And with his back to the oncoming threat, his gun and attention pointed the wrong direction, Bronski was about to die.
"Look out!" Cavanagh shouted to him, clawing frantically beneath his jacket for the flechette pistol hidden there.
Frantically, but uselessly. His shout had caught Bronski's attention, and on the brigadier's face he could see the sudden realization there was danger behind him. But even as he started to spin around, Cavanagh knew it was too late. The Bhurt was coming down the alley like a charging rhino, and there was no possible way Bronski was going to be able to complete his turn and get a stopping shot off before the alien trampled him into the broken flagstones of the alley. At the very edge of his vision Cavanagh saw Kolchin throw up his arms as if in panic and then double over at the waist. Vaguely seen, mostly imagined, something seemed to flicker through the air past Bronski's ear-
And suddenly the hilt and three quarters of Kolchin's big split-blade knife appeared, protruding from the Bhurt's upper left leg.
The alien bellowed, his torso jerking to the left, the rhythm of his running thrown violently off by the blow. He got two more steps, arms flailing like windmill blades as he fought to regain his balance. But the impact of the knife, plus the uneven footing, proved too much for him. An instant later, with a crash that shook the whole alley, he slammed full-length onto the ground. Bellowing again, he shoved himself halfway up from his prone position, got his feet under him-
And then Bronski's flechette pistol barked, and the alien's upper right torso exploded in a brilliant blaze of flame.
The alien convulsed, his angry bellow abruptly turning to a scream of rage as he struggled up into a crouch. Bronski fired again and again, the Bhurt seeming to dissolve into multiple bursts of flame and smoke and blood. But the defiant screams continued, and through the smoke Cavanagh could see him still struggling mindlessly to get the rest of the way to his feet and kill the humans who were doing this to him. If Bronski's gun ran out of explosive cartridges, he might still make it.
And then, to Cavanagh's shock, an echoing scream came from behind him.
Somehow, in the eternity of the past few seconds, he'd forgotten about the other Bhurt.
He twisted around. The first alien, the failure of their clever little subterfuge having finally penetrated its thick skull, had abandoned the effort at subtlety and was lurching to the attack.
"Bronski!" Kolchin called.
The brigadier didn't even turn around. Still blasting away at the second Bhurt, he snapped his free hand up underneath his extended right arm, tossing Kolchin's flechette pistol toward him. Kolchin caught the weapon and twisted around, the gun blazing into action almost before it was fully settled into his hand.
But it was an effort Cavanagh knew was doomed to failure. Even with the assistance of the running Bhurt's forward momentum, Kolchin's thrown knife had barely managed to penetrate the alien's thick hide. Standard flechette loads would do no better, and that was all Kolchin's gun was loaded with.
The Bhurt knew it, too, or else was too infuriated to care. Crossing his massive arms in front of his face, making no effort to evade the steel darts collecting on his arms and torso, he kept coming.
"Cavanagh!" Bronski shouted.
Cavanagh turned back, dimly noticing the fact that the rapid-fire explosions had ceased. Bronski was beckoning sharply toward him, the second Bhurt a gory mess, finally unmoving, at his feet. "This way," the brigadier shouted. "Move it!"
Cavanagh pushed off the wall and ran toward him. "Kolchin, come on."
"Go with Bronski," Kolchin ordered, still firing his useless darts at the approaching Bhurt. "Move, damn it."
There was no time to argue. Cavanagh reached Bronski's side; and then the brigadier had a grip on his arm and was pulling him down the alley. "Where are we going?"
"Away from here," Bronski said. There was a crash behind them- "Don't look," the brigadier ordered.
"But Kolchin-" Cavanagh said, resisting Bronski's grip as he tried to turn around.
"I said don't look," Bronski snapped, jerking his arm hard enough to hurt. "You just concentrate on your running and hope whoever set this up didn't put in any backstops."
Apparently, they hadn't. Cavanagh and Bronski reached the end of the alley without incident, emerging into a brightly lit but strangely deserted market street. "You can always tell a backwater culture," Bronski said, tugging Cavanagh sharply to the left. "They don't stand around gawking at trouble-they get out of sight and stay there. This way."
Halfway down the block they reached a narrow stairway on their left, wedged between two shop fronts. "All the way to the top," Bronski told him, pushing him into the shadowed entryway and pausing to pull a fresh flechette clip from beneath his jacket. "Go on, I'll catch up."
