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The nighttime sky was preternaturally clear. Stars shone, each encircled by an individual frosty halo. The mist-gauzed Genrichian moonring split its milky light upon the greenway as the damaged lodka slowed to a weary halt at a prudent distance from newfallen rock which darkened the ring-silvered sward before the roadcut where the machine had earlier been ambushed.
Even so, they were anticipated. For the briefest moment, those inside the damaged machine found themselves bathed in the tepid, scattered scarlet of someone's faraway designator. A dull thump! vibrated the hull. The fabric of the lodka began singing with the energies of quickblades directed towards it at the furthest extremity of their useful range.
Issuing terse instructions, Eugene the Sorokin levered the hatch-ladder to the ground and preceded those he had chosen----if such a word was appropriate, given millions he might have picked before depending upon 3 aging Cossacks and two untried lads---to assist him. He knew he had small hope of finding those responsible for this villainy, but even less choice about trying, not only as a man whose family had been assaulted, but as the planet's Oligarch-Hereditary, representative and enforcer of the Premier's law.
At the Sorokin's direction (given with a trepidation which, if the father were lucky, the boy would never know of), Eugene fils, armed with a borrowed quickblade as untried as himself, departed for the left side of the tumbled roadcut with Zaytseva's erstwhile wheelchair-pushing servant. The Malinovsyn-Korochuvak bodyguards, specialized to the task assigned them, newer but of inferior quality, went with his younger, unarmed, and less-experienced brother Adam through the menacing shadows down to the middle of the cut. The Sorokin himself would take the right, whence he believed the blades had originated.
His own shopworn quickblade, although he bore it all his waking hours, felt odd to him (it was always thus before a fight too long anticipated) where it lay along the back of his forearm. Its curved powerpack was warm, strapped to his elbow. Its cooler axis lay hard against his flesh, fastened about his wrist. Its lensed beam-end projected a line or two beyond his knuckles, and the yoke, two lines from front to back, palm-wide and kidney-shaped, was no more than one-tenth that thickness, lifetime-tested, ready in his hand.
The Sorokin took deep breaths, thinking. He'd never been one of those joyous warriors he'd fought besides in the Premier's wars. He no longer hunted, although he had aplenty in his youth, also in his first days upon Genrich, and still encouraged his sons in the enthusiasm. Now he raised meat for slaughter at the Holdings and owned neither time nor energy to hunt for more. The killing of men or other thinking things such as he had encountered warvoyaging among the stars filled him with no delight. Yet never had he shrunk from the necessity, nor from the ruthlessness it required, when need was clear. Nor would he do so now. Cursing, he stumbled over an exposed and upturned rock.
It was passing strange, he thought to himself, to be seeing bare soil and barren rock, almost obscene after decades of his life spent upon this moist, rich world where everything soon acquired a green layering, be it the grassy covering of meadow, the darker, heavier foliage of the forest, or the simple lawn of moss high in the mountain passes. It was like seeing the skeleton of a planet.
he'd long observed, upon every planet his feet had touched (and they were many), the manner in which his sense of smell became keener at night, be it upon account of vapors arising in the absence of sunlight to drive them away, or owing to the fact that, when eyesight was diminished by the darkness, one came to lean without volition or awareness upon other senses. Now, an alien scent intruded among those of soil and broken vegetation, heavy upon the damp and earthy night air despite time's passage, which he could not at once identify. It grew stronger as he left the violated earth and climbed higher up the steep slope beside the roadcut. Sharp it was, pungent, in some way even pleasant, yet it belonged neither to Genrich nor anything he knew as Genrichian.
A nightbird called in the quiet. Disturbed by the sound, he sensed something wrong, something missing. That was it! At this time of night and this time of year, the insects should have made a greater racket than any bird!
