Heirs of Empire

“Well?” Sean asked, and Harriet glanced at Tamman and shrugged.

“We don’t know. We can get into the operating system, sort of, but it’s in terrible shape. I’ve never seen one this bad off—as far as I know, no one’s ever seen one this bad—and we can’t access any of its files.”

“Crap,” Sean muttered, but Tamman shook his head.

“It may not be quite that bad. The main memory core’s shot, but there’s an auxiliary wired into the system. I’d guess somebody hooked in his personal unit as a peripheral—it’s all that’s keeping anything up, and there’s a chance we can recover some of its memory.”

“How much?” Sean asked eagerly, and Tamman and Harriet laughed.

“Spoken like a true optimist.” Tamman grinned. “We can’t tell you that till we can get at it properly, and we can’t do that here. It’s going to take Israel’s ’tronics shop to access this, Sean. We’ll have to pull the unit and haul it back with us.”

“Oh, lord!” Sandy knelt and ran her fingers over the dusty console, peering into it through her implants. “That’s gonna be a real bitch, Tam.”

“I know.” He propped his hands on his hips and frowned at the glowing telltales. “I’m not real crazy about carting it out of here by hand, either. Molycircs or no, this thing’s fragile as hell. Dropping it down a cliff or two wouldn’t be real good for it.”

“Then let’s take it out the easy way,” Harriet suggested. “Sandy and Sean blew what was left of the defenses into dust bunnies, so why don’t I go back and collect the cutter while you and she take it apart?”

“Now that,” Tamman murmured, “sounds like an excellent idea.”

“I don’t know, Harry,” Sean said. “You’re all better techs than me. Maybe I should go back while all three of you work on it.”

She snorted. “Seen yourself moving lately, brother dear? It’d take you till dawn to hobble back to the cutter!”

“Hey, I’m not that bad off!”

“Maybe not, but you wouldn’t enjoy the hike, and Tam and Sandy are better mechanics than me. That makes me the logical choice, now doesn’t it? Besides, I haven’t had a good jog since Terra kicked us overboard.”

Sean didn’t like the thought of splitting up and letting any of them out on his (or her) own, yet they hadn’t met anything worrisome on the way in. None of the native predators, if any, had put in an appearance, and this was the Valley of the Damned. No Pardalian was likely to be wandering about in its vicinity in the middle of the night. And she was right about how he felt. The trek back to the cutter was more than he cared to face, and he discovered he’d been dreading the thought of it.

“All right,” he agreed finally. “I’ll stay here and hold lights and pass tools or something, but keep your belt light lit. That ought to discourage any of the local beasties from wondering what you taste like. And you take a real close look through your passive sensors before you try to land out there! You’re probably right about the defenses being down, but don’t take any chances.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” She tossed him an impudent salute, then whipped about and fled with a trill of laughter as he started for her. She paused at the outer door just long enough to stick out her tongue, and then her light, quick step receded rapidly up the stairs. Sean shook his head, then smiled and eased down to sit on the floor beside Sandy and Tamman as they produced tools and began removing the front of the console.

Harriet jogged happily through the darkness at a steady forty kilometers per hour. Sean might be fourteen centimeters taller, but he had their father’s long body and broad shoulders; her legs were almost as long, despite his height advantage, and she was much lighter. Without even the weight of her scanpack she was free to attack the steep slopes, burdened only by her holstered grav gun, and she savored the opportunity. The moon had set, but her belt light was more than enough for someone with enhanced eyes, and running on Israel’s treadmill paled beside the sheer joy of filling her lungs with the crisp, cold mountain air as her feet spurned the ground.

It took her just under eighty minutes to reach the ledge they’d landed the cutter on. She paused, jogging in place, to wipe sweat from her forehead, then trotted onward a bit more cautiously in light of the hundred-meter drop to her right.

She was less than a kilometer from the cutter when her head came up in sudden surprise. Her eyes widened, and she slithered to a halt as the sound of human voices cut the darkness.

Her head whipped around and she went active with every implant, probing the night. People! At least a dozen people, coming around the bend ahead of her! Her implants should have picked them up sooner, and she cursed herself for not paying more attention to her surroundings and less to the pleasure of running. But even as she raged at her foolishness a part of her mind whirred with questions. She hadn’t looked for them, but, damn it, what were they doing out here in the middle of the night without even a torch?

Questions could wait. She killed her belt lamp and turned back the way she’d come, and a voice shouted, loud and harsh with command. Crap! She’d been seen!

She abandoned her attempt to sneak away for a blinding pace no unenhanced human could have matched, and her thoughts flashed. They’d agreed not to use their coms in case they were picked up, but if there were people here, there might be more of them, closer to the Valley, as well. The others had to be warned, and—

Light glared and thunder barked behind her. Something whizzed past her ear, and something else slammed into her left shoulder blade. She staggered and snatched for her grav gun, spun to the side by the brutal impact, and the beginning of pain exploded up her nerves. A second fiery hammer hit her in the side, throwing the grav gun from her hand, but before it really registered there was another flash, and a sixty-gram lead ball smashed her right temple.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Come out of there, you—aha!”

Tamman broke off in mid-exasperation and eased the glittering block of molecular circuitry gently to the floor with a wide, triumphant smile.

Removing it had proved even harder than Sandy had feared. Not even implants could trace circuits in three dimensions without a schematic, and they’d found too late that it would have been far simpler to disconnect the console from the wall and go in from the back. Dust had infiltrated the ancient seals, as well, drifting up to irritate eyes and inspire bursts of sneezing, and Tamman had had an interesting moment when he bridged what he’d thought was a dead circuit. But two and a half painstaking hours had finally yielded their prize, and Sean met Tamman’s grin with one of his own.

“Foosh!” Sandy fanned herself with a dirty hand. “When I think how much quicker we could have done this in a proper shop—!” Sean switched his grin to her. Then he frowned.

“Hey—shouldn’t Harry be back by now?”

Sandy and Tamman stared at him, and he felt their matching surprise. All three of them had been oblivious to time as they concentrated on eviscerating the console; now their eyes met his, and he saw them darken as surprise gave way to the beginnings of concern.

“Damn right she should!” Tamman rose and snatched up the hand lamp. “The way she likes to run, it shouldn’t’ve taken her more than two hours—tops—to get to the cutter!”

Sean started for the stairs and drew up with a gasp, for his injured side had stiffened as he watched his friends work. Pain beaded his forehead with sweat, and he muttered a curse and hit his implant overrides. He knew he shouldn’t—pain was a warning a body did well to heed, lest it turn minor injuries into serious ones—but that was the least of his worries.

Sandy frowned as his suddenly brisker movement told her what he’d done, yet she said nothing, and the two of them half-ran up the treads on Tamman’s heels.

They scrambled out past the tree, panting from their hurried ascent, and stared into the darkness. There