By Jane Carver
In long strides he scurried around the building. “Pessios!” His friend lay in a heap beside the door, hidden in dark shadow. Before he could check for wounds, Pessios groaned and propped up on one elbow.
“By the gods, someone stomped on my head.” He massaged his aching skull as Gambrel helped him sit. Too unsteady to stand, Pessios blinked his unusual eyes several times.
“Do you need a medical?” Gambrel examined the man and found a large contusion above his ear.
“No, I’ll live, but we have to hurry.” Pessios tried to stand and nearly fell into Gambrel’s arms. “Shorty left not long ago. We won’t be far behind.”
“Are you sure you can move? That bump’s bad.”
“Feels just as bad, but we must go quickly. He mentioned a house near the edge of town as he came out the door.” Pessios took several steps, with each one growing steadier on his feet. They ran into the alley leading to the next street. “Shorty failed to see me at first, but I must have made noise to alert him. He got the upper hand before I could stop him.”
“Actually, I’m glad you didn’t. He knows something, or he wouldn’t be running.” Gambrel picked up the pace when Pessios kept up. “I’d like to ask him how he got here ahead of us.” His attitude boded ill for the hapless sailor.
Hours of searching the town gave the men a fair idea of where Shorty headed. “Must every place these shagmiesters hide be in open area,” Gambrel grumbled as they stopped behind thick bushes. No getting closer to the front of the house. Full dark provided the only cover between them and the structure.
“What the fick do we do now?” Pessios scanned the area.
“No lights burn inside. Perhaps everyone sleeps. We can’t risk a rush if guards are posted at the windows. Let’s circle the place. Perhaps we can get closer.” They moved under cover to the rear of the house.
“See that small building?” Pessios pointed to a structure between the trees where they hid and the rear door. “We should be able to get that far without anyone seeing us.”
Gambrel shook his head. A weak plan at best, but all they had. “Is Shorty the only one in there?” A nagging feeling at the nape of his neck when trouble hung close bothered him now. Going blind into a place without more information wasn’t his way of doing things. But they couldn’t wait. Shorty might disappear, and his being on Dasari didn’t strike either as a coincidence.
“Stay low, and move slowly.” Gambrel drew his guns and checked the blastmaker attached to his belt. A massive shadow, he moved across the clearing behind the smaller building. They met at the rear. “Be careful where you fire. Don’t hurt Shorty or any other innocent in this game.”
Pessios nodded then ran in a crouch to the steps. Gambrel followed but worried. Too quiet. “Feels wrong.”
One man on each side of the door with weapons at the ready, they listened. Night flyers squawked, and tiny biting creepers buzzed. But no sound came from the house.
Pessios reached over and twisted the doorknob. The unsecured lock clicked open. Gambrel frowned and tilted his head to one side. Odd. But not odd enough to stop them from advancing further.
Pitch black. A cooking room or a storeroom? Deep silence. Not even the floor creaked.
The moon peeped in and out of clouds, filling the hall with wavering shadows. Each time the gloom lightened, the men stopped. With a wave of his hand, Gambrel motioned Pessios to the left where a wide door stood open, a matching one to the right drew him.
A flash! Light blinded him as a shot whizzed past his ear. Gambrel stooped to present a smaller target. Pessios lay on the floor not far away. Shots rang out. More than one, a constant flow of brilliant reds, greens, and blues, indicating a variety of blasters and phasers. A trap!
Too busy shooting back at unseen target, Gambrel hoped Pessios was not seriously injured. Arm forward. Pull the trigger. A brilliant blast. A scream! Feet scurried inside the room. Across from him, Pessios fired. More than one person hid in each room.
The room to the right lit up for a second as several phaser blasts took out part of the doorframe over Gambrel’s head. He fell to the floor, pulling a splinter of wood from his cheek. Behind him, someone grunted.
“Pessios, you hit?”
“Yes, but not bad.” He didn’t think Pessios spoke softly because he hid. He suspected his friend suffered a serious hit.
“Pull back further down the hall.” Gambrel scuttled backwards, firing as he went in an effort to keep his assailants busy ducking his shots. Someone ran forward in the room next to Pessios. A quick twist and he fired on the shadow looming over his friend. A body fell with a heavy thud. The coppery smell of human blood filled the hall.
Several shots rang out, and the burning sting of phaser fire singed Gambrel’s shoulder. Another shot and his leg crumbled beneath him. A direct hit on his position.
“Move, Pessios! Move!”
A groan answered him. With a curse that would make Vangee cringe, he crawled forward, fired at a man to his right then grabbed Pessios by the back of his tunic. Crawl. Fire. Move. Over and over while more men crowded closer.
“No choice. Take a deep breath and hope the gods like us.” With careful haste, Gambrel stuffed Pessios under a set of steps and edged in beside him. Reaching under his coat, he unclipped the blastmaker and pulled the triggering device. One hand shoved his friend deeper into the recess while the other hurled the killing device down the hall. Too small an area. The blast would destroy their ears, if not out and out kill them along with the attackers. Gambrel dove for cover, using his body to shield his smaller companion.
