Mid-Flinx (20 page)

Out of ideas and options, Flinx steadied himself. He was fast, but not as fast as a needler. Maybe he could catch a strong liana on the way down, break or slow his fall. He took a deep breath. The worst part of it all was that he could sense the pleasure Coerlis was experiencing.

Then he frowned. Suddenly he could sense the emotional presence of others besides those already accounted for. It made no sense. He wished for time to analyze what he was sensing, but mindful of Coerlis’s warning, he knew there was no time. It puzzled him as he started forward, wondering what he would feel next.

It was safe to say that neither he nor anyone else expected Coerlis’s skull to explode like a ripe melon.

Chapter Fifteen

The headless body stood swaying for a moment, blood fountaining from the raw stump of a neck. As quivering fingers contracted reflexively on the needler’s trigger, Flinx dove for the ground, screaming for Teal and the children to do likewise. The single bolt seared open sky, and a severed branch or two tumbled downward. Then the decapitated corpse crumpled forward belly first. Coerlis hadn’t even had time enough to look surprised.

The Mu’Athal whirled and simultaneously unlimbered its heavy rifle, but it never had the opportunity to return fire. The attackers were well hidden within the dense greenery. Multiple shots from both projectile and energy weapons blew the rifle out of the big alien’s four hands before bringing him to his knees. A last shot inflicted a blackened streak on the long snout before terminating in a neat, round hole in the exact center of the sloping forehead. With nary a sigh, the powerful alien rolled over on its left side and expired. Equipment spilled from its capacious backpack, tumbling out onto the branch.

Firing wildly into the verdure, Peeler flung the sack containing Pip aside and raced desperately down the branch. Shots tracked his flight, missing the frantic, agile human. Flinx lifted his head slightly to watch. If Peeler could escape the immediate ambush, and if he carried a positioner of his own, it was conceivable he might make his way back to the landing site.

At that point the bodyguard missed a step, flailed madly, desperately, to regain his balance, and went plunging off the side of the branch.

A long time passed before his screams were cut off by the first crack of snapping branches. The sounds continued, rapidly diminishing in volume, for nearly a minute, fading into the distance rather than ceasing entirely. For all he knew, Flinx mused as he rose to his feet, Peeler was still falling.

“That’s what I call a timely interruption.” A glance showed that Teal and the children were unhurt. Around them the wall of green remained unbroken. “Come on out so we can thank you!”

“Thank us?” The accent was clipped, the tone dry and rasping. “I suppose you would.”

Why, Flinx wondered, should that surprise the unseen speaker? Without the intervention, he would most probably now be lying somewhere far below, badly injured and possibly dead. The unexpected arrival had saved his life and probably that of Teal and her offspring as well.

Making his way forward, he passed first the headless cadaver of Jack-Jax Coerlis and then the wholly enflowered body of the luckless engineer. Hastily abandoned by Peeler, the mesh sack stirred as Pip sensed her master’s approach.

“Easy, girl,” he murmured as he started to kneel. “I’ll have you out of there in a second.” He reached for the tie that secured the opening.

A voice stopped him. “Please do not do that. I believe it would be best if your remarkable pet remained where she is.”

Figures began to emerge from the greenery. Two descended from above on swing climbers, reeling in the portable devices as soon as they reached the branch. All wore camouflaged ecosuits.

None were human.

His insides went cold. The source of the peculiar emotions he’d only recently detected was now evident. They were not wholly alien to him, but he hadn’t encountered their like in some time.

Teal and the children gathered around him. “What are
those
?” Dwell’s curiosity overcame his fear. “They walk like persons, but they don’t look like persons.”

“They’re a different kind of person.” Flinx moved to position himself between the new arrivals and the family. “Very different.” Within the sack at his feet, Pip was stirring anxiously. Even if she could be freed in time, he knew that if they tried to run, he and Teal and the children would be shot down where they stood before the minidrag could do anything to help them.

He counted seven, eight, eleven in the party as they emerged from the greenery, and there was no guarantee a dozen more weren’t keeping under cover. Not even Pip could deal with so many trained, heavily armed assailants. Furthermore, these weren’t a young merchant and his hired bodyguards. They were professionals, and comported themselves as such. For the moment, his pet was safer in the sack, where her instinctive desire to protect her master couldn’t get her killed.

