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Preparations

Blohm watched Sergeant Gabrilovitch pause, then take a second pouch of magazines for his backup weapon, the grenade launcher. They didn't intend to fight anybody. The plan was that the pair of scouts would slip three miles through the jungle to the site of a magnetic anomaly the major wanted checked out, report, and rejoin the column without firing a round.

The rest of the universe, the Spooks and in particular the forest itself, might have different plans. Blohm clipped another fuel-air grenade to his equipment belt. If he and Gabe stepped in shit, they were a whole lifetime away from resupply.

The encampment was waking up. There were sizzles and cooking odors from the last proper meal the column would have until a relief ship arrived with replacement ranges and prepared food. Children called in shrill voices, angry at being roused before dawn.

Blohm looked toward the sky, pale enough to hint at colors in the forest. "Ready to go, snake?" he asked.

Gabe laughed without humor. "Not as ready as you are. But yeah, let's do it. You lead?"

C41 was marshalling near the ship. The major and Sergeant Daye made sure the strikers knew their placements in the column. Sergeant Kristal saw the scouts standing apart and walked toward them.

"Hey, you two," she called. "You've still got your converters. Bring them over to the cit woman at the trailers. The president. She'll take care of them from here out."

"Who died and made you God, Kristal?" Blohm said. He and 2-1's sergeant had rubbed each other wrong since she transferred to C41 from a line battalion.

"It happens that Top tasked me to help with administration since we're short of officers," Kristal said in a hard, pale voice. "But for a pissant like you, Blohm, all that matters is I'm a sergeant and you're a striker."

"Major Farrell wants us to check something magnetic out in the jungle, Sue," Sergeant Gabrilovitch said. "We need the converters. We're headed out right now."

"Come on, Gabe," Blohm said. He wasn't going to give up his converter. Not if the major himself ordered it.

"Well, hell, nobody told me," Kristal muttered. She knew she'd stepped on her dick by trying to pull rank. She turned to go back to the main body. Over her shoulder she added, "When you get back, then. The cits are taking care of catering."

"No," Blohm said. "I need my converter. I might be out there—"

He nodded.

"—any time."

So long as Caius Blohm had a converter and a knife, he was independent of every other human being on Bezant. He could pretend, believe, he was completely alone.

Both sergeants looked at Blohm with carefully blank-faced concern. They'd seen redliners plenty of times before. There wasn't a psych wing to bundle people off to here; and besides, even Kristal would have admitted the expedition needed Blohm just now.

"Look, Sue," Gabrilovitch said, speaking more to Blohm than to Kristal. "When we're in camp, Blohm'll run his converter for any cits that need it, right? He'll do it himself. Top can't complain about that, right?"

Kristal shrugged. "Yeah, sure," she said, watching Blohm the way she'd have watched a cobra; only she knew the scout was faster than a cobra. "Have a nice hike through the park, why don't you?"

"Come on, snake," Gabrilovitch said in an urgent whisper. "We got a job to do, right?"

"Right," Blohm growled. He twitched his whole body to settle his pack, then strode toward the edge of the unbroken forest.

Kristal watched the scouts disappear. Blohm entered the jungle like a fish diving home in the sea.

The civilians' faces were sullen over layers of fear, anger, and uncertainty; but mostly fear. Abbado walked down the line of the two deckloads who'd start at the head of the column and were therefore 3-3's primary responsibility. He reminded himself that they were civilians; and he tried to remember to smile.

The civilians had been told to prepare to colonize a planet, not for route marching. They didn't have load-bearing equipment. Many of them carried bundles in their arms. Others had travel cases with handles and sophisticated support devices on the underside, a dead weight over the bulldozed terrain between here and the proper site.

Strikers were talking to the civilians about their baggage, helping them sort and toss items aside. Abbado noticed Glasebrook was checking everybody's neck patch. Flea seemed to have made that a crusade, which was fine with his sergeant. Abbado's wrist still ached where the crazy Spook had bitten him.

