Page 6 (1/2)

CAPTAIN

For the first twelve years of his life, Laurent Zai had been, eest, not quickest Just a lofty, cluraceful bodies Since long before Laurent was born, Vada had elected and reelected as its governor a short, solid woman who stood with ar as seven standard, Laurent began to pray to the Risen E, but his journey toward the sky continued relentlessly By age eleven it was too latetaller; he had already passed the average height for Vadan adults He asked the Risen Deity to shrink hi shorter was scientifically unlikely, at least for the next sixty years or so And on Vada one did not pray to the Risen Ee the laws of nature, which were His laws after all Ever logical, Laurent Zai i solution: increased height a his peers or a deraphic shift that would rescue Laurent from his outcast status

In the suravity Krupp Reich flooded Laurent Zai&039;s school These were refugees displaced by the ravages of the New Gerued, and thickly accented These survivors were im the societal meltdown of population collapse rather than the virus itself, but the stench of contagion still clung to theracefully tall

Zai was their worst tor the Reichers fro foot so that it hooked the other ankle with their next step He graffitied the ures as tall as a page

Laurent was not alone in his misbehavior The Reichers were so mistreated that a month after their arrival the entire student body was asse area (over the field upon which Laurent had been so often hues froanda--an art for which Vadans were justly fa their torments of the newco under white gauze to hide the pulsing red sores of the New German Flu Photos from preflu faress, the victi survivors ree in the presentation was the huge, h successive Sunday afternoons over the last four years The population of tourists, hawkers, merchants, and strollers on the square dwindled slowly, then seemed to stab ilize, then crashed relentlessly Finally, a lone figure scuttled across the great sheet of copper Although only a few picture ele fearfully, as if wary of so predator overhead

Twelve-year-old Laurent Zai sat with his jaw slack a silence peculiar to shaain

"What have I done?"

When the airscreen faded, Zai bolted down the stairs, shaking off the restraining hand of an annoyed proctor He fled to sanctuary under the bleachers and fell to his knees in the litter of spectator trash His hands together in the clasp of prayer, he started to ask for forgiveness He hadn&039;t asked the Emperor for this How could he have known that the Reich Pandemic would be the result of his request for taller classround, the stench of cigarette butts and old honey wine bottles and rotten fruit under the bleachers struck him like a blow to the stomach He vomited profusely into his prayer-locked hands, in an acid stream that burned like whiskey in his mouth and nose His hands remained faintly sticky and smelled of vomit the rest of that day, no matter how furiously he washed them

As if some switch deep within him had been perht back a glimmer of that intensechapel seemed to coalesce into an acid trickle down the back of his throat The airscreen rallies in which the Risen E crowd filled his stomach with bile

Laurent Zai had never prayed to the Risen Eain

He never drank, for every toast on Vada asked the Risen Deity for luck and health And even as Cadet Zai waited for word of admission into the Imperial Naval Academy, he lay silent in the endlessevery mistep and victory in his six-week application trial But not praying

Thirty subjective years later, however, seated in the shipate Lynx, Captain Laurent Zai took a moment to pair his hands over nose and o shame

"Make this work," he demanded in a harsh whisper "As for me, I want to return to my beloved As for her, she&039;s your daht his hands down and opened his eyes

"Launch," he commanded

EXECUTIVE OFFICER

ExO Katherie Hobbes noted fro the Apparatus Initiate Barris had not been fully gelled The safety AI began to protest the dangers posed by an incorih "Operation is launched, sir"

Alured turret blisters along the underside of the Lynx each fired one railgun and one plasma burst A pair of each type of projectile headed toward four carefully plotted targets below

The plashtspeed, their 12,000-degree core teh the atth perfectly ti as their only marks four smooth, concave hemispheres burned into the palace&039;s stone walls

The railgun projectiles followed in their wake

COMPOUND MIND

The attack was registered by the warning syste across the planet&039;s data and co, bellicose streak behind the from the point Alexander had already predicted that an Imperial warship would station itself to attempt a rescue The mind required less than two milliseconds to determine that such an attees be killed However, the Rix co y, after all, which was incompatible with Rix coh a transponder sitting in the center of the table in the council chanal and immediately let out a loud squawk, a dense static whose crenellations were coded like soan its journey from the transponder outward toward the Rix commandos at the speed of sound The nearest commando was four ht un

Racing against this warning were the four structured suns These projectiles, rah the near-vacuuht as lasers They traversed the distance to the palace in far less tiis&039;s atmospheric pressure to slam closed their vacuum paths They reached the plasma-smoothed hemispheres of their entry-points into the palace within seven s were cylinders no wider than a huh the ancient palace walls, releasing a carefully calculated fraction of their awesoy The stone around the entry points ribbed with sudden webs of cracks, like safety glass struck with a ha theer spheroid that flattened on ih the floors and walls of the palace In the seconds after their passage, the old palace would boo into dust Localized but terrific wind storms would soon rise up as the air inside the palace was set in e

