The Icarus Hunt (48 page)

“Actually, we’d already set it up,” Nicabar said. He found the keys and set to work on my cuffs. “After the Iykams jumped you, I followed your party back here and then called Ixil. He brought the chemicals I needed, and while I mixed up the smoke bombs and time fuses he sent his ferrets in to reconnoiter. They came back, and we rigged them with harnesses to drag the bombs and gun inside.”

The last cuff came loose. “You certainly had me going,” I said, massaging my wrists. So that was what the ferret in the vent had been doing: chewing through his
harness straps so that he wouldn’t have to be sitting on top of the smoke bomb when it went off. “How exactly does the rest of the plan go?”

Nicabar nodded at the three Patth. “We cuff our friends together and get out of here.”

“Good plan,” I said. “There’s only one problem. This ship of theirs, the
Considerate
. It must be pretty good-sized, or Nask wouldn’t have thought they’d be able to handle the
Icarus
. If they get loose before we make it off-planet, they might take it into their heads to try and intercept us.”

“A good point,” Nicabar admitted. “Well … if you want, I’ll deal with it.”

“Be warned,” Nask said. Suddenly every trace of smarminess was gone from his voice, leaving nothing but simmering threat in its place. “The murder of a Patthaaunutth citizen is punishable by the most severe consequences imaginable.”

“And how would they know who’d done it?” Nicabar scoffed.

“There are ways,” Nask said, still in that same tone. “There are always ways.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said before Nicabar could reply. “We can’t shoot down unarmed civilians in cold blood anyway.”

“Then what do we do?” Nicabar demanded. “Just leave them here like this?”

“We leave them here,” Ixil said, stepping forward and handing me his gun. “But not precisely like this. Jordan, if you’d be so kind as to watch them; and Revs, I’d appreciate it if you’d get that upper vent open so that Pix can get out.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked, keeping one eye on the three Patth and the other on Ixil. He had retrieved one of the corona guns and was fiddling with a pair of control settings.

“This will be an experiment,” Ixil said. “I found this setting when I was examining the weapons you
brought from your encounter on Xathru. It’s quite low-power—far too low, in fact, to possibly serve as a credible weapon.”

“What’s it for, then?” Nicabar asked, grunting as he tore the grating from the upper vent. Pix was more than ready, diving out of the opening almost before the grating was all the way off. Hitting the floor, he dodged around the Iykams’ bodies and scampered up Ixil’s leg.

“I expect it’s used for torture,” Ixil said, squinting at the dials. “Something to cause pain without the risk of physical damage.”

“What an efficient idea,” I muttered, gazing hard at Nask. He said nothing, his eyes riveted on the weapon in Ixil’s hand. “No reason you should have to carry both a gun
and
a set of thumbscrews, too.”

“Indeed,” Ixil said. Finishing his adjustments, he headed toward Brosh.

“Just a moment,” Brosh said, taking a hasty step back. “I’m a simple starship pilot, from a civilian merchant ship. I have nothing to do with decisions or policies of that sort.”

“I realize that,” Ixil said, reaching out his free hand and taking one of Brosh’s arms in an unbreakable grip. “And for that reason I sincerely hope this doesn’t hurt too much.”

And pressing the corona gun against Brosh’s left cheekbone, he pulled the trigger.

There wasn’t any flash—the current flow was far too low to produce a spark. But from the effect on Brosh Ixil might have just put a thousand volts across his face. He gasped sharply, his head jerking back with such violence that my own head injuries throbbed in sympathetic pain. Ixil didn’t give him a chance to recover his balance, but simply leaned forward and delivered a second jolt to the other cheekbone. Brosh gasped again, a sound that seemed to be on the edge of panic or hysteria. “Just one more,” Ixil soothed him, and
delivered a third shock to his forehead just above his eyes.

Abruptly, Nask snarled something in the Patth language. About a step behind me, he’d suddenly figured out what Ixil was doing. “You
sacundian
alien
frouzht
—”

“—and then we move on to the hands,” Ixil said, ignoring both Nask’s curses and Brosh’s yelps and delivering a quick jolt to the backs of each of the pilot’s hands. “And that,” he added, letting go of Brosh’s arm so quickly that the other nearly toppled over backward, “is that.”

