Charles Stross - The Clan Corporate

A body fell from the platform in a spray of blood. Miriam crouched, arms covering her head. There was another bang from the room at the back where the royal party had assembled for dinner, an eternity ago. Men in black-black combat fatigues, torsos bulky with flak jackets, heads weirdly misshapen with gas masks-ran past the back of the dais, two of them staying to train guns behind. "Get down!" screamed one of the men in black. Then he saw her. "Milady? This way, now." Shit, Clan security, Angbard's men, Miriam thought, dizzy with the need for oxygen: What's happening?

"This way."

Miriam flinched. "Who's attacking us?"

"I don't know, milady-move!" She rose to a crouch, began to duck-walk along the back of the platform. "You, sir! On your feet, have you a gun?"

There was a noise behind her, so loud that she didn't hear it so much as feel it in her abdomen. Someone thumped her hard in the small of her back and she went down, trying to curl up, her spine a red-hot column of agony. She was dimly aware of Clan guards rushing past. Blood on the floor, plaster and debris pattering down from the ceiling. There was more gunfire, some shouting.

As Miriam caught her breath she began to realize that the gunfire was continuing. And the Clan guards-there's only a handful of them, she realized. They may have modern weapons, but that's a lot of muskets out there. And cannon, by the sound of it. Sick fear gripped her. What's going on?

Miriam felt sick to her stomach. The pain in her back was easing. It was bad, but not crippling: the boning of her corset had spread the force of the blow. She risked pushing herself to her knees and nothing happened. Then she looked round.

King Alexis Nicholau III sat with his legs sprawled apart, leaning against an ornamental pillar with an expression of ironic amusement on what was left of his face. About half of his brains were spread across the pillar, forming the body of an exclamation mark of which his face was the period.

"Surrender in the name of his majesty!" The hoarse voice sounded slightly desperate, as if he knew that if they didn't surrender his head was going to end up gracing the top of a pike. "Yield in the name of his majesty, King Egon!"

Miriam kilted up her dress and began to crawl rapidly across the floor, past bodies and a howling, weeping old woman she didn't recognize. She passed a servant lying on his back with blood pooling around him: evidently he hadn't understood enough English. There was more smoke now, and it smelled of wood. I've got to get out of here, she realized. Fucking Egon! His accession to the throne depended on the support of the nobility, of course. He'll have to kill everyone here, she realized coldly. If he thought his father had decided to sideline him in favor of his younger brother, how better to assure himself of the support of the old nobility than to liquidate the one group of noble houses who were the greatest threat to them?

She turned and crawled toward the door to the reception chamber. A bullet cracked off the tiled floor in front of her, spraying chips of marble, and she pulled back hastily.

It was twilight outside, and the chandelier was down. The soldiers outside seemed determined to bottle a couple of hundred people up inside a burning building with no fire extinguishers. People who'd come here to celebrate her betrothal. She felt a rising sense of nausea. Not that she'd wanted it herself, but this wasn't her idea of how to extract herself from the situation-

There was a side door, discreet and undecorated, behind one of the pillars. She eyed the bullet holes high up it warily, then glanced round at the dais. It was partly shielded. She crawled forward again, her shoulder blades twitching. People were screaming now, cries of alarm mingling with the awful panting gasps of the wounded.

The door opened onto darkness. Miriam stood up as she ducked inside. Isn't this the passage they brought me through to see the queen, the first time? she wondered. If so, there should be another door here-

She pushed the door carefully and it opened into another room, largely obscured by the pillar and drapes positioned to hide it from genteel attention. She froze in place, trying to look like another ornate swag of curtain. Half a dozen soldiers in what looked like stained leather overalls worn under chain-mesh surcoats were standing guard. Some held swords, but a couple were armed with modern-looking pistols. Two of them were covering a group of captives who lay facedown on the floor. "You will guard these tinkers in the rear," one of them told his companion. "If there is any risk of escape, kill them." He continued in rapid hochsprache, too fast for Miriam's ear.

Two of the guards were yanking the captives to their feet. They seemed slow to move, disoriented. The guards were brutally efficient, dragging them forward toward the main door. The talkative one bent over a lump on the floor and did something. "Hurry!" Then he followed the others out hastily.

Shit. That's got to be a bomb. As soon as he was out, Miriam scurried forward. It was green, it had shoulder straps, and there was some kind of timer on top of it. One of Matthias's leftover toys. Why am I not surprised? If I move it-She froze, indecisive. What if there's a trembler switch? She glanced at the door they'd left through. I've got to get out of here!

Miriam ducked into the next servant's passage, darting along it. She reached the outer receiving chamber with the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, worth a fortune in this place, just about the time the men in black were leaving it. Creeping forward, she looked out across a scene of devastation. Beyond the shattered windows lay what seemed to be half the palace guard. They lay in windrows, many of them still clutching their broken pikestaffs. Another gout of thunder and a lick of flame told her why: across the ha-ha at the end of the terrace, a group of figures moved urgently about their business, manhandling an archaic-looking cannon back into position to bear on the west wing of the palace. More isolated gunfire banged across the garden, the flat bursts of the black powder weapons sounding like a Fourth of July party.

Jesus, it's a full-scale coup, she thought, just as another distinctive figure stumbled around the front of the building.

"Creon!" she called out, forgetting that she was trying to hide. He was out in front, while she was at the back of the reception room, in near-darkness. He probably couldn't hear her anyway. Her heart lurched. What's he doing? Who the hell knows what he thinks he's doing? Right now he was silhouetted against the twilight outside, but in a moment-

Creon loped away from the front of the palace, toward the gun crew. He seemed to be waving his arms

"Creon! No!" she yelled. Too late. One of the pikemen beside the cannon saw him, pointed: another soldier raised an ominously modern weapon, a rifle. They're protecting their artillery, she realized blankly. Probably realize there'll be no more modern ammunition when-Creon dropped like a stone.

Miriam shook herself, like a dog awakening from a deep sleep. Appalled, she took a step forward.

Someone grabbed at her from behind. He missed her, snagging her veil instead. She spun round and lashed out hard with her left fist, all the anger and frustration of the past days boiling up inside her. Then she doubled over in pain as her assailant punched her in the stomach.

"Aushlaant' bisch-"

She gasped for air, looking up. He had a dagger in his hand, and an expression on his face that made her elbows and knees turn to jelly. He's going to-

The back of the man's head vanished in a red spray, and he dropped like a stone.

"Fuck!" she screamed, finally getting her breath back.

"Miriam?" Hesitantly. I know that voice, she thought dizzily. "Are you all right?"

"No," she managed to choke. Putting one arm out she tried to lever herself up.