Odd Girl Out

Reflexively, I ducked low behind the top of the bar. "Ten minutes?" Karim shouted as a shot slammed into the wall above our heads through one of the shattered windows.

"More or less," I shouted back irritably. That was twice now, first Yandro and now here, that the Modhri had casually undercut a plan or prediction I'd just taken pains to explain to someone. If he was going to kill me, the least he could do was have the courtesy not to destroy my reputation first.

Another shot whizzed past overhead, this one coming from the other window. It was followed immediately by a third shot from the first window, then a fourth from the second window.

I frowned as the shots settled into a pattern, one shot at a time through alternating windows, each on the heels of the one before, all of them tearing through the wood and drywall at least half a meter above our heads. What was the Modhri up to?

Karim was apparently wondering that, too. "He must be trying to keep us pinned down," he shouted over the steady blam-blam-blam of the thudwumpers. "Probably trying to infiltrate."

"From both sides at once?" I shouted back.

"Maybe he's got more ammo than we thought."

I looked back and forth between the two windows. Standard infiltration technique was to pin your opponent down along the infiltration line, covering only one line at a time to conserve ammo.

But that was for open ground, not this kind of urban setting where you had buildings and convenient corners to hide around. He didn't need to cover any line, let alone two at once, until the infiltrators were ready to move.

And they clearly weren't ready. I couldn't see anyone moving out there, through either window. Was he just trying to spook us, then? Goad us into wasting our own shots firing at shadows and unseen enemies?

The shots continued, a steady blam-blam-blam. A steady blam-blam-blam, I noticed suddenly. Not a barrage designed to pin us down. Not even a volley, a group of shots followed by a lull where we were supposed to feel obligated to burn some ammo shooting back. A methodical, steady blam-blam-blam.

He wasn't covering up an infiltration. He was covering up something else.

Something he didn't want me to notice.

I fumbled out my comm. The incoming-call light wasn't glowing, or flashing with the message-waiting signal. No one was trying desperately to get in touch with me.

But maybe the Modhri was afraid someone was about to.

"Bayta—kick me if they start coming in," I called to her. Dropping behind the bar, I pulled up the city directory, found Veldrick's number, and punched it in.

He answered on the second ring. "Hello?"

"Mr. Veldrick, this is Frank Donaldson," I called. "I need to talk to you."

The words were barely out of my mouth when the steady blam-blam-blam of the Modhri's guns abruptly turned into a full battlefield cacophony. I was already surging back to my feet when Bayta's kick against my thigh confirmed the enemy was attacking.

I got an eye over the bar just in time to see a Filly leap in through each of the broken windows, their stolen police guns blazing away. For a second they faltered on the upended chairs we'd laid across their path, their shots going wild as they fought for balance.

I raised my gun over the bar to fire, but was forced to duck back down as a pair of shots gouged grooves in the bar and threw a handful of wooden splinters into my face. Before I could get back up into firing position, the entire bar began to come apart as the Fillies regained both their balance and their aim.

"Get down!" I yelled at Karim, ducking a little lower myself. He ignored me, his hand stretched up over the bar as he fired blindly in the general direction of our attackers. Bayta started to lift her hand, probably planning to do the same with her kwi. I grabbed her wrist before she could get there and pulled both the arm and Bayta herself low to the floor. The barrage was deafening, the rounds from Karim's military weapon adding a slightly deeper counterpoint to the Fillies' lighter police weapons.

And then, suddenly, Karim's gun was firing alone.

"Hold your fire!" I shouted. "Karim?"

Karim squeezed off two more rounds and then stopped. The silence seemed to ring in my ears as I carefully lifted my head above the bar.

The two Fillies were sprawled unmoving on the floor, bright red blood flowing across the floor from beneath their bodies, their guns still held loosely in their hands.

I looked at the side of the room. McMicking was still lying among the oblivious sleeping drunks, his gun and gun hand hidden behind one of the other men. His half-closed eyes rolled to catch mine, and his head nodded microscopically toward the guns.

I nodded back. "Stay here," I told Karim and Bayta, both of whom had risen cautiously to check out the situation. Squeezing past them, I circled around the end of the bar and headed for the Fillies.

I was still two steps away when the guns and gun hands suddenly twitched upward.

