by Baen Books
Dimitrovic shrugged. "We aren't on any side, Loyalist or Freedom Party either one," he said. "Two thirds of the RCN bulk supplies for the sector ship out of Dashiell Harbor, though, so Navy House sent Vocaine here to keep the lid on when the riots started. I guess Elder Foscara started out thinking we were going to help him mop up the Freedom Party, and he wasn't best pleased when he found out we weren't."
"Not a reason to start shooting at us," Woetjans muttered. In her heart she figured it was all you could expect from the locals once you got off Cinnabar.
There was a sustained burst of firing from an automatic impeller across the street. Metal rang as the osmium slugs tore through something out of Woetjans' sight. There was a dull boom! Their—the detachment's—truck's diesel fuel exploded.
Dimitrovic swore. "Renown," he said, keying the link on his commo helmet. "This is Unit Twelve, over."
Woetjans could hear the response as insect sounds, but she couldn't make out words. She continued to scan her narrow angle of the building opposite.
"Sir," Dimitrovic said. "They've got an automatic impeller. I don't think aircars to the roof are survivable. Isn't there a way to get a company of Marines into the back side of the building the shooting's coming from? Over."
Buzzing.
"Sir," Dimitrovic said, "I appreciate that the Marines have a lot of their plate now, but we need some help here and we need it bloody fast! We don't have an hour, over!"
Buzzing.
"Unit Twelve out!" Dimitrovic snarled. He looked at Woetjans and took a deep breath. "They're working on it!" the midshipman said, making the phrase a curse.
It's gone tits-up for good and all, Woetjans realized. Oh, bloody hell!
"Look," she said. "This place has a back way out, don't it? Maybe we can at least get into another building that they're not looking down on the way they do this one."
A slug from the opposite roof came in through an angle to hit the inside of the door they were sheltering behind. It ricocheted off the steel with a whang! and a spray of white sparks. The main portion of the osmium projectile shrieked across the stairhead. It blew a hole through the back wall.
"They're back there too," Dimitrovic said. "We tried the alley when the shooting started. Bevan got one in the chest. Now they've rolled a cart down to block the door and we can't even push it open from the inside."
Bloody hell! The thing to've done was to charge on through right at the start before the hostiles set up. Sure, you'd have a couple people shot, but if you go in hard and fast the chances are that a bunch of untrained civilians are going to run. Most of them would throw away the guns they likely saw that morning for the first time.
Too late now. Oh, bloody hell! And if the rest of the detachment had gotten out by the alley, she and Balliol on the roof would've been well and truly screwed.
Which they were anyway, of course. The only chance Woetjans saw for them was that the hostiles were going to take hostages. Probably not: both sides in Dashiell had been burning prisoners alive before Force D landed, and no admiral who did a deal with wogs had a career left in the RCN.
Another slug hit the door, this time from the outside. Again it howled away, but the impact bumped the panel closed and on the inner surface left a glowing red dent the size of a soup plate. Woetjans pushed the panel part-open again.
Buzzing.
"Unit Twelve, over," Dimitrovic said.
Buzzing.
"Bloody hell! Can you? But there's at least forty of them and a full-size automatic in the front. Over."
Buzzing.
"Roger that! We'll be ready! Unit Twelve out!"
Dimitrovic looked at Woetjans and said, "That was Rudolf! He and Mckinnon are coming to take us off the roof in the Renown's pinnace! I'll get things organized below!"
The midshipman disappeared down the stairs as another slug zipped through the stairhead from right to left, this time without touching the steel door. Grit and dust from the walls exploded around the spacers.
Sapony bent over Balliol to cover the wounded man's face. He bent his left arm over his own nose and mouth. Balliol's trousers were ripped open and the thigh was bandaged. Blood hadn't seeped through the padding yet.
"Can a pinnace land on the roof here?" Sapony asked when Woetjans glanced back.
"It'll light it on fire," Woetjans said. The roof was covered with a mixture of sand and tar.
She shrugged. "Guess we'll have burns. It's still the best idea I've heard yet."
