Kris Longknife: Audacious Part 47

"Oh my" was the man's shocked reply.

"Tell your man to open the road. To get the ambulances in here."

"We can't do that. They'll talk to the media. This is horrible."

"Yes, Mr. Third Vice President, this place is horrible, people are dying, and you and I are talking about totally irrelevant matters.

"Tonight people have been trying to shoot me dead and blow me to bits. And I have shot people dead and hurled explosives that blew them to pieces. It would be no bother at all for me to add you to the long list of people who died here tonight."

"Oh" came low and slow to the man's lips.

"Take down the roadblock."

The politician looked down at the automatic at his throat. For a long second he eyed it, alarm growing in his eyes. Kris could almost hear his brain grinding as the pistol changed from a party prop to an instrument of death.

To the source of his impending doom.

Eden's third vice president brought his wrist up to his mouth. "Inspector Johnson."

"Yes, sir" came only a second later.

"Allow the emergency services vehicles in. Allow everyone in. Close down the roadblock. We need help here. Lots of it. Now."

"What about the media?"

"Don't worry about them. Just get help in here."

"Sir, is Kris Longknife pressuring you?"

"Inspector, do it."

"Yes, sir."

The line went dead. Kris didn't let go of the politician. She didn't lower the gun. Open covenants openly arrived at was one of her father's favorite sayings. But until this covenant started to pay off with medical care here, it hadn't been agreed to and Kris wanted this man to know that his chances of living to see the morning were not getting any better.

Gunnery Sergeant Brown kicked in the front door of the rotunda.

"I think the ambulances are moving, finally," he announced, "Yes, those blasted whirley gig lights are finally moving."

"Let me know when the first one gets here," Kris ordered, not releasing her grip on one pale, political fish. Maybe he was finally getting a good look at what lay around him.

Or maybe the closeness of his own brush with mortality was settling in.

A long minute later, the first ambulance arrived.

Kris didn't even waste a sigh when she tossed the politician aside. His knees failed to support him, and he fell on a still oozing body. The lovely blonde did not stoop to offer him solace.

She'd spotted a newsie coming in and made a beeline for him.

Lieutenant Martinez arrived in the first wave, a pair of alternate media reports at his elbow. They looked around wide eyed. One lost her lunch, but they kept their cameras rolling.

This was not something that would be lost somewhere between the happening and the eleven o'clock news.

Oh, and Inspector Johnson showed up.

He made a beeline straight for Kris.

57.

Kris had a command to care for. One that had bled deeply.

Gunnery Sergeant Brown announced he was the proud owner of ten prisoners. "Would have been eleven, but dang if the officer that I personally plugged didn't managed to smash a tooth or something and kill himself."

"I sure wanted to talk to him," Gunny finished.

"So did I, Gunny, but I'm starting to think Greenfeld's powers that be don't want to be at war with us any more than our honchos want to be at war with them, official like."

Which seemed to leave Gunny Brown with something to chew on.

Kris knew that the first thing she should have done was go hunting for the amba.s.sador. Instead, she trotted for the riverside walk to check on Captain DeVar. No surprise, the zoo collecting around her, trotted right along. Even Johnson.

The wounded captain was just being lifted onto a stretcher.

"He going to be okay?" Kris asked the nearest medic.

The woman looked worried. "He's lost a lot of blood. We got to get him to Doc fast."

"I'm too mean to let a little leakage put me down," the captain grumbled, but his words were slurring.

"Gunny," Kris said into her commlink, "we need a rig here fast for the captain." She glanced around the field. There were several casualties that looked to have been hit hard by the auto-gun. More that had been hit too hard and were beyond aid.

"I got one rig able to roll. That whale of yours needs a new tire. Once the driver changes it, I'm sending it back to the emba.s.sy with the walking wounded."

"Do that," Kris agreed. "Just get me something back here that can handle four," she said, eyeing the medic. The woman held up a hand with all fingers spread. "Five stretchers."

"d.a.m.n, was it that bad back there?"

"It looks it," Kris answered.

A Marine rig quickly arrived, shot up and limping, but going nevertheless. Tailing it were a pair of private rigs driven by loyal members of the Fraternal Order of Proud Caballeros.

And a newsie made to jam a mike under Kris's oversize nose.

Inspector Johnson got in the way. "You can't interview her."

"Why not?"

Martinez stepped forward. "Because he doesn't want you to know the only thing that stood between the liquidation of all our leaders and the survival of the few who did was these Marines from Wardhaven."

"That's not true," Johnson insisted.

