Shadow of Freedom-eARC (38 page)

But what else can I do? I need to get in and out of Mobius, and I need to do it before the situation gets any worse. So far, nobody outside the Sector even seems to’ve noticed—probably because they’re all so busy watching to see what happens between Manticore and the Navy. But if it drags on, if it gets even worse, somebody
will
pick up on it. After all, this is where the entire confrontation started, isn’t it? Of course the bastards in the media are keeping an eye peeled this way! So if I don’t keep the lid screwed down, GHQ is going to have my ass, because another spectacular fiasco in-sector—or anywhere remotely
near
it, for that matter!—is sure to draw the newsies’ attention. That’s the
last
thing the home office wants…except some equally spectacular allegation of “excessive force” or “Gendarme brutality”!

He kept his shoulders back, maintaining a properly attentive, nobly determined expression for the troops’ benefit, but even this review could turn out as a public relations disaster. If the men and women marching past him in their black uniforms and shiny boots turned in the sort of performance intervention battalions had turned in so often before and the newsies did get wind of it, the fact that he’d sent them off with such public fanfare and obvious approval was only going to make things even worse.

It’s all the damned Manties’ fault
, he thought bitterly.
Until they shoved their noses into Talbott, who the hell
cared
what happened out here in the armpit of the galaxy?
Nobody,
that’s who! Now anything that happens has the potential to be another interstellar incident!

He glanced at Hongbo, standing beside him with an equally grave expression. The vice commissioner had covered his own ass quite neatly, Verrochio reflected resentfully. He was on record as opposing the deployment. Of having come around to it only reluctantly, only because all of Verrochio’s security advisers had endorsed it. So if it all blew up in Verrochio’s face, Hongbo could always point out that he’d been opposed to it from the beginning. And if it worked, he got credit for having been open-minded and thoughtful enough to put aside his initial opposition when those security advisers’ reasoned arguments convinced him they had a point.

The universe, Lorcan Verrochio concluded resentfully, wasn’t exactly brimming over with fairness.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The lead air van wore the colors of SINS—System Information and News Service, the Mobius System’s official government news agency—as it moved sedately down the broad canyon between the business towers that dominated downtown Landing. There was no obvious connection between it and the other pair of vans or the two somewhat battered looking private air cars, and all five vehicles were careful to obey all traffic signals as they made their way towards their various destinations.

Appearances could be deceiving, however, and the eleven men and seven women in the lead van sat grim and silent, final weapons checks completed, waiting for the carnage to come.

“Three minutes,” the driver said quietly over his shoulder.

None of the passengers replied. They didn’t have to. Everyone knew what his or her job was, just as all of them knew that a strike like this in the middle of the day was more than merely risky. In many ways, it approached the suicidal, yet that was one of the strengths of their plan. No one—not even that kill-crazy bitch Yardley—was going to see
this
one coming.

The glittering tower of the Trifecta Corporation loomed ahead of them. Trifecta held a special place in the hearts of the Mobius Liberation Front. It was scarcely among the great transstellars of the Solarian League—barely a bit-player compared to Technodyne or Zumwalt of Old Terra, really—but it still owned something like sixty percent of the Mobius planetary economy outright. It wasn’t shy about proclaiming the fact here in its private little preserve, either. The ivory-tinted Trifecta Tower—known to its owners as the “Silver Lady” and to most citizens of Mobius (privately, at least) as the “White Whore”—was the tallest structure on the entire planet. No pains had been spared to turn it into the sort of glittering showplace and monument to corporate grandeur an outfit Trifecta’s size could never have afforded, for many reasons, in the Core. It was a brazen statement that Mobius was Trifecta’s private preserve…and that everyone who lived there was effectively a Trifecta serf.

Well
, the strike team’s leader thought grimly,
our lords and masters are about to find out
these
serfs aren’t very happy with them. And
they’re
not going to be very happy with
us
in a few minutes
.

“Here we go!” the driver said.

