“But the Songstress gets knifed if she won’t talk like a good girl!” another voice yelled. “She’s an uppity bitch who thinks that she can live by her own rules!”
The second goon wedged himself inside, managing to marginally enlarge the door opening in the process. He kept Lank from getting a clear stunner shot at him by keeping his arms in motion in front of his head, and presenting a side profile as he entered the room. But that left him vulnerable to Rakil’s stunner, and he, too, went down without a fight, as soon as he was through the door.
“Two down,” Rakil muttered, as much to himself as to Mathilde. “But it’ll get tricky now. They’ll widen the door opening, and we don’t know how many of them are out there.”
“Six in all,” Mathilde whispered back to him. “The goons travel in packs of six, almost without fail.”
Four more then. Muscular, physically capable Vultairians, not the usual bean poles. “Body guards” the Exalted called them, and Rakil had seen them following the nobles—in groups of six, in fact. The door and the bench were not going to hold much longer.
Rakil made a decision.
He gestured to Mathilde to hurry to the back of the room.
“Have your stunner ready, Lank,” he called to the youth in Lamanian.
The moment Mathilde had reached the back wall, he pulled the bench away from the door with a single, powerful gesture. The quartet that crashed into the room in disarray met two stunners wielded by men who were well-prepared to make use of them.
The first two of the four went down under stunner shots. The third one was the leader, quicker of wits and more agile in body than any of the others. He leapt over the bodies on the floor before either Lank or Rakil had a chance to recover from their shots, and bounded over to where Mathilde was.
“Javer, go call for reinforcements!” he shouted to the one man left at the door, even as he grabbed hold of the singer, using her body to shield himself from stunner shots while holding a thin, gleaming knife at her throat.
“Keep your stunner on the one that’s got Mathilde!” Rakil shouted to Lank, heading out after Javer.
He did not know how far that one had to go to put in a call for reinforcements but he meant to stop him before he could do so. He ran down the walkway towards the stairs, gaining on the goon in spite the Vultairians’ longer legs. Just before Javer made it to the steps, the last door before them suddenly opened, and a long Vultairian leg shot out, tripping the goon. The goon fell down with a yell and a crash, and Rakil, following close behind him, could not stop in time! He tripped on the leg, too, and went crashing down, also, if perhaps a fraction less precipitously.
“Hey Alfonso, you idiot, you got Mathilde’s protector, too!” a female voice shouted somewhere above him as he fell heavily into the body of the goon on the landing.
Luckily, the goon’s knife had gone flying off the stairs, and his body provided cushioning for the Borhquan’s fall. To be on the safe side, Rakil gave him a shot from the stunner he was still holding, even though that may well have been unnecessary, what with the damage his weight had already done.
“You okay, off-worlder?”
This had to be Alfonso, come to check out Rakil’s health.
“Bit shook up, but much better than my opponent,” Rakil replied. “But we better go see how my partner’s making out with the guy who’s holding a knife at Mathilde’s throat. He’s the last one still on his feet. And the smartest one.”
Alfonso turned around as soon as Rakil was up and preceded him on the stairs. Rakil was vaguely aware that dawn was breaking as he followed the taller man up the steps. Near the top, Alfonso abruptly looked behind him, and grabbed the stunner out of Rakil’s hand. Then, before Rakil’s shaken brain had time to process this, he pounced up the last steps, like a cat after its prey. He pressed the stunner’s trigger, aiming at the unprotected nape of a Vultairian male backing away from Mathilde’s door towards them, still holding the singer in front of him, and followed by Lank, his stunner cocked. The goon fell, dragging Mathilde down with him, the knife falling out of his hand.
Beyond them, beyond Mathilde’s door, another woman screeched.
“Mathilde’s hurt! Cripes, Alfonso, the point isn’t to get her killed!”
She ran to check the blood on Mathilde’s neck, even as Lank, Alfonso, and Rakil, a little more slowly, converged beside her and the comatose goon.
