Conquerors' Legacy

13

Cavanagh needed no encouragement. He threw himself back across the alley, slamming his shoulder against the brick wall with jarring force. Rolling to put his back to the wall, splaying both hands to the sides for stability, he risked a quick look back at Bronski.

The brigadier's left hand had snaked under his jacket, emerging with a new flechette-gun clip. Cavanagh caught a glimpse of bright-red cartridges, started to turn back to the approaching Bhurt—

And jerked his head back again as a movement caught the corner of his eye. At the far end of the alley a shadowy figure had appeared, its black garb silhouetted against the only marginally lighter gloom of the alley, moving swiftly toward Bronski's back, the sounds of its footsteps masked by the roars of the first Bhurt and the shouts and shrieks of scattering pedestrians.

And with a stab of horror Cavanagh understood. The first Bhurt—the one moving slowly and brazenly toward them—was merely a feint. The second one was the real attack.

And with his back to the oncoming threat, his gun and attention pointed the wrong direction, Bronski was about to die.

"Look out!" Cavanagh shouted to him, clawing frantically beneath his jacket for the flechette pistol hidden there.

Frantically, but uselessly. His shout had caught Bronski's attention, and on the brigadier's face he could see the sudden realization there was danger behind him. But even as he started to spin around, Cavanagh knew it was too late. The Bhurt was coming down the alley like a charging rhino, and there was no possible way Bronski was going to be able to complete his turn and get a stopping shot off before the alien trampled him into the broken flagstones of the alley. At the very edge of his vision Cavanagh saw Kolchin throw up his arms as if in panic and then double over at the waist. Vaguely seen, mostly imagined, something seemed to flicker through the air past Bronski's ear—

And suddenly the hilt and three quarters of Kolchin's big split-blade knife appeared, protruding from the Bhurt's upper left leg.

The alien bellowed, his torso jerking to the left, the rhythm of his running thrown violently off by the blow. He got two more steps, arms flailing like windmill blades as he fought to regain his balance. But the impact of the knife, plus the uneven footing, proved too much for him. An instant later, with a crash that shook the whole alley, he slammed full-length onto the ground. Bellowing again, he shoved himself halfway up from his prone position, got his feet under him—

And then Bronski's flechette pistol barked, and the alien's upper right torso exploded in a brilliant blaze of flame.

The alien convulsed, his angry bellow abruptly turning to a scream of rage as he struggled up into a crouch. Bronski fired again and again, the Bhurt seeming to dissolve into multiple bursts of flame and smoke and blood. But the defiant screams continued, and through the smoke Cavanagh could see him still struggling mindlessly to get the rest of the way to his feet and kill the humans who were doing this to him. If Bronski's gun ran out of explosive cartridges, he might still make it.

And then, to Cavanagh's shock, an echoing scream came from behind him.

Somehow, in the eternity of the past few seconds, he'd forgotten about the other Bhurt.

He twisted around. The first alien, the failure of their clever little subterfuge having finally penetrated its thick skull, had abandoned the effort at subtlety and was lurching to the attack.

"Bronski!" Kolchin called.

The brigadier didn't even turn around. Still blasting away at the second Bhurt, he snapped his free hand up underneath his extended right arm, tossing Kolchin's flechette pistol toward him. Kolchin caught the weapon and twisted around, the gun blazing into action almost before it was fully settled into his hand.

But it was an effort Cavanagh knew was doomed to failure. Even with the assistance of the running Bhurt's forward momentum, Kolchin's thrown knife had barely managed to penetrate the alien's thick hide. Standard flechette loads would do no better, and that was all Kolchin's gun was loaded with.

The Bhurt knew it, too, or else was too infuriated to care. Crossing his massive arms in front of his face, making no effort to evade the steel darts collecting on his arms and torso, he kept coming.

"Cavanagh!" Bronski shouted.

Cavanagh turned back, dimly noticing the fact that the rapid-fire explosions had ceased. Bronski was beckoning sharply toward him, the second Bhurt a gory mess, finally unmoving, at his feet. "This way," the brigadier shouted. "Move it!"

Cavanagh pushed off the wall and ran toward him. "Kolchin, come on."

"Go with Bronski," Kolchin ordered, still firing his useless darts at the approaching Bhurt. "Move, damn it."

There was no time to argue. Cavanagh reached Bronski's side; and then the brigadier had a grip on his arm and was pulling him down the alley. "Where are we going?"

"Away from here," Bronski said. There was a crash behind them— "Don't look," the brigadier ordered.

"But Kolchin—" Cavanagh said, resisting Bronski's grip as he tried to turn around.

"I said don't look," Bronski snapped, jerking his arm hard enough to hurt. "You just concentrate on your running and hope whoever set this up didn't put in any backstops."

Apparently, they hadn't. Cavanagh and Bronski reached the end of the alley without incident, emerging into a brightly lit but strangely deserted market street. "You can always tell a backwater culture," Bronski said, tugging Cavanagh sharply to the left. "They don't stand around gawking at trouble—they get out of sight and stay there. This way."

