by David Weber
The office door flew open, and half a dozen weapons swung towards it. The uniformed citizen sergeant who’d opened it flung out his hands to show they were empty just in time, but he scarcely seemed to notice that he had just come within a few grams of trigger pressure of dying.
“They’re coming up from the garage!” he gasped. “Don’t know how many. They blew their way in. At least a dozen of them—in battle armor! Not more than one level away!”
The door to Saint-Just’s inner office opened, and the citizen secretary stood in the opening, a long-barreled military style pulser in his right hand, but Tsakakis barely glanced at him.
“John! You and Hannah are right here on the Citizen Secretary. Al, you, Steve, and Mariano take the lift shafts. I want Isabela and Janos on the emergency stairs. Nobody gets through without my personal authorization—is that clear?”
Heads nodded, and taut-faced bodyguards dashed for their assigned positions.
“What about me, Sir?” the citizen sergeant demanded.
“If they’re in battle armor, you need a bigger gun, Sarge,” Tsakakis told him with a grim smile, and reached back into the locker for a plasma carbine. “You checked out on this thing?”
“Not in the last nine or ten months, Sir. But I guess it’ll come back to me in a hurry, won’t it?”
“It better, Sarge. It damned well better.”
* * *
Gricou forged ahead down the hallway. Somehow, Jackson had managed to get in front of her anyway, and her armor audio pickups brought her the whining thunder of the sergeant’s flechette gun as he spun to fire a short, professional burst down a cross corridor.
A thin haze of smoke eddied down the hall, and she heard the sound of small arms fire from behind, as well. So far there was nothing dangerous behind her, but she didn’t begin to have enough people to hold open a line of retreat to the parking garage, so she wasn’t trying to. Her rearguard’s job was just to keep the lightly armed regular security types off her back until she got her hands on Saint-Just. Once they had him, they’d have the only door key they needed. But if they didn’t get him…
She checked her HUD schematic again, and grunted in satisfaction. Less than three minutes since they’d detonated the breaching charges, and they were only one floor below their objective.
Ahead of her, Jackson charged the lift doors. A stream of pulser darts cascaded off his battle armor, but he turned straight into them and triggered his flechette gun. Someone shrieked in agony, and the pulser fire chopped off abruptly. The sergeant started to punch the lift button, but Gricou’s sharply barked command stopped him.
“We’re taking the direct route!” she told him, and beckoned for Corporal Taylor and her demolition charges.
Tsakakis checked the charge on his plasma rifle again, and then scrubbed sweat from his forehead. Was he making the right call? Or was his decision to fort up the worst one he could have made? It had been automatic, made without any true consideration at the conscious level, but that didn’t necessarily make it wrong.
One set of instincts screamed at him to get the citizen secretary the hell out of here. No one seemed to have a clue about what was truly happening, and the earbug of his personal com brought him only confusion and panic while State Security’s duty personnel tried frantically to somehow bring order out of chaos. The only things he knew for certain were that someone had attacked the head of state and that other attackers were actually here, inside the building. That should have made putting distance between them and his charge his number one priority. But he didn’t know where else there might be attackers, and he did know that there was nowhere else on the planet where there were more StateSec reinforcements than right here in this building. All he had to do was keep Oscar Saint-Just alive until those reinforcements could arrive.
Corporal Taylor’s charges exploded, and the ceiling of the corridor disappeared. Flame and debris erupted out of the sudden breach, and one of Tsakakis’ team members became a mangled corpse. But two others were waiting, and Sergeant Amos Jackson died instantly as two plasma bolts slammed into his armor almost simultaneously.
Alina Gricou swore harshly as what was left of the sergeant fell back through the hole. Pulser darts and flechettes were no threat to battle armor; plasma rifles certainly were, and what the hell were they doing here?
Fresh alarms wailed as the thermal bloom of the plasma which had killed Jackson started fires, both here and on the floor above, but that was the least of her worries. It would take more than a fire to inconvenience someone in battle armor, but if there were plasma rifles waiting up there, then things were about to turn really ugly.
“Taylor, Bensen, Yuan! Grenades—now!”
Tsakakis recognized the sound of exploding grenades, and his jaw clenched. They were coming from the lift shafts. He’d been afraid of that, and a sharp spasm of grief twisted him. StateSec’s institutional paranoia over its commander’s security meant his people were probably more heavily armed than their attackers had anticipated, but aside from the limited protection from the anti-ballistic fabric of their tunics, they were completely unarmored.
More grenades exploded, and he heard someone screaming endlessly, terribly over the team’s dedicated channel.
“John! Take Hannah and get out there and back up Al!”
Citizen Corporal John Stillman nodded curtly and jerked his head at Citizen Private Flanders, and the two of them headed out into the smoke.
“Now!” Gricou barked, and another pair of Marines vaulted up to the next floor. Even in a planetary gravity, their armor’s exoskeletons made it a trivial feat. What was not trivial were the acquired gymnastic skills which made it possible for them to twist like bipedal cats in midair to bring their weapons to bear. Their flechette guns whined and thundered, belching death, but it took precious instants for their armor sensors to find a target. They tried to compensate by laying down suppressing fire, but the sole surviving bodyguard covering the waiting area around the lift shaft wasn’t where they’d expected him to be. Their flechettes blew corridor walls into fragments and dust, and one of them saw him and swung his weapon towards him in the same instant that he pressed the firing stud.
