The flightcar containing Regent Tara and her younger sister, Artemisia, has been disabled and grounded. Three of their six devoted outfliers are hit, feared killed. The flightcar has a compartment for handweapons, for use in such emergencies. Someone has had the presence of mind to upgrade the weapons, which are a good planetary century more modern than the antique flightcar itself. With the survivors of their bodyguard and their pilot, the sisters prepare to make their would-be assassins pay dearly. They have ditched in the industrial sector of the capital, a warren of access points for the maintenance engineers who are the only humans who ordinarily come to this most automated of landscapes. The conspirators won't like this. They expected to destroy the Regent and her siblings in flight. They weren't bargaining for a firefight at street level. Behind the women, the flightcar carrying their brothers, Constantine (Artemisia's twin) and Claudio, has also sustained slight damage, but has feigned a crash-landing, complete with some spectacular and deceptive pyrotechnics. The perpetrators of the attacks know that there will now be troops racing to secure the zone and ensure the Regent's safety, but they don't realise that the brothers, their pilot and their full escort are already much closer and heading to Tara's aid. Regent Tara used a handgun for real often enough in the bad, early days of the New Scandinavian War: "an immoral conflict against a friendly star-nation", as she described it in the Matriarch's presence. Her punishment for opposing the war was to be sent to fight it, as a junior officer in the kind of sharp-end starship whose loss might be listed in the beyond-the-attention-span section of the newsreps. Her younger sister, Artemisia, made no statement about the war, probably through shyness (their mother hardly encouraged self-expression), but her silence was interpreted as support and Artemisia was rewarded by being kept well away from the conflict. After the coup against Matriarch Agrippina VII, Tara jumped from StarCommander to C-in-C overnight: not just a titular generalissimo, but the real, hands-on variety. Still, that role didn't involve any more close-quarters combat. The irony is that the war-veteran Tara has always confessed that she can't shoot to save her life, but that's exactly what she now must do. Her little sister, though, is a genuine markswoman, without ever having fired a gun in anger. Well, she's angry now, angry as a sackful of hornets, and the steadiness of her aim earns the admiration of the bodyguards fighting alongside her.