Generation Warriors

by Anne McCaffrey

  "You have a message for me?" prompted Sassinak when a long silence had followed that after the crystal globe had vanished again into the dimness.

  "That was your message." A quizzical expression crossed that face, followed by: "You are familiar with the local bars, aren't you? You are a sailor?"

  Behind her, Aygar choked and Sassinak barely managed not to gulp herself.

  "No," she said gently. "I'm not any more familiar with local bars than with . . . uh . . . costumes."

  "Oh." Another long silence, during which Sassinak realized that the assistant's pupils were elliptical, and that the dark costume was actually fur. "I thought you would be. Try the Eclipse, two blocks down, and order a Planetwiper."

  That was clear enough, but Sassinak wasn't sure she believed it was genuine.

  "You . . ." she began.

  The assistant withdrew behind the billowing blue satin skirt, and opened its mouth folly, revealing a double row of pointed teeth.

  "I'm an orphan, too," it said, and vanished.

  Sassinak shook her head.

  "What was that?" breathed Aygar.

  "I don't know. Let's go."

  She didn't like admitting she'd never seen an alien like that before. She didn't like this whole setup.

  The Eclipse displayed a violently pink and yellow sign, which at night must have made sleep difficult for anyone across the street. Sassinak glanced that way and saw only blank walls above the street-level shops. No beaded curtain here but a heavy door that opened to a hard shove and closed solidly behind them. A heavyworlder in gleaming gray plastic armor stood at one side—evidence of potential trouble, and its cure, all in one. A glance around showed Sassinak that her clothes did not quite fit in. Except for the overdressed trio at one table, clearly there to prey on customers, the women wore merchant-spacers' coveralls, good quality but not stylish. Most of the men wore the same, although two men had on business clothes, one with the crumpled gown of an attorney at court piled on the seat beside him. Sassinak supposed the little gray coil atop it was his ceremonial wig.

  She was aware of sideways glances, but conversation did not stop. These people were too experienced for that. She led Aygar to one of the booths and dialed their order. Planetwipers had never been her favorite but, of course, she didn't have to drink the thing. Aygar leaned massive elbows on the table.

  "Can you tell me what is going on, or are you trying to drive me crazy?"

  "I'm not, and I don't know. I presume that at some point our party will arrive. At least I know what he looks like."

  She was trying not to be too obvious about looking around. No one here of Coromell's age, or close to it. Surely they wouldn't have a third meeting place to find. Aygar took a long swallow of his drink.

  "That's potent," she said quietly. "Best be careful."

  He glowered at her. "I'm not a child. I don't even know why you . . ."

  He stopped as someone stopped by their table. Tall, silver-haired, erect. If Sassinak had not known Coromell, she might have believed this was he.

  "Commander," he said quietly. "May I sit down?"

  "Do join us," Sassinak said. She gestured to Aygar. "The young Iretan you may have heard so much about."

  The older man nodded, but did not offer to shake hands. He wore an impeccable blue coverall, what she would have expected of a merchanter captain off-duty. One hand bore a ring that might have been an Academy ring, but the face was turned under where she could not see it. And his movements, his assurance, came from years of command, some kind of command. If he was not Admiral Coromell—and he wasn't—then who or what was he?

  "There's been a slight misunderstanding," he said. "It is necessary to stay out of reach of compromised surveillance devices until . . ."

  Sassinak never saw the flicker of light, only the surprised look on his face and the neat, crisped holes, five of them, in his face.

  Instinct had her under the table and scrambling before the first blood oozed out. She heard a bellow and crash as Aygar tossed the table aside and came after her. Something sizzled and Aygar yelped. Then the whole place erupted in noise and motion.

  Like all fights, it was over in less time than she could have described it. The experienced hit the floor and scuttled for shelter. The inexperienced screamed, flailed, and threw things that crashed and tinkled. Fumes from the shattered bottles stung her nose and eyes. Glass shards pricked her palms and knees.