“I think it’s only a little nick,” Mathilde was saying, examining the blood she had wiped onto a finger.
“Maybe you have something to put on it, Suse,” Alfonso suggested, collecting the knife off the walkway, and handing back Rakil’s stunner.
“That was good shooting,” Lank said to Alfonso. “Very precise. Very effective.”
Alfonso grinned at him.
“I’ve taken some training with the Underground,” he said. “We do try to look after one another whenever we can.”
*****
Mikal was not happy with the Star Federation bureaucrats. For two Lamanian weeks he had been shuttling between his office in the Second City and the Government Offices on the Space Station, trying to arrange diplomatic transport across the galaxy to the Xeonsaur home world. Or, not actually the home world itself; the Xeonsaurs never permitted human ships to land on Xeon, and they were quite capable of preventing any such trespassing. A Space Station orbited the planet Xeon, and it functioned as the go-between for the Xeonsaurs and the rest of the Universe. That Space Station was to be Mikal’s destination.
Unfortunately, there was no direct traffic between the Federation Space Station and the Xeon one. The lizard-race generally had very little interest in humans, and made no special effort to foster diplomatic relations with the creatures that they called “short-lives” when they were being polite.
The Space Station above Xeon existed only because the Xeonsaurs did like some of the goods that the other sentient creatures grew and manufactured. They also liked some of the modifications that some members of the short-lived species—especially the Shelonians—had done to Xeonsaur inventions. The Station was staffed by humans, most of whom worked for the lizards and who were scrupulous about protecting their employers’ privacy. They dealt mainly with matters of trade, and made scant efforts to further galactic cooperation.
For that reason, Mikal and Maryse had reached the conclusion, after studying reams of Space Liner Schedules, that it was necessary for them to obtain the use of one of the Federation Space Cruisers with which to make the trip. Mikal was needed back on the home turf in time to lead the Official Investigation to Vultaire, and that meant that he did not have the time to cool his heels for weeks and weeks in a succession of Ports and Space Stations while being routed across the galaxy aboard poorly timed transports.
Only, here he was, wasting time inside a succession of Government Bureaus, trying to keep his temper while explaining the importance of his proposed mission to an official after an official, while at the same time keeping the secrets of the Peace Officer Corps from spilling out into wrong ears. He was, by natural orientation, very much a democrat, and had more patience with the glitches of the system than many others in the SFPO Corps, including Maryse, but there were times when the glacial pace of the procedures sorely tried him.
“Look, this is really, really important,” he said to another bureaucrat, in another office. “There are implications in what happened to Kati of Terra that we absolutely have to communicate to the Xeonsaurs, in person. They have to be informed of this, and in such a manner that they can’t just brush our concerns aside, without even considering them. The sooner they are alerted to it the better, and the only way to get to the Xeon Space Station, within weeks rather than months or years, is aboard a fast Space Cruiser.”
He had been laying on what Maryse called his “famous charm” by the trowelful, on the woman behind the counter, but it had all come to naught. Not that she had objected to his blatant flirtation; it simply had not brought him what he wanted.
“Why has
this kind of requisitioning become so complicated anyway?” he finally asked, trying to mask his frustration. “It seems to me that catching a ride on a Space Cruiser was a much simpler matter in those days when we were bringing Paradiso into the Federation.”
The clerk smiled at him, ruefully.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Ex-President Stolts changed a lot of the procedures that we follow, and not for the better. His people claimed to be streamlining things, but what we have now is much, much more awkward and confusing than what we had before.”
Her words triggered an idea inside Mikal’s brain. They had a new Federation President now, a Shelonian, and hadn’t Maryse mentioned that her friend, the Master Healer Vorlund, knew him? Maybe he could ask Maryse to use this connection to slash the red tape that he was tangled up in? It was certainly a notion worth exploring!
“Mikal, that’s brilliant!” Maryse said when he broached the subject with her. “I should have thought of it myself, but I guess I’ve just been too busy to think straight. I’ll get hold of Vorlund right away, and ask him to arrange an audience with Vascorn for you.”
