[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
mobility was flowing back into them.
The man who pretended to be David Korf stood two blocks away looking down the
street.
Ifeel like
Fron-tier Rabbi, two-gun sage of the Talmud, he thought crazily. He had
removed most of the padding from the coat and it was on now so that it could
be dis-carded in an instant. He'd cut his pockets so that when his hands were
in them they rested on two highly efficient Com Police machine pistols, the
kind you didn't even have to aim to shoot.
The kind nobody but cops was supposed to have.
He spoke into the portacom he held in his right hand. "How's it going, Paddy?
What've we got?"
"Well, no innocents if that's a bother," a thickly ac-cented human voice said.
Most old spacers were some-what nuts; Paddy, whose hobby had been folk songs,
had decided he was Irish long ago and acted it despite the fact he had one of
the blackest African skins ever seen. "Looks like they really is a convention
some-place."
"No other ships in, either," Brazil noted. "So? Your other boys as good as
you?"
"You kin trust me to pick 'em, Nate," Paddy replied. "We got us some of the
supergals, it looks like, on the rooftops."
Brazil was surprised. "Olympians? Here? Damn! So it's that crazy cult after
all!" He was almost dis-appointed. He'd been hoping for something more
interesting. Paddy's reply raised his hopes again.
"No, it looks like the babes moved in on your other folk. There's dead or
knocked-out horsies all over the rooftops. Looks like ye got a lotta people
after ye, Natty!"
That was better. "You got the Olympians?" he asked. "How many?"
"Three that we see on the rooftops; there may be more, but if so they ain't
layin' for ye on high."
That was manageable. Any others would be in the warehouse. If he was lucky the
Olympians had done the dirty work for him and he had only to deal with them
and not with the unknown enemy if the two were different, as it now appeared.
"Zap 'em, hard stun, as soon as you see me," he in-structed. "They're not
human and pretty tough, so give it all the juice you got."
"And if that still don't get 'em?" Paddy pressed eagerly.
"Do what you have to," Brazil responded. "Then take their positions and cover
me in the square."
"Righto. Come ahead" was the reply.
Page 92
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Brazil put the portacom in an inside shirt pocket and started down the street.
It's a kind of pretty day, he thought. Idiotic way to spend a pretty day like
this.
Ahead he saw the opening into the small square with a monument of some kind in
the center a huge
Rhone of age-greened bronze pulling some sort of wa-gon, the god of commerce
or somesuch. The statue was the only impediment, but it would provide cover
for somebody, he thought. No, Paddy's men would have seen anyone.
Or would they? He stopped just short of the square, just out of sight, and
peered hard at the statue.
How many Olympians could use it as a backdrop to fade into? he wondered idly.
He put his hands through his pockets to the pistols. Well, superwomen or no
super-women they'd have to be unarmed. He swallowed hard, inhaled then
exhaled, and stepped into the square.
At that moment Paddy and his men fired. The Olympian women on the rooftops
quietly stiffened and rolled over. Nothing was heard or seen in the square,
but Brazil knew that his ambush had been successful; if not, there'd have been
yells, screams even possibly explosions, knowing Paddy.
He glanced over the warehouses washed in the bright sunlight, spotted the
Durkh Shipping Corpora-tion sign on one, and headed toward it carefully,
keep-ing half an eye on the statue. With the snow the green centaur looked
like it had white mange.
Inside the warehouse Mavra was the first to rise groggily to her feet and
recover her wits.
They'd been double-crossed by the Olympians, there was no doubt in her mind.
That meant the women were laying for Brazil in the square! She reached the
door, slid it open, and saw him approach-ing diagonally across from her.
Quickly she reached for the transceiver and flipped it to all-call.
"Talgur! Galgan! Muklo!" she called. There was no answer. She tossed the thing
aside in frustration. She had to warn him, she knew, had to get him out of
there But how to do it without getting shot?
It was cold, yes, but to hell with cold! She re-moved coat and long sweater so
she was now un-clothed.
That would show him she had no weapons concealed or otherwise. Without
thinking further of the risk she kicked off on her powerful equine hind legs
and bounded full-speed into the square right toward the tiny black-clad
bearded figure approaching casu-ally.
"Go back!" she screamed at him, all the time charg-ing. "It's a trap!"
He stopped dead, seemingly amazed by it all and taken slightly aback by her
rush toward him.
