I Dare by Sharon & Miller Lee & Sharon & Miller Lee

Author:Sharon & Miller Lee & Sharon & Miller Lee [Lee, Sharon & Miller, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Baen Books

Day 346

Standard Year 1392

Industry Street

Surebleak

GWINCE GUIDED THE car to what passed for a curb, set the brake and looked up. Pat Rin could see her worried frown in the reflection of the rear view mirror.

"Boss, I ain't likin' this street too much."

Which only proved her a woman of superior sense, Pat Rin thought. In his recent travels, he had seen bad streets—even very bad streets.

This street was—an affront to the honorable, a blight upon the eye; a dismay upon the soul.

Burned out buildings lined both sides of the pitted road, broken windows gaping like fanged entrances to black and bottomless gullets. There were no trees, nor flowers, as there had been seen on some of the streets under Penn Kalhoon's care; there were no people; no vehicles on the street, saving their own.

One house stood, unburned and unbroken, along the whole doleful thoroughfare: A glowering gray pile, protected by a rusty fence which had been draped with a glittering net of metallic spikes.

"Very well," he said, steeling himself, and turned to meet Natesa's eye. She inclined her head, novice to master, with no discernible irony.

"Gwince, please contact Mr. McFarland and have him bring his team in close. Natesa and I will see if Boss Ivernet is at home."

Gwince bit her lip. "Boss, it might be a good idea to wait 'til Mr. McFarland gets here."

"Call now," he said, patient in the face of her concern. "Surely, they will not open fire without first discovering who we are."

He was wrong.

He had taken precisely fifteen steps up the shattered walkway toward the house, Natesa at his back, when the first pellet snarled past his ear. He found his target, fired and leapt in the same instant, coming down heavily on his shoulder behind a pile of broken concrete that might once have been part of a wall.

The air was full of pellets, snarling and whining, pinging off his scant cover. Pat Rin leaned out, found a target, fired and ducked back, face dusted with concrete. He leaned out again—and froze.

Natesa lay, exposed and unmoving, on the walkway leading to the house. Even as he stared, disbelieving, a pellet chipped the stone by her head. He could not tell if she were alive—no, her hand! Surely, her fingers had twitched toward her fallen weapon?

More pellets stormed and he ducked again, measuring the distance with his eyes, ignoring the old, self-taunting voice telling him he was too slow, far too slow. He would not fail in this. He would not leave her out there to die.

Carefully, he holstered his gun. Carefully, he got his feet under him. The storm of pellet fire lessened; he focused on the still figure lying on the broken pavement, took a breath—and ran.

Fleet and desperate, he reached her side, lifted her in his arms and hurtled back toward the dubious shelter of broken concrete.

He almost made it.

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