The Icarus Hunt

by Timothy Zahn

  There wasn’t any flash—the current flow was far too low to produce a spark. But from the effect on Brosh Ixil might have just put a thousand volts across his face. He gasped sharply, his head jerking back with such violence that my own head injuries throbbed in sympathetic pain. Ixil didn’t give him a chance to recover his balance, but simply leaned forward and delivered a second jolt to the other cheekbone. Brosh gasped again, a sound that seemed to be on the edge of panic or hysteria. “Just one more,” Ixil soothed him, and delivered a third shock to his forehead just above his eyes.

  Abruptly, Nask snarled something in the Patth language. About a step behind me, he’d suddenly figured out what Ixil was doing. “You sacundian alien frouzht—”

  “—and then we move on to the hands,” Ixil said, ignoring both Nask’s curses and Brosh’s yelps and delivering a quick jolt to the backs of each of the pilot’s hands. “And that,” he added, letting go of Brosh’s arm so quickly that the other nearly toppled over backward, “is that.”

  “Yes, indeed,” I agreed. “And with all that lovely implanted circuitry now scrambled or fried, the Considerate is without a chief pilot.”

  “And will be also without its backup pilot in a moment,” Ixil agreed, moving to where Enig was cringing.

  Enig demonstrated himself capable of more dignity and self-control than his superior, leaving Nask’s continuing stream of invective unpunctuated by gasps or moans. “Now it should be safe to secure them to the desk,” Ixil said, tossing the weapon distastefully across the room and taking his plasmic back from me. “Revs, if you’ll do the honors?”

  A minute later, the three Patth were trussed like a matched set of Thanksgiving turkeys. They maintained a stoic silence throughout the operation, even Nask apparently having run out of things to call us. But the ambassador stared at Ixil the whole time, and there was something about the very deadness of his expression that sent a chill up my back.

  “Looks good,” I said after Nicabar had finished, giving his handiwork a quick examination. Not that I didn’t trust him to do a proper job, but it was too late in the day to be taking unnecessary chances. “I presume one of you knows the best way out?”

  “Straight through the club,” Ixil said. He snapped his fingers and Pax abandoned his examination of one of the dead Iykams and scurried toward him. “Did you know you were in the back rooms of a night-to-dawn club, by the way?”

  “No, but I should have guessed from the music I was hearing,” I said as Pax climbed up and took his accustomed place on Ixil’s other shoulder. It occurred to me that I hadn’t actually heard the band for some time now; straining my ears, I discovered I still couldn’t hear it. Either Nicabar’s gunshots had affected my hearing, or else the club had suddenly gone silent. An ominous possibility, that one. “Let’s go.”

  I headed for the door, scooping up one of the corona guns along the way just to have some kind of weapon in my hand. Nicabar and Ixil moved into support positions on either side of me, Nicabar easing the door open for a cautious look as Ixil kept an eye on our three Patth friends. “All clear,” Nicabar murmured. He started out—

  “Kalix.”

  I turned around. Nask was still staring at Ixil, the look of death still smoldering in his eyes. “For what you did here you will pay dearly,” the ambassador said quietly. “You, and all your species with you. Remember this night as you watch your people starve to death.”

  For a moment Ixil looked back at him, his own face expressionless, and I wondered uneasily if he was having second thoughts about the side he’d chosen. If Nask wasn’t just blowing off steam—and if he could persuade the Patth Director General to back him up—the Patth certainly had it within their economic power to make life miserable for the Kalixiri.

  “Ixil?” Nicabar prompted quietly.

  His voice seemed to break the spell. “Yes,” Ixil said, turning back. “Go ahead. I’ll take the rear.”

  Seconds later, the three of us were moving along a well-lit but deserted corridor. There was still no music; nor, as we moved along, could I hear any sounds at all other than our own. “What did you do, scare away all the patrons when you came in?” I murmured.

  “Something like that,” Nicabar murmured back.

  “I hope you scared away the Iykams, too,” I said. “Nask implied he had a whole troop of them guarding the building.”