A death-like silence for a heartbeat then the world lost control. Thunder roared, fire erupted, and flames shot past Gambrel’s hiding place. All the air seemed sucked out of what were once a hall and the front of the house. After the fury died, leaving Gambrel as deaf as he feared, the structure burned with a vengeance.
Too late to wonder who attacked, he pulled an unconscious Pessios out of their hiding place and dragged him toward the back door. The air snapped as dropped phasers met fire and exploded. Fumes from the blastmaker threatened to render Gambrel as mindless as Pessios. His vision swirled to a narrow tunnel while his ears rang with rolling booms. Ash fell on his skin. A sharp tang made him sick to his stomach.
At the back door, he stumbled over a body. A man grunted and tried to roll away. Gambrel would have left him, but shock compelled him to grab the man by his collar.
Three men made it out into the night air. The house lay in ruins and burned like a fury. Half senseless himself, Gambrel tugged and grunted as he pulled Pessios and the other man behind the yard’s farthest building.
His strength gone, he collapsed. By sheer determination, he turned the body over. Gastrojan! By the gods of the universe, he wasn’t crazy. The man he pulled from the house was the former Fenix passenger and possibly Haggin’s companion in crime—Gastrojan.
Like a mountain whose fires have been held in too long, Gambrel’s anger let go in uncontrolled wrath. He straddled Gastrojan’s body. With white-hot fury burning his soul, Gambrel leaned forward. Silent as a stone, with exquisite care, he put both hands around the man’s throat and began to squeeze. Tighter his fingers curled. For a man barely alive, Gastrojan gurgled in protest. His arms lay burned and pinned beneath rock-hard knees.
More pressure. Gastrojan’s eyes bulged. What little life was left in the bastard seeped out in spittle, weak thrashing, and the sounds of tortured pain.
“Enough!” Strong hands pulled at Gambrel’s arms, but barely slowed his determination to end the man’s existence. “We must let him speak. He knows where Vangee is.” Like a magic bullet that drops a Digian courser, Gambrel released Gastrojan. “Get off him, you great hulk.” Pessios pushed and hit Gambrel’s shoulder wound. That was the only reason the larger man fell to one side.
“I fear you may have taken the last of his life. His injuries kill him. Caught in the main blast.” Pessios studied the maimed man, no pity in his gaze.
“Fick! I think you’re right.” Gambrel sat up and moved closer. The heat of rage still boiled his blood, and it was difficult to sit this close while resisting the urge to choke him again.
Gastrojan lay in the remnants of his burned tunic and trousers, his boots melted to his feet. Both arms to the shoulders resembled meat too long on a fire. Rasping air whistled in and out as he breathed. One eye laid in milky ruin while the other opened only halfway, its gaze dulled by pain. The monstrous blast had rushed past and taken his skin with it. The man was dying, plain to see. If Gambrel did not get the information he wanted quickly, any knowledge of Vangee with die with Gastrojan.
“Tell me of Vangee.” One meaty fist grabbed the dying man’s tunic, but skin came away with the blackened material. Gambrel dropped the mess.
A wheeze and rattle represented to Gastrojan’s laugh. “You seek the Radiant. She is beyond you, Sarjean.” Each word emerged as a tortured shadow of speech. The man would not last long.
His words tore at Gambrel’s heart. What did he mean? Vangee beyond him? Was she dead? “Speak, and make sense.” This to a man who breathed in agony.
“She is mindless. Kept under drugs since we first set sail. We almost let her loose once until we slipped the powder into her food. She controls no one now including herself.” Bright blood frothed on Gastrojan’s withered lips.
“Where is Haggin taking her?” This time Gambrel grabbed Gastrojan by his shoulders. But burned nerve endings made the man immune to further pain. His only task now seemed to be drawing air into lungs as seared as his flesh.
“Away. Away from you.” His words caught for a space then continued. “She will work for Haggin. Control those with power. He gains. They lose. She is…key to…everything.”
Gambrel didn’t care what Haggin controlled. He wanted the man dead and his wife back. Before he could ask more questions, Gastrojan slumped in his grasp.
“You fell into our trap. Like Haggin said you would.” A horrific sound imitated a wicked laugh.
“Take notice, you bastard. It is you who is dying.” Gambrel let the man go as his life slipped away.
Where was Vangee? Could a Radiant survive being mindless? His sweet adorable wife…mindless. A fate she would wish on no one. He cried for his darling.
The sound of voices carried on the wind.
Using one hand, he pulled Pessios over his shoulder. “Come, friend. We must hide until we can return to the Forbidden.” His other arm hung useless from the wound high in the flesh. “We are a fine pair. Caught but not caught in a trap. Too hurt to help anyone, even ourselves. And too far from Vangee.” His lips pulled into what some might think a grin, but Merlo and Pessios would recognize as determination.
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