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  The tower was toppling. The support leg was gone, the tires on that side of the truck were demolished, and much of the truck's frame was ruined. There was nothing left to keep the tower upright, and it fell sideways in slow, lazy grandeur.

  She scurried closer, then reached back to snatch up the saddlebags. By the time the tower finished falling she was pressed against the underside of the truck and scanning for targets.

  Fresh shots poured into the truck, and a blast tore through a handspan from her shoulder. Cassie cringed away, then snapped a shot at an armored mercenary trying to flank her. He retreated, and she switched her pistol to rail gun mode, hoping to keep them guessing.

  Another shot burst through the bottom of the truck, then another, and then she heard the sweetest sound she could have possibly imagined. Roger's voice, through the bud in her ear, saying, "Is that you behind the overturned truck?"

  "Yes," she snapped. "Shoot everything that isn't me." Hastily she added, "Or the nomads. Don't shoot them."

  "Got it," he answered, and an explosion split the air, making her breastbone vibrate and her ears ring. She peeked through one of the holes in the bottom of the truck and saw the armored ground car, its armor split, billowing greasy dark smoke.

  The mercenaries were being careless about their cover, gaping in dismay at the Raffles. Cassie blindsided a guy, pouring round after round into him until she hit a gap in his armor and he collapsed. Someone opened up on her with a laser rifle from behind a nomad wagon, and she hit the dirt again. A moment later the wagon exploded. She saw the shooter stagger back, then fly apart as a heavy blast from the ship tore him apart.

  The Raffles rose, nose tilted down so Roger could strafe the camp with the forward turret. Another ground car exploded, men dove for cover, and another mercenary died in an eruption of gore.

  A line of blue fire lashed up from the ground and slammed into the underside of the ship. Cassie sprang up, running toward the source of the blast, zig-zagging through a maze of nomad tents and burning wreckage. There was a massive field gun set up among the tents, and it fired again as she spotted it. She ran toward the gun, screaming and shooting, and her shots made ragged divots on the back of the gunner's body armor. He let go of the gun's handles, clawing for the pistol on his hip as he turned to face her.

  Half a dozen rounds hit his armor, and one bounced from the front of his helmet, none of them doing any harm. Cassie stopped, braced herself, took careful aim, and ignored his first shot as it sizzled through the air beside her ear.

  She squeezed the trigger, and the round took him in the chin, drilling through into his skull. He flopped backward and fell out of the gunner's chair, dead before he hit the ground.

  Cassie looked up. She was too late. Her beautiful ship, punctured half a dozen times, was falling. The nose turret kept firing, aimed shots that drew a scream from another mercenary before the Raffles finally thumped into the ground and the gun went silent.

  "Lead them away from us," Roger said in her ear. "We have a ship picked out. We'll pick you up."

  We? Shrugging to herself, Cassie examined the field gun. It was designed for anti-aircraft fire, with a barrel that would never depress to ground level. She couldn't use it against the mercenaries, so she fired a shock pulse into the control box and ran back into the forest of tents. She could hear men blundering around to her left, so she circled right, hoping to work her way back to the dropped saddlebags.

  A stun bolt sizzled past, close enough to her head that her scalp went numb.

  Cassie reacted without thought, diving forward, going into a roll. She'd glimpsed the shot hitting the fabric of the tent in front of her, which put the shooter behind and to the left. She rolled left, using a second tent for cover, came up on her knees and shuffled forward, coming around the other side of the tent where he wouldn't expect her.

  Another shot scorched the air, and her right arm lost all sensation. He'd predicted exactly where she would come out.

  She stuck a hand out past the tent, just enough to create a flash of movement and keep him guessing. Then she threw herself flat, wriggled under a different wagon, and popped out on the far side. The temptation to circle back and try to take out the shooter was strong, but she had bigger fish to fry. She kept going forward, putting more distance between herself and the clever man with the stun gun.

  At least he isn't trying to kill me. She wished the rest of the hired guns had as much restraint. She came to the edge of the tents and saw a flicker of movement on the far side of the Raffles. It was Lark, moving fast, with a small duffel bag over one shoulder.

