“I am. I’d love to kick it around here for a few hours without having to worry about killer aliens harvesting brain stems.”
He gave her a long, dubious look. She didn’t seem at all nervous. “How is it,” he began tactfully, “that you have such difficulty approaching those we meet at your hotels—”
She laughed. “And not here, when I’m literally drowning in total strangers?” she finished for him. “Look around, Tagen. No one sees me. If I fell down, they’d step right on me and keep going. It’s as good as being here by myself.”
Tagen frowned and stared out at the crowd again.
“For crying out loud, you’re a seven-foot-tall guy with visible fangs, yellow eyes, three fingers and claws, walking around in socks, wearing a shiny military uniform and an empty gunbelt and no one’s even stopped to ask if you’re performing here or anything.”
His frown deepened.
“I could stand on your shoulders and shout out that you’re an alien and I don’t think most of these people would even stop to stare.”
“You have made your point,” he told her. The sense of this place as a chemist’s killing grounds was now overwhelming. To distract himself as much as her, he said, “Why have you not recently been to fair if you enjoy them and are not frightened?”
She shrugged. “No one to go with, I guess. It’s no fun being at the fair by yourself.” She looked wistfully around her. “And this one looks like a really cool one. They’ve even got roller coasters.”
Tagen glanced at the nearest loop of unstable track just an open car came thundering through it with a full load of shrieking, unharnessed passengers. “Which I would never allow you to ride,” he said.
“And I’d eat. You can’t get food like this anywhere but at the fair.”
Tagen watched a cook pull a dripping battercake from a vat of boiling grease and coat it with pure sugar until it had a solid crust. “Have you never wondered why?”
“You know, I bet you were just mountains of fun when you were a kid,” she said wryly.
“You would lose that bet.”
“Yeah, that’s why I…oh never mind.”
He smiled, and then knuckled sweat from his eyes. “If you insist on poisoning us both, you had best do it swiftly. I am losing to Heat, and much as I dislike the thought of scandalizing your cat, there are some things I have no doubt will draw attention even in this crowd.”
Pink rose high in her cheeks and she giggled. “Well, okay. I have to do my part for Jota’s boys in blue. Or black, as the case may be. I see barbeque chicken on some of these people’s plates, you ought to be able to choke that—Oh God!”
He looked sharply around, and then down at her again. “What is it?”
“Tagen, look!”
There were too many people, too much to see. Tagen gripped her hand a little tighter, aiming his eyes in the direction of her stare, and tried to see what she saw.
He saw the purple hair first. Purple hair, just as the lawman had described, a color so astounding that for a moment, it was all Tagen
could
see. And then he saw the man walking beside her, a man that stood head and shoulders above her. A man in a long coat and head-cover, the only man so attired on such a hot day.
“Is it him?” Daria asked. She clutched at his arm, her little claws digging painfully at him. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
Big man and two women, one of them with purple hair, the other blonde.
“Cover your ears,” Tagen said. He had no idea what the range for his neural stunner might be in the open like this, and there were hundreds of humans all around him, but he could not open fire with a plasma gun into this crowd. Likewise, he could not follow along behind the three forever, and if E’Var turned and saw him, there would be carnage. Tagen had one chance, one alone, to catch his prisoner by surprise.
He reached into his jacket and took his neural stunner in one hand, his plasma gun in the other.
Daria paled, her eyes flashing wildly around at the crowd. “You can’t mean it!” she hissed. “There’s people everywhere!”
“Cover your ears,” he told her again.
“Tagen!”
His temper slipped and he bent close to her ear and snarled, “I have no time, woman, obey me!”
Clap went her hands on her ears. Her eyes were pleading.
Tagen raised the stunner over the crowd and pushed the trigger. He saw the pulse belch out from the device, a colorless distortion of sound that struck like a hammer inside his head and left a nauseating echo, but he was Jotan and it passed. The humans, for which the device had been developed, dropped in waves all around him, leaving a sea of prone bodies in a perfect ring. He heard Daria cry out, the sound rapidly eclipsed by screaming as the surrounding humans reacted to the sudden incapacitation of so many of their kind.
