The driver, Sselar by name, was eager to talk to us. He was old enough to have some perspective on the incessant infighting in the empire. It had soured him on the kvenningari. He had seen Calldlamm change its first loyalty fifty planetary years before and the experience had earned Carrillacki an extra helping of his distaste. Not that he had ever done anything about it. Sselar owned and managed two bakeries in Kordon, which made him a relatively prosperous merchant. He had centered his life on his family, maneuvering a good tie for his oldest, and on his business. It had been his business, a special delivery to a wealthy patron, that had brought him near the governor’s compound so late at night. Somehow, the realization that we were enemies of Carrillacki had unleashed four decades of subconscious rebellion. He proclaimed that he would see us to the spaceport at all cost. It would be his personal act of defiance.
For a while, I thought we would get away cleanly. Sselar pushed his car at frightening speed down the cliff road to the central city even though I saw no pursuit behind. Likely, it was his speed that gave us away. Had he driven like an old lady, I doubt even Aalaza’s best airborne sensors could have deduced we were in that car. As it was, we must have stuck out like a sore thumb. I tried to break into his monologue to make that point, but nothing could persuade him to slow down.
We were almost past the crest of one of Kordon’s towered hills when an official-looking car pulled out in front of us. Sselar banked his car so hard to the left that I thought we would lose the ground effect and set down on the left stabilizer fin. The air cushion stayed intact and we made a high-speed hairpin, just missing the front of a building before heading back the way we came. Blaster fire came from the car behind us. At first I dismissed it, thinking that no handblaster could burn through a shield. Then I realized that ground cars did not have shields.
Sselar gave them little chance to find their range. He banked to the right at high speed, into the first crossing street. Aalaza’s guards tried to follow us and I began to appreciate Sselar’s driving. Their driver misjudged the bank. The ground effect lost contact and inertia took over. The car flipped upside down, skidded across the roadway and shattered itself against the base of a tower. A look at Sselar’s face told me that he was having the time of his life. The lines in his forehead had smoothed out and his eyes shone.
Guards ran into the street, weapons drawn. Sselar laughed and gunned the car straight for them. Fire flickered from their weapons and was answered from the car. Angel got one, Jaenna another. Then we were on them, the car rocking as a fin cleaved one of them through the torso. We ran on toward the spaceport.
We had just cleared another roadblock when the car suddenly dropped. It slammed into the ground with a crash that rattled teeth, then skidded along the road leaving a trail of shredded metal. Someone’s lucky shot had hit the engine. Fortunately, we were able to open the doors and scramble out. A squad of six Srihani was charging down the street toward us, firing wildly as they ran. We took shelter behind the ruined car and fired back. It was no contest. The advancing squad was coming full bore, right out in the open. Jaenna’s blaster was out before she hit the ground. Each time she moved her blaster, she fired. What she fired at she hit, and what she hit went down. I took out one on my side and saw Angel drop another. It was over that fast. Six bodies lay in the street. We rose to find ourselves unscathed. Well, not really. Behind us, Sselar lay on his back, a ragged gash burned into his chest. He hadn’t known to stay low. A carefully structured lifetime was gone, for the sake of a moment’s rebellion. Was it worth it? For us, certainly. Somehow, I doubted that his family would have agreed.
We were not far from the main spaceport entrance, maybe a half dozen irregular city blocks, but we no longer had a car. Meanwhile, the local constabulary was becoming more coordinated. What saved us was that Aalaza’s cops drew the same conclusion from the bodies by the car as Mark Twain’s cat did from the hot stove lid. They did a lot of shooting, but seemed disinclined to press too closely. We didn’t have night glasses, and such was the haste with which they had been mustered, neither did they. Most of the shooting did more damage to the buildings than to any of the combatants. This allowed us to retreat in a reverse leapfrog toward the port.
