Kai stared up into Truper's face. "You're going to turn me over to them?"
"They pay, we play," Jocko growled. " 'Bout time we score a big one."
Truper nodded in agreement. "You're the first contract case we've actually found. This'll take care of our rep and rent for a long time."
"But I'm like you, I'm from the Federated Commonwealth. You should be helping me, not betraying me."
Truper spit into the stream. "You ain't the same as me, boy. I've got a gun on you and you're wanted by ComStar and the Clans. Besides, I can tell from your accent where you're from. Your Hanse Davion ain't done squat for us since he took ole Melissa as his bride, 'cept drain our economy and get us into a war with the Dragons. I come from Tamar originally and he's ignored our claims for Pact worlds in the Free Rasalhague Republic. Given all that, I think you'd best not be pushing this FedCom brotherhood stuff too much."
"Harry, stop jawing and get it over with."
Kai stiffened at the implication of Jocko's statement. He knew Truper's rifle, at that range, would rip through his bulletproof vest in an instant. "Wait, don't shoot. I'll go with you quietiy."
"Sorry, sport," Truper drawled as he worked the bolt on his rifle. "Dead prisoners don't escape."
A bullet punched straight through Truper's cruel sneer, blowing most of it out the back of his head. His rifle flew from limp fingers as his body turned head over heels and splashed down into the stream. The explosion echoing over the meadow swallowed all sound of the stream sucking Truper's body down.
Kai clawed for the needle pistol on his right hip. It cleared the holster as Jocko completed his spin toward the thicket from which Deirdre had fired. Kai tightened down on the pistol's trigger as Jocko swung his rifle around on target His first cloud of needle made a hash of Jocko's left knee. As he let recoil track the pistol upward, the subsequent shots shredded Jocko's hip, flank, and shoulder.
Despite his shots, Jocko still jerked his trigger. A jet of flame shot from the rifle's muzzle, stabbing straight toward Deirdre's hiding place. Then, as Kai pumped round after round into him, Jocko's body whirled in a lazy pirouette. The barrel of his gun scythed through long, golden summer grasses, but never fired again. His body a bloody ruin, Jocko fell from sight.
Kai rolled to his feet and bolted for Deirdre. He tore through the brush and stopped short when he found her slumped over the smoking autorifle. Dropping to his knees, he reached out to gently turn her over, but he met resistance. His mind flashed to images of corpses locked in rigid poses by rigor mortis, but the trembling of her body told him she was not dead.
"Are you hurt, Deirdre? Did he get you?"
She tried weakly to push him away. When she failed at that, she pulled the autorifle from beneath her and cast it aside. "Get away," she breathed in a harsh whisper.
Anger filled Kai. He jerked her roughly around. "Are you hurt?"
She twisted up into a sitting position and showed no sign of having been hit. She thumped his chest with fists. "Get away, dammit." A grimace snapped up all the beauty Kai had ever seen in her face. "I don't take life. I save it. You've tainted me. You've made me over into your image!"
"What are you talking about?" The vehemence of her attack surprised him, but he recognized a thread of pure terror in her voice. "You saved my life!"
"But I killed to do it. The thing I swore never to do. I became what I am so I would never have to do that!" Tears streamed from her blue eyes. "Because of you, I killed a man. I never even looked him in the eye, I struck like a coward, from hiding. I executed him, and it's your fault!"
She slapped Kai hard, snapping his head around to the left. Kai tasted blood in his mouth. She tried to slap him again, but he blocked the blow and pushed her down with a none-top-gentle shove to the shoulder. "No, Doctor, it is not my fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame the man who gave you no choice. Truper forced your hand. You know that. You do!"
Kai slowly stood. "I've not tainted you. Reality has. You made a decision a long time ago to save lives. That was good, no matter who or what your motivation was. The only mistake was believing you might never find yourself in a situation where you had to kill someone. Perhaps being a general practitioner on some backwater world near the Periphery would have granted you that luxury, but life in the military does not."
Deirdre slowly rolled to her side and pulled her legs up toward her chest. Kai refused to give in to his desire to hug her until she gave in and saw reality. "I cannot say I am sorry you had to pull the trigger, Doctor. You saved my life, and for that I am grateful. The culture in which my mother was raised has a tradition: if you save someone's life, you are responsible for it."
"I don't want to be responsible for you. You have inherited other traditions of which I want no part."
"That could well be." Kai swallowed hard. "One thing I do know, however, is that I am heir to a tradition of honesty that allows me to look at and evaluate situations for what they are. Despite what you might like to believe of me, I find killing no easier than you do. I regret being forced to kill Clansmen and I regret having to shoot Jocko."
The bitterness returned in Deirdre's voice. "If you regret killing so much, why are you in the military? Why don't you follow the advice you gave me a moment ago and leave it?"
"Perhaps because, like you, Doctor, I have reasons that demand I remain." Kai looked down, avoiding her angry eyes. "Being willing to accept the responsibility of taking another person's life does not mean I enjoy it. Here, now, killing those two was the only expedient way to continuing to survive."
"You and your kind are animals."
"So aren't we all, Doctor." Kai scooped up the autorifle and slung it over his shoulder. "Some of us just aren't afraid to admit it."
* * *
Scouting along the bounty hunters' backtrail, Kai found a beat-up old hovertruck. A quick search of it produced a packet of information sheets issued by ComStar to provide the bounty hunters with targets for their searches. He found the warrant for his own capture and destroyed it. He also discovered two other fugitive warrants that described other things he had done but that had not been linked with Dave Jewell.
More important to him, however, was the discovery of a grid map of the area. Truper and Jocko had been assigned to search a wedge of territory that included the small meadow through which the stream ran. It narrowed to a point that Kai recognized as an old firebase. It had been little more than a compound with some quonset huts and storage facilities, but the map made it look as if ComStar had found a new use for it.
"Definitely worth checking out, I think." It occurred to Kai that if one team of bounty-hunters had been given that slice of territory, others would be working similar search zones. Assuming not all the hunters were as bloodthirsty as Truper and Jocko, it struck Kai as quite possible that other refugees had been rounded up and imprisoned at the fire-base.
After a minute or two of fiddling with the ignition panel, he overrode it and punched in a code that started the hoverfans. By the time he brought the truck back to the meadow, he'd hit on a perfect plan for getting into and out of the firebase. Drawing his pistol, he set to work.
Deirdre looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. "I thought you'd abandoned me."
Kai shook his head. "Nope. Just making sure our cover story holds together when we get where we're going."
"I heard shots . . . two. Was there someone else out there?"
"No." Kai hesitated. "Just something I had to do."
"What?"
"You don't want to know." His tongue played over the split in his lip. "Trust me, you don't want to know."
Deirdre stood slowly and brushed pine needles from her clothes. Hugging her arms around herself, she met his eyes with a steely stare. "Tell me."