[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
died. Some recognized the corpse-white Al'ar, and their shrieks added a new terror to the swirling
throng. Gun-fire boomed, the screams grew louder, and Wolfe saw a young man gape in disbelief at the
bloody mess that had been his knee.
They came to an open square with a deserted band-stand in its center. They ran toward the bandstand,
and six Chitet rose from concealment and rushed forward, encircling them.
Wolfe went airborne, his feet lashed out, and he felt bones shatter. He let himself land on the body,
scissor kicked the second attacker's feet out, and pulled the woman down on him as the third's rifle butt
crashed down.
The woman grunted, and Joshua rolled from under her and was up. He sidestepped the weapon's butt
strike. His hand reached and then touched the rifleman's elbow; he shouted, and the weapon fell from
pain-numbed fingers.
Wolfe's right hand came out in a finger strike, and the man bent double, trying to suck in the air denied
him as Wolfe's left hand tapped the back of his skull; the corpse fell limply to the decking.
Wolfe recovered and saw the fifth man's body spasm as if electrocuted. Taen's grasping organ flashed
out once more, and the sixth Chitet contorted and dropped.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Wolfe and Taen ducked for cover, and a blaster bolt from behind crashed into the plas wall above them.
"We appear to be cut off," Taen said, and fired a long burst behind himself.
Not far from the blackened crater the bolt had made was a panel, one of hundreds scattered through
Tworn Station. Wolfe had seen them; then their commonality had made them invisible.
On the panel were three sealed boxes, one labeled fire, the second dome leak, the third gas. Under them
was a warning:
EMERGENCY ONLY
Any person who knowingly sets
off a false alarm will be prosecuted
to the fullest extent of the
Tworn Station Authority.
The most severe penalties will be sought,
including fines, imprisonment, loss of citizenship,
and banishment for life.
"When in doubt," Wolfe murmured, and shot all three boxes open.
The night went mad. Sirens howled, screamed, clanged. Doors crashed shut. Partitions arched up from
the deck, closing off the dome.
"Come on! For the port!"
Lasers flashed overhead, to the side, and then steel walls rose smoothly, above a man's height, blocking
Chitet pursuit, continued to rise higher still until they touched the "sky," partitioning the dome and sealing
Tworn Station against the anticipated blowout.
Wolfe ran for the dome wall, pushing his way through the crowd that had poured from nowhere.
"To your stations! Emergency stations!" a man bayed. He saw Wolfe, the gun, then the Al'ar. He
screamed something, reached into a pocket, and Wolfe snap kicked him into a wall.
The dome wall was just ahead, and a blister yawned open.
"Inside!"
They dove into the survival pod as a gun blasted be-hind them. The pod was a thirty-foot-long cylinder
with a rounded front and a squared rear. There were four
rows of plas seats with safety harness and a small con-trol panel with a single porthole above it. The air
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
lock's gray metal was visible outside. Wolfe slammed the seal sensor, and the pod's hatch hissed closed.
"Did you know this was here?" Taen asked.
"I didn't. But there had to be something," Joshua said. "Shut up. I'm trying to figure out how this bastard
works."
He scanned the panel, ignoring the flashing lights, touched sensors, swore when nothing happened.
One panel was blinking insistently:
DO NOT LAUNCH WITHOUT AUTHORITY PERMISSION! DO NOT LAUNCH WITHOUT
AUTHORITY PERMISSION!
There was a crash as the unknown gunman outside sent another shot into the pod.
"Over there?" Taen suggested.
Under the controls was a square box marked over-ride. Wolfe ripped it open, saw old-fashioned
manual knife switches, and snapped them closed.
The world lurched beneath him as the pod rolled out into the lock. Wolfe heard the clunks of another
pod be-ing moved into position as the lock cycled them out of the dome. Water frothed outside, rising to
cover the porthole, and there was nothing but black.
Again the world roiled, and he stumbled, grabbing one of the plas seats to steady himself.
Taen curled himself into one of the seats.
"Your departure from the station was successful," a synthed voice intoned. "Alarm signals on all standard
distress frequencies are being automatically broadcast."
Wolfe swallowed, equalizing pressure as the pod shot toward the surface.
"And what happens next?"
"We surface, and I call for my ship. Then we get the hell out of Dodge."
"And after that? What are your long-range plans?"
"I would dearly like," Wolfe said, "to see tomorrow or maybe the week afterward." He became serious.
"I don'thave many options. Federation Intelligence will be after me for not killing you, and the Chitet
won't give up.
"I guess there's only two things possible: Either I start practicing how to become invisible on a full-time
basis or else go looking for this goddamned Mother Lu-mina that's got everyone on a skewed orbit."
"Are you suggesting," Taen said, "that you become my partner in my quest?"
"Ifyou wish meto," Joshua said carefully. The sub-ject seemed better handled in his second tongue.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"At one time, when we were little more than hatchlings,"Taen said,"I wondered what a partner-ship
would have produced, when we achieved full growth. But I thought in terms of exploration of the
unknown or something of that nature, and when I realized we were doomed to go to war with each other
& "
Joshua waited, but the Al'ar did not finish the sen-tence. After a heavy silence, Taen continued:
"But I haveallowedthe dead past to swallow me.
"I observed the way you fought down below. You are a far greater warrior than when last I saw you.
You have learned much with no one to guide you. You give great honor to your teachers, your fellow
students who tried to help you learn the ways of fighting.
"To answer your question, yes, of course. I wel-come you, Shadow Warrior, and it is my honor to be
allowed to fight with you."
Something touched Wolfe, something he had not felt for time beyond memory.
"We are approaching the ocean's surface," the artifi-cial voice said. "Would all aboard strap themselves
down, in the event of bad weather on the surface, to avoid injury. One person designated as pod control
offi-cer should approach the controls."
A board slid out from the control panel.
"This pod has a range of approximately a hundred miles at a fixed speed of three knots. You will
observe the controls provided."
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]