“It’s him, all right,” breathed the woman with the burning eyes. Her hands were clenched in tight fists, in her lap.
“Do I … know you, ma’am?” he said politely, carefully. Her torch-like heat perturbed him. Half-consciously, he moved closer to Rowan.
Her expression was like marble. Only a slight widening of her eyes, like a woman drilled neatly through the solar plexus by a laser beam, revealed a depth of … what feeling? Love, hate? Tension … His headache worsened.
“As you see,” said Lilly. “Alive and well. Let us return to the discussion of the price.” The round table was littered with cups and crumbs—how long had this conference been going on?
“Whatever you want,” said Admiral Naismith, breathing heavily. “We pay and go.”
“Any price within reason.” The brown-haired older woman gave her commander an oddly quelling look. “We came for a man, not an animated body. A botched revival suggests a discount for damaged goods, to my mind.” That voice, that ironic alto voice … I know you.
“His revival is not botched,” said Rowan sharply. “If there was a problem, it was in the prep—”
The hot woman jerked, and frowned fiercely.
“—but in fact, he’s making a good recovery. Measurable progress every day. It’s just too soon. You’re pushing too hard.” A glance at Lilly? “The stress and pressure slow down the very results they seek to hurry. He pushes himself too hard, he winds himself in knots so that—”
Lilly held up a placating hand. “So speaks my cryo-revival specialist,” she said to the Admiral. “Your clone-brother is in a recovering state, and may be expected to improve. If that is in fact what you desire.”
Rowan bit her lip. The hot woman chewed on her fingertip.
“Now we come to what I desire,” Lilly continued. “And, you may be pleased to learn, it isn’t money. Let us discuss a little recent history. Recent in my view, that is.”
Admiral Naismith glanced out the big square windows, framing another dark Jacksonian winter afternoon, with low scudding clouds starting to spit snow. The force screen sparkled, silently eating the ice spicules. “Recent history is much on my mind, ma’am,” he said to Lilly. “If you know it, you know why I don’t wish to linger here. Get to your point.”
Not nearly oblique enough for Jacksonian business etiquette, but Lilly nodded. “How is Dr. Canaba these days, Admiral?”
“What?”
Succinctly, for a Jacksonian, Lilly again described her interest in the fate of the absconded geneticist. “Yours is the organization that made Hugh Canaba completely disappear. Yours is the organization that lifted ten thousand Marilacan prisoners of war from under the noses of their Cetagandan captors on Dagoola Four, though I admit they have spectacularly not-disappeared. Somewhere between those two proven extremes lies the fate of my little family. You will pardon my tiny joke if I say you appear to me to be just what the doctor ordered.”
Naismith’s eyes widened; he rubbed his face, sucked air through his teeth, and managed a strained-looking grin. “I see. Ma’am. Well. In fact, such a project as you suggest might be quite negotiable, particularly if you think you might like to join Dr. Canaba. I’m not prepared to pull it out of my pockets this afternoon, you understand—”
Lilly nodded.
“But as soon as I make contact with my back-up, I think something might be arranged.”
“Then as soon as you make contact with your back-up, return to us, Admiral, and your clone-twin will be made available to you.”
“No—!” began the hot woman, half-rising; her comrade caught her arm and shook her head, and she sank back into her seat. “Right, Bel,” she muttered.
“We’d hoped to take him today,” said the mercenary, glancing at him. Their eyes intersected joltingly. The Admiral looked away, as if guarding himself from some too-intense stimulus.
“But as you can see, that would strip me of what seems to be my main bargaining chip,” Lilly murmured. “And the usual arrangement of half in advance and half on delivery is obviously impractical. Perhaps a modest monetary retainer would reassure you.”
“They seem to have taken good care of him so far,” said the brown-haired officer in an uncertain voice.
“But it would also,” the Admiral frowned, “give you an opportunity to auction him to other interested parties. I would caution you against starting a bidding war in this matter, ma’am. It could become the real thing.”
“Your interests are protected by your uniqueness, Admiral. No one else on Jackson’s Whole has what I want. You do. And, I think, vice versa. We are very well suited to deal.”
For a Jacksonian, this was bending over backward to encourage. Take it, close the deal! he thought, then wondered why. What did these people want him for? Outside, a gust of wind whipped the snowfall to a blinding, whirling curtain. It ticked on the windows.
It ticked on the windows… .
Lilly was the next to be aware, her dark eyes widening. No one else had noticed yet, the cessation of that silent glitter. Her startled gaze met his, as his head turned back from his first stare outward, and her lips parted for speech.
The window burst inward.
It was a safety-glass; instead of slicing shards, they were all bombarded by a hail of hot pellets. The two mercenary women shot to their feet, Lilly cried out, and Hawk leaped in front of her, a stunner appearing in his hand. Some kind of big aircar was hovering at the window: one, two … three, four huge troopers leaped through.
Transparent biotainer gear covered nerve-disruptor shield-suits; their faces were fully hooded and goggled. Hawk’s repeated stunner fire crackled harmlessly over them.
You’d get farther if you threw the damned stunner at them! He looked around wildly for a projectile weapon, knife, chair, table-leg, anything to attack with. Over one of the mercenary women’s pocket comm links a tinny voice was crying, “Quinn, this is Elena. Something just dropped the building’s force screen. I’m reading energy discharges—what the hell is going on in there? You want back-up?”
“Yes!” screamed the hot woman, rolling aside from a stunner beam, which followed her, crackling, across the carpet. Stunner-tag. The assault was a snatch, not an assassination, then. Hawk finally recovered the wit to pick up the round table and swing with it. He hit one trooper but was stunner-dropped by another. Lilly stood utterly still, watching grimly. A gust of cold wind fluttered her silk pant legs. Nobody aimed at her.
“Which one’s Naismith?” boomed an amplified voice from one of the biotainered troopers. The Dendarii must have disarmed for the parley; the brown-haired mere closed hand-to-hand on an intruder. Not an option open to him. He grabbed Rowan’s hand and dodged behind a chair, trying to get a clear run toward the exit tube.
“Take ’em both,” the leader shouted over the din. A trooper leaped toward the lift tube to cut them off; the rectangular facet of his stunner discharger winked in the light as he found near-point-blank aim.
“Like hell!” yelled the Admiral, cannoning into the trooper. The trooper stumbled and his aim went wild. The last thing he saw as he and Rowan dove for the lift tube was a stunner beam from the leader taking Naismith in the head. Both the other Dendarii were down.
They descended with agonizing slowness. If he and Rowan could get to the force screen generator, could they get it turned back on and trap the attackers inside? Stunner fire sizzled after them, starry bursts on the walls. They twisted in air, somehow landed on their feet, and stumbled backward into the corridor. No time to explain—he grabbed Rowan’s hand and slapped it flat to the Durona-keyed lock-pad, and hit the power-off square with his elbow. The trooper pursuing them yelped and fell three meters, not quite head-first.