*****
“Now I know how the Vultairian Exalted get what they want in the Halls of the Federation Government,” Mikal told Maryse after a brief meeting with Vascorn over glasses of Chatna Valley Red (which came from his own stock of his parents’ best). “And why they have become so miserably arrogant. There’s nothing like getting a personal hearing at a high level to see the bureaucrats respond. It’s profoundly undemocratic, but it works.”
“I agree that it’s not an ideal solution within an organization which is supposed to be egalitarian,” Maryse sighed in response, “but we don’t have the luxury of insisting on purity of motives and methods right now. Keep in mind why you’re doing this.”
“How could I forget?” he muttered.
Kati’s face swam past his mind’s eye. How was the Unofficial Team faring on Vultaire, he wondered.
*****
Kati’s mood was not the best as she trudged beside the deluxe cart, keeping one eye on the animals which were plodding along patiently, pulling the Troupe’s possessions and Zass, who was hidden inside the bowels of the cart. She and her companions were tired, especially Rakil, Lank and Mathilde who had had an eventful night, but very little sleep. The early summer sun had been powerful for hours, beating mercilessly down on them. Moreover, once they had left the city behind, the road had turned into a dirt track, barely wide enough for two carts to pass one another.
“Jeez,” Rakil had muttered, staring in the direction they were travelling, “doesn’t anybody spend any money on the roads on this planet?”
“Actually, no,” Mathilde replied, shrugging tiredly. “I’d heard of it, although I’ve always lived in the City, and this is the first time I’ve seen it. The farmers get together before their crops go in, and again in the fall, after the harvests, and do whatever roadwork needs desperately to be done. Usually the crews of one area meet up with those of the next, so pretty much all of a road gets maintained. But that’s it; the government doesn’t spend anything. The Exalted don’t need them, you see; they have their flyers and flits.”
“They really don’t give a rat’s ass for the Ordinary Citizens, do they?” Joaley snapped from behind the cart.
“It’s insane,” Rakil said with a shake of his head.
Joaley muttered a curse, but at a warning glance from Lank subsided into silence. Nerves, obviously, were frayed all around.
“Kati, how far did you say we had to travel before nightfall?” Rakil asked, wiping sweat off his nape hair with a cloth he carried in a pocket. It was looking soiled already, in the early afternoon.
“According to Sam’s information, there’s a campground soon after we enter the forest. We leave the Warrion Family territory at the forest edge, so we ought to be safe there. It’s the only suitable place within kilometres so we’d be wise to make use of it.”
“How would camping by the side of the road be?” Lank asked.
“There is really no side of the road,” Kati answered. “The trees are big and they crowd the road on both sides. I wondered about that, but the fact that road maintenance is done by unpaid farm labour, explains it. The farmers probably just clear away the saplings that invade the road, and leave the trees be, unless they fall and block the road. We should be grateful, I guess, that somebody decided to clear camping areas at strategic intervals; otherwise all travellers would be stuck blocking the road.”
“Kati, do you really think that the Warrions are going to honour the custom about leaving people alone once they’re out of their territory?” Mathilde asked suddenly. “Who’s to stop them from coming along and spying on us at the campground, and grabbing Zass if we let him out?”
“My guess is that they’ll catch up with us before we enter the forest,” Kati responded. “According to Sam’s information, the Warrions and the next Family over, the Balans, are fierce rivals. If the Warrions interfered with an off-world Troupe in Balan Territory, the Balans could accuse them of interfering in their affairs.”
“Are you implying that it’s better if they catch up with us in their own backyard?” Joaley queried. “Somehow, I don’t really see it that way. I was hoping we’d get away without going through an inspection.”
“Come on, Joaley, you know better than that!” Kati laughed for the first time that day. “We hope for the best, but expect the worst! And better that they inspect us when Zass is well hidden, rather than when we’ve let him out of his coffer!”
“You have a plan for the visit then, Kati,” Rakil said drily. “Are you going to share it with the rest of us?”
