by David Drake
"Ah, Lieutenant?" the jailer said. "There's your cap and—"
"Forget it," interrupted Private Hodicky. He gave Waldstejn a push in the middle of the back. "Mary and the Saints! How long is he going to need it, anyway? Now move, sweetheart, movel"
The condemned man stumbled as he marched down the corridor in the middle of four soldiers as grim as any the jailer had ever seen. The man in gray shook his head sadly as he stepped back into the cell.
He had to get the room ready for the next, ah, customer.
* * * *
"Hey!" said the clerk behind the counter, "everybody signs. Don't you know that?"
"Hey?" Hodicky snapped back. "Who the hell do you think you are, soldier?" He glared through the reinforced glass at the arms-room attendant. "All / know is they rotated us back for a rest and gave us this crap! Now, if you've got any more bloody forms, hand them through so we can get our guns and get out of this place."
The little private turned from the counter with an ostentatious flare of his nostrils. It had been easy once he had learned to think of them all as images on a computer screen. Just like nights in the lyceum office, inputting data that the system, the System, thought was true.
Of course, a mis-key here and they really would go out as garbage.
Lieutenant Waldstejn was bent over as if he were muttering a prayer to his boots. "Names . . .," Hodicky heard him whisper.
"Lichtenstein," Hodicky said, pointing at Sergeant Hummel, "you sign first." God the Savior, what would have happened if all three mercenaries had filled out the forms in non-Cecach names? Thank the Lord, thank the Lieutenant. "Then Breisach, then you, Ondru," he continued aloud. If he sounded like an obsessive-compulsive with a burr up his ass, then that was reasonably in keeping with his present persona. Three soldiers who did not know their own names were more of a problem.
The door guard was watching them instead of his screen. "Wouldn't be surprised to get a little rain," he remarked with a wave toward his monitors. There was not enough sky visible on them to make the comment more than a hope for conversation. In the alley dividing Transit Section from the next unit over stood the van they had stolen and restenciled for the purpose. Churchie Dwyer had claimed that was easy. The harder trick had been to get two more rifles and a pistol for the 'Captain', but there were too many troops quartered around the capital for even that to look like an epidemic of theft.
"All right," the clerk said. He laid the three rifles and the sidearm in the drawer and slid them through to the anteroom proper.
"You boys be careful," said the guard as he pressed the latch button. He was trying a joke since the previous ploy had been ignored. The bolts in the outer door snicked back into their housings. "Yes sir, this one looks real dangerous—for a no-guts deserter!"
Nobody spoke this time either. The high-voiced officer paused a moment before he thrust his stooped prisoner toward the doorway. The guard did not like the look in the Captain's eyes. And he did not like the muttered reference to a Delete key.
* * * *
"There's a van," Lieutenant ben Mehdi called tensely. He was hunched forward, feeling horribly exposed in the glass booth. If he leaned back, however, he stuck to whatever had spurted onto the chair cushion. There were things ben Mehdi had seen often enough, now, to know that he would never get used to them. The interior of the guard post was one such thing. "Allah be praised, it's them!" He stood up, waving toward the van which was high-balling out of the compound interior.
Another horn squealed angrily. There was a truck outside the gate as well. It looked exactly like the one in which the mercenaries were about to escape.
"Bloody hell," muttered Churchie Dwyer as he peered past the Lieutenant. The close-up screen showed clearly the gate pass the driver was holding up to it. "Fifteen minutes early. . . . Say they got to wait, that's what Bles would've done."
The four bodies were stacked in a corner where they could not be seen through the booth's glazing. Ben Mehdi could have done without a reference to the man he had replaced, however. "Are you crazy?" he demanded. He threw a switch and the outer gate slid back. The van pulled up to the inner one. "You think they're just going to watch when we all get in a truck and drive away?" The Lieutenant closed the gate behind the incoming vehicle and opened the one in front of it. The van with Trooper Powers driving and the Cecach private beside her in the cab waited. Its turbine whined on more throttle than idling required.
"Del," ordered Churchie Dwyer.
