“I should have left you at the bottom of the swamp, boy.”

  “I’m sorry Daddy,” said Mudface. “But you killed Sarah.”

  “We haven’t got time for her tonight, boy. Strange things are happening around the colony. Lots of reported riots and disappearances. I think that new Nexus Governor is making a play to start a civil war down here and I don’t want to hang around for it.”

  “I had big plans,” said Mudface, looking at Sarah’s blue cheeks longingly.

  Daddy sighed and rolled his eyes. He looked at the ceiling of his luxurious summer home. He rarely came down from Gopus these days to visit—except to do a little business like tonight. Publicly he held that he couldn’t stand the crowds of Garm. In truth he didn’t like the gravity, which made his vast bulk twice as hard to move around.

  “Okay, boy, I know I promised and I don’t like to go back on promises. Look, we both know CPR. Let’s give it a try,” suggested Daddy, moved to a rare attempt at pleasing his son. He grabbed Sarah’s arms and jerked her out of the pool. Chlorine-smelling water dribbled from her broken fingernails.

  “What are you talking about? She’s dead.”

  “We’ve got one of those reviver kits in the poolhouse. Go get it.”

  Mudface left at a trot and soon returned with a shrink-wrapped package. He pulled off the wrapper and popped the safety-seal cap. Beneath the cap were two copper prongs and a long steel needle. Daddy grabbed them from him saying, “Get back.”

  Mudface shuffled backward and Daddy jabbed the instrument into Sarah’s chest. There was a jolt of electricity and the body lurched in a grotesque parody of life. The bulb at the end of the needle pumped automatically.

  The two performed CPR for nearly a minute before Sarah coughed and vomited. Her chest heaved and her eyes rolled loosely in her head, but she was breathing again.

  “It worked,” marveled Daddy.

  Mudface was peering outside, past the windows. “I don’t know, but I think something’s out there.”

  Daddy heaved himself up off his knees with a grunt. At their feet Sarah shivered, barely conscious. Her toes and lips were blue with cold.

  “Now you don’t want her? Ah, to hell with it,” he said, pulling his hand-cannon from his waistband. “I’m not up for drowning her again. Nobody will care about one more blasted smuggler with a civil war going on.”

  “What was that?” asked Mudface, turning. Another clattering sound came from the poolhouse, near the back gate.

  “You go and see, I’m gonna finish matters here,” said Daddy, prodding Sarah with his boot. “Again,” he added. He raised his hand-cannon.

  Mudface frowned, opened his mouth to complain, but the words never came out. At that moment the poolhouse door burst open. Into the open ran Bili, followed by a grotesque caterpillar-like monster. The shrade humped after him eagerly, making ready to spring onto the boy’s back. It halted and reared up when it saw the others. It stared at them, quivering.

  Bili dashed past them, his breath coming in ragged sobs. Without ceremony he flung himself into the swimming pool. Mudface and Daddy grunted in disgust at the shrade and lifted their weapons. Mudface’s first shot only grazed the creature, but Daddy managed to blow off two of its stumpy, sticky-padded feet. Then the shrade jumped onto Mudface. Grappling with the monster, Mudface sought the thing’s biting head and tried to pull it away, as he had sometimes done with swamp-kinks on Gopus. Far stronger than any kink, however, the shrade constricted on him. His thin arms heaved it away. It was a struggle between two beings of uncommon strength.

  “I think I’ve got this thing,” said Mudface.

  “Good boy, tear it up.”

  Two more shrades ran into the room then and after a fraction of a second, they all hopped onto Mudface. Working together, squeezing inexorably, they crushed his arms down to his sides. One of the mech’s optics popped out and clanked onto the concrete patio.

  Aghast, Daddy reached to help pull the monsters off his son, but quickly realized it was useless. “Sorry, boy,” he rumbled. He repeatedly fired his hand-cannon, point-blank. Chunks of flesh flew away from both Mudface and the shrades indiscriminately. Soon they sagged down together, still struggling. Life fluids ran slickly into the pool, staining the water with dark clouds.