* * *

The SINS van shot forward, accelerating suddenly, turning out of its traffic lane and cutting across three others. Air cars and lorries swerved wildly as the rogue vehicle violated their airspace and the traffic control frequencies exploded with abrupt imprecations, controllers’ questions, and emergency orders.

The air van didn’t care about any of that. It simply altered course, climbing steeply, and arrowed straight into a restricted, high-security access point. The portal in the side of Trifecta Tower was specifically dedicated to the use of its senior executives. Entry by anyone else was strictly forbidden, and the eleven Trifecta Security personnel manning the access point had standing orders to use lethal force if anyone tried to break into it anyway. Unfortunately for Trifecta’s intentions, the people who’d planned this attack had been right in at least one respect; no one in his right mind would have expected
anyone
to launch an attack like this in the middle of the business day.

The security detail’s initial reaction was that they were looking at a traffic accident about to happen on a grand scale, courtesy of a drunk or somehow suddenly incapacitated driver. It was the only logical assumption, especially given the van’s livery, and before they could realize how wrong they were, the accelerating vehicle was right on top of them, the side windows had slammed abruptly open, and eighteen military-grade pulse rifles opened fire.

Despite their body armor, the security men never had a chance in the face of that much concentrated firepower. Most of them were killed outright. The three survivors were all badly wounded—all of them would quietly bleed to death eventually—and the van went scorching past them.

It was moving too rapidly to stop in the available space, but the strike leader had planned on that, as well. There
was
room for the vehicle to kill a lot of speed before it crashed into the assistant planetary operations manager’s parking stall, crumpling the last third of his limousine in on itself before it staggered to a halt. Specially reinforced shoulder harnesses and Solarian-manufactured combat helmets protected its passengers from the impact, and all of them bailed out instantly through the side doors.

Four of them moved quickly to the security station they’d just shot up. They ignored the dead and wounded, except to kick any personal weapons away from anyone who seemed to still be breathing, and shot open the lockers the Trifecta personnel hadn’t had time to get to. They dragged out the military-grade tribarrels—heavy enough to take down an armored stingship if they hit it right—which President Lombroso had personally authorized for Trifecta’s private security force and slammed them onto the swivel mounts built into the security office.

The rest of the strike force lunged for the emergency fire exits. The doors were locked, of course, but that had been anticipated, and incendiary charges turned the locks to slag. Shoulders rammed into the suddenly unlocked panels, smashing them open, and boots clattered on the risers as the attackers stormed up the old-fashioned stairs.

They burst into an expensive foyer just as the first security men came spilling out of the lift banks in response to the alarms. Security had the advantage of internal cameras and free flow communications links; the attackers had the advantage of knowing exactly what they were doing and where they were going to accomplish it. The result was that they were ready—and the security team wasn’t—when the lift doors opened. Pulser darts turned the two lift cars into abattoirs, and a grenade tossed into each of them made sure all of
these
bodies were dead.

Four more team members peeled off, covering the foyer, while the ten remaining attackers burst into the inner sanctum of the Trifecta Corporation.

“Down on the floor!” the team leader bellowed. “
Down on the floor or die!
”

The highly decorative receptionist and both of his assistants dived for the floor instantly, sliding under their desks and covering their heads with their arms. Aides and secretaries who didn’t have a clue what was happening poked their heads out of office doorways, gawking at the sudden eruption of roughly dressed, armed proles. Most of them got the message as quickly as the receptionist had. The faster ones popped back into their offices, like Old Terran prairie dogs. Others dropped to the floor, burying their noses in the expensive carpet. But—

“Who the
fuck
d’you think you
are
, you god—?!”

Both pulser darts took the red-faced man dead center as he came storming out of his office. The expanding anti-personnel darts tore through his body in a spray-painted red cloud, and he went down, furious question chopped off in mid-word as his lungs and heart shredded and most of his right shoulder blade disintegrated into splinters of finely separated bone.

