The Vastalimi Gambit (15 page)

Wink said, “You still don’t want to call your sister?”

“No. Nothing has changed.”

He nodded.

They were in an empty building that allowed them a view of the one in which they had been held. Wink had made a run for supplies, food and water and a couple of padded mats upon which to sleep. Kay didn’t seem to mind the bare floor, but Wink preferred some padding these days.

It had only been a day since their escape, not quite that, but they were set up for at least another two or three, should it take that long, after which he could make another supply run.

As it turned out, that wasn’t going to be necessary.

A cart arrived at the building under surveillance, and a quartet of Vastalimi alighted. They were all males, and three of them were obviously muscle; they were large, moved well, and were armed with handguns.

One of them carried a backpack.

Those three approached the entrance with care, while the fourth one held back, watching.

Hickory, Dickory, and Doc . . .

The trio split—Hickory and Dickory went inside, Doc stood near the door, waiting. They had handheld coms, and the one by the door used his.

After three minutes, Doc nodded at the one who was obviously the boss, and the two of them entered the building.

The theory was that they’d have a look at the dead Vastalimi and do something about them. Haul away the bodies themselves, or call somebody. Either way, they’d depart eventually, and somebody being careful could follow them if they happened to have their own cart parked nearby, which Wink and Kay did. After that?

Well, to make
smeerp
stew, first you have to catch a
smeerp
 . . .

After twenty minutes, the four exited the building, hurried to the vehicle, and drove away.

Wink and Kay ran to their own cart. Something bothered Wink, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

“They’d didn’t try to remove the bodies,” Wink said.

“Maybe somebody is coming later,” Kay said.

But when they were only a half klick or so away, there came a loud explosion from behind them.

The backpack. None of the four carried it back out, that’s what he’d noticed. “Want to bet that’s why they were in such a hurry?” Wink said.

Kay nodded. “A large bomb obscures a lot of evidence.”

A few more days, week, maybe, this would be wrapped up, a snoozer of a job. Jo preferred more action and uncertainty, but the odd easy stroll was good for business and morale. If you got paid, got leave, and none of your friends were killed, there was something to be said for that.

She was in the gym, working on her tumbling. She was practicing a front flip with a walkout. She came down, then caught sight of Singh in the doorway.

“What’s up, Singh?”

“Gunny sent me, sah, to tell you that you have a visitor.”

“A visitor?”

“Yes, sah.”

“And the visitor is . . . ?”

He shook his head. “Gunny told me to tell you that she is making popcorn.”

Jo frowned. What was he talking about?

She wiped her face and neck with a towel. “Well, let’s go see.”

A couple of nervous-looking newbie guards stood on this side of the gate with their carbines at low ready; outside the gate stood Mish, the Vastalimi.

Jo walked over.

“Em.”

“Jo Captain.”

“What can I do for you?”

“My unit has packed up and is awaiting transport to ship in orbit, but you and I have a match to finish,” Em said.

Jo nodded. Of course. She should have expected this.

She glanced around.

Gunny, Gramps, Formentara, and Rags stood in the shade of the Op Center behind her, leaning against the wall or standing with arms crossed, watching.

Gunny waved.

“Popcorn,” Jo said. She shook her head.

“Let our visitor in,” Jo said to the guards.

“Captain?”

“Open the gate. And put those carbines away, you won’t need them. If Em here had evil on her mind, she could have come over the fence and taken you both out, and neither of you would have gotten a useful shot off.”

The two guards glanced at each other nervously. One of them tapped a shirt pad on his left shoulder. The gate slid open.

Em walked through.

“Same as before,” Em said. She looked around.

“If you win, you walk away, nobody bothers you,” Jo said.

Em whickered. “
If
I win?”

Jo smiled back. “Yeah, I suppose that is unlikely.”

Now the whicker turned into a deeper laugh. “I like you, human. I don’t say that much about your species.”

“And yet you work with us.”

“I get to see the galaxy, and the prey can shoot back. Keeps it interesting.”

Already in her workout tights and her muscles warm, Jo said, “You want to loosen up?”

“Not necessary.”

“Pardon me if I’m unfamiliar with the proper ritual,” Jo said. “Do we need to make our declarations again?”

“The match began at our base, it is not yet done. No need to repeat anything.” She lowered her center of gravity. “When you are ready.”

Jo raised one hand in a hold-it gesture, and called out: “Em and I are going to dance. If I lose and can’t get up? She walks away, nobody stops her.”

She looked at Em. “They’ll honor it.”

Em nodded. She edged closer.

Jo relaxed and settled a bit lower in her own stance. Normally, a Vastalimi would open with a leap, but since they both had experience with how each other’s species fought, Jo wasn’t banking on that. If Em moved within her range, which was greater than that of an unaugmented human and not quite as great as a Vastalimi’s, Jo would attack, but her training with Kay had shown her that augmentations notwithstanding, she was still slower than Kay.