Halfway down the block they reached a narrow stairway on their left, wedged between two shop fronts. "All the way to the top," Bronski told him, pushing him into the shadowed entryway and pausing to pull a fresh flechette clip from beneath his jacket. "Go on, I'll catch up."

Breathing hard, leg muscles starting to burn with the exertion, Cavanagh headed up. The stairway was uncomfortably dark, its gloom relieved only by a dim light plate at each floor's landing. He had passed the second floor and was on his way to the third when he heard Bronski start up the stairs; had just made it to the fourth and top floor when the brigadier caught up with him. "What now?" Cavanagh asked, gasping for breath.

"We wait," Bronski said. He was breathing a little hard, too. "There's an empty apartment up here I can get us into—I moved in yesterday to see if you'd show up at Bokamba's place. But we need to know first if they saw us come in here."

"They?" Cavanagh repeated, frowning. "I thought you killed one."

"I did," Bronski said grimly. "It turns out there were two others waiting in the wings. Luckily not at the end we left by—they were probably ready with a pincer movement near Bokamba's place. I saw the three of them come charging out of the alley just before I headed up here."

Cavanagh braced himself. "What about Kolchin?"

Bronski looked away. "I don't know," he said quietly. "I didn't see him."

The dim light of the landing seemed to become a little darker. "I understand," he said quietly.

"Don't go jumping to any conclusions," Bronski warned, his voice oddly gruff. "He could have made it out of the alley just behind us and been out of sight the other direction before we were able to turn around and look. He was a Peacekeeper commando once, and you never count a Peacekeeper commando out until you've retrieved a body."

Cavanagh nodded, trying hard to believe him. Kolchin deserved far more than just a brief, passing thought, but there was no time right now for anything else. No time to mourn him properly. "Shouldn't you be calling someone for help?"

"Like who?"

"Like the police, maybe? Keeping the peace is what they're here for, isn't it?"

Bronski snorted under his breath. "Not when it involves NorCoord citizens getting beat on by aliens. Not on Granparra, anyway. As long as they don't see their own people or property as being in danger, they'll probably stay out of it. Probably be cheering for the Bhurtala."

An unpleasant chill ran up Cavanagh's back. He'd long ago accepted the fact that putting up with a certain amount of resentment toward NorCoord was one of the factors involved in doing business around the Commonwealth. Apparently, the feelings were running a lot deeper than mere resentment. "What about the Myrmidon Weapons Platform, then? They ought to have the necessary firepower to deal with a group of Bhurtala."

"Sure they do," Bronski said. "Problem is that with the Parra vine blocking a straight-line drop, it'd take them a minimum of an hour to get here. Too late to do us any good." He gestured with the barrel of his pistol toward Cavanagh's jacket. "I don't suppose you happen to have any explosive rounds in that gun of yours."

Cavanagh had completely forgotten about his flechette pistol. "No," he said, feeling a guilty ache as he pulled it out. Everything had happened so quickly down there in the alley, but he should at least have been able to get a couple of shots off at the Bhurtala. It probably wouldn't have made any difference; but then again, it might. He would never know now. "I only have standard-load flechettes. Kolchin used up all his explosive rounds back on the mainland."

"Figured as much," Bronski grunted. "Let's hope they didn't see us—"

He broke off, his hand raised suddenly for silence. Cavanagh froze, listening.

They could hear the sound of heavy, clumping footsteps echoing up through the stairway. The footsteps stopped; then, abruptly, came the splintering crash of a breaking door. Someone screamed, someone else shouted, the verbal uproar mixing in with the sounds of running feet and more of the clumping footsteps. The footsteps came to a halt, and there was a second crash.

Bronski swore. "So much for that hope," he muttered. "They're checking all the apartments. Means they know we're here."

Cavanagh felt his stomach tighten. Trapped here on the top floor. Might as well have been gift wrapped. "What do we do?"

Bronski nodded toward the corner of the landing and a rusty ladder leading to an equally rusty ceiling trapdoor. "We keep going."

It was obvious at first glance that the trapdoor hadn't been opened in years; equally obvious that it wasn't going to be opened now without creating considerable noise in the process. But Bronski was ahead of the problem, waiting until the Bhurtala two floors below were in the process of breaking down the next door before forcing the trap up against its protesting hinges. A minute later both men were on the roof.

"Now what?" Cavanagh asked, shivering in the cool night air as he looked around them. The entire block of buildings had been constructed under a single roof, and aside from a couple dozen vent pipes poking up like defoliated shrubs, the rooftop stretched flat and open. No cover, no place to hide, and on all sides a sheer four-story drop to the streets below.

"We find another stairway and get the hell out of here," Bronski said, peering across the roof. "Looks like another trapdoor over there." He started off in that direction—

And suddenly, from behind them, came the high-pitched screech of tearing metal.

Cavanagh spun around. The trapdoor they'd just come through had vanished, along with about half the metal framing that had attached it to the tarred-wood roofing material. Even as he watched, a huge Bhurtist hand came up through the opening and began ripping away at the rest of the framing.

"Damn!" Bronski bit out, jamming his gun back under his jacket. "Come on."

