Suzy flung her arms around him and squeezed. “Barry,” she said, “you wonderful packrat.” Then she socked him in the shoulder. “And that’s for stealing,” she said.
Barry didn’t complain, he simply thrust the pile at Petrick. “Is one of these things the amazoner?”
It was sitting nearly on top, and Petrick reached for it just as they heard a shout from around the corner of the long hallway. The intruders were almost on top of them now, moments away.
“Huddle up,” he said to the group with as much of an urgent whisper as he could muster.
The group obeyed, even Balta, who kept her mouth shut. What else was there to try? Petrick, in the center of the huddle, worked furiously with the small device, adjusting dials on its sides and flipping a series of switches. The voices from down the hallway seemed like they were right on top of them; they must have been just about to round the corner.
“Petrick!” Haber hissed.
There was a snap-crackle, and then there were troops rounding the corner, backlit by the flashing lights that could be seen beyond the window. They were Authority, no doubt; their head-to-toe armor glistened ominously. Beside Petrick, Balta began to rise with her gun, ready to fight to the end.
“What are you doing?” Petrick whispered through his teeth.
Balta looked at him, confused, but she’d stopped moving. Petrick motioned her back down with the rest of the group. After a moment, as the troops continued their purposeful march toward them, he realized that none of them had trained their weapons on them.
“Have . . . ,” Balta breathed. “Are we . . . ?”
Petrick, by way of answering, took his hand and moved it toward the corridor wall behind them. He looked each of the rest of the group in the eye, and then passed his hand right through the wall.
“My stars,” Balta said in a whisper. “They can’t see us.”
“We’re slightly out of atomic phase,” Petrick said, eminently proud of himself. “Even light passes right through us.”
“Will they pass through us?” asked Barry, who was looking at the oncoming troops . . . oncoming as in coming directly at them.
Petrick paused; he hadn’t considered that. What would happen if the troops were to walk through them? They’d enter the displacement field. It was fine to have a wall or a floor in your displacement field—a wall or a floor couldn’t see you—but an Authority trooper most certainly would once inside.
“Crunch,” he said. “We’re going to have to move out of the way.”
“Where?!” Balta whispered.
“What about the wall?” Suzy asked. She, like Petrick, stuck her hand out and it passed into the wall without any effort.
“Great idea, Suzy.” Petrick nodded. The rest of the group shuffled to start moving.
“Halt!” Haber whispered. Everyone froze. “Sloooowwwlllyyyyy.” He pointed down at Petrick’s foot, which everyone now saw had started to disappear down into the floor. “If I may, young master, I assume you’ve set up a static charge at the bottom of the field?” Petrick nodded an affirmative. “Then that static charge is keeping us from falling through the floor. Moving makes it weak, so I’d suggest we move very, very carefully.”
“We don’t have time!” Balta was pointing down the hallway at the troops, which were now mere feet away.
“Haber’s right,” Petrick insisted. “If we fall through, even partway, I can’t phase us back without cutting our bodies in half!”
“Move,” Suzy said, and she skittered her light frame into the wall and was gone.
Petrick gasped, hoping to the stars that she was okay, that the field was holding beneath her . . . and then he nodded to the rest of the group. They plunged into the wall as carefully as they could, just as the troops began to sweep past where they’d been squatting a second before.
Behind the wall, it was dark. Because of the atomizer field, bits and pieces of the corridor beyond could still be seen. Petrick realized that if he moved the atomizer itself slightly, he could adjust the field to see, but he didn’t dare move it too much, lest it uncover one of his friends, phasing them back into reality in the middle of a solid wall.
As it was, he had a sliver, which he positioned just in time to see a slouched, wicked-looking man walk into view. He recognized him instantly as the thin man from the transmission when the capital ship had first arrived. The “vice,” he’d called himself. He had a small figure in tow behind him connected by a thin cord.
“We’ve been looking for you!” another voice called, stopping the stooped man and his companion right in Petrick’s view. It was Hek, Petrick could tell from the voice, and a second later the suspicion was confirmed when he also stepped into view, in front of the vice purveyor.
“Where are the children?” the vice purveyor asked. His voice was raspy; it gave Petrick the shivers.
“We had them until your troops stormed the marketplace, Vice Purveyor Slink.” Hek said Slink’s—that was his name—title with a snarl.
“I knew it,” a voice breathed quietly next to Petrick’s ear. It was Balta. “Slimy bastard.”
Petrick didn’t dare respond.
“You’d reported to the general you were going to intercept and capture them before they got as far as the marketplace.”
“We were.” Hek’s bravado slipped somewhat. “But . . . they surprised me.”
Slink took a small but intentional step toward Hek, and his eyes narrowed into slits. “Such incompetence is not optimal,” he said.
Hek started to visibly sweat. “We’ve just missed them,” he gulped. “They ran in here just moments ago. I saw them.”
“We’ve come down this corridor,” Slink said back. “You’re mistaken. And useless.” He looked Hek in the face, then glanced down at a small device he had strapped to his wrist. He tapped some commands into the odd interface there. A moment later, he looked up. “Take him into custody, Wiers,” he commanded to a lagging trooper.
