by Timothy Zahn
“Yes, I have,” Nask said, considerably less taken aback by Nicabar’s appearance than I was. “And you are …?” he added as Nicabar crossed the room toward him.
“What do you mean, who am I?” Nicabar countered scornfully. “Weren’t you watching when Brosh held my ID up to the monitor?”
“Only the Director General’s seal was clear,” Nask said. “Not the number or rank designation.”
With a supremely restrained sigh, Nicabar pulled an ID folder out of his inner pocket and dropped it on the desk. “Fine. Help yourself.”
Nask did. For nearly half a minute he studied the folder, while the rest of us sat or stood where we were in silence. Nicabar sent his gaze around the room, pausing briefly and measuringly on each of the Iykams in turn, sent me a brief and totally impassive glance, then looked back at Nask.
Finally, almost reluctantly I thought, the Patth closed the folder and laid it back down on the table in front of him. “Satisfied?” Nicabar asked.
“Quite satisfied, Expediter,” Nask said, his voice almost sullen.
“Good,” Nicabar said, holding out his hand. “Then you can return the favor. Brosh tells me you’re the ambassador to Palmary. Unless you want to try telling me this is an embassy annex, I’d like to see some proof of that.”
“Of course this isn’t the embassy,” Nask said stiffly, reaching into his robe and pulling out his own ID folder. “I chose this place precisely because I didn’t want the encounter taking place on official Patthaaunutth soil.”
“So where exactly are we?” I asked.
Nask glanced at me but didn’t answer. Nicabar, studying Nask’s ID, didn’t even bother to look at me. I looked around at the Iykams, but none of them seemed interested in talking to me, either. After a moment, Nicabar closed Nask’s ID and dropped it onto the desk beside his own. “Fine,” he said. “Any progress so far?”
“We have him,” Nask said, gesturing toward me. “That’s a start.” He cleared his throat. “You’ll forgive me if I find myself surprised by your unexpected arrival, Expediter. I was not informed of your presence on Palmary.”
“You’ll be even more surprised when I tell you the name of the ship I came in on,” Nicabar said dryly. “A little independent freighter by the name of Icarus.”
It was as if all three Patth had simultaneously grabbed hold of the same high-voltage wire. “What?” Enig said, the sound coming out more as a gasp than a legitimate word. “The Icarus?”
“What, don’t you read your own government’s hot-sheets?” Nicabar sniffed. “My picture ought to be plastered all over the embassy identifying me as one of the Icarus’s crewers.”
“There have been no such pictures,” Nask said. “We have only now begun to piece together the profile of the Icarus’s crew from sifting through the various reports, and there are no pictures or sketches as yet.”
Nicabar grunted. “Sloppy.”
“We are doing the best we can with what we have,” Nask insisted, his voice still civil but clearly showing some strain. “It was mere blind luck that one of Enig’s defenders spotted McKell heading for that pharmacy and was able to see through his disguise.”
“Enig’s defenders?” Nicabar echoed, looking over at Enig.
“Yes,” Nask said. “Enig and Brosh are the pilot and copilot of the freighter Considerate.”
“Civilians?” Nicabar demanded, his eyes blazing. “You brought civilians into this?”
“I had no choice,” Nask snapped back. “I couldn’t involve my staff for the same reason I didn’t take McKell to the embassy. Besides, Brosh and Enig are no longer precisely civilians. Their ship happens to be the only Patthaaunutth vessel currently on the planet, and once we have the Icarus we’ll need someone who can fly it back to Aauth. I’ve therefore commandeered both of them into official service.”
“I see,” Nicabar said, glancing at me. “You know where the ship is, then?”
“Not yet,” Nask had to admit. “I was just beginning negotiations when you arrived.” He sent me a rather disgusted look. “Now, I presume, the question is moot.”
“Not quite,” Nicabar said. “The rest of the crew know he’s missing and are on the alert. We have to be careful or we’ll risk damaging the artifact.”
“That would just be too bad, wouldn’t it,” I murmured.
