Jinx on a Terran Inheritance (49 page)

They double-timed then, past more of the side ways and nooks, the stolen masterpieces, and more of the unconscious Custodians.

They came to a T at the end of the corridor. "Could the place we're looking for be on a lower level or something?" Floyt asked. Janusz shook his head, reading another instrument.

"Then it's one way or the other," Notch said. "Why don't we—"

Alacrity yelled, "Look out!" at the same moment Janusz cried, "Stand aside!" Both shoved Floyt out of their way; Notch brought his gun up.

The guard loomed slowly out of the dimness, tottering, sausage-fingers clawing and curling in the air.

He didn't seem to know where he was or what he was doing, so disoriented that he'd come at his enemies barehanded.

Floyt brought his shockgun up too, bracing the U in the crook of his elbow. The guard bucked and blackened to the shots from Notch's plasma chopper, Janusz's scatterbeams, and Alacrity's pistol. Floyt couldn't tell if the shockgun had any effect or not.

The guard was jarred and twirled around, legs and arms crumbling. But when the obscene pirouette was done and he was on the corridor floor, when they'd stopped firing, the guard tried to come on again, file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (259 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

scrambling at the floor with burnt stumps of fingers. Alacrity shouldered the others aside, took careful aim with both hands, and delivered the
coup de grace.

"Great Creator, what does it take to stop them?" Floyt whispered.

"He was probably the last," Alacrity said. "He was so wheezed up, he didn't even know where he was or what he was doing."

"He knew enough to want to get his paws on us," Janusz countered. "We must be cautious. There isn't much time, and so we'll have to divide forces. Alacrity, you and Hobart down that way if you will; Notch, you'll accompany me, please."

As they went off together, Alacrity said, "Uh, Ho … " and motioned to the shockgun. Floyt shouldered it and drew the Webley, thumbing the hammer back.

"If you see anybody—
anybody
—spark 'im," Alacrity said. "If it helps, remember what these people have helped do to your world."

Floyt said nothing. They proceeded through the gloom, shining spots around them. That went on for what Floyt's proteus reported to be only a short time, but it felt like eternity. Then they came to a pair of doors.

They were high and reticulated, double doors with carved meanders. There were heavy locks on them, and marks on the locks. Alacrity looked around uneasily but saw no one.

"Get back." He slapped charges onto it and stroked the timers. Floyt scurried into the shelter of a side grotto and Alacrity followed him. They both ducked and covered their ears.

The concussion almost knocked them silly even so, and the corridor was like an oven. They shook their ringing heads and went to see what they'd come up with.

The doors were hanging from their hinges. They went into the room beyond with weapons up and heeled to a stop, back to back, pointing all around, angling guns and handspots everywhere. They were shaken and spooked, and just beginning to realize they'd found what they'd come for.

"Well, I'll be—"

"Holy—"

There were ordered shelves and rotating racks of data, every shape and size and format Floyt could think of, in a chamber perhaps four times the size of Floyt's apt living room. Floyt stood up straight, reached out to a rack, and extracted a folder. He tucked the Webley under his arm and flipped through it.

"Alacrity, do you see this? Terran fiber paper. And two-dee photographs. And old-style molecular file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (260 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

memory strands."

Alacrity began rummaging too. He held up a couple of spools. "Induction-copy records, old ones.

Whatever's on them, somebody got his brain sucked out like through a straw and had it set down. And headboarder testimony. I don't think there's any way to fake these things. This is it, m'friend: your Terran Inheritance."

Floyt started pouring through more of the stuff while Alacrity tried his comset. Floyt scanned 3-Ds and notarized documents authenticated by complex chemical coding, and official depositions and oaths of allegiance that the Custodians had required of each new member of the Camarilla who'd come into it over the years.

"I'm not getting anything," Alacrity said. "I'm gonna run get Janusz and Notch, and leave signs for the kids when they follow along. You start figuring out which of this mess is the most important, okay?" He glanced at his proteus again. "We're right up against the deadline; we're over it. And I didn't like that explosion before." He stopped as he was about to leave. "Oh, and don't shoot me by mistake when I come back, all right? Thanks."

