“Just a moment, Doc.”
There were scuffling sounds, a grunt of pain from Namron and a muffled “Sorry!” from Peyte, and the torch came on. Its actinic glow made the faces of the little crowd standing together on the upstairs landing look drained and colorless—not, Jessan suspected, that even north light on a good day could have made much difference at the moment.
But Peyte was grinning like an idiot, and Jessan found himself grinning back. “What the hell,” he said out loud. “If I wanted a quiet life I’d have studied flower arranging and ornamental tree-sculpture. Let’s go on down.”
The cargo bay, when they finally reached it, proved to be as empty of life as the stairwell. The light from Peyte’s hand torch played over stacks of crates and boxes to the massive blast doors at the far end.
“Nobody home,” said Jessan. The words echoed in the high-ceilinged chamber.
The Professor looked somber. “They’ll realize soon enough that we’ve abandoned the upper floors.”
Jessan locked the lower stairway door. “We have a while yet. Peyte, you and Tarnekep get Namron settled by the back door. That’ll be our way out when the shuttle comes in, and I’m damned if I want to see him dragged any farther than I have to.”
“What about blankets, Doc?” the clerk/comptech asked. “This floor’s going to be colder than a Magelord’s heart.”
“Wait a minute and I’ll find you something,” said Jessan, craning his neck to scan the roomful of shipping containers.
Where … ah, there.
He headed over to the crate he’d spotted and started working the lid off. “Here we are,” he said over his shoulder. “Good-quality reclaimed synthetic, thermal weave, preserves body heat down to some incredible temperature below zero, allows for the free evaporation of sweat, does everything but function like a healing pod—which is what those misbegotten paper-pushers in Supply swore on their mother’s graves these blankets were going to be.”
He came back to the group with a stack of blankets in Space Force basic beige, and with Peyte’s assistance soon had Namron bedded down as snugly as circumstances allowed. The Professor watched the proceedings with an expression of polite interest, but Tarnekep prowled back and forth among the stacks of boxes like a thin, patch-eyed ghost. Jessan recognized from experience the compulsive activity of someone who must either keep moving or collapse.
“Commander.” The Professor spoke quietly, his eyes on the tall, restless figure in the bloodstained shirt. “I am concerned about the stairwell.”
Stairwell, my foot
, thought Jessan. Aloud, he said, “They’ll have to cut through the doors top and bottom to get to us—we’ll have warning. And with luck they won’t come around the back. Too much chance of getting burned if the dawn shuttle comes in early.”
“With luck,” said the Professor, still watching Tarnekep prowl among the boxes. “Without it …”
He shrugged his uninjured shoulder. “One does what one can. Your improvisation in the upper hallway comes to mind—do you have supplies for something similar down here?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Jessan. “Except for what’s in the treatment rooms, the chemicals are all in the flammables locker. Safety regs.”
“Very proper,” said the Professor, but his expression was grim.
Jessan hesitated for a moment. What he was contemplating now would probably get Supply so angry with him that he’d never see the healing pods at all.
The hell with that
, he told himself.
Right now you’re not likely to see morning if you don’t do something about it.
“Look in those boxes nearest the blast doors—that’s the emergency supplies for an aircar we don’t even have yet. If there’s anything in there that looks useful, haul it out. Take Peyte with you to do the heavy stuff; that arm has got to be giving you hell.”
The Professor moved off without protest in the direction of the blast doors, summoning Peyte to follow with a nod. Jessan sat down on the cold concrete next to Namron to check the pressure bandage; as he worked, he could hear the sound of boxes being ripped open, mingled with a stream of chatter from the irrepressible Peyte.
“Monofilament—scalpel blades—yo! Look what I found here!”
“What’s that?” The voice asking the question was Tarnekep’s; it sounded like the gunfighter’s prowlings about the cargo bay had brought him back to the doors again.
“Survival Kit, Aircar, One Each.”