  Sassinak bumped into other scuttlers, caught sight of Aygar and yanked him down just as a pink streak ripped the air where he'd been and burst the windows out. She jerked hard on his wrist, trusting him to follow, as she worked her way through the undergrowth of the fight. Table standards, chair legs, bodies. Through the service door, and into a white-tiled kitchen. She was surprised to realize that the place sold food as well. More noise behind her, following. She slipped on the greasy wet floor, staggered, and yanked Aygar again.

  "Come on, dammit!"

  "But . . ." He threw a last glance over his shoulder, and whatever he saw propelled him in a great leap that ended with Aygar and Sassinak tangled out the back door, and flames bursting out behind them. "Snarks in a bucket!"

  Sassinak struggled out from under the younger man and shook her head. Screams, more sounds of mayhem. She looked down the alley they'd landed in. She hated planets . . . living on them, at least. No one to keep things really shipshape. On the other hand, this filthy and disreputable bit of real estate offered hiding places no clean ship would. Aygar, she noted, had a bleeding gash down his face and several rips in his coverall, but no serious injury.

  He was already up on one knee, looking surprisingly relaxed and comfortable for someone who had narrowly escaped death. He had probably saved her life with that last lunge for the back door.

  "Thanks," she said, trying to figure out what to do with him. She'd thought of him more as deterrence than serious help if things turned nasty. And at the moment, they were about as nasty as she had seen in awhile.

  "We should go," he pointed out. "I was told only Insystem had that sort of weaponary."

  "We're going."

  Another quick glance, and she chose the shorter end of the alley. Nothing happened on the first quick dash to cover behind a stinking trash bin with rusty streaks down its sides. Sassinak eyed the other back doors opening on the alley. Surely someone should have peeked? Unless the neighborhood were really that tough, in which case . . .

  "There's someone behind the next one of these," Aygar said softly in her ear.

  She eyed him with respect. "How d'you know?"

  He shrugged. "I lived by hunting, remember? On Ireta, the things you didn't notice would hunt you. I heard something wrong."

  "Great."

  No weapons. No armor. And all her tricks were back in childhood, the tricks that worked on screen, and not in real life. Real life worked a lot better with real weapons.

  "I can take them," Aygar went on.

  She looked at him: all the eagerness appropriate to a young male in the prime of his pride and no military training whatever. And he wasn't hers, the way young Timran would have been. He was a civilian, under her oath of protection. She started to shake her head, but he hadn't waited.

  Even knowing about the great strength his genes and his upbringing had developed, she was still surprised. Aygar picked up the entire trash bin with all its clinking, rattling, dripping, smelly contents, and hurled it down the alley to crash into the next. Someone yelped. Sassinak heard the flat crack of smallarms fire, then nothing.

  Aygar was moving, rushing the barrier of the two trash bins crunched together. With a quick shrug, she followed, vaulting neatly into the mash of rotten vegetables and fruit peels on the far side. Aygar had neatly broken the neck of the ambusher. Sassinak picked herself out of the disgusting mess carefully and smiled at Aygar.

  "Try not to kill them unless you have to," she heard herself say.

  "I did," he said seriously. "Look!"

  And sure enough, the Insyste
m guard had managed to hang onto his weapon even with a trash bin pinning him by the legs.

  "Right. There are times . . . good job." At least she wouldn't have to worry about this one having post-combat hysterics. "Let's get out of this."

  Aygar hesitated. "Should I take his weapon?"

  "No, it's illegal. We'll be in enough trouble." We're already in enough trouble, she thought. "On second thought, yes. Take it. Why should the bad guys have all the advantages?"

  Aygar pried it out of the man's hand and courteously offered it to her. Surprised, Sassinak let her eyebrows rise as she took it and tucked it into a side pocket. Then, swiping futilely at the stains on her coverall, she led them down the alley to the street.

  By this time, sirens wailed nearby. With any luck, they would be on the other street. Sassinak motioned Aygar back. With that blood dripping down his face, he'd be better in hiding. Cautiously, she put her head around the corner. As if he'd been waiting for her, a stocky man in bright orange uniform bellowed and then blew a piercing whistle. Sassinak muttered a curse, and yanked Aygar into a run. No good going back into the alley. They'd have someone at the other end.

