by David Weber
"Thank you," Kuramochi repeated, then strode past him and opened the door he'd been guarding.
The basement conference room on the other side was enormous. It was also comfortably and luxuriously furnished, but its sixty or so occupants seemed unappreciative of its amenities. The air was stale, heavy and hot with the failure of the Presidential Mansion's air conditioning plant, and a thin skim of old-fashioned tobacco smoke hovered. The men in the room-there were no women present-were disheveled looking, their faces and body language tense, and their heads jerked up as the door opened.
Lieutenant Kuramochi stood in the doorway for a second or two, then stepped through it and headed directly for a small, wiry man who looked remarkably less dapper and distinguished at the moment than he did in his usual appearances on HD.
"President Shangup," she said courteously, holding out her hand. "I'm Lieutenant Kuramochi Chiyeko, Imperial Marines. Governor Aubert and Major Palacios extend their compliments and have instructed me to escort you to the spaceport."
"I- I see." Shangup gave himself a shake, then took her offered hand. "I'm delighted to see you, Lieutenant. Ah, may I assume you've already met with Brigadier Jongdomba?"
"I'm afraid there was a little misunderstanding there, Mr. President," Kuramochi said. "The Brigadier appeared to be under a misapprehension as to the content of my orders from Major Palacios and the limitations of his own authority. At the moment, I'm afraid he's under arrest. So are most of the members of his headquarters company. I'm afraid most of those not under arrest were killed or wounded in the course of our... misunderstanding. "
"Under arrest?" someone blurted from behind the President. Kuramochi's expression never flickered and her eyes never looked away from Shangup's.
"Does that mean you're in command now, Lieutenant?" the President asked after a moment.
"Effectively, I suppose I am, at least temporarily. I'm afraid I've had to place most of the Brigadier's staff under arrest, as well. And as far as I can determine, Colonel Sharwa never made it to the Mall in the first place. I believe Major Cusherwa is the Brigadier's logical successor under the circumstances, but he's been coordinating the defensive perimeter. I understand he's on his way to the CP to assume command of all militia forces now."
"I see." Shangup blinked, then inhaled deeply.
"To be completely frank, Lieutenant," he said, "I'm very happy-and relieved-to see you. Some of Brigadier Jongdomba's recent decisions have seemed... less than optimal. In fact, I'm afraid he's been less, ah, stable than most of us had believed."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Sir," Kuramochi said. The lieutenant's voice was politely attentive, Alicia noticed, giving no indication that Kuramochi had recognized the militia captain outside the conference room door as the President's jailer. Alicia wondered whether Jongdomba had definitely made up his mind to attempt what amounted to a coup d'etat, or if he'd still been stumbling toward one. Or, for that matter, if he'd been considering the possibility of one even before the present emergency arose.
"May I assume, Mr. President," Kuramochi continued, "that you and these other gentlemen," she nodded pleasantly to the rumpled Delegates, "are, indeed, prepared to accompany my platoon and myself back to the spaceport, where Major Palacios and Governor Aubert will be able to assure the safety and continuity of your government?"
"You may indeed, Lieutenant," the President said firmly.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to walk, Sir," Kuramochi warned him. "Major Palacios considered sending transport to collect you, but we don't have any armored vehicles or air transport, and we know there are enough shoulder-fired SAMs floating around Zhikotse at the moment to rule out the use of air lorries. We'd rather not have you and the Delegates smeared across the pavement somewhere because we failed to spot a SAM in time."
"I think keeping us unsmeared is an outstanding idea, Lieutenant." Shangup surprised Alicia with an amused snort and a broad, toothy grin. "And I've always considered walking an excellent form of exercise," he continued. "At the moment, I find myself quite looking forward to the opportunity to indulge in it with you."
"I'm delighted to hear that, Sir. In that case, if you'll forgive me, I'll go and see about organizing an orderly withdrawal from this position."
***
Captain Chiawa frowned as he peered carefully through the narrow horizontal gap. Something new was going on, and he didn't much care for what he suspected it was.
He'd heard the sudden, hammering explosions of a mortar fire mission delivered with far greater precision and concentration than any militia heavy weapons squad could have achieved. It had come from the general direction of the Mall, which suggested that the Wasps were moving to Jongdomba's relief. Frankly, he was surprised it had taken this long, but he'd been delighted to hear it.
He and his four companions had been making their crouching way through the storm drains at the moment the mortar rounds landed. Paldorje's caution about the drains' possibly cramped dimensions had proved only too well founded, but none of Chiawa's men were particularly large-few Gyangtsese were-and it beat the hell out of wandering through the open streets, wondering if there was a sniper on one of the rooftops, or behind one of the upper story windows looking down upon them.
It did have its drawbacks, though. Chiawa would have loved to join up with whatever column the Marines had sent to the Mall, but they'd been unable to determine exactly where the mortar fire had landed. Besides, it had taken them almost fifteen minutes of slithering along through the drain system to find another manhole.
