Sergeant Ricky Lamb, of the Andorran Congressional Marines, stabbed Dallas in the leg with a syrette and tossed the spent capsule aside. “Smooth,” he said. “Very smooth.” His words, muffled by the scarf wrapped around his face, and drowned in the roaring gusts of wind, were for himself alone.
Lamb glanced up and down the street and was utterly pleased at how little he saw. The storm had cut visibility down to ten meters or so: perfect cover for a kidnapping. What a stroke of luck!
“Package secure,” Lamb said, after triggering the microphone at his throat. “Rally on me.
“Let's get him off the street,” he shouted at the marine next to him.
The two men stooped; each took an arm of their victim, and they dragged him back to the alley from which they had launched their ambush. Up and down the street, and in the buildings overlooking it on either side, Lamb's squad: twelve marines in all, shouldered their rifles and came running.
At the same time, an observer came leaping and crawling out of the storm. It skittered low to the ground one second, and leapt up to cling to the side of a building in the next. Unnoticed, it studied the men who had assaulted Dallas, and the others that came to join them. It saw that while they were dressed like civilians: in long dust coats, with their faces wrapped against the storm, their behavior was distinctly military. It could see that they were a small unit preparing to move, and that their kinetic rifles were of a carbine pattern used by the Andorran armed forces. The observer took no time at all to draw the obvious conclusion, and silently raised the alarm.
Three marines ran directly below the cyborg, utterly oblivious to its presence. They exchanged hand signals with two more coming the opposite way, and it was one of these two who saw the observer perched above his friends. The marine's rifle snapped up to his shoulder, but the cyborg had already fired. A salvo of silent, ferrofibrous darts tore into the soldier, spinning him around. His comrade instinctively dove away, and she was only injured in the leg.
Muzzle flashes and glowing ferrous projectiles lit up the storm as the rest of the squad engaged, but the observer leapt into the concealment of the whirling sand, unharmed.
“Shields!” Lamb reminded his marines, and one by one, they activated their personal defenses. The shield auras glowed nearly solid white under the constant assault of the storm. The marines facing into the wind had to hold up their free hands to deflect the buffeting sand, and so open a kind of vision slit in their protective barriers, just to see.
Lamb again triggered the throat microphone for his comm piece. “Contact! Observer! Rally up! Rally up!” Lamb ceased his urging as he and his marines all grunted in unison. Their comm pieces squealed in their ears: jammed.
The observer came and went, came and went, hitting and running with impunity as the marines continued to regroup. The last two stragglers appeared suddenly in the storm: dark silhouettes without shields, and were almost gunned down by their comrades. They got an earful as they joined the others. Their formation now complete, the squad instinctively coalesced into a defensive ring around the alley, with their sergeant and wounded comrades in the center. The Andorrans then staunchly stood their ground and fired enthusiastically whenever the observer showed itself. They were utterly confident in their eventual victory, and only a little impatient for it to happen.
Lamb knew that the observer wasn't trying to win a fight however, but to suppress his squad: to pin them in place long enough for reinforcements to arrive. They couldn't hope to overcome the entire starport garrison. There was only one thing to do: run away.
“Fall back to rally one!” he ordered, as soon as everybody was gathered. He had a good shout: a drill sergeant's shout. It cut through the storm and sporadic gunfire like a thunderclap. “Teech, carry Myrtle. Johnny, Harko. Rally one marines!”
The indicated men slung their rifles and stooped to their fallen comrades. Young Myrtle hung limp and silent from Teech's massive shoulder, but Harko was clearly alive. She groaned with the unmistakable anguish of a salvageable marine when she was helped up. She hobbled along on her good leg, with her rifle in the one hand, and the shoulder of her comrade clutched in the other.
The observer came streaking through the storm, one final time. It had heard the sergeant's command. It prioritized him as a target. Lamb threw himself across Dallas ahead of a fusillade of darts, shielding the young man as much with his broad back as the aegis that protected it. Dark missiles whistled and twanged as they were punched out of the air, and the sergeant shook and shuddered with the recoil of his protective barrier.
Kinetic rifles barked and roared, and the deadly storm was over. The observer collapsed dead on Lamb's back, and he grunted from the shock and the weight of it. He looked over his shoulder into a dark, featureless face. A trickle of opaque, pinkish fluid dribbled from the smoking exit wound in the center of its head, and splattered on his shoulder.