He headed off, but not in the direction of the trapdoor he'd pointed out. "What about the other stairs?" Cavanagh called, running after him.

"We'll never get it open in time," Bronski called back over his shoulder.

Cavanagh frowned. Near as he could tell, they were headed at a dead run straight toward one edge of the roof. "So what are we doing?"

"This," Bronski said. Still running, he dropped into a half crouch and jumped—

And caught hold of a tendril loop that hung a meter down from the main mesh of the Parra vine spanning the sky overhead.

"Don't just stand there," the brigadier grunted, hauling himself up with some effort onto the tendril. "Come on."

Grimacing, Cavanagh backed up a few steps, eyeing the vertical distance dubiously. But a quick survey showed that this was the only tendril over their roof that came even marginally within reach. If the alternative was to wait here for the Bhurtala... Taking a deep breath, he ran forward and jumped.

He made it, just barely, getting his left hand and about half of his right on the tendril. "Use your momentum," Bronski instructed, catching his right wrist and pulling the hand into a more secure grip. "Swing your legs, arch your back, and pull. Come on, you must have seen gymnasts do this a hundred times."

"I'm not a gymnast," Cavanagh gritted, swinging his legs as instructed and trying to remember exactly how the professionals did this. It always looked so smooth and quick and graceful that he'd never really noticed the technique.

"No, you're going to be lunch," Bronski shot back. "Come on."

Swallowing a curse, Cavanagh swung his knees up, arching his back and tugging with his arms—

And suddenly he was there, teetering precariously on his chest on top of the vine, pumping his legs hard to try to maintain his balance. Bronski caught him under the right armpit and hauled, and a few seconds later he was up. "About time," the brigadier grunted. "Here they come."

Cavanagh looked behind him. The entire metal framing of the trapdoor was gone, along with sizable chunks of the wood around it, and one of the Bhurtala was fighting to squeeze his massive shoulders through the freshly enlarged opening. "Can we get rid of this tendril somehow?" he asked as he and Bronski pulled themselves up onto the main Parra mesh.

"Take too long to cut it," Bronski said, pulling out his flechette pistol and aiming at the tendril. "Let's try this instead."

He fired three times. But the steel darts merely embedded themselves in the vine's tough outer surface without cutting it. "That should do it," Bronski said, putting the gun away again and carefully pulling himself to his feet. "Let's go."

Cavanagh followed suit, wondering what all that had been about. Was Bronski hoping the embedded darts would cut into the hands of the Bhurtala when they tried to grab hold of it? "Where to?" he asked.

"Let's start by getting away from here," Bronski said. "After that we'll figure out how to get down."

They set off. From the ground the tendrils of the Parra vine's intertwined mesh looked fairly thin, even delicate. In fact they were reasonably thick and not delicate at all, most of them measuring a good six to ten centimeters in diameter, with the main supports twice that thick. Slightly flattened on top, they were quite adequate for a human being to walk along. And on a clear, sunny day, at ground level, Cavanagh wouldn't have thought twice about doing so.

At night, five stories above the streets of Puerto Simone Island, it was terrifying.

And they hadn't even gotten yet to where they were five stories over the streets.

"Don't look down," Bronski kept saying as Cavanagh inched with painstaking care along the mesh. "Stick to the main support vines—they're thicker, and they have those outrigger branches coming off the sides you can use if you start losing your balance. And don't look down."

It was stupid advice. Cavanagh had to look down if he wanted to see where he was going. Too tense even to swear, he kept going, fixing his eyes on the vine and trying hard to keep the rooftop below in hazy unfocus where he could almost forget how far down it was.

They were nearly to the edge of the roof, with the deep chasm of the street gaping ahead and below, when a triumphant roar came from behind them.

"Keep moving," Bronski ordered, pausing and turning carefully around to look.

"They're on the roof?" Cavanagh demanded, too shaky to risk his balance by turning himself.

"The first one is," Bronski said grimly, pulling out his flechette pistol. "Here he comes toward the tendril." The brigadier looked around them— "Hold it, Cavanagh—sit down right where you are. Sit down now,"

There was an urgency in his voice that demanded instant obedience. Carefully, Cavanagh lowered himself into a squat; then, clenching his teeth, he let his legs slip off both sides of the vine, dropping down to land on his rear and stiffly outstretched hands. The jolt of the landing ran straight up his spine as his hands scrabbled for handholds on the short outrigger branches—

And without warning he was suddenly enveloped by a screaming swarm of small brown grooma.

"Bronski!" he shouted, ducking his head to his chest as the grooma darted across and past him, their claws tearing through his jacket into his arms and shoulders. One of the creatures slammed with exquisite pain into his right biceps, all but paralyzing that arm. Cavanagh squeezed his legs tightly around the vine, locking his ankles beneath it, hoping desperately he wouldn't roll over and wind up hanging upside down.

And then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the creatures were gone. "What in the name of—?"

"I'll be damned," Bronski said. "It worked."

Frowning, Cavanagh turned his head. The herd of grooma had gathered on the vine mesh directly above where all three Bhurtala were now standing, screaming and clawing viciously at the lead Bhurt as he struggled against their attacks to pull himself up by the hanging vine loop.