A few civilians had tried to manufacture their own packs. Lack of proper materials handicapped them, but Abbado nodded approval at the initiative. Half a dozen adults carried their loads balanced on lengths of plastic pipe. That was probably the most efficient technique, though it'd be awkward in tight places.

Abbado didn't worry about the marchers crowding together. This mob was going to straggle from the first step, and he only hoped nobody thought it was the job of his strikers to close them up. Trying to protect the poor bastards was going to be problem enough.

Dr. Ciler bobbed his head silently to Abbado. The sergeant lifted a hand in response. He recognized a number of the faces, though he couldn't have put names to them. People from the batch he'd guided aboard the ship. "Hey, it's homecoming, right, folks?" he said.

Jeez, these poor bastards are meat on the table unless we stay razor sharp, Abbado thought as his lips smiled.

The tractors were turning over as staffers checked the prime mover and ancillary motors. The drives were electric, generated by fusion-heated steam in a light-metal working fluid.

The tractor cabs were covered on the top and three sides. The staffers driving would wear hard suits from C41's stores, most of which had to be abandoned at the ship. The major had decided to put a striker in full armor on the platform behind the cab for additional protection. They couldn't afford to lose the tractors.

Abbado stopped beside a woman in her forties. Most of the civilians stood in small groups, families or neighbors together, but she was alone. She wore a tailored pants suit and what looked to the sergeant like slippers.

"Ma'am, do you have other shoes than these?" he asked. The beige suit was probably all right, loose enough to be comfortable and of a synthetic that was tough though diaphanous. "Or boots, maybe?"

The woman covered her face and began to cry. She started to fold at the knees.

"Ma'am?" Abbado said. He reached out but he was afraid to touch her. He looked desperately at the nearest civilians.

A father took the hand of a six-year-old so that his wife could put her arms around the crying woman. "It's all right, Mrs. Florescu," the mother said. "I've got an extra pair that I don't want to carry. What size are you?"

"One-sixty-five," Florescu said, trying to control her sobbing. "I'd just moved in. A new life after the divorce. And then this. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't get anything ready, I just couldn't!"

"I'm one-fifty-five," the other woman said. She looked at Abbado with a worried expression. "Do you think that's too small, captain?"

"Shit, I'm a one-sixty-five and I've got a pair in my hold baggage that was just going to feed mice," Caldwell said. "Cover for me while I get them, Sarge? They're up on Deck 24."

Abbado nodded. "Don't let Top see you going back aboard," he said. "And don't waste time."

Caldwell put a bulldozed line of brush between her and the command group as she trotted toward the ship.

"You're going to be the envy of all your friends, Mrs. Florescu," Abbado said. "Genuine Strike Force boots, guaranteed to outlast the wearer. Now, let's take a look at your bag, here."

He knelt and turned over a suitcase that probably weighed pretty close to what the owner herself did. It had a built-in air cushion lift similar to that of a Heavy Weapons dolly—and here as useless as tits on a boar.

One of the bulldozers squealed as it raised its blade from resting position on the ground. Whining and clanking, the massive vehicle started toward the edge of the forest.

These poor bastard civilians.

The second bulldozer backed slowly toward the trailer's tow-bar. The drive started out at a high-pitched whine, but the sound lowered as torque overcame the vehicle's initial static resistance.

"There are still ten adults and two children on the transport," Tamara Lundie said—ostensibly to the project manager but loud enough that Farrell would be sure to hear over the tractor's squeals and clangor. "Councillor Lock's wife and child are among them. I believe the councillor has gone back aboard also."

"That's under control," Farrell said wearily. He hadn't slept worth a damn. Dreaming about the extraction from Active Cloak, and he'd have thought his subconscious could have found more pressing concerns. "I've got four strikers chivying people out."

Farrell tried to visualize the column stretching through the jungle. Half a mile long, and that was if the civilians kept together better than he had any expectation that they would. How the hell was C41 going to protect them?

