by David Drake
Grayle jumped to her feet, shouting silently. The older of her male colleagues rose also, but the younger man—a blond fellow in his thirties with a neat moustache and goatee—was noticeably slower to get up. His eyes flicked from Orichos to Grayle, as nervous when they rested on his own leader as when he looked at the Gendarmery officer.
"Based on this report," Orichos continued as though oblivious of the capering Freedom Party officials, "I have applied for and been granted a warrant by the Chief Justice of the High Court to search the premises of the Freedom Party in order to corroborate our information. Due to the delicacy of the situation, I'm informing the Assembly before taking action."
Grayle's older colleague was a rougher sort than the handsome blond on her other side. She extended an arm to keep him from climbing over his desk to reach the floor. Grayle's blue eyes never left Orichos and the Speaker on the podium.
She sat down again, gesturing her colleagues with her. Her face was red, but she stared at Orichos with sneering contempt, not anger. She touched a button in her desk; a spiral of coherent orange light appeared above her head.
Orichos nodded meaningfully to the Speaker. Nestilrode leaned forward, touched the muting switch, and said, "The chair recognizes the member from Bulstrode."
Still seated, Grayle said, "That's not just a lie but a bloody lie. As Captain Orichos knows well, my party is funded entirely by the contributions of the Moss rangers on whom the nation's economy is based. There are no documents in our party headquarters or anywhere else to support these lies!"
Grayle turned so that her gaze swept the hostile assemblymen to her left and behind her. Some met her eyes; most did not. "I will not have the machinery of the law perverted to allow lying bureaucrats to plant false documents in our party offices. The so-called search has no other purpose. If that's what you intend, Captain, you'll have to shoot your way in—or use the mercenaries you've hired at a true cost equal to the national budget for three full years!"
Her eyes locked Huber's with almost physical force. The blond man to her left was cringing back in his chair, looking at an empty corner of the chamber with an anguished expression.
Captain Orichos gestured the Speaker aside again. "We have no desire to plant anything in the Freedom Party files," she said, "nor would we even need to disturb the normal office routine. Will the member from Bulstrode permit me and one aide to search her files in her presence, with the entire exercise being broadcast live to the citizens of the Point?"
The older man snarled something toward Grayle. She shushed him with a gesture, though the chamber's electronics had swallowed the words.
Grayle stood. She pointed her index finger at Orichos. "You'll be showing this live over the regular governmental channel?" she said. "And you'll search in the presence of me and my fellow party members?"
"Yes," said Orichos, nodding without expression. "The only concern I and my department have is that the truth come out. If our sources in Solace have misled us, then I will be the first to apologize to you and your colleagues."
Grayle slammed her fist down on her desk. "By the Lord's bleeding wounds!" she said. "That's just what you'll do."
She stepped sideways toward the aisle leading out. "Come on, then," she added. "We'll take care of that now—and then we'll discuss the cost of these alien murderers you've saddled the Point with!"
* * *
"You'll come with me into the Freedom Party headquarters, Lieutenant," Orichos murmured as they watched Melinda Grayle and her henchmen stride out of the chamber. Their bodyguards were trampling down the stairs from the gallery to join them. The remaining assemblymen were either rigid in their seats or whispering in small cliques.
"All right," said Huber. "Sierra, this is Fox Three-six. I'll be accompanying the liaison officer into the red buildings across the way. If anything pops, you'll know where to come and get me. Three-six out."
"Roger that, Three-six," growled Captain Sangrela. "Six out."
Huber looked at the Gendarmery captain. "Why me?" he said.
"Let's go," Orichos said, nodding to the doorway. "A recording team from the Speaker's staff is joining us outside."
They went out. The ushers were backed against the walls, watching Huber and Orichos with silent concern.
"I want you rather than someone from the Point . . ." Orichos said, showing that she wasn't ignoring Huber's question after all. "Because Grayle knows that her Volunteers outnumber the Gendarmery by several times. Your regiment's an unknown quantity, so she'll be less inclined to resort to violence."