The hanging vine loop that Bronski had fired three flechettes into, cutting into the Parra vine with sharp-edged metal, and sparking precisely this reaction from the vine and its grooma symbionts. "That's not going to hold them for long," Cavanagh said.

"I know," Bronski said, already clambering carefully back to his feet. "Maybe it'll be long enough."

Grimacing, Cavanagh eased one leg up—

And dropped abruptly back into a sitting position as something tore through the outrigger branches and went whizzing past his ear.

"Watch it!" Bronski snapped, flailing his arms for balance. "Stay down!"

Cavanagh dropped his torso to the vine, wrapping his arms around it and looking back. The two Bhurtala still on the roof, not content to wait for their climbing partner to clear away the enraged grooma, were running across the rooftop toward the two humans, jagged pieces of something clutched in their huge hands. Even as Cavanagh watched, one of them hurled one of the pieces upward.

This one came closer, ricocheting off the vine just behind where Cavanagh was sitting. "They're trying to knock us off," Bronski snarled. "Using pieces from the trapdoor."

"What do we do?"

"You just hang on." Dropping into a crouch on the vine, Bronski swung his flechette pistol around and began firing.

For all the effect, he might as well have been throwing snowballs. The jagged missiles kept coming, swishing through the leaves or bouncing painfully off his legs or arms. One piece caught Bronski square on the chest, and he flailed madly for a heart-stopping minute before he managed to regain his balance.

And then, as abruptly as it had started, the barrage was over. Cautiously, Cavanagh leaned his head around the vine he was clinging to and looked down.

One of the Bhurtala was loping back toward the ruined stairway entrance. The second was crouched down below them, digging with his hands at the edge of the roof.

"He's ripping out pieces of wood," Bronski said quietly. "Getting more stuff to throw at us."

And even if he didn't succeed, the Bhurt heading back to the stairway was bound to find more ammunition. And then the two of them would resume the aerial attack, keeping the two humans pinned down until their friend hanging from the vine cleared away the grooma and climbed up.

At which point he and Bronski would be dead.

Cavanagh swallowed, his mouth chalk dry, his pulse racing painfully in his throat. The aliens' scenario was vacuum clear, as inevitable and unstoppable as an incoming tide. And it left them with exactly one option. "Then we have to go right now," he said to Bronski, his voice shaking with dread. "And we have to run."

"I know," Bronski said. Had probably known, in fact, long before Cavanagh had. "You think you're up to it?"

From beneath them came the sudden crack of breaking wood. "Do I have a choice?" Cavanagh snarled back, unlocking his ankles from around the vine and shoving himself to his feet again. "Come on."

He set off along the vine, his careful jogging pace quickly and inexplicably accelerating into a flat-out run as adrenaline or fatigued recklessness or sheer hubris flooded into him. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, his vision tunneling in to block out everything except the vine ahead, the strange madness ruthlessly crowding out any attempt by his rational mind to pause and think any of this through. Beneath his feet the rooftop dropped abruptly away to the lights and insectlike scurrying of pedestrians in the street below; behind him the sudden howling of their pursuers was grimly satisfying proof that they'd been caught off guard. A fresh pair of wooden chunks went spinning past, too late and far too wide of the mark. Cavanagh kept running, dimly noticing that his cheeks were hurting—

"Hold it," a panting voice called. "Cavanagh—hold it."

Cavanagh jerked, coming suddenly aware again of Bronski running beside him. Suddenly aware, too, that the ache in his cheeks was due to a wide, almost feral grin laminated across his face. "What?"

"I said stop, damn it," Bronski growled, coming to a teetering halt and jabbing a finger downward. "Look—we're here."

Cavanagh frowned, looking down. The street he'd last noticed himself running over was gone. In its place, barely two meters beneath his feet, was another roof. "Oh."

"Oh?" Bronski puffed, easing into a crouch and sitting down on the vine. "Is that all you can say, oh? I yelled for you to stop a whole building ago."

"You what?" Cavanagh blinked, sitting down on the vine and looking behind them. The brigadier was right: the rooftop directly behind them—a small roof, just beyond a narrow, dark alleyway—was indeed not the one they'd left from. That particular roof was one building farther back. "I'll be damned."

"I thought for a minute you were going to run all the way to the spaceport," Bronski grunted. Getting a grip on one of the tendrils, he slid off the vine, hanging for a second before dropping the rest of the way. "Damnedest switchover I ever saw. I didn't know you Brits did this berserker rage thing."

"Must be the Scandinavian blood in the family line," Cavanagh said, still not believing it as he followed the brigadier down onto the roof. "I don't think that's ever happened to me before."

"Well, don't lose the cutting edge just yet," Bronski warned, working at the edge of a shiny square in the roof with a folding knife. "In case you hadn't noticed, the Bhurtala aren't just sitting there waiting for us to come back."

Cavanagh looked around again. The grooma were still gathered around the damaged tendril, their chattering clearly audible over the city noise coming from below. But the Bhurtala themselves were nowhere in sight. "They must have gone back down to street level."

