NIGHT ATTACK

notturno minore night piece in a minor key

Even rain on wet leaves can sound ominous after midnight.

Firebird stopped walking and listened intently. The dark hours were slipping away, but she'd awakened with both calves bound up in excruciating muscle cramps. Pausing on her third lap around a long, windowless training room, she felt positive she'd heard something — someone — out in the passway.

She would've known if it were Brennen.

Barefoot, she crept across the cushioned mat. Once a storage area, this room bristled with weapons, simulators, and exercise equipment. A home-security master board glimmered behind the flight simulator. She bent toward it.

One of her unborn sons kicked her ribs in protest.

Firebird straightened and pushed red-brown hair back from her face. She'd hoped to command a star cruiser someday ... she'd never hoped to resemble one. Now, six and a half months pregnant with twins, she suspected she did.

She snugged the belt of her flimsy nightrobe. On the security board, an image of their two-story hillside home gleamed in pale yellow holo. Each entry and window shone red, fully covered by sensors and dispatch circuits. Brennen had invested his Federate severance pay in a lovely, defensible location near Thyrica's primary military base, then installed the best available home sec system. In ten years of intelligence work, he'd made enemies.

The board showed no sign of intrusion.

Firebird glanced over her shoulder. Blame pregnancy hormones, but she wasn't convinced. She despised this maternal jumpiness, this urge to protect herself at all cost. She'd been a military pilot, qualified on advanced fightercraft and small arms.

Still, these days she must protect two other lives. She needed to be jumpy.

Brennen had merely rolled over when she'd slipped painfully out of bed. She wondered if she ought to go back and wake him now. She'd done that two nights ago, when she thought she heard noises. They'd found nothing wrong.

Deciding she didn't want her pride stung again, she opened a weapons cupboard. She bypassed several training knives, a broadsword, and two deadly service blazers. A bulky shock pistol — her weapon of choice, a gift from her husband — lay behind the blazers. Hefting it expertly, she thumbed a stud on one side of the grip and quickly checked its charge.

Husband. Unbelievably, she had a husband. Last year, she'd forsaken her homeworld, with its holy laws and traditions that demanded her death, and married Field General Brennen Caldwell. An expert telepath and her enemy when they met, he won her trust and introduced her to faith ... and Firebird had never dreamed of love like Brennen gave her, day after night after day. Eight months ago, they had pair bonded in his people's way, linking their lives and their feelings in a marriage only death could end.

She reached for the door control, then hesitated again. She really would rather Brenn didn't find her prowling armed. If she stepped out into that passway quivering with nerves, her worry would wake him. The Ehretan pair bond sensitized each of them to the other's strong emotions, even though she was no trained telepath.

Quiet my heart and mind, Mighty Singer ... and help me, she prayed. Her determination, her jumpiness, and even her fond concern for her twins ebbed away. She touched the door control.

The steel panel silently slid aside. She braced against it until her eyes adjusted. Across the passway, diffused city light filtered up Trinn Hill into their second bedroom. She peered out its glasteel window-wall.

Rain had softened into thick fog. Two tiny red eyes shone out for a few seconds, then extinguished. Thyrica's planetary developers must've had quite a sense of humor to create those fist-sized, oozy night-slugs.

She steadied the shock pistol between her hands. Trying to move as serenely as the deep night, she shuffled toward a bend in the passway. She adjusted her grip on the pistol and then peered around the corner.

Her breath caught. Silhouetted by a floor-level luma, a wiry stranger stood facing into the master room. He braced against the doorway with his left arm. She couldn't see his right hand.

She squeezed her pistol's grip.

The stranger whirled, brandishing a black energy blazer in one blackened hand. He thrust his other hand toward her too, palm outward.

Firebird knew that gesture too well. "Brenn!" she shouted. She shot a wild burst —

Then toppled sideways, dropping her pistol with suddenly limp fingers. The intruder had a telepath's power of voice-command. Her right shoulder hit the wall, and she pitched toward the floor. She mustn't fall hard — must not miscarry — but her arms turned to jelly. She couldn't catch herself.

As she flopped on the carpet, barely missing her pistol, she felt Brennen come fully awake. His confusion burst into the back of her mind. Less than a second later, the hall flashed blood red with blazer fire. The prowler's attention shifted to Brennen. Freed from command, Firebird groped for her pistol.

"Mari!" Brennen shouted. "Stay down!"

She raised her head. A four-armed silhouette danced wildly atop their bed, grappling and kicking. She crawled forward on her elbows and knees. If she could get into the room quickly, she might stun both men with one burst and hit the house alarm.

Too late! Deadly red lightning flashed again. Half the silhouette flew toward the bedroom window-wall, and then — unbelievably — glasteel exploded. "Brenn!" she cried, pushing up on her knees just outside the door, struggling for balance. An alarm klaxon blared. Flood lamps activated outdoors.

"Stay there," he called again from the bed. His combat focus throbbed in her awareness, but his voice sounded steady. "He's gone. Don't come in, though. There's glasteel everywhere."

Warm light flooded the master room. Her husband perched on the foot of their bed, dressed in drawstring trousers and aiming a blazer out into the night through a gulf that had been their security window-wall. Middle-sized, muscular without any extra bulk, he stared down the blazer's sights as if he'd been welded to the weapon.

Firebird lumbered to her bare feet and backed into the extra bedroom to look outdoors. Under the flood lamps, fog dripped from fragrant, evergreen kirka tree limbs onto soggy undergrowth. The night-slug had...