In that fashion, we quickly whittled down the distance to where the buildings of the succeeding block ran right up to the ring road around the port wall. I nestled myself into a convenient doorway where the entrance formed an open-ended vestibule, allowing me to shelter most of my body while shooting. Farther up the block behind me, flashes came from Angel’s and Jaenna’s positions. Still farther back, on the other side of the road, the Calldlamm troopers lit up the street like a chain of firecrackers.
I yelled to let Angel and Jaenna know that I was ready, then I began firing back at the locations of the blaster flares. The firing from one of our positions stopped. Angel or Jaenna—I couldn’t tell which—kept going until they were across the street behind me. Then there was a yell. It was Angel. Firing resumed from a new point at my back. Shortly afterward, I could see shadows on the street as the Calldlamm troopers advanced again. I fired where I saw movement and was rewarded by a scream.
The trooper, hit in a leg, flopped in the street and tried to scramble on all fours. One of his buddies went to help, and a beam from Jaenna’s blaster dropped him. Now there were two wounded Srihani in the street. Once again, the Calldlamm advance came to a complete stop. Jaenna dashed across the street to the block Angel had reached. That left me as the rearguard, looking to gauge my opportunity for the same move. Behind me, Angel and Jaenna kept up a steady fire.
The two downed Srihani still moaned in the street, but no one was going to aid them and risk becoming the third victim. The troopers were shooting, but not moving. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. Pirate captain or not, I was trained to be a pro football player, not a soldier and there is a big difference. I ducked low and made a dash, trying to melt into every nook and cranny offered by the buildings. When I came to the cross street, some sixth sense made me look down the street to my left. I dropped flat as two beams hissed into the wall above me. The bastards had sent a group to flank us. They had been a little slow, Jaenna and Angel were already across the street, but they had me hung up.
Flat on my belly, I inched up to the corner of the building and fired down the side street. Jaenna or Angel must have seen the byplay, because fire erupted from the next block, also directed down the street. I backed up two steps and sprinted into the street. After three quick steps, I went into a diving forward roll. I could hear the hiss of the beams aimed at me. I came out of the roll almost within reach of the nearest building. One long stride and I dived headfirst for cover. I skidded along the paved surface, doing grievous, but superficial, damage to my skin. Too late, I saw that this building had an entrance below ground level. Down the stairs I went, headfirst. I got up spitting blood, but safe from the beams. My tough break was also my lucky one as the recess also made a convenient firing pit.
Jaenna and Angel and I worked our way down the block, until we stood together in the wide, recessed entrance of a building across from the port. There it was, ten feet of massive retractable wall, set into that twenty-foot barrier. Before we could get to it, though, there was thirty yards of open ring road in front of us. Just to add to the fun, blasters opened up from the top of the wall.
“Shit,” Angel said. “All that work for this. They’ll flank us again, and even if we slip past, how do we get through that?”
Good question. My mind went as blank as the front of that wall.
Jaenna said, “I can take the gate. Just cover me.”
The rocket! Did it pack enough explosive to damage something as massive as the wall? From the strain on Jaenna’s face, I knew she wasn’t certain either. Having no choices, however, makes it wonderfully easy to reach a decision. Angel and I kept up a steady fire at our pursuers, while Jaenna slipped sideways to get a clear shot at the gate. She clenched her fist and the unit on her arm came alive. The gray she
ath split down the middle, the two halves sliding across the underside of her arm. On top, ensconced in a little pop-up cradle, was the rocket. It looked like a scale model of a real rocket, it was that small and slender, with its warhead painted bright yellow. A blast plate had come up behind the rocket’s tail. Jaenna threw her hand open, fingers spread wide. The rocket ignited. Flame spewed off the blast plate, surrounding her like a halo. For a split second, the rocket remained poised on its cradle, and then it was gone. A second later, it struck. There was an actinic glare, followed by a thunderclap. The windows in the building we crouched against were proof against all the noise of the port, but that blast broke them. Then we heard the noise of falling masonry. Amidst the smoke at the gate, lights from the field became visible. The firing from the wall stopped.
