in

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converts went to help Stash carry the two bodies into the security lounge. It was the work of a few more seconds to stuff them into the weapons room with the other corpses.
Then, all was done except the final strike on the princess. Gideon's initial plans had worked to perfection. They departed the security lounge, filing down the corridor leading to the halls of the Devil's playground where the whore sister would surely be found.
* * *
First Lieutenant Ahmed Griggs was not a happy man. To put it mildly.
Not because of anything to do with his own people, of course. He and Laura Hofschulte had chosen Sergeant Christina Bulanchik's squad from Griggs' own platoon for the detail for several reasons. The biggest one was Bulanchik herself, a long-service noncom who, like Griggs, held the Sphinx Cross. Several of the other members of her squad had been decorated for valor also, but that wasn't particularly uncommon in the Queen's Own Regiment. Almost all of its personnel were on at least their second term of enlistment in the Royal Manticoran Army (those who hadn't been cross-transferred from the Marines, as Griggs himself had been), and the Queen's Own was able to pick and choose only the very best. But Bulanchik had two other points in her favor. One was that she had always scored very high in public place training scenarios, and the other was that Ruth Winton liked her. It wasn't essential for a protectee to have a friendly personal relationship with one of her protectors, but it never hurt. Especially when it came to guarding Princess Ruth in such a crowded, busy, distracting, security nightmare of a place like The Wages of Sin.
Since they'd entered the pleasure resort, a part of Griggs' mind had never stopped cursing. Some of those silent curses, needless to

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