Smashing the wall pretty near knocked the wind out of me, but my head was clear enough to realize I was closest to the Sperm anchor. Everyone else had bounced several paces away. Shaky and reeling, I kicked out my foot and hit the anchor’s off-switch. The glittery tail whipped away past my face in a jamble of colored lights, swishing across the city like a single strand of aurora borealis. With luck, Harque could keep the tail dancing all over Unshummin, distracting searchers in both armies. Meanwhile, we’d carry the anchor box with us; when we switched it on again, the tail would come straight back to our party, giving us a quick escape route.
"Everyone all right?" Festina’s whisper came softly through the receiver in my ear.
Tobit and Dade both answered, "Fine." I just nodded. Up in the ship, Festina had told me to keep quiet as much as possible. Since I wasn’t muffled up in a tightsuit, nearby soldiers might hear if I talked.
Festina made an okay sign, then craned her neck to look at the sky. "Jacaranda, are you receiving?"
"Loud and clear, Admiral," Harque answered.
"We’re on the move," Festina said. "Dade, you grab the anchor. Edward, stay right behind me." She turned to Tobit. "Have you figured out where we’re going?"
Tobit had unclipped a Bumbler from his belt and was scanning the area. "The signal came from that direction," he said, pointing to the wall I’d banged against. "Inside this building." He lifted his head and looked up. "For best transmission, they’d go to the roof. Of course, they may not be there now; it’s been an hour since the beep."
"If they’ve left, they’ll come back," Festina answered. "They can’t have missed our Sperm-tail."
The tail was still lashing the city, darting from block to block: whisking over the pavement, flapping against walls, lifting high over the rooftops and circling like a lariat before plunging down again in a splash of green and gold and blue and purple. I could hear distant Mandasar voices, commanders yelling orders at their troops, or just soldiers hollering at each other. Some would be shouting, "Keep cool," and others, "Look lively," and a few maybe even, "Naizo!"… tired palace guards who were ready to surrender to anything.
"Let’s head for the roof," Festina said. "Plebon and Olympia may still be there. If they aren’t, they’ll know they should hurry back to their transmission site. And from the roof, we’ll have an easy time grabbing a ride out."
"Sure, Ramos," Tobit growled. "Easy. Piece of cake. In the history of the Explorer Corps, have you heard of a single landing that didn’t turn into a complete ass-biter?"
"Always a first time," Festina answered. "Let’s go, people. Immortality awaits."
At the end of the alley, Tobit poked the scanner of his Bumbler just past the edge of the wall. That way, we could look around the corner without sticking our heads into the open.
The Bumbler’s vidscreen showed the front of the Fasskister embassy… or what was left of it. Something had smashed it hard, like a wrecking ball or an explosion or a barrage of cannon fire. A great chunk of the brick face had been knocked in, exposing the four stories of the interior to open air. Unshummin’s weather was as mild as you could get — shirtsleeve temperatures most of the year round, with only a bit of rain — but it had still taken a toll on the inside of the building. All the floors had a definite sag, and some were crumbling on the edges. I imagine the place was filled with insects and jiffpips: centipedey things that could jump and climb like squirrels. (For some reason, Mandasars found jiffpips sweet and cute… maybe because they were distant evolutionary cousins, like lemurs are to humans. Me, whenever I saw a jiffpip, I wanted to whack it with a sledgehammer.)
Dade’s voice spoke through my earpiece. "You really think the Explorers transmitted from this building? It doesn’t look safe."
"Maybe that’s why they chose it," Festina replied. "The floors look strong enough to hold humans but maybe not Mandasars. Plebon and Olympia could go in, set up their equipment, and know they wouldn’t be disturbed."
"Why would they be disturbed?" Dade asked. "I thought we were assuming the Explorers had got friendly with the palace guards."
"Friendly is one thing," Tobit said, "but guards might get a wee bit anxious if they knew humans were broadcasting radio messages to the world at large. Some nasty paranoid folks would suspect you were sending intelligence to the enemy. Better to set up your transmitter where you’ll have a little privacy."
"Besides," Festina added, "we don’t know for sure our friends are on good terms with the guards. They may be on the run and hiding out. Always suspect the worst, and… uh-oh."
The Bumbler’s screen showed a pair of warriors coming toward us. They were moving cautiously from the direction of the palace, gas masks over their heads and crossbows held steady in their waist pincers. Each had a Cheejretha finger resting on the bow’s trigger mechanism, so they could instantly fire an arrow with the slightest squeeze.
The warriors passed in front of the crumbling embassy, peeking in through gaps in the brickwork. They had to be looking for something… and I suspected it was us. Some keen-eyed lookout at the palace had spotted the Sperm-tail lingering a few seconds in this neighborhood; the team coming our way got sent to investigate.
"What do we do?" Dade asked over the radio.
"Let’s invite them to tea," Tobit said. "No, wait… let’s stun their fucking gonads off." He handed the Bumbler to me and quietly drew his stun-pistol. Festina had hers out too. They hadn’t let Dade bring a gun; he’d been just a teeny bit too eager to shoot, back at the Fasskister orbital.
Me, I didn’t want a gun. And nobody had offered me one.
The guards’ footsteps came closer, clicking softly on the pavement. Festina lifted her hand, with three fingers showing. Silently she lowered one finger, then a second, then the last… and together she and Tobit dived out of the alley.
Arrows twanged at almost the same instant the stunners whirred; but the warriors shot high, not prepared for humans who could throw themselves belly down on the street. The guns fired again in unison. That was enough. I heard the bows clatter to the pavement, and a moment later, two heavy thuds on the ground.
"Are they out?" Dade asked excitedly.
"We stopped shooting, didn’t we?" Festina answered.
Without another word, she led us forward.
When you hear me talk about streets and alleys, maybe you’re picturing some city you know — your local downtown late at night, with the sidewalks empty and everything quiet.
No. Put that out of your head.
First of all, Unshummin was dark. Really, really dark. The city had plenty of streetlamps, but none of them worked — there hadn’t been electricity on the planet since the Fasskisters loosed their Swarm, except for chemical batteries and maybe some motorized generators protected by thick nano defense clouds. The only significant light was a glow from the direction of the palace, where I figured soldiers were burning cookfires; but the palace lay to the rear of the embassy and we were in front, so most of the light was blocked by the building. Neither of Troyen’s moons was up, so we had to make do with the stars… and after all the lights on Jacaranda, my eyes needed time to adapt.
Next, you’re probably thinking of a normal human street paved with asphalt or cement or gravel or stone. Nope. Every road on Troyen was built from a pebbly stuff called Ayposh: kind of like coral, because it consisted of a whole bunch of tiny shelled organisms, some alive, some dead. They’d been bioengineered to grow in long level sheets, photosynthesizing most of their nutrients straight from the air. Every few months, the board of works sent out sprayers full of fertilizer and mineral supplements to feed the little guys; and each year, crews would paint the highway shoulders with a chemical suppressant to keep the Ayposh from spreading off the roadbed. It was cheap, it was simple, it was elegant… and with the war on, maybe it was doomed. All of a sudden, I started wondering if people had time to spray fertilizer when they were all busy fighting. I thought of millions of miles of pavement, slowly starving to death for lack of vitamins. Maybe all the streets around me were nothing but corpses, teeny husks that would slowly crumble away and never get replenished by new generations.