  “He did,” Ixil said grimly. “Everett and I dealt rather more permanently with them while the Patth were distracted with you and Nicabar.”

  “And where is Everett?”

  “On guard in the main club area,” Ixil said. “It’s right up here on the right.”

  We rounded a corner, to find ourselves at the edge of a garishly decorated wiggle floor, its flickerlights still playing to its departed clientele, a scattering of spilled drinks and a couple of lost scarves adding color to the floor itself. Beyond the wiggle floor, surrounding it on all three sides other than the one we were on, were the drinking and conversation areas, consisting of a collection of close-packed tables. Most of them sported abandoned bottles and glasses, with the disarrayed chairs around them evidence of just how rapidly the club’s clientele had departed. The arrangement of lights had put most of the conversation area into deep shadow, a fact I didn’t care much for at all.

  Especially given that there was no sign of Everett. On guard or otherwise.

  Nicabar had made the same observation. “So where is he?” he murmured.

  “I don’t know,” Ixil said as we hugged the corner. “Maybe he went outside for some reason.”

  Or maybe the Patth or Iykams had spirited him away, I didn’t bother to add. If so, the evening was still a long way from being over. “Where’s the door?” I asked.

  “There’s an emergency exit behind that cluster of orange lights in the corner,” Nicabar answered. “It opens onto an alleyway just off one of the major streets.”

  “Let’s hope he’s out there,” I said. “After you.”

  Silently, Nicabar headed off, angling across the wiggle floor toward the orange lights he’d pointed out. We were about two-thirds of the way across the wiggle floor, pinned like moths in the glow from the flicker-lights, when I caught a glimpse of movement from behind the mass of darkened tables to our left. “Watch it!” I snapped, jabbing a finger that direction.

  But my warning was too late. There was the muted flash of a plasma-bolt ignition, and with a gasped curse Nicabar dropped to one knee, his gun firing spasmodically toward the area where the shot had originated.

  “Damn,” I snarled, jumping to his side and pulling him flat onto the floor as Ixil’s plasmic opened up from behind me, laying down a spray of cover fire.

  “Shoulder,” Nicabar bit out from between clenched teeth, his voice almost inaudible over the rapid-fire hiss of Ixil’s plasma fire and the louder three-millimeter rounds from his own gun. “Not too bad. Can you see him?”

  I couldn’t, though I could make out vague movements back in the shadows as our unseen assailant apparently repositioned himself for his next shot. But without a weapon that could reach that far it didn’t much matter whether I could see him or not. Instead, I darted to the edge of the wiggle floor, grabbed the nearest table, and half shoved, half threw it to where Nicabar was firing.

  And then, even as the table skidded with a horrendous screech into a position where he could use it for cover, there was another plasmic flash from just to the right of our attacker’s direction, this one accompanied by a startlingly forlorn sort of squeak. “I got him,” a hoarse voice croaked. “Come on—I got him!”

  “Stay here,” Ixil ordered quietly, pushing me unceremoniously into the cover of the table beside Nicabar. Before I could do more than flail around for balance he heaved himself up from his prone position on the floor and was gone, charging in a broken run across the open area with a speed and agility that were surprising in a being of his size and bulk. Pix and Pax had already made it across the floor, and I caught a glimpse of them as they disappeared am
ong the maze of tables and chairs on that side. I held my breath, watching Ixil run, waiting in helpless agony for the shot that would take him down.

  But that killing shot didn’t come; and then he was there, ducking down and using the tables for maximum cover as he headed in.

  Abruptly he stopped. I held my breath again—

  “Come on,” he called, waving toward us as he holstered his plasmic. “It’s Everett. He’s hurt.”

  I felt like saying who isn’t, but with an effort I managed to restrain myself. Helping each other, with the added incentive of not knowing whether another attacker might be lurking in the shadows somewhere, Nicabar and I made it across the wiggle floor in record time.