The Olympian leader, cursing, broke from her place by the statue and started
running for Brazil, scream-ing, "Shoot her, sisters! Shoot!" As she did so,
her shrill plea echoed eerily off the buildings on
the square.
Brazil saw the Olympian amazon rushing him to his left and the specter of Wuju
charging across and was completely stumped. "Holy shit!" he managed.
Paddy was quicker. As soon as he saw the Olym-pian break from the statue he
drew a bead and pre-pared to fire. The Olympian leader beat Mavra to Brazil
and screamed, "Lord, are you Nathan
Brazil?" At that moment Paddy fired and she was knocked to the ground and lay
unmoving, an amazed expression on her face.
Mavra was taken by surprise by the shot but assumed that at least one of her
people had managed to retain control of a rifle. Two Rhone crewmembers,
Brazil's shadows, suddenly galloped into the square, guns drawn, from two
different street openings. Mavra briefly felt reassured. She tried to stop but
her mo-mentum was carrying her past Brazil.
More pulse-rifles fired from the rooftops, felling the Rhone. Again caught
off-guard, Mavra swerved to avoid Brazil but he'd already shed his coat to
Page 93
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
reveal a large double-bolstered gunbelt. One of the machine pistols was in his
left hand. He didn't try to avoid her; instead, as she swerved and slowed, he
jumped on her back!
She almost buckled from the unexpected extra weight, but as she stopped and
reared in an attempt to throw him, she felt the cold of a pistol in the small
of her humanoid back.
"Just don't try anything," he warned sharply. She knew his voice well from
Obie's files. She stopped dead.
"Head up the street toward the port authority build-ing," he ordered. She
calmed herself and started slowly in the indicated direction, completely
confused about what had happened.
"Who's up there?" she managed, pointing at the rooftops.
Brazil laughed, enjoying his full control. "My peo-ple, of course! You
should've covered the back alley and the window last night!"
She was sweating now, and felt the cold very bit-terly all of a sudden. She
shivered.
"Mind telling me where we're going? I'm freezing to death!"
He laughed again. "Tit for tat. I damn near froze going down that brick wall
in the snowstorm last night.
You won't die. Just get to the port authority." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szamanka888.keep.pl
mobility was flowing back into them.
The man who pretended to be David Korf stood two blocks away looking down the
street.
Ifeel like
Fron-tier Rabbi, two-gun sage of the Talmud, he thought crazily. He had
removed most of the padding from the coat and it was on now so that it could
be dis-carded in an instant. He'd cut his pockets so that when his hands were
in them they rested on two highly efficient Com Police machine pistols, the
kind you didn't even have to aim to shoot.
The kind nobody but cops was supposed to have.
He spoke into the portacom he held in his right hand. "How's it going, Paddy?
What've we got?"
"Well, no innocents if that's a bother," a thickly ac-cented human voice said.
Most old spacers were some-what nuts; Paddy, whose hobby had been folk songs,
had decided he was Irish long ago and acted it despite the fact he had one of
the blackest African skins ever seen. "Looks like they really is a convention
some-place."
"No other ships in, either," Brazil noted. "So? Your other boys as good as
you?"
"You kin trust me to pick 'em, Nate," Paddy replied. "We got us some of the
supergals, it looks like, on the rooftops."
Brazil was surprised. "Olympians? Here? Damn! So it's that crazy cult after
all!" He was almost dis-appointed. He'd been hoping for something more
interesting. Paddy's reply raised his hopes again.
"No, it looks like the babes moved in on your other folk. There's dead or
knocked-out horsies all over the rooftops. Looks like ye got a lotta people
after ye, Natty!"
That was better. "You got the Olympians?" he asked. "How many?"
"Three that we see on the rooftops; there may be more, but if so they ain't
layin' for ye on high."
That was manageable. Any others would be in the warehouse. If he was lucky the
Olympians had done the dirty work for him and he had only to deal with them
and not with the unknown enemy if the two were different, as it now appeared.
"Zap 'em, hard stun, as soon as you see me," he in-structed. "They're not
human and pretty tough, so give it all the juice you got."
"And if that still don't get 'em?" Paddy pressed eagerly.
"Do what you have to," Brazil responded. "Then take their positions and cover
me in the square."
"Righto. Come ahead" was the reply.
Page 92
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Brazil put the portacom in an inside shirt pocket and started down the street.
