Vortex (41 page)

Two Gurkhas in full ceremonial dress, which included kukris and willyguns, snapped out of the lighter and presented arms, first to the Jochi flag to one side of the stand, then to the main riser, where Dr. Iskra's chosen symbol was mounted. Iskra had not yet materialized, but he was the only dignitary not in appearance.

Sten stepped out, Alex slightly to his rear. Kilgour had chosen to wear the full ceremonial rig of his home world: flat shoes, tartan stockings with a dagger tucked in the top, kilt with sporran—containing a pistol—another dagger at his hip, silver-buttoned black velvet and vest, lace jabot at his throat, and lace at his wrists. On his head was his clan's bonnet, and slung over one shoulder was a tartan cloak.

The outfit was not, however, exactly what he would wear on Edinburgh turned out as Laird Kilgour of Kilgour. The flat shoes were strapped on, so as not to come off if Kilgour had some running to do. The tartan pattern was very dark, which Alex blandly explained was the correct ancient hunting tartan of his clan. Sten had never been sure whether there really was a Clan Kilgour, or whether Alex, and the several thousand people on his estates, were making it up as they went along. The Scots were fully capable of doing something entirely that elaborate just to pull the chain of the Sassenachs.

He was not carrying the usual ceremonial broadsword, again for efficiency. Swords got in the way. And the cloak thumped if banged against—Sten thought that the heavyworlder was likely carrying a full weapons shop in the drape.

Behind Sten came two more Gurkhas. Sten bowed to the Jochi flag and, mentally gritting his teeth, to Iskra's emblem. Otho lifted the gravlighter away—he would keep it ready in a park just behind the palace with the other backup units.

Two of Iskra's Special Duty goons were at the foot of the stairs, with detectors. Alex looked at them once. Even hooligans occasionally were guilty of sense, and the two stepped out of the way, awkwardly saluting.

The Gurkhas remained at the rear of the stand. Sten felt a bit more secure about his back. In front of the stand's base, standing shoulder to shoulder, were more of the Special Duty troops.

"A wee bit of info," Alex whispered. "All th' troopies thae'll pass i' review hae been told i' their weapons point anywhere close t' th' stand, Iskra's murthrers hae orders t' ice 'em wi' no questions. Whidney y' like a wee career i' th' Jochi gruntery?"

Sten was twice surprised at the top of the stand. First he saw Menynder. Interesting. Someone or something had winkled him out of his period of mourning.

The second surprise—and it took him a moment before he recognized the being—was seeing Milhouz the rebel, now in the black uniform of this new "student" movement that Iskra had created and Sten had vaguely noted.

There were two older beings beside Milhouz—his parents, Sten thought. Milhouz met Sten's gaze, started to flinch, then stared boldly.

Sten frowned, as if trying to remember the face, couldn't, but to be polite nodded slightly: Perhaps we were introduced at a social function some time?

Sten almost felt sorry for the clot. Turncoats were never trusted—and everyone knew that, especially those who doubled them. True in espionage, true in politics. Milhouz had only one future—to be used by Iskra as long as needed and then dispensed with.

Iskra being Iskra, Sten thought, that dispensing would almost certainly involve a shallow grave rather than an obscure retirement.

No more than Milhouz deserved.

Sten, Kilgour beside him, worked his way to his assigned seat. A polite greeting to Douw, who was wearing a full dress uniform hung with decorations old and new. Nods to other dignitaries and pols.

He stopped beside Menynder.

"I am glad," he said, "to see you have recovered from your family's tragedy."

"Yes," Menynder said, his head moving a bare millimeter sideways, toward Iskra's emblem. "Nobody'll ever know how grateful I am to have some new friends who just cheered the drakh out of me, telling me how much the rest of my family means, and how my ancient estates should be worried about, and, in general, convinced me to dump the widow's weeds."

As Sten had thought. Menynder had been blackjacked into attendance.

A military band blared what might be considered music, and Dr. Iskra, aides at his heels, came down the steps from the palace's terrace and walked slowly across the vast open square to the reviewing stand.

"Any idea," Sten whispered to Kilgour, "why the doctor isn't reviewing his troops from the usual place?''

