Taldageron and Captain Avangar soon ran into groups of people heading the other way, some screaming as they hurried away from whatever was happening up the street. A pillar of black smoke rising over the rooftops seemed to mark the location. A few rickshaws and carts lay abandoned in the street. A torthugan continued to lumbar down the road unattended, still pulling its massive cargo wagon behind it. During the third phase of their strange life cycle, the great armored amphibians spent most of their time on land and had become the primary beast of burden on both coasts.
Avangar shouted into his comm as he ran, “Activate the Rapid Reaction Force. Deploy forward scouts.”
Taldageron wished he could hear the same comm traffic that Avangar did. He still hadn't heard a single word through his comm. Bringing in the Marines seemed like a pretty big escalation.
A siren began blaring behind them. Taldageron glanced back and saw a few police officers on electric bikes heading towards the smoke. The Crown controlled most of the motorized vehicles on the planet. He wondered if these were real policemen or more of Avangar’s Suraskar agents.
As he turned his attention back forward, through a gap in the little shops lining the street, he could have sworn he saw red lighting flash by at street level. Then thunder shook the ground.
Taldageron decided maybe the Marines would be a good idea.
Avangar changed course slightly as he headed towards the red lightning.
They dashed down a narrow alley between buildings to get over to the next street quicker, and as soon as they exited the alley onto the main street, multiple pulses of blue energy pounded into the road next to them.
Taldageron leaped back towards the alley, while Avangar had dropped to the ground and rolled back.
The image of the street was frozen in Taldageron’s mind. Dozens of people lay dead or wounded in the street. Some were on fire, the smoke from their bodies adding to the smoke of several buildings now burning. The pulse fire had come from atop a three-story building, the tallest on this street.
“Target is on top of the Amrit building,” said Avangar into his comm. "He has at least a dozen armed friends. They have some kind of energy weapon in addition to pulse rifles. Eighth Street looks like a battlefield."
Taldageron agreed that it looked something like a battlefield, but most of the bodies appeared to be civilians. Were the hildagos attempting another insurrection? He just didn’t understand what the purpose of all this was. The carnage just seemed so pointless. There had to be more going on.
“They knew we were on to Maldi,” said Taldageron as the thought coalesced into his head. “This is all just to divert our attention.”
“Maybe,” said Avangar as he activated the camera-sight on his pulse rifle. A small targeting screen popped up. “Other teams are raiding Maldi’s properties.”
He quickly swung the pulse rifle around and peeked around the corner, trying to use the telescopic gunsight to investigate the enemy's position. He just as quickly pulled back as a blast of blue energy shot by, impacting the building on the other side of their alley with a small explosion of brick fragments.
Taldageron ducked and covered his face as he was pelted with small fragments of brick.
Avangar brushed the dust and debris from his face and said, "We're going to have to relocate soon." Then something seemed to catch his attention, and he glanced back up the street in the opposite direction.
Taldageron edged over to take a look in the same direction while trying not to expose himself to any enemy fire from the building. About a hundred yards away, a vispa buzzed around the rooftops, moving in an arc around the Amrit building. One of the forward scouts for the Rapid Reaction Force assigned to backup Avangar and his agents.
A series of blue energy pulses shot from the building towards the vispa, but it constantly changed direction as it buzzed around, making it very hard to hit at over a hundred yards away. It did seem to move back, though, increasing the range.
Avangar edged up to the corner of the building again and leaned out just enough to aim his pulse rifle, and then he began returning fire.
Taldageron wished he had something more than his stunner pistol, which was pretty much useless at this range. He felt kind of useless.
Avangar pulled back just before the corner of their building exploded in a small blast of shattered brick as a blue pulse caught the edge as it shot by.
“I think relocating would be a very good idea,” said Taldageron. Whoever was shooting at them would soon realize they could probably shoot them through the building. The brick walls wouldn’t stand up to pulse fire for long.
“Got to keep them distracted for just a few moments longer,” said Avangar.