"Brilliant deduction, Holmes." There was a soft click, and Bronski pulled up the trapdoor. "If we're lucky, maybe they left before they saw which building we wound up on. Let's go."

No one was waiting for them as they emerged from the stairway onto a deserted side street. "Any idea where we are?" Cavanagh asked, looking around. Two blocks ahead he could see one of the more brightly lit major arteries, though even at their distance it was clear that the earlier crush of pedestrian traffic still hadn't resumed.

"Bokamba's place is about a block that way, I think," Bronski said, pointing in a direction roughly parallel to the main street. "The Puerto Simone street system is an inhumane joke, but I think if we go this way, we'll hit a tram line that'll get us to the spaceport."

"I hope it's not far," Cavanagh said, rubbing his sleeve at the sticky sweat around his neck. His berserker rage, as Bronski called it, had worn off on the walk down the stairway, leaving him a throbbing collection of sore joints, exhausted muscles, and aching bruises where the grooma and the Bhurtala's wooden missiles had struck him. "I don't think I could walk more than another—"

And from behind them came an all-too-familiar roar.

Cavanagh spun around. A block away, in the gloom of the side street, stood the dark figure of a Bhurt, its arms raised in triumph. It howled again, this time in a call of summons.

"Come on," Bronski snapped, slapping Cavanagh's shoulder for emphasis and taking off in the opposite direction.

"We can't outrun them," Cavanagh protested as he broke into a sprint, his aches and exhaustion pushed to the background by a fresh surge of adrenaline.

"You're welcome to surrender," Bronski shot back.

Cavanagh bit off a curse, glancing back over his shoulder. The Bhurt's summons had been answered: all three of the aliens were visible now, running side by side, their short, thick legs pumping rhythmically against the paving stones. In a straight run Bhurtist strength and stamina would eventually win out over almost any human opponent. The recommended counterstrategy, Cavanagh remembered reading, was to use the aliens' greater mass and inertia against them, changing direction as often as possible to limit the pursuers' ability to build up speed. In the middle of a city, though, with changes of direction defined by the layout of the streets, that wasn't going to be easy to do. Cavanagh glanced over his shoulder again—

His pounding heart seemed to freeze. Behind the three Bhurtala, moving silently and without lights, the shadowy shape of a groundcar had joined in the chase. This time, clearly, the Mrachanis were going to make sure their quarry didn't slip through their client aliens' fingers. "Bronski—look—"

He never finished the warning. His toe caught the edge of a loose paving stone, and the ground rushed up and slammed hard into his chest and outstretched hands.

For a handful of heartbeats he lay there, his head spinning, his whole body seemingly paralyzed as his lungs struggled to retrieve the air that the impact had knocked out of him. With a supreme effort he pushed up with one arm, half turning over. The Bhurtala were still there, still coming—

And then Bronski was beside him, his hands grabbing under Cavanagh's armpits. "Get up," the brigadier panted, hauling him halfway to his feet. "Get up, damn it."

But there's no reason to, Cavanagh tried to say. There's no hope. But his throat was as paralyzed as the rest of him. He tried to raise an arm, to point at the oncoming Bhurtala and the groundcar pacing along behind them. But the arm, too, was paralyzed, and dropped to his side with the warning undelivered. The aliens were less than half a block away, legs pumping harder as they closed in for the kill....

And suddenly, with a squeal of tires, the groundcar leaped forward, its lights blazing to life. The charging Bhurtala faltered, their silhouettes turning to look behind them—

And with a horrendous crash the vehicle slammed into the three aliens, scattering them like broken dolls through the air to land with sickening thuds on the paving stones. They skidded or rolled across the ground for another second, then lay still.

"See?" Bronski murmured as the groundcar coasted to a stop in front of them. "I told you not to count him out."

The vehicle's lights flicked off, and the driver leaned his head out the side window. "You all right, sir?"

Cavanagh smiled tightly. "I'm fine, Kolchin," he croaked, wobbling toward the groundcar. His muscles and joints still ached, and his chest now felt as if it were a single massive bruise. But suddenly none of it mattered. "I'm just fine."

Piltariab was waiting for them just inside the door to Bokamba's house. "Ah—Moo Sab Plex," he said to Kolchin, a puff of chlorinated coffee mingling with the scent of burned bread. "I'm highly relieved to see you back."

"I told you I'd have no trouble," Kolchin said as the Avuire stood to the side to let the three humans in. "But thank you for your concern. Have our guests behaved themselves?"

"They have created nu further truble," Mitliriab said darkly from an open doorway at the end of the entrance hall. Cavanagh sniffed, caught the same unidentified odor that he'd noticed on their earlier walk from the docks. "Is this the human yu spuke uf, Mu Sab Plex?"

"Yes," Kolchin said, touching Bronski's shoulder. "This is Assistant Commonwealth Liaison Petr Bronski."

Mitliriab's gaze shifted to Bronski. "I salute yu, Liaisun Brunski," he said. "I have a crime tu repurt tu the Human Cummunwealth. Wuld yu cume inside."

