Read The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds (34 page)

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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“I ought to kill you right now, you son of a bitch. But I want to give you to someone for a present.”
She tucked the spare blaster into the waistband of her trousers. The movement hurt; she felt blood starting to seep out of the wound in her side as the cauterizing effect of the blaster bolt wore off.
She pulled Tarnekep Portree’s lace-trimmed handkerchief out of her coat sleeve and stuffed the delicate fabric in between the wound and her shirt to stop the bleeding. Her fingers came away red and sticky. She looked at them, and the reality of the situation hit her at last.
There’s no way I can possibly get out of here.
Beka thumbed her blaster setting back to Full, and pointed the weapon at Nivome. Then she lowered it again.
No, not yet. There’s still one move they might not be expecting. But I can’t do it alone.
She switched the blaster to her other hand and reached into the pocket of her long-coat. She found the comm link, and keyed it on.
“Ari,” she said. “Ari, this is Bee. I’m in trouble. Please get me out.”
 
Ari shifted positions in the pilot’s seat of his stolen aircar, trying to find some way to sit that didn’t make his cracked rib hurt even worse.
Blinking hard, he checked the instruments again. He was having trouble seeing out of his left eye, and the readouts kept blurring when he tried to bring them into focus.
Level flight … good attitude … low altitude … no contacts on the scope …
“Ari,” said a voice from somewhere in the cockpit. “Ari, this is Bee. I’m in trouble. Please get me out.”
“Dammit, Bee,” he muttered. “You always pull these crazy stunts, and then expect me to take care of you.”
His jaw hurt and his head felt thick. Something was wrong. He was alone in the aircar—that was it. He shouldn’t be listening to a sister who wasn’t there, and who sounded scared.
“Ari!” came the call again, through the ringing in his ears. “Ari, are you there?”
The voice seemed to be coming from right beside him. He turned his head that way, grimacing as several more sets of muscles protested the move, and squinted at the copilot’s seat.
Nobody there. Maybe I
am
crazy.
Then the afternoon light shone through the cockpit window and glinted off something small and metallic lying on the seat cushions: the comm link he’d left there when he went into Building 125-34 to settle accounts with Estisk. He picked up the comm link and keyed it on.
“Beka, this is Ari. Where are you?”
“I’m in the Citadel, at the top. Come get me?”
She was scared, he realized—scared or angry, or maybe both. “Sure thing, Bee. How do I find you?”
He heard his sister laughing over the comm link, and the sound made the hairs on his neck stand on end.
“Watch for my signal, big brother. You can’t miss it.” The link clicked off. Ari turned the aircar and headed for the Citadel.
Nobody bothered him. The aircar’s built-in identification devices must be signaling that it had permission to enter that airspace—one of the advantages to stealing the head man’s personal runabout.
He put the aircar into a climb, bringing it up to the altitude of the black ziggurat’s upper levels. Suddenly, he saw a flash. One wall on the topmost floor crumpled outward, falling down and away like an avalanche. A cloud of thick black smoke hung in the air for a few seconds before beginning to drift on the wind.
“You’re right, Bee,” he said aloud. “I couldn’t miss it.”
He toggled the side cargo door open, and turned the aircar into the smoke.
 
Beka clicked off the comm link and stuffed it back into her pocket. She pulled out the collapsor and peeled off the film covering the device’s adhesive surface.
Do it right the first time,
she told herself, pressing the flat disk hard against what she hoped was an outside wall.
One try is all you get.
She dialed the collapsor up to maximum power, then set the timer and entered the arming sequence. The glowing red numbers on the readout started their march down to detonation. She hadn’t allowed herself much leeway; reinforcements would be showing up any minute now, and none of them would be for her.
You’ll die before I do,
she thought, looking at the Rolny’s unconscious form.
But maybe—if I’m lucky
—
not just yet.
She crouched by his head and slapped him across the face with her free hand, back and forth until he grunted and started to come out of his stun.
His eyes blinked open; she made certain that the first thing he saw was the muzzle of her blaster. She kept it trained on him as she stood.