"Pan your camera over this field," Martinez went on. "Who do you see down? Not Eden troops. You drove by the wreckage of our rapid reaction force. How close did it get?"

"Not very," the reporter said.

"You've taken pictures inside the hall. Did you see any of our guards still alive?"

"My producer isn't allowing us to show those pictures." The reporter shivered at a memory. "It's too b.l.o.o.d.y, but I can say that all I saw were Marines and a few private guards still alive. And some of their patrons," she hastily added.

"You can't say that," Johnson insisted.

"I just did," the reporter shot back. "And I said it to the"-she tapped her earbud-"to our ten million subscribers, including the nine million that just joined us tonight."

"I'll have your license canceled," Johnson snapped through gritted teeth.

"You and what government?" the reporter snapped back. "Shirley Chisel of the opposition has already called for new elections."

"They can't make such a call."

"They can if they're not the opposition," the reporter said with a grin. "A lot of them weren't invited to this shindig tonight. And just making an educated guess at the survival rate of those that were, I'd say the majority party doesn't have anything like a majority anymore. How many votes do you think they'll have in the morning?"

Johnson paled.

And Kris did a quick look at her options.

Eden was changing. It could never be the same after this night. Oh, people like Johnson and his boss might try, but this tide was in full flow, and only fools got in the way of a riptide.

So what did that mean for her?

King Ray would probably try meddling in these people's affairs. Kris was no longer blind to some of his less socially desirable habits. But she was here and he was not.

These people did not need a Longknife. Or rather, they'd had about all of a Longknife that they could take.

With a shrug, Kris made up her mind.

"If you will excuse me, I have wounded Marines I need to get to care before we lose them." Kris saluted the reporter and the police lieutenant, and turned away.

"And my cops and caballeros are searching the great hall for any living soul," Martinez said. "What do you say we get more pictures your producer can try to edit for public consumption?"

"Who did this?" the reporter asked as they left.

"We'll be a long time investigating that question," the cop said carefully. "Things like this aren't accidents that just blow up one day. But at the bottom of it all, I think we'll discover that we did this to ourselves."

Kris went about her duty, hunting through every nook and cranny where a Marine might have fallen. She would leave no one behind. No one for the civilians to stumble across.

The wounded were dispatched to the emba.s.sy at first. But Doc was quickly overwhelmed. When Kris's limo took off with the walking wounded like Penny, it headed for a hospital.

The search went through the night. The emba.s.sy sent a team of Foreign Service officers to hunt for the amba.s.sador. They found him, along with the third political officer, a lovely middle-aged woman who had taken Kris's place on his arm. They were among the dead on the ground floor. The attackers hadn't even considered him important enough to herd upstairs.

Wardhaven's officers took their leader back to the emba.s.sy.

Grant von Schrader was also found. The bronze foot of one of the landers had taken him full in the face, smashed his skull, and pinned him against the wall. They identified him by the contents of the wallet in his hip pocket. Kris ordered him left to hang there. "Let Eden pick up its own trash."

The Marines gently collected their own honored dead on the gra.s.s in front of the west portico. The last of them was gently laid out just as sunrise colored the dawn sky. The pink of the reborn sun blushed their cheeks, tried to make them look warm and alive. The lie was painful to observe.

One of Martinez's men showed up with blankets to give them decent cover.

And Kris had her final run-in with Inspector Johnson.

58.

"The President wants you and your Marines out of here," Inspector Johnson started without preamble. "Off this planet. Out of the reach of these newsies and their cameras."

"Your president is dead," Princess Kristine, daughter to Wardhaven's Prime Minister, reminded the inspector. It had been a rough night. Was the obvious slipping out of focus?

"The third vice president is not dead, and he is taking charge."

Kris knew that such transfers were often automatically a.s.sumed by the uninformed. But there were procedures to be followed. "Has he taken the oath? You know, being third in line is still third in line until you raise your right hand and swear the words." Politics turned on such fine distinctions.

That seemed to give Johnson pause. He blinked several times.

Kris gave him a moment to absorb that, then went on. "Besides, if the blond bimbo I saw him with right after the shooting stopped wasn't his wife, I suspect your man is as politically dead as your president is physically." Kris, after all, did grow up on politics.

Now Johnson blanched.

"I have my orders" had to be the final fallback of any poor bureaucrat.

"Is your third vice president aware I have dead and wounded to take care of?"

Another blank stare. Of course this politician had no idea what price had been paid by fighting men while he was up with his bimbo. Of course Johnson had no idea what Kris owed the wounded or fallen. Guys like Johnson wouldn't have thought they owed them a dime.

"Nelly, get me Doc if you can."