They called Obron a spacer's paradise. At least, that's what Del Tarrant had always heard. The reality, of course, fell far short of the expectation. Its single town comprised a handful of dusty wood frame buildings, all dedicated to the 'entertainment' of a spacegoing clientele. Nothing elaborate, but for a few days' holiday, it would do.
His deal for the weapons cache sealed, he waited now for Scorpio's return in two days, and to see if Avon and Soolin had done as well securing guns on Apros IV. He doubted it, but if they had, a double haul would bring a nice fat price from the rebel factions on Solasus.
Meanwhile, he had two days to enjoy the 'comforts' of Obron's gambling dens and pleasure houses. They were opulent, but well-worn, and too crowded for his taste -- mostly with self-styled freetraders whose aversion to bathing made them less than desirable company. Tarrant chose the 'Athena' for its more modest appearance -- a smaller, paint-peeling house on the edge of the settlement -- and paid twenty credits for dinner and 'companionship.' Neither qualified as particularly memorable. But it passed the time.
Alone again, he found a reasonably quiet corner in the bar, ordered a Selisian gin, and sat back to watch the customers. Companions of both sexes -- wearing a feather here or a jewel there, but little else -- wandered between the tables, some serving drinks, others merely advertising. 'Canned' music vibrated off the mirrored walls. The pilot relaxed and enjoyed the female half of the scenery.
As the day wore on the place began filling up, becoming as busy as the bigger houses down the street, and Tarrant began contemplating a change of locale. He was on his third gin, but the alcohol had done nothing to dull his olfactory senses. What did Obron spacers have against sono-showers, anyway? Or plain old soap and water?
He rose, began making his way through the crowd toward the exit. The hand that came out of nowhere to clamp on his shoulder took him by surprise; it spun him to face two nondescript spacers in ill-fitting local dress. The one who had grabbed him wore a lop-sided grin.
"Hullo, Tarrant," he said.
The pilot started at the use of his name, stared at the unshaven face in a vain attempt to recognize the speaker. He looked dimly familiar somehow...
"Tarrant?" the second man exclaimed, scrutinizing his friend's catch. "Captain Tarrant, you mean? Damned if it isn't! Cort, you've got eyes like a Golan spearhawk." He giggled. "Damned if it isn't him."
Tarrant fought down the urge to bolt into the crowd, concentrated instead on the name Cort. Where had he heard that before? They were out of uniform, but the taint of Federation trooper clung to both of them.
"Shut up, Ryver." The hand tightened on Tarrant's shoulder and pulled. "Let's take a walk outside where we can talk in private, eh Captain?"
Tarrant resisted the hand's urging, planted his feet firmly and decided on a verbal frontal assault. "Do I know you?" he demanded.
Cort's grin collapsed like a folding fan. "Outside," he repeated, giving Tarrant's shoulder a vicious shove. "Move."
The sea of intoxicated celebrants parted to let them pass. On the way, Tarrant weighed options, tried fiercely to remember where he'd seen either of these jokers before. It had to be Academy; he would remember anyone he'd served with, surely. As to whether he could take on two of them...
They 'escorted' him out into the evening breeze and between the buildings, to the tree-shaded rear of Athena's, where Ryver produced a hand blaster and Cort's ugly grin reasserted itself. "Now," he chortled, "suppose you save us the time checking and tell us just how much the price on your head is nowadays."
"I'm afraid you're mistaken," Tarrant responded, mock-polite. "I don't--"
He had no chance to block Cort's blow; the fist caught him low in the abdomen, doubled him over with a startled cry.
"Don't be a smart-ass, Captain Tarrant." Cort yanked him upright again by the hair while Ryver cackled uproariously from behind his gun. "I don't take any lip from deserters."
"No?" Tarrant fought for air, still gasping from Cort's attack. "And what are you?"
Cort shoved him with bone-breaking force against the wall of the building. Soured liquor breath assaulted him close-up. "We're a couple of enlisted men on leave, that's what. And we just found a shortcut to wealth and promotion. You."
Not if he could help it. Tarrant slammed one knee into Cort's groin and kicked hard, sending him flying with a startled yelp into Ryver. Both went down, a sudden tangle of limbs, blaster and irate curses.
Tarrant ran.
