by Timothy Zahn
"Where is this hospital?" the Troft asked.
"Four blocks down that street," Daulo said, pointing toward the Troft ship blocking the road.
The alien seemed to consider. "You may take him," he said. "But on foot. No vehicles are currently permitted on the streets."
"He's injured," Daulo repeated, in the tone someone might use when trying to explain something to a small child. "The extra time that would take could be fatal."
"No vehicles are currently permitted on the streets," the Troft said again. "Take him, or leave him here."
"Fine," Daulo shot back scornfully. "Fadil, pull over there."
"Do not move the vehicle," the Troft said, gesturing sharply toward Fadil with his laser as the younger Sammon started to put the truck into gear. "Shut off the engine and give me the starting mechanism."
"Why?" Daulo demanded. "This is my truck. You go find your own."
Fadil shot his father a nervous look. "Father—"
"Quiet," Daulo cut him off, his glare focused on the Troft. "You want me to beg? Is that it? Fine, then—I'll beg. May I please drive the injured man to the hospital?"
The Troft gestured again. "Get out of the vehicle," he ordered. "Give me the starting mechanism."
Daulo snorted, an angry, contemptuous sound. "Give him the keys, Fadil. Everyone else, out."
A minute later they had Zoshak out of the truck, Jin supporting the unconscious man's head while the other three carried his body horizontally on their forearms like a living stretcher. "You take terrible chances, my father," Fadil murmured tautly as they headed down the street.
"I'm a Qasaman, my son," Daulo countered, his voice still simmering with anger. "These invaders might as well know from the very start who we are whom they have challenged. Jin Moreau, do we go around the front of the alien ship, or around the rear?"
"The front," Jin said. Merrick could see from her expression that she didn't agree with Daulo's in-your-face attitude, but it was also clear she wasn't about to call him on it. Certainly not in front of the man's own son. "I want to see what the forward weapons and sensor clusters look like."
Another pair of Trofts stepped into view around the ship's bow as the stretcher party approached, their lasers not quite pointing at the humans. But they made no effort to stop or even challenge. Apparently, the word had been passed from the checkpoint that this group was to be allowed past. Jin led the way around the ship, glancing casually up at the gleaming metal as they walked. Merrick looked up, too, but he could make little of the orderly array of bumps, nozzles, pits, and intakes.
And then they were past the ship and the watchful Trofts and were heading down the deserted street. "Another three blocks, you said?" Jin asked.
"Yes," Daulo confirmed. "It should be that eight-story white building just ahead, the one with the half-circle drive for emergency vehicles."
Jin half turned, taking care not to jostle Zoshak's head as she did so. "I see it," she said, turning back. "I don't suppose the Palace would happen to be somewhere along the way?"
"Not on the path, but not far off it," Daulo said. "Two streets down and half a block to the left."
"About a block away from the hospital?"
"Correct," Daulo said. "It might be possible for me to make a short side trip while you continue on with Carsh Zoshak."
Merrick looked behind them. The two Trofts they'd passed were standing together beside the ship, their attention clearly on the four humans carrying their burden down the street. "How well is the place marked?" he asked.
"There's no large illuminated sign, if that's what you mean," Daulo said. "Why, you think the invaders may not have found it yet?"
"It's possible," Merrick said.
"But unlikely," Jin warned. "If they've done their homework, they know where all the centers of government and industry are."
Daulo muttered something under his breath. "We'll know soon enough," he said.
They reached the cross street Daulo had identified, to discover that the Trofts had indeed done their homework. Midway down the block, a large but unpretentious four-story gray-stone building had been completely encircled by armed aliens, with support from a handful of tripod-mounted heavy lasers and a pair of panel-truck sized armored vehicles. Two of the soldiers were crouched by a tall front door, fiddling with something Merrick guessed was probably some kind of explosive. "So much for our lending assistance to the Shahni," Daulo muttered.
"Don't give up yet," Jin said. "If they haven't gotten the door open by the time we've turned Carsh Zoshak over to Dr. Kambuzia, there may still be something we can do."