Technique that depended on speed went to the faster fighter.

Technique that depended on power went to the stronger fighter.

If you were slower and weaker, you couldn’t go there; instead, you used form and position. If your skills with those were good enough, you could beat faster and stronger fighters all day. If—

Em danced in, not a leap but a stutter step designed to draw Jo’s response—

Jo didn’t bite. She held her position, waiting

Em turned the attacking step into a bias move, skirting Jo’s range and bypassing to Jo’s left—

Jo shifted her weight forward and V-stepped to cut the distance—

Em saw it and lashed out with a low side kick—

Jo stopped, and her proprioceptive aug nailed her balance perfectly. Em’s heel was two centimeters shy of her knee.
She’s on one foot—

Jo sprang, tucked into a tight ball, and did a half somersault, opened and snapped her right leg out in a thrust kick—

Em didn’t expect that. She dodged to her left but not quite enough, and Jo’s foot slapped into Em’s right shoulder and knocked her off-balance—

Em went with it, threw a backflip, a loose pike. Slower than a tuck, but faster than a layout to a stance, and more stable—

Jo charged, feet churning, knew she’d get there in a left lead, and had her right knee coming up when she was close enough—

Em saw the knee coming, knew it would be too hard to block and she wouldn’t be able to dodge—

Got you—!

But Em fooled her—she came in, hopped up, and put her lead foot onto Jo’s knee, and used the force of the strike to leap high into the air and
over
Jo’s head. She’d land several meters away behind Jo, that was brilliant—

Except that Jo realized it in time and as Em took off, Jo caught her right ankle with both hands and held on—

Em’s momentum was great, but Jo got a good grip, and her weight was more than enough. Em’s flight stopped, turned into a fall. She tried to kick with her other foot to get loose, but Jo twisted and dropped, hung on to Em’s ankle, and Em flew outstretched facedown onto the ground—

Em managed a bit less than a quarter turn, to land not quite on her face, but not quite on her side.

It was rather like swinging a heavy flail and slamming it onto the ground.

The force was terrific. Enough to knock the breath and most of the consciousness from the Vastalimi.

Jo let go, scrabbled over the fallen Em, and snaked her arm around her throat.

Stunned as she was, Em managed to grab at the choke. She also extruded her claws, which bit deeply into Jo’s forearm—

Too late. Jo’s pain dampers kicked in; the carotid hold did the trick. Em went out, the claws retracted, and Jo rolled away. Her arm oozed blood from where eight of Em’s claws had pierced it, but all the wounds were on the dorsal side, and no big bleeders had been cut. Easy to glue shut.

After a few seconds, Em regained consciousness. She sat up, turned to face Jo.

“Your match,” she said. She noticed the bleeding. “I apologize for the extrusion. It was reflexive.”

Jo nodded. “A fair fight.”

Em shook her head. “They won’t believe this around the fires. Probably serve me better not to speak of it.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Jo said.

Em whickered. “A fair match and an honorable opponent.”

Jo got to her feet, watched Em do the same.

“Going to rejoin your crew?”

“I think not. My contract was for this engagement only. Might you have an opening here? It seems I have things to learn.”

Cutter seemed to appear as if by magic next to Jo. “You’re hired,” he said.

Em looked at him, then at Jo.

Jo nodded.

“Terms?” Em said.

“We can discuss those, but whatever you were getting before, we’ll match.”

“Even though I was defeated by a human here in front of you?”

“Jo’s not your average human.”

“So I have seen.”

“Colonel?”

Rags turned. Gramps stood there. “We have a message you need to hear.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

The image was compressed for delivery across the parsecs, and when it expanded, it was a little grainy and fuzzy until the computer program rectified it, but the Vastalimi centered in the frame was clear enough in his speech.

When he was done—it was a one-way only—Cutter and his crew looked at each other.

“That’s Kay’s brother?”

“We have no reason to believe otherwise,” Cutter said. “He’s telling us what Kay told us before she left.”

“Well, shit,” Gunny said.

“They have been missing for a couple of days.”

“Reckon somebody collected ’em?”

“Or killed them,” Jo put in. “In which case, there’s not anything we can do.”

Em, who had been invited in to see the message, said, “If there was a point to be made by killing them, then it is likely their bodies would have turned up already.”

“So if they are still alive, we might be able to do them some good,” Cutter said.

Gramps said, “It’s three weeks and some from here to there. We might be really late to the party.”

Cutter looked around. “Not if we take The Chomolungma Shortcut.”

Gramps blinked. Nobody else said anything.

After a bit, Singh, the least-traveled among them, said, “What is this shortcut?”