“Get up,” she said. “We’re going for a little walk.”
Nivome staggered to his feet. “Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it.”
“There’s not that much money in the universe,” she told him. With a sudden motion, she grabbed Nivome’s wrist in her left hand, twisting his arm up between his shoulder blades. She pressed the muzzle of her blaster into the small of his back.
“Walk,” she ordered.
The Rolny walked. Together, they moved out through the false office and the security room, and into the corridor.
Beka flattened herself against the wall, holding Nivome in front of her like a shield. Down the hall, someone peeked around a half-open door, and seconds later a blaster bolt sizzled against the wall by her head.
“Don’t shoot, you idiot!” Nivome shouted. “It’s me!”
“Very smart,” said Beka, sending a return beam down the hallway. “You may just live past today after all.”
But I wouldn’t bet the family silver on it, if I were you,
she thought, waiting for the sound of the collapsor.
Only a few seconds left to go.
The grenade went off with a sound like a mountain blowing itself apart. She wrenched Nivome back around, and shoved him ahead of her through the doorway.
The shock of the collapsor blast had thrown the sliding doors apart all the way back to the rear office. Where the wall had been was now a cloud of dense smoke … but the cloud was shot through with sunlight, and from somewhere outside she could hear the sound of an aircar’s engines.
Still pushing Nivome before her, Beka went forward toward the light.
 
B
EKA PUSHED Nivome torward the gap the collapsor had made in the wall of the Citadel. The floor ended an inch beyond the toes of her boots, and she didn’t like to think about how far below her the ground might be. Somewhere out in the smoke, the aircar purred closer.
She still had her prisoner in the come-along grip. He was too groggy from the stun-bolt to protest much, even if the blaster pressed against his spine had left him any choice.
“If I pushed you right now,” she said, just in case, “you’d fall a long way down before you bounced.”
The Rolny didn’t reply. Sometime in the past couple of minutes, he’d apparently decided that Tarnekep Portree was too crazy to reason with.
Funny thing about that,
thought Beka, as the approaching aircar gradually became visible through the smoke.
He’s right.
The aircar flew past the side of the building, close enough for her to see that the cargo door gaped open. Then the craft veered off into the smoke and came circling back toward the Citadel to make another pass.
The drone of its engines changed to a ragged growl as the pilot reduced speed.
“Not so slow,” she muttered. “You’ll lose lift.”
The aircar came in close … closer … if the wall had still been there, the aircar’s right wingtip would have broken against it. The open cargo door yawned like a cave-mouth, only yards away and drawing nearer every second. She could see the leap she’d have to make, several feet out and a long step down if she missed.
If I were an Adept
, she thought,
I’d just grab hold of the currents of the universe, and hitch a ride on over. But I’m not an Adept, so—
“You’d better hope I’m lucky,” she said to Nivome, and pushed him ahead of her as she jumped.
Beka felt a split second of weightless panic. Then she was falling hard against the far wall of the cargo compartment as Ari banked the aircar left. Nivome landed under her; she still had his arm up in the come-along. She thumbed the blaster in her other hand back down a notch to Heavy, put the muzzle behind his ear, and shot him again. He went limp and slid down onto the aircar’s decking.
Behind her, the cargo door slammed shut with a clang. She scrambled over and dogged it down, then clambered forward and collapsed into the copilot’s seat.
Ari looked around from the controls. “Strap in, baby sister. Where do you want to go?”
She stared at him. A bruised and bleeding gash marked the right side of his jaw, his left eye had puffed almost shut, and his hands on the control yoke were red-knuckled and swollen.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asked.
“I got in a fight,” he said. “Where’s the Professor? Still taking care of things in the cargo compartment?” “That’s Nivome back there.” She leaned her head back against the seat cushions. Her right side was hurting her now; it felt like someone had shoved a burning torch into it. “The Professor won’t be coming.”
“Dead?” Ari asked.
She closed her eyes. “That’s right.”
“I’m sorry, Bee.”
“The hell with sorry,” she said. “Where’s Jessan?”
