Price of Ransom (32 page)

The ship pulled a tight circle, altering its course to streak low across the prostrate men and begin firing at the trees. Behind it, coming in low over the hills, appeared a second vessel of the same type. It did not fire at all, but came to an impossible halt in midair and sank, engines screaming, to land beside the charred, smoking hulk of the ruined shuttle.

A
S SOON AS THE
ship in the air had overshot their position, Fred hoisted his gun nimbly over one broad shoulder and moved quickly over to where Windsor and Lily huddled between two tree trunks.

“Armored, boss.” He made a movement with his head, indicating the ship that had just landed. “We got nothing that’ll crack it.”

Windsor swore, a string of oaths that Lily did not recognize. “The bastards must have brought those in from The Pale.” He looked at Lily, and she was surprised to see that he was grinning. “They must want you pretty badly.” He hoisted himself up, a smooth, trained movement at odds with the stubble on his unshaven face and the shabbiness of his clothing. “Let’s go. This cover isn’t good enough. And we’ve got company.”

She turned as he turned. Above, she could hear the arc of sound as the ship pulled around over the trees. But the other ship, the one that had landed, had lowered a ramp and now armed figures—two, four, eight—emerged out of the ship.

“My crew—” She could see no sign of them in the grass.

Before she could move, Fred grabbed her.

“Ransome. The odds aren’t with us right now.
Let’s go
.”

“I won’t leave them to be killed!”

Windsor looked sincerely perplexed. “Why would they kill them?”

“I have no idea. But someone just tried.”

“Not for them, Ransome. For us. They’re safe enough.”

She tugged against Fred but his hold was ridiculously strong. “Do you expect me to take that chance?” she demanded.

Windsor sighed and made a sign with one hand to Fred. “No. You’ll just have to trust me.”

Lily did not bother to dignify the comment with a reply.

Fred’s grip shifted, and she twisted her arm, spun, and broke for freedom.

Only to find herself hoisted up next to Fred’s gun, as helpless in his grasp as it was. Her view was of the farther depths of the forest, and of Stanford, appearing as if by magic some five meters away from behind a tree that should not have been broad enough to conceal his stocky form.

“Korrigan,” he said primly, “there are twelve armed humans headed this way. No. Six have broken off to retrieve min Ransome’s companions. I suggest we make haste.”

“He’s right, boss.” Fred turned and now Lily could see the meadow and the small figures fanned out in order. Six had surrounded her party. She could not see Hawk or Pinto, but Yehoshua had risen to his knees, hands clasped behind his head, and Deucalion rose as she watched and set his hands on his hips. The armed men, approaching, hesitated and lowered their guns, evidently cowed by Deucalion’s posture or by one of his lectures.

“Go on ahead,” said Windsor. “Stanford, you got any gas?”

She could not see them, only heard a soft
thump
as something thrown was caught, and then Fred began to move quickly away. His gait, a remarkably smooth jog, covered distance more quickly than a man could run, and he was nimble enough to weave through the dense wood without faltering. Bach followed smoothly behind them.

After about ten minutes Fred stopped and set Lily down. “Boss is right,” he said gruffly, swinging down his gun as well. He did not appear to be winded. “They won’t kill them. You saw it yourself.”

“They just blew up our shuttle. Why should I believe you?”

Fred tugged on one ear with a thick hand. “Seems to me you got no one else to believe.”

She pulled her tunic straight, to give herself time to think. Those men had, after all, lowered their guns on seeing Deucalion. Perhaps his Intelligence badge gave him and his companions immunity. “It seems I’m with you whether I want to be or not. All right.” Bach floated watchfully at her back. “I’m still with you then. Who are they? Why do they want to kill me? Or your boss?”

A branch snapped behind her. She whirled. Fred did not move. Windsor and Stanford appeared, Windsor looking pale and out of breath.

He paused, leaning against a tree. “Call me Korey,” he said. “Gwyn always used to. It must be the saboteur connection. It’s the only link between us. Someone must finally have decided to be rid of us once and for all.”

Lily went white, and she felt sick with sudden fear. “Then, even if the others are safe, we just abandoned Hawk to them. I’ve got to go back.”

Simultaneously, both Fred and Stanford wrinkled their noses and looked to the left. Stanford made a face and took two sidesteps right.

