A Covenant of Justice Page 6

  “The bridge!” said Lee. “If we can seize the bridge—”

  “Let’s not get grandiose,” said Sawyer. “Let’s just get off this ship.”

  “This way,” pointed Three-Dollar. He steered the wheelchair toward the door. “Sawyer, take the point. Lee, cover our butts.”

  The men circled the twitching Dragons warily. The seizures afflicting the great beasts had left them helpless in their own vomit. Their sphincter muscles had also relaxed and they had fouled themselves with their own urine and feces. The horrendous stench filled the chamber. The rebels hurried out quickly.

  Ahead, the brinewood-paneled corridor stood empty. An alarm clanged insistently, but no one came running to meet them.

  “To the left,” said Three-Dollar. “To the shuttle-bay.”

  Sawyer grunted and quickly headed left. The others hurried after, Tuan covering Sawyer, Three-Dollar steering the wheelchair, Lee dancing backward behind them.

  Two insect attendants stepped out of a door. They looked surprised at seeing the men escorting Zillabar. They fluttered their claws nervously. “Get back!” Sawyer motioned them back into the chamber. The door slid shut behind them and the men hurried past.

  “Why didn’t you kill them?” asked Three-Dollar.

  “Why kill slaves? They haven’t hurt us.”

  Three-Dollar grunted.

  “What does that mean?” Sawyer called back over his shoulder.

  “You begin to show signs of a conscience, Sawyer. That does not bode well for your peace of mind.”

  Sawyer shook his head in annoyance. “Thanks for sharing that.”

  “To the right, now!” directed Three-Dollar. “This passage should lead directly to the shuttles.” They ducked into a corridor that curved sharply around to the right, bending with the shape of the vessel’s hull. “I don’t like this,” muttered Sawyer.

  “They’ll have no more visibility than us,” said Tuan.

  “I didn’t mean the corridor,” Sawyer replied. “This whole thing seems too easy. Why haven’t they pursued us? No, this escape has too much convenience. It smells bad.”

  But even as he spoke, a squad of Vampires—more of the Elite Guard—came hurtling around the curve of the corridor ahead.

  “You spoke too soon,” called Lee.

  Sawyer didn’t waste time answering; he flattened himself against the wall and started firing immediately. So did Tuan. Bright blue fire punched through the Vampires’ fragile bodies; it splattered off the walls. Screams and smoke and ricocheting pieces of metal and flesh filled the corridor. “Shit!” said Sawyer, and kept on firing. Wherever something moved, they blasted. Behind them, Lee-1169 began firing steadily at attackers from the rear—Vampires or Dragons, Sawyer couldn’t tell.

  William Three-Dollar grabbed the Lady Zillabar’s authority bracelet, yanking it off her arm. He began shouting quickly into it in the Vampires’ own language: “Don’t fire! Don’t fire! They have the Lady Zillabar! They’ll kill the Lady Zillabar! Don’t fire! Stop all firing! Evacuate the shuttle-bay or they’ll kill her! Do it now!”

  Abruptly, the firing from behind them stopped; either Lee-1169 had successfully beaten back their attackers or they had heard Three-Dollar’s frantic message. Sawyer would have bet on the latter.

  Unfortunately, whoever still blocked the passage ahead had not yet gotten the word. Intermittent fire still came splattering off the walls ahead of them. Sawyer ducked a ricochet. His skin stung sharply with the effects of the electric spray.

  Three-Dollar punched up another channel and began grunting commands in the Dragons’ own guttural language. “Don’t fire! Don’t fire! No dishonor. The Dragon Lord allows it. No dishonor! Let them pass! Save the Lady’s life! Let them pass!”

  A moment later, the corridor fell silent.

  “Come on,” said Three-Dollar, pointing ahead. “Let’s get into a boat before one of those damn reptiles starts thinking for itself.”

  The Shuttle

  Halfway down the corridor, another alarm went off. This one rasped with the sawtooth-edged note of ship security. Behind them, they could hear the security doors slamming solidly shut, one after the other.