“All right,” I yelled, “let’s go for it!”
Before I could even move, however, there was a popping noise all around us and the street began to fill with smoke.
“What the hell?” Angel started.
“I don’t know where it came from, but if we can’t see, neither can they. Let’s do it. Where did Jaenna go?”
Then I saw her. She was standing just ahead of us, bent over with one hand clamped to her hip.
“Jaenna! No!”
“It’s nothing, Danny. I’m all right.”
“Sure you are. That’s why you’re twisted around like a pretzel. Angel, give me a hand with her.”
“Stubborn chick,” he muttered when she tried to pull free.
She could stand on her own, keeping her weight on her left foot, but she couldn’t move. In the end, Angel took one arm, I the other, and we half carried her across the street. Enemy troopers were firing blindly into the street but every blast was wasted. Without the smoke, though, we would have been deep fried.
When we reached the gate, we saw that the rocket had done its work. One lower corner had been blasted out entirely. Huge cracks spread through the rest of the gate. The portion immediately above the point of impact had broken off and tumbled to the ground. Along the ragged edges, loose ends of honeycomb material dripping chunks of metallocrete swayed back and forth. Angel and I helped Jaenna across the debris. The burnhole and bloodstain were centered on her right hip. I had no idea how bad the hit was, but I could see the pain in her face.
Once past the gate, we could see why the shooting from the wall had stopped. The landing boat had been brought up close to the wall and the crew left to guard it had been deployed outside. From there, they were able to rake the top of the wall with fire. Those positions had not been designed against an attack from the field. Three of my crew were down at the ship, but there were more bodies at the base of the wall and those wore Carrillacki insignia.
It took one last effort to reach the ship. Angel simply scooped Jaenna up in a fireman’s carry and ran for it, with me right behind him. Over our heads, the crew fired at the guardposts, preventing the remaining Srihani there from interfering with us. The hatch opened ahead of us, the gladdest sight I could imagine.
Harvangi, the pilot, met us just inside, while on the landing field the crew began to retreat to the ship. “How bad?” he asked.
“Four dead,” I answered. “One wounded.” Angel was busy settling Jaenna into one of the couches. There was no need to give names. “What’s going on here?”
“Communications intercepted the transmissions from the governor’s compound. They were encrypted, of course, but our computer knows those codes.” He grinned. It was useful having a former Imperial ship. “That told us what was going on. Once we knew, we were able to pick up even the low power transmissions of their field units. Way too chatty, they are. We couldn’t get a visual fix, with the clouds and night, and the orbit is too far for that kind of detail on infrared, but we knew you were headed here. When they opened up from the ground posts, I figured you had to be right outside. We just moved the boat and let them have it from behind. When you blew the gate, we put down some smoke on the outside.”
I was impressed. It had taken a good job of tracking and some quick thinking to save our asses. However, we were still sitting on an enemy landing field in a thinly shielded landing boat. Going from there to orbit seemed even more difficult than our run from the governor’s house.
“Actually, I don’t expect a problem,” Harvangi said as the last of the crew came on board and sealed the hatch. “Fire Control is broadcasting that if the boat is attacked, the ship will burn the city.”
Harvangi wasted no time testing the theory. As soon as everyone was belted in, he lifted off. I kept waiting for Carrillacki to hit us, but apparently Aalaza took Ruoni at his word. The city was our hostage. Once we had docked with Franny, Angel took Jaenna to Medical while I went to the bridge.
Ruoni answered my request for a status report with, “Not bad. We are beyond the effective range of most of their satellite-based weapons and they have not tried to use them. The small ships they have are staying in, under cover of those weapons. As long as we don’t need to come in close, we’re okay.”
At which point, Cardoni interrupted. “I have two ships on scan, headed inward at 16, 37, 85.”
