The Crown Jewels (18 page)

Tvi considered this. Dramatic music began welling in her mind. Tvi the Silent, Tvi the Thief, would creep up on this bunch from behind and bag them one by one! If she played this right, they wouldn’t even know she was behind them.

*

Roman charged through the library door, saw motion below him, and, with three well-placed shots of Khotvinn’s chugger, utterly demolished the robot that, per Chang’s earlier request, had just arrived with a large selection of beer. Foam flooded the carpet. Roman felt a pang of regret.

“This way,” he said, and flung himself over the railing, gliding to the first floor on a-grav. Maijstral, Amalia Jensen, and Pietro followed.

*

Tvi crouched, readied herself, then flung herself at top speed toward the shimmering figure in the door. Gregor’s first bolt went wild and there wasn’t time for a second. Tvi crashed into Gregor, driving him into the doorframe. The breath went out of him and he sagged to the ground. Tvi, seeing stars herself, groped for Gregor inside the darksuit screen, located his neck, reasoned there was a head above it somewhere, and lashed out with the butt of her stunner. The weapon connected and Gregor flopped to the floor.

Tvi grinned invisibly behind her holographic shroud. Things were looking up for the Fate of the Empire.

*

Khotvinn groped his way toward consciousness through a blaze of stars. A dozen puny humans hiding behind their darksuit screens must have set about him with clubs. But Khotvinn wasn’t finished yet— he was sure he must have chopped five or six at least, and the rest couldn’t have much fight in them. He climbed to his feet, groped for his sword, then dragged it out of the metal chair. He felt better immediately. Where
were
the stinking redbellies?

There was someone in a darksuit apparently engaged in a wrestling act in the corridor, and in the clear light of the library Khotvinn could see Amalia Jensen, her ankles stilt bound, beginning her descent to the first floor.

Light
! Once he could see his foe, nothing could stop him! If the traitors hadn’t turned out the lights, he would never have been overcome.

Roaring, Khotvinn raised his blade and charged. Action at last! Death to traitors!

*

Warbling, Countess Anastasia raced down the corridor for the library, cradling her new Nana-Coulville custom mapper with the folding para-assault stock and Trotvinn XVII sights. Her little song was simple: “Kill, kill, kill . . . firmness, firmness, firmness . . .” But it was in High Khosali, in which each word made a comment on the word before, and it was heartfelt. She was singing with all her soul. Not even the great Sebastiana would have put more feeling into a lyric.

The simple pleasures, one is constantly reminded, are oft the best.

*

“Say,” Pietro Quijano said, remembering to subvocalize for once, “shouldn’t we wait for Gregor?” He was standing on the second-floor library landing to one side of the door, watching Amalia Jensen as she dropped down the center of the room toward the splatter of smoking robot and streaming beer that stained the costly carpet. And then Pietro heard a howl to freeze his blood. Ronnie Romper, he realized, was coming to chop Miss Jensen to bits!

Pietro’s mind seemed to work, in that instant, with amazing clarity. He dropped to the landing and stuck his foot into the doorway.

Roaring, Ronnie Romper charged through the doorway, tripped over the foot (roaring), made an architecturally perfect arc (roaring) as he soared over Bix’s unconscious form and the wrought-iron rail, and fell twenty feet (still roaring) to the library floor.

Ronnie landed and the mansion trembled. Beer fountained as high as the crystal chandelier. Amalia Jensen, who had been missed by inches, looked up in surprise.

Feeling a bit squeamish, Pietro gazed delicately over the rail. Ronnie was sprawled in an X below him, his never-altered grin beaming mischievously upward. Pietro felt his stomach turn over.

“Well," Amalia said. "So much for
him
.” She looked from Pietro to Ronnie and back. “Thank you, Pietro,” she said.

“You’re welcome. Miss Jensen.” In that bleak instant Pietro realized, sick at heart, that he would visit the Magic Planet of Adventure nevermore.

*

Tvi crouched in the doorway and watched in stunned amazement as the giant Ronnie Romper charged across the drawing room, a hoarse bellow issuing from behind the perpetual smile. There followed a crash, one that shook the entire house, but no shots, no sound of struggle. It was time to do some more sneaking up, she decided.