Before the sergeant could roll the wreck off of him, the observer came back to life. A dark blade snapped out of its wrist and came plunging towards the back of Lamb's leg. The sergeant would have been crippled if he hadn't already lost that leg: in an another brush with Evolution, on another world. The blade glanced harmlessly off his prosthetic, and before the machine could strike again, the other marines were on it. It took three of them to drag the observer clear. Lamb was still rising, turning and bringing his rifle to bear when the twisting, writhing machine exploded.
Lamb was thrown back against the alley wall, and for a moment, his world went black. He came back to reality a moment later, blinking. The medic loomed over him, and shouted something silently.
“We have to move,” Lamb said, and he didn't hear his own words. He didn't feel the medic's needle in his arm either, but he saw the bright red and white syrette as it was pulled out and tossed aside. He began to hear his ears ringing.
Sitting across from the sergeant was another marine, who still held one of the observer's arms in his hands. His face was miserably burnt and scorched black. Like the others, he had been wearing goggles, and his face had been wrapped up against the storm, but all that was gone now, and he was blind. A marine tore the mechanical arm from his hands and forced him to his feet. At the same time, firm hands helped the sergeant up as well. He pushed those hands away however, and stooped to pick up Dallas. He lifted him like a sack, and threw him over his shoulder.
“Rally one! Go, go, go!” the sergeant commanded.
Evolution dropships came and rained drones on and around the fallen observer's position. These semi-autonomous units spread out to the limits of their sensors and began sweeping through the storm. Twice, the marines bumped into these drones and twice, the marines shot their way through. It was enough for Evolution to calculate the direction of their retreat. It assembled a force to block the Andorran's escape route, and redeployed its sweepers into a cordon, but it was already too late. The marines disappeared: went to ground somewhere short of the blocking force. After minutes of delay, this cohort surged forward and began searching, door-to-door and building by building.
The cyborgs soon found their quarry in a First Founding warehouse. The marines had deployed an automated turret to protect the ground floor and Evolution lost six drones storming the doors. They were still forming up to assault and clear the lower levels when the building erupted with explosions and collapsed in on itself.
Below the surface of Ar Suft, the marines ran on. They had paused only long enough for another round of first aid and to arm their traps, then exited by way of the mag line. Once a major artery of the city's municipal transit and logistics system, the line had been defunct for decades. The Andorrans were the tube's first travelers in years, excepting some few and various vermin. With no trams running, these critters made their homes in the mounds of dirt and refuse that accumulated beneath every ventilation stack, which the denizens above had used as trash cans, as often as convenience had demanded.
The marines traveled in darkness, except for the lights they brought with them, and sparingly used. Their clattering feet and hushed voices echoed strangely in their cylindrical environs. On and on they marched, limping along as fast as their slowest comrade could manage, until they reached another warehouse far down the line. They climbed back out of the tube, onto the loading platform, where cranes had once transferred hexagonal shipping containers from tram to storage.
Sergeant Lamb took the opportunity to make a head count, and allowed himself the luxury of glaring suspiciously at Dallas. Their captive was conscious and moving about on his own two feet. Lamb hadn't wanted to wake him, but a third of his squad were casualties, and he had had to choose between rousing Dallas and leaving his dead behind: an unthinkable choice, considering how much Evolution could learn from a recently deceased brain.
What made Lamb suspicious was that Dallas had voluntarily carried some of their equipment, and now he even helped Harko, by making up half of the pair of human crutches she clutched under her arms. Lamb couldn't understand it, and so of course, he mistrusted him.
“Two flights up,” the sergeant said in a curious voice: a blend of a shout and a whisper. “Almost there.”
Up above, a young woman and a van waited for the marines. She was out of her element, and it showed in her wide eyes and tremulous, breathless speech.
“I never thought I'd be so glad to see a bunch of ugly potatoes,” she greeted them.
“Everything alright Carlee?” Lamb asked her.
“The bots are flying circuits all over the place. The whole garrison must be out. You guys really pissed 'em off.”
Carlee's nervous smile came and went. She didn't want to drive out into the storm. She thought the smart thing to do was to stay hidden in the warehouse until things calmed down, but the marines were all loaded up now, and Lamb was closing the cargo box door. Her objections died in her throat, and she reluctantly climbed into the driver's seat.
