Asgard's Conquerors (18 page)

It didn't
take a genius to work out what must have happened.

We'd even heard someone moving around as we came out, and I cursed
myself now for having let it go so easily. I looked at Serne, and could almost
hear him thinking that we ought to have left a guard. It was all too obvious
now, but at the time I hadn't thought about it, and he hadn't made the
suggestion. So much for the value of Star Force training.

"A lone scavenger," I said, bitterly, "hiding out from
the invasion."

"Surely there must have been two," said Scarion. "There
are two suits gone."

"No," I said. "If there'd been two, we'd have lost the
lot. He's taken a cutting-tool as well as the suits—that would be about the
limit of what one man could carry."

In a way, we had been lucky—if the scavenger had been cleverer, he'd
have stashed the two suits and the tool in some hidey-hole of his own, and then
come back for the rest. Maybe he simply hadn't had that much nerve. In all
probability, he'd gleefully made his grab and then set off into the distance,
making sure that he was as far away as possible from the scene of the crime
when we got back.

I realised, though, that his intemperate exit didn't necessarily mean
that he wouldn't come back for the rest. It just meant that he wouldn't come
back alone.

It was bad enough to find that our doorway to the city was useless. We
also had to face the fact that it might now become a magnet drawing all the
undesirables in the vicinity.

With two suits left and further trouble in store, our options were
limited. We could pick up the rest of our gear and move on, trying to find a
safer exit-point, but that seemed rather pointless. It looked to me that we had
to split up. Two of us would have to remain in the city, cut off from our base,
while the other two took the sad tale back to the colonel and 994-Tulyar.

"What use are the cold-suits to him?" complained 74- Scarion.
"Unless he belongs to a species closely related to yours or mine, the
drip-feed won't be adjusted to his metabolism." On investigation, we had
found that 74- Scarion's was one of the suits that had been taken.

The other was mine.

"He might not find it entirely satisfactory," I answered,
"but it would keep him alive long enough to make a trip through the
levels, if that's what he wants. Any humanoid could get by using your suit or
mine for a couple of days. But I don't think he's going to use either suit
himself. I think he's got the black market in mind. The stupid thing is that
he'll sell the damn things to someone on our side— someone who desperately
wants to get information out of the city to one of the C.R.E. bubbles, in the
hope that it can then be transmitted to the Tetrax in orbit. If the buyer realises
where he got the suits from. ..."

"It's not so bad," said Serne. "We have spare suits back
at base. Do you want to take my suit? You could have the spares back here in a
couple of hours. I'll be safe here for as long as it takes."

"No," I said. "You and Vasari go. But don't come back
here—it's too dangerous. The Turkanian will have to guide you to the second of
our planned entry points. Scarion and I will go directly there, on the inside—it's
on this level and it's no more than ten kilometres away. We'll meet you there
at . . . damn this idiotic City time ... at 25.00 tomorrow."

Serne frowned. "We don't know that the second point is any safer
than this one," he pointed out.

He was right—we didn't.

"Sometimes," I reminded him, "you just have to guess.
Anyhow, with only the mud guns to protect us, we're not really in a position to
defend ourselves here. Better to get out. We've spent all day out there, and
it's reasonably safe. I'd rather be under the lights than waiting here like
rats in a trap."

He still didn't like it, but he conceded the point. While he and Vasari
suited up, 74-Scarion and I came back to the city side of the old plug, so that
Serne and Vasari could re- seal it before opening up the outer one.

"Perhaps you should have gone," said the Tetron. "The
sergeant's suit would have fitted you well enough."

"I have a feeling," I told him, "that a star-captain is
expected to stay with his sinking mission. It's probably the Star Force
way."

I was being sarcastic, of course, but the Tetron thought it a perfect
answer. "I understand," he said. Matters of duty and obligation were
things that low-status Tetrax understood only too well.

There was a rustling sound close at hand, and when I flashed the torch
round the beam caught some furry thing scampering away, illuminating it for a
fraction of a second. I let out my breath slowly.

"Let's get out of the tunnels," I said. "I'll feel
better when we're back in the light."

We moved back along the dark corridor, quickly but cautiously.

But we were already too late.

When we got back to the place where the corridor let us out into the
fields, and took a look outside, the first thing we saw was a group of humanoids
hastening toward us.

"Merde!"
I said, with feeling.

One glance was enough to tell me that it couldn't be much worse. There
were three vormyr and three Spirellans, looking as ugly and as vicious as all
their kind, and I had more than a suspicion that our chances of recruiting them
to the noble fight against the alien invaders were not good. Clearly, the
bastard who'd lifted our cold-suits had made his contact.

74-Scarion and I backed off a short way into the corridor. I wondered
whether we had any chance of hiding out, but I didn't like the idea. These
scavengers might know the territory, and as soon as they found the rest of our
gear gone they'd be after us. Vormyr are said to have good low-light vision,
and I didn't fancy playing hide-and-seek with them. Our only possible advantage
was the fact that they couldn't know we were back yet. We had a chance to
surprise them.