"Ah ask't," Kilgour hissed. "Ah wae told because th' terrace i' distant. An' the doctor wishes t' be closer t' his wee heroes."

"That's a real cheap lie."

"Aye. An' wha' worries me, is th' stand wae no built right."

Kilgour was correct—it was no more than a meter and a half off the ground. A basic part of preriot crowd control was to build the bandstand high enough to make it difficult for the madding throng to rush the stage successfully.

The dignitaries came to the salute as Dr. Iskra mounted the stand.

Cymbals crashed, and the military band crescendoed and broke off.

In the sudden silence, Sten heard, from a great distance, the twitter of a panpipe being played by some street minstrel working the crowd.

And then, as if cued, the clouds broke, a high wind rolling them up like they were dirty linen, and an impossibly blue sky shone above.

The band cacophonied into life again, and the review began.

The Square of the Khaqans was a crash of cleated bootheels, an eerily grating rumble of tracks, and the bash of marching music. Every now and then Sten could hear the cued cheers from the crowds watching.

He applauded with his forearm against his side, Altaic style, as yet another range of rankers bashed past the stand.

"Fifth Battalion, Sixth Regiment, The Iron Guards of Perm," the unseen commentator told them over the square's PA system.

"Didn't we just see them?"

"Nae, skip. Thae wae th'
Sixth
Battalion,
Fifth
Regiment. Y' hae t' pay tighter heed."

"How much longer can he keep running troops past us?"

"Damfino," Alex whispered. "Till our eyes bleed an' we start burblin' ae th' wonders ae ol' Isky. It's mass hypnosis, lad."

"Time," Cind said. Obediently, her spotter rolled away from the scope, behind his own rifle. Cind slid into position and began her own shift, sweeping endlessly across the palace rooftops and windows that she had taken for her sector.

Her other sniper teams were doing much the same—one being watches, the other waits behind the gun. A spotter could only work effectively for a few minutes before starting to see motion that was a curtain blowing in the wind, menace that was the shadow from a chimney, or just simply things not there.

The architectural style of the Palace of the Khaqans didn't make their job any easier, having been built and then redecorated in a style that could be referred to as Early Unromantic Gargoyle.

Cind and her spotter had taken position on one of the palace's roofs, finding a fairly level area to keep their backup arms and ammunition in, then slithering very slowly to the roof's peak to observe. A dull scarlet hood, just the color of the metal roof they were lying on, hung over the scope, and both snipers had their faces camouflaged with a flat medium-brown wash.

Cind's eyes were watering from the strain in a few minutes. She swept the roofline, then swept it again, routinely. She stopped and moved the scope back.

"Earle," she said, unconsciously and needlessly whispering. "Three o'clock. That dormer window."

"Got it," the man behind the rifle said. "The window's open. Can't see inside. Too dark."

"Come left half a finger," Cind ordered.

"Oh-ho."

"I'll take the gun."

Earle started to protest, then took the spotting position. Cind moved up, hands automatically readying her own rifle.

Across the square, to the side of that dormer window, a hatch onto the roof had been lifted clear—a hatch that had been closed earlier. And very close to that hatch was a low parapet that would make excellent cover for someone to use to move the thirty meters or so to where a wall zigged out, that provided a hidden crevice that would make an ideal escape route.

The window was about six hundred meters away from the reviewing stand below, and about…

"Range?"

"Twelve… twelve twenty-five."

"I have the same…"

… twice that to Cind's post.

Cind slid her shooting jacket's fasteners shut, pulled the rifle sling tight around her upper arm until there was no circulation anymore, and was in the rigor mortis that was her firing position.

All that existed was that open window twelve hundred meters away.

She barely heard Earle reporting that they had a possible target and ordering another team to take over the routine scan.

Venloe was ready. He had his monstrous sporting rifle braced firmly on a tabletop, the table solidly sandbagged.

He was about three meters back of the open dormer window, in clever concealment. Neither the human eye nor a scope would be able to see him in the gloom, and if some extraordinarily paranoid security type was using an amplified-light scope the glare from the rooftops outside would blank that device.

He looked again through the rifle scope, then rubbed his eyes. He had forgotten how exhausting sniping was, and how short a time before the edge was lost.

