* * *
With Biggar Fro secured by a pair of restraints that An Kohli had brought along for the purpose, Thomaso opened the door leading to the entrance lobby and stepped through. He came to such an abrupt hall that An Kohli propelled Biggar Fro into his back. Standing foursquare in front of the main entrance, blocking their exit, was a groggy looking Jackon. Groggy he may have been, but the pulsar that he pointed at Thomaso’s chest was wide awake.
“I’m getting a little bit fed up with people pointing weapons at me.” He drawled.
“Shoot! Kill him!” Biggar Fro screamed, apparently oblivious to the fact that it only needed a small mistake for him to be as dead as his captor.
An Kohli was the first to react, throwing herself backwards into the bedroom, dragging her lightweight prisoner with her. They landed with a heap on the floor, the breath forced from her body with an explosive gasp, but she clung onto her captive just in case he tried to get away, though he had few options for escape.
There was a pulsar blast and chunk of plaster flew from the wall above Biggar Fro’s bed, then Thomaso flew through the door, combat rolled into a corner and pulled out his pulsar, all in one smooth movement. He scrabbled above his head and found the door control at his side of the bed and pressed the button. The door was still only half closed when a second pulsar blast hit the door jam, buckling the thin metal and stopping the door half open.
“Now what?” An Kohli gasped, still trying to recover her breath.”
“Now you die.” Shrieked Biggar Fro.
“In your dreams, shorty.” An Kohli breathed, clamping a hand over his mouth to silence him. She wriggled backwards a little to make sure she was out of direct line of fire from the part opened doorway, dragging a reluctant Biggar Fro along with her.
“Shortist...” Snarled Biggar Fro, his remark muffled behind An Kohli’s hand.
“It looks like we have a stand-off.” Thomaso observed dryly.
“Does he have a communicator?” An Kohli asked.
“Yes, he still has it.” The Aloisan blushed slightly, the pale green skin of his handsome face turning a darker shade, embarrassed at having overlooked something so obvious when he drugged his former colleague.
“How long before help turns up?”
“Minutes, maybe less.”
“Well, the one thing we have going in our favour is that he’s a Jackon and therefore has the cognitive skills of a small mollusc. If he’s got this door covered, he won’t be thinking about the door from the other bedroom, which opens behind him.”
“You’re closer, so you’ll have to go.”
“What about him?” An Kohli nodded downwards to indicate the wriggling form of Biggar Fro. “As soon as I let him go he’s going to shout a warning that even a Jackon will eventually work out.”
Thomaso went to the walk-in wardrobe and scrabbled around for a moment, returning with a dainty silk scarf. He wrapped it around a shoe, which he had also brought and threw the bundle across the room to An Kohli. Discarding the shoe, she quickly secured the scarf across Biggar Fro’s mouth, gagging him. Satisfied that he was no longer a credible threat she made her way to the bedroom door, scurried across the lounge and into the other bedroom. The lights came on automatically and she recognised the smell of Jackon in the air, along with the usual mess they created wherever they went. In one corner stood a pile of dirty and discarded clothes while in another lay a mound of take-away cartons that had once contained the sort of food that Jackons preferred: thick, greasy and covered with artificial cheese. She wondered idly why the hotel’s housekeeping staff hadn’t cleaned up and then concluded that the Jackon had probably refused them permission to enter his temporary lair. Jackons actually liked to live like that.
Quietly she approached the door that led to the entrance lobby. She pressed her ear against the door, straining to hear any communications that the Jackon might be making to summon back-up. It crossed her mind that the Jackon might not even have had the wit to summon help, but decided to ignore that optimistic thought. She had to be prepared for the worst.
She checked her pulsar to make sure that it was ready to fire. As the Jackon had fired first she had the right to defend herself, but the code of ethics demanded that she give him the chance to surrender, so she couldn’t just open the door and start shooting. She balanced herself on the balls of her feet, ready to dive in either direction and passed her hand across the door switch. It hissed obediently open. She saw the Jackon’s shoulders stiffen as he recognised the sound of danger behind him, then he started to turn.
“Don’t do it.” An Kohli called a warning. “Drop your weapon!”
But the Jackon kept turning, the hand holding his weapon leading slightly as he sought to bring it to bear on this new threat.
He fired, but he was too soon and the high energy beam simply took another chunk of plaster form the expensively decorated wall. An Kohli did the only thing she could to prevent him completing the turn and getting another shot in, this time on target.
She squeezed the trigger of her pulsar and felt the weapon discharge its lethal bolt of energy; pulsars aren’t designed for wounding. The blast took him squarely in the chest and he folded up, dead before he hit the ground.
“Clear” She shouted, loud enough for Thomaso to hear. She heard his muffled response and saw him pass across the gap of the open door opposite her, on his way to retrieve the prisoner.
Forewarned, they were more cautious about opening the outer door to the penthouse. Thomaso held the prisoner away from the door on one side while An Kohli used the wall to screen her as the door slid open to her touch.
She took a cautious look around the edge of the door, but the corridor was empty. They hurried along, quickly reaching the service corridor that led to the ladder.