*

Baron Sinn, commending his soul, etcetera, half overcome by smoke, charged into the corridor amid a gush of fire-generated camouflage. He could barely see, and he staggered as he lunged toward the southeast drawing room.

What he did see through his streaming eyes was a figure in a darksuit in the drawing room door. Obviously a miscreant. Sinn raised his spitfire and fired.

*

Tvi yelped as the spitfire blew away the wall just over her head. Her darksuit had given her a view of the corridor behind her, and she’d been thankful Sinn was there to back her up. Instead of offering to assist, her boss, without even a declaration of enmity, had gone and shot at her.

This, she concluded, was totally unfair. She did not think to wonder why the Baron had opened fire. The point uppermost in her mind was the doubt that her darksuit screens could handle spitfires.

Tvi flew like hell for the servants’ stair. Another spitfire round blasted the wall as she ran.

*

Baron Sinn, gasping for breath, staggered in pursuit. Here was one he wasn’t about to let get away

*

Maijstral considered the French door onto the east terrace long enough to realize that whoever was firing disruptor bolts into the second story could as easily cover the east terrace from his position. He pointed at the door into the interior of the house.

“
That
way,” he said. “Then north.”

Roman flung open the door and lunged through it, colliding with the Countess Anastasia and knocking her sprawling, “Beg pardon, my lady,” he said promptly, and, after relieving the Countess of her Nana-Coulville, gallantly offered to help her stand.

A deep X of anger marred Countess Anastasia’s brow. “Die, redbellied wretch!” she barked, and batted Roman’s hand aside.

Even well-trained politesse has its limits.

Roman stiffened. He bit back the comment that came to mind at this churlish display of unladylike behavior. “Good evening, my lady,” he said in sepulchral, indignant tones, “Your obedient servant.” He strode in high dudgeon toward the back of the house.

*

“Hey,” said Pietro Quijano, “what about Gregor?” He was still on the landing, listening to the spitfire bursts from the corridor where, so far as he knew, Gregor was standing alone against the Imperial hordes.

Maijstral did not, apparently, hear, since he was on his way into the corridor. The spitfire bursts came to an end.

“Gregor?” Pietro subvocalized, and heard a groan in reply.

He peered into the drawing room and saw Gregor’s form sprawled in the doorway, a smoking spitfire hole in the wall over his head.

There seemed to be no enemies about. Pietro slipped back into the drawing room, got Gregor in a fireman’s carry— easy, since Gregor on a-grav was virtually weightless— and hastened after the others.

*

Maijstral, on hearing Pietro’s plaintive inquiries about Gregor, reflected on first thought that henchmen were, after all, expendable, and on second thought that Pietro was too. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t volunteered.

Thus cheered, he floated near the ceiling to avoid the Countess— he was tempted to say something savage in passing, but decided to stay well to windward— and instead increased his speed, heading for the back of the house.

The party encountered nothing but a robot rushing for the servants’ stair with a fire extinguisher, and then burst out of the back door and accelerated over the smooth croquet lawn. On the way they passed Tvi, who had jumped into Bix’s flier and was trying to peel the lock and get it moving before the Baron drew another bead on her.

Maijstral called for his fliers to meet him at a rendezvous a mite ahead. Tvi got her Dewayne Seven started and raced away.

*

Baron Sinn burst out the back, waving his spitfire. Blinded by tears, he put a foot down on his kibble-colored croquet ball and crashed to the sward. Through his streaming eyes he could see nothing but a scatter of empty stars.

*

The first thing Bix smelled was beer. He put a hand to his wounded jaw and staggered to his feet. Stars flooded his vision. He swayed and clutched the wrought-iron rail. As his eyes focused, he saw Ronnie Romper sprawled amid a massive puddle below, surrounded by robot parts.

“Hey,” he said. “Did I miss something?”

The Countess entered, back rigid, fists clenched. Furiously she kicked a robot part across the room. “Swine!” she remarked.

Bix decided to keep out of sight. He had obviously done something wrong by opening the drawing room door.

In careful silence, he drew back into the drawing room and shut the door behind him.

CHAPTER NINE

Mr. Paavo Kuusinen was on the wrong side of the building to see much of what occurred at the Countess’s mansion.