There were lots of screams now, and the leader charged down the corridor with five other men and women as a third quartet peeled off to hold the foyer. He smashed his way through the ornate, expensive door at the end of the hall, and a pulser dart whined past his ear. One of his fellows’ head exploded under its impact, and he triggered a return burst that sawed the bodyguard standing in front of the huge desk almost in half.

The bodyguard went down, and the leader vaulted the desk. A richly dressed, wild-eyed woman cowered under it, both hands pressed to her mouth, expensively coiffured hair wildly awry, and he smiled coldly.

“I think you’d better come out, Ms. Guernicke,” he said.

* * *

Sirens howled all across the city of Landing. Public buildings went into lockdown. Corporate structures mustered their own armies of private security goons. Presidential Guard armored vehicles thundered into ground level and subsurface roadways. Stingships streaked into the air above the city, and unmanned reconnaissance platforms went swarming through the airspace around Trifecta Tower.

The traffic in the vicinity, obedient to the strident commands of City Traffic Control, cleared the area as quickly as possible. In the case of two nondescript vans (neither of which looked the least bit like the one which had crashed into Trifecta Tower), the fastest way to do that was to land. One set down hastily and awkwardly on the surface roadway a half-block down Trifecta Boulevard from the tower; the second landed on the ground level of a public parking garage directly across the street from it. Their drivers, who obviously had no desire to find themselves in the middle of what looked like turning into a free fire zone, locked their vehicles and took to their heels.

They were hardly alone in that. After the previous month’s riots, no Mobian was going to be stupid enough to hang around when the Presidential Guard could be expected momentarily. A mass exodus turned the busy downtown blocks into a ghost town in mere minutes, leaving streets, slide-walks, and aerial walkways to the security troops already storming into the area.

Six blocks from Trifecta Tower (in opposite directions), the pair of battered air cars swooped down just long enough to pick up the fleeing van drivers, then vanished into the city’s anonymity.

* * *

The communicator on Georgina Guernicke’s desk buzzed loudly. The strike leader looked at it for a moment, then pressed the voice-only acceptance key.

“Yes?”

“This is General Yardley,” a hard female voice said from the blank com. “Who am I speaking to?”

“Did you screen just to waste my time asking stupid questions?”

“You realize, of course, that none of you are getting out of this alive,” Yardley replied flatly.

“That’s possible,” the strike leader acknowledged. “We won’t go alone, though. In fact, I think the body count’s already in our favor.”

“The one who dies with the most kills is still dead,” Yardley shot back, and the leader surprised himself with a harsh chuckle.

“That’s clever, General. Cleverer than I would’ve expected out of a homicidal bitch like you. Do you really want to talk, or should I just hang up?”

“I presume you have some sort of demands to make. Why don’t you go ahead and make them so we can get it over with?”

“My demands are pretty simple, actually. You turn loose all of the innocent men and women you’ve arrested over the last two or three T-weeks and provide us with an air car, and Ms. Guernicke takes a little trip with us. You fulfill your side of the bargain, and we turn her loose alive and unharmed. You screw around with us, and Lombroso gets to explain to Trifecta why it’s going to need a new system operations manager here in Mobius.”

“No fucking way.” Yardley’s voice was even flatter than before. “You harm Ms. Guernicke in any way, and I promise you’ll take a long time dying.”

“That would suppose you managed to take any of this alive,” the leader responded. “Which isn’t going to happen. Mind you, we’d rather get out of this in one piece, but we’re okay with it either way. Your fucking Presidential Guard made sure of that last month. You know what I’ve got left to lose,
General
Yardley? Last month it would have been a wife, a teenaged daughter, and a ten-year-old son. Today? Well, I’ll let you
guess
.”

There was silence for a moment, and the leader heard Guernicke whimpering in terror as she crouched in a corner with a pistol barrel pressed to the side of her head. Once upon a time, his heart might have felt at least some pity for her, but that had been then, and this was now.