B00BFVOGUI EBOK (12 page)

“Fire team,
star four!” Bridget
yelled. At once, three of her armored companions were at her side, placing
themselves and their weapons between Jamie and the new arrivals. At their
various positions around the icy atrium, O’Herlihy,
Dinner, and her two other troopers stood alert as well. She yelled into her
mouthpiece. “Gideon, check in! Why didn’t you tell me these people were
coming?”

“Because he couldn’t,” Kolvax said, sauntering into the room. “Oh, he’s all right — we
didn’t disturb your party at all. Our vessel began jamming your ship’s communications
on approach.” His words dripped with malice. “I didn’t want our meeting to be
disturbed.”

Jamie peeked out from behind his
guardians. “How come we can understand you now?”

“It’s not our intent,” Kolvax said. “Our words aren’t for such as you.” He nodded
to the stage and the Leelites’ knowglobe.
“But our people once attended this…event. Their device is patched in with
yours. So you get our words — but that’s all you get.”

Bridget checked the audio stream.
Sure enough, Kolvax’s words were channeling through
the Leelite database to their knowglobe.
It had assigned him the voice of a scenery-chewing soap opera villain from more
than a hundred years ago. It seemed to fit.

But the rest made no sense. “Your people?” Bridget’s eyes narrowed. “You look pretty
human to us!”

Several members of Kolvax’s forces started forward, angrily snarling words
foreign even to the Leelites’ knowglobe.
“You should be more careful,” Kolvax said. “The
Stalkers take offense easily. They aren’t as patient as I am.” He turned to
calm his wary troops. “Easy. The little fool clearly doesn’t know anything
about us. And it’s going to stay that way!”

Quiet until now, the Leelite auctioneer interceded from his podium. “I’m so
pleased that you’ve arrived — Kolvax, did you say?” Vremian shook with excitement. “We’ve only just gotten
underway, you know.”

“I told you,
thing
, the auction is over!” Kolvax
turned. “We will take all the superconductors you have, at whatever price you
name. We will even pay you to keep them down there in your hole, as long as
they are never sold to this species. This market — and
all
markets — are closed to them.”

“Like hell,” Jamie called out.

“Ah, the little trader,” Kolvax said, his words dripping with malice as he stepped
forward. Bridget raised her rifle as he approached. “We let you go last time. Continue
your activities and we won’t make the same mistake. And don’t imagine these toy
soldiers can save you. You’re facing our finest warriors now.”

Bridget shook her head. The idea
of armed mercantile competitors was nothing new; the East Indies trading
companies clashed all the time. But nothing like this had happened in years.

“Keep bidding, Jamie,” she said, a defiant eye on Kolvax.
“We’ve got as much right to be here as they do!”

The Leelite
went through the motions of restarting the auction. Kolvax
stood firm, watching the rattled humans through his darkened facemask. He
smiled. He’d found them on the first try. And it was more than a good guess.

Mu Casseopeiae
was one of the installed links from the now human-controlled depot station, and
the exact timing of the Leelite auction was known by
every race in the vicinity, even if most ignored the silly event. But given
that the humans had mounted a trading mission from the depot, he’d wagered that
this would be a likely early stop for them. Maybe they didn’t know how bad an
opportunity it was. Or maybe they’d assumed there wouldn’t be any competition. Now,
Kolvax was showing them the error of that judgment,
aided by the crack Dominium-supplied team from Gharion
Preserve.

He looked at the display in his
helmet. The star their exiled station orbited was called Sigma Draconis, and the humans referred to the prison as the
Dragon’s Depot. He knew those words now from his radio link to the Leelite device. But its knowledge of humanity was limited
to language — the information openly being supplied by the humans’ knowglobe.

He couldn’t hear the human
merchant chattering with his bodyguards now; Kolvax’s
most recent outlandish bid for the superconductors had flummoxed them.
Good
. It was helpful to see how easily
he could make them squirm. He’d meant what he said: there was no price at which
they’d allow the humans to have the high-tech devices. The superconductors
would simply help them build more whirlibangs — such a
preposterous human word! — and the Xylanx would never
allow that.

But in truth they were here for
something else. He saw it now, right in front if him.
This was their big chance.

Kolvax transmitted a signal to his
forces parked outside. They’d hear it through their jamming of the human ship
and would begin the countdown. His countdown was begun as well. “Get ready,” Kolvax whispered to his warriors on the secure channel. “We
move on my signal!”

Jamie had his briefcase open now,
rechecking superconductor column prices on his assayer. The prices had risen to
ridiculous levels for units they previously would’ve gotten at a song. Wasn’t
this crazy trip supposed to be about turning a profit?