  Another sound came from the poolhouse, and Daddy whirled. He brought up his hand-cannon. His eyes were wide and his bulky sides heaved. The gray shapes of three killbeasts charged him. He fired once, staggering the leader. Then the other two closed with him. Daddy threw himself back into the pool where Bili was still treading water. Maybe the kid knew something.

  One of the deadly foot-knives was already sweeping up for his neck, however. Seeing that it wouldn’t reach, the killbeast diverted its kick and neatly knocked the hand-cannon from Daddy’s grasp. Three severed fingers dropped with the gun.

  Daddy splashed into the water and came back up sputtering and howling. He gripped his damaged hand and watched with his mouth gaping as the killbeasts flitted about the rest of the pool area and disappeared into the house. More of them soon appeared at the door of the poolhouse and this time there was another type with them. This alien was clearly a leader. He bore two striking stalks that protruded from his head and blinked like eyes.

  Daddy realized with a start that he was already thinking of these things as aliens, intelligent aliens. There simply was no question about it. That was what they were.

  The leader alien had the killbeasts march them all out of the pool and lined them up. Sarah leaned on Bili heavily. He walked up and down in front of them, clearly inspecting them with his waving sensory stalks. In particular, he seemed taken with Daddy. His mandibles drooled noticeably as he examined Daddy’s vast belly. This filled Daddy with a great unease.

  Finally, the leader stood erect and the three of them were hustled out of the house by the killbeasts. Sarah and the remains of Mudface were borne away on trachs, while Daddy and Bili were forced to march. Daddy had to be forced to enter the open mouth of the tunnel. Stumbling along in the darkness, he was soon heaving and puffing with exertion. The way back to the nest was long.

  #

  “Great Lady,” the Captain of the Gladius greeted Mai Lee, bowing slightly toward the video pick-up. The glare of the ships running lights reflected from his shiny bald pate. “To what do I owe the honor of the call?”

  “Your word choice is most accurate,” said Mai Lee dryly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You do indeed owe me,” she said with sudden vehemence. Her lined face broke through the pancake make-up in a fine network of a thousand wrinkles.

  “I—I do not understand,” quailed the Captain, taking an involuntary step backward from the leering holo image of Mai Lee’s horrific face.

  “Let me explain,” hissed the ancient mask of powdered leather. “First, you withheld the fact that Droad had a bodyguard of combat-trained giants. Second, you delivered information concerning myself and my assets to Droad, for a liberal gratuity, I have no doubt. Third, you have failed to mention the cargo of mechs in your hold that you have transported for Droad, with the express purpose of removing me from power.”

  A sudden change overcame the Captain. He no longer crouched and simpered. Instead his stance became erect, almost swaggering. A hint of a smile tugged at his lips. “Ah, it seems you have become acquainted with the subtler points of our arrangement. I beg to differ on one point, however, milady. The mechs are to the best of my knowledge charged only with the protection of Lucas Droad, not with your destruction.”

  Mai Lee became agitated. Her claw-like hands gripped her seat and she leaned forward, snarling. “It amounts to the same thing. You owe me.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked the Captain, a bit ill-at-ease again. His eyes wandered away from the holo-plate and he frowned.

  “You will destroy the mechs in their cargo pods. You will provide me with full holo-video of the event so that I may feel confident in your actions.”

  “Your plan has merit... For you, anyway,” he said, drumming his fingers on his generous belly. “There is the small matter of increased payment, of course. Just enough to reward me for my efforts.”

  “You will be paid the stipulated amount, nothing more,” said Mai Lee emphatically. “You owe me.”

  “Hmm. Yes,” said the Captain, appearing to be in deep thought. “I must say that I find your attitude less than endearing. What if I simply let them go, perhaps with the financial blessings of the new Governor?”

  “Then I’ll have you killed and be done with it,” said Mai Lee with absolute certainty.

  The Captain blinked and made an alarmed, gasping sound.

  “My agents left with you from Neu Schweitz and more have infiltrated the Gladius since you arrived. Don’t believe for a moment that I can’t do it, or that I won’t.”

  “But such an action amounts to nothing more than petty revenge,” sputtered the Captain. He smoothed his nonexistent hair with a sweaty palm. “There would be no profit in it for anyone.”