He left, and Floyt went back to the evidence, examining it worriedly. But his misgivings began to fall away. Any one or even several of the pieces of evidence might be subject to dispute, but taken as a whole, the cache was overwhelming, as close to conclusive as it was possible to come. Floyt disencumbered himself of his shockgun and began culling out the best.

He discovered one more Custodian, collapsed beside a burn drum, out cold. Near him was a complicated instrument panel. Floyt examined it for a few moments, using knowledge acquired at the complex, and concluded that he'd found the Custodians' main destruct mechanism. He dragged the Custodian away from it just to be safe. It was then he heard the scrape of a shoe behind him.

He wasn't the same man who'd left Earth, and even that Hobart Floyt hadn't been a slug. He lunged sideways and the butt of the shockgun only struck him a grazing blow; his attacker couldn't figure out how to release its safety, or Floyt would've been down for good. The weapon swung again; Floyt, rolling from it, trying to protect his head, avoided most of the impact but still saw whirling lights. He hunched into the shelter of a shelf stack, bringing his feet and free hand up to protect himself, trying for his revolver at the same time.

The boy was another, younger version of the Custodians, not even of age yet, by most reckonings. His lower face was swathed in layers of some shiny fabric, taped tight, a make-do filter mask of some kind that obviously sufficed. Floyt wondered for an instant if the boy was in some sealed-off area of the catacombs when the burning started. Obviously he didn't know the entry code to the cache; he'd tried to file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (261 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

force the lock and it didn't work, then Floyt and Alacrity showed up to blow the doors.

The boy plainly knew the destruct code, though; he'd dropped the shockgun and was working away at the panel. It was alive with flashing symbols.

Floyt sat up, wobbling, drawing back the hammer of the Webley, trying to focus his eyes.

"Stop … stop … "

The boy ignored him; he aimed, using both hands. "Son, don't make me shoot you."

The boy gave him a quick, hating glare, and mocked him with the muffled word "
Son
." Then he was back at work, racing to blow the evidence and the cache and the whole underground area to nothingness.

Floyt thought hard, almost pulling the trigger. But the boy was only ten or so, younger than the youngest of the alley runners.

Floyt threw the pistol at the boy, hard, then dove for his shockgun, yanking back the charge level from lethal to stun. The instrument panel was glowing and beeping, ready for an ultimate command. The revolver missed the boy but cracked the panel and made him flinch from it. Floyt had the shockgun up, but the last Custodian's finger was going for a touchpad …

The second tremor-detonation shook the corridors just as Alacrity reached the other end of the T's crossarm, this time a more violent quaking, though the tunnel corridor showed no cracks. He agonized for a moment, then went on with what he was doing.

At the other extreme of the cross corridor there was no cache. Instead Alacrity came out onto a balcony looking down into a domed treasure chamber.

The dome, a meter thick, was of some transparent stuff. The treasure was more art from many worlds, set out for viewing and enjoying, and piratical heaps of conventional riches: gemstones and ingots and bars, crafted pieces, bolts of exotic fabrics. Down on the dome's floor, Alacrity saw without being able to hear, Janusz and Notch were in a hostile tableau, yelling at one another. Victoria was with them. All three wore protective masks.

Alacrity tried the door of the place, a big servo-operated valve of the same transparent stuff, but it wouldn't open. He pounded on it with his fist, barely evoking a sound from it. He was about to search around for the lock signal when the tableau broke.

Janusz and Notch had been squared off, hands close to their-weapons. Victoria reached out and grabbed Janusz's shoulder, swinging him toward her, apparently hollering at him. Notch seemed about to pull a weapon, but hesitated; Alacrity could see that Victoria was right in his line of fire.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (262 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

Alacrity had pulled his own gun, but dismissed the idea of trying to shoot through the dome. Whatever the transparent substance was, it would very likely send the blast back into his face.