  It was indeed Everett, lying beside a tangle of chair legs, and he was indeed hurt. A single plasmic burn, a pretty severe one, in his left thigh just above the knee. “I must have been looking the wrong way at the wrong time,” he explained, managing a wan smile as Ixil carefully tore the charred pant leg away from the wound. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, taking his plasmic from him and making a quick but careful survey of the area. If there were more attackers lying in wait, they were being awfully quiet about it. “None of the rest of us are exactly in mint condition at the moment, either. Where’s the chap who was shooting at us?”

  “He’s over there somewhere,” he said, nodding to the side.

  “I see him,” I said, stepping over to a misshapen bundle on one of the chairs a couple of tables away from Everett’s position. The bundle turned out to be another of the ubiquitous Iykams, this one lying draped across the seat with a plasmic still hanging loosely from his hand. Cause of death was obvious: a close-range plasmic burn in his back. “Nice shooting.”

  “Thanks,” Everett said, the word cut off by a hissing intake of breath as Ixil finished with the charred cloth. “I’m sorry I didn’t get him sooner—I’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness. I didn’t even know he was there until he took that shot at you. How bad is that burn, Revs?”

  “Hurts like hell, but I don’t think there’s any serious damage,” Nicabar said. He was on one knee beside Everett, rummaging around in the medical pack lying on the floor beside him. “So how come they left you here alive after they shot you?”

  “I don’t know,” Everett confessed. “I’m just glad they did.”

  “Ditto,” I said. “Can you walk?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Everett countered. He dug into the med pack, pushing Nicabar’s hands impatiently out of the way, and came up with a couple of burn pads. “I presume you know how to apply one of these,” he said to Nicabar as he handed him one of the pads.

  “I’ve had more practice than I care to remember,” Nicabar grunted, pulling the charred shirt material away from his shoulder with stoic disregard for the pain.

  “What about you, McKell?” Everett went on as he opened his own pad and arranged it carefully over his burn. “I seem to remember you being the one we were charging in to rescue in the first place.”

  “I’m all right,” I assured him. “I could use a painkiller for my head, but they hadn’t started on the really rough stuff yet. Aside from Ixil, I think I’m probably in the best shape of all of us.”

  “I wouldn’t tempt fate that way if I were you,” Nicabar warned. “Everett?”

  “I’m ready,” Everett said, wincing once as he pressed the edges of the pad firmly into place against his leg. “Though I may need some help until the anesthetic takes effect.”

  I sighed. We were, without a doubt, just exactly the right men to be challenging the giant octopus of Patth economic domination. Humanity was counting on us, and humanity was in trouble. “Tell me some more good news,” I said sourly.

  “As a matter of fact, I can,” he said, digging out a bottle of painkillers and tossing it to me. “I’ve found us a safe haven. A temporary one, at least.”

  I frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “I got in touch with a friend of mine on my way over from the ship,” he said, dropping his voice. “Called him on that StarrComm station by the tram lines. He’s a retired doctor, one of my instructors when I went through med training. He’s running a private ski and ice-climbing place now on a quiet little resort world about five days away, complete with a small but full-service landing area. Fuel supply, landing-pad repulsors, perimeter lift-assist grav beams—the works.”

  “He’ll be used to private yachts there,” Nicabar pointed out doubtfully. “Can he handle a ship the size of the Icarus?”

  “I spelled out the dimensions and he says he can,” Everett said. “And it’s off-season there right now, which means the place is deserted.”

  “Other towns?” Ixil asked.

  “Nearest is two hundred kilometers away,” Everett said. “We’ll have time to finish the camouflage work on the ship and give all these burns some healing time.” He lowered his voice still further. “We might even be able to get the stardrive working.”

