"This way we will be in blood up to our necks," Bemish spoke quietly.
Giles spun.
"Be silent, Terence, when other people have to do your laundry." And he turned back to Kissur.
"What are you going to do to the zealots?"
"What should I do to them to be accepted to the military academy?"
Giles was dumb-founded for a moment and then he answered, "Shoot them." Bemish swallowed. He was certain that Kissur would agree to this proposal. Doesn't he understand, however, that no public opinion would tolerate him in the academy after such a bloodbath?
Kissur laughed out, slapped, in his turn, Giles on his shoulder and declared, "Better late than never. You, Earthmen, get bold only when the stocks of your companies plummet! Listen, Dick, let's exchange!"
And Kissur pulled his 9mm Star out of the gun holder and handed it over to Giles handle first. The gun's barrel was in its original state while its handle was covered by beautiful engraving over attached silver plates.
Giles hesitated for a moment, pulled his gun out and handled it over to Kissur.
He took the gun, checked if it was loaded and declared loudly, "And now, monkeys, stick your faces in the floor and your asses in the air! You are under arrest!"
The fighters behind Kissur raised their assault rifles.
"Are you joking, Kissur?"
"It's not a joke, dog! Get down! Down!"
Giles was lost; he looked at the Star in his hands and pulled the trigger. The gun only clicked — it was not loaded.
Several employees started slowly rising out of the table with the hands up.
The next moment, Bemish whipped his gun out of the holder but, before he was able to pull the trigger, fighter kicked the gun out of his hand with his rifle's butt. Bemish turned and, with a dull thud, his fist collided with the fighter's solar plexus. The latter moaned and sagged to the floor.
Two Alom fighters rushed at Giles. The security service head dropped the useless gun and the guys started twisting his elbows back. Giles butted one of them with his head in the stomach and threw the other one over. The fighter dropped his rifle and Giles snatched the falling weapon. The next moment a rifle burst sounded — Kissur was firing. One after another, heavy bullets with zinc outer layer were making holes in the clothing and the body of the security service chief. Giles swayed. His face showed astonishment. He looked at his jacket stained with blood, muttered, "Why?" and crashed to the floor letting the gun go.
Meanwhile, two more fighters rushed at Bemish. Having cried out, one of them smashed into the table with his face. The papers prepared for the meeting flittered and flew around the room like white geese. The other one sailed ass forward into a flat, built in terminal, crashed to the floor and stayed there. Bemish leaped over the table and charged at Kissur. A rifle burst formed a series of holes in the floor in front of Bemish and he froze. Kissur and the company director stood surrounded by the fighters.
"Don't be dumb, Terence," Kissur said, waving the gun, "Put your hands behind your head or you will enter the other world together with Giles."
Bemish stood with his tie askew and his perfect shirt's collar torn. The shirt had been absolutely fresh. Bemish took a shower half an hour ago and changed it and he felt now how the cloth under his armpits and behind his back was getting wet and sticky with his sweat.
"Raise your hands, Terence," Trevis muttered lying on the floor, "Don't you see — they are nuts."
The next moment Bemish dove forward and his hand locked on Kissur's wrist. In a moment the gun flew to the side and Kissur and Bemish rolled over the floor in a tight embrace. The fighters didn't dare shoot — they were afraid of hitting their master and they also believed that to kill one of the enemies locked in personal combat was not cool.
Kissur's steel hands locked at his foe's neck. Bemish's ears rung, the room's ceiling spun and started floating upwards. Bemish hit Kissur in the groin with his knee. The latter hissed but didn't let go. Twisting, Bemish rolled onto his side and drove his heel into Kissur's kneecap.
Kissur roared. A lock and a snatch followed and, having thrown the barbarian over, Bemish leapt on his feet.
Time froze as a sentinel at a gate. Bemish was watching Kissur falling vertically, head down to the floor and he could already hear the crunching sound that vertebrae would make breaking over hard wood. For a moment he wanted to rush to his friend and spot him but he realized that he would be late. He also realized that he would die a second after this sound came.
At the last moment, Kissur threw his arms forward and his hands rustled touching the hardwood floor. Kissur somersaulted over his head and having pushed himself off the floor with his hands, kicked Bemish horribly with both legs in his chest. Bemish flew away to the wall. Kissur's fist missed his jaw by a millimeter. Bemish dove and landed a short jab in Kissur's solar plexus. Kissur swayed. Bemish drove his heel into Kissur's groin. The latter roared. The next moment, he jumped at his opponent and he jammed Bemish in the ribs with his knee. The company director was thrown to the floor. He barely had time to turn aside and then Kissur's heavy boot kicked him in the chin once and again.
Bemish tucked his knees in and, right at this moment, he saw in the ceiling's light Kissur's contorted face far above him and his blackened fist right next to his eyes. Then something exploded and flashed in Bemish's head. The world sank and fell like a flower petal and Bemish lolled on the floor like a man who had his skeleton extracted so that only the meat was left. Two fighters locked handcuffs on his wrists and dragged him by his legs out of the room. The Assalah director's head trailed down the office's freshly waxed hardwood floor, blood seeped out of his light hair.
