I Mengsk s-6 Page 2

  The bedroom shared by Angus and Katherine was to his left, but the figure set off in the opposite direction, toward the bedrooms of the Mengsk family children.

  The floor was wooden, covered with thick rugs, and he walked carefully on it, avoiding the places in the floor where he knew the wood creaked. He slopped before a thick door with a bronze “A” fixed to the wood and smiled to himself.

  He gripped the handle, softly opened the door, and ghosted inside the room.

  The room was dark, with long benches strewn with dismantled equipment and rock samples lining the walls. Framed images of geological strata and rock compositions hung from the walls and a lumpen, sheet-covered form rested in the large, iron-framed bed.

  He took a step into the room and a voice said. "I suppose you think that was clever."

  Turning around, he saw Achton Feld, head of security for the Mengsk family, seated on a plush leather chair in the far corner of the room. Dressed in a dark uniform jacket and loose-fitting trousers, Feld's hand rested on the butt of a heavy pistol. He was tall and powerful—built exactly as one would imagine a head of security would be proportioned.

  The figure in black relaxed and removed the goggles, revealing patrician features, a strong jawline, and the wide, eager gray eyes of a seventeen-year-old boy.

  "I thought it was very clever of me, as a matter of fact," said Arcturus Mengsk.

  Achton Feld examined the geo-survey unit with a critical, and not unimpressed, gaze. The boy had managed to put together quite an infiltration package, and Feld was going to have to thoroughly review the security procedures in place at the summer villa.

  He put the geo-survey unit down. If Arcturus could get this far, there was no telling how far someone with more malicious intent might reach.

  Feld didn't want to the think about the consequences of that. Korhal was in a volatile enough state as it was without something happening to Angus Mengsk. To have so outspoken an opponent of the Confederacy murdered in his bed would be a blow from which the fledgling independence movement on Korhal might never recover.

  "Shouldn't you be at the academy in Styrling?"

  "I got bored,” said Arcturus, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling the covers back to reveal a series of pillows arranged to give the semblance of a human being. "They weren't teaching me anything I didn't already know."

  That was probably true, reflected Feld. Arcturus Mengsk was many things. Including a truculent teenager and a selfish rogue who possessed a confidence some called arrogance. But he was also fiercely clever and excelled at everything to which he turned his hand.

  "Your father won't be happy about this."

  "When is he ever happy with what I do?" countered Arcturus.

  "Once a rebel, always a rebel, eh?" said Feld.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing. Forget it," replied Feld. "So why break into your own house?"

  Arcturus shrugged. "To see if it could be done, I suppose."

  "And that's all?”

  “Well, maybe to annoy my father," Arcturus smiled. "That never gets old."

  "Oh. I have no doubt it'll annoy him," said Feld. "Especially now. And after he's gotten through chewing me out, I'm sure he'll have some choice words for you, too."

  "So how did you do it?" asked Arcturus. "Find me, I mean? The bodysuit kept me off the infrared and I know the laser net didn't get me. So how did you know?"

  "And why should I tell you? If anything I should be hauling you over the coals to find how you got this far. You had help, didn't you?"

  "No." said the boy, but Feld knew he was lying. Having a senator for a father had schooled the boy in many of the political arts, and he was almost as skilled a dissembler of the truth as a seasoned veteran of the Palatine Forum.

  Almost, but not quite.

  "There's no way you could have known how to avoid the laser net without help."

  "All right," admitted Angus. "I had help. I persuaded Lon Hellan to give me the specs for the lasers so I could modify that geo-survey unit to make them visible. I told him it was for a school project."

  "Then Lon Hellan will be looking for a new job in the morning."

  "Yes. I suppose he will."

  Anger touched Feld at Arcturus's lack of concern for the man whose life he had just ruined for the sake of a prank and at the boy's need to challenge the limits of his abilities.

  "Come on," said Arcturus. "Tell me. How did you find me? Some new system I didn't know about? A biometrlc reader? A DNA scanner?"

  Feld looked at the young, eager face and felt his anger melt away. Angus Mengsk's son had a quality that caused those around him to forget their ire and want to please him. Only his father and mother seemed immune to his charms.