  “Someone finally got smart,” said Lee. The men ran as fast as they could toward the last door, the one leading into the shuttle bay. Sawyer fired ahead, hoping to disable the mechanism. The door hesitated—

  Sawyer leapt through, then Tuan. The door hesitated again—Three-Dollar pushed the wheelchair into the bay and jumped through after it, with Lee close behind. The door slammed shut behind them.

  Sawyer and Tuan moved into the long corridor cautiously, wondering how many Dragons and Vampires lay hiding in the passages that branched off to each side. Each tube led down to a different shuttleboat.

  “Which one?” asked Sawyer.

  “Any one,” guessed Tuan. He pointed. “This first one?”

  “No,” said Three-Dollar. “If they’ve booby-trapped any of them, they’ll have rigged the ones closest to the door. Let’s go forward. Lee, watch behind!”

  Sawyer pointed to Tuan. “What how I do this.” He unclipped the safety cover from the external launch panel, turned the arming key, and punched the red panel. The starship shuddered as the first shuttleboat leapt away. “Launch them all as decoys. They’ll cover our escape.”

  They began working their way down the corridor, jettisoning each boat in turn. The Golden Fury reverberated again and again and again.

  As they approached each access, Sawyer stuck his cannon around the corner and fired down into the tube. The beam splattered painfully like a water-jet in a bucket. Already his fingers felt numb; his cheeks had turned red and blistered.

  “Take this one—” signaled Three-Dollar. Sawyer approached the tube carefully. He stuck his gun around into the access—

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” someone called.

  “Come out, slowly—”

  A pale Vampire boy, hands held over his head came crawling up out of the shuttle-tube. “Please, don’t shoot—” he begged. His eyes flicked from one to the other, pausing only briefly on the unconscious form of Lady Zillabar before returning to meet Sawyer’s. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I promise—”

  Sawyer hesitated. He looked to Three-Dollar. “We can’t leave him here.”

  Three-Dollar looked unhappy. Behind him, Lee-1169 scowled. “We can’t take him with.”

  Sawyer made a decision. He motioned with his rifle. “Walk down to the end of the passageway. Stand there. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything.”

  The boy nodded quickly, eager to please, and began backing away. He started to lower his arms; abruptly he reached behind himself—he ducked and rolled. Lee’s shot narrowly missed Sawyer’s head. He flinched sideways. The boy returned fire. Something splattered behind Sawyer. He ignored it and fired back. Another shot from Lee—the blue fire punched right through the Vampire boy, almost exploding him from the center outward. His right arm jerked away from his body with a needle-gun held tightly in its grip.

  “Thought so,” said Lee. “Vampires never beg.”

  Sawyer looked back to Three-Dollar. “Some Alliance of Life you’ve got.” He stood up warily.

  “This doesn’t please me,” Three-Dollar said bitterly.

  “Where did Tuan go?” Sawyer asked.

  Lee pointed at the passage opposite the one the boy had come from. “He jumped in there.”

  Sawyer looked into the tube and froze—Tuan lay on the floor, all charred and twisted. Three-Dollar stepped up beside him, looked and turned away. A moment later, Lee-1169 pushed them both aside. He didn’t flinch. He merely nodded and said, “They’ll pay for this one too. I promise it.”

  Sawyer bit his lip, wondering if he should add his vow to Lee’s. Probably not. Lee might take offense, might feel that Sawyer had no right to vengeance here. So he just nodded, patted Lee once on the shoulder, and turned away. He didn’t know how well the two men had known each other, what Tuan might have meant t
o Lee, and it didn’t matter. Tuan had died in service of the Alliance. In that, Sawyer realized . . . he had died for all of them.

  “Come on,” Three-Dollar said. He pushed Sawyer forward into the tube. He grabbed Lee too. “Let’s get out of here before they decide to use sleepy-time gas.” He steered the wheelchair quickly down the tunnel after them.

  The access tube led down at a steep angle to where the hatch of the shuttleboat linked up with the hatch of the starship. Sawyer stepped into the boat cautiously. The cabin stood empty. The acceleration couches waited invitingly.

  Three-Dollar pushed the wheelchair into the boat, followed by Lee, who quickly sealed and secured the hatch. Sawyer pulled out his needle-gun and nodded to Lee, who did the same. The two men moved forward toward the cockpit. The door dilated for them. Sawyer entered first, Lee came in right behind him. The two Vampire pilots there immediately lifted their hands above their heads.