In retrospect, it had been a stupid move. He knew nothing of the planet's topography, wildlife, weather conditions... and the sun was going down. But there had been no time to stop and consider the alternatives. He plunged into the stand of trees behind the Athena and tore through bushes, thorns, underbrush, all intent on tangling about his feet and tripping him. Shouts and grunted oaths followed close behind. Twice, blaster fire seared into the tree branches above his head. Ryver and Cort had obviously recovered their faculties -- and their weapons. Tarrant's only defense lay concealed in an inner pocket -- one of Dayna's miniature, inconspicuous handguns. Before he could use it, he would have to find cover and the precious seconds necessary to get at it. He wondered if it could handle two of them.
He broke suddenly through the tree line and into the harsh red light of Obron's sunset, pausing for a startled moment at the abrupt change in his surroundings.
Dangerous. Open ground. No cover.
A shout from the thicket spurred him on. He sprinted east several meters and then turned back into the wood. The trees were thinner here; not so much noisy undergrowth to give him away. Better chance to lose them here. But he knew better than to underestimate Academy-trained troops -- even if this particular pair had undoubtedly been officer wash-outs. He set a pace and kept to it, not quite running now that he no longer heard them behind him. He had the advantage of a few less years and a great deal less alcohol -- but greedy types like Cort and Ryver would never give up a reward this easily. They would follow, all right.
Which left him with very few choices.
Tarrant stopped just long enough to catch his breath, and removed Dayna's tiny gun from its concealed pocket. The only cover here was offered by the tree trunks themselves. It would have to do. He chose the spot in darkest shadow, crouched, and waited. He tried the emergency recall button on the teleport bracelet, just in case, but there was predictably no response. Scorpio wouldn't be back in range for another day, at the very least.
They came crashing through minutes later, Ryver in the lead with his blaster, Cort five paces behind with a non-standard-issue pistol in hand. Without hesitation, Tarrant aimed and fired. Ryver dropped without a sound, Dayna's gun leaving a small black hole square in the center of his forehead. The second shot narrowly missed Cort. The man scrambled behind a thick trunk to return fire. Percussion bullets began splintering the bark from Tarrant's tree. Time to leave.
He backed away, intending to keep the tree between himself and the trooper for as long as possible. But the loud snapping of twigs and leaves told him that Cort had also moved, changed his trajectory. Tarrant spun, headed further into the trees, mindless of how much noise his retreat made. All that mattered now was to get away, find a better vantage point. In the scramble, he almost missed the echoing report of the pistol. Bullets whined past him like angry insects, one thudding into the ground at his heels, another plucking at the sleeve of his tunic, and still another--
He gasped, stumbled, caught his balance and plunged on, trying desperately to ignore the piercing, fiery agony under his left ribcage.
Keep running. Don't stop, don't fall, don't give in to the pain. One more stupid mistake like that and you're dead.
He had to repeat the litany to himself a thousand more times, while the night closed in to wrap both hunter and prey in mottled black and shadow. Twin moons, mismatched crescents, peered mockingly through the overhead branches, doing little to light the way. Endless repetitions of rock, tree and bush flashed past in silhouette, while a warm stickiness crept from beneath his ribs and soaked into his tunic.
Cort followed. Tarrant did not have to pause to know it; the sounds were behind him, moving relentlessly in tandem with every ragged, agonized breath he took.
Don't stop. Keep going!
Roots, brambles, stones and gullies conspired to pull his feet from under him, but somehow he kept on.
Abruptly, the tree line broke once again, and just as suddenly, the ground dropped away, sent him tumbling, plummeting downward. He couldn't suppress a cry of pain when something hard and sharp-edged slammed into his injured side, nor a small yelp of surprise when his slide ended in a shock-cold splash into shallow water. He lay there for a moment, pelted with cascading pebbles and soil from the landslide, until the sounds of Cort's pursuit spurred him to rise and wade further into the lake -- if lake it was. The wet lapped at him, crawled greedily up to his knees, his waist, finally engulfing the fire in his side with anaesthetic chill. When it reached his chin, he halted and turned to squint back at the hillside. Barely -- just barely -- he could make out the shadow of something moving against the darker bulk of the trees. He tried to listen, but all other noise was drowned by the slurp of water and the roar of his own labored breathing.
Beneath the water, something slithered between the fingers of his right hand. He started, bit back another cry. When the thing did not return, he forced himself to relax, to breathe normally. Absurdly, he wondered if Dayna's gun and the teleport bracelet would survive this drenching.
Stupid, he chided himself. But it's a bit late to worry about it now.
He did hear something then. Scrabbling, scraping, rockfall, a stifled curse. Cort, either falling or making his way down the embankment.
