Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers by Glen Cook Page A

Gun.”
    “You know it. I know it here in my head. But down here in my guts there’s a caveman who says we’re both liars.”
    “If it’s really that hard . . . ”
    “No, don’t get upset. I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. I’ve got to get used to it. Hell, I force myself to get out as much as I can. I just wanted to warn you so you won’t think it’s your fault if I get a little jumpy and quiet.”
    “You’ll settle down. You’ll see. This is just about the dullest, least dangerous city in The Arm.”
     
    A few hours later, shortly after The Broken Wings’ early night had fallen, Niven snarled, “What did you say back at the hospital? Something about the safest streets in the galaxy?”
    The darkness of the alley pressed in. His frightened eyes probed the shadows for movement. The lase-bolt had missed his cheek by a centimeter. He still felt the heat of it. “Even my toenails are shaking, lady.”
    Marya fingered her hair. A bolt had crisped it while they were running. Niven’s nostrils twitched as they caught the sharp burnt hair odor.
    Marya’s face was pallid in the glow of a distant streetlight. She was shaking too. And apparently too angry to respond.
    “You got a jealous boyfriend?”
    She shook her head, gasped, “This isn’t Old Earth. People don’t do things like this out here.”
    Niven dropped to all fours and crawled to the alley mouth.
    Heavy work was not his province, but he had had the basic programs given all field agents. He could make a show if he had to.
    He had to do something now. The alley was a cul-de-sac. And the rifleman might be teamed. A deathtrap could be closing.
    A bolt scarred brick above his head. He rolled away, growling, “Starscope. Damn!” But he had spotted the triggerman. The bolt had come from atop a warehouse across the street.
    “Can’t be much of a shot,” Niven mumbled. “That isn’t fifty meters.”
    If he could survive the sprint across the street . . . 
    There was a startled exclamation from the gunman’s position, then a choked wail of fear and pain. A body plunged off the warehouse roof and thumped into the street.
    Niven was across in an instant, shoving himself into the warehouse wall while he studied the corpse.
    The weak light revealed the limper from the Marcos lobby. His windpipe had been crushed.
    Every man’s signature is unique. And an assassin leaves a grim sort of signature on his victims. Niven knew this one. He peered upward.
    Why would Mouse be shadowing him?
    Not that he objected. Not right now.
    Marya arrived. She averted her eyes. “You must have a guardian angel.”
    “One of us does.” He stared at her. Something clicked. It was nothing he could define, just a tweak of uneasiness because she had not asked him why anyone would want to kill him. A civilian would have asked that right away.
    He looked for the assassin’s weapon, did not see it. “I’m going to try to get onto that roof.”
    “Why? Shouldn’t we get out of here?”
    Another click. Civilians started screaming for the police. Outworlds civilians, anyway.
    “Yeah, I guess. If he had anybody with him we would have heard from them by now.” But where to go? he wondered. Not the hotel. Not with the number officially on. Not with the war rules proclaimed. And not to a safehouse. He did not yet know what Mouse had arranged. And he could not make the fallbacks to find out with Marya tagging along.
    The death threat had alerted the professional in him. Had raised barriers that would wall off the whole universe till he had sorted the friends from enemies and noncombatants.
    “We could go to my place,” Marya suggested.
    Memories of countless spy and detective dramas battled for Niven’s attention. Was it all a setup? Three misses at fifty meters seemed unlikely for even a clumsy assassin. But he did not want to believe that Marya was involved. She was such a magnetic, animal woman . . . 
    Believe it or not, only a cretin would have ignored the