The incoming van pulled through the gate and stopped in front of the identical vehicle waiting to exit. An officer stepped out of the cab. He ignored the gate guards. Instead he shouted to Trooper Powers, "You! Soldier! What do you think you're doing in one of our trucks?"
Hussein ben Mehdi fumbled to find the door latch. It was not really a 212th Service Company truck, just one repainted to look like it, but that would not help matters. A member of the real firing squad was leaning out of the back of their enclosed van. The officer reached for Powers' door.
Allah help—
The Federal officer jerked open the door. Powers' weapon was across her lap. Its off-planet design was a dead giveaway. She thrust the muzzle into the officer's belly and blew him back into the road. The projectile itself would have left only a punch-mark on entrance and exit, but the man's flesh had to absorb also the spurt of propellant gases and the vaporized sabot. The combination eviscerated him, leaving his spine bare and his soft parts from ribs to pelvis a spray across the truck he had stepped from.
"Now, Del!" Dwyer shouted. He fired through the glass of the booth. Lieutenant ben Mehdi shrank down to the floor, bawling with pain from the blasts as Trooper Hoybrin promptly emptied his own weapon into the van in two long bursts.
The booth windows blew outward, crazed by the projectiles but showered onto the road by the muzzle blasts themselves. A Federal soldier flopped out of his van and lay howling on the pavement with no visible wound. Powers drove across him. Her back tires splashed the puddle of burning fuel that dripped from the other vehicle.
"Come on come on come on!" Churchie Dwyer was screaming as he vaulted the emptied window frame. Hoybrin followed with Gratz, who had not as yet fired a shot in the operation.
It was Hussein ben Mehdi who remembered to open both gates before he too stumbled out of the booth.
Chapter Eighteen
"It's started," said Sookie Foyle. Her fingers trembled, but they were precise enough to throw the toggle switch which would do the rest.
The ship's radioman watched the brunette approvingly from the bridge proper. The Communications Bay of the Katyn Forest was little more than a one-man alcove off the bridge. With additional equipment welded to its bulkheads, even someone as short as Communicator Foyle had to watch her head as she stood up. The crewman smiled through the tangle. "Come have a drink with me, hey?" he said. "Relax."
"Are you out of your mind?" Foyle retorted. "Go on, I'm busy."
Pavlovich tapped the crewman on the shoulder. He murmured something in low-voiced Russian. The two men walked down the corridor together while the Communicator strained to listen through the welter of recorded orders and dialogues she had just set the Katyn Forest to broadcast.
There were demands to police and security forces, directing them to deal with riots, bombings, and commando raids in various parts of the city. There were reports from firemen and patrol vehicles of wrecks, robberies, and tenement blazes. There was even an order, tight-beam and scrambled, to Spaceport Control, that all vessels lift off at once to avoid rebel attack. All the signals were broadcast from the starship. Its transmitter hopped frequencies automatically with the abruptness of a scanning receiver. And all of the messages were recorded, because nobody aboard now was competent to carry on a live dialogue in Czech. It could not be expected that the blurted demands would be obeyed, but at worst they would increase the confusion and cause real orders to be discounted as well.
Between each flurry of signals there was a five-second pause. D
uring these pauses, the transmitter of the Katyn Forest was not blanking her own receivers. It was then that Sookie Foyle strained to hear a message on the Company's emergency push.
Not, of course, that there was a great deal those remaining on the starship could do, except listen to their comrades die.
* * * *
The back of the van had eight passengers for six seats, and one of the eight was Del Hoybrin. Albrecht Waldstejn was not complaining. The choice was more room and the sullen faces of a real firing party watching him. Still, when Sergeant Hummel said, "Hell, forgot the cuffs!" she poked him in the eye with the key.
The rescued officer cursed by reflex, then took the key and said in apology, "You people shouldn't have done it. I ... I mean—"
"Yeah, well," said the non-com, "save the congratulations for about ten blocks, huh?"