Before Hek could protest or run, the soldier named Wiers had shoved him out of Petrick’s view, and they could hear Hek kicking and screaming down the corridor toward the marketplace.
“You promised me immunity!” Hek called back to Slink, who was watching him recede, expression unchanged.
“The Master Purveyor requires your services,” Slink called back to him. “All of you.”
Behind Petrick, Balta let out a noise of frustration or horror.
Slink snapped his gaze toward them instantly. Petrick sucked in a breath and didn’t move.
Slink stared at the wall, the blank empty wall, hard.
He’d heard them.
38
SLINK STEPPED FORWARD. His eyes were narrow, alert.
Petrick resisted with all his might the urge to take a step back, deeper into the wall, but he didn’t dare.
Again, the slouched man looked down at his wrist device and tapped some commands into it. Apparently, it didn’t show him what he wanted, because he gave it a shake. He grabbed the thin cord running from the base of his head to the small companion figure and cracked it like a whip. The smaller figure groaned in pain. Slink, who’d never taken his eyes off his wrist device, cursed in frustration.
“Sir . . . ?” the lingering soldier said.
Slink stared at the device for a moment longer and then turned to look back at his guard. “Stay close, Commander,” he said, “I’m not sure my new Companion is operating very well.”
The guard nodded, and the two of them swept out of view.
Petrick waited for what seemed like forever until the corridor was absolutely silent before he finally let out the breath he’d sucked in.
“Very, veeerrryyy slowly,” Petrick called quietly into the darkness, hoping everyone was still back there, in the field, and hearing his voice, “move toward my voice one step at a time.”
Petrick went out first, feeling a slight tingle on his feet as he stepped forward. Haber had been spot-on, he’d formed the phase field like a dome, with the flat bottom corre
sponding to the floor. They had all been huddled within the dome, more or less in the middle of the field’s base, and that flat bottom had stood between them and falling through the floor. As long as the field was working and they were inside it, they were just fine. Were the field to fail at the bottom, they’d fall right through.
The tingly feeling meant it was weak, but it was there. Had it been strong enough?
Petrick was out in the corridor a few careful steps later, and he turned to see Balta right behind him and then Barry. Haber was next, with Clarke in hand, and then finally Suzy crept out.
They were all there. Everyone’s feet were sizzling on the floor of the field, where they were supposed to be. Petrick sighed in relief. He switched off the field and felt the cold reassurance of the corridor floor flood sensation into his feet. He looked down the hallway left and right and saw that they were alone.
“You did it, boy!” Balta clapped Petrick on the back.
That motion was quickly followed by another smacking sound, this time to Balta’s shoulder. Balta spun around and found herself faced with a red-faced Suzy.
“What was that for?” Balta asked.
“You need to learn to keep your gob shut,” she said, and pointed down the hall at where the Authority contingent had moved on to. “He heard you.”
Suzy was right, but they didn’t have time to argue about it. “Let’s move, guys,” Petrick reminded them.
Haber had his head cocked back in that direction, listening with his super-android hearing. “I suspect it will not take them much time to conclude we’re not in the market.”
They hustled back to the window and paused there as Balta once again rummaged in her large overcoat.
“What are you doing?” Suzy pressed her.
“Just hold on,” she said, and she produced a small cylinder that Petrick instantly recognized as similar to the one Hek had been holding and speaking into before the Authority arrived.
“Hey!” Petrick said. “You’re not calling the Authority too?”
Balta swatted his protest away. “Calm down, kid. Stars!” she said. “Not all transmitters call the Authority.”
Petrick flushed and felt a bit foolish. Balta keyed a particular sequence into the small transmitter, and it beep-beep-beeped in dutiful response. Balta nodded and strained to look out the window, appearing to be searching for something.
“May I inquire as to who you are calling?” Haber asked.
“Our ticket off this quagmire,” Balta answered. She flinched as there was a flash of light outside. A second later there was an explosion that rumbled the deck and the walls around them.
“Guys,” Barry chimed in, “we need to get out of here.”
“Keep your pants on and we might be able to do just that,” Balta said. She shook her small transmitter and repeated the sequence, beep-beep-beep.
Barry couldn’t just stand still, and he pressed his face up against the window to join the pirate captain in searching the outside. “What are you looking for?” he asked.
“The Red Robert,” Balta answered. She shook the small cylinder in her hand. “This is a com link with Colossus. I’m hoping that since we’re at the very outer wall he’ll get the transmission to take off.”
“Take off?” Haber said, rising worry in his voice. “Well, then how are we going to get on board?”
“Listen, android,” she said, “we know the place is crawling with the Authority both that way”—she pointed ahead to the curving corridor from which Slink and his troops had come—“and that way.” She pointed back down the long, straight corridor to the marketplace. “So, our only option is to go back that way.”
She was pointing to the maze of corridors that led back toward the tram platform, on the other side of the station, the side that faced the Outer Rim . . . away from the Authority ship.
“If that metal lug is smart,” Balta said with one last attempt at the transmitter, “he’s already taken off, and he’s using—”
A bright orange and yellow explosion lit up the window, this time much closer, and the station rocked in response, nearly knocking everyone to the ground.