Though they were masked, Alacrity thought Janusz and Victoria were arguing bitterly. She yanked his arm, seeming to shout something, and he lost that icy control of his. Janusz pulled free, pushing her away. Victoria went off balance and fell against a pedastel, overturning a statuette that crashed to the floor and shattered.

Notch leapt like an angry devil, swinging his doubled fists down across the back of Janusz's head and neck. Janusz went down and Notch kicked him, drawing a pistol and bringing it to bear.

Alacrity was howling, pounding on the dome with the butt of his pistol, making no sound that penetrated. He expected to see Janusz shot to bits. But Notch stopped instead and looked to Victoria, who was gesturing weakly from where she lay on the floor. The way Alacrity read the dumb-show, she'd been injured—her head, likely.

Notch wavered for second. Victoria said something else, and the alley runner let Janusz be, ran to kneel by her.

As Alacrity looked on, she stroked Notch's cheek—then moved the barrel of his weapon aside as he froze, the muzzle of her pistol under his chin. Janusz was coming back to his senses, shaking his head.

He saw Victoria gently disarming Notch, apparently talking calmingly to him. The gang leader was slowly, unwillingly giving up his hold on the gun.

Janusz gathered himself. Alacrity saw Victoria take notice and snap an aside at him, probably an order to stay out of it. But Janusz, eyes wild behind his eyepieces, launched himself, moving very fast. Notch sensed it, ignored Victoria's pistol and began to turn, bringing up his own.

Janusz hit him with a body block, knocking them both away from the woman. As Notch went down he was trying to draw a bead on Janusz, but Janusz drew as he fell, hitting Notch once while he was in the air and again from a semiprone position. The scatterbeams charred Notch's body and set his clothing aflame in hideous swaths. Notch's pistol discharged into the air.

Janusz scrambled up to regard his kill. By then Victoria was ranting at him, her sights fixed on his back.

Janusz pivoted on her with his own weapon raised; their eyes met over gun barrels.

Alacrity had backed away from the door of the dome, to shoot at it at an angle. It was dangerously close range; he held the Captain's sidearm extended as far as he could, turning away a little and shielding his face with his left forearm and hand. He fired twice, the pistol's handshield protecting his gunhand, his clothing and hair warming, exposed skin seared by the backwash. The sounds battered him.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (263 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:31

[Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE

He hadn't even singed the dome.

He gaped, disbelieving, then looked inside. Victoria and Janusz had noticed him. They looked back to one another and slowly lowered their weapons.

Fortunately, Alacrity hadn't damaged the door mechanism. When the two opened it from inside, he said,

"What happened? What's wrong with you two?"

"Notch wanted it all," Janusz said in monotone.

"Never mind that now," Victoria said. "Alacrity, did you find the evidence?"

"Oh, did we! Ho's pulling it together now. Did you feel those tremors? What's going on?" As the words tumbled out of him, he was chewing over what he'd seen, debating whether is was safe to put his own gun away. The truce between Janusz and Victoria had been pushed to the breaking point.

"A spaceship showed up outside after you went below," Victoria told him. "It came juicing over the hills and attacked my boat, made a hit on the first pass."

"What ship? From where?"

She shook her head. "We don't know. Whoever it was had overlooked the
Harpy
and the
Stray,
though, at least on that first run. Corva and Heart and Tilla gave it a couple of good volleys and went off after it.

I managed to land on the grounds, but the spaceboat's useless now. The others were going to come back once they've made sure there's no more danger. We have to wrap things up quickly."

"It is my belief that Notch was in on this somehow," Janusz added. "He seemed to be expecting something, and he was upset by the appearance of
Astraea Imprimatur
and the
Harpy.
But he made his play nonetheless."

Victoria glowered at him, but didn't contradict him. Alacrity shook himself. "Victoria, Ho's in the evidence cache, at the opposite end of this corridor. Janusz, I think we'd better hide what's left of Notch." The body was still sending up clouds of smoke; he was glad he was wearing a mask.