The van crept out into the storm. The sand blew even thicker than before. It was dark as night in the shadows of buildings, but in line with the sun, they were shrouded in churning, rusty red fog. Fine dust wafted into the van through failing weather seals and even its ventilation. The wind howled and whined louder than the van's little motor.
“There, did you see that?” Carlee pointed up at a fleeting shadow in the storm.
“Dropship,” Lamb said calmly.
“Even with this storm...” Carlee began.
“Just keep it going, nice and easy. We're just going home. We don't know anything about Andorrans, bombs, or shooting, and we're not in any hurry, because we're more worried about getting in an accident than getting shot.”
“Right,” Carlee said miserably.
They crept along. The unevenness of their pace was almost imperceptible. Carlee's nervousness and instinctual compulsion to get away from danger led to gradual increases in speed, only for her to catch herself and slow down again: always before Lamb ever needed to say anything.
Suddenly, a gust of wind revealed a towering figure in the street. Coming towards them was an Evolution juggernaut: a mechanical behemoth, which steadily advanced on four long, spidery legs. It was the stuff of nightmares for Lamb and his marines. There was no fighting it.
“Pull over!” Lamb commanded. “Clear the road, clear the road!”
The sergeant reached for the steering wheel but Carlee was already turning it. She had instinctively slammed on the brakes at the first sight of the monster, and now she punched the accelerator. The van leapt up onto the sidewalk with a lurch.
“Easy,” Lamb said, a little more calmly. “Easy, easy.”
The juggernaut paused in its stride; its turrets rotated towards the van, and the cab's occupants flinched when a scanning laser burned into their eyes. Carlee raised her hands in abject surrender. Lamb thought about it, and decided she had the right idea. He raised his hands too.
The laser winked out. At the same time, the juggernaut's main turret settled back into travel position, and it continued to advance towards them.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Easy,” Lamb said again. His eyes were fixed on the anti-personnel turret slung under the juggernaut's belly. It continued to track the van with unerring, gyroscopically stabilized precision as the monster came on. He kept repeating the word as the monster came closer and closer: like it was a prayer. “Easy, easy, easy.”
The giant machine stepped up to them. It raised a leg, and the tripod of toes collapsed into a point: a giant spike poised to skewer them. And then it simply stepped over the van. As the juggernaut's second leg came down, it grazed the back corner of the van, and they were set to rocking in their seats.
“Stars around us,” Carlee whispered, some seconds after the van stopped shaking. “Did it do that on purpose? It had to be on purpose. Right?”
“Yeah,” Lamb agreed tensely. He watched the juggernaut in the side-view mirror, and didn't feel secure again until after it had been swallowed back up by the storm. “I'm sure it had a good laugh. Let's get out of here. I've had enough close calls for one day.”
“I just need a second. I almost crapped my pants.”
“Now you know why marines wear brown.”
***
Dallas listened to juggernaut's receding steps; he felt them in his butt and legs through the hard floor of the van's cargo box. It was an eternity later that he and the marines, sitting in darkness, felt the van's resumption of travel, and were finally lulled into a sense of safety. The medic called for light, and a trio of torches filled the cargo box with muted red illumination.
A canteen was passed under Dallas's nose and stayed there. The marine holding the bottle waggled it, making it clear that a drink was being offered.
“My hands,” Dallas croaked.
“Crap, sorry,” the marine said. “I forgot. Tilt your head back boo. I got you.”
The marine apologized again when the water spilled over, and he used his sleeve to wipe Dallas's face conscientiously. “You know we're not out to hurt you, right? I mean besides the whole... balls man, you know what I mean.”
“You're Andorrans, right?” Dallas asked him.
“That's us,” the marine said with a perfectly friendly smile. “I mean, technically I'm from Haur's World, but you know. I'm Johnny.”
“Dallas.”
“Yeah, we know. That's Teech there,” Johnny pointed.
One by one, all of the marines were introduced, including the dead, dying and unhappily injured. These civilities complete, they then bounced along in awkward silence, until Dallas ventured to speak.
“I would have come along if you just asked me you know,” he said, rather sullenly. He had a horrible headache.
“Sarge thought it was best to do it this way,” the marine named Nobu explained.
“He was right,” Teech chimed in. “Two dead. Three injured. It would have been a lot worse if we took the time to ask nice.”
“One dead. Myrtle ain't kacked. Right Bunny?”
“He's hanging in there,” the medic agreed reluctantly. Myrtle's blood pressure and heart rate had plummeted steadily since she had begun to monitor them. He had sucked up all three blood bags in her trauma kit, and there was nothing else she could do with med-foam and stim packs. Myrtle needed surgery, and he wasn't going to get it.
