“What is this place?” Eric stepped in and looked around. It was two-story house, not too dissimilar in construction from the one they’d rented in Primus. A closed door divided the space they were in, with a kitchen, tables, and chairs, from where the hatch in the outside wall would be. On one table sat a computer slate, turned off, several more men in brown robes standing nearby. When the footsteps stopped, he thought he heard a baby crying. “Who are you?”
“They’re Franciscan friars,” replied Selva. “Snuck onto this planet about a year ago, not long after recontact.”
“I figured someone would find out,” the Franciscan said. “Are you Star Patrol?”
“Existential Risks Directorate.”
“Oh.” He seemed taken aback, as most people did when visited by someone from that organization. “I suppose you’re here about those replicator ships that burst out in orbit.”
“It’s a long story. Officially, we are supporting a classics professor—” she jabbed a thumb towards Temerin “—on an expedition to study technologically-regressed cultures. In reality, we are here to stop Dulane. Right now, we’re a bunch of fugitives looking for a way out of this city and back to the Druza Freeholds.”
“That’s quite the story,” another Franciscan said. “How long have you known we were here?”
“Since you arrived on that Free Trader ship.”
“And you were going to tell us this when?” Cobb asked.
Selva shrugged. “When it became relevant. The Directorate appreciates the humanitarian work you’re doing, though of course we can’t say so officially. All we ask for now is your help.”
“Certainly,” the first Franciscan said, then took a bin of ration packs from a crate. “Looks like you haven’t eaten in days.”
After enough servings of nutrition bars and rehydrated soup, Selva judged Eric in danger of overeating and declared his dinner done.
“That’s gotta be the first decent dinner I’ve had in weeks, if not longer,” Eric said. “Thanks.” Brother Kasey, the first Franciscan they’d met, nodded. “What is it exactly you do here? I doubt Dulane would let you keep your heads if you went around preaching.”
“The early Church not only survived, but thrived, in conditions nearly identical to this.” He stood up. “As for our mission here...”
Going over to the other door, the one the hatch-room would be behind, he knocked and opened it after a pause. Inside was lit by an electric light, with the little hatch in one wall and, in a chair before it, a rather portly friar with a big grin on his face, feeding a baby from a bottle.
“It’s a baby depository?” Eric said, realizing what he had seen.
Brother Kasey nodded. “They have a practice here, also prevalent on ancient Terra, of abandoning unwanted infants to die of exposure.”
“That’s—” Eric felt sick, like his dinner might come back up.
“Monstrous?” Selva offered. “You see why we tolerate some level of illegal intervention on primitive planets, even when the Foreign Directorate would reject it to placate the cultural-preservationists.”
“We cannot save them all.” Kasey closed the door. “But even a few is worth it. We keep them upstairs, then sneak them out of the city to the Sisters at the orphanage.”
“That could be our ticket out of here!” Cobb said. “Any chance it’d work for us?”
“Not for so many, all at once. And the orphanage is up north, if you’re looking to reach the Freeholds you’ll want to go east. There’s a few coastal towns the Panarchy doesn’t police too harshly, you might find a friendly captain willing to give you a lift. In any case, we need to wait. Dulane is searching for you, in a few days it may let up once he presumes you’ve already escaped.”
They slept in the basement, behind a false wall in case patrols decided to search the house, and ended up waiting almost two weeks until Selva and the Franciscans deemed it safe to begin sneaking people out. Eric wondered what was going on elsewhere, how the Freeholds were faring (had Arztilla attacked again?), when the Patrol would show up to clobber the replicators, and whether Rachel had escaped the naval battle alive.
“Worry not!” Sir Wotoc had said, when he voiced that last concern. “She is with my squires, and they will give their lives to defend a lady!”
Most of Fightmaster Flavius’ gladiators, including Flavius himself, elected to head north, and were smuggled out one-by-one through various means. Then it came everyone else’s turn.
“There’s no easy escape route going east,” Brother Kasey explained, referring to a map. “You’ll have to use the drainage tunnels again. Make it to this outlet, and we can have horses and carts waiting nearby. Pass yourselves off as regular travelers until you leave the heart of Arztillan territory.” Another friar came up from the basement with a hefty-looking metal case. He set it on the table and opened it to reveal a heavy-duty stunner, like a short, fat rifle. “And take this. Brother Zola brought it in case we ran into any Tyrannosaurs.”
“Already happened,” Cobb mused.
“Does your kindness know any bounds?” Wotoc asked. “How can we repay you?”
“All I ask,” Kasey answered, “is you help others when you can.”
Before sunrise, they snuck from the Franciscan safehouse back to the drainage inlet. Back in the musty tunnels, they weaved along until the little passage widened into a sun-illuminated outlet. Selva checked for observers and summoned them out of the bushes. By a tree, horses and carts waited. Selva reached into one and tossed Eric a bundle of cloth wrappings. “Put that around your head. We are all lepers, heading to a colony.”
“Good call,” said Temerin.
And it worked. For the first few days, any travelers and guards who saw the wrapped figures in the carts tended to shuffle along. Then, their luck ran out.
It came without warning. Maybe someone had seen them unwrap around the campfire for dinner, or gryphon-scouts keeping an eye on traffic had fingered them as likely escapees. Regardless, one moment Eric was laying in the back of a bouncing and rocking cart filled with hay, the next angry shouts started and thundering over a hill came a squad of Black Legion cavalry.
“How’d they find us?” Eric tore off the wrappings, clambered behind Sir Wotoc on his horse. The answer came in the form of a gryphon screech: the Savage Hunters, stooping into a dive. There were four of them, in a lopsided V-formation led by the Red-Masked Man.
Something whizzed past Eric’s head—a dart from a blowgun. The gryphons skimmed over the trees, closing in. Sir Wotoc veered right, Eric was certain a gryphon’s wing brushed his hair. The Hunters pulled up, thirty-foot wings pumping the air.
Eric looked over the fleeing group. Their horses were losing speed, no match for trained Legion steeds. Selva, riding behind Professor Temerin, unslung the heavy stunner, aimed it back, and fired with a hair-raising hum. Two Legion horsemen and their steeds tumbled to the ground in a cloud of dirt, catching the legs of a third. She clicked the trigger again and more fell. That wouldn’t keep them away forever—some might be injured, but most would recover in a few minutes and get right back on their tail.
Atop his gryphon, the Red-Masked Man raised a familiar weapon: the thermite disk launcher. With a click and the buzzing of built-in fans, a disk shot out. Selva drew a sword, kept it held close until the last possible instant. Then, when it was too close to veer away, she snapped the sword out and struck it dead-on. The edge broke in a shower of metallic shards, the disk tumbled away buzzing like an angry hornet. Selva sighted it with the stunner and clicked the trigger. It dropped to earth and exploded in sparks. She fired at the Black Legionnaires again, this time a wide beam that caught most of them, but at a low power that just dazed men. Horses, however, lost their footing and tumbled, leaving riders jumping to their feet and shaking their fists. With the Legion pursuit disabled, the Savage Hunters dared not draw near for fear of the stun beam.
Further behind, a few horsemen recovered the chase, this respite wouldn’t last long. They were thundering through rolling hills of alien limestone, scraggly bushes and trees growing among them. Canyons and cliffs lay in the distance; this was treacherous terrain.
Overhead, the Red-Masked Man found his answer to Selva. He lifted the disk launcher again and loosed another, then a second. Eric wondered how much ammo he had—surely they couldn’t replace those? Instead of seeking out a technological device like the stunner, the first disk arced down to explode between three horses. The second struck in front of Sir Wotoc’s, and Eric saw his feet tumbling past the clouds.
