Star Risk - 02 Scoundrel Worlds by Chris Bunch

think," she said. "A nice lecture, not far from our friends' place, debating the need for More Equality and Less Secret Justice. Something staunch patriots like the Masked Ones will be sure to object to. Two nights from now."
    "Heh. Heh," Goodnight agreed. "Perfect like a mamoo."
    That night and the next, Goodnight and Riss, wearing black coveralls under their street clothes, took a lifter to the mansion's neighborhood.
    They carefully watched comings and goings, and shot several dozen amplified light films.
    "What we need," Goodnight said, "is to catch these idiots just putting their masks on, before they start terrorizing the widows and orphans or whoever's dumb enough to want to go to this damned talk."
    "So," Riss said, "if the suckers' lecture is at nineteen hundred, I'd guess our friends will be assembling at eighteen hundred, maybe a little earlier, getting ready to go out and beat the hamhocks off these poor dissenters for being potentially traitorous and, worse for them, unarmed."
    "Are you sure this is necessary?" von Baldur asked. "I know he is what he is, and that eventually we shall be on a collision orbit with L'Pellerin, but is it necessary this early in the game?"
    "I think so," M'chel said. "The only thing a cop understands is greater violence."
    "True," von Baldur agreed.
    "Besides," Grok rumbled, "I think an object lesson in how to correctly apply violence and terror is more than needed in these parlous times."
    "You," von Baldur said, "just want to go kick holy hell out of something or someone. And where in the hell did you learn the word parlous?"
    "This is true," Grok said. "But, like humans, I should be able to put a most pious front to my sadism. As for my vocabulary, all of you should be envious of someone who realizes education is a continuing process."
    The afternoon of the lecture, Goodnight posted a note in the guards' wing. It said that anyone not on night shift who wanted to pick up an extra hundred credits or so, doing nothing all that illegal, should sign at the bottom of the sheet. All of the guards not on duty signed.
    "What we'll need you for," Goodnight instructed, "is to seal off both sides of a street. Keep the curious away, and if any police lifters show up, which I think they've been carefully instructed not to, give the alarm and haul ass. This isn't an exercise in fair fighting."
    The troops were fed early, then issued black coveralls, blasters, gas and blast grenades, and truncheons.
    The Star Risk operatives armed themselves more heavily. Grok picked a semiautomatic, semiportable�except to the enormous alien�grenade launcher.
    Riss strapped a small flamethrower on her back.
    Jasmine shuddered, checked her own blaster and small backup unit, holstered them, and was ready.
    The others had blast rifles, pistols, grenades. All of them wore available-light helmets.
    Lifters were waiting in the mansion's yard, and the men and women, not talking, boarded.
    The lifters took off and headed west, away from the slum district. It'd been leaked that Star Risk planned a night exercise in the wilderness, to make sure all their people were as qualified as they claimed.
    The lifters, beyond Tuletia, circled wide around the city, keeping well below any radar sweeps, then reentered. They landed at a bankrupt loading yard a block and a half from the Masked Ones' lair, put guards on the lifters, and moved in on the mansion just at dusk, making sure their hiding places were off the street.
    As night fell, men, mostly young, made their way toward the mansion, pretending elaborate innocence.
    By 1800 it was full dark, and the last stragglers were inside.
    Goodnight moved the guards out into the street, cordoning the area.
    At 1815, M'chel Riss slithered through backyards to the rear of the mansion, and opened the flamethrower's valves.
    One blast to one side of the back door, another to the left, and a third straight into the door sent it pinwheeling in flames into the mansion's center.
    The fire caught