Shit, I’ve been hit, he thought and supported himself against the wall, the coughing man ahead of him coming into view. It was unmistakably Colin Hess, staring up at the ceiling as he bled from three gunshot wounds to the chest and stomach. He was reaching into his pocket with a trembling hand.
Gresham took a knee next to Hess, breathing heavily and keeping his right hand clamped down where he had been hit. It didn’t seem like the bullet had lodged in his arm, but the wound was deep and had clearly ruptured a vein.
“Hess… Why? Why you? You could pay someone to do this. I never thought you’d be putting together the bomb yourself.” Gresham kicked away Hess’s gun for good measure. “You were going to go up with the whole building, weren’t you? Why?”
“Because…” Hess wheezed and hacked, blood bubbling out of his mouth like a forest spring. “Because… I didn’t want… I didn’t want…”
His shaking hand was clutching something. Gresham leaned closer to try to hear the words but Hess only produced indecipherable gurgling. Gresham could tell that it was a lost cause and pried open Hess’s hand, meeting no resistance. It was a wadded-up wedding photograph of a smiling young man and an attractive dark-haired woman.
“Where’s Perry?” Gresham demanded and Hess turned his head to spit blood out.
“He’s… he’s…” he feebly gestured with his other hand upwards, unable to lift his arm more than an inch off of the ground.
Gresham nodded and rose, picking up Hess’s gun as he did. There were three bullets left in the magazine. Better than his own sidearm.
Tearing off his left sleeve, Gresham tied the cloth around his shoulder to create a makeshift tourniquet and wiped some of the blood from his face with his good arm. He looked back at Hess one more time before hurrying off the way he came.
Hess’s final thought as death enveloped him was that he was indeed going to be buried alone.
#
It was nine o’ clock and no word from Hess. The bomb should have been ready by now.
They had been discovered and Hess had been intercepted, likely killed. That was the only explanation. Perry started hyperventilating and dabbed sweat from his cheeks with his sleeve.
“You alright there?” a portly, aging colonel asked Perry from across the table.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Perry replied, taking a deep breath. Paine had concluded his speech and let each delegate address the assembled audience, each struggling through thickly accented Standard. He rose. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling hot. I need some fresh air.”
“Do what you have to do,” the colonel said with a chuckle and sipped some more of his complimentary champagne.
Perry passed one of the security guards and paused just beyond the door. “Any word from Barkley?”
“None, besides to get ready to leave. Is something wrong?”
“Hess hasn’t sent us a confirmation yet, so I’m going to go down there and check on him. Make sure nobody follows me.”
Perry stepped out into the lobby, acknowledging another mercenary over a hundred yards away before turning to the left and briskly walking across the marble floor, his footsteps echoing in the massive, silent atrium.
This isn’t good, Eli, he thought. He pulled out his voxcom as he approached the entrance to the service corridor and called Barkley.
“Hello?”
“I think something’s gone wrong. Have you been able to reach Dakkal?”
“Negative. The LAPD responded pretty quickly to a bunch of krokator shooting everyone in sight on the bridge. Go figure. I’d give us at most five minutes before they show up here in swarms to make sure the summit isn’t in danger.”
“It’s your job to give them updates on the security here! That’s why I’m paying you!”
“I have been, Perry.”
Perry pushed through the doors to the back corridor, scowling. “Christ. Are they coming for sure?”
“Without a doubt. I’m telling the mercenaries to bail save one or two.”
The good news, Perry reminded himself, was that there was no evidence to implicate him. He could always just slip out undetected, lie low for a while and then rendezvous with Grakko and their other partners at a later time. Barkley and the mercenaries would never survive a gunfight with armored police officers or similarly equipped Marines if it came to that.
He turned to head down to the basement and lowered the voxcom to hang up when the butt of a gun collided with his jaw and he fell to the floor.
Perry tried to get up but was kicked back down. He rolled over to see Gresham standing over him with a gun, looking a fearsome sight. The intelligence officer’s right sleeve was torn off and tied around his shoulder, which was bleeding heavily, and the top half of his ear had been clipped off, spilling dark, dried blood all over his face and neck.
