The giant brushed through the fire, unconcerned. Destruction boiled in its path as it sprayed the avenue and its buildings with flashing beams of energy.
"Grayson!" Tor's scream penetrated his numbed senses, brought him back to the scene at hand and the gagging stench of the burning vehicle. He shook himself, turned, and looked into Tor's wild eyes.
"Grayson, we've got to get out of here!"
He allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, then began running with clumsy strides back down the alley and away from the monster. Behind him, the 'Mech collided with the buildings at the alley mouth, and the fall of brick and stone sent debris skittering along the ground in front of them.
Grayson followed Tor through the twists and turns of Sarghad's alleys, and the sounds of cannon fire and falling buildings began to recede behind them. Tor stopped and fell back against the wall, his chest heaving as he caught his breath.
"Where now?" Grayson asked, his mind still numb. He was willing to be led, to let the decisions be made by another.
"I don't know. I'm a stranger here too, remember?"
"I... I know a place we might be able to go." Grayson thought of Berenir the Merchant, knowing the man would not be pleased to see him again, and less so if he brought along another offworlder to hide. "I know some people, but they may not be able to help us."
"We're going to have to find a way to get up to the port." Tor looked thoughtfully in its direction. Across the roofs of low, single-storied warehouses, they could just make out the port's control tower as a tiny white saucer perched on a narrow column. And just beyond, they glimpsed the bulk of the upper third of Tor's ship.
"Are you thinking of getting your ship back?"
Tor shook his head. "No... no way. We'd never get near her, not now."
"Then why the port?"
"Because ships’ll be coming in, sooner or later." Pain clouded the freighter pilot's face. "And because I have three men three... three friends. I've got to get them out, somehow."
"You can't fight THAT alone!" The sounds of fresh skirmishing broke out somewhere behind them, followed by a series of explosions.
"Maybe not. But these pirates aren't going to stay here forever. Now that they've attacked, they'll pull out, take their loot, slaves, and captured 'Mechs and haul for Oberon... or wherever. They can't stay here, not against a whole planet Besides, how can they be sure House Steiner won't send a punitive expedition back to ram this planet down their throats."
"My Lance..."
"Maybe," Tor said thoughtfully. "Though, from what I've heard, your friends were pretty badly shot up. The point is, traders'll be coming in. Hell, even my friends with Mailai might come in to see what happened to their investment. I want to be at the port when they do, and I mean to have my people with me. And don't forget my ship is out at the jump point, with twelve more of my men aboard." Tor shook his head fiercely. "I can't just let them go!"
Grayson thought of the small community of Techs and laborers quartered at one end of the spaceport. "Maybe you could get a job at the port, and find a way to help your people that way. I don't know how you'd go about getting your ship back, though."
"Neither do I, lad. Neither do I." The pain was back in Tor's face. Grayson wondered if he was feeling guilt at having abandoned his crew, or was simply afraid that they'd already been put to death. The other man seemed to give himself a shake.
"No matter what, we'll have to eat and find a way to blend in with the natives."
Yes, thought Grayson, they'd need a place to stay, a place to wait, while he figured out a way to bring down the plotters who had killed his father. Only then would he think about how to get off this forbidding world.
The battle sounds had ceased now, leaving the city unnaturally quiet. Grayson looked in all directions, orienting himself. "Let's go visit my friends. Berenir is a merchant, with contacts off-planet and at the spaceport. Maybe he can get us jobs. At least, he might have some ideas about what we should do."
"Where is he?"
"Third Street of the Merchants. This way." Grayson took the lead as they walked, but his thoughts turned back to the Marauderastride the street, and the memory of his father's death. That Marauderhad ambushed Durant Carlyle after Carlyle's lighter Phoenix Hawkhad been badly damaged in a hopeless duel with the hidden weapons mounted on the Invidious'DropShip. His father had never had a chance.
New energy was replacing the lassitude that had paralyzed Graysons spirit since he'd regained consciousness in Berenir's house. For the first time, he felt a goal, a purpose to keep him going. He would burn that killer 'Mech, or die in the attempt. The need for vengeance was like a hunger driving him on through the twisiting streets of Sarghad as panicked civilians and disorganized squads of Guards and Militia streamed past him. Although he didn't yet know how, he vowed to destroy that
Marauderand
10
Ten-meter-tall death machines now stalked the narrow avenues of Sarghad. Though Grayson knew how to find the Third Street of the Merchants, four times he and Tor were forced to leave streets suddenly blocked by throngs of panicked people or by the striding nightmares of attacking 'Mechs. Grayson tried to keep track of the types he saw. There was one Locust,he knew, and another that looked like one of the Commando Wasps,now bearing the animal's eye insignia of Hendrik III of Oberon. Once he saw the Marauderagain, wading through the splintered rubble of buildings. A pall of oily smoke hung suspended above Sarghad, and the air was heavy with dust from plaster turned to brick rubble, and crumbled slabs of ferrocrete.
At the mouth of an alley opening onto the Third Street of the Merchants, Tor held back, motioning Grayson behind him. Peering past the freighter pilot, Grayson saw another Wasp,this one leading a string of perhaps fifteen Trells toward the city borders.
"What are they doing?"
Tor looked grim. "Taking hostages, possibly. But those people don't look all that well-to-do. Slaves, more likely."
Grayson remained silent. He'd heard stories of the slave trade among the bandit kinglets of the Periphery, but had not given them much credence. Even Claydon's lingering fear that his mother might have been taken by Hendrik's raiders as a slave to Oberon, that was easy enough to dismiss as the xenophobic fears of an untravelled, nearly uneducated native who had never been beyond the fringes of his own world's atmosphere. The brutal truth was that among the shards of a civilization where machines and the products of technology were treasures, human labor tended to be cheap and easily harvested.
"Where will they take them?" Grayson wondered aloud.
Tor shrugged. "The spaceport, perhaps. They won't be able to use them here. Most likely they'll be coralled somewhere offworld." His voice was curiously level and remote. "They might even load them aboard the old Invidious."
A rumbling crash from farther down the street caught Grayson's attention. He crawled forward, slipping his head past the shelter of the wall close to the street. What he saw shocked him to the core. Standing there was the Marauder,encased in the rubble of a building in flames. A knife twisted cold in Grayson's gut. That building was the house of Berenir the merchant