by David Drake
"Yes sir," said Tyl.
He swallowed. "Sir,"he said, "I can't promise it'll work. If it does,it'll give you the time you wanted for things to hot up over there. But I can't promise."
"Son," said Colonel Hammer. He was grinning like a skull. "When you start making promises on chances like this, I'll remove you from command so fast your ears'll ring."
His face straightened into neutral lines again."For the record," Hammer said, "you're operating without orders. Not in violation of orders, just on your own initiative."
"Yes sir," Tyl said.
Hammer hadn't paused for agreement. He was saying, "I expect you to withdraw as soon as you determine that there is no longer a realistic chance of success. Nobody's being paid to be heroes, and—"
He leaned closer to the pickup. His face was grim and his eyes glared like gun muzzles. "Captain, if you throw my men away because you want to be a hero, I'll shoot you with my own hand. If you survive."
"Yes sir," Tyl said through a swallow. This time his commander had waited for an acknowledgment.
Hammer softened. "Then good luck to you, son," he said. "Oh—and son?"
"Yes sir?"
The colonel grinned with the same death's-head humor as before. "Bishop Trimer decided Hammer's Slammers weren't worth their price," Hammer said. "It wouldn't bother me if by the end of today, His Eminence had decided he was wrong on that."
Hammer touched a hidden switch and static flooded the screen.
"Four-six to Six," came Scratchard's voice, delayed until the laser link was broken. "We're ready, sir. Over."
"Four-six," Tyl said as he shrugged his armor loose over his sweating torso. "I'm on my way."
He left the laser communicator set up where it was. He'd need it again after the operation was over.
In the event that he survived.
Chapter Twenty-Six
"—gathered together at the dawn of a new age for our nation, our planet, and our God," said the voice.
Bishop Trimer's words had a touch of excitement remaining to them, despite being attenuated through multiple steps before they got to Tyl's helmet. Anne McGill aimed a directional microphone from the cathedral to the seafront altar, below her and over a kilometer away.
Trimer's speech was patched through the commo gear hidden between the woman's breasts, then shuttled by the UDB artificial intelligence over the inter-unit frequency to Tyl Koopman.
"We could shoot the bastard easy as listen to him," Scratchard said as he held out a shoulder weapon to his captain.
Only the two of them among the ninety-eight troopers in the rotunda had helmets that would receive the transmission. The other Slammers watched in silence as varied as their individual personalities: frightened; feral; cautious; and not a few with anticipation that drew back their lips in memory of past events . . . .
"Might break the back of the rebellion," Tyl said.
He had to will his eyes to focus on Scratchard's face, on anything as near as the walls of the big room."Sure as blood that lot—" he touched his helmet over the tiny speaker "—they'd burn the city down to bricks 'n bare concrete. Might as well nuke 'em as that."
His voice didn't sound, even to him, as if he much cared. He wasn't sure he did care. He wasn't really involved with things that could be or might be . . . or even were.
"With dawn comes the light," the Bishop was saying. "With this dawn, the Lord brings us also the new light of freedom in the person of the man he has commanded me to anoint President of Bamberia."
"Jack, I don't need that," Tyl said peevishly. Sight of the 2cm weapon being pushed toward him had brought him back to reality; irritation had succeeded where abstracts like survival and success could not. "I got a gun, remember?"
He slapped the receiver of the submachine-gun under his arm, then noticed that the whole company was carrying double as well as being festooned with bandoliers and strings of grenades.
"UDB's weapons stores were here in the Palace," the sergeant major explained patiently."Their el-tee, he told us go ahead. Sir, we don't got far to go.And I swear, they all jam."
Scratchard grinned sadly.He lifted his right boot to display the hilt of his fighting knife, though with his hands full he couldn't touch it for emphasis. "Even these, the blade can break. When you really don't want t' see that."
"Sorry," said Tyl, glad beyond words to be back in the present with sweaty palms and an itch between his shoulder blades that he couldn't have scratched even if it weren't covered by his clamshell armor.
"Blazes," he added as he checked the load—full magazine, chamber empty. "Here's my treatment a' choice anyhow. I'll take punch over pecka-pecka-pecka any day."
He looked up and glared around the circle of his troops as if seeing them for the first time. Pretty nearly he was. Good men, good soldiers; and just the team to pull the plug on Trimer and the bully boys who thought they owned the streets when the Slammers were in town.