Breathing hard, leg muscles starting to burn with the exertion, Cavanagh headed up. The stairway was uncomfortably dark, its gloom relieved only by a dim light plate at each floor's landing. He had passed the second floor and was on his way to the third when he heard Bronski start up the stairs; had just made it to the fourth and top floor when the brigadier caught up with him. "What now?" Cavanagh asked, gasping for breath.
"We wait," Bronski said. He was breathing a little hard, too. "There's an empty apartment up here I can get us into-I moved in yesterday to see if you'd show up at Bokamba's place. But we need to know first if they saw us come in here."
"They?" Cavanagh repeated, frowning. "I thought you killed one."
"I did," Bronski said grimly. "It turns out there were two others waiting in the wings. Luckily not at the end we left by-they were probably ready with a pincer movement near Bokamba's place. I saw the three of them come charging out of the alley just before I headed up here."
Cavanagh braced himself. "What about Kolchin?"
Bronski looked away. "I don't know," he said quietly. "I didn't see him."
The dim light of the landing seemed to become a little darker. "I understand," he said quietly.
"Don't go jumping to any conclusions," Bronski warned, his voice oddly gruff. "He could have made it out of the alley just behind us and been out of sight the other direction before we were able to turn around and look. He was a Peacekeeper commando once, and you never count a Peacekeeper commando out until you've retrieved a body."
Cavanagh nodded, trying hard to believe him. Kolchin deserved far more than just a brief, passing thought, but there was no time right now for anything else. No time to mourn him properly. "Shouldn't you be calling someone for help?"
"Like who?"
"Like the police, maybe? Keeping the peace is what they're here for, isn't it?"
Bronski snorted under his breath. "Not when it involves NorCoord citizens getting beat on by aliens. Not on Granparra, anyway. As long as they don't see their own people or property as being in danger, they'll probably stay out of it. Probably be cheering for the Bhurtala."
An unpleasant chill ran up Cavanagh's back. He'd long ago accepted the fact that putting up with a certain amount of resentment toward NorCoord was one of the factors involved in doing business around the Commonwealth. Apparently, the feelings were running a lot deeper than mere resentment. "What about the Myrmidon Weapons Platform, then? They ought to have the necessary firepower to deal with a group of Bhurtala."
"Sure they do," Bronski said. "Problem is that with the Parra vine blocking a straight-line drop, it'd take them a minimum of an hour to get here. Too late to do us any good." He gestured with the barrel of his pistol toward Cavanagh's jacket. "I don't suppose you happen to have any explosive rounds in that gun of yours."
Cavanagh had completely forgotten about his flechette pistol. "No," he said, feeling a guilty ache as he pulled it out. Everything had happened so quickly down there in the alley, but he should at least have been able to get a couple of shots off at the Bhurtala. It probably wouldn't have made any difference; but then again, it might. He would never know now. "I only have standard-load flechettes. Kolchin used up all his explosive rounds back on the mainland."
"Figured as much," Bronski grunted. "Let's hope they didn't see us-"
He broke off, his hand raised suddenly for silence. Cavanagh froze, listening.
They could hear the sound of heavy, clumping footsteps echoing up through the stairway. The footsteps stopped; then, abruptly, came the splintering crash of a breaking door. Someone screamed, someone else shouted, the verbal uproar mixing in with the sounds of running feet and more of the clumping footsteps. The footsteps came to a halt, and there was a second crash.
Bronski swore. "So much for that hope," he muttered. "They're checking all the apartments. Means they know we're here."
Cavanagh felt his stomach tighten. Trapped here on the top floor. Might as well have been gift wrapped. "What do we do?"
Bronski nodded toward the corner of the landing and a rusty ladder leading to an equally rusty ceiling trapdoor. "We keep going."
It was obvious at first glance that the trapdoor hadn't been opened in years; equally obvious that it wasn't going to be opened now without creating considerable noise in the process. But Bronski was ahead of the problem, waiting until the Bhurtala two floors below were in the process of breaking down the next door before forcing the trap up against its protesting hinges. A minute later both men were on the roof.
"Now what?" Cavanagh asked, shivering in the cool night air as he looked around them. The entire block of buildings had been constructed under a single roof, and aside from a couple dozen vent pipes poking up like defoliated shrubs, the rooftop stretched flat and open. No cover, no place to hide, and on all sides a sheer four-story drop to the streets below.