Taking his time, he ascended, watching, sniffing, listening each cautious step of the way until finally he stood just below the violated summit of the right-hand ridge of the roadcut. What he saw stretched his sensibilities near to breaking between anger and awe. With the sky clearer moment by moment, ringlight there was enough by now to see what had been done here. It looked as if some giant had cut a giant cake. Over an undetermined period---time would have abounded upon this neglected thoroughfare---a long row of vertical holes had been drilled deep into the rock. He could see the grooving which was all that remained of them; the odor he'd noticed issued from here. Explosives had been tamped into the holes. He presumed the same had been done upon the other side. Young Eugene would let him know in due time.
He knew the smell now for what it was: sulfur. the machine-drilled holes had been packed with the most ancient and primitive explosive known to man's part of the galaxy, which accounted for their number. Of a sudden he was filled with suspicion. If someone who did not know the planet, who had only read about woodsjacks from a datafile, had wished, for some ungodly reason, to replicate the rebellious pattern of many years gone by, they might think to stir things up with a political portion of charcoal corned with yellow sulfur and potassium nitrate, both abundant upon Genrich, kneaded with water and alcohol and let desiccate, then ground coarse with cautious patience.
They might. And they would be dead wrong, because woodsjacks, for all they led a rustic life, were not primitives, fashioning their own machinery, generating their own power (or purloining it from Sorokin conductiles and beamcasts, which was easier). They would make and use explosives not a whit less sophisticated than any found within the sky-wide Cosmopolity. The only mechanic arts they lacked were those which he, as Oligarch-Hereditary and representative of the Cosmopolitan Premier upon Sokorin, was obliged by Romanovan law to deny them. Likely such were practiced secretly in any case. Stooping, he ran a finger along the dew-damp groove, feeling chatter-marks of whatever tool had cut it into the stubborn mountain rock. This was a second betrayal of the same kind: woodsjacks would have used lasers.
Whatever idiot was responsible for them, fused them together and set them off immediately, the crude landmines had worked, hurling the whole force of the cut, a volume of two measures' depth by a hundred by another two, outward and downward onto the greenway. Had they been a fraction of a second better timed, he would have seen all his sons dead, buried alive in one hideous stroke.
The nightbird trilled again. This time something seemed as alien about the noise as the cloying odor filling the air all around him. Without thinking, out of long years of warrior-training and near-fatal mistakes, the Sorokin had taken care not to silhouette himself against a sky that, filled with water-vapor and backlit by the hazy moonring, glowed faintly to the night-adjusted eye. Now he was aware of what he had done, and grateful. Crouching low, he crept as silent as he could, feeling his way past slipping rock and brittle windfallen branches, towards the phony bird-noise, an obvious signal that came to him yet again as he counted out his fifth and sixth paces.
A deeper silence followed, the Sorokin thought, upon the sudden awareness that he was not the individual for whom the signal had been intended and with whom a meeting was anticipated. A different sound came, of someone less forest-wise than the Sorokin making his way toward him in intended stealth. Thinking thoughts about professional assassins accustomed to urban work, the Sorokin drifted left, hurried low along the ground, his progress rapid as stalking would permit, to get behind whomever was approaching. The flash of a bit of metal or a careless, unplanned movement caught his eye.
The Sorokin stood and shouted, "Stop, fellow!"
Standing as well, the stranger whirled to face him, kicking up dead leaves about his ankles in the effort. A wild, fearful expression widened his mouth and eyes, distorting his features. It was the look, the senior Eugene thought, of a shocked and hunted beast. Yet, if the fool were still here in this place of ambush, standard hours after his intended victims and their vehicle had escaped the manmade avalanche, if he were the one who had thrust upon the droilodka just minutes earlier, why should he be surprised.?
Without delay, the Sorokin raised right forearm to left shoulder in a diagonal gesture termed, in sporting circles, the "salute." More practical than courteous, it covered the torso with the weak, secondary pressor-field surrounding the long axis of his quickblade. A deep breath calmed him. He meant to take this unaccountable incompetent alive, if he could.
"In the name of the Premier, surrender now to me and live!"
