by David Drake
Ben Mehdi went cold. Trooper Powers got out of the cab on her own side. "I'll go along," she said.
"Not till you learn some Czech, Bunny," said the non-com. Her voice sounded light until it cracked. "Lieutenant, leave that—" she pointed to the grenade launcher—"and take Diesson's rifle." She looked up at the troopers around her. "How's Dwyer?" she asked.
"Be okay if he gets to Doc pretty quick," said one of the men. "The Captain's coming around, sort of."
Hummel nodded. "Okay. Diesson, you're in charge. If this one's blocked, head for the ramp— Hodicky'll know where to find it. Let's go, Lieutenant."
Ben Mehdi followed the Sergeant numbly. There was, by Allah, no question of who was in charge, not here. He supposed he should be thankful to be considered an acceptable follower at a time like this. She would not have brought him a month ago, the bitch.
The Lieutenant was getting dizzy, in part because his torso was too tight to permit him to breath. His clam-shell armor had not been among the loot in the Katyn Forest.
Hummel glanced into the kiosk as they walked past it. The little booth was as empty as it had appeared to be from across the street. They could flip the pole up easily if they wanted. The van would not even have to break it off as they drove into the tunnel. "Well, who knows, Lieutenant?" the non-com said as she settled her rifle where she wanted it. "You might even be right about everything being clear."
They started down.
The tunnel dipped, then rose in a single fluid curve. Like the berm itself, the tunnel was designed to redirect a blast. It was quite impossible to hope to absorb the full potential of a fusion unit. The tunnel was concrete lined and three meters high, although the vehicular height was less since roof lines cut the chord rather than following the arc. There were steps along the right wall, but the two mercenaries kept to the vehicle way. The grade lengthened ben Mehdi's strides despite his nervousness.
The tunnel was only fifty meters long. The mercenaries were halfway through, at the nadir of the curve, when six armed soldiers appeared in silhouette at the spaceport end. "All right!" one of them shouted. "State your business."
"Sir," Hussein ben Mehdi called back, too caught up in the situation to be worried about the quality of his Czech, "we were ordered to stand by at the freighter Boudicca and await further orders." He could not tell the sex, much less the rank, of the troops because the bright daylight was behind them. Their weapons were clear enough, though. Automatic rifles like the one he carried, deadly in trained hands as his were not . . . and the squat, solid outline of a heavy grenade launcher whose capacity ben Mehdi was well able to imagine. But Allah would not permit his servant to be trapped in this hollow killing ground when—
A seventh figure strode against the background of the sky. "What's this?" the newcomer demanded. "You there, drop those guns! And—say, / know you!"
It was the Morale Section Colonel who had met the Katyn Forest when she docked.
"Run!" shouted Jo Hummel as she sprayed the Federal soldiers. Ben Mehdi ran, because there was nothing else to do.
The Colonel and two of his squad flopped face down on the concrete. The others sprang away as if flung by the muzzle blasts. The angle protected them from the second burst which Hummel sent up the tunnel as she herself turned. The opening behind her danced with motes of concrete settling upon the bodies.
"Tell—" the Lieutenant heard her shout. Then the grenade went off.
There was no reality in the tunnel but that of the blast. The Federal grenadier had lobbed the round in without exposing himself to rifle fire. That showed a competence the Lieutenant could appreciate, even as the shock wave pitched him forward. The grenade detonated on the tunnel roof. The curve protected even Sergeant Hummel from the shrapnel that rusticated the smooth concrete from which it ricochetted. Ben Mehdi glanced back as he rose. The Sergeant was sprawled in a fog of white lime and smoke from the bursting charge. She did not move, the bitch, the bitch, and the Lieutenant scrambled back to her side.
The shadows against the dust-smeared daylight were more than bodies and blast residues now. Federal troops were peering into the tunnel to see whether the grenade had cleared it. Ben Mehdi swung his rifle toward them. The unfamiliar weapon would not fire. Perhaps the safety was still on or he had not charged the rifle properly. He threw it down and began dragging Hummel by the arms.
