Brian Stableford - Asgard's Secret

“Mr. Rousseau does not understand,” he said flatly.

The star-captain’s face never changed expression. I couldn’t tell whether she was looking at me or at the creature behind me.

“Trooper Rousseau is in deep trouble,” she said, laconically. “He faces charges of cowardice and desertion. He ran out on us when he thought we were in trouble. If you want him, you can keep him. Frankly, I don’t care.”

They say that when the chips are down, you find out who your real friends are. I didn’t seem to have any. The only person with whom I’d recently exchanged an amicable word was Myrlin, who seemed even more unpopular than I was. I had been worried before, but now I began to feel downright terrified. I didn’t know the star-captain well enough to fathom her real motives and true beliefs. I knew that Amara Guur was a verminous bastard who would kill everyone in sight given half a chance, but what the star-captain’s game was I really couldn’t be certain. Maybe she did think she could make a deal. Maybe she did figure that zapping the android was so important that it was worth taking sides with Amara Guur.

“If your men will come out of hiding,” said Guur, “mine will do the same. When we are all clearly visible, we will all lay down our arms. Is that agreeable?”

“Certainly,” said Susarma Lear, with apparent equanimity.

Then, somewhere away to the left, there was the unmistakable sound of a flame-pistol erupting. There was a great gout of smoke, and the jungle went mad as every oversized insect in the place started chattering in blind panic.

I had already planned my move. I ducked out of the way of Guur’s needier, stuck my arm between his legs, and heaved upwards. In the low gravity Guur weighed less than half what he normally did, and although I couldn’t lift him vertically I got him off the ground, pitching him sideways so that he cannoned into Jacinthe Siani and knocked her flying. The crash-gun she’d been holding flew from her grasp and landed in the bell of a huge flower whose petals were amber streaked with dark red.

Amara Guur was too clever to let go of his needier, but for the moment he was all tied up trying to collect himself. His reflexes were quick, but they were the wrong reflexes for this kind of gravity—when he thrust against the ground, trying to bring himself back to his feet, he thrust far too hard, and completely lost his balance again, tumbling in mid-air in a long somersault.

The vormyran Guur had called Kaat hadn’t been at all inconvenienced by his master’s acrobatics, but when he’d jerked his own needier up to the firing position he’d also trusted his old reflexes, which were geared to functioning in Asgard-normal gravity. The shots he fired went high and wide.

The star-captain had obviously been trained for low-gee combat. I couldn’t see where she’d stashed her own gun, but it was suddenly in her hand, and the entire upper part of Kaat’s body was suddenly aflame as the flesh boiled away from the bones.

I dived for the flower where the crash-gun had fallen. Although I’d lost sight of it, my groping hand caught it up without a fumble. I let the dive carry through, rolling with it. The enormous flower, crushed beneath my weight, felt like a sheet of sticky rubber but it didn’t stop my forward roll. When my feet touched the ground again I let myself come upright, stretching with just the right touch of delicacy, bringing the gun up to fire.

I felt as if everything were happening in slow motion— as, after a fashion, it was. While I was up on my feet again I could see that Amara Guur had just about regained control of his own body. He’d fetched up against the curving wall and with its aid he was bracing himself, bringing the needier round to aim at my midriff.

I fired, holding the trigger down to discharge the last three bullets as fast as they would go. The first one hit him in the navel, the second in the sternum. The third exploded his head.

The recoil kicked me backwards and sent me sprawling under a bush, where a congregation of giant cockroaches was wailing away like a choir of demented sirens. When I landed in their midst they wriggled away as fast as their scrawny legs could carry them.

When I was able to stand up again, the star-captain was holding her gun before her, covering Jacinthe Siani, who was pressed back against the wall with hands thrown wide, looking terrified. Serne was emerging from the bushes to one side, Crucero from the other. There was no sign of Heleb or the last vormyran.

I didn’t expect ever to see either of them again.

The noise of the insects was beginning to die down, and by the time we were all together it was possible for us to speak and be heard.

“Nice move, Rousseau,” said the star-captain. “Maybe you’ll make a starship trooper after all.”

“I grew up in low-gee,” I said, by way of explanation. “Never did any real fighting, but I played a lot of games. Guur lived all his life on planets, and he was careless enough to let me know it. I knew he’d be a sitting duck once he was off-balance.”

I looked down at Guur’s shattered body. There was blood everywhere. It looked no different from human blood—even the stink was the same.

“I could have taken all three of them,” said the star-captain, matter-of-factly. “But it was nice of you to help, considering. I suppose you didn’t believe me, though, when I said that he was welcome to you.”

“I figured you were marginally less likely to gun me down than he was. You always intended to blast him, though, didn’t you? All the stuff about co-operating was just to gain time while these two tidied up Heleb and the last vormyran, wasn’t it?”

“Right,” she said, already turning away to face Crucero.

“The predator is clever,” I murmured. “The predator deceives.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Just a little motto I picked up,” I told her. “You were bluffing too, I hope, when you mentioned charging me with cowardice and desertion?”

“It had crossed my mind,” she said. “But when poor Kally started screaming, I guess we all thought we were dead. I’ll trade off that one against the fact that you backed me up here—okay?”

She didn’t seem exactly over-generous, but I figured that the result was acceptable.

“What do we do with her?” asked Crucero, waving his flame-pistol at Jacinthe Siani.

“Kill her,” advised Serne casually. For a moment, he reminded me very strongly of Heleb.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “She might be useful to me. She’s probably the only one left who can tell the Tetrax the whole truth about my being framed. I need her.”

“That’s okay,” said the star-captain. “She’s harmless now, and she isn’t going to give us any trouble—are you?”

Jacinthe Siani shook her head enthusiastically.

“If you want her,” said Serne, “you can look after her.” He slapped a gun into my hand—a needier, which he’d recovered from one of the dead bodies.

I took it, and glanced at the part of the forest from which he’d emerged. The noise of the insects hadn’t died away, and seemed to be increasing again. I suddenly realised why. The moment I saw what was happening, the stink of it cut through the riot of odours like a knife, and my heart skipped a beat.

“Merde!” I said, too softly to be clearly heard.

They saw from my expression that something was wrong, and the star-captain turned quickly to look at whatever it was that had alarmed me.

The billowing smoke was gushing furiously now, filling the margin between the topmost leaves and the twelve-metre sky, already beginning to blot out the vivid electric lights, bringing night to the jungle for what might have been the first time in thousands of years.