Halfway up the stairs, a pair of Dragoon officers divided their attention between the mob and a detail of Dragoons erecting barricades to link the columns of the portico into a defensible perimeter. Two sandbag emplacements flanked the main doors, each with a semi-portable laser and crew. The heavy weapons were a statement to the mob that the Dragoons were ready to answer serious violence with serious firepower.

Outside the cordon, the crowd roared as a straw effigy in a mocked-up Dragoon uniform burst into flame. It burned with the fierce heat of gasoline-fed flames, and people came forward to spit on it. Every time the breeze fanned the flames, the mob's cries peaked. The red-and-white striped uniforms of the Civilian Guidance Corps were nowhere to be seen.

The staff car came to a halt at the ruins of a festival wagon. In the press, there was no room to maneuver the vehicle. The car following had pulled close again, and that prevented the driver from backing up. They were still twenty meters from the steps to the Dragoon HQ. “We're not getting any closer, Chu-sa-sama,”the driver told Akuma.

Wolf reached for the door handle.

“Be careful, Colonel,” Akuma warned.

“I didn't know you cared,” Wolf replied dryly. Blake smirked at the sarcasm in his Colonel's voice.

“I would not care to see you the victim of random violence.”

Wolf forced the door open and stood beside the car. As soon as the Colonel had elbowed out enough space amid the milling throng, Blake followed. No longer protected by the baffled interior of the vehicle, they could now hear the jeers, taunts, and recriminations the crowd hurled at the Dragoon soldiers. “Cowards” and “turncoats” were among the milder epithets that rose above the general uproar. Then a single voice stood out above the hubbub, screaming that the Dragoons were wanton murderers of innocents, and naming them teki.

Wolf marked the speaker as the crowd took up the chant of “Enemy! Enemy!”

“Keep your eye on that one in the red tunic, Stan,” Wolf ordered as he started to force his way toward the rabble-rouser. Too short to see over most of the crowd, the mercenary relied on Blake's directions, correcting his course whenever their target moved.

A sudden shift of the crowd left Wolf facing his quarry's back. Stepping up to close the distance, he threw a backhanded slap against the man's shoulder blade.

“Hey, you!” Wolf addressed the man in his best battlefield voice, speaking Japanese for the crowd's benefit. “You've got a big mouth for somebody who needs to hide in a crowd. If you have accusations, you say them to me, to my face. I'm Jaime Wolf.”

The man turned around. He stood a full thirty centimeters taller than Wolf and was built like a wrestler. Throwing out his chest and tensing his muscles, he frowned disdainfully at the short mercenary. The practiced ease with which the man went through those motions showed how used he was to intimidating people with his size alone, especially those smaller than him. Wolf was unimpressed.

“Lost your taste for speeches now that someone is here to call you on your lies?” Wolf demanded.

The man's eyes narrowed beneath his bushy eyebrows. They darted to the left as the man glanced over Wolf's shoulder.

Trusting Blake to warn him of treachery, Wolf turned his head to follow the rabble-rouser's line of sight back toward the staff car. Akuma had gotten out and was standing on the vehicle's door frame, his tall, lanky frame visible even to Wolf. Wolf thought he saw Akuma nod, but a disturbance near the second vehicle distracted him. The Dragoons who had been traveling in it had disembarked and were working their way through the crowd. When Wolf looked back, the Draconian bully was ready to bluster.

“So you are the barbarian Wolf. You seem an insignificant package to have caused so much grief to the people of the Draconis Combine.”

The mob around them had quieted.

Wolf was getting the confrontation he had asked for and now he had to deal with it. “And you seem to have gotten away from your keepers, lackwit. I didn't come here to trade insults. You've called the Dragoons murderers and I call you a liar.”

“I am no liar! You are the liar if you deny what the Dragoons have done. These people here have all heard of the butchery your bandits performed against the peaceful people on the planet of Kawabe. Now you have brought your violence here to An Ting.”

“We have killed no peaceful people on this or any other world.”

“Hear his lies, fellow Draconians! You know me. I am Albert Nitta. You know I am an honest man. I myself saw two of his men brutally attack and kill an innocent man in a bar last night. They had no cause—the poor fellow merely got in their way.” Nitta raised his arms and shouted, “Citizens, we must rid ourselves of these vermin before they decide our children are in their way!”

“You've got your facts wrong.” Wolf's tone held a clear note of warning.

“Now the cowardly cur wants to call facts to his defense. His kind of facts will have little truth to them,” Nitta called out. “He hopes to slip away from our justice on the grease of a facile tongue, to blind our eyes with glib lies. I can tell you the facts. The truth is that three loyal sons of the Dragon lie dead today, their blood on the hands of mercenary scum. Those are facts, villain. Can you deny them? Can you silence my voice of truth?”

A new voice broke in before Wolf could answer. It was shrill and cut through the crowd's murmur like a laser slicing paper. “Look out, the tekihas a gun!” The- words were punctuated with the report of a gunshot.

Nitta stiffened as though about to hurl himself at Wolf, then a thin trickle of blood escaped from the corner of his mouth. He toppled forward at the mercenary Colonel in a disjointed sprawl.

Wolf got one arm around Nitta before he could hit the ground. The man was heavy, dead weight. Nitta's body slipped from Wolf's grip, its mass and the slick blood covering the man's back making it impossible to hold. Wolf's right hand and arm were covered with Nitta's blood.

With a howl of rage, the mob surged forward. Bodies crashed into Wolf. Hands struck and pawed at him. He smashed out with his elbows. He kicked and bit. The tide of humanity was too strong for his efforts, and the mob overwhelming.

Blake was attacked as well, but his greater mass and lesser age let him strike back more effectively. Several Kuritans whirled away, screaming their pain, before the weight of multiple attackers caught and pinned the Major's arms. A few seconds later, Blake, too, went down under a snarling mass.

The screeching of a stunner rifle cut the air as the Dragoon guards on the steps opened fire. Draconians fell in windrows on either side of the melee around the fallen Wolf. The Dragoons dared not fire too close, however. If one of their burst caught the Colonel, Wolf would have no chance against his attackers.

Lieutenant Riker was about to order his men to form a wedge to charge through the mob when the Dragoons from the second car began to force their way toward the Colonel. They were considerably closer. The Lieutenant redirected some of his men to fire on the portion of the throng between the struggling Dragoons and the scuffle where Wolf had disappeared under a pile of Kuritan bodies. Riker's decision proved to be a wise one.

Struggling to come to the Colonel's aid, Anton Shadd didn't know why the pressure against his advance had eased, but he took advantage of it. A few well-placed punches at the Dracs in front of him opened a relatively clear path through the mob. Only sprawled bodies and a few stumbling, half-aware Kuritans were between him and the knot around the Colonel. Galvanized at seeing flashes of the Dragoons uniform, the commando bolted forward. Behind him, his companions broke through as well. He heard Fraser's whoop as the kid pounded after. Shadd didn't have time to look back, so he missed Cameron's tumble over a fallen Draco. Lean stopped to help her comrade, leaving only Shadd and Fraser in the first assault against the snarling mob around the Colonel.