“According to Hotel Security, there’s no way of getting in from that roof.” Thomaso observed.
“Hotel Security were wrong.” Grunted An Kohli as she pulled herself up the ladder. Once she was through the hatch at the top she lay on her belly and lowered her arms through the small rectangle, ready to receive the struggling form of Biggar Fro. Beneath her the Aloisan heaved his prisoner up to shoulder height, then used his muscular strength to push him high enough for An Kohli to reach. From her lofty position An Kohli had to admire the way his muscles rippled and she fought to get her ovaries back under control before they undermined her ability to reason.
She grabbed the prisoner under his scrawny arms and heaved, quickly realising that it would have been better if the much stronger Aloisan had come up first. The Dysac may have been small, but he was no lightweight. She had to use all her strength to complete the manoeuvre. Thomaso pulled himself up two rungs of the ladder so that he was able to help by pushing from below. At last An Kohli dragged Biggar Fro through the hatch and laid him on the roof beside her. She rolled onto her back, panting like a stranded fish. Too much soft living, she scolded herself; she needed more gym time.
She felt the strong hand of Thomaso grasp hers as he helped to pull her to her feet. Distracted for moment they failed to see Biggar Fro struggle upright and run across the roof, desperate to find an escape route.
With an almighty roar two of the automatic shotguns fired, perfectly triangulated so that their deadly projectiles met precisely above the pressure sensor on which Biggar Fro had stood. Blood and skin fragments sprayed across the roof. Biggar Fro’s trademark hairstyle seemed to disappear in a cloud of metal shot.
“Shit. That wasn’t supposed to happened.” An Kohli could only stare in bewilderment at the bloody remains of what had once been her prisoner.
“Don’t tell me, you cut the main power supply and waited for the solar powered batteries to discharge.”
“Of course.”
“But you didn’t cut the secondary supply.”
“What secondary supply?” An Kohli’s head snapped round to look at Thomaso.
“Every fifth pressure pad has a back-up from different supply. It means that i
f one power source is lost twenty percent of the pressure pads remain active.”
“But… but I watched the power indicators go out.”
“Yes, which triggered the failsafe supply to those twenty percent. It’s deliberate, to fool intruders like you and sucker you into getting yourself killed. You were damned lucky not to have set one off when you arrived.”
“Well, we can be sure that the alarm system has been triggered as well. Now, we need to get Biggar Fro onto the powerhouse roof. That’s where my jetpack is.”
“No. Get the jet pack down here, it’s easier. You know the route you took to get to the hatch. That will still be safe. I’ll get him.” He pointed towards Biggar Fro’s body, which seemed to have shrunk since the life had been blasted out of it. “I can work out which pads he stood on before he got to where he is.”
An Kohli did as she was bid, retracing her steps across the roof, her body tensed in case she made a mistake and triggered another pair of shotguns. She heaved herself over the edge of the powerhouse roof, retrieved the jetpack and dropped back down to the main roof once again. She found Thomaso back at the hatch, waiting patiently for her.
Between them they strapped the grizzly remains of Biggar Fro to the front of An Kohli’s jetpack harness, so that he hung there like child’s broken doll.
“Sorry about that, but I don’t think you’ll ever wear that outfit again. Pity, it suits you.”
An Kohli grimaced, partly at the heavy handed compliment and partly at having a dead and bloody body strapped to her. “No body; no bounty. Those are the rules. Now, how are you going to get out?”
“I’m going to drop back through that hatch and when the security goons arrive I’m going to tell them how angry I am that I was too late to stop you escaping. Then I’m going to walk out the front door of the hotel, hail a hover taxi and get it to take me to wherever you left your shuttle. So where is that, exactly?”
“Hiding in plain sight at the commercial shuttle port. You can’t miss it, pad twenty three.” The sound of panicked voices came from below, causing both Thomaso and An Kohli to look in the direction of the hatch. “Time for me to get going, I think. I’ll wait for an hour, or until a posse turns up. If you don’t appear then I’m heading back up there.” She jerked her head upwards in the general direction of her orbiting ship. “If you don’t make it I’ll transfer your share of the bounty to the Guild escrow account for you to claim.”
“Let’s hope I’m still alive to spend it.”
An Kohli gave him a bleak smile, acknowledging the risk he had yet to run. “Now stand back and give me room, because I’m out of here.”
Thomaso did as he was bid and took a couple of steps backwards. An Kohli hit the start button to power up the jets, took hold of the thrust control and twisted. She rose slowly into the air, then started to accelerate skywards.
Thomaso pulled out his pulsar and took careful aim. He fired two carefully placed shots so that they passed close to An Kohli as she soared through the dawn’s early light, but not close enough to risk actually hitting her. However, the surprise attack did force her to take evasive action, which was convincing enough to fool the hotel security guard who chose that moment to stick his head through the hatch in the roof.
“Bad luck mate.” He commiserated.
“No. Good luck. Better luck than you will ever know.” Whispered Thomaso, but so softly that the guard couldn’t hear. Biggar Fro wasn’t the only cargo that An Kohli was carrying. She was also unwittingly carrying Thomaso’s heart.