They were at the hospital's main door when the flat crack of an explosive charge came from around the corner they'd just passed. "So ends your hoped-for options," Daulo growled. "And so ends freedom for the Shahni."
"Don't count them out yet," Jin warned. "If there's one thing I've learned about your people, it's that they always have a trick or two up their sleeves."
They reached the hospital and went inside. To Merrick's uneasy surprise, the reception lobby was as deserted as the street outside. "Hello?" Jin called. "Anyone here? We need a doctor. Where is everyone?"
"I don't know," Daulo said, nodding toward a group of gurneys lined up along the side wall. "Let's put him down over there."
They got Zoshak onto one of the gurneys. His teeth were chattering again, and Merrick took an extra few seconds to wrap the other's robe more snugly. "One of us could try to get into the hospital computer while the others search for the staff," he suggested as he checked Zoshak's pulse. "Maybe we can at least find out where Dr. Kambuzia is supposed to be."
"Good idea," Daulo said. "It should be—God in heaven."
Merrick jerked his head up. Five armed Trofts had appeared around the corner from of one of the two hallways leading off the lobby and were forming themselves into a wide V-shaped wedge. "Humans, stop," the Qasaman words came from the leader's translator pin.
"We have an injured man—" Daulo began.
"You carry a radio transmitter," the Troft interrupted him. "You will submit to an immediate search."
Out of the corner of his eye Merrick saw his mother turn a sharp look on him. He gave her a microscopic shake of his head in response—as she'd already said, both their comms were still back at Milika . And Daulo had already said he and Fadil weren't allowed such devices.
Which meant that Merrick must have missed something when he'd searched Zoshak's clothing. Now the Trofts were going to give it a go, and they were likely to be a lot more thorough than Merrick had been. Wherever Zoshak's transmitter was hidden, they would find it.
Merrick didn't know what would happen after that. But he was pretty sure it wouldn't be pleasant. "You don't have to search," he spoke up impulsively, digging beneath his tunic. "I have it."
He held his breath as Daulo and Fadil turned astonished faces toward him. But Jin, at least, was instantly on her son's wavelength. "Yes, give it to them, " she put in before any of the aliens could respond. "While he does, we need to get our friend to the doctor." Without waiting for permission, she started pushing Zoshak's gurney toward the hallway leading off the other end of the lobby.
She'd gotten three steps before the Troft leader apparently recovered from his surprise at such chutzpah from a mere human. "Stop!" he snapped.
Jin frowned at the alien, managing to get two more steps before coming to a confused halt. "What's the problem?" she asked, glancing back at Merrick. Her hands came casually together, her left forefinger tapping the little finger of her right hand. "I said he would give it—God in heaven—" She broke off, her eyes going wide as she focused on the empty corridor behind the Trofts.
And as the two Trofts in the rear of the V started to turn around, she activated her sonic disruptor.
The disruptor wasn't really an antipersonnel weapon, having been designed mainly for shattering glass and brick and crystalline-based electronic equipment. But at close range, its effect on living beings was also nothing to s
neer at. The two Trofts closest to the center of the blast jerked as if they'd been punched in the face, while the ones at the edges staggered like drunkards, all of them clearly fighting to hold on to their balance long enough to deal with this unexpected attack that had apparently sneaked up from behind them.
They were still trying to make their uncooperative bodies turn the necessary hundred eighty degrees to look behind them when Merrick lifted his right hand and activated his stunner.
A short, low-power laser blast shot out of his little finger, its frequency carefully tuned to expend most of its energy on the air instead of on the Troft at the other end. An instant later, a high-voltage, low-amperage lightning bolt shot out of the electrode beside the laser emitter, the current riding the partially ionized pathway that the laser flash had just created.
A full-power arcthrower blast from that same electrode would have fried the Troft where he stood, even through battle armor. The much less energetic stunner, or so the theory went, would merely knock him out.
The theory turned out to be correct. Without even a gasp, the Troft collapsed to the floor and lay still.
