Movement. From the shadows across the street. The first question was: Who was after him?
Kilgour was operating at an advantage and a disadvantage. On a normal E-world, his three-gee muscles might have provided an easy solution, either acrobatic or bloody. Here he was just another man. Of course, his pursuers would be under a disadvantage—unless they, also, came from a high-grav world.
He chanced a look back.
His tail had entered a commercial gravsled. The sled had lifted and was creeping down the street behind him. Kilgour grimaced. If this was a termination attempt, the sled would go to full power, lift over the sidewalk, and scrub him against the high stone wall beside him. An unfortunate accident. He listened, but the sled’s McLean generators did not increase their pitch.
So let’s see if we can find out who these lads are, he thought.
Three crossings down, he turned onto a narrow street. Very narrow. A close, actually—so steep it was not ramped but was instead a long stairway. Alex moved faster.
The close ended in a small courtyard. Four other lanes opened from it. Kilgour picked one, ducked into its shadows, and held for a moment.
Two figures moved down the stairs. The flurried storm broke, and Kilgour glimpsed them. Clot. He had no strength advantage at all. Either he was being chased by a pair of hyperthyroid Earth gorillas, or his pursuers were wearing fighting armor. Fighting suits were AM2-powered killing machines that turned the properly trained infantryman into something far more lethal than a conventional tracked assault vehicle. Amplified musculature gave the wearer many times the strength and endurance of an unsuited soldier. Their armor was impervious to conventional shoulder weapons and even medium-size shrapnel.
Against a suit, Kilgour was far more impotent than a man from a zero-gee environment would be against Alex.
Two of them. Just wonderful. Och well. Th’ Laird wi’ provide...
Kilgour was off, zigging through alleys at a dead run, his mind running at equal speed.
How were they tracking him? Had they planted anything on him? Was his kilt wired? Or that locator? He didn’t think so but started to hurl the locator away, then considered.
He came out of the alley warren onto a street. It was very late and the streets were still. Ahead he saw a grav-sled land and three other monsters lumber out and up the hill toward him. He went into another alleyway.
Who was after him? Occasionally fighting suits came into the hands of big-time private warlords, but these, Alex thought, appeared to be current Imperial issue. Which meant? That for some reason he had offended the powers that be. Not the planetary officials on Edinburgh—Alex had purchased far too many friends in high places not to have gotten a tip—but off-world.
Worst case? The Empire—or those clottin’ imbecile thieves who’d taken it over after the Emperor’s death. Assume that, Kilgour. For whatever the privy council’s reason, assume that.
Now, he thought. What do they want of me? If they wanted me just dead they would’ve had plenty of opportunities over the past few days, weeks, or months. There’s more’n enough lads still in service who remember how to plant a bomb or look through a crosshairs.
So it’s alive, alive-o, then.
If they looked up m’wee record—th’ honest one—then they’ll noo send a boy for a man’s work. So think those lads in thae braw suits are Mantis. They are lookin’t f’r me. But nae quite the way I thought. An’ they’re nae suited up because th’ grav pulls hard on their wee bones.
So it would be a simple snatch, wi’ th’ minimum of screekin’ an’ broken bones. Then off’t’ th’ brainscan.
Ah think not. Ah’ll nae hae some psych’s slimy fingers pryin’t ae m’soul. But I hae nae desire’t’ put m’back ‘gainst a wall, spit on m’sword, an’ go down yodelin’ like ae Vikin’ sarky, or whatever thae dubbed themselves.
The storm was lashing down harder.
Two back of me—driving. Three more backup. Plus there’ll be another team in immediate reserve. Solution: drop all five of them before they hae a chance to gurgle f’r help.
Five men. Five of the Empire’s best operatives, wearing suits that could have let them crash through the thickest walls of Alex’s castle and emerge with their hair unmussed.
Nae problem, lad. Nae problem at all.
Kilgour stayed moving—just fast enough to keep the Mantis people after him, but not fast enough for them to blow the whistle and think he was on a full-tilt run.
His path wound through the back alleys of the city. His pursuers may have been in suits, but Alex had grown up familiar with the cobblestones that the idiotically tradition-minded builders of the city—God bless them to the twelfth generation—had installed when Edinburgh was first colonized.
First a wee rope...
He found it—a coil of 5-mm wire, hanging from a building site. Alex grabbed it and pulled. He had, he estimated, nearly sixty meters of wire. A bit too much.
His route became more direct, heading back toward the heart of the city. The cobbles were steep and the muck on either side of the road greasy. He led his pursuers back to the High Street, then went into the open. He doubled up the center of the street, stopped, and turned. Now his pursuers were in the open, as well.
They’ll be thinkin’ Ah’m armed. But noo wi’ this. Imperial issue an’ all. He knelt, pistol in right hand, left hand cupped around his right, left arm just behind the elbow on his knee... breathe in... out... hold... squeeze.
The willygun cracked. The bullet was a 1-mm ball of AM2, shielded by Imperium. AM2—spaceship power. The round struck one of the suited men in a leg—and the leg exploded. AM2 was not a conventional infantry round.
B’dam, Alex thought in some surprise. Moren’ one hundred meters an’ Ah hit somethin’ with a bleedin’ pistol. Sten’ll nae believe it... Four left... Now the gloves were off. Return fire spattered around him. Kilgour assumed they were using more conventional weapons—and still trying to take him alive. One block up was his street.
The wire was knotted securely to a lamppost, half a meter off the ground. The Mantis operatives were bounding, ten meters to a leap, up the rise toward him. Alex went down “his” street at a run. At a skate, actually.
The narrow alley was at a fifty-degree angle—and icy. There was no way anyone could walk, let alone run down it. Kilgour could not—but he used that cable as a steadying ski tow in reverse, swearing as he felt the insulation sear his hands. He braked, stumbled, nearly skidded, and recovered.
Two Mantis operatives were leaping down the alley toward him. They touched down—on slippery, fifty-degree ice. Even as the pseudomusculature kicked in and they rebounded, their feet had gone out from underneath them. One man smashed into a wall, then skidded, motionless, toward Kilgour. The other man pinwheeled in midair, out of control.
Kilgour shot him through the faceplate as he tumbled past. Then Alex was going back up the way he came, hand-over-hand.
He heard a suitjet blast over the storm and went flat, rolling onto his back. One operative came over the roof-top.
Y panicked and let the power save you, lad. An’ noo you’re hangin’ thae, like a braw cloud. Alex shot the cloud three times in its center. The suit’s drive stayed on and rocketed the tiny near-spacecraft straight up and away into the sleet clouds.
One more. One more. Show yourself, lad.
Nothing.
Not knowing—or caring—if the final operative had cracked, had gone to aid his downed teammates,