The Marine died a fragment of a second before him… but only because plasma bolts traveled at near light-speed and flechettes didn’t.
John Stillman and Hannah Flanders raced past the uniformed citizen sergeant and flung themselves to their bellies with their plasma rifles trained down the hallway. Neither of them liked lying in the middle of the corridor that way, but without battle armor, they had to respect the danger zone of their own weapons. The thermal bloom from a plasma rifle was vicious, which meant neither dared to get in front of the other, and that they couldn’t get too close in against the walls. It also explained why having a citizen sergeant they didn’t know and had never trained with behind them was one more worry. The last thing they needed was to have him start blasting away over them with his plasma carbine!
But then the citizen sergeant suddenly became a very minor concern. Stillman just glimpsed the vague loom of a figure through the wavefront of smoke rolling down the passage towards him, and raised his heavy weapon. Unfortunately, he was dependent upon the unaided human eye, while the Marine headed towards him had the full capabilities of her armor’s sensors. She “saw” him—and Flanders—before he’d even realized she was there, and the blast of flechettes tore both of them apart.
The Marine shouted in triumph and headed down the corridor, but even her sensors couldn’t see through solid walls, and the StateSec citizen sergeant who suddenly rolled out of a side passage ahead of her with his plasma carbine ready came as a complete surprise.
“Get up here, Isabela and Janos!” Tsakakis barked into his com. “They’re coming up the lifts, not the stairs!”
He heard the sergeant whose name he didn’t even know open fire out in the corridor, and his instincts screamed at him to get out there and help him. But cold intellect kept him where he was even as the l
ast two members of his team obeyed his command. He loathed himself for it, but he did it.
Alina Gricou followed Corporal Taylor down the hall, and she felt Death’s hot breath on the nape of her neck. It was taking too long. They had to get to Saint-Just’s office before his bodyguards had time to regroup and realize they had to get him out of here, and these unarmored maniacs and their plasma guns were screwing her mission profile all to hell. They didn’t have a chance against battle-armored Marines, but they didn’t seem to care. Why in the name of God were they so willing to die to protect a butcher like Oscar Saint-Just?
Another StateSec noncom loomed up in the smoke and dust. Even through the crackle flames and the background noise of the grenade explosions and pulser fire from her two remaining rearguards, she could hear the unarmored man coughing and wheezing, but that didn’t make his plasma carbine any less deadly. Taylor went down as the lethal bolt seared its way through her armor, and Gricou screamed a curse as she dropped to one knee and her flechette gun ripped the corporal’s killer apart.
Private Krueger charged past her, and she hurled herself back to her feet to follow him. She and Krueger were all that was left now, aside from the two men fighting frantically to cover their rear, but they were less than thirty meters from Saint-Just’s office. Krueger was as aware of the need for haste as she was, and he’d opened the distance between them while she was still rising from her firing crouch. He was almost at the door to Saint-Just’s outer office—a door that gaped ominously open—when the plasma bolt came screaming down the corridor and cut him in half.
Gricou didn’t waste the energy to curse this time. She only returned fire, hosing the passage with flechettes. Someone went down ahead of her, then someone else, and she charged forward, praying that neither of the bodies had been Saint-Just. The chance of getting out of this alive had become miniscule whatever happened, but if she’d killed him there was no chance at all. Yet somehow the near certainty of her own death had become secondary, almost—not quite, but almost—unimportant, as long as she could know that Oscar Saint-Just was already dead. And if he wasn’t, then she had to catch up with them before the bodyguards ahead of her could get him to safety.
Mikis Tsakakis knew he would never forgive himself, but it had worked. The last two members of his team, people he had worked and trained with for over three T-years, were dead, and he’d used them as bait. He had deliberately recalled them, knowing they would run directly into the attackers, and they’d done just that.
And just as he’d hoped, the attackers had assumed that the two of them must be the rearguard of the security detail trying to get the Citizen Secretary to safety. It was the only answer that made sense, because surely no unarmored bodyguard would have been so stupid as to charge to meet someone in battle armor, no matter what they were armed with. Coupled with the open office door and the total lack of fire from it, all the attackers could conclude was that they were too late. That the Citizen Secretary was already gone… and that their only chance for success was to overtake him before he got away.
The citizen lieutenant made himself wait two seconds longer, and then he stepped out into the corridor.
There was only one of them left, a corner of his brain noted with near-clinical detachment, and from the sounds of combat coming from behind him, whoever they’d left to cover their rear was in serious trouble as the StateSec reserves converged upon them. Which made the battle armored figure moving rapidly away from him the only real remaining threat.
He brought the plasma rifle up into firing position, and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. He had time to realize that for some reason he didn’t even hate the person he was about to kill. He ought to, but he didn’t. Perhaps it was because at that moment he hated himself too much to spare any hatred for another.
But whatever the reason was, it didn’t matter.
Alina Gricou had one instant to realize she’d been fooled.
