Star Risk - 02 Scoundrel Worlds (28 page)

Star Risk thought about throwing a Very Minor Success party, but didn't think hangovers would improve matters if surprises did develop.

Surprises did just that, a bit after dawn the next morning. Evidently L'Pellerin had decided to wait until he had all of Star Risk penned in the same coop before striking.

The attack started with a heavy commercial lifter, crashing at as much speed as it was able to reach holding close to the ground and having to make a hard turn off the boulevard, through the heavy iron gates. It was enough to smash down the gates, then, bursting into flames, it killed the two sentries.

The Masked Ones didn't attack from above, assuming that Star Risk probably had some sort of antiaircraft provision. It did�small autotracking AA missiles hidden in three of the mansion's front bedrooms.

But rather than catching everyone asleep, the new shift of guards was already awake, and finishing breakfast in the dining room. Half an hour earlier, and the Masked Ones might've been able to successfully follow up the first shock attack on the sleeping mansion.

Instead, the two lifters that came in next, modified with armor plating in front of the driver's compartment and filled with heavily-armed gunmen, were immediately engaged by the guard shift commander and his fellows when the intruders lifted over the burning crash, exposing their soft bellies. One lifter spun sideways, crashing beside the initial attacker. The second tried to retreat. The driver was killed by a heavy blaster bolt, and the lifter slid sideways and smashed down in the driveway.

"Go, go, go," Star Risk's hired guns were chanting, as they deployed out into the mansion's yard, finding cover behind parked lifters, trees, and statuary, and finding targets. "We got �em now, we got �em now." No one could complain about the guards' morale.

By then, the five Star Risk principals were awake, half dressed, and had their combat harnesses on.

There was a brief, brisk firefight that killed another Star Risk guard and half a dozen Masked Ones. They fell back, and found cover.

"We have got fire superiority," von Baldur shouted.

"No," Riss called back. "The bastards are waiting for something."

"Well, let's not let them get bored," Goodnight said, and burnt a burst from a crew-served blaster through the rising smoke.

"Did you notice something interesting?" King asked, and Riss was impressed with her calmness. "No sirens."

"So we're to work out our fate by ourselves," Grok said. "L'Pellerin is making sure his thugs aren't interrupted. I don't mind that, since I am of a mind to wreak total havoc."

Goodnight's loader made a small, frightened noise.

Riss heard it before she saw it, then a huge self-propelled gun on tracks ground toward the mansion. Its firing spade cranked down, and it reversed, and the spade dug in to ground the weapon securely. The cannon tube lifted, pointed at the mansion.

"Eat dirt!" Goodnight said, and obeyed his own command, chewing carpet, as the gun's crew aimed and fired. The shell shattered the mansion's enormous front door, smashed through the foyer. It was an armor-piercing round and tore on, not exploding until somewhere in the rear storerooms.

The gun moved forward and smashed into the wrecked lifter. It pulled back, smashed into it again, trying to push it out of the way.

Von Baldur had a throwaway anti-track launcher popped open. He came up in a shattered window, fired. The rocket shot out, hit the SP gun on its heavily armored mantle. It ricocheted upward, not penetrating, and exploded harmlessly.

"Out the back!" von Baldur shouted. "We shall bust it from the side."

He motioned to a guard, and each of them grabbed two launchers. They doubled through the house, and went through the tunnel into the garage. Von Baldur started to pry the door open, and blaster fire chattered around him.

"Damnation! They appear to have discovered our secret," he said, and the two went back the way they came.

The SP gun was still battering at the lifter, slowly moving it aside. The gun fired again, this time high, and took off a good percentage of the mansion's roof.

"Urban renewal," Goodnight managed, trying to see if he could go bester and get out the front for a flanking shot.

A grenade arced through a window, hit, and bounced. Riss watched it roll in slow motion, then it exploded. The blast caught King, sent her rolling back, and shrapnel ripped into Goodnight's leg. He screamed, went down. Jasmine King lay motionless, then she moved slightly without getting up.