“Surprised to see me alive?” Gresham growled and bent down, grabbing Perry by the collar, fiery rage in his eyes.
#
Zurra pulled his pistol from his boot, trying to figure out the best angle to hit the distant heretic from. The red-spiked hair of his target moved slightly and Zurra seized his opportunity. He leapt to his feet, charging down the thin catwalk towards his target. The heretic appeared on the other side of the concrete support and Zurra leapt sideways onto an adjoining walkway, dodging the poisonous needle meant for his chest.
Zurra landed on his side and fired three barbs in quick succession. Two struck the heretic in the shoulder and the other disappeared into the twilight. The krokator shrieked and fell away.
Unfortunately, the heretic’s gun fell with him, and Zurra was low on needles. Nevertheless, he rounded the concrete barrier to see Dakkal under fifty yards away, scampering along the catwalk and glancing back every now and then to check for pursuers.
“Face me, coward!” Zurra roared and launched a single needle. Intended to frighten Dakkal, it instead nearly hit him, splitting one of the spikes of thin hair on his head and clearly startling the heretic leader, who paused in fear.
Zurra climbed out onto the same catwalk as Dakkal and approached, gripping one of the guard wires tightly with his free hand as another gust of wind rattled the maze of platforms. “Hrain, run all you want, I could kill you from here.”
Dakkal revealed his own okka gun and turned to face Zurra. “This is not a duel either of us will survive, Sharm Zurra. From a hundred yards away either of us can hit the other and even dodging a needle would be fatal on these walkways should one slip.”
“True. But this will end here, on this platform.” Zurra glanced sideways to see the rays of the setting sun reflected on the waves beneath them. It was a long way down.
“Then let us settle this the honorable way,” Dakkal said and tossed his gun off the platform. Zurra watched it fall away until it had grown so small it was no longer visible.
He looked back at Dakkal and raised his own okka gun. “You suppose I would hesitate to kill you, heretic?”
“Do your worst. Would you really kill me when I am unarmed?”
Zurra let a needle fly inches from Dakkal’s head and he could see the heretic flinch and take a step back. He approached, getting within twenty feet of his quarry. The wind rushed through again and Zurra stopped to brace himself, grabbing hold of the wire. In his moment of hesitation, Dakkal whipped a long, wicked knife out of his own boot and crouched in an attack stance.
“Go on, shoot me,” he growled, baring his tusks. “Or come closer. It does not matter to me.”
Zurra glared and continued approaching, gun in hand. “I want to know who else you are working with. Who produced the weapons used to kill the Emperor and his guards?”
“You can ask me in the Origin World, hrain!” Dakkal roared once Zurra was within a few feet and lunged forward. Zurra fired a needle but he was surprised when Dakkal ducked and rolled perfectly on one shoulder to avoid it. Before he could get off another shot, Dakkal kicked the gun away and it went soaring onto a nearby platform, skidding to the edge.
&
nbsp; Zurra dodged a jab and struck Dakkal in the abdomen. The heretic kneed him from his lowered position and then brought his elbow down onto Zurra’s back.
He regretted the decision to give Zurra a lower position as he was plowed forward and the two krokator both fell to a larger platform nearby, each grabbing at the tusks and face of the other and trying to avoid rolling lest they both plunge from the narrow catwalk. The knife scratched a deep cut into Zurra’s upper shoulder and he howled in pain, slamming Dakkal’s arm into the metal, causing him to release the knife. As they both clawed after it, the sharp blade was knocked off of the platform completely.
Dakkal twisted his way out from the bottom of their tangle and slid further up to get in a better position to attack, digging his fingers into the sockets of Zurra’s eyes and squeezing hard. Zurra grabbed Dakkal’s left wrist with both hands, twisted with all his might and heard a resounding crunch as it broke.