He looked back warily at Kolvax, the brute who’d struck him at the Dragon’s Depot.
The guy didn’t seem like a player. He wasn’t thinking with his bids, wasn’t
using any strategy at all, so far as Jamie could tell.

Okay,
let’s see how big your wallet really is
, he thought. They had seven cargo ’boxes with them,
each bearing thirty tons of bauxite. Kolvax would be
able to calculate that. But he might not have any idea how plentiful the
substance was on Earth, and how easily it could be shipped here. He decided to
take a chance on the second lot being offered. “Five hundred tons,” Jamie said.
“Two hundred now, three hundred later. It’ll be
waiting for you next time you…er, come out of your
hole.”

Vremian seemed to gurgle with glee — or at
least, that was how Jamie interpreted the bizarre sound. “A
fine offer. A wonderful offer! And you, Kolvax
of the Xylanx?”

Jamie looked back to see Kolvax straightening. “I’ll give you our answer,” he snarled.

Booom!
A thunderclap shook the atrium.
Above, the crystal light source shattered, raining shards below. Bridget
grabbed Jamie and slammed him to the icy floor. Above him, the chief and her
companions shielded the lightly protected trader’s body with their armored
forms.

“Now!” the alien leader shouted.
Through the legs of his protectors, Jamie saw Kolvax charging
forward in the newly darkened atrium. His team of Stalkers did the same, firing
their hand-cannons at the Earth team.

“
Unnhh”
One of the blasts glanced off
Bridget’s armor, but she stood firm and returned fire. Jamie squirmed through
an opening between his guardians, desperate to escape.

The only light now came from the
energy weapons — and from the aperture leading down into the Leelites’
lair. Ahead, on the rostrum, Jamie could see the flimsy form of Vremian, desperately trying to maintain order. “Please,
gentle beings! Try to quiet down. I didn’t hear that last bid!”

Jamie stumbled behind his team’s knowglobe and looked back. With O’Herlihy
and Dinner setting up a crossfire on the open floor,
Bridget and her companions scrambled to regroup. Crouching, she switched to
missile rounds and fired back. The slug hit Kolvax’s
chest dead center — and simply sparked off. Seemingly amused, the shadowy figure
raised his weapon to return fire.

Kraa-aack!
Another horrific sound rocked the
atrium, and a mist of ice pellets fell from the ceiling. The weapons on both
sides fell silent; from his cowering position, Jamie saw that Kolvax seemed puzzled. The black-clad leader looked back at
his forces. “That wasn’t—”

Another loud,
shearing sound — this one from ground level. The floor shook. On the stage, the Leelite dignitaries fled for their underground haven. At
the podium, Vremian followed it up with one last
announcement. “This auction is suspended —
on
account of early thaw!
”

Kolvax looked through the falling
shards of ice — directly toward Jamie. “Hurry,” Jamie heard the alien yell.
“That’s what we want!”

The Xylanx
leader and his companions charged across the rumbling floor toward the trader. Off-balance,
Bridget switched her weapon to use different ammunition and raised it to fire. But now the ground beneath her cleaved, sending the woman and her
teammates tumbling backward against the rostrum.

Jamie struggled to see. Something
was alive down there, coming up from the ice — something
huge
. With another sickening crack, a giant, clawed six-fingered
hand shoved upward from the darkness, upending more of the ice floor and
sending O’Herlihy and Dinner dashing away.

Above, the remaining Leelites in the room flocked toward the ceiling, terrified.
Vremian screeched in horror. “
The Jorvil!
We’ve waited too long!”

On his hands and knees behind
Surge Sigma’s knowglobe, Jamie looked up at Kolvax. His footing steady and momentary surprise past, the
warrior regarded the mammoth reaching arm without fear and laughed. “I guess we
know why the Leelite sales season is so short!” He turned
and looked directly at Jamie once again. “But I think there’s just enough time
to finish what we started!”

Jamie gulped, remembering his
nose’s previous meeting with Kolvax’s fist.
This was a long way to travel to relive
seventh grade…

As important as the discovery of
extraterrestrial life had been for Earth’s scientists, it had given the lawyers
an even bigger thrill. The pact between the Signatory Systems had existed long
before humanity reached the stars and had changed many times over the years. Around
the globe, university departments opened to study the agreement. It would be several
years before there would be much practical demand for anything taught in Interstellar
Law 5010, but graduate students were used to that. The kindly aliens had
supplied another way to postpone real life.

