Or whether he’d survive it.
“The folder holds a list of amounts and dates,” Orichos said. “It purports to be records—”
The lens wand slipped off the drawer; the plump technician had curled her arms around herself, sunk into a personal world light-years away from this terror. In a sudden break from her detached calm, Orichos looked at the girl and screamed, “Hold that bloody thing up or I’ll have you executed for treason!”
The thin technician tilted her wand closer to the open drawer. She didn’t look toward Orichos.
“This is fake!” Grayle said. “It’s been planted! There’s no—”
“Purports to be a record,” Orichos resumed in a louder voice, “of payments—”
“—truth in it at all!”
“—by the Interior Ministry of the Government of Solace to the Freedom Party!”
Grayle turned to get out of the file room. Fewsett knocked her back accidentally as he raised his carbine. Huber fired from the hip. His 2-cm bolt hit Fewsett in the upper chest, vaporizing most of the big man’s torso in a thunderclap. The shockwave slammed Huber against a file cabinet and knocked the Volunteers in the doorway off their feet.
A Volunteer tried to aim his carbine, or maybe he was just flailing his arms for support. The powergun’s cyan flash would’ve blinded anybody seeing it close-up without the protection of a polarizing faceshield like Huber’s. He fired twice more, clearing the doorway save for a scatter of body parts. A blast-severed head flew past Huber, driven by vaporized body fluids.
The thin technician screamed and flung down her wand. It wobbled behind her on its flex as she sprang through the doorway Huber was trying to slam shut with his left hand. Two or more gunmen riddled her before she took a second step into the hallway. She thrashed backward, but Huber threw all his weight against the panel. It latched despite the obstructions.
A burst of shots whanged into the door from the outside. The panel was metal-cored, but concentrated gunfire would peck through it before long. For that matter there must be somebody in the gang outside with the key to the door’s snap lock.
“Don’t shoot, you idiots!” Melinda Riker Grayle screamed. “Don’t shoot or you’ll kill me!”
Huber glanced behind him. Grayle sprawled on the floor. Captain Orichos lay on top of her, twisting back her left arm and holding a pistol to Grayle’s neck.
The plump technician sat on the floor with her legs splayed, crying uncontrollably. The room was hot—oven hot, heated by the three heavy-caliber powergun discharges in its narrow confines.
When a bolt liberated its energy in a human body, it turned the tissues to steam with explosive suddenness. The file room’s walls, the ceiling, and the people within were all covered with a mist of blood. Huber’s hands were red, and there was a sticky film across his faceshield that the static charge hadn’t been able to repel. He flipped the shield up and out of the way.
The stench of cooked flesh and of the wastes voided when Fewsett’s sphincters spasmed in death was stomach-churning, even for Huber who’d smelled it before. Some things you never get used to….
Captain Orichos raised herself to her knees, still pointing her pistol at the assemblyman. She patted the floor with her left hand till she found the lens wand and raised it vertical again. Grayle twisted to look back into the bore of the pistol.
“Assemblyman Grayle!” Orichos said. “You stand convicted of treason by your own records and by your failed attempt to use force against the agents of the Assembly!”
“That’s a lie!” Grayle said in a hoarse voice. “You planted that file!”
Several voices were jabbering at Huber through his commo helmet; at least one of them seemed to be from Base Alpha. He locked out all incoming channels and concentrated on the door in case the Volunteers tried to rush it. The muzzle of his powergun was cooling from yellow to bright orange.
“In order to prevent bloodshed among citizens …” Orichos continued as though her prisoner hadn’t spoken. She was facing Grayle over the gunsights, but Huber noted that her eyes weren’t focused anywhere in this world. “I’m offering you, in the name of the citizens of the Point, a chance to go into exile. You and all your fellow conspirators will have one hour to leave Midway and six hours to leave the Point. After that time, you will be considered criminals and dealt with according to law.”
“You faked that so-called evidence,” Grayle said, “and you faked the vote count to steal the last election from the Freedom Party! You’re the criminals! You’re thieves, and you’re bankrupting the state by hiring these mercenaries!”
“Assemblyman Grayle!” Orichos said. She jerked her weight backward to balance her as she stood. She held the wand in her left hand like a torch, and the pistol slanted down toward her prisoner’s face. “Do you accept my offer, made in the presence of the entire citizenry of the Point?”
“Better take the offer, lady,” Huber said. Ozone from the 2-cm bolts had flayed his throat, making his voice a rasp that he wouldn’t have recognized himself. “Whatever else happens, I guarantee you’re not going to leave here alive any other way.”
Grayle looked at him. Her eyes slid downward to the floor on which she lay. Fewsett’s head, severed when his chest exploded, stared back at her from a hand’s breadth away. She jumped to her feet, forgetting the threat of Orichos’ pistol.
“It’s all a lie!” Grayle said. She got control of her breathing and went on, “But I don’t have any choice. All right—we’ll leave Midway, but I’m agreeing under duress. You have no legal right to expel us!”
“You out there in the hall?” Huber shouted. He figured the Volunteers, a lot of them anyway, would be watching the broadcast along with the rest of the citizens, but the gunmen just outside the door might be an exception. “I’m going to open the door. The first one through it’s going to be your leader, Assemblyman Grayle. But be clear on this—you’ve got a deal with your government and your Gendarmery. You don’t have a deal with me personally. If anybody sticks his head into this room, I’m going to blow him to atoms just like I did a lot of his buddies a moment ago. Got it?”
Nobody answered. Huber thought he heard the sound of boots running down the staircase. Grayle was poised like a roach caught by the light, momentarily frozen.
“Captain Orichos?” Huber said.
“Yes, open the door,” Orichos said.
Instead of reaching, Huber kicked out with his right boot and sprung the latch. The panel bounced open. The hallway was empty.
Grayle jumped through so quickly that she slid on the blood pooling from the dead technician’s body. She caught herself on the wall and ran toward the stairs, leaving a handprint on the wall
behind her.
Nothing else moved for over a minute.
Huber let out his breath. He switched his helmet back to receive mode and said, “Fox Three-six to Sierra. We’re holding our present position on the fourth floor of the Freedom Party headquarters until somebody comes to fetch us out. And give me plenty of warning before you show yourselves, people, because I’m as jumpy as I’ve ever been in my life!”
Captain Sangrela’s driver had bounced his jeep up the Assembly Building steps and parked it under the porch. The officers and senior sergeants of Task Force Sangrela stood on the patterned stone, listening to the holographic image of Danny Pritchard speaking from Base Alpha.
Around them the citizens of Midway noisily celebrated their release from Freedom Party domination. In the street below whirled a round dance with hundreds of participants. A fiddler stood on a raised platform in the middle of the circle; beside him, occasionally crowding his elbow, gyrated a young woman wearing only briefs. Huber didn’t think she was professional—just exuberant and very happy. As far up and down the Axis as Huber could see there were similar dances as well as free buffets, speakers on makeshift podiums, and crowds of people drinking and singing in good fellowship.