Nicabar regarded me as if I were something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe. “Who are all of these?” he asked, waving at the assembled Iykams. “More merchant-ship conscripts?”
“They’re my ship’s personal defenders, Expediter,” Brosh said, bristling noticeably at what he obviously took to be a slight. “They’re more than equal to whatever task you require of them.”
“I suppose we’ll find that out, won’t we?” Nicabar said, leaving the desk and moving through the gathered Iykams, looking at each in turn with the piercing glance of military inspection officers everywhere. “Do I also assume you have cloaks of invisibility for all of them?”
“What?” Brosh asked, clearly startled. “Cloaks of what?”
“That’s the only way they’re going to get close enough to the Icarus to use these,” Nicabar said, lifting the nearest Iykam’s gun hand and tapping the corona weapon.
“Yes, I see,” Nask said with a nod. “A good point. Brosh, do any of the defenders standing guard outside have plasmics with them?”
“Some of them, yes,” Brosh said, glaring from under his hood at Nicabar. Apparently, he wasn’t used to dealing with top-ranking Patth agents. He certainly didn’t seem to care much for their style. “I’ll call them and ask.”
“No—no phones,” Nicabar said as Brosh reached beneath his robe. “We don’t want anything going through the phone system that could be backtracked later. You three”—he jabbed a finger at a clump of Iykams—“go to the others and collect all their plasmics from them.”
“Wait a minute,” Brosh protested, pointing at me. “You can’t just send them away. What about him?”
“What, it takes more than five of your highly competent defenders to guard a single manacled prisoner?” Nicabar countered scornfully.
“He has a point, Expediter,” Nask put in. “McKell is a highly dangerous human, and has slipped out of several other traps. Enig can go check on the weapons.”
“I don’t want you three going outside this room any more than you have to,” Nicabar said in a voice of strained patience. “You shouldn’t even be in this part of town, let alone wandering around loose.”
“It’s the Grand Feast,” Nask pointed out tartly. “All races mix freely together for that. But if you insist.” He nodded to the three Iykams Nicabar had marked out. “Carry out your orders.”
“And make sure you bring back one for me,” Nicabar added as the three headed to the door.
“You’re not armed, Expediter?” Nask asked as the Iykams left the room, closing the door behind them.
“You know I’m not,” Nicabar said. “I presume you were watching as Enig and his defenders checked me for weapons outside.”
“My question was more along the lines of why you didn’t have a weapon at all,” Nask said. “I was under the impression Expediters were routinely armed.”
“Most Expediters don’t have to live aboard a ship the size of the Icarus with people like McKell poking their noses into everything,” Nicabar reminded him. “He’d have fingered me long ago if I’d brought a gun aboard.”
“You had us fooled, all right,” I growled, trying not to sound too bitter. “Especially that little speech you made back in the engine room. That was a nice touch.”
He lifted his eyebrows mockingly. “I don’t know why,” he said. “I thought I made it pretty clear that I thought the Patthaaunutth were being unfairly picked on just because they happened to be more technically innovative than the rest of us. You must not have been listening very well.”
“I guess not,” I murmured, a sudden surge of adrenaline jolting through my system. I had been listening to that conversati
on; had been listening with everything I had. And that was not in any way what Nicabar had said or implied.
Which either meant he was playing a completely pointless game with me … or else there was something else entirely going on here.
And then, even as Nicabar turned contemptuously away from me and back to Nask, I heard the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard in my life. A soft sound, hardly audible, certainly not at all melodic. But a sound nevertheless that three minutes ago I would have sworn I would never hear again.
The soft sneeze of a Kalixiri ferret.
I would have been surprised if any of the others noticed it. Certainly they gave no sign that they had. Nicabar was conversing in a low but intense tone with Nask, probably discussing plans for the upcoming raid on the Icarus, and all the Iykams in my field of view were still glowering at me with the same unfriendly expressions that their companions had worn in the back room just before I’d dropped a chair on them. Slowly, making it look like I was checking them out in turn, I moved my head just enough to see the lower of the room’s air vents.
