peeled the armor off one of them and found out just who she was dealing with, but there were more pressing matters at hand.
As she and Jock reached Vinnie’s position at the corner, she saw Glen Mulrooney crouched beside him, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, eyes wide and skin pale from abject terror. Behind them, half around the corner, was the RHN reporter, clad only in bikini briefs, sprawled out on the pile carpet. Half his head had been shot away. As they approached, Glen Mulrooney rose from his knees, hands clenching and unclenching nervously.
“Did you find Val?” he demanded, spittle flying off his lips as he struggled to control his muscles. “Did you see her?”
“She wasn’t in her room?” Shannon snapped, temples beginning to throb with each bit of bad news.
“He says she went for a walk,” Vinnie told her, seemingly cooler than any of them. “Haven’t had much time to look around.”
“What about Lieutenant McKay?” Stark wanted to know.
“I looked in his door on the way down here,” Mahoney shrugged. “Not around.”
“Goddammit,” Shannon hissed, eyes flicking around instinctively to watch for any more of the armored troops. “Well, we can’t stay around here much longer. We’ve got to get out before the place burns down around us!”
“Doesn’t look like the fire control system’s working,” Jock agreed, eyes still locked down the corridor, following the aim of his mini-grenade launcher.
“Let’s see if we can find the governor,” Shannon decided, “Then we’ll try to find some transportation and…”
“Won’t have to look too far for His Honor,” a voice announced casually from around the corner. All heads snapped around to see Tom Crossman approach from behind them. He was dressed in a pair of baggy fashion pants, with a submachinegun tucked in the crook of one arm and a young, female mansion employee in the grasp of the other: she was wearing the shirt that matched Crossman’s pants, but nothing else. “The Gov’s in his chambers.” He glanced back down the hall, a grin playing across his face. “Y’all gotta see this.”
He headed back the way he had come, and the others followed him around the corner to a set of large, inlaid-wood double doors at the end of the hallway. Sprawled at the base of the entrance was one of the invaders, its neck blown out—by Crossman’s weapon, Stark assumed. One of the doors was slightly ajar, and Crossman kicked it open, revealing the interior of the Governor’s private bedroom and a kinky diorama the likes of which Shannon hadn’t seen in all her young life.
The bed was the latest in magnetic suspension technology: a thin, pliable sheet of metal topped by a water- filled cushion held off the base by superconductive electromagnets. Since the power had failed, the heart-shaped floater cushion had collapsed over the base; but the holodisplay over the bed apparently ran on batteries, since it was still active. Amid a coruscating rainbow of pastels, a pair of teenage boys whose endowments, Shannon thought, had to be computer enhanced, were engaged in activities with a live horse that would have made a hardened sailor blush. The opposite wall was home to another such projection, different only in the lack of a farm animal and additional leather.
Governor Sigurdsen was crouched half-in a closet too small to contain his herculean frame—even though that frame looked decidedly less imposing in the lacy negligee that covered it at the moment. Pressed up against the wall behind the bed, a Hispanic youth Shannon recognized as one of the servants she’d seen on their arrival at the mansion was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible in nothing but a spiked leather harness.
“Holy shit,” Jock muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Takes all kinds,” Vinnie agreed.
“Governor Sigurdsen.” Shannon tried to keep the distaste out of her voice—she respected everyone’s right to their own sexual preference, but these kind of B&D power games turned her stomach. “The mansion is apparently under attack and on fire. We have to leave. Now, I’m going to close this door. When I open it in exactly thirty seconds, I expect you and your… friend to be as dressed as possible and ready to go. If not, we’ll have to leave you here.”
“No!” The Governor’s eyes widened and he jumped to his feet, all embarrassment gone with a sudden rush of fear. “Take me with you!”
“Thirty seconds,” she repeated, pulling the door shut. As they waited, Shannon glanced back over at Crossman, and the young woman clinging to him. “Nice shirt,” Stark commented to him wryly, regarding the garment that was all the clothes the Hispanic girl possessed.
“Thanks.” Crossman grunted, gaze falling upon her bare chest. “Like to borrow it?”
She swallowed a sharp reply as she realized just how ridiculous they must all look, and found herself chuckling softly instead. At least, she mused, she had managed to get her boots on.
The sudden clomp of heavy footsteps behind them sent Vinnie and Jock into a defensive crouch, their weapons coming on line.
“Wait, hold your fire!” Shannon ordered, recognizing the blue utilities of the mansion security force on the forms running their way through the haze of smoke in the hallway.
The trio of blue-clad figures solidified into three of the mercenary guards, the leader of which she recognized as Captain Trang, head of the security force.
“Lieutenant Stark,” he said, not even showing a hint of embarrassment at her state of undress. “Is the Governor safe?”
“As safe as any of us are at the moment, Captain,” she assured him. “He’s getting dressed. What’s the situation outside?”
“Not good,” the thin-mustached, fortyish mercenary captain reported. “Whoever the invaders are, they’re everywhere. My men are trying to hold them out front, but it is a losing cause.”
It didn’t even take the full half-minute before the colonial governor and his companion emerged, the big man in hastily-thrown-on, mismatching dress shirt and pants, his face redder than his beard. Glancing out of the corner of her eye at Trang’s face, Shannon saw a faint look of amusement.
“Lieutenant Stark…” Sigurdsen began, obviously on the verge of some kind of explanation.
“No time for talk now, Governor,” she said curtly. “Follow us. And stick close.”
Jock took the lead, guiding them toward the main stairwell, with Vinnie bringing up the rear and the three security men clumped around the governor. Shannon could still hear the distant stutter of gunfire outside, suddenly capped by the rumble of another explosion, and she began to wonder again just how many of the invaders there were and what they would do once they got outside.
The stairwell was clear as they swiftly but cautiously descended it, but smoke was already beginning to flood through the mansion, and they could feel the heat behind them as the fire continued to spread. As they came around the curve of the staircase, the front entrance came into view. The doors were shut and no threats were visible, but the raucous sounds of the firefight between the invaders and the governor’s security force echoed off the foyer walls.
“It might not be wise to go out the front,” Captain Trang recommended, obvious pain on his face from being forced to abandon the bulk of his men.
“Head for the back,” Shannon ordered Jock, as their party clumped together at the base of the stairs.
Before he could take a step, another explosion from outside shattered the full-length windows on either side of the front door and a shotgun-blast spray of shrapnel ricocheted off the walls. The governor’s young companion screamed and made a break toward the rear exit, but he hadn’t gone more than a few strides when a burst of slugs took him full in the chest, jerking him around in a nerveless dance before he collapsed in a blood-spattered heap.
“Get down!” Shannon yelled above the continuing din of incoming machine-gun fire that chopped across the staircase’s wood bannister, punching into the walls and shattering the row of mirrors that hung in the foyer.
Governor Sigurdsen stayed on his feet, staring in horror at the bullet-riddled body of his lover with a look of loss that made Shannon almost regret her harsh thoughts about him, until Trang grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hauled him down on his butt with the rest of them.
Shannon cringed at a ricochet that whizzed inches from her face, and was about to call for Jock to lay down some return fire when she saw that the big Australian was already inching around the base of the staircase, angling his selective-fire grenade launcher at the force of Invaders advancing from the rear entrance. The sergeant squeezed off a long, magazine-emptying burst, then rolled quickly back behind cover to slap home a spare stick of ten mini-grenades before the first round went off.