Tarrant fought back a moment's panic at what to do next. He balked at the thought of going further in, submerging himself completely and swimming blind. If he angled left instead, headed back to shore, and if he could move slowly and quietly enough to slip past Cort in the dark...
He heard a splash, then more curses as his pursuer encountered the water. Tarrant took advantage of the covering noise to set off on his new course, aiming for a point roughly 40 degrees left of the thinner moon crescent. To his relief, the lake bed rose more evenly in that direction, offering fewer pitfalls to his unsure feet. Off to his right, Cort's angry thrashing continued, interlaced with still more vehement curses. Tarrant had already reached shore and crawled partway up the incline (thankfully gentler than the one he'd fallen down) when he heard the pistol discharge. Five shots hushed the trilling night insects; five bullets slapped into the water.
Firing blind, Tarrant realized, though he'd instinctively flattened himself to the bank at the first shot. He can't see and maybe he can't follow either. Pistol's an open-chamber weapon... won't always fire wet.
More splashing, then the squishy, sucking noise of trooper's boots in mud, moving along the shore.
Damn.
Which direction is he moving in?
Tarrant didn't wait to discern the answer. He scrambled up the slope on all fours, found the rim and forced numb feet to carry him back into the relative safety of the trees.
He lost all track of time after that. His run had slowed to an exhausted, stumbling walk and the agony beneath his ribs throbbed with every step. He kept on by sheer, stubborn force of will, but so, incredibly, did Cort, coming inexorably on with the tenacity of a mutoid.
The pink haze of dawn had begun filtering through the overhead clouds when Tarrant started up a wooded hillside. The trees were sparser here, allowing short brown grass to grow between. That should make for better foot purchase. Or so he'd hoped. Halfway up, the dew-slick grass slipped both feet out from under him, dropping him face-down on the damp, dusk-smelling blades.
He lay there and panted in shallow, gasping breaths, brain raging all the while that he must get up and keep going. But his legs refused to obey the command, and a warm, comforting lethargy began to overtake him, obliterating all the reasons he should ever have to move again, or do anything other than sleep...
He never heard Cort's approach; could not even manage more than a faint gasp when a booted foot kicked his uninjured side.
"Get up, you bloody bastard." The boot prodded again, dug itself under his ribs and turned him over -- to blink at the harsh sunlight shining on the barrel of Cort's gun. "I said get up."
Tarrant shook his head, or tried to, and offered his captor a grimacing smile. "Can't," he rasped out. "I'm afraid you'll just have to shoot me lying down."
Rage contorted the trooper's face. "Oh, no. I'm not carrying dead weight all the way back. So you can damn well get up and walk!"
A fist reached down to clutch the sodden fabric at Tarrant's throat, yanked him upward with a bone-jarring jolt. The motion sent his head swimming, and when his legs still failed to support him, Cort, roaring an oath, struck him across the face with the pistol. It should have hurt, but somehow it didn't. Tarrant felt oddly removed from it all. He noted with an even more peculiar detachment that grass and trees flashed past at crazy angles as the blow sent him rolling down the hillside. Then Cort towered over him again, screaming epithets. He caught the words 'traitor' and 'deserter' in the barrage, but the rest was muddled, like someone talking underwater. The booted foot lashed out and kicked him again; he felt nothing at all. Nothing but the urgent, undeniable need to give in to the lethargy, to sleep.
Cort's head loomed just above his own, the twisted, beard-stubbled face mouthing more words, words, words. Tarrant wished he would go away. The hand with the pistol drew back, swung toward him for another blow--
Something sizzled.
Cort's hand froze in mid-arc. The gun toppled from limp fingers. Tarrant struggled to focus on the man's face and was convinced he must be hallucinating: Cort's left eye was missing, replaced by a smoldering black laser burn.
Then the face fell backward, away from him, and he heard the soft thump of a body hitting earth -- the last sound trooper Cort would ever make.
More sounds then. Feet crushing the grass, voices. Someone standing over him, bending down. He saw a woman's face, and a man's behind it, heard an earnest voice ask a question, but he didn't quite catch the words.
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except that Cort was gone and he could finally sleep...
He could not, at first, identify the sounds that woke him. A strange, arhythmic twittering, and the whisper of... leaves? He opened his eyes to a neatly-furnished room, an open window framed with gauzy curtains, a view of sun-drenched, cultivated fields, trees... and flocks of small, black birds winging in and out between it all. They were the source of the twittering, he realized. A peculiar but not altogether unpleasant sound. He'd encountered birds on only a few planets in the past. On Earth, inside or out of the biodomes, they had been extinct for centuries.
