Fall of the White Ship Avatar (5 page)

There was a lot of scuffling as somebody hustled for cover. Alacrity fired twice more. Floyt took the insane chance of popping up and squeezing off unaimed shots, the Webley jumping in his hand.

Whoever the assailants were, they were busy staying low. Floyt emptied the revolver's cylinder, hot file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (21 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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propellant and bullet shavings spraying from the chambers, as Alacrity pulled him back the way they'd come. Alacrity kept up the fire, unleashing the furious blare of the Captain's Sidearm around the shed pell-mell, making the air broiling hot, keeping the attackers' heads down.

Until one of them gets desperate enough to rush us,
Floyt fretted, working on the hatch. He got it open as Alacrity hosed the energy gun back and forth, alley-broom style, raising the temperature to blistering, backing along after Floyt. Alacrity jumped to cover on one side of the hatchway as Floyt shouldered it shut from the other, shots roiling and spattering from it as it swung to.

"No lock, fug-all!" Floyt panted. "It's been stripped."

Alacrity backed away from the hatch, muzzle trained on it. "We can't stick around. Go to the next hatch and reload; I'll cover."

Floyt skimmed off in that direction. Alacrity checked his weapon. The charge indicator still read three-quarters full. Alacrity hoped he was getting a true reading; a fizzle now would be very embarrassing and harmful to his career goals. He backed and side-hopped, face streaming, to rejoin Floyt.

Floyt was at the next hatch along their route of retreat, nearly set. He had his top-breaking pistol open, holding it by its down turned barrel, reloading two bullets at a time. He had his tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth in concentration, but he worked quickly and calmly.

He's changed a lot,
Alacrity thought again as he took a crouched firing position on the other side of the hatch.

"What now?" Floyt asked, closing the revolver. "If we go back, I bet we'll find the other ambushers have that route blocked, too."

"I'm stumped," Alacrity admitted. "They sure got everything covered in a hurry."

"Yes, it seems they're thorough."

"Uh-huh. You want to know what I don't get? That part about 'Firing Studs.'
Firing Studs
? New one on me."

Floyt had his slug pistol cocked and ready. "Oh, that; that's one of Sintilla's expressions. People end up calling us that in
Castle of the Death Addicts
."

"Wha—?
Fancula
, doesn't anybody have anything better to do than read those damn books?" He hunkered around to peer through the lock, into the next stretch of passageway they'd have to negotiate.

"It sounds as if someone decided to read up on his quarry," Floyt judged.

"Stop the clock!" Alacrity was looking at him pop-eyed. "They read the book; what if they believe all file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (22 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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that pasture decor that Tilla made up about us?"

"Well, then they're probably a little apprehensive just at the moment. In the book we are truly remarkable fellows. Part of it takes place here in the lashup, as a matter of fact. It developed that you knew the secrets of the subsurface shuttle system of the Lunar Ancients."

Hissing and scorching sounded at the hatch behind them, covering fire for a rush by the opposition.

Raul Plantos, Langstretch Field Operative Class Two, was the one who'd just come through the aeroponics shed after Floyt and Alacrity, the one who'd offered terms of surrender to make it easy for him to braise them.

He was leery of his two targets; he was familiar with their astounding dash to Terra in a privateer starship, their final planetfall in a superstealth spaceboat, and their key roles in bringing down the Camarilla.

In some fashion no one seemed to quite understand, the two hapless vagabonds had defied certain death and beat the odds, not just once, but repeatedly.

Plantos had read of their exploits in those absurd books, determined to know his prey as well as possible.

He dismissed just about all of it as sheer fantasy, but was troubled by occasional doubts. How could the pair have survived what they had, out on their own in the Third Breath, if they didn't have hidden resources? That seemed as unlikely as the
Amazon Slave Women of the Supernova.
He knew he had them cornered, but Plantos still felt misgivings.

