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.txtShe looked at him."I'm not entirely convinced you're not.""Love is the answer," said Greta Thamar suddenly.That was a line from a song, Chen realized suddenly, as the lady began to sing the rest of it under her breath.He was ready for another beer, and here were two, no, three bartender robots coming along the aisle in a row.Business must be looking up.The booth-optics showed them as three kinds of dancing animals.And then he caught a clear glimpse of the moving figures, through lined-up openings in booth walls, when they were still two curving aisles away.More of them now.Not dancing animals at all but dragoon uniforms, men and women moving with weapons ready.As Chen gaped at them through the walls again, they turned into prancing nymphs and satyrs.Chen wasn't waiting to see what might come next.Olga, alarmed at his alarm, was right beside him as he hit the deck.He started to cry a warning to Greta Thamar, but there was no time.The shooting had already started.Olga was quicker with her pistol than Chen was with the more awkward carbine, and he admitted to himself that she was probably more effective too.Gunfire started and rose at once to a crescendo.Greta Thamar ducked under the table, crying her alarm.The booth walls burst in at Chen, spattering him with bleeding images and melted plastic.He stayed on the floor, pinned down under heavy fire.He tried to use his carbine and it quit on him;out of ammo, he supposed, though he had earlier reloaded from a spare pack on Olga's gunbelt;fortunately most Templar small arms used the same load.Crawling desperately from under one table to under another, under the sagging booth walls, he realized that he had lost sight of Olga now.Things looked very grim.He thought he heard Hana calling out, but with the firing there was no way to hear actual words.He crawled under another booth, saw boots running in front of his face, and lay still.Then he crawled until an open door came into view, and he jumped up and ran for the door and tripped and fell before he reached it.Someone shouted behind Chen, and he rolled onto his back.A dragoon only five meters off was leveling a rifle or weapon of some kind at him.With a great crash, what looked like one whole side wall of the place burst in.The dragoon who had been on the verge of shooting Chen was gone, wiped away like a bad drawing.Something tall and metallic, something that moved three-legged through walls and space alike was coming on.Another dragoon, gun blazing, was flung out of its way.In mad terror, Chen crawled away, got to his feet, and fled again.The Prince's recorded voice boomed after him in an appeal.Scrambling desperately, Chen made his way out over and through the rubble of the tavern's demolished outer wall.He could hear dragoons, or someone, still screaming behind him.The familiar, three-legged shape was close behind.It followed Chen out into the street and there swooped down on him.He scrambled and tried to run from it.Useless.He fell again.It closed in on him, loomed above him-reached out an arm for him.He saw it open the internal compartment of its torso, to tuck him into it, and he knew why it had been chosen for this job.-and at the last moment, a blinding explosion in front of Chen.He saw the monster toppling, headless, and then for the second time in as many days he saw and heard no more.Chapter 18The Templar staff car came gracefully over the low patio wall and then, its gravitic engine gammalasered into little more than a lump of exotic lead Page 102ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlisotope, it fell like a ton of scrap metal inside the barren courtyard of the building that had once been occupied by Georgicus Sabel.The berserker whose beam had disabled the staff car did not bother to pursue it to final destruction.Lescar, out doing a little scouting on behalf of his master, had been watching the vehicle suspiciously for the last minute, as it had moved erratically up one street and down another, hopping now and then over walls and buildings as if whoever controlled its movements were uncertain of his goal.Then a hovering berserker half a kilometer away had evidently become suspicious of the odd maneuvers also, and had fired.Lescar, his own inescapable berserker escort close at his heels, was at the wall of Sabel's old lab within a minute, and over the wall a few moments later.It had occurred to him that some of the Prince's friends might possibly be aboard that staff car, in which case they would certainly need help.Or on the other hand it might be, happily, some of the Prince's enemies who occupied the car, in which case there might be a good chance for equally appropriate action.file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Fre.Saberhagen%20-%20The%20Berserk er%20Throne.txt (75 of 88) [11/1/2004 12:23:07 AM]file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Fred%20Saberhagen%20-%20The%20Berser ker%20Throne.txtLescar dropped over the wall and looked at the crashed vehicle.None of the occupants seemed yet to have stirred.For a few moments longer there was still no movement.Then one of the doors on the vehicle's undamaged side opened slowly, and a short man in the uniform of a captain of Prime Minister Roquelaure's dragoons emerged.He straightened up slowly and stood there dazed for a moment.Then he turned back to the car and dragged out an old man whose uniform was also military but of a different color.The chest of the old man's tunic was almost fully covered by a multitude of decorations, and there was blood on the uniform jacket now, among the ribbons.The old man could not support himself.It appeared to Lescar that he was still breathing, but not much more than that.Carelessly the short man let the old one fall.Then he rummaged inside the disabled car again, and came up with a handgun.Then he started to aim the weapon at the collapsed old man.And only then-perhaps the dragoon captain had been a little dazed himself-did he at last catch sight of Lescar watching him.The captain's eyes widened, as if he recognized Lescar, though Lescar did not know him
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