by Brian Lowe
We arrived in the common areas, not without some trepidation, but no one seemed to be paying attention to us. That wouldn't last.
"My uncle always said, if don't want to be noticed, you have to act like you belong," I said under my breath.
"Your uncle did a lot of this, did he?"
"You have no idea."
Unfortunately, looking like we belonged was not only the most important, but also the most difficult, part of our plan. We had no clue when Amal might try again to see Tierse; we were taking it on faith that he would try at all. But it made sense in my head; he wanted the cannon and Tierse was the only way he knew of to get it. So we had to find an out-of-the-way niche where we could watch the corridor leading to the stairs, since there was nowhere down below where we could hide. We managed to find a good spot where we wouldn't be in anyone's way, which was the best we could hope for, but even then it was only a matter of time until someone passed by who recognized us.
"We need to be doing something! Just standing here is going to attract attention."
Avanya glanced around. "Stay here and look inconspicuous," she said to the 300-pound gorilla. Then she strode off like a woman with a mission.
Within moments she was back, holding a holographic notepad. "Look at the crowd, then look down at this like we're checking data," she said. "Every once in a while, I'll point to someone like I'm going to ask him a question. That will discourage anyone from coming too close."
This strategy worked like a charm. We were more than invisible, we were avoided. It was almost a disappointment when Amal passed us, trying to look casual without any success at all, given that he was a head taller than everyone else in the station. But whatever restrictions Trocas had put upon him, plainly Amal didn't have an Aerios chaperoning him. I wanted to wonder what kind of alarm he had set off last time he visited the dungeons, but I didn't have time.
We watched him disappear into the hallway where the stairs were located, counted to one hundred, and followed. He was nowhere to be seen. So far the plan was working to perfection.
We crept down the stairs and made the twists and turns just in time to see Amal disappear into the last cell in the row. It took us a full two minutes to cover those last few yards, so quietly did we traverse them. We stopped short of the open door and eavesdropped.
"How many times do I have to tell you I don't know where the neutron cannon is?"
"If you think that holding onto that information is going to allow you to negotiate some kind of deal with the gorillas, you are wrong. Tell me where the cannon is, and I will take you with me. I will leave you wherever you want."
Tierse's voice, both physical and mental, was muffled as though she were talking at the wall.
"And why should I believe you? Your kind aren't known for your friendly dealings with the 'lower races.'"
"You have my word," Amal said. He sounded genuinely surprised that Tierse would doubt him.
"Pass."
"In that case, I have to insist."
The sudden shriek of protest and sounds of struggle made the terms of his insistence quite clear. I signaled to Avanya; that was our cue.
We slipped into the cell behind Amal, who had his hands full of Tierse. I'd been sure she'd tell him to get lost--and would have even if she'd known where the cannon was--and he'd try to force her, without any clue who he was trying to manhandle. He might be bigger, but Tierse was tough. Even as I moved in, there was a meaty thud and he grunted in pain.
I came up from behind and wrapped my arms around him, completely pinning him. Tierse's eyes flew wide with shock, more so when she saw Avanya.
Amal was struggling but I gave him a squeeze which calmed him down fast.
"How did you get here?" Tierse demanded.
"We walked. How about you?"
"We got away from the monster, but it had some kind of natural telepathic damper. We couldn’t hear you any more, so we had to run and hope we could catch up with you later. But then Kevim turned her ankle, and I left her and Qriss in a cave while I went for help." She grimaced. "Fat lot of help I was. They picked me up before I'd gone a mile. At least I was able to convince them I was the last survivor of our party."
"Until we came along, anyway. All right then. Come on. We're all leaving." I tugged on Amal. "You, too."
"Leaving?" Tierse asked. She seemed alarmed. "What about the cannon? Do you have it?"
"It's safe. We had to leave it behind," I grunted, getting a better grip on Amal.
"Who are you?" He was trying to get a look at me. "What is Trocas up to?"
"Trocas has nothing to do with this, my lord. And I don't think you want him to know what you're up to, either." I nodded to Tierse. "See if he's armed."
She slapped her hands across his body in a thoroughly disrespectful way. "He's not."
"Of course I'm not armed," Amal snapped. "Trocas wouldn't allow it. Besides, I have people for that."
And it wasn't until the next moment, when the world started to dissolve around me, that I realized what he meant.
XXXIX
I woke up slowly, face-down on a cold floor, with a sick churning in my stomach that didn't come entirely from the feeling that I'd been kicked repeatedly while I was unconscious. I wasn't complaining; frankly, I was kind of surprised that I was even alive. As I lifted myself, I realized I wasn't alone, that there was another body on the floor with me. I reached out and shook Tierse gently.
"You alive?"
She groaned. I took that for a "yes," and I didn't pursue the question.
"They took Avanya."
"Wha--?" Tierse rolled over with a grunt of pain, her eyes frantically searching every corner of the small space.
I roused myself against the advice of my aching body. "They must have figured out that you were telling the truth and she was a better bet for finding the cannon. They certainly weren't going to try to drag me out of here." I helped Tierse to her feet, even though I knew she didn't need it. "We need to move. Now."