Her sensors detected the lone figure behind her the instant it stepped out into the corridor, but that wasn’t soon enough. She was still trying frantically to turn when the plasma bolt struck her squarely in the small of the back.
Esther McQueen looked up from the tactical holo display in front of her as a Marine captain and two corporals ushered two more “guests” into the Octagon Work Room. The cavernous chamber, with its huge holo displays, plots, and communications consoles, made a perfect CP for her, although she rather suspected that her lords and masters on the Committee of Public Safety couldn’t be too pleased at the use to which she was currently putting it. Citizen secretaries Avram Turner and Wanda Farley certainly weren’t, at any rate—not to judge by their half-murderous, half-terrified expressions. They made as mismatched a pair as ever, and the furious, frightened glares they turned upon her indicated that they were anything but glad to see her, but McQueen was delighted to see them. At least that part of her plans had gone off as scheduled. Aside from Oscar Saint-Just and Pierre himself, her commando teams had made a clean sweep of the entire Committee. She had all of its members, now, and she allowed herself to feel a faint glow of hope that she might just pull this off after all.
Might.
If only they’d managed to take Saint-Just out cleanly! Or at least to take Pierre alive. Esther McQueen had never understood the underlying dynamic which allowed a man like Saint-Just to feel personal friendship for anyone, yet she’d seen ample proof of the StateSec commander’s personal devotion to Rob Pierre. If she’d had Pierre in her hands, Saint-Just would have dealt. She knew he would have. But the Citizen Chairman’s bodyguards had put up too good a fight, and her people had been too rushed for time to avoid collateral damage. The Chairman’s Guard whose members mounted the normal sentries outside the People’s Tower were much too lightly armed to seriously threaten battle armored Marine Raiders, but the heavy StateSec intervention battalions were another matter entirely. That was why her planning had stressed the imperative need for speed, not numbers—for forces small and agile enough to get in and out again before the intervention battalions could arrive—from the outset. And that, in turn, was how Rob Pierre had wound up caught in the crossfire.
McQueen regretted that as she had regretted very few things in her life. Not because of any great love for the Citizen Chairman, and certainly not because she’d intended to spare him indefinitely. If one thing in the universe had been certain, it was that she would have had no choice but to stand him up against a convenient wall eventually, and probably sooner rather than later. Which was a pity, in many ways, because for all of his failings, Pierre truly had managed to turn the corner on the fundamental structural reforms the People’s Republic’s economy had needed so desperately. But he would simply have been too dangerous to be allowed to live, and having profited from that sort of mistaken judgment on the part of the Committee’s master, Esther McQueen would not make the error of extending it to anyone else.
Saint-Just would undoubtedly have realized that, but McQueen felt certain that he would have at least paused to negotiate if she’d managed to sweep up Pierre in her net. Not that anyone would ever know if she’d been right.
“Have we heard anything from Admiral Graveson?” she asked.
“No, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Caminetti replied. The young man looked remarkably calm, under the circumstances, but she could see the fear for his brother in his eyes. “She hasn’t responded at all.”
“She may not even have gotten the heads-up signal, Ma’am,” Ivan Bukato pointed out. “We never had an opportunity to test that com link.”
“I know. I know,” she agreed unhappily. And if Amanda didn’t get the word ahead of time, she almost certainly didn’t have time to warn anyone else before the shit hit the fan. Damn Saint-Just and his purges! All I needed was one more week, and Amanda would have known ahead of time.
“If Graveson didn’t get the word, then we can’t count on Capital Fleet at all,” she said aloud. “It’s almost certain that Saint-Just got the word to his SS units bef
ore anyone else in the Fleet realized what was happening. And if they’re just sitting there, cleared for action and ready to shoot, nobody could possibly come out on our side without being blown out of space before they even got their sidewalls up.”
“But at least they don’t seem to be coming in on Saint-Just’s side, either,” one of her other staffers pointed out.
“Of course not!” McQueen snorted. “You think anyone in StateSec is going to be crazy enough to let regular Navy units clear for action at a time like this? If they ever did manage to get their wedges and walls up, it’s a better than even bet that whoever they wound up shooting at, it wouldn’t be us!”
“Agreed.” Bukato nodded, but his face was tight with worry. “But it may not matter what the Fleet does. I don’t like the reports coming in from the western part of the city, Ma’am.”
“They’re not too good,” McQueen agreed, “but they’re actually better than I was afraid they might be.” She turned back to Caminetti. “What do we hear from General Conflans?”
“His last report was that all three battalions from the spaceport have come over, Ma’am,” the lieutenant replied quickly. “One of them is on its way here to reinforce the Octagon perimeter. The general is personally leading the other two to support Brigadier Henderson.”
“We just got word from Colonel Yazov, Admiral McQueen!”
McQueen turned towards the commander who had just entered the conference room, and despite the thick haze of tension hovering about her, she felt an undeniable urge to smile in satisfaction. One way or the other, no one in this room would ever use that stupid, sycophantic “Citizen” crap again, and it felt unspeakably good to put on the persona of an admiral once more instead of wearing the ill-fitting, quasi-civilian mask of secretary of war.