Their comrade's grim prognosis was generally understood by the others; they could read Bunny's mood, if nothing else. It was only a couple of kids, marines as young as Dallas, who didn't have the experience or sense to know better, and who clung to hope. Teech thought it was best to acquaint them with unhappy reality. It was a mistake. Myrtle was popular; Teech wasn't, and his comrades heaped scorn and resentment on him for his doom-saying. He withdrew into his own corner and sulked.
After everyone had calmed down, Dallas jingled his restraints. “I don't suppose you can take these off. It's not like I'm going anywhere.”
“Sorry boo,” was Johnny's unhappy answer.
“We'll be home soon. Sarge'll cut you loose then,” Nobu promised.
“The lady isn't gonna like it,” the blind marine, Bonden, declared. Med foam had wept through the bandage wrapped around his eyes. In the red light, his face was the stuff horror.
“What lady?” Dallas asked.
“He's gonna meet her anyway,” Nobu said.
“Lady Luna,” Johnny explained. “She's in charge of our little mission.”
“Don't tell Admiral Blueberry that,” Teech muttered, and so paved his way back into the good graces of the others.
Admiral Blueberry was their nickname for a certain ensign. He wasn't a marine, but a fleet officer -a very, very junior fleet officer, who had command of nothing more than the cutter, which had been abandoned. He didn't have the good sense to know how meaningless his petty little rank was, or how handicapped he was by inexperience, and besides all that, he was just the worst. He was a snob twice-over, being an aristocrat, and he was a fool. He refused to take off his blue navy uniform: because an officer and a gentleman shouldn't dishonor himself with trickery and deception. He thought it impressed the lady: their actual boss. The marines were certain she encouraged Blueberry and his bloated sense of dignity, because it kept him out of sight. That gave their sergeant the latitude to carry out her orders, without Blueberry's interference in the field.
“She's a gem,” Johnny said, and the other marines agreed unanimously.
They regaled Dallas with their favorable opinions of their lady for the rest of the ride. They continued amiably as they disembarked the van, and escorted Dallas into an abandoned casino-hotel. The marines built her up into a figure of such angelic kindness, consideration and beauty, that it defied plausibility, and Dallas began to suspect they might be setting him up for some great joke: that the lady was in fact hideous. And then, following Sergeant Lamb into an expansive suite, Dallas saw her, and he thought that their descriptions of Li Luna had fallen short.
Dallas had half-expected some kind of fairy tale princess, with a floating crown of wave stones and a gown of shimmer silk, but Li was more modestly and practically dressed. Her tunic, trousers and boots were better suited to the desert than lounging about a palace. She was dirty, disheveled, and just a little bit frizzy, but she remained astoundingly beautiful. She was blessed in a very visceral way: from the golden hue of her thick, curly hair, to the outrageous elegance of her full, womanly figure. Only the severest, most hateful critic would conceivably find fault, and of course, her own modest self. It was wholly unfair to a galaxy of simple, plain beings that such a creature should exist.
Even her voice was beautiful: sweet and musical. Her greeting was a caress to Sergeant Lamb as he stepped into her suite. She thanked him for his effort and the risks taken, and Dallas was almost on tip-toes, waiting for his turn to be addressed. He was utterly smitten: instantly consumed with a wild infatuation and romantic longing.
The lady turned her smile on Dallas, and it spawned a yawning pit in his gut. He had been looking at her with an almost unseemly intensity: watching for some sign that she had felt the same burst of attraction he had. She hadn't. Her smile was warm and friendly: undeniably born of earnest good will, but it was the same smile she had graced the marine with. All at once, Dallas was overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness. The heart that had been fit to burst with boyish love, now pulsed feebly, with the most miserable, lonely reluctance.
“I'm Li, Lady of the House of Luna, of the First Circle of Inner Andorra,” she introduced herself. She spoke with the haste, ease, and discontent of much unwelcome repetition. “Won't you take my hand sir?” she coaxed, rather taken aback Dallas's obvious unhappiness.
Lamb cleared his throat. He gestured for Dallas to turn around.
“What's this?” she asked incredulously.
“Well,” Lamb ventured to say, but found himself unwilling to continue.
