“U. S. Marshals, by direct Presidential appointment,” Dzheenis said, and tapped the badge. “Put down your weapons. You behind the glass, release that man and step aside.” The two guards did no such thing. One of them grabbed Peters’s collar preparatory to dragging him off, and the two bür demonstrated what the armor glass was worth to Maker weapons.
Briggs had ducked below the counter. Peters did the same, wiping his face. Glass cylinders five millimeters in diameter, fifteen centimeters long, and moving at several Mach made for really messy head shots. More guards ran up the corridor from the cell block, and one of the bür methodically picked them off as they rounded the corner. He got three before the rest figured out that that wasn’t the way to do it. Then the world started getting fuzzy and accelerating on odd vectors.
Peters woke strapped to a gurney with an oxygen mask on his face, being carried down a corridor with lots of fresh scars on the walls. It took a bit for him to recognize the man walking alongside, and longer to credit it. “Good, you’re awake,” said Dr. Steward. “I already injected the antagonist, you’ll be fine in a minute.” He brandished a small handweapon, either the one Peters and Todd had taken from the nekrit or one just like it. “Audit this, motherfuckers!” he shouted derisively, and several people cheered.
Being carried up stairs on a stretcher isn’t pleasant, but the two bearers did a good job. After two flights they came out at street level, on a cold, blustery day with mist swirling around. Wherever they were it was the middle of town, concrete and stone and glass in various configurations. “Do you know where you are?” Steward asked. “IRS headquarters in downtown DC. Some changes are being made.” He looked down, and his face changed. “Somebody get this man a couple of blankets,” he snapped in fair Trade. “He doesn’t have a suit.” A blanket arrived immediately, and the doctor looked on benignly as Peters was wrapped. “I work for you now,” he told the bewildered ex-sailor. “My daddy was a science fiction publisher. I always wanted to go to space, so I jumped on Dzheenis’s offer, but I’d have sold my soul for this opportunity.”
“Bonus time,” Peters mumbled weakly, and Steward grinned like a thief.
The bearers popped one set of wheels out on the gurney and set Peters at an angle against a wall so he could see. A bür smallship took up a good part of the street, and two men in sharp suits were maneuvering a ladder into place. A third man, also nicely dressed, climbed the ladder and reached behind to help a woman. Hatches popped, and Marines, bür, and more Secret Service people climbed out in no discernible order, to take up suspicious watches all around. The well-dressed man held up a bullhorn and said into it, “I’m Gene Hansen.” The crowd didn’t go wild, but there were cheers, along with enough weapons held aloft to give the most militant pause.
When relative quiet was restored Hansen continued: “Pursuant to Executive Order nine-oh-one-three, which I just signed an hour ago, no employee or contractor of the Internal Revenue Service is authorized to carry a weapon as defined in the Peaceful Streets Act of 2017.” Nail files and up, that meant. “If you are an IRS employee and are carrying a weapon, go immediately to the nearest U.S. Marine and surrender it. If you aren’t sure of the definition, be conservative. Carrying a weapon in violation of this order is a felony, and peace officers are authorized to shoot to kill if such a violation is detected.”
Another cheer, followed by stirs and eddies in the crowd accompanied by a few clinks and clanks. “The rest of it is too complicated to go into here,” Hansen continued, “but the end of it is, you tax collectors work for the people of America, not the other way around, and if I have to call in help from the farthest star to insure that, well, I’m just grateful that such friends exist.” More cheers went up.
“Dr. Steward, may I borrow that handweapon?” Peters asked calmly. The President was still talking, but Peters was sure he’d seen the fellow in the blue anorak before.
“Certainly. It’s yours anyway. Let me loosen the straps so you can get your arm out.” Steward suited action to the words, leaning across Peters to do so.
Steward didn’t like to be called “Doc.” “Thanks, Doctor,” Peters told him. He took the weapon and held it below the blanket, and the doctor started to straighten up and turn. “What the—”
Blue-anorak had spun around and produced a revolver. He got off one shot, but his mistake was to take the time to stretch his arm at full extension before firing. Peters was thumbing the button, and kept it up until somebody else took a hand. The bür weapons were too much in this situation, but M27 sliver guns were specifically designed for close-quarters urban combat. The man’s chest exploded in gore before he’d begun to fall from Peters’s shots. A Marine and a bür smiled and nodded at one another.
“Medic!” somebody shouted, but this wasn’t the sort of crowd to run screaming in terror. Marines clustered around the downed man, and a couple of other people—Grallt, in this case—were clutching wounds in testimony that even sliver rifles were a bit much some ways.
“What the Hell was that all about?” Steward wanted to know.
Peters let the handweapon fall to clatter on the concrete. “Look for his ID,” he suggested. “Betcha it says ‘Styles.’”
“Are you all right?”
Peters stretched his lips in a strained mockery of a grin. “No. It don’t hurt, though. Must be the sleepygas.” Then he passed out again.
The suite at the Willard had been repaired, but if you looked closely at the window frames you could still see traces of the events of a year ago. Peters leaned back in his chair, careful not to stretch the clips and stitches under his left arm, and looked at the scene with pride approaching hubris and satisfaction well past the ‘smug’ point.
Alper was on the floor, helping little Emmett with the brightly colored toys scattered around; the boy had already tried most of them and rejected them as inedible. Ander was asleep in one of the wingback chairs, with Eve a blanket-swaddled lump in her arms. Lisi was suckling baby Thu in the other wingback, and Dzheenis was looming over her and his son with the same sort of expression Peters knew was on his own face. Khurs was half-prone on the couch, too swollen to more than waddle; her mate, a zerkre called Denis, was in the kitchen making her a peanut butter and zishis sandwich. Peters had just met him. He seemed a decent sort. He’d better be.
“We ain’t found you a girl friend yet,” he said to Steward, who was sitting in the fourth wingback around the coffee table sipping something with ice in it.
“It’s being worked on,” the doctor replied. “She works across the road there.” He jerked his thumb at the building behind, which was the White House. “First I need to find out whether it’s me or outer space she wants, then I’ll introduce her to this lot and see if she runs screaming. I don’t think she will.” He swirled his drink and sipped.
Peters chuckled. “Good enough. Like I told Dzheenis a bit ago, a pa’ol can grow by recruitin’ as well as by natural increase.”
“Seems to me you’ve got a nice balance of both here.”