It's a kind of pretty day, he thought. Idiotic way to spend a pretty day like
this.
Ahead he saw the opening into the small square with a monument of some kind in
the center a huge
Rhone of age-greened bronze pulling some sort of wa-gon, the god of commerce
or somesuch. The statue was the only impediment, but it would provide cover
for somebody, he thought. No, Paddy's men would have seen anyone.
Or would they? He stopped just short of the square, just out of sight, and
peered hard at the statue.
How many Olympians could use it as a backdrop to fade into? he wondered idly.
He put his hands through his pockets to the pistols. Well, superwomen or no
super-women they'd have to be unarmed. He swallowed hard, inhaled then
exhaled, and stepped into the square.
At that moment Paddy and his men fired. The Olympian women on the rooftops
quietly stiffened and rolled over. Nothing was heard or seen in the square,
but Brazil knew that his ambush had been successful; if not, there'd have been
yells, screams even possibly explosions, knowing Paddy.
He glanced over the warehouses washed in the bright sunlight, spotted the
Durkh Shipping Corpora-tion sign on one, and headed toward it carefully,
keep-ing half an eye on the statue. With the snow the green centaur looked
like it had white mange.
Inside the warehouse Mavra was the first to rise groggily to her feet and
recover her wits.
They'd been double-crossed by the Olympians, there was no doubt in her mind.
That meant the women were laying for Brazil in the square! She reached the
door, slid it open, and saw him approach-ing diagonally across from her.
Quickly she reached for the transceiver and flipped it to all-call.
"Talgur! Galgan! Muklo!" she called. There was no answer. She tossed the thing
aside in frustration. She had to warn him, she knew, had to get him out of
there But how to do it without getting shot?
It was cold, yes, but to hell with cold! She re-moved coat and long sweater so
she was now un-clothed.
That would show him she had no weapons concealed or otherwise. Without
thinking further of the risk she kicked off on her powerful equine hind legs
and bounded full-speed into the square right toward the tiny black-clad
bearded figure approaching casu-ally.
"Go back!" she screamed at him, all the time charg-ing. "It's a trap!"
He stopped dead, seemingly amazed by it all and taken slightly aback by her
rush toward him.
The Olympian leader, cursing, broke from her place by the statue and started
running for Brazil, scream-ing, "Shoot her, sisters! Shoot!" As she did so,
her shrill plea echoed eerily off the buildings on
the square.
Brazil saw the Olympian amazon rushing him to his left and the specter of Wuju
charging across and was completely stumped. "Holy shit!" he managed.
Paddy was quicker. As soon as he saw the Olym-pian break from the statue he
drew a bead and pre-pared to fire. The Olympian leader beat Mavra to Brazil
and screamed, "Lord, are you Nathan
Brazil?" At that moment Paddy fired and she was knocked to the ground and lay
unmoving, an amazed expression on her face.
Mavra was taken by surprise by the shot but assumed that at least one of her
people had managed to retain control of a rifle. Two Rhone crewmembers,
Brazil's shadows, suddenly galloped into the square, guns drawn, from two
different street openings. Mavra briefly felt reassured. She tried to stop but
her mo-mentum was carrying her past Brazil.
More pulse-rifles fired from the rooftops, felling the Rhone. Again caught
off-guard, Mavra swerved to avoid Brazil but he'd already shed his coat to
Page 93
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
reveal a large double-bolstered gunbelt. One of the machine pistols was in his
left hand. He didn't try to avoid her; instead, as she swerved and slowed, he
jumped on her back!
She almost buckled from the unexpected extra weight, but as she stopped and
reared in an attempt to throw him, she felt the cold of a pistol in the small
of her humanoid back.
"Just don't try anything," he warned sharply. She knew his voice well from
Obie's files. She stopped dead.
"Head up the street toward the port authority build-ing," he ordered. She
calmed herself and started slowly in the indicated direction, completely
confused about what had happened.
"Who's up there?" she managed, pointing at the rooftops.
Brazil laughed, enjoying his full control. "My peo-ple, of course! You
should've covered the back alley and the window last night!"
She was sweating now, and felt the cold very bit-terly all of a sudden. She
shivered.
"Mind telling me where we're going? I'm freezing to death!"
He laughed again. "Tit for tat. I damn near froze going down that brick wall
in the snowstorm last night.
You won't die. Just get to the port authority." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]