He lay still, allowed the birdsong to lull him back to a half-conscious state. Odd, how the almost-musical chittering seemed to touch some deep, primal part of him...
He drifted, starting awake some time later when the door clicked open. The woman who entered looked familiar: perhaps in her mid-forties, auburn hair pulled back severely, a concerned but no-nonsense demeanor about her. He also remembered the older man who followed her. He'd last seen them both in the woods just after Cort had fallen mysteriously dead. How long ago had that been? If Scorpio had come and gone...
Tarrant tugged at the quilted blanket until he'd extricated his left wrist -- he found bandaging from wrist to elbow. No teleport bracelet. Swathing also covered his right hand and arm.
The woman smiled faintly at his puzzled expression. "You were pretty badly scratched up," she explained. "But we were a bit more concerned about the bullet wound. You were lucky there. One entry wound, one exit wound, some serious but reparable blood loss. No vital organs affected. You'll live -- as long as you don't cross the likes of Erol Cort again, anyhow."
Tarrant's own voice sounded hoarsely alien to him "An old friend of yours, was Cort?" He winced when the simple act of speaking awakened a throbbing under his left ribs, and another sharper pain below his left eye, where the pistol had struck him.
"No." The man stepped forward to answer his question. "An old enemy, actually. One whose death was long overdue."
Bitterness palled the aging voice. The man might be sixty, Tarrant decided... or seventy. He wondered which of them had shot Cort, and with what. He'd never seen the gun.
"Not that I'm ungrateful, mind you," he completed the thought aloud. "But... who are you?"
The woman poured a tumbler of water from a pitcher on the bedstand, then helped to raise Tarrant's head from the pillow. He drained the glass and another before she answered him.
"I'm Evlin Amarin."
Tarrant's eyes fell on the man, whose return probing gaze made him increasingly uncomfortable. "And... your father?"
She looked patently indulgent for a moment, as though she'd answered this question a thousand times before. "Galt is my husband," she said.
Tarrant tried, probably failed, to hide his surprise. They seemed and odd pair to be bonded. Not that he hadn't seen odder. At the moment, however, he had somewhat more pressing concerns.
"How long was I out?" he asked. "I had a... a bracelet of sorts. It's important."
"Better part of a day, all told," Galt moved away, plucked an oblong dish from a bureau beside the window. When he returned with it, Tarrant saw that it contained the teleport bracelet's mangled components.. "Not much left of this, though." Galt poked at the remains with an index finger. "Guess you took some pretty bad falls out there. Fell apart when we pulled it off you. Some sort of signal device, is it?"
Tarrant fell back against the pillow with a sigh. "Some sort," he admitted. "Look, is there a transmitter here, in the town perhaps? I'll need to contact my ship. Could be rather embarrassing, it leaving orbit without me." He forced a weak laugh and added, "I'm the pilot, you see."
He didn't know quite what to make of the guarded look that passed between his two rescuers. "There's a transmitter, yes," Evlin told him. "But it's not in the town. And you're in no shape to travel. Give Galt the call signal and he'll send a message for you, if you like."
Tarrant struggled to sit up, only half-managed over Evlin's protests. "I really do have to call myself, I'm afraid. My... friends... might misinterpret a message from someone else."
"I'll take you then." Galt cut off an objection from his wife. "Tonight. Your ship'll stay around that long, surely?"
Tarrant didn't know if Scorpio was around at all, yet, nor how long Avon would wait when the teleport bracelet failed to respond. But he nodded an agreement to Galt's offer, even though he'd have preferred to go now. No point, he supposed, in antagonizing friendly forces.
"Lie down and rest," Evlin ordered, expertly repositioning him and arranging the pillow. "You're going to need it. Galt's 'taxi' can out-bump a flight simulator, and I think I've already patched you together as much as I care to."
"You're a doctor?"
"Something like that," she demurred. "You haven't told us your name yet."
"Trent," he lied easily, and left it at that. She didn't ask for other names or explanations, which was just as well. His eyelids had suddenly acquired the weight of plutonium, and he found it impossible to hold them open any longer.
Double moon crescents were peering in the window by the time Evlin woke him. She brought a tray with toasted bread, vegetable soup and hot tea. Ravenous, he needed no persuasion to devour the lot. But all the while, something in the way she watched him -- with a look somewhere between pity and scorn -- made him acutely uncomfortable.
