And then, as Zoshak grabbed for one of the throwing weights at his belt, a brilliant beam of light slashed through the air above him, and the Qasaman machine gun went abruptly silent.
Reflexively, Zoshak threw himself sideways, looking up in disbelief and dismay as a second blast of laser light shattered the pavement where he'd just been standing. The acid wash
had
hit the cluster—he'd seen the impact himself. Every one of the weapons up there ought to be out of commission.
But they weren't. None of them. All six of the lasers were firing, targeting the Djinn still engaging the ground troops, as well as those running toward the ship's fore and aft hatches. The heavier missile launchers hadn't yet fired, but the tubes were tracking back and forth as if looking for a worthy target. One of the machine guns farther down the street shifted aim toward the weapons cluster, and once again the Trofts' lasers lashed out. For a long moment the machine gun continued to fire, and Zoshak held a brief hope that the gunner would survive. But the lasers continued to fire, and a few seconds later the machine gun finally went silent.
And then, Zoshak's receiver implant gave the triple-click order for retreat.
God in heaven,
he thought viciously. But there was no other choice. With the weapons clusters still operational there was no hope of success, and to continue would simply cost more lives without any gain. He clicked back an acknowledgment and straightened up, looking around for any of his fellow Djinn who might need assistance—
His only warning was a slight flicker of motion from the corner of his eye. He threw himself to the ground beside the slabs of broken pavement the Troft laser had gouged into the street as a wave of tiny antipersonnel missiles shot past, exploding like a volley of firecrackers against the wall behind him. Another wave was right behind the first; grabbing the biggest piece of shattered pavement he could reach, he rolled half over, holding the slab up as a shield. A half-dozen of the missiles exploded against it, blasting off splinters and chunks. He rolled back to his feet, still holding the slab for protection, and began backing through the chaos toward the alley where the closest emergency exit was located.
He was the first of the Djinn to make it through the hidden door and into the safety of the subcity. A Djinni from one of the other squads was the second. Siraj Akim was the third.
There wasn't any fourth.
Jin was gazing up at the hospital room ceiling, listening to her rumbling stomach and wondering when the evening meal was going to be delivered, when she heard the sound of running feet outside her door.
She frowned, activating her audio enhancers. There appeared to be two different groups of footsteps out there: one group running to her left, the other, heavier group heading to her right.
And the group heading right was accompanied by occasional metallic clinks. The kind of clinking that weapons and military equipment made as they bounced against belts and chests.
Reaching to her left arm, she carefully disengaged the two IV tubes that still remained after the battery of tests the doctors had put her through. Then, slipping into the soft boots and robe beside her bed, she padded to the door and opened it a crack.
A line of civilians was running to her left, some of them carrying small equipment consoles or record boxes. Others, mostly hospital staff, were pushing wheelchairs or assisting the more ambulatory patients. Down the hall, she could see other doors opening in sequence as the staffers systematically cleared out the rest of the patients.
On the opposite side of the hall, heading to Jin's right, was a line of grim-faced soldiers.
She pulled the door open all the way. One of the passing soldiers caught her eye and jerked his thumb silently in the direction the civilians were going. "Wait," Jin said quietly. "I can—"
He didn't even pause, but just kept going. "I can help," Jin muttered under her breath. She lifted a hand to the next soldier back, but he merely gave her the same thumbs-back gesture.
Jin grimaced. But there was clearly no time to argue the point, even if she could find someone to argue it with. Spotting a gap in the traffic flow, she left her room and joined the civilians heading to the left.
She'd gone only about fifty meters when she spotted a familiar face: Fadil Sammon, hurrying toward her behind two burly soldiers. "Fadil!" she called, holding out a hand toward him. "Fadil Sammon!"
He jerked at the sound of his name, then finally noticed her. "There you are," he said, stepping out of the soldiers' line and falling into step beside her. "I was on my way to see you. I can't—"
"What's going on?" Jin interrupted. "Are the Trofts coming in?"
