SEVENTEEN

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The world of Zion had been settled for a baby forever—and it showed.

Its central city might have come right out of medieval Earth, turning its back on the coast it fronted on toward the close mountains, cut through with narrow lanes and close-set buildings.

Many of its people also looked archaic, dressing all in formal black, with beards and long side curls.

Many of them practiced a religious faith/lifestyle that was just as ancient, dictating everything from dress to manner of worship to diet.

Zion's main commerce was equally antique: diamonds.

Here was one of the four great diamond markets of Man's worlds, the other three being Tel Aviv and Amsterdam on Old Earth, and Sternopoli.

The trade was founded on mutual trust and knowledge.

There was little crime here but the petty variety.

All that, Chas Goodnight willing, was about to change.

Two ships broke into the world's atmosphere at speed, both homing on the city.

One was an archaic Alliance destroyer, stripped of almost all of its weaponry, save two missiles. If all went well, there would be no need for violence after the first assault.

Both ships were running less than five minutes behind a sleek transport, escorted by a pair of corvettes, all three provided by Cerberus Systems.

Weaponry wasn't the most important part of the Cerberus operation's security—secrecy was.

No one was supposed to know the transport's schedule.

Almost no one did.

The transport was intended to pick up cut and polished diamonds, some in their final settings, which would be shipped toward retail markets on a thousand thousand worlds.

The old destroyer carried two pilots, Chas Goodnight, and twenty heavily armed, suited men.

Only one of them was a double agent.

No one had ever dared Zion's security.

Chas Goodnight was daring it.

He'd considered the fact that Cerberus was providing security, and his sensible vow to never cross tracks with them if he could avoid it. But he wasn't stepping on their coms, since he was planning to jack the diamonds before they became Cerberus's responsibility.

Besides, this was an incredibly juicy target…

The transport landed at the central city's spaceport, its two escorts seconds behind.

Lifters were waiting to load the vastly precious cargo aboard.

The old destroyer, its pilots ignoring the yammering from Ground Control, dove on the transport, and launched its pair of missiles.

Both, fired at point-blank range, slashed into the Cerberus escort ships and blew their sterns and their drive mechanisms apart, immobilizing them.

The destroyer came in for a hard landing between the escorts and the transport, never giving either corvette a chance to fire on it.

A pair of locks slammed open, and the robbers ran out toward the lifters.

Each of them carried on his back a modified antigravity lifter.

As they did, Goodnight's emergency backup ship, an ultra modern medium speedster, crashed down into a square less than five hundred meters from the port.

The speedster destroyed a statue of a dignified man, fronted by a plaque heralding his life as a statesman and philanthropist.

The plaque didn't say that he'd started his career as a diamond smuggler.

The destroyer pilots slid out a forward hatch, and scurried away from the spaceport toward the speedster. They moved quickly, because they'd triggered a gas bomb in the destroyer, intended to cover the robbers' exit.

The plan was for the robbers to break into the lifters, grab one lifter's worth of diamonds, and then head for the speedster.

Goodnight already had fences and transport in place on a dozen worlds.

This caper would give him—even after the heavy expenses of the two ships and hiring the twenty very expensive pros—enough to retire on.

Or, at least, to relax while he figured out another job, he thought realistically.

Each of the robbers had a timer above his suit's viewscreen, and orders to take no more than five minutes before they went for the speedster and escape.

Less than a minute after the landing, Cerberus sprang the trap that the man who'd betrayed Goodnight's scheme to them had helped set up.

There were no diamonds in any of the waiting lifters.

Instead, doors and panels fell open, and crew-served weapons opened fire.

The gunners had been given orders that there was no particular need to take prisoners.

There was little cover on the spaceport's open tarmac, and about half of the robbers went down in the first blasts.

The double agent had been given instructions by Cerberus to go flat, and pop a purple smoke grenade. He'd been promised that would keep him safe to collect the huge reward.

Cerberus was not known for keeping its promises, but this time it may have meant them.

But two gunners, in a frenzy of excitement, saw the purple smoke, didn't remember what it was supposed to mean, and chattered bursts through the agent.

Goodnight had only seconds to realize how thoroughly he'd been mousetrapped.

He rubbed his cheek against the inside of his helmet, and triggered bester.

Goodnight became a blur, zigging, ducking, and running as hard as he could.

He ducked behind a lifter, flipped a grenade in its rear as he went past, and went hard for the park, as the last of his robbers was shot down.

His suit mike gave him the sound of sirens starting to scream, then, to his accelerated ears, going down the scale to bass.

He knocked a gaping pair of guards down and was past them in a moment, through the doors and in a terminal building.

Goodnight knocked a door on the far side off its hinges, saw a pair of ranking men in uniform grabbing for holstered blasters, then was instantly past them and around a transport.

In less than a minute, he was at the park, ahead of the running pilots.

Back at the field, the bomb aboard the destroyer went off, gas billowing into the air.

Goodnight hadn't bothered telling anyone else about the bomb, so it was a surprise to Cerberus, putting them on momentary tilt.

Goodnight was aboard the speedster, cursing himself for being a sentimental slob as he turned and took the time to yank the two pilots aboard.

He squirrel-chattered an order, realized he was not completely in control, triggered himself back out of bester, and shouted, "Lift it, goddamnit!"

One of the speedster's pilots gawped, then obeyed, hitting controls.

The airlock slid shut, and the drive boiled.

The speedster came off the ground, went vertical, and drove upward.

That caused the day's only civilian casualty—incinerating an old man who came to the park every day to leer at the young girls playing handball on nearby courts.

Goodnight ignored both the babble of questions from the four fliers and his own extreme hunger pangs from the body energy his extended bester state had burned.

He wheezed in air, slumped down into an acceleration couch, and hoped he still had enough in his savings to at least pay off these fliers.

"I think," he finally managed, "I could have done with another rehearsal when I planned this operation."

Then he wondered what the hell he was going to do next.