by Peter David
“I heard it,” Darg said impatiently. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the other Thallonian. “What is your name again?”
“Qadril, sir,” said the Thallonian. “We met not long ago. I’m a friend of—”
“Yes, yes, I remember. Qadril…attend to her.”
“To her, sir?” He looked uncertainly in Vandelia’s direction. “Are you sure—?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Darg told him, his temper not becoming any gentler with the constant need for repetition. “Haul her chair upright so that she’s not simply lying about on the floor like that. And keep your fingers away from her teeth, would be my recommendation.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Darg headed out.
Qadril glanced right and left. Vandelia knew this since she was watching him carefully. Her eyes were narrow slits as she saw him draw closer, closer. She suspected that he would be of no more use in freeing her than anyone else, but she looked forward to sinking her teeth into him during an unwary moment. His howls of pain would bring her great pleasure, and be a further reminder to Darg that she was going to make every moment that he held her captive as much of a living hell as she could manage.
Qadril hesitated a few feet away, and then he went around her and gripped her chair from behind. She was mildly surprised when he did not grunt under the weight of hauling her back into an upright position. He didn’t seem all that strong. Obviously he had some muscle, although one wouldn’t have known it to look at him.
But, just as obviously, he was remarkably stupid, for the poor fool was actually in the process of exhibiting something akin to concern for her. He walked in front of her and took either side of her face in his hands, tilting her head back so that he could try and see into her eyes. “Can you hear me?”
When he said that, there was something different in his voice. He sounded rougher, more brusque than he had mere moments ago when speaking to Darg. Darg he had addressed in a manner that was fairly simpering. But not now. Now he sounded more dynamic, more confident and sure of himself.
It was probably, she assumed, because she was unconscious. In fact, he was probably trying to determine if…yessss. Yes, that was it. He wanted to see if she was still out cold so that he could have his way with her with impunity. Oh, and wouldn’t that be something for him to boast to his friends about. She could practically hear his weasely voice bragging of how he had “tamed” her, made her beg for his attentions. Her fury began to bubble over the imagined liberties that he was about to take.
He had momentarily distracted her from her purpose with his feigned concerns as to her well-being. She was annoyed with herself that she had allowed that to happen, no matter how short a time her determination had actually wavered. As if to make up for it, she attacked with speed and viciousness that would have done any Orion female proud.
Just as he was making another inquiry as to her wakefulness, her head whipped around and she sank her teeth into his left forearm. She had envisioned chomping through his flesh, all the way down into the bone if she were lucky. If not, then at least she would take some pleasure in tearing out a large, dripping hunk of the man’s arm and spitting it back into his face while his blood trickled down the sides of her face.
But she did not come into contact with flesh or bone. Instead her teeth bit through the cloth of his sleeve and hit metal.
“No!” he shouted.
What in the world? The thought flashed through her mind even as she quickly yanked her head back. Perhaps, she thought, he was some sort of cyborg or android.
Sparks flew from the section of his arm that she had mutilated, and she saw a few quick sparks dancing along his shirt sleeve. He tore at the sleeve, pulling off some sort of device that had been strapped around his arm.
It was at that moment that his face fell off.
Vandelia gaped in confusion as the red skin cracked and crumbled away, cascading to the floor in a powdery heap. Not only was his skin color different, but the very shape of his visage had altered.
The man who only moments before that been calling himself Qadril had gone from having a fairly round face to one that had a good deal more definition to it. His chin was cleft, his nose somewhat irregular, as if it had been broken. Instead of being bald, he had a thick mop of black hair. His skin was no longer red, but instead a paler shade that was more evocative of human beings. Even his eyes had changed color, going from a sort of pale blue to a vivid purple. Most striking about him to Vandelia, however, was a scar that ran the length of his right cheek. Considering the skin graft and dermaplast techniques that were so readily available, Vandelia couldn’t recall ever having seen a facial mutilation that was quite so severe.
She found it rather attractive.
“Perfect,” he growled, dusting away the remains of the red material that had been obscuring his true features. “Just perfect. You had to do that. You just had to.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“The one who was going to get you out of here. At this point, though, I’m half-tempted to leave you.” He made an impatient noise, blowing air from between his clenched teeth, and then he seemed to make up his mind. “All right,” he sighed, “we’ll just have to make the best of it. If I free you, will you give me your word that you won’t attack.”
For a moment, despite the fact that he was offering her aid, she couldn’t hold back a contemptuous sneer. “Are you that afraid of me?”
“No,” he said reasonably. “But you’re a splendid looking woman, and I try to minimize the number of splendid looking women I kill in the average day.”
The words were light, the tone quite flip, but she looked into his eyes and there was something in there, a flat, cold stare that caused her to realize that there was nothing cavalier about his attitude. He really did believe that he was capable of killing her. Moreover, she began to get the impression that he might actually be able to accomplish it.
“You would take the word of an Orion?” she asked after a moment.