Most aristocrats disappointed by their servants were compelled to express scorn and anger. Lady Luna was simply aggrieved, and the dismay in her voice unmanned the grizzled sergeant. His fellow marines would have paid good money to see him tongue-tied and discomposed: flustered like any little boy. He actually blushed, and he dropped the key to Dallas's shackles.
“I'll do it,” the lady said, not unkindly. She could see that the sergeant was stiff from some injury (lifting Dallas had done for his back cruelly: more than being thrown against a wall by an explosion even); she stooped for the keys ahead of him. “There. Please, accept my most heartfelt apologies Dallas.”
Dallas said nothing at first. He just stared at the lady's soft, tortuously gentle hands as they held his own. “It's understandable,” he eventually mumbled. “All things considered.”
“What's to consider?” Li asked the sergeant. “I told you, I made it clear-”
“Evolution had him under surveillance,” Sergeant Lamb interrupted her, remembering he was a marine at last. “They hit us when we moved on him.”
“How bad?” she asked.
“One dead, four injured.”
“Sergeant, I-” Li began, and stopped herself. She had been about to apologize. “I want you to go and get some rest.”
“Ma'am.”
Lamb clicked his heels together; he saluted the lady crisply; he spared Dallas a nod, and he left.
“I'd offer you coffee, but I'm afraid we're rather poorly supplied with comforts,” Li said to Dallas. She dropped his hands then, and gestured to a chair. “Will you sit?”
“I don't think I should, miss.”
“So you are angry with us. With me.”
“Not at all,” Dallas said, somewhat plaintively. “It's just that one of your men is dying. He needs a hospital. It doesn't feel right to sit around with him bleeding to death down the hall.”
“I wish I could help him.”
“You can!” Dallas exclaimed indignantly. “Take him to a clinic! There's one half a kilometer from here and another-”
“It's not that simple. Even if we just dropped him off, if Evolution found out who he was... well, maybe you don't know what they would do to him, or to his mind rather. I hardly want to talk about it in any case. It's better that he dies here, with his friends. It's better for him and for the rest of us.”
“But he doesn't have to die. Sinsin Cu made a deal with the Prefect. If you surrender yourself into militia custody, you'll have asylum from Evolution.”
Lady Luna blinked in surprise. “Sinsin Cu made this deal?”
“He did.”
“And he trusts the Prefect? He told you this?”
“Not exactly,” Dallas said unhappily. “But Ed gave his word, and he believed me when I told him he wouldn't-”
Dallas stopped himself. He had been speaking rapidly and with earnest, passionate conviction. He had been sounding immature again. He saw the condescension in the lady's smile, and it was like a knife in his insides. He would rather have been clobbered by the marines again than suffer being looked at like that, by her: a woman smiling at a boy.
“The Prefect is an honorable man,” Dallas continued more sedately: somewhat gruffly. He paused again as the door quietly opened however.
A dark young woman stepped in, followed by a tall young man in a blue uniform.
“Tru,” Li said casually. “Ensign Kitteler, come meet Dallas Aiken.”
Dallas impatiently clasped the hands of these other people. The testament of the marines was confirmed in Kitteler's arrogant, puffy bearing, and the ephemeral, reluctant touch of his handshake. He was a plop -a gooner. He clasped his hands behind his back and took up station possessively close to the lady, until she sat down upon an isolated chair. The others reclined with her, but Dallas remained standing, at some distance.
Dallas read nothing but prim disdain in Truanna's tightly compressed lips and scowl, and he thought very little else about her.
“You were speaking as to the Prefect's character,” the lady reminded Dallas. “It seems he's offered us asylum,” she informed the others.
“What good is that?” Truanna asked: callously pragmatic.
Li smiled expectantly up at Dallas.
“Besides saving the life of your marine out there?”
“Soldiers die in war,” Kitteler said disdainfully.
“What we mean, is that this planet has been annexed by Evolution-”
“That's not true!” Dallas exclaimed indignantly.
“-And to all outward appearances, it seems that your Prefect is colluding with them,” Li finished, without any apparent displeasure at having been interrupted.
“Who told you they annexed the planet?”
“Evolution did, when we were still on our ship. I didn't have time to confirm their claim with our embassy but I don't see any reason to doubt it. House Monet has abandoned Ar Suft, and their civil administration has fallen apart almost entirely. They don't exactly have the resources to contest Evolution's claim in Arbitration, whatever their legal rights. Is it not so?”
