Elora laughed and the Legate had no idea why. Tortorelli stood on the spot where the bogus MP officer’s blood had been spilled by a single shot from her pistol. She had arranged for his body to be dumped at the edge of a riot and no one had noticed or cared. One day the Legate would suffer the same fate. But not today. She still needed his authority.
Elora considered all the possible replacements for Tortorelli after the Governor was deposed. Prefect Radick would undoubtedly follow her guidance in the matter, since it would leave him in control of Mirach.
“Are you any closer to capturing Leclerc, Calvy?” She lowered her voice to a husky whisper to erase any hint of criticism. She had always been told she could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, though her need for an insect like Tortorelli was strictly circumstantial. He was already caught and when his usefulness evaporated, he could be quickly swatted.
“My best officers are working on finding him. He might be hiding in Havoc.”
“They’ll never find him there unless you move in adequate military power to level what buildings are still standing.” Havoc was the name her own newscasters–in private—had given to a particularly ugly section of the city. Nothing but burned-out buildings and dangerous refugees filled the ten-square-block area.
“That might not be a bad idea. Thank you for suggesting it to me, Elora,” the Legate said.
Elora had just set into motion the next step in her plan to marginalize Governor Ortega further and paint Legate Tortorelli as a bloody-handed butcher. She had to fight against overconfidence, but the time was almost at hand to contact Prefect Kal Radick and invite him to this fine world.
24
Havoc, Cingulum
Mirach
3 May 3133
Austin jumped at every small sound. Most were caused by rats and other scavengers feeding off the carcasses littering the streets—or what was left of the streets. Entire buildings had collapsed. He could picture in his mind’s eye how the fronts would crumble and fall onto demonstrators, unable to escape because of their numbers. Then the remainder of the building, weakened to its foundations by fires, would slowly follow in a stately, almost majestic orgy of demolition.
His nose twitched at the scent of death and decay and dust, but he kept moving cautiously through the destruction. Austin clutched the small pistol Marta had given him so hard his hand turned sweaty. He kept thinking that the first two shells in the magazine were armor piercers, the third an explosive round. He concentrated so hard on that, he didn’t hear the man creeping up from behind.
Austin jerked around when a tiny pop! sounded and a brilliant white star illuminated the area from a height of almost ten meters. His eyes swept around and up to the burning spot on a third-story window ledge, then dropped back to the silently stalking dark form. His pistol lifted.
“Halt or I’ll fire!” he called. When the man hunting him did not stop, Austin fired. Once, twice. Both rounds hit squarely in the center of the man’s torso. Austin saw flesh and blood sail away from the impacts, but the man only hesitated. He looked at his chest, touched the two small round wounds, then grinned.
Austin started. The man confronting him was missing all but two teeth, but most frightening were the sunken eyes, mad and manic. No shred of sanity remained.
Austin fired a third time. This time the round detonated and sent blood and body parts into the air like water from the Czar Alexander Fountain. He recoiled, dropped to one knee, and used his free arm to cover his head as the grisly rain cascaded down. When Austin looked up, he fought to hold down his rising gorge. Hot blood had splattered in lumpy puddles as it fell on the street around him.
“Killing isn’t quite as sanitary as it is in a trainer, is it?” came the calm question.
Austin swung around to face the new threat but quickly elevated the muzzle away from Manfred Leclerc.
“I don’t know why the first two rounds didn’t stop him,” Austin said, his voice cracking with strain. “I hit him. I saw.”
“They were armor-piercing rounds and went through him like a laser through vacuum. Where’d you get the pistol?”
Austin knew that wasn’t Manfred’s real question. He really meant, why are you carrying a weapon whose capabilities are a mystery? Manfred was always the commander, always the instructor.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Austin said. “Marta Kinsolving—”
“Marta!” The look on Manfred’s face confirmed all he suspected.
“She gave me the pistol. She’s back there in her limo. We’ve got to get you into hiding where—” Austin stumbled when another white-hot pinpoint blossomed above him, this time from the other side of the street.
“What was that?” Manfred asked, rubbing his dazzled eyes. “I was looking almost directly at it when it blew up.”
“Come on,” Austin said, realizing what Manfred did not. “Don’t say a word. Just follow me. Fast!”
The two set out at double time. Austin wasn’t sure he remembered the way back through the tumble-down buildings but felt the need to show Manfred he wasn’t a complete idiot stumbling over his own feet. Austin had always thought of himself as an expert soldier, but this brief excursion in Havoc convinced him there were soldiers and there were soldiers. Urban warfare hadn’t been his military specialty.
He preferred the cockpit of a ’Mech to being on foot, without armor, with a small but potent weapon that was inappropriate for the mission.
“There’s the limo,” cried Manfred, breaking into a dead run. Austin followed at a slower pace, winded from the dash through the ruins. He blinked as another of the brilliant white points flared a dozen meters beyond the limousine. He caught himself against the side of the car, looked behind, and realized he and Manfred had attracted a considerable amount of attention. A small crowd of haggard, almost skeletal men and women dressed in rags trailed them, as if they were magnets pulling iron filings. Austin thought to shoot at them, then lowered the pistol and swung into the back of the limo. It would have been a mercy for the people, but it was wrong to murder those he was sworn to protect.
Manfred and Marta sat side by side, their thighs pressed together tightly. Other than this he would have thought they had just met, given how they kept their eyes locked on him and their hands to themselves. He dropped into the seat opposite them and said, “Can we get out of here?”
The words hardly escaped his lips when he was thrown forward by the sudden acceleration. Manfred caught him and gently pushed him back into the soft leather-upholstered seat.
“I’m glad to leave,” Austin said. “How’d you survive there, Manfred? That place is terrible. I’ve got to tell my father and do something.”
“He knows,” Manfred said. “Other, more pressing problems need to be taken care of first.”
“But—”
“Austin, be quiet,” said Marta. “Did you notice the small explosions back there?”
“What were they?” Manfred asked.
“Remote surveillance cameras. Tortorelli might have ordered them installed, but any picture has already made its way to Elora. Count on it,” Marta said.
“Why did they blow up?”
“All WorldComm makes them, so I can locate them. I might not be able to tap into their encoded signal, but once I know where they are, I can send a radio spike that will blow out the electronics. And I did.”
“What are we going to do?” Manfred said. “Tortorelli and Elora both know where I am—and that puts you in danger, too.”
“While you were out sightseeing, I contacted my security chief. There’s no way we can hide you, not on Mirach. We’re going directly to our company’s launch facility,” Marta said. “A DropShip is taking off soon. You can hide out on Kuton.”