With his quarry momentarily incapacitated, Zurra dove onto the next platform and reached after the okka gun where it was lying only inches from his fingers. Before he could get his hand around it he was tackled from behind, and Dakkal wrapped an arm around his neck, driving a knee into his groin.
“Grakko told me about your brother,” Dakkal hissed into Zurra’s ear. “Told me he squealed. That he begged for mercy. Did you know that? Mm?”
Zurra clawed at Dakkal’s arm but the grip was tight. He coughed and choked and struggled to reach the okka gun.
“You want to know the funny thing about your brother? He never earned the Death Box they sent home to your father.”
Zurra got a hand on the pistol and threw his shoulders sideways, twisting on the platform. Dakkal hesitated and Zurra used the opportunity to kick the krokator’s legs out, causing him to fall back into the wire. Dakkal caught himself with his good arm and straightened up.
Zurra rolled over and fired a single okka needle into the side of Dakkal’s knee. The heretic’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head as Zurra grabbed the wire near his edge of the platform to pull himself upright.
“My brother is alive?” he whispered in stunned shock. “You cannot be serious…”
Dakkal smiled from ear to ear. “See you in the Origin World, Sharm Zurra.” As he lost strength from the poison, he released his grasp of the wire and dropped out over the water.
Zurra watched him fall the entire way down.
#
Gresham pressed the barrel of the gun into Perry’s chest. “Blowing up a whole building of delegates? Killing the President, half the Cabinet and who knows how many members of the military and Commission? You’ve got some nerve, Perry.”
“You’re smarter than I assumed, Major,” Perry said as Gresham pushed him back into the wall. “And more resilient. How’s your shoulder?”
“I’ll manage, you jackass.” He spun Perry around and aimed the gun at the back of his head. “Start walking.”
“What exactly is your plan here, Major? You don’t think you’ll attract attention parading me around with a gun to my head?”
Gresham considered this and lowered the weapon, discreetly burrowing the barrel into Perry’s lower spine. “Point taken.”
“My men are in control of this building, they will shoot you on sight the moment they see us together.”
“Good for them. The place is being surrounded as we speak.”
“I’m sure it is,” Perry retorted dismissively. “Gresham, you can’t win. You have no evidence – none – that implicates me.”
They pushed out into the lobby, still eerily quiet. Gresham blinked. His left arm was going numb. Nevertheless, he squeezed down on Perry’s wrist and pushed him forward.
“I have powerful friends you can’t even fathom,” Perry said triumphantly. “Hess and I were giving all these people a mercy stroke. Something terrible is coming and the Alliance must be ready to embrace it when the day of reckoning arrives. We could have made it ready.”
“Oh yeah? I don’t suppose these friends of yours will save you, will they?”
“You’re a fool.”
“Shut up,” Gresham wheezed. He shook his head, trying to stay conscious. “You know what I don’t get, Perry? What’s a corporate sleaze like you doing here? When guys like you break the law, its insider trading or embezzlement, not terrorism. What do you gain from blowing all these people up?”
Perry noticed the loss of strength and shook his arm free. “You wouldn’t understand, Gresham. You don’t know what I know. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. There needed to be someone left behind to pick up the pieces in the coming months and years. Someone who knows what needs to be done in the brave new world we’re all going to be living in soon.”
Gresham, without the support of holding onto his prisoner, collapsed against the floor, still grasping the pistol loosely in his hand.
“You’re pathetic,” Perry said with a mocking tone and picked Gresham up by the collar, dragged him along the floor and pushed him up against a pillar, their faces inches apart. “You have nothing to threaten me with. Nothing. You lost, Gresham. You went to all this trouble, went through all this pain, just so that you could bleed out while I watched.”
“Are you sure?”
Perry’s eyes went wide as Gresham raised the gun up with his last ounce of strength and pulled the trigger. Two bullets tore through Perry’s chest and the third ripped open his throat. His body pitched sideways without a sound, his legs tangling with Gresham’s.
“That’s for Lara, you slimy fuck,” Gresham coughed and tossed the empty gun aside, trying to focus on keeping his eyes open, while the ceiling above pitched and turned. He was going into shock and he could no longer feel his left side.