Huber noticed that she said, " . . . the Gendarmery . . ." rather than " . . . from my organization. . . ." Orichos was a member of the police force only as a matter of administrative convenience. In their own self-image, intelligence personnel are a breed apart—and generally a law unto themselves as well.
Two black-haired young women waited on the porch with lens wands and satchels of recording equipment. One technician was plumpish with a broad mouth, the other razor thin with three vertical blue lines on her right cheek. Huber couldn't tell whether the marks were tattoos or makeup.
Grayle and her entourage were walking back across the Axis to their compound. The older male was speaking into a hand communicator as he gestured forcefully with the other arm. The compound gates were open; the squad waiting there wore red headbands and carried carbines openly.
"Come along," Orichos said to the recording technicians as she strode past and started down the steps. They fell in behind obediently, looking excited but not frightened. They obviously didn't have any conception of what they were about to get into.
Trooper Learoyd waved from Fencing Master; Huber nodded in response. He was operating on trained reflex now. His intellect had dug itself a hole from which it viewed its surroundings in puling terror, but the part of him that was a soldier remained fully functional.
If things broke wrong, Task Force Sangrela couldn't get Huber out of the Freedom Party headquarters. The whole Regiment in line couldn't do that, though it could pulverize the buildings and everybody in them easily enough.
That wouldn't help Huber while he was inside. He wasn't going to fight his way out through the hundreds—at least—of armed Volunteers inside with him, either. Well, it'd be what it'd be. . . .
On the lowest of the three terrace landings, Orichos turned her head and said, "This is of course dangerous, Lieutenant; but I don't want you to imagine that it's a suicide mission."
Huber shrugged. "It doesn't matter what I think," he said. "It's my job."
Oddly enough, the words brought him a degree of comfort. They reminded him that he was here by choice, however dangerous "here" turned out to be. And by the Lord—Arne Huber couldn't clear out the compound alone, but if push came to shove the Volunteers who took him down'd know they'd been in a fight.
The road surface was more irregular than it'd seemed while Huber was riding over it in a combat car; repeatedly his foot slipped in a rut or scuffed a ridge he hadn't noticed because his attention was where it belonged, on the armed guards waiting for him in the gateway. He imagined taking this same route while mounted on Fencing Master. The thought made him grin, and maybe because of that expression the solid phalanx of Volunteers parted to let Huber and his companions through without jostling.
Orichos looked over her shoulder and said, "Begin recording now," to the technicians.
The thin one sniffed and replied tartly, "We've been recording since you came out of the building, ma'am. We have orders from our supervisor."
Orichos nodded without evident emotion. Huber wondered if she were nervous or if like him she was following by rote the path she'd planned while there was time for cool reflection.
They entered the compound. Melinda Grayle stood with the older male assemblyman in the doorway of the building ten meters ahead of them. Grayle was still in the white and red outfit she'd come from the Assembly with, but her companion had changed into black battledress set off by a red headband; he carried a ca
rbine and wore a powergun in a belt holster.
Huber didn't see the blond assemblyman. He might be inside the building, of course. Aircars, mostly battered-looking private vehicles—the large trucks were garaged in an annex outside the walls—filled the grounds within the compound. They were parked so tightly that except for the path between the gate and the central building, anyone walking across the tract would have to worm his way through and sometimes over cars.
The people they'd flown into the city watched Orichos and her companions from the buildings and from the cars themselves. Everyone Huber saw was armed, and they were trying to look tough. For most of them, that didn't require a great deal of effort.
"All right, madam snoop," Grayle said to Orichos. "You're here now. How do you intend to proceed?"
"We'll go directly to the file room adjacent to your personal office on the fourth floor, Assemblyman Grayle," Orichos said calmly. "If there's no record of wrongdoing there, you'll have my apologies and we'll leave immediately."
