Ragnarok (The Echo Case Files) by C.S. Stinton
* *
One moment the air had been filled with cheers. Now it was filled with screaming. Locke squirmed under Ramirez and by instinct she slammed his shoulder against the stage. ‘Stay down! They’re trying to kill you!’ This last was said more to herself, still catching up with the sudden turn of events.
‘I see why you’re a detective.’ He spoke with a calm sarcasm born of sheer terror, eyes wide.
‘Cute.’ She looked up to see Locke’s security taking the steps to the stage, and yanked her Hauer from its holster. They stopped short when it was levelled at them. ‘You stay over there!’ Someone had put the beacon in his pocket, after all.
‘What’re you -’ Locke was silenced by a bullet thudding into the metal podium, and Ramirez exhaled with relief. She hadn’t been absolutely sure it was solid enough to take a round from a high-calibre rifle.
‘Saving you. I know, I’m surprised, too.’ She shoved his back to the podium. ‘Turn out your pockets.’
‘What?’
‘Do it!’ They couldn’t stay here forever, and there was no guarantee the podium would absorb every round. Ramirez chanced a look about. The staff on Mayor Kelvin’s side of the stage was in a flurry of activity, the Mayor himself grabbed and bundled by security and long gone. Ramirez suppressed a curse; so far she’d had no reason to suspect Cheng’s men, and now they were leaving or dealing with the crowd, which surged forward as it devolved into panic and screams. They would be no help.
Locke emptied his pockets. A spare earpiece, a palm-sized pad, a credit chit, a stylus - then there it was, the targeting beacon, and Ramirez had to resist the urge to smash it. It was evidence, after all, so she instead snatched it up and thumbed it off.
‘Right. That should make shooting harder.’ She grabbed him by the lapels of his exquisitely-tailored jacket and looked into those peerless green eyes which, for the first time, glinted an inch beyond control. ‘We’re getting out of here. You have to understand: your people set this up.’
‘That’s not possible.’
She heard thudding footsteps as Locke’s security made another valiant effort at doing their jobs, and she glanced over. ‘I mean it! None of you are coming over here.’ She looked back at him. ‘Call them off. Right now. I don’t care what you say - tell them to go secure the cars, just get them away.’
He swallowed and put a finger to his earpiece. ‘Boys, the Marshal’s got me. We’ll be going for the cars, so head there and make sure the open air’s secure. We’ll be right behind you.’ He lowered his hand and squinted at her. ‘What are you doing?’
She’d been squirming out of her uniform jacket, and with a firm yank removed the armoured inner mesh. ‘Take your jacket off and put this on. It might not be much good against a high-calibre rifle round, but it’s better than nothing.’
‘Is now the time?’
‘Right before we dart across a field of fire? It’s the perfect time.’ Ramirez scowled at the sky, at the roaring crowd, at the dented podium. There’d been no more gunshots. Had something up there changed, or was the sniper waiting? She pressed her earpiece. ‘Harrigan?’
His voice crackled back after a heartbeat that felt like a hundred, sounding tense but excited. ‘I’m comin’ in on him, Ramirez, I -’
‘Then come in on him fast. Locke and I are breaking cover in three seconds. If you’re in any kind of position to keep me from getting my fool head blown off, please do something.’
Locke winced as he buttoned his jacket back up. The armour mesh stretched across his chest, but with his tie tugged over the top of it, the silvery sheen was difficult to see - which was what she wanted. ‘Three seconds?’
‘Now!’ Then she was hauling him upright and dragging him alongside her as they broke cover for the Mayor’s side of backstage. Without thinking she’d put herself between him and the open air, knowing that a body would slow - though not stop - a 2288 Machenry round better than the light armour would, and so she braced with every step for an impact that would drop her as surely as it had dropped Tycho.
