Vickry had reached for a stunner, but Van was faster, and snapped it out of the older man’s hands, following up with a stiff jab to the vee of Vickry’s ribs. Vickry staggered back, gasping, and Van scooped up the stunner, triggering it at the sub-marshal’s legs.
Vickry went down.
Van could sense the alert pulse from Vickry’s implant, but since Van had disabled the receivers in the office, along with most systems, the signal went nowhere.
Vickry grimaced as he levered himself against the wall, his lower body numb and inert.
“I hadn’t expected you this late.” Van smiled, wondering what he could get out of Vickry. “You have rather elaborate security here.”
“How long have you been a Coalition agent?” Vickry asked mildly, although behind his expression of mild curiosity Van could sense both worry and agitation.
“I’m not, and I never have been,” Van replied. “How long did you and Marshal Connolly and Marshal Eamon have to work to set up your assassination plot and coup?”
“Coup?” Vickry forced a laugh. “I don’t see any troopers on the streets, and there will be elections before long.”
“It’s amazing how closely events here resembled what happened on Scandya,” Van added conversationally.
“How did you do it?” snapped Vickry.
“Do what?” replied Van.
“You’ve blocked off the office. It might buy you some time, but before long, someone will check on it. The building systems will report it as an exception, and they’ll send in a Marine team, and there won’t be enough of you left to fill a datacard.”
“You already tried that,” Van pointed out.
“Sergeant Telford will be back shortly, with more men.”
“Maybe,” Van conceded. “Why did the RSF have to take over the Republic?” He raised the stunner again.
Vickry looked up. “You’re so smart, black man. You figure it out. If you have the brains and time.”
Van thumbed the stunner up to lethal and pressed the trigger.
Vickry didn’t even look surprised.
Van shook his head, looking down not at Vickry, but at the young soldier’s body. Van had been the intruder, and he hadn’t wanted to kill the man, not until the Marine had tried to kill him.
He had to hurry. Quickly, he pulled out the green couch, away from the wall, then straightened. His entire body had begun to throb. Ignoring the pain, he slowly dragged Vickry’s body behind the couch, then that of the dead Marine before straightening the furniture. While the couch wouldn’t conceal the bodies from a thorough search, it would hide them from a cursory look into the office.
Then Van picked up the datacase, walked out, locking the door, and turning off the body-shield, because it would register on the security systems. He made his way along the deserted corridors—except that two doors in the public affairs office were still open, and a major and a captain were calling up holo images and working on something. Neither looked up as Van passed.
He wanted to look around, to see if anyone happened to be following him, but knew that looking worried would alert anyone monitoring the system. So he continued to walk down the ramps, past security—which cleared him—then outside. He kept feeling as though someone would put a laser through his back, although not even his name was in the building security system.
The sky had clouded up in the hours that Van had been in the RSF headquarters building, and a mistlike rain had begun to fall.
He nodded to the guards. “I hope it doesn’t rain any harder.”
“You and us, ser.”
Van smiled and kept walking.
At the end of the open plaza, he hailed a groundcar. Thankfully, this time the first one stopped.
“Orbit station shuttle terminal.”
“OST, it is, ser.”
Van couldn’t sense any communications to or from the driver, and he added a solid tip to the fare when the woman dropped him off. By then, the rain had intensified, and Van was glad of the weather screens as he walked into the terminal.
There he made his way into the public fresher, and in one of the stalls, after using the implant to blank the sensor, changed tunics. The severe black changed not only his overall appearance, strikingly, but even his mien. Van hoped it would be enough. He slipped the datacase into a corner with his tunic and uniform cap inside. While he would have preferred to keep the uniform tunic, he didn’t want to risk having it scanned when he departed Tara—if he could depart.
After leaving the fresher, rather than seek a seat on the shuttle in person, Van eased his way to a pubcomm unit, and reserved his place—as S. V. Moorty. He had slightly less than three hours to kill.
Empty-handed, he walked toward the small restaurant on the left side of the terminal, where he managed a seat that looked out onto the open concourse. While the time passed, slowly, he occasionally scanned the open space outside the restaurant, watching to see if any security or military forces appeared.
As he ate slowly, he could discern neither, and finally he slipped from the small circular table and made his way to the departure consoles.
“Ser Moorty, how was your stay on Tara?” asked the console officer.
“Most productive, it was,” Van returned.
“You have no luggage? No cases?”
“I brought business materials. They remained.” Van shrugged. “It makes the return shuttle flight much lighter.”
The woman waved Van through. He kept thinking that someone would try to stop him from boarding the up-shuttle, but no one did. The hardest part was walking without betraying the soreness and growing stiffness he felt. And the growing concerns he was getting for his family.
Chapter 66
Eri was standing just inside the lock to the Joyau when Van closed it behind him.
“I’m sore, very sore,” he replied. “We need to delock as quickly as we can.” He moved toward the cockpit.
“Is someone chasing you?” Eri followed him into the cockpit.
“They could be shortly, and I’d rather
