Starfist: Hangfire

PROLOGUE

Looming black against the bright sunlight from the arena, two gladiators clomped under the arch and down the corridor to the dressing rooms. Filmed with sweat, breathing hard, they congratulated each other on their performance. The crowd had loved them despite the emperor's disappointing decision to spare the loser. Outside, the spectators screamed and stomped their feet, demanding another performance. They'd get it.

The two paused briefly in front of where Gilboa Woods sat wearily, one arm chained to the wall, his face showing signs of recent beatings. He was dressed as a lightly armored secutor, as befit the Caligulan theme of the park. The gladiators said nothing, just nodded sympathetically and passed on down the corridor. Woods's turn was coming up soon.

Noto Draya shifted his huge bulk comfortably and put an arm around his nearest consort, a beautiful Turko-Asian girl he'd bought from the Old Woman. He held up his goblet and a servant—a real boy, not one of those idiotic servomechs—poured more wine. Other members of the Draya Family lolling about in the emperor's box above the stadium saluted him with their goblets.

"Long life, boss!" Noto's counselor said across the rim of his goblet.

The crowd had grown silent, attention riveted on the two men circling one another in the dusty arena below. They bore the arms and armor of first-century gladiators. The Pompeiian was the odds-on favorite, but his opponent, trained in Capua, was a good contender. They were attired in the Thracian heavy-armored style. Of course, the gladiators who fought in the Havanagas Roman theme park actually trained in modern facilities. But one attraction of the park was that it re-created precisely the atmosphere of Imperial Rome circa AD 3741, the reign of the emperor Caligula. Exact reproductions of the amphitheater, the gladiatorial schools—the whole city of Rome, in fact—existed for the pleasure of the park's twenty-fifth-century patrons. The other attraction was blood.

The two circled each other warily, their feet kicking up tiny puffs of dust. Then the sharp sound of the Pompeiian's sword against the Capuan's shield brought the crowd to its feet. Beside him Noto's consort suppressed a scream of delight as she clutched her tiny fists in anticipation. Noto grinned. He was sponsoring the Pompeiian so he stood to win a substantial bet if his man won, and if the man lost, it would be up to him to decide if he lived or died. Either way, he would enjoy himself.

The Capuan darted inside his opponent's guard and his sword stabbed at the Pompeiian's left leg, striking the greave but slicing upward and drawing blood from the other man's thigh. Not an incapacitating wound, but the first of the battle. The crowd went wild. "One for me," a tiny voice said in Noto's left ear. He glanced downward toward a spectator box and grimaced at Johnny Sticks. Sticks, counselor to the Ferris Family, grinned as he gave Noto the finger.

"Hey, up yours, Johnny," Noto whispered into his throat mike. "Tell Homs I got your man by the balls." Homs, head of the Ferris Family, looked up and waved cordially at Noto. Homs had been emperor last month, and Noto had lost heavily to him then.

The Pompeiian suddenly rained blows against the Capuan's shield, driving him back. The crowd jumped to its feet again. The Capuan staggered under the onslaught, tripped, and fell backward. The spectators surged to their feet, and Noto screamed for his man to finish the Capuan while Homs and his party shouted at the Capuan to get up and return to the attack. The Capuan rolled, jumped to his feet, and slashed his attacker across the right forearm. The tightly wrapped leather bands there protected the Pompeiian, but the crowd saw the blow as a skillful counterattack and roared approval.

Hidden back in the shadows under the gladiators' arch, a trainer spoke into a throat mike, frowned when he got no response, then realized he'd picked up the utility radio rather than the crypto. "Slow it down, boys, slow it down," he cautioned the fighters. "Drag the fight out. They expect it. See if you can go a full ten minutes this bout." Obediently, the two slowed to circling one another warily, each looking for openings in the other's guard. They feinted and maneuvered for a full minute.

Noto turned to his counselor. "When's our boy up?"

"Next, boss. Everything's ready."

"You're sure they can't jump up into the stands?"

"Sure, boss. The vet operated on their leg tendons. But they're still plenty dangerous. He won't last long."

The families particularly enjoyed shoving agents into the arena because what happened to them was real.

Another scream of delighted rage erupted from the spectators as the two gladiators leaped at each other, furiously hacking and smashing. Their shields slammed together and the sound of swords banging off them resounded throughout the amphitheater. When the blades crossed, sparks flew from the metal, to the immense delight of the crowd. Then they were on the ground, rolling in the dust. Their weapons flung aside on impact, they were using heads, elbows, feet, and fists.

Using a wrestling maneuver, the Capuan managed to throw the Pompeiian off and jump to his feet. He retrieved his sword and, before the other man could recover, placed its blade under the Pompeiian's chin.

The fight was over. The Capuan looked up at the emperor's box. Noto leaned over the railing, his ample body quivering with rage. His first reaction was to get rid of his defeated fighter. If he did that, though, he couldn't put the man back into the arena for the rest of the month, and despite his loss, the Pompeiian was still Noto's best chance to win big another time.

Noto gave the thumbs-up. The crowd booed and cursed as one. People threw things into the arena. A wave of angry sound washed over the emperor's box. "Fuck you!" Noto shouted back. "Who runs this place, me or you?" he asked in a lower voice. He turned to his counselor. "They want blood? All right.

Give 'em Woods."

For six years Noto Draya had been head of the Draya Family, since removing his brother. When the Drayas had joined with the Ferris Family to run their enterprise on Havanagas some twenty years ago, his brother had moved to Havanagas so he could maintain better control over business matters while keeping an eye on the Ferris Family. The bitter wars between the two crime families that had characterized their relations before the Havanagas deal were not so far in the past that they'd been forgotten.