“Company, boss,” said Fred.

He came out of the trees, a tall, slender figure, hair muted in the shadows made by the forest’s canopy.

“Kyosti!”

His gaze flicked over her, but she knew him well enough, even as changed as he was—especially as changed as he was—to understand that he marked her more by scent than by vision now. He moved to stand close to her and turned to speak a quick sentence in the language of the je’jiri to Windsor.

Windsor replied and then looked at Lily. “He says that they took the other three men captive and that all twelve of those from the shuttle are on our trail.”

“And Pinto—he’s alive?”

Kyosti shuttered his eyes and appeared to take in a breath, or the smell of the air. “Alive,” he said. Strangely, his hands twitched, as if some reflex had taken hold of them, and he hesitated and finally spoke in slow, struggling Standard. “Not so badly hurt. He will live.” It was, clearly, a diagnosis, however general.

“Thank the Void,” Lily breathed. “Well—Korey. Now what? Who do you think is hunting us?”

“As far as I know the only people who knew I was hunting you were the ones as hired me—Concord Intelligence. But I can’t believe Yevgeny Basham would turn coat like this. He’s fair, however hard he might be.”

“I suggest we try to find out once we’re safely on my ship. I have a shuttle at—Bach, what are the coordinates?”

In Paisley’s voice, Bach reeled them off.

“Mine’s closer.” Windsor made a hand sign to Fred and Stanford. “We’ll go ahead. They’ll cover the back.”

“Doesn’t that put them in more danger?”

“Diplomatic immunity, of a fashion.” He grinned. “Even for two outlaws like Fred and Stanford. Can’t risk damaging trade agreements by offending the honorables who govern in, the Ardakian system.”

“Which way?” He pointed, and she let him set the pace. He took it at a slow run. Lily did not find it hard to keep up, and she wondered how badly he had ruined his health in the last few years. Kyosti loped effortlessly along beside her. The effect was uncanny: he had never shown such obvious fitness before, or such preternatural alertness. At every three steps he took in a quick breath, scenting, and he never once faltered on the uneven footing of the forest floor. How had he gotten away from the meadow? She did not think the Kyosti she had once known could have done it.

They came to a ravine hidden in a wrinkle of the low hills, and Windsor turned down it. Of Fred and Stanford’s passage behind them she heard nothing. Wind stirred the trees above, and then the low, hard sound of a ship passing close above grew and thundered and ebbed about them. A moment later, an explosion—not too far, not too close.

“Shit!” swore Windsor. “Fucking sons of bitches and their whores of fathers with them—” He broke off. “Come on.”

They scrambled down a steep slope and followed a rushing stream until it curved around a high bank and emptied into a pond at one end of a tiny, circular meadow. The burning remains of a small ship lay strewn across the high grass. Smoke spiraled up to mark its resting place. As they paused at the edge of the clearing to stare, the whine of an engine built in volume behind them.

Lily faded back into the trees, but Windsor continued to stare, in disgust, or fury. “Come on,” Lily hissed, as if the ship approaching above might hear her if she spoke above a whisper. “We’ll have to double back and try to reach our other shuttle.”

For a beat, she thought he had not heard her. Finally he turned and gave her a wry, twisted smile, bitter as he usually was, as if life had long since treated him to a cruel joke. “The bastards ruined my credit line for certain now, with that. How the hell do they expect me to pay for it?”

Meeting his eyes, Lily felt suddenly—not sorry for him, but a sense of compassion, of comradeship, a strange enough thing to feel, after her first acquaintance with him. “Don’t you get a substantial bounty for turning me in? I thought I was worth quite a bit to you.”

“Looks like you’re worth my life, Ransome.” He slipped into the shadow of a broad-trunked tree as the ship streaked past overhead and dropped another explosive onto the hulk of the stranded ship for good measure, reducing it to an unrecognizable bulk of metal and smoke and spitting fire. “No. My death. Which I guess is worth more to Concord Intelligence.”

“You don’t have any enemies? From someplace else? Who might have wanted you killed?”