After the seventh such collision, a nu precise s ballooned to their largest size The s outward like a child&039;s paper snowflake, and attaining the surface area of a large coin

Thesethe Rix co squawk froht thousandths of a second after the attack had begun The slugs tore through the co tunnels that were momentarily as exact as holes drilled in e pulled a pulverized spray of blood, tissue, and bio the council chamber with a round, their bones shattered and implants liquifacted by the blow

For the es were safe

DOCTOR

Above, the marines were on their way

Twenty-five entry vehicles accelerated down launch tubes, riding electroees hit Dr Vecher like a brain he the color behind his closed eyes from red, to pink, to the white of the hottest flael-sealed ears, and he felt his body iant&039;s foot If not for his yolk of gel and the injected and inhaled smart-polymers that marbled his body tissue, he would have died in several instantaneous and exotic ways

As it was, it hurt like hell

The entry vehicles hit the dense air of the rees to orient their passengers feet-down, firing retrorockets to begin braking and targeting They spread out, screais XV Only three were targeted near the council chaes carried the risk of injuring the Child Empress The marines would be spread out, deployed to sweep for the three re Rix commandos and secure the noice-battered palace

Dr Vecher&039;s entry vehicle was fractionally ahead of the others, and was aih the palace&039;s three sets of outer walls, the i churchbell

But the landing, in which the vehicle expended its last reactionhalt outside the chamber, seemed almost soft There was a final buel that carried hi as it hit the super-heated stone floor of the palace

ADMIRAL

For the hostages, the transition froue and boredos reached their targets well before any sound or shock waves struck the council cha ind seeristle exploded fro on the airborne ichor of the eviscerated Rix, mouths and eyes filled with the sudden spray Moments later, the boo outer walls ca the vain shriek of the transponder on the table

Ad like this He had written his War College graduate thesis on hostage rescue, and for the last four hours had been quietly stewing over the irony After a seventy-subjective-year career, here he finally was in a hostage situation, but on the wrong end The latest articles in the infrequent professional literature of hostage rescue even lay on his bedside, printed and handsomely bound by his adjutant, but unread He hadn&039;t been keeping up lately But he knew roughly how the attack would unfold, and had palo He placed it over his h one leg The admiral had tried dutifully to perform escape-pod stretches, but he&039;d been in the chair for four hours He li away blood fro shallowly The floor rolled as a heavy portion of the palace&039;s ancientin?

They&039;re too close, the ad, for His Majesty&039;s sake Ade up there a few things about insertions into pre-ferroplastic structures

Vision cleared as the ichor began to settle in an even patina on the exposed surfaces of the room The Empress was still seated Admiral Pry spotted a Rix commando on the floor She had landed on her side, doubled up as if put down by a punch to the stomach The entry wound was invisible, but two pieces of the co exit wound at forty-five-degree angles

Pry noted with professional pleasure that the slug had struck the commando&039;s chest dead center He nodded his head curtly, the saesture he used to replace the words well done with his staff Her blaster, extended toward Child Eth, was untouched

The adid fingers pull the trigger, and turned to the Empress&039;s still form

"M&039;Lady?" he asked

The Empress&039;s face isted with pain She clutched her left shoulder, gasping for air with ragged breaths

Had the Reason been hit with a slug? The Empress was of course covered with Rix blood, but under that her robes seemed to be intact She certainly hadn&039;t been shot by anything as brutal as a blaster or an exsanguination round

Ad before the heavy ash doors burst open

CORPORAL

Marine Corporal Mirame Lao was the first out of her dropship

A veteran of twenty-six cohest egress speed/lowest safety rating At this setting, the dropship vo Corporal Lao onto the floor in a cascade of suddenly liquidized gee-gel, through which she rolled like a parachutist hitting thick un&039;s barrel frone cork, and her helmet drained its entry insulation explosively on the floor around her Inside her visor, blinking red diagnostics added up the price of her fast egress: her left leg was broken, the shoulder on that side dislocated Not bad for a spill at highest setting

The leg was already nu from automatically injected anesthesia; her battle armor&039;s servomotors took over itsmoved, she could feel that icy sensation of splintered bone tearing into nerve-dead tissue She gritted her teeth and ignored the feeling Once during a firefight on Dhantu, Lao had functioned for six hours with a broken pelvis This mission--win, lose, or draouldn&039;t last lyph with her eye-mouse, and braced herself Her battle ar her dislocated shoulder back into place Now that hurt

By now, some fourteen seconds after impact, the marine corporal was oriented to the wirefraht, the el vomited by his own drop-ship, disoriented but intact The vehicle that had brought the Apparatus initiate down hadn&039;t spilled yet--it looked wrong, as if the door had buckled in transit

Tough luck

Corporal Lao loped toward the heavy doors that separated her froait She was right-handed, but she hit the ashwood doors with her already wounded left shoulder; no sense injuring the good arh her as the doors burst open

She tu the room for the Rix commandos