Admiral Naismith glanced out the big square windows, framing another dark Jacksonian winter afternoon, with low scudding clouds starting to spit snow. The force screen sparkled, silently eating the ice spicules. “Recent history is much on my mind, ma’am,” he said to Lilly. “If you know it, you know why I don’t wish to linger here. Get to your point.”
Not nearly oblique enough for Jacksonian business etiquette, but Lilly nodded. “How is Dr. Canaba these days, Admiral?”
“What?”
Succinctly, for a Jacksonian, Lilly again described her interest in the fate of the absconded geneticist. “Yours is the organization that made Hugh Canaba completely disappear. Yours is the organization that lifted ten thousand Marilacan prisoners of war from under the noses of their Cetagandan captors on Dagoola Four, though I admit they have spectacularly not-disappeared. Somewhere between those two proven extremes lies the fate of my little family. You will pardon my tiny joke if I say you appear to me to be just what the doctor ordered.”
Naismith’s eyes widened; he rubbed his face, sucked air through his teeth, and managed a strained-looking grin. “I see. Ma’am. Well. In fact, such a project as you suggest might be quite negotiable, particularly if you think you might like to join Dr. Canaba. I’m not prepared to pull it out of my pockets this afternoon, you understand—”
Lilly nodded.
“But as soon as I make contact with my back-up, I think something might be arranged.”
“Then as soon as you make contact with your back-up, return to us, Admiral, and your clone-twin will be made available to you.”
“No—!” began the hot woman, half-rising; her comrade caught her arm and shook her head, and she sank back into her seat. “Right, Bel,” she muttered.
“We’d hoped to take him today,” said the mercenary, glancing at him. Their eyes intersected joltingly. The Admiral looked away, as if guarding himself from some too-intense stimulus.
“But as you can see, that would strip me of what seems to be my main bargaining chip,” Lilly murmured. “And the usual arrangement of half in advance and half on delivery is obviously impractical. Perhaps a modest monetary retainer would reassure you.”
“They seem to have taken good care of him so far,” said the brown-haired officer in an uncertain voice.
“But it would also,” the Admiral frowned, “give you an opportunity to auction him to other interested parties. I would caution you against starting a bidding war in this matter, ma’am. It could become the real thing.”
“Your interests are protected by your uniqueness, Admiral. No one else on Jackson’s Whole has what I want. You do. And, I think, vice versa. We are very well suited to deal.”
For a Jacksonian, this was bending over backward to encourage. Take it, close the deal! he thought, then wondered why. What did these people want him for? Outside, a gust of wind whipped the snowfall to a blinding, whirling curtain. It ticked on the windows.
It ticked on the windows… .
Lilly was the next to be aware, her dark eyes widening. No one else had noticed yet, the cessation of that silent glitter. Her startled gaze met his, as his head turned back from his first stare outward, and her lips parted for speech.
The window burst inward.
It was a safety-glass; instead of slicing shards, they were all bombarded by a hail of hot pellets. The two mercenary women shot to their feet, Lilly cried out, and Hawk leaped in front of her, a stunner appearing in his hand. Some kind of big aircar was hovering at the window: one, two … three, four huge troopers leaped through.
Transparent biotainer gear covered nerve-disruptor shield-suits; their faces were fully hooded and goggled. Hawk’s repeated stunner fire crackled harmlessly over them.
You’d get farther if you threw the damned stunner at them! He looked around wildly for a projectile weapon, knife, chair, table-leg, anything to attack with. Over one of the mercenary women’s pocket comm links a tinny voice was crying, “Quinn, this is Elena. Something just dropped the building’s force screen. I’m reading energy discharges—what the hell is going on in there? You want back-up?”
“Yes!” screamed the hot woman, rolling aside from a stunner beam, which followed her, crackling, across the carpet. Stunner-tag. The assault was a snatch, not an assassination, then. Hawk finally recovered the wit to pick up the round table and swing with it. He hit one trooper but was stunner-dropped by another. Lilly stood utterly still, watching grimly. A gust of cold wind fluttered her silk pant legs. Nobody aimed at her.
“Which one’s Naismith?” boomed an amplified voice from one of the biotainered troopers. The Dendarii must have disarmed for the parley; the brown-haired mere closed hand-to-hand on an intruder. Not an option open to him. He grabbed Rowan’s hand and dodged behind a chair, trying to get a clear run toward the exit tube.
“Take ’em both,” the leader shouted over the din. A trooper leaped toward the lift tube to cut them off; the rectangular facet of his stunner discharger winked in the light as he found near-point-blank aim.
“Like hell!” yelled the Admiral, cannoning into the trooper. The trooper stumbled and his aim went wild. The last thing he saw as he and Rowan dove for the lift tube was a stunner beam from the leader taking Naismith in the head. Both the other Dendarii were down.
They descended with agonizing slowness. If he and Rowan could get to the force screen generator, could they get it turned back on and trap the attackers inside? Stunner fire sizzled after them, starry bursts on the walls. They twisted in air, somehow landed on their feet, and stumbled backward into the corridor. No time to explain—he grabbed Rowan’s hand and slapped it flat to the Durona-keyed lock-pad, and hit the power-off square with his elbow. The trooper pursuing them yelped and fell three meters, not quite head-first.
He winced at the thud, and towed Rowan down the corridor. “Where are the generators?” he yelled over his shoulder at her. Other Duronas, alarmed, were appearing from all directions. A pair of green-clad Fell guards burst into the corridor’s far end and pelted toward the penthouse lift-tube. But what side were they on? He pulled Rowan into the nearest open doorway.
“Lock it!” he gasped. She keyed the door shut. They were in some Durona’s residence suite. A cul-de-sac made a poor bolt-hole, but help seemed to be on the way. He just wasn’t sure for whom. Something just dropped your force screen… . From the inside. It could only have been dropped from the inside. He half-bent, mouth wide for air, lungs on fire, heart racing and chest aching, a dizzy darkness clouding his vision. He stumbled to the dangerous window anyway, trying to get a handle on the tactical situation. Muffled shouts and thumps penetrated from the wall by the corridor.
“How t’hell’d those bastards get your screen down?” he wheezed to Rowan, clutching the windowsill. “Didn’t hear an explosion—traitor?”
“I don’t know,” Rowan replied anxiously. “That’s outer-perimeter security. Fell’s men are supposed to be in charge of it.”
He stared out over the icy parking lot of the compound. A couple more green-clad men were running across it, shouting, pointing upward, taking cover behind a parked vehicle, and struggling to get a projectile-weapon aimed. Another guard made urgent negative gestures at them; a miss could take out the penthouse and everyone in it. They nodded and waited.
He craned his neck, face to the glass, trying to see upward and to the left. The armored aircar loomed, still hovering at the penthouse window.
The assailants were withdrawing already. Damn! No chance with the force-screen. I’m too slow. The aircar rocked as the troopers hastily re-boarded. Hands flashed, and a thick little grey-clad figure was dragged across the gap, six heart-stopping flights above the concrete. A limp trooper was dragged across too. They were leaving no wounded for questioning. Rowan, teeth clenched, pulled him back. “Get out of the line of fire!”