Brothers in Arms

everything all picked out and piled up, and then the bitch wouldn't take our credit! Good Dendarii credit!'

'The bitch . . . ?' Miles looked around, stepping over the disarmed Yalen. Oh, ye gods. . . . The store clerk, a plump, middle-aged woman, lay on her side on the floor at the other end of the display rack, gagged, trussed up in the naked soldier's twisted jacket and pants by way of makeshift restraints.

Miles pulled the bowie knife out of his belt and headed for her. She made hysterical gurgling noises down in her throat.

'I wouldn't let her loose if I were you,' said the naked soldier warningly. 'She makes a lot of noise.'

Miles paused and studied the woman. Her greying hair stuck out wildly, except where it was plastered to her forehead and neck by sweat. Her terrorized eyes rolled whitely; she bucked against her bonds.

'Mm.' Miles thrust the knife back in his belt temporarily. He caught the naked soldier's name off his uniform at last, and made an unwelcome mental connection. 'Xaveria. Yes, I remember you now. You did well at Dagoola.' Xaveria stood straighter.

Damn. So much for his nascent plan of throwing the entire lot to the local authorities, and praying they were all still incarcerated when the fleet broke orbit. Could Xaveria be detached from his worthless comrades somehow? Alas, it looked like they were all in this together.

'So she wouldn't take your credit cards. You, Xaveria—what happened next?' 'Er—insults were exchanged, sir.'

'And?'

'And tempers kind of got out of hand. Bottles were thrown, and thrown on the floor. The police were called. She was punched out.' Xaveria eyed Danio warily.

Miles contemplated the sudden absence of actors from all this action, in Xaveria's syntax. 'And?'

'And the police got here. And we told them we'd blow the place up if they tried to come in,'

'And do you actually have the means to carry out that threat, Private Xaveria?'

'No, sir. It was pure bluff. I was trying to think—well—what you would do in the situation, sir.'

This one is too damned observant. Even when he's potted, Miles thought dryly. He sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. 'Why wouldn't she take your credit cards? Aren't they the Earth Universals you were issued at the shuttleport? You weren't trying to use the ones left over from Mahata Solaris, were you?'

'No, sir,' said Xaveria. He produced his card by way of evidence. It looked all right. Miles turned, to test it in the comconsole at the checkout, only to discover that the comconsole had been shot. The final bullet hole in the holovid plate was precisely centered, must have been intended as the coup de grace, although the console still emitted little wheezing popping noises now and then. He added the price of it to the running tally in his head and winced.

'Actually,' Xaveria cleared his throat, 'it was the machine that spat it up, sir.'

'It shouldn't have done that,' Miles began, 'unless—' Unless there's something wrong with the central account, his thought finished. The pit of his stomach felt suddenly very cold. 'I'll check it out,' he promised. 'Meanwhile we have to wrap this up and get you out of here without your being fried by the local constables.'

Danio nodded excitedly toward the pistol in Miles's hand. 'We could blast our way out the back. Make a run for the nearest tubeway.'

Miles, momentarily bereft of speech, envisioned plugging Danio with his own pistol. Danio was saved only by Miles's reflection that the recoil might break his arm. He'd smashed his right hand at Dagoola, and the memory of the pain was still fresh.

'No, Danio,' Miles said when he could command his voice. 'We are going to walk quietly—very quietly—out the front door and surrender.'

'But the Dendarii never surrender,' said Xaveria.

'This is not a firebase,' said Miles patiently. 'It is a wineshop. Or at any rate, it was. Furthermore, it is not even our wineshop.' Though I shall no doubt be compelled to buy it. 'Think of the London police not as your enemies, but as your dearest friends. They are, you know. Because,' he fixed Xaveria with a cold eye, 'until they get done with you, I can't start.'

'Ah,' said Xaveria, quelled at last. He touched Danio on the arm. 'Yeah. Maybe—maybe we better let the Admiral take us home, eh, Danio?'

Xaveria hauled the ex-bowie knife owner to his feet. After a moment's thought, Miles walked quietly behind red-eye, pulled out his pocket stunner, and placed a light blast to the base of his skull. Red-eye toppled sideways. Miles sent up a short prayer that this final stimulus wouldn't send him into trauma-shock. God alone knew what chemical cocktail it chased, except that it clearly wasn't alcohol alone.

'You take his head,' Miles directed Danio, 'and you, Yalen, take his feet.' There, that effectively immobilized all three of them. 'Xaveria, open the door, place your hands on top of your head, and walk, do not run, to where you will submit quietly to arrest. Danio, you follow. That's an order.'

'Wish we had the rest of the troops,' muttered Danio.

'The only troop you need is a troop of legal experts,' said Miles. He eyed Xaveria, and sighed. 'I'll send you one.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Xaveria, and lurched gravely forward. Miles brought up the rear, gritting his teeth.

Miles blinked in the sunlight of the street. His little patrol fell into the arms of the waiting police. Danio did not fight when they started to frisk him, though Miles only relaxed when he saw the tangle-field finally turned on. The constable commander approached, inhaling for speech.

A soft foomp! broke from the door of the wineshop. Blue flames licked out over the slidewalk.

Miles cried out, wheeled, and sprinted explosively from his standing start, gulping a huge breath and holding it. He hurtled through the wineshop doors, into darkness shot through with twisting heat, around the display case. The alcohol-soaked carpeting was growing flames, like stands of golden wheat running in a crazy pattern following concentrations of fumes. Fire was advancing on the bound woman on the floor; in a moment, her hair would be a terrible halo.

Miles dove for her, wriggled his shoulder under her, grunted to his feet. He swore he could feel his bones bend. She kicked unhelpfully. Miles staggered for the door, bright like the mouth of a tunnel, like the gate of life. His lungs pulsed, straining for oxygen against his tightly-closed lips. Total elapsed time, eleven seconds.

In the twelfth second, the room behind them brightened, roaring. Miles and his burden fell to the slidewalk, rolling—he rolled her over and over—flames were lapping over their clothing. People were screaming and yelling at an unintelligible distance. His Dendarii uniform cloth, combat-rated, would neither melt nor burn, but still made a dandy wick for the volatile liquids splashed on it. The effect was bloody spectacular. But the poor clerk's clothing offered no such protection—

He choked on a faceful of foam, sprayed on them by the fireman who had rushed forward. He must have been standing at the ready all this time. The frightened-looking policewoman hovered anxiously clutching her thoroughly redundant plasma-rifle. The fire extinguisher foam was like being rolled in beer suds, only not so tasty —Miles spat vile chemicals, and lay a moment gasping. God, air was good. Nobody praised air enough.

'A bomb!' cried the constable commander.

Miles wriggled onto his back, appreciating the blue slice of sky seen through eyes miraculously unglazed, unburst, unslagged. 'No,' he panted sadly, 'brandy. Lots and lots of very expensive brandy. And cheap grain alcohol. Probably set off by a short circuit in the comconsole.'

He rolled out of the way as firemen in white protective garments bearing the tools of their trade stampeded forward. A fireman pulled him to his feet, farther away from the now-blazing building. He came up staring at a person pointing a piece of equipment at him resembling, for a disoriented moment, a microwave cannon. The adrenalin rush washed over him without effect, there was no response left in him. The person was babbling at him. Miles blinked dizzily, and the microwave cannon fell into more sensible focus as a holovid camera.

He wished it had been a microwave cannon. . . . The clerk, released at last, was pointing at him and crying and screaming. For someone he'd just saved from a horrible death, she didn't sound very grateful. The holovid