A tall, balding security guard suddenly towered over Gresham, holding an okka pistol in his left hand. He bent down to grab the top of Gresham’s head and tilted it up so he could get a better look at him. The stranger looked confused.
“Who the hell are you?”
Gresham struggled to form words as he began to lose consciousness. “Major John S. Gresh… Gresham… Military… Intel...”
The security guard stepped back, raising his okka gun so that it was aimed right at Gresham’s relaxed, blank face. “Goodbye, Major Gresham.”
The sound of shattering glass echoed through the lobby and the impostor turned his head. There was the resounding crack of a rifle and his head snapped back as a bullet punctured a precise hole directly through his skull.
Gresham slid further down the pillar, trying to drag himself away from the two warm bodies with his uninjured arm. He finally collapsed about five feet away as the boot of a Marine appeared in front of his eyes.
“We’ve got an injured one! Get a medic!”
“All contacts are clear! Let’s start to evacuate the building!”
“Is the President safe?”
I need a vacation, Gresham thought as he passed out for the second time in twenty-four hours.
Epilogue
Los Angeles, Planet Terra, Sol System
“I had to pull more than a few strings,” Ambassador Jerven fumed. “In the course of a week, High Prod Nikkwill, I have had to use almost every favor I have spent thirteen years accumulating here on this hrain-ridden rock! And all to save your prized attack dog!”
Nikkwill scowled and rose to his full, imposing height, glaring at the ambassador. “Your lack of gratitude is alarming, Orget Jerven. Were it not for Sharm Zurra, you and I would both be dead! He and his friend… what was his name again?”
“Cooker of foods,” Zurra replied dutifully, keeping his gaze cast downwards.
“Right! Cooker of – Sharm Zurra, do you mean to tell me that you and a mere cook caused all this damage?”
“No, High Prod. It is my nickname for him. His name is John Gresham, and he is an officer in the equivalent of their sukuda.”
“Nickname?”
“You have to admit, his name sounds… well, grishemm, it is a cooker of foods. Sir.”
Jerven was c
learly not amused. “It is not my concern what he calls his boyfriend, High Prod Nikkwill! I demand that Sharm Zurra be disciplined harshly upon return to the Empire. The police here will want to arrest us just for getting him out of jail!”
“I think not, ambassador. Zurra will receive the highest commendations from both the Emperor and myself upon his return, whenever he chooses for that to be.”
Zurra’s glanced up. “Sir?”
Nikkwill smiled. “I have made arrangements privately with the head of the Alliance military to allow you to stay here as President Paine’s personal guest for as long as you wish. I know that Terra may not be the most understanding of worlds, but the humans insisted on lavishing you with every compliment in return for your heroic acts. Had you not stayed behind to battle the Hudda Kugrall – outnumbered and alone, to boot – the ‘cooker of foods,’ as you call him, would never have reached the banquet hall to stop the attack. We would all be dead and the galaxy would be in a dangerous place.”
Zurra bowed his head. “I am honored, High Prod, but I will return with you if that is your wish.”
“No, I want you to stay. The human President had a lot of good things to say in his speech. If there is truly a conspiracy against the League, as the evidence suggests, then the galaxy’s two mightiest nations must stand together against it. You may be an instrument of goodwill the likes of which the Empire has never seen before.”
“He is not a diplomat, Nikkwill!”
“I know he is not,” the High Prod responded, beaming. “He is a soldier and he will conduct himself as one. You are dismissed, ambassador.”
“This is my embassy!”
“And Zurra and I have matters to discuss in private. Anything further you have to say can be said to me later. Goodbye.”
Jerven’s face contorted into a mask of disgust and anger, but he did not act upon it and turned away in a fury, storming away across the grounds of the Imperial embassy.
Nikkwill chuckled. “I warned you, Zurra, that he is a politician, but he means well and wants to keep our relations with the Alliance on the right path. Do not take offense at his anger, no matter how misplaced it may be.”