The pilot punched full power to the McLean generators and pushed the control stick hard over to the right.
The gravlighter pirouetted, crashing into its fellow, which went out of control and dominoed into the parade formation.
The young officer fought his craft level, then slammed it to the ground, the lighter skidding forward toward the reviewing stand, skewing crazily.
It spilled out soldiers, soldiers who hit the ground running—and firing, semiautomatic grenade launchers blasting the Special Duty soldiers.
These guards took a bare moment to recover—but a third of them were dead by then. Then they opened up, rounds sheeting into the middle of the review.
The support wing's formation broke, gravlighters climbing for the sky and getting shot down as other Special Duty units obeyed orders to kill anyone or anything irregular.
A platoon of the scout unit broke from its formation and went flat. Orders were bellowed, and rifles crashed.
Their target was the reviewing stand.
One burst and—"Grenades!" came the shout, and the platoon charged the stand.
A quarter second earlier, Sten's four Gurkhas had been at attention, at the rear of the stand. Now, most suddenly, they were on the stand, knocking fear-maddened pols aside, willyguns braced on their hips, AM2 slugs slashing out and cutting down the scouts.
Sten dug under his monkey suit for his pistol and was down as Kilgour bodychecked him flat. Alex recovered, his cloak pitched away and the willy gun hidden under it up and chattering rounds.
Douw was suddenly in an underwater trance, as he saw the grenade thud down on the planking just in front of him—how annoying—and he kicked it, grenade dropping off the stand and then exploding, blasting him back into Menynder. Both men sprawled, Douw half stunned.
Menynder started to shove the general's crushing weight off his body, then reconsidered. What better shield could there be, he realized, and then turned his thoughts toward camouflage, concentrating on being the very model of a modern major corpse.
Dr. Iskra's eyes were wide open, his brows just beginning to furrow like a professor about to chide a favorite pupil for being unable to answer an easy question, when the blood-covered woman levered herself up onto the stand in front of him.
Iskra's hands went out, trying to push this horror away.
The woman shot Iskra four times in the face before her body was shattered by a burst from a guard's weapon.
Sten rolled sideways, pistol coming out of a rear holster, and was coming to his knees, mind recording screams from the crowd, gun blasts, crashes from the pandemonium that had been an army in review seconds earlier, and the whine of gravlighters at full drive.
Out of a corner of his eye he saw the Bhor lighters rip out of their park toward the stand, then there were two men just below him, aiming, and he fired... tap, tap... tap, tap... they were down and dead... looking for another target...
The pleased smile was frozen on Venloe's face as he touched the sight stud, and it zoomed tight on the target, his field of vision narrowing.
Iskra was dead. Absolutely.
Menynder and Douw were hit-probably. It did not matter-they weren't major targets.
Now. Now for Sten.
There he is. The bastard's not killable. He's coming to his feet now...
Just coming up... hold the breath... exhale smoothly... touch the stud... brace for the recoil... firing pressure... now!
Shock-recoil-slam, gun butt against shoulder. Action crashing back, sending the smoking shell case spinning out, clatter, another round chambered, bolt locked in battery, dammit, the sights are off target...
"Sten is down," an unemotional voice on the com said.
Shut up, Cind said. Don't look. Don't turn. Just hold on that dormer window and see the curtain flung out by the muzzle blast inside, bastard's trained, had enough sense to pick a stance back in the shadows, and she pumped three AM2 explosions through the window...
Sten's formal dress may have been bulletproofed by Kilgour. However, there is no way the human animal can withstand the impact of a solid bullet weighing just over one hundred grams being delivered at a velocity of around eight hundred meters per second, unless he or she is inside a tank, any more than a bulletproof vest is worth drakh to a pedestrian hit by a bus.
But it had been too long for Venloe's old training, as his mind flinched away from that shoulder-cracking kick-to-come.
Six hundred meters is not significant with a modern weapon. But it is a factor. It is especially a factor if a projectile weapon uses conventional propellant to punt an enormously heavy round to its target. So the trajectory taken by the bullet from Venloe's dinosaur-killing rifle was a high, looping howitzer-arc, subject to crosswind and heat/cold waves.
The bullet should have hit Sten in the stomach. Instead, it first struck the heavy chair beside him, and shattered. Most of the bullet ricocheted away to who-knew-where. But its solid jacket impacted directly on Sten's monkey jacket, just on the base of one of those solid plates Kilgour had sheathed his boss with. Sten was knocked spinning off the stand. The self-inflating shock cushion realized that its finest hour had arrived, and suddenly the Imperial ambassador greatly resembled a floating bath toy; then, as he touched down on corpses, the shock cushion deflated, and there was somebody just in front of him with a bayoneted rifle.
Somehow the pistol was still in Sten's hands, and he shot the man dead, and was looking for a target, then realized he was still alive, and able to hear that wonderful wonderful Ayo... Gurkhali as his backup arrived.
Cind's AM2 rounds blew the attic room apart, sending Venloe stumbling back, dazed for a moment; then he recovered, staggering toward the open hatch, but no, there'll be someone out there, remember you planned for this, too, reach down, reach down.
Venloe's hands found the pull cord on the two smoke grenades he had taped on either side of the patch, and yanked.
Wait... wait... wait for the smoke... now. Through the hatch and away with you.
"Clottin' missed him," Cind muttered, then her sights swung as the open hatchway gouted smoke.
"The ambassador is all right! I say again, the ambassador is all right," the com bleated.
Did the explosion start a fire...
Hell. It's a smoke screen, she thought, seeing a flicker of movement that disappeared behind the parapet.
Oh, you cute thing, she thought.
"Earle. Three rounds rapid. Into the middle of that wall. Forward one meter from that rainspout. Now!"
Crash... crash... crash.
The ancient stone of the parapet shattered. Cind could see a tiny, jagged hole through her scope.
Now, you behind that wall, what are you thinking? Do you think you're quick enough—or that I'm not a good enough shot-to wriggle past that little crack?
Cind sighted and fired. Her single round slammed through the crack and exploded somewhere on the parapet's far side.
Yes, you. I am that good a shot that I can slip a bullet through the hole if I see any movement.
Now, it would seem to me, were I stupid enough to be that man over there, thinking that twelve hundred meters and only one way out makes you bulletproof, I would now be considering modifying my avenues of egress.
"Earle, watch the smoke."
"NG for him. It's thinning."
Very good. So what do we have? We have you out there, lying prone behind that parapet. Your exit route is blocked by that hole Earle drilled and by the knowledge you have that I can see through it and shoot through it.
About twelve meters back of Earle's spy hole, the parapet ends against the dormer window. So you are lying somewhere within that twelve meters.