Under the Ember Star. Charles Allen Gramlich

natives often sewed pouches into their robes. Ginn watched the movement, her blaster pointed almost casually in the needed direction. The lower portion of the stranger’s veil wrinkled, as if with a smile. The hand slowed even further, but dipped just inside the pouch and emerged with a crimson fruit, an apple. It, too, was placed in front of Ginn.

      “All for you,” the being said.

      Ginn took another swallow of the kaftee, then set down the mug and plucked up the apple. She studied it for a moment, then bit and chewed. Her gaze never left her companion.

      “Three hundred and fifteen solars to ship this from Earth,” she said finally.

      “Three twenty-five.”

      “So you’ve got money and you want me to know it. Why?”

      “To hire you.”

      “I’m listening.”

      “I must make a journey. Through nomad lands. I am known among some of the tribes. Not all.”

      “I’m guessing, not among the tribes where you plan to travel.”

      “Not where I plan to finish. Also, the nomads I know cannot accompany me there. It is taboo for them.”

      “Then it’s likely to be death for you. As well as for me if I decided to be stupid enough to take the job.”

      “I have been there before and do not think so. Besides, there will be much vivum where we are going.”

      Ginn’s heart stuttered; skin tightened all across her body. She was glad her clothing hid the goose bumps. She took another bite of apple to cover her reaction, chewed while her guest watched her from behind its veil.

      “If you’ve been there before you surely don’t need me,” Ginn finally said.

      “I did not go alone last time either.”

      “Then hire the same people.”

      “There are reasons I cannot.”

      Ginn rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. “So that must mean....”

      She paused as she heard a whisper of sound that she shouldn’t hear. From outside.

      “Who’d you bring with you right now?” she demanded suddenly.

      “No one. I mean, they did not come into town.”

      Ginn surged to her feet, the apple dropped and forgotten, the kaftee spilling to the desk. She filled her free hand with her second blaster. Her visitor recoiled, hands going up toward its veiled face.

      “Then you were followed,” she snarled.

      From below, in the abandoned factory, a door shished open. From the street outside came a sound like a sheet of paper tearing—a pulse weapon powering up.

      Ginn hurled herself forward, one arm sweeping her robed companion with her to the floor.

      The wall at her back exploded.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Smoking Blasters

      Shrapnel sleeted. Echoes hammered.

      A burning flake of metal furrowed Ginn’s left shoulder. She heard the sudden grunt of the being beneath her but couldn’t tell if or how bad it had been hurt. Dust and ash roiled and the already dim Kelmerian sun did little to cut it.

      Lurching into a crouch, Ginn hacked up some of the swirling grit, tried to draw shallow breathes to keep the rest out of her lungs. The light-lenses provided a quick catalog of what was left of her apartment. It wasn’t pretty. Her roof sagged, smoldering. Half of it was gone. The remaining walls bulged outward. She wasn’t living here anymore.

      The floor beneath Ginn creaked, as if about to collapse. Her enemies weren’t waiting on that. From below in the abandoned factory, running footsteps sounded. They’d expect her to try and escape that way—if she lived. But the stairs down would not belong to her anymore. Her options were narrowing.

      “Follow or die,” Ginn growled toward her strange visitor, who was sitting up now and coughing harshly.

      She straightened and charged toward the gaping maw of what had been her bedroom. The bed was gone. The outside wall was gone. The wooden strakes of the floor shuddered beneath her boots. But for a moment they supported her, and then she leaped—outward. Kelmer’s gravity was less than Earth’s. She cleared the dust and ash, fell into the clean air beyond. Her light-lenses instantly adjusted.

      Below in the dirt street sat an open hovercar. Two of Red Jac’s bravos manned it. Both standing. Both laughing. One leaned casually against a pulse cannon mounted in the back of the car. He saw Ginn falling toward him, started a shout.

      Ginn fired both blasters. The man’s cry boiled in his throat as his head turned to slag. The second man lunged toward the wheel of the hovercar. The top half of him made it, screaming.

      Ginn hit the ground in a roll and came to her feet. She leaped the side of the hovercar, landed on her boots in the passenger seat. The half-man lay on his side in the driver’s area, one hand still clutching a steering wheel that was useless to him now. There was no blood, the awful wound having been cauterized by the blaster flame that made it. His eyes were open; his mouth worked around words she couldn’t hear. She dropped into the seat beside him, slapped the door latch and shoved him out into the street.

      The hovercar’s engine was already running. She powered it into high, listening to the whine of energies building in the machine’s central dynamo.

      Most hovercars couldn’t lift more than ten feet off the ground. She took this one up to its limit, spun it toward the wrecked apartment that had been her home only a few minutes before.

      Her visitor in the native robes hadn’t followed her leap. Standing wreathed in rapidly diminishing smoke, it seemed anchored to the last solid patch of floor in the destroyed bedroom. No walls surrounded it, only a few blackened beams.

      “Come on!” Ginn shouted.

      The being took a step forward, faded a half step back with its gloved hands clenched at its sides. Ginn thought she saw movement in the background, an assassin coming up the stairs maybe. She sent blaster flame scorching into the dimness but no answering fire returned. Maybe the movement had been just a board falling. In another few seconds it wouldn’t be. The hunters were on their way.

      Ginn tried to force eye contact with the entity who’d claimed a wish to hire her. Even from beneath its veil, the faint shine of fear-stricken eyes was clear to her lenses.

      “Come on,” she said, almost quietly. “Or I’ll leave you.”

      The being gave a shudder, but then jumped, and landed hard across the back seat of the hovercar, across one man’s corpse and half of another. Ginn heard it cry out, in pain or horror, but she didn’t wait to find out which. She punched the throttle. The car hesitated an instant, like a beast gathering itself. Then acceleration shoved her back into the seat as the vehicle leaped forward.

      Ginn had lived at Old Towne’s edge, in a mostly abandoned industrial strip. The road ran a hundred yards and ended in the open desert. The hovercar wove between piles of debris and the buildings fell away as they shed the town’s husk.

      Seconds passed. More. Wild shouts turned Ginn’s head. Blaster fire cratered the ground behind them. Too far behind them. She almost slammed the car to a stop, almost leaped into the back seat to turn her enemies’ own pulse cannon against them. Then she laughed. She was alive. That’s all she needed for the moment.

      Wind swept past them, cold through her t-shirt. She was used to the cold on Kelmer. She called over a shoulder: “Less crowded up here. Why not join me.”

      A bedraggled form crawled over the back partition and slid down into the passenger seat. Its robes were bloody but it looked like most of the blood wetted the outside of the cloth.

      “You all right?” Ginn asked.

      The