"I've placed the second tractor in the center of the column as you requested, Major," al-Ibrahimi said. "Because it's as large as the path the leading vehicle cuts, it divides the column . . . which it would not do if it were at the rear or front."

The tractor backed over the tow-bar. The two staffers holding the bar ready had to jump aside, shouting curses at the driver.

The driver lifted her helmet visor. "It's this fucking spacesuit!" she shouted back. "You try to do better wearing one, Biggs!"

She closed the visor. The bulldozer whined forward a foot and a half and halted while the other staffers gingerly returned to lift the bar.

"I want resupply in the middle of the column," Farrell said. "My people are carrying double their usual ammo loads—"

Which were about double what Logistics thought a striker's basic load should be to begin with.

"—but we don't know what we're going to run into. The only way we've got to cover the civilians is to lay down enough fire to chew this jungle to a golf green at the first sign of trouble. The dozer can cut its own way off the path if we need to get by it."

Susannah Reitz broke from a group of floor monitors and strode toward the project manager. "Manager al-Ibrahimi," she said in a voice with a shrill edge, "I've taken a look at some of the citizens you claim are fit to march. We have a woman from Three West who's eight and a half months pregnant! We have fourteen residents over seventy years old, and we have an asthmatic for whom a walk of as much as half a block in this heat and humidity will mean a life-threatening attack."

The building president stopped in front of al-Ibrahimi, ignoring Farrell and Lundie. Her face was flushed both with heat and anger. "What I want to know, Mr. Manager," she said in a lower voice that cut like a hacksaw, "is do you expect to treat people the way you treat the excess luggage? Throw them into the jungle when they get to be a burden?"

"No," said Farrell. He'd heard dogs snarling that sounded more human than he did. "We're not abandoning anybody alive, Ms. Reitz. Other folks'll carry them or they'll ride the trailers. The dead I don't care."

"The ground pressure of the trailer wheels—" Lundie began.

"Fuck the ground pressure!" Farrell said. "We'll throw out ammo before we leave people behind."

"I don't think that will be necessary, Major," al-Ibrahimi said with a faint smile. "Not at the rate I fear you'll be using that ammunition. Ms. Reitz, why don't you and I discuss the matter with our less healthy fellows and see what can be arranged."

He offered Reitz his arm. The gesture obviously surprised her, but she accepted it.

Farrell's eyes were closed. He felt his stinger's magazine click as he reseated it in the butt-well.

"Major Farrell?" said Tamara Lundie in a quiet voice beside him. "You're correct, of course. The human considerations are the only considerations that are really pragmatic."

The nearby tractor whined like a giant hornet. It was starting forward against its own mass and that of the two loaded trailers.

"We don't leave anybody behind," Farrell whispered to his ghosts.

The doors to the living compartments on 10-1442 didn't lock, but 2A was closed unlike any of the others on the corridor. Meyer checked the name on a sidebar, then raised her visor to look less threatening. Top said not to scare the cits and not to use any more force than necessary.

"Margaret Lock?" she called and started to push the door open.

"No!" a woman shouted from inside. The door slammed against its jamb. A child began to shriek.

The sound of the door threw a switch in the striker's mind. It was shutting her out, not in, but all Meyer's nightmare reflex heard was the closure. She hit the panel with her right shoulder and pivoted in. Her finger was within the trigger guard of her stinger. The muzzle swept the room.

Male and female, not obviously armed. Child of three or four, female, screaming like a steam vent. The parents were around thirty, the man trying to view both Meyer and the woman Meyer'd flung across the compartment with the door. The woman looked like a harpy's corpse, but she'd probably be all right when her face wasn't distorted with fear, anger and a day of hysterics.

"I'll take care of this, soldier!" the man said. "I'm Councillor Matthew Lock and this is my wife."