And there he was, barely visible in the shadows behind the vent’s crosshatched grating: Pix or Pax, I couldn’t tell which, his head turned to the side as if he was grooming himself or gnawing at an itch. Just as slowly, I turned back to the desk again, not wanting my interest in that part of the room to spark any unwelcome curiosity.
Nicabar was looking sideways at me, still talking to Nask. I dropped one eyelid a millimeter and got an equally microscopic nod in return from him before he seemed to notice his ID still lying on the desk and returned it to his pocket. Not his ID, rather, but the one I’d taken off the Patth agent on Dorscind’s World after my old buddy James Fulbright’s attempt to cash in on the reward. Clearly, my original estimation of Thompson as little more than a glorified Patth accountant had been seriously off target.
“I suppose you’re wondering what we’ve got planned,” Nicabar spoke up into my thoughts.
“Oh, no, don’t tell me,” I said, remembering to put the same bitterness into my voice that I’d been feeling two minutes earlier. “I just love surprises.”
“I’d be a little less flippant if I were you,” Nicabar said reprovingly. “Whether the rest of the Icarus crew lives or needlessly dies is going to depend entirely on you. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that—what the hell?” He jumped away from the desk toward the wall, just as Nask let out a yelp of his own.
And for good reason. The air vents, upper and lower both, were suddenly spewing a dense, pale yellow smoke. “We’re on fire!” Enig gasped.
“You three get out of here!” Nicabar snapped. He’d reached the area of the lower vent now, his head and torso disappearing as he bent down into the smoke. “You—defenders—get that top vent sealed!”
Two of the five Iykams were already scrambling against the wall, straining to reach the upper vent’s sealing lever. From Nicabar and the lower vent came a teeth-grinding screech of torn metal; and then abruptly he was standing upright again out of the cloud of smoke, a cloud that seemed already to be starting to dissipate.
And in his hand was Fulbright’s Kochran-Uzi three-millimeter semiautomatic.
His first two shots took out two of the Iykams still standing guard over me. The third guard nearly got his own weapon up and aimed in time, but lost the last chance he would ever have as I leaned sideways and kicked his gun arm out of line. I swiveled back around as Nicabar systematically took out the rest of the guards, heaving myself up with the chair on my back again, and hurled myself across the desk at Nask.
The Patth threw his own chair backward as he saw me coming, making one last futile grab for something in the drawer he’d opened as he got out of my way. But the desk was higher than the table in the back room had been, and with the additional barrier of the monitors along its edge I only made it about halfway across before I ran out of momentum. Nask, belatedly seeing that his reflexive dodge had been unnecessary, killed his own backward momentum and dived out of his chair toward the open drawer.
“Don’t,” a familiar voice warned from the doorway.
Nask froze, his head twisting to look in that direction, his hand still outstretched toward the drawer. I looked, too, trying to ignore the fresh red haze my sudden bit of exercise had sent swimming across my vision. Ixil stood in the doorway, the plasmic in his hand pointed squarely at Nask, his wide shoulders and settled-looking stance blocking any hope of escape for the two Patth pilots standing rigidly in shock in front of him.
“I see,” Nask said. I looked back to find he had straightened up again, his hand fallen empty at his side.
“It’s like a class reunion in here,” I said, my voice sounding distant in my ears through the trip-hammer that had apparently finished its lunch break and started up work again on the back of my head. “I hope someone thought to bring some painkillers along.”
“We did better than that,” Ixil assured me, motioning Brosh and Enig back toward Nask and closing the door behind him. “We’ve got Everett waiting outside.”
“Everett?” I echoed. “I told him to stay with Shawn.”
“Tera and Chort are with Shawn,” Nicabar told me. He was at my side now, examining the handcuffs. “It occurred to us that you might need medical attention more urgently than he did.”
“I don’t, but I might have,” I admitted, nodding toward one of the guards lying dead on the floor. “That one. Keys in his belt pouch. How did you find me, anyway?”