The bigger question, which Woetjans didn't mention aloud, was whether the roof trusses could support the weight of the pinnace. For herself, she wouldn't bet on it—but like she'd said, it was the best idea she'd heard yet. The pinnace's hull plates were over an inch thick; they'd turn even slugs from an automatic impeller.
"You gonna give me a hand with Balliol?" Sapony asked. "I give him a shot and he's really out of it."
"Yeah, sure," Woetjans said. There were going to be more wounded—and maybe dead too, though Dimitrovic might decide to leave them behind. If the building burned, the locals wouldn't find much to wave around for a trophy.
The locals kept shooting. Every once in a while somebody in the RCN detachment would shoot back, but when that happened a storm of shots replied. Dimitrovic had guessed more than forty hostiles, but it must be closer to a couple hundred. They could've brought the whole building down if they'd known what they were doing, but Woetjans figured you could usually trust wogs not to know what they were doing.
Spacers started up the staircase. They weren't crowding or panicked: just ready to move when they got the word. Looking down, Woetjans saw two more wounded, each being supported by a buddy or two.
Clason moved up beside Sapony. Woetjans was afraid more would try to squeeze into the stairhead—and there wasn't room. Clason said, "I'm supposed to help get Balliol aboard."
"I figured I'd do that," Woetjans said in surprise.
Clason shook his head. "Dimitrovic wants you at the end with him for clean-up, Voyt," he said.
Woetjans nodded understanding. That made sense. Dimitrovic was doing okay for a green midshipman.
"They're about to splash!" Dimitrovic shouted up from invisibly below. "Hang on!"
Woetjans expected the pinnace to arrive from the left because the hatch was on the starboard side, but instead the boat roared up the street from the right. They're moving too fast. . . . As the boat approached the buildings, it rotated a quarter turn on its axis.
"He's lost control!" Sapony shouted.
No. The helmsman had just bathed the front of the three story building with the plasma exhaust. Shots had been pinging and sparkling on the spaceship's heavy plates. That stopped instantly and Woetjans thought she heard screams over the reflected roar.
The pinnace slanted upward as it pulled away and began to turn. Woetjans pushed the door most of the way open so that she could lean out and follow what was happening. Minutes before that would have gotten her head blown off, but now the hostile base was a three-story pyre. Fire puffed out of every window she could see.
The pinnace curved back around. Its hatch was lowering as it approached.
"Go! Go! Go!" somebody shouted behind Woetjans. She turned and saw Dimitrovic pushing up the stairs past the waiting spacers.
The midshipman came abreast of Clason and Sapony. "Move out!" he said.
"Are you nuts?" Woetjans said. "Even if he shuts down as soon as he lands, the exhaust 'll fry anybody on the roof before then!"
"It's Mack flying her!" Dimitrovic said. "He's going to hover over the street and we'll jump through the open hatch!"
I'll believe that when I see it! Woetjans thought, but she helped Sapony lift Balliol and then got out of the way when Clason took over. The three of them staggered onto the roof and the rest of the detachment followed.
The pinnace pulled into a hover alongside the building, well out in the street. Tilting slightly to starboard, the vessel slid inward until the end of the ramp crushed the low parapet like the
blade of a bulldozer.
Balliol and the two spacers supporting him jumped onto the ramp, then started up into the empty bay. The rest of the detachment came by ones and twos. There was no pushing or panic; it made Woetjans proud to be RCN.
"They hijacked the pinnace," Dimitrovic said in Woetjans' ear, shouting over the thruster exhaust. "They couldn't get clearance from Vocaine and Mack said, 'Screw it, let's do it ourselves. I know I can hold her near enough the roof to get 'em all aboard.' Rudolf went along with him, and by heaven they've done it!"
A burst of shots slanted up through the roof, coming from the back. One round clanged from the pinnace's stern. The outriggers weren't deployed, probably to fit better in the width of the street.
"Let's go," Dimitrovic said, running forward as the last three spacers reached the ramp. Woetjans strode alongside him, still holding the borrowed impeller.