“So?”
“So there’s an emergency transmitter in here someplace.”
“Dig it out,” said Tarnekep. “Maybe we can raise somebody after all. Commander!”
Jessan gave Namron a final quick once-over and rose to his feet. “What’s the problem?”
“Help me shove some boxes around. We need to clear out fields of fire around the stairs and lift entrance.”
The slightly built Mandeynan was stronger than he looked; he and Jessan moved boxes until they’d emptied out nearly the first third of the bay and had thrown up some quick-and-dirty barricades, one set facing the stair and lift doors across the open space, and the second about halfway back to the far wall.
Jessan heaved a shipping carton marked “Boxes 120 Lint-Free Wipes, Disposable—100 Count” onto a crate stenciled “Table, Folding, Metal—Property Republic Space Force Medical Corps,” and asked, a trifle breathlessly, “What’s the plan behind all this, anyway?”
“We need covered lines of retreat,” said Tarnekep, panting.
The Professor looked around from holding the hand torch for Peyte. The clerk/comptech was elbows-deep in an open crate.
“If we can’t hold them up front,” the older man explained, “we’ll need to fall back to the secondary position. If we can’t hold them there, we fall back to the door. Then it’s each for himself out the back, or fight to the last man in here.”
“Damnation and hellfire!” Peyte came up from the packing crate empty-handed except for a plastic-laminated printed sheet.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jessan.
“The transmitters’ power sources are shipped separately. But we do have complete instructions for installing them.”
Tarnekep muttered something that Jessan didn’t quite catch, and then asked, “Commander—any chance that the power. sources are here?”
“We’re dealing with the Supply Department,” he said. “There’s a chance of finding almost anything. But with all the comps down, I wouldn’t make bets on locating those power sources tonight. Anything else useful in the box?”
“So far—” began the Professor.
A yelp from Peyte interrupted him. “Hey! Here’s something, Doc—take a look.”
Jessan came over and read the label on the carton. “Emergency rations; including stimulant tabs. ‘Use of this medication by persons in a duty status strictly forbidden except under emergency conditions.’” He looked from one grey, dust-and-sweat streaked face to the next. “Fine. By the power vested in me by the Grand Council of the Republic, I hereby declare this an emergency. Share out the food and fluids, and everybody take one of those pills.”
The solid rations tasted even worse than space rations usually did, and the liquids tasted like the body fluids they were supposed to replace, but they did their job. Jessan found himself feeling, if not optimistic, at least somewhat more steady.
Once the stimulant tabs kick in, we’ll really be on top of the world … probably just in time for the party.
Tarnekep finished his share of the rations; Jessan was relieved to see some color reappearing in the narrow features. The Mandeynan swallowed off the stimutab with the last of the liquid and looked over at Peyte and the Professor. “Anything else in there?”
“Flare launcher and flares,” said Peyte. “I’m taking those.”
Tarnekep held up a hand for silence. “Noises in the stairwell.”
“Places, everyone,” said the Professor. “I’ll cover the lift door. Commander, you take the flank—shoot down the length of the front wall toward the stairwell door. Peyte, stay here with Tarnekep. When they break through, put a multistar cluster behind them. I want them backlit and us in shadow.”
Jessan moved off to his left for the position the Professor had indicated, behind a pile of boxes at the stairwell end of the bay. The grey-haired man had vanished somewhere off to the right, and Jessan caught a glimpse of the top of Tarnekep’s head over the boxes in the center before he heard the Mandeynan snap, “Put out your light!”
The hinges of the stairway door glowed a bright orange-red for a moment against the darkness, and then the door fell forward into the cargo bay.
“Here they come!” the Mandeynan’s voice shouted over the crash of the falling door. “Fire, damn you!”
Jessan heard a dull
whump!
as Peyte fired the flare launcher. A glowing red streak shot in a flat arc across the cleared-out space and into the open door. Brilliant white light poured out of the doorway from the burning flare, and reflected on clouds of thick white smoke. The attackers—black shapes against the light—ran forward through the smoke and glare.
