Sweet Starfire (23 page)

Surprised, she stepped after him. “What are we going to do?” A sloshing sound reminded her of her wet boots. Gingerly Cidra sat down on the charred ground and removed them, shaking out the river water.

“I’m going after Racer.” He spoke from inside the tent.

“Going after him? But, Severance, he’s got a skimmer. He’s long gone.”

“He’s got a skimmer that’s in trouble, although he may not realize it yet. It’s going to take a while for the fuel cells to start losing power.” Severance reappeared outside the tent carrying his travel pack. He put it down on the ground, crouched beside it, and began going through the contents.

Cidra watched him. “Why should the fuel cells fail on his skimmer?”

“After I shot Overcash, Racer ducked into the cabin. I had a clear view of the engine section of the skimmer. And I got in a couple more shots. One cell was glowing yellow when the skimmer took off up the river. Yellow means that the charge was already starting to diminish. Racer will realize what’s happening when he calms down and has a chance to check his controls.”

“Then what will he do?”

“Panic, I hope. He tends to lose his nerve when the sardite’s down. I’m counting on him losing it this time too.”

“You speak from past experience with the man?” Cidra asked carefully.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve tangled.”

“You said he was once your partner.”

Severance removed a thin blade from the travel pack and slipped it into his utility loop. “The partnership dissolved the day he left me to fight my way out of a sinkswamp here on Renaissance.”

Cidra sucked in her breath. “He’s tried to kill you before?”

“Not exactly. We had a mail run into a field camp that was doing some work in the swamps up north. There was trouble with the sled. Always something going wrong with machinery on this damned planet. The sled started to slip into a sinkswamp with both of us on board. When we realized what was happening, we managed to attach a wire line to a tree. The plan was to use it to climb to safety. Racer went first. When he reached the tree, the line broke. He was getting set to toss me another one when he saw the killweaver. The things live in the swamps, and this one apparently decided to investigate the activity going on over its nest. It surfaced beside the sled. Big ugly thing with very unappealing pincers. Racer took one look and fled.”

“Leaving you behind?”

“Guess he figured I didn’t have much chance, anyway. He made it to the company’s field camp a couple of hours later and somehow neglected to mention that he had left me behind in the sled sitting on top of a killweaver’s web. I think he was busy realizing just how convenient the whole setup was. In one fell swoop he was now sole owner of the ship and all our equipment. It was somewhat disconcerting for him when I wandered into camp an hour behind him. We’ve made a practice of avoiding each other ever since.”

“How did you get away from the….the killweaver?” Cidra struggled with the dim recollection of a holotape she had once seen of a huge spider shape. Another typical Renaissance horror. Even the wild parts of Lovelady seemed tame in comparison to this planet.

“It’s a short story. The trick with dracons and killweavers is to distract them with a convenient meal.”

Cidra shuddered. “What did you find to feed the kill-weaver?”

“Something equally mean and ugly.” Severance got to his feet, having removed several small objects from his travel pack.

“But you didn’t find this, uh, distraction until after the web had burned your hands?”

“It never pays to be slow on Renaissance.” He dropped the travel pack and checked the contents of his loop.

“Are we leaving already?” Cidra asked.

“I’m leaving. You’re staying here.”

She shot to her feet. “Severance, no!”

His face softened. “You’ll be all right. There’s enough charge left on the deflectors to last until nightfall. I’ll be back by then. Just stay inside the screens and don’t wander outside for any reason. Understood?”

“I refuse to stay here alone while you take off info that jungle!”

“I’ll be staying close to the riverbank. Don’t worry, Racer won’t get far. When he realizes that the fuel cells are faltering, he’ll bring the skimmer into shore, set up the deflector screens, and call for help. I intend to arrive long before help does.”

“I don’t like this,” Cidra began earnestly.