The only view from the back of the van was through the small communication window into the cab and through the windshield. Dwyer and Gratz were standing bent over, trying to peer out. Trooper Hoybrin braced his partner against the jolting vehicle, while Gratz tried to grip the side panel with one hand and Dwyer with the other. A third trooper was slitting the sheet metal with his knife. His eyes would not have time to react to the blur through so small an opening, but Waldstejn could not see that it would do any harm to try.
The squeal of the brakes was no adequate warning. Deceleration slammed everyone against the back of the cab.
"Roadblock!" said Churchie Dwyer as he struggled to clear his weapon from ben Mehdi's legs.
Waldstejn could hear Private Hodicky shouting, "Out of the way, fast! We've got orders to arrest saboteurs at the Port immediately!"
"Blue berets, " Gratz whispered. Sergeant Hummel had elbowed her way to the glass to look for herself. "Two trucks across the steet."
"Defense Police," the Cecach lieutenant said. He realized as he spoke that the identification was valueless at this juncture. It had been spewed out by a mind that wanted to avoid the realities of the moment by focusing on trivia.
"Sorry, sir," said a Czech speaker who did not sound in the least sorry. "My orders say nobody, so nobody gets through. You want to take it up with my Colonel, fine."
"All right," murmured Sergeant Hummel. "Dwy-er, Hoybrin, Gratz, and Diesson—out the back on three, turn rigjit, and kill it if it breathes." She touched the door latch with her left hand. In her right she held the assault rifle which had been part of her disguise. It was better for this job anyway. "Rest of you bastards, follow me to the left. Same drill."
"I need a gun," said Albrecht Waldstejn.
Hummel looked back at him through the tangle of soldiers sorting themselves to her instructions. There was no anger in her expression, only grim appraisal. "For God's sake," the non-com said, "will you keep your head the hell down?"
The young officer could see himself in the veteran's glance, even after she had faced back and started the count. "One." Pasty and soft from ten days in a narrow cell. "Two." Unarmed and hopeless with a gun if there had been one available. "Three!" and Hummel took her troops onto the street like blue-fish into a school of herring.
Albrecht Waldstejn followed them out anyway.
The officer in charge of the roadblock died before he could glance toward what was happening at the back of the van. Dwyer's shot snapped through both his temples and splashed the colloid of his brain in ripples from the interior of his skull. Simultaneously, Sergeant Hummel sprayed three soldiers who were still on the open back of their ground-effect truck. After that, it was a shooting gallery; but the ducks shot back.
Two air cushion trucks had been swung across the street with a platoon of Defense Police aboard. The road behind the mercenaries had already jammed solidly, but their van was the first westbound vehicle to have been stopped. Ten seconds earlier and they would have gotten through unchallenged. As it was, the blue-capped troops were still deploying and were more concerned with setting up the roadblock than with the vehicles they had begun to stop with it. The Federals wilted under the unexpected fire.
The eight mercenaries rushed the trucks. The Defense Police who had not died in the first blast flopped to cover behind their vehicles. Trooper Gratz fired through the door of one of the truck cabs, then jerked it open. The driver was hunched down on the seat. He shot Gratz in the face with his assault rifle. The mercenary stumbled backward to the street. Waldstejn snatched at the dead man's gun and fought his rigid muscles for it. He twisted back with the weapon to receive the shot which he knew must be coming.
The police driver was dead. Gratz' preliminary round had drilled through the Federal's body from neck to pelvis. The tiny, directionally-stable projectile had killed the man quite surely, but the massive internal haemorrhage had not been fatal in time to prevent the victim from revenging himself.
Waldstejn jumped into the cab and locked the far door.
The truck clanged as mercenaries fired through its skirts to get at the Federals on the other side. Somebody had crawled onto the bed of the vehicle, but a burst of rifle fire had stopped or killed him. The Cecach officer dropped the weapon he had appropriated in order to drag the driver's body aside with both hands. The corpse slid out from under the wheel, and Waldstejn took its place.
The power was on. Waldstejn found it hard to see the controls while he bent over because his nose was almost on the dashboard. A Federal was tugging at the locked left-side door, shouting questions at him. Waldstejn let the turbine rev to full power for several seconds. Then he reached for the attitude control.
