Never trust an elf

Before they could react, the rough boy had them covered. His trjbarrel hissed softly as the barrels spun at speed on their silenced bearings, but for some reason he didn't fire. Kham was relieved; this was no place for a firefight with opponents armored so heavily they looked almost made of metal. Since only one had tumbled to their presence, there was a chance that he and the guys could take these bozos down if their fire was fast and accurate enough. But Kham's guys would take losses. They'd blow the run, too. Kham knocked Ratstomper's hand away from her holster before she could get a grip on her gun.

The metal man, apparently satisfied that Kham's team offered no threat, snapped the snout of his weapon up into carry position and began to mumble to himself. Kham dared to breathe once more, but only until he realized that the tribarrel was built into the guy's arm. These guys were some kind of super sol- • diers. What the frag had he and the guys bumped into?

The metal man started toward them, moving quietly, for all his bulk. The scent he gave off was mostly machine oil, cordite, and plastic, but underneath it all, Kham caught a whiff of something rotten and decaying. The guy stopped a few meters away. A good leap might put Kham inside the sweep of the tribarrel. The idea was gutsy, but not bright. That kind of cowboy move might work against an ordinary opponent, but it would be suicide against the coiled-spring speed of this metal man.

"WHAT-" The sound of the guy's first word reverberated so loudly in the corridor that he stopped speaking immediately. He hummed to himself for a moment, then began again, his voice much softer. "You are not Andalusian personnel. What are you doing here?"

Kham managed to find his voice; no one else in his group seemed ready to speak to this guy. Hostile wouldn't get them anywhere, so he tried to make his tone casual and friendly. He also hoped he sounded confident, but he doubted it. "Could ask ya the same, chummer, 'cause ya sure ain't on da Andalusian staff." The hard line of the rough boy's mouth twitched down at the corners. "I am not here to answer questions. I have the gun, you will answer my questions." "Eliminate them," the second one said. The other two had come ghosting up behind the first.

"Negative," said the third. "Elimination entails unacceptable reduction of mission success-probability due to noise factor. Beta has already lowered probability by two percent with speech volumes."

"What are these guys?" Ratstomper wailed, voice cracking. "Some kind of fragging robots?"

"Silence!" commanded number three. Something in the manner of the other two suggested that this one was their leader. "Interference in our mission will not be tolerated. If your talking sufficiently raises the probability of discovery, your elimination will no longer threaten our mission, and you will be eliminated." Ratstomper looked bewildered. "Da chummer just told ya ta shut up, 'Stomper. Do it." Kham returned his attention to the metal men. "We don't want no trouble wit you chummers. None of us is Andalusian, so we ain't got no feud. Ya do yer biz, we do ours, and everybody's happy."

"You will remain here. You cannot be allowed to interfere with our mission."

"Don't want ta."

"Beta, move them out of the corridor and remain with them."

A gesture with the tribarrel pointed out the chosen room, and Kham nodded to his guys that they should go along. Everybody moved quietly, pointedly keeping their hands away from their weapons. Kham carried his AK in his left hand, and held his right up at chest level, well away from the butt of either the hol-stered automatic or that of the magnum protruding from his belt.

Their captor waited until the door to the corridor was closed before turning on the room lights. The place was some kind of electronics lab, but Kham didn't know enough about such things to even guess at the uses of most of the equipment. He was sure that none of it would be useful as a weapon. Neko tried to put a counter between him and the metal guy, but a shake of the rough boy's head, emphasized by a pointing tribarrel, brought the catboy back around to the front. Neko gave Kham a shrug, then sat with his back against the counter and shut his eyes. Kham was damned if he didn't think the catboy was taking a nap.

Time dragged on. Though their captor never seemed jumpy, he was always alert, reacting to their slightest movements, but only bringing the tribarrel to bear when somebody's hand got too close to a weapon. One by one, the guys got tired of standing and sat down; all except for Scatter, who stared venomously at the metal guy.

After about twenty minutes, Kham felt the pulsed flashes of heat from the earpiece of his headset. It was the signal that Chigger wanted to communicate with them. He would have simply ignored the signal, but their captor turned cold chrome eyes on him. "Explain the signal." Somehow this guy knew that Kham was getting a message. Denying it wouldn't help. "Car's over-parked."