“Yes, indeed,” I agreed. “And with all that lovely implanted circuitry now scrambled or fried, the
Considerate
is without a chief pilot.”

“And will be also without its backup pilot in a moment,” Ixil agreed, moving to where Enig was cringing.

Enig demonstrated himself capable of more dignity and self-control than his superior, leaving Nask’s continuing stream of invective unpunctuated by gasps or moans. “
Now
it should be safe to secure them to the desk,” Ixil said, tossing the weapon distastefully across the room and taking his plasmic back from me. “Revs, if you’ll do the honors?”

A minute later, the three Patth were trussed like a matched set of Thanksgiving turkeys. They maintained a stoic silence throughout the operation, even Nask apparently having run out of things to call us. But the ambassador stared at Ixil the whole time, and there was something about the very deadness of his expression that sent a chill up my back.

“Looks good,” I said after Nicabar had finished, giving his handiwork a quick examination. Not that I didn’t trust him to do a proper job, but it was too late in the day to be taking unnecessary chances. “I presume one of you knows the best way out?”

“Straight through the club,” Ixil said. He snapped his fingers and Pax abandoned his examination of one
of the dead Iykams and scurried toward him. “Did you know you were in the back rooms of a night-to-dawn club, by the way?”

“No, but I should have guessed from the music I was hearing,” I said as Pax climbed up and took his accustomed place on Ixil’s other shoulder. It occurred to me that I hadn’t actually heard the band for some time now; straining my ears, I discovered I still couldn’t hear it. Either Nicabar’s gunshots had affected my hearing, or else the club had suddenly gone silent. An ominous possibility, that one. “Let’s go.”

I headed for the door, scooping up one of the corona guns along the way just to have some kind of weapon in my hand. Nicabar and Ixil moved into support positions on either side of me, Nicabar easing the door open for a cautious look as Ixil kept an eye on our three Patth friends. “All clear,” Nicabar murmured. He started out—

“Kalix.”

I turned around. Nask was still staring at Ixil, the look of death still smoldering in his eyes. “For what you did here you will pay dearly,” the ambassador said quietly. “You, and all your species with you. Remember this night as you watch your people starve to death.”

For a moment Ixil looked back at him, his own face expressionless, and I wondered uneasily if he was having second thoughts about the side he’d chosen. If Nask wasn’t just blowing off steam—and if he could persuade the Patth Director General to back him up—the Patth certainly had it within their economic power to make life miserable for the Kalixiri.

“Ixil?” Nicabar prompted quietly.

His voice seemed to break the spell. “Yes,” Ixil said, turning back. “Go ahead. I’ll take the rear.”

Seconds later, the three of us were moving along a well-lit but deserted corridor. There was still no music; nor, as we moved along, could I hear any sounds at all
other than our own. “What did you do, scare away all the patrons when you came in?” I murmured.

“Something like that,” Nicabar murmured back.

“I hope you scared away the Iykams, too,” I said. “Nask implied he had a whole troop of them guarding the building.”

“He did,” Ixil said grimly. “Everett and I dealt rather more permanently with them while the Patth were distracted with you and Nicabar.”

“And where
is
Everett?”

“On guard in the main club area,” Ixil said. “It’s right up here on the right.”

We rounded a corner, to find ourselves at the edge of a garishly decorated wiggle floor, its flickerlights still playing to its departed clientele, a scattering of spilled drinks and a couple of lost scarves adding color to the floor itself. Beyond the wiggle floor, surrounding it on all three sides other than the one we were on, were the drinking and conversation areas, consisting of a collection of close-packed tables. Most of them sported abandoned bottles and glasses, with the disarrayed chairs around them evidence of just how rapidly the club’s clientele had departed. The arrangement of lights had put most of the conversation area into deep shadow, a fact I didn’t care much for at all.

Especially given that there was no sign of Everett. On guard or otherwise.

Nicabar had made the same observation. “So where is he?” he murmured.

“I don’t know,” Ixil said as we hugged the corner. “Maybe he went outside for some reason.”

Or maybe the Patth or Iykams had spirited him away, I didn’t bother to add. If so, the evening was still a long way from being over. “Where’s the door?” I asked.

“There’s an emergency exit behind that cluster of orange lights in the corner,” Nicabar answered.
“It opens onto an alleyway just off one of the major streets.”