"Sounds that way, yes," Fadil said grimly. "There's been some kind of breach, anyway. The Shahni have ordered this area evacuated."
Jin half turned to look at the departing soldiers. She should be back there, she knew. She should be on her way to the breach, helping to defend the people of Qasama—
"No," Fadil said firmly, grabbing her arm and turning her back around front. "They can do it themselves."
"Who can?" Jin asked. "The Qasamans? Or the city people?"
Fadil muttered something under his breath. "Come on—the seal is just ahead."
Jin had noticed several seals during her travels around the sub-city. They would have been hard to miss, actually: red-rimmed slabs of stone or reinforced concrete set into the sides of strategically placed corridors or doorways, ready to be slid into position to block off any further access. Some of them had gunports or firing niches nearby that guards could use, others had red-striped ceilings just behind the slabs marking something ominously labeled as avalanche zones.
This particular seal had no such backups, just a pair of Qasaman soldiers waiting tensely by the slab as the refugees streamed past. One of them, a few years older than the other and wearing sergeant's insignia, frowned hard at Jin as she and Fadil slipped through with the others—
"Jasmine Moreau?" he called suddenly.
Jin stopped, stepping to the side out of the way of the hurrying civilians. "Yes," she confirmed.
"A message from Miron Akim," the sergeant said. "He asks if you will remain here until all have passed."
"Why?" Fadil demanded. "She's not a soldier."
"It's all right," Jin said, touching his shoulder. "Go on."
Fadil hesitated, then gave a snort and rejoined the line of civilians. "Did Miron Akim say what he wanted me to do?" Jin asked the sergeant.
"The seal will need to be closed when everyone's past," he told her, his voice tight. "That duty usually goes to a Djinni, but we've received word that none are available in this sector."
A cold knot settled into Jin's stomach. "Did they say why not?"
"No," the sergeant said. "Just that none was available." He looked back over his shoulder at her. "Miron Akim said that you were here, and that we were to stop you when you came through and ask for your assistance."
"No problem," Jin assured him.
The flow of refugees had faded to a trickle of hospital workers when the faint sound of gunfire began to echo down the hallway.
The other soldier snarled something under his breath. He was young, Jin noted as she studied his profile. Actually, neither of the two was all that old. Certainly neither could have had any experience in the sort of warfare their world had suddenly been plunged into.
Or had they? The city/village rivalry that Jin had seen and heard of on her first visit to Qasama was clearly still going strong three decades later. Could that rivalry have occasionally boiled up into actual shooting combat?
Daulo hadn't even hinted at any such violence on his world during their conversations. But then, he wouldn't have. Not to her and Merrick.
"It's time," the sergeant said quietly.
Jin frowned. The gunfire was still going strong. "What about the soldiers?" she asked.
"They will return to the subcity by a different route." The sergeant hesitated. "Or not at all."
Jin clenched her teeth.
Let me go to them,
the words and plea flashed through her mind.
I can help.
She took a deep breath. "What do I do?" she asked instead.
"Pull up on this," the sergeant said, indicating a long lever set into the wall just inside the slab. "More than once, I think."
With Jin's first tug on the lever it became clear why Djinn were generally tasked with this job. Even with the gearing that was obviously built into the system the lever took a lot of effort to pull. The first hundred-eighty-degree rotation moved the slab perhaps a centimeter into the corridor; ratcheting the lever back down, she hauled up on it again, and again, and again, until the slab completely blocked the corridor.
"What now?" Jin asked as she released the lever and stepped away from it.
Both soldiers were staring at her with a mixture of awe and uneasiness. But the sergeant merely nodded back down the hallway. "This way," he said. "Miron Akim wishes to speak with you."
Given all the civilians and medical personnel that had just come through the area, Jin had expected it to be crowded with masses of displaced people. To her surprise, though, the corridors didn't seem much busier than she'd usually seen them. Wherever the refugees had gone, they'd gone there quickly and efficiently.
