Archiwum
- Index
- Jessica Thomas [Alex Peres Mysteries 1] Caught In The Net
- Diana Palmer Wakacje w Meksyku (Mystery Man)
- Diana Palmer Mystery Man
- Lois McMaster Bujold 10 Mirror Dance
- Lois McMaster Bujold 15.5 Winterfair Gifts
- Lois McMaster Bujold 06 Ethan of Athos
- Chmielewska Joanna Jak wytrzymać‡ z m晜źczyznć…
- Henryk Ryszard Żuchowski Słownik savoir vivre dla pani
- Ostatni calus dla mamy Watson Casey
- Catherine George Milion pocaśÂ‚unków
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- aeie.pev.pl
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"Stop!" he cried.
To his surprise, they did, cautious. Rau had lost his stunner somewhere, but
Millisor pulled a vicious, glittering little needler from his jacket and took
aim at Ethan's chest. Ethan pictured its tiny needles expanding on impact and
whirling like razors through his abdomen. His autopsy would be the
godawfullest mess . . .
Terrence Cee yanked away from Rau and spun to stand in front of Ethan, his
arms spread wide in a futile gesture of protection. "No!"
"You think I have to keep you alive just because the cultures are gone,
mutant?" Millisor, furious, cried at him. "Dead will do, by God!" He raised
his weapon in both hands. "What the " he lurched as his feet rose from the
floor, his hands clutching out for lost balance.
Ethan grabbed Cee. His stomach seemed to be floating away independently of the
rest of him. He looked around hysterically, to spot Quinn clinging to the far
wall near one of the corridor entrances, the cover plate forcibly torn off an
environmental engineering control panel beside her.
Millisor's body undulated in midair, compensating expertly for his unwanted
spin, and he brought his weapon back to steady aim. Quinn, yelling helplessly,
tore the cover plate the rest of the way off its cabinet and flung it toward
them. It spun wickedly through the air, but it was obvious before it was
halfway across the bay that it was going to miss Millisor. The Cetagandan's
grip tightened on his needler trigger
Millisor's body, haloed for a blinding instant like some burning martyr,
convulsed in the booming blue crackle of a plasma bolt. Ethan's head jerked at
the pungent stench of burnt meat and fabric and boiling plastics. He blinked
red and purpled afterimages of the dancing, dying silhouette of the ghem-lord.
The needler spun away, and Rau lost his grip on the floor in an aborted grab
for it. The Cetagandan captain swam frantically in air, swiveling his head in
urgent search for the source of this devastating new attack. Quinn's cover
plate, rebounding off the far wall, winged by nearly taking Ethan's head with
it.
"There he is!" Cee, grappling in midair with Ethan, pointed with a shout at
the catwalks and girders. A pink blur moved along them, aimed something at
Rau. "No! He's my meat!" Cee cried. With a berserker yell, Cee launched
himself off Ethan toward Rau. "Kill you, bastard!"
The only benefit Ethan could see coming from this insane outbreak of martial
spirit was that he, Ethan, was pushed toward the outer bulkhead wall. He
managed to catch a grip on a projection without breaking a wrist, halting his
mindless momentum.
"No, Terrence! If somebody's firing at Cetagandans, the thing to do is get out
of the way!" But this voice of reason whipped away in the wind. Wind? The air
leak must be widening explosive decompression at any moment, surely . . .
Cee's and Rau's struggling forms sank to the deck like a pebble dropping
through oil, as Quinn gradually turned up a little gravity. Ethan's own body
stopped flapping like a flag in the breeze, and he found himself hanging,
though still lightly, entirely too far above the deck. He began to climb down
hastily, before Quinn decided to try something like Helda's trick with the
birds.
Rau threw the smaller, lighter Cee bouncing and skidding along the deck, and
whirled to dash for his ship's flex tube. Two steps, and he flared, melted,
and burned like a wax image in a brilliant plasma cross-fire, coming from not
one but two sources among the girders. He fell with a meaty thunk, and,
horribly, lived a moment more, writhing and screaming soundlessly through
fleshless black jaws. Cee, on hands and knees, watched open-mouthed, as though
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himself dismayed by the completeness of his vicarious revenge.
Ethan started across the deck toward the telepath. On the Station side of the
bay, two men swung out of the network of girders and catwalks. One was the
pink apparition from the mallway, a second was another dark-skinned man
dressed in shimmering brown in a similar highly-decorated style. They closed
on Quinn, who, so far from welcoming her rescuers, started back up the wall
like a busy spider.
Each of the dark men grabbed an ankle and yanked her down, careless of what
her head struck on the way. An attempted karate kick on her part was foiled by
brown-silk and turned into what would have been a nasty fall in higher gravity
and still didn't look exactly pleasant. Pink-suit pinioned her arms from
behind, and brown-silk took the fight out of her with a breath-stopping blow
to her stomach.
One on each side, they hustled her away up the corridor ramp toward the
emergency exit as pressure-suited Stationer damage control squads began to
pour into the chamber from several other entrances.
"They're they're snatching Quinn!" Ethan cried to Cee. "Who are they? What are
they?" He danced from foot to foot in an agony of bewilderment, pulling Cee
up.
Cee squinted after them. "Jackson's Whole? Bharaputrans, here? We've got to go
after her!"
"Preferably while there's still air to breathe "
Clinging to each other, they proceeded in a sort of bounding hobble as rapidly
as they could across the docking bay and up the ramp.
At the emergency airseal they had to wait for terrifying seconds, working
their jaws to protect their ears against the now rapidly decreasing air
pressure, while the trio ahead of them cycled through and vacated the
personnel lock that permitted escape from blocked chambers. Jabbing at the
control button in a panicked tattoo, or even leaning on it, did nothing to
hasten the process, Ethan found; the door opened only when it was damn good
and ready.
They fell through, then had to wait again while pressure equalized and Quinn's
assailants gained a lengthening head start. Ethan gasped in relief. He had
been entirely mistaken about Stationer air; it smelled just great, better than
any air he'd ever had.
"How the devil," Ethan panted to Cee as they waited, "did Millisor and Rau
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