“Luck to you, sir.”
They scrambled off down the gulley. Vorgens waited a moment, then headed across me gulley and up the other side. Once there, he started diagonally away from the spot where he had left Mclntyre and Giradaux, toward the oncoming Komani.
As he scuttled through the foliage, he spotted three Komani warriors groping cautiously through the twilight haze. The effect of the mescai’s worn off, he realized as he stopped to watch them.
Vorgens edged carefully off to one side of the approaching Komani, working his way to a position as far as possible from the direction the Terrans had taken. Another flare burst overhead, and in its sudden light Vorgens saw another trio of warriors moving slowly through the brush toward him. Now is the time, he said to himself.
He fired at the first group of Komani, hit two of them and left the third to scream for aid. Then he swung around and fired quickly at the other trio. He dropped one of them and got a sizzling blast by his ear in return.
Ducking into the deeper brush as the flare petered out, Vorgens crawled farther away from the Komani searchers, always leading them—he hoped—away from the escaping Terrans.
Twice more flares bloomed overhead, and twice Vorgens topped to hit-and-run, making certain that the Komani knew from which direction he was firing.
Then for a long stretch there was dark silence. Vorgens squatted in the foliage and waited, straining his senses for some hint of what they were doing. He began to realize how a mouse might feel, if a pack of cats were quietly stalking it.