  Mai Lee shrugged. “My reputation is based on such actions. I find that my reputation is worth much in business dealings and I am therefore quite willing to take something of a loss here to enhance the aura of cooperation my name engenders. You have forfeited your life to a good cause at least, Captain. Let that be of some small comfort to you during your last seconds. Now, if you would excuse me,” she said, reaching for the cut-off button.

  “Wait,” cried the Captain, his voice rising up and cracking. “I will comply!”

  Mai Lee let him stew a moment, looking down as if she hadn’t heard, pretending to fondle the cut-off button. Finally, she looked up in disgust. “You agree to halt the exodus of the cargo?”

  “Yes, immediately,” gushed the Captain. He wrung his reddened hands and attempted a sickly smile. “Your Excellency,” he added.

  Mai Lee let play a long moment of indecision. “Very well. Your assassination is stayed,” she said and moved again to cut-off the connection.

  “But wait, we haven’t yet discussed our new terms.”

  Mai Lee made a gesture of exasperation. Her lips curled back in a grotesque snarl. “There are no terms, worm. You will stop them or die.”

  She pounded her fist on the cut-off button and the screen went dark.

  #

  Inside the aft hold of the Gladius a twelve-foot tall shipping polygon of gray foam suddenly ruptured. A massive bio-mechanical hand, called a gripper, extruded from the breach. The gripper swiftly tore away the top of the foam, like a spoon topping a boiled egg. The mech lieutenant stepped out of the cocoon, swiveling his optics. As the hold was pitch-dark, he switched to infrared mode and quickly moved to activate his platoon.

  This was the moment that the security forces had been waiting for tensely. The Captain had been emphatic about waiting for the leader of the mechs to reveal himself before taking him out. The others would then never be activated and that meant they could be salvaged. The salvage value of the combat-ready mechs would be much greater if they were still intact.

  Unfortunately for the security team, however, they had failed to consider the fantastic sensory apparatus of a mech manufactured for combat. The mech lieutenant heard the ambushers breathing and sensed the heat of the sighting lasers playing on his head encasement. Instantly, he bounded away behind an immense carton containing a power-dozer.

  Shouting to one another in alarm, the security team broke cover and tumbled forward in pursuit, snapping off shots at every flickering shadow. A sergeant roared in alarm and fired wildly into another of the gray cocoons, which had also extruded a bio-mechanical arm. The mech’s second gripper shot out to grasp the Sergeant’s shoulder, which was instantly crushed to jelly.

  “Turn on the floods!” screamed a green-suited security woman. She ripped off her night-goggles and opened up on the cocoons as well, as many of them were now popping open.

  A hailstorm of exploding bullets and lancing laser beams turned the gray foam coverings into a disintegrating cloud of particles. One mech’s arm was blown off. Unconcernedly, he reached out with his remaining gripper and squeezed the head off the nearest rifleman.

  The floods went on, removing the mechs’ advantage of superior night-vision. The lights also revealed the dark towering form of the mech lieutenant who now stood in the midst of the humans.

  Moving with berserk speed, the mech lieutenant yanked a rifle away from a man, his claw-like steel gripper taking a good portion of the man’s arm with it. Wielding the rifle first as a club, he swept it around at head-level, dropping three more security personnel. With fantastic dexterity he flipped the weapon into his cradling arms, found the trigger and fired into the fleeing pack of humans.

  After that it was a rout. Leaving most of their people behind, the security forces escaped through the huge pressure doors into the ship. They hit the emergency pressure-loss toggles, shutting the doors with explosive force in the faces of the pursuing mechs.

  A hurried meeting was held in the Captain’s briefing room.

  “The aft hold is over six miles long and is an absolute maze of cargo,” began the Security Chief. He had been involved personally in the attack on the mechs and his right hand was damaged, crusty with dried blood and coated thickly with nu-skin. “I suggest we open the primary bay doors and space the entire hold. We can then recover most of the cargo with the tug fleet. Even mechs can’t operate in vacuum for long.”

