“Flinx?”
“I'm okay. I'm alive. I guess.” Sucking air, he eyed the massive bulk that was now lying motionless on the floor next to him. The Qwarm was unchanged, provided one discounted the hole that pierced his cranium from forehead to back. The hole was notably smaller in front than in the rear, indicating that something superfast and lethal had penetrated the skull. No sound had accompanied the lethal shot. A sonic stiletto would make a hole like that, Flinx knew. Or an inertia plug. Professional that he was, the Qwarm could probably have identified the source immediately. Except that it had been focused on him, and now he was dead.
A pulsing, cylindrical shape slithered into his lap. A quick check of Pip's right wing showed that the injury, while sufficient to bring her down, was not extensive. With appropriate treatment it should heal quickly. Lifting her, he slipped her carefully onto his right shoulder and waited until she had a good grip before he rose.
A voice parsing elegant symbospeech clicked melodically behind him.
“Still riding the grizel, I see.”
Still a little unsteady, he turned and looked behind him. What he saw and recognized made him smile.
Deus ex thranxicum, he mused. Memories came flooding back.
Her chitin glistening a pure and brilliant aquamarine, feathery antennae inclined forward, twinned ovipositors forming a pair of perfect parallel arcs above the back of her abdomen, the young female thranx stood facing the center of the chamber. In addition to the customary carry-pouch slung over her thorax and a larger satchel strapped to her abdomen, she held four pistols: one in each truhand, the others in her raised foothands. The display of firepower was impressive. Even more so was the realization that she had needed only a single shot to bring down the Qwarm. The presence of all four vestigial wing cases indicated that she had yet to mate. Inlaid into her right shoulder was the gleaming enamel insignia of a full padre in the security service of the United Church.
Flinx doubted she would have been able to bring down the assassin, despite her bearing, maturity, and sharpshooting ability, had he not been fully engrossed in preparing to finish off his quarry. That total absorption had been just enough of a distraction to allow the new arrival to get off the fatal shot. Had she missed, Flinx feared the outcome might have been very different. But she had not missed. Still smiling, he started toward her. As he did so, she neatly holstered all four of her weapons.
“Your reflexes have gotten better,” he told her.
Standing on her four trulegs, she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. The maroon bands that formed horizontal stripes across her shimmering gold compound eyes were darker than most.
“And you've grown taller. You humans and your disorderly growth variations: it's enough to make those of other species who follow sane patterns of biological development believe your genetic code is packed with jokers.”
“You wouldn't get any argument on that from me.” Lowering his gaze, he eyed a truleg. “You still limp a little.”
She clicked her mandibles and kicked out slightly with the indicated limb. “The occasional limp is a psychological reflex I have not been able to shake. Structurally, the leg is fully restored. A little regenerated natural chitin, a little synthetic, and everything was made good as new. Memories, however, aren't as easily repaired. Those are what sometimes cause me to miss a step.” Almost as an afterthought, she leaned toward him. Bending low, he let the tips of her antennae caress his forehead. When he straightened, he extended a hand to contact them with his fingertips.
“You're still human, I see,” she commented when she stepped back. “Meaning that you're still short the necessary number of appendages required to live a proper civilized life.”
“My life has been anything but civilized.” His tone darkened. “Or proper. I'll fill you in and do my best to skip over some of the greater excesses.”
A foothand reached up to indicate the insignia embedded in her shoulder. “No need. As you can see, I'm no longer a padre-elect. Working for Church Security, one encounters plenty of excess on a regular basis.”
“Um—excuse me?”
At the sound of Clarity's voice Flinx turned back toward her. In the excitement of the unexpected reunion he had momentarily forgotten that his beloved was still encased in a hardened container of highly volatile explosive material.
“You two know each other?”
“Sorry, sorry.” Flinx indicated the self-assured insectoid standing poised in front of him. “Clarity, this is Sylzenzuzex. An old friend and a distant relative of Truzenzuzex. She and I originally met under—difficult circumstances. That was something like ten years ago.” He looked back at the waiting thranx. Her b-thorax pulsed slightly as she breathed, taking in air through spiracles far more advanced and oxygen-efficient than those of any Terran insect. Her personal bouquet was even more fragrant than that of the average thranx. Frangipani and rose, honeysuckle and huckleberry. It was all coming back to him.
He gestured in Clarity's direction. “Syl, meet Clarity Held. The one human being in the universe who knows who and what I am, in more depth and detail than I used to think possible. She loves me in spite of that.”
“That could change,” Clarity growled, “unless you get me out of this coagulated goo before one of these fanatics wakes up and thinks to hit me with a rock, or a chair, or a good swift kick, and blow all of us to kingdom come.”
“I do not know exactly what your intended mate is talking about, srra!!aut,” Syl clicked, “but I can relate to the part about being blown up.” Left truhand and foothand gestured in unison to take in their immediate surroundings. “What is all this about? Who are these people and how and why have they come to be so incapacitated?” She used a foothand to gesture back the way she had come. “There are others by the entrance and in the hallway. Seeing them in such a state and knowing you were somewhere here is what caused me to proceed with caution and weapons drawn.”