Jessan fired into the packed figures before they could spread out. More streaks of blaster fire zinged in from behind the barricades where the Professor and Tarnekep lay hidden.
The attackers were no slouches either—they fired as they came.
So many of them
, thought Jessan.
Who the hell can throw this many into a private war?
Then the blaster bolts were coming in his direction as well, and he didn’t dare look any longer. He could only take quick snap shots in what he knew was the direction of the opening—a group of three, duck, a burst of five, duck, while the attackers kept on coming.
B
EKA SAW the hinges of the door glow red. “Here they come!” she shouted as the door fell inward. The clerk/comptech beside her hadn’t moved. “Fire, damn you!”
The flare launcher went off with a
whump
, and the attackers charged in through smoke and blazing light.
You’ve only got a little time before their eyes adjust,
Beka thought.
Make the most of it.
She heard the clerk/comptech shout a warning as she stood up for a clear line of sight on the attackers’ point man. A blaster bolt burned into the stack of boxes with a sound like water hitting hot metal. She ignored it and fired, smiling with satisfaction as she saw the bolt connect.
Got you, you bastard!
She aimed and fired again.
A harsh grating noise broke her concentration. She looked to the right and saw the lift doors opening.
They must have climbed down the shaft,
she thought. Peyte fired off another flare toward the new sound, and the blaster beams that had been coming from the Professor’s position switched from the stair door to the lift entrance.
Peyte’s flare exploded into deep crimson flame. Over by the stairway door, meanwhile, his first star was guttering out. The white light faded and died. Seconds later five attackers burst out of the smoke in front of the barricade, looming enormous against the bloodred light of the second flare.
They’re right on top of us!
Beka shot the first one, and then another, but the other three kept coming. She took aim at the closest, and fired again.
Nothing happened.
No charge. You’ve had it, my girl.
She threw the useless weapon full force at the nearest of her assailants. The heavy blaster hit him squarely in the forehead, and he went down. She heard the sound of the flare launcher going off again beside her. The star hit one of the two remaining men in the belly. He screamed—a a high, rising note that got inside her skull and wouldn’t stop—and began to roll on the floor.
Beka drew her knife and braced herself as the last man leaped over the barricade and tackled her. He was almost as big as her brother Ari, and had momentum on his side. She went down backward with him on top, and barely remembered to fall the way the Professor had taught her.
She felt a muscle in her leg twist anyway as she hit the concrete, with the big man landing on top of her at full length.
“What the hell?” she heard him grunt, on a note of surprise. “This one’s a bitch!”
She shoved the dagger home between his ribs.
His heavy body went limp, pressing her down on the floor. She cursed in every language she knew, and half-pushed, half-squirmed her way out.
The clerk/comptech was staring at her. Beka thought for a moment that he’d heard the dead man’s last words, and felt a surge of blind panic. Then she followed his eyes down to the bloody knife she’d pulled from the man’s side as she wiggled free, and understood.
She gave Peyte what she hoped was a reassuring smile. The young man flinched. She shrugged.
The hell with it, then.
She stood the rest of the way up and took a deep breath. The lieutenant commander would have to hear her from up in the front, and the Professor from wherever he had moved to since he’d fired last.
“Fall back!” she shouted. “Fall back!”
Tarnekep’s voice came to Jessan over the sound of blaster fire. “Fall back! Fall back!”
About time
, Jessan thought, and headed for the second pile of boxes. He was the first one there; a moment later, by the faint light still glowing off the interior wall, he could see Peyte coming, with Tarnekep limping alongside half-supported by the clerk/comptech’s shoulder.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, as soon as they got close enough.
“No,” said Peyte. “Just a twisted leg—not too bad. One of the bastards got over the barricade and jumped him.”
