Free Cluster Command: Crisis of Empire II by David Drake, W. C. Dietz Page A

buffet line, promiscuously throwing up geysers of food and gobbets of living flesh, not stopping until it reached Governor Trent, the man who had made it all possible. Trent was dead before the first piece of him hit the floor. Two guards died shielding Windsor before Senda threw him down and covered the senator’s body with his own.
    Tenly disappeared under the buffet table. Unarmed marines charged the aliens with their bare hands and died in bloody heaps.
    Glass balls and needles cut through the crowd. The needles were almost silent but the whaps! of hypersonic glass beads merged with whumps! of flesh exploding on impact. The assassins carved bloody trails through the packed bodies as they sprayed the room with lethal projectiles.
    Pulling his handgun free of his tunic, Merikur brought it up and fired. His shots punched a Cernian backwards to slide across the buffet table and fall off the other side.
    Bethany! He whirled ready to throw her down, but found she was covering his back, her small purse gun spitting death. Beyond her, a Dreed grew a third eye and fell backwards into a pile of screaming men and women. There was a lot he didn’t know about his new wife!
    Merikur picked another target and squeezed the trigger. Whap! Whap! Whap! A sloppy job. His projectiles blew the Cernian’s right arm to pulp before crossing his chest and putting him down. And what would Warrant Nister have had to say about that? Neat meant ‘fast’ and speed counted . . .
    It took a few seconds for the Governor’s Hundred to pick their targets. Then it was all over. When the firing stopped, there was a moment’s silence then moans and hysterical laughter.
    In the distance ,Windsor was swearing and pushing Senda out of the way while members of the Elite Guard formed a circle around him. Tenly had emerged from under the table and was doing his best to get in everyone’s way.
    Turning, Merikur saw Bethany was untouched and already helping the wounded.
    He scanned the room as troops flooded in through open doors and windows. Movement caught his eye as Nola Rankoo and her husband stood. They’d been concealed behind the bar, the room’s heaviest piece of furniture and, therefore, the most projectile-proof. There wasn’t a mark on them. Meeting his gaze, Rankoo nodded and smiled. Then, stepping delicately over and around the bodies, she and Coda left the ballroom.
    He knew to a certainty that Rankoo had planned the whole thing. He couldn’t prove it. But as Merikur looked out over the bloody ballroom, he swore an oath that Nola Rankoo would pay.

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    Two days later, the wounded were on the way to recovery, the worst of the shock was over, and the ballroom floor was cleansed of blood. Trent’s wife had departed for Earth with an attentive Admiral Stender by her side and her husband’s body, or most of it, stored in the ship’s hold.
    Members of the Hundred were buried as they’d lived, side by side. Mixed among the human and Cernian guards were the sixteen marines who had attacked the assassins with their bare hands and posthumously earned a place in their ranks. On Merikur’s orders, all were buried with full honors in a section of the military graveyard that had been reserved for the Hundred alone. Some of the living marines were dubious about having their comrades interred with aliens, but the honor of it overcame their reservations.
    And with the perversity of soldiers everywhere, applications for the Guard doubled, and then tripled within a few days. Members of all races represented on the planet were rushing to join up.
    The public swearing-in was cancelled due to Governor Trent’s death. Instead, there was a quiet ceremony witnessed by only a few. As Windsor raised his right hand and swore to defend Harmony Cluster from all enemies foreign and domestic, it occurred to Merikur that they had plenty of both.

    ###

    Windsor and the senior members of his staff met in a conference room just off his spacious office.
    Governor Trent