The wisp of a half-dream teased at the back of his memory as he ate and Evlin looked on. She'd seemed to float around and over him as he slept, the green halo of light from the doorway limning her copper hair like some mad, colorized effect from a holo-vid. And he remembered voices, arguing in loud stage whispers. A disembodied hand had drawn the door shut with a loud ka-plik, muffling the voices further. And then... He couldn't remember any more.
Dream and not dream.
As she reached to remove the food tray, Tarrant risked a point blank question. "What was the argument about?"
The empty dishes jumped and rattled briefly on the tray; she silenced them with a fussing gesture and visibly pulled her "professional calm" façade back together. "No arguments here. You must have been dreaming." She hurried on before he could object. "Galt has the truck ready. If you think you can walk twenty meters or so, we can take you to that transmitter now."
Tarrant's weak smile hid both nagging curiosity and a deeper, more insidious suspicion that she was hiding something. "All right," he said, and then cast an embarrassed glance around the room. "I... seem to be missing my... er..."
"Clothes." Evlin's lips quirked. "I'll find something of Galt's for you."
"If you don't mind--" Tarrant halted her at the door, the tray still in her hand. "I'd prefer my own."
Her eyebrows rose. "Those won't be much use."
"Yes, well, just the same," he argued gently.
She shrugged, set the tray on the bureau and opened the nearby closet, pulling out a tall waste container. From it, she pulled an armful of stained, wadded garments.
"Have a look," she said, and handed him the soggy bundle. "I'll bring back a clean set, just in case you change your mind." She retrieved the tray and swept out with it, leaving Tarrant to inspect the blood and dirt sullied rags that had once been his clothing.
Though his bandaged hands made the search clumsy, he managed to locate Dayna's gun still concealed in its special tunic pocket. Ignoring the twinges from his ribcage, he threw back the covers, swung both legs over the side of the bed and maneuvered on the ruined trousers. He tucked the gun into a hip pocket. No way to tell yet if it remained functional or not -- he'd just have to trust in Dayna's weapon-building talents. The rest of the outfit he discarded, gingerly making his way across to the closet refuse bin and tossing the shredded remnant back in. He caught sight of himself in the bureau mirror on the way back, made a pained face at the swollen, purpled eye and badly cut cheeks.
Well, you look like death half-warmed, he thought to the reflection, then ran a hand into one damp pocket to grasp the little gun. Let's just see if you can avoid letting anyone else complete the job friend Cort started.
On the face of it, the thought seemed rather paranoid. Maybe he'd been around Avon too long -- or just long enough to learn that no one could really be trusted.
Shivering slightly in the night breeze from the window, he sat down on the bed once again. When Evlin returned with the clean clothing, he accepted an open-front shirt, socks, and his own boots, which had been given a cursory cleaning. Then he took the supporting arm she offered and allowed himself to be guided out into the hall, across the neatly furnished living room, and through the front door to Galt's waiting truck.
At first sight of the vehicle, Tarrant stopped cold. Even in the dark, its shape was unmistakable. Federation prison transport. He moved instantly away from Evlin's grasp and back into the doorway, Dayna's gun slipping easily out of hiding and into his hand. Galt came tramping around from the front of the truck, halted when he saw the gun and snorted a question at Evlin. "What's this about?"
Tarrant curtailed her response. "Do you make a habit of touring the countryside in prison transports?"
Galt's bored gaze traveled from the gun to the open back of the paneled truck. "I travel in whatever I can steal," he huffed, and abruptly turned his back on them to climb into the driver's cab.
Equally disdainful of Tarrant's gun, Evlin started up the metal-grate steps leading into the transport's 'passenger' section. She held out a hand then, as though to help him up after.
"Coming?"
Tarrant held his ground. "Not until I have a few answers."
She dropped the proffered hand and waited a beat. "Such as?"
Tarrant fidgeted, feeling suddenly foolish standing in the amber glow of the porch light, holding a gun on his rescuer. He squelched the feeling and asked his questions anyway. "Such as who you people are, exactly, and why you'd want to help me."
"Fair question," she conceded with ill grace. "Let's discuss it on the way, shall we?"
"No." He tightened his clumsy, bandaged grip on the gun and tried to sound more threatening than he felt. "We'll discuss it now."
"All right. Short version. We're two people with plenty of reasons to hate the Federation in general, and Cort in particular." The ancient truck's fuel-injection engine chugged and growled to life in the middle of her sentence. "Doesn't really matter a whit who you are or what you did. Any enemy of Cort's..."