I wished that I had Serne or Vasari with me. They were combat soldiers,
who could probably have taken out this gang comfortably. 74-Scarion was a
Tetron immigration officer, and fighting was definitely not his line.

"Got to try the ambush," I told him.

He nodded uneasily.

We waited, mud guns at the ready. I felt anything but confident. My
quick glance had told me that one of the vormyr had a needle-gun, and it would
be lunatic optimism to suppose that any of the six might be weaponless.

To make things worse, I had a dreadful suspicion that they might know
who I was. Amara Guur wasn't the kind of man who had friends, but the vormyr
notion of vendetta wasn't based on friendship. If they did recognise me, they'd
be all the more enthusiastic to tear my head off.

"Take out the three vormyr first," I whispered to 74-
Scarion. "Spirellans are dangerous, but vormyr are worse."

He nodded to show me that he understood.

As soon as they came around the corner, while they were still
silhouetted against the light, I let fly at the one whose needier I'd seen. I
kept my finger down on the firing-stud of the gun, hoping to spray the knockout
juice over as many of them as possible. 74-Scarion seemed to be firing even
faster, with panic-driven wildness.

The trouble with a mud gun is that its effects aren't usually
instantaneous. I'd shot John Finn in the open mouth, and even he'd crumpled up
slowly. It was the shock rather than the anaesthetic that had stopped him from
firing back while his presence of mind remained.

These guys had very good reflexes, and some of the shots had to soak
through clothing. Having just come in from the bright light they were virtually
blind, but they didn't need to see in order to react. The one with the needier
was hit clean, and didn't manage to fire it—although he did draw it. One of the
Spirellans hauled out an old-fashioned pistol, but he didn't manage to get the
hammer back before crumpling at the knees. The others, alas, had knives—and
they were very quick to lash out with the blades.

A vormyran dived at me, and I brought my boot up very sharply into his
midriff, then smacked him sideways with the edge of my left hand. The Spirellan
behind him nearly got me, but his thrust went past me into the wall as he
tripped over the vormyran. I only had to hit him once before an eyeful of mud
put him out.

But I was lucky. It could easily have gone the other way.

74-Scarion wasn't so lucky.

When everyone had gone down, I stopped firing, although my gun was
already empty. Scarion was down along with the nasties, and my hope that he'd
simply been caught by a little stray mud died almost immediately.

I had to untangle him from a fallen vormyran, and when I kicked the
body off him I found that he was bleeding to death from a stab-wound in the
chest. He tried to speak, but the blade had ripped his lung, and all he could
do was cough up blood. There was nothing I could do to help him, and he died
within a minute.

I prised the gun gently from his leathery fingers—it still had a small
charge left in it. I put it inside my shirt, and threw my own away.

Then I turned my attention to the six scavengers. They were all
unconscious. I stirred them with my boot, not wanting to risk wetting my hands
with any mud that might be clinging to their clothing. I picked up the needier
and the pistol gingerly.

I knew that it would be reckless simply to walk away. The logical thing
to do would be to pump them full of needles, then drag their bodies further
into the dark, so that the vermin could help themselves to a nice square meal.
Seme wouldn't have hesitated for a moment, and neither would Susarma Lear.
After all, there had to be some sort of chance that I'd run into these beauties
again, and they weren't going to say "thank you"—they'd kill me as
soon as look at me.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't just kill them as they lay there. I
cursed myself for being a squeamish fool, and I certainly didn't take any
satisfaction from my reluctance. I knew that I was a disgrace to my Star Force
uniform.

I took the needier and the pistol with me, and left them all to sleep
it off.

The brief, brutal encounter left me feeling weak at the knees, and I
couldn't get the image of Scarion's blood- gushing torso out of my mind. I was
glad I hadn't had anything to eat for a long time. I was feeling sick, although
I knew I wasn't actually going to vomit.

While I walked swiftly along a catwalk we'd crossed earlier, the
queasiness gradually changed into a raging thirst, and I had to stick my face
into one of the irrigation channels feeding the artificial fields, to suck up
some mineral-loaded water. That cleared my head a little, and reminded me that
the scavengers weren't the only danger I had to keep in mind. It wouldn't do to
forget the invaders.

I ducked down into a ditch at the edge of one of the fields, trying to
get everything straight inside my mind. I tried to fix my attention on the
memory of the city maps that Tulyar and I had spent so much time poring over.

The place we'd selected as the second-best site for breaking in was—as
I'd told Serne—less than ten kilometres away. I could walk it in a matter of
hours, and I was reasonably certain that I could find the exact spot, even in
the darkness. With luck, it would be easy—but it would be stupid to be
overconfident. If there were scavengers here, there might be scavengers there
too—there was no way to know how many people had run from the invaders into the
darker corners of the city. In the meantime, I had to stay away from invaders.

I set out again in a more sensible frame of mind, to walk to the place
where I'd arranged to meet Serne.

My temper was bad, and it got worse while I silently cursed my luck,
asking myself what I could possibly have done to deserve such evil treatment at
the cruel hands of fate. The last shreds of my earlier optimism were gone, and
I now expected things to get even worse.

Like most of my more doleful expectations, this one turned out to be
right.

13