi gestured at Trey, Myri, and Jesmin. “It’s a Wraith operation, and here are the Wraiths. You need to get your—”
Sharr’s glare was no less forbidding than hers. “No, we’re the Wraiths, and you—”
“Both of you, shut up.” Myri didn’t raise her voice, but she put a threat into her tone. She pointed at Sharr. “Who recruited you for this?”
He paused, considering his answer.
Myri felt herself getting more annoyed. “Now’s not the time to give me the silent treatment. If you’re Sharr, you’re Sharr Latt, and you used to be a Wraith. I’m Myri Antilles, and my father founded the Wraiths. So answer me. Who recruited you?”
Sharr’s eyebrows rose. “Myri Antilles. I met you when you were a little girl. You probably don’t remember—”
“Who?”
“Face Loran.”
Myri turned to look at Bhindi. “We’ve got two teams here. Both being played.”
Bhindi looked baffled. “But why?”
Myri turned toward Trey. “You said you thought we were good on flags. But what if there are two teams here dropping them?”
He shrugged and looked apologetic. “We could be in trouble.”
A noise, a combination of clanging and keening wail, filled the air.
Bhindi glared at Sharr. “Do you have our Clawdite?” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the alarm. She straightened so that her eyes were above the lip of the trench. She looked northward, then southward.
“Oh, he’s yours. That explains the ambience suit.” Sharr maneuvered himself into a crouch and took a topside look as well. “My medic darted him. Would have used a different drug if he’d known it was a Clawdite. As it is, your guy has just become dopey and amiable instead of unconscious.” He turned toward the tunnel he’d rolled out of. “Everyone out, we’re extracting!”
“Was it before or after he sabotaged all these vehicles?” Bhindi growled.
“His explosives bag was pretty full.”
Bhindi clawed at the air above as if trying to punish some greater power for letting her down.
Now there were shouts from north and south, but no Pop-Dogs came immediately into view. A great creaking and rumbling sounded from overhead as the lift began a slow descent.
A third person rolled out of the trench tunnel. A dark-skinned human male, probably in his twenties, he was clad, like Sharr, top to bottom in black, but he also wore a black hip-cloak that would have looked good on any fashion icon. He held a long rifle, almost spindly compared to a mil-spec blaster rifle, in both hands. From his prone position he flexed his back and was suddenly on his feet, crouching beside Bhindi.
Bhindi looked at him. “That’s Wran Narcassan. Sharr, you stole my sniper.”
“He’s my sniper.”
Narcassan didn’t look at either of them. “I’m open to offers. But let’s leave first.” His voice was mellow and unperturbed.
“We all need to be at the balcony one floor up before the lift gets to it.” Jesmin glanced at Bhindi for confirmation. “Otherwise we won’t be able to winch all the way up.”
Bhindi nodded. “Go.”
Jesmin led the way, leaping effortlessly up to floor level and darting between landspeeders as she raced to the column where they’d tied off their cords.
Sharr added, “Two, back her up.”
“Two’s our Clawdite.” Myri gave Sharr a confused look, but it was Wran who leapt up to floor level. “Oh, your Two, not our Two.”
Bhindi raised her voice almost to a shriek. “This is not going to end well, this is not going to end well, this is not going to end well.”
A blaster bolt from the south plowed into the metal of the trench lip a meter from Bhindi’s head. She flinched, then returned fire. Myri thought it was more suppression fire than an attempt to hit the enemy; the enemy was not in sight. The Joyls flattened themselves on the trench floor.
To the north, a figure in the distance moved from left to right, crossing from one side of the main corridor to the other, leaping the trench. Sharr took a shot at the figure, missed him by several meters.
Now another man crawled out of the access tunnel. He was a Devaronian, red-skinned and bald, with horns protruding from his brow and sharp, sharp teeth in his mouth. He got to his knees, spun, reached back in the hole, and dragged out yet another man—Turman, bound hand and foot, his hood off, an improvised cloth gag holding wadded cloth in his mouth. He was now in Clawdite form, his human appearance abandoned or unavailable to him.
Bhindi yanked the gag down off his mouth and pulled the wadding out. “Two, did you plant the charges?”
Turman looked blearily at her and cleared his throat. “So it has come to this. Perhaps a Rodian and a Bothan should never have wed, and yet we did. And now our union is as dead as Shacobi there. Yet can we not preserve one last happy memory of our years together?”
Bhindi paused, studying him. Then she shoved the wadding back in place and yanked the gag back up.
Myri chanced a look southward. Figures were moving there, too, Pop-Dogs in uniform, no armor, but rifles in their hands. One of them, too, darted toward the far wall, preparing to leap the trench.
