how many orphans St. John and his people had created over the last few years. Since Dram became the Empress's official Consort, as well as Warrior Prime, he'd had to delegate most of his duties in the field to his Second in Command, St. John. Billy boy had taken over the pursuit and persecution of potential rebels, and the execution of rogue clones and espers, and did it all with great efficiency and even greater gusto. Blood and death followed in his wake, and he was never known to bring in his prey alive. Cruelty and slaughter were his pastimes; mercy was not in him. The underground had voted unanimously for his death. St. John's execution would send a message to the Imperial Palace that could not be ignored.
No one would weep for his passing, not even his own kind. Of late, St. John had taken to playing politics, seeking to improve his position to something more than just the Lord High Dram's shadow. He went about it with his usual vim and venom, and made enemies among his rivals with sneering abandon. Opening a new orphanage was safe and uncontroversial, and bound to get St. John good publicity. The man of action with a soft spot for big- eyed children. Couldn't fail. All the big holo networks would be there. Finlay grinned. They didn't know it, but they were in for some of their best ever ratings.
Finlay hadn't missed the similarities between himself and St. John. They were both men with a need for blood and death, and a willingness to get their hands dirty in the process. As soldiers in a war they'd have been heroes, feted by all, with medals and commendations. They'd have been comrades, perhaps even friends. Sitting around a roaring fire in winter, with drinks in their hands, toasting old campaigns and lost comrades. But if there was a war, Finlay and St. John were on different sides. And the similarities between Finlay and St. John just made it that much more of a challenge.
Finlay looked up sharply. He could hear the publicity circus approaching. A brass band led the way, marching down the street in full ceremonial uniforms, playing something pointedly martial and patriotic. After them came a full company of St. John's private guards, conditioned by mind techs to be loyal unto death, surrounding a small personal flyer on which St. John stood tall and proud, smiling and waving to the crowds that packed the street. Finlay sniffed, unimpressed. The crowds had appeared with suspicious speed. One might almost think they'd been paid to gather in just the right place to impress the holo cameras.
St. John was looking good in his everyday uniform with no decorations. Nice touch, that. Meant to suggest that at heart he was just one of the boys, just another soldier doing his job. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a barrel chest and a handsome face—the best the body shops could supply. And if his smile was a little practiced and his eyes a little cold, well, people were used to that in the politicians.
Finlay ignored the man, concentrating instead on his flyer. It was really nothing more than a large personalized gravity sled with extra armor, decorated so lavishly with precious metalwork and studded jewels that even Finlay's taste was faintly appalled. You needed style to bring off that kind of excess, and Finlay had a strong suspicion St. John wouldn't know style if it walked up to him on the street and bit his nose. Just another reason to kill him, and put him out of everyone else's misery. The air was shimmering slightly around the flyer; force Screens generated by the craft to ensure the onlookers kept a respectful distance. Strong enough to turn aside an energy beam or the blast from an explosion. St. John's security people knew their business. However, force shields kept out everything. Including air. So the force shields covered only the sides of the craft, leaving the top open so St. John could breathe. It wasn't much of a risk. At the first sight of a flyer or gravity sled approaching from above, the top would be sealed instantly and maintained for us long as it took the potential threat to pass. No problem. Unless of course there was no flyer, no gravity sled. Just one man crouching precariously in a recess in the wall of the tower above St. John.
Finlay grinned. He'd spotted the opening the moment the underground had explained St. John's security setup to him. Attack from above was thought to be impossible, given the surrounding towers' security systems, but even the most sophisticated instruments could be fooled or bypassed by a man willing to take risks; a man who didn't care whether he lived or died. The openness of that thought shocked Finlay for a moment, mostly because it was true. He could live without a Family or his place in society, but he couldn't go on without Evangeline. Events were conspiring to keep them apart, possibly forever, and a life without Evangeline wasn't worth a damn to him. He looked down at the entourage moving into place below him, and his smile widened into a death's-head grin. Someone was going to die soon. St. John stopped his flyer before the tower's main entrance, directly below Finlay, and was preparing to begin his speech. All Finlay had to do was draw his gun and shoot the little toad through the head.