He stepped out of the doorway. Silently, Bronski led the way into the room.

It was a conversation room, small but neatly furnished. To the right of the doorway, lying unconscious amid a scattered agglomeration of kindling that had probably once been a side table, was another Bhurt. In the center of the room stood the third Avuire, Brislimab, exuding the same unidentified aroma as Mitliriab.

Sitting on the floor at his feet, huddling like a frightened hamster beneath the Avuire's glare, was a Mrachani.

"Well, well," Bronski said conversationally. "What have we here?"

"It is a Mrachani," Mitliriab said. "As a representative uf the Human Cummunwealth, I hereby infurm yu uf his use uf diargulates against the Avuire citizen Piltariab."

"What are diargulates?" Cavanagh murmured.

"Fragrance exhilarants," Bronski said, his voice suddenly gone very cold. "A subtle Avuirlian equivalent of hard narcotics. You have a cross-star license to dispense drugs, Mrachani?"

"This is all a terrible mistake," the Mrachani moaned. His tone was that of a helpless, terrified child, and despite himself Cavanagh felt a stirring of sympathy deep within him.

"Really," Bronski said. If he was feeling any of the same sympathy, it didn't show. "Let me guess. A group of big, nasty Bhurtala kidnapped you and brought you to Granparra. Then, when Piltariab showed up with a message from Lord Cavanagh, they forced you to mix up a concoction that would eat into his brain, making him so eager to come back and smell it again that he'd kidnap Cavanagh if necessary and bring him here. But instead of Cavanagh, Piltariab brought two other Avuirli, who recognized the smell of diargulates, pounded your jailer into the floor, and jumped to the totally unwarranted conclusion that you were actually the one calling the shots. Am I close?"

The Mrachani seemed to shrink farther into himself. "I am so afraid. Please, Liaison Bronski, you must believe me."

"It is nut an unwarranted cunclusiun, Liaisun Brunski," Mitliriab insisted. "We have seen the chemical vials. They are marked with Mrach symbuls."

"Oh, I believe you," Bronski assured him. "That was what we humans call sarcasm. I'm sure that when we check over the groundcar Kolchin borrowed, we'll be able to connect it to the Mrachanis, too."

"What then du yu plan tu du?" Mitliriab persisted.

"Well, I'm only an assistant liaison," Bronski said. "I don't personally have any police power. Let me talk to someone on the Myrmidon Platform, see what kind of deal I can work out."

Mitliriab's aroma turned peppermint pine. "I du nut wish any deals wurked uut," he growled. "This was an illegal actiun, and an attack against an Avuirlian citizen—"

"Lord Cavanagh?"

Cavanagh turned to find Kolchin's head poking around the corner of the entrance hallway. "Yes?"

"Would you and Liaison Bronski step this way a moment?" Kolchin said. "There's something back here I think you ought to see."

"Certainly," Bronski said. "You Avuirli stay here, please, and keep an eye on the Mrachani and Bhurt. Don't worry—we'll make this right."

They followed Kolchin to what looked to be a small storage area at the back of the house. "I noticed this when I came through here on my way to borrow the Mrachani's getaway groundcar, but I didn't have time for a close look," he said, walking over to a crate whose markings indicated it contained Bhurtist foodstuffs. Lying on top of the crate was a small, flat metal box. "I came back and checked just now," he continued, picking up the box and handing it to Cavanagh.

Cavanagh turned the box over in his hands. To all outward appearances it was just a standard commercial card carrier. "I take it you haven't tried opening it?" he asked, handing the box to Bronski.

"No, I thought I'd let Bronski take care of that part," Kolchin said. "Under the circumstances I suspect it's designed to go bang if the wrong person opens it."

"Or at least erase everything on the cards inside," Bronski said. For a moment he peered closely at the edge of the box, angling it toward the light. Then, with a shrug, he handed it back to Kolchin—

And suddenly the brigadier's flechette pistol was in his hand, pointed at Cavanagh's chest. "I'll take your gun, Kolchin," he said quietly. "Yours too, Cavanagh. Pull them out—two fingers only, please—and set them down on the floor. Then step back against the wall."

Cavanagh looked at Kolchin, found the bodyguard looking back at him, and shook his head. "I thought we'd moved beyond this phase," he said to Bronski, pulling his flechette pistol out as instructed and lowering it to the floor.

"Maybe you did," Bronski said, waiting until the two of them were standing against the storage-room wall before crouching down and retrieving their weapons. "I didn't. Like I told you on Mra-mig, I can't afford to trust you to keep your mouths shut."

Cavanagh felt his stomach muscles tighten. "What does that mean?"

"That part's up to you," Bronski said. "Cooperate, and you'll sit out the war with Taurin Lee and your man Hill for company. Don't cooperate, and we may have to arrange a more permanent kind of silence."

Cavanagh glanced at Kolchin. Back on Mra-mig, the young bodyguard had managed to get the drop on Bronski. If he could do so again...

"And if I were you, I wouldn't count on Kolchin pulling any more rabbits out of his hat," Bronski continued, as if reading Cavanagh's train of thought. "He got lucky on Mra-mig. He won't get lucky again."

