Jinx on a Terran Inheritance by Brian Daley Read Free Book Online Page B

a brightness up ahead. Human-style lighting was part of it, but so was something else, something irregular. And they could hear deep, distant sounds, unintelligible yet somehow familiar.
    The incline was very steep. Floyt was worried about losing his footing; Alacrity's pathfinders still gave him good purchase. The glow before them grew brighter, outshining the walls. Its source was somewhere close, around the bend.
    Suddenly they heard yells, Severeemish roars, the chatter and hiss of weaponry, and the concussion of a rocket. Floyt understood what Alacrity meant; even at a distance, the report slammed their eardrums.
    file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (28 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28
    [Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE
    The firefight died away abruptly, raged again for ten seconds, then became sporadic.
    "Now what?" Floyt asked, his heart hammering.
    Conditioning and instincts told them to get out, but they were indebted to Redlock, perhaps even more so to Dorraine. Alacrity bit his lip. "You ever feel like everybody else's problems are simpler than yours?"
    Floyt thought about how Redlock had intervened on their behalf and the look on Dorraine's face when she'd found out that her father was dead. "Not right now, for a change."
    "Yeah? Okay, Ho; keep your head down."
    They made their way to the next buttress, crouching low, then crawled behind it to the adit's right wall.
    From there they could see the end of the tunnel.
    The Precursors hadn't any use for landings or ledges; the adit simply ended at a sharp angle, plunging into a vast underground chamber. They couldn't make out much except that they seemed to be looking into the upper reaches of the place. Brief shadows flickered against the ceiling and there were the sharp sounds and echoes of the battle.
    Someone—Weir's research teams, presumably—had built a stairway down the last, steepest stretch of the adit, bracing it with suction disks and tension members. The steps led to a catwalk grating where the adit simply emptied into the artificial cavern.
    There one of the Daubin' Band musicians lay unmoving, badly wounded or dead, blood darkening the white stripes of her shimmerskins. Her over-under infantry rifle lay nearby.
    "Ambush," Alacrity guessed.
    "Could she still be alive?"
    Alacricty made a who knows? face. They began to ease up over the buttress, then ducked back as they heard running footsteps on the catwalk. A figure came into view, pounding up the steps in silhouette, crouching low, impossible to identify.
    Alacrity braced both arms across the barrier, aligning the barrel of the Captain's Sidearm. "Halt! Stand fast!"
    The figure froze almost comically, posed like a statue of a cat burglar.
    "Interlock," Alacrity called out. Floyt glanced at him. His face, merely shiny with sweat a few moments ago, streamed with it now, catching some of the glare of the cavern.
    "Interlock!" Alacrity repeated. "Gimme the damn countersign; I'm not asking you ag—" He threw file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (29 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28
    [Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE
    himself sideways, taking Floyt with him. They heard the enraged buzzsaw of a flechette burpgun, the reports of the rounds battering their ears, the metal slivers whining and ricocheting off the floor, barrier, and walls, nearly as much of a hazard to the marksman as to his targets.
    All the tension and resentment in Alacrity—some of it dated back to Terra and the underhanded way he'd been framed and recruited—exploded. With a curse in some language that didn't sound quite human, showing his teeth and the whites of his eyes, he scrabbled back to the barrier, staying below the line of fire, and waited for a lull in the swarming of flechettes. Lying asprawl, he eased the muzzle of the Captain's Sidearm up, barely over the buttress, and let fly.
    Floyt,