Except, of course, that would have been far too easy. Finlay Campbell had a reputation to uphold.
And he liked to get his hands dirty.
A flick of his hand was all it took to send his rope darting down the side of the tower till it hung unsuspected over St. John's head. It had the same elusive qualities as his chameleon suit, and was for all intents and purposes invisible, even to security systems. Finlay eased himself out of his concealing niche, clinging tightly to his rope, and leaned out over the long drop. He paused, savoring the moment, and then pushed himself away from the side of the tower, sliding down the rope with gathering speed. Leather gloves protected his hands from the growing friction. Wisps of heated smoke escaped between his fingers as he hurtled down, but he waited till the very last moment to clasp his hands shut, slowing his descent. He freed one hand and drew the dagger from his belt. At the last moment St. John must have heard or sensed something. He looked up, and it was the simplest thing in the world for Finlay to let go of the rope, drop down, and stab St. John neatly through the eye.
The Lord convulsed, his arms flying wide, but he was already dead. Finlay's feet hit the deck of the flyer hard, his leg muscles absorbing the impact. He jerked the dagger out of St. John's ruined eye in a gush of blood, and the Lord slumped bonelessly to the deck, twitching and shuddering. The flyer was still rocking sickly from the impact of Finlay's sudden arrival, and the handful of guards on the flyer with St. John were too busy trying to regain their balance to put up much of a defense when Finlay tore into them with his sword and his dagger and his death's-head grin. He swung his sword in short, chopping arcs, doing the most damage possible without risking the blade getting caught in flesh or clothing. He laughed breathlessly, cutting down the disorientated guards with brutal professionalism, and if sometimes their blades came too close for comfort, he didn't give a damn. He was in his element, doing what he was born to do, and loving it.
His sword slammed into a guard's gut and out again in a flurry of blood, and the blade rose quickly to parry a blow from another guard that would have taken his head off. Finlay was glad someone was making a fight of it. He threw himself at the guard, and for a moment they stood head-to-head, neither giving ground. And then something in the guard's eyes gave him away, and Finlay flung himself to one side, just as the other guard behind him lunged forward. Finlay laughed nastily as the other guard ran through his previous opponent, and cut the man down from behind while his sword was still trapped in his comrade's body. There were only three guards left now, and Finlay disposed of them quickly. He didn't have the time to savor it.
He ran the last guard through with a flourish, jerked the sword out in a welter of blood, and looked about him, taking in the situation. He wasn't even breathing hard. Only a few minutes had passed since he'd struck St. John down, and outside the flyer most of the dead Lord's security people were still trying to figure out some way of getting into the flyer so they could get at his assassin. The force shields were still keeping everyone well back, as they'd been designed to, and as yet it hadn't occurred to any of them to try climbing Tower Silvestri, as Finlay had. One poor fool fired his disrupter at the flyer, and they all had to duck and dodge as the energy beam ricocheted back. Someone with his wits about him was yelling for extra flyers, and Finlay took that as a sign it was time for him to leave.
He moved quickly over to the flyer's controls, stepping carefully over the bodies, and lifted the flyer up into the air. A quick glance around showed him more flyers approaching at speed from the south, and he sent his flyer weaving quickly in and out of the pastel towers, accelerating rapidly to a speed his pursuers would be hard-pressed to match if they had any sense of self-preservation. He laughed aloud and stamped his feet on the deck for the simple pleasure of hearing his boots squelch in the pooled blood of his enemies. He'd done it again, made the kill that everyone said was impossible, and got away with it. He'd shake off the flyers behind him and make his escape. He always did. He glanced back at the dead Lord William St. John, lying very still with a surprised look on his bloody face, and Finlay laughed again. It sounded loud and confident; and if it was a crazy kind of laugh, too, well, Finlay could live with that.
Adrienne Campbell, wife of Finlay, once the scourge of polite company and owner of the biggest, loudest, and foulest mouth in all society, sat fuming before her blank viewscreen and wondered whom to call next. She'd tried practically everyone she could think of, including some she would have sworn she wasn't talking to, but no one would talk to her. Some made excuses, some were rude, but most just instructed their servants to say that they