  Cassie broke into a run, breaking cover, sprinting toward the crashed ship. She clambered on top of the Raffles, expecting a blast to hit her at any second. For an instant she stood on top of the hull, plainly visible to the entire camp. Then, deciding she'd done enough to draw attention away from Lark, Cassie dropped flat.

  Just in time. A stun bolt passed through the air above her as she fell. A moment later a wave of energy blasts and projectiles went past. Whoever the man with the stunner was, he was faster than his associates.

  She would have to shoot him first.

  By lying flat on the top of the ship, Cassie was protected from gunfire by the curve of the hull. She couldn't move much, but her role was to draw fire, not shoot back. Shot after shot rattled against the side of the ship, and she winced even though she knew the Raffles would never fly again.

  Something moved in the corner of her eye. She twisted her head around, and grimaced. It was him. The blond man who'd caused her so much trouble back in Sandport. He was splayed across the top of a tent, a stun rifle in his hands, wobbling back and forth as he fought to maintain his balance.

  "Bloody nuisance," she muttered, and switched her pistol to laser. A quick swipe sliced through the fabric that supported the man, and his eyes went wide an instant before he dropped from sight. Cassie chuckled.

  "This way," somebody shouted from below. "They're going for the Robin!"

  Muttering a curse, Cassie turned away from the fallen mercenary and wriggled across the hull until she could see over the far side.

  Her heart sank.

  Armed men were converging on a small black skimmer with red trim. No doubt the Robin. Cassie could see Lark at the top of the entry ramp, fiddling with the bag over her shoulder. The hatch to the skimmer was closed, and by the looks of it, Lark was having no luck opening it. As Cassie watched, Lark dove to the side an instant before the first stun bolt smacked against the sealed hatch. She tumbled to the ground and scooted under the ramp.

  Cassie switched her pistol to stun and fired a few shots into the side of the skimmer, reminding the mercenaries that she was there, keeping them away from the ramp. Then she wriggled backward to the far side of the Raffles and slid to the ground.

  She ran straight back, away from the Raffles and the Robin, into the battered remains of the tent village. She kept the starship between herself and the mercenaries. If they didn't know where she was, they'd have to worry that she was still on top of the ship, ready to pick someone off. The threat was the only thing keeping Lark safe for a few more moments.

  The blond mercenary with the stun rifle had to be somewhere ahead of her. She pushed him from her mind, darting back and forth among the tents, heading for the toppled tower. She reached it without seeing a mercenary, scooped up the saddlebags, and headed through the tents in a wide arc. She hoped to come up behind the mercenaries unseen.

  Her best guess was that she faced between four and eight armed men. It was terrible odds by any reasonable standard, but combat was nothing if not unpredictable. As long as Lark remained alive, there was hope.

  She fished a disk bomb out of the bag as she ran. The disks were meant to be stuck on the side of something, then detonated with a timer. They would work as grenades, though. She hit the timer with her thumb and set it to three seconds, but didn't arm it.

  When the closest mercenaries were only a couple of tents away she slowed her pace and
tried to quiet her breathing. Stun shots wouldn't do much against armored men. She considered her arsenal. The pistol had a shock setting, but four or five shots would drain the gun completely.

  There was also a magazine with eight explosive rounds, propelled magnetically by the rails. She set the dial on the pistol, then edged around the tent in front of her.

  Two mercenaries crouched, less than twenty meters away, their attention fixed on the Robin. Cassie took careful aim, held her breath for a moment, and slowly exhaled.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The round hit the mercenary on the left in the back of the head. He dropped instantly as the round exploded, and she snapped a quick shot at the man beside him. That one was already rolling to the side, and she wasted another round on a near miss as he dashed to the left, vanishing behind the tents.

  Cassie trotted forward, gun up, alert. She could see two more mercenaries off to the left, one looking at her, the other watching the top of the Raffles. The one man snapped a shot at her. She stepped behind a tent, not bothering to duck, and armed the disk bomb. The she lobbed it over the tent toward the two men.

