Extremis (44 page)

“We will make less noise and hide better if we go as two separate groups. And if one of us is found—”

“The other might not be. It is logical but—”

And that was when a black shape loomed out of the right-hand branch of the intersection. Ipshef gasped, reached out to Orthezh in (love, panic, fear)—but the shape slid past his back. Deliverance?

No, The shadow was a
Destoshaz
that had simply slipped behind Orthezh to get to the humans. She pulsed out to them to (Run!), hoping they would hear her
selnarm
scream—

She did not feel the
skeerba
as it cut into her from behind, severing her spine and tearing through her heart, all in one savage, sinuous twist. She recognized that attack, in a strange moment of pre-mortem lucidity, as a death strike also used to impart a final insult to the one attacked: its message was
You are so inept at
maatkah
that I can kill you without any fear that my claws will snag within your harmless body.

And, obligingly, Ipshef died as harmlessly and gently as she had lived.

Orthezh had seen the Death-Vowed that swept in behind her and was already moving as her torso bulged obscenely outward, distended by the interior ravages of the deeply penetrating back-strike. His own claws sprang from their tentacle sheathes, vengeance and agony surging out of him in a ferocious wave of
selnarm
—

—which ended as abruptly as it had risen. Another Death-Vowed assassin, following the first that had slipped behind him, cleanly slashed the back of his head free from the top of his spinal column.

The first Death-Vowed had already reached the humans, who fled, screaming. But rather than attack, he swerved around and then ahead of them; then he wheeled about,
skeerba
ready. The
griarfeksh
stumbled to a halt, the ones in the front falling in their panic to stop. The other five Death-Vowed came loping up behind. Arms whipped out,
skeerba
met flesh with a sound like hacksaws slicing at a tarpaulin; the rear two humans went down, one spraying blood out of an arterial wound. The Death-Vowed clambered over the fallen bodies, the last two humans cowering and whimpering—

A ragged chorus of staccato weapon reports filled the corridor. Three of the Death-Vowed toppled, one thrashing as if its brain were already dead but the body refused to believe it. The other two in the rear spun and leaped toward the new threat—

—which turned out to be two teams of Marines, shooting high to avoid hitting the cringing civilians. The two Baldy heads and torsos shredded into tattered ruins of flesh, bone, and cartilage. The last Death-Vowed at the rear, realizing it had but seconds to complete its mission of assassination, swept both arms back. With
skeerba
ready in one cluster and claws snicking out of the other—

—the Baldy blinked its main eye shut, suddenly motionless at the sound of a single, thunderous report. Igor Danilenko lowered his Alliant-Rimstar battle-rifle and spat. The Arduan’s central eye opened again—a bloody, oozing ruin—and the alien toppled over, as limp and heavy as a slaughtered steer.

McGee raced forward, checking bodies, sad for the losses but relieved that Jennifer was not among them. He lifted one of the human survivors—a balding, rather frail man—and said, “Sir, you’ve got to focus and give me information.”

“Wha—yes? Yes?”

“Are you one of the artists the Baldies abducted?”

“Well, not really abdu—”

“Yes,” interrupted the other human survivor, a thickset woman of middle age who lifted herself stiffly from the floor. “We’re the artists.”

“And where are the rest of you?”

“Don’t know. Ankaht split us up.”

“Ankaht?”

“She’s the Arduan in charge of the translation project.”

“Uh…okay. Are some of the humans—eh, subjects—still in the sleep-study lab area?”

“Don’t know anything about that. But Ankaht evacuated the general-observation labs. I guess she heard that these other Arduans were coming after us.”

Shit. My neatly packaged cluster of objectives has now fragmented into various, moving pieces. Shit and shit. I knew this op started too smoothly.
“Where might the Baldi—the Arduans try to hide themselves?”

“Maybe in our quarters?”

McGee shook his head. “That’s probably the first place the attackers will look, so anyone who’s there is probably already—eh, anywhere else?”

The thickset woman thought. “The safest place would be the discreet-observation room in the library. It’s on the sixth floor.”

McGee knew the blueprints of the other floors pretty well, but her description wasn’t ringing any bells. “What discreet-observation room?”