I jerked back, reflexively squeezing off a round into the nearest Filly's torso. But the guns weren't coming up in some last-gasp attempt by the Modhri to nail me. Before I could even shift my aim to the other Filly both guns broke free of their late owners' limp grips and skittered back toward the windows. For a moment the weapons bounced around and through the barricade chairs' legs, giving me just enough time to wonder what would happen if one of them bumped hard enough to go off Then, with one last bounce, they disappeared out their respective windows into the night.

Behind me, Karim spat something vile-sounding. "Tethered guns," he growled. "The favored ploy of those who value their weapons more than their men."

"That's the Modhri in a nutshell," I agreed. Cautiously, I stepped to the nearest window, hoping to see which direction the tethered guns had gone. But both weapons had vanished. Returning to the relative safety of the bar, I retrieved my comm from the floor where I'd dropped it. "Mr. Veldrick?" I called. "You still there?"

"Donaldson?" Veldrick's voice came back. "What the hell's going on there?"

"The more important question is what in hell's going on there," I countered.

There was a short pause. "What do you mean?" he asked warily.

"You know what I mean," I said, putting an ominous edge to my voice. I still wasn't a hundred percent sure I had the situation figured out, but I was sure enough to try playing the odds. "The situation with you and your illegal coral. You want to give me the details, or would you rather deal with the mess on your own?"

My hearing had recovered enough from the gun battle to pick up his long, sibilant sigh. "Someone's been in my house," he said. "He came to the door and shot me—snoozers—and then just walked right in."

"Did he steal anything?" I asked.

"No, but he was going to," Veldrick said grimly. "He had my shipping boxes out, the ones I used back when I brought in the coral."

"But he didn't actually take any of it?"

"You don't get it, do you?" he snapped. "You don't burgle someone's home and not even touch a fortune in illegal merchandise. Not unless you've decided it would be safer to turn in the owner and claim the reward."

"Maybe," I said, appreciating the irony of the whole situation. The last thing this particular home intruder wanted was for Veldrick and his eight million dollars' worth of Larry Hardin's coral to fall into official hands.

"Of course I'm right," Veldrick said. "So what do I do?"

"You start by not panicking," I told him. "For one thing, the police don't usually break their necks rushing to investigate anonymous tips. For another, they're all tied up at the moment with some kind of fire or something."

"An accident, actually," Veldrick corrected me. "At least, that's what Isantra Golovek says. He says we should have time to get the coral boxed up and hidden over at his place—"

"Wait a second," I said. "Who's Isantra Golovek? One of your Filiaelian business contacts?"

"You know any Juriani with Filiaelian titles?" he countered sarcastically. "He and Isantra Snievre are on their way now to give me a hand loading the coral."

A cold chill ran up my back. Earlier this evening, when the Modhri had had a murder frame-up planned for me, he'd been willing to sacrifice the coral outpost rather than risk losing track of Rebekah and her stack of boxes.

So why was he now apparently willing to pull his walkers away from his attack on us in order to protect that same outpost?

Unless protecting the outpost wasn't his plan.

I looked out one of the broken windows. The Modhri's earlier murder frame-up of me had failed, leaving me alive and well and unjailed. And I was likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Unless the Fillies were on their way to Veldrick's to arrange another frame-up. Possibly for another murder.

Possibly Veldrick's.

"Listen carefully," I said to Veldrick, pitching my voice low and earnest. "Go lock your doors and windows—right now—and don't let anyone in. Understand? Anyone. Not Golovek, not the police—no one."

"What are you talking about?" Veldrick asked, his verbal tension level starting to rise, his voice bouncing a little as he headed off on a jogging tour of his house's entry points.

"I'm talking about barricading yourself inside your house," I said, thinking fast. "Don't you get it? Officially, that coral doesn't exist. They can walk right into your house and take it …provided you're not around to squawk to the police afterward."

"You mean …they'd actually kill me?"

"For eight million dollars in untraceable coral?" I countered, praying he would be too rattled to think straight. Since he couldn't complain to the cops without bringing a mandatory prison sentence down on his own head, there was no reason for a would-be thief to even rough him up, let alone kill him. "People kill for a lot less than that."

"But that's insane," he protested, sounding more bewildered than frightened. "These are well-respected, highly positioned Filiaelian businessmen."