  “I won’t hear of it,” rumbled the Captain. “Your team’s incompetence has already cost me dearly. I certainly will not dump a billion credits worth of trade goods into orbit to rid the ship of a handful of crazy robots. This trip has too slim of a profit margin to suit me already.”

  “Sir, these aren’t crazed robots,” explained the Chief with a hint of exasperation in his voice. “They’re highly intelligent and ruthless beings built for warfare. All we’ve managed to do is get them to classify the crew of this ship as hostiles.”

  “What are our other options then?”

  “Well, we should remember that the mech lieutenant doesn’t really care about us. I mean, he has a mission to do, to get down to the planet surface, I assume. We disabled their jump-flitters before they woke up, so he can’t get down without improvising.”

  “What exactly are you suggesting?”

  “Why don’t we just let them go? Give them the flitters they need, and let them out one of the airlocks.”

  The Captain rubbed his chins and glared at the Chief. He puffed out his cheeks and threw his arms up in a gesture of exasperation. “I positively fail to understand your cowardice in this. We have a full combat-ready company of marines and several hundred security people on this ship. There are only sixteen of these pests in the hold and some of them are damaged. What you’re going to do is go in there and hunt them down and blow them apart.”

  Fifteen

  After hunting the rogue for three days, the inquisitors were exhausted, and even their riders grew tired of the chase. Fryx had given them no further telepathic hints and Garth was leaving behind him precious little in the way of spoor. They had tracked him back to the highway where he had apparently caught a ride to the next village, then proceeded on foot. In the muddy jungles of the river basins they lost him again.

  The man whose turn it was to watch fell asleep in the bole of a stink-vine tree. In the night, with Gopus only a dim sliver of light barely discernible through the jungle canopy, an odd figure entered the camp. Wearing a black hat with a wide low brim and a black cape, the figure moved with infinite care lest he awaken the men or in some way alert their wary riders. After a few minutes of slinking in their midst, the dark figure discovered the man in the stink-vine tree. With a delighted fluttering of the fingertips, the figure stalked the sleeping man, coming up behind him.

  Gathering up a handful of pebbles, the figure flicked them, one by one, onto the sleeper’s back. After the third such attack, the man snorted and half rose up. Suddenly, he lurched upright, his rider goading him to wakefulness. The figure behind him pranced forward, cape swirling. A length of steel glittered and the inquisitor slumped back down.

  The commotion awakened another of the men, however, who climbed from his bedroll. Not aware that anything was amiss, the tall, slender man wearily opened the tent flaps and rummaged in the cooler for a squeeze-bag of refreshment.

  There was movement in the back of the tent. The man startled, then peered more closely. “Jed?” he mumbled, still half-asleep. His rider, withdrawn into unknowable private thoughts of its own, did nothing to warn him.

  The shadowy figure loomed up. Beneath its low-brimmed hat blue eyes blazed with insanity. The figure pounced.

  This time the kill wasn’t a clean one. Staggering from the supply tent with his throat bubbling fresh blood, the inquisitor fell dead on top of his companions.

  The others leapt up, drawing their guns and turning on the floodlights. The jungle was illuminated by a harsh glare. There was a ripping sound at the back of the supply tent. Rushing to the spot they saw a gaunt figure dive into the underbrush. A storm of gunfire broke out. Howlers protested their loss of sleep from the treetops, pelting the inquisitors with sticks, fruit, feces and other offal.

  As they reached the edge of the jungle, knee-deep in ferns and sucker-plants, their quarry rose up before them. Clearly visible in the harsh glare of the floodlights, Garth stood in full view. The eyes of a murderer burned from within the broad red stripe his rider had left when mounting him. In one hand he gripped a hand-cannon, in the other he brandished a bloody knife. His lips formed a ghastly rictus for a grin. Only a few feet from this apparition, the three men halted and raised their weapons.

  Fryx chose that moment to loose a desperate, pleading howl for mercy. A keening wail, not of sound, but rather of thought, washed over all the men and their riders. The cry caused the other riders to pull back on the reins of their skalds, digging in spiny nerve-spurs to halt them. For a full second the inquisitors, intent on killing, slackened. Their arms drooped, their muscles rubbery, their weapons suddenly too heavy to aim.