There are only two guards left inside the villa itself, and there is no trickery to this next bit.
Both guards watch the stairs leading up into the extensive living quarters. The assassin appears and puts bullets into both men as he closes the distance in swift and economical steps. They try to react but don’t seem able to process what’s happening. Can’t believe someone is here and killing them right now. That someone has bypassed all the road surveillance, sensors, gate guards, watch commander, and perimeter patrol, to come here and do the thing they were supposed to prevent.
The stairs were the “cush” assignment.
And now they’re dying because the assassin is a shooter. He knows people only die when you stop the pump and pipes. Even headshots need to land right in the three-point-five-centimeter sweet spot of the brain stem for what some might call an instant kill.
Blasters are a little more forgiving because of the kinetic bulk the bolt delivers. But bullets… gotta know what you’re doing there.
Both guards get it in the pump. Multiple shots to make sure. Then each in the head once they’re down.
Mag out.
Mag in.
Nothing stands between the assassin and his target now.
* * *
Syl Hamachi-Roi is sleeping when the man in the dark wakes her. She’s been sleeping a lot lately. Once her political career came apart at the seams, sleep seemed to be all that was left for her.
She suffers from depression and is on some heavy-duty meds to deal with it. Plus the anxiety of having gone from being the brightest and shiniest of political stars to being indicted for election fraud, money laundering, and association with a known war criminal.
There are a lot of other charges.
Armies of lawyers, financed by Mr. Zauro, are dealing with the fallout. Some pundits say she might come back. Someday. That she’s still on the verge of greatness, a force the galaxy must acknowledge. They don’t believe the charges. They believe in her. Just as it had been on that day when she addressed all of her…
…her supporters. On Detron, and across the galaxy.
The Soshies…
No.
Her fans. They had been something more than mere political supporters. Because she had been something more.
They hadn’t just believed in her. They’d worshipped her. Her entire life, everything, had been leading up to that divine moment when that sea of people in the plaza looked to her to save them.
Looked to her to lift them up. Make their dingy little scrubby lives better.
Every word that came from her mouth on that day had been treated as the spun gold of a prophetess. Dripping with pearls and pretty wisdoms. They’d come to her for all the truly important answers to what was wrong with the galaxy.
Now she went to sleep each night with a bottle of wine and another handful of pills. She felt good about what she’d done then, as she drifted into the embrace of sleep. When she was sober… when the pills wore off and before the first glass of the day was poured… then she knew the score. It was all gone. The investigations, the document trail to Zauro, the deaths of the legionnaires blamed on her… it had ruined everything.
The lawyers who seemed the smartest told her she’d be lucky to avoid the prison planets. She knew Zauro would pay a hefty fee to avoid that. But still. She was effectively ruined.
The few millions she’d managed to squirrel away via influencer fees during her brief time in the House didn’t seem like much when compared with the fact there wouldn’t be any more coming for a long while.
She remembered her first days in office, adding up how much she’d make over all the years of her service within the House. The figure had been the size of a mountain. Wide eyes had gone wider at the numbers she’d calculated.
That was all gone.
Maybe it might come back. Someday.
Zauro had told her that. Had given her some hope on the other side of all this. Given time, maybe people would forget, and then she could come back—new, redeemed, wiser.
Try for some real influence in the House. Develop a coalition that could make things happen.
They were so close, Zauro had told her, to fundamentally changing the galaxy. For the better.
She believed it.
She believed in herself first of all, and maybe that was all one needed to get back on top. Or maybe that should be filed under things the pills can make you believe after the first glass is poured.
The assassin raised her up in bed, gently. There was no need to be rough. No need to make this worse than it had to be.
She woke up, but the effects of the pills and the wine made her sluggish. Slow to respond. Without the sense of urgency or fear that should accompany a home invasion.
“Who’re you?” she asked the figure in the dark. As if still waking from some wonderful dream where everything had not gone horribly wrong. Where things had gone as they were supposed to have. According to plan. Where the crowd still roared their undying adulations at her very presence.
The assassin gave no reply.
“I don’t recognize you,” said the sleepy Syl Hamachi-Roi in the little girl’s voice of her drug-ravaged personality. Still cottony. Still pleasant. Still dreaming of all the things that never should have happened.
She could see his face in the blue light of the last of the night. He’d left the dive mask down on the beach and had pulled back the synthprene hood for the killing. It didn’t matter if she saw his face. She wouldn’t live. And he didn’t care. He was already a wanted man. A very wanted man. The most wanted man in the galaxy.
The assassin, a man on the young side of middle age, placed a pair of ener-chains about her wrists. She looked at them quizzically, as though fascinated by their design. He hauled her to her feet in a quick motion. Best to be about the
