Honorable Enemies Rethought

onorable Enemies Rethought

  by Poula Anderson

  Copyright 2010 Poula Anderson

  A Dominique Flyndry story

  A Gender Switch Adventure

  I.

  The door swung open behind her and a voice murmured gently: 'Good evening, Captain Flyndry.'

  She spun around, grabbing for her stun pistol in a wild reflex, and found herself looking down the muzzle of a blaster. Slowly, then, she let her hands fall and stood taut, her eyes searching beyond the weapon, and the slender six-fingered hand that held it, to the tall gaunt body and the sardonically smiling face behind.

  The face was humanoid—lean, hawk-nosed, golden-skinned, with brilliant amber eyes under feathery blue brows, and a high crest of shining blue feathers rising from the narrow hairless skull. The being was dressed in the simple white tunic of her people, leaving her clawed avian feet bare, but insignia of rank hung bejeweled around her neck and a cloak like a gush of blood from her wide shoulders.

  But they'd all been occupied elsewhere—Flyndry had seen to that. What had slipped up—?

  With an effort, Flyndry relaxed and let a wry smile cross her face. Never mind who was to blame; she was trapped in the Merseian chambers and had to think of a way to escape with a whole skin. Her mind whirred with thought. Memory came—this was Aycharaya of Chereion, who had come to join the Merseian embassy only a few days before, presumably on some mission corresponding to Flyndry's.

  'Pardon the intrusion,' she said; 'it was purely professional. No offense meant.'

  'And none taken,' said Aycharaya politely. She spoke faultless Anglic, only the faintest hint of her race's harsh accent in the syllables. But courtesy between spies was meaningless. It would be too easy to blast down the intruder and later express her immense regret that she had shot down the ace intelligence officer of the Terrestrial Empire under the mistaken impression that it was a burglar.

  Somehow, though, Flyndry didn't think that the Chereionite would be guilty of such crudeness. Her mysterious people were too old, too coldly civilized, and Aycharaya herself had too great a reputation for subtlety. Flyndry had heard of her before; she would be planning something worse.

  'That is quite correct,' nodded Aycharaya. Flyndry started—could the being guess her exact thoughts? 'But if you will pardon my saying so, you yourself have committed a bit of clumsiness in trying to search our quarters. There are better ways of getting information.'

  Flyndry gauged distances and angles. A vase on a table stood close to hand. If she could grab it up and throw it at Aycharaya's gun hand—

  The blaster waved negligently. 'I would advise against the attempt,' said the Chereionite.

  She stood aside. 'Good evening, Captain Flyndry,' she said.

  The Terran moved toward the door. She couldn't let herself be thrown out this way, not when her whole mission depended on finding out what the Merseians were up to. If she could make a sudden lunge as she passed close—

  She threw herself sideways with a twisting motion that brought her under the blaster muzzle. Hampered by a greater gravity than the folk of her small planet were used to, Aycharaya couldn't dodge quickly enough. But she swung the blaster with a vicious precision across Flyndry's jaw. The Terran stumbled, clasping the Chereionite's narrow waist. Aycharaya slugged her at the base of the skull and she fell to the floor.

  She lay there a moment, gasping, blood running from her face. Aycharaya's voice jeered at her from a roaring darkness: 'Really, Captain Flyndry, I had thought better of you. Now please leave.'

  Sickly, the Terran crawled to her feet and went out the door.

  Aycharaya stood in the entrance watching her go, a faint smile on her hard, gaunt visage.

  Flyndry went down endless corridors of polished stone to the suite given the Terrestrial mission. Most of them were at the feast, the ornate rooms stood almost empty. She threw herself into a chair and signaled her personal slave for a drink. A stiff one.

  There was a light step and the suggestive whisper of a long silkite skirt behind her. She looked around and saw Alind Chang-Lei, the Sir Marr of Syrtis, her partner on the mission and one of Sol's top field agents for intelligence.

  He was tall and slender, dark of hair and eye, with the high cheekbones and ivory skin of a mixed heritage such as most Terrans showed these days; his sea-blue gown did little more than emphasize the appropriate features. Flyndry liked to look at him, though she was pretty well immune to beautiful men by now.

  'What was the trouble?' he asked at once.