Footshuffles and hop-sounds came his way from behind. He whirled, fearing the targets had managed some flank attack, but it was only the last of his strike force, for a total of five. They moved loudly and were less professional than he preferred, but there was no help for that now.

Plantos, a deceptively lean man with a protruding Adam's apple and sleepy eyes, motioned with his scatterbeam assault weapon; the manhunters took cover to await orders. He cursed the need for haste that had required his obtaining local help. But the boxtown mayor's tip came out of the blue, and there was no telling when Fitzhugh would drop from sight again, leaving an absolute-zero trail, as he had in the past.

The standing bounty on Fitzhugh, already generous enough to let a field op retire in rare style, had been increased. That meant Fitzhugh and, inevitably, his sidekick Floyt, must be nulled with dispatch, before someone beat Plantos to it.

"Get ready," he said in a low voice. "They must be in there somewhere."

"We found the kid, Quirk," one of the latecomers said. "He's crammed into a locker. Him, we can adjust file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (23 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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later."

"Come," Plantos said, rising. He advanced with the scatterbeam's skeletal stock clamped firmly to his right hip. His dearest wish was that his mission partner were there to help; a human juggernaut could be a liability at some times, and frightening, but a welcome companion at others.

But his mission partner wasn't there, so Plantos directed the assault with professional calm and skill, letting the local hirelings take most of the risks.

Counterfire didn't come when and where he expected it, which was disturbing. The targets had been driven into a dead end, an old land-dozer hull the Sockwallets used as a warehouse. There wasn't even access to the Lunar surface, not that that would do the quarry any good.

Plantos, bringing up the rear, found himself staring down a short passageway and through an open hatch into the warehouse. It as empty except for odd bits of trash, with no cover to be seen but for a low life-support service unit with its access panel hanging open. If the targets had gone to ground inside it, they were as good as dead. There were a few little viewblebs in the place, through which harsh sunlight flooded.

The locals were wary but eager as weasels, itching to have it over with and collect the head bounty. One threw himself down in a good firing position, leaning against the circular plug-hatch that was swung back, flat against the bulkhead. A second hireling got to the other side of the hatchway for a crossfire and still there was no sign of opposition. Plantos ordered up the remaining two gunmen, establishing commanding fields of fire. There was no sign of Floyt or Fitzhugh in any direction, including up.

Then he himself advanced to weigh the situation. After some tentative ducking in and out, a laser marksman and a scatterbeam gunner were inside, seeing no prey.

Plantos crouched in the hatchway, taking a better look at the service unit. The open panel had a symbol qwik-graffed on its inner side, a trefoil with a human eye beneath it. The blood in his veins seemed to stop.

"My god! The damned transport system! The secret transport system!" That explained some of Fitzhugh's and Floyt's unlikely triumphs. Plantos still didn't believe in Lunar Ancients, but apparently those books had some truth in them after all.

Plantos leapt through the hatch, plucking at his belt for the stun grenades he couldn't use earlier when he was in the same compartment with Alacrity and Floyt. He had no idea where the bolthole led, but knew that if he didn't act fast, the quarry would escape. His men crowded after, ready to fire at the first sign of a target.

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Two gunmen took up firing positions inside the hatchway; the others and Plantos closed in on the service unit with infantry-style rushes. Plantos invoked an icy calm; he maneuvered to his right, scatterbeam leveled. At his command, his men advanced on the open access plate. He prayed that the targets were still within range of a dropped grenade; the thought of chasing armed enemies down through some underground maze made his skin crawl.

"Suppression fire." Plantos got ready to open up.

They would riddle the service unit and inspect for subsurface escape shafts afterward.

All at once a tremendous gunbolt crashed across the warehouse to blast out one of the viewblebs. There was an eternal instant as an ocean of air, drawn irresistibly to vacuum, mobilized itself, during which Plantos whirled and saw Alacrity standing in the half-closed hatchway, the Captain's Sidearm held cup-in-saucer style. Though the hunter-killer team couldn't see him, Floyt was struggling from hiding too, shoving himself from the cramped hiding place that had been left when the hatch, like a number of others, was gutted for salvage.