“Let’s hope he’s out there,” I said. “After you.”

Silently, Nicabar headed off, angling across the wiggle floor toward the orange lights he’d pointed out. We were about two-thirds of the way across the wiggle floor, pinned like moths in the glow from the flicker-lights, when I caught a glimpse of movement from behind the mass of darkened tables to our left. “Watch it!” I snapped, jabbing a finger that direction.

But my warning was too late. There was the muted flash of a plasma-bolt ignition, and with a gasped curse Nicabar dropped to one knee, his gun firing spasmodically toward the area where the shot had originated.

“Damn,” I snarled, jumping to his side and pulling him flat onto the floor as Ixil’s plasmic opened up from behind me, laying down a spray of cover fire.

“Shoulder,” Nicabar bit out from between clenched teeth, his voice almost inaudible over the rapid-fire hiss of Ixil’s plasma fire and the louder three-millimeter rounds from his own gun. “Not too bad. Can you see him?”

I couldn’t, though I could make out vague movements back in the shadows as our unseen assailant apparently repositioned himself for his next shot. But without a weapon that could reach that far it didn’t much matter whether I could see him or not. Instead, I darted to the edge of the wiggle floor, grabbed the nearest table, and half shoved, half threw it to where Nicabar was firing.

And then, even as the table skidded with a horrendous screech into a position where he could use it for cover, there was another plasmic flash from just to the right of our attacker’s direction, this one accompanied by a startlingly forlorn sort of squeak. “I got him,” a hoarse voice croaked. “Come on—I got him!”

“Stay here,” Ixil ordered quietly, pushing me unceremoniously into the cover of the table beside Nicabar.
Before I could do more than flail around for balance he heaved himself up from his prone position on the floor and was gone, charging in a broken run across the open area with a speed and agility that were surprising in a being of his size and bulk. Pix and Pax had already made it across the floor, and I caught a glimpse of them as they disappeared among the maze of tables and chairs on that side. I held my breath, watching Ixil run, waiting in helpless agony for the shot that would take him down.

But that killing shot didn’t come; and then he was there, ducking down and using the tables for maximum cover as he headed in.

Abruptly he stopped. I held my breath again—

“Come on,” he called, waving toward us as he holstered his plasmic. “It’s Everett. He’s hurt.”

I felt like saying who isn’t, but with an effort I managed to restrain myself. Helping each other, with the added incentive of not knowing whether another attacker might be lurking in the shadows somewhere, Nicabar and I made it across the wiggle floor in record time.

It was indeed Everett, lying beside a tangle of chair legs, and he was indeed hurt. A single plasmic burn, a pretty severe one, in his left thigh just above the knee. “I must have been looking the wrong way at the wrong time,” he explained, managing a wan smile as Ixil carefully tore the charred pant leg away from the wound. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, taking his plasmic from him and making a quick but careful survey of the area. If there were more attackers lying in wait, they were being awfully quiet about it. “None of the rest of us are exactly in mint condition at the moment, either. Where’s the chap who was shooting at us?”

“He’s over there somewhere,” he said, nodding to the side.

“I see him,” I said, stepping over to a misshapen
bundle on one of the chairs a couple of tables away from Everett’s position. The bundle turned out to be another of the ubiquitous Iykams, this one lying draped across the seat with a plasmic still hanging loosely from his hand. Cause of death was obvious: a close-range plasmic burn in his back. “Nice shooting.”

“Thanks,” Everett said, the word cut off by a hissing intake of breath as Ixil finished with the charred cloth. “I’m sorry I didn’t get him sooner—I’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness. I didn’t even know he was there until he took that shot at you. How bad is that burn, Revs?”

“Hurts like hell, but I don’t think there’s any serious damage,” Nicabar said. He was on one knee beside Everett, rummaging around in the medical pack lying on the floor beside him. “So how come they left you here alive after they shot you?”

“I don’t know,” Everett confessed. “I’m just glad they did.”

“Ditto,” I said. “Can you walk?”

“Do I have a choice?” Everett countered. He dug into the med pack, pushing Nicabar’s hands impatiently out of the way, and came up with a couple of burn pads. “I presume you know how to apply one of these,” he said to Nicabar as he handed him one of the pads.