As his fantasy world started to implode, the demi-Precentor mentally chastened himself and moved to remedy the situation. "I can segregate her from Jewell and make sure she is not taken off to the Reeducation Center." The memory of an earlier visit to that facility made him shudder. "No, she should not be wasted there."
Khalsa heaved himself up out of his chair and quit his office. At the door heading down into the basement, he waggled a finger, causing two ROM guards to follow him down the wooden stairs. He crossed to the door and flicked open the little viewport, but saw nothing.
With a frown, he stepped over to the light switch. "The light is out, but the switch is on." The ROM guards stepped closer to look through the viewport, and Khalsa flicked the switch up and down several times. "They've broken the bulb!"
As Jewell usurped the demi-Precentor's place in his erotic fantasies about Deirdre Lear, the ComStar bureaucrat quivered with rage. Giving the light switch a last flip, he pointed at the door. "Open it! Open it!"
In the 1.27 seconds it took from Kai's activation of the cut-out switch connected to the light, to the power drain knocking that whole city sector from the power grid, the damaged myomer actuator contracted. It went from a gelatinous consistency to one of spun steel as it snapped taut, cracking both the pillars to which it had been bound with nylon cables. When the power died, the myomer relaxed, too soon for it to bring down the house, but not soon enough to prevent it from accomplishing the task for which it had been prepared.
The water heater, filled up to the crack in its side with water, launched forward like a stone from a slingshot. As it left the myomer, it began a slow rotation, with the lower, heavier section lagging slightly behind the upper part. Kai saw the cylinder slam into the door, blasting the half-rotted wood into a cloud of splinters. He heard one man's muffled scream of pain, then another snapping sound.
The projectile continued its flight, skipping off bodies and the cellar corridor until it hit the far wall and crumpled. Water gushed from the crack and slowly spread back along the floor. In the glare of battery-powered emergency lights, it looked like an oversized beer can that had been mashed underfoot.
Squinting against the harsh illumination from the emergency black-out lights, Kai shot forward and leaped from the room. With a snap-kick to the chest, he sent the demi-Precentor spinning into the far wall. As the corpulent man collapsed in a moaning heap, Kai plucked the autorifle from the first ROM guard's dead hands, then stripped off his ammo belt. He looped it over a shoulder, then looked toward Deirdre. "C'mon, do it!"
Motion above him caused him to backpedal and bring the autorifle up. A ROM guard at the head of the stairs jerked his trigger at the same moment Kai tightened down on his. Both guns filled the cellar with smoke and strobing muzzle-flashes. The ROM guard's throat exploded in a spray of blood, then his nearly severed head lolled to the side as his body toppled back into the hallway above.
Kai felt the impact of three bullets as they hit his chest.
Knocked off his feet, he crashed back against the wall. His head hit hard and sizzling rainbow lights exploded before his eyes. As darkness began to close in around him, he tried to fight it off, but blacked out nonetheless.
When his eyes snapped open again, Kai knew from the smoke still drifting upward and the single, bloody rivulet dripping down step by step that he'd only been out for a second or two. The pain in his chest that came with each breath reminded him of the ROM guard's marksmanship.
Deirdre dropped to her knees beside him. "Oh God, I've got to get you to some place where I can operate."
Kai rested his left hand on her shoulder. "Just help me up."
"You can't. You have to lie still. Massive chest trauma." She bent over him and peered into his eyes. "Pupils are slightly dilated. You must be in shock."
"I'm just in pain." He patted his chest with his right hand. "I've got my cooling vest on, remember? Ballistic cloth. It stopped the bullets, but I think ribs got bruised."
"Or broken. Be careful." She helped him to his feet and pulled the ammo belt from the second ROM guard without his asking. "How do you feel?"
"Rocky. I blacked out for a second." He shook his head to clear it, but was less than satisfied with the result. "We have to get out of here."
She looked down at the ComStar staffers. "The first guard's dead. His neck is broken. The other two are just out cold. Are you going to finish them?"
He looked at her as if she were mad and mounted the stairs. "They're no threat. Let's move." Hugging his left arm to his ribs, he worked his way up the stairs with the autorifle's muzzle leading the way. At the first-floor landing, Kai crouched near the body of the man he'd shot, but saw no one. He signaled Deirdre to follow him and cut down the hallway to the demi-Precentor's office.
They ducked inside and Deirdre shut the door behind them. "Why are we here? Let's just go!"
Kai walked over to Khalsa's desk. "Can't. I made a promise." He scooped Dave Jewell's holographs into the small pack he'd brought to the ComStar center. He checked it and smiled when he saw his pistol and the survival knife still in their place.
"Besides, I want to see what the demi-Precentor can offer us to help our escape." He wrenched open the central desk drawer and nodded. He scooped out a series of magnetic cards and tucked them into a pocket. "Trip-cards. All we have to do is get to the garage in this place and his hovercar will provide us a way out."
Deirdre nodded. "Let's go. Hurry."
Kai dropped a new clip into the autorifle and shook his head. "One more thing. We pay this clown back for betraying us." He tracked a burst of fire across the desk, then along the wood-paneled walls. The computer console exploded and a few splintered paintings dropped to the floor.
Deirdre clapped her hands over her ears. "It's a good thing you're a warrior," she shouted.
"Why?" Kai asked as he put another clip into the gun.
"You make a lousy decorator."
* * *
Khalsa's harsh stare sent his subordinate scurrying from the ravaged office, but had no effect on the Clan Elemental standing before him. The plaster on his left-arm cast had not yet dried, and it felt cold and clammy pressed over the dressings binding his ribs and shattered collarbone. The painkillers even made him feel a bit loopy, but his sense of duty to ComStar cut through the narcotic haze.
"I was quite reluctant to summon you, Star Captain, but I had no choice. You see what he did, don't you?"
The Elemental nodded solemnly. Even without his armor, Khalsa thought the man improbably large. His close-cropped blond hair and military bearing contrasted with the brightness of his blue eyes, at least to the demi-Precentor's way of thinking. Not the eyes of a killer.
"I saw his handiwork throughout your station here, demi-Precentor. Pity about the chandelier in the foyer." The Elemental kept his hands clasped at the small of his back. "Had you informed us about your capture of a FedCom, we would have taken him off your hands with less inconvenience for you."
Khalsa bristled at the derision in the man's voice. "Yes, Star Captain, I am certain you would have, but my authority here allows me to determine the disposition of those people we capture, as you have control of those people you capture. This Dave Jewell is obviously very dangerous, so I have called you in."
"He kidnapped Dr. Lear, perhaps with some hideous motive, and stole my Migliore hovercar." Khalsa picked up a sheet of paper from his war-ravaged desk. "This is a list of the destinations and routes for the trip-cards he stole." He extended it to the Elemental, but the man did not take it.