He spoke quickly, but calmly. "Keep your shots waist high, no lower. Remember, Abraham and the yellow-jacket stay alive. Kill the others. Now."
Donald and his three Ballroom comrades began firing with the single, deadly precise shots of expert gunmen, and the fifteen Masadans still on their feet around the gaming table began falling like scythed grain. With, somehow, as if by a miracle, Abraham and one other remaining unharmed. As Victor had anticipated, the sudden attack from the side had caught the Masadans completely by surprise. Standing up, without the cover of the mob to conceal them and confuse the marksmen, they were like so many targets in a shooting gallery.
Victor made no attempt to add his own fire to the carnage. He was a good marksman, but not an expert one—and never would be. And while the range was easy for pistoleros like the Ballroom gunmen, it was long enough that Victor didn't think he'd add much to their efforts. He was more concerned that his stray shots might kill or injure one of the bystanders still trying to flee the area. There weren't many left anywhere near the gaming table, of course—not standing, at least. But there were still half a dozen people desperately trying to crawl away, and perhaps the same number lying about wounded. It was essential for Victor's plan to have no innocent casualties laid at his own feet.
Besides, speaking of the plan, it was time to start on the next stage of it. Victor began trotting through the gaming hall, weaving in and around the tables, heading toward the exit which Abraham Templeton would use to take away the Manticoran princess.
On the way, he took the time to call Lieutenant Palane.
"They'll be coming soon, Thandi. Gideon Templeton's dead, so his cousin Abraham will be leading them. Abraham, one other, and whoever else they pick up from the rest of the hall. I'll try to give you a count when I spot them myself."
"Good enough," came her voice in his ear. "We'll just have to hope Abraham was privy to all of Gideon's plans. Any word from the planet?"
"Yes. Walter called me not two minutes ago. They've got the Mesans and Flairty and are bringing them up. Everything went perfectly, it seems."
"Good." There was a short pause. Then: "One thing, Victor. This is my part of the deal. I need Flairty dead. I don't care about the others. But Flairty goes down."
Victor's mind raced, even while his eyes kept ranging the hall looking for more of Templeton's men. Within ten seconds, he'd spotted seven of them making their way toward the exit. Those would have been among the ones assigned by Templeton to take out the perimeter guards.
He estimated there'd been nine of them. Victor and Donald had taken out one. That left one still missing. Where was he?
But most of Victor's brain was occupied with analyzing Thandi's forceful request. By the time he spotted the last man, straggling far behind, he'd figured it all out.
"Sweet boss you've got, Thandi. But I won't argue the point. Flairty goes down. I assume you'll do Abraham yourself. Eliminate anyone who'd know the truth."
He spoke the words calmly, but there was enough of a foul taste in his mouth to condemn a man to death. As soon as Victor came within range of the Masadan straggler—who'd been so concerned with trying to find his way out that he hadn't noticed the man stalking him—Victor stopped, brought up his pulser in a two-handed grip, and cut the man down.
He'd planned to let him live long enough to join the others in the trap, but...
It was a really foul taste. And since Masadan fanatics were just as foul, Victor took out his anger by killing him immediately.
Though it didn't really seem to help much.
"All right, Thandi. I've got a full count now. I'm pretty sure it's accurate—close enough, anyway. You should be facing Abraham Templeton and eight others."
"Cut 'em down by almost three-fourths, did you? Thanks. But you might want to consider those numbers, before you condemn others for being too ruthless."
He took a long, deep breath. "The Manticoran soldiers accounted for a dozen of them. But there's a difference anyway, Thandi, and you know it. For me, there's a purpose. For your precious captain, just his own ambition."
She said nothing in response. What could she say, really?
Victor didn't know the full story yet—though he'd make sure to find out—but at least one mystery had been cleared up. Hieronymus Stein had not been murdered by Manpower, after all. He'd been murdered by Templeton and his religious goons working on the side. Not for their own purposes, but simply because they'd been hired to do so by Captain Luiz Rozsak—and now Rozsak had ordered Thandi to eliminate the witnesses.
Why? Victor was quite sure it was part of a scheme by Rozsak to advance his career. Probably by displacing Cassetti as Governor Barregos' indispensable man, because Victor was fairly certain that the order had been given by Cassetti. The governor himself probably knew nothing about it. By all accounts, Cassetti was utterly unscrupulous—and just the sort of man to come up with an elaborate scheme like this one. Kill Stein, throw the blame on Manpower—and then use that to drive forward Maya Sector's growing alienation from the Solarian League. Get the Renaissance Association's political backing as a result of Stein's murder, and...
Yes, it all made sense to him. Cassetti would have been the one. Cassetti, dreaming of the days when he could be the right-hand man—and possibly the successor—to the leader of an independent star nation richer and more powerful than any in the galaxy except the Solarian League itself. With the Solarians half-paralyzed by the fact that it had been Manpower's overweening arrogance and brutality which seemed to have been the final straw to lead to the revolt.
A clever scheme—and, like almost all such, too clever. Cassetti had overlooked the possibility that the man he'd chosen to do the "wet work" might turn it against him, when the time came.
Victor slowed down a bit. He was nearing the exit, and didn't want to be spotted by Abraham Templeton and his men as they left the gaming hall. Hiding was going to be more difficult now, because most of the panicked mob had managed to flee from the hall. He spotted a particularly elaborate gaming table with a central tower of some kind, and trotted over to stand behind it. The tower's flamboyant, coruscating lights would hide him from sight.
There, as he waited, he completed his calculations. It all came easily enough, since he'd already understood that Rozsak's ambitions would probably lead him to have a favorable response to Victor's overture. All that was really new was that Victor now understood that Rozsak had been responsible for the Stein assassination. Which...
Yes, yes, shocking. But Victor had overcome his initial surge of anger, and was thinking cold-bloodedly again. The truth was that Rozsak's actions would make him all the more willing to go along with Victor's scheme. Nor would Cassetti interfere. For both of them, Victor's plans for Congo would work splendidly. Giving them—whichever won out in their own internecine conflict—an even greater moral luster to drape over their personal ambitions.
So be it. Victor could live with foul tastes. He'd lived with Oscar Saint-Just for years, hadn't he? What the revolution required of him, Victor would give.
Flairty would go down, then. Victor swallowed the taste and ignored it thereafter.
He found himself now wondering what it all tasted like for Thandi Palane. Just as foul, he suspected. He hoped so. The woman was coming to occupy more and more of his thoughts, whether he wanted it or not.
On the planet below, other people were dealing with the taste of things.
"What the hell is going on?" Cassetti's voice was practically screaming in Captain Rozsak's earbug.
Luiz glanced at Lieutenant Commander Watanapongse, who gave him a little thumbs up. The recording was being made.
The Solarian Navy captain eased back in the armchair in his suite. "I don't know, exactly. From the garbled reports I've been getting, Sir, it sounds like the Masadans have run amok. I warned you, if you recall, that it was dangerous using them."
"They were all supposed to be taken out afterward!"
"And I also told you that 'taking out' over forty armed and dangerous men was no picnic, unless you wanted me to bring down the fleet and level half of Erewhon's capital. Assuming I could have fought my way through the Erewhonese Navy—which I couldn't possibly have done, anyway. All I've got is what amounts to a commodore's flotilla. They've got ships of the wall in orbit here, Ingemar. They'd have swatted me like a fly."