The two humans walking aside of the coated man fell with the rest of them, but the man merely staggered, and that was it, that was E’Var. Tagen had just time enough to register this, not even time to raise his plasma gun, and then E’Var was gone, darting around the side of the nearest booth in a snap of black coat without even glancing to see where the attack had come from.
But the booth was isolated from the bank of them. E’Var could not flee unseen, he could only hide. A live capture was not out of the realm of possibility.
“Prisoner!” Tagen shouted in Jotan. He had to shout to be heard. The humans were running, streaming past him in a blind panic, even trampling their own fallen in their desperation to escape. “I arrest you, Kanetus E’Var. Surrender yourself!”
His words seemed to be the catalyst that freed Daria from her shocked paralysis. She uncovered her ears and shot forward in a blur, dropping to her knees and touching her hand to exposed throats. “What did you do to them?” she asked shrilly.
E’Var glanced around the side of the booth, giving Tagen a glimpse of shoulder, a plane of cheek, and a lock of dark blonde hair. He was gone again before Tagen could get off a shot.
“Is that one yours?” E’Var’s voice was untouched by tension. He sounded as easy as if they were talking over bottles of
ul
. And he spoke in N’Glish, bringing Daria’s head up in a quick jerk.
Tagen grit his teeth, his arm steady and his finger heavy on the trigger of his plasma gun. He hated even that E’Var was thinking about Daria. “Surrender!” he shouted again, stubbornly speaking Jotan.
“She’s cute,” E’Var continued. “I could fuck that all day, I think.”
Daria blanched and crawled back to Tagen’s side. He stepped in front of her instinctively.
“When I’ve killed you,” E’Var called evenly, “I’m going to take your
ichuta’a
. I’m going to fuck her until she bleeds out before I crush her skull and turn her into Vahst. She’ll probably die screaming your name.”
E’Var moved, flashing black from one booth to another, and Tagen blasted futilely at his shadow. Hot plasma took out a half-circle of his new hiding place, but there was no cry of pain to indicate a hit. Moreover, Tagen realized that the prisoner’s flight had brought him closer, not further away. He was not fleeing, but angling for…what? A better line of attack? Tagen’s gun remained aimed and ready; his empty hand found Daria’s side and moved her toward the cover of some empty booths.
“I hear something, don’t I?” E’Var asked from his new, nearer cover.
Tagen cocked his head. He heard only human chatter and it took a second or two to decipher.
“—there’s like, dozens of dead people!” “—at the Fair!” “Some crazy guy—” “Terrorist!”
Tagen frowned.
“I hope you have friends in Earth’s police force,” E’Var called. “It isn’t me they’ll be coming for.”
Tagen glanced behind him and saw several humans speaking into transmitters. A scraping sound brought his gaze around fast, in time to see E’Var dragging his purple-haired female behind the booth by her ankle. Tagen aimed without thinking, but had no shot for E’Var and hesitated to kill the human. The unconscious female was swept out of sight and Tagen heard E’Var growling at her in tones anyone might mistake for concern.
“You have but one chance, prisoner,” Tagen warned, and steeled himself resolutely. “I am prepared to kill your hostage.”
Anger entered E’Var’s voice for the first time. “The fuck you say!”
There was a flat snapping sound and Daria suddenly grunted and fell into a drop-sitting position. She looked up at him, her eyes round with surprise, and then down at her lap, where blood bloomed over her thigh.
“Shit,” E’Var snarled, and a human’s gun skittered away from the booth where he hid. “Do you hear that?”
Sirens.
“You can still come and get me,” E’Var invited. “I’m not even armed any more. Easy pickings, as the humans say. Leave your
ichuta’a
and take me. She’ll be arrested, of course. We’re surrounded by humans who saw her stand by you after you dropped these people. She’ll be imprisoned before the day is out. They kill prisoners here.”
“I’ll be okay,” Daria said. Both her hands were pressed to her thigh and blood welled between her fingers. “Get him, Tagen!”
“Yes, Tagen, get me. Or shoot me. Or something. Like they say here, shit or get off the pot.”
Tagen could hear the engines of the police now. He had only seconds to act.
Tagen holstered his weapons and grabbed Daria, pulling her into his arms. He sensed movement at the corner of his eyes and spun around. He watched E’Var run for the woods, knocking humans aside with his claws in sprays of blood. The purple-haired human was over his shoulder, her arms swaying limply.