"How do you know?" I asked. "You've only known them a few weeks." And he'd only known me a few hours. I hoped he wouldn't remember that. Or if he did, that the Hardin Industries security card I'd come in on would matter more than our length of acquaintanceship.

"You're right," he said, his voice shaking openly now. "All right—I've got everything locked down."

"Make sure you didn't miss any of the windows, even small ones," I warned. "I'll call you when I've figured out what we're going to do. You'd better wait in the meditation room, where there aren't any windows."

"What about the coral?"

"You may have to abandon it," I said.

"No," he said flatly.

I rolled my eyes. People and their possessions …"Fine," I said. "Then go ahead and start packing it for travel. Don't touch it, though. I've heard of people getting badly poisoned with scratches from Modhran coral."

"I've got some gloves right here," he said. "But it's going to take a couple of days at least to work up the documentation to get it off-planet."

"Even given the fact you've already got that documentation started?"

There was another short pause. "How did you know?"

"Because you were clearly the one who swore out that arrest warrant for me," I told him. "You were hoping the cops could keep me off your back long enough for you to sneak your coral off New Tigris. How far did you get on the paperwork?"

He sighed. "Not far enough," he said. "It'll still take at least two days."

"Maybe I can come up with a shortcut," I said. "I'll be there to help as soon as I can." "Make it fast."

"I will," I promised. "Wait a second," I added as a sudden thought struck me. "Before you start packing, go get the biggest hammer you own. If things get too tight, you may have to destroy the coral."

"Are you insane?" he demanded. "Do you know how much I paid for the stuff?"

"More than your life is worth?" I asked pointedly. "Remember, if there's nothing in your house worth stealing, there's no reason for anyone to murder you for it."

He hissed out a breath. "You're right," he said reluctantly. "It's just that …no, no, you're right."

"We'll try to keep it from coming to that," I assured him. "But you'd best be ready. Just in case."

I broke the connection. "What's going on?" Karim asked.

"Our playmates are trying to change the game," I told him, looking at Rebekah. She was still sitting in front of the boxes, still looking scared but determined. "How are you doing?"

"All right," she said. "He's not going to—"

"What the frinking—?" a slurred voice said from across the room.

I looked over the bar. McMicking was staring in feigned horror at the dead Fillies he'd just shot. Before I could say anything, he heaved himself up off the floor and began staggering toward the door.

Leaving his reader lying on the floor. "Karim—stop him," I ordered.

Karim was already hurrying toward the would-be escapee, clearly intent on making sure a paying customer didn't wander outside and get himself killed. Slipping around the end of the bar behind him, I angled over and retrieved McMicking's reader.

McMicking put up a good fight, in a shambling, uncoordinated-drunk sort of fashion, muttering incomprehensibly the whole time. By the time Karim managed to get him turned around and walking toward the relative safety of the bar, I was back in place beside Bayta, checking out the data page McMicking had left for me.

It didn't look good. The real-time locators on the Fillies' six rental cars showed that four of them were traveling across Zumurrud District in the direction of Veldrick's house. The other two cars, presumably those of the dead walkers lying on our floor, were still in their original places in the Modhri's detector array.

Karim reached the bar and started maneuvering McMicking past Bayta and me toward the far end. "Don' wanna be here," McMicking muttered. His eyes caught mine with a look of silent urgency. "Wanna go home. Wanna go home now."

"You can't go home," Karim said. "It's not safe."

"It's not exactly safe here, either," I put in. "Maybe we should just let him go."

"What, through the middle of a fire zone?" Karim countered with a snort.

"They didn't shoot Dawid when he left," I reminded him. "They seem to have a pretty good idea of who their targets are."

"He stays here," Karim said firmly. Brushing past us, he guided McMicking to the other end of the bar.

Bayta moved close to me. "What is it?" she asked quietly.

"The Modhri's doing it again," I told her. "Giving us the choice of sticking with Rebekah or nailing Veldrick's stash of coral."

I tapped the reader's display. "Only this time he's also tossing Veldrick's life into the pot."

Bayta looked at Rebekah. "We aren't abandoning her," she said.

"I wasn't suggesting we do," I said, frowning at the display. On the other hand, if four of our six Fillies were heading for Veldrick's house, and the other two were lying dead at our feet, that ought to mean there was no one out there in the street pointing guns at us.