“I’m not especially thrilled with the mess we’re in, either. But since I’m the one who got us into it, I’d better start fixing things. Once the fuel cells start to go, the skimmer won’t have enough power to stay afloat, but there’ll still be enough of a charge left in them to keep the deflectors and a comm unit going for quite a while. I can float the skimmer back down the river if necessary. Relax, I’m supposed to be the one whose good with his hands, remember?” He walked toward her, coming to a halt a short distance away. “Don’t look at me like that, Cidra. It’s going to be all right. This is my fault and I’ll take care of it.”

“It’s hardly your fault!”

“I’m the pilot in command. The head of Severance Pay, Ltd. That makes it my job to clean up the situation. Besides, even if I wanted to delegate the responsibility, this is a very small firm. I don’t see any convenient vice-president standing around to send after Racer.”

“There’s me.”

“You’ve already done more than your share to defend the mail and the firm. It’s my turn. I’ll be back before the screens fail. Believe me? I spent the year after Jeude’s death getting to know this jungle very well.”

She chewed helplessly on her lower lip and then nodded once. “I believe you, Severance.” And she did. If he didn’t come back before the screens failed, it would be because he couldn’t come back. She didn’t want to think about that possibility.

“I’ll see you before nightfall, then.”

“And then what?” she challenged. But she knew even as she spoke that she had accepted the inevitable. There was no choice but for him to leave. Taking her with him would slow him down far too much.

“When I come back, I’ll bring the skimmer and a fresh set of screens. If we can’t repair the skimmer, we can still use the communications equipment to call for aid.”

She drew a deep breath. “What about Racer?”

Severance didn’t look up as he adjusted the utility loop. “What about him?”

She searched his face. “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”

“Don’t think about it, Cidra. Racer is my problem.” He leaned down to brush his mouth over hers. When he lifted his head, he was smiling again. “I’ve got to stop doing that.”

She touched her lips with her fingertips, realizing how accustomed she was becoming to his brief, intimate gestures. She remembered how she had felt when she’d stood in the stern of Racer’s skimmer and watched as she was dragged farther and farther away from Severance. Then, in a wordless rush, she threw her arms around his neck. “Be careful, Severance. Please be careful.”

“I’ll be back for you before nightfall.” He held her, his arms closing with bruising fierceness around her slender body. Then he released her and moved through the screens without glancing back.

Cidra watched until he was out of sight. It didn’t take long. The undergrowth closed behind him, and it was as if he had never been standing there with her at all. Out on the river all was once again placid, giving no hint of the living hell that cruised just below the surface.

Cidra was staring at the spot where the skimmer had floated when she caught sight of something shiny out of the corner of her eye. It was a container of Renaissance Rose ale that had apparently survived the explosion of the skimmer. It was caught in the reeds near shore. Cidra risked a quick trip through the deflectors to rescue the container. Severance would appreciate the ale when he returned.

Holding the Renaissance Rose as if it were a talisman mat could somehow guarantee Severance’s safe return, Cidra slipped back into the safety of the deflectors.

He had to get the deflectors and the skimmer’s communication equipment. And he would probably have to kill Racer to do it.

Severance didn’t try to fool himself. There was an outside chance that Racer would allow himself to be dragged back to Try Again and turned over to the company authorities, but it wasn’t likely. He had too much to lose. He was far more likely to force Severance’s hand, counting on what he knew of his ex-partner to keep him from getting killed. Deep down Racer was probably convinced that Severance wouldn’t have the guts to kill him.

Severance moved through the undergrowth along the river-bank, trying to make as little noise as possible. There was no chance that Racer would hear him, but there was every chance something else might come to investigate the strange movement. Without the deflector screens a man with a pulser and a utility knife was among the more poorly armed of Renaissance’s inhabitants.

Severance knew that all of his senses were on full alert. He had reached that unpleasantly acute state of awareness he had come to know well during the year after Jeude’s death. It didn’t take much to translate awareness into panic. There were a lot of things that could kill on Renaissance, but panic was one of the surest methods. Severance let his eyes and ears and the hairs on the back of his neck do their job while he thought about Racer.