  “Jettison this boat,” Lee ordered. “Do it now.”

  The pilot shook his head. “I don’t take orders from humans.”

  “Then go to Hell,” said Lee and shot him at point blank range. The Vampire’s face imploded with the impact. Lee turned to the copilot. “What about you?”

  The copilot hesitated. He licked his lips uncomfortably. “I—I—I’ll do it.” He started to turn around to the controls in front of him. Lee shot him in the back. He spasmed and slumped.

  Sawyer looked to him, startled. “Do you know how to fly this thing?”

  Lee shook his head. “Not really.”

  Sawyer pulled the two bodies out of their couches, laying them out on the floor. “Fortunately, I do,” he muttered, climbing into the pilot’s seat. “Go on, get them out of here.” He started looking over the controls. “No telling what defense programs those two might have activated—”

  “We don’t have time to read the autolog,” Lee snapped back.

  “Do you want to kill me too, you bloodthirsty son of a bitch! What’ll you do for a pilot then?” He reached up and snapped back the safety cover on the jettison control, armed the circuits, waited till they flashed green, then hit the large red panel. The shuttleboat thumped and clanged and then fell away into silence.

  For a moment, the bright glow of The Golden Fury filled all the windows of the shuttleboat. The view had a horrendous quality. They stared in awe and fear as the boat dropped swiftly away from the huge vessel’s strangely silent gun ports and launchers. Sawyer’s hands danced across the panels in front of him. The shuttleboat rotated. The Golden Fury slid out of view. He lifted his hands carefully away from the panel and studied the status screens.

  “Come on!” said Lee. “Let’s go!”

  “I can’t—not this close! Not yet. We’ll trigger the automatic defenses.”

  “We launched decoys. They don’t know which boat to aim at!”

  “They will when our engines kick in. The longer we drift, the crazier their targeting computers will get.”

  “They won’t fire on us with Zillabar aboard—”

  “That depends on how many enemies the bitch left behind.” Sawyer held up a hand for silence. “Shut up a minute. I need to follow this.” He bent to the status panel again. Despite his anger, Lee held his silence.

  Sawyer waited until the screen in front of him cleared. He didn’t recognize all the notations. He’d never troubled to become proficient in the more arcane aspects of the Phaestoric language; but he knew enough to puzzle out the patterns. “All right,” he said. “I think they’ve figured us out. The scanners have locked onto us as the last boat launched. We’ll duck and cover—” He brought the boat around to a new bearing, sighted quickly, and punched for maximum thrust. The boat began accelerating straight for the rings of giant Burihatin.

  “You didn’t set a course.”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Huh—?”

  “If I had, they’d track it and project our destination. This will add to their confusion.”

  “They already know the only place we can go—Fourteen!”

  “Right. But let’s not make it easy for them to follow us down.” Sawyer opened a transmission channel. “Attention starship, attention starship. We have the Lady Zillabar. If any ship follows us, if any ship attempts to intercept us, if any ship fires on us, we will kill the Lady immediately. And we will broadcast the manner of her death on all available channels, civilian and military. We will not repeat this warning.” He switched off, and swung around in his chair. He looked at the two bodies on the floor, then met Lee’s angry gaze. “All right,” he demanded. “Why did you shoot the second one?”

  “The pilot refused. The copilot didn’t. How far would you have trusted him?”

  “Not very,” Sawyer admitted.

  Lee nodded. “Then you know why I had to shoot him.”

  “I just assumed you still felt angry about Tuan—”

  “I have many different kinds of anger,” Lee replied. “I’ve carried most of my rages for years. But my angers don’t rule me. I’ll avenge Tuan—and Drin and Tahl—at the appropriate time.”

  Sawyer shook his head. “I hadn’t realized that the Alliance of Life sanctified so much killing.” He said it sardonically.

  “Do you think the Vampires would have given us any courtesy?”

  “I didn’t ask you about the Vampires. I asked about the Alliance of Life.”