They'd found one in the end, and he'd climbed the ladder and used his shoulders to raise the cover far enough for him to peek out. He'd intended to keep right on going, but he'd changed his mind rather abruptly when he found himself looking right at the backs of someone else's heels.
He'd frozen, holding the cover motionless, hoping no one had noticed its initial movement. The others had gone equally still below him as they absorbed his sudden change in body language, and he'd felt their tension rising about him like smoke as he moved his head cautiously, peering outward while he tried to figure out what he was seeing.
His heart hammered, and he felt himself beginning to sweat again as he realized he was looking at what had to be at least forty or fifty armed men and women. None of them were in uniform, but he saw dozens of the red armbands of the GLF.
He inhaled deeply, then let the cover settle gently, gently back into position. He climbed back down the ladder far more carefully and quietly then he'd ascended it, then turned to face the others.
"I couldn't see all that well," he told him softly, "but there's maybe fifty GLF types up there, and they're loaded for bear. I saw combat rifles and grenade and rocket launchers, and I think they've got at least a couple of calliopes, as well."
"Shit," Corporal Munming muttered. "What the fuck are they doing, Skipper? Just standing around scratching their asses?"
"I wish," Chiawa said with a harsh chuckle. "No. I saw one guy waving his arms around, like he was giving orders. And it looked like they were moving into the buildings on either side of the street."
"Ambush?" Munming said.
"I'm guessing," Chiawa agreed with a nod. "We're about half a block from an intersection. Hang on."
He settled down into an awkward squat so they could all gather round in the cramped quarters of the storm drain as he activated his map board again. The GPS icon appeared, and he looked up at the others.
"See?" He tapped the illuminated surface of the map, then pointed up the ladder at the manhole cover. "That's Solu Avenue up there. And half a block that way -" he pointed in a roughly southeast direction "-it runs into Capitol Drive. Which just happens to be the shortest route from the Mall to the spaceport."
"So what do you think they've got in mind, Skipper?" Private Mende asked in the tone of a man who expected he wasn't going to much like the answer he might get.
"I don't know for certain, obviously," Chiawa replied. "But I have to say it looks to me like the
se people know somebody's going to be coming down Capitol Drive sometime soon. And given that mortar fire we heard about half an hour ago, I can only think of one candidate for who that 'somebody' might be."
"You figure the Empie Marines sent somebody out to the Mall to fetch the President and take him back to the spaceport, not to try to hold the Presidential Mansion, right?" Munming said.
"That's about the size of it," Chiawa agreed.
"Well, yeah. Okay, I guess that makes sense," Private Khambadze said slowly, frowning down at the map. "Only, I don't think I'd like to be the ones who tried to ambush those Wasp bastards. I mean, they sure handed us our heads, and they're going to have their fangs out for real, not just training, this time around."
"Agreed." Chiawa nodded. "And they're bound to have overhead sensor coverage, as well. But these people are a long way from the Mall. I think there's a real good chance they're outside the Wasps' sensor perimeter, and if they manage to get under cover quick enough, without being spotted, and if they're smart enough to stay inside the buildings, they're going to be a copperplated bitch to pick up. This is a high-rent district. These are substantial buildings, the kind that make it awful hard to pick up internal thermal signatures, even for the Wasps' equipment. And aside from the power packs on the calliopes, there aren't going to be a lot of electronic emissions from this bunch, either. So it's distinctly possible that they may actually be able to pull it off."
"Pity the poor bastards if they do," Munming grunted. "They may manage to kill themselves a couple of Wasps, but then the whole fucking world is gonna land on their heads."
"Unless," Chiawa said quietly, "they manage to get their hands on President Shangup first. Think about it. If they've got him, or even just a handful of the Delegates, do you think the Empies are going to take a chance on turning him-or them-into a friendly fire statistic?"
"Honestly?" Munming looked at him, then grinned thinly. "I think they're hard-assed enough they might just figure breaking a few eggs is okay, as long as the omelet turns out in the end. Course, they might not, too. And I guess what matters isn't what I think they'd do, but what those people standing on our roof right now think will happen."
"Exactly." Chiawa nodded again. "Personally, I think the odds are pretty good the Empies would try real hard to avoid killing off the planetary government. Wouldn't look too good for the referendum if they had an oopsie like that, after all. But even if that's true, there's the little problem that sometimes the wrong people get killed in a firefight." His face tightened as he recalled the bloody chaos at the Annapurna Arms. "These people could kill Shangup themselves in the process of trying to take him alive."
"Sir," Mende said, "I don't think I like where you're going with this."
"Neither do I, Dabhuti," Munming said heavily. "Doesn't change the fact that he's right, though, does it?"
"No, it doesn't." Mende managed a tight, unhappy smile. "That's why I don't like it."
"Well, I can see where we ought to do something about it if we can," Khambadze said slowly. "Thing is, I don't see anything we can do. We're almost out of ammo, there's only five of us, and we don't have any communications with anybody else. I mean, all due respect and all that, Captain, but I hope you aren't about to suggest we try some kind of frontal attack of our own. You just said there were at least fifty of them, and it sounds like they've got a hell of a lot more firepower than we do."