"Get your little girl out, sir," Meyer said, breathing hard. She let the sling snap her weapon back under her arm. Christ, what had she been thinking of? "Don't threaten them," Top had said. "I'll guide your wife."

Meyer reached for the child's arm. The child screamed, "Help, Mommie!" and dodged back.

"Get away from her, you filthy whore!" cried the woman. She launched herself at Meyer.

Meyer kicked the woman in the crotch, a bar-fight reflex that was about as effective on one sex as the other. The compartment was too small. Filters of memory darkened it in the striker's mind. She was back on Active Cloak.

"I'll have you—" Councillor Lock said as he grabbed Meyer by the shoulders. Meyer slammed her stinger's barrel into the pit of Lock's stomach.

He doubled up, still clinging to her. Meyer's intellect caught her instinct just before she butt-stroked him in the face. She batted the insides of Lock's elbows to break his grip, then stepped away.

Both civilian adults were on their knees. The woman made wet sobbing sounds. The kid's mouth and eyes were wide open, but for a wonder she'd stopped screeching.

"Coming through!" Steve Nessman warned. He entered in a crouch with his stinger ready, then straightened uncertainly.

"My people went out on their own," Nessman said as he eyed Meyer. "Figured I'd stop off on Two and see how you were doing, Essie."

"Yeah," Meyer said hoarsely. "Help me get these guys to the lifts, will you?"

Councillor Lock put his arms around his wife and stood, helping her up with him. "Alison, come along at once," he said to his daughter in a breathy voice. "We'll get the luggage later."

Lock walked the woman out of the compartment, holding her to hide her face against his chest. He kept his eyes straight ahead. The child caught the slack of her father's trouser leg and followed. Unlike the adults, she stared at Meyer while leaving, turning her head like an owl.

Nessman stepped into the doorway to separate the parties. "You all right, snake?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Meyer. "We'll just wait till they're on the lift, okay?"

Her eyes were aware of the compartment's normal lighting, but the lonely darkness squeezed tight on her mind.

Back | Next
Contents
Framed

Back | Next
Contents

Preparations

Blohm watched Sergeant Gabrilovitch pause, then take a second pouch of magazines for his backup weapon, the grenade launcher. They didn't intend to fight anybody. The plan was that the pair of scouts would slip three miles through the jungle to the site of a magnetic anomaly the major wanted checked out, report, and rejoin the column without firing a round.

The rest of the universe, the Spooks and in particular the forest itself, might have different plans. Blohm clipped another fuel-air grenade to his equipment belt. If he and Gabe stepped in shit, they were a whole lifetime away from resupply.

The encampment was waking up. There were sizzles and cooking odors from the last proper meal the column would have until a relief ship arrived with replacement ranges and prepared food. Children called in shrill voices, angry at being roused before dawn.

Blohm looked toward the sky, pale enough to hint at colors in the forest. "Ready to go, snake?" he asked.

Gabe laughed without humor. "Not as ready as you are. But yeah, let's do it. You lead?"

C41 was marshalling near the ship. The major and Sergeant Daye made sure the strikers knew their placements in the column. Sergeant Kristal saw the scouts standing apart and walked toward them.

"Hey, you two," she called. "You've still got your converters. Bring them over to the cit woman at the trailers. The president. She'll take care of them from here out."

"Who died and made you God, Kristal?" Blohm said. He and 2-1's sergeant had rubbed each other wrong since she transferred to C41 from a line battalion.

"It happens that Top tasked me to help with administration since we're short of officers," Kristal said in a hard, pale voice. "But for a pissant like you, Blohm, all that matters is I'm a sergeant and you're a striker."

"Major Farrell wants us to check something magnetic out in the jungle, Sue," Sergeant Gabrilovitch said. "We need the converters. We're headed out right now."

"Come on, Gabe," Blohm said. He wasn't going to give up his converter. Not if the major himself ordered it.

"Well, hell, nobody told me," Kristal muttered. She knew she'd stepped on her dick by trying to pull rank. She turned to go back to the main body. Over her shoulder she added, "When you get back, then. The cits are taking care of catering."