But while the pact had been
amended many times, one thing was common to most iterations of the agreement: sanctioned
merchants, whether they wore the official trader’s badge
or not, were not allowed to be armed. The agreement said nothing about their bodyguards,
of course: that explained the small armies many merchants traveled with. But it
somehow seemed important that sellers, who were often diplomats for their
cultures, appeared unthreatening.

Jamie was certainly wishing for a
change in the rules as he looked out from behind the knowglobe,
the only solid thing in the room that wasn’t moving. The giant creature the Leelites called the jorvil twisted
and writhed as it bulged through another section of the ice floor, upending slabs
in the middle of the room. In the low light, the jorvil
looked to Jamie like a great hand the size of an elephant, but it appeared the
arm it was attached to had no end.

This would be a good time to have
one of Bridget’s fancy rifles, Jamie thought. Or to have
chosen law school instead.

Kolvax didn’t seem to care about the jorvil — or the rules regarding weapons in
the hands of traders, if that was indeed what he was. Stepping
deliberately up to the knowglobe, he tapped it with
the barrel of his hand-cannon.

“Leave me alone!” Jamie called
out, cringing behind the dodecahedron and remembering the kidnapping attempt
aboard the Dragon’s Depot. But there wasn’t anywhere to run here, and his
bodyguards were — where? Somewhere in the darkness, Jamie guessed, lost in the
mass of ice or on the other side of the jorvil. “
Yang!
Somebody!”

It took a moment before Kolvax, face inscrutable behind his darkened faceplate,
responded. “Pathetic,” he said over Jamie. Then he turned to address his
warriors, who were advancing across the quaking floor. “Take it!”

Jamie turned to run, but his
right foot slipped on the ice. He slid sideways, landing in an awkward heap. He
covered his head with his hands, imagining Kolvax
grasping for him. But a second passed in which he felt nothing, apart from the
rumbling of the floor and his throbbing ankle. Daring to move, he raised his
head and looked back.

Beside Kolvax,
one of his hulking crew members easily lifted Surge Sigma’s knowglobe
off the ground. “To the ship!” Kolvax
ordered. The leader then turned to face Jamie. “Good-bye, idiot,” he said.

Then Kolvax
followed his troops, who were already making their way to the exit.

“Hey! That — that…” Jamie spluttered.
“I was hiding behind that!”

He scrambled to his hands and
knees. Where was Yang? Where was O’Herlihy? The
shower of ice crystals from the ceiling had become a deluge, with clear shards
falling from above even as the jorvil’s gyrations
tore at the floor below. More of the surface buckled, and Jamie saw what he
thought was a rocky fin stab up from beneath.
Another monster?

As it moved, Jamie realized what
he was looking at. It was no arm that the six-fingered hand was attached to but
a tremendous mineral-encrusted worm. The body shrank and stretched like an
accordion-style air hose, snaking and grinding its way through the hard
surface. Spellbound for a moment, Jamie gawked as the thing tore more of the
floor apart.

That fascination ended when the
six-fingered hand — which he only now understood to be the creature’s head — twisted
back toward him. The meter-wide talons opened, revealing a blood-red maw in the
“palm.” Violet tongues splayed outward from the hole and a gaseous breath hit
Jamie full in his helmeted face, knocking him backward.

“
Yaaahhh
!
” Jamie turned his stumble into a headlong run. He
dashed for the exit to the surface, caring little that his would-be kidnappers
had already gone that way.

We
wore the wrong outfits to this dance
,
Bridget thought in the blackness. The indoor avalanche had left hundreds of
kilos of ice on top of her, and while the HardSHEL
armor had taken the beating and kept her breathing, the internal armature
wasn’t strong enough to free her.

But unlike at Baghu,
she’d held on to her rifle — or, rather, the armor had. The eruption from the
floor had given her a split second to activate the death-grip feature. Any
impact strong enough to separate her from the weapon would be strong enough to
take her arm, too.

The weapon could fire from her
verbal command, but she didn’t know where it was pointing. This called for a
different approach. “Switch sonics,” she ordered.
Seeing the confirmation that her rifle switched from impact ordnance, she
continued. “Discharge, point-blank!”

Even her armor couldn’t shield
her ears from the shrill sound that followed. The sonic discharge was a ranged
weapon, but here it was having a different effect. The weapon’s vibrations
rattled through her arm and entire body, and the outfit’s exterior set the
surrounding icy mass to quaking. Bridget went into motion then, as the crystal
mass loosened enough for her to claw in the direction her sensors said was up.

Like a swimmer resurfacing after
a plunge, Bridget punched up through material that was momentarily fluid,
though not fully liquid. To add to her troubles, the rifle’s functionality had
been destroyed by her desperate maneuver, shaken apart by its own sonic
vibrations, so she released it and clawed for a handhold amid the chunks of
ice. The whole room seemed to be moving now, the ground rent to pieces by the
massive creature.

