Ruiz nudged Yubere with the barrel of his splinter gun. “Let’s go find a comm and make sure the staff accepts you. Huxley, bring your gear. Albany, trail us a few feet, but no shooting unless there’s no other way. And, Yubere, no more funny stuff, or Publius’s investment will be wasted.”
“I’ll be careful,” said the puppet. “You be careful too.”
“A good thought,” said Ruiz. “Huxley, spike his bomb, in case we have to kill him.”
The new Yubere led the way to his comm center, moving with a convincing ease. Ruiz dared not aim a weapon at Yubere, for fear that one of Yubere’s people would see and react aggressively. He felt a distressing loss of control over the situation, but he needed to establish Yubere’s authority.
“When we get there, set up my exit first,” he said. “Give us an escort back to the tram.”
Yubere looked back curiously. “Don’t you want to just go out the top? We’re in control here, now?”
Ruiz looked at him wordlessly, and Yubere shrugged easily. “As you wish.”
Huxley threw Ruiz a worried glance. He felt impelled to explain, for some reason. “Our employer will be hoping we’ll make it that easy for him to get rid of us. He’ll be sure to have people topside — but maybe he doesn’t have another sub. And on the sub, we’ll have the Gench to bargain with.”
Huxley looked even more worried. “What made you take employment with such a dire creature, Ruiz?”
“Necessity.”
Albany snorted. “Don’t let him kid you, Huxley. He likes this stuff — the more borderline the better, as far as Ruiz Aw is concerned. He’s always had that sort of bug up his ass.”
Ruiz wanted to deny it, to claim that he had changed, but Albany would only laugh at him.
The comm center was occupied by a tech wearing a black tunic and two Dirm guards — though these were unpithed and wore no armor. As they moved into the room, Ruiz began to calculate angles and priorities. The Dirm to the right seemed somewhat more alert than the other guard, and the tech paid no attention at all.
Yubere walked to the main dataslate, laid a languid hand on the black glass. He tapped it absently, then turned to the nearest Dirm and said, “Kill them.”
The Dirm was only starting to bring down its graser when Ruiz’s burst chopped across its torso, smashing it back against the wall. Ruiz spun, squeezed off another burst, missing the other Dirm just as it fired; then Albany’s graser hissed and cut the guard in half.
Ruiz turned, saw that Huxley was down, his legs twitching feebly, a wisp of steam rising from the hole in his chest. As he took this in, he saw Albany aim at Yubere, a look of murderous rage suffusing his lumpy features.
“No!” barked Ruiz. “We won’t kill him yet.”
For an instant he thought Albany would do it anyway, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to kill Albany before Yubere was dead — his weapon was still pointed at the first Dirm, who wasn’t quite dead yet.
But Albany snarled, flicked the graser aside, and vaporized the head of the black-shirted tech, who had finally reacted and was rising from his seat.
Relief shuddered through Ruiz.
Yubere leaned back against the panel. “Well, it was worth a try,” he said brightly.
Ruiz struggled to maintain a clear mind, though he felt an almost-irresistible impulse to destroy the puppet.
“How can I make the situation clear to you?” he asked Yubere. “If you keep fucking with us, your master’s scheme will come to nothing. Didn’t you see what I did back at the tram? My pack is full of toroidal explosive.” Ruiz looked at the watch embedded in the forearm of his armor. “If we don’t get back in twenty-eight minutes, it’s going to bring down the dome and choke off the hole.”
Yubere snapped upright. His face underwent an instantaneous transformation, from tolerant amusement to taut cold rage. “You’ll have to pay a terrible price for your obstructions when Publius catches you,” he said through his teeth. His eyes gleamed with an almost-human craziness for a moment, but then he regained control. “Of course, dead is dead, so I suppose I shouldn’t blame you for struggling.”
“Good for you,” said Ruiz. “Now make the arrangements.”
Yubere took a deep breath, then spoke terse instructions into the comm. When he was finished, he looked up at Ruiz, completely composed again. “Satisfied?”
“We’ll see how it goes,” said Ruiz.
Albany knelt beside Huxley, who had become still. “Dead,” Albany reported glumly. Ruiz felt a small poignant sadness. Huxley had seemed a fairly decent person, for a freelance slayer, and now he was gone as if he had never existed, his trust proven foolish.
He shook his head — he was indulging in pointless emotions. Each of the beings he had destroyed during this night’s work had been as alive as Huxley, and their lives had been just as important, in their own eyes.
As the puppet had said, dead was dead.
Ruiz helped Albany remove Huxley’s undamaged detectors, and slung most of the gear from his own armor. “I guess I’ll have to do Huxley’s job for a while,” he said.
Albany stood up wearily. “Yeah. Your army’s getting a little thin, Ruiz.”
A minute passed, then another brace of Dirm guards entered at a trot and slid to a stop, heads swiveling to take in the carnage. They started to snatch at the grasers they carried slung across their scaly chests, but Yubere spoke sharply. “Wait,” he said, raising a peremptory hand. “These are friends — they saved me from a treachery. You are to escort them to the downlevel security lock, then return here to clean up the mess. And see that the comm room is adequately restaffed. Guard the safety of our friends with your lives; we owe them much. And we intend to repay them.” A glitter of malevolence returned briefly to Yubere’s eyes.
“Thank you,” Ruiz said for effect. “Happy to help. By the way, did you know that life is a stiletto vine that blooms only once?”
When he spoke the code phrase that the Gench had tied into the puppet’s volitional network, Yubere slumped slightly, and a light went out of his eyes. He would be unable to make any decision, no matter how small, until Ruiz spoke the counterphrase. He would be unable even to decide to follow Publius’s orders. If for some reason Ruiz failed to speak it, Yubere would sit here until he starved, unless his people dared to carry him to a medunit to be fed intravenously.
“Well,” said Ruiz. “Good-bye, and good luck.”
The Dirm convoyed Ruiz and Albany to the lock, eyes rolling with suppressed panic. They seemed to have accepted the new Yubere’s identity without reservation — but they were a credulous species, another reason why they were popular cannon fodder. They bowed Ruiz and Albany into the lock and left at a quick trot.
When the inner door closed, Albany said, “So far so good. What did you do to the puppet?”
“Cut his strings, until we can get away. It gives us a deal point with our employer.”
“I wish you’d done it a little sooner.”
“I could only do it once. I’m sorry.”
Albany shrugged. “Well, it’s a tough business, and I know you’re sorry. What now?”
“Let’s run,” Ruiz said, and began to trot back down the long corridor.
The bits of the dismembered Moc were still twitching when they reached the tram platform ten minutes later. Ruiz looked at it and shivered. The face of Durban’s corpse had acquired a greasy bluish pallor; the dead eyes still glared, but without heat. Ruiz felt a pang of uncustomary squeamishness at the thought of riding down the tramway with the corpse, but there was no practical way to remove it from the tanglefoot.