Timothy Zahn - The Icarus Hunt

I got an opening and slammed my fist into his neck just behind his ear. He twitched and gave a weak roar that was more than half whimper. I hit him again, and he collapsed and lay still.

I took a few seconds to catch my breath and take a quick look around. No onewas visible. Keeping a cautious hold on his gun hand, I worked the weapon out ofhis grip and pulled it out of the pocket. It was a Kochran-Uzi compactthree-millimeter semiautomatic, a nasty enough weapon in a taverno fight butan extremely stupid thing to carry aboard a starship, where a bullet can gothroughmachinery and hulls with all sorts of unpleasant consequences. Dropping theguninto my pocket, I hauled the unconscious man half to his feet and half leaped, half fell off the slideway.

About ten meters to my right was a stack of empty forklift pallets piled upagainst the corner of one of the buildings. Getting a grip under Fulbright'sarms, I dragged him over and laid him down on the ground facing them. Hisjacket, like mine, was leather, but his shirt was made of a thick but morepliable cloth. I pulled his right arm out of the jacket sleeve, carefullysliced off the exposed shirtsleeve with my pocketknife, put the jacket back on him, and cut the sleeve into thick strips. Two minutes later, his hands were tiedsecurely behind him and he had a gag in his mouth. Another three minutes' workand I had manhandled one of the pallets down off the top of the stack and hadthe edge of it resting more or less comfortably across his legs, with most ofthe weight being supported by the stiff soles of his boots.

Fulbright wasn't going anywhere for a while, and for a long moment I wastemptedto leave it at that and get out while I could. But that five-thousand-commarkreward meant that someone out there had upped the ante on this game, and Istill didn't have the foggiest idea what the stakes were or even what the game was.

But with a little luck, maybe I could at least find out who some of the otherplayers were.

Fulbright's phone was in the same pocket as the flyer. I pulled out both, consulted the flyer, then punched in the local number it listed. A voiceanswered on the second vibe; a voice, I decided, that definitely fit with thewimpish accountant description. "Thompson," he said briskly.

"My name's James," I said, imitating Fulbright's voice as best I could. Oddswere Thompson wouldn't even remember James Fulbright, let alone his voice, butI'd already taken more chances than I cared to for one day. "That guy you'relooking for—Jordan McKell? You said five thousand for finding him. How muchfor delivering him all trussed up?"

He didn't hesitate. "Ten thousand," he said. "Do you have him there now?"

I felt my throat tighten, my somewhat snide preconception of the man vanishingin a puff of unpleasant smoke. No accountant I'd ever met was anywhere nearthat quick and free with the money they handled. Whoever Thompson was, he was nosimple flunky. "Yeah, I got him," I said. "I'll be waiting for you off thenorth spaceport slideway, next to the Number Twelve machine shop. Bring the money."

"We'll be there in fifteen minutes," he promised, and hung up.

I put the phone away, scowling to myself. We. That meant he was bringingfriends, almost certainly friends with muscle. I would have liked to have toldhim to come alone, but that would have looked suspicious—a man who passes outhundred-commark bills as a come-on would hardly try to stiff a customer, certainly not over ten grand. Once again, I considered that the better part of valor would be to run for it; once again, I made myself stay put. I set the stage as best I could, then settled down to wait.

HE WAS THERE well within his promised fifteen minutes, and he did indeed have muscle with him. Unpleasantly familiar muscle: two more members of the Lumpy Clan. Apparently these things liked to travel in pairs.

"Mr. James?" Thompson called toward me as he and the Lumpies hopped off the slideway.

"Right here," I called back, half turning to look vaguely over my shoulder at them as I waved a hand in invitation. I was squatting down facing the now conscious Fulbright with my back to them, a position I hoped would disguise any of the height-and-build cues that might give away my identity. "Come on, hurry,"

I added. "I think he's coming to."

Lying on his left side with his back also to them, Fulbright had his head twisted around and was glaring daggers up at me. But with his gag still in place, and his hands and feet still immobilized, there wasn't a lot he could do about the situation. Even without the gag he probably wouldn't have had much to say, not with my plasmic half-concealed inside my jacket digging into his side.

If we both made it off Dorscind's World intact, I suspected, he wasn't going to be smiling cheerfully the next time we ran into each other.

But at the moment I couldn't be bothered about such vague and uncertain futures.

Right now my sole concern was whether or not I could survive the next ten seconds.

I needn't have worried. Thompson might be more than a flunky, and the Lumpies were professional enough in their own right, but it apparently never occurred to any of them that their quarry might pull something this insane. They hurried incautiously forward, the Lumpies pulling a pace or two ahead of Thompson; and then, as they got within three steps of me, I snapped my head left as if I'd suddenly seen something and jabbed a finger toward a gap between two of the maintenance buildings. "Watch out!" I barked.

The Lumpies were professionals, all right. Braking to an instant halt, they jumped backward in unison, putting themselves between Thompson and the unknown danger. I jumped back, too, landing upright beside Thompson; and as the Lumpies yanked their guns out of their back holsters, I slid around behind Thompson, got an arm around his neck, and pressed my plasmic into his right ear. "Don't turn around," I said conversationally. "But do set your weapons on the ground."

Again in unison, and flagrantly ignoring my orders, they started to swivel around. I shifted my aim and sent a plasma blast directly between them to spatter off the ground ahead. "I said not to turn around," I reminded them, returning my plasmic to its previous resting place against Thompson's sideburn.

He flinched away from the residual muzzle heat, but I pressed it hard against the skin. It wouldn't damage him, and I'd always found that a little mild pain did wonders for cooperation. Especially with people who weren't used to it.

Thompson was apparently very unused to pain. "Don't move," he seconded hastily, his voice breaking slightly at the top. "Do what he says—he means it."

"I do indeed," I agreed. "Anyway, heroics would be wasted. I'm not going tohurt anyone unless I have to—don't forget I could have shot both of you in the backjust now. So be smart and put your guns on the ground in front of you—slowly, of course—and then take two steps past them."

They obeyed quickly and without argument, raising my estimation of Thompson'sstatus another couple of notches. He might look like an accountant with nostomach for even potential conflict; but when he talked, even in a squeakyvoice, people listened.

More importantly, they obeyed. The Lumpies became models of cooperation, dutifully stepping past their weapons and lying facedown as I ordered withtheir hands visible. I retrieved their guns—between them and Fulbright and the firstset of Lumpies, I was starting to make a nice little weapons collection here—

and had Thompson relieve them of the restraints I knew they would have broughtwith them.

He came up with two sets, which seemed to be one set too many unless theyeither had planned to stiff Fulbright or else intended to shackle me hand and footand carry me away draped over someone's shoulder like a bag of cement. Butwhatever the reason, it was certainly a convenient number for my purposes. A minutelater I had the Lumpies cuffed together through one of the slots in the bottompalletwith Thompson cuffed on the other side of the stack. With the weight of therest of the stack on top, and the utter lack of leverage any of them had to workwith, I was pretty sure they would stay put until someone happened by, whichfrom the evidence would probably not be until the next shift change at themaintenance buildings. Hopefully, that wouldn't be for at least another coupleof hours.