"They're fine."
"I got two big marines that'll hold you down if you don't show me those paws of yours. I see blood dripping from here."
"It's just rain." Without a word from Du, the two marines beside Jeff grabbed his arms and held his hands out, palms up. One was a woman; still, they held him like a solid metal vise. Du applied medicine to Jeffs hands; they hurt for a second, then went numb. Du finished by spraying something over it all. "That'll hold them. You want to shoot straight, don't you?"
"You've seen Annie?"
"No, but it's a good bet they brought her here for something. Knowing the trust level of the shits we're dealing with, they'll have a gun or knife on her to make sure she does what she's supposed to."
"I shoot whoever it is."
Dumont eyed Jeff for a long second, then shook his head. "No, Jeff. I'll take that one out. Not you."
"Why?"
"Because you got emotions behind your trigger finger. Makes people shake. Could shake your bullet from your target to Annie. Trust me, they'll be close. I'll do the shooting." Jeff didn't answer. Du didn't wait for him to. "Our secondary targets are about an hour out from the primary. Let's start walking, folks."
It took forty-five minutes to work their way around the three thousand yards of rain-slick rock; the ledge narrowed down to almost nothing for most of the way. Once on the rocky overhang, Dumont motioned Jeff to stay close. While the others anchored their safety lines to rocks or trees, Du worked out lines for both Jeff and himself. Done, the two edged forward to get their first look at the Greens' camp.
A fire crackled outside the cave made by the overhang. Three figures sat in lotus position, meditating on the flames. Two men stomped around the edge of the dark, air rifles in hand. A lone figure huddled in a lump halfway between the fire and the dark. Du pointed at that one, asked a question with a raised eyebrow. Jeff studied the figure. The clothes were a standard plaid. The figure was small, even allowing for its present lump. "Daga, I think," Jeff muttered into his throat mike.
"Anybody see a box?" Du asked on net. Jeff didn't; neither did anyone else. There were plenty of piles around the fire; any one could hide the deadly box. One of the meditators could be sitting on it, for all Jeff knew.
"Settle in, crew. Company in fifteen minutes." Du unfolded a bedroll and draped it over Jeff. It kept the rain out, warmth in. Jeff rolled himself up in it, letting it protect him from the cold stone beneath, the cooling, damp air above. How could he hate a man who'd share his kit with you even as he waited to kill, and maybe be killed? What were the starmen all about? Jeff wondered if he would ever know. Then thought again, and wondered how long it would take him to become one.
Annie rode, knowing that the woman beside her had an air pistol aimed straight at Nikki's back. Around her, men rode, heads down against the rain. Ahead of them and higher up, Annie caught glimpses of a fire. That was where this trail led. That was where it would all come together-or all come apart.
Hardly a word had been spoken to Annie and Nikki by their captors. Kicks, orders, demands, yes, but no talking; Pretty Boy and the woman had seen to that. The men feared the woman; maybe they could still hear the screams of the wife at the house as the woman tortured her to make her husband talk. Annie remembered and struggled to swallow the terror memory raised in her. Somehow, in this dark, with Dumont's pitiful pistol, she would find a way to get her and Nikki away from this woman.
The husband had told everything. Shouted it in the end. It hadn't saved him or his wife. Annie knew nothing she and Nikki did to please these people would save them in the end either.
There was noise ahead. The man bringing supplies must have arrived at the camp. Pretty Boy came back to exchange words quickly with the woman. Then the men dismounted and Pretty Boy led them into the trees.
"We wait here, children, for a while. When we ride in, Nikki, you go straight to Daga and tell her her mother's dying, that she has to go home. Don't explain how you found their camp, just talk to Daga. Let things get confused." The woman's smile might have been lovely on a picture. Here, with her words, it was cold evil. "Do what I say, and you and Daga can ride out of here tomorrow happy as kids should be. Cross me, and I'll hurt you worse than any priest's hell. Understand?'
Nikki nodded, fighting tears. Annie said, "Yes, ma'am."