All of them wore dark goggles and bore sleek packs and weapons. Even had they been alerted to the presence of such as these, Flinx knew that Coerlis and his companions wouldn’t have stood a chance against them.

He thought rapidly. Their unexpected saviors hadn’t revealed themselves until Coerlis had moved to finish off his quarry. That suggested they wanted him alive. He had no difficulty resigning himself to his new status—it certainly beat lying broken and shattered on a branch fifty meters below.

But what did they want with him, and what were they doing here? Certainly altruism had nothing to do with it. Altruism was a concept alien to the AAnn.

It had been some time since he’d had to deal with any of the noble servants of the AAnn Empire, an interstellar alliance second in scope and power only to the Commonwealth, whose might the AAnn probed with circumspect relentlessness. Bribing, cajoling, occasionally making war and then retreating, the AAnn sought continuously for signs of weakness, taking advantage whenever possible, relinquishing when overmatched.

His last encounter with them had been on Ulru-Ujurr, where the loyal but avaricious servants of the Emperor had busied themselves stealing the planet’s surface riches without ever learning of the far greater wealth inherent within the amusing, dangerous, comical, extraordinary dominant native species. Only Flinx had penetrated the secrets of the Ulru-Ujurrians and become their friend. Or at the very least, a curious component in their Great Game. In return, they had included him in their amusements and assisted his mind in reaching further than it would ever have been able to reach on its own.

He wished a few of them were here now.

As several of the soldiers slid their goggles up on their high, scaly foreheads, Kiss pointed to the individual in front. “See, Mother? Isn’t it funny-looking? Like a prindeletch without the right number of eyes and legs!”

Teal put a reassuring arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Hush now, Kiss, until we know what they want.” She was watching Flinx closely, trying to read his body language.

The reptiloid halted. It was unusually tall for one of its tailed, armored kind, able to scrutinize Flinx eye-to-eye. Slitted yellow eye to round green one. Flinx stared back without flinching, knowing that to look away would be taken as a sign of weakness.

What he saw was a tapering, scaly snout full of short, sharp teeth. The officer was clad in a green camouflage suit complete with skintight tail sock. Both clawed feet were shod in special webbed grip-boots that greatly enhanced the wearer’s footing without reducing flexibility. A long-muzzled sidearm showed prominently on the well-made equipment belt. While the other soldiers wore contoured jungle bodypacks, the tall officer was not similarly burdened. One neatly manicured hand lifted the thick goggles from its face. Like a counterweight, the tail switched reflexively back and forth.

Empire soldiers, all of them, Flinx saw. He counted eleven, could sense none hiding back in the trees. Not that he intended to rely on that estimate. Not given the way his abilities had been functioning lately. Or not functioning.

Coerlis and his people had never had a chance. This was not some wandering exploration team. Judging from the efficiency and forethought with which they’d been equipped, Flinx didn’t think they’d stumbled across this world by accident. Certainly their locating and subsequent ambushing of Coerlis and his party had been no coincidence, nor was the fact that he himself had been spared. They had arrived in search of something specific, and were prepared to fight for it. Now that the fight was over, he wondered what they were after. Watching the officer, Flinx felt certain he was about to find out.

Flinx indicated Coerlis’s corpse. “If I didn’t know your kind better, I would thank you.” The AAnn appreciated candor.

“Having no way of knowing what you have been saved for, your ambivalence is understandable.” The officer’s symbospeech was nearly perfect, with nary a hint of the usual hiss that normally harshed their attempts to enunciate the lingua franca of the Commonwealth.

Flinx deliberately looked past him, managing by means of his visual inclination and concurrent verbal comment to simultaneously magnify and minimize the officer’s importance.

“I would’ve expected there to be more of you.”

The AAnn responded with a gesture indicative of third-degree appreciation for Flinx’s tactfulness, with overtones of sadness and loss.

“There
were
twelve soldiers with me. One was carried off by something that dropped down on him from above, swept him off the branch we were traversing, and carried him away into the depths before we could react and fire. His cries linger still in our minds. The other stepped on a rotten, shallow place and fell through, to land in the center of a large growth not far below. Though we rushed to his assistance, by the time we could reach him, his nether regions had been consumed up to the hips.

