The thin technician’s face was frozen, her mouth slightly open; she held her wand rigidly upright where it recorded events in a sphere around her. The other technician huddled against a back corner, leaning on her wand as though it were a cane. Huber supposed it was doing an adequate job of recording the parts of the file room that were blocked from her companion’s lenses.
“—I’d like someone in whom you have confidence to be present to ensure that I’m merely examining files, not adding anything to them.”
“By the Lord, you’d better not be adding stuff!” Fewsett growled. He added, presumably to some of the gunmen, “Come on, boys.”
Grayle stepped in herself. Huber squeezed against the cabinets behind him to allow her to get by if she wanted, but she merely gave him a sneer. “Go ahead!” she said. “You’ll find nothing because there’s nothing to find.”
Fewsett crowded in behind Grayle and touched her shoulder to move her back. She slapped his hand without looking around. More Volunteers stacked into the doorway; those in front pushed back against their fellows to the rear to keep from being shoved into Fewsett’s massive figure.
Orichos nodded, then turned to a cabinet midway down the row. “Let the record show that I am at a cabinet marked Finance,” she said, and opened the second drawer from the top.
Huber stood with his head cocked so that though he mainly faced the Freedom Party officials, he could still watch Orichos out of the corner of his eye. Grayle’s expression was one of iron disdain; Fewsett glared past her with a mixture of anger and frustration.
“Bring the wand closer,” Orichos snapped to the plump recorder. When there was no reaction, Orichos lifted the girl’s arm and placed the lens wand on the edge of the drawer. In a dry, mechanical voice Orichos continued, “I am removing a file marked Special.”
“What is this?” Grayle said on a rising note. She tried to look behind her but the way was filled with gunmen. “Where’s Patronus? Why isn’t he here?”
Orichos displayed her empty right hand to the lens wand, then reached into the drawer and brought out a folder with a red tab. She spread her left hand in plain sight also, then opened the folder.
Fewsett turned and bellowed, “Get that bastard Patronus here now! He’s the fucking party treasurer. We need him now!”
Huber didn’t move except to slide his finger into the trigger guard. He’d figured how the business was going to play out, but he didn’t know quite the exact time.
Or whether he’d survive it.
“The folder holds a list of amounts and dates,” Orichos said. “It purports to be records—”
The lens wand slipped off the drawer; the plump technician had curled her arms around herself, sunk into a personal world light-years away from this terror. In a sudden break from her detached calm, Orichos looked at the girl and screamed, “Hold that bloody thing up or I’ll have you executed for treason!”
The thin technician tilted her wand closer to the open drawer. She didn’t look toward Orichos.
“This is fake!” Grayle said. “It’s been planted! There’s no—”
“Purports to be a record,” Orichos resumed in a louder voice, “of payments—”
“—truth in it at all!”
“—by the Interior Ministry of the Government of Solace to the Freedom Party!”
Grayle turned to get out of the file room. Fewsett knocked her back accidentally as he raised his carbine. Huber fired from the hip. His 2-cm bolt hit Fewsett in the upper chest, vaporizing most of the big man’s torso in a thunderclap. The shockwave slammed Huber against a file cabinet and knocked the Volunteers in the doorway off their feet.
A Volunteer tried to aim his carbine, or maybe he was just flailing his arms for support. The powergun’s cyan flash would’ve blinded anybody seeing it close-up without the protection of a polarizing faceshield like Huber’s. He fired twice more, clearing the doorway save for a scatter of body parts. A blast-severed head flew past Huber, driven by vaporized body fluids.
The thin technician screamed and flung down her wand. It wobbled behind her on its flex as she sprang through the doorway Huber was trying to slam shut with his left hand. Two or more gunmen riddled her before she took a second step into the hallway. She thrashed backward, but Huber threw all his weight against the panel. It latched despite the obstructions.