“Stay where you are! This is a citizen’s arrest!”
Tagen turned furiously into the voice and punched, sending the human who had dared to confront him into a booth and over the counter with his teeth spilling down the front of his shirt.
“That’s police brutality,” Daria remarked. She sounded strained.
Tagen moved her to his shoulder and drew his stunner. He sent another pulse out through the closing crowd, and Daria slumped, suddenly heavy. Tagen stepped forward through the fallen, seized the blonde female who had been walking with E’Var and hauled her awkwardly onto his other shoulder. He ran.
He passed a phalanx of uniformed lawmen charging in. One of them tried to stop him, gesturing to the females he carried and particularly to Daria, but Tagen bulled past him and he did not pursue. They did not yet know that Tagen was responsible for the chaos, but he could not count on their ignorance for long.
He found Daria’s groundcar among those in the parking bay and set the humans inside, bundling them both together in the rear hold while Grendel looked on from the front seat, its golden eyes almost prissily shocked at the intrusion. Tagen took the keys from Daria’s pocket, slammed the hatch, and crawled into the front of the car where he spent several nerve-wracking minutes trying to work the controls for the captain’s chair so that he could fit in it.
He could pilot this. He could pilot sixteen different spacecraft, all of which were a hell of a lot more complicated than a groundcar. He’d watched Daria piloting it, and it didn’t look that difficult. He could pilot this. And he’d better, because sooner or later, the police would lock down the parking bay. If he were captured—
Tagen fit keys one by one into the trigger-slot until he found the one that ignited the engines. Immediately, something began to chime at him. Tagen scanned the console frantically and his eye lit on a flashing icon of a figure in a harness. Tagen tapped it hesitantly but the chimes continued to sound. What did it mean?
He couldn’t wait for Daria to wake and tell him. His entire body locked and rigid, Tagen put his hand on the directional indicator and pushed it into gear. The groundcar rolled backwards; Tagen stomped on a pedal and the car’s movement became a lurch that slammed it into the face of another groundcar.
“
Shu-ra
!” Tagen hissed, and shifted again. This time, when he pushed at the pedal, the engines raced but did not propel. More police were coming. Humans were all around him in their own groundcars, blasting their klaxons at each other as they swarmed back onto the road. He pushed harder at the pedal and felt the car actually shaking as the engines roared.
“Fucking thing,
fire up
!” Tagen bellowed. He shoved at the directional indicator a third time and finally the groundcar hit ahead-full. Tagen spun the steerer wildly and the car kicked up a spray of earth before leaping into motion. He managed to avoid impact with the trees that had shaded the vehicle, but he did rip out a large amount of undergrowth as he navigated the groundcar around in a wide arc.
At least he was moving. The right pedal was the accelerator. The left, the full-stop. If he remembered that, he’d be fine. At the first opportunity, he would stop and see to Daria’s injury, and find a way to bind his human prisoner before she woke. E’Var was on foot for now. There was time to get ahead of him, time to interrogate his prisoner and find out where he was going. There was time.
And even if there wasn’t, Tagen didn’t care. Daria came first. Let E’Var leave Earth ahead of him, and he could still pursue and someday capture him and repay him for Daria’s injury.
Or avenge her death.
No, he would not even think such a thing.
Tagen navigated onto the main road and aimed himself west. The smell of blood was thick in the close confines of the vehicle. Daria made no sound at all.
Tagen drove.
*
Kane ran.
Raven bounced on his shoulder, a burden of uncaring weight. He could feel the beating of her heart on his back. It was the only sign of life she gave him, but it was a warming one. He could go much faster without her, he knew, but it was not an option. He would leave the Vahst before he left her.
Where was he? They’d been traveling west for some time already, but where the hell was he? He couldn’t afford to get turned around now, blunder out into the road or, hell, into the Fleet officer’s path.
He didn’t think anyone was following him. The Fleet-man had run off with his wounded
ichuta’a
and he would probably be going just as far as he could as fast as possible, just like Kane. With any luck, the fucker’s face would be on the tee-vee by nightfall, and that would be a great help to Kane.