A Matter of Record

The initial exchange of fire lasted a hair more than seventeen seconds. At the ten second mark, I authorised my remaining two units to initiate fire. Extended firefights tended to become undesirably disordered.

The heat haze effect generated by my defensive energy-opaque sphere faded back to optical perfection at exactly the same time as all four of my units returned to ready positions. If there had indeed been an attempt on the Senator's life in the last seventeen seconds, as would have been optimal in the chaos, the assassin had not even registered on sensors.

Over sixty-five percent of the legally-human entities on the concourse were dead outright. The death toll was likely to rise to over seventy percent.

I was aware there would be political backlash, although such protests were symbolic in this day and time. The order had been numerically justified.

Secretly, I was simply glad I had not needed the naval battlegroup sitting in low orbit. A concourse is one thing - a metropolis quite another.