"Quick, Malakar!" Gretchen shouted, struggling to hold the massive soldier pinned. He hissed like a steam boiler in her ear and flexed forward, flinging Anderssen into the wall. The gardener swung wildly with the board, but the soldier ducked and slashed at her head with his claws.
Gretchen snatched a cutting tool from her vest, thumbed the little device to high-beam and jammed the hissing plasma-jet into his neck. The Jehanan squealed, scales flaring red-orange. Flame spilled away from the tool, blinding him. Anderssen threw her weight behind the cutter – scales popped with a snap! And there was a gout of scalding steam as the plasma-torch sheared through the scaly integument and erupted into his chest cavity.
Malakar hooted in horror, scuttling back, but Gretchen kicked the body away, her face grim.
"Come on," she said, thumbing off the tool, "we've got to stop them. Find his gun."
Parker stumbled through the door into the apartment, gasping for breath, sweat streaming from every pore. He collapsed to his knees on a sleeping mat. "Oh god, Mags, they're right behind me!"
"I heard you," Magdalena said, briskly rotating the wheel controlling the door. The six triangular sections rasped closed and she threw the locking bolt with a clang. The Hesht turned, ears back flat, and sniffed Parker's sweaty head. "Pfawgh! Stewing in your own waste! Can you even stand?"
The pilot groaned, forcing his fatigue-exhausted legs up. He was trembling from head to toe. "I don't…feel so good."
Maggie snarled in disgust, showing all her teeth, forced herself up and slapped self-adhering black packets on either side of the door. "Get into harness, sog-tail. Now!"
The pilot staggered to a pair of open windows and slumped against the wooden frame. Most of their equipment had been gathered up and stuffed into Maggie's duffel, but a black fleximesh harness lay out and Parker managed get one arm into the proper opening by the time the Hesht reached his side.
Magdalena seized his other arm and forced the harness on, glossy black paw sealing the clasps and jerking the mesh to a proper fit. Parker bleated, feeling doubly abused, but was having trouble standing without assistance. "Now, Maggie, you're not thinking we have to -"
"There is no other way off this floor and out of the building," the Hesht growled, slinging the duffel across her stomach. The sound of Jehanan voices hooting and booming echoed dimly through the door. A sharp rapping sound penetrated. "Clip to my back," she said, snapping two dark green monofilament spools to the front of her harness. "Now, kitling, no time to laze on the rocks!"
Startled, Parker put his chest to the Hesht's back, hooked harness to harness and wrapped his arms under her shoulders. "All aboard," he muttered.
Magdalena squared her hips, planted her feet and lifted with a strained hiss. A little dizzy, Parker clenched his legs back to get them out of the way. Awkwardly, the Hesht turned around and backed into the window, paws gripping the frame on either side. Monofil line hissed from the spools on her harness. Parker caught a glimpse of a line of anchors driven into the floor of the room.
"Will that – ayyyyy! Oh sweet Jesus!" Parker squeezed his eyes shut as Maggie tipped backwards.
The Hesht worked her feet into a solid position, a cool breeze gusting across her pelt. She carefully took a pair of monofil gloves from a pouch on her climbing harness and tugged them on. Inside, the banging on the door had ceased and she could hear a drill whine sharply against ceramic. Dust puffed from the center of the portal. Both gloves on, she powered them up and watched for the winking green light indicating descender field strength at maximum.
The hexagonal door shattered with a crack! and bits of ceramic rattled against the windowpanes. A cloud of dust billowed into the room. Maggie heard a cheerful beep from the gloves, clenched hard on the monofil line and kicked back. Wire hissed between her gloves and she, Parker and the duffel bounded back a half-dozen meters. Her feet hit a section of blank concrete and started to skid. She leaned further back, forcing her boots flat on the wall.
Parker felt cold wind ruffle his hair, the cawing of native avians from far below and absolutely nothing beneath his swinging feet. "Oh goddddd," he bawled, clutching tight.
Takshilan guardsmen burst into the apartment, one ducking left, one right and another dodging forward in the middle. All three were clad in bulky cloth armor plated with hand-sized ceramic lozenges. Their long snouts were covered with leather facings, their deep-set eyes masked by bulging goggles. The one on the left turned, the muzzle of his automatic rifle sweeping across the empty room.
"Kramat -" he started to call out, beckoning the rest of the squad forward with one claw.
The black packets pasted beside the doorway detected heat and motion within their limited perception and blew apart. Choking white smoke blasted out, hiding the near-supersonic expansion of tanglewire coils. A thread-end smashed into the chest of the lead commando, puncturing his armor. He was thrown down, gasping, and the wire stiffened, tearing through scale and muscle. The room filled with a glittering black cloud. The other two soldiers had leapt back in time to avoid the brunt of the blast, but the knockout gas in the smoke flooded over them.
Someone in the hallway – spooked by the high-pitched ting-ting-ting of wire anchors punching into the walls – fired accidentally and the entire squad opened up, blazing away at the smoke. Tracers ripped through the haze, smashing the remaining windows. The lead commando, still tangled, was torn in half by the fusillade, his body jerking violently. Ricocheting bullets whined through the apartment, scoring the walls and clattering into the corners.
Magdalena looked up, saw the windows shattering into a cloud of glittering, plunging glass and kicked off again. Her legs were starting to cramp. Parker was a thin little human, but his squirmy weight was no furless kit clinging to her pelt. They bounded into another section of concrete and she kicked off again, flying past a row of windows.
Inside, a wide-eyed Jehanan child stared out, caught sight of a completely unexpected apparition, fluted in terror and scrambled under its sleeping rack.
The broken windows rained past them, forcing Maggie to duck her head and swing in close to the wall. Slivers of greenish glass caught in her pelt and spanged away from the concrete. Without looking up, the Hesht pushed off, monofil whirring through her harness and gloves. This time her legs were tired and they bounced into a row of windows. Glass splintered under her boots, and Maggie crabbed to the side, trying to reach concrete. The window groaned under the stress, cracked lengthwise and burst inwards.
One leg plunged into the opening, crashing through a shelf of potted plants. There were outraged hoots inside. Maggie kicked her leg free, shoved off with the other and swung past three more intact windows. She glimpsed two very large, very angry Jehanan males inside. The monofil whined, complaining, and she clenched hard with the gloves. She flew down the line as the descender released, their weight swinging them into a shallow arc.
Maggie forced her paws to release, skipping across ceramic facing. Their swing slackened, losing momentum, and they bounced to a halt against a concrete rib jutting from the face of the building. Parker grunted, suddenly jammed into a rock-hard surface, and his eyes flew open. The Hesht braced her feet, panting.
"Ooooh…my stomach feels…" The pilot stopped, squinting, his goggles automatically zooming in on the rushing shape as he focused. "What in the Nine Hells is -"
A shrieking roar filled the sky. Maggie snapped her head around, alarmed.
A huge, winged silver shape blasted past – less than a kilometer away – between the apartment tower and its nearest neighbor. Sunlight gleamed on swept-back triangular wings and blazed from a mirrored canopy. Slender black canisters nestled under the wings. Bright red insignia were blazoned on the double-finned tail. Superheated air howled from twin fairings at the rear of the aircraft.