But it didn’t come. The run felt longer than the mere heartbeats it lasted, but it was enough for Ramirez to take stock of everything. The HCPD and Cheng’s security trying to keep the crowd from going ballistic, funnelling people out of the square through the exits on the far side of the plaza. The blue skies of Thor through the octagonal mesh wide and open, any shooter in the air too small for her to see at a glance. Her heart thudding with every footstep, and Locke’s ragged breathing.
Then they fell down the steps to backstage. Locke staggered and almost collapsed, but she kept a firm grip on his shoulder and hauled him through the doors into the hall, sweeping over their surroundings with her Hauer. Backstage had all but emptied, Kelvin’s staff and security leaving with him, Locke’s ushered out through the side doors to where his motorcade waited. Here and there abandoned technicians or staffers took panicked cover under tables, with their backs to walls, behind stacked equipment, refusing to go out into the open.
Considering there was a sniper out there, she couldn’t blame them. But her sidearm swept across each and every one of them before she looked to the side doors. ‘We’re not going that way,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you’ll get your head blown off the moment we go near your security.’ She pressed her earpiece again. ‘Harrigan?’
This time there was no response, and a cold fear clutched at her chest. Perhaps he’d done something up there, perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps there was a good reason he couldn’t respond.
Perhaps the good reason was that he was dead. Either way, she couldn’t help him right now - and he couldn’t help her.
‘Commander, explain. Why can’t we trust my people?’ Locke planted his feet as she tugged at his shoulder.
‘Someone placed a targeting beacon in your pocket. It’s why a sniper in a car a mile away could reliably make a shot as difficult as that. You had it on you when you came through the security scanners at the door. Between that and one of your employees trying to shoot me after we had dinner, I have some personal issues with your staff.’ She pressed him against the wall, presenting a lower profile.
‘So where do we go? Kelvin’s people are gone or dealing with the crowd, you’ve made it quite clear you don’t trust the HCPD, and my apparently untrustworthy people have the cars. I don’t even have the driving codes for those things.’ Despite his calm voice, Locke had gone pale.
Ramirez’s lips thinned. ‘Harrigan will take care of the sniper. He’s got a car. He comes down here, picks us up. And soon enough this whole area gets secured by Kelvin’s security and the HCPD, with the press crawling all over it. When we have a safe vehicle or a hundred cameras from a dozen worlds on you, then we get out of here.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘We wait. And find some cover.’ She grabbed him by the elbow and looked deeper into the museum. This near the entrance there were normally displays giving visitors an introduction to the world and technology of early interstellar exploration almost two hundred years ago. These had been dragged away from the doors and now ringed the other exhibits, like the half-size model of the Aquila Twelve, the exploratory ship that had made Thor’s first landing.
‘This way.’ She pushed him as they went, gaze going up and around. The roof of the museum was domed glass, and wasn’t covered by the wire mesh Kelvin’s people had erected over the plaza. Being beneath that with a sniper on the loose wasn’t her best idea - but a shooter had to know where they were, and then find them in the cover from the exhibits.
‘So why are they trying to kill you?’ she said once they had disappeared behind the displays, and she urged him further down, past a dangling replica of the probe that had found the future founding site of Hardveur as an ideal landing spot. ‘They use your protests, like it or not…’
‘Going legitimate might have not pleased them.’ Locke scowled. ‘I suppose you’re right. Nobody knew about that except my people and George. I don’t know if George’s staff even kne
‘Of course. Then they lose the protest movement, they lose their smokescreen, and they publicly kill you - punish you - for it. Showing the galaxy they can kill anyone at any time.’
The cacophony from outside was enough to muffle their footsteps, Kelvin’s people and the HCPD still busy with the public. So when her pad beeped, nestled in the pocket of her unbuttoned uniform jacket, she almost didn’t hear it.
‘I should put this thing on silent,’ she muttered, pulling it out - then swore.
‘What?’
‘I’m still connected to the scanners at the side doors,’ Ramirez said, shoving the pad away and putting a hand on his back, urging him further forward. ‘The ones which now have nobody manning them. Four guys carrying 2288 Machenry rifles just came into the building.’