Tierse stood her ground. "Do you know where we're going?"
"I have no idea. But when Trocas finds out what's going on--"
And that's when the alarms went off.
"--that's what's going to happen!" I finished. "Let's get out of here!"
"Don't you want your ship back?"
That stopped me. "Don't I want my what--? What's Rose got to do with this?"
"Because she's here! That Nuum told me. He said that if Trocas had the neutron cannon and an airship, Tanar wouldn't have a chance. He was trying to tell me it was my patriotic duty to betray my station."
My ship was here? I stood for a few seconds frozen by the possibilities flooding through my mind, then grabbed Tierse's arm and yanked her off her feet.
"Come on!"
"Where are we going now?" she said, as if she had a choice with me holding her arm.
"We've got to find Trocas--and get to Rose before Amal gets to the neutron cannon!"
It turned out finding Trocas was the least of our problems, since the moment we left the cell we found ourselves face-to-face with a dozen security guards. They demanded we get on the floor, I demanded we get to see their boss, and nothing but shouting got done until Tierse said the magic words: "Neutron cannon." All of a sudden they couldn't get us to Trocas fast enough--which turned out to be pretty fast, since he was in the hangar down the hall--in the very room that I'd seen the two soldiers guarding the day before.
I stopped dead at the sight of my own airship gleaming under the artificial lights. She'd been cleaned up; the effects of the hhoonom attack and the crash landing were nowhere to be seen. We were marched through the open hatch and up to the pilot's compartment, where Trocas and a couple of other gorillas were poring over the controls.
"What are they doing here?" he bellowed at our guards.
"We're here to take back my ship and keep Amal's hands off the neutron cannon," I replied. "Unless you think you can stop him."
Trocas gave me a long look. "Why do y
ou think I'd let you pilot this ship? I'd rather it sit here and rot than give it to someone I can't trust. How do I know you won't just give the cannon back to Tanar? Or keep it for yourself?"
"Because I don't care what you and Tanar do to each other. I only ended up here by accident and I just want to go home. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let the Nuum have that weapon."
I hesitated a minute, running options in my head. I didn't have many. "Look, Trocas, here's what I can do. Give me my ship back and I'll leave as soon as this situation is cleared up. I don't want the neutron cannon--but I won't give it back to Tanar, either."
"Timash--" Tierse started.
"Be quiet," I ordered. "The whole time I've been here I've been taking orders. It's time I gave some instead. What do say, Trocas? Your only alternative is to let Amal have the cannon, and we don't know what he plans to do with it."
Trocas sighed and dismissed his assistants. "All right. We haven't been able to do much with this thing anyway. We managed to lift it and get it into our access shaft with manual piloting, but it took us days before we were able to bring it down here without crashing into the walls. We've been trying to access the computer controls ever since, but we haven't been able to." He hesitated. "I assume you can."
Without answering him, I took up the diagnostic pod into which I had downloaded the ship's AI.
"Rose, re-boot all systems."
Almost instantly, the control boards and holographic displays glowed to life. Trocas, Tierse, and the guards all looked about like children who've been given a new toy.
"This is amazing," Tierse said. "We used to have ships like this, but we scrapped the last one a hundred years ago because we had no place to fly it." Too late she censored herself, but Trocas only shook his head.
"We did, too. That's why we went to so much trouble to grab this one out from under your noses. But we couldn't fly it--until now." He motioned to the guards and they leveled their weapons at us. Tierse groaned, but I just gave Trocas a look of annoyance.
"Look, whatever you're thinking, forget it. The ship is cued to my commands, and my commands only. Right, Rose?"
"Absolutely, sweetheart. It's so good to see you again."
"Go ahead," I said to Trocas. "Tell her to do something."
After a couple of simple instructions which Rose ignored, and several more emphatic orders that she ignored just as emphatically, he got the point.
"I'm going with you," he announced. He pointed at the guards who were still standing by. "Unless you have another objection."
I frowned. "Whatever you want, as long as we get going. We don't have all day."
Since it was pretty crowded in there, and I made it plain I was going nowhere without Tierse, the guards left, but Trocas stayed, armed with a borrowed rifle. I walked deliberately over to the weapons locker, unsecured it, took a sidearm for myself and gave one to Tierse, as well. Trocas mirrored my annoyance, but we understood each other.
There was an access tunnel into the valley as well as to the surface. How Amal had known that, or how he had even found the Southern Valley in the first place, Trocas wasn't saying. Despite the problems he had experienced getting the ship down here, with Rose in charge we sailed toward the outside at a speed Thoran operators couldn't match, and she was able to open the hangar doors and the outside doors remotely.
-I've had weeks to work on it, she told me privately. Their security isn't bad, but it is three hundred years old.
We shot out into the air above the forest, and I directed Rose to take us as close to the treetops as she could. Whether we could escape Amal's notice was questionable, but at least we could give it a good shot.
"It really depends on whether anyone is watching their sensors," I explained, "but if they're not expecting any other ships in the area, they might not be."
-I've turned off our beacon, for what it's worth. I've also pinpointed their location and superimposed it on the main monitor for you.