A rifle bullet winked on the tunnel wall and spattered both mercenaries with bits of itself. "Hold it there, you swine!" one of the oncoming figures shouted. The Federal's instincts were those of a policeman, not a combat soldier. At the moment, ben Mehdi was as defenseless as any deserter dragged out of an attic.
"Get down!" somebody cried in English.
The Lieutenant threw himself flat. Trooper Iris Powers squatted on the steps, halfway down the slope. She held her weapon low. The first armor-piercing projectile would bring a storm of automatic fire which would sweep all three of them into—
The little blonde emptied her magazine in a single twenty-round burst that was almost a directed explosion. Not even Del Hoybrin could have stood up to that recoil and kept the muzzle down. Powers managed by butting the weapon against a step and letting the concrete instead of her shoulder receive the jack-hammer blows. Precise aim was as impossible as it was unnecessary. The osmium projectiles ricocheted instead of shattering like bullets from the assault rifles. Buzzing projectiles and chunks of concrete ripped through the dusty tunnel like a round of canister.
Lieutenant ben Mehdi rose to his hands and knees again. His fingertips were bleeding from the way he had unconsciously tried to dig himself into the pavement. It hurt his hands too much to drag Hummel. He threw one of the non-com's arms over his shoulder and began to stagger up the slope with her in a packstrap carry.
Iris Powers did not help him with the burden. She reloaded and backed out behind the others with her weapon to her shoulder. Twice she fired into the reeking fog. The mercenaries were well clear before there was return fire from the inner mouth of the tunnel.
The truck and the troops with it waited as the trio stumbled back across the boulevard. There were sirens converging on them from three directions. To their rear, the wall around the port was as bleak as the one against which the condemned are stood.
* * * *
She caught the signal just as another dummy message began to cycle through the transmitter. Foyle's hand flashed out and killed the transmitter's power in time for her to catch his tag, "—in Allah's name, Big Brother!"
Sookie Foyle slapped in the patch which fed all the intercoms into the main unit. "Big Brother has you," she said, hearing echoes of her voice from the bridge speakers and each compartment stern-ward in a reflected-mirror pattern. "Hold one for—"
Before the Communicator could get the word out, Sergeant Mboko's voice boomed "White One to Sister, tell us what you need."
Foyle listened with her eyes open as she always did. If her duties had required her to find a switch or dial instantly, her body would have responded. Her mind was in the world of visualized sounds crackling out of the speaker.
"Sister to White One," hissed the voice of Hussein ben Mehdi, "we made it to the wall but we can't get through and we can't get back. They got us bottled in a building across—" there was a blast of white noise which was not atmospherically generated. Something had exploded close enough to the commo helmet to overload its filters. The Lieutenant's voice resumed, "Save what you can, Stack. This was a good try but it—" an automatic weapon overprinted his signal— "Over."
Sergeant Mboko was on the bridge. Captain Ortschugin stood at the lip of the Commo Bay, listening to the speaker as intently as Foyle did.
"Sister, hold what you got!" Mboko said. "You're at the entry point? Over."
"See you in Paradise, White One. Over and out."
Sookie Foyle stared at Ortschugin as the Captain turned away. "I'll prepare to lift ship," she heard him say to Sergeant Mboko.
* * * *
The roof of the adjacent build
ing was afire. That meant there would not be another attempt to rush them from it. Six Federal soldiers had died before one had fired his grenade launcher as he fell back through the trap door. That had ended the rush, but it had not helped the trooper sprawled beside Albrecht Waldstejn with a bulged skull and a hole between his eyes.
Automatic rifles yammered across the boulevard. Waldstejn cursed and fired back. He cursed again. The recoil had hurt him, as usual, and he had, as usual, missed. There was one body crumpled on the inner slope of the blast wall, but Del Hoybrin had nailed it there. Now Federals within the spaceport slid only far enough up the berm to fire in the general direction of the roof overlooking them across the boulevard. They would probably duck back even if Waldstejn did not respond . . . but the next time they might pause long enough to aim, and that could be all she wrote for the two men still alive on the roof.
