Audacious

2

Tonight's assassination attempt had been layered. First the attendant in the ladies' room…one of the few places Jack didn't insist on escorting her. After putting that overly helpful and far-too-deadly woman to sleep, Kris found the door locked and even Nelly unable to do anything about it. That blasted jamming.

So Kris threw a chair through the low back window.

Only to find some very fancy dressed men waiting for her.

She'd kicked the closest one in the groin before he realized this Navy lieutenant was not the usual damsel, given to easy swoons when in distress. Both guys went down in a ball and Kris took off running for her life…or at least freedom.

Which frequently meant the same. It had for poor little Eddy.

The front of the Hotel Landfall had been a zoo of newsies, cameras, and security. The back was quiet as a Buddhist temple, but Kris lacked the time to contemplate. To her right, at the end of the alley, a car waited with two more thugs. She headed left at full speed.

Running footsteps and the crash of several garbage cans told her it was going to be a long night.

At the end of the alley, Kris found a guy in a full-length, leather coat taking a leak. Bad timing. While he scrambled to finish with one hand, he clutched inside his coat with the other, grabbing for what Kris suspected was an illegal weapon on this wonderland of planets, New Eden.

Or just plain Eden as the locals insisted.

Kris didn't wait to see what he came up with. She chopped him on the side of his neck to put him down.

She'd kept running and had been running ever since.

As Kris ran for the corner, behind her came more sounds of the chase. Either her second pursuer was finding the nerve to keep this up, or whoever was paying for this hit had not stinted on numbers. The quality his money bought had yet to be determined.

Maybe it was the first time for them.

It wasn't for Kris Longknife.

As she neared the corner, a gruff ''You're blocking my fire lane'' greeted her in Jack's wonderful voice.

Wonderful for at least the moment.

Kris went wide around the corner, then skidded into a turn and a stop. Jack knelt there, in dress red-and-blues, service automatic covering the street. Kris took the situation in as she caught her breath.

Ineye's Qck-Stp. ''Lunch in five minutes or it's on me'' probably didn't have armored glass, but solid bricks covered the lower half of his store front.

Kris ducked behind Jack. ''You got a handkerchief or a bandage?'' Kris asked as she eyed the half-inch glass sliver in her gun hand.

''Bandage in my hip pocket,'' Jack said, and snapped off two rounds. There was a shout out there and the clatter of a weapon bouncing along the cobblestones.

Kris located the bandage, drew the sliver out with her teeth, then spat it out as she wrapped the bleeding hand if not expertly, at least with experience. ''What took you so long?''

''How am I supposed to know how long you need to take a leak, put that outfit back together, and powder your too-large nose. Your opinion, not mine,'' he said, and snapped off two more shots. No noise rewarded him this time. A stream of bullets stitched the glass of the far window but failed to make it through to the window above Kris's head. Other rounds ricocheted off the pavement.

''I am not slow in the head,'' Kris snapped. Well, there was the time she'd planted bombs to blow up a space station's sewage treatment plant, but that was a special occasion.

''Besides,'' Jack continued, ''the Hotel Landfall did not take well to me shooting the door off their ladies' room. Insisted I wait for someone with a key. And asked dark questions about whether or not I had a permit for this thing.'' Jack fired two more rounds to punctuate the reference to his Corps-issued weapon, authorized on Wardhaven…but illegal on a mature, civilized place like Eden.

Kris had been naïve enough to believe that line in the official ''Welcome to Eden'' handbook given her by the inattentive secretary in the ambassador's office. But not naïve enough for her and Jack to leave their backups at home on this night of Kris's coming out as the visiting princess from the Rim.

''You'd have thought they'd give us a couple of free passes,'' she grumbled. ''Two or three quiet nights out.''

Kris's complaint was cut short by the roar of a car engine. A gray sedan shot around the corner up from them, an automatic pistol already out the window. But the gunner was busy holding on tight as the car took the corner, giving Kris the first shot.

A major mistake.

Kris aimed one for the gunner, then quickly spaced ten across the front window.

The car wobbled in its turn. Then slammed into a fire hydrant. Water geysered up, showering everything, including the car. No motion there.

''Somebody's got to notice that,'' Kris said.

''Glad we've heard from the motor brigade,'' Jack said, then followed it by three shoots down the street he was covering. The storm sewer was backing up fast, turning the street corner beside them into a lake. Water now lapped at Kris's very expensive, if nearly nonexistent shoes.

Jack snapped off two more shots, the last of which brought a scream from someone. ''Unless you're planning on walking on water tonight, Your Princesshood, what say we make tracks?''

Kris did not argue. Not tonight. She was already up and running.