Near the center of the room was a wide staircase leading up to the second floor, with a set of curved metal railings on both sides. "Make them sit beside the staircase," Draycos whispered to Jack. "It will give some protection from fire through the windows."

"I should be out there," Jack muttered as he herded the Parprins to the side of the stairway. "I should be out helping them."

"You cannot," Draycos told him firmly. "You have no weapon. You can only stay here and guard the civilians."

"But those are supposed to be my comrades out there," Jack insisted. "You're the one who's always talking about duty. How can I just sit here while they're getting shot at?"

"You cannot help them," Draycos repeated, flicking his tongue out once through the gap in Jack's shirt. The smell of Parprin wasn't one he had tasted before, and he made a mental note of its texture. "But I can. And I will."

Jack exhaled in a huff. "Okay," he said. "Be careful." He helped the Parprins down with their backs against the stairway wall; and as he did so, he lifted his left hand over the top of the railing.

Draycos was out of the sleeve in an instant, leaping onto the stairs. With his scales tingling, his battle senses fully alert, he headed up.

The second floor was much like the first: wide spaces, tables with merchandise, no cover near the windows. Draycos didn't pause, but continued up the next stairway to the third floor.

There he found what he was looking for. This floor, instead of being devoted to merchandise, had been divided by low partitions into an orderly maze of small ofEce-like areas. Even better, the windows were partially covered by thick, decorative drapes. Keeping to the cover of the partitions, he made his way to one of the side windows and looked cautiously out.

The side of the next building was perhaps ten feet away, an easy leap for a K'da warrior. He scanned all the windows, but there was no one in sight. Apparently, the attackers were concentrating on the street side, where the Edgemen were pinned down.

Still, they hadn't completely neglected their defense of this side. Between the two buildings a steady trickle of popcorn bombs was raining down.

It was an interesting defensive method, one which the K'da and Shontine had never used. The popcorn bombs were propelled outward from a central launcher somewhere on top of the building. As each bomb cleared the edge of the roof, it sprouted a small parachute, which stopped its outward motion and turned it instead to fall straight down. The parachute then popped off, sending the bomb falling at normal speed toward the street below.

For a few seconds Draycos watched the bombs, studying their pattern. With the proper timing, it should be cub's play to get though it.

The rooftop was a little ways above his position as he looked out the window, and he couldn't see if there was anyone up there tending the popcorn machine. Still, the Edge manual had said such devices ran automatically, so it had probably been left on its own. He would have to risk it.

He looked down, and felt his jaws crack open in a tight smile. Whatever else the popcorn bombs were supposed to do, they were also having an unintended but useful side effect. Just as the gunfire from the windows was creating a hazy smoke screen around the tops of the buildings, so too the bombs were creating a smoky mist of their own at ground level.

Which meant that, when he made his move, neither the attackers nor the defenders would see a thing.

He pushed open the window and backed up to midway across the room. There he crouched low, watching the bombs fall past the window. He could feel the blood pounding through his body, pouring oxygen and nutrients into his muscles in preparation for the effort ahead. Out of the edge of his eye he could see the golden color in his scales turn to black as some of the extra blood flow trickled into them.

The K'da warrior was ready.

Across the room, the pattern of falling bombs reached the proper point. Digging his claws into the carpet, he charged.

A quick sprint took him back to the window. He jumped up to the sill with his front paws, got his rear paws planted on the sill behind them, and leaped up and outward.

There was no time to wonder what would happen if he had made a mistake in the pattern. Fortunately, he hadn't. His jump took him sailing cleanly through a gap in the artificial hailstorm and landed him on top of the low parapet around the edge of the roof.

The popcorn machine had been set up near the center of the roof, spitting its deadly dispatches toward and over the edges. As Draycos had expected, there was no one tending it. Staying low beneath the stream of bombs, he sprinted across the roof.

This particular machine was slightly different from the one that had been shown in Jack's manual. But it was similar enough. Two quick slashes through the power and control cables, and the rain of bombs stopped.

Beside the machine was a trap door leading down into the building. Prying open the popcorn machine's magazine, he pulled out two of the small bombs. Then, ready to toss them in if necessary, he pulled the trap door open a crack.

He flicked his tongue into the gap. There was an alien tang in the air, almost buried beneath the taste of the explosive powder of the guns. The taste of Parprin was there, too, but faint and stale, plus the stronger scent of a human. Neither the human nor alien scents seemed to be nearby.

He lifted the trap door the rest of the way up. Below was a narrow stairway leading down to a door that had been propped open. No one was visible, and the enemy did not seem to have set any alarms or booby traps. Tucking his two popcorn bombs out of the way beneath his forearms, he headed down.

The open door below led into the center of a corridor lined with ten doors. Apartments, he decided, or possibly private offices. Silently, he prowled down the hallway, listening and tasting at each door.

At the second and fourth doors to the left, on the side facing the street, he found the enemy.

He took a moment to lay the two bombs on the hallway floor by the fourth door, where the door would strike them if it was opened carelessly. Then, returning to the second door, he pulled it open.

The attacker's setup was again something he'd seen in Jack's manual. At the window sat a slender, long-barreled weapon on a tripod, angled sharply downward to fire at the street. A belt of ammunition ran up to it from a small suitcase on the floor.

The gunner himself was of a species Draycos hadn't met before: short and stocky, with large ears and clumps of feathers poking out of a mottled red-and-purple skin. His heavy battle vest had a shoulder patch showing a long, curved sword, and his scent matched the alien smell Draycos had tasted by the trap door.

He was seated cross-legged in the center of the room, well back from the window, leaning comfortably against the front corner of a large desk. With the help of a small video monitor in one hand and a control stick in the other, he was firing the weapon by remote control.

Foolishly enough, he was sitting with his back to the door. Perhaps he assumed his large ears would warn him of any intruders.

Draycos didn't give him the chance to correct that error. A single leap across the room landed him behind the alien. A single slap of his forepaw bounced the other's head against the desk and sent him sprawling unconscious onto the floor.

For a moment Draycos crouched beside him, listening to the rhythm of his breathing. The soldier was alive, but definitely out of the fight.

One room down. One more room to go, and then he would have done all he could. He turned back to the door.