There were wrecked emergency vehicles in either direction along the boulevard. A truck and several police cars were burning. Water still leaked from the riot control vehicle which a garbled message had sent to the scene with its water cannon. Surprise and confusion had made cold meat of the first waves who did not realize they were being dropped straight into a war. But killing Federal troops was not going to do any long-term good for Albrecht Waldstejn and the team which had tried to rescue him.
Nothing was.
Del Hoybrin fired across the radial street. He was too late. The shoop from a window there became the shattering detonation of an anti-tank rocket. It demolished much of the second floor of the building in which the mercenaries were holed up. The van in which they had arrived burned in the street. Its smoke was at least an edge of cover for the rest of the team on the ground floor with the wounded.
The Cecach officer had stumbled up the stairs, pushed by the big trooper since there was not enough room to be carried. Churchie Dwyer had been alive when they left him, and Jo Hummel was breathing though unconscious with streaks of dried blood beneath her nose and ears. Enforced motion and the pain of his cracked ribs had ridden Waldstejn out of the state of shock into which he had begun to slip. Now he was becoming increasingly dizzy. The building seemed to tremble even after the warhead's racket had died away. The blast wall across the boulevard was expanding as his eyes tried to focus on it.
The blast wall was not moving. A'starship was sliding toward it, broadside, at a measured pace.
The rest of the Company were coming for them, and they were bringing the Katyn Forest.
* * * *
"Clear the area!" blatted the starsliip's external speakers in bad Czech. "This area is about to be destroyed! Clear the area!"
Cooper tensed as the volleys ripped out from Holds Two and Three. "Get down," croaked Gunner Jensen. The skin of his face was red, and it would be weeks before he had eyelashes again; but he was master of his gun and his section, by Saint Ultruda!
The inner face of the berm was turf. It absorbed the hail of projectiles with no sign of their passage. The score of Federal troops there had been concerned only with the building on the other side of the blast wall. They leaped and died against the turf, scythed down by the shots from behind them. There was no target worthy of the automatic cannon as yet, and Jensen did not want his three crewmen endangered by rising to fire their shoulder weapons when the infantry sections had the business well in hand.
Herzenberg tried to smile at her section leader. The effect was grim, but the thought brought her an equally-awful rictus from Jensen in reply. Herzenberg had insisted on being in Hold One with the rest of Gun Section, though she could not have been of much practical use even if she were better trained. The polymer splints on her right arm and leg permitted her to move without restriction. Nothing could change the blinding pain such movement caused, however, except enough drugs to knock her flat anyway.
The Katyn Forest was steadier under her own power than she had been when she drew from the broadcast grid, but she still bucked as she started to lift. The sloping berm dropped below as they approached it. Someone stood on the nearest of the buildings, waving a gun butt-upward.
The brick and stone facades of other buildings began to powder as the troopers in Holds Two and Three opened fire. They were leaning over their copper breastworks to shoot down at an angle. The cannon could not be depressed in its present mounting. A target had to be in the same plane for the gun to bear. The speakers continued to call their warning, but it was doubtful whether words could be heard over the muzzle blasts. Still, it was the most chance that Mboko could give non-combatants under the circumstances.
The Katyn Forest began to settle as if to land on the peripheral boulevard. With her belly ten meters in the air, the vessel paused. The intercom boomed in Ortschugin's gruff English, "Bridge to Guns—here we go." With a gentleness that belied the Swobodan's looks, the starship managed the incredibly difficult job of rolling two degrees on its axis. Jensen's sights swung down across building fronts, then over the Cecach soldiers and vehicles huddled along the structures where the angle protected them from the trapped mercenaries. The Federal troops were blazing away furiously at the Katyn Forest, though bodies and cratered facades showed the damage the Company's infantry was wreaking.
Sergeant Jensen started a block in front of the starship's bow and traversed left on Continuous Fire.
