Andrew LaFollet and Arthur Yard were alive, but Yard was unconscious, and the major was little better. He heaved up on his knees and looked for the pinnace. One glance was all he needed to know he could do nothing for anyone who'd been close to it, and he bent over Yard to check his injuries.
Thank God I talked her into staying, in the ditch, he thought, and then sighed in relief as his fingers found the throb of Yard's pulse.
Honor crawled up the side of the ditch, looking for Nimitz. She could feel him through their link and knew he was both frightened and appalled by the destruction. A bright, sharp jitter of anger in his emotions suggested he hadn't gotten off totally unscathed, and resented the fact, but at least she knew he was in one piece and not badly damaged, which was more than she was certain she could say for herself at the moment.
She'd already known she had at least one broken rib; now her entire side was afire with pain and blood stung her eyes with its thick salt. She couldn't tell if her forehead was cut or just badly scraped, but she knew she'd split her lower lip when her face hit the ground, and she was still more than half-dazed when her head rose over the edge of the ditch.
There! Nimitz had found the ceramacrete lip of the culvert. Now he crouched behind it, peering over it at the flames, and she sighed in relief. His pelt was singed in more than one place, but she should have known he had the sense, and reflexes, to get under cover.
She looked back over her shoulder and grimaced in sympathy as she watched Candless struggling stubbornly to pick himself up once more. Poor Lamie's having a bad day, she thought with a something that would have been hysterical amusement if she hadn't been so detached. First a pinnace wreck, then his own Steadholder tries to put him down for the count, and now the entire world blows up in his face. It's a wonder he can even move.
A hand touched her shoulder, and she looked up. Reverend Hanks stood beside her, his face a mask of blood and grief as he stared at the carnage, and he shook his head sadly.
"Here, My Lady," he said, "let me help you."
He reached down and pulled her to her feet, just as Nimitz suddenly whipped around to his left with the tearing-canvas snarl of his war cry.
"Pretend it's a target range, Austin," Martin said softly as they jogged towards the ditch as fast as their rubbery legs would let them. Taylor nodded convulsively, but the ex-sergeant didn't really expect much from him. Austin was as brave and willing a companion as a man could ask to die with, yet he lacked the training for this. Martin knew he'd do his best, but he also knew the job was really up to him.
Forgive me, God, for what I've already done, and far what I am about to do, he prayed. I know she is your enemy, an infidel and a harlot, yet she's also a woman. Give me the strength to do what I know I must in Your Name.
Honors head snapped around as a streak of singed gray-and-cream fur rocketed across the flame-struck ground. Her eyes were already tracking him, but her brain had been through too much. Even with her link to the cat, it took her precious seconds to realize what was happening, and they were seconds she didn't have.
"Sweet Tes...!"
Austin Taylors shout became a gurgling shriek as ten kilos of Sphinx treecat exploded from the ground and went for his throat. He managed to get an arm up to guard his jugular, but all the instant, instinctive reaction bought him was a few more endless seconds of agony as a six-limbed buzz saw exploded in his face. Nimitz's first strike took out his eyes, and the blind, screaming assassin tottered wildly, staggering about in the steps of some hellish dance while claws and fangs ripped his life out one bloody centimeter at a time.
Edward Martin flinched as Austin screamed, then gagged in horror as he realized what had happened. The snarling, hissing fury slashing and tearing at Austin could only be the harlot's demon familiar, and he cringed as Austin's shrieks tore at his ears, but even in that he recognized God's providence. The treecat had attacked the wrong man, leaving the more dangerous killer free to act, and he charged forward with his pistol ready.
There! His entire universe narrowed to that single tall figure. He saw the blood coating her alien, sharply beautiful face, noted the way she leaned to the right, favoring the ribs on that side, saw the dirt and blood on her once-elegant gown. His mind noted every detail as she turned towards him. He saw her puzzlement, recognized her dawning comprehension, and none of it mattered. He was too far away for her off-world combat techniques to be a threat, yet far too close to miss his shot, and he skidded to a stop and brought his pistol up in both hands. Someone moved at the corner of his vision, but nothing mattered. Nothing but the woman he'd come to kill.
Forgive me, God, a corner of his brain whispered yet again, and he squeezed the trigger.
Honor heard the screams as Nimitz hit his target, but there was other movement out there, as well. She fought her confusion, trying to make her battered mind work, but too much horror had come at her too fast this night, and she couldn't quite grasp what was happening.
Then she saw the gun, and in one, searing instant, she understood. It hadn't been a terrible accident. Someone had killed all those other people as a mere byproduct of an effort to kill her... and now they were going to kill her, and there was nothing at all she could do about it.
"My L...!"
The shout died in a staccato chatter as the Reverend Julius Hanks, First Elder of the Church of Humanity Unchained, flung himself between her and her assassin. Bullets ripped through a frail old body in a spray of blood, and Honor cried out, in horrified grief and useless denial as much as pain, as those same bullets smashed into her chest. She went down, fighting for the breath the impact had hammered out of her, but she wore her formal gown and vest, not her uniform, and it was the vest Andrew LaFollet liked so much, the one designed with Nimitz's claws in mind. The one that could stop even light pulser fire. It wouldn't normally have stopped the machine-pistol's heavy slugs, not from this close, but their passage through Reverend Hanks' body had slowed them, absorbed just enough kinetic energy to keep them from penetrating.
She lay at the bottom of the ditch, drenched in Hanks' blood and pinned by his weight, stunned by the brutal impact of bullets and gasping for breath, and her killer came to the lip of the ditch. He knelt there and extended the pistol at arms' length for the final, careful head shot to end it.
Martin went to his knees, clinging to his sanity by his fingernails. Alive. She was still alive! How many times must he muster all the courage in him to kill this woman? And how many more innocents must perish before she died?!
The thought of all the blood he'd taken upon his soul, even in the name of God's work, tore at him, and his eyes dropped compassionately to the armsman who'd given his life to save his Steadholder's. A good man, he thought. Another good man, just like that kid at...
Edward Martin's universe came apart in one terrible, incandescent burst of recognition. The light of the fires spilled over the face of the man lying across Harrington's body, and he heard the hideous triumph of Satan's laughter in the roar of the flames, for he knew that face. He knew it, and it was no armsman's.
The pistol fell from his hand, and he stared in utter horror at the man he'd killed. The man whose murder would damn his own soul to Hell for all eternity.