"If anybody moves," Kissur said, "he will get nine grams heavier."
And he pointed at dead Giles.
"What does it mean?" Ronald Trevis asked from the floor.
"The spaceport is taken over."
"Who took over it?"
"It is the party of people's freedom."
Then, dressed in Earth clothing, Kissur smiled and took a broad marine knife from a warrior standing next to him. Slowly and enjoying himself, he wrapped his dark red bordeaux colored tie around his left hand and, grinning broadly, he cut it off at the top.
X X X
Afterwards, everybody admitted that, on the technical side, the operation had been performed brilliantly.
At 18.05, an announcement sounded out of the Assalah spaceport loudspeakers. A slightly hoarse voice with a trace of Alom accent said, "Ladies and gentlemen! The Assalah spaceport is controlled by me, Kissur, and the party of people's freedom. All the spaceport guards have been disarmed. Nobody should move from where they are. Anybody resisting my troops will be shot dead on the spot. Any panic will be considered a resistance attempt.
The Earthmen will soon be allowed to leave the spaceport. Before that, however, they are considered to be hostages and they will be killed if they take any hostile actions towards us.
Ladies and gentlemen, have a good day. Goodbye."
Immediately after the announcement, Kissur's fighters, present in practically every lounge, custom corridor, restaurant and shop jerked their assault rifles up at the ready position and screamed, "Everybody down on the floor! Ass up, hands behind your head! Go! The majority of people submitted obediently, dropping in the process the souvenirs they just bought — Inis lacquered figurines and flat wooden bottles with Chakhar vodka. This order effectively stopped panic (that was to be treated as resistance). Occasional gun bursts above the heads took place; five spaceport security service employees attempted to escape — four were shot dead and the fifth died two hours later at a surgery table.
In the air traffic control room, assault rifles were aimed at the workers and the latter unquestioningly obeyed Khanadar's directions — to announce Assalah, without getting into any extra details, to be a closed-off zone. Therefore, the ships that were not on the landing trajectory yet, should go land anywhere the hell they want but not in Assalah; the ships that
were already moving on the landing trajectory should continue landing.
The pilots are a well trained crowd and they were accustomed to landing the way they were told to. The last two ships had time to figure out that they were landing in a spaceport taken over by terrorists. Attesting to the professional level of their crews, the ships didn't vacillate in the air — that could've been very dangerous — and landed in the spaceport. After the landing, they immediately required a permission to launch; the permission was refused.
At least, not a single ship crashed missing the launching chutes; it would've been very probable if the air traffic controllers had panicked.
The flight schedule board in the main lounge blinked and went dead. Then, an announcement appeared on it, "Long live the party of people's freedom!" The announcement was written in Weian and English. The English variation contained a grammatical mistake.
There were total of eight thousand people in the spaceport, five hundred volunteer and regular security service employees, twenty three hundred of regular personnel and fifty two hundred passengers.
About four dozens passengers, mostly journalists, recognizable thanks to their cameras, were pulled out of the crowd and brought to an office. Kissur and his younger brother Ashidan sat there and young Ashinik with the old man Yadan represented the zealots. Kissur offered the guests to take part in the inspection of the spaceport and he added that he would rely completely upon their honest reports. Afterwards, the whole Galaxy saw the pictures made by these journalists.
X X X
The following is an excerpt from the testimony given by Francis F. Carr, an employee of a large auditing firm Coupere, Lir and Gambacher; he had been among the forty selected hostages. Mr. Carr gave this testimony to a senate committee during an investigation concerning the spaceport's takeover a month and a half later.
"Why did they pick you?"
"I don't know. Two fighters approached me, one of them stuck his finger at me and they took me away. They didn't speak English. I thought that they were going to shoot me."
"Did they beat you?"
"Frankly, I got a good kick in the butt and, when we were passing the peasants, somebody threw a rotten tomato at me."
"What did they fighters do?"
"They screamed something at the crowd and they cleaned the tomato off me."
"What happened next?"
"They took me to a large room, there were already about thirty people there. A lot of journalists were there and nobody obstructed from taking pictures. Kissur and his brother sat at a table together with the leaders of the party of people's freedom. Kissur told the journalists to save their film — he was going to take them on a trip through the spaceport and they would get good shots there."
"What happened next?"
"Kissur said that he demanded that everything photographed was shown on Galactic channels. He said that the films should be sent to a place that had broadcasting equipment and that the broadcast should be shown on all channels. He said that they had agents on different planets and that if the broadcast started later than 9am of the next day, he would shoot five hostages for every minute of delay. Somebody asked what would happen to the hostages if his demands were complied with. Kissur said that he was not enough of a scoundrel to make eight thousand Earthmen hostages in his future fight with Gera. Then, they asked him why he had seized the spaceport and he said that it was the only way to expose all its secret depositaries. He said that it was impossible to pick a moment when no passengers were present in the spaceport and that he didn't know any way to prevent panic spreading among civilians but to make them drop on their bellies and to shoot a dozen or two as an example. They asked him what he was going to do with the passengers and he said that after the broadcast was shown, he would free the hostages."
"What about the personnel?"