The soldiers led her through the usual maze of corridors to a door guarded by a single soldier. "Jasmine Moreau?" the guard asked formally as Jin and her escort came up to him. "Miron Akim offers his regrets, and states that he was called away on urgent business," he continued, reaching over and opening the door. "He asks that you wait for him inside, and that you examine a file he has left for you."
"Thank you," Jin said. "And thank you," she added to her escort, giving them the sign of respect.
Neither of the soldiers returned the gesture. Either she'd done it wrong, or else word had spread that the visitors from the Cobra Worlds weren't worthy of the sign.
The room was typical of what she'd seen in the subcity: small and sparsely furnished, with a desk and computer terminal and two wooden chairs. Lying beside the terminal was a single dusky-red file folder. Circling around behind the desk, wondering briefly if the door would be locked from the outside, she sat down and opened the folder.
The sheet of paper on top was a report of some sort, a listing of Troft activities from one of the villages, complete with alien troop numbers, types of air—and spacecraft observed, and a time-line that indicated it was a single day's report. She leafed briefly through the rest of the papers, noting the differing times and village names but that all of them followed essentially the same format. Leave it to the Qasamans, she thought with a touch of grim amusement, to be organized even down to their paperwork.
She was skimming the fourth page when a particular entry belatedly caught her attention:
razorarms captured.
Frowning, she settled down to read.
It was an axiom of war, she'd heard once, that numbers quoted in the heat of battle or delivered by civilians should never be taken entirely at face value. But if the numbers in the various villager reports were even halfway accurate, the Trofts had been incredibly busy. In the three days since their invasion they'd already hauled nearly four hundred razorarms out of the forest and loaded them aboard cargo carriers. The reports were a bit vague on the techniques involved—apparently none of the observers had managed to get very close to the scene of the action—but it seemed to include multiple small aircraft as spotters and some kind of tranquilizer gas bombs.
Of even more interest was the fact that the Trofts were apparently leaving the razorarms' mojos behind.
She was midway through the papers when Akim arrived. "My apologies," he said as he closed the door behind him. He had a folder of his own, Jin noted, a light green one. "No—please" he added, waving Jin back to her seat as she started to rise and seating himself in one of the other chairs facing her. "Did you finish reading the file?"
"I only made it through about half the reports, but I was able to skim the rest," she said, studying his face. His expression was under rigid control, but there was a dark tightness around his eyes, a darkness she hadn't seen even on the day of the invasion itself. "They've been busy, haven't they?"
"That they have," Akim said. "The question remains: why?"
"I see two possibilities," Jin said. "One, they mostly want the razorarms. Two, they mostly want to leave mojos in the forests
without
symbiotic companions."
"An interesting possibility, that last," Akim said. "Yet if they wanted the mojos to be alone, why not simply kill the razorarms out from beneath them? Why bother taking the animals away alive?"
"A good point," Jin conceded. "Are we sure the razorarms haven't shown up in any of Qasama's cities or villages?"
"Not that we know of," Akim said. "Of course, there are many smaller villages and settlements outside our communication range. Still, if sending razorarms into those villages was the goal, why not do their hunting in those same areas? Why choose animals from near Sollas and transport them the entire distance?"
"No reason I can see," Jin agreed. "So it would seem they're simply taking the most convenient animals, the ones that are near where all their heavy transports are already located."
"Here at Sollas," Akim said, nodding.
"Right," Jin said, frowning as something else occurred to her. "The transports
do
leave those areas once they have their razorarms, don't they?" she asked. "I didn't see that in the reports."
"Yes, they invariably leave," Akim confirmed. "But where they go, we have no idea." He cocked his head, and Jin thought she saw a subtle change in the man's expression. "Could it be that the invaders want them for the same reason you brought them to Qasama in the first place? That they wish to seed an enemy's land with quick-breeding predators?"
Jin stared at him, a horrible sensation rippling through her. There it was, staring her suddenly in the face.