“Let me have a look,” said Jessan. He went down on one knee and reached out to make an examination by touch in the near-dark.
Tarnekep pulled away in a move that had his bad leg almost buckling, and the dying light glinted off a knife blade in the Mandeynan’s hand.
“You keep your damned hands off of me!”
Jessan drew his hand back and stood up slowly. “That’s fresh blood,” he said, in as calm and even a voice as he could manage. “Yours?”
“Of course not.”
But the knife didn’t go away, and Jessan watched the Mandeynan’s tense face for a stretched-out moment before another voice said, “Gently, Tarnekep. The young man meant no harm.”
Tarnekep gave a long sigh, and Jessan saw the lean frame relax. The four of them leaned against the packing crates while the last light from the star-flares faded and died.
Muffled sounds came from the darkness toward the front of the bay. “How’s the charge in your blaster, Commander?” the Professor asked.
“Damn near flat, I’m afraid.”
“Then you’ll need to make every shot count. But still-better to shoot as though you have all the charge in the world, than to let them know you’re running out. Tarnekep?”
“I ran dry up front,” said the gunfighter.
“Stay out of it unless they overrun us. Peyte—how many more flares do you have?”
“We’re down to the last one.”
“Save it, then.”
More noises drifted toward them from the forward part of the cargo bay.
“Commander,” murmured the Professor, “if you would be so good as to throw out a piece of your spare change …”
Jessan fumbled in his pocket for a tenth-credit bit, and tossed it out over the crates in the direction of the rustling noises. The coin hit the concrete with a high, metallic chink, and a blaster beam lanced out at the sound.
The Professor fired at the source of the bolt. By the brief light of the shot, Jessan saw a man fall to the floor—dead or cowering, he couldn’t say.
Another beam flashed up through the stacks of boxes. Jessan fired back, with no result that he could see. The firing speeded up and began to work its way closer, shot by shot. He and the Professor were soon returning to fire alternately between them, and there was no time left to wonder about results.
“My compliments,” said the Professor, when the interchange slackened for a moment. “For a medic, you shoot well.”
“You’ve guessed my guilty secret,” said Jessan. “I was on the Academy target team, the year we went to the Galactic finals. But believe me—” Two beams passed close above his head, and he threw himself against the boxes. “—I made a habit of standing at the other end of the range back then.”
“It’s only a matter of time before they rush us,” said Tarnekep’s voice out of the darkness near his ear.
“You’re just saying that to cheer me up,” replied Jessan under his breath. “I’d hate to think—what’s that noise?”
A pause followed. The Professor traded blaster bolts with someone unseen out in the darkened bay, and the faint sound grew steadily louder.
“Light orbit-to-atmosphere cargo craft, putting down on jets,” said Tarnekep, with more emotion in his cool voice than Jessan had heard all evening. “Your shuttle’s coming.”
“Right,” said Jessan. “I don’t know about the two of you—but when the Midnight Special pulls out, the Space Force is going to be on it.”
“You won’t get any argument from us, Commander,” said the Professor. “Time to fall back to the doors. Peyte, if you would be so good as to lend Tarnekep your shoulder again and move on out ahead—”
“No trouble.”
“Excellent.”
Jessan heard the clerk/comptech and the Mandeynan moving off at a limp-and-shuffle.
“Commander, you and I will have to cover the rear. I anticipate a rush as soon as our friends hear the shuttle and realize we’re leaving.”
“We can always hope they’re deaf and stupid,” said Jessan. And then, as at least five blaster beams lit up the air in front of him from positions uncomfortably close—“No, I guess they’re not. Let’s get going.”
“Wait for a count of five, then move back,” said the Professor, fading off into the darkness.
“Right,” said Jessan, to the air where the older man had been a second earlier. He directed a beam of his own into the darkness and began a subvocal count.
One … two … fire again … three … damn, that came close! … four … standing here lighting myself up like a holosign at midnight, I must be crazy … five, and move!