  'What brings you here?' she responded. 'I thought you'd be at the party, helping distract everyone.'

  'I just wanted to rest for a while,' he said. 'Official functions at Sol get awfully dull and stuffy, but they go to the other extreme at Betelgeuse. I wanted to hear silence for a while.' And then, with grave concern: 'But you ran into trouble.'

  'How the hell it happened, I can't imagine,' said Flyndry 'Look—we prevailed on the Sartay to throw a brawl with everybody invited. We made double sure that every Merseian on the planet would be there. They'd trust to their robolocks to keep their quarters safe—they have absolutely no way of knowing that I've found a way to nullify a robolock. So what happens? I no sooner get inside than Aycharaya of Chereion walks in with a blaster in her hot little hand. She anticipates everything I try and finally shows me the door. Finis.'

  'Aycharaya—I've heard the name somewhere. But it doesn't sound Merseian.'

  'It isn't. Chereion is an obscure but very old planet in the Merseian Empire. Its people have full citizenship with the dominant race, just as our empire grants Terrestrial citizenship to many nonhumans. Aycharaya is one of Merseia's leading intelligence agents. Few people have heard of her, precisely because she is so good. I've never clashed with her before, though.'

  'I know whom you mean now,' he nodded. 'If she's as you say, and she's here on Alfzar, it isn't good news.'

  Flyndry shrugged. 'We'll just have to take her into account, then. As if this mission weren't tough enough!'

  She got up and walked to the balcony window. The two moons of Alfzar were up, pouring coppery light on the broad reach of the palace gardens. The warm wind blew in with scent of strange flowers that had never bloomed under Sol and they caught the faint sound of the weird, tuneless music which the monarch of Betelgeuse favored.

  For a moment, as she looked at the ruddy moonlight and the thronging stars, Flyndry felt a wave of discouragement. The Galaxy was too big. Even the four million stars of the Terrestrial Empire were too many for one woman ever to know in a lifetime. And there were the rival imperia out in the darkness of space, Gorrazan and Ythri and Merseia, like a hungry beast of prey—Too much, too much. The individual counted for too little in the enormous chaos which was modern civilization. She thought of Alind—it was his business to know who such beings as Aycharaya were, but one human skull couldn't hold a universe; knowledge and power were lacking.

  Too many mutually alien races; too many forces clashing in space, and so desperately few who comprehended the situation and tried their feeble best to help—naked hands battering at an avalanche as it ground down on them.

  Alind came over and took her arm. His face turned up to hers, vague in the moonlight, with a look she knew too well. She'd have to avoid him, when or if they got back to Terra; she didn't want to hurt his but neither could she be tied to any single human.

  'You're discouraged with one failure?' he asked lightly. 'Dominique Flyndry, the single-handed conqueror of Scothania, worried by one skinny bird-being?'

  'I just don't see how she knew I was going to search her place,' muttered Flyndry. 'I've never been caught that way before, not even when I was the worst cub in the Service. Some of our bes
t women have gone down before Aycharaya. I'm convinced MacMurtrie's disappearance at Polaris was her work. Maybe it's our turn now.'

  'Oh, come off it,' he laughed. 'You must have been drinking sorgan when they told you about her.'

  'Sorgan?' Her brows lifted.

  'Ah, now I can tell you something you don't know.' He was trying desperately hard to be gay. 'Not that it's very important; I only happened to hear of it while talking with one of the Alfzarian narcotics detail. It's a drug produced on one of the planets here—Cingetor, I think—with the curious property of depressing certain brain centers such that the victim loses all critical sense. She has absolute faith in whatever she's told.'

  'Hm. Could be useful in our line of work.'

  'Not very. Hypnoprobes are better for interrogation, and there are more reliable ways of producing fanatics. The drug has an antidote which also confers permanent immunity. So it's not much use, really, and the Sartay has suppressed its manufacture.'

  'I should think our Intelligence would like to keep a little on hand, just in case,' she said thoughtfully. 'And of course certain nobles in all the empires, ours included, would find it handy for purposes of seduction.'

  'What are you thinking of?' he teased her.

  'Nothing; I don't need it,' she said smugly.

  The digression had shaken her out of her dark mood. 'Come on,' she said. 'Let's go join the party.'

  He