CYTM68

=Chapter 68=
==Can you tell me where can start over?==
Kowloon, Lyran Alliance
3066
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The Duchess was conveyed to JFS Emerald Eagle under tight security.  
In this situation, the domestic security forces from Kowloon's Coast Guard didn't even try to argue-they ****** up.
It was a sunny, pleasant day, the Frontiers were winning in the final period of the second game, and the Duchess was cheering as loudly as anyone.
It wasn't the first time Elizabeth Ngo had been shot.
Typical for a Lohengrin kill team, the sniper went for center mass, counting on his backup to take her head.
The second bullet missed her cranium, clipping one ear and knocking her unconscious with a glancing hit that carved a furrow along her skull, before ending its travel in the leg of a Frontiers fan behind her.
Now, there's a difference between pre-Katherine and Post-Katherine Lohengrin or Loki teams.  The ones prior to the Secession, were highly trained professionals paid not much more than the average pay for regular troops, but dedicated to their craft and quite good.
Post-Secession Loki teams (and Lohengrin types) are a bit less...professional, being far better compensated, but with a certain shift in the institution toward sloppy work and counting on at least partial control of a world's infrastructure to cover their escape, or get them out of holding if caught.
A bit 'less', one might say.
Private James Qua was just out of Marine Boot at the Coast Guard Training facility Vin Drin Lap.  Young and fresh from training, still waiting to finish his high-school before he can go active service and attend proper MOS training, he'd been one of the handful of visible security at the stadium, while the iron-hard professionals were supposed to be doing the real work.  To wit; they issued him three live rounds and sat him up on the top tier of the stands.
He fired twice in reply to the gunshots, sending one man tumbling from the lighting array and the other stumbling away with a sucking chest wound, as the professionals cleared the crowd and tried to save the life of his Duchess.
The second assassin didn't get far, ambushed by a pair of rather angry Elementals in the parking lot as he was trying to flee.
Jimmy had shot, because he'd seen the first muzzle flash, and he'd shot again, because in his frantic scan, he'd seen a shadow that looked like it shouldn't be there.
What he didn't do, was spot the hit team before they took their shots.  This, for a kid with as little training as he has, would not have been possible.
Not even for his legendary ancestor.
That didn't stop him from blaming himself for not seeing it sooner.
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