Starliner(81)

A dozen of the escorting warriors, including those with plasma weapons, rushed toward the Empress. Rossignol bolted backward. Hatches began to shut across all three gangways. A klaxon within the starliner began to honk.

"Since we have satisfied our mistress's instructions," Rawsl said, "now we can satisfy the demands of honor." He drew both his long swords.

Ran bent, grasped a palanquin pole, and jerked. The smoothly finished hardwood was screwed and pinned into its socket. The vehicle skidded a few centimeters when Ran put his back into the effort, but as a weapon it was as useless as the bedrock.

Rawsl gave a high-pitched chirp. He thrust. His swordblades were slightly curved, but if Ran hadn't ducked behind the palanquin, the point would have crunched in and out through the bone and gristle of his rib cage.

"Prod him to me," ordered Rawsl. "This animal must not be allowed to hold back in the slaughter chute."

The main hatch had shuddered, then reopened fully again. Szgranians facing the starliner aimed modern weapons up the gangways from which human help might come. The other warriors had drawn their swords. They formed a rough circle with Ran, the palanquin, and Rawsl as the hub. Lower ranking Szgranians, male and female both, squatted beyond the ring of warriors and called encouragement to Rawsl.

Two warriors on Ran's side of the palanquin shuffled toward him, their swords raised like crab pincers. They'd drawn daggers in their central pairs of hands. Ran had as much chance of grabbing a weapon from one of them as he did of surviving a bath in battery acid.

Commander Kneale in his white uniform appeared at the main gangway. A Szgranian fired a machine-pistol in the commander's direction. The burst may have been aimed to miss, but several of the little bullets whanged and howled off the bulkheads of the Embarkation Hall.

This was going to be an international incident—particularly if some of the Empress's crewmen got into a gunfight with the Szgranian escort. Rawsl and his confederates didn't care in the least.

If Ran had thought it would do him any good, he might not have cared about an open firefight either. All it would do was get good people killed, though. The Empress of Earth wasn't a warship with external weapons. The Szgranian warriors outgunned anything available from the starliner's arsenal. If there was enough ordnance flying around, Ran wouldn't survive long enough for Rawsl to cut him into collops.

How Lady Scour would react to the event was an open question. Ran's bet was that she wouldn't deign to notice it. As mistress of Clan Scour, she had the right to do anything she pleased; but her evening of bestiality was no matter for pride, even to her overmastering will.

Anyway, Rawsl and his confederates wouldn't care if their mistress had them flayed alive. They would have served their honor and their clan's.

A warrior poked his sword a calculated distance toward Ran's buttocks. The Szgranian didn't want to kill Ran—that was Rawsl's perquisite. But if the human wouldn't go to his death willingly, then he would be thrust to it in a welter of his own blood.

Instead of waiting for the pricking blade, Ran leaped on top of the palanquin. Spectators cackled with delight. Rawsl stepped back and spread his swords wide. If Ran tried to overleap the Szgranian, the blades would come up and cross through his body, cutting the human into three segments while he was still in the air.

Someone switched off the Empress's external lighting.

"Down!" cried Wanda Holly as she rose from the edge of a shanty behind the circle of Szgranians. She pointed a broad-mouthed weapon.

Ran jumped off the end of the palanquin, putting himself as far as he could from Rawsl and the warrior who'd approached to prod him forward. Intense light hammered through Ran's closed lids and the flesh of the forearm he'd thrown across his eyes.

Szgranians screamed. Swords dashed together, and a warrior emptied his automatic rifle in a single long burst. It was God's own mercy that one or more of the plasma weapons didn't belch nuclear hell as well.

The throbbing pulses stopped. Ran was flat on the ground, though he didn't remember hitting it. Szgranians sobbed and bellowed.

"C'mon, c'mon!" Wanda shouted. Her right hand gripped Ran's arm to guide him as he stumbled to his feet.

She wore the padded, dull-colored overgarment of a Szgranian commoner. She wouldn't pass for a local if anyone looked carefully—but no Szgranian of rank would look carefully at a commoner.

The nerve gun and powerpack slung to Wanda's breast weighed forty kilos. Ran didn't see how she could carry it and move so quickly. The weapon projected light pulsing at critical neural frequencies. These differed for various species—for humans and the great apes, it was just under seven and a half Hertz—but at some frequency, any chemically-based nervous system could be stimulated to dump neurotransmitters wildly.