“Look,” and it was clear from his tone that his patience was starting to wear thin, “I’m not interested in passing judgment on a species just now. I’m asking you, personally, if—”
“Yes, yes, all right, you have my word I will not attempt to hurt you,” she said at last.
He had a knife hanging from his right hip. He pulled it out and briskly cut through the ropes that bound her. “You use that knife as if you really know what you’re about,” she commented.
He said nothing, but instead simply slid it back into its sheath. He glanced around the room they were in as if he were trying to see if anything could be used as a weapon.
“What was that device you were using to disguise yourself?” she asked.
“A Zynterian Camouflage Field,” he replied as he went to the wall and ran his fingers along it. He seemed to be probing for something. He had been wearing gloves, which one would have thought was simply for ornamentation, but now she realized it had been to hide the true color of his hands.
“Zynterians? They’re a passive race. They have no espionage interests that I’ve ever heard of,” said Vandelia. She was busy rubbing her wrists, trying to restore circulation to them. She was a bit unsteady on her legs as well, but was determined not to let the weakness show.
“True enough. But they don’t use it for espionage. It’s a sex aid.”
“A what?” She didn’t quite think she’d heard him properly.
He cast an impatient look at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe that he was wasting time explaining it to her. “They believe sex in any form is inherently evil, and so they use the camouflage field to disguise themselves as members of other races when they’re…involved. That way they can pretend that they themselves are remaining pure. It’s a sort of ritual.”
“I see.” She didn’t, actually, but it seemed the thing to say.
“Generally Zynterians are the only ones who can use them. Other races who have tried to employ the device for o
ther pursuits—such as espionage, as you mentioned—find that the device tends to sear the flesh from their bones. However, we Xenexians are close enough biologically to Zynterians that we can get away with using them. It causes considerable pain, but otherwise no lasting damage.”
“Pain? You were in pain the entire time you were using that thing? I couldn’t tell.”
“I’m very stoic,” he said, never taking his eyes from the wall as he continued his probe of the room. “For instance, my impulse is to throw you to the ground and take you like an animal right here. But you’d never be able to tell.”
His voice was so flat, so lacking in inflection, that it was impossible for her to tell whether he was joking or not. She felt a headache coming on just trying to keep up with him. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Call me Mac,” he said over his shoulder. “Ah.”
“Ah?”
He had his hand against a section of the wall that looked no different from any other. However, he pushed it and suddenly the wall swivelled around, revealing what appeared to be some sort of passage. She couldn’t quite make out any details, although she did see small, flickering lights lining the upper section.
“Come on,” he told her.
“But…where does this go?”
“Away from here. For the moment, that’s good enough.”
She mentally shrugged as she realized she had nothing to lose. This strange individual, whoever he was and wherever he was from, at least seemed to have some idea as to what he was about. She really couldn’t be much worse off than she’d been a few minutes ago.
They headed down the narrow passage. Moments after they’d entered, the wall had slid back into place on noiseless hinges. The action dimmed the corridor slightly, but not significantly.
“How did you know that was going to be there?” she asked. “That false wall, I mean.”
“I didn’t. Not for sure. But we’ve done a good deal of research on Darg, and it seemed a reasonable guess. He had a similar hideaway on Estarcion IV, and he’d laced it with catacombs with similar entrances. He likes to get about unobserved and show up unexpectedly. He feels it keeps his people on their toes.”
“It probably does.” She paused and then said, “Who are ‘we’? I mean, the ‘we’ who did this research?”
“You don’t need to know that either,” he said brusquely.
“Listen,” and her temper started to flare, “I’d better start getting some answers, or—”
“Or what?” He turned to face her there in the confines of the passage, and there was unmistakable danger in his tone. “Look: You weren’t in the plan. I found out that you were here when I was already inside. You’re an innocent bystander who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. I decided that it wouldn’t be right to simply leave you to die. So I am risking myself to save your neck. I didn’t have to. I still don’t. If you want to go off on your own and take your chances, go right ahead.” He flattened against the corridor wall so that she could pass by him. “My guess is that it branches off just ahead. You can go on and take your chances. I’ll give you a five…no, three…minute head start. You’ll go your way, I’ll go mine, and that’ll be that. Or tell me now if you’re going to stick with me but are going to continue to irritate me, because if you are, then I’ll put you down right now and be done with it. I don’t need the distraction or the grief. Life’s too short and on the verge of getting even shorter. Your only other option is to shut up so I can get both of us out of here in one piece. Once we’re out of here and safe, you can be as arrogant and irritating as you wish. It won’t bother me then because you won’t be putting us at risk. Now have I made myself clear?”
“Yes,” she said tightly.
“Now are you going to be quiet?”
No reply.
“Good.”
She took some small measure of satisfaction in the fact that he actually appeared surprised that she had quieted down.
As she followed him, she said softly, “May I ask a less inflammatory question?”