The roof spurted three slanting geysers of wood shreds, powdered cement, and tarpaper. Dimitrovic gave a startled yelp. His left leg kicked high overhead and he flipped onto his back. His left foot was gone.
The hostiles had an automatic in the back also. The gunner there seemed to have more on the ball than the fellow in front had.
Woetjans dropped the impeller and threw the midshipman over her shoulder. He needed something on the stump but that could wait till they were inside the boat's steel hull.
Woetjans sprinted up the ramp. The hatch between the hold and the cockpit was open. Clason stood in it. When he saw Woetjans enter with her burden, he shouted to the helmsman. The exhaust note changed and the pinnace started to lift.
Two heavy slugs whanged into the hold while the ramp was still down. The re-echoing Clang-g-g! was deafening. Vivid pink, orange, and green flashes filled the compartment momentarily as projectiles ricocheted from the bulkheads. Clason yelped and pitched forward, but he was up almost instantly.
The pinnace staggered. Woetjans was afraid that the hostile burst had shattered one or more thruster nozzles, which would be fatal at this altitude. The thrusters continued to roar normally as the pinnace recovered and curved toward the Renown in harbor.
The boarding ramp slammed shut, making the hold quieter. From the vibration, the outriggers were deploying so that they could land.
Sapony crawled over with his kit. Woetjans clamped both hands above Dimitrovic's shattered ankle so that Sapony could fit a proper tourniquet. Woetjans hoped that the midshipman hadn't already lost too much blood, but you did what you can. There'd be a Medicomp in the Renown's hold.
The thrusters roared again. The pinnace bucked. They splashed stern-low into water and skidded onward, pitching and bobbing. It wasn't a good landing but Woetjans wasn't going to complain. The kid had gotten them out when she hadn't seen any way to do that.
One of the rescued spacers used the override lever in the hold to lower the ramp. The pinnace's four small thrusters put out too little energy to create enough steam and ions in the open harbor to be dangerous or even noticeably unpleasant for veteran spacers.
Woetjans went forward toward the cockpit. She met Clason sticking a self-adhesive pad over his left forearm.
"A ricochet from that last burst?" Woetjans asked.
Clason shrugged. "Spray from the bulkhead only," he said. "The slug itself missed, and a bloody good thing too."
"Yeah," said Woetjans. "You'd need a new arm if it'd done that."
Rudolf had just risen from the starboard station. For volume reasons, instead of a console the pinnace had side by side flat-plate displays for the helmsman and helmsman's assistant.
"Hey, you guys did a bloody fine job," Woetjans said. She was still trying to accept that she was really alive. "The Alliance don't have a prayer with officers like you coming up in the RCN."
"Mack did it all," Rudolf said. Tears were running down his cheeks. "All I did was take over when the hard part was done."
Rudolf turned to look toward the bow. That shifted his body enough that Woetjans could see past him to Mckinnon at the port station. The ricochet which missed Clason had struck Mckinnon in the back of the skull, continuing through to smash the display beyond. His blood and brains painted the forward bulkhead.
I'm glad it was quick, Woetjans thought. He'd have made a bloody good officer.
Father Avenir and the Fire Demons of Yellowstone
Kevin J. Anderson and Sarah A. Hoyt
The tall spare man walked across the wild, breathtaking landscape as though pursued, although the pursuit came mostly from within.
His name, given to him by water and the holy chrism in the rites of his father’s people, the name by which he would be called by the last rising, was Pierre de Toussaint D’Avenir. His other name, the one his long-dead mother had given him in the secret of the tent late at night, in the rites of the tribe from which she’d been stolen as a child, was Tatanka, which meant Bull. His mother had told him that meant he wouldn’t retreat from anything.
Born between worlds, sometimes he wondered if he’d ever done anything but retreat. Or advance. When you walked alone, it was difficult to know the direction you were going.
Since shortly after his father had dropped him off at school in St. Louis, at the age of six, he had cleaved to the Word of God, seeing the rites of the Catholic Church as an anchor in a madly shifting world. He had no other way to deal with the conflicting ideas and visions, a world in which the old tribal gods had come to life and manifested their chaotic ways, interfering with human existence and making people their playthings. Instead, he clung desperately to a God who had sent his only son to die for the world. That was his unshakeable truth.