"No," Blohm said. "I need my converter. I might be out there—"

He nodded.

"—any time."

So long as Caius Blohm had a converter and a knife, he was independent of every other human being on Bezant. He could pretend, believe, he was completely alone.

Both sergeants looked at Blohm with carefully blank-faced concern. They'd seen redliners plenty of times before. There wasn't a psych wing to bundle people off to here; and besides, even Kristal would have admitted the expedition needed Blohm just now.

"Look, Sue," Gabrilovitch said, speaking more to Blohm than to Kristal. "When we're in camp, Blohm'll run his converter for any cits that need it, right? He'll do it himself. Top can't complain about that, right?"

Kristal shrugged. "Yeah, sure," she said, watching Blohm the way she'd have watched a cobra; only she knew the scout was faster than a cobra. "Have a nice hike through the park, why don't you?"

"Come on, snake," Gabrilovitch said in an urgent whisper. "We got a job to do, right?"

"Right," Blohm growled. He twitched his whole body to settle his pack, then strode toward the edge of the unbroken forest.

Kristal watched the scouts disappear. Blohm entered the jungle like a fish diving home in the sea.

The civilians' faces were sullen over layers of fear, anger, and uncertainty; but mostly fear. Abbado walked down the line of the two deckloads who'd start at the head of the column and were therefore 3-3's primary responsibility. He reminded himself that they were civilians; and he tried to remember to smile.

The civilians had been told to prepare to colonize a planet, not for route marching. They didn't have load-bearing equipment. Many of them carried bundles in their arms. Others had travel cases with handles and sophisticated support devices on the underside, a dead weight over the bulldozed terrain between here and the proper site.

Strikers were talking to the civilians about their baggage, helping them sort and toss items aside. Abbado noticed Glasebrook was checking everybody's neck patch. Flea seemed to have made that a crusade, which was fine with his sergeant. Abbado's wrist still ached where the crazy Spook had bitten him.

A few civilians had tried to manufacture their own packs. Lack of proper materials handicapped them, but Abbado nodded approval at the initiative. Half a dozen adults carried their loads balanced on lengths of plastic pipe. That was probably the most efficient technique, though it'd be awkward in tight places.

Abbado didn't worry about the marchers crowding together. This mob was going to straggle from the first step, and he only hoped nobody thought it was the job of his strikers to close them up. Trying to protect the poor bastards was going to be problem enough.

Dr. Ciler bobbed his head silently to Abbado. The sergeant lifted a hand in response. He recognized a number of the faces, though he couldn't have put names to them. People from the batch he'd guided aboard the ship. "Hey, it's homecoming, right, folks?" he said.

Jeez, these poor bastards are meat on the table unless we stay razor sharp, Abbado thought as his lips smiled.

The tractors were turning over as staffers checked the prime mover and ancillary motors. The drives were electric, generated by fusion-heated steam in a light-metal working fluid.

The tractor cabs were covered on the top and three sides. The staffers driving would wear hard suits from C41's stores, most of which had to be abandoned at the ship. The major had decided to put a striker in full armor on the platform behind the cab for additional protection. They couldn't afford to lose the tractors.

Abbado stopped beside a woman in her forties. Most of the civilians stood in small groups, families or neighbors together, but she was alone. She wore a tailored pants suit and what looked to the sergeant like slippers.

"Ma'am, do you have other shoes than these?" he asked. The beige suit was probably all right, loose enough to be comfortable and of a synthetic that was tough though diaphanous. "Or boots, maybe?"

The woman covered her face and began to cry. She started to fold at the knees.

"Ma'am?" Abbado said. He reached out but he was afraid to touch her. He looked desperately at the nearest civilians.

A father took the hand of a six-year-old so that his wife could put her arms around the crying woman. "It's all right, Mrs. Florescu," the mother said. "I've got an extra pair that I don't want to carry. What size are you?"