The woman accepted their agreement like it was her due. Her gun stayed under her cloak, weaving between Annie and Nikki, a snake eager to strike. Annie kept her hands on the reins, close to her wallet and its gun, but subservient, the way Ma said a good serving girl met a customer. Time stood still as they and their horses rested. Their mounts at least could crop a little green from trailside. Annie had nothing to do but taste terror rising in her throat. Could she find a way out for her and her sister? Could she grab it when she saw it?
"Let's get moving," the woman ordered. "Annie, you first. Remember, I have my gun on Nikki."
"I will remember," Annie said obediently. The horses plodded up the trail. As they reached the edge of the clearing, Annie whispered back, "We should announce ourselves."
"Then do it" The woman's whisper could flail skin.
"Hello the fire. We have an urgent message for Daga Finnigan. Is she there?"
"Hello the traveler," came a woman's voice. "You picked a miserable night for traveling. What brings you out?" Annie measured the words. They were what should be said, but there was no feeling behind them. At the edge of the clearing, Annie paused, let those around the fire see her. She dismounted and led her horse forward. Nikki and the woman did the same.
"Is Daga there?" Nikki called, her voice trembling. Maybe those around the fire would mistake it for concern.
Daga appeared suddenly from a shadow, distant from the fire. Annie's horse snorted at the surprise. Annie took reins from Nikki as her sister raced to Daga. "Your ma, she's taken fever. She's calling for you. We've been hunting for you forever."
The woman gave her horse over to Annie, the slight flow of her cloak giving Annie a glimpse of the pistol's eager jaws. Annie got all three sets of reins into one hand, let her own free hand wander toward the wallet and its own death.
From around the fire, people stepped forward, rifles in hand.
"And how is it that you only now found us?" a woman's voice sweetly asked.
"We asked in all the villages," Annie spoke over Nikki. "Someone said she'd seen a girl who looked like Daga gathering mushrooms around these rocks." Annie shouted, trying for time and confusion. The woman beside her curled her lips in her satisfied death smile and raised her chin, as if to urge Annie on. "We've been searching and saw your fire in the night."
"Daga," Nikki blabbered on, "your ma, she's real sick. She really wants to see you. She really needs you."
"Why don't I
really
believe that?" the woman from the fire said. "Sean, see what the smiling one has under her cloak. Brothers, check the woods. Where there's one, there's more."
Suddenly the night was alive with cracks, pops, and whizzing noises. Sean dropped, grabbing his knee and screaming in agony.
'Take 'em down!" came over Jeffs commlink. His rifle had Dumont's fire plan. Jeff was assigned the woods on the right side of the camp; he split three targets with a marine. Dumont had taken the center of the camp. Heave, whom he insisted was his best sharpshooter, shared it with him. Jeff squeezed off a three-shot burst at his first target. The man dropped, pulse and respiration slowing. Jeff switched to his next target, but this one was behind a tree and spraying the camp with air pellets as fast as he could work his action. Jeffs burst missed. To his right was a long crack of thunder. The marine had gone to live ammunition, stitching the forest with needles that shattered trees and downed logs. The target died.
"Over the side, crew," Dumont ordered.
Jeff hurled himself off the cliff, then tried to remember all he'd been told about rappelling. He grabbed the break on his chest, felt his hands go hot, then shoot with pain as rope and break didn't quite work as he'd expected. Maybe he wasn't remembering right. He landed hard, rolled away from the rope, and brought his rifle up.
The woman from the campfire held an airgun under Nikki's chin. Daga was close enough to take any spray as well.
Annie held three horses, their eyes wide with fright, but no wider than Annie's. Another woman held a pistol to Annie's head.
"I want the box," the woman beside Annie snapped.
"I have it and no one is getting it," the woman threatening Nikki snarled back.
"Gee, and I was told all the women on this planet were so ladylike," Dumont answered with a boyish grin. "Goes to show what happens when you believe the advertising."
