Meanwhile, two more fighters rushed at Bemish. Having cried out, one of them smashed into the table with his face. The papers prepared for the meeting flittered and flew around the room like white geese. The other one sailed ass forward into a flat, built in terminal, crashed to the floor and stayed there. Bemish leaped over the table and charged at Kissur. A rifle burst formed a series of holes in the floor in front of Bemish and he froze. Kissur and the company director stood surrounded by the fighters.
"Don't be dumb, Terence," Kissur said, waving the gun, "Put your hands behind your head or you will enter the other world together with Giles."
Bemish stood with his tie askew and his perfect shirt's collar torn. The shirt had been absolutely fresh. Bemish took a shower half an hour ago and changed it and he felt now how the cloth under his armpits and behind his back was getting wet and sticky with his sweat.
"Raise your hands, Terence," Trevis muttered lying on the floor, "Don't you see — they are nuts."
The next moment Bemish dove forward and his hand locked on Kissur's wrist. In a moment the gun flew to the side and Kissur and Bemish rolled over the floor in a tight embrace. The fighters didn't dare shoot — they were afraid of hitting their master and they also believed that to kill one of the enemies locked in personal combat was not cool.
Kissur's steel hands locked at his foe's neck. Bemish's ears rung, the room's ceiling spun and started floating upwards. Bemish hit Kissur in the groin with his knee. The latter hissed but didn't let go. Twisting, Bemish rolled onto his side and drove his heel into Kissur's kneecap.
Kissur roared. A lock and a snatch followed and, having thrown the barbarian over, Bemish leapt on his feet.
Time froze as a sentinel at a gate. Bemish was watching Kissur falling vertically, head down to the floor and he could already hear the crunching sound that vertebrae would make breaking over hard wood. For a moment he wanted to rush to his friend and spot him but he realized that he would be late. He also realized that he would die a second after this sound came.
At the last moment, Kissur threw his arms forward and his hands rustled touching the hardwood floor. Kissur somersaulted over his head and having pushed himself off the floor with his hands, kicked Bemish horribly with both legs in his chest. Bemish flew away to the wall. Kissur's fist missed his jaw by a millimeter. Bemish dove and landed a short jab in Kissur's solar plexus. Kissur swayed. Bemish drove his heel into Kissur's groin. The latter roared. The next moment, he jumped at his opponent and he jammed Bemish in the ribs with his knee. The company director was thrown to the floor. He barely had time to turn aside and then Kissur's heavy boot kicked him in the chin once and again.
Bemish tucked his knees in and, right at this moment, he saw in the ceiling's light Kissur's contorted face far above him and his blackened fist right next to his eyes. Then something exploded and flashed in Bemish's head. The world sank and fell like a flower petal and Bemish lolled on the floor like a man who had his skeleton extracted so that only the meat was left. Two fighters locked handcuffs on his wrists and dragged him by his legs out of the room. The Assalah director's head trailed down the office's freshly waxed hardwood floor, blood seeped out of his light hair.
"If anybody moves," Kissur said, "he will get nine grams heavier."
And he pointed at dead Giles.
"What does it mean?" Ronald Trevis asked from the floor.
"The spaceport is taken over."
"Who took over it?"
"It is the party of people's freedom."
Then, dressed in Earth clothing, Kissur smiled and took a broad marine knife from a warrior standing next to him. Slowly and enjoying himself, he wrapped his dark red bordeaux colored tie around his left hand and, grinning broadly, he cut it off at the top.
Afterwards, everybody admitted that, on the technical side, the operation had been performed brilliantly.
At 18.05, an announcement sounded out of the Assalah spaceport loudspeakers. A slightly hoarse voice with a trace of Alom accent said, "Ladies and gentlemen! The Assalah spaceport is controlled by me, Kissur, and the party of people's freedom. All the spaceport guards have been disarmed. Nobody should move from where they are. Anybody resisting my troops will be shot dead on the spot. Any panic will be considered a resistance attempt.
The Earthmen will soon be allowed to leave the spaceport. Before that, however, they are considered to be hostages and they will be killed if they take any hostile actions towards us.
Ladies and gentlemen, have a good day. Goodbye."
Immediately after the announcement, Kissur's fighters, present in practically every lounge, custom corridor, restaurant and shop jerked their assault rifles up at the ready position and screamed, "Everybody down on the floor! Ass up, hands behind your head! Go! The majority of people submitted obediently, dropping in the process the souvenirs they just bought — Inis lacquered figurines and flat wooden bottles with Chakhar vodka. This order effectively stopped panic (that was to be treated as resistance). Occasional gun bursts above the heads took place; five spaceport security service employees attempted to escape — four were shot dead and the fifth died two hours later at a surgery table.
In the air traffic control room, assault rifles were aimed at the workers and the latter unquestioningly obeyed Khanadar's directions — to announce Assalah, without getting into any extra details, to be a closed-off zone. Therefore, the ships that were not on the landing trajectory yet, should go land anywhere the hell they want but not in Assalah; the ships that were already moving on the landing trajectory should continue landing.
The pilots are a well trained crowd and they were accustomed to landing the way they were told to. The last two ships had time to figure out that they were landing in a spaceport taken over by terrorists. Attesting to the professional level of their crews, the ships didn't vacillate in the air — that could've been very dangerous — and landed in the spaceport. After the landing, they immediately required a permission to launch; the permission was refused.
At least, not a single ship crashed missing the launching chutes; it would've been very probable if the air traffic controllers had panicked.
The flight schedule board in the main lounge blinked and went dead. Then, an announcement appeared on it, "Long live the party of people's freedom!" The announcement was written in Weian and English. The English variation contained a grammatical mistake.
There were total of eight thousand people in the spaceport, five hundred volunteer and regular security service employees, twenty three hundred of regular personnel and fifty two hundred passengers.
About four dozens passengers, mostly journalists, recognizable thanks to their cameras, were pulled out of the crowd and brought to an office. Kissur and his younger brother Ashidan sat there and young Ashinik with the old man Yadan represented the zealots. Kissur offered the guests to take part in the inspection of the spaceport and he added that he would rely completely upon their honest reports. Afterwards, the whole Galaxy saw the pictures made by these journalists.
The following is an excerpt from the testimony given by Francis F. Carr, an employee of a large auditing firm Coupere, Lir and Gambacher; he had been among the forty selected hostages. Mr. Carr gave this testimony to a senate committee during an investigation concerning the spaceport's takeover a month and a half later.