I looked at Fayr again. Both he and Bayta, I noted with interest, had been remarkably quiet during this whole conversation. “Comments?” I invited.
“Mr. Applegate has caught the essence,” Fayr said, his voice neutral as he circled the table and gathered up Mahf’s guns.
“Just the essence?” I asked.
“There are a few other details.” Fayr gestured toward the sleeping Peer. “For one, that this Halka is one of them. He controls the company that mines, packages, and ships the coral.”
“Ah.” I looked back at Applegate. “What’s the Confederation’s position on this?”
He made a face. “Officially, we haven’t got one. We don’t have any of the coral on our worlds, and we mean to keep it that way. Unofficially”—he gave my cuffs a final tweak and popped them free—“the UN supports any action that keeps dangerously addictive drugs off the streets. As far as I’m concerned, Modhra I is fair game. If you want to assist them, I won’t stop you.”
I looked at Bayta. “You want to go?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.
“
The Bellido gave a slight bow. “Your assistance would be valuable.”
“Then we’re on,” I said, getting to my feet.
“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Applegate said, a slight smile touching his lips.
I got out of my chair and circled around behind him, then paused and turned back. “There’s just one other thing,” I said, gesturing to Fayr. “We wouldn’t want Prif Klas and Mahf to wonder if you betrayed them, now, would we?”
Applegate’s eyes went wide. “What? Wait a—”
His protest was cut off by the snap of Fayr’s wrist gun. He had just enough time to send me a baleful glare, and then his eyes rolled up and he slumped unconscious in his chair. “Good shot,” I said pulling my helmet off its shoulder clip and putting it back on. I turned off the suit’s comm and retrieved the remora transceiver from my pocket, sticking it back onto my faceplate. “What’s our first move?” I asked, choosing one of the Halkan guns from the neat row Fayr had laid out on the table and sliding it into a side pocket where it would be handy.
“You shall see,” Fayr said, his voice coming distantly from the remora as he fixed another of the little transceivers to the bottom of Bayta’s faceplate. His chameleon suit had settled into a nice copy of a Halkan military outfit. “Bring your carrybags,” he added, picking up the other Halkan gun. “We will not return to this place.”
SIXTEEN:
The corridor outside the conference room was deserted. We saw a few people as we made our way to the airlocks, including a couple of Halkan soldiers. But it was always at a distance, and as far as I could tell none of them gave us a second look.
Everything outside looked pretty much the way we’d left it a few minutes earlier. The torchferry was still sitting on the ice, with the Halkan troop carrier squatting nearby. We headed toward the landing area, Bayta and me in front with our luggage, Fayr walking behind us with his gun out like a good Halkan prisoner escort should. “I hope you’re not relying on this charade to get us aboard that troop carrier,” I warned. “Halkan commandos have chameleon suits, too.”
“No fears,” Fayr assured me. Faintly through my remora I heard the sound of someone reporting to him on his own suit comm. “Other transportation has been arranged.”
Right on cue, a large bulky vehicle hove into view over the horizon, heading our direction. It took me a couple of puzzled seconds to identify it as the heavy lifter I’d seen earlier, now with the damaged tour bus clutched beneath it on its grapples. The lifter continued toward us, flying low and much faster than I would have expected something lugging that much mass could manage.
I was still watching when the grapples released in midair, sending the bus arcing sedately toward the surface. I heard Bayta’s sharp intake of air; and a second later the bus slammed squarely into the aft section of the troop carrier.
Even in Modhra’s thin atmosphere the impact was loud enough to hear, like a meat grinder that had had a bone tossed into it. “To the torchferry,” Fayr ordered over the noise.
We picked up our pace, fighting to maintain the delicate balance between maximal speed without hitting the ground hard enough to go bounding kangaroo-style into the air. Behind us, people were starting to pour from the lodge’s airlocks in response to the crash, and I saw a dozen figures in military vac suits hurrying in from over two of the nearby hills. The lifter itself, now relieved of its burden, shot past the lodge and disappeared over the horizon in the direction of the toboggan tunnels.
We reached the torchferry’s open outer door without incident and slipped inside. I drew my gun, just in case, as Fayr closed the door and cycled the airlock. The inner door slid open, and we went inside.
I needn’t have bothered with the gun. There were two figures already at the torchferry’s command and copilot stations, and though their vac suits were pure Halkan military it was obvious from their nonchalant glances our direction that they were in fact two of Fayr’s commandos. “I guess this explains where the Halkas’ prisoner went,” I commented as Fayr gestured us forward.
“Actually, he is piloting the lifter,” Fayr said. “I assumed that the last direction the Modhri would expect him to flee would be to the scene of his previous activity. Can you fly this vehicle?”
“Probably.” I stepped between the two Bellidos and gave the controls a quick look. All the labels were in Halkora, but the layout was standard enough. “Make that yes,” I said. “Provided you don’t want anything too complicated.”
“Nothing complicated at all,” Fayr assured me, gesturing the Bellidos out of their seats. “We need only return to where you found me earlier this morning.”
“Got it,” I said, slipping into the pilot’s seat and strapping in. I checked the thrusters and ion-plasma drive, confirmed they’d been run properly through their warm-up. “Say when.”
“Lift now,” Fayr said.
My limited Westali flight training had centered around starfighters and other military craft, and the first thing I noticed was how sluggishly the torchliner responded. But as I got us pointed the right direction and fed power to the ion-plasma drive it became considerably more lively, and we were pressed gently back into our seats as we shot over the frozen landscape below. A minute later, we’d reached the end of the red pylons and the unfinished toboggan tunnels. “Now what?” I called.
“We must melt the ice over the north tunnel,” Fayr called from the rear of the compartment. “You know where.”
I glanced back over my shoulder, paused for a longer look. While I’d been concentrating on my flying, Fayr and his buddies had been putting together a pair of very nasty-looking 15 mm hip-mounted packet guns. “Nice,” I said. “You get all this stuff from Sistarrko?”
“Yes,” Fayr said. “Military-class weapons cannot be transported via Quadrail, so we brought in trade goods and purchased the equipment we needed from local manufacturers.”
“By way of the black market, I’d guess,” I said. “Incidentally, you
“No fears,” he assured me. “Concentrate on melting the ice, and leave us to deal with the starfighters.”
“The—?” I checked my board, then lifted my eyes to look out the canopy.
There they were, all right: a matched pair of Chafta 669s hovering watchfully over the ice, their bows pointed our direction.
And as I watched, one of them dipped its bow and then raised it upward again, tracking its weapons-lock systems across our hull in the universal command to surrender. “They’re not looking very happy,” I warned Fayr.
“Ignore them,” he said as he helped one of his armed compatriots into the starboard airlock. The other gunner was already in the portside lock, the inner door closing behind him. “This is a civilian craft,” he added, coming