"He said that he had to detain the employees that were necessary for the proper operation of the spaceport."
"Have you witnessed any abuse of the passengers?"
"Yes. I saw a terrorist hitting a man with his rifle's butt only because the man rose without obtaining permission. Also a guy, sitting on the floor, stretched his legs; a terrorist thought that the guy was trying to trip him and the fighter hit him with his knee in the temple."
"What else has Kissur said?"
"He said that he had arrived at the spaceport to defend his friend Bemish. Then, he obtained reliable information that the military had been transporting toxic gas in a ship and that they were going to use it against the protesters. He had tried to persuade Bemish's deputy, an Intelligence Service employee Giles, not to utilize the gas. The latter said, "Shut up, Weian monkey." Kissur shot Giles."
"Have you seen the gas?"
"Yes. In a ship that was one of the latest to arrive, neurotoxin containers made up half the cargo. The containers were marked as a military cargo accordingly to the standard rules of the Federation Space Force. We were the first ones to enter the ship and the journalists photographed everything."
"Are you aware of the fact that the Federation defense department claims that it does not own these containers?"
"Yes, your honor."
"In your opinion, could Kissur load the containers before showing them to you?"
"That would be impossible. When we stood at the loading dock, the after landing warning lights were still lit on the board and they were just dragging the crew outside."
"What happened next?"
"They took us down a lot of storage areas. Quite often, the goods that were stored there had nothing to do with custom department's documentation describing them. More precisely, it was practically never the case. Cars were called medical equipment, computers were called canned food. I saw boxes of Lamass lace that were exported as glass."
"Were you offered any explanation?"
"Yes. The goods that were not duty free were documented as goods that were. Most export-import companies had a life expectation of less than two months. I don't know how corruption in customs looks on other planets but I was shocked by what I saw there. They didn't steal by containers, they stole by whole cargo loads."
"What happened next?"
"Finally, they took us to an area of space field that was almost never used for the civil flights. The chutes there looked slightly different from the civil ones. They showed us papers demonstrating that these chutes were intended for military ships. There were certain differences in construction between military and civil chutes, for instance ceramics deposition on the support columns allowed a ship to have a launching acceleration of five to six times higher than a civilian spaceship would require. They also…"
"We are not discussing technical parameters of military chutes at this hearing. Did you only see chutes?"
"No. There were several storage areas there — 17A, 17B and 17C — that had walls and locks designed in a different way. In particular, the storages had radiation shielding. Mr. Bemish was brought in and he opened the storage."
"How was Bemish treated?"
"They dragged him on a leash."
"How did he look?"
"He looked horrible. His suit was torn, there was blood on his shirt and he had a huge wale under his right eye. On the other hand, Kissur had the same size wale under his left eye and, as far as I know, Bemish got it all while fighting. Nobody beat him when his hands were tied."
"What was in the storage?"
"Some imported apparel was stored in 17A though, accordingly to the documentation, it was supposed to be empty. 17B was also supposed to be empty accordingly to the documentation. However, containers with medical markings were stored there. Right in front of us, they extracted constructions out of the containers that were later identified as partially functional Cassiopeia missiles."
"Why was Bemish needed there?"
"The storage areas were computer controlled and the computer had eye retina recognition lock system. There were only two retina images loaded into the computer memory, the spaceport director's and h
is deputy's — Terence Bemish and Richard Giles."
"Therefore, the missiles could be stored there only if the above named persons were involved. Is it correct?"
"Yes, your honor."
X X X
Bemish lay on a leather sofa in his own office and his hands were tied tightly behind his back. If he moved his eyes to the side strenuously enough, he could see out of an office's window a small section of the landing field and an arching asphalt ramp. Peasants wandered around in the landing field. A beetle shaped passenger bus crawled down the ramp.
The door squeaked and Kissur entered the office. Bemish turned pointedly to the wall; the pain in his twisted hand made him hiss sharply.
"Hello to a TV star," Kissur said, "They will show you tomorrow on all the channels — together with 17B storage area."
Bemish turned and hissed again.
"How did those damned missiles get here?" Bemish asked.
"My dear," Kissur said, "that's a question for you."
"Don't clown around! I sent them there on Shavash's request…"
"And Shavash thought that he was importing cute little cars," Kissur finished for him.
"You know, Shavash can goof up sometimes too… I don't have my own dummy fronts so I had to use one of vice minister's."
"What are you striving for, Kissur?" Bemish asked. "Have you forgotten how you shouted with joy when they told you that they would build a military base here? And I was almost killed when I refused to do it!"
Kissur was smiling and nursing an assault rifle on his knees.
"All right. You abased Shavash. You filmed him being a thief. You filmed me being a thief. You buried our military in unforgettable shit though, for my death's sake, I can't figure out how you got these damned missiles. What do you want?"
"What do I want? I want this spaceport to be nationalized. I want all this crap that the foreigners have built here to be nationalized. I want to change the government that steals just like our little brother Shavash. The foreigners station armaments, which are forbidden across the whole Galaxy, on our land and without our knowledge. Do you think that it's enough of a reason to expropriate the goods that the rich had stolen from us and return them to the people?"
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