  “Sounds too good to be true,” I said. “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch,” Everett said. “He has no idea who or what we are—I told him you were a group of investors interested in buying into resorts like his and pouring expansion money into the more successful ones. He won’t even be there—he’s heading out in two days on an equipment-buying trip. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”

  I looked at Ixil and lifted my eyebrows questioningly. He shrugged slightly in reply, his expression mirroring my own thoughts. Even if this turned out to be a trap, given that the Patth were already breathing down our necks we didn’t have a lot to lose. At least with a trap set the Patth and Iykams might not be so quick to flail around with blunt objects, a restraint that would not only give my head a chance to heal but would also automatically raise our chances of slipping or fighting our way out of it. “All right,” I said. “We’ll try it. Where is this place?”

  Everett hesitated, glancing around the darkened room. “I don’t know,” he said. “Out here in the open—you know.”

  “I want to know now,” I told him, moving close and putting my ear to his lips. “Just whisper it.”

  He sighed, his breath unpleasantly warm on my cheek. “It’s on Beyscrim,” he whispered. “The northwest section of the Highlandia continent.”

  “Got it,” I said, getting a grip under his arm. He was right; even whispering it in here was risky. But I needed to know, and I needed to know before we got back to the ship. “Okay. Now we can go.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  After all the firepower that had been expended inside the club, I’d half expected to find a wall of local police surrounding the place as we slipped out the emergency exit and down the alley onto the crowded k’Barch streets. But to my mild surprise not a single badgeman was visible anywhere among the colorfully dressed celebrants. Either they just hadn’t made it to the scene yet because of the crowds or because they were tied up with other more pressing business, or else a little good-natured gunplay wasn’t remarkable enough during the Grand Feast to warrant official attention.

  Especially without the club’s ownership making any complaints; and it was for sure that Ambassador Nask wouldn’t have risked losing Patth control of the Icarus by calling the local authorities in.

  Which was just as well, considering how much trouble we had making our escape even without governmental interference. Now that it was full night, the crowds filling the streets were at least twice as dense as they’d been when I’d first arrived, and it seemed like every third step one of us managed to get jostled or bumped in a tender spot by some boisterous or flat-out drunk reveler. Even the high-quality painkillers and anesthetic pads Cameron had stocked the Icarus with could only do so much, and by the end of the second block I was about ready to haul out my plasmic and start shooting us a clear path.

  Adding to the physical torture of pushing through the morass was the tension of wondering if and when the Patth would be able to regr
oup for another stab at us. Even in a multispecies gathering like this Ixil and his ferrets stood out, drawing far more attention than any of us liked. But like the badgemen, the Patth and their Iykami minions failed to materialize. Either we’d already taken out the bulk of their force, or else Nask had decided to concentrate whatever he had left on the various spaceport entrances instead of trying to comb the entire city. I could only hope that the informally thrown-together Bangrot Spaceport wouldn’t have made it onto his map.

  It turned out that the night-to-dawn club wasn’t too far from the pharmacy where the Iykams had jumped me, which was itself not very far from the tram station where I’d first gotten off. But from the unfamiliar terrain we quickly passed into, it was clear that Ixil was leading us in a different direction entirely. I understood the tactical reasoning behind the plan: The nearest station would naturally be where the Patth would concentrate any observers they might be able to pull together. But at the same time, I found myself privately grousing at having to put up with more of this than I absolutely had to.

  But we made it through the crowds, and my head didn’t fall off along the way, and finally I saw the undulating sign of a tram station ahead of us. “Wait here,” Ixil said, steering the three of us into the mouth of another alleyway. “I’ll go check for unwelcome company.”

  “Right,” I said, helping him ease Everett to the ground. “The k’Tra might have monitor cameras in there, too.”

  “I’ll take care of them,” he promised. Two steps later, he was lost to sight among the teeming multitudes.

  “What was all that about monitors?” Everett asked, rubbing his leg at the edge of the burn pad.

  “Monitor cameras can be used by people other than those who set them up,” I told him. “It could be the Patth aren’t bothering to look for us out here because they’ve already tapped into the k’Tra citywide monitor system.”

  “A fact Ixil seemed to pick up on right away,” Nicabar said. He was leaning against the opposite wall from me, regarding me with a thoughtful expression. “Has he had any military experience, McKell?”