  They pelted down the street, dodging oncoming pedestrians. Sassinak expected at least one of them to try stopping them, but none did. Behind them, the whistle-blower fell steadily behind. Sassinak led them right at the first corner, slowing to an almost-polite jog as she stepped on the first slideway. Aygar, beside her, wasn't even breathing hard.

  Then he gripped her wrist. Across the street they were on, ahead, was a cordon of orange-uniforms on the pedestrian overpass above the slideways. They carried something that looked uncomfortably like riot-control weapons. Sassinak and Aygar edged back off the slide-way. This street, like the other, had a miscellany of small shops and bars.

  No time to choose. Sassinak ducked into the first she saw, hoping it had a useful back entrance.

  "You look terrible, dearie," said someone out of the dimness.

  Sassinak started to answer when she realized the young woman was looking at Aygar. Who was looking at her.

  "We don't have time for this," she said, tugging at Aygar's suddenly immobile bulk.

  "Men always have time for this," said the young woman, setting her various fringes in motion. "As for you, hon, why don't you take a look in the other room."

  Someone from there had already come to the archway. Sassinak ignored him and tried the only thing she could think of.

  "We need to find Fleur. Now. It's an emergency."

  "Fleur! What do you know about her?"

  An older woman stormed through the draperies of another archway. Somewhat to Sassinak's surprise, she had the trim, brisk appearance of a successful professional which, in a sense, she was, "Who are you, anyway?"

  "I need to find her. That's all I can say."

  "Security after you?" When Sassinak didn't answer immediately, the woman moved past them to peer through the outer window. "They're after somebody and you've got bloodstains and gods know what stinking up your clothes. Tell me now! You?"

  "Yes. I'm . . ."

  "Don't tell me."

  Sassinak obeyed. Here, in this place, someone else commanded.

  "Come." When Aygar cast a last look after the young woman who had greeted him, their guide snorted. "Listen, laddy-o, you're looking at a week's salary, unless you're ranked higher than I think, and you'd be dead before you enjoyed it if we don't get you under cover."

  Then, as she led them down a passage, she shouted back to her household, "Lee, get yourself in three with Ell. I don't think the locals know you yet. Pearl, you saw Lee come in. The woman with him, if they think they saw one, was our street tout." She muttered over her shoulder to Sassinak. "Not that that'll hold five minutes if they really saw you, but they might not have. It's getting to our busy time of day, so there's a chance. In here."

  In here was a tiny square office, crowded with desk and two chairs. The woman pulled open a drawer and slapped an aid kit down on the surface.

  "He won't pass anywhere, with all that blood. Clean him up. I'll be back with another coverall for you."

  Aygar sat in one of the chairs while Sassinak cleaned the shallow gash and put a sticker over it. He did look less conspicuous with the blood off his face. She used several more stickers to hold the rents in his coverall together. The scratches under them had long stopped bleeding.

  The woman came back with a cheap working coverall of tough tan fabric and tossed it to Sassinak.

  "Get that smelly thing off so I can run it through the shredder in the kitchen. What'd you do, camp out in a grocer's trash bin?"

  "Not exactly." Sassinak didn't want to explain. She handed Aygar the gun out of her pocket before peeling off her coverall and slipping into the other one. Aygar, she noticed, was trying not to watch while the woman stared at her.

  "You must be Fleet," she said, more quietly. "You've got muscles, for a woman your age. Over forty, aren't you?"

  "A little, yes."

  The tan coverall was a bit short in the arms and legs, but ample in the body. Sassinak transferred her ID and the handcom into its pockets and then took the gun back from Aygar.

  "Ever heard of Samizdat?" The woman's voice was even lower, barely above a murmur.

  Sassinak stared, remembering that bleak afternoon when Abe had told her a tiny bit about that organization.

  "A little," she said cautiously.

  "Hmm. Fleet. Samizdat. Fleur. Tell you what, honey, you'd better be honest, or I swear I'll hunt you to the last corner of the galaxy, my own self, and stake your gizzard in the light of some alien sun, so I will. That Fleur's a lady, saved my life more'n once, and never thinks the worse of a girl for doing what she has to."