"One-sixty-five," Florescu said, trying to control her sobbing. "I'd just moved in. A new life after the divorce. And then this. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't get anything ready, I just couldn't!"

"I'm one-fifty-five," the other woman said. She looked at Abbado with a worried expression. "Do you think that's too small, captain?"

"Shit, I'm a one-sixty-five and I've got a pair in my hold baggage that was just going to feed mice," Caldwell said. "Cover for me while I get them, Sarge? They're up on Deck 24."

Abbado nodded. "Don't let Top see you going back aboard," he said. "And don't waste time."

Caldwell put a bulldozed line of brush between her and the command group as she trotted toward the ship.

"You're going to be the envy of all your friends, Mrs. Florescu," Abbado said. "Genuine Strike Force boots, guaranteed to outlast the wearer. Now, let's take a look at your bag, here."

He knelt and turned over a suitcase that probably weighed pretty close to what the owner herself did. It had a built-in air cushion lift similar to that of a Heavy Weapons dolly—and here as useless as tits on a boar.

One of the bulldozers squealed as it raised its blade from resting position on the ground. Whining and clanking, the massive vehicle started toward the edge of the forest.

These poor bastard civilians.

The second bulldozer backed slowly toward the trailer's tow-bar. The drive started out at a high-pitched whine, but the sound lowered as torque overcame the vehicle's initial static resistance.

"There are still ten adults and two children on the transport," Tamara Lundie said—ostensibly to the project manager but loud enough that Farrell would be sure to hear over the tractor's squeals and clangor. "Councillor Lock's wife and child are among them. I believe the councillor has gone back aboard also."

"That's under control," Farrell said wearily. He hadn't slept worth a damn. Dreaming about the extraction from Active Cloak, and he'd have thought his subconscious could have found more pressing concerns. "I've got four strikers chivying people out."

Farrell tried to visualize the column stretching through the jungle. Half a mile long, and that was if the civilians kept together better than he had any expectation that they would. How the hell was C41 going to protect them?

"I've placed the second tractor in the center of the column as you requested, Major," al-Ibrahimi said. "Because it's as large as the path the leading vehicle cuts, it divides the column . . . which it would not do if it were at the rear or front."

The tractor backed over the tow-bar. The two staffers holding the bar ready had to jump aside, shouting curses at the driver.

The driver lifted her helmet visor. "It's this fucking spacesuit!" she shouted back. "You try to do better wearing one, Biggs!"

She closed the visor. The bulldozer whined forward a foot and a half and halted while the other staffers gingerly returned to lift the bar.

"I want resupply in the middle of the column," Farrell said. "My people are carrying double their usual ammo loads—"

Which were about double what Logistics thought a striker's basic load should be to begin with.

"—but we don't know what we're going to run into. The only way we've got to cover the civilians is to lay down enough fire to chew this jungle to a golf green at the first sign of trouble. The dozer can cut its own way off the path if we need to get by it."

Susannah Reitz broke from a group of floor monitors and strode toward the project manager. "Manager al-Ibrahimi," she said in a voice with a shrill edge, "I've taken a look at some of the citizens you claim are fit to march. We have a woman from Three West who's eight and a half months pregnant! We have fourteen residents over seventy years old, and we have an asthmatic for whom a walk of as much as half a block in this heat and humidity will mean a life-threatening attack."

The building president stopped in front of al-Ibrahimi, ignoring Farrell and Lundie. Her face was flushed both with heat and anger. "What I want to know, Mr. Manager," she said in a lower voice that cut like a hacksaw, "is do you expect to treat people the way you treat the excess luggage? Throw them into the jungle when they get to be a burden?"

"No," said Farrell. He'd heard dogs snarling that sounded more human than he did. "We're not abandoning anybody alive, Ms. Reitz. Other folks'll carry them or they'll ride the trailers. The dead I don't care."

"The ground pressure of the trailer wheels—" Lundie began.

