Changer of Worlds

Corporal Taylor’s charges exploded, and the ceiling of the corridor disappeared. Flame and debris erupted out of the sudden breach, and one of Tsakakis’ team members became a mangled corpse. But two others were waiting, and Sergeant Amos Jackson died instantly as two plasma bolts slammed into his armor almost simultaneously.

Alina Gricou swore harshly as what was left of the sergeant fell back through the hole. Pulser darts and flechettes were no threat to battle armor; plasma rifles certainly were, and what the hell were they doing here?

Fresh alarms wailed as the thermal bloom of the plasma which had killed Jackson started fires, both here and on the floor above, but that was the least of her worries. It would take more than a fire to inconvenience someone in battle armor, but if there were plasma rifles waiting up there, then things were about to turn really ugly.

“Taylor, Bensen, Yuan! Grenades—now!”

Tsakakis recognized the sound of exploding grenades, and his jaw clenched. They were coming from the lift shafts. He’d been afraid of that, and a sharp spasm of grief twisted him. StateSec’s institutional paranoia over its commander’s security meant his people were probably more heavily armed than their attackers had anticipated, but aside from the limited protection from the anti-ballistic fabric of their tunics, they were completely unarmored.

More grenades exploded, and he heard someone screaming endlessly, terribly over the team’s dedicated cha

“John! Take Ha

Citizen Corporal John Stillman nodded curtly and jerked his head at Citizen Private Flanders, and the two of them headed out into the smoke.

“Now!” Gricou barked, and another pair of Marines vaulted up to the next floor. Even in a planetary gravity, their armor’s exoskeletons made it a trivial feat. What was not trivial were the acquired gymnastic skills which made it possible for them to twist like bipedal cats in midair to bring their weapons to bear. Their flechette guns whined and thundered, belching death, but it took precious instants for their armor sensors to find a target. They tried to compensate by laying down suppressing fire, but the sole surviving bodyguard covering the waiting area around the lift shaft wasn’t where they’d expected him to be. Their flechettes blew corridor walls into fragments and dust, and one of them saw him and swung his weapon towards him in the same instant that he pressed the firing stud.

The Marine died a fragment of a second before him… but only because plasma bolts traveled at near light-speed and flechettes didn’t.

John Stillman and Ha

But then the citizen sergeant suddenly became a very minor concern. Stillman just glimpsed the vague loom of a figure through the wavefront of smoke rolling down the passage towards him, and raised his heavy weapon. Unfortunately, he was dependent upon the unaided human eye, while the Marine headed towards him had the full capabilities of her armor’s sensors. She “saw” him—and Flanders—before he’d even realized she was there, and the blast of flechettes tore both of them apart.

The Marine shouted in triumph and headed down the corridor, but even her sensors couldn’t see through solid walls, and the StateSec citizen sergeant who suddenly rolled out of a side passage ahead of her with his plasma carbine ready came as a complete surprise.

“Get up here, Isabela and Janos!” Tsakakis barked into his com. “They’re coming up the lifts, not the stairs!”

He heard the sergeant whose name he didn’t even know open fire out in the corridor, and his instincts screamed at him to get out there and help him. But cold intellect kept him where he was even as the last two members of his team obeyed his command. He loathed himself for it, but he did it.

Alina Gricou followed Corporal Taylor down the hall, and she felt Death’s hot breath on the nape of her neck. It was taking too long. They had to get to Saint-Just’s office before his bodyguards had time to regroup and realize they had to get him out of here, and these unarmored maniacs and their plasma guns were screwing her mission profile all to hell. They didn’t have a chance against battle-armored Marines, but they didn’t seem to care. Why in the name of God were they so willing to die to protect a butcher like Oscar Saint-Just?

Another StateSec noncom loomed up in the smoke and dust. Even through the crackle flames and the background noise of the grenade explosions and pulser fire from her two remaining rearguards, she could hear the unarmored man coughing and wheezing, but that didn’t make his plasma carbine any less deadly. Taylor went down as the lethal bolt seared its way through her armor, and Gricou screamed a curse as she dropped to one knee and her flechette gun ripped the corporal’s killer apart.

Private Krueger charged past her, and she hurled herself back to her feet to follow him. She and Krueger were all that was left now, aside from the two men fighting frantically to cover their rear, but they were less than thirty meters from Saint-Just’s office. Krueger was as aware of the need for haste as she was, and he’d opened the distance between them while she was still rising from her firing crouch. He was almost at the door to Saint-Just’s outer office—a door that gaped ominously open—when the plasma bolt came screaming down the corridor and cut him in half.

Gricou didn’t waste the energy to curse this time. She only returned fire, hosing the passage with flechettes. Someone went down ahead of her, then someone else, and she charged forward, praying that neither of the bodies had been Saint-Just. The chance of getting out of this alive had become miniscule whatever happened, but if she’d killed him there was no chance at all. Yet somehow the near certainty of her own death had become secondary, almost—not quite, but almost—unimportant, as long as she could know that Oscar Saint-Just was already dead. And if he wasn’t, then she had to catch up with them before the bodyguards ahead of her could get him to safety.

Mikis Tsakakis knew he would never forgive himself, but it had worked. The last two members of his team, people he had worked and trained with for over three T-years, were dead, and he’d used them as bait. He had deliberately recalled them, knowing they would run directly into the attackers, and they’d done just that.

And just as he’d hoped, the attackers had assumed that the two of them must be the rearguard of the security detail trying to get the Citizen Secretary to safety. It was the only answer that made sense, because surely no unarmored bodyguard would have been so stupid as to charge to meet someone in battle armor, no matter what they were armed with. Coupled with the open office door and the total lack of fire from it, all the attackers could conclude was that they were too late. That the Citizen Secretary was already gone… and that their only chance for success was to overtake him before he got away.