Grayle's eyes narrowed; she looked angry but not, if Huber read her correctly, afraid. "I'll have your apology and your resignation, Captain," she said. "And you'll be lucky if there's not a libel suit as well!"
"Just as you please," Orichos said. She didn't look concerned either.
Grayle turned on her heel and strode into the building. Orichos followed immediately instead of waiting for the permission that wasn't going to come. Huber gestured the recorders ahead of him and brought up the rear. He didn't bother trying to watch behind him; he knew he'd see an armed mob, and it wasn't going to make him feel any more comfortable.
The two girls now looked nervous. They were walking so close together so that they occasionally bumped elbows. They'd started to understand. . . .
There were two elevators in the wall to the right of the doorway. Grayle gestured to them with her left hand and said sardonically, "Take your pick, snooper."
"We'll take the one that goes to the fourth floor," Orichos replied in a mild tone, stepping in front of Grayle and pressing the call button for the cage farther from the door.
Grayle's face went carefully neutral, but the male assemblyman with her said, "Hey, how does she—"
"Shut up, Fewsett!" Grayle said. Her voice didn't rise, but the snarl in it brought a look of surprise and anger to her subordinate's face. He cocked his right hand back, then gaped in blank horror at what he'd been about to do.
Grayle ignored him, pushing past Orichos to enter the elevator before the delegation from the Assembly could do so. Fewsett followed; other Volunteers would have done so as well, but there simply wasn't room on what was meant as a private car for the highest officials.
Huber grinned without humor. He didn't doubt that there'd be a sufficiency of gunmen already waiting for them upstairs.
The elevator rose smoothly but with a repetitive squeak to which the plump recording technician winced in synchrony. The thinner girl took her hand and squeezed it tightly. The contact seemed to help; at any rate, the twitches immediately became less pronounced.
The elevator stopped. What had been the back of the cage opened into an office appointed like a throne room. A large stuffed chair with gilt upholstery stood on a dais behind an agate-topped desk. Behind it was a wood-framed triptych of heroic figures created not by an artist but by a technician using stock imagery. Highlights on the pictures' glossy surface veiled them; a good result.
Even urban structures on Plattner's World tended to be tall and narrow, slipped in among the trees that were the source of the planet's considerable income. This high-ceilinged office was half the building's top floor; even so, another dozen people besides the six waiting gunmen would've filled the space left over by the desk and throne. They'd have had to stand, because there was no other chair in the room.
Grayle and her henchman got out first as they had entered. Fewsett immediately began to talk in a guttural whisper to the leader of the waiting squad, a slender man with tattoos and a serpentine copper bracelet.
Captain Orichos led the way to the small door at the side of the throne room; Huber brought up the rear. Through it was a paneled hallway with a stairwell at the far end and a doorway on the left side. Another squad of guards waited in the hall.
"Back, if you please!" Orichos said, gesturing at the guards. She opened the side door and entered the file room beyond.
Huber gave the gunmen a wry smile. They didn't know what was going on any better than he himself did. That didn't make him and the Volunteers brothers, but it was a good enough illustration of a soldier's life to amuse him.
There was no one in the file room; five-drawer cabinets circled the walls, leaving only an aisle in the middle. Though the Freedom Party was as technically advanced as the rest of Plattner's World, hardcopy remained a necessary backup to electronic files and ultimately more secure than any form of information linked directly to the outside world.
"Assemblyman Grayle?" Orichos said to the woman watching from the doorway. "Would you or a deputy please join us before I begin examining your files? Although the whole nation is witness to the proceedings—"
The thin technician's face was frozen, her mouth slightly open; she held her wand rigidly upright where it recorded events in a sphere around her. The other technician huddled against a back corner, leaning on her wand as though it were a cane. Huber supposed it was doing an adequate job of recording the parts of the file room that were blocked from her companion's lenses.
"—I'd like someone in whom you have confidence to be present to ensure that I'm merely examining files, not adding anything to them."