  "It wasn't a new system, it was an old system you forgot about."

  "An old system? What?"

  "EB Mark I," said Feld, picking up the geo-survey unit.

  "EB Mark I?" repeated Arcturus. "I've never heard of that one? Is it LarsCorp? No, wait, it has to be Gemini, yes?"

  "Neither," said Feld, pointing to his eye. "Eyeball. Mark I. I saw you on the spy-cams as you came in through the kitchen."

  "Spy-cams? What spy-cams?"

  "The new Terra model spy-cams your father had installed last week in time for that Umojan ambassador's visit".

  "Who?"

  "Do you listen to anything that goes on in this house that doesn't involve you?"

  "Not if it's anything to do with my father. It's all politics and business, far too boring to pay attention to," said Arcturus. "So who's here?"

  "A man named Ailin Pasteur and his daughter," said Feld. "Apparently he's some sort of bigwig on Umoja, and he wants to talk trade with your father."

  That wasn't entirely true, but Arcturus had displayed little enough interest in the senator's dealings before now for Feld to bother with explaining further. World-changing events were in motion and all Arcturus wanted to do was piss his father off and spend his time with his coterie of sycophants at the academy or his collection of rocks and gems.

  With the geo-survey unit confiscated, Achton Feld turned and made his way to the door.

  "Oh, and you'd best tell your friends the game's up."

  "My friends?" said Arcturus. "What do you mean?"

  "Don't," warned Feld. “Just tell them to go home. It's late and I'm too tired to deal with any more nonsense.”

  "Honestly, Feld, I have no idea what you are talking about."

  Achton Feld stared hard at the boy, looking past his glib exterior and power to make the unbelievable believable. Arcturus Mengsk could, with a few words, get techs with ten years' experience to give up the specs for a laser net, but Feld knew that what he was hearing now was the unvarnished truth.

  Which meant...

  "Crap," said Feld, activating the comm unit on his wist. "All units, condition black: I repeat, condition black."

  Feld turned back to Arcturus. "Stay here." he said. "And hide."

  "What is it?" cried Arcturus as Feld ran for the door.

  Feld drew his pistol and said. "Intruders."

  Arcturus watched Feld disappear through the door, and it took a moment for the implication of the head of security's words to penetrate. Intruders? Here?

  Arcturus now wished he had not thought to try and test himself against the defenses of his father's home: it seemed suddenly foolish and childishly impulsive. Close on the heels of that thought was the idea that his family might actually be in danger, and he felt a knot of warm fear settle in his belly.

  The emotion was quickly suppressed, and contrary to Feld's instructions. Arcturus bolted from his room into the corridor. Lights were coming on throughout the house and shouted voices were rousing guards from their posts. As doors slammed, Arcturus was suddenly rooted to the spot with indecision.

  The hard bang of a pistol shot echoed in the hallway and a man's scream galvanized him into motion. He set off farther down the corridor and skidded to a halt beside a door hun
g with paper flowers and a child's drawing of a pony tacked to it.

  Colorful paper letters declared that this was "Dorothy's Room," and Arcturus pushed it open. The lights were on, and he pulled up short as he saw his four-year-old sister sitting in bed, her long dark curls spilling messily around her shoulders as she sleepily rubbed her eyes.

  Sitting next to her in the bed was a young girl, roughly Arctums's age, whose blonde hair shone like honey and whose face was as beautiful as it was unexpected.

  "Who are you?" demanded the girl, putting protective arms around Dorothy.

  "I could ask you the same damn thing," said Arcturus. "What are you doing in my sister's room?"

  "I'm Juliana Pasteur," said the girl. "Dorothy asked me to stay and read her a story. I guess we must have both fallen asleep. You must be Arcturus, but what's going on? Was that a gunshot?"

  "Yes, and I'm not sure exactly what's going on," said Arcturus, rushing over to the bed. "I think we might be under attack."

  "Attack? From whom?"

  Arcturus ignored the question and knelt beside the bed. "Little Dot," he said, keeping his voice even and using his sister's pet name. "You have to get up."