Riss was on her knees, and she spotted the two Masked Ones who'd gotten close enough to throw the grenade. One of them was about to throw a second grenade. Her burst took both men down, and the grenade fell out of the man's hand, blew up.

"Thanks," Goodnight gritted, trying to sit up. "Get some of those launchers� third floor, side bedroom. There's a plating to go across into the place next door."

"So that's why�"

"You didn't think I was cultivating that old bat for her sex appeal," Goodnight said. "Now go, god-damnit! Be sure and tell her I sent my love, and that we'll pay for damages."

He slid back behind the crew-served blaster. His loader lay moaning beside it. Goodnight let the rest of a drum blast out into the yard, spattering bolts across the SP gun, which was slowly bulldozing the lifter aside.

Riss saw ten guards scattered around the front rooms, shooting at the Masked Ones, who seemed content to let the gun do all the preliminary work, as she went upstairs, a launcher in each hand. Behind her came Grok, effortlessly carrying a crew-served on its tripod in his arms, a pair of drums under one arm.

M'chel made the third floor landing, ran down the hall, and kicked the unused bedroom door open. It was empty except for a long, heavy steel strip with a dropper harness lashed to either end. The bedroom had double windows, and Riss booted them open.

Less than four meters away was a jutting turret of the next door mansion. Riss turned on the dropper antigravs, and she and Grok slid the strip across, crashing through the other house's turret windows.

The Masked One's artillery piece fired again, and the mansion rocked.

Riss slung the two launchers, ran across the gangplank, and jumped through the broken window. She fell down into a nursery filled with dusty, old-fashioned dolls. Behind her came Grok, delicately balancing as he walked across, the strip bending under the bulk of him and his weapon.

M'chel pulled him into the turret, and they found stairs, went down them. A frightened face peered out of a door, the door slammed closed before Riss could give Chas's greeting.

Part of Riss's mind noted the house's musty smell, dust and unwashed body, and then she was at the front door and had it open.

The front garden was overgrown, bushes and trees reaching high�perfect cover. The two went down the walk to the locked gate. Riss shot it off its hinges with her heavy blaster, the noise buried in the battle-din next door, and they were in the street.

Two Masked Ones, crouched behind a lifter, turned startled faces before Riss killed them.

Grok braced his crew-served gun on the rear lid of the lifter. About thirty meters distant was the entrance to their mansion, the self-propelled cannon slamming at the lifter like a crazed robot. The crew in the open gun tub was concentrating on the gate.

Riss took the safeties off a launcher, aimed carefully. The crew of the gun was loading a shell into the cannon's breech.

Things became very slow.

Riss noted, as she depressed the firing key, a crew member turning, seeing her, lifting an arm, mouth opening to shout a warning. The rocket crawled out of the tube, crossed the space to the SP gun, struck the cannon just inside of its shield, and exploded.

There was a double blast as the shell also exploded, tearing the tube off the gun mount and sending it spinning away. The crew in the tub vanished in the blast, and then the gun's engine caught fire.

The Masked Ones along the avenue gaped in shock for an instant, then Grok opened up with his blaster. That broke them, and, as they'd done before, they pelted away, up the avenue.

M'chel Riss aimed carefully and fired her second rocket.

It took the woman she'd aimed at in the middle of the back, tore her in half, then struck a parked lifter and exploded.

Grok sent the rest of his drum, then another, after their attackers.

Bodies and burning lifters strewed the street, but there was little sound but moans, the crackle of flames, and the occasional pop of a round going off in a fire.

Only then did the "rescuing" sirens start.

***

The toll was heavy.

Of the twenty guards, six had been killed, eight were wounded badly enough to warrant their contracts being paid off, and wound bonuses paid. The mansion's staff, to a person, insisted this was far too risky a job, regardless of pay, and demanded they be given the return ticket to their home worlds and released.

Jasmine King lay on a couch, Riss and one of the two doctors von Baldur had brought to the mansion next to her. Without opening her eyes, she said in a little girl's voice, "I don't like these people."

Riss lifted an eyebrow.

"Concussion," the doctor said. "She'll be wobbly for up to a week. I'll be coming by daily to check on her."