Myri aimed straight along and above the trench and fired. Her shot took the Pop-Dog as he jumped. He fell, limp, smacking into the permacrete on the far side of the trench with a bone-breaking impact. Myri frowned. “Leader, in a minute they’ll figure out they can jump into the trench and shoot at us, and the trench walls will channel the bolts right into our bodies. Now that we’re all together—”
“Yes, Three. Let’s go.” Bhindi scrambled up out of the trench and ducked behind a red, open-top landspeeder.
In moments they were all up and charging toward the column with the tied-off cords. Trey had Turman over his shoulder. Sharr and Bhindi held back, moving up more slowly, providing covering fire, Bhindi north and Sharr south.
Myri saw Jesmin and Wran begin their ascent, both on the same rope, Wran holding on to Jesmin. She guessed that the second team of Wraiths didn’t have winches of their own.
Reaching the column, Myri untied the next cord. “Kirdoff, with me. Four, our Four I mean, carry Usan.” In seconds, she hooked up her winch to her belt and the cord.
“I’ll get the other Duros topside.” The Devaronian slapped Dashan’s arm, gestured toward a far corner of the back wall where the Wraiths had convened earlier, and went running.
“Where’s he going?” Myri gestured for the curly-haired man to wrap his arms around her neck.
He did. “Emergency-escape stairwell. Standard on underground bases that might be damaged by bombing. Except our bomb’s in there now, and Drikall will set it off when they’re past it.”
Myri entangled their legs, then hit the winch button.
“By the way, it’s not actually Kirdoff. Fodrick, Thaymes Fodrick. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Four. Just Four.”
“Awww. You can trust me. I’m a Wraith.”
“A Wraith in an enemy facility, vacuum-brain.”
She and Thaymes reached the rail of the darkened residential level. Jesmin, standing there, tossed the trailing end of her ascent cord and Thaymes caught it. Jesmin hauled them in. Wran now stood against the side wall and was methodically firing into the thrusters of all the airspeeders within line of sight, crippling them. His laser rifle was eerily silent compared with blasters.
Thaymes kept talking as they climbed over the rail. “One of the leaders should really be up here, directing. I mean, the orders you were barking out were fine, but—”
“I think they have unresolved issues.” Myri glanced overhead. The lift car was halfway down. “If the Pop-Dogs had any sense, they’d lock that car down where it is right now and trap us here.”
Thaymes trained his blaster pistol at the scene below. Sharr and Bhindi were now i
n sight, backing the last few meters toward the column. Trey began his ascent, slow because of his and Usan’s combined weight. No Pop-Dogs were yet in sight below, but a constant rain of blaster bolts slammed into parked speeders all around the Wraiths. Myri estimated that at least eight Pop-Dogs were firing, and their numbers seemed to be growing.
Thaymes grinned. It was a charming expression, completely out of place in this environment. “They can’t lock the lift. I can take control of it at any time. When it gets right below this level, I’ll lock it. Which will last a minute or two, until they figure out how we did it.”
“Well, that’s ... clever, I guess. But there may be forces on the lift car itself when it passes us.”
Down below, Bhindi and Sharr were both in the process of hooking up winches. Myri guessed that Sharr was using Turman’s; the actor, now unbound and ungagged, sat with his back to the column, apparently singing to himself.
A Pop-Dog, a female trooper, appeared, creeping out from under cover just beyond the lift shaft’s northwest support column. She drew a bead on Bhindi or Sharr. Wran didn’t have line of sight on her, but the others did. Thaymes got off a quick shot, missing the woman but causing her to flinch. Stun bolts from Myri and Jesmin struck her, sending her unconscious to the floor.
And Thaymes kept talking throughout. “No. Our Wookiee has taken care of all the Pop-Dogs at the big building.”
“You have a Wookiee? We don’t have a Wookiee.” Myri knew she sounded hurt.
“We don’t have a Clawdite.”
Below, more Pop-Dogs were creeping in toward the leaders and Turman. The Wraiths at the rail stepped up their fire, forcing the Pop-Dogs to keep down and behind cover.
Sharr picked up Turman, a strain for him, and started his ascent. Bhindi unloaded blasterfire, ill aimed but furious, at the enemy.
“Wait a second. Your Wookiee. Female? Cream-brown fur?”
“Yes.”
“I think she served me a fizz-and-brandy the other night.” Myri crouched, taking better cover behind the rail, as the Pop-Dogs below began returning fire.
Wran, his shoulder braced against the wall to the right, fired. His rifle discharged with a quiet hum. The bright bolt that emerged hit just below the visor of a helmeted Pop-Dog. He fell.
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