“He that dies pays all debts.”
“What’s that sound?” Senator Daniel O’Keefe wondered, cocking his head toward the jackhammer echo that filtered in from somewhere outside the auditorium.
“Sounds almost like…” Valerie’s voice trailed off, a haunted look coming into her eyes. “Daddy, I want to leave.”
“Honey,” he protested, “the speech isn’t over yet.”
“I want to go now!” she insisted. “Glen?” she looked pleadingly at her fiance’, clutching at his wrist.
“Maybe we’d better go, sir,” Glen sighed, pushing himself to his feet.
“All right, all right.” O’Keefe stood, beginning to lead them out one of the side exits, hoping to remain unobtrusive.
They’d only gone a few steps when a second blast of noise, closer this time, sounded through the auditorium, and Glen could see behind him some kind of activity toward the front of the building, near where the President was speaking. The security personnel manning the side doors began jogging quickly to the front.
“Just what the hell
They’d almost made it to the nearest exit door when the explosion blew in the main entrance, a ball of fire that flash-roasted the onlookers nearest the blast and seared scores more, their agonized shrieks nearly inaudible in the reverberation of the thunderclap. A wave of sound and hot wind slammed into the three of them in mid-step, sending them tumbling into the wall and throwing Glen through the exit door for which they’d been aiming as it unexpectedly opened outward before him.
Glen landed hard on his left elbow, but a cry of pain died stillborn on his lips as he found himself face to face with the dead eyes and expressionless blue visage of an Invader biomech. Mulrooney sprang to his feet with a shout of alarm, but then frowned in confusion as he realized that the creature was dead, the back of its skull blown off along with its helmet.
“Where is Ms. O’Keefe?” A viselike grip on Glen’s shoulder spun him around into the mask of intensity that was Nathan Tanaka. Glen blinked, staring past the man in disbelief at the sight of Shannon Stark guarding their backs with an Invader autorifle, a half-dozen dead biomechs stacked like cordwood in the narrow alleyway between the main auditorium and the Senate office building.
“In there.” Glen jerked a thumb back through the door.
Tanaka pushed past him, unslinging his appropriated rifle and ducking through the partially-open exit into the cacophonous slaughterhouse which the auditorium had become. Valerie O’Keefe and her father lay huddled together against the wall just inside the door, frozen with shock and fright while the Invader troops advanced across the breadth of the chamber, killing anything human in their path.
Nathan grabbed a handful of Senator O’Keefe’s lapel and tossed him bodily through the doorway, then leaned over to yank Valerie to her feet. He was pushing her toward the exit when something—maybe it was the way she stiffened in his grasp, maybe it was pure instinct—spun him around on his heel. Keeping his left hand on her arm, he brought up his Invader carbine with the other and chopped a long burst into the face of an oncoming biomech trooper, sending it jerking backwards nervelessly. Shoving Valerie toward the exit, Tanaka sprayed the rest of his magazine at a clot of advancing Invaders, then dove through the door just ahead of a fusillade of answering fire.
Glen Mulrooney kicked the door closed as the bodyguard emerged, and then they were sprinting down the alleyway with Shannon in the lead, Nathan struggling to reload his rifle as he brought up the rear. Shannon held up a closed fist to halt them as she came to the mouth of the passage, where the Capital Center opened up into Reagan Plaza. Tanaka came up beside her, jacking a round into battery from a fresh clip of ammunition.
“Did you see the President?” she asked, sparing him a glance.
“There were too many of them,” he said. “If he’s alive, the Invaders have him.”
“That makes it even more important we get you to safety, Senator,” Shannon told O’Keefe. “You might be all that’s left of our elected government.”
“Oh, my God,” Daniel O’Keefe hissed, leaning heavily against the alley wall.
“They’re all dead,” Valerie whispered, looking back the way they’d come, toward the Senate chamber. “Oh, Lord, they’re all dead.”
“And it’s still not too late for us to join them,” Shannon snapped. “There.” She suddenly pointed out across the plaza, past the ruined shells of a score of Invader drop pods. Tanaka followed her gaze to a far corner of the square, eyes drawn by the strobe of flashing lights.
A Capital Police flitter rested almost unnoticed next to a sidewalk cafe, its doors thrown open. Not ten meters from the ducted-fan hovercraft, the bodies of two uniformed police officers lay sprawled on the pavement, riddled with Invader slugs. None of the biomechs were in sight at the moment—she guessed they had moved on to the Capital Center.
“We need to get to that flitter,” Shannon announced. “It doesn’t look damaged—it could take us out of the city.”
“To where?” Valerie demanded shrilly, pulling away from Glen and standing in the middle of the alleyway, arms wrapped around herself. “Where can we go? They followed us all the way from Aphrodite—where can we run to that they won’t follow? Oh, God…” She began sobbing uncontrollably, shoulders shaking.
“Ms. O’Keefe.” Nathan gently took her arm. She looked into his eyes, her face streaked with tears, looking very much like the little girl who’d just seen her mother die.
“Nathan?” she stammered, as if she’d just noticed him.
“Ms. O’Keefe, you must stay with us,” he told her firmly but softly. “I swear to you, I will keep you safe.”
“All right, Nathan,” she said, wiping at her eyes.
“Nathan,” Shannon said. “Keep them here—I’m going to try to get across and get that thing started. If anything happens…”
“I will do what is necessary,” he told her. “Take care, Shannon.”
Shannon took one last careful look around, then headed out across the plaza in a zigzag route, running from cover to cover.
“How can she just run out there like that?” Glen wondered, shaking his head.
“She sees what must be done,” Tanaka explained, fixing the man with an unreadable gaze, “and she knows no one else will do it. That is called courage.”
Glen didn’t answer, but the look on his face was thoughtful—and ashamed.
Nathan turned back to following Shannon’s progress, feeling a surge of optimism as he saw that she was more than halfway to the aircraft, taking cover for a moment behind the shell of one of the Invader drop pods. Nathan was so wrapped up in observing Shannon that he nearly missed the faint scraping sound behind them as the door to the auditorium slowly pushed open.
“Nathan!” Valerie O’Keefe’s cry brought him around, the borrowed rifle coming up to his shoulder as he fell into a crouch.
Tanaka’s finger was tightening on the trigger when the door swung outward and a man in a dark dress suit fell through, slumping on the alley floor, barely conscious.
“Jesus,” Senator O’Keefe exclaimed, running up to the man, ignoring Tanaka’s yell that he should stay back.
Glen rushed to help him and, together, they hauled the big man by the armpits, bringing him back to the mouth of the alley where Tanaka and Val waited.
“Who is he?” Valerie asked, staring at the man. He was solidly-built, perhaps in his forties, with hair shaven close to the scalp and the face of a Marine drill sergeant. As Valerie spoke, his eyes fluttered and opened with a flash of thundercloud-grey.
“The President!” he exclaimed, shrugging away from O’Keefe and Mulrooney and straightening with sudden intensity, eyes flashing around in confusion. “Where… who are you people?”
“I’m Senator O’Keefe,” the older man told him. “Who are you, son?”