Tarrant shook his head. "Pretty words, but not a reason. Try again. I'm not nearly as naive as I look."
Her short, disgusted laugh echoed in the empty transport. "Neither am I," she said, nodding at the gun. "You don't really think I'd leave a weapon with a full charge lying about in the rubbish, do you?"
With chagrin, Tarrant recognized the tiny capsule she held up to the light as one of Dayna's miniature power packs. Stupid of him, not to have checked for that. He turned the little gun to reveal the empty clip chamber in its base, and smiled grimly.
"Touché," he said.
"Now do you want at that transmitter, or not?" She extended the hand once more. Tucking the gun away again, Tarrant accepted her help up the steps.
Their weight on the metal decking triggered light panels overhead and instantly bathed them in a sickly pink neon haze. Evlin deposited him in one of the deactivated restraint chairs, then moved forward to a bank of controls. With a shuddering thump, the steps retracted and drew the double doors shut behind them, closing off the Obron night. The truck lurched into motion at the same time, nearly spilling Tarrant out of the chair. When he'd regained his balance, he settled back to study Evlin's profile above the console's blinking lights. They'd traveled for some time before either of them spoke.
"I thought perhaps," Tarrant finally ventured, "you might still like to tell me why."
Her eyebrows rose again in query as she echoed the question. "Why?"
"Don't tell me you and Galt spend all your time rescuing total strangers from Federation death squads?"
"Only some of it." Her rather morbid smile did little to allay Tarrant's discomfort. "As I said, we all have reason to hate the Federation. Maybe our reason is just a shade more personal than some."
"Personal?" He repeated the word uneasily, feeling that there was less and less to like about this woman by the minute. Rescue and nursing notwithstanding, there was something about her...
"Doesn't everyone have someone they've persecuted, tortured, murdered?" she was saying. "Who was it for you? Parents, perhaps? A wife, a lover?"
Tarrant paled, remembering Teal-Vandor and Deeta. "My brother," he said.
She nodded. "We have a son. Sala..." She let the words trail away, as though the subject were too painful to pursue. For a moment, Tarrant sympathized. He found it just as difficult to talk about Deeta.
"So you're part of the resistance?" he asked hopefully.
She looked disconcerted at the suggestion. "In our way," she said, and went back to fiddling with something on the console. They didn't speak again until a lurch signaled the truck's abrupt halt. With a coughing rattle and wheeze, the engine died, and Evlin glanced up from the control panel. "Sounds like we've arrived," she said in an oddly anxious tone. She waited for the sound of the cab door and for Galt's footsteps, grinding gravel, to approach the rear of the vehicle. Then she activated the door control.
When the steps had lowered themselves and the pink neon light spilled out into the darkness, Tarrant found himself facing the unpleasant vision of Galt -- pointing a Federation issue rifle directly at him.
"No fuss," the man said gruffly. "Just get up and get out here. Slow and easy."
Tarrant turned on Evlin, intending to singe her with a guilt-inducing glare. Instead, he faced another gun barrel, and any sympathy he'd once imagined he'd seen in her eyes was gone, replaced with a cold pragmatism that reminded him, uncannily, of Avon.
"Do as he says," she ordered.
"I don't suppose you'd care to--"
"No arguments, Captain Tarrant. It will only make this harder."
The use of his correct name and former rank took the pilot by surprise. Somehow, his suspicions hadn't included the possibility that his erstwhile rescuers might know his true identity. "Did you know that... from the beginning?"
Evlin shook her head. "You did a lot of talking in your sleep." She came around the control board to approach him with the gun. "Not that it made any difference, really. Any enemy of Cort's is still of use to us."
"That's not quite how you put it the first time."
"Out!" Galt barked from the doorway.
Tarrant took his time painfully rising and making his way down the steps, this time throwing off Evlin's effort to assist him. He emerged onto a crudely-paved road with the shadowy outlines of sparse trees on either side -- and two Federation guards standing a few hundred feet further on. Its lights glaring, another battered prison transport loomed behind them. And between, hands shackled, stood a thin, bearded man wearing prison grey.
We have a son, Evlin had said. Sala...
Things were beginning to come clear at last, though Tarrant was less than fond of the resolution.
"An exchange," he guessed out loud as Evlin clattered down the steps behind him. "Me for your son. Do you get to collect the reward into the bargain, or would that be considered unduly greedy?"
"Shut up!" Shouldering the rifle, Galt snarled an order at his wife. "Watch him," he said, and stalked away toward the waiting troopers.
