There was a long pause.

“Why are you in your force field suit?” Tarlo asked.

Gwyneth jerked her head around to stare at the wall between the rooms.

“Shit!” Her virtual hand swiped at the suit’s activation icon as she dived for the floor.

The middle of the wall exploded in a gout of dazzling white plasma. Long ion flames seared across the room. One of them licked at Gwyneth. Her force field wasn’t quite established; it flared purple around her, allowing a weakened gust of the energized atoms to rake across her bare skin. She screamed at the pain, thrashing around as the force field stabilized, deflecting the rest of the blast. Flames burst out of the furnishings and carpet.

The room vibrated to the bass roar of more weapons being fired. Blinding light flared through the wrecked wall. Gwyneth rolled over, tears blurring her vision. She risked a glance down at the side of her rib cage where the ion stream had penetrated. Her flesh was blackened, with red cracks splitting open to weep blood and fluid. It was an agony so intense it was actually dull. She knew she was going to throw up. The sprinklers came on, spraying a glutinous blue foam. Nozzles automatically sought out the hot spots, directing the foam to the worst of the blaze. Steam and smoke churned into the air, obscuring the room.

More explosions sounded. One actually produced a quake in the floor that tumbled her about. The ceiling sagged, and what was left of the ruined wall collapsed completely. She tried to stand, but somehow her limbs didn’t respond. The best she could do was roll over into a crouch. An alarm was howling.

Three armor-suited figures materialized out of the thick smoke. Two of them pointed fat stubby weapons at her.

“Do not move, lady.”

Gwyneth almost laughed.

The third circled around her warily, and held a hand out flat toward the bathroom door. There was a dull thud, and a pressure wave knocked Gwyneth back onto her stomach. She groaned at the fresh outbreak of pain in her side. The bathroom door had vanished, along with most of its frame.

“Clear,” the suited figure said.

“Did you see where he went?”

Gwyneth blinked in confusion. A galaxy of colored lights that weren’t quite part of this universe were flashing at her through the smog.

“Gwyneth! It’s Paula. Did you see him? Did he come through your room?”

“I…No.” She gritted her teeth in the effort to concentrate. “No, there was just the plasma grenade. He didn’t come this way.”

“Okay, hang on. We’ve got a medic team on standby. They’ll be with you soon.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, I’m all right,” she said, and fainted.

The sun was just high enough to send a pale light along Tridelta’s long straight streets as Alic Hogan’s taxi pulled up outside the cordon that had been set up around the Almada hotel. He got out of the vehicle with Lieutenant John King and stared at the scene with a rising sense of dismay. Alic wasn’t a religious man, nor even superstitious, but some days it did seem as if the Paris office had been cursed.

Five big fire tenders were drawn up outside the modern concrete and glass edifice of the hotel. Firebots had crawled up the walls to the fifth floor, trailing their hoses after them. They were clustered around a series of holes that had been ripped through the neat mosaic pattern of windows and concrete panels. He recognized them as weapon blasts. The edges were melted, with little soot scarring the wall above, which meant the plasma had punched out horizontally. That was confirmed by the amount of debris littering the street below. Water and blue suppressant foam was smeared all the way down the wall below the holes, spilling onto the pavement to run into the gutters. There were a couple of shallow craters in the road, where plasma grenades had struck, and a number of smaller pocks from ion pulses.

Outside the area where tenders and force field–clad fire department staff were supervising the damping-down operation, the police had established a cordon that they were enforcing with armed officers and patrolbots. Clusters of patrol cars were blocking the street a block back from the hotel, their red and blue strobes bright in the leaden dawn. Several other vehicles were stationary along the road, cars and a few early morning delivery vans halting where the city’s traffic management arrays had injected their emergency stop orders. The hotel residents, a couple hundred people, were all huddled together at one end of the building, wearing their pajamas, or dressing gowns, or less. A lot of them had bare feet. Police officers were moving through them, listening to the questions and protests. Kids were crying.

A couple of ambulances and a medic command bus were parked behind the fire tenders.

“Dear God,” Alic muttered.

“He was determined not to be caught, wasn’t he?” John King said.

“Right.” All Alic could think of was what the Admiral would say.

The first person Alic saw when a police officer led them into reception was Paula Myo. His jaw clenched at the sight of her. She was wearing full assault armor, with the helmet held under one arm. Even in the bulky dark suit she managed to appear orderly, with her hair neatly held back from her face with a blue Alice band. Several of her Senate Security team were positioned around the reception area, also in armor, with their force fields active, and rifles held ready.

A couple of the paramedics were working on Gwyneth, who was lying on a crash trolley with a green medical smock around her. Vic Russell was holding her hand, the big man’s face white with worry and anger. Renne was also there, along with Jim Nwan, both of them standing back a polite distance from the cart, but peering at their fallen colleague. The police precinct captain was talking quietly to Paula, while a detective sergeant called Marhol hovered at his side.

Alic took a breath and walked over to the crash cart. “How is she?” he asked the senior paramedic.

“Heavy burns on her side where the plasma struck. There will have to be some regeneration, but it’s not critical. We’ve cleaned the injury and sealed it in healskin.”

“So she’ll be all right?”

“A few days in the hospital, then a fortnight recuperating. She was lucky.”

“Great.” He leaned over the crash trolley, trying not to look at the stains and flecks of crisped flesh.

“Hi, Chief,” Gwyneth said. Her face was very pale, sweat glinting on her brow.

“Hi, yourself. When you get back, the first thing I’m doing is sending you on a refresher course on how to duck quicker.”

“Fine by me.” Her dreamy smile was mainly due to painkillers.

“Go with her to the hospital,” Alic told Vic. “Take as long as you want.”

“I’m coming right back,” Vic said. “I will be on the arrest team when we track that piece of shit down.”

“Okay.” Alic wasn’t going to argue in public, but there was no way he was going to allow Vic any part of the case. Right now his priority was to get the big man out of the way.

He finally turned to Paula, and smiled like a prosecuting lawyer. “Would you care to brief me now, please.”

“Certainly.” She thanked the precinct captain, who walked off with Marhol. It was just the Paris office team who were left in a group.

“Tarlo is a traitor,” she said flatly.

“I really hope you can prove that.”

She glanced meaningfully around the reception area and through the huge glass doors at the scene outside. Alic reddened slightly, but held his ground.

“I’ve been running elimination entrapment operations on both Tarlo and Renne,” Paula said.

“Me?” Renne yelped.

“Of course,” Paula replied urbanely. “Our observation was both visual and electronic. As soon as Tarlo was informed that Renne had Bernadette Halgarth under observation he called her. We intercepted that call. When we moved in to arrest him, he fought back and managed to elude us. His armament wetwiring is not registered. Next time we will field a more appropriate arrest squad.”