  At the sound of Arcturus's voice, Dorothy looked at him and his anger rose as he saw the tears in her eyes. Arcturus did not care much for his father or his dealings, but he doted on his sister. Her smile was able to melt the hardest of hearts and not even Angus could resist giving in to her every whim.

  "Where are we going?" said Doroihy, her voice drowsy.

  Before Arcturus could answer, more gunshots boomed. Dorothy squealed in terror. Arcturus looked up at Juliana Pasteur and said. "Look after her. I'll see what's happening."

  Juliana nodded and clutched the little girl tightly as the door to the room opened and two people burst in. Arcturus leapt to his feet, but let out a relieved breath as he saw that one of the figures was his mother.

  Katherine Mengsk was tall, beautiful, and slender, but she was no shrinking violet who spent all her time at needlepoint or recitals. A core of neosteel ran through her, and with her children threatened, that quality was in the ascendancy. She blinked in surprise to see Arcturus, but overcame that surprise in a heartbeat and quickly gathered her children as the man next to her ran over to Juliana.

  "Are you all right?" asked Katherine. "Arcturus? Dorothy?"

  "We're fine, Mother," said Arcturus, prizing himself free of her embrace. "Where's Father?"

  Katherine lifted Dorothy to her breast. "He's with Achton. Some men are trying to get inside and they've gone to stop them."

  More shots sounded from beyond the door, and Dorothy burst into tears.

  His mother turned to the man who had entered the room with her and nodded to Juliana. "Is she okay?"

  "She's fin," said the man, his voice strong and lyrical.

  Arcturus thought the man looked around the same age as his father, which put him in his mid-forties. His concern over Juliana identified him as Ailin Pasteur, and Arcturus thought him an unimpressive man for an ambassador from so important a world as Umoja.

  Receding gray hair and a weak chin conspired to make Ailin Pasteur look timid, but from an early age Arcturus's father had warned him that where politicians and men of words were concerned, it was almost always the ones you underestimated who would bring you down.

  "What's going on, Mother?" asked Arcturus. "Are we really under attack?"

  "Yes," said Katherine, nodding. His mother was never one to sugar the pill—it was one of the things Arcturus loved about her. Ailin Pasteur took his daughter by the hand as Katherine Mengsk said. "Now we need to get to the refuge. Everyone follow me, and no dawdling."

  The bark of automatic weapon fire roared from somewhere nearby. The noise was so loud it was impossible to pinpoint the source of it, but Arcturus thought it was coming from this floor.

  He heard booted footsteps and more shouts.

  Arcturus hauled on his mother's hand as more shooting exploded nearby.

  The wooden frame around the bedroom door splintered as gunfire tore through it. Everyone screamed and dropped to the floor. Arcturus covered his ears as a clatter of metal and wood rained down from the shattered door.

  A twisted spike of silver rolled across the carpet, a thin cone of metal as thick as the tip of his pinkie.

  Arcturus recognized it immediately: ammunition fired from a military-grade assault rifle. A C-14 gauss rifle, to be precise. An Impaler.

  He heard thumps from outside and two men spun around the doorway. One was Achton Feld, his slugthrower smoking and blood pouring from wounds in his arm and chest. The other was armed with the Impaler rifle, and Arcturus recognized him as one of his father's security guards, a man named Jaq Dolor.

  As Feld's gaze swept the room, he spoke hurriedly into his shoulder mike. "Angus, it's Feld. I've got them. We're in Dot's room."

  Arcturus missed the reply as another roar of gunfire sounded. Delor quickly leaned around the door and fired off a couple of shots. The noise of the gun was deafening, especially mixed together with Dorothy's sobbing cries.

  "Achton," said Katherine. "Where is my husband?"

  "Downstairs organizing the defense, but he's on his way,” said Feld, slamming a fresh magazine into the butt of his pistol and awkwardly racking the slide. "And we have to get out of here. We're too exposed. The refuge is just along the hall."

  "We can't go out there!" said Ailin Pasteur. "We'll be killed."

  "We'll be killed if we stay here, Ailin," replied Katherine.

  "No time to argue," said Feld, his face pale with blood loss. "They have men coming in from both sides. Jaq, how's it looking?"