"By the Lord, you'd better not be adding stuff!" Fewsett growled. He added, presumably to some of the gunmen, "Come on, boys."
Grayle stepped in herself. Huber squeezed against the cabinets behind him to allow her to get by if she wanted, but she merely gave him a sneer. "Go ahead!" she said. "You'll find nothing because there's nothing to find."
Fewsett crowded in behind Grayle and touched her shoulder to move her back. She slapped his hand without looking around. More Volunteers stacked into the doorway; those in front pushed back against their fellows to the rear to keep from being shoved into Fewsett's massive figure.
Orichos nodded, then turned to a cabinet midway down the row. "Let the record show that I am at a cabinet marked Finance," she said, and opened the second drawer from the top.
Huber stood with his head cocked so that though he mainly faced the Freedom Party officials, he could still watch Orichos out of the corner of his eye. Grayle's expression was one of iron disdain; Fewsett glared past her with a mixture of anger and frustration.
"Bring the wand closer," Orichos snapped to the plump recorder. When there was no reaction, Orichos lifted the girl's arm and placed the lens wand on the edge of the drawer. In a dry, mechanical voice Orichos continued, "I am removing a file marked Special."
"What is this?" Grayle said on a rising note. She tried to look behind her but the way was filled with gunmen. "Where's Patronus? Why isn't he here?"
Orichos displayed her empty right hand to the lens wand, then reached into the drawer and brought out a folder with a red tab. She spread her left hand in plain sight also, then opened the folder.
Fewsett turned and bellowed, "Get that bastard Patronus here now! He's the fucking party treasurer. We need him now!"
Huber didn't move except to slide his finger into the trigger guard. He'd figured how the business was going to play out, but he didn't know quite the exact time.
Or whether he'd survive it.
"The folder holds a list of amounts and dates," Orichos said. "It purports to be records—"
The lens wand slipped off the drawer; the plump technician had curled her arms around herself, sunk into a personal world light-years away from this terror. In a sudden break from her detached calm, Orichos looked at the girl and screamed, "Hold that bloody thing up or I'll have you executed for treason!"
The thin technician tilted her wand closer to the o
pen drawer. She didn't look toward Orichos.
"This is fake!" Grayle said. "It's been planted! There's no—"
"Purports to be a record," Orichos resumed in a louder voice, "of payments—"
"—truth in it at all!"
"—by the Interior Ministry of the Government of Solace to the Freedom Party!"
Grayle turned to get out of the file room. Fewsett knocked her back accidentally as he raised his carbine. Huber fired from the hip. His 2-cm bolt hit Fewsett in the upper chest, vaporizing most of the big man's torso in a thunderclap. The shockwave slammed Huber against a file cabinet and knocked the Volunteers in the doorway off their feet.
A Volunteer tried to aim his carbine, or maybe he was just flailing his arms for support. The powergun's cyan flash would've blinded anybody seeing it close-up without the protection of a polarizing faceshield like Huber's. He fired twice more, clearing the doorway save for a scatter of body parts. A blast-severed head flew past Huber, driven by vaporized body fluids.
The thin technician screamed and flung down her wand. It wobbled behind her on its flex as she sprang through the doorway Huber was trying to slam shut with his left hand. Two or more gunmen riddled her before she took a second step into the hallway. She thrashed backward, but Huber threw all his weight against the panel. It latched despite the obstructions.
A burst of shots whanged into the door from the outside. The panel was metal-cored, but concentrated gunfire would peck through it before long. For that matter there must be somebody in the gang outside with the key to the door's snap lock.
"Don't shoot, you idiots!" Melinda Riker Grayle screamed. "Don't shoot or you'll kill me!"
Huber glanced behind him. Grayle sprawled on the floor. Captain Orichos lay on top of her, twisting back her left arm and holding a pistol to Grayle's neck.
The plump technician sat on the floor with her legs splayed, crying uncontrollably. The room was hot—oven hot, heated by the three heavy-caliber powergun discharges in its narrow confines.