Six hundred meters away was the reviewing stand.

Venloe had his targets chosen, and six cigar-sized solid projectiles resting in the rifle's box magazine.

If there was an error… first Iskra.

Then Sten.

Then…

The tiny com beside him, tuned to the review's public broadcast, spoke:

"Eighth Company, Guards Combat Support Wing. The Saviors of Gumrak.

"Afoot, Scout Company, Eighty-third Light Infantry Division."

This was it.

Now for the Crimson Ratpack.

The combat support wing's gravlighters swept forward, three abreast, at low speed. Just ahead of them trotted the lightly armed scouts.

Each gravlighter carried a full complement of troops, sitting at rigid attention. The gravlighter's pilot concentrated on his formation, and the lighter's commander saluted.

Six ranks back, in the center row, was the first of Venloe's assassins. The gravlighter's pilot was one of the young officer/conspirators, as were all of the other soldiers.

"Sixteen… seventeen… eighteen…"

At a count of twenty, the gravlighter was, as calculated, about fifty meters out and twenty meters short of the reviewing stand.

The pilot punched full power to the McLean generators and pushed the control stick hard over to the right.

The gravlighter pirouetted, crashing into its fellow, which went out of control and dominoed into the parade formation.

The young officer fought his craft level, then slammed it to the ground, the lighter skidding forward toward the reviewing stand, skewing crazily.

It spilled out soldiers, soldiers who hit the ground running—and firing, semiautomatic grenade launchers blasting the Special Duty soldiers.

These guards took a bare moment to recover—but a third of them were dead by then. Then they opened up, rounds sheeting into the middle of the review.

The support wing's formation broke, gravlighters climbing for the sky and getting shot down as other Special Duty units obeyed orders to kill anyone or anything irregular.

A platoon of the scout unit broke from
its
formation and went flat. Orders were bellowed, and rifles crashed.

Their target was the reviewing stand.

One burst and—"Grenades!" came the shout, and the platoon charged the stand.

A quarter second earlier, Sten's four Gurkhas had been at attention, at the rear of the stand. Now, most suddenly, they were on the stand, knocking fear-maddened pols aside, willyguns braced on their hips, AM2 slugs slashing out and cutting down the scouts.

Sten dug under his monkey suit for his pistol and was down as Kilgour bodychecked him flat. Alex recovered, his cloak pitched away and the willy gun hidden under it up and chattering rounds.

Douw was suddenly in an underwater trance, as he saw the grenade thud down on the planking just in front of him—how annoying—and he kicked it, grenade dropping off the stand and then exploding, blasting him back into Menynder. Both men sprawled, Douw half stunned.

Menynder started to shove the general's crushing weight off his body, then reconsidered. What better shield could there be, he realized, and then turned his thoughts toward camouflage, concentrating on being the very model of a modern major corpse.

Dr. Iskra's eyes were wide open, his brows just beginning to furrow like a professor about to chide a favorite pupil for being unable to answer an easy question, when the blood-covered woman levered herself up onto the stand in front of him.

Iskra's hands went out, trying to push this horror away.

The woman shot Iskra four times in the face before her body was shattered by a burst from a guard's weapon.

Sten rolled sideways, pistol coming out of a rear holster, and was coming to his knees, mind recording screams from the crowd, gun blasts, crashes from the pandemonium that had been an army in review seconds earlier, and the whine of gravlighters at full drive.

Out of a corner of his eye he saw the Bhor lighters rip out of their park toward the stand, then there were two men just below him, aiming, and he fired… tap, tap… tap, tap… they were down and dead… looking for another target…

The pleased smile was frozen on Venloe's face as he touched the sight stud, and it zoomed tight on the target, his field of vision narrowing.

Iskra was dead. Absolutely.

Menynder and Douw were hit—probably. It did not matter—they weren't major targets.

Now. Now for Sten.

There he is. The bastard's not killable. He's coming to his feet now…

Just coming up… hold the breath… exhale smoothly… touch the stud… brace for the recoil… firing pressure… now!

Shock-recoil-slam, gun butt against shoulder. Action crashing back, sending the smoking shell case spinning out,
clatter
, another round chambered, bolt locked in battery, dammit, the sights are off target…