Authors: Steve Perry
The four guarding the door never had a chance, though one of them did manage to spew a hundred rounds from her carbine before she lost her grip on it when she hit the ground. It dug a three-meter-long trench in the earth next to where Sleel stood, but it wasn't even close; half a meter away, easy. He ran to the door, tried it and found it locked, and slapped a popper onto the control plate inset into the wall. He twisted away, and the popper went off, blowing the circuit. Sleel slid the door open, using it for cover, but nobody inside started shooting. He darted into the building. There was enough ambient light seeping in through the door and windows to see by using the spookeyes, and Sleel moved in an easy crouch across the entryway. This was the building most likely to be sleeping quarters, according to what they figured.
A guard carrying a sleetpistol came around the corner. "Who's there?" he called, waving the gun.
Sleel shot him in the throat, and the shocktox dart threw the man into a hard spasm against a table, knocking it over.
Sleel would've gone on looking, but he was supposed to wait for back-up.
All right.He'd wait. He'd give 'em thirty seconds.
Even six kilometers way, the sounds and light seemed loud and bright to Veate. It was happening. And she had to sit here and wait.
People might be getting hurt, they might be dying, and she couldn't do anything about it. Her father, her mother, and Bork, they were all out there, in danger.
But she had to wait—
Fuckwaiting!
Veate punched the flitter's repellors up to full power and lifted.
Khadaji came through the open door, rolled to his left, and ducked behind a free-standing shelf full of hand-held umbrella-field generators.
When he peered around the corner of the shelf, he saw what appeared to be several white dots floating in the air five meters away. It took him a second to recognize them as teeth against a shiftsuit hood background.
"Sleel," he said.
"Yeah, boss. Call it."
"Cover the door. I'll go look."
Khadaji moved down the hallway, spetsdods questing as if they had a life of their own, seeking targets.
He passed a small kitchen, turned into a long hallway, and saw a glow-in-the-dark exit sign mounted over a back door. The normally dim sign was made bright enough by the spook-eyes so that it seemed he was looking at the sun. Not quite bright enough to trigger the shields, however.
He tried the first door. It opened on an empty room.
Same with the second door.
The third door slid open and a blast of gunfire erupted from within the room. Craters appeared in the wall across the hall.
Khadaji was not so stupid as to have been standing in the doorway. Off to the side, he dropped prone and wiggled around the jamb.
The man inside had his carbine aimed at where a standing man's chest would be.The shiftsuit tried, but even it couldn't match a background instantaneously, and the man saw the motion. His aim was too high, his reflexes too slow.
Khadaji fanned four shots at the man. The last one missed, but it didn't matter. Three were enough.
Getting old, Emile, to miss at that range.
The last door on the right was locked from without by a portable bolt and screamer.
"Juete?" he said.
"Who is it?"
Khadaji felt a flush of joy as he recognized the voice. It was her! She was alive!
"Stand away from the door."
The popper blew the lock and he shoved the still-smoking door back into its frame. It stuck halfway, but that didn't matter.
There was no mistaking her, even in the foggy green of the spookeyes.After all the years.As beautiful as ever. Funny, she didn't look as much like Veate as he had thought.
"E-Emile?"
"It's been a while."
"How did you—?" She stopped and grinned."Veate?"
"Yeah.She's really something. You didgood ."
"We did it."
"I hate to interrupt,"came the voice from behind Khadaji, "but I'm holding a WD shotpistol and if either of you even bats an eyelid, you're both dead."
Biolum light flared and Khadaji's spookeyes shields popped on.
Veate brought the flitter down in the nearest clear spot close to the main complex. Her father had left her a small handgun, a 4mm needier, and she held this as she left the little ship.
Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea, she thought, but she had to do something. There was enough light from burning structures so she could see. Now, which way to go looking?
She almost fainted when she heard her father's voice over the com tacked to her belt." 'Vring the flitter in 'vlasting!" he said. His voice was tight, and she realized it was a subvocalization, all quiet throat sounds.
Bring the flitter in blasting , he'd said.
He was in trouble.
There was a small garbage can-sized and -shaped din rigged with camera and sensors that Wall had saved for the direst of emergencies. He powered the robot up, put it online, and sent it to where Cteel was to meet Tone for their escape. It wouldn't do to miss the grand finale.