Tarrant turned on Evlin as soon as the older man was out of earshot. "A prison. That's where the trucks came from, isn't it? And where the transmitter is." A reasonable guess. Avon would no doubt have reproached him for not realizing it far sooner than this.
Evlin nodded. "It's two miles on. Been there eight years, though the Feds manage to keep it secret, for the most part. Cort and his neolithic friend came from there. Prison guards."
Well, that came as no surprise. Prison duty was a fate shared by many an FSA washout. Tarrant's lip curled in a half grimace. "The only thing surprising in all of this is your naiveté. You don't really think they're going to honor their part of the agreement?" He nodded toward the troopers and Galt, conversing now a few wary yards apart. "They'll never allow the lot of you off planet alive."
Her expression hardened. "We have transport off-world. Look to yourself, Captain. In that place, believe me, you'll have to." He laughed, and the unexpected reaction brought a quizzical frown to her face. "I hardly thought you'd be amused."
"I'm wanted for desertion, among other things. Summary execution doesn't give you much time to look to anything."
That revelation rattled her confidence: Tarrant was sure he could see cracks beginning to form in the façade. "Warden Aiger won't allow that," she insisted, but the doubt in her voice showed through.
"You believe everything they tell you, do you?"
"I know Aiger. I was his prison medic for five years!"
"Ah." Tarrant imbued the single syllable with as much skepticism as possible. "Maybe not an immediate execution, then. They'll take their time about it. That's what they do best, after all, with--"
"Stop it!" she snapped. "You can turn off the hearts and violins. It won't work. You're the means to an end, Captain, and that's all. We want Sala back. That means we can't afford to care what happens to you."
Galt had started back toward them, rifle pointed at Tarrant once again. The pilot aimed one last barb at Evlin before the man reached them. "It's comforting to know the milk of human kindness hasn't entirely vanished from the universe," he muttered.
She shot him a look a pure venom, but her intended response was precluded by Galt's shoving Tarrant with the rifle barrel. "Walk," he grunted. "Now."
With a final, scathing glance at them both, Tarrant complied. The man on the other side started forward at the same time, becoming a dark silhouette as he left the nimbus of the prison transport's light pool. They crossed paths midway without speaking, but their gazes locked. Tarrant saw a shadowy, haggard young face full of desperation and rash hope. But the hollow eyes spoke of regret when they met his.
A moment later gloved hands had grabbed and hustled him to the waiting vehicle. He was able to look back just long enough to see Evlin eagerly embracing her son. Then the guards strong-armed him into the truck, ignoring his gasp when the damaged ribs protested the treatment. They slammed him roughly into one of the chairs -- the force of the landing nearly made him black out and sent agony searing up his left side. When he could see straight again, the transport was in motion, and one armed trooper sat opposite, blaster poised in his lap. They hadn't bothered with the restraints. Apparently, the threat of one gun was presumed sufficient to safely move a wounded prisoner two miles down a dark road.
As it happened, that presumption proved fatal.
The first explosion rocked them to a swerving halt scant minutes into the journey. When the guard made a dive for the console's short-range radio, Tarrant tackled him from behind. He caught the man's unprotected neck beneath the helmet in a choke-hold, and fought with flagging strength to hold on.
The second explosion sent them both toppling. Tarrant's weakened condition was no match for a combat-trained soldier; he lost the hold and ended up pinned against the console-base, the trooper's blaster pressed firmly to his temple.
The guard hesitated, finger poised on the trigger. Listening for more sounds of an attack, Tarrant supposed, or perhaps for orders to come crackling over the silent radio. The latter was not forthcoming.
With a blinding flash and the sizzle of disintegrating metal, the doors flew open. Tarrant grabbed and forced the trooper's gun upward -- the shot took out part of the overhead light panel and sent sparks raining down on them. The man recovered with lightning speed, knocked Tarrant aside, re-aimed the blaster -- and Soolin's charge burned a neat hole through his uniform at heart level.
The body crumpled nearly on top of him. Tarrant shoved it aside, and sent the blonde gunfighter an ungracious scowl. "You took your bloody time getting here," he complained.
"Orac picked up a message offering to sell you to Commissioner Sleer." She navigated deftly over the tailgate's ruined metal shards, climbed into the truck waving sparks away. "I think the sale is off, though."
Gunfire erupted outside as she knelt down beside him, cursorily inspecting the blood-stained bandages beneath his tunic. "Someone's still putting up a fight," he breathed, wincing when she touched the bandaging.
