Changer of Worlds

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 last 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.”