On the other hand, he’d never really liked Lakphro. The rancher had always held himself aloof from his guests, suspicious and unfriendly and way too inquisitive about what the Agbui were doing. This killing he might actually enjoy.
“You see, you made a mistake,” Lakphro went on. “You forgot who we were.”
“Who, the grand and mighty Chiss?” Haplif scoffed, starting to ease toward the other. “Don’t make me laugh. You have the same weaknesses and passions as everyone else in the Chaos, and are just as easy to manipulate.” He snorted. “If anything, this insane family setup of yours makes it even easier. All that ambition and infighting and suspicion are perfect for my kind of operation.”
“And that’s where you made your mistake,” Lakphro said softly. “You’re right about the ambition and infighting parts. But you never understood the family part.”
“Hardly,” Haplif said, still drifting forward. The rancher was almost within grabbing range now. “Family is genetics and bloodlines and annoying relatives. Nothing more.”
“You’re wrong,” Lakphro said. “It’s also friendship, loyalty, support, and communication.” He raised his eyebrows. “Especially communication. We talk to one another, the Xodlak do. Our leaders may wallow in ambition, but the rest of us talk to one another. We talk here in Redhill, we talk elsewhere around the planet, and we even talk to relatives on Naporar.”
Haplif frowned. “Naporar?”
“Where the headquarters of the Expansionary Defense Fleet is located,” Lakphro said. “I sent Lakris’s brooch there to be analyzed. In return, my cousin told me that the whole fleet has been turned upside down, with Xodlak family officers and warriors summoned here to Celwis.”
So someone outside of Councilor Lakuviv’s circle knew about that. Unfortunate, but hardly calamitous. Nothing Lakphro could do could change any of it. “What does that have to do with me?” he asked.
“Don’t play stupid,” Lakphro said scornfully. “It doesn’t work any better than the sarcasm. You hand out jewelry, you spend hours with Councilor Lakuviv, Patriel Lakooni vanishes for days at a time, ships full of warriors assemble here.”
The rancher shook his head, drawing his right-hand lurestick and pulling down the tab of his jacket. Frosif had been right, the odd thought occurred to Haplif; the sealer did sound like a flat-blast artillery shell coming at them. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen on Celwis,” Lakphro continued. “Not unless there’s some alien in our midst pulling on our strings.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Haplif insisted. Almost there …
“I think you do,” Lakphro said. He thumbed the lurestick’s switch, and Haplif heard the faint, high-pitched warning whine of the device’s full-power setting.
Haplif had seen Lakphro’s daughter take down a full-grown yubal with that setting. He had no interest in seeing what it would do to him.
Fortunately, he wouldn’t have to. One leap forward, and the rancher would be his.
“And pretty soon everyone else will know it, too,” Lakphro said. He ran the sealer tab back up again, as if he’d belatedly noticed that the air out here was a little chilly. He started to step back, as if also belatedly realizing how close Haplif had come.
And then, it was too late.
Haplif leapt across the gap separating them, his left hand flashing out to slap at the side of the lurestick. Lakphro’s feet stumbled as he tried to back up, his left hand fumbling for the second lurestick holstered on that hip.
But he didn’t have a chance. Haplif caught the man’s neck in his right hand, wrapping his long fingers around the throat as he took a half step to the side to crowd against Lakphro’s arm and keep him from drawing the second weapon. The rancher’s emotions flooded across his mind, ripples of anger and betrayal and determination. Haplif clenched his hand tighter, savoring the feel of the raw emotion, waiting for the fear and hopelessness that would soon spread across the anger—
The racing footsteps had just registered in his ears and mind when something slammed into his side and a stabbing pain exploded through his right arm.
The impact threw him to the side, the agony in his arm tearing his grip off Lakphro’s throat. He twisted his head around as he fought for balance against the sudden weight trying to drag him to the ground.
To find one of the growzer border hounds clinging to him, its white teeth clenched solidly around his arm, its hind legs making little furrows in the dirt, a low snarl rumbling from its throat.
Haplif cursed, staggering back against the animal. He grabbed at the upper jaw with his left hand, trying to pry the damn mouth open. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the rancher had recovered from his partial strangulation and was coming toward him, lurestick raised high.
Despite the pain, Haplif smiled. Lakphro might think he was helpless, but in calling the growzer down on him the fool had just handed him a weapon he would never even think of. He watched as Lakphro moved closer, still prying at the animal’s jaw, judging his timing …
And as Lakphro stretched out the lurestick Haplif heaved his shoulder and hips around, putting his full weight into swinging the growzer that was hanging from his arm around to slam into the rancher’s side. Lakphro staggered, the lurestick swinging wide.
It was only then that Haplif saw the second lurestick ready in Lakphro’s left hand.
But again, the rancher was too late. With a supreme effort, Haplif broke the growzer’s momentum and started it swinging back toward Lakphro. Electric weapons, he knew, normally required a few seconds to recover from a discharge. If he could get Lakphro to waste that first shot, he would still have him. The lurestick was reaching out toward him—
With a snarl of triumph Haplif slammed the growzer into the weapon’s tip. There was a small flash, a half-seen burst of coronal energy, and the animal’s body went rigid.
And Haplif screamed as the creature’s jaws convulsively tightened around his arm, the teeth tearing through skin and muscle, snapping bone and severing artery and vein.
He was on his back on the ground, still screaming, when the shadow of his ship passed over him.
Perhaps Shimkif had seen that he couldn’t be rescued. Perhaps that was merely her excuse for abandoning him here. Perhaps his death had always been part of her plan.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Not anymore.
Because he’d won. Whatever happened to him now, the Chiss ships were on their way, and their civil war had begun.
The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was Lakphro’s glowing red eyes gazing down at him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
All was ready.
The Springhawk and Grayshrike were in position. Their crews and personnel were as prepared as Thrawn and Samakro and Apros could make them.
And in the end, Samakro thought with a vague sense of gathering doom, it was all going to come down to the actions of fourteen of those officers and warriors.
Fourteen.
All of them were from the Springhawk, not from any partiality or seniority, but by simple necessity. As the two warships raced to reach the Agbui planet ahead of the three incoming family task forces, and as a result spent as much time in hyperspace as their sky-walkers could handle, the Springhawk’s officers and warriors were the only ones who could easily access the Watith freighter strapped to the cruiser’s underside.
Fourteen.
Lakinda had told them the Xodlak force consisted of a frigate and light cruiser. Even if she could pull her punches without her senior officers noticing and calling her on it, it was still questionable whether the Springhawk and Grayshrike could stand up to them. The fact that two more family forces were also on the way tilted the odds even further.