Blueshell's fronds angled in all directions. "Are you all right, Greenstalk?" They rattled back and forth at each other for a few seconds. Then Greenstalk resumed in Trisk: "Sir Pham. Yes, I'm all right. I'm sorry to upset you all so much. But I could tell the deal with Rihndell was going to work out, and then these local Riders stopped by. They are wonderful people, Sir Pham. They have invited us across to their terrane. Just for a day or so. It will be a wonderful rest before we go on our way. And I think they may be able to help us."
Like the quest romances he'd found in Ravna's bedtime library: the weary travelers, partway to their goal, find a friendly haven and some special gift. Pham switched to a private line to Blueshell: "Is that really Greenstalk? Is she under duress?"
"It's her, and free, Sir Pham. You heard us speaking. I've been with her two hundred years. No one's twisting her fronds."
"Then why the hell did she skip out on us?" Pham surprised himself, almost hissing the words.
Long pause. "That is strange. My guess: these local Riders somehow know something very important to us. Come, Sir Pham. But carefully." He rolled away in what seemed a random direction.
"Rav, what do you — " Pham noticed the red light blinking on his comm status panel, and his irritation chilled. How long had the link to Ravna been down?
Pham followed Blueshell, floating low behind the other, using his gas jets to pace the Skroderider. This entire area was covered with the stickem that Riders liked for zero-gee rolling. Yet right now the place seemed deserted. Nobody in sight where just a hundred meters away there was light and crowds. The whole thing screamed ambush, yet it didn't make sense. If Death to Vermin — or their stooges — had spotted them, a simple alarum would have served. Some Rihndell game…? Pham powered up the suit's beam weapons and enabled countermeasures; midge cameras flitted off in all directions. So much for dress codes.
The bluish moonlight washed the plain, showing soft mounds and angular arrays of unknown equipment. The surface was pocked with holes (tunnel entrances?). Blueshell said something muddled about the "beautiful night", how much fun it would be to sit on the seashore a hundred kilometers above them. Pham scanned in all directions, trying to identify fields of fire and killing zones.
The view from one of his midges showed a forest of leafless fronds -Skroderiders standing silent in the moonlight. They were two hillocks away. Silent, motionless, without any lights… perhaps just enjoying the moonlight. In the midge's amplified view, Pham had no trouble identifying Greenstalk; she was standing at one end of a line of five Riders, her hull stripes clearly visible. There was a hump on the front of her skrode, and a rod-like projection. Some kind of restraint? He floated a couple of midges near. A weapon. All those Riders were armed.
"We're already aboard the transport, Blueshell," came Greenstalk's voice. "You'll see it in a few more meters, just on the other side of a ventilator pile," apparently referring to the mound that he and the Skroderider were approaching. But Pham knew there was no flier there; Greenstalk and her guns were to the side of their progress. Treachery, very workmanlike but also very low tech. Pham almost shouted out to Blueshell. Then he notice the flat ceramic rectangle mounted in the hill just a few meters behind the Rider. The nearest midge reported it was some kind of explosive, probably a directional mine. A low-resolution camera, barely more than a motion sensor, was mounted beside it. Blueshell had rolled nonchalantly past the thing, all the while chattering with Greenstalk. They let him past. New suspicions rose dark and grim. Pham broke to a stop, backing quickly; never touching ground, the only sounds he made were the quiet hisses of his gas jets. He detached one of his wrist claws and had a midge fly it close past the mine's sensor…
There was a flash of pale fire and a loud noise. Even five meters to the side, the shock wave pushed him back. He had a glimpse of Blueshell thrown frond over wheels on the far side of the mine. Edged metal knickered about, but mindlessly: nothing came back to attack again. Several midges were destroyed by the blast.
Pham took advantage of the racket to accelerate hard, scooting up a nearby "hill" and into a shallow valley (alley?) that looked down on the Skroderiders. The ambushers rolled forward around the hill, rattling happily at one another. Pham held his fire, curious. After a moment, Blueshell floated into the air a hundred meters away. "Pham?" he said plaintively, "Pham?"