“The Psych staff put in a hidden observation room so they can watch social interaction in a non-laboratory setting.”

“Can you show me where it is?”

“Sure.”

“Good.” McGee toggled the command circuit to Li. “Harry, you hear all that?”

“No, I was napping.”

“Figures. Listen, this snoop room sounds like our best bet. But just in case they’ve taken Jen somewhere else, I want you to continue on to the Sleep-Observation Labs.”

“Got it. If I find her, should I—?”

“No, Harry. We maintain as much radio silence as much as possible from here on out. I’ve got your position via transponder on the HUD. You just check the lab and follow any leads you might find. As you go, watch out for hostiles coming back from the main human dormitory area. Rendezvous in eight minutes at the exfil point.”

“Roger. We’re moving.”

McGee toggled the channel for Simonson. “Mei, how’re you doing?”

“Some company on the way.”

“Radio silence unless your position is compromised.”

“Yep. Out.”

McGee turned to the stocky woman, who was looking up at him, hands on her hips. “Ma’am, what’s the least obtrusive way to get to the library?”

* * *

Khremhet sent calm (approval) out among his fellow Death-Vowed as they spun, tumbled, and slashed their way through the last three Arduan researchers and five
griarfeksh
. One of the humans—a large, hirsute creature—surprised the Death-Vowed who attacked him: nimble for his size, the fur-faced male spun to avoid a lethal slash, rotating all the way around through his spin so that he was now behind his Arduan attacker. The
griarfeksh
’s two hairy arms caught his would-be executioner about the neck, pulled him close and did not simply squeeze: they cinched tight, like a pair of short-stroke pistons compressing. The snap of the
Destoshaz
’s neck vertebra was audible throughout the room.

There is some training in this one,
thought Khremhet, who crossed over to the human in a single, high-arcing leap. The human turned, hands at the ready—but Khremhet twisted in midair and landed short of the human. As he did, he tucked down into a tight, fluid roll that brought him up behind his adversary. Without stopping to uncurl fully, Khremhet swept his own talons across the back of the human’s knee even as the patch-furred
zheteksh
was turning to attack. Tendons severed, the human fell, stifling a howl of pain down into a harsh gargle—an act of profound self-control for which Khremhet felt a pulse of respect, just as he struck upwards with his
skeerba
, slashing deep into and across the
griarfeksh
’s pale throat. The animal’s dying blood-spray spattered across the First Blade of the Death-Vowed, who shuddered at such a soiling of his person. Arduan blood was arguably an honor, but the reeking spume from a two-eyed animal such as—

His lieutenant sent (respect). “We are done here, First Blade.”

“So we are.” Khremhet tried to shake off the
griarfesksh
’s blood. “Guzhgef, conduct a search of the upper floors and other locations where any stragglers might hide.”

“Yes, First Blade. If any remain unfound, we shall find them.”

“Excellent, Second Blade. The rest of us will now follow in support of the first team that went to the Elder’s quarters.”

* * *

Fighting the instinct to cradle her baby in both arms, Jennifer shifted Zander so that his spine lay along the inside of her forearm, which she clutched tight against her body. She needed the other arm for balance as she ran, following Ankaht through the maze of narrow office corridors. When they reached the central bank of elevators, Ankaht paused, thought, signaled “Wait here,” and, moving to the left, opened the fire door leading to the staircase. She slipped inside, evidently listening and sensing for any movement above or below.

That was when three Arduans, all in black tunics, came trotting around the right-hand corner. They stopped, looked at Jennifer, who looked at them and clutched her baby close. She was about to send a
selnarm
cry after Ankaht, when the
shaxzhu
Elder’s pulse came clear and tight—and through what felt like an armored tube, as though she was trying to limit its reception to Jennifer alone. “Jennifer. Flee into the office behind you. Then hit the fire alarm.”

And without question or thought, Jennifer did just that, sprinting and panting, Zander giggling as he was jounced. She could hear the three
Destoshaz
behind her, slow and wary at first. But by the time she reached the office door, they were coming hard. She shut and locked the door, looked for the fire alarm but couldn’t find it. The first
Destoshaz
crashed into the door, trying to break it down. Jennifer saw the office had another door, one that opened into an open space with an infinitude of cubicles. Maybe if she ran that way—

Ankaht’s thought interrupted hers. “No, Jennifer. Trust me. Trip the fire alarm and wait there.”