Racer, who had once been his friend. Racer, who in some ways he knew better man any other living man in the universe. Racer, who had tried to take Cidra as a battle prize while he left his former partner to die.

A band of dark green slithered through the light green river grass ahead of Severance. Automatically he brought the pulser up and trained it on the wedge-shaped head. But the green slicer apparently had better things to do than sample a jungle boot. It moved out of the way, shivering iridescently in the morning light. Behind him Severance heard a startled squawk that ended with telling abruptness. The green slicer had found another meal.

Severance kept moving, using the utility knife when the tangled vines became too thick to push aside. He tried to calculate how far Racer could get with a failing set of fuel cells. The second and third pulser shots this morning had done real damage; Severance was sure of it. But it was difficult to tell how far the craft would go before it started sinking toward the water line. As long as Racer ran the skimmer at top speed, the end was bound to come quickly. And he was certain Racer would force the craft as far as he could at the highest possible speed. Racer was the nervous type under pressure. He tended to panic.

That tendency was a side of the man few people would ever know. Only when you had worked with a man in a high-pressure situation did you learn his real weaknesses, the ones that could get you killed. Severance had learned them the hard way. Finding yourself facing a killweaver alone had a way of making a lasting impression.

So he’d learned his lesson. Never trust anyone—except perhaps a Harmonic—completely. Severance’s partnership with Racer had dissolved. Life went on, and Severance saw to it that he and Racer rarely came into contact. Racer had been cooperative in that respect. Severance also avoided any more attempts at forming a partnership. Severance Pay, Ltd., he’d decided, would take a slightly slower route to success.

There was a flurry of black wings up ahead. Severance paused and gave the flying reptile the chance to get off the ground with its prey impaled in its toothed beak. Then he started moving again, circling a stand of suspicious-looking flowers. Anything as beautiful as those flowers had to be deadly on this planet.

A pair of eyes watched him from the river. Severance didn’t look at them. For the rest of his life, whenever he saw dracon eyes, he would think of those sickening moments when Cidra had been the center of dracon attention. The memory made his hand tighten on the grip of the pulser. Deliberately he forced himself to relax. A too-solid grip made the weapon more difficult to aim properly.

Cidra had floated. The image of her hovering quietly in the water as the dracons moved closer was still a source of amazement to Severance. Doing so had been her only chance, of course. She had bought him the time he needed to find the monsters another meal. But the terror would have overcome most people, should have overcome a gently raised lady from Clementia. Most people would have panicked. But Cidra had heard his desperate instructions and she had obeyed them.

Racer had put her to that savage test and nearly gotten her killed. And it was Racer who had tried to carry her off, knowing with a man’s sure instinct that Severance’s helpless rage would be a worse torment man the knowledge that the deflector screens were going to fail by nightfall.

Severance had half convinced himself that Cidra might be better off with her captor than left behind to face the Renaissance night, but that belief had been his rational, thinking side speaking. His emotional side hadn’t come close to seeing that logic. His guts had been twisted with fury at the thought of Racer trying to rape Cidra. And it would have been rape. Cidra would never willingly submit to Racer. She would have seen it as a betrayal of herself and of Severance.

“Death before dishonor.” He wondered where she’d picked up that phrase. Probably from those First Family tales she was so fond of reading. No telling where the First Family writers had picked up the concept. Must have been a part of the folklore they had brought with them to their new world.

Even though he had feared for her life when she had dived from the skimmer, Severance acknowledged that a part of him had been exultant. Cidra belonged to him, and on some level she had acknowledged that. He didn’t know any other woman who would have chosen to stay behind with him in a Renaissance jungle when the alternative was some hope of survival.

He swore silently. He was getting as primitive in his reactions as everything else on this planet.

The time slipped past. Severance heard no distant hum from the skimmer. But he did perceive a change in the atmosphere, a lengthening shadow from the heavy, bloated clouds building high overhead. Just what he needed, Severance thought—a storm. Renaissance did thunderstorms the way it did everything else—on a grand scale.