  "She's a Fleet captain," said Aygar.

  Both women glared at him.

  "I didn't want to know that," said the woman. "A Fleet captain with undisciplined crew . . ."

  Before Aygar could say anything, Sassinak said, "He's not crew; he's civilian, an important witness against planet pirates, and they're trying to silence him. We were supposed to have a quiet meeting but it didn't stay quiet."

  "Ah. Then you do know about Samizdat. Well, well have to get you out of here later, and I'll send word to Fleur . . ." She stopped, as voices erupted down the passage. "Rats. Up out of that chair, laddy-o, and quick about it."

  Aygar stood, and the woman shoved until he flattened against the wall. Sassinak, guessing what she wanted, lifted the chairs onto the desk. Beneath the worn carpet was the outline of a trap door. The woman didn't have to urge quickness, not with the words "search" and "illegal aliens" and "renegade posing as Fleet" booming down the hall.

  First came a straight drop down five feet to a landing above a short stair. Aygar had scarcely bent to get his head below floor level when the trap banged down, leaving them in complete darkness. Sassinak could hear muffled thumps and scrapes as the rug and chairs went back atop it. She had made it almost to the next level, but stopped where she was, afraid to move in the darkness lest she trip and make a noise. Aygar crept down three steps and touched her shoulder.

  "What now?" he asked.

  "Shhh. We hope the searchers don't know about the trapdoor."

  For the first time since trouble started, Sassinak had leisure to think about it and about her ship. She had been fooled by the original communication because it was in Fleet slang. That implied, but did not prove, that someone in Fleet was trying to get her killed. Whoever it was knew enough about Coromell to suspect that his name would lure her and that she would know only his general appearance. He was famous enough. It wouldn't be hard for anyone to know his height, his age, and find someone reasonably close to impersonate him.

  But why all the complexity? Why not simply have someone assassinate her, or Aygar, or both, as they were on their way out of the shuttleport, or any place between? And, assuming those orange uniforms were the police, why were the authorities on the side of the attackers?

  She tried to think wh
at someone might have said to convince the local police that she and Aygar were dangerous criminals causing trouble. Fleeing a bar fight was only common sense. She'd originally thought to call in to Coromell's office as soon as she found a telecom booth. And what was happening to her ship, topside? She wanted to pull out the comm unit and find out, but dared not with searchers after them.

  Time waiting in the darkness had strange dimensions. Endless, seamless, compressed by fear and stretched by anticipation: she had no idea how long it was before she dared extend a cautious foot to the next lower step. She edged down, drawing Aygar after her. Just in case they found the trapdoor, she'd rather be around a corner, behind something, under something. Another step, and another.

  When the lights went on, her vision blanked for a moment. Aygar gasped. Now she could see the long narrow room. She ran down the last few steps, Aygar behind her, and looked for a place to hide. There? An angle of wall, perhaps a support for something overhead? She ducked around it, out of sight of the stairs. Then a voice crackled from some hidden speaker.

  ". . . know you have a basement, Sera Vanlis, and you'd better cooperate. This is nothing to play games about."

  "I still don't see a warrant." Not quite defiance, but not quite calm confidence, either. "I've nothing to hide, but I'm not setting precedent by letting you search without one."

  "I'll call for one."

  A pause, then the sound of speech Sassinak could not distinguish. Did the sound go both ways? She had to trust not, had to hope the woman had hit some hidden switch to give them both warning and a way out. But nothing looked like a way out. No doors, in the long opposite wall, or the far end. No door at either end. A fat column of cables and pipes came out of the ceiling, entered and exited a massive meter box covered with dials, and disappeared into a grated opening in the floor.

  Aygar nodded toward it. Sassinak looked closer. Not big enough for Aygar and she wasn't sure she could slither alongside the bundled utilities, but it gave her an idea. If this were a ship, there'd be some kind of repair access to the utility conduits. She couldn't find it, and the conversation overhead could have only one ending.