He knocked two other fighters aside as he reached for the hatch. Both hands closed on the edge. It must have weighed two hundred pounds, but Blade ripped it free and hurled it away as easily as if it had been a playing card. Then he leaped through the opening, into the Looter machine.
Another dart clanged off the floor as Blade landed inside. He flattened himself against the forward bulkhead while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then he whirled around and sprang up into the cockpit. A glance told him that it was full of strange shapes and strange instruments. But for the moment he didn't care about them. All that interested him now were the two remaining members of the Looter crew.
One of them was a woman. She was backing away into a corner as Blade entered. The other, a lean red-haired man, stood on one of the control consoles and aimed his dart-thrower at Blade with one hand while he drew a sword with the other.
Blade lunged forward and up. One hand chopped upward under the wrist of the hand holding the dart gun. Blade felt the other's bones splinter under the impact, heard the man scream, saw the dart gun go flying. He pivoted and drove his other fist into the man's stomach. The man doubled up and lurched forward off the console.
Blade caught him as he fell, grabbed him around the waist, and hurled him up and back as hard as he could. The man seemed to fly through the air, then jerk to a sudden halt. His mouth opened, letting out a scream and a spray of blood. His arms and legs waved frantically as he hung, impaled on the broken points of the canopy, then went limp.
Blade turned to the woman. She was still backed into her corner and had drawn a short sword. One of the people moved in with his own sword drawn. A flicker and a clack of teksin meeting metal. The attacker's sword went flying. He dove to retrieve it. The woman's sword slashed down at the back of his neck, and he jumped clear just in time.
Blade took a closer look at the woman. She was small and lithe, with curling brown hair piled on top of her head. Her eyes were wide, but with intense concentration on her opponents, not with fear. This was someone who meant to sell her life as dearly as possible.
«Don't kill her!» shouted Blade. The woman might not want to be taken alive, but she was the last chance for a Looter prisoner. He drew his own sword and moved in. The woman thrust, fast and well, but his own down-cut was faster and delivered with a much stronger arm. It beat down the woman's guard. Blade thrust high, aiming to smash the flat of his sword into the woman's head and stun her.
Instead she dropped under his thrust and came up with her sword darting at his groin. The point drove into his teksin loinguard and was held there for a moment. Blade's left hand chopped down at the woman's sword arm. She jerked it back from under the chop just in time. Blade's hand came down on the sword itself, knocking it out of the woman's hand.
Instantly she dropped into an unarmed-combat stance. One small booted foot darted out at Blade's chest in a high kick. He pivoted so that it struck his left shoulder. Then he clamped both hands on the woman's ankle and twisted, hard. The woman screamed but had to turn over on her face to keep her ankle from being twisted apart. The moment she did so, Blade lunged forward and brought the edge of one hand down across the back of her neck, just below the hairline. He struck with only a fraction of the force he could have used. The woman went limp, but a quick check told Blade that she was unconscious rather than dead.
Blade quickly stripped off the woman's belt and tied her hands tightly behind her back. He lifted her across his shoulders easily-she could not have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. Then he turned to the fighters behind him.
«Two of you go and bring our comrade with us. We shall not leave her. But we must get away from here as fast as possible, before the smaller machines come.»
The five nodded. Blade shifted the woman to a more comfortable position and led the way out into the street.
Chapter 21
Blade led his survivors into the nearest deep cellar. He would have liked to sit down and spend hours or days with the command machine and the prisoner, digging out secrets. But to do that he and the others would have to live through whatever attack the three machines on guard outside Miros might still launch.
They stayed down there in the stifling, dusty darkness for a good two hours. After perhaps half an hour they heard the sound of three distant explosions, one after another. Then silence. After the savage violence that had thundered through its long-dead streets, Miros seemed to be returning to its former peace and quiet.
Blade realized that he was more exhausted than he had realized, both physically and mentally. His throat was as dry as the dust lying inches deep on the cellar floor around him. It got drier every time he breathed. His skin was caked with sweat and grime and his wounded hand sent a dull, continuously throbbing pain up his left arm to his bruised left shoulder. In the darkness Blade could not see the others. But their silence suggested that they were too stunned by the terrifying violence of the past few hours to even realize they had won a victory, let alone rejoice over it.
After the two hours had passed, Blade stood up, brushed off as much dust as he could, and gave his orders.
«It's time we got back on the streets and out of Miros. If the smaller Looter machines were going to move in, I think we'd have heard them by now.»
«This is true, Mazda,» said Chara. «But what if they have gone off after our comrades?»
«Then we go on managing as best we can ourselves,» said Blade. «We have done that all this day and so won our victory. We can go on doing it as long as necessary.» He bent and lifted the Looter woman onto his shoulders again.
The first living things they met in the streets of Miros were not Looters, but a party of six of their own scouts on horseback. These broke into a gallop when they saw Blade's party, and came pounding up in a cloud of dust. In the lead was Anyara. She sprang down out of her saddle and ran up to Blade.
«Mazda, the Looters are gone from here, all of them.»
«The other three machines?»
«Half an hour after the battle in the city ended, they exploded with much flame and smoke. They are nothing but pieces of black metal now, harmless to everyone.»
«Good.» No doubt the machines had been programmed to destroy themselves if they lost contact with the command vehicle. The Looters had realized that it was not wise to let their enemies capture their machines. «Are the four machines we captured in the first battle intact?»
«They are.»
«Good again. Let them be brought into the city. I want to examine the machine in which the Looters themselves rode. There may be heavy things in it we want to take away, too heavy for our horses to carry.»
«Mazda has spoken. And-the prisoner?» She pointed at the woman still slung across Blade's shoulder.
«She should not be harmed for now. If we treat her well, she may tell us much about the Looters and their machines.» Blade was determined that the woman should be well-treated at all times and never tortured. But the people would not accept this attitude toward an enemy even from Mazda unless he gave them some good reason.
Anyara's eyes wandered past Blade to the two men carrying the dead woman. Blade shook his head. «The prisoner did not do that. It was one of the two men with her. They are both dead. The woman is the only one left, the only one who can tell us anything.»
«Only three of them?» said Anyara, wonderingly.