Unless the Modhri had other walkers on New Tigris we didn't know about.

I looked over at Karim as he settled McMicking onto the floor. McMicking might have a handle on that, if I could get Karim out of earshot for a couple of minutes.

Fortunately, there was an obvious way to do that. "Karim, I need you to go get your car and bring it here," I said, digging the keys out of my pocket. "It's parked about half a block north."

He gave me a disbelieving look. "You want me to do what?"

"It'll be all right," I said, showing him the reader. "See? Here are the real-time tracking marks for four of the Fillies' rental cars. That means all the survivors of the group have left."

He peered at the display. "What makes you think they don't have a few other friends?"

"Trust me," I said, trying to sound like I believed it.

He looked at Rebekah, then back at me. "All right," he said. He hesitated a heartbeat, then set his P11 down on the bar. "If they do have friends, there's no point in giving them another weapon. Back in a minute."

He skirted the edge of the bar and crossed to one of the broken windows. For a long moment he gazed out into the night. Then, getting a careful grip on the edge of the window, he hauled himself up and over the sill and disappeared out into the night.

"He won't let the coral be destroyed, you know," Rebekah warned quietly.

"Who won't?" I asked, gesturing McMicking over to us.

"The Modhri," she said. "If Mr. Veldrick tries to destroy it, the Eyes will kill him."

"I thought he just needed the coral to find you," McMicking said as he came up to us.

Rebekah shook her head. "He also needs it for …what he needs it for."

"Glad we cleared that up," I said, turning to McMicking. "Do you know if there are any other non-Humans on New Tigris at the moment?"

"There aren't," he said. "There were a few groups coming in and out over the past few months, but the last of them left about six weeks ago."

"Just after our Fillies came in?"

"About then," he confirmed.

"What about the other two torchyachts we saw at the spaceport?" Bayta asked.

"One is mine, the other is the Fillies'," McMicking told her. "According to the port records, they're still paying rent on it." He looked at Rebekah. "Must have figured that when they left, they'd need to leave in a hurry."

"Then this is our chance," I said, lowering my voice. I didn't know whether or not the polyp colonies inside the dead Fillies could still hear, but I wasn't going to take any chances. "With the walkers on their way to protect Veldrick's coral outpost, we've got a clear shot at the spaceport. I say we load Rebekah, Rebekah's boxes, Bayta, and Karim into Karim's car and send them on their way."

"What about Mr. Veldrick?" Rebekah asked.

"Unless the Modhri gets impatient, I should be able to get there fast enough to get him out," I said, skipping over the fact that McMicking and I had to go there anyway to pick up the coral.

"What about Customs?" Bayta asked.

"Not a problem," McMicking said. "Just have Karim park somewhere outside the spaceport and wait."

There was the hum of a car engine, and I looked through the window to see Karim pull his car to the curb in front of the bar. "Bayta, you're on guard duty," I said, holstering my Beretta. "Shoot anything that moves out there that isn't us."

She nodded and headed to the left-hand broken window, the kwi held ready. "Keep an eye on the cars," I added to McMicking, handing him back his reader. "If the colonies in the dead Fillies can still hear, there's no way we're going to be able to hide the transfer from him."

He nodded and staggered his way over to the other of the broken windows, flopping down heavily in one of the chairs where he had a reasonably good view of that part of the street, picking up one of Rebekah's boxes, I headed for the door.

I had made it through our barricade and was unlocking the door when Karim came in through the window. "What are we doing?" he asked, throwing a frown at McMicking. "And he's supposed to be behind the bar."

"We're moving out, and I was curious to see how far he would get," I told him. "Not very, as you see. Grab a box and let's get this show on the road."

Despite my own assurances to the others, I nevertheless half expected the Modhri to have some stunt waiting up his sleeve. But the streets remained quiet as Karim and I loaded the boxes into his car trunk. Things remained equally quiet as we then loaded in Bayta, Rebekah, and Karim. "Remember, find a nice quiet hiding place near the spaceport and wait for my call," I told Bayta as I handed Karim back his P11.

"How long do we wait?" Karim asked. "In case—" His lips compressed briefly.

"In case I get myself killed? Half an hour," I said, picking a number out of the air. I actually had no idea how long it would take for McMicking and me to deal with the four walkers converging on Veldrick's house. "If you haven't heard from me by then, I suggest you head out of town and find somewhere to go to ground until you do hear from me."