She heard her brother sigh. “I don’t know.”
“Dammit, Ari, I told him and Llannat to take the aircar up and go looking for you—don’t sit there saying you don’t know where he is!”
“All right. I won’t. Now tell me where you want to go.”
“Set a course back for
Warhammer
,” she said without opening her eyes. “They’d head there if anything went wrong.”
The aircar droned on in silence for a few minutes. Her side throbbed in rhythm with the engines.
Ari exclaimed something under his breath. She dragged her eyes open again.
“What is it, big brother?”
“Look up ahead,” he said. “I think we’ve found them.”
She pushed herself away from the seat back and looked out the front window. Yes, there was the aircar that should have been their getaway craft. One of the Darvelline atmospheric fighters was on its tail, getting lined up for a firing pass.
Dodge him, you Khesatan idiot—dodge him!
Frantic, she searched the copilot’s side of the console for weapon controls. “Bloody hell, Ari—aren’t there any guns on this damned ground-hugging boat of yours?”
Ari pulled the aircar up and added throttle. “Don’t worry about it.”
She bit down hard on her lower lip, and watched in silence as Ari began to sneak up on the Darvelline fighter from behind. Another moment, and he was in tight beside the Darvelline, flying with his left wing under the right wing of the fighter.
Ari put the aircar into a hard bank, and the left wing tilted up to strike the underside of the wing above it. The fighter flipped down into a vertical spin.
“Not bad,” she said as the Darvelline spiraled earthward.
Her brother looked pleased with himself. “I told you not to worry.”
Jessan’s voice came over the comm link. “Is that the Terror of the Spaceways back there?”
“None other,” said Ari. “Get on the deck—we have to switch to your aircar. This one’s just about had it.”
“No trouble. Taking it down.”
A minute or so later, Beka felt the aircar settling to the ground. She unstrapped the safety webbing. The movement pulled at the wound in her side, making her head spin.
How much blood have I lost?
she wondered.
Just let me get
Warhammer
into hyperspace before I go under, that’s all I ask.
She pushed open the cockpit door on her side and started climbing out. “You get Nivome,” she told Ari over her shoulder. “Damned if I’ll carry the bastard.”
She heard Ari muttering under his breath and then his footsteps clunked back toward the cargo compartment.
She leaned her forehead against the side of the aircar.
How long have we got before somebody else shows up to shoot at us? The Professor would have known … the Professor … damn you, Nivome, I hope your Citadel burns to the ground.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” said a familiar voice at her elbow.
“Jessan!” she exclaimed, turning.
He embraced her, hard; she hugged him back, harder, in spite of what that did to the pain in her side. He must have noticed something, though, because he let go and stepped away to look at her.
“If I ask whose blood that is on your shirt,” he said, “will you pull a knife on me again?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s all mine, this time.”
“Bad?”
“It’ll keep until we make the jump,” she said, and turned back toward the cargo compartment. “Ari!” she called. “Have you got our passenger yet?”
The door clanked open behind her. “I have him, Bee,” said her brother, emerging with Nivome slung over his shoulders like a rolled-up rug.
“Good.” She moved away from the side of the aircar, heading for the armed craft Jessan had set down not far off. “Let’s get out of here before the law shows up.”
Minutes later, the getaway aircar lifted with Ari at the controls. Beka sat beside him in the copilot’s seat that had held Llannat Hyfid not long before.
She didn’t know what was wrong with the Adept, only that she was out even colder than Nivome. Ari and Jessan had argued diagnoses the whole time they’d been strapping Llannat into one of the fold-down cots in the back, and Beka had gotten the impression that they didn’t know either.
“Massive internal bleeding?” she’d heard Jessan wondering aloud at one point. “Or is this some weird Adept thing they didn’t teach us about in class?
You
tell
me
what’s normal for somebody who pops out of nowhere and moves aircars around just by thinking about it hard enough … .”
The console readouts were blinking; she glanced at them, then at the screens for confirmation.
“We’ve picked up a tail,” she said aloud.
“How many?” asked Ari, from the pilot’s seat.
