He was intelligent, romantic, and very, very brave. When a member of me cabal had imprisoned her inJohannesburg it had been Booly who led the mission to rescue her. She would never forget the moment when light spilled into her cell, when he spoke her name, when he swept her into his arms. Just like in her childhood story books except for one very important thing: He might be me one, and they might live happily ever after, but she wasn’t sure.
Hardswim looked down on the lights of Sintra, imagined the interior of his favorite bar, and cursed his luck. The general got laid, his buddies got drunk, and what did he get? The stinkin* shaft that’s what... Hardswim paused in midthought as his nose tried to tell him something. A scent that shouldn’t be there?
No, too much of the scent that should be there!
The Naa was already drawing his sidearm and turning toward me light switch when the assassins took him down. One hit the back of his knees, a second pulled his head back, and the third slit his throat. The blood looked black in the moonlight. It took less than three seconds. The body made a soft thump as it hit the floor.
Moving quickly, lest the body cool, the diminutive killers towed the Naa over to the bedroom door, raised him up, and pressed a palm against the print sensitive lock. The mechanism made a soft but distinctive click.
Maylo heard the door lock click and frowned. Hardswim never entered the room without requesting permission first—not to mention the fact that it was the middle of the night. Having been awake for some time, the executive’s eyes were fully adjusted to the half darkness that pervaded the room. She saw the door open a crack and made up her mind. There had been a time when she would have laughed at the notion of assassins, but that was before she had spent months as a political prisoner, and been forced to shoot a man at close range. Better to look stupid than dead. Booly felt a hand cover his mouth, came instantly awake, and felt for the handgun. It had a tendency to migrate during the night, especially when they made love, but it happened to be in the spot where he’d left it. His fingers closed around cool metal as lips brushed his ear. “Someone opened the door.”
The officer nodded, nudged Maylo toward the far side of the bed, and nicked the safety to the “off’
position.
Someone else might have yelled something like “Who’s there? I have a gun’” but Booty didn’t believe in that sort of nonsense. He figured that anyone who mistakenly entered a locked room during the middle of the night deserved to die. He rolled to the left, saw motion, and opened fire. The first assassin staggered as two bullets ripped through her body, but the second and third made it through the door, and opened fire with handheld flechette throwers. The dans sampled the air, identified epithelial cells that matched the DNA they were programmed to seek, and steered themselves accordingly.
Booly continued to fire, saw two additional shadows fall, and felt rather than saw the missiles that accelerated past his torso. Smart darts! Targeted to Maylo!
The officer turned, threw himself out over the bed, but knew it was too late. Having rolled off the right side of the bed, Maylo sensed the attack and raised the pillow out of reflex more than anything else. She felt the darts hit the foam rubber, fell backward in an attempt to reduce the extent to which she was visible, and saw Booly throw himself into the line of fire. The bed creaked as the officer landed on it, three heavily armed legionnaires burst through the door, and the lights flashed on.
Maylo, surprised to learn she was still alive, lowered the pillow. Nine flechettes protruded from the opposite side. The previously white linen was yellow where some sort of liquid had started to spread. Booty yelled, “Poison!” and Maylo threw the object away.
Booly rolled off the bed, stood, and approached the bodies. He was naked, which meant that anyone who cared to look could see the mane of silvery gray fur that began at his hairline and ended at the base of his spine. Proof that he was one-quarter Naa—and a matter of pride for his bodyguard. Sergeant Armstrong had gold fur streaked with white, a bald spot on his right biceps where a bullet had ripped through it, and carried an assault weapon in his right hand. He knelt by one of the bodies. “They murdered Hardswim.”
Booly swore, bent over, and tugged at one of the black hoods. It came off rather easily. The small almost feline head bore large light-gathering eyes, pointed ears, and horizontal slits where nostrils might have been. Maylo peered down across her lover’s shoulder.
“Thraki.”
“Yes,” Booly agreed. “But why?”
Maylo frowned. The Thraki race was but one element in a very complicated political picture. Humans, along with a number of alien species had founded a star-spanning government called the Confederacy of Sentient Beings. First conceived as a military alliance, the Confederacy had become much more than that, and me key to interstellar peace and prosperity. Not that all of its members could or should be trusted. The Clone Hegemony along with the Ramanthians and others had agendas of their own and had been at the very center of the effort not only to subvert Earth’s duly constituted government but to destabilize the Confederacy as well.
A rather complex situation made all the more difficult by the arrival of the Thraki, who dropped out of hyperspace, formed a relationship with the conspirators, and took possession of a world called Zynig47. Other planets had been colonized as well, most with permission from the Hegemony, but some without it. All during a time when the Confederacy’s armed forces were not only suffering from the cumulative effects of serial downsizings but were divided by the recent mutiny. Then, as if those problems were not enough, Maylo’s uncle, a businessman-politician named Sergi ChienChu, had learned that the Thraki were on the run from something called “the Sheen,” and hoped to use the Confederacy for what amounted to cannon fodder. All of which was extremely important—but didn’t
