Jinx on a Terran Inheritance by Brian Daley

who'd been present on a previous firing, already had his fingers in his ears.
    The bulky old handgun overloaded the adit with thunder-flash, heat, and death. It had been designed for use against the dangers a vessel's skipper might face: boarding, riot, and mutiny. Its discharge was attended by almost overwhelming visible light and sonic energy.
    Alacrity fired again; the shot boomed, reverberating through the place.
    The flechette burpgun had fallen silent. Alacrity pushed his hip howitzer up higher for a better angle on a third shot, still without so much as raising his head. Then he swiftly wriggled to a different firing spot elsewhere along the barrier, using shoulders, heels, one hand, and the back of his head.
    In the wake of the concussion and glare, he was up, forearms once more steadied across the barrier. The man was backing toward the catwalk, nearly on all fours, the burpgun aimed where Alacrity had been.
    Alacrity cut loose again, just as the burpgun muzzle swung to bear on him. The fierce blare of energy caught the intruder squarely, knocking him backward through the air as it simply vaporized his middle.
    For an instant Alacrity saw the disbelieving look on a face that seemed to be all bulging eyes.
    The body hit the catwalk and lay smoking and crackling. Alacrity was up and over the buttress, sprinting for the catwalk. Floyt brought up the rear, the Webley in his hand, it's lanyard ring flapping and clinking.
    Floyt fetched up against Alacrity's back, almost toppling them both. They were gagging on the smoke, breathless and nearly spent.
    "See?" Alacrity asked in a remote voice as they gazed down into the chamber. "Didn't I tell you we'd seen a Precursor artifact?"
    "Hell, no, you didn't," Floyt answered softly. "All you did was hint. I wonder if the one on Weir's terrace is an egg. A nit ."
    The causality harp they'd seen at Frostpile was small and uncomplicated compared to this shifting, file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...aley%20-%20Jinx%20on%20a%20Terran%20Inheritance.htm (30 of 320)19-2-2006 17:12:28
    [Fitzhugh 2]-JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE
    churning titan. The Precursor chamber was wide and high—fifty meters or more through its long axis, the vertical—and most of that was occupied by this fuller, terribly complex looking nebula. The primeval smell they'd noticed was all-pervasive.
    The half-familiar sounds came to them clearly, the tonalities and near-subsonic hum, the great baritone chiming of the thing. It was more alive-seeming than the first; the adumbrations and eddies, brume-shapes and hazy images seemed much more immediate, nearer to resolution.
    "Quit goggling and help me," Floyt panted, snapping Alacrity out of what was becoming a trance. Floyt was on one knee by the fallen woman. A few minutes earlier she had laughed at his wallflower joke.
    Alacrity leapt to help. Both could hear the sounds of the fighting below. Levels of catwalk had been set up surrounding the harp and beneath it. The vault itself didn't have a level floor; it was as concave as an egg cup. At several levels, gantries had been installed.
    All around the Precusor artifact were detectors or sensors of a kind Alacrity had never seen before, something Weir's people must have developed. Some were spherical, resembling tufted dandelions three meters across, others were like metal barnacles.
    Alacrity's jaw had dropped. My god! Did Weir actually figure out a way to interface with that thing?
    Beams and projectile shots ranged up at the catwalk where Floyt and Alacrity knelt, flaring and spanging off it. The combatants were keeping to cover; the engagement had settled into sniping and jockeying for position.
    The musician-Celestial had been caught below the waist by a burst of flechette fire. There wasn't much left of her pelvic area at all.
    "Ho, she's dead."
    "Give me a hand here." Floyt was trying to compose the body so that he could move it without losing part of it.
    She's about the same age as his