“Just one, so far. Can you lose him?”
“I can do better than that,” Ari said. “Watch.”
He banked hard left and put the aircar into a dive. Beka saw a Darvelline fighter below them and climbing. Their energy guns went off with a zinging whistle, and the fighter exploded.
“Got you!” crowed Ari as their own aircar rocked in the turbulence.
“Big brother, you amaze me sometimes.”
“Compared to everything else I’ve done today,” Ari said, “that was so easy it ought to be illegal. Now the real fun starts.”
He banked again to a new heading, tilted the aircar’s nose up, slid the throttles all the way forward, and flipped on the thrust inducers. The roar of the engines changed to a high, tooth-aching whine, and inertia pressed Beka down into the seat cushions. Her side hurt; she could feel it bleeding again.
Ari cut the engines back to minimum throttle. The pressure on her chest and her wounded side disappeared as the aircar went into free-fall.
She heard a yell from the cargo compartment. “Lords of Life, what are you two doing up there?”
“Taking the quickest way home,” she yelled back. “We’ve just gone ballistic.”
“Coming into final approach,” Ari said. “So far, so good.”
Beka shook her head. “Too good, big brother. It shouldn’t be this easy.”
Dazzling white light filled the front window as she spoke. She shut her eyes.
“Massive energy strike,” said Ari’s deep voice next to her. “Right about where our calculated landing place should have been. Somebody must have figured out we had a spaceship hidden somewhere, and decided to take it out before we could get his boss on board.”
Decided to take it out. My ship. Just like that.
She pulled the knife out of her sleeve, and started to unstrap.
“Bee, what the hell—”
“If the ’
Hammer
is gone, I’m not waiting any longer. The Rolny buys it right now.”
Next to her, Ari chuckled. “Relax and strap back in. I deliberately overshot when I plotted this thing. There was a whole mountain peak between that blast and the ’
Hammer.”
“Dadda would be proud of you,” she said, sliding the knife back. “Uh-oh … more contacts on the scope. Big ones, low and slow, matching course.”
“Troop carriers,” Ari said. “They’ll wait until we set down, then try to run a rescue.”
“Burn them.”
Her brother shook his head. “No good—they’d just send more. Groundside’s probably tracking us from one of those spy satellites we saw on the way in.”
“Damn.” She bit her lip, and watched the winking points of light on the scope. “Ari, you packed the first-aid kit for this aircar. Did you throw in anything strong enough to bring someone out of heavy stun in a big hurry?”
She saw him frown. “It’s taking a chance on turning his brains to scrambled eggs.”
“I don’t care what he thinks with,” she said. “Just so he can walk.”
She turned her head and shouted back into the cargo compartment. “Jessan! Crack open the first-aid kit and bring the prisoner round! Ari, set us down a little way outside
Defiant’
s cloaking field.”
“Got you, Bee. Going down.”
By the time Ari got the aircar grounded, the troop carriers were closing. Beka could see one of them from the cockpit window, hovering on high-step nullgravs not a hundred yards away. She unstrapped the safety webbing and stood up, grimacing as the motion pulled at her wounded side.
“Get Llannat,” she said to her brother. “Jessan!”
“Captain?”
“Status on the prisoner.”
“He’ll walk.”
“Good.” She was in the cargo bay by the time she finished speaking, and saw that the Khesatan had been as good as his word. He had Nivome on his feet and semiconscious, hands bound behind him with tape out of the first-aid kit.
Her brother already had Llannat out of the other cot. The Adept looked like a child cuddled next to Ari’s broad chest. Beka tried to reconcile the picture with Jessan’s comment about moving aircars around by force of will, and had no luck.
“She still with us?”
“In and out,” Jessan said. “She keeps waking up and looking for something that isn’t here.”
“Her staff, you idiot,” growled Ari. “You don’t think she left it behind on purpose, do you?”
Beka pulled the Professor’s staff out from under her belt, and gave it to her brother. “Here. Give her this if she asks again. It’s not the same, but maybe it’ll help. And I sure haven’t got any use for it.”
BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
3.71Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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