Chapter 18
A green dot on the screen, then its twin, exactly as Cardoni had announced. The ships were near the second planet beyond Calldlamm, that planet being on the same side of the sun and only a few degrees off line with Calldlamm. A long way from any of the charted wormholes.
“What do you make of them?” I asked.
“IFF is Carrillacki,” Cardoni replied. “Initial estimate is a cruiser and an enhanced destroyer.”
So that had been Aalaza’s plan! All at once, it all made sense. He must have known we would never have put ourselves in the position we had, Franny in that orbit and me on the ground, if there had been heavy ships around. It’s hard to hide an interstellar warship in space, but it is possible. The current position of the ships suggested that they had either been landed or orbited around that planet so that its bulk had always been between them and us, possible since they knew which wormhole we would come through.
Since no transmission from Calldlamm to the ships would be possible, Aalaza must have counted on perfect timing for success. He must have figured that even if I refused to go along with him, the crew might well have cooperated, with me out of contact and two Carrillacki ships on top of Franny. Too bad for him, the timing had been just a little off. The screen gave me another idea, as well.
“Take us out of here,” I ordered and gave Helm a course to one of the wormholes.
“Captain Danny, on that course they will be able to overhaul us.” Farad looked almost comical, trying to balance protest with discipline.
“All of which proves you can do your arithmetic,” I gibed. Actually, I hadn’t been certain, the relationship just looked likely from the screen. I didn’t want to run away. I wanted Aalaza’s balls. “They’ll overtake us from the rear, correct?” He nodded.
That was the answer I wanted. “Cardoni, how likely are sensors to detect a powered-down boat, directly between us and them?”
“Powered down? You mean no engines, no shield?”
“No nothing. Personnel on suit systems only.”
“Not likely at all.” He frowned and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Then he consulted the computer. “I mean, yes, sensors could detect a boat like that, but not in direct line with this ship. Our emissions would swamp all the telltales.”
From Ruoni’s immense grin, I knew that he had figured out what I was up to. Once we had the pursuit directly astern, we would drop off the attack boats, dead in space. Then we would accelerate a little to separate from the boats. The Carrillacki closing on us would run right past the boats, which would then wake up very fast. If it worked, the two on one advantage they thought they had would be very fleeting. Once we set our course, I went to check on Jaenna.
She was lying down in the Medical Unit. Angel and Ramorir stood nearby. Jaenna didn’t look good. She was breathing too fast and I could see he
r nostrils flare out every time she inhaled.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Not too bad,” answered Ramorir. “The wound itself isn’t the major problem. The burn didn’t destroy the bone or damage the blood supply to the hip joint, but it did ruin a large blood vessel, so she’s lost more blood than I’d like. Also, these wounds are extremely painful. That pack you see is supplying a mix of growth factors to help the tissues heal and some endorphin to cut the pain. I’m also using it to infuse fluorocarbon blood substitute. She’s lost too much to wait for her to regenerate it, even with the growth factors.”
An object the size of a shoebox was fastened at Jaenna’s belt. Two small tubes ran from it through the shipsuit and God knows where thereafter.
“What’s going on, Danny?” she asked.
She looked even younger than usual. What I wanted to do was hug her, but under the circumstances, that was impossible. I settled for describing the situation. That was a mistake.
“I like your plan, Danny,” she said. “They won’t suspect until much too late.”
“I thought you would. Now, I’d better find Gonnar and go over this with him.” Gonnar having been promoted to Jaenna’s second in command.
“That’s not necessary,” Jaenna said. “I’ll take the strike force in.”
“Like hell you will. Jaenna, you can stand on one leg, but you can’t walk without both of them, and you’ve lost so much blood that I’m not sure you could walk anyway. Don’t push it.”
“It will be okay. I can do it,” she insisted.
“No.”
“Danny, please do not shame me in front of the crew.”
“Shame you? What’s the shame? You’re hurt; it’s not like you’re trying to duck out.”
My Life: An Ex-Quarterback's Adventures in the Galactic Empire Page 25