"Fuck the ground pressure!" Farrell said. "We'll throw out ammo before we leave people behind."

"I don't think that will be necessary, Major," al-Ibrahimi said with a faint smile. "Not at the rate I fear you'll be using that ammunition. Ms. Reitz, why don't you and I discuss the matter with our less healthy fellows and see what can be arranged."

He offered Reitz his arm. The gesture obviously surprised her, but she accepted it.

Farrell's eyes were closed. He felt his stinger's magazine click as he reseated it in the butt-well.

"Major Farrell?" said Tamara Lundie in a quiet voice beside him. "You're correct, of course. The human considerations are the only considerations that are really pragmatic."

The nearby tractor whined like a giant hornet. It was starting forward against its own mass and that of the two loaded trailers.

"We don't leave anybody behind," Farrell whispered to his ghosts.

The doors to the living compartments on 10-1442 didn't lock, but 2A was closed unlike any of the others on the corridor. Meyer checked the name on a sidebar, then raised her visor to look less threatening. Top said not to scare the cits and not to use any more force than necessary.

"Margaret Lock?" she called and started to push the door open.

"No!" a woman shouted from inside. The door slammed against its jamb. A child began to shriek.

The sound of the door threw a switch in the striker's mind. It was shutting her out, not in, but all Meyer's nightmare reflex heard was the closure. She hit the panel with her right shoulder and pivoted in. Her finger was within the trigger guard of her stinger. The muzzle swept the room.

Male and female, not obviously armed. Child of three or four, female, screaming like a steam vent. The parents were around thirty, the man trying to view both Meyer and the woman Meyer'd flung across the compartment with the door. The woman looked like a harpy's corpse, but she'd probably be all right when her face wasn't distorted with fear, anger and a day of hysterics.

"I'll take care of this, soldier!" the man said. "I'm Councillor Matthew Lock and this is my wife."

"Get your little girl out, sir," Meyer said, breathing hard. She let the sling snap her weapon back under her arm. Christ, what had she been thinking of? "Don't threaten them," Top had said. "I'll guide your wife."

Meyer reached for the child's arm. The child screamed, "Help, Mommie!" and dodged back.

"Get away from her, you filthy whore!" cried the woman. She launched herself at Meyer.

Meyer kicked the woman in the crotch, a bar-fight reflex that was about as effective on one sex as the other. The compartment was too small. Filters of memory darkened it in the striker's mind. She was back on Active Cloak.

"I'll have you—" Councillor Lock said as he grabbed Meyer by the shoulders. Meyer slammed her stinger's barrel into the pit of Lock's stomach.

He doubled up, still clinging to her. Meyer's intellect caught her instinct just before she butt-stroked him in the face. She batted the insides of Lock's elbows to break his grip, then stepped away.

Both civilian adults were on their knees. The woman made wet sobbing sounds. The kid's mouth and eyes were wide open, but for a wonder she'd stopped screeching.

"Coming through!" Steve Nessman warned. He entered in a crouch with his stinger ready, then straightened uncertainly.

"My people went out on their own," Nessman said as he eyed Meyer. "Figured I'd stop off on Two and see how you were doing, Essie."

"Yeah," Meyer said hoarsely. "Help me get these guys to the lifts, will you?"

Councillor Lock put his arms around his wife and stood, helping her up with him. "Alison, come along at once," he said to his daughter in a breathy voice. "We'll get the luggage later."

Lock walked the woman out of the compartment, holding her to hide her face against his chest. He kept his eyes straight ahead. The child caught the slack of her father's trouser leg and followed. Unlike the adults, she stared at Meyer while leaving, turning her head like an owl.

Nessman stepped into the doorway to separate the parties. "You all right, snake?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Meyer. "We'll just wait till they're on the lift, okay?"

Her eyes were aware of the compartment's normal lighting, but the lonely darkness squeezed tight on her mind.

Back | Next
Contents
Framed