I laughed too—but only not to offend him. What I actually thought was that we’d be the ones who’d need a handicap and every other advantage we could grab.
Eleven
It is better one hundred guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer.
Sounds like a good principle of justice, and really it is—in theory. So much so that most of the time we pozzies try to hold to it. That’s probably what Makrow 34 was counting on when he decided to escape through a docking module full of bodies in shock, each of which could make a perfectly good hostage if things went badly for him.
Except that he was the one particular guilty person for whom I was likely to make a big exception. For the Cetian Gaussical I was strangely willing to sacrifice two or three innocents just to be sure he didn’t wriggle out again. I’d sacrifice even more if need be. I don’t know if I would have gone so far as to invert the saying completely and let a hundred innocents suffer to keep one guilty party from escaping, but I was more than open to an intermediate compromise solution. Say fifty innocents, more or less—more if they were aliens—if it meant trapping these three sons of bitches once and for all.
We had no time to clear out the module or call for reinforcements. Anyway, Vasily didn’t want to (neither did I). So we used a simple but effective technique:
We came in running, guns in hand. If the three suspect paramedics reacted, it was them. If not—we’d have to risk a nasty diplomatic incident and oblige them to take off their helmets and submit to DNA scans.
It wasn’t necessary. The metabolic bomb guy wasn’t Weekman, after all.
It was Weekman who recognized us the instant we stepped out of the elevator. I knew it was Giorgio when I saw him pull an ultrasonic blaster from one of the pockets of his white uniform: he was too small to be the Colossaur, and if he had been Makrow 34 his shot wouldn’t have gone so wide of the mark. I get it: he was nervous, oozing adrenaline. Things would have gone better for him if, instead of reacting like a cowboy in an old Western, he’d spent another fraction of a second trying to aim—or more so, if he’d warned his pals before squeezing the trigger.
Even so, the impact of his sonic-wave weapon knocked the hat off my head. But it told me what I needed to know, giving me time to roll aside and dodge the second shot before firing back. Not at Weekman (I wanted to leave him to Vasily—after all, those two had an old score to settle) but at the hulking mass that had to be the Colossaur—unquestionably the most dangerous opponent in an encounter of this nature.
I missed him, firing like a rank beginner. They had realized by then that they’d been discovered, and so I learned that Makrow was now using his powers.
But even the Cetian’s abilities had limits. Warding off simultaneous attacks on both of his henchmen was probably pushing it. Evidently he considered the Colossaur more useful in a fight like the one that had just broken out—or rather, I suspect, he allowed Vasily his just revenge on his former human partner, now that Weekman was becoming more of a burden than a help.
In any case, El Afortunado flung himself to the floor and, sliding along it while firing two of his masers without bothering to aim, reached the still unconscious body of a fallen human, which he used as an improvised shield.
Not that he really needed the protection. Whether it was his Gaussical powers or simply his good aim, my partner’s first shot tore the visored hood off Weekman’s blindingly white bioprotection suit.
With Weekman’s head still inside, of course.
I hoped with all my strength it had hurt him. A lot.
Of the three criminals, he was the one I worried about the least. But still: one less. So now things were close to even. Two on two.
Except in the meantime the Colossaur had managed to embed his imposing bulk behind a customs counter, and he was now firing at me from that vantage point with a weapon that no other species would consider a sidearm. The cannon must have weighed over a hundred pounds and measured nearly a foot wide.
I tried to respond with my own comparatively diminutive maser. Powerful as it had looked when I grabbed it, it couldn’t do much damage compared to the Colossaur’s portable artillery piece. Especially if I couldn’t aim straight. Under a constant rain of high-power microwaves, it was risky even to stick my arm out and fire, let alone take time to aim. The first time I tried, the cloth of my precious English trench coat caught fire and I had to turn up my thoracic bellows to blow it out.
By the time his blasts had melted a good portion of the titanium crossbeam I had taken refuge behind, woken up three of the unconscious bombing victims (two of them fainted again when they saw what a hopeless mess they were in; the third, a Grodo, showed a surprising amount of common sense for one of his kind and didn’t attempt to join the brawl, scuttering away instead on his six appendages as fast and as far from there as he could), and set fire to my trench coat three more times, I realized that I was never going to get him like this. If I insisted on continuing to play his game, I’d only be making more victims of those who hadn’t scooted out of there yet.
I was