He was resting under his tree, his arms pillowing his head, when suddenly he heard the sound of spitfires barking back and forth, accompanied by bright explosions from the front of the building. Kuusinen sprinted across the knoll to his flier and jumped in without bothering to open the door. He rolled back the canopy to get a better view and set the flier on a long banking curve to the south so that he could watch the building from a safe distance. He saw that the upper right front of the mansion was definitely on fire, but could see nothing else of interest. He continued to orbit, swinging wide around the back, and saw a figure leaving the back of the building. Kuusinen focused his longfinders and saw Amalia Jensen floating at great speed over the lawns and ornamental gardens behind the estate. If there was anyone with her, Kuusinen didn’t spot him, but whatever the case, this looked like a clean getaway.

Kuusinen told his flier to circle and kept Amalia Jensen under observation. Presently two Gustafsons appeared over the horizon, Jensen floated into one of them, and darksuit screens appeared over each. Kuusinen swore. He tried to keep them on his detectors as they rose into the sky and sped off on two separate paths, but the disguise technology on each was too good, and they seemed to have special terrain-avoidance computers that kept them closer to the ground than Kuusinen dared fly.

Police and firelighters would soon be coming. It was time for Kuusinen to leave.

He decided to take up his surveillance again in the morning.

*

General Gerald snored gently in his battle armor, dreaming of glory. Maijstral had not come, would not be coming, but in his dreams the General fought a greater foe, the vast might of the Khosali Empire, the armada he had trained all his life to fight, now come at last.

*

“Next thing I knew,” Gregor said, “Pietro was carrying me out.”

There was an ever-darkening lump on his temple, which Roman now approached with a semilife patch. Gregor flinched from Roman’s touch, took the patch himself, pulled his long hair out of the way, and gingerly applied the creature to his head. Happily released from suspended animation, the patch began to attach taproots to his skin and exchange healing drugs for nutrients.

Gregor could not recall being knocked out. The last thing he remembered was floating in the room next to Amalia’s, admiring the Basil vase.

The others were in a much more ebullient mood. They hadn’t ceased talking, laughing at their exploits, and exchanging stories since the fliers had parked at Maijstral’s house.

Maijstral raised a glass of champagne. “Mr. Quijano,” he said, “you have been a glorious asset to our cause. You disposed of two enemies, including the ferocious Romper, and rescued Gregor from the hostiles. I salute you, sir.”

Pietro blushed and looked at his feet. “Wasn’t much,” he said.

“Quite the contrary,” said Amalia. “Beating that Romper creature was more than I could accomplish, and I’ve been studying pom boxing for years.” Pietro’s blush deepened. Amalia was still hovering in midair until such time as Roman could locate a tool capable of getting the manacles off her ankles,

Roman refilled everyone’s glass, then bowed and went in search of the appropriate cutter. Now that the rescue was over he had reverted to the role of impassive servant, changing from the one-piece darksuit to more formal apparel. Maijstral had changed clothing as well, into a lace-edged shirt and dark, embroidered housejacket— meaning one he didn’t have to be laced into— which was tailored not to show the pistol he still wore in a hidden pocket.

“By the way,” Maijstral said, “I believe our hero is still wearing our screens and weapons.”

“Oh. Right.”

Pietro handed Maijstral a pistol, which vanished into another hidden pocket, and peeled himself out of the darksuit, which Maijstral dropped on a table. Gregor gave an unusually (for him) mellow smile as his healing patch fed him soothing chemicals.

“Do you think any of them were hurt?” Amalia asked. “Aside from Romper, I mean.”

“I don’t believe so,” Maijstral said. “Were there any you particularly wanted injured?”

Amalia gnawed a lower lip. “No. Romper was the only one who went out of his way to be unpleasant. The rest were only doing their jobs. But you didn’t see a small Khosalikh in any of the fighting?”

The others looked at each other. “I don’t believe so,” Maijstral said. “The only other Khosalikh I saw was the Baron.”

To Maijstral’s surprise, Amalia seemed relieved. Maijstral decided not to offer comment.

Roman returned with the cutter and a microvision hood, which would enable him to perform the delicate task of removing the skin-thin manacles from Amalia’s ankles. “Please come over to the sofa, miss,” Roman said, “and put your feet up on the table.” The others watched with bated breath, sipping champagne, as Roman pulled the hood over his head and carefully sliced the manacles away from her ankles and wrists.