"Get out of here, all of you," the woman from the camp demanded.
"My men have you all covered," the other countered.
"My men have put all of your men to sleep," Dumont replied. "At least all of them who ain't dead," he added, nudging Sean's lifeless body with his toe.
Jeff did a quick survey. Some around the fire looked to be bleeping, but several of them had air pellets in them as well. If no one took care of their wounds they could bleed to death.
Dumont pointed that out.
"I should care?" the one by Annie snapped.
"It's for the cause," the other answered.
"God protect us from causes," Dumont countered.
"You starmen, you believe in nothing. I should have disappeared you first," the one with Nikki spat.
Jeff tried to edge downhill, toward Annie. Dumont put an end to that with a slight wave of the hand that wasn't visible to the two women. "Then you'll just have to give me something to believe in, besides having another beer. I think I know what you believe in," he said to Nikki's captor, "but what's put you on this chase?" he asked Annie.
The woman flashed Dumont a greedy grin. "I'm in it for the money. Vicky Sterling'll pay well for the box. And you, over there," she said to the other woman, "she wants the star-base vanished as much as you, maybe more. I see a deal here."
Maybe she did, but Annie saw a woman distracted. Her free hand had been rubbing her stomach slowly, as if terrified and fighting to keep her supper down. Now Jeff saw where that hand was reaching: into her wallet. The short snout of a starman's gun was visible for a second. Then it spoke—on full automatic.
Her captor's eyes grew wide with surprise as her gut was stitched open. Annie dropped the horses's reins and batted away the gun at her head—a split second before it fired.
Jeff whirled, bringing his rifle up to take out Nikki's captor. Two, maybe three marines had already put three-round bursts into her skull. Her head wasn't there anymore.
The body stood for a second, then crumpled, air rifle still aimed at its hostage's chin. Nikki and Daga, covered with gore and bone from the hits beside them, screamed hysterically as they collapsed to their knees. Dumont rushed to them, chucked the air rifle away, then held both girls as they shrieked.
Jeff raced for Annie.
She stared down at the woman. "I did it," she whispered hoarsely. "I did it myself. I did," she said as Jeff took her in his arms. "I hoped you'd come. Hoped you would," she muttered to his chest. "But I didn't know. I wasn't sure they'd let you. But I knew I'd do what I had to when the time came." She looked up at Jeff. "I did it."
"You did, honey. You did." Then she began to cry. Trembling in his arms, the tears turned to racking sobs. Jeff found himself crying, too. He didn't want to. A marine wouldn't. A glance behind him showed tears on Dumont's face as he held the girls. Maybe it was okay to cry.
Three marines went through the piles of gear around the fire and found the vanishing box. Others collected the sleepers in the woods, brought them in, and tied their arms and legs. One went from wounded to wounded, stopping the bleeding. The marines were a good team, they let their boss have the time to cry with the girls, let Jeff rejoice and tremble with his girl. It was fifteen minutes before one of them tapped Dumont. "The Colonel'11 want to know, sir."
Dumont looked. Sniffed. Pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, used it, then tapped his commlink. "Boss man, this is Du. We got the box. We got all the hostages unhurt. This street is clean, man. Your dog's got one hell of a bite."
Ray laughed at Dumont's report; his dog did have sharp teeth. "Took you long enough," he countered. "Any casualties?"
"No marines. Young Jeffs hands are a bit the worse for wear. He failed on his first rappelling gig. We got all three of the missing local girls unhurt. At least they're not bleeding. It got a bit ugly."
"But they have a long life ahead to get over it. I'll launch a blimp at first light to connect with the package. We're sending it south."
"You might want to wait on that, sir. These ridges are no place for a blimp. I suggest we meet on the plains."
Ray glanced at the blimp pusher, who'd come into his office when he started talking. She nodded. "Pilot agrees with you. How long to get down off that hill of yours?"
"We spent the day getting here. I guess it'll take most the night getting down. I'll call in when we're close."