Kati shook her head.
“I don’t think I’ll share,” she said. “You guys would just think up objections. But I do ask that you try to trust me, and go along with what I do, if the Warrions do show up. Remember, I do know what I’m doing.”
Rakil gave his head a shake while Joaley glared at Kati for a few moments. Lank merely grinned, and Mathilde sighed tiredly. They trudged on.
*****
The Warrions’ timing was so precise that Kati was sure that they must have been waiting somewhere where the flyer’s occupants could see the Troupe approach the forest edge. There, a sign beneath which all land travellers had to pass, proclaimed the change in Exalted authority. The ground around the arch was neither forest, nor of the freshly seeded farmland; a narrow band had been left to grow scraggy bushes, none of which were taller than the average Vultairian. It was, apparently, a transition zone in which most of the soil nutrients were sucked up by the trees, and therefore not arable, and had been left to grow what it would, which was not much of anything that humans would find useful. The flyer swooped down in front of the runnerbeasts just as they were about to pass into this scrubland, and landed in front of them, completely blocking the road, and its narrow shoulders.
Joaley was the one to shout to the animals to stop, shocked by the flyer’s abrupt appearance. Kati reached for the beasts’ minds and calmed them down, keeping them from rearing on their hind legs, and backing into the cart.
Joaley swore at the Exalted who alighted from the flyer, laughing to see the upset he had created. He was followed by two other men, non-Exalted.
“Goons,” Lank mouthed to Kati, his voice so low that only another noded person could have heard him. “But not the usual pack of six.”
The man in the garish red garb of the Warrions turned his attention away from Joaley to Kati.
“Ah, you’re the Troupe Leader, aren’t you, Kati of Terra?” he inquired in a mocking voice. “A singer not extraordinaire, but an excellent entertainer. Smart enough to surround yourself with some real talent.”
Kati walked to stand beside the heads of the runnerbeasts. Caressing the nearer one’s neck, she threw a warning glance at Joaley who took a couple of deep breaths and pinched her lips shut. Kati was now standing so close to the Warrion peacock that she had to crane her neck to look at his face. An an
noying advantage that the Vultairian had, but there was nothing to be done about it. She simply had to suck it up.
“I gather that you have been at Marita’s and seen us perform,” she said politely.
“Oh, yes,” the young man, for that is what the peacock was, answered, sketching a perfunctory bow. “Your Troupe created quite the sensation. A pity that you didn’t stay at Marita’s any longer.”
Kati shrugged.
“We artists are restless sorts,” she said casually. “Don’t want to hang around one place too long. Besides, the opportunity to travel around a new and different world—who can resist a temptation like that?”
“Not you, obviously,” the Exalted responded wryly. “Still, if you had stayed in Port City longer and made friends in the right places—like with me, for example—your travels might have been arranged in a much less physically demanding fashion. You and your friends could have been in a flyer rather than on foot, following a runnerbeast cart.”
Kati scrutinized the man.
“You know, I’m not certain that I remember you from Marita’s,” she said flirtatiously. “But then, the Terrace was full during our performances, every night. I think I may be forgiven for not remembering every face.”
“I remember every face,” The Monk snapped mentally. “What are you up to?”
Kati ignored this interjection.
“Mathis Warrion at your service,” the peacock introduced himself, sketching another slightly mocking bow. “With my employees: Lud and Joe. Which reminds me that we are here to make certain that you are not transporting illegal property from Warrion Territory into that of the Balans.
Lud and Joe, will you...?”
“Wait a second,” Kati interrupted. “Illegal property? What nonsense are you talking about? Illegal property! What could we possibly have with us which could be classed as illegal property? I mean, we have our instruments, our clothes, camping equipment....”
“No, no, no,” Mathis Warrion protested with a laugh. “If those are all that you have, you have not a thing to worry about! But surely you don’t have hidden under that tenting, your ballad singer’s brother, Zass, who seems to be missing!”
On Assignment to the Planet of the Exalted Page 21