Jo said, “Back in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries on Earth, there were commercial companies that offered a climbing adventure for tourists, an ascent of Mount Everest. That name comes from the man credited with surveying the hill’s height. All the locals who could see it from different regions had their own names for it: It is also known as
Sagarmatha
,
Zhumulangma Feng
, and
Chomolungma
.

“This is the tallest mountain on Terra and visible for a long way on a clear day.

“At 8850 meters, achieving the summit was, until modern times, a dangerous trek. Weather can go from sunny and mild to stormy and well below freezing in an hour. Recreational climbers had to spend a period of weeks to acclimate themselves to the decrease in oxygen, and even then, supplemental tanks were carried and used by nearly all those attempting an ascent.

“More than a few people died attempting the climb, from exposure, from altitude sickness, from falls, sometimes from exhaustion.

“If you were on a team essaying the trip, and you were seriously injured, you had no recourse for rescue. Aircraft at the time could not safely come and fetch you, and if you fell and died, climbers would simply step over your body, not having the physical ability to pack you down.”

“Nice,” Gunny said. “Not a ‘leave no soldier behind’ philosophy, is it?”

“Part of the assumed risk,” Jo said. “You knew going in what would happen if you broke your leg or ran out of oxygen, and tough titty.

“The mortality rates were, until the tours were regulated and safety measures made mandatory, about one climber in a dozen. Even after that, one in thirty-five wound up fatal. Plus there were some serious cases of frostbite and altitude sickness.”

“Not really good odds,” Gramps observed.

“People wanted to take the risk, they still do. There’s a restaurant on the peak now, you can fly in, eat ersatz-yak burgers for lunch, and be back at your hotel that afternoon. But people still climb.”

“People are crazy,” Gramps said.

“No question,” Jo said.

“You seem to know a lot about this, sah.”

“Well. Yes. I’m crazy, too.”

Singh looked at her.

“I made the climb once.”

Gramps shook his head.

Jo continued: “When it works, the trip through the peculiar hyperspace called the SST—the Super Subquantum Transit—results in an incredibly fast trip. You can cross half the galaxy in a few days. We still don’t know exactly how it works, or why, only that it does.

“Except that one ship in ten that goes in doesn’t come out again.
That
is why it is called The Chomolungma Shortcut. It is a high-risk exercise.”

She looked at Cutter. “Colonel?”

He said, “So here’s the deal. Wink and Kay are in trouble on Vast. A standard hyperspace lane will take us three weeks to get there, by which time they might well be good and dead. If we risk the Chomolungma, we can drop back into NS in seventy-two hours and maybe do them some good.

“Or not. We could get there too late even so. There is a one-in-ten chance we won’t make it at all.

“It costs a fucking fortune to hire somebody crazy enough to make the trip. Nobody knows what happens to those ships that don’t exit. Maybe they are still in the warp, maybe they came out in some alternate universe, maybe they were vaporized as soon as they entered. So if you don’t want to risk it, now’s the time to take some R&R.”

Gunny laughed. “Who are you talkin’ to, Rags? Not any of us. We laugh at Death.”

Cutter grinned. “I had to ask.”

“With all due respect, the fuck, you did.”

Em said, “You would do this for a comrade?”

Cutter said, “In this case, yes. Two weeks ago, we couldn’t have left, but we are done here.”

“I have found the right humans. Count me in.”

“All right. Pack it up. We’ll take the shortcut and see what happens.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

“So, where are we?” Wink said.

“Southeast part of the city. A neighborhood of people who are well-off.”

“I can see that. Nice dwellings.”

“We won’t be able to stay here for long,” she said. “Rich people are more concerned with losing their possessions. Someone will notice us parked here and wonder why.”

Wink nodded. The van had dropped the one they thought was the leader here, and he had gone into a house. They had decided to let the others go and to check this one out.

“So, recon?”

“Yes. But you stay here. Humans won’t be common, you’ll be noticed. I will be, too, but if I don’t stay long, it won’t matter.”

“Think this is the guy doing it?”

“If not, he is a thread that will lead us further on. And no, I don’t want to call my sister.”

“What about your brother? He might be worried about us, too. It’s been more than two days. He will have missed us.”

“Leeth will be monitoring his communications. Droc will survive not knowing.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Try not to be noticed.”

She stepped out of the cart.

_ _ _ _ _ _

“We are spacing in
that
? That ship looks older than dirt,” Gunny said.

Gramps said, “Nah, I believe we created dirt first, then this. But not long after.”

Gunny shook her head.

Jo could understand the reaction: The ship did look as if it had been sideswiped by an asteroid and only partially repaired. The hull was dinged and pitted, and there were rainbow patterns that made it look as if the stressed stack had been annealed and retempered. It hung there in the vacuum like a relic from another century, an eighty-meter-long lozenge with rounded and melted edges. She couldn’t make out the name at this distance unaided, but a tag floater under the image identified the vessel as the
Elfu Mwaka Valco
.