"Yes, they do," Chiawa said. "And no, I'm not-going to suggest we launch some sort of suicide attack, that is. But I think we do have to at least try to warn the Wasps."
"How, Sir?" Munming asked. "We don't know exactly where they are; like Ang Tarki just said, we're completely out of communication; and any Wasps wandering around out here are gonna have itchy trigger fingers. Sounds sort of... touchy, if you know what I mean."
"Oh, I do." Chiawa smiled tightly. "Believe me, I do."
***
Rather to Alicia's surprise, Major Cusherwa-who, unlike Jongdomba, actually seemed to be a capable sort-declined to accompany the platoon.
"Are you sure about this, Major?" Lieutenant Kuramochi asked.
She and Cusherwa stood in what had been Jongdomba's command post. Alicia had found herself still attached to Kuramochi, watching the lieutenant's back, and she was just as glad that the body of the man she'd killed had been removed. Someone had also shoveled fresh dirt over the sticky pool of blood the corpse had left behind. Now if that same someone had only been able to do something about the blood smell and the still-hovering stench of ruptured internal organs....
"Lieutenant," Cusherwa said frankly, "however willing some of my people might be, we don't have your training, and we don't have your equipment. If anything goes wrong on your way back to the spaceport, I'm afraid we'd be more likely to get in your way then to do much good. On the other hand, I think we've already demonstrated we can do a pretty fair job of holding dug-in positions. Assuming, of course," his expression tightened, "that the officers in charge of holding them are concentrating on that instead of stupid political games."
"Maybe so," Kuramochi said. "On the other hand, Major Palacios says the pressure on our perimeter around the spaceport has dropped almost to nothing, while here -"
She waved one hand at the CP's walls, indicating the battered buildings surrounding the Mall beyond them. Individual shots were still ringing out from many of those buildings fairly frequently, and there'd been several bursts of heavier fire over the last several minutes, as if the people inside them were regaining their nerve after the Marines' arrival.
"According to my remotes," she told Cusherwa, "there are still people moving in to reinforce the bad guys out there. If we get the President and the Delegates out of here, is there really anything else in the Mall worth losing more of your own people's lives over?"
"I may not have agreed with Brigadier Jongdomba on everything, Lieutenant," the Gyangtsese major said, "but he did have a point about our responsibility to protect the Mall. Maybe he didn't want to do that for all the right reasons, but these buildings-or, rather, the files and offices inside them-are critical to the government's ability to govern. If we lose them, we lose a huge chunk of our administrative continuity, and avoiding that's going to be especially important when we start trying to reorganize in the wake of all this... unpleasantness.
"Besides," he produced an exhausted-sounding chuckle, "once they figure out that you've got the President, they're going to lose a lot of their enthusiasm for taking the Mansion in the first place."
"But Brigadier Jongdomba said you're almost out of ammunition," Lieutenant Kuramochi pointed out, and Cusherwa made a disgusted sound.
"We're on the short side, yes," he said, "but 'almost out' is a pile of crap, Lieutenant. I want the President and the Delegates out of here because I can't guarantee we can hold the Mall. And because there's no telling where a stray rocket or mortar bomb may decide to land. But we've got a lot more ammo than Jongdomba was telling you we do. If you get the President out of here, and if the people on the other side realize you have, the intensity of their pressure is going to drop. In which case, I believe we have ample ammunition to hold our positions."
"I see." Kuramochi looked at him for several seconds. The Gyangtsese officer had a distinctly bookish, nerdy look, but there was a hardness and determination behind what she suspected were normally rather mild brown eyes. She wondered if it had always been there, but that wasn't really her problem at the moment, and she shrugged. "You're in command of the militia, now, Major. If you think you can hold the Mall, I'm not going to argue with you. My orders are still to get President Shangup and the Delegates safely back to the spaceport, however."
"I understand, and I agree entirely," Cusherwa said. "And, if I may, Lieutenant, I do have one additional request."
"Which is?" Kuramochi asked.
"I'd feel much more comfortable if you'd take Brigadier Jongdomba with you." Cusherwa looked the Marine straight in the eye. "I think you probably got most of his toadies, b
ut there may be others out there I don't know about. If there are, and if he's still here, they might be tempted to do something stupid."
"Understood," Kuramochi said, and smiled thinly.
"And while we're talking about taking people with you, Lieutenant," Cusherwa continued, "I'd appreciate it if you'd revisit your plan to walk all the way back to the spaceport. President Shangup mountain bikes for exercise in his spare time, but several of the Delegates are in much poorer physical condition than he is. Not to mention the fact that they don't have any training at all-or, at least, not anything like current training-for something like this."
"I appreciate that, Major," Kuramochi said. "But I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it, except possibly to leave the less physically fit Delegates here, since you're planning on continuing to hold the Mall, instead of pulling out with us. I'd certainly prefer to evac them by air, but none of our transport is armored. I can't risk exposing these people to ground fire when I know there are SAMs out there in the streets. They've already managed to knock down an all-up sting ship; unarmored transports would be sitting ducks."