“Do you think he’ll come?” the Olympian asked nervously.
Marquoz nodded. “Oh, he’ll come. Oh, yes indeed, he will. He’s actually
They all agreed. Mavra walked over to the doorway and opened it slightly. There was some wet snow about and it was still a little chilly, but the clouds had broken and sunlight streamed all around, so bright against the snow it hurt the eyes. She pointed as they looked.
“Up on that roof is Talgur, armed with a stun rifle and scope. Over there is Galgan, same, and up on that steeple or whatever it is is Muklo. Plus us in here and Tarl and Kibbi shadowing him. Should be enough.” She shut the door.
“Too much,” an Olympian voice snapped from behind them. Stun beams shot through the warehouse as well-placed Olympians easily cut down the crewmen, Mavra, and Marquoz. The Olympian leader looked around, then, satisfied, turned to the others. “The three on the roofs. You know what to do.”
They nodded and dashed to the second-floor exits they’d spent two days scouting and preparing. In less than ten minutes all had returned. “They’ll sleep till dark,” one of the Aphrodites assured her confidently.
“Their vantage points were well chosen,” the leader noted. “Take the far roof and the steeple—those are best no matter what route he chooses. Use the crew’s rifles to pick off the shadows and anybody else who gets in the way. Full stun.”
“And if they have stun armor?” one of them asked.
“Then kill them.”
“Where will you be?” another asked her.
“Right in the square,” she replied. “I shall become a statue until he is close enough to touch. Then and only then will I ask the Holy Question.” She smiled broadly and there was more than a hint of fanatical rapture in her eyes. “And this time the answer shall be the true one, sisters! Salvation and paradise are at hand!”
The leader looked across the square. All was ready, she saw; her sisters now held the high points and she blended herself to near invisibility in the shadow of a large statue. As long as she remained still, no one would be able to tell where she stood. She depended on the others for weaponry. The cold did not bother her at all; on Olympus Meouit’s snow flurries would be considered high summer. She was satisfied to wait patiently, perfectly still. Her people had waited so very long for this that another forty minutes would be as a raindrop in a heavy storm. That stupid little lizard policeman and that arrogant bitch, spawn of the , Evil One and their minions, were all silenced. Her word! As if one’s word given to the Evil One was binding! The Holy Mother had been right, she’d planned it all carefully, and she and her sisters had carried it out. There had been no mistakes. All was perfect.
In fact she’d made two mistakes. One was understandable; her religion did not permit her to believe that Nathan Brazil would use others to prevent unpleasant surprises, yet even now three very nasty spacers he had contacted the previous evening were sitting on other rooftops watching the show. The apparent disappearance of the leader in the middle of the square had surprised them, but the others, although they, too, were blended with the rooftops, wielded weapons trained on the square and those were clearly visible. Even using the weapons as points of reference you could barely make out the outlines of the Olympians holding them.
The second mistake was in forgetting that the stun settings were established for human-average body- mass; Rhone, which Mavra and all of her crew were now, were much larger and required a more powerful shot. What would have kept humans—and Marquoz, despite his bulk—out for hours had started to wear off in thirty minutes on the stunned Rhone inside the warehouse Mavra included. It was kind of like waking up one cell at a time, but slowly awareness, pain, and mobility was flowing back into them.
The man who pretended to be David Korf stood two blocks away looking down the street.
The kind nobody but cops was supposed to have.
He spoke into the portacom he held in his right hand. “How’s it going, Paddy? What’ve we got?”
“Well, no innocents if that’s a bother,” a thickly accented human voice said. Most old spacers were somewhat nuts; Paddy, whose hobby had been folk songs, had decided he was Irish long ago and acted it despite the fact he had one of the blackest African skins ever seen. “Looks like they really is a convention someplace.”
“No other ships in, either,” Brazil noted. “So? Your other boys as good as you?”
“You kin trust me to pick ’em, Nate,” Paddy replied. “We got us some of the supergals, it looks like, on the rooftops.”
Brazil was surprised. “Olympians? Here? Damn! So it’s that crazy cult after all!” He was almost disappointed. He’d been hoping for something more interesting. Paddy’s reply raised his hopes again.
“No, it looks like the babes moved in on your other folk. There’s dead or knocked-out horsies all over the rooftops. Looks like ye got a lotta people after ye, Natty!”
That was better. “You got the Olympians?” he asked. “How many?”
“Three that we see on the rooftops; there may be more, but if so they ain’t layin’ for ye on high.”
That was manageable. Any others would be in the warehouse. If he was lucky the Olympians had done the dirty work for him and he had only to deal with them and not with the unknown enemy—if the two were different, as it now appeared.
“Zap ’em, hard stun, as soon as you see me,” he instructed. “They’re not human and pretty tough, so give it all the juice you got.”
“And if that still don’t get ’em?” Paddy pressed eagerly.
“Do what you have to,” Brazil responded. “Then take their positions and cover me in the square.”
“Righto. Come ahead” was the reply.
Brazil put the portacom in an inside shirt pocket and started down the street. It’s a kind of pretty day, he thought. Idiotic way to spend a pretty day like this.
Ahead he saw the opening into the small square with a monument of some kind in the center—a huge Rhone of age-greened bronze pulling some sort of wagon, the god of commerce or somesuch. The statue was the only impediment, but it would provide cover for somebody, he thought. No, Paddy’s men would have seen anyone.
Or would they? He stopped just short of the square, just out of sight, and peered hard at the statue. How many Olympians could use it as a backdrop to fade into? he wondered idly. He put his hands through his pockets to the pistols. Well, superwomen or no super-women they’d have to be unarmed. He swallowed hard, inhaled then exhaled, and stepped into the square.
At that moment Paddy and his men fired. The Olympian women on the rooftops quietly stiffened and rolled over. Nothing was heard or seen in the square, but Brazil knew that his ambush had been successful; if not, there’d have been yells, screams—even possibly explosions, knowing Paddy.
He glanced over the warehouses washed in the bright sunlight, spotted the Durkh Shipping Corporation sign on one, and headed toward it carefully, keeping half an eye on the statue. With the snow the green centaur looked like it had white mange.
Inside the warehouse Mavra was the first to rise groggily to her feet and recover her wits.
They’d been double-crossed by the Olympians, there was no doubt in her mind. That meant the women were laying for Brazil in the square! She reached the door, slid it open, and saw him approaching diagonally across from her. Quickly she reached for the transceiver and flipped it to all-call.
“Talgur! Galgan! Muklo!” she called. There was no answer. She tossed the thing aside in frustration. She had to warn him, she knew, had to get him out of there—But how to do it without getting shot?