"I know some places," Karim said, his face grim in the glow of the streetlights. "Good luck."

"You too."

He drove off, leaving me standing in the silence of the street. "You want me to get us a car?" McMicking asked through the window.

"No need," I said, feeling my throat tightening as I watched Karim's taillights disappear around a corner. Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong. But I couldn't put my finger on it.

"You want us to walk?"

I shook the vague apprehension away. "Of course not," I said, heading back into the bar. "You figure out which of the Fillies' cars is the closest. I'll get the keys to both of them."

A minute later we were striding along the deserted walkway toward one of the encirclement cars the Fillies had left behind a couple of blocks from the bar. "How do you want to work this?" McMicking asked as we walked.

"As quickly and cleanly as possible," I told him, feeling the back of my neck tingling as I threw a careful look into each alley and doorway that we passed. This still wasn't adding up. "We can't afford to let the situation settle into a stalemate."

"Agreed," McMicking said. "So you'll drop me about three blocks from Veldrick's house and go the rest of the way in alone. Hopefully, you can draw the Modhri's attention while I come in from behind."

"His attention and his fire?" I suggested dryly.

McMicking shrugged. "Would you rather I go in and you play backup?"

"I appreciate the offer," I said. Backup …"But since he already knows what I look like—"

And suddenly, it clicked. "Oh, damn," I muttered, coming to an abrupt halt.

"What?" McMicking demanded sharply, his gun coming up to ready position, his eyes darting around.

"We've been played," I said, my mind spinning with possibilities and implications. "Remember Rebekah saying that the Modhri needs Veldrick's coral for whatever he needs to do vis-à-vis the Abomination?"

"Yes, of course," McMicking said. "That's presumably why the Fillies took off so quickly when you told Veldrick to be ready to hammer it to powder."

"Presumably, yes; actually, no," I said. "If that was the whole story, he should have gone equally frantic when you and I broke into Veldrick's home earlier this evening."

"Good point," McMicking said darkly. "So why didn't he?"

"Because he doesn't need Veldrick's coral," I said. "The Fillies have an outpost of their own tucked away."

McMicking swore under his breath. "Aboard their torchyacht."

"Bingo," I confirmed grimly. "Obvious, in retrospect. The Modhri couldn't have expected to find a ready-to-use outpost waiting for his walkers on a Human world."

"Unless he found out from the other walkers who've been snooping around," McMicking pointed out.

"Right, but by then the Fillies were probably already on their way with their own coral in tow," I said. "It's not like there are a hundred places between the Filiaelian Assembly and New Tigris where you can safely stash a Modhran outpost."

"So why are we breaking our necks to get to Veldrick before he destroys his coral?" McMicking asked.

"It's worse than that," I said, pulling out my comm. "If he's got coral at the spaceport, you can bet he's moving a couple of the Fillies there, too."

"All four cars are headed to Veldrick's."

"All four cars' trackers are headed to Veldrick's," I said sourly, punching in Bayta's number. "That doesn't necessarily mean the cars themselves are. How hard would it be to pull the trackers out of the cars and load them aboard a couple of autocabs?"

McMicking's hand closed around my comm, canceling the call. "Don't call her," he said. "One of the walkers might be watching them, and a sudden change of direction would tip him off that we were on to this new wrinkle."

"We have to warn them," I insisted.

"We will," he assured me. "I'll go now."

My first thought was to remind him that Bayta and Rebekah were my responsibility, not his. My second thought was to remember that he knew that. "All right," I said. "You probably shouldn't take the other Filly car."

"I wasn't planning to," he assured me. "Watch yourself." He angled across the street, heading toward a pair of parked cars.

I started walking again toward the Filly car that had been our original goal, resisting the urge to also find an alternative mode of transport. The most important thing I could do right now was keep the Modhri thinking I'd fallen for his trick.

The second most important thing was to get Veldrick out of his mess so that I could get back to the spaceport and get Bayta out of her mess. The mess I'd put her into.

I picked up my pace. As I did so, I flipped the Beretta's selector switch to the right-hand half of the clip, the one with killrounds in it.

The Modhri was playing this game for keeps. It was about time I started doing the same.