  “Congratulations, Sawyer,” Lee said, annoyance edging his voice. “You’ve accurately identified the moral dilemma at the heart of this struggle. The Alliance of Life only works when everybody agrees to it.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up,” said Sawyer. “I wondered what justification you would use.”

  Lee’s expression hardened. “Don’t act the fool, Sawyer. The Vampires have sworn eternal enmity to all other species. What would you have had me do? At least, you and I take the time to wonder about the morality of our actions.”

  Sawyer snorted. “I don’t have to wonder about morality. I don’t kill for ideology.”

  “Right. You kill for money.”

  “At least, I can see a specific measurable result from my endeavors.” Sawyer said quietly. He set the autopilot and pulled himself up out of the seat. He lifted one of the Vampire bodies. “Grab the other one,” he ordered.

  The two men dragged the dead Vampires into the main cabin of the shuttle. Three-Dollar had already secured the unconscious Zillabar in a couch; now he tended Finn Markham. The big man sagged in his couch, his features sunken and gray; he looked already dead. Three-Dollar looked across to them with a question in his face.

  “No problem,” explained Sawyer, indicating the bodies. “They died in the service of the Alliance of Life.” He started dragging the body of the pilot toward the doorway leading to the aft cargo bay, but abruptly Lee stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  The clone-brother stepped silently past Sawyer, holding his needle-gun high and ready. “Wait,” he mouthed. Sawyer and Three-Dollar exchanged a curious glance.

  Lee approached the rear cabin door cautiously. He stepped to one side of it, then let it open. He hesitated, then threw himself diagonally into the aft cargo bay with military precision. Almost immediately, the ship reverberated with the bright electric sound of a needle-gun. Sawyer pulled his own weapon out—

  Lee-1169 stepped back into the main cabin, a grim expression on his face. “No problem,” he said, looking straight at Sawyer. “Another one dead in the service of the Alliance.”

  Perspective

  When Sawyer and Lee returned to the main cabin, they saw that Three-Dollar had opened one of the ship’s two first-aid cabinets and had already installed Finn Markham in the coffin-like maintenance chamber.

  Sawyer went straight to the head of the case and looked in at his brother. He stood there for a long moment studying the ashen face. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked with emotion. “Do you really think he has a chance?” he asked Three-Dollar.

  “I honestly don’t know,” admitted t
he TimeBinder. “I’ve got him on a full blood-refresh, a liver-cleanse, spleen regeneration, and augmented bone-marrow functions. It can’t hurt him. Maybe, if we can get him to Fourteen—”

  “I’ve already said goodbye to him once,” said Sawyer. “He—he always told me that if it ever came to this, I should pull the plug on him.”

  Three-Dollar put his hand on Sawyer’s shoulder. “And he’d do the same for you, if he thought you had no chance.”

  “I—I just want to end his pain—”

  “He can’t feel anything now, Sawyer.” Three-Dollar turned him away from the cabinet. “Look, maybe this just postpones the inevitable. And in that case, you have my sincerest apologies for prolonging his and your suffering. On the other hand . . . well, I have a contract with the two of you and I intend to collect in full.”

  Sawyer looked up sharply. “And you called us greedy—?”

  “On the contrary.” Three-Dollar grinned. “You’ll find that the practice of greed takes on a whole new dimension when it exists in the service of ideology.” The taller man smiled gently and rubbed Sawyer’s shoulder in an affectionate manner. “Let me do what I can,” he said. “He won’t suffer. I promise.”

  Sawyer turned back to the case, feeling hopeful for the first time in days. He put his hands on the glass over Finn’s head, as if to touch his brother’s face.

  Three-Dollar left him alone then. He checked on Zillabar’s condition—she remained unconscious. The TimeBinder gestured to Lee. “Help me put her into the other maintenance cabinet.”

  “Huh? Why should we save her life?”

  “Enlightened self-interest. She’ll have more value to us alive than dead.”

  Lee looked unhappy, but he nodded his assent. “I’d just as soon toss her out the airlock.”

  “So would I,” agreed Three-Dollar. “But what I want to do often bears little resemblance to what I actually will do. My heart and my head often have ferocious arguments about issues like this. It gives me terrible headaches.”