“They're members of something called the Order of Null. I—incapacitated them. They want me dead.”
Her right truhand and foothand pointed to the body of the Qwarm. “And are apparently willing to pay well to accomplish that.”
Flinx joined her in staring at the assassin's mountainous corpse. “I'm glad you didn't switch professions. He wouldn't have given you a chance to explain yourself.”
She gestured second-degree accord. “A senior Qwarm.” Her gaze returned to search his face. “After all these years there are still those who wish you gone.”
He shrugged. “Their identity shifts and changes, but not their intent. It's just my life, Syl. Later, when we have more time, I'll tell you more about it than you want to know.” He mustered up his earlier smile as he turned and started toward the immobilized, increasingly impatient Clarity. “Just as you have to tell me how you came to be here, and how you found me.”
She nodded and moved off to check on the condition of the traumatized, fetally curled, and still overwhelmed members of the Order, as he hurried over to Clarity.
The Elder had told him that there were four of the small, disk-shaped detonators taped to her thighs and electronically attuned to the hardened foam. They would set off the explosive amalgam if anyone attempted to cut or break through it or if it was struck hard enough. He did not need the beseeching look in her eyes to tell him that whatever he did he would have to proceed with the utmost caution. As with the Qwarm, if he made a mistake there would be no second chance. For either of them.
But if the detonators were simply taped to her body …
Smiling encouragingly, he stepped behind her and tried to slip his right hand down her front, starting at the neck where the foam stopped. No matter how hard or how carefully he wiggled his hand and no matter how deeply she inhaled, he could not get more than a finger or two into the restrictive space between her throat and the inside layer. Fearful of cracking or setting off the gray amalgam, he was reluctant to push too hard. He could not take a chance on triggering one or more of the detonators.
He had no better results when he lay down on the floor and tried to slip a hand up a leg. The Order had done their work well. He couldn't free Clarity without splintering or splitting the encasing foam. Doing that would undoubtedly set it off. And if the Elder was to be believed, the “simple” mechanical triggers taped to her upper legs could not be deactivated electronically without the risk of initiating the deadly reaction.
He needed something thin, narrow, and flexible that had a strong grasp, like the wormgrip the Elder had referred to. He could send Sylzenzuzex off to obtain one and bring it back, but that would leave him having to guard Clarity against any surprises the recovering acolytes might produce. Even disarmed they might prove dangerous. With the right tools he could shift both Clarity and her volatile sheath, but what if in the process of being moved it accidentally struck a wall or fell to the ground? The result would be as explosive as if he tried to cut into it.
As Syl continued to gather up the last of the Order's weapons and communits, he wracked his brain for a solution that would not only be viable but quick. It finally struck him that he had at his disposal a tool that was even more flexible than a wormgrip. Turning and walking away from Clarity, he started searching through the pile of instrumentation Sylzenzuzex had collected. Clarity watched him intently.
“What are you doing, Flinx? You heard what the crazy old militant said: the detonators on my legs can't be switched off electronically. They're simple on-off switches. In order to disable them you have to get them off me.” An edge crept into her voice. “Why aren't you getting them off me, Flinx?”
“Because I can't reach them without splitting or cracking the foam and setting it off. But there's someone who can.”
Digging through the growing pile of sequestered weaponry and personal instrumentation, he evaluated and discarded one item after another before finally settling on a miniholo disk. It was round, it was small, and it was the closest thing to a button-sized detonator he had been able to scrounge from the pile. As a puzzled Clarity looked on, he grabbed Pip gently by the neck and drew her head downward. He showed her the disk, emphasizing its importance by emanating concomitant heightened emotions of longing and desire. Then he dropped it down the front of his shirt.
Clarity had heard him talk to the minidrag on numerous occasions. This, however, was the first time she had ever heard him use the word “fetch.”
For an alien non-Terran pseudo-reptiloid whose body shape was an excellent example of interstellar parallel evolution, Pip was moderately intelligent. Even so, she was no dog, far less a dolphin. Flinx had to repeat the demonstration several times before she got the idea. His feeling of accomplishment when she finally wriggled down his shirtfront to recover the dropped disk and then slithered back out his open collar holding it in her mouth was the equal of any triumph he had experienced recently.
Leaving the mound of confiscated gear, he returned to Clarity. Gently unwinding Pip's coils, he placed her on Clarity's left shoulder with her triangular-shaped head facing the slight opening at her neck. Holding the miniholo disk in his other hand, he mimed dropping it into the narrow space between her throat and the hardened explosive foam. Wings folded tightly against her sides, the flying snake immediately ducked down into the opening and disappeared into the gap.
A moment passed. Clarity's expression contorted. She gave every sign of trying to move, to get away, but imprisoned within the solidified froth she was unable to do little more than twitch. Flinx was suddenly concerned. She had not raised any objections to his serpentine stratagem, and living as she did with Scrap the last thing he expected was for her to show any kind of irrational fear of intimate proximity to Pip.
“What's wrong? Try not to move so much—you might accidentally impact the foam and set off a reaction.”