Just then blue energy pulses shot by, but this time heading towards the building. Somebody else had joined the fight.
Taldageron leaned in again and peeked around the corner. Several vispas had moved in closer to the building, firing at the top, while from various other positions people on the ground and top of other buildings fired at it too. The tower shone like a fountain of sparks as blue pulses streaked in from all directions and shot out in all directions.
Then explosions rocked the ground and thundered through the sky. An assault shuttle came streaking in from higher altitudes, its main cannon blasting away.
In that instant, all the blue pulses stopped. The people firing at the tower stopped, and the people firing from the tower stopped.
In the frenzy of all that was happening, it took Taldageron a moment to realize that the assault shuttle’s main cannon should have inflicted massive damage to the building by now. But it had not. It was firing blanks. A diversion.
Once that cannon started firing, everybody on the roof would have been diving for cover or trying to get as far away as possible.
Taldageron quickly surmised that they wanted the assassin taken alive if possible. The assault shuttle could have taken out the whole rooftop in seconds if it had been so ordered.
The shuttle came in and turned hard as it rapidly decelerated into a holding position over the building. The exits sprung open, and Royal Marines began pouring out and leaping down on droplines, computer-controlled elastics cords. Taldageron thought he saw the elite Nagas in their distinctive uniforms of black scale armor and green headdresses lead the way.
But just as the first Naga touched down, red lightning shot from the top of the building, striking the shuttle hovering not more than thirty or forty feet away. A thunderous blast shook the ground as the shuttle blew in half in a brilliant red fireball.
The front part of the shuttle and the command deck was blasted away, twirling and on fire as it shot into a nearby strip of shops, creating another large blast upon impact.
Taldageron stood there mesmerized as the rear section twirled too as is it spun away, shooting out in his direction, completely engulfed in red flame and flinging burning debris and burning Marines. It mostly disintegrated before it crashed down in the middle of the street right in front of Taldageron.
This was madness.
Avangar grabbed his collar and pulled him back into the alleyway just as fiery debris tumbled past him down the street.
“Negatory! Negatory!” Avangar shouted into is comm. “There’ll be nothing left to recover.”
Taldageron forced away his shock and tried to look around the corner again. There was a chance there might be survivors in need of assistance. It would be a very small chance after the destruction he had just seen, but perhaps some chance. As he appraised the carnage, fiery debris scattered in a large radius, fiery bodies scattered as well, he saw somebody come out of the Amrit Building. The assassin.
“It’s him!” he shouted to Avangar, and then he started running towards him as fast he could.
“Standby!” Avangar yelled. “He’s on the run, heading northeast.”
Quite a few pillars of dark smoke had blossomed up from multiple locations, and as Taldageron skirted past burning wreckage and debris, he did kind of wonder if maybe this wa
s a good idea. Someone had just shot an assault shuttle out of the sky, and he was charging after him with a stunner pistol.
Taldageron had to watch his step as he ran because of all the obstacles -- fires, bodies, big chunks of shuttle debris, and pave stones that had been knocked free and scattered all over the road from all the impacts -- so he was taken by surprise when he rounded a big piece of shuttle debris and found the assassin suddenly standing before him.
The hildago’s clothes no longer suited a nobleman -- frayed and dirty. His boots and scabbard were scuffed and scratched. His hair had become disheveled, and black soot coated one of his cheeks. Perhaps a nobleman having a really bad day, yet other of his features might make one question whether he was even human at this point -- not only did his eyes seem to glow an even brighter shade of red, but his right arm, the arm that he had wrapped with strange belt writhing with insect parts, now had become something out of nightmares, some new appendage of sharp, jagged chitin. Long, super-articulated ‘fingers' covered with jagged spikes and hooks rippled in motion as he smiled at Taldageron.
Taldageron just stood there as his mind tried to process what he was seeing.