Chas Goodnight sat on another couch, watching the second doctor finish splinting his broken leg. He looked around the room.

The mansion was somewhat of a shambles, missing a good percentage of its roof, all the windows on the front and side, plus suffering extensive interior damage from blaster bolts and the cannon shells. Plaster dust hung thick in the air.

"I think," he observed, "our insurance rates are about to go up."

He winced. "I'll have another of those pain pills, if you please," he said.

"In a moment," the doctor said. "I just want to make sure I don't get any of you in the splint before I seal it."

Jasmine opened her eyes, struggled up. "Everything is going roundy-round," she said, still in the little voice, then: "I think we're going to have to do something about this Mr. L'Pellerin."

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FIFTY-TWO � ^ � But doing something wasn't exactly that easy.

L'Pellerin's DIB building was reconned, and regarded as invulnerable except for a full-out attack by a space fleet or a burrowing nuke. The headquarters was also protected by guard posts hidden in the surrounding buildings. Very alert snipers, relieved every hour, were stationed on the rooftops around it.

When L'Pellerin went out, he was buried in bodyguards, and traveled in lims that were armored personnel lifters with civilian paint jobs.

"Besides," Grok said, "killing him will solve nothing, except that Torguth will not have their easy in to the secrets of Dampier. In fact, simply assassinating him, assuming that we're prepared to accept this as an option, will more likely make him a martyr to the sanctity of Dampier� a man who gave his all� and so forth. The matter needs considerable thinking." There wasn't that much else to do.

King recovered fully, although for two months after the grenade blast she would still have periodic headaches. Goodnight was also recuperating. The shrapnel wounds were healing nicely, his doctor said, and his leg was knitting. Goodnight didn't help the process any, furiously stomping around the shattered mansion, growling about not, goddamnit, being able to do his job.

Riss said, sweetly, that there was no problem. She could take on the load, since, "After all, a soldier's task is light compared to a Marine's." She patted his cheek. "I know you've been having problems with Caranis, either tying him in with the spy ring or proving him innocent. Ooo don't have to worry yer little knickers about it. Riss has the situation well in hand." That didn't improve Goodnight's mood at all.

The damage to the mansion was quite considerable, and the owning agency was just as unhappy as Goodnight had predicted. But workmen, each watched by a Star Risk employee, swarmed over the structure. Goodnight insisted on putting up a banner across the driveway: nice try, with a Masked One's face mask at either side of the banner.

The casualty count for the Masked Ones was dreadful�the police who belatedly arrived dragged away some eighty-three bodies in various stages of disrepair. The self-propelled gun had been stolen, so von Baldur was told by the authorities, from an arms depot by Masked Ones who'd had military training. Von Baldur didn't embarrass them by scoffing except in private.

There was one piece of good news: Cerberus Systems, evidently feeling well out of things, quietly withdrew from the Dampier System, with never any indication of what their assignment had been.

"Beat without even a face-to-face," Goodnight chortled.

"Let us hope," Grok said, "all our enemies fade away like boojums."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. It's poetry. Ancient poetry."

"Yaak. Damned right I'll never mind. Probably the kind of shit that doesn't rhyme, either."

The campaign was going hot and heavy.

The Universalists were running on a platform of continuing prosperity, keeping the peace, and business as usual, with, as Reynard had predicted, Faraon leading the campaign. They were ignoring the incident on Belfort, saying that it was unfortunate that the Patriot League building had gotten blown up in some sort of industrial accident, but, after all, that was what happened to thugs who were willing to go beyond the law.

Reynard's Independents took quite a different tack. What happened on Belfort was clearly an attack by Torguth commandos on the League, which, even though it espoused methods beyond the law, had some good, solid patriotic points.

The switch by both parties must have puzzled the thugs with masks, and von Baldur chortled at the convolutions L'Pellerin must be going through to keep his dunces with truncheons happy.

Reynard promised if the Independents were returned to power, "Dampier would have to face the price of its freedom and independence."

Universalists hissed that Reynard's adventurism would bring war, and that the first thing he and his fellow crazies would do, after taking office, was to order mobilization, and who knew what Torguth would respond with?