“I am trying!” she shot back, just before she lapsed into uncontrollable giggling. “I can't help it—she tickles!”
The laughter subsided along with the stimulation when Pip's head reappeared beneath her chin. Flinx broke out in a wide grin. Gripped firmly in the minidrag's sharp teeth, the thumbnail-sized detonator trailed shreds of the tape that had secured it to her right thigh. The empathetic warmth that now passed between man and minidrag was as deep and true as any spoken expression of satisfaction.
He examined the recovered detonator closely. It was small, but not so small that it couldn't conceal within its slim plastic body some kind of backup triggering system. He laid it carefully aside. At his urging Pip made three more trips down Clarity's front, bringing forth the remaining three detonators along with concurrent bursts of uncontrollable laughter that gradually faded in intensity. When all four detonators had been recovered, he induced the flying snake to make one more exploratory slither. This additional excursion took three times as long as any of its four predecessors. Finally emerging, the minidrag radiated concern and uncertainty. Picking her up and settling her on his shoulder, he proceeded to soothe her both mentally and physically.
There was always the risk, he explained to Clarity, that the Elder had been lying. “Couldn't take the chance that there might have been five detonators,” he told her, “or more. Don't worry. If there were, Pip would have found them.”
Gathering up the four detonators, he turned and headed for the hallway. Behind him, Sylzenzuzex was busily trussing the hands and feet of the recovering Order members with a spool of wire-thin makesafe that was standard issue equipment for a Church Security operative.
His rented skimmer was parked where he had left it. Ten minutes later he was forty kilometers away and hovering a centimeter above the center of a small, shallow lake. Slipping out of his clothes, he picked up the detonators one last time, took a deep breath, and plunged into the cool water. Reaching the bottom, he proceeded to shove them as deep into the mud as he could. Lastly, he moved a large flat rock over the top of them before returning to the surface to gulp air.
Moments later he was back at the Order's villa. No smoke rose from the middle of the building and insofar as he could tell, the central atrium had not collapsed. His relief was not complete, however, until he was once more in the central chamber.
Emerging from the individual paroxysms of pleasure induced by Flinx's emotive projecting, the now bound and secured members of the Order were suffering from varying degrees of emotional hangover. The Elder in particular looked especially distraught. None of them were in any condition to confront him verbally, far less physically. Her training had taught Sylzenzuzex how to secure detainees. None of the Order members could stand, much less mount an assault.
“What do you want to do with them, Flinx?” One antenna waved in his direction while the other indicated the prisoners. “What did you do to put them in this condition, anyway—drug them?”
“Something like that.” Years ago, when they had met on Ulru-Ujurr, his Talent had still been in its infancy. He had only been able to infrequently read the emotions of others—not to project his own onto them.
He realized with a start that dealing with the Order posed a tricky problem of its own. Their organization might be secretive, but that did not make it illegal. Attempted murder, of course, was another matter. But declaring the attempt on his life would require registering a formal complaint with the Nurian authorities, giving a relevant deposition, appearing before an adjudication automaton, and answering the kinds of questions he preferred not to answer. On the other hand, if he and his friends simply departed and left them bound as they were, eventually they would free themselves and come after him again. Perhaps less precisely next time: say, by locating him in a public place in downtown Sphene and then bombing it. That risk he could deal with, but not the prospect of endangering innocents.
It was Sylzenzuzex who proposed a solution. One that was temporary, to be sure, but temporary was all that was required. The members of the Order needed to be neutralized only until he and his friends were safely away from New Riviera.
“In my capacity as a Church Security officer I am all
owed a certain amount of operational leeway.” A truhand indicated the bound and now increasingly active throng of believers. “If I file a report stating that these confrontational humans are members of a potentially dangerous organization, they can be taken into official custody until the truth of the claim is adjudicated one way or the other. It is not necessary for me to mention that they have attempted murder and hired a Qwarm to do so. It should be enough to keep them in custody for a couple of days. Will that be sufficient for your purposes?”
He would have hugged her except that he was afraid of breaking a delicate truarm. He settled instead for swiping his hand across the tips of both antennae.
“Go ahead and file the necessary report. I'll see to Clarity.”
Recovering his service belt, he returned to where she still sat encased in the congealed sheath of explosive foam. Her tone, like her expression, had lost none of its impatience. “What was that all about?”
“I had to find a way to make sure that both these fanatics and the authorities wouldn't interfere with us for a little while. At least long enough to allow us to leave Nur without having to chance another battle at the shuttleport.” He turned his head to his left. “Syl assures me she has enough rank to take care of it. Hold still. And you might want to take a deep breath.”
While Pip looked on with interest, he drew a small cutting tool from his belt. Under his experienced fingers it flared to life.
“Why take a deep breath?” she wondered aloud. “If this doesn't work and you set off the amalgam it's not going to matter how much oxygen I have in my lungs. Or you have in yours, either.”
“Good point.” He moved the dynamic end of the tool toward her left shoulder. The beam made contact and began to slice into the hardened grayish material. In spite of himself, he winced. But the beam continued to cut and nothing, least of all his life, flashed before his eyes. He was careful to work at an angle that would keep it well away from her skin.
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