He was still falling when Merrick shifted his aim to the next alien in line and again fired his stunner. Four more shots, and it was over.
"Backup," Jin murmured, nodding toward the corner where the Trofts had appeared.
Merrick nodded and headed across the lobby, his hands curled into fingertip-laser firing position, his heart thudding painfully with reaction. He'd never used his stunner outside the Sun Center practice range, certainly never against another living being.
And suddenly the old family stories and histories had come boiling off their nice, neat pages. This was real. This was combat.
This was war.
"God in heaven," Daulo's shaking voice came from behind Merrick. "What was that?"
"Stunner," Jin told him. "Something else Merrick has that I don't. Merrick?"
Merrick reached the corner and paused, his audio enhancers reaching out ahead of him. A spine leopard hunt, he told himself firmly. Just think of it as another spine leopard hunt. With really weird-looking spine leopards.
There were no sounds of footsteps coming from the hallway. Cautiously, he eased an eye around the corner.
"Clear," he called back softly. There were faint noises of a sort coming from down there, though. Not Trofts, but soft, tense Qasaman voices. "I may have found the doctors and staff," he added, turning his enhancers off again." He turned back to look at his mother. "Do you want me to check—?"
He broke off, his eyes refocusing on the gurney behind his mother and the two Sammons, the gurney where they'd laid Zoshak.
The empty gurney where they'd laid Zoshak. "Mom!" he snapped, jabbing a finger.
The others turned to look. "What in—? Where did he go?" Daulo demanded.
"No idea," Jin said grimly as she hurried to the far corridor where she'd been heading when the Troft stopped her. "He's not down here," she reported, peering around the corner. "But there's a stairway just off the lobby. Just a minute."
She paused, and Merrick spotted the twitch of cheek muscles as she keyed in her audio enhancers. "He's on the stairs," she said. "Moving fast." She threw an unreadable look at Merrick. "I guess he wasn't as injured as he looked."
"That's impossible," Merrick protested. "He had a slow heartbeat. How do you fake a slow heartbeat?"
"Forget the how and concentrate on the why," Jin said, waving him forward. "Daulo, Fadil; go check on the hospital staff. See if they need any help. Merrick and I will go find Carsh Zoshak."
The stairway was quiet as Jin and Merrick went in. "You sure the footsteps were in here?" Merrick asked as he looked upward through the gap between the switchback flights of stairs.
"Yes, I could hear the echo," Jin said. "Sounded like he was taking the steps three at a time, which means he could have made it all the way to the top floor by now."
Merrick frowned. Three at a time? Not only had Zoshak not been injured, he'd been in a lot better shape than Merrick had guessed. "What do we do?"
"He seemed to be going for speed, not stealth," Jin said. "That implies distance, which implies a high floor. Let's start at the eighth and work downward."
They headed up, their servos allowing them to also take the steps three at a time. At the top, Jin listened briefly at the door, then opened it and slipped through. Merrick followed, and found himself in a long, light-blue corridor lined with numbered doors.
He keyed in his audio enhancers. Above the general background murmur that seemed to pervade any center of human activity, he could hear what sounded like two different nearby voices. They were too quiet for him to distinguish individual words, but there was no mistaking the underlying urgency. "Left side," Jin murmured. "Four or five doors down."
She headed off. Merrick keyed off his enhancers' and followed.
They were within a few meters of the door when Merrick began to make out actual words. "—easy, Your Excellency," Zoshak was saying. He did not, Merrick noted a bit resentfully, sound even dazed, let alone seriously injured. "Lean on me—I can take your weight."
Jin glanced back at Merrick, crossed the last two steps to the doorway, and strode into the room. Merrick followed.
And came to a sharp halt beside his equally motionless mother. Across the room, standing beside an elaborate recovery bed, Zoshak had a supporting arm around an old, frail-looking man dressed in a hospital gown, a robe, and a pair of soft boots. Between the two of them and the door, facing the two Cobras, was another young man, his tunic partially open to reveal the same scaled gray outfit Merrick had seen on Zoshak.