Which was when Jen saw the fire alarm—and the tip of the bit of a small hand drill that one of the assassins was using on the door’s lock. Every primal instinct told her to run and keep running. But Ankaht had said otherwise, and after all, Ankaht was—well, she was Ankaht.

Jennifer pulled the lever of the fire alarm that was mounted next to the door.

The triple-time shrieking of the alarm system started immediately. The three Arduan assassins paused, looked baffled for a moment, and then went back to their drilling. The drill bit came through the lock, the door swung open, the first black-garbed killer stepped through—just as Ankaht came soaring, literally soaring, through the air behind them.

She landed with her full weight on the rearmost of the three Death-Vowed, riding his back down to the ground and tumbling him into his two co-conspirators. The second one—the one with the drill—fell. The other stumbled but turned it into a shoulder roll that took him into the room with Jennifer.

From what Jennifer could see, Ankaht had somehow used her claws to kill the one whose back she had leaped upon. The one with the drill tried rising but saw he was about to be struck down by the strange three-clawed weapon that Ankaht—like the assassins—was wielding in one of her clusters. He raised one cluster to block Ankaht’s oddly imprecise roundhouse cut while his other cluster swung back, clutching his own three-clawed weapon. But he had let his attention slip away from Ankaht’s feet. Her left leg snapped out and caught him low in the chest. He went back with a grunt. In a second, she had leapt upon him and buried the claws of her unarmed cluster into his throat. Scissoring her claws together sharply, she then yanked them upward with a twist. Her adversary fell aside, clutching the long, jagged hole where the front of his neck used to be.

Ankaht had ridden the momentum of her backward ripping motion into a rearward hop, just in time to narrowly dodge a powerful cut from the weapon of the third assassin. The flurry of blows and blocks that ensued was too fast for Jennifer to follow—but as it progressed, Ankaht gave ground slowly, slowly, until they were halfway back to the elevators.

And then Ankaht emitted a wide-open, desperate
selnarm
scream. “Now! Run!” And Jennifer almost did—before she realized why the pulse had been sent out as an open message, not through the tight private tube that Ankaht had used the first time. Jennifer was just starting to smile as the last assassin spun to check on the flight of his human target—who, oddly, was standing very still. Staring at him. Jennifer could see in those alien eyes that he, too, had figured out Ankaht’s trick, but a second too late. He spun about, arms rising into a cross-block defense—

But discovered a
skeerba
already sliding deep into his chest. He twitched, drew his own weapon back for a final strike, but Ankaht yanked her
skeerba
—still deep in his upper torso—upward sharply. The last assassin breathed out, blood gargling up over his narrow lips as he slumped down, quite dead.

“Shit,” said Jennifer looking at the bodies.

“Yes,” agreed Ankaht, “that was very close.”

“No, I mean your fighting. Can you teach me that?”

(Amusement, fondness.) “Probably not. It is based on the principles of our more flexible joints and spines. But enough. We must hurry.”

“Where?”

“The Extreme Environment Trauma Lab.”

They started running. Jennifer, carrying Zander as if she were running with an ancient rugby ball clutched tight against her, asked, “Why there?”

“That Lab connects to an entirely separate wing of the building—the Post Abaria Recovery Center—through a single shared resource.”

“Which is?”

“A hyperbaric chamber. The safety seals of which cannot be overridden without special command codes, once it has been sealed and activated.”

Jennifer smiled slowly. “I get it.”

“Good. Then run faster.”

She did.

Neither of them noticed that Ankaht had not fully avoided the third assassin’s first
skeerba
sweep: emerging lazily from a nick not much bigger than a paper cut, droplets of her blood seeped and fell after every fourth or fifth step.

* * *

Second Blade Guzhgef entered the library quickly, scanning with eyes and
selnarm
both. Too many of the researchers and humans were unaccounted for—and they had checked almost every other wing of this building. Perhaps the
griarfeksh
were sheltering in a stairwell, or one of the service rooms accessed through them. He motioned to the two Death-Vowed behind him, reached for the handle of the fire door that led into the staircase—