“There are two medics with me, and he might have lived, but we complied with his traditional desire to die with his spirit intact. I administered the injection myself, as I am bound to do.” A vertical flick of the tail emotionally underscored the painful memory. The AAnn tended to express emotion through gesture instead of speech.

“Given the immoderate hazards this world presents, I consider it fortunate to have lost only two in catching up to you, Philip Lynx.”

So it was him they were after, Flinx decided. He could suspect several reasons for their interest in him but reframed from mentioning any. There was a to-be-hoped-for chance he might be wrong.

The officer performed an elaborate, sweeping gesture with both hands and tail that was meant to be all-encompassing. “A most remarkable biosphere, do you not agree?”

“Considering what you’ve been through, I wouldn’t think you’d be in any hurry to admire it.”

The officer responded with a series of incongruously high-pitched cheeping sounds, a form of laughter among his kind. The AAnn had a deep appreciation of irony and sarcasm.

“Your observation is warranted, Philip Lynx. As you may know, we prefer dry, less heavily vegetated surroundings. Even with the use of appropriate climatologic gear, the humidity taxes my troops. Unlike your own, our purgatory is a damp place.” He executed an intricate hand salute, appropriately adjusted for the fact that those to whom he was speaking were neither of noble lineage nor military bearing.

“I am Lord Caavax LYD, honored and enshrined servant of his most Revered and Shining Illustriousness, the Emperor Moek VI.”

“You seem to know who I am.” Flinx nodded in the direction of Teal and the children. “These are my friends.”

Lord Caavax’s eyes passed over them as though they didn’t exist. “Yet another offshoot or subspecies of your regrettably fertile kind.” His tone was cool, correct, and devoid of overt animosity. “We have been trying to catch up with you for some time.” Turning slightly, he gestured to where a trio of soldiers were rummaging through Coerlis’s effects. Several others were examining the unlucky engineer’s mycelium-encrusted carcass, careful not to touch.

“It appears we were not the only ones. Do you have a lot of enemies?”

“I seem to have lately,” Flinx replied readily.

The AAnn did not smile, but the noble did his best to make his captive feel at ease. “I am not your enemy.”

Flinx smiled back, knowing the AAnn would recognize the expression. At the same time, he could sense the antipathy and revulsion that dominated the alien’s emotions. Of all the members of the human species, the only one Lord Caavax could not hide his true feelings from was standing before him.

Flinx kept his voice flat. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re my friend?”

“Let me put it this way: it would distress me greatly if I were to have to kill you. Surely you can appreciate the benefit of that?”

“I’m overcome with affection,” Flinx replied dryly. He gestured at Coerlis. “What intrigues me is that you didn’t want him to kill me, either.”

“Certainly not! By all the rules of rational etiquette, you should be kneeling at my feet in gratefulness, but as you are human I do not expect you to act in a civilized manner. Among your kind, heartfelt gratitude is a cheap commodity to be bartered and traded like salt.”

“You’ll have to excuse me.” Flinx maintained his inflexible smile. “I would kneel, but I have a bad back. So you don’t wish me dead?”

“On the contrary, we are strongly desirous of perpetuating you in a state of healthy existence.” White teeth flashed.

“And my friends?” He jerked his head in Teal’s direction.

Lord Caavax responded with a gesture of second-level indifference tempered by third-degree curiosity. “
Ssissist
. Their future is yet to be decided. If they are important to you, then they become by inference of mild interest to us.”

Flinx folded his arms. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here? And why the interest in me?” He struggled to monitor the noble’s emotions closely.

The AAnn considered at length before replying. “I was not ordered to withhold the information from you, Philip Lynx. Several visits to a proscribed world within the illegally declaimed borders of the Commonwealth were made by another of the Noble House several years ago. A distant relation of mine by marriage, actually. He was a participant in a since terminated mining venture there. You are familiar, I believe, with the properties of Janus jewels?”

A startled Flinx remembered. The aristocrat continued.

“More recently there were interesting developments on a Commonwealth world by the name of Longtunnel. According to the file we have developed for you,
pssissin
, you recently graced both worlds with your presence.”

“Your agents are very good,” Flinx conceded.

“They have to be, the Commonwealth being so much larger and more powerful than the Empire. For now.” Yellow eyes glittered.