  The explosion was huge, a roiling ball of fire that set the tent in front of Cassie on fire and singed the tips of her hair. She abandoned her plan to throw more bombs and ran for the Robin instead.

  She was a meter from the ramp when a stun bolt hit her in the back.

  CHAPTER 11

  When she woke up, Cassie was lying on her back under the ramp with Lark kneeling over her. The girl looked terrified, so Cassie gave her a wink, almost the only movement she was capable of.

  "Cassie! Are you okay? Roger got the door open, but we can't get up the ramp, and I don't know what to do. What should we do, Cassie?"

  Roger? She looked around, triggering a wave of electric tingles through the muscles in her neck. Stun shots were a serious nuisance. Lark's shoulder bag lay on the ground beside her, with a cable running from the bag to a data port near the bottom edge of the hatch.

  Cassie took a closer look at the shoulder bag. "You pulled Roger's circuit boards?" she said.

  "He told me how," Lark replied. "He said I should." She looked more worried about Cassie's reaction than about the mercenaries outside.

  Cassie rotated her feet one at a time, then her hands. Every nerve in her body set up a screaming protest, but the pain was already fading. She heaved herself up onto one elbow.

  The fires were all out. She could see men moving, darting from one wagon to another, keeping under cover. If she hopped up and tried to run up the ramp into the flitter she'd be flat on her back again before she was fully upright. If there had ever been a chance to get inside, that chance was long gone.

  She turned to Lark. "Why didn’t you run into the flitter when Roger got the hatch open?"

  Lark looked at her as if she'd asked the stupidest question imaginable. "You were just lying there in the dirt. I couldn’t get you up the ramp."

  Cassie glanced at the ground just past the ramp. She could see her own boot tracks, widely spaced as she'd run for the ship, and the mark she'd made when she fell on her face. And then drag marks, leading to the ramp. She stared at Lark. "You pulled me back here?" She looked at the girl's slender frame. "How?"

  "You there," said a voice from the row of tents. "We have you trapped. You might as well come out."

  Cassie turned away from Lark and scanned the row of tents. No one was in sight. "You first!" she shouted.

  After a long moment an armored mercenary rose from behind a tent trailer. She reached for her pistol, and her hand touched an empty holster. She cursed, seeing her pistol lying in the dirt on the far side of the ramp.

  Clearly, the mercenaries had seen it too.

  Another mercenary rose, then another. The first one spoke again. "You're unarmed," he said. "Give up. Or we'll come over there and shoot you down and drag you out."

  "What do we do?" Lark whispered.

  Not having the faintest idea, Cassie didn't answer.

  Another mercenary stepped into view. It was the blond man, the stun rifle loose in his hands. He stared at the Robin, frowning.

  "Last chance," the first mercenary said. "If we have to come and get you it's not going to be pretty." A couple of long seconds stretched out, and the man shrugged. "All right. Have it your way."

  He started toward the skimmer, circling wide to get a line of sight under the ramp. The rifle in his hand swung up.

  The blond mercenary put a hand on the breech of his stun rifle, adjusted something, hesitated, then swung the gun up and fired.

  And shot the walking mercenary in the back.

  The armored man fell, and the blond man spun, racing for the cover of the tents. A stun shot from the remaining mercenaries missed him by a fraction, and he skidded to a halt beside a tent trailer. He dropped to one knee, snapped a shot at his erstwhile comrades, and shouted, "Get in the skimmer! Now!"

  Cassie needed no further urging. She sprang up, darted out just far enough to snatch up her pistol, and dashed up the ramp into the ship. Lark was a step ahead of her on the ramp. A belated stun shot hit the inside bulkhead as Cassie slapped the hatch button. The last thing she saw as the hatch slid shut was the blond man who'd saved them, retreating into the tents with lasers slicing the fabric all around him.

  She dropped into the pilot's seat, then stared in mute frustration at the palm reader on the dash while Lark fiddled with Roger's cable. At last the cable snapped into a data port, the dash lit up, and Cassie lifted them straight into the air. She brought the ship around and headed for open desert.