“They're a rogue house,” Kitteler agreed. “Utterly powerless. They'll be reduced to a lower order in two or three generations.”
“I haven't heard anything about the planet being annexed,” Dallas said. “Not legally anyway. Professor Cu hasn't said anything about it, and he has access to the galaxy hub.”
“Through Evolution?” Truanna asked, keenly interested.
Dallas nodded. “Ed hasn't said anything either.”
“You mean the Prefect? So you are close to him,” Luna said, leaning forward. “I've heard something about your relationship. You're something of a son to him, aren't you?”
“We're friends,” Dallas said uneasily.
“Tell me though, and be honest,” Luna urged. “You don't think the Prefect is colluding with Evolution? Or is it just that you don't want to say it, or think it, because he's a friend? Consider itfor a moment before you answer, if you please.”
Dallas did think about it. “Ed is no Martyr of the Light,” he admitted. “He's ambitious, and... he's he's not above telling a lie, but he would never break his word. He's sworn to House Monet, and he's a man of honor.”
Kitteler sneered. “What does a backwater bureaucrat know about honor?”
Dallas clasped his own hands behind his back: to keep them from balling into fists at his side. “The same as any good man, wherever you find him in the galaxy,” he retorted with a glare.
“Well said,” Luna congratulated him earnestly, and she looked at Dallas in a way that made his heart skip a beat. “My father said something similar once.
“But tell me more about the Prefect. Tell us some story or anecdote that will help us to see him as you do.
“Does that make sense?” Luna ventured to ask, when Dallas hesitated to reply.
“I... don't...” Dallas stuttered.
“We know enough about him my lady,” Kitteler said, waving a hand.
“You've met him then,” Dallas said sarcastically.
“I wouldn't stoop to it,” Kitteler replied. “He's a corrupt provincial thug, who would rather take bribes from extortionist criminals than command his militia to clear them out of the starport. You don't deny it.”
“No,” Dallas admitted.
“A man's character is written in his actions.”
“But you still think he's honorable?” Luna pressed Dallas.
“Like I said, he's never gone back on his word.”
“But you won't go into specifics,” Truanna observed.
“You wouldn't find them persuasive,” Dallas told her miserably.
“Try me,” Luna coaxed.
Dallas sighed. “There's a man on his staff. His name is Jean Paul, and he's... he's slow. When Ed, General Flea that is, took over as Prefect from Lady Sevier, he gave her his word that Jean Paul would always have a place with him.
“Jean Paul is useless; he's disruptive and at times, even unpleasant, but he has nobody else. Lady Sevier's been dead for fifteen years, but her Paulie is still right where she left him: just down the hall from the Prefect's office. He sees the General every day. He thinks he's useful and appreciated and he's happy, just like Ed promised it would be.”
Kitteler sneered. Truanna rolled her eyes. Li's smile was radiant.
“That's the best thing I've heard since coming to Ar Suft,” the lady said. “And it's far more compelling than you thought. But tell me this. Suppose that Evolution would oppose Flea's offer of asylum. Can he fight them for the sake of his honor? Would he?”
“I don't know,” Dallas admitted. “But I wouldn't underestimate him. If wiping out the militia was so easy, Evolution would have done it by now, just like they did the gang at the starport.”
Li considered this a while. “Tru love, do you trust Sinsin Cu?”
“No,” Truanna replied flatly, without the least hesitation. “My mother did though. She said he was the best man she's ever known.”
Kitteler scowled. “If he's a geel then he's not a man, or even a he.”
“I have no doubt that was a contributing factor to her opinion,” Truanna replied, with just a degree more acerbity than was usual for her. It was like an acid bath.
“Well,” Lie said quickly, before Kitteler work out the technicalities of this offense. “I hope you don't think I'm being rude, but I think I should check in on the marines,” Li said, rising. “Will you come with me Mr. Kitteler?”
“Of course my lady.”
“Don't go anywhere,” she said to Dallas: playfully, and just a little bit awkwardly. “Not just yet. You'll keep him company until I get back Tru?”
The lady might as well have asked her friend to keep an eye on a lizard. Truanna, who was no mental slug, blinked stupidly at the unexpected request, and said nothing.
“I'll be back shortly,” Li promised Dallas, and offered her hand. “You'll wait for me?”
“I'll be here miss,” Dallas assured her. To his delight, she held onto his hand for as long as it took to pass him by. Her fingers caressed his hand in their final, prolonged parting.
