"Not a problem," I assured him, feeling chagrined, scared, and stupid all atthe same time. Brother John had totally blindsided me on this one, catching melike some fool fresh off the cabbage truck.
From my right another of his species appeared, tossing a four-pack of cola tothe Grifser with one hand as he reached under my jacket and relieved me of myplasmic with the other. "Now," the first said as their decoy ran off gurglingwith delight over his prize. "Let's go have ourselves a nice little chat."
Flanking me on either side like a couple of long-lost friends, they guided me through the usual crowd of spaceport traffic, along a couple of narrow andincreasingly depopulated service streets, and eventually into a blind alleyblocked off at the far end by a warehouse loading dock. It was a long way togo, I thought, for what was going to be only tentative privacy.
But more importantly, from my point of view anyway, the trip itself wasalreadya major blunder on their part. The ten-minute walk had given me enough time torecover from the shock and start thinking again, and that thinking hadpersuadedme that my original assessment had indeed been the correct one. Whoever thesethugs were, they weren't Brother John's enforcers. Not just because he didn'tlike aliens, but because his boys would have dropped me right there in frontof the StarrComm building instead of engaging in all this unnecessary exercise.
All of which boiled down to the fact that, whatever I wound up having to do tothem, no one was likely to care very much. At least, that's what I hoped itboiled down to.
They settled me with my back against the loading dock and took a prudentcoupleof steps away. The first was now holding his wrist knife openly: a kind ofpushknife sticking out from his palm at right angles to his arm, the weaponstrappedto his hand and wrist so that it couldn't be snatched or kicked out of his hand.
The other was holding my plasmic loosely at his side, not crassly pointed butready if it was needed. Both aliens were roughly human in height and build, Icould see now, except with simian-length arms and foreshortened torsos. Therelief-map look of their faces was repeated over their entire bodies, or atleast the parts that were visible sticking out of the long brown neo-Greektunics they were wearing.
"If this is a shakedown, I'm already broke," I warned, getting in the firstword just to irritate them as I gave their outfits a casual once-over. There wereno bulges or asymmetric bagginess that I could see. Either they didn't have anybackup weapons at all—which would be pretty careless on their part—or elsetheywere holstered behind their backs.
"It's not a shakedown," Lumpy One said, waving his wrist knife back toward themain docking area. "We want your cargo."
I blinked in surprise. "You want to steal fifty cases of combine machineparts?"
I asked incredulously.
They exchanged furtively startled glances. "That's not what you're carrying,"
Lumpy Two growled.
I shrugged. "That's what it says on the manifest and the crates. If there'sanything else in there, the Barnswell Depot is going to have a lot ofexplainingto do."
For a long second Lumpy One seemed at a loss for words. Then his crack of amouth cracked a little wider in what I decided was probably his version of aslysmile. "Clever," he said. "But not clever enough. You are Jordan McKell, youcame here from Meima, and you have a highly valuable cargo aboard your ship.
We want it."
"Jordan who?" I asked. "Sorry, boys, but you missed completely on this one. Myname's Ivo Khachnin, I'm flying a ship called the Singing Buffalo, and I'mcarrying fifty cases of farm-equipment parts. Here—I can prove it." I reacheda hand into my jacket—
"Stop!" Lumpy One barked, leaping forward with knife held ready. "I'll getit."
"Sure, pal," I said, managing to sound both startled and bewildered by hisviolent reaction. In point of fact, I'd been counting on it. "Fine. Helpyourself."
He approached at a cautious angle, staying out of his partner's line of fire, which at least proved he hadn't picked up his street-mugging technique solelyfrom watching Grade-B star-thrillers. Carefully, he set the point of his wristknife against my throat and reached into my inside jacket pocket. The probingfingers located my ID folder and pulled it out, holding it cautiously by acorner as if expecting it to be booby-trapped.
And as it came free from my jacket, the bills I'd slipped carelessly inside inthe StarrComm booth slid out and fluttered colorfully to the ground.
It was a small distraction, but it was all I needed. As their eyes flickedinvoluntarily to the floating commarks, I jerked my head back and around, movingit out of contact with Lumpy One's knife, simultaneously snapping up my lefthand to catch his wrist behind the knife strap. Pushing his arm high, I duckedunder it and spun 180 degrees around, ending up standing behind him with hisknife arm between us, bent upward toward his neck at what I very much hopedwas a painful angle.
"Release him!" Lumpy Two spat. He was holding my plasmic straight out at menow, clutched in a two-handed grip, his whole body trembling.
"Make me," I grunted, looping my right arm around Lumpy One's throat andpullinghim hard back against me. If I'd guessed wrong about this—if he did not infact have a backup weapon—I was now officially in serious trouble.
But he did. There it was, a hard flat object pressing against my abdomen as Iheld him to me. Cranking his arm up another couple of centimeters, eliciting agasped phrase that was probably an unfavorable comment on my parentage, Itwisted the knife tip down and jabbed it into the fabric of his tunic. Withthe jammed knife preventing him from lowering his arm, and the limits of his owntendon structure preventing him from raising it, the limb was effectivelyself-immobilized, freeing my left hand. Reaching up the back of his tunic, Igrabbed his weapon.
Lumpy One shouted something, probably a warning, to his companion. But by thenit was already too late. Almost too late, anyway. Lumpy Two got off a shotthat nearly scorched the side of my face as the superheated plasma ball made a nearmiss, and fired another that would have seared my right arm and possiblykilled Lumpy One outright if I hadn't bent my knees suddenly, driving my kneecapsinto the backs of Lumpy One's legs and dropping us both halfway to the ground. Thejolt of the sudden movement sent the embedded knife tip tearing a couple ofcentimeters farther into the cloth and, judging from Lumpy One's gasp, intothe skin beneath it as well.
And then I had his weapon out and pointed over his shoulder. The gun wasn't remotely like anything I was familiar with, but I didn't have time to do anything except hope like hell it had some stopping power behind it. Flicking a
thumb key that I hoped was the safety, I squeezed the trigger.
From the size and shape of the weapon, I would have guessed it to be a flechette thrower or maybe a two-shot scattergun. It wasn't. My hair and skin tingled with electrical discharge; and suddenly Lumpy Two was writhing in agony in the middle of a sheathing of blue-white coronal fire.
The electrical firestorm lasted about two seconds. From the looks of things, Lumpy Two himself didn't last nearly that long.
Under other circumstances I would probably have taken a few seconds to gape at the unexpected display of firepower I'd just unleashed. But I wasn't given that chance. Mouthing obvious obscenities, Lumpy One broke out of my grasp with a sudden lurch and spun around to face me, the sound of tearing cloth warning that he was half a second away from freeing his knife hand. I jumped to the side, swinging the alien weapon around; and as he got his arm free and lunged toward me, I fired again.
With the same result. Three seconds later, I was standing alone over two alien bodies, both of them charred literally beyond recognition.
I had seen a lot of repulsive things in my years of knocking around the Spiral, but this one definitely took the cake. Glancing around for any sign of witnesses—our little confrontation seemed to have gone unnoticed—I squatted down beside the corpses, trying to breathe through my mouth as I forced myself to sift through what was left of their clothing.