Old Mars

It opened without the chime. A green paralysis grenade came rolling through, but Satemcan was already getting to his feet; he made a desperate scrambling leap and struck, batting the barrel-shaped handful of ceramic back out through the open portal.

It sailed out on an arc that would—unfortunately—take it right over the balustrade and into the courtyard. There were shouts of Fright! Alarm! from below, abruptly cut off as it shattered on the stone and everything nearby with a spinal cord went unconscious the instant one of the nanoparticles touched skin.

Three masked figures in robes with the hoods up came through her door on the heels of the projectile, swords and bulbous, thin-barreled dart pistols in their hands. They checked very slightly; she realized it was surprise at finding the Terrans still in their robes indoors, and the fabric was good armor against the light needles.

Sally pivoted on one heel and threw the bowl of sizzling-hot oiled meat and vegetables into the face of the first Martian through the door. He toppled backward, tangling his companions for an instant as she dove forward in a ten-foot leap from a standing start, one arm up in front of her face. A dart gun hissed in a stink of burnt methane tinged with sulfur, and something struck her elbow painfully through the fabric.

That was one pistol out of commission for twenty seconds while it recharged. She hit the ground rolling, stripping her sword out of the belt hanging beside the door; no time for the Colt .45.

Everything felt dreamlike, swift but smooth and stretched somehow; partly the adrenaline buzzing in her blood, partly the gravity. Jumping around on Mars was dreamlike, and so was the softer way you hit the ground.

Satemcan leapt out the door; there was a round of scuffling and thudding and savage growling and a Martian voice screaming:

“Pain!​Sudden​extremepain!” in a tone that told of sincerity. “Emphatic mode!”

And Tom Beckworth fell to the ground with a limp boneless thump, a red spot on his throat showing where a soluble crystal dart had hit as he charged forward like an enraged bull. The third Martian came in at her with a running flèche and all thought vanished as pointed steel lunged for her left eye, blurring-fast and driven by a longer arm than hers.

Parry in tierce, a desperation move, her blade whipping up and to the side and wrist pronated, jarring impact through her fingers. Smooth ting-shring of steel on steel, and she stepped in with a quick shuffling advance and punched with the guard as the elongated figure began an agile backing recovery. That was a bully-swordsman’s trick that would get you disqualified in any salon on Earth, but she wasn’t on Earth and there weren’t any second prizes here.

The Martian made a hissing sound as the Terran’s heavier bone and muscle ripped the hilt of his or her gloved fingers, probably breaking something in the process. Sally Yamashita had just enough time to begin a savage cut from the wrist toward the other’s neck before she felt the slight sting on the back of hers. There had been three Martians to start with.

Oh sh—

Blackness.

The unconsciousness didn’t last long, and the anesthetic dart didn’t leave a hangover. Something rough and wet was touching her cheek. She blinked her eyes open and saw Satemcan’s bloodied muzzle.

“Bossss …”

The canid’s paw-hand dropped the applicator from her belt pouch that had administered the antidote. Blood leaked away from the dagger wounds in his throat and torso, slowing as she watched. Volition returned and she rolled upright, trying to staunch the wounds with her hands.

“Good dog,” she said. “Optimal canid.”

Satemcan whined. A face looked around the doorjamb, one of the lineage.

“Medical care, imperative tense!” Sally barked. That brought someone in with a clamshell-shaped platform running at their heels on many small, unpleasantly human feet. It opened to display a bed of writhing wormlike appendages that divided and subdivided until pink filaments too fine to actually see glittered and weaved. Sally grunted as she levered Satemcan inside and the chitin top closed with a clumping sticky sound like two raw steaks being slapped together. A few moments later a voice came from behind a pierced grille in the shell, unstrained through consciousness as the organic machine spoke:

“Hybrid canid, standard format. Extensive exsanguination, moderate tissue trauma, minor damage to motor nerves. Stabilizing … prognosis excellent but requiring additional proteins and feedstocks.”

“I authorize the expenditure,” she snapped, holding herself from slumping with relief; Mars didn’t run to national health plans. “Maximum accelerated healing.”

For a moment she touched the shell of the trauma unit.

Come on, boy, you can make it!