Shadow of Freedom

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?”