Agent of Change by Sharon Lee; Steve Miller

Author:Sharon Lee; Steve Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2007-01-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

THE SITUATION LOOKED even worse from the street than it had from the car. Even granting the two of them awesome powers of mayhem and confusion, Miri was ninety-five percent certain that they wouldn't be able to fade through the checkpoint. She didn't bother to ask her companion for the official figures.

Nor did he offer them, just stood at her shoulder in the pool of shadow they'd chosen as their observation point and silently watched the procedure.

After a time, she felt him shift next to her. "Let us get a drink."

She turned her head, but it was impossible to see his face in the inkblot they occupied. "Sounds like the most useful thing we can do," she agreed. "Maybe two or three. Then we can come back and try to bull on through. Won't hurt so much when we get perforated."

She heard the shadow of his laugh as he moved out onto the sidewalk. "No faith, Miri."

"None," she said, catching up. "My folks weren't real religious, either. Are we really gonna take a kynak break with the cops and the Juntavas within eight seconds in every direction?"

He turned down a slender alleyway at the far end of which multicolored neons promised cheap warmth and noise.

"Why not?" he asked.

Or, she translated, do you have a better idea?

She didn't, so she followed.

* * *

THE THIRD BAR was noisiest, full nearly to overflowing with men and women in leathers and other work clothes. It was the perfect place for them to hide, though there seemed barely enough room to accommodate two more bodies, no matter how small.

Val Con hesitated at the door, weighing the scene, while Miri stood at his shoulder, watching the crowd absently. She stiffened suddenly and he snapped his eyes to her face, looking for a clue to the trouble.

She was grinning and leaning a bit forward, eyes squinted against the smoke. In a moment, she turned to him, grin undiminished.

"Tough Guy, you're a genius. Let's go." She started forward.

He dropped his hand, gently encircling her wrist. "Tell me."

"Part of that mob in there's the Gyrfalks—my old unit." There was no missing the excitement in her voice. She jerked her wrist and he let it go. "C'mon, Tough Guy."

He followed, afraid of losing her in the press of bodies and the eddying smoke as she pushed and wove her way through, moving with the stride of a person with a goal in sight.

What the goal was, Val Con couldn't tell. He was satisfied to keep her in sight, and re-established himself at her left shoulder when she caught up against a temporary body-jam.

The jam sorted itself out and she moved on, he maintaining his position as they broke out into the center of the room.

There it was less crowded, though a goodly portion of available floor space was taken up by the biggest Terran that Val Con had ever seen: Eight feet tall if he was an inch, shoulders wider than Edger's shell, chest and ribcage said his planet of origin had been just a tad light on oxygen, and there was not an ounce of fat on him.

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