"Guard who was driving," she said as she fastened a teleport bracelet over the tape binding his wrist. "I doubt he'll give Avon and your friends much more trouble."
"Friends?" Several more shots echoed in quick succession, then silence.
Soolin's hair glistened in the ruined panel's sputtering light. "We found the other transport first. They weren't exactly cooperative about helping to retrieve you. Avon insisted."
And, Tarrant mused to himself, nobody who wanted to live long argued with Avon.
Abruptly, the silence outside was pierced with a scream, and the sound of hysterical weeping. Evlin, Tarrant realized. It had to be...
Soolin rose, held out a hand. "Can you walk?"
"I'll manage." He accepted her hand up, gritting his teeth at the pain the movement caused, and they made their way to the door. Soolin peered out, gun first. Then, nodding that all was clear, she jumped down and turned back to help him from the truck.
Tarrant emerged to the sight of Avon, gun in hand, bending over the body of the second Federation trooper. Just beyond that, the other transport sat skewed on the blast-scorched pavement. Beneath its open doors, another body -- Galt's -- lay sprawled on the road, rifle still tangled in its twisted arms. Evlin's cries were ongoing and inconsolable; Sala knelt beside her with one arm around her shoulders.
"Couldn't you have managed without involving them?" Tarrant asked, though he was frankly amazed at his own feelings of sympathy. He might have shot Galt himself, given the opportunity...
Soolin snorted a derisive answer. "We had a pinpoint on the signal to Sleer, and found one road leading into that complex. How should we know which truck you were in?"
"The one heading toward the prison was a better bet."
"Probably." Avon joined them, deliberately turning his back to the emotional display on the ground. "But we had no way of knowing there were two, and we ran into them first. Are you ready to go?"
Tarrant ignored the question for the moment, meeting Avon's gaze head on. "Just tell me you didn't plan it that way. I don't much care for being played the fool."
"A pity." Avon's smile could have flash-frozen molten lead. "You do it so well."
Ignoring the taunt, Tarrant held out a palm. "Give me your spare bracelet"
Avon's smile dissipated. "Why?"
Why indeed. Because three corpses were enough, or perhaps because Del Tarrant had never learned to be quite as cold as the people he depended on for rescue? "Just give it to me," he demanded, and feigned invulnerability to Avon's glare as it was handed over. "Do you have another?" he asked Soolin, but she was already removing it from a belt pouch, placing it in his hand. They never traveled without spares; the bracelets were far too easily lost or broken. Though Tarrant wondered idly as he moved away whether the bracelet he'd arrived with had been broken with a little help from Galt.
Two pairs of tear-rimmed eyes looked up at him as he approached. Sala stood, pulling a reluctant Evlin after him. "I didn't know they would try an exchange," he said. "I'm sorry, Captain. I wouldn't have let them if--"
"There was no other way!" Evlin contended, voice shaky with tears. "I'd do it again, if I had to. There was no other way."
Tarrant didn't argue, though he wondered if she'd do it again knowing just how high the price would be. "Put these on," he said, proffering the bracelets. "You'll have missed that ride off planet by now. We'll take you out."
Evlin stared, distrust and disbelief mingling in her eyes. "You don't have to--"
"Forget it," Tarrant cut her off. "Just put the bracelets on."
Sullenly, they obeyed, though Tarrant couldn't help but notice Evlin flinch when Avon approached with Soolin close behind.
"We may have enough trouble escaping the system without extra liabilities aboard," Avon growled. "They're nothing to us. Leave them."
Tarrant glowered at him, raising his own bracelet to his lips. "Humor me," he said, and depressed the transmission stud. "Dayna, Vila, are you there?"
Avon, indulging a sardonic smile, declined further argument. "Vila!" he said to his bracelet. "Wake up, Vila. We're ready to come back, now."
Sala, one arm still around Evlin's shoulders, caught Tarrant's eye and started to speak. The teleport effect shimmered around them, obliterating the words, but Tarrant could read the lips.
They said, "Thank you, Captain."
And then Scorpio's familiar flight deck materialized in front of him, and Soolin was shepherding him off to the medi-capsule while Avon barked orders at Dayna to take the ship out of orbit. There would be lectures from Avon, later, about bleeding hearts and misplaced sentimentality and how either could get you killed. And inevitably, comparisons to the legendary Blake would enter into it somewhere. Tarrant would listen and nod and then go right on doing as his conscience led.
He didn't know how to live with himself any other way.
Somehow, he had the feeling Blake would have approved.