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and bucking; they did their best to cling to the deck carpeting.
    The ship began to stabilize. Alacrity wondered where King's Ransom and the other aircutters were, then realized that very little time had passed.
    "There! Open fire!" Redlock yelled into his proteus. He was standing in the middle of the main lounge area, the Severeemish and others getting to their feet all around him.
    Shaking the pretty lights and restful fog out of their heads, Floyt and Alacrity saw what he was pointing at. Down where the Scimitar had been circling, a dark shape was rising with gathering speed. It was larger than the Blue Pearl, a cluster of bulbous, pendulous shapes, spiny with commo and detector vibrissae and armament. In the fleeting glimpse they got of it, they saw the intruder ship changing color, beginning to match Epiphany's sky. Alacrity registered numbly that it must be some new stealth system he'd never heard of before. The stealth ship fired another flight of missiles.
    The Blue Pearl's defenses had barely saved her from the first, unexpected salvo, with a flurry of jamming and counter-measures aimed at the missiles' guidance systems. Those systems had been analyzed; the shuttle merely rose a bit and the twin fireballs streaked red annihilation beneath her. They failed to detonate.
    Redlock's ship opened up with an answering volley. A long, straight bridge of blinding yellow-white light connected the intruder and the Pearl's underside for a moment. If the intruder had shields, they failed; part of her upper hull disappeared.
    A doomsday crack shook the sky, air rushing into the vacuum created by the cannon bolt. The stealth vessel jolted and wobbled, then, trailing thick blue smoke and windblown flames, began an emergency descent that threatened to become a crash.
    The Pearl followed her kill down. For the first time Floyt noticed the long, silvery seam of a crack in the shuttle's crystal hull, curving from the level of the main lounge area almost to its apex. He also noticed how sluggish the shuttle was.
    "What's he landing for?" Floyt sounded angry. "Why doesn't he wait for reinforcements?"
    They became aware of Redlock's mustering the band members, a few other Celestials, and the file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (24 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28
    [Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE
    Severeemish, including the giant who'd taken out the span of railing and now seemed none the worse for it. Dorraine was standing by the remains of her father's funeral urn, silently studying a shard she'd picked up from the deck.
    "I don't want them back in possession of that site," the governor was saying, "not even for a few minutes."
    Alacrity nudged Floyt. "See? What'd I tell you?" Floyt made a sour face.
    "But, my lords Seven Wars and Sortie-Wolf," Redlock was saying, "I still think it might be best for you both to remain in the shuttle."
    Under the heavy bone cliff of his brow, Seven Wars' dark, close-set eyes widened a bit. He answered in a hearty, good-natured tone.
    "And miss a good fracas? Don't you think you owe your allies better treatment than that, Governor?" His son and their bodyguards made laughter resembling steam locomotives leaving a station. Redlock gave one of his rare, brief smiles.
    Dorraine let go of the shard; it shattered to fragments on the dance floor. They all turned to her.
    She went to join her husband, flinging back her resplendent robe and opening the heavy brooches, one the tragic mask and the other the comic, set at either shoulder. Letting the robe fall, she drew two silvery little guns from the folds and overlaps of her tightly cinched gown. They were modeled after antique derringers.
    Redlock didn't object to her tacit insistence on coming along. Floyt had already seen the Queen of Agora use a handgun; she was good at it.
    "I'll be going too," Alacrity called down, and started picking his way through branches, broken glass, fallen fruit