Some of the attackers staggered and dropped as Sikander and Ranya watched, struck by fire from the palace defenders, but more streamed in to replace them. One small group found a spot by a barricade and set up a heavy autorifle, opening up on the Royal Guard’s positions. Sikander could distantly hear the shrill stuttering sound of the weapon echoing down the hall. It stood as a chilling reminder that he watched events taking place just outside the palace, not a feed showing some far-off disorders.
A flash of light flickered across another screen. A moment later, Sikander heard a loud rumble, and the floor beneath his feet trembled slightly. He looked back, and realized that the east gate—the one so many people had been crowded near—no longer existed, blown into a tangled mess of twisted metal. Scores of bodies littered the street. A bomb, he realized. There was a moment of stunned silence, and then bystanders slowly began to pick themselves up off the ground. Some remained too dazed or injured to move, but others seized whatever weapons were close to hand and surged toward the gap. “Dear God,” he murmured.
Zakur turned to Ranya. “Amira, I beg you: We must go. We do not have enough men to defend the palace grounds against the mob. All we can do is buy a little time.”
Ranya nodded slowly, still shaken by what she saw on the screen. “Very well.”
The Gadiran officer took her by the arm and steered her out of the center, as more Royal Guards joined the entourage. Sikander and Darvesh followed in their wake. They hurried through more parts of the palace he hadn’t yet seen, and emerged in a spacious garage filled with a dozen or more ground cars and flyers of varying degrees of luxury. A large landing pad stood just outside the garage doors, occupied by three military flyers; beyond those, the parklike palace grounds looked down on olive groves and outbuildings. Once again the roar of the angry mob rose in Sikander’s ears, along with the constant popping of gunfire.
The Royal Guards ringed Ranya and moved toward the nearest of the flyers—but a sudden burst of small-arms fire erupted in front of them. Sikander caught sight of armed men in mismatched working clothes scuttling under the branches of the olive grove before he threw himself to the ground. Captain Zakur pushed Ranya down and covered her with his own body, while the other guards returned fire. Mag-rifle rounds chirped and whined as more men opened up. “Get some covering units into the air!” Zakur shouted at his troops.
Sikander rolled behind a large planter, and drew his pistol. He’d left the mag carbine he’d carried in the raid at Meknez racked behind the pilot’s seat in the flyer on the south terrace. A pair of Royal Guards ran into the rebel fire, heading for the parked flyers. Bullets struck around them, but the two reached the combat flyer and scrambled into the cockpit. A moment later, the engine hummed to life, and the autorifle turret below the flyer’s nose kicked into motion, swiveling to find a target. Two blurred silver streaks shot out from the shadows of the grove and slammed into the side of the flyer—antiarmor rockets, screaming across the landing pad with deafening roars. The flyer exploded, hurling pieces of fuselage and landing gear across the field and knocking everyone to the ground, Royal Guard and insurgent alike.
Sikander picked himself up, his ears ringing. Now what? Maybe there were no more rockets ready to fire on the remaining flyers at the palace landing pad—and maybe there were. He didn’t know if he would be willing to risk his life on that gamble, but they clearly couldn’t stay where they were.
Darvesh shook his shoulder. “The flyer we came in might be a better option, sir,” he said.
“I agree.” Sikander raised his voice and shouted at Zakur. “Captain! The south terrace!”
Zakur glanced over his shoulder, and nodded. He tapped the soldiers near him on their backs, and called out hurried instructions to the rest of his group. Half the group laid down a furious barrage of fire, lashing every conceivable bit of cover in sight with bursts of mag-rifle darts. The rest of the men got to their feet, doing their best to keep their bodies between Ranya and the insurgent riflemen, and then ran back into the garage. Sikander and Darvesh sprinted after them.
They raced back through the palace. Sikander caught the distinct chatter of gunfire echoing through the marble halls, and realized that somewhere in the sprawling building insurgents were already on the loose. The thought was not remotely reassuring, and he breathed a sigh of relief when Zakur burst out of a door onto the terrace with its pools and sweeping view of the sea. The flyer they’d arrived in remained parked on top of the unlucky arbor.
This time, one of the Royal Guards headed for the pilot’s seat. Sikander happily presumed the fellow was rated as a combat pilot, and settled for piling into the back with Ranya, Darvesh, and four more guards. The pilot lifted off before he’d finished strapping in, and raced away from the palace by dropping over the cliff’s edge and heading west across the bay.
Ranya gazed back at the palace through the rear window. To Sikander’s surprise, she did not have a scratch on her, although she’d managed to lose her shoes in the race through the palace. She took several deep breaths, then looked at Zakur, in the copilot’s seat. “Where are we going, Captain?” she asked.
“We are still considering options, Amira,” Zakur replied. He had a bad cut on his scalp that was bleeding freely, but he ignored it as he scanned through the flyer’s comms again. “At the moment I simply want to get you out of the area.”
“Head for Toutay,” she said. “The sultan will need our help.”
“I don’t think that is a good idea,” said Sikander. Ranya gave him a startled look, so he continued. “Bey Salem needs the el-Nasirs either captured or dead for his coup to succeed. For that matter, the Dremish would prefer Bey Salem to be the only thing resembling a planetary authority for them to deal with. It won’t take them long to figure out no one is left at El-Badi, so it seems to me that going anywhere near your uncle might be the most dangerous thing you could do right now.”
Captain Zakur nodded in agreement, his face set in a hard scowl. “Lieutenant North is correct, Amira,” he said. “We should keep the royal family dispersed if possible.”
“Then where should I go?”
“Some place where you’ll have the ability to communicate with loyal forces and maintain command, but your enemies won’t be able to find you,” Sikander said. Hector, perhaps? Would Captain Markham be willing to extend an offer of refuge, or not? He couldn’t even begin to imagine what sort of diplomatic headaches that might lead to … but perhaps a different ship might be a better choice. “You told me that Shihab is equipped with a modern comm suite and defensive systems. Where is she now?”
“She departed Socotra early this morning, right after the amira left,” Zakur replied. He pulled out his dataslate, and studied his reports. “Yes, she’s about halfway between Socotra and Tanjeer. It’s as secure as any other option at the moment, and we can meet her at sea.”
Ranya thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “The Shihab will do. Take me there, please.”
“Yes, Amira.” Zakur nodded to the pilot, who banked sharply and turned the flyer away from the coast, heading out over the Silver Sea.
Sikander glanced out the window at the gleaming white walls of El-Badi, quickly falling behind them. He wondered whether the palace would still be standing the next time he saw it, and whether Ranya would be safe anywhere on Gadira today. Salem el-Fasi’s forces or Caidist insurgents probably didn’t have the means to locate or attack her if Shihab stayed well out to sea, but what about el-Fasi’s Dremish friends? If he was right about their intentions, then it was only a matter of time before Dremark moved in force. And what does Captain Markham do then? Just how far do her orders extend?