“If you must.”
“You’ve been talking as if we have a deadline. Why is that?”
That was when a massive explosion rocked them.
She stumbled against him as the passageway vibrated uncontrollably around them. He steadied her and muttered, “Idiots. They must have found it and tried to defuse it.”
There was now an unmistakable rumbling all about them, and he grabbed her wrist and yanked. “Come on.” There was urgency to his voice, but he didn’t sound close to panic. Clearly this was someone who was accustomed to handling difficult situations with aplomb.
She picked up speed and now they were heading at a full dash down the corridor. There was the sound of a second explosion, and a third, and they staggered as they ran. From a distance they could hear shouts and the sounds of running feet, and voices being raised in alarm.
There was a sensation of heat from directly behind them. “I wouldn’t look back if I were you,” the man called Mac warned her.
She looked back.
A gigantic ball of flame was roaring down the passage behind them.
She looked forward once more, suddenly wishing that she’d done as he suggested.
The seam in the wall that indicated a door barely had time to register on her and then Mac was pushing both of them through. They stumbled out into a main hallway that hardly seemed to be much better in terms of being a safe haven, for men were running about in total panic and any one of them might notice the escaping prisoner. Giving no heed to the danger that being spotted presented, Mac slammed the door back into place just as the jet of flame caught up to them. The wall instantly became superheated, but Mac had blocked off the passageway just in time, and the flames within passed them by harmlessly.
“Come on,” and he pulled her roughly. “We’ve got to get to our ride. This place doesn’t have much longer.”
It was the first opportunity that Vandelia had had to see anything of her place of capture aside from the one room in which she’d been imprisoned. The place was massive, stretching upward as far as she could see. There were crosswalks and catwalks far overhead and then, when she looked down she saw that they descended to a great depth as well. Everything had been constructed so that everything was visible to some degree from elsewhere within the complex. It was all rather clever; it meant that Darg could keep his eye on just about everything from any point.
Under ordinary circumstances, she and Mac wouldn’t have had a prayer of getting ten feet without attracting attention. But these circumstances were far from ordinary. She continued to hear explosions, some further away, some closer, and the entire place had spiralled into chaos. “What did you do?” she cried out over the shouts of others who were running around without noticing them.
“I’ll tell you later, provided there is one!”
“You!”
Vandelia’s heart sank. She recognized the voice immediately, of course.
It had come from behind them, and they turned to see Zolon Darg. He was on a catwalk above them, looking down, and he had half a dozen men with him. He had spotted Vandelia, and more, he obviously realized that it was Mac who was the intruder. Perhaps it was the fact that Mac was wearing the same clothes as the supposed red-skinned guard had been sporting a short time earlier. “You did this! You! Stay where you are!”
“You don’t have time for this, Darg!” Mac shot back. “These explosions you’re hearing so far are nothing! A chain of bombs to distract you from the real threat: the fact that I set two of your main boomers in your central weapons room to overload. Once those go, you can say good-bye to this entire place! You’ve got only a couple of minutes to get clear! Are you going to waste them coming after me, or are you going to save your own neck?”
The choice seemed fairly straightforward to Vandelia. Unfortunately, it was less clear-cut to Darg, who did not hesitate to aim a fairly lethal weapon squarely at Mac and fire.
Mac yanked Vandelia forward
, barely getting them clear of the shot. “Get them!” they could hear Zolon Darg shout after them, but they didn’t look back. Instead they bolted as quickly as they could along the catwalk. “Get back here!” Darg’s voice came, and a disruptor blast exploded just ahead of them, missing them but blowing the leg off a hapless individual who was trying to save his own skin. He hit the ground, crying out as he clutched at the stump of his knee. Mac and Vandelia did not slow down, but instead simply vaulted over him and kept going.
They angled left, then a quick right, and they were on a rampway that was heading downward. Vandelia had no idea whether Mac truly knew where they were going, or if he was simply guessing with sufficient confidence to allay her concerns. But she was quite certain that the source of the explosions which were wracking the entire area was below them, and heading toward that source was the height of folly. She yanked her hand from his. He turned and looked at her in confusion. “Come on!” he called to her.
“We’re going the wrong way! We’re heading towards the explosions! It’s suicide!”
“There’s no time for this!”
But she wasn’t listening. Instead she turned and ran.
Her legs moving like pistons, she charged back up the ramp, found another turn-off, and took it. Someone tried to get in her way. She didn’t even slow down, didn’t take time to look at his face. She just slashed out with her fingernails and ripped across his face. He doubled over, blood welling up from between his fingers, and she shoved him aside and kept going.
Suddenly she was hit from the back, a flying tackle as someone took her down. She hit the floor, taking most of the impact on her elbows which sent a shock straight up her arms. But she did not cry out, instead keeping the pain within. That was how she was going to get out of it, she had decided. She would focus all her anger, all her agony, and it would drive her forward to safety. At least, that was the theory.