"Wait a minute," Brosh protested, pointing at me. "You can't just send themaway. What about him?"
"What, it takes more than five of your highly competent defenders to guard asingle manacled prisoner?" Nicabar countered scornfully.
"He has a point, Expediter," Nask put in. "McKell is a highly dangerous human, and has slipped out of several other traps. Enig can go check on the weapons."
"I don't want you three going outside this room any more than you have to,"
Nicabar said in a voice of strained patience. "You shouldn't even be in thispart of town, let alone wandering around loose."
"It's the Grand Feast," Nask pointed out tartly. "All races mix freely togetherfor that. But if you insist." He nodded to the three Iykams Nicabar had markedout. "Carry out your orders."
"And make sure you bring back one for me," Nicabar added as the three headedto the door.
"You're not armed, Expediter?" Nask asked as the Iykams left the room, closingthe door behind them.
"You know I'm not," Nicabar said. "I presume you were watching as Enig and hisdefenders checked me for weapons outside."
"My question was more along the lines of why you didn't have a weapon at all,"
Nask said. "I was under the impression Expediters were routinely armed."
"Most Expediters don't have to live aboard a ship the size of the Icarus withpeople like McKell poking their noses into everything," Nicabar reminded him.
"He'd have fingered me long ago if I'd brought a gun aboard."
"You had us fooled, all right," I growled, trying not to sound too bitter.
"Especially that little speech you made back in the engine room. That was anice touch."
He lifted his eyebrows mockingly. "I don't know why," he said. "I thought Imade it pretty clear that I thought the Patthaaunutth were being unfairly picked onjust because they happened to be more technically innovative than the rest ofus. You must not have been listening very well."
"I guess not," I murmured, a sudden surge of adrenaline jolting through mysystem. I had been listening to that conversation; had been listening witheverything I had. And that was not in any way what Nicabar had said orimplied.
Which either meant he was playing a completely pointless game with me... orelse there was something else entirely going on here.
And then, even as Nicabar turned contemptuously away from me and back to Nask, I
heard the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard in my life. A soft sound, hardlyaudible, certainly not at all melodic. But a sound nevertheless that threeminutes ago I would have sworn I would never hear again.
The soft sneeze of a Kalixiri ferret.
I would have been surprised if any of the others noticed it. Certainly theygaveno sign that they had. Nicabar was conversing in a low but intense tone withNask, probably discussing plans for the upcoming raid on the Icarus, and allthe Iykams in my field of view were still glowering at me with the same unfriendlyexpressions that their companions had worn in the back room just before I'ddropped a chair on them. Slowly, making it look like I was checking them outin turn, I moved my head just enough to see the lower of the room's air vents.
And there he was, barely visible in the shadows behind the vent's crosshatchedgrating: Pix or Pax, I couldn't tell which, his head turned to the side as ifhe was grooming himself or gnawing at an itch. Just as slowly, I turned back tothe desk again, not wanting my interest in that part of the room to spark anyunwelcome curiosity.
Nicabar was looking sideways at me, still talking to Nask. I dropped oneeyelida millimeter and got an equally microscopic nod in return from him before he seemed to notice his ID still lying on the desk and returned it to his pocket.
Not his ID, rather, but the one I'd taken off the Patth agent on Dorscind'sWorld after my old buddy James Fulbright's attempt to cash in on the reward.
Clearly, my original estimation of Thompson as little more than a glorifiedPatth accountant had been seriously off target.
"I suppose you're wondering what we've got planned," Nicabar spoke up into mythoughts.
"Oh, no, don't tell me," I said, remembering to put the same bitterness intomyvoice that I'd been feeling two minutes earlier. "I just love surprises."
"I'd be a little less flippant if I were you," Nicabar said reprovingly.
"Whether the rest of the Icarus crew lives or needlessly dies is going todependentirely on you. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that—what the hell?" Hejumpedaway from the desk toward the wall, just as Nask let out a yelp of his own.
And for good reason. The air vents, upper and lower both, were suddenlyspewinga dense, pale yellow smoke. "We're on fire!" Enig gasped.
"You three get out of here!" Nicabar snapped. He'd reached the area of thelower vent now, his head and torso disappearing as he bent down into the smoke.
"You—defenders—get that top vent sealed!"
Two of the five Iykams were already scrambling against the wall, straining toreach the upper vent's sealing lever. From Nicabar and the lower vent came ateeth-grinding screech of torn metal; and then abruptly he was standinguprightagain out of the cloud of smoke, a cloud that seemed already to be starting todissipate.
And in his hand was Fulbright's Kochran-Uzi three-millimeter semiautomatic.
His first two shots took out two of the Iykams still standing guard over me.
The third guard nearly got his own weapon up and aimed in time, but lost the lastchance he would ever have as I leaned sideways and kicked his gun arm out ofline. I swiveled back around as Nicabar systematically took out the rest ofthe guards, heaving myself up with the chair on my back again, and hurled myselfacross the desk at Nask.
The Patth threw his own chair backward as he saw me coming, making one lastfutile grab for something in the drawer he'd opened as he got out of my way.
But the desk was higher than the table in the back room had been, and with theadditional barrier of the monitors along its edge I only made it about halfwayacross before I ran out of momentum. Nask, belatedly seeing that his reflexivedodge had been unnecessary, killed his own backward momentum and dived out ofhis chair toward the open drawer.
"Don't," a familiar voice warned from the doorway.
Nask froze, his head twisting to look in that direction, his hand stilloutstretched toward the drawer. I looked, too, trying to ignore the fresh redhaze my sudden bit of exercise had sent swimming across my vision. Ixil stoodin the doorway, the plasmic in his hand pointed squarely at Nask, his wideshoulders and settled-looking stance blocking any hope of escape for the twoPatth pilots standing rigidly in shock in front of him.
"I see," Nask said. I looked back to find he had straightened up again, hishand fallen empty at his side.
"It's like a class reunion in here," I said, my voice sounding distant in myears through the trip-hammer that had apparently finished its lunch break andstarted up work again on the back of my head. "I hope someone thought to bringsome painkillers along."
"We did better than that," Ixil assured me, motioning Brosh and Enig backtoward Nask and closing the door behind him. "We've got Everett waiting outside."
"Everett?" I echoed. "I told him to stay with Shawn."
"Tera and Chort are with Shawn," Nicabar told me. He was at my side now, examining the handcuffs. "It occurred to us that you might need medicalattention more urgently than he did."
"I don't, but I might have," I admitted, nodding toward one of the guardslyingdead on the floor. "That one. Keys in his belt pouch. How did you find me, anyway?"
"We never really lost you," Nicabar said, dropping to one knee and digginginto the pouch. "Tera wanted to know just where you were going to go on yourerrand."
I looked at Nask, who was standing stiffly glowering at us. "Don't worry aboutgiving anything away," I told Nicabar. "They were staking out pharmacists, after all. Like he said, they're putting together the pieces."