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And if I'd gotten around from the Chamber just a little bit faster, it would have slaughtered me, right along with them, he thought. A part of him almost wished it had.
"Mr. Vice President! Mr. Vice President! "
Rajkovic turned, blinking smoke-reddened eyes, as Darinka Djerdja, his executive assistant, clawed her way through the smoke towards him.
"Yes, Darinka?" Too calm, he thought. I sound too calm. It must be shock.
"Mr. Vice President, this wasn't-I mean," Darinka dragged in a deep breath, then coughed explosively as the smoke hit her lungs. He handed her his handkerchief, and she held it over her mouth and nose, coughing into it until she finally managed to catch her breath.
"Now, Darinka. Try again."
"Mr. Vice President," tears cut startlingly white tracks in the soot and grime on her pretty face, "these weren't the only bombs."
"What?" He stared at her. He couldn't have heard her correctly.
"All over the Mall, Mr. Vice President," she told him, reaching out in her distress to grip him by the upper arms and shake him. "The Stock Exchange. First Planetary Bank. The Sekarkic Square subway station. They're everywhere! We have hundreds of dead and wounded, Sir— hundreds of them!"
"All right, Darinka," he told her, although a part of him sneered that it would never be all right again. "All right, I understand. I'd better get over to Civil Defense. Do you have your official com?"
"Yes, Sir," she said with almost pathetic eagerness, grasping at anything useful she could do.
"All right. Listen, the regular civilian circuits are jammed, and I lost my com somewhere between here and the Chamber. So get on yours. Contact General Suka. Tell him that on my instructions he's to declare martial law. Do it now; I'll get the formal, signed proclamation to him as soon as I can. Then get hold of Colonel Basaricek, at Police HQ. Give her the same message. And tell both of them I'm going to Civil Defense, and that we'll use the com room there as our headquarters. And tell the General he'd better start bringing in emergency perso
"Mr. Vice President, you'd better see this."
Rajkovic turned away from yet another hoarse-voiced, exhausted conference. Six hours had elapsed since the horrendous attack, and the news just kept getting worse. According to Brigita Basaricek, the commanding officer of the Kornatian National Police, the count of confirmed dead had already topped five hundred, with twice that many injured. The missing numbered in the thousands, but some of them— most of them, please God! -were probably simply lost in the confusion, not buried under the rubble.
Probably.
"What?" he snapped at the aide whose name he'd never learned. He regretted his tone the moment the words were out of his mouth, but the young man didn't even seem to notice.
"It's the HD, Sir. There's a message from someone claiming responsibility."
Rajkovic found himself back in the communications room without any conscious memory of having moved. The place was crowded, uniformed and civilian perso
They got out of his way when they finally realized who he was, and he found himself in the front row, staring up at the display with the rest of them. Staring at a face he knew well, someone who had once been a close political ally... and an even closer friend.
"— responsibility in the name of the Freedom Alliance of Kornati. We regret that we have been driven to this extremity, but we will not turn aside from the road we have chosen. The collaborationist regime of President Tonkovic and her sycophants will not be allowed to sign away the sovereignty of our home world. The indecently wealthy traitors whose corruption and greed have inflicted so much poverty, so much suffering, upon so many Kornatians, will profit no further from their crimes. Their plan to sell our planet to the highest bidder to protect their own obscene fortunes will not succeed. And the off-worlders who seek to steal our souls along with our rightful wealth, our liberties, and our rights as freeborn citizens of the sovereign Planet of Kornati, will find only death on our soil. The Freedom Alliance is the avenging sword of the betrayed people of the Split System, and it will not be sheathed while a single traitor clings to power on our world! Let those who love freedom rally to us-and let those who worship slavery fear us!"
She stared out of the HD, dark eyes blazing with a messianic light, and her voice rang with absolute conviction and sincerity. It came to Vuk Rajkovic in that moment that she'd never before found her true place. Not in the electoral fray, not in efforts to reform a corrupt political system, not in the thrust and parry of parliamentary debate. Not even in the white-hot crucible of the a
"Find that bitch, Brigita," he said harshly. "Find her... and kill her ."