“We never really lost you,” Nicabar said, dropping to one knee and digging into the pouch. “Tera wanted to know just where you were going to go on your errand.”
I looked at Nask, who was standing stiffly glowering at us. “Don’t worry about giving anything away,” I told Nicabar. “They were staking out pharmacists, after all. Like he said, they’re putting together the pieces.”
“And we already have most of them,” Nask said quietly. “Sooner or later we will get you.”
He drew himself up. “And when we do, you will wish you had bargained here and now. You will wish it very much.”
“I’ll make you a small wager that we don’t,” I offered. But the words were automatic, and ninety percent bluster besides. For at least the foreseeable future, the smart money was definitely still on the Patth. “So what, after I left she called and had you tail me?” I asked, turning back to Nicabar.
“Actually, we’d already set it up,” Nicabar said. He found the keys and set to work on my cuffs. “After the Iykams jumped you, I followed your party back here and then called Ixil. He brought the chemicals I needed, and while I mixed up the smoke bombs and time fuses he sent his ferrets in to reconnoiter. They came back, and we rigged them with harnesses to drag the bombs and gun inside.”
The last cuff came loose. “You certainly had me going,” I said, massaging my wrists. So that was what the ferret in the vent had been doing: chewing through his harness straps so that he wouldn’t have to be sitting on top of the smoke bomb when it went off. “How exactly does the rest of the plan go?”
Nicabar nodded at the three Patth. “We cuff our friends together and get out of here.”
“Good plan,” I said. “There’s only one problem. This ship of theirs, the Considerate. It must be pretty good-sized, or Nask wouldn’t have thought they’d be able to handle the Icarus. If they get loose before we make it off-planet, they might take it into their heads to try and intercept us.”
“A good point,” Nicabar admitted. “Well … if you want, I’ll deal with it.”
“Be warned,” Nask said. Suddenly every trace of smarminess was gone from his voice, leaving nothing but simmering threat in its place. “The murder of a Patthaaunutth citizen is punishable by the most severe consequences imaginable.”
“And how would they know who’d done it?” Nicabar scoffed.
“There are ways,” Nask said, still in that same tone. “There are always ways.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said before Nicabar could reply. “W
e can’t shoot down unarmed civilians in cold blood anyway.”
“Then what do we do?” Nicabar demanded. “Just leave them here like this?”
“We leave them here,” Ixil said, stepping forward and handing me his gun. “But not precisely like this. Jordan, if you’d be so kind as to watch them; and Revs, I’d appreciate it if you’d get that upper vent open so that Pix can get out.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, keeping one eye on the three Patth and the other on Ixil. He had retrieved one of the corona guns and was fiddling with a pair of control settings.
“This will be an experiment,” Ixil said. “I found this setting when I was examining the weapons you brought from your encounter on Xathru. It’s quite low-power—far too low, in fact, to possibly serve as a credible weapon.”
“What’s it for, then?” Nicabar asked, grunting as he tore the grating from the upper vent. Pix was more than ready, diving out of the opening almost before the grating was all the way off. Hitting the floor, he dodged around the Iykams’ bodies and scampered up Ixil’s leg.
“I expect it’s used for torture,” Ixil said, squinting at the dials. “Something to cause pain without the risk of physical damage.”
“What an efficient idea,” I muttered, gazing hard at Nask. He said nothing, his eyes riveted on the weapon in Ixil’s hand. “No reason you should have to carry both a gun and a set of thumbscrews, too.”
“Indeed,” Ixil said. Finishing his adjustments, he headed toward Brosh.
“Just a moment,” Brosh said, taking a hasty step back. “I’m a simple starship pilot, from a civilian merchant ship. I have nothing to do with decisions or policies of that sort.”
“I realize that,” Ixil said, reaching out his free hand and taking one of Brosh’s arms in an unbreakable grip. “And for that reason I sincerely hope this doesn’t hurt too much.”
And pressing the corona gun against Brosh’s left cheekbone, he pulled the trigger.