She beheld the monster, rising
and plunging. The chemical ice that made up the floor was still frozen — could
liquids even exist on Leel? — but the thaw Vremian mentioned had evidently weakened its tensile strength,
and the stony serpent was wending and crunching its way through it like a drill
through balsa wood. At least it wasn’t paying any attention to her — yet.

Bridget quickly checked her
armor’s team status display. All the members of Surge Team One were alive, she
saw, but there had been several non-life-threatening injuries from the battle
and the collapse. She suspected the Xylanx warriors
had been doing as her team had: using lesser ordnance so as to avoid bringing
down the atrium on everyone. But her team had been too near the place where the
creature had erupted from the floor. She did an audio roll call, and everyone
checked in.

“Those still armed use your sonics to get clear,” she said. “It’s a little busy up
here.”

Of all the members of her squad,
only Arbutus Dinner was free from the icefall. At least she wasn’t alone. He
was crouched behind the onetime podium, firing explosive rounds at the beast to
no noticeable effect.

“Dinner, where’s Jamie?” Bridget
asked.

“Outside,” Dinner
replied between shots. “He followed the Xylanx
dudes.”

A sign of intelligence on both their parts?
she
wondered.
Maybe.
Well, she still had people outside. “Gideon, come in,” she said into her mic.

Static — but different from what
she’d heard earlier, when the Xylanx leader boasted about
jamming her second team’s transmissions from
Indispensable
.

Jamie and the Xylanx
would have to be Gideon’s problem, she realized, as the monstrosity ceased its
circular movements. The leading end of the beast rose in the air, towering like
a cobra, heading for — what? Bridget trained her armor’s
spotlight above. Near the damaged top of the atrium, airborne Leelites swirled in panic, looking like bubbles circling a
drain. Through the communications link, she could hear them screaming about the
thing — the jorvil, they called it. So they knew what
it was, she thought — and it certainly knew about them.

The upper section of the creature
loomed over the erstwhile floor, grasping for the wispy aliens with its handlike head. The floating Leelites
seemed an insubstantial meal for such a monster —
how did it get so big?
— but that didn’t stop the thing from
snatching and devouring every unfortunate creature that came near.

Her armor’s interface alerted her
to a nearby armament. Across the wreck of a room she spotted the oversized
stock of a rifle, half-buried in the icy dust. She dashed for it, ducking
underneath a moving section of the jorvil along the
way. The rifle was O’Herlihy’s, she realized on
picking it up. All surge team members used signature weapons, useless in the
hands of unauthorized personnel; in the chief’s hands, though, it worked fine. She
wondered what had happened to Mike even as she started firing explosive rounds
at the jorvil’s top section. She didn’t want to bring
the entire ice dome down — had it been weakened, too, by the thaw? But there
really was no missing a target as big as the jorvil.

Nothing.
She switched ammunition modes. It was the same
story with electrical pulses — and with the sonic power that had freed her
earlier. Almost too fat to be called a rifle, the Spraecher
300 had five ordnance settings — and not one of them seemed to even distract the jorvil from its prey.

“Vremian!”
she called out into her helmet mic. “What is this
thing?”

She heard the start of an answer
from the Leelite, but it resolved into a scream as
the jorvil lunged. The Leelite
flitted out of the way, causing the monster’s face to slap hard against the
interior of the ice dome. The wall shook, and another shower of ice fell.

Worse, behind her the ceiling of
the entrance tunnel gave way, closing off the exit and the last source of exterior
light.

Inside her helmet, Bridget’s
visor switched to infrared tracking, allowing her to see Dinner again across
the mess. “Party knowglobe connection lost,” the
computerized voice in her ear said.

“Terrific,” she said, rolling her
eyes. It was the end of her ability to tap the Leelites’
knowledge base about the creature — not that she’d had a chance to even check.
Her team had also been using it to boost their armor transmission signals from
within the hall to make them audible to the team outside. Jamming or no
jamming, they were truly cut off.

“What now?” Dinner radioed. He’d
momentarily paused his waste of ammunition. “It’s gonna run out of appetizers soon.”

“Just don’t tell it your name,”
she said.

Anxious, she tried again to reach
the second team leader at the ship, to no avail. Where Hiro
Welligan was her greenest squad leader, Victor Gideon
had twenty years of experience battling strange things from beyond. That was
more than anyone on her team had, Bridget included. But Welligan
simply had trouble knowing the right thing to do. Getting Gideon to do the
sane
thing would
be a triumph…