Now Noto, the ruthless and ambitious second son of the infamous capo James Ferguson Draya, was head of the family. As soon as he could manage it, the Ferrises would be history. Then he would deal with the local rebels. But for the moment he would show the Ministry of Justice it couldn't send its agents to spy on him.

Two burly guards came for Woods. After days of brutal interrogation, a bridesmaid could have handled the agent, but Noto was taking no chances.

"Wa'uh, wa'uh," Woods mumbled. The guards ignored his request for water. Noto had had his tongue cut out. No matter what he screamed in the arena, nobody would understand him.

The guards hauled him to his feet and half carried, half pushed him toward the sunlit archway leading into the arena. Outside it was so bright that, after the gloomy interior, Woods was blinded at first. One of the guards thrust a short-bladed sword into his hand and shoved him out into the amphitheater, where he tripped and fell to his knees. Behind him a solid door slammed shut. He staggered to his feet. As his vision cleared he saw the detritus of combat strewn all over the arena, broken shields, discarded swords, and fragments of armor.

The arena was about two hundred meters in circumference, surrounded by stone walls four meters high. Above the walls were boxes and stands for spectators. Woods knew very well what went on here.

The contests were all fixed, and gladiators seldom died in the arena. Men suffered terrible wounds sometimes, but most of the gore was artificial. Woods knew his wouldn't be.

The arena was empty.

Woods stared at the wall opposite where he stood panting, waiting for his opponent to emerge from the staging area. Would he be a retarius, a net-fighter armed with a dagger, trident, and net? Woods hefted his short sword. In his current physical condition, even another secutor would make short work of him.

The crowd began to chant, "Bring on the fight! Bring on the fight!" The roar swept over Woods.

Suddenly the opponent's door clanged open. The crowd went instantly silent. For a full thirty seconds nothing emerged from the black square. Then two agile, bipedal, reptilian creatures bounded out into the amphitheater, and the crowd gasped in surprise. Behind them two more scaly animals colored in irregular stripes of yellow, green, and brown appeared in the doorway. Their heads, half the length of a man's forearm, had gaping jaws lined with fearsome serrated teeth. They bounded into the amphitheater on massive hind legs that had three dagger-like claws on each foot. Stubby forearms held shorter but no less lethal-looking claws. The creatures stood a meter tall. An agile, heavily armored man could easily deal with one; two were always a little more difficult. But, the year before, the best of the Gauls had fought four of the beasts at one time and emerged with only a few wounds. The spectators rose as one and shouted approval.

Disoriented by the roar of the crowd, the beasts tried to leap the walls into the crowd at first, but the severed tendons in their legs prevented them from jumping that high, normally not a difficult thing for this species.

And then they saw Woods.

The raptors bounded at him quickly.

Woods placed the tip of his blade just under his sternum and threw himself to the ground as hard as he could. The crowd screamed in anger and disappointment as the blade pierced his chest but settled down immediately as the beasts set about reducing Woods's body to red chunks.

CHAPTER ONE

Getting from the highway to the side of the headquarters building was no problem; the Marines'

chameleon uniforms easily hid them from the crowds of HQ workers milling about outside during the lunch break. Those same crowds confused the motion detectors and other passive surveillance devices around the building's perimeter so the sensors didn't notice the intruders either. Just where the intelligence report had said it was, they found an open window to an untenanted office.

"Rock," Corporal Kerr said into his helmet radio. His infra screen showed Lance Corporal Rachman Claypoole slithering through the open window. Kerr followed immediately and had to move immediately to keep PFC MacIlargie from landing on him inside the office.

By the time Kerr got to his feet, Claypoole was next to the hallway door. Kerr checked his HUD and shook his head. He was amazed that it didn't show guards in the hallway. But nobody seemed to be there. He thought that was amazing for so large a building. Of course, most of the people who worked at the headquarters were civilians, and civilians didn't act like military personnel.

"Go," he said softly into his radio. Claypoole's next move was the first true test of the infiltration—intelligence didn't know if there were passive surveillance devices in the headquarters'

corridors.

Claypoole pushed the door open and darted through. No alarms sounded, but that didn't mean none were blinking somewhere else, alerting guards to the intruders. Kerr tapped Claypoole's invisible shoulder and gave him a push. The three Marines sprinted to the nearest radial corridor and down it to a vending alcove. Kerr rechecked their route on the floor plan in his HUD, made sure his men knew where they were going next, and then they were off once more, soft-footing their way. Their objective was the command center deep in the center of the large building. So far there were no signs of pursuit.

They next stopped outside a door on an inner ring-corridor, and Kerr once more examined the building's floor plan on his HUD. Three green dots indicated the positions of he and his men; the door icon showed its lock was engaged. Five ill-defined red dots inside the room showed where its occupants were. Maybe. The dots were indistinct because his sensors weren't sure the hot spots were people; they could be overheated equipment. The floor plan showed another door leading from the room deeper into the building. It didn't show another route to where they had to go—unless they blasted through a wall.

Blasting through a wall was out of the question; for their mission to succeed, they had to infiltrate the interior of the building undetected. They weren't even carrying anything that could blast through a wall.

This was a good test, Kerr thought, of how three Marines could quietly subdue five people. It wasn't a good idea to rush in and try to physically overpower them. Even if the five were trained navy guards instead of ordinary sailors or civilians, the Marines had a distinct advantage since they were effectively invisible in their chameleon uniforms. Three highly trained, invisible Marines bursting in unexpectedly should have little problem subduing five people, even trained security men. But could they do it before one of the five managed to sound the alarm? In any event, they had to get through a locked door before they could deal with whoever was in the room. But breaking the lock would alert the people inside, and if the lock was tied into a security system...