"Thank you, Rose." I didn't realize I spoken out loud until Trocas asked:
"Can you communicate with your ship on a private telepathic band?" When I said I could, he said: "Don't."
I sighed, but agreed. "That's Amal's ship. He isn't as far ahead as I feared. As long as he doesn't change course, it means he hasn't seen us."
"Is he heading for the cannon?" Tierse asked with a glance at Trocas.
I checked the screen. "Rose, can you plot out their course for me?" A new dotted line immediately appeared showing where the other ship was heading.
"He's almost there," Tierse fretted. "I didn’t think Avanya could hold out on him, but I was hoping she might."
"Hey," I said. "Don't go counting Avanya out quite yet."
Tierse was leaning over staring at the monitor as though she could will us to go faster.
"I like Avanya," she said without looking away. "I really like her. But she's not tough enough to resist that man."
"Avanya is tougher than you know," I said. "And smarter, by the look of it."
Tierse turned to stare at me instead of the monitor, and Trocas had a puzzled frown on his face. It felt good to be putting something over on someone else for a change.
"Avanya's not taking him to the cannon. She's playing for time by taking him to the wrong cave. She's hoping somehow we can come after her. But if Amal sees us coming, we'll have to fight, and I don't want that." I came to a snap decision. "We have to move fast. I'm going to give piloting over to Rose. It could get rough; we should strap in." I took the pilot's chair and the other two moved into seats further back. "Rose, I'm sending you a mental image. Please locate it and take us there with all speed."
-Anything for you, Timash.
As Rose covered in seconds distances that had taken days to walk, I kept my eyes on the dot indicating Amal's ship. It had stopped moving. Obviously, Avanya had picked out a cave and Amal had landed there. I hoped it would keep them busy for a while, and no one would notice us while we headed for a different destination. I had no idea what kind of weaponry Amal could bring to bear on me, but I didn't want to gamble that it wasn't better than mine.
The closer we got to our destination, the closer we got to finding out.
XXXX
Despite the fact that the cave where I'd left the cannon looked a lot like every other one on that cliff-side, I would never forget the cave above, where I'd found the murdered scientists. That made telling Rose where to go very easy, and she got us there in what only seemed like hours. My jaw was clenched tight the entire way, waiting for the dot that represented Amal's ship to move, to start climbing toward us with whatever armament it possessed on-line and pointed in our direction, but the moment never came. I could only guess that Amal was so confident he couldn't be followed that he hadn’t bothered to leave anyone behind on his ship to watch. It was the kind of mistake that only a Nuum would commit, but I'd take it.
Rose set us down directly outside the dark outline of our destination. At least I didn't have to worry about the noise of our descent, as we were miles from where Avanya had told Amal to land.
"I'm going to look for the cannon. Can I trust the two of you to behave until I get back?"
"Wait! I'm going with you!" Trocas demanded, and Tierse seconded his protest.
"I can get the cannon myself. I'll bring it right back and then we can go rescue Avanya. And remember, it's going to take all of us to do it." I glanced at Tierse, who said nothing. Either she was afraid I'd just shut her down again, or she'd decided to trust me. Checking the charge on my pistol, I went outside. Rose locked the hatch behind me.
-My sensors aren't picking up any life forms inside the cavern. Outside of the ship, our telepathic link was our only means of communication.
Thanks. Keep me posted if they try anything while I'm gone.
-Of course, dear. Trocas is attempting to decipher my controls to see if he can override me. He won't be a problem. You might want to disarm him when you come back, though.
Unfortunately, I can't.
I don't know how many men Amal brought. But Tierse and I already outnumber him, and once we get Avanya back, I think we'll be able to handle him.
Regardless of Rose's assurances, I took my time working my way into the cave, waiting until my eyes had adjusted to the dimness. I scrambled up to the ledge and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the cannon lying where I'd left it. I hoisted it onto my shoulders and inched backward to the ledge. I'd gotten it up here; it shouldn't be any more difficult to bring it down.
It was, because despite the harness's ingenious weight-distribution structure, it was built for marching, not climbing, and climbing down is an entirely different proposition than going up. Weight wasn't a problem, but mass was. If I tilted too far in any direction, it threatened to tip me over. With the cannon on my back, even a short fall could break bones, so I had to move slowly and keep my balance as far forward as possible, not easy with a rock wall right in front of me. But I managed, and with a minimum of heart-stopping events, I put my bare feet on the floor.
As soon as I turned around, my wrist was seized in an unbreakable grip. Rose had been correct when she scanned the cave and found no life forms, but Aerios was a robot.
My brain refused to accept what I was seeing. How could Aerios possibly have gotten here before me? She didn't say anything, just held onto my wrist with a mechanical grip that I could never break, but could snap my arm like a twig. I had no idea what her game was, but I knew I couldn't fight it alone.
Rose, please send the others. Tell them I am being held captive by a robot.
-Oh, no! My poor Timash! They're on their way! Is there anything else I can do?
Not right now. If I think of anything, I'll tell you.
Tierse and Trocas came in at a rush, slowing down to let their eyes adjust, as I had. When they saw me they trained their guns on Aerios, but wisely withheld fire.