Michael Flynn - In the Lion’s Mouth

“Got the bitch!” cried Number Five, who shared the doorway. “She was over behind the trash bins. No escape. Suicide mission.” He glanced at his master. “Shoulda been you coming out third. Two had good instincts.”

“Aye. ‘Always do the unexpected.’ See that she’s tagged for pickup. She’ll go in the Rose Garden. Assassin have a second?”

“Don’t they always? Might have flown if he thought the primary succeeded. That’s ‘you’ lying on the alley over there.”

“Good theory. Test it.”

Number Five stepped out of the doorway, but with his face averted.

The pulse took him on the armor and he convulsed and dropped. From the other side, Number Fourteen spotted the backup and sliced him up with a flechette gun.

Domino Tight tugged on Five’s leg while Fourteen went to blacklight the two assassins. “You all right, mate?”

“Y-yes,” said Five. “Just j-jangled. Dispersal armor b-better than n-nothing, but n-not all that much b-better.”

The Shadow laughed. He had used that line himself.

“Pendragon’s chrysanthemum,” Fourteen told him over the link. “Both of them. Tag ’em for pickup?”

Domino Tight glanced at Number Two’s body. “No. Strip their identifiers. If Pendragon’s magpies think they’ll never sleep in the Rose Garden, they may hesitate to do his bidding.”

Fourteen looked at him from across the alley. “If we start pulling their identifiers, they’ll stat pulling ours,” he pointed out. “‘The dead take no sides,’” he quoted. “Everyone agreed on that chapter from the onset. They’re dead once, master. Why kill them a second time? What more can they do?”

Domino Tight sighed and wondered at the wisdom of a war fought with rules. “Very well, tag them.” Then he opened the link. “Listen, my flock,” he said. “The mum has found the lyre. Two has retired the service. Continue shifting. Who’s watching the crosshairs?”

“One and Twelve,” came the answer.

Domino Tight sighed again. Another agreed chapter was “Don’t spook the sheep.” Removing the Yuts’ga Talker was supposed to be a tragic accident. If it looked like assassination, the sheep-cops started asking cui bono. “One. Twelve,” he said. “Move the target. But move his protectors first.”

“Ah, so that is how to suck an egg!” That was One answering. Close enough to winning a name to treat with her master as an equal.

“Do it.” Domino Tight closed the link. “Right,” he told the others. “Let’s blow this place.”

At that point, he learned that the dead did sometimes take sides. Both assassins had worn dead-man’s packs, and when the timers ran out the blasts took Domino Tight and Number Five and left no trace of Number Fourteen but a thin film of oil on the paving.

“Not exactly what I meant,” murmured Domino Tight before darkness took him.

Big Jacques set up a command center in an old warehouse along the River Cola in the Fourteenth District of Cambertown. He was the sentimental sort and saw no reason to site a potential combat zone in an area frequented by the sheep. “We’re supposed to keep things on the q.t.,” he reminded his flock.

When he had his equipment set up and linked to the string of microsatellites he had strewn in orbit on his arrival, he took reports from his flock. Seven would take the ship to the forward libration point, near the ruins of an old Commonwealth habitat. One had remained at Inbound to follow Ekadrina when once she had appeared.

Two, who was monitoring planetary news distributors, said, “That a good idea, boss, leaving One up there? What if she spots him? We should bushwhack her at Arrival Groundside. She won’t be expecting you.”

Big Jacques leaned back on the shipping crate he had appropriated for a seat and linked his hands behind his head. “First off, One has one of those baby faces that blends right in with the sheep. Looks innocent.”

“No one’s that innocent.”

“Said he looked it; didn’t say he was. Second off, a bushwhack at Arrivals ain’t artistic. Thing that griped me most about the Life was hunting down all those sheep. A corrupt governor, an uppity businessman, an ambitious swoswai. All they do is whine and cower when you corner ’em. What sport, that? Third off, Yuts’ga’s got five spaceports. Where do we set up the ambush?”

“She’ll come down here, won’t she?” the magpie asked. “At Number Three. I mean, she’s coming to meet with Pendragon, and he’s set up here in Cambertown.”

“Yeah, and so’s Curly. Getting crowded. But maybe she comes down at Spaceport Two and takes skimmers over here. Main Rule of Arrivals?”

Two sighed. “‘Never the obvious.’”

“Yeah.” Big Jacques looked around his command center and wondered if he was being too obvious about using isolated locations. “Six,” he said, “take a couple of the boys and set up a dummy command center somewhere else. Somewhere I might have chosen. No, don’t tell me where ’less I got need-to-know. Keep an eye on the dummy from a sniper nest and see if anyone shows an interest. Make it a little more obvious than here. Use the playbook. Funnel all the comm traffic through there, but keep the link between here and the dummy site deep in the black. Two: Nothing goes in and out of here except through the funnel.”

For a few moments bustle engulfed the warehouse as the subteam formed up, commandeered equipment, and departed. Two watched them go, then flipped up his data goggles. “Think Six is ready to solo?”

“Were you? If the ruse works, it works. If not…” The big man shrugged.

“If the ruse works,” said Two, “Lady Ekadrina and her whole flock could come down on them.”

“That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

“Master, we are in rebellion. We are not getting paid.”

“Oh, yeah. Then we’re doing this for honor. Hey, drop the kid a message and remind him to have his boys sneak in and out of the center now and then. Foot traffic, you know.”

“Nasty job,” said Two, “when the prey is just as able to pot you. Give me the low hanging fruit any day.”

“That’s how you get soft, Two.”

“Hold one…” Two held a hand to his ear, listened, then flipped down his goggles and started scanning the planetary network. “What was the name of that tavern where Lord Domino … The Mountain Dragon? The news dispensers here say there was an explosion there. Power cell overload or something.”

Big Jacques grunted. “Or something. Body count?”

“Ah … The sheep are being assured that the tavern itself was undamaged and will be serving Bartholomew Black as usual in the morning. No mention of bodies.”

“That’s nice.”

“Local bobs are investigating and the Riff of Yuts’ga is flying in from Great Hardwick in case there are Confederal implications.”

“In case.”

“Does the Riff know we’re on-world?”

“Not if you ain’t told him.” Jacques tapped his comm box. “My skinny tells me the Yutsgar Riff is a loyalist. So Pendragon maybe gave him a heads-up.”

“And…” Number Two listened again. “… Number One reports Lady Ekadrina’s ship entering parking orbit.”

Jacques considered that. “I hate coincidences.”

Domino Tight felt a numbness all over his body, as if he had been sealed away from the outside world and nothing in it could touch him anymore. His head, lolling to the side, saw nothing but the back door of the tavern and the boneless body of Five. Something sharp had been accelerated by the explosion and protruded slightly from the back of the man’s head, and Domino Tight could see enough of it to be glad he could see no more. His ears rang, and sounds also seemed far away, beyond the barrier encasing him.