A blaster fired from behind him—the Professor, that would be, taking up the job of providing cover. Jessan loped past him toward the doors, counting as he went. On five, he stopped running and began firing to another count, until once again the Professor’s blaster lit up the darkness.
A long-legged man in no particular hurry could cross the clinic’s cargo bay from lift doors to blast doors in a little over a Standard minute, and run it in less. In objective time, Jessan realized, their leapfrogging journey back to the auxiliary door couldn’t be taking much longer—
which fails to explain,
he thought, caroming off a metal crate he’d forgotten was in the way and swearing in High Khesatan, Galcenian, and Nammerinish backwater-talk all at once,
why enough time’s gone by since we started for hell to freeze over and all my hair to go grey.
He found the back wall by running into it, and was so grateful for its presence that he didn’t bother to swear this time. He only sagged against the reinforced plast-block, breathing hard, until he could ask, “Are we all here?”
“All present or accounted for, Doc,” said Peyte, “And Namron’s still with us.”
“Had it easy,” came the petty officer’s faint voice from the floor. “Only had to lie here and watch the fireworks. Must have been … fun up front.”
“A laugh a minute,” Jessan assured him.
“Tarnekep,” said the Professor, “you have good ears. Has our taxi landed?”
“She’s down,” said the Mandeynan. “But let’s give them a while longer to open up and lower the ramp.”
“Can you walk on that leg?” Jessan asked.
He heard the gunfighter laugh, a bit shakily. “The question is, can I run on it?”
“Adrenaline’s a marvelous thing,” said Jessan. “Run now, pay later—but I think you’d better take my blaster and let Peyte and me carry Namron.”
Whatever Tarnekep might have said was cut short by a whoop from Peyte. “Here they come, Doc!”
Jessan slapped his blaster into the Mandeynan’s lean, sinewy hand, then bent with Peyte to scoop up Namron, one of them under each of the petty officer’s arms.
They backed up to the auxiliary door, and Jessan reached around to slap the ID plate. He heard the locks click over, and threw his shoulder against the opening lever. The door swung open. He and Peyte half-backed, half-fell with Namron out onto the apron around the shuttle pad. Tarnekep and the Professor followed, firing back into the darkened bay.
“Son of a bitch!” Peyte yelled, as a blaster beam flashed past them out of the bay. The bolt came so close that Jessan could see Peyte’s indignant expression by its light. The clerk/ comptech lifted his flare launcher and fired their last flare back into the doorway.
“Come
on,
” said Jessan to the comptech. With Namron hanging limp between them, they turned and ran awkwardly toward the shuttle. The supply craft sat door open and ramp down in the center of the landing pad. Its pilot and flight engineer stood together at the top of the ramp, paralyzed by the scene.
Jessan had to admit the sight was spectacular. Sizzling rays of red, green, and blue-white came from the auxiliary door and from both sides of the pad, filling the air around the shuttle with a brilliant, deadly interlace of colored fire. By the intermittent, strobe-effect light, he could see the Professor and Tarnekep running on either side of him and Peyte, and firing as they ran.
“Space Force!” Jessan shouted at the shuttle crew over the whine of the blasters. “We’re Space Force! Let us in!”
One of the two figures on the ramp moved to do something—raise the ramp, toggle on the force field, duck out of the way, Jessan never knew. From out of the darkness came the ugly snarl of a crew-served energy gun, and one of the colored beams threading the darkness with light went into the doorway and brought down pilot and engineer together. One of the figures fell forward off the ramp onto the pad, and the next flash of light showed his head a blackened lump. The other staggered as the bolt hit, grabbed the frame of the door, and sank backward into the darkness as Tarnekep and the Professor reached the top of the ramp.
The one on the ground’s dead for sure
, Jessan told himself, as he and Peyte dragged Namron the last few steps over the threshold.
The one inside … get the door shut first, and then take a look.