Odd Girl Out

restricted himself to snoozers up until now—with the cops crouched behind the van, his precious crateloads of coral had been in his line of fire. With the van now out of the way, his walkers were free to switch to thudwumpers and do their best to put us out of his way permanently. I glanced at the van, bouncing at full speed across and through the modest landscaping around the spaceport parking area as Comet Nose whisked the coral out of the battle zone.

I caught my breath. No—Comet Nose wasn't driving away from anything. He was driving toward something. Specifically, toward a shadowy figure running stealthily across the parking area. Was McMicking finally joining the party?

And then the headlights brushed across the figure, and I saw that it wasn't McMicking, but Karim.

The cacophony of shots from the two Fillies was joined by the distinctive bark of Karim's RusFed P11 as he opened fire at the vehicle heading toward him. But for all the effect the shots had he might as well have been throwing confetti. With no need for Comet Nose himself to see where he was going, he could crouch low behind the dashboard with the whole engine compartment to block Karim's shots.

I swiveled my Beretta around, resting it across my left wrist, and opened fire on the van's cargo compartment. If I could put a couple of thudwumpers into the coral, maybe the walkers would go catatonic long enough for Karim to get out of the way.

I was still firing when the van caught Karim a glancing blow, throwing him sideways to the ground and sending his gun spinning off into the night.

I winced with sympathetic pain. The impact had been relatively light, and there was a fair chance Karim had survived it. But that state of affairs wouldn't last long. All the Modhri had to do was pull the van around in a quick circle and roll over him to finish the job.

I peered helplessly out into the darkness surrounding the spaceport. McMicking had to be here—he was too good to have missed out on the probability that the Modhri would have set up for a full-fledged attack. Not Larry Hardin's top troubleshooter. He had to be lurking somewhere on the fringes of the battle, maybe with a homemade mortar and lob bomb, maybe with a cozy sniper's position and a hypersonic rifle. He was the surprise, last-minute flanking move that the Modhri wouldn't be expecting and would have no way of blocking.

Only our last minutes were rapidly running down, and Karim's absolute last minute was nearly here.

Where the hell was he?

The van shifted direction, and I waited tensely for it to circle around and finish off Karim. But instead the vehicle veered in the opposite direction, curving around and heading back toward the spaceport proper. 'Looks like he's coming back for his friends,' Bhatami said. 'We've got one last chance to nail him.' Rising from his crouch a few centimeters, he braced his gun hand on the car's trunk, pointing it toward the shelter.

And with a sudden snarl of pain, he lunged forward, slamming his chest against the car's rear bumper, and fell heavily to the ground.

I dropped to one knee beside him. To my surprise, it was his ankle, not his chest, that was busy spurting blood onto the pavement. The Filly in the car had managed to land a shot under not only his own vehicle but also under ours as well.

'Never mind me,' Bhatami gritted out between clenched teeth as he clutched at his wound. 'Nail the haramzas.'

'In a second,' I said, shoving my gun back into its holster and gingerly pulling back the blood-soaked pant leg. There was a pulsing rhythm to the flow, which meant the shot had nicked an artery. If I went charging off after the Fillies now, Bhatami would bleed to death where he lay. 'Where do you keep your med kits?'

'You hear me?' Bhatami snapped. 'I said—'

'Never mind—I'll find it,' I cut him off, eyeing the nearest police car. It was about four meters away, across the business end of the Modhran shooting gallery. Setting my teeth, I gathered my feet under me and sprinted to the car.

No shots rang out. With my skin crawling in gruesome anticipation, I wrenched the door open and ducked down into its limited protection. 'Under the front passenger seat,' Bhatami called, his voice already sounding weaker.

I reached under the seat and pulled out the shiny white box. Tucking it under my arm, I turned around and braced myself for the return run across the shooting gallery.

And as I did so, there was a horrendous crash from the spaceport fence.

I looked through the car window. Comet Nose had driven the van through the fence and was now bouncing across the landing area. Behind him, running for all they were worth, were the two remaining Fillies from the shelter and the car.

Suppressing another curse, I ran back to Bhatami's side and popped open the medical kit. The all-purpose emergency bandage was right on top; ripping it out of its sterile plastic envelope, I wrapped it around Bhatami's ankle and squeezed the activation disk. The tiny red lights went on as the catalytic reaction inside the bandage began swelling the material, sealing off the entire area around the wound. 'Go,' Bhatami breathed. 'Maybe you can still stop them.'

'Right.' Away to the south, I could see the faint flickers of red and blue light that marked the approach of the backup forces that I wished had been here three minutes ago. Pressing a pain-med hypo into Bhatami's palm, I headed for the hole in the fence.

I had just reached it and started through when there was a flat crack from somewhere in front of me and a bullet whizzed past my head.

I threw myself down and to the side, landing painfully on a tangled flap of the fencing that Comet Nose's impact had torn free. Another shot ricocheted off the pavement beside me. This time I spotted the shooter crouched at the corner of the spaceport building. I fired three shots, and had the satisfaction of seeing him jerk violently and then fall to the ground.

But my sense of accomplishment was short-lived. I'd made it to his position and confirmed he was dead when, across the field, one of the torchyachts rose into view on its Shorshic force thrusters. Still lifting, it swiveled ponderously around and headed across the sky.

I raised my gun, then lowered it again, the taste of defeat in my mouth. I'd been able to keep the Modhri away from Rebekah at Karim's bar, and had blocked his effort to bring his outpost and her boxes together in the police evidence room.

But this time he had me. Even if Bhatami was willing to let me go without further investigation—and I was pretty sure he wouldn't—the Modhri would still get to the transfer station ahead of us. At that point, he would simply arrange for his coral and Rebekah's boxes to be shuttled over to the Tube together. Whatever the Modhri had in mind, a nice little hundred-kilometer trip together in a shuttle's cargo compartment would probably do the trick.

We could, of course, bypass the transfer station entirely by sneaking around behind the Tube and pulling the backdoor entry we'd used on a couple of previous occasions. But I doubted that would really help us any. The Modhri could simply split up his own coral boxes between the transfer station and the Tube and be ready to pounce with either the minute we showed our faces.

Besides, once we reached the Tube we still had to actually go somewhere, and once in the Quadrail system the Modhri had a very definite edge in numbers. All Bayta and I would have would be the kwi, and given the Modhri's obsession with Rebekah I doubted that would be enough.

We would just have to come up with some other clever trick. Unfortunately, at the moment I didn't have the faintest idea what that might be.

And in the meantime, I still had a few other hurdles to clear before we could get off the planet. Holstering my Beretta, I headed back to see how Bhatami was doing.

I had just reached the mangled section of fence when the whole landscape lit up around me.

I spun around, my first reflexive thought that the torch-yacht had somehow exploded. But the light was already fading, and as I squinted through the afterimage I realized that the ship had merely cut in its ion-plasma drive for half a second or so. It was already back on its normal atmospheric thrusters before the rumble of the brief high- energy pulse rolled over me.

I was still wondering what that was all about when I reached Bhatami. The rest of the backup crowd had arrived in my absence, and a pair of medics were getting the lieutenant settled onto a stretcher. A few of the cops