  "The other people got away," Lark said. "The prisoners? I saw them run into the desert when the shooting started."

  Cassie shot her a guilty look. She'd forgotten all about the nomads.

  "What about that man?" Lark said. "The one who helped us?"

  "I'm sure he'll be fine."

  Lark didn’t say anything, just belted herself into the co-pilot's seat, but she didn't look happy.

  "He made his own choices," Cassie said impatiently. "He's not my responsibility. You are."

  Lark blinked at her with big solemn eyes. "Why?"

  "Well, because you're a kid. And because you saved me."

  "He saved you too," she said.

  "Oh, for—" The hell of it, Cassie realized, was that Lark was right. The blond mercenary had seen what was happening, and he'd made a suicidal decision to interfere.

  She sighed, accepting the inevitable. "Lark, I'm going to set you down the desert."

  "No, I want to help!"

  Cassie ignored her. "Roger, can you take the controls?"

  "The skimmer's AI is fighting me. I can keep us moving in a straight line. That's about it."

  Cassie swore. "All right, Lark. Pay attention. This is the throttle. It controls speed…."

  Two minutes later, the skimmer raced back into the wreckage of the camp with Lark at the controls. Cassie was braced in the open hatch, her hands white-knuckled on the frame as the skimmer bucked and swooped. She had a quick glimpse of a mercenary gaping up at her, wide-mouthed, before the skimmer flashed past. The stubby wings were catching on the tops of tents and knocking them over. The ship slowed, and Cassie jumped out, drawing her pistol.

  The blond mercenary was a dozen steps from where she'd last seen him, face-down in the dirt. An armored man was beside him with an antigrav cargo mover, trying to roll him onto the platform. Cassie cut him down with a laser beam.

  A chorus of shouts rose as the other mercenaries reacted to the skimmer. Cassie ran to her saddlebags, lying discarded in the dirt, and hauled them back to the unconscious man. She set her pistol down and started pulling out disk bombs, arming and throwing them as fast as she could. Explosions billowed all around her, and bits of debris fell like hail.

  The nomads, she reflected, were not going to be pleased.

  A shape loomed beside her, and she flinched, grabbing for her pistol. It was the skimmer, nearly clipping her with a wing as it came veering
in and set down hard. The impact raised a cloud of dust, and she coughed, then looked up as the hatch slid open.

  "Rogers says the AI locked him out!" Lark shouted. "We can't take off!"

  "Well, that's great." Cassie shook her head. "Get down here, Lark. You're a great target up there." She turned her gaze to the unconscious man. "You don't seem to be one of them. What are you, a contractor? More to the point, did they let you fly their skimmer?"

  If there were mercenaries left in the camp, they were keeping their heads down. It was a good thing, too. It took an absurdly long time to haul the unconscious man onto the skimmer. They wedged him into the co-pilot's seat, Cassie grumbling about the weight, and strapped him in. Then Cassie took his limp right hand and pressed it against the palm reader on the dash.

  The console lit up.

  "It's about bloody time something worked." Cassie brought the ship straight up, swung the nose around, and headed for the horizon.

  Episode Four

  Death of an Avatar

  CHAPTER 12

  Midnight Wells was the closest thing the nomads of Bruma had to a city. There were permanent, non-portable buildings, but they were designed to be abandoned. That they had been occupied continuously for two and a half generations was irrelevant. The town could be completely abandoned within a day, nothing of value left behind except the stone walls and plastic roofs of a dozen large buildings and half a dozen smaller ones.

  There probably weren't ten spaceships on the entire planet in the possession of nomads, but most of them could be found in Midnight Wells. Cassie set the skimmer down on the outskirts of the town, kicking up great billowing clouds of dust. Then she turned in her seat and stared at the man in the co-pilot's chair.

  "Thanks for getting me out of there," he said. "They would have killed me."

  "Likewise," she said. "So we're even. The way I see it, I no longer owe you a thing."