The ambushers ignored Blueshell. Three of them disappeared around the hill. Pham's midges saw them stop in consternation, fronds erect — they had suddenly realized he'd gotten away. The five spread out, searching the area, hunting him down. There was no persuasive talk from Greenstalk anymore.
There was a sharp cracking sound and blaster fire glowed from behind a hill. Somebody was a little nervous on the trigger.
Above it all floated Blueshell, the perfect target, yet still untouched. His speech was a combination of Trisk and Rider rattle now, and where Pham could understand it, he heard fear. "Why are you shooting? What is the problem? Greenstalk, please!"
The paranoid in Pham Nuwen was not deceived. I don't want you up there looking down. He sighted his main beam gun on the Rider, then shifted his aim and fired. The blast was not in visible wavelengths, but there were gigajoules in the pulse. Plasma coruscated along the beam, missing Blueshell by less than five meters. Well above the Skroderider, the beam struck hull crystal. The explosion was spectacular, an actinic glare that sent glowing fragments in a thousand rays.
Pham flew sideways even as the ceiling flared. He saw Blueshell spinning off, regain control — and move precipitously for cover. Where Pham's beam had hit, a corona of light was dimming from blue through orange and red, its light still brighter than the shepherd moon overhead.
His warning shot had been like a great finger pointing back toward his location. In the next fifteen seconds, four of the ambushers fired on the place Pham had been. There was silence, then faint rustling. In a game of stealth, the five might think themselves easy winners. They still hadn't realized how well-equipped he was. Pham smiled at the pictures coming in from his midges. He had every one of them in sight, and Blueshell too.
If it were just these four (five?), there would be no problem. But surely reinforcements, or at least complications, were on the way. The wound in the ceiling had cooled to darkness, but there was a hole there now, half a meter across. The sound of hissing wind came from it, a sound that brought reflex fear to Pham even in his armor. It might take a while before the leak affected the Skroderiders, but it was an emergency nevertheless. It would attract notice. He stared at the hole. Down here it was stirring a breeze, but in the few meters right below the hole there was a miniature tornado of dust and loose junk, hurtling up and out…
And beyond the transparent hull, in space:
A gap of dark and then a glittering plume, where the debris emerged from the arc's shadow into the sunlight. A neat idea struggled for his attention.
Oops. The five Riders had roughly encircled him. Now one blundered into view, saw him, and snapped a shot. Pham returned fire and the other exploded in a cloud of superheated water and charred flesh. Its undamaged skrode sailed across the space between the hills, collecting panicky fire from the others. Pham changed position again, moving in the direction he knew was farthest from his enemies' positions.
A few more minutes of peace. He looked up at the crystal plume. There was something… yes. If reinforcements should come, why not for him? He sighted on the plume and shunted his voice line through the gun's trigger circuit. He almost started talking, then thought… Better lower the power on this one. Details. He aimed again, fired continuously, and said, "Ravna, I sure as hell hope you have your eyes open. I need help…" and briefly described the crazy events of the last ten minutes.
This time his beam was putting out less than ten thousand joules per second, not enough to glow the air. But reflecting off the plume beyond the hull, the modulation should be visible for thousands of klicks, in particular to the OOB on the other side of the habitat.
The Skroderiders were closing in again. Damn. No way he could leave this message on automatic send; he needed the "transmitter" for more important things. Pham flew from valley to valley, maneuvering behind the Rider that was farthest from the others. One against three (four?). He had superior firepower and information, but one piece of bad luck and he was dead. He floated up on his next target. Quietly, carefully…
A sear of light brushed his arm, flaring the armor incandescent. White hot drops of metal sprayed as he twisted out of the way. He boosted straight across the space between three hillocks, firing down on the Rider there. Lights crisscrossed around him, and then he was under cover again. They were fast, almost as if they had automatic aiming gear. Maybe they did: their skrodes.