"Peacekeeper commandos make their own luck, Brigadier," Kolchin said softly. "That was my drill instructor's favorite saying."

"Really," Bronski said. "My DI's favorite was that luck scales directly to experience... and for the record I had three times as many years in the commandos as you did. I suggest you think about that."

"So what happens now?" Cavanagh asked.

"Three things," Bronski said. "One: you finally get that other cuff attached to Kolchin's wrist. Two: I whistle up some Peacekeepers from the Myrmidon Platform to pick up the Mrachani and any Bhurtala who are still worth picking up. And three"—his mouth tightened—"we head back to my ship and try to open that box."

"As it happened, it was all pretty straightforward," Kolchin said. "Bhurtala might be fast in the long stretch, but they can't change direction worth anything. I just pulled over one of those garbage bins in front of him; and when he came leaping over it, I ducked under him and headed out the other end of the alley." He smiled tightly. "Just in time to almost run square into the other two as they came around the corner."

"That must have been thrilling," Cavanagh said, trying hard to keep his mind on Kolchin's story instead of on the flat box Bronski was working on two meters away from where he and Kolchin sat wristcuffed to wall mounts. The almost certainly booby-trapped flat box...

"It was a boost to the heart, all right," Kolchin said. "And I thought I was in for some fancy footwork to get past them. But they kept going into the alley, following the Bhurt I'd just ducked out on. They must have been wired for sound and gotten orders to follow you two instead of me."

"Though that doesn't mean they wouldn't have stomped you if it hadn't meant going out of their way," Bronski put in.

"You just concentrate on that box," Cavanagh told him. "Kolchin can handle the story without footnotes."

"Don't get testy," Bronski said. "I'm already past the tricky stuff."

"Anyway, I knew I wasn't going to catch up with them," Kolchin continued before Cavanagh could reply. "Even if I did, I didn't have anything to stop them with. I figured that whoever had set the trap was probably inside Bokamba's house, so I headed there."

Cavanagh nodded. "And ran straight into another Bhurt and a Mrachani."

"Actually, the Bhurt had already been run over," Kolchin said. "Piltariab's new friends had just finished taking him down and were lining up to have a go at the Mrachani." He shook his head. "Three Avuirli against a Bhurt. I wish I'd been in time to see that one."

"Be thankful you weren't," Bronski said, straightening up from his work and flexing his fingers. "That exotic scent the Avuirli had—you could still smell it when we got back—is the aromotional cue of Avuirlian fulkumu rage, probably the coldest anger you'll ever see anywhere. They knew the Mrachani had used diargulates on Piltariab and were ready to take him apart in retribution. Him and anyone who got in their way."

"Interesting," Kolchin murmured. "I'm rather surprised they stopped when I asked them to."

"I doubt they cared one way or the other what you wanted," Bronski told him dryly. "It was probably Piltariab who got them to stop after you suggested it. I'm not sure he even knows now what all the fuss was about. The point is that if you ever smell that cue again, make exhaust the other direction."

"We appreciate the biology lesson," Cavanagh said icily, nodding toward the box. "Now, would you kindly get on with your job?"

"I'm done," Bronski said mildly. Reaching to the box, he touched the release—

And the box popped open.

Cavanagh exhaled a long breath. "Was it booby-trapped?"

"Six ways from April," Bronski confirmed, peering into the box and pulling out three cards. "Let's see what we've got here...."

He slid one of the cards into his plate and spent a few minutes scrolling through various parts. "Interesting reading?" Cavanagh asked.

"Somewhat," Bronski said, pulling the card out and replacing it with the second. "That one was a list of dossiers on about fifty retired Peacekeeper officers of your acquaintance, along with complete data on their current homes. And I mean complete data: climate and terrain profiles, macro- and microcultural information listings, city and sector maps—the whole list. Must be a whole lot of Mrachanis scattered around the Commonwealth waiting for you to show up. Probably with a lot of Bhurtala to keep them company."

"I'd wondered how they managed to pinpoint Granparra," Kolchin murmured. "I guess they didn't."

"No, this group was just the lucky one," Bronski said, studying his plate. "Or not, depending on your point of view. Well, well. This one looks like a complete breakdown of CavTronics Industries, including listings for all manufacturing plants, R-and-D stations, sales outlets, and transport vessels. Plus dossiers on all your top management personnel."

Cavanagh swallowed hard. If he and Kolchin had followed their original plan of going directly home to Avon... "They must want me pretty bad."

"It's starting to look that way," Bronski agreed, inserting the third card into his plate. "You know, Cavanagh, I didn't put much stock in that Mrach conspiracy theory you spun for me on the way from Phormbi to Mra-mig. That whole idea of a quiet Mrach war against the rest of the universe sounded too much like a Yycroman smoke screen. But I'll admit it's starting to look more and more like the little furballs are sneakier than they like to appear...."

He trailed off, his forehead wrinkling as he frowned at the plate. "What is it?" Cavanagh asked.

"It's some kind of update," Bronski said, his voice suddenly tight. "Projected timetables for two operations. Mirnacheem-hyeea One and Mirnacheem-hyeea Two."