“Kapellans might want me dead, but they’d never act on it. It’s not their way. Gwyn’s the only one of us they hated enough to ever try to kill outright. No, these are human ships. And human agents. Only someone from Concord Intelligence would have known my movements, known about you. And only someone who really hated us would have gone this far.” He paused, listening. “Yeah,” he said, but not to her. “We’ll circle back.” His gaze shifted back to Lily. “All right, Ransome. What were those coordinates again?”

Lily did not like moving in forest. She was used to cleaner lines of sight, used to gauging for corners and set widths of corridor or tunnel and hard surfaces for leaning and pushing off from. Nothing here seemed solid enough to rely on—too much wind, too much extraneous noise, too many curves and gaps and inconstant backdrops. Windsor seemed right at home. Bach sang to himself—
Am Abend da es kühle war
“In the evening, when it was cool”—at such low volume that she could only hear him because he hovered not two hand’s-breadths from her right ear. Even Hawk appeared unfazed by the way the shadows shifted without warning. And Fred, to her vast surprise, sniffed about several broad tree trunks and then with more speed than grace scrambled up one and vanished from her view. Stanford hoisted the heavy gun Fred had been carrying onto his back and strapped it there, oblivious to its extra weight.

They had not walked more than ten minutes when Windsor halted her with a raised hand and, pausing, she heard a brief snatch of conversation from ahead.

Hawk, beside her, said, “Four.”

Windsor glanced at her. “We’re six,” she said.

“Send the ’bot up. Each take one.”

They fanned out. It proved easy enough: a distraction from above, provided by Bach, a quick, controlled move in to get inside their guns, and all four of the soldiers—if that was what they were—were out flat on the ground. It had been a long time since Lily had felt herself to be the least experienced fighter in any group, however small. Even Hawk had dispatched his target with uncharacteristic precision. A je’jiri’s precision.

Lily paused, standing over the unconscious figure beneath her, and stared at Windsor, suddenly at a loss. Did he mean to kill them? And a wash of memory hit her—of the first person she had killed, in the raid into the 30s dig on Harsh. She forced herself to look down. Through the thin plastine helmet she recognized the face of a man—young enough, with pale skin and thin lips gaping open. Nausea hit her. She was no longer sure she could kill someone this helpless.

“They’ve got trank guns,” said Windsor in disgust. “Look at where the levels are locked on. This would kill an elephant. I wonder if these poor sods knew, or if it was meant to be an accident?”

“Korrigan,” said Stanford as he took his victim’s gun and reconfigured the level of tranquilizer. “We have another group of four closing at northwest.”

“Ransome.” Windsor was also setting a new level in the gun he held. “You know how to work these guns?”

“No.”

“Stan, shoot them all. Here.” He tossed the gun he had just reset to Lily. “Let’s go.”

“You’re just going to kill them?”

He stopped, staring at her. “
Kill
them? Why the pissing hell would I want to kill them? They’re just hirelings, and if I’m any bet by this gear, they’re probably from some pumped-up detective firm and don’t even know what they’re doing, or what they’re up against. It’s them as hired them as
I
want.”

To his left, Stanford shot—once, twice, three times—and came over to Lily where she still stood above the unconscious man. “Might I request that you stand aside, please?” he asked, more sarcastic than polite.

“Oh,” said Windsor, looking at her. “We’re just tranking them. Acceptable levels. Not the ones that were meant for us.”

Relief flooded her, wiping away the weight that had settled on her. She stepped back. “Oh.” Hawk was already fading back into the trees, attention on the distant approach of the next four.

“Where do you come from, Ransome?” Windsor asked. You’ve got some pretty strange notions. It ain’t war anymore. We did our job. Haven’t you had enough killing?”

“More than enough.”

“Korrigan. Two hundred meters, northwest.”

“Split and fan out. Same tactics.”

They took out the next four and made a wide swing around the meadow where they had originally met. Encountered no one else. It took just over an hour across the rough terrain, keeping a careful watch, halting frequently to listen, to come within wrist-com short-line hailing distance of the
Hope
’s second shuttle. They could not risk any other communication for fear it would be picked up. The ship hunting them passed overhead at least six times, and they continued to hear it running a slow sweep pattern over the area as they walked. Lily did not see Fred at all, but once a branch came crashing down from above and almost hit Windsor in the head. He swore good-naturedly into the air, talking to Fred through their invisible com-system.