Along the way, the din sent back an image of Tone, heading away from the rendezvous. Wall sent the din after the man, at a discreet distance. No need to get close when the gel-eyes of the camera could zoom to a close-up from a hundred meters away.
"Turn around and let me see you peel those dartguns off, very carefully," Cteel said.
Khadaji turned slowly, spetsdod barrels pointed at the ceiling. He shifted the spookeyes back on his hood. "I can put a dart into you before you shoot me," Khadaji said calmly.
"Yeah, probably.But you're loading shocktox and if this building is still here in fifteen minutes, I'll wake up. You and the woman will bleed to death before anybody can get a vouch to you or get you into a Healy."
"Somebody will find us before you wake up."
"I'd say that's iffy, pal. Even so, I got this sucker pointed right at her head, and a brain shot or three won't leave much to work with. Best neuromedic who ever lived can't fix it if it's splattered all over the wall."
Khadaji thought about it. Sleel was watching the door; he'd come eventually, but it wouldn't do them much good. Of course, they were dead if he shucked his weapons, too. The only thing that was keeping Cteel from shootingwas knowing he couldn't do it unscathed.
"I don't plan to stand here all night," Cteel said.
He had to play it for as long as he could."All right." Slowly, Khadaji reached over and unsealed his right spets-dod, peeling up the edge of the plastic flesh. He lifted the weapon and dropped it.
"Now the other one."
He had bombs on his belt, but he'd never be able to get to them fast enough.
Bork saw the flitter come down, but he was on the other side of the compound and by the time he got there, Veate wasn't around. Had Emile called her? Or was she here on her own?
Bork couldn't stand the idea of losing her. They hadn't become lovers yet, not in the physical sense of the word, but he knew he loved her. She called to him as Mayli had done, and he couldn't go through that kind of pain again.
He pushed the hood of the shiftsuit back, and the humid night air felt good on his bare skin where it touched him.
Veate.Where are you?
Khadaji peeled the second of his spetdods free and allowed it to fall to the floor.
Cteel grinned. "Her I still need," he said. "You I don't. I never killed a hero before." He shifted his weapon so that it pointed at Khadaji's face.
"If he dies, so do you," Veate said from behind Cteel.
• • •
"Hey, isn't that our flitter?" Geneva said.
"So it is. Wonder what it's doing here? I thought we had things iced."
"She wasn't supposed to come unless Emile called."
"Yeah.Maybe we'd better go see what's up.That building, over there."
Bork saw a smallish man, one who would be forgettable in a crowd of three, moving toward the back door on the target building. Only Bork knew this face; it belonged to the man who'd been with Cteel when he'd taken Juete. Well, well. Wonder where he thinks he's going?
Wall's remote eyes saw the big matador following Tone. Not good for Tone, to be sure. Nor Cteel, if he was around, as certainly he must be. He was Tone's exit pass, he and the albino woman, and why would he be going there if they weren't still inside? He didn't have a battery-operated camera in the woman's room; too bad.
It looked, however, as if Tone and Cteel were about to reach the end of their usefulness.
Cteel spun, firing the shotpistol—
Too quickly.The first round punched a dozen fingertip-sized holes in the hall wall, angled in a widening fan pattern along the wall's length. The boom was deafening in the enclosed space—
Instinctively, Veate ducked and crouched away from the shot, raising the needier. She was not very good with guns. The little neediertwanged twice, but both spikes went high and wide to Cteel's right—
Khadaji was already moving, leaping at Cteel's back—
The door behind Veate opened and a man stepped in, raising a weapon—
Khadaji slammed into Cteel with all his weight, arms circling around his neck in a simple tackle that knocked the man to the floor. Cteel's biolum flew, casting pale moving shadows, and landed on the floor.
The shotpistol went off again—
The man in the doorway pointed his weapon at Veate—
Bork stepped in behind the man and brought his fist down on top of the man's head.Hard. "No, you don't," Bork said. The man fell as if his legs had vanished—
There came two muffledwhumps . Khadaji felt Cteel vibrate under his grip, and blood oozed from the man's ears. What—?
