Starliner(73)

Somebody had to do the former job, and Ran knew damned well that neither Wanda nor Franz would accept the order. Wanda was senior to him, and the kid was both a civilian and—as he'd pointed out—the only one of them who'd been trained for this sort of business.

The lifeboat banked hard and braked simultaneously. Ran's feet slipped from the seat stringer where he'd braced them. His legs flailed loose. Babanguida didn't try to grab his superior, knowing that if he did they'd both of them go bouncing around the cabin. Ran's hands clamped like welds to iron, the way they'd done a dozen times in the past when an unexpected shock threatened to fling him into sponge space for the cold remainder of eternity.

Mohacks slid the hatch open before the lifeboat grounded. The cabin filled with the motor roar that the hull insulation had damped to a rumble. Blue glare reflected like chained lightning, and the windblast pummeled those inside.

Ran used his last momentum to throw himself upright when the vessel grated to a halt beneath him. He unstrapped the long rifle and presented it, bracing his left palm on the side of the hatchway and resting the barrel on that outstretched thumb. Wanda, Franz, and Babanguida bolted past him.

The house was rambling and a single story, with four rooms in one portion and a fifth connected to the others by a covered dogtrot. A man looked out the door of the single room, silhouetted by the lamplight behind him.

Ran fired. The muzzle brake of his weapon spewed red flames back to either side. His body rocked with the familiar recoil. He absorbed the thrust with his back muscles instead of fighting it with the bones of his shoulder.

The man Ran shot threw his arms up. The bullet was explosive, but it was meant to penetrate deep within creatures weighing scores of tonnes. The charge burst in the middle of the room, shattering the windows outward in a violet flash.

The lights in the room across the dogtrot went out. The window was a cool rectangle against the building's warm siding. Ran swung and fired again, aiming at the center of the glass.

This bullet also exploded well within the room. Its flash and the miniature shrapnel of the bullet jacket weren't dangerous, the way a bursting grenade would have been, but they must have distracted the kidnappers inside. Franz kicked through the door an instant after the crack! of the 15-mm bullet. His submachine gun lit the interior with ragged yellow flashes. There was no return fire.

Babanguida opened up at the lifeboat's bow, out of Ran's sight. A return bullet clanged off the vessel's sturdy plating, but only one of them, and distant screams proved that the rating wasn't wasting ammo.

The man Ran shot in the single room had slipped to his knees. He gripped the doorjamb with both hands. Wanda Holly pointed her weapon past him, then turned without shooting to follow Franz. The victim slumped further, then rolled supine, his hands clutching the dirt and his boots in the room in which he had died.

Red and yellow flashes quivered within the long end of the building. The local weapons used a propellant that burned deeper in the spectrum than those from the Empress's arsenal. A bullet ricocheted from the building and howled past Ran. It thumped into a cabin bulkhead.

The red flashes reflected from the third room over. Ran aimed at that sidewall, not the window, and blasted the last round in his magazine through what seemed to be some thin cast panelling.

His bolt locked open. Thumbing cartridges from his bandolier loops into the magazine, Ran sprinted toward the far end of the long wing.

An orange flash followed his last shot. He'd hit a munitions store. Ammo detonated in a rattling chain like a tympani riff. A second orange blast knocked Ran down.

That was a good thing because the third explosion, following a heartbeat later, blew off the roof and sidewalls together. The walls were castings, all right: cast concrete. Some of the chunks were big enough to dent the lifeboat's hull.

Ran rolled to his feet and slammed the bolt of his rifle home. He wasn't sure whether he'd loaded two or three rounds.

"We've got her!" squealed a voice too high-pitched to sound like Wanda. Overlaying the words on the same radio channel, Franz Streseman shouted, "Baby baby baby!"

Ran reached the end of the building. A window was open. Someone was running away. Ran dragged his thermal goggles down away from his eyes. The goggles didn't give fine detail, and there was so much light now from the burning building that he didn't need them.

The running man was Gerd von Pohlitz. Firelight twisted the wrinkles of the big Grantholmer's clothing into tiger stripes. He was only a hundred meters away. It was a clout shot for a hunter like Ran Colville, who'd made over seven hundred one-shot kills at that range and longer.

Ran's finger tightened, then released its pressure on the trigger.

Let him go. Oanh was free—and no matter what had happened to the girl while she was a captive, one more corpse wouldn't change the past. It wasn't Ran Colville's business or any one man's business to rid the universe of sadistic sons of bitches. . . .