Colonel Welrod, variously an officer of Westalis, Ostania, Baltica, and now the supreme commander of the Cold Front, looked up with his binoculars at the ascending elevator that held Loid Forger, the legendary Twilight… if, he reminded himself, it truly was the same man. He was not surprised to see the passenger looking down at his own position, atop one of the automated turrets that defended the west entrance of the Deck. He glanced toward the other turret. One of the pods the exotrooper had left behind still lay at its base.
"We are still looking for the intruder," said a subordinate at his side. "Given that our sensors failed to detect an approaching craft, it must be a loyalist that escaped our containment, or just a maintenance man playing hero."
"Don't worry about it," Welrod said. "Focus on securing the mezzanine. If the intruder intends to interfere, that will force his hand." He turned his binoculars outward. At the gates to the complex, two tanks and a dozen armored exotroopers had gathered. He frowned at the sight of a trooper in an especially large multilimbed suit, who seemed to be trying to make a certain gesture with one out of three fingers of his main appendage.
The mezzanine was really a four-story truncated cone or pyramid where the lower tower tapered down to an upper tier. Its glass sides formed a greenhouse that held a serviceable micro-ecology of tropical rain forest, where birds sang as they flitted about. Around its edges were a succession of overlooking balconies, the widest and lowest lined by shops and kiosks. Almost all of them had already been shuttered and evacuated as dozens of armed men advanced toward the west end. One turned back as he passed a maintenance stairway. "Hey," he said, "this area's off limits to civilians until…" He dropped with a long, slender dart in his neck.
The gunmen on either side of the armored Ice Queen kept their weapons aimed at the face of Loid Forger. "All my people need is one head shot," the Queen said. She shouldered an anti-tank rifle. "This would do the job, even if you had your helmet on."
The exotrooper held both forearms level. A targeting beam for the plasma projector on the right arm swung back and forth. "This can fire a plasma jet a meter wide," the trooper countered. "Or it can fire a concentrated beam that can bore through the frontal armor of a tank. I may not be able to take out all of you, but I can take at least one."
Yor's hand-thrown darts felled two gunmen before a third turned. He fired a short, poorly aimed volley as a dart caught him in the shoulder. She considered whether to take one of their weapons for herself. She had never cared for firearms, but she would have had no qualms about using them to achieve their intended purpose before Anya and especially little Loidy. She shook her head and kicked the nearest weapon aside. Then she attached a translucent box 8 cm long to her gauntlet. It was packed with scores of needle-like darts.
The sound of a shot drew little more than a twitch from the Ice Queen. Her focus remained on the forehead of the girl who held Loid Forger, Junior, lit up by the dot of a targeting beam. Young Loidy, sensing the rising anxiety, teared up without making a sound. The girl only rolled her eyes upward. "My beam at full power can make flesh boil," Loid said. "I do not know who she is, but I think she means something to you. It doesn't feel so good when you're on the other side, does it? Board the elevator, child, and descend to the ground floor. Then we can settle our quarrel."
Both of Yor's gauntlets raked the balcony across the garden, where a full dozen heavy assault troops had gathered. The needles she launched did not seek out necks and joints the way her hand-thrown darts would have, but inevitably, some of the hundreds found a mark. They all had a narcotic that could be fatal in large doses. She found that she could not muster concern at the sight of one who went down with ten or more embedded in his vulnerable side. He might live; she did not care. Another used a shield to stop the brunt of her volley, then returned fire with a shotgun. She hurled a wrench that she had found in a maintenance man's toolbox. He went down with a significant dent in his helmet. A stun grenade struck the support she had chosen for cover, producing a shockwave that made the entire balcony ring. She gripped three darts between the fingers of each hand and cast them all together at the gunmen advancing toward her. The nearest yowled before he fell.
The Queen laughed over the sounds of battle. Young Loidy gave a single squall of fright. "So the great Twilight would threaten a child?" she said. "No. The Twilight I knew would not do it. He told me what it was like to be a child in the midst of war, to be helpless among those who saw innocence as weakness. He fought so all the children of the world could live without fear. No, he could not do it, even to save his own son. But of course… you aren't him."
And the exotrooper with the face of Loid Forger only laughed in turn.
"We have a second attacker on the mezzanine," the colonel's subordinate reported. "Based on both tactics and visual data, it is likely that it is Yor Forger."
"Then it seems we have more than a maintenance man," Welrod said. "Do not be ashamed; it was my oversight as much as yours. If it truly is her, then we still have the leverage. Take her alive, as the Queen has directed." He smiled. He glanced again toward the far turret. His gaze flicked toward the pod. He started to look away. Then his eyes locked on it. "Remove that!" he called out.
Two of his men jogged in… just before the pod exploded and destroyed the turret.