“He’s using that Tusian battleship as cover to slip through to the other side.”
“I’m afraid we need to leave immediately,” Haber said, and he pointed down the corridor leading to the marketplace. Several figures had emerged from the opening, and in front of them, bright, sharp green lines were sweeping methodically over the walls and floor. “Scanners,” the android explained.
Balta cursed and shoved the transmitter into her overcoat, and started off into the corridors leading back to the other side.
“Did Colossus get your message?” Petrick asked, running to catch up. He hadn’t heard any sort of response from the comm link.
“We’d better hope so,” Balta said back. “I told him to meet us on the far side. There’s a series of airlocks that correspond to each of the transit stations. Colossus docks at one of them, we run on board, blast out of here lickety-split.”
“Lickety-split,” Petrick repeated. He certainly hoped that was how it would go down.
“Oh, crunch.” Barry said what everyone was thinking as their group huddled behind a set of abandoned cargo bins that smelled like grease and wet hair. “Why don’t they move already?”
He was pointing to the four men dead ahead of them, who were milling about the airlock but not actually going anywhere. There were the same four tall men that they’d seen back in the corridors, running ahead of the Authority troops.
The whole group was itching with urgency. Balta had gotten them all lost, again, leading them back to the tram station area—Haber’s step-tracking had been able to bail them out, thank the stars—but now they were at a standstill. Time was ticking away.
There was no chance of trying to get past the men to the airlock that was a tantalizing thirty feet beyond them. The four men stood watching the chaos unfolding outside through the nearest viewport. From the almost-constant rumblings now and blinding flashes of light, things were hot and dangerous out there.
“They must be waiting for a ship, just like us,” Petrick whispered.
“Difference is we don’t even know if our ship is coming!” Barry mourned in a huff.
“Colossus will be out there,” Balta replied, sounding very sure of herself. “This isn’t the first time we’ll have slipped past the Authority.”
“I think it would be wise to focus on the issue in front of us,” Haber interjected, pointing at the group pacing back and forth outside their intended means of escape.
The four men were better lit now, and Balta identified them as Lanesh traders. She said, they’d once been the primary go-betweens among the prosperous worlds of the Inner Rim. Their fleets had been thousands strong, and they were extremely wealthy and well cultured. They’d been at the center of a renaissance age of travel, trade, art, and knowledge.
Looking at these four young men, that was certainly hard to believe. Their once-brilliantly multi-colored clothes were faded and threadbare, and they clearly hadn’t bathed in days, perhaps weeks. Balta said these days they traded in illicit goods, things their forebearers would never have dreamed of touching . . . like black tar—impure starstuff that was dangerous in the most desperate of situations—or even humans. Balta said Hek might have tried to sell Suzy to the Lanesh. Before he realized the Authority was after them, anyway.
“It’s no use letting them see us,” Balta said. “They’d turn around and sell us out to the Authority in a microsecond.”
“Maybe Clarke can distract them,” Barry suggested.
Petrick squeezed Clarke closer to his body. The fluff ball was exhausted, as Petrick was himself, he realized. But now was no time to think about such things.
“And then what?” Petrick said to Barry. “We don’t have anything to overpower them.”
“We have Haber,” Suzy said. “He’s strong enough.”
“While I appreciate the vote of confidence, young mis
tress,” Haber said, “I doubt I could single-handedly subdue four young men at the peak of their physical prowess.”
“I wouldn’t say those skinny traders are ‘at the peak of their physical prowess,’” Balta grunted, “but you’re still right. Even with my pistols.” She patted her coat pockets where she kept her two golden guns. “Too many of ’em, and too many places to hide and dig in or call for the Authority.”
“Well, then, we’re cooked, aren’t we?” Barry said with a harrumph. “We’ll just sit here till the Authority shows up anyway.”
Everyone sighed, Suzy the loudest. It was the sound she made when Barry said something that actually made sense. And make sense he had. They couldn’t just sit there. If the Red Robert was out there, waiting, every minute that went by was another the ship could be discovered and captured.
“Any word from Colossus?” Petrick asked for what must have been the billionth time. “We’re back out to the edge now, maybe it’s working?”
Balta shook her head. It wasn’t.
“It seems we have no choice,” Haber said. “We must attempt to overpower those four young men.”
Suzy picked up a jagged piece of broken plastic from one of the bins in front of them and gave it a swing. “It’ll be just like fighting Litz and his bullies back home,” she said.
“I don’t know why you’re so excited,” Barry said to her. “Last time we ran into Litz and his bullies, I seem to remember we all got squashed.”
“Back then, we didn’t have Haber and Balta,” Suzy replied. “We can do it.”
“Children, I want you to—”
Haber’s words were cut off by the sound of a loud clank in the direction of the airlock.
Everybody froze, including the four men being watched. Then one of them peered out the window and motioned back to his compatriots in affirmation. Petrick could barely see out the window, but the sliver that was visible was unmistakable: a ship had just docked with the airlock, and the men were running toward it to board.
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