Avangar collided into Taldageron’s back, apparently rounding the same shuttle wreckage and not having time to stop when Taldageron suddenly appeared before him, just standing in the street.
Just as Taldageron tumbled forward, red lightning shot from the assassin’s nightmarish arm as a thunderclap rattled the ground.
The light and noise left him a little dazed as he fell to the ground, but he suddenly realized that a fireball blazed where he had just been standing. Where Avangar had just been standing. It was that nightmarish arm that was the energy weapon that brought down the assault shuttle.
Taldageron pulled up the stunner pistol and fired and fired and fired.
The green beams kept hitting the assassin, but he resisted. He should have been totally paralyzed as many times as he had been hit, but the hildago was able to grimace as he tried to point his grotesque arm at Taldageron, slowly shifting his aim over, pausing for a moment each time a stunner beam hit him.
Taldageron rose to his feet as he continued to fire, moving in a circle around the assassin, making sure the deadly arm did not line up with him.
Then the stunner pistol stopped firing. Taldageron squeezed the trigger a few more times, but he was pretty sure the charger was out of juice.
The assassin still moved like he was dazed and stuck in honey, but Taldageron doubted it would last long. He glanced over at the fiery remains of Avangar to see if his pulse rifle was still intact, but he saw no sign of it. There didn’t seem to be any weapons around. Not a real weapon anyway. He supposed he might have to grab a pave stone.
Then he heard a small chuckle. The hildago was regaining his muscle control. And his nightmarish arm began to more quickly spin in his direction.
Taldageron sighed, but then his eyes locked on the hildalgo’s sword. Better than a pave stone at least.
He leaped the short distance separating the two, coming up behind the slowly turning hildago, and drew the sword from the man’s scabbard. He quickly glanced at the blade to make sure it was real steel and had a true edge.
Normally he might have hesitated to take a blade to such a disadvantaged opponent, but this opponent seemed more a monster than a man. He took a step back and raised the sword, but suddenly he had some doubt -- kill the assassin immediately, or try and take him alive. Then he knew. He would hamstring him -- cut the muscles and tendons in the back of his thigh and cripple him. That was something they had practiced when his father had taught him the blade.
He ducked barely in time as the assassin’s slow movement suddenly sped up to normal speed, the nightmarish arm swinging at him. He could feel its wake across the top of his head as he was almost too slow.
Taldageron slammed the blade into the back of the man’s thigh.
Lightning and thunder blasted his senses again, temporarily blinding and deafening him. As he forced his attention back onto the assassin, he saw the hildago on his back, rage written across his face. The assassin must have fired his weapon by accident as the blade cut into him.
But now he was trying to point the weapon, his hideous arm, at Taldageron.
There was no way he was going to take him alive as long as that arm could keep shooting lightning at him. He leaped forward as he brought the sword up over his head in a two-handed grip, and then he chopped down at the man's shoulder.
Another blast of lightning and thunder shook the ground. It shook his senses again too, but he could distinctly feel the burned flesh on his side where the red lightning had grazed him.
He looked down at the grotesque arm, still attached to the bloody shoulder, still covered in a faint red glow. He brought the sword up and again chopped down with both hands. This time, there was no thunder, just the screams of the assassin. Taldageron kept chopping, and the assassin kept screaming until the arm was separated from the body. Then they both stopped. The assassin's dead eyes no longer glowed red.
Taldageron took a deep breath, and fell to the ground, sitting next to the dead assassin as the dismembered arm twitched and writhed on the broken pave stones. He spoke into his comm, hoping somebody was listening on the other end. “This is Shvank. The assassin is dead. Captain Avangar is dead. And I’ve recovered the energy weapon.”
“You cut it awfully close,” said a voice from his comm.
Just then three aircraft streaked by overhead. Skeiron Mark 3’s from what he could tell. Heavy assault fighters from the Menelaus that had been distributed to the various military districts to beef up their firepower.
This was much bigger than any hildago rebellion. War had begun, but he had no idea who or what the enemy was.
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