  Jaq Delor raised his rifle and leaned around the door, checking left and right. He fired a burst of Impaler rounds along the length of the corridor, and Arcturus heard a scream of pain.

  "Clear now," said Delor as the sound of gunfire intensified.

  Arcturus could make no sense of this. All he could hear was a meaningless cacophony of cries for cover, medical attention, or mothers.

  Who was winning this fight? Did anyone know?

  "Now!" shouted Feld. "Let's go!"

  Feld was first out of the room, his pistol extended, as Delor hustled Katherine—still with Dorothy clutched to her chest—Ailin Pasteur, and Juliana through the door. Lastly came Arcturus, and Delor remained with him as they sped along the corridor toward the refuge.

  Smoke from the gunfire filled the hallway and Arcturus could see little beyond the floor in the dim glow of sputtering lights that had been shot out. He passed a bulky shape lying on the ground, a body with a bullet wound in the neck.

  Blood squirted onto the floor from the ragged crater in the man's throat and Arcturus gagged at the horrid, burned-metallic smell of the man's death. Another man's body lay farther along the corridor, this one with his chest torn apart by Impaler spikes. It looked like he'd been sawn in two.

  Delor kept watch on their rear as Feld haltingly led the way to the refuge, a fortified bolt hole constructed in the heart of the house with comm systems capable of reaching Korhal's orbitals and enough supplies lo last four days.

  Arcturus's mother had objected to the idea of installing such an ugly thing in her summerhouse, but had reluctantly consented to its construction after a crazed psychopath had murdered Senator Nikkos and his family in their beds a few years ago.

  A crazed psychopath who was probably now a neurally resoclallzed Confederate marine.

  Arcturus stumbled, but Delor held him upright.

  The refuge was up ahead, its neosteel door open and a cold fluorescent light spilling from inside. The wounded Achton Feld lay slumped in the doorway, his face ashen as he tried to hold his slugthrower level.

  Shouts sounded behind Arcturus, urgent and demanding.

  Jaq Delor released him and spun around, dropping lo one knee and bringing his rifle up. The barrel exploded with noise and light, and Arcturus cried out at the unimaginable volume of the weapon. Gauss spikes roared from the bar
rel and more screams of pain followed.

  "Go!" shouted Delor.

  No sooner had he given this last instruction than Jaq Delor was struck by a burst of Impaler fire.

  It was as if a giant fist had hammered into his side and hurled him against the wall. Blood spattered Arcturus, and he watched in horror as Delor's head lolled down over his chest, almost severed by the impact of the Impaler spikes.

  "Arcturus!' screamed his mother from the refuge, but her voice seemed tinny and indistinct. All he could hear was the last rasp of Delor's breath and the sound of his blood as it sprayed from his ruined neck.

  Without conscious thought, Arcturus knelt down and lifted Delor's fallen rifle. He'd never fired such a weapon before, but figured all you needed to do was point it at what you wanted to kill and pull the trigger.

  How hard could it be?

  A shape resolved itself from the smoke of the corridor, a gunman dressed in dark fatigues, body armor, and a strange helmet. It had a number of projecting attachments jutting from the side and a matte black visor, upon which Arcturus could see his own face reflected.

  The rifle was a dead weight in his hands, but he raised it without conscious thought. The gunman already had his rifle aimed, and Arcturus knew he would not be able to pull the trigger before he was torn apart.

  The thought made him more angry than fearful.

  Before the gunman could fire, Arcturus's reflection in the helmet's visor exploded in a mist of Plexiglas fragments, bone, and brain matter.

  Another shot struck the gunman's helmet, then another and another. The man dropped to his knees as high-velocity slugs tore into his chest and legs.

  Arcturus turned and saw his mother marching toward him, Achton Feld's slugthrower held out before her in both hands. With her long black hair unbound and her nightdress flaring behind her like a cloak, she looked like some warrior woman from the old myth stories.

  The gun boomed in her grip and she never once broke step as she fired.

  Arcturus watched the gunman die and dropped the gauss rifle as his mother's hand clamped on his shoulder. He looked up and saw that her face was thunderous with anger— not at Arcturus, but at the man who had dared threaten one of her children.