The big osmium slugs took buildings down in a row like a demonstration of controlled demolition. The lighter weapons had blown gaps in the facing walls. The cannon's slow traverse sawed through the massive but brittle structures, including the load-bearing firewalls separating adjacent buildings. Bricks and blocks and humans, most of them civilians huddled in their rooms, cascaded into the boulevard. Federal soldiers flattened to the pavement while Jensen's fire ripped overhead. The debris avalanched over them.
The shattering fire paused momentarily while Pavlovich slid a fresh drum into the ammunition feed. Then Jensen dumped the full hundred rounds down the street by which the rescue commando had approached the port. The gun raked buildings on both sides with the exception of the one on the left corner from which Albrecht Waldstejn had waved as the starship loomed over the blast wall. Secondary explosions blew geysers of brick and stone from the stately cascades that filled the street.
"Set her down, Control!" Jensen called as Cooper this time reloaded the automatic cannon. The Katyn Forest rocked level and settled onto the boulevard. The ship had hovered less than a full minute to give the big gun a chance before the locals were ready to react to the situation.
When the cannon opened up, the infantry had shifted its fire to concentrate on the buildings to the left of the one in which their comrades were trapped. The Federals in that stretch too had already been silenced. But as familiar figures staggered from the corner building, the Gunner opened fire again. In part, it was for safety's sake, demolishing everything in sight that faced the boulevard. That way no one could crawl to a window and shoot a trooper on the edge of safety.
There was more to it than good technique, however. Roland Jensen was a veteran who knew that killing was a matter of business, not emotion. But there were two figures fewer than there should have been running toward the ship, and three of those he did see were being dragged or carried by others.
It gave Gunner Jensen a certain pleasure to see Cecach buildings collapsing with a roar as he drew his sights through them.
Chapter Nineteen
"Are you all right, Captain?" asked Roland Jensen. He spoke with the calm born of experience with wounds.
"I'll live," said Albrecht Waldstejn. He touched the tape over his ribs. Hold Two was a babel of enthusiasm and minor casualties, but it was big enough for that and the cargo of metal as well. The Cecach officer looked from the general confusion to the men who had joined him in the corner where he sat staring at his hands. Jensen, Mboko, ben Mehdi . . . even Vladimir Ortschugin. "You got me off-planet with my life," Waldstejn continued. "I guess we're off-planet? I was getting these—" he touched the tape again— "done . . .?"
"We enter
ed the envelope six minutes ago," Ortschugin said with satisfaction. "Six minutes and . . . thirty-nine seconds."
"Yeah, well," said Waldstejn. He looked from his hands to the other men again. "Hey, I don't want you to think I don't appreciate it. They were going to kill me, I know. Only . . . only . . ." He breathed as deeply as the tape would allow. "Look," he went on, "you won't be able to understand this, I know, but—that was home. I'm alive, and I don't have a home or a,,hell . . . don't have a future." The young man grinned bitterly. "You need an engine-wiper, Vladimir? Or maybe the Company could use a trooper who's proved he can't hit a damned thing with a gun?"
"I can teach anybody to shoot," said Sergeant Mboko. "I can't teach them to think better than I do."
"We want you for our Captain, Mr. Waldstejn," said Roland Jensen. "Call yourself Colonel like the Old Man did, if you like."
Waldstejn straightened. His eyes searched for the member of the command group who was missing.
Lieutenant ben Mehdi understood the look. "Worried about Hummel?" he said. "Don't be. Bertinelli's still working her over, but it was her idea to begin with." The Lieutenant's mouth quirked into something with less humor than a smile. "That was before we crashed back into Smiricky—while some of us didn't see much use in planning for the future."
"I'm going back to the bridge," said Captain Ortschugin. He thrust out his hand to be shaken. "But look—you saved my ship, which is nothing, I am no Excellency to pull strings . . . but also you saved a ship of the Pyaneta Lines. It could be that something other than engine-wiper could be found for you." The spacer strode off, spitting tobacco juice at random into the jumbled ingots.
"Can I have a little while to think about it?" Albrecht Waldstejn asked his hands.
The two non-coms exchanged looks of surprise. "Ah, I don't know if you realize what this means when we're not on service," Sergeant Mboko said. "That's three full shares of what's usually a damned big pie."