He moved back and turned Cteel over. Blood also came from the man's nostrils and eyes. His expression was one of intense pain, of terror. After a few seconds, he went limp.
"This one's dead," Bork said. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hit him so hard."
Khadaji stood, glanced at the other corpse, and shook his head. "It wasn't you.Some kind of minibomb in his skull. Same thing happened to Cteel here." He nodded at the body.
"Mother!"
Veate ran to her mother and they embraced.
Behind Bork, Dirisha and Geneva arrived. "This aprivate party or can anybody play?"
"Mother, this is Bork," Veate said.
"Hi," Bork said."Nice to meet you. I, uh, love your daughter." He glanced over at Khadaji. "If that's okay?"
Khadaji laughed. He and Juete exchanged looks.
Sleel sauntered down the hall. "I got better things to do than sit around out there waiting for you guys to finish taking care of business," he said. "Are we done here?"
"Yes," Khadaji said. "We're done. Except I've got to go see a computer about a man."
"Huh?" Sleel said. "Veate will explain it," he said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE FLITTER DIDN'T have the capability to reach orbit, but Khadaji had access to a ship that did, courtesy of Rajeem. He flew to the spaceport at Fortaleza on the coast and found the little vessel, a six-passenger lighter formerly owned by the captain of a deep space liner, now owned by the Republic.
The captain's tastes had apparently run to the plush side—most of the inside surfaces were carpeted in dahlteen, and to step onto it was to sink to the ankles in the soft green furlike material.
Khadaji checked the launch window he needed, found he had less than ten minutes, and so didn't have much time to worry about what he was going to do. He plugged in his orbit request and he rechecked for the fifth time the small pack he'd brought with him from the flitter. This would be a tricky operation, no doubt of that, and a mistake would probably be fatal. So many things he had done over the years would have been fatal, had his luck not been strongly good. He had cheated death dozens of times, but that did not mean he could take it as a given. A man needed only one fatal mistake to end the game.
The traffic computer gave him a three-minute launch warning, and Khadaji turned his attention to making certain the lighter's systems were all functioning properly. The previous owner's logo still graced all the computer reads, and apparently the Republic hadn't gotten around to reprogramming the system. Jacob's Ladder, it was named. Khadaji didn't know what the significance of the lighter's name was.
"Launch in one minute," the computer said.
Khadaji vocally affirmed the notice. What a convoluted trip this had been.About to be over, one way or another. At least Juete was safe. And he had come to know a daughter, no small accomplishment.
"Launch in ten seconds. Counting to one. Nine. Eight. Seven."
Khadaji took a deep breath. Five seconds later,Jacob'sLadder took him into the heavens.
He was coming, Wall knew, just as he had known all along. He didn't have the vessel located yet, but he surely would soon. Most of his not inconsiderable attention was turned to tracking everything he could see leaving the Earth. There were hundred of ships, but most of those could be ignored. Within a matter of seconds, Wall had narrowed down the possibilities to a handful. Of course, other ships were leaving all the time, and those were also observed and plotted. The handful waxed and waned as destinations were logged or arrived at. No ship claimed a matching orbit with Wall's own, but he hardly expected Khadaji to announce it that blatantly.
If I were him, I would move into a higher or lower orbit and work my way down or up, Wall thought.
With that idea, he expanded possibilities.
He was coming; hehad to be coming. The bait had been taken, the game had run its course when the albino had been retrieved, and all the tactics Wall had used were narrowed down to the final moves of the game. Khadaji had to come because of who and what he was. He had been given sufficient clues to solve the puzzle, albeit the clues had been oblique enough to make it difficult. Wall knew what made the man work; he had studied every scrap of information available on him, including his own brief meeting before it all fell apart. Khadaji was a hero; he wore the psychologically flawed psyche like a cape, he was a slave to fair play and the belief that the universe was an innatelygood place. Khadaji made it a point not to kill during his revolution, not with his own hands. He could have snuffed Wall like a flickstick when first they'd met, but he had not; he had given Wall a chance to consider the error of his ways. What a fool. True, he had engineered the assassination later, but even so, he had chosen as his tool someone who would have gladly killed Wall on her own, had she possessed the means.