"We find another stairway and get the hell out of here," Bronski said, peering across the roof. "Looks like another trapdoor over there." He started off in that direction-
And suddenly, from behind them, came the high-pitched screech of tearing metal.
Cavanagh spun around. The trapdoor they'd just come through had vanished, along with about half the metal framing that had attached it to the tarred-wood roofing material. Even as he watched, a huge Bhurtist hand came up through the opening and began ripping away at the rest of the framing.
"Damn!" Bronski bit out, jamming his gun back under his jacket. "Come on."
He headed off, but not in the direction of the trapdoor he'd pointed out. "What about the other stairs?" Cavanagh called, running after him.
"We'll never get it open in time," Bronski called back over his shoulder.
Cavanagh frowned. Near as he could tell, they were headed at a dead run straight toward one edge of the roof. "So what are we doing?"
"This," Bronski said. Still running, he dropped into a half crouch and jumped-
And caught hold of a tendril loop that hung a meter down from the main mesh of the Parra vine spanning the sky overhead.
"Don't just stand there," the brigadier grunted, hauling himself up with some effort onto the tendril. "Come on."
Grimacing, Cavanagh backed up a few steps, eyeing the vertical distance dubiously. But a quick survey showed that this was the only tendril over their roof that came even marginally within reach. If the alternative was to wait here for the Bhurtala... Taking a deep breath, he ran forward and jumped.
He made it, just barely, getting his left hand and about half of his right on the tendril. "Use your momentum," Bronski instructed, catching his right wrist and pulling the hand into a more secure grip. "Swing your legs, arch your back, and pull. Come on, you must have seen gymnasts do this a hundred times."
"I'm not a gymnast," Cavanagh gritted, swinging his legs as instructed and trying to remember exactly how the professionals did this. It always looked so smooth and quick and graceful that he'd never really noticed the technique.
"No, you're going to be lunch," Bronski shot back. "Comeon."
Swallowing a curse, Cavanagh swung his knees up, arching his back and tugging with his arms-
And suddenly he was there, teetering precariously on his chest on top of the vine, pumping his legs hard to try to maintain his balance. Bronski caught him under the right armpit and hauled, and a few seconds later he was up. "About time," the brigadier grunted. "Here they come."
Cavanagh looked behind him. The entire metal framing of the trapdoor was gone, along with sizable chunks of the wood around it, and one of the Bhurtala was fighting to squeeze his massive shoulders through the freshly enlarged opening. "Can we get rid of this tendril somehow?" he asked as he and Bronski pulled themselves up onto the main Parra mesh.
"Take too long to cut it," Bronski said, pulling out his flechette pistol and aiming at the tendril. "Let's try this instead."
He fired three times. But the steel darts merely embedded themselves in the vine's tough outer surface without cutting it. "That should do it," Bronski said, putting the gun away again and carefully pulling himself to his feet. "Let's go."
Cavanagh followed suit, wondering what all that had been about. Was Bronski hoping the embedded darts would cut into the hands of the Bhurtala when they tried to grab hold of it? "Where to?" he asked.
"Let's start by getting away from here," Bronski said. "After that we'll figure out how to get down."
They set off. From the ground the tendrils of the Parra vine's intertwined mesh looked fairly thin, even delicate. In fact they were reasonably thick and not delicate at all, most of them measuring a good six to ten centimeters in diameter, with the main supports twice that thick. Slightly flattened on top, they were quite adequate for a human being to walk along. And on a clear, sunny day, at ground level, Cavanagh wouldn't have thought twice about doing so.
At night, five stories above the streets of Puerto Simone Island, it was terrifying.
And they hadn't even gotten yet to where they were five stories over the streets.
"Don't look down," Bronski kept saying as Cavanagh inched with painstaking care along the mesh. "Stick to the main support vines-they're thicker, and they have those outrigger branches coming off the sides you can use if you start losing your balance. Anddon't look down."
It was stupid advice. Cavanaghhad to look down if he wanted to see where he was going. Too tense even to swear, he kept going, fixing his eyes on the vine and trying hard to keep the rooftop below in hazy unfocus where he could almost forget how far down it was.
They were nearly to the edge of the roof, with the deep chasm of the street gaping ahead and below, when a triumphant roar came from behind them.