A cold knot formed in Cavanagh's stomach. "That's the Mrach name for the Conquerors," he said. "Or at least that's where we got the name Conquerors from."

"Yeah, I know," Bronski said, still frowning.

"Where are they supposed to take place?" Kolchin asked.

"The locations are coded," Bronski said. "Looks like they both have the same jump-off point, though, somewhere in Mrach space. Wait a second."

For a minute he was silent, doing something with the plate's keys. "Yes," he said at last. "Still don't have the endpoints; but if I'm reading this right, I've got a transit time from jump-off to end point for Mirnacheem-hyeea One. Assuming we're talking standard stardrive speed and not skitters... the end point has to be in either Mrach or Yycroman space."

Cavanagh looked at Kolchin. "I'll be damned. They're going to attack the Yycromae."

"No, they're not," Kolchin said. "It's the Mirnacheem-hyeea operation, remember? They're going to get the Conquerors to attack the Yycromae for them."

"How on Earth are they going to do that?" Cavanagh objected. "How could they even be in contact with the Conquerors?"

"There was a Mrach ship at the Conqueror base when Quinn and his bunch rescued your son Pheylan," Bronski said thoughtfully. "It was damaged, but it was there."

"Any sign of live Mrachanis?" Kolchin asked.

"They didn't see any," Bronski said. "But that might not have been necessary. We know the Conquerors have learned English; the Mrachanis might have planted data aboard that identified the Yycromae as a threat and persuaded them to launch an attack."

"With a complete timetable included?" Kolchin asked.

Bronski grimaced. "Yeah, there's that," he conceded.

"There's another possibility," Cavanagh said slowly. "The term Mirnacheem-hyeea also applies to humans—it was what the Mrachanis first called us after the Peacekeepers made contact with them. Maybe they've found a way to manipulate the Peacekeepers into attacking the Yycromae."

Bronski stroked his lip thoughtfully. "Could be. Wouldn't take all that hard a push, either."

"Not after all the paranoia they've cultivated toward the Yycromae over the years," Cavanagh said. "And not with the access to Peacekeeper information sources the Mrachanis seem to have."

"That last part's been changed, anyway," Bronski said. "I've put through an order cutting the Mrachanis out of all Peacekeeper information lines."

Cavanagh frowned. "I thought you didn't put any stock in my theories."

"I didn't," Bronski said. "That was their punishment for kidnapping and drugging that journalist, Ezer Sholom."

He closed the plate and leaned back in his seat, regarding his prisoners with an unreadable expression. "Well, gentlemen, I've got a problem here," he said. "I can get Myrmidon to send skitters to Earth and Edo with the alert; but what we really need right now is more information. For that someone's going to have to go to Mra and do some snooping. As head of NorCoord Intelligence for Mrach space, that's my job. The problem is what to do with you two."

"I thought you were planning to drop us into a deep hole somewhere," Cavanagh said.

"Oh, I am," Bronski said. "The problem is timing. If I'm reading this right, the jump-off time for the Conquerors One operation is only about forty-nine hours away. This ship is skitter-class, which helps, but from here to Mra and back to Edo will still eat up better than sixteen hours. Figure another twenty-five for Edo to get ships wherever the hell they'll have to go to stop this, and I'm left with only eight hours for actual snooping. That's not a lot of time. If I have to stop first and drop you two off on Mra-ect, I'll have even less. I could leave you here on the Myrmidon Platform; but they haven't got a secure quarantine area, and leaving you with anyone who doesn't know what you know kind of defeats the whole purpose of the quarantine."

"You could let us go," Cavanagh suggested. "I've already given my word we won't say anything."

"And that you won't be coerced into saying anything?" Bronski shook his head. "You know I can't risk that. Not with all these Mrachanis and Bhurtala looking for you. We already saw with Sholom what they're willing to do for information; and we cannot let them get even a hint that CIRCE doesn't exist. No, what I really want is to keep you with me. But I can't do that and watch my back at the same time." He folded his arms across his chest. "The ball's on your side of the net, Lord Cavanagh. Convince me you can be trusted."

Cavanagh lowered his eyes, suddenly misted with tears. Yes, there was indeed something he could say. The ultimate, unbreakable vow... "I swear on the soul of my beloved wife, Sara," he said quietly, the words aching in his throat. "We won't try to escape."

He looked up to find Bronski gazing back at him, something that might be sympathy behind the brigadier's eyes. "I guess that's what I wanted to hear," he said. His wrist flicked; automatically, Cavanagh opened his hand to catch the wristcuff key. "Get yourselves unlocked, then join me in the control room," Bronski told him, shoving the Mrach card carrier into a storage locker and standing up. "I'm going to get the prelaunch started."

Cavanagh hesitated. "Brigadier?"

Bronski paused at the door. "What?"

"I don't know if it's occurred to you," Cavanagh said, "but it's possible the Mrachanis already learned about CIRCE from Ezer Sholom before we found him. If they are in contact with the Conquerors, and if they tell them CIRCE doesn't exist..."