"Die, whorespawn!" the shout was weaker than the ugly words it carried, desperate, high, and strained. Ragged and dirty in the ringlight, his enemy mirrored the salute with little grace, straightening his weapon-bearing arm in preemptory attack. Where the Sorokin stood, 7 paces off, he could hear the man's breath rasp, frantic, see his knuckles whiten where they wrapped about his quickblade's yoke, and knew he faced a villain scared badly or worse schooled. In a vague way he was aware---these thoughts occupying less than a heartbeat---of the scarlet designator's beam where it splashed upon his chest, wavering as the man's arm trembled from terror or exhaustion.
Disdaining the protective field about it, the Sorokin, too, straightened his arm before his opponent's thumb could twitch, gave the safety a squeeze across the yokefront, saw the spot of his own laser spring to life where he'd known it would, upon those whitened knuckles, and, without awaiting this confirmation, thumbed the trigger. Great energies, invisible in themselves, flared harsh in the meeting. The air between the men roared protest, sparked with ionization, as thrust met thrust, canceling in a blinding flash.
"Again I say, surrender in the Premier's name!"
"And I say---!" The assassin's voice chopped off. Again, kinergic beams annihilated each other. The Sorokin's almost instinctive blink saved him from the dancing blue afterspot in his eyes which is the start of the end for a quickiblist. The merest instant passed which seemed to him an hour. Before he was aware of having made the decision, he turned his wrist inward, downward, heedless of the designator as before, and thumbed the trigger.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpZ9f12zqcF
Dealt a glancing blow upon the right hip, the bandit spun, responded by loosing a kinergic bolt even as he staggered backward against the bole of a tree, and fell with a thump upon a bed of dead leaves. He followed with yet another bolt as he struck the ground.
The Sorokin caught the first thrust in midair with an answering burst, the second upon the field of his upturned axis as he rotated his arm for another thrust. Downed or not, the fellow was better than he had guessed, becoming more so as he calmed himself and gained more confidence thereby.
Crimson filled the Sorokin's eyes a moment. Headthrust coming, something inside him warned. He ducked, hair ruffled by disrupted air about his head.
Suffering disadvantage, since he wanted the man alive, while the man labored under no such constraint, the Sorokin lay loose a 3rd time, almost in the same instant as before, anticipating another thrust from the supine bandit. He thrust at the foot the fellow was attempting to get under himself. The foot whipped out from under the man, and in that moment, he lost what self-control he had regained, answering with random windmill thrusts at the foot the fellow was attempted to get under himself. The foot whipped out from under the man and in that moment he lost what self-control he had regained, answering with random windmill thrusts at the Sorokin while attempting to scrabble backward for the cover of a fallen tree.
"Die! Die! Die! Die!"
Hurried by a thing practiced fighter fears most, an unlearned, flailing, desperate, and therefore unpredictable opponent, the Sorokin was pressed to defend himself: block in 4th, parry and respond from 6th.221Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSSE1KHoA2z
Boom! Pain sang the length of the Sorokin's left arm as bark exploded from a tree beside him. The standing remnants of its trunk steamed in the ringlight. Otvet, otvet, otvet. The tortured air between the men smelt of ozone and of purge-field-scorched leaves. One hellish, invisible beam at a time, one desperate burst after another, the Sorokin met and canceled the flurry of red-fringed energies the bandit tossed at him.
From a distance, voices shouted. His foot slipped, putting him upon his back like his opponent. He had been distracted by flashes from across the roadcut. Young Eugene had found prey upon the opposite slope. This was no moment to be worrying about his son, who would acquit himself or not.
He felt a shocking blow to his upraised, vulnerable knee, heard a shout of triumphed from his enemy. Attempting to raise his quickblade to ward off a killing thrust, he found himself unable to move his arm. His sleeve was entangled in an upthrust tree root. Scarlet flashed before his eyes once again.
As he struggled to free his arm, something within Eugene the Sorokin started to ready itself for death.
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