Then the pain hit. Pham folded on himself, gasping. If this were like wounds he remembered, there would be char to the bone. Tears floated in his eyes, and consciousness disappeared in a nauseated faint. He came to. It could only be a second or two later — else he'd never have wakened. The others were a lot closer now, but the one he'd fired on was just a glowing crater and random skrode fragments. His suit's automation brought the damaged armor in close to his side. He felt the chill of local anesthetic, and the pain dimmed. Pham eased around the hill, trying to keep all three of his antagonists simultaneously out of sight. They had caught on to his midges; every few seconds a glow erupted or a hill top turned to glowing slag. It was overkill, but the midges were dying… and he was losing his greatest advantage.
Where is Blueshell? Pham cycled through the views from his remaining midges, then his own. The bastard was back in the air, high above the combat — untouched by his fellow Riders. Reporting everything I do. Pham rolled over, awkwardly bringing his gun to bear on the tiny figure. He hesitated. You're getting soft, Nuwen. Blueshell abruptly accelerated downwards, his cargo scarf billowing out behind him. Evidently he was using his gas jets' full power. Against the background noise of bubbling metal and blast beam thunder, his fall was totally silent. He was driving straight for the nearest of the attackers.
Thirty meters up, the Rider released something large and angular. The two separated, Blueshell braking and diving to the side. He disappeared behind the hills. At the same time, much nearer, came a solid thud/crunch. Pham spent his next to last midge for a peek around the hillside. He had a glimpse of a skrode, and fronds splayed all about a squashed stalk; there was a flash of light, and the midge was gone.
Only two ambushers left. One was Greenstalk.
For ten seconds there was no more firing. Yet things were not completely silent. The slumped, glowing metal of his arm popped and sputtered as it cooled. High above, there was the susurrus of air escaping the hull. Fitful breezes whispered around ground level, making it impossible to keep position without constant tweaking at his jets. He paused, letting the current carry him silently out of his little valley. There. A ghostly hiss that was not his own. Another. The two were closing in on him from different directions. They might not know his exact position, but they could obviously coordinate their own.
The pain faded in and out, along with consciousness. Short pulses of agony and darkness. He dared not fool with more anesthetic. Pham saw frond tips peeping over a nearby hill. He halted, watched the fronds. Most likely, there was just enough vision area in the tips to sense motion… Two seconds passed. Pham's last midge showed the other attacker floating silently in from the side. Any second now, the two would pop up. At that instant, Pham would have given anything for an armed midge. In all his stupid hacking, he'd never gotten around to that. No help for it. He waited for a moment of clear consciousness, long enough to boost over the enemy and shoot.
There was a rattle of fronds, loud self-announcement. Pham's midge caught sight of Blueshell rolling behind slatted walls a hundred meters away. The Skroderider rushed from protection to protection, but always closer to Greenstalk's position. And the rattling? Was it a pleading? Even after five months with the Riders, Pham had only the vaguest sense of their rattle-talk. Greenstalk — the Greenstalk who had always been the shy one, the compulsively honest one — rattled nothing back. She swung her beamer around, raking the slats with fire. The third Rider popped up just far enough to shoot at the slats. His angle would have been just right to fry Blueshell where he stood — except that the movement took him directly in front of Pham Nuwen's gun.
Even as Pham fired, he was boosting out of his hole. Now was his only chance. If he could turn, fire back on Greenstalk before she was done with Blueshell — The maneuver was an easy head-over-heels that should have left him upside down and facing back upon Greenstalk. But nothing was easy for him now, and Pham came around spinning too fast, the landscape dwindling beneath him. But there was Greenstalk all right, swinging her weapon back toward him.
And there was Blueshell, racing from between pillars that glowed white in the heat of Greenstalk's fire. His voice was loud in Pham's ear: "I beg, don't kill her. Don't kill — "
Greenstalk hesitated, then turned the weapon back on the advancing Blueshell. Pham triggered his gun, letting his spin drag the beam across the ground. Consciousness ebbed. Aim! Aim right! He furrowed the land below with a glowing, molten arrow, that ended at something dark and slumped. Blueshell's tiny figure was still rolling across the wreckage, trying to reach her. Then Pham had turned too far and could not remember how to change the view. The sky swung slowly past his eyes:
A bluish moon with a sharp shadow 'cross its middle. A ship floating close, with feathery spines, like some giant bug. What in the Qeng Ho… where am I?… and consciousness fled.