Sassinak shook her head.
"What was that?" breathed Aygar.
"I don't know. Let's go."
She didn't like admitting she'd never seen an alien like that before. She didn't like this whole setup.
The Eclipse displayed a violently pink and yellow sign, which at night must have made sleep difficult for anyone across the street. Sassinak glanced that way and saw only blank walls above the street-level shops. No beaded curtain here but a heavy door that opened to a hard shove and closed solidly behind them. A heavy-worlder in gleaming gray plastic armor stood at one side - evidence of potential trouble, and its cure, all in one. A glance around showed Sassinak that her clothes did not quite fit in. Except for the overdressed trio at one table, clearly there to prey on customers, the women wore merchant-spacers' coveralls, good quality but not stylish. Most of the men wore the same, although two men had on business clothes, one with the crumpled gown of an attorney at court piled on the seat beside him. Sassinak supposed the little gray coil atop it was his ceremonial wig.
She was aware of sideways glances, but conversation did not stop. These people were too experienced for that. She led Aygar to one of the booths and dialled their order. Planetwipers had never been her favorite but, of course, she didn't have to drink the thing. Aygar leaned massive elbows on the table.
"Can you tell me what is going on, or are you trying to drive me crazy?"
"I'm not, and I don't know. I presume that at some point our party will arrive. At least I know what he looks like."
She was trying not to be too obvious about looking around. No one here of Coromell's age, or close to it. Surely they wouldn't have a third meetingplace to find. Aygar took a long swallow of his drink.
"That's potent," she said quietly. "Best be careful." He glowered at her. "I'm not a child. I don't even know why you…"
He stopped as someone stopped by their table. Tall, silver-haired, erect. If Sassinak had not known Coromell, she might have believed this was he.
"Commander," he said quietly. "May I sit down?"
"Do join us," Sassinak said. She gestured to Aygar. "The young Iretan you may have heard so much about." The older man nodded, but did not offer to shake hands. He wore an impeccable blue coverall, what she would have expected of a merchanter captain off-duty.
One hand bore a ring that might have been an Acadamy ring, but the face was turned under where she could not see it. And his movements, his assurance, came from years of command, some kind of command.
"If he was not Admiral Coromell - and he wasn't - then who or what was he?
"There's been a slight misunderstanding," he said. "It is necessary to stay out of reach of compromised Surveillance devices until…"
Sassinak never saw the flicker of light, only the surprised look on his face and the neat, crisped holes, five of them, in his face.
Instinct had her under the table and scrambling before the first blood oozed out. She heard a bellow and Crash as Aygar tossed the table aside and came after her. Something sizzled and Aygar yelped. Then the whole place erupted in noise and motion.
Like all fights, it was over in less time than she could have described it. The experienced hit the floor and scuttled for shelter. The inexperienced screamed, flailed, threw things that crashed and tinkled. Fumes from the shattered bottles stung her nose and eyes. Glass shards pricked her palms and knees. Sassinak bumped into other scuttlers, caught sight of Aygar and yanked him down just as a pink streak ripped the air where he'd been and burst the windows out.
She jerked hard on his wrist, trusting him to follow, as they worked her way through the undergrowth of the table standards, chair legs, bodies. Through the door, and into a white-tiled kitchen. She was to realize that the place sold food as well. More noise behind her, following. She slipped on the wet floor, staggered, and yanked Aygar again.
He threw a last glance over his shoulder, and whatever he saw propelled him in a great leap that ended with Aygar and Sassinak tangled out the back door, and flames bursting out behind them. "Snarks in a bucket!"
Sassinak struggled out from under the younger man and shook her head. Screams, more sounds of mayhem. She looked down the alley they'd landed in. She hated planets… living on them, at least. No one to keep things really shipshape. On the other hand, this filthy and disreputable bit of real estate offered hiding places no clean ship would. Aygar, she noted, had a bleeding gash down his face and several rips in his coverall, but no serious injury.
He was already up on one knee, looking surprisingly relaxed and comfortable for someone who had narrowly escaped death. He had probably saved her life with that last lunge for the back door.
"Thanks," she said, trying to figure out what to do with him. She'd thought of him more as deterrence than serious help if things turned nasty. And at the moment, they were about as nasty as she had seen in awhile.
"We should go," he pointed out. "I was told only Insystem had that sort of weaponary."
"We're going."
Another quick glance, and she chose the shorter end of the alley. Nothing happened on the first quick dash to cover behind a stinking trash bin with rusty streaks down its sides. Sassinak eyed the other back doors opening on the alley. Surely someone should have peeked? Unless the neighborhood were really that tough, in which case…
"There's someone behind the next one of these," Aygar said softly in her ear.
She eyed him with respect. "How d'you know?"
He shrugged. "I lived by hunting, remember? On Ireta, the things you didn't notice would hunt you. I heard something wrong."
"Great."
No weapons. No armor. And all her tricks were back in childhood, the tricks that worked on screen, and not in real life. Real life worked a lot better with real weapons.
"I can take them," Aygar went on.
She looked at him: all the eagerness appropriate to a young male in the prime of his pride and no military training whatever. And he wasn't hers, the way young Inran would have been. He was a civilian, under her oath of protection. She started to shake her head, but he hadn't waited.
Even knowing about the great strength his genes and his upbringing had developed, she was still surprised. Aygar picked up the entire trash bin with all its clink-teg, rattling, dripping, smelly contents, and hurled it down the alley to crash into the next. Someone yelped.
Sassinak heard the flat crack of smallarms fire, then - nothing.
Aygar was moving, rushing the barrier of the two trash bins crunched together With a quick shrug, she followed, vaulting neatly into the mash of rotten vegetables and fruit peels on the far side. Aygar had neatly broken the neck of the ambusher. Sassinak picked herself out of the disgusting mess carefully and smiled at Aygar.
"Try not to kill them unless you have to," she heard herself say,
"I did," he said seriously. "Look!"
And sure enough, the Insystem guard had managed to hang onto his weapon even with a trash bin pinning him by the legs.
"Right. There are times.. good job." At least she wouldn't have to worry about this one having post-combat hysterics. "Let's get out of this."
Aygar hesitated. "Should I take his weapon?"
"No, it's illegal. We'll be in enough trouble." We're in enough trouble, she thought. "On second thoughts, yes. Take it. Why should the bad guys have all advantages?"
Aygar pried it out of the man's hand and courteously handed it to her. Surprised, Sassinak let her eyebrows raise as she took it and tucked it into a side pocket. Swiping futilely at the stains on her coverall, she led them down the alley to the street.
By this time, sirens wailed nearby. With any luck, they would be on the other street. Sassinak motioned Aygar back. With that blood dripping down his face, he'd be better in hiding. Cautiously, she put her head around the corner. As if he'd been waiting for her, a stocky man in bright orange uniform bellowed and then blew a piercing whistle. Sassinak muttered a curse, and yanked Aygar into a run. No good going back into the alley. They'd have someone at the other end.