Mission: Earth "Doomed Planet" by Ron L. Hubbard Page B

Palace City's streets resembled, already, an armed camp. The general signalled a colonel of a Death Battalion and gave him a crisp order and a caution. Then the general hurried on to a communications tank to order far more Apparatus troops into the town and around its perimeter. The colonel grabbed a captain of a hundred-man company. Within a brace of minutes, black-uniformed Death Battalion troops went to the various outside doors of the Imperial Palace and entered to converge upon the antechamber through various halls. The aqua-green uniformed crew were suddenly confronted by levelled blastrifles. The dice game went into suspended animation. Gun prodded Twa and Flick awake. Others rose up staring. "CHIEF!" screamed Flip. Madison, who had just finished dressing in a Home-view rig, came out buckling on its equipment belt. He stopped with a jolt. "You Madison?" said the Death Battalion captain. Madison looked at the levelled blastrifles and the deadly troops. "I think there's some mistake. If you'll just step into the bedchamber with me, His Majesty will straighten it out." "His Majesty, or whatever he is, ordered it," said the captain. "You're all under arrest. Come along." "They're going to kill us!" yelped Flick. "No," said the captain. "You're simply under arrest. I don't want any trouble. My advice, knowing something of-and he jerked his head toward the bedchamber– "I'd move quickly before it's something worse. Where's the dungeon in this place?" Flip leaped up. "Right this way!" She led off down a side hall. The rest of them shouldered their equipment, cameras and loot. Madison still would have gone to the bedchamber but the captain blocked his way. "You're stupid," said the captain. "You haven't been in the Apparatus long or you'd know better. Move along!" And he shoved Madison into the wake of his crew. Followed by the soldiers, the crew was led down a long, curving flight of stairs. They came to a vast place that had a whole wall covered with locker doors, equipment, tables and benches. It had round windows that overlooked a park. "Well, here we are," said Flip. "This is no dungeon!" snapped the officer. "Captain," said Flip, "when you have been in as many dungeons as I have, you get to be an expert. Just because this LOOKS like the Imperial galley with its lockers all crammed with food is no reason it isn't a perfectly satisfactory dungeon for your purposes. Now, if you want to give your troops piles from sitting on stone ledges, that's up to you. But a smart officer always thinks of his troops above everything. Look at those soft benches." The deadly expressions on some of the soldiers' faces relaxed. It was the captain who laughed. "Now, we're only under arrest," said Flip. "We are just movie people, not dangerous like soldiers, so don't worry that we'll try to get away. Maybe Hisstee didn't like some of the shots we took. Celebrities are funny that way. This will all blow over and there's nothing like full stomachs. So let's all just sit down and have a nice party. Girls, start looking in those lockers for some tup. Imperial grade." She slipped a very sharp electric kitchen knife into her boot under cover of her gesture toward the lockers. The captain and the soldiers sat down. Several criminals studied covertly how to slip the power charges out of the blastrifles now leaning against tables. Madison handed the captain the half-finished bottle of LSD and Scotch. The electronics man pulled the Imperial chefs Homeview set out of its locker and turned it on. His intention was to mask the sound of any commotion if Madison gave the signal to fight their way out of here. Comets, there were certainly enough shots and screams coming out of Homeview, as its crews covered battles and riots, to mask anything short of blowing up the whole Imperial Palace.
     
 CHAPTER 7
     
    Lombar Hisst struggled with the coronation robe and with a curse threw it in the corner. If he had appeared in Homeview in that, he had no illusions as