Sweet Starfire

night with these bugs, do you? No telling when one of them might get free. Why, I could open a couple of these cages myself with this little can opener I brought along. I might just do it, too, if you don’t cooperate.” He glided closer.
    Cidra’s heart was hammering as the fear-induced adrenaline ricocheted through her system. Something was wrong with her insides. She felt almost sick. Steadily she moved down the aisle, forcing herself to count each cage. Three more to go… two more to go…
    One more to go. One more, that is, if she had remembered exactly where she was when she had started and if she hadn’t lost count. She paused and listened. There was no sound from the inhabitants of the cage overhead. Flattening herself on the cold metal floor, Cidra waited. If she wasn’t beside the right cage, she was going to be trapped. She had to let the hunter get close. Too close to allow her to have a chance at escape if she had made a mistake.
    She huddled into herself as the footsteps came nearer. He was making no effort to hide himself now. The confidence of the hunter was born of arrogance and the belief that he held the upper hand. Just the same sort of attitude that could get a person into trouble when he was playing Free Market.
    The footsteps came to a halt. Now, in the shadows, Cidra could make out a pair of heavy boots not more than two meters away. She drew, in her breath and knew he heard the sound. “There you are, little lady. I told you there wasn’t much point in hiding.”
    Cidra put up her hand and flattened her warm palm against the diazite of what she believed was the Rigor Mortis Mantis cage. For a heart-stopping moment nothing happened. Then the creatures inside reacted with an instantaneous flare of eerie blue-white brilliance, illuminating themselves to the man in the boots facing them on the other side of the diazite.

    Cidra was not staring up into the cage. She was waiting for a glimpse of her pursuer’s face. It came, the features bathed in blue-white terror as the Mantises switched on the paralyzing luminescence. She had time to note the fear, time to see the pulser grasped in one huge hand, and time to realize that the mantises were very good at their work. Their victim was literally immobilized with shock and horror. He couldn’t even scream, although Cidra could see the panic in his eyes as she leapt to her feet.

    The mantises had bought her only a few seconds, but that was all the time Cidra needed. She flowed into the deceptively gentle movements of Moonlight and Mirrors.

Chapter Nine

    “I can’t let you out of my sight for a minute.” Severance slouched as usual in his seat, morosely regarding Cidra. Behind him the green wall of vegetation slipped past at a quick, steady pace as the skimmer, riding just above the water, followed the river into the dark heart of the jungle.
    “That’s going to make things awkward, isn’t it? Because, after that display in the Bloodsucker, I’ve learned that I can’t take you anywhere.” Cidra knew she was being dangerously flippant, but the truth was that she was getting tired of the never-ending lectures. They had been going on in one form or another since she had dragged Desma out of the bio lab and called for help. Help had come quickly enough, but so had Severance.
    “This isn’t a joke, Cidra. You could have been seriously hurt. Maybe killed. You should never have gone into that lab alone. As soon as you opened the door and realized something was wrong, you should have called a company guard. They get paid to go into places like that. You don’t. Come to think of it, I probably ought to dock your salary for bad judgment.”
    “You’re not paying me a salary, remember? Just providing transportation and scenic sidetrips such as this one.” Cidra’s eyes widened slightly as she had a flash of intuition. “I think you’re chewing on me as if I were a bite of torla steak because I let him get away.”
    Severance leaned forward with an abrupt movement and lowered his voice so that it was only barely audible above the hum of the skimmer’s power cells. “If you really believe that, then you’re functioning on fewer brains than a novakeet.”
    The image was not a pleasant one. Novakeets, with their splashy orange-and-red plummage, were pretty enough creatures, but on Lovelady nature seemed to have decided that such beauty didn’t need a lot of brainpower. Cidra cast a quick glance toward the front of the skimmer where