The third squad of each platoon was on the backdoor of that platoon's objective, ready to plug the bolt-hole, and each detachment was also accompanied by a squad of Royal Guards. The remainder of the armored suits were at the castle, ready to move as reinforcements if they were needed.
Which they shouldn't be.
"All right," the XO said finally. "All the pieces are in position, and the dinner is underway. All teams: Execute."
Julian drew a deep breath. He shouldn't be nervous; there ought to be zero danger in this for him. And worrying didn't help matters, anyway. It was time to do the deal, and he raised a hand and knocked on the door, hard.
K'Luss By paused just as he was about to throw the knucklebones. He'd heard that there was some new game going around, one that used pieces of paper, but he was a traditionalist. Knucklebones had been good enough for his father, and they were good enough for him.
"Who the hell is that?" he asked rhetorically, looking around at the other guards in the front room, and T'Sell Cob clapped his false hands and shrugged, then picked up his favored ax as the door boomed again.
"I don't know. But he's about to be in pieces."
"Open in the name of King Xyia Kan!" a voice boomed through the hallway.
"Ah," By said as he picked up his own spear, "maybe we ought to wait for the others to join us?"
It had always bothered Julian that there was no way to fidget effectively in armor. He wanted to pick at a finger, or bite fingernails. Nope. Pull hair? Nope. The best he could do was to fiddle with his bead cannon as the sensors indicated more and more guards gathering in the front area. A loud boom suddenly racketed through the night like a rogue thunderclap, and his sensors processed the sonics and electromagnetic flux and then announced that a full powered charge from a plasma cannon had just struck something at the facility the HUD designated "House C'Rtena."
Nice to know the sensors were working.
He nodded at PFC Stickles and stepped to the side of the vast door.
"Gunny, I'd say we've got about max participation here," he said, keying his helmet to darken. It was supposed to do that automatically, but it never hurt to make sure. Regrowing eyeballs would suck on this rock. "Stickles, darken your helmet."
"Yes, Sergeant," the PFC shot back just a tad testily. "Already done."
He was the junior guy in the squad, which was why Julian had picked him as his own backup. Better that Julian be stuck with the rookie, although, to be fair, a "rookie" in the Regiment was hardly the same thing as a rookie in a regular unit.
"We're ready here, Gunny," Julian said, and leaned into the wall and pointed his bead-cannon to the vertical as he took it off safe. Time to party.
"What was that?" N'Jaa Ide demanded. The booming echo was similar to thunder, but not identical. "It sounded like one of the weapons of these visitors, these humans," the house-leader went on with an ill-pleased glare.
Mardukan state dinners, in Q'Nkok, at least, were conducted on platters and covers on the floor. This one was no exception, and by careful manipulation of the seating arrangements, the human guests had been placed opposite the house-leaders considered particularly dangerous. And, just coincidentally, all of those humans were accompanied by Marines in armor.
"What was what?" Xyia Kan asked innocently. The monarch's power had been systematically hamstrung and undercut by the Houses for a generation, the very Houses which were about to be removed, and his dinner had been deliciously flavored with anticipation all evening.
"That noise," Kesselotte said in support of N'Jaa, sounding even more suspicious than his fellow house-leader. After the last acrimonious meeting, he'd insisted on bringing his full complement of guards to this one. Indeed, there were over twenty house guards present, far more than should have been allowed into the king's presence. Perhaps it was time to act. Sometimes even the deepest plots were improved by a willingness to take advantage of opportunities, and one such as this was unlikely to come again. He glanced at N'Jaa to see if the other leader was in agreement, but saw only worry.
Kesselotte was still considering the significance of the human weapon when two more booms echoed across the city. They were just as loud as the first one, and his eyes flew wide as other strange crackling noises followed them.
"Brothers!" He leapt to his feet. "It is an attack by the faithless Xyia Kan! We must—"
Before he could finish the sentence, two of the human leaders came to their own feet and drew weapons.
Pahner had been infuriated by Roger's insistence, but in the end, he could only accede to his demands. At least this time the prince had made them in private! So when the captain stood and drew his bead pistol, Roger stood up right alongside him. O'Casey, at least, had the intelligence to scuttle behind the armored trooper at her back, then out the door.
Each of the Houses involved in "The Woodcutters Plot" had brought its maximum of three guards. In addition, two other Houses which were fully aware of that plot and were involved in others of their own against the king, had brought their maximum, as well. It was up to the humans to ensure that none of those extra guards did anything unpleasant.
Two of Xyia Kan's bodyguards picked the king up and interposed their armored bulk between him and danger as the humans opened fire. Since each guest's guards were placed to watch his back, and since the prince and the captain been seated facing the plot leaders, all their targets were lined up in a neat, formal row down the opposite wall.
It was Hell's shooting gallery.
Armand Pahner had been shooting one weapon or another for the better part of his seventy-two years. The M-9 bead pistol was an old and dear friend, so as he began servicing targets, his hand moved as steadily as a metronome. The small bead pistols had tremendous recoil, which meant the maximum rate of accurate fire depended primarily on how fast the shooter could get the weapon back on target. Armand Pahner had plenty of bulk and plenty of forearm strength, so in the first four seconds, eight guards were slammed back against the far wall, staining the pale wood with huge splashes of blood before they slumped to the floor.
At which point, it was all over.
Sixteen of the guards had been designated as threats, and it had been decided that the bead-cannon of the armored Marines were a bit too overpowering for an enclosed space... particularly since the idea was for all the "lords" to survive. So it was up to the pistol-armed "officers."
Pahner had moved from right to left, concentrating on picking off the guards that were quickest to respond. The first to react were a couple of N'Jaa elite, but before either of them could draw a sword or hurl a javelin, they were both bloodstains. The rest went down nearly as quickly, but by the time he'd cleared "his" zone, the prince's zone was already empty.
He looked at the eight blood splotches, all high on the wall where Roger's assigned targets had stood, then at eight headless bodies, and turned to his charge.
"Head shots?!" he demanded incredulously.
Roger shrugged and then smoothed his hair as the house-leaders erupted in consternation, some wailing at the blood that covered everything—the people, the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the food.
"My toot has a very good assassin program, Captain," he said.