Someone fired an assault rifle point-blank into the door.
The light bullets disintegrated on the outer panel. They hit the inner panel as a spray of steel and glass. The portion that burned through into the cab proper flicked across the tall officer like a line of boils. He screamed. His fist slammed the control forward so abruptly that only the immense torque of the electric drive motors kept the fans from stalling. The truck lurched, then buried itself in the shop window across the sidewalk.
There was another ripping burst from an assault rifle. Waldstejn rose and twisted to look out the back window. His left arm and side were alive with cold fire. Jo Hummel was reloading her captured weapon by the cab of the second truck. When Waldstejn slid the lead truck forward, the Sergeant had the shot she had been waiting for. Her burst raked the line of Federals whose cover had just driven away from them. A dozen Defense Police sprawled on the pavement now. Trooper Powers sent the van through the gap between the trucks. She made a tire-squealing left turn as she cleared the cab of the vehicle which was still in position. Blue-bereted soldiers leaped away from her bumper.
The mercenaries stood and shot them down like driven deer.
"Come on, come on!" Powers was shouting. She reversed to clear the line of east-bound vehicles which the roadblock had stopped also. Most of them were already abandoned. One of the mercenaries began firing into them deliberately until a fuel tank blew up.
Waldstejn staggered out of the shop into which he had driven. He was dragging Gratz' weapon by the sling. His body was not working as it should have. All his mind could hold was his determination to reach the van before it drove away. He stepped blindly into Del Hoybrin and recoiled, nearly falling.
"Churchie's hit!" the big man wailed. He had just slid his comrade's form off the back of the truck. Dwyer was as limp in his arms as a grain sack. The front of his tunic was bloody from shoulder to waist.
"We'll get him back," wheezed the Cecach officer. He pointed to the van. Sergeant Hummel was poised beside the vehicle. She fired into a clot of Federal bodies where movement had suggested volition.
Trooper Hoybrin swept his left arm around Waldstejn's chest. He began trotting for the van, ignoring the weight of the two men and three weapons which he carried. Albrecht Waldstejn began to lose consciousness.
Blackness was a welcome relief from pain.
* * * *
There was a check-point at Gate 2, a tunnel under the blast wall of the spaceport. The chec
kpoint was unmanned, and that was a very bad sign.
Hussein ben Mehdi got out of the van awkwardly. The two sprawled casualties made a close fit closer, though Hummel had ridden off in the cab and Gratz was not taking up any room at all.
"Well, I can drive in," the petite blonde was saying.
Sergeant Hummel stood beside her open door, peering across the boulevard. There was no traffic on it, presumably as a result of roadblocks elsewhere in the city. "Hodicky," the non-com asked, "did you ever know them not to have gate attendants here?"
The Praha native shook his head. "Let me check the Lieutenant, huh?" he said. He squeezed past Hummel as ben Mehdi walked forward.
The three-story buildings around the port were all sixty years old or less. That was the date that the fusion bottle of a freighter too large for the docking pits had failed. The first construction that had taken place afterwards was the encirclement of the whole port with a berm instead of trusting pits to deflect catastrophe from the city. An arched ramp with broadcast pylons led the largest vehicles up the vertical eight-meter outer face of the berm and down the inner slope. Radial tunnels ducked below ground level to serve lesser traffic. But there were always movement controls, especially now in wartime. And with multiple emergencies, real and imagined, crackling over the airwaves . . . the booth should not have been empty.
"Well," said Lieutenant ben Mehdi, "the attendant ran away. Big deal."
Sergeant Hummel frowned. Passers-by were nervously watching the van and the troops around it. The squad was a nexus for the crisis that worried the civilians. "Maybe," said Hummel, "and maybe they decided there wasn't any way to hold this side." She waved at the blank wall across the peripheral boulevard. It was defended only by the empty kiosk and a tipping-bar gate. "Let's you and me walk through and see what's on the other side, Lieutenant."