The hatch was moving as the lashup's tremendous mountain of air surged into motion. Alacrity was putting another shot into the shattered viewbleb to be sure; a spectral wind-howl had begun.

Most of the assassins were too startled to move, but one began bringing his pulsed-laser alley broom around. Floyt fired the Webley again and again as the wind tore at him, throwing the man into convulsions of pain, the air whiplashing them all in a monumental surge.

Plantos was yelling, drowned out by the howling air-leak, and Alacrity dropped the Captain's Sidearm to grab Floyt, who was in danger of being whisked into the warehouse. Alacrity dragged his friend to one side, reaching for purchase with hands and feet, the light gravity working against him as the hatch was swung shut by the vast atmospheric flow. It nearly sucked them through, and the hatch came close to chopping off half of Alacrity's left foot.

The hatch whammed shut with such force that Alacrity feared it would split up the middle and give way.

A few feeble alarms began, tribute to the Foragers' endlessly cautious engineering.

There were some few screams and impacts from the ruptured warehouse, but they grew fainter as the atmosphere bled away.

Floyt only had to wave the Webley around once or twice and that was it; the boxtowners kept an emphatic distance. They were scavengers, with no taste for gunplay and firefights.

When Alacrity showed up at last, in the repaired vac-suit he'd rented from the local protection committee, he looked several shades paler than usual. The raptured viewbleb wasn't very big, so Floyt file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (25 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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didn't want to think about what the assassins' remains looked like strewn across the airless lunar landscape.

"One of them was Langstretch," Alacrity said, throwing down carry-pouches and proteuses and an armload of guns. Searching quickly, they found that only the Langstretch man had much cash, but he was pretty well heeled.

"We don't have time to fence the guns," Alacrity admitted, "so I propose we give 'em to the protection committee, where they'll do some good."

Floyt fingered through the money solemnly. "It isn't enough to get us very far on our way to Windfall, though, is it?"

"No. This is." Alacrity held up a spacecraft code-key, smiling triumphantly. "That skinny guy who had all the money—Plantos, his name was—he was a Field Op Two. We needed a break, and it came to us the strangest way I ever saw: Plantos."

Floyt held up one hand. "Wait; slow down. You're saying to me that we have ourselves a
starship
?"

Alacrity was rubbing the end of the code-key on the tip of his nose, beaming. "Provided there's enough money here to pay the right bribes. The ship's called, um—" He double-checked—"The
Lightning
Whelk.
And she's ours if we move sprightly. I say again: let's houdini the hell outta here."

Floyt was grinning. "What's the weather like on Windfall?"

Alacrity looked thoughtful, seating a new charge in the Captain's Sidearm. "It's nice there, Ho. It's always nice on Windfall."

CHAPTER 3—DARK MATTER

"Not very well equipped, was he?" Floyt announced after he and Alacrity had made their inspection of the
Lightning Whelk.

"I mean, for a Langstretch man? I don't see much of the paraphernalia that Victoria carried."

"Me either," Alacrity said, feeding the last of the mathematical models into the computer guidance suite.

The pliability of Lunar port officials increased when Alacrity flashed the sheaf of money he'd recovered from Plantos's leg pouch. It had cost most of the op's cash, but Alacrity and Floyt received priority clearance and made immediate lift-off.

"But she's a Field Op One and he was only a Two," Alacrity added. He glanced around a cockpit/bridge that was roomy enough for one but cramped for two. It wasn't set up for two, but the rest of the file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...y%20-%20Fall%20of%20the%20White%20Ship%20Avatar.htm (26 of 242)23-2-2006 17:03:12

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Lightning Whelk
was, Plantos's permanent living arrangements augmented by temporary provisions for a second person. Or thing. A quick look at those accommodations gave Floyt an uneasy feeling.