Only this man was also wearing a matching set of gloves, and both hands were raised to point at the intruders, his little fingers extended, the other fingers curled back over his palms with his thumbs resting tautly against the ring-finger nails.
The same position a Cobra would use to fire his fingertip lasers.
Merrick felt his stomach tighten. What in the Worlds had he and his mother gotten themselves into?
"Step away, enemies of Qasama," the young man bit out, his eyes blazing defiance and anger and a complete absence of fear. "Step away, or die."
Chapter Eight
"Take it easy," Jin said, lifting her hands to show their emptiness, her heart and bad knee throbbing in unison as she stared at the positioning of the young man's hands. No—it wasn't possible. The Qasamans couldn't have created their own Cobras. Not from scratch, not even with the bodies of her former teammates to examine. This had to be some kind of bluff. "Just take it easy," she said again. "We're not your enemies."
"You are the demon warrior Jin Moreau," the other ground out. "You are here, and we have been invaded. What conclusion should we draw?"
"Those are Troft ships out there, not ours," Jin pointed out.
"From which we conclude that you and the Trofts are in league," the Qasaman countered.
"We're not in any sort of league," Jin said. "We trade with some of them, but that's all."
"And we don't even trade with this bunch," Merrick put in. "Their demesne markings aren't like any we've ever run into before."
The Qasaman spared a quick glare at Merrick, then turned his eyes back to Jin. "Then why are you here?"
Jin winced. This was going to sound incredibly lame. "I was invited."
"By whom?"
"I don't know," she had to admit. "I received a written but unsigned message urgently requesting my presence on Qasama."
"Most likely from Daulo Sammon," Zoshak spoke up, an edge of urgency in his voice. "Ifrit, we need to leave this place. If His Excellency is taken, this will all have been for nothing."
"There's no profit in escaping enemies who stand before us if other enemies stand at our back," the other Qasaman countered, his face hardening even further. "And liars are ever enemies."
"I'm not lying," Jin insisted as calmly as she could. There was a narrow tube running along the outer edge of the little finger of each of t
he Qasaman's gloves, she noted, the tubes extending all the way back to his wrists. Dart throwers with compressed-air propulsion, most likely, possibly modeled after the palm-mate gun Decker York had used during the Cobra Worlds' first Qasaman mission. That was probably what she and Merrick were facing, not Cobra-style fingertip lasers.
But why then was the Qasaman holding his hands that way? Had they deliberately adopted Cobra-style triggering for their dart guns? "And it wasn't Daulo Sammon who asked us here," she added.
"Someone else, then?" the Qasaman suggested, his voice carrying the subtle undertones of a hidden trap. "Someone else you might have met during your last intrusion onto Qasaman soil?"
Jin hesitated. It was a trap, all right. Only which way did it point? Would invoking Miron Akim's name help her or damn her? She had no idea what had happened to Akim in the past three decades, whether he had worked his way up the ladder or whether his brief and reluctant association with her had completely ruined his career.
But she had no choice. The Qasaman was angling for a name, and she had only one to offer him. "It's possible the invitation came from a former Shahni agent named Miron Akim," she said.
The Qasaman smiled tightly, and Jin could practically hear the sound of the trap snapping shut. "No, Jin Moreau, it didn't," he said. "Miron Akim did not invite you here."
"How do you know?" Merrick demanded. "We don't even know who sent the message. How could you?"
"Because, demon warrior," the Qasaman bit out, "I am Siraj Akim, son of Miron Akim."
Merrick felt his mouth drop open. "You're his—?"
And then, abruptly, something flashed past the room's window. "Watch it!" Jin snapped, dropping into a crouch.
"What was it?" Zoshak demanded. He, too, had dropped lower, bringing the old man down into a crouch alongside him. "I saw something go by the window."
"Some kind of aircraft," Jin said. "Looks like the Trofts have started a serious search of the hospital."
"And so now your mission is plain," Siraj accused coldly. "You led them here against us."