Admiral Fenton Pry, however, had been expecting something 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't been keeping up lately. But he knew roughly how the attack would unfold, and had palmed a silk handkerchief some hours ago. He placed it over his mouth and rose.
A horrifying cramp shot through one leg. The admiral had tried dutifully to perform escape-pod stretches, but he'd been in the chair for four hours. He limped toward where the Child Empress must be, blinking away blood from his eyes and breathing shallowly. The floor rolled as a heavy portion of the palace's ancient masonry collapsed nearby.
Marines coming in?
They're too close, the admiral thought. This was a natural stone building, for His Majesty's sake. Admiral Pry could have taught whoever was in charge 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 commando's spine thrust from the gaping exit wound at forty-five-degree angles.
Pry noted with professional pleasure that the slug had struck the commando's chest dead center. He nodded his head curtly, the same gesture he used to replace the words well done with his staff. Her blaster, extended toward Child Empress at arm's length, was untouched.
The admiral lifted her hand from it, careful not to let the rigid fingers pull the trigger, and turned to the Empress's still form.
"M'Lady?" he asked.
The Empress's face was twisted 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't been shot by anything as brutal as a blaster or an exsanguination round.
Admiral Pry had a few seconds to wonder what was wrong before the heavy ash doors burst open.
CORPORAL
Marine Corporal Mirame Lao was the first out of her dropship.
A veteran of twenty-six combat insertions, she had set her entry vehicle to the highest egress speed/lowest safety rating. At this setting, the dropship vomited open at the moment of impact, spilling Corporal Lao onto the floor in a cascade of suddenly liquidized gee-gel, through which she rolled like a parachutist hitting thick mud. She came up standing. The seal that protected her varigun's barrel from clogging with gel popped out like a champagne 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 numbing from automatically injected anesthesia; her battle armor's servomotors took over its motion. Lao realized that the break must be severe; as the leg moved, 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 draw--wouldn't last more than six minutes. She confirmed a blinking yellow glyph with her eye-mouse, and braced herself. Her battle armor huffed as it contracted implosively, shoving her dislocated shoulder back into place. Now that hurt.
By now, some fourteen seconds after impact, the marine corporal was oriented to the wireframe map in her secondary vision. To her right, the marine doctor was rising gingerly up from the gel vomited by his own drop-ship, disoriented but intact. The vehicle that had brought the Apparatus initiate down hadn'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 from the council chamber, gaining speed even with her lopsided gait. She was right-handed, but she hit the ashwood doors with her already wounded left shoulder; no sense injuring the good arm. Another spike of pain shot through her as the doors burst open.
She tumbled into the council chamber with weapon raised, scanning the room for the Rix commandos.
They were easy to find. All four had fallen, and each was the origin of a long ellipse of thick red ejecta sprayed on walls and floor. A lighter, pink shroud of human blood coated everything in the room, from the ornate settings on the table to the stunned or shrieking hostages.
These four Rix were definitely dead. Lao clicked her tongue to transmit a preconfigured signal to the Lynx: Council chamber secured.
"Here!" a voice called.
The word came from an old man who wore what appeared--beneath its bloody patina--to be an admiral's uniform. He knelt over two figures, one writhing, one still.
The Child Empress, and a dead Rix.
Marine Corporal Lao ran to the pair, reaching for a large device on her back. This move caused her wounded shoulder to scream with pain, and her vision reddened at the edges. Lao overrode the suit's suggestion of anesthesia; she needed both arms working at top efficiency. There were three surviving Rix in the building; this might turn into a firefight yet.
The diagnostics on the generator blinked green. It had survived the jump in working order. She reached for its controls, but movement behind her--the helmet extended her peripheral vision to 360 degrees--demanded her attention. Lao spun with her weapon raised, shoulder flaring with pain again.
It was the marine doctor.
"Come!" she ordered, her helmet uttering one of the preprogrammed words she could access with a tongue click. Her lungs remained full of drop-goo, whose pseudo-alveoli continued to pump high-grade oxygen into her system. "Sir!" she added.
The man stumbled forward, disoriented as a recruit after his first high-acceleration test. The corporal grabbed the doctor's shoulder and pulled him into the generator's radius. There was no time to waste. The com signals from the rest of the drop were running through her secondary audio, terse battle chatter as her squadmates engaged the remaining Rix.
Corporal Lao activated the machine, and a level one stasis field jumped to life around the five of them: Empress, lifeless Rix commando, admiral, doctor, and marine corporal. The rest of the council chamber dimmed. From the outside, the field would appear as a smooth and reflective black sphere, invulnerable to simple blaster fire. The hiss of an oxygen recycler came from the machine; the field was airtight as well.