And yet, in a world where the Pope—if there was still a Pope—and the rest of the Church had been broken off from the Americas in the Sundering, he was once more trapped between the worlds, a man who believed in rites and ceremonies disdained by most Protestant Christians in America.
That was why he’d become a priest of the holy mother church, Father Avenir, bringing the Word far into arcane America, beyond the Mississippi River and over the Continental Divide. He’d taken to the wild lands, carrying his faith where he need not question the wisdom of serving a Universal Church that was no longer universal.
He walked the rugged wilderness in buckskin pants and tunic, his wild waist-long black hair, increasingly streaked with white, blowing in the wind, his beard long and only intermittently trimmed by his own knife. He kept his tattered cassock with all his other possessions on his back, bringing it out only when he had to perform Catholic rites for those who requested them, a few Natives, but mostly mixed-breed men like himself, the product of Native and European.
As a priest of the mother church, Father Avenir knew he looked odd, and he also knew that he was inadequate to his task. But everyone was inadequate in these wild times, and many other priests had lost their way, turned their backs on the Church and embraced some other sect of Christianity, or worse, degenerated into idolatry and sorcery now that magic had returned.
Father Avenir could have retreated into the chaos of power and desire to control the future, or he could have joined the more powerful Protestant sects from the North. But it was not in him. Tatanka stood firm, steady, facing down threats with lowered head, ready to charge.
He ranged all over the unexplored arcane territories populated by scattered Native tribes, all of whom needed to hear the word of God. Now, more than ever, they must hear that in the world of spirits and supernatural creatures, there was a rock to cling to. For God so loved the world He sent it His only son.
Fifty years after the Sundering, when Mr. Halley’s comet had exploded over the Earth and forever separated America from the old world, Father Avenir’s beliefs had become even more potent and necessary. But all the unleashed magic had also made manifest the powerful Native gods as well.
He should have been preaching to scattered tribes, sitting around their campfires and sharing food with them, but now those encounters had become more than telling them of his faith, of the man who was
God and who required nothing more than their belief in Him. Now his work had become fighting demons and visions, sometimes literally.
Father Avenir had wandered for the past fifteen years, embarking from St. Louis as a missionary, up the Missouri River, heading across the Great Plains, and up into the mountains. He trended ever northward where his father had once hunted, where his mother had carried him on her back. The landscape had been frightening twenty years after the Sundering, and it was terrifying now.
The younger generation of shamans didn’t rely only on the legends of their forefathers, but they had also personally visited the spirit worlds. They had spoken directly with Coyote and flown with Raven. They had seen river serpents and been attacked by Canotti with their magic arrows. He had heard of the land of the dead where the tribes believed their spirits went, but what place did he have there, halfbreed that he was? Father Avenir had to go to the God that claimed all peoples, or nowhere.
He spoke English, French, and a half-dozen or so Native tongues, and often the words got mixed up in his mind because he spent so much time wandering alone and talking to himself. Avenir believed that one needed miracles to convince people who were beguiled by shamans, but he refused to perform sorcery. He would not risk his connection to Him Who’d Redeemed the World, not even to achieve his holy purpose.
And now at last, he knew what that purpose was. He had heard stories from the tribes about a powerful wizard, an evil force that drained energy from the land, destroyed numerous tribes, brought back the dead, summoned monsters—all to strengthen the wild arcane territories and fight against the white men in the East. Father Avenir felt that he had at last come to his most important battle.
He trudged along on foot, crossing a ridge and working his way through sparse pine trees and larches, until he looked down at the wide and smoking valley below, where heat shimmered, where steam and spray wafted into the air, bringing with it a sulfurous taint. He could hear the hiss and grumble in the forest silence.
The Shoshone people had told him of this place and sent him here, a land where the rivers ran hot and cold within feet of where the stone was yellow, or mud bubbled up from the ground and geysers roared with hot steam like a dragon’s breath.