"Thomas Chastain has mounted the dais," said Anne McGill. She sounded calm, but the distance in her voice was more than an electronic artifact. "Both Chastain brothers. The faction heads are present, and so are several churchmen, standing beneath the crucifix."
Tyl keyed the command channel while ducking through the bandolier of 2cm magazines the sergeant major held for him.
"Orange to Blue Six," he said, using the code he and the UDB officer had set up in a few seconds when they realized that they'd need it. "Report."
"Blue Six ready," said Desoix's voice.
"Orange to Blue Three. Report."
"Blue Three ready," said a voice Tyl didn't recognize, the noncom in charge of the Gun Three near the east entrance to the plaza.
"Orange Six to Blue," Tyl said. "We're moving into position . . . now."
He cut down with his right index finger.Before the gesture ended, Sergeant Kekkonan was leading the first squad into the incipient dawn over Bamberg City.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"I figured they'd a' burned it down, the way they was going last night," said Lachere, blinking around the warehouse from the driver's seat.
"Tonight," he said, correcting himself in mild wonder.
"Senter, what's the street look like?"Desoix asked from the gun saddle.Beneath him the calliope quivered like a sleeping hound, its being at placid idle—but ready to rend and bellow the instant it was aroused.
Desoix couldn't blame his subordinate for thinking more than a few hours had passed since they first entered this warehouse. It seemed like a lifetime—
And that wasn't a thought Lieutenant Charles Desoix wanted to pursue, even in the privacy of his own mind.
"I don't see anybody out, sir," the other clerk called from the half-open pedestrian door. "Maybe lookin' out a window, I can't tell. But none a' the big mobs like when we got here."
Reentering the warehouse without being caught up—or cut down—by the bands of bravos heading toward the plaza had been the trickiest part of the operation so far. Stealth was the only option open to Desoix and his two companions. Even if Koopman had been willing—been able, it didn't matter—to spare a squad in support, a firefight would still mean sure disaster for the plan as well as for the unit.
"All right, Senter," Desoix said. "Open the main doors and climb aboard."
Lachere was bringing the fans up to driving velocity without orders. He wasn't a great driver, but he'd handled air-cushion vehicles before and could maneuver the calliope well enough for present needs.
The suction roar boomed in the cavernous room while Senter struggled with the unfamiliar door mechanism. The warehouse staff—manager, loaders, and guards—had disappeared at the first sign of trouble, leaving nothing behind but crated goods and the heavy effluvium of tobacco to be stirred into a frenzy by the calliope's drive fans.
The door rumbled upward; Senter scampered toward the gun vehicle. Desoix smiled. He'd been ready to clear their way with his eight 3cm guns if necessary.
He had ordered Control to lock the general freq
uency out of his headset. Captain Koopman was in charge of this operation, so Desoix didn't have to listen to the running commentary about what the mob in the plaza was doing.
If he listened on that frequency, he would hear Anne; and he would have to remember where she was and how certainly she would die if he failed.
"Ready, sir?" Lachere demanded, shouting as though his voice weren't being transmitted over the intercom channel.
Desoix raised a hand in bar. "Blue Six to all Blue and Orange units," he said. "We're moving into position—now."
He chopped his hand.
Lachere accelerated them into the street with a clear view of the plaza's south stair head, two blocks away.
Metal shrieked as Lachere sideswiped the door jamb, but none of the calliope's scratch crew noticed the sound.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"I'm with you!" said Pedro Delcorio, gripping Tyl's shoulder from behind. He was almost with the angels, because Tyl spun and punched the young noble in the belly with the weapon he'd just charged, his finger taking up slack.
"Careful, sonny," the Slammers officer said as intellect twitched away the gun that reflex had pointed.
Tyl felt light, as though his body were suspended on wires that someone else was holding. His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat that had nothing to do with the night's mild breezes.
Pedro wore a uniform—a service uniform,probably; though the clinking, glittering medals on both sides of the chest indicated that the kid still had something to learn about combat conditions. He also wore a determined expression and a pistol in a polished holster.
"You're doing this for my family," Pedro said."One of us should be with you."
"That why we're doing it?" Tyl asked, marvelling at the lilt in his own voice. Tyl wasn't sure the kid knew how close he'd come to dying a moment before."Well, it'll do unless a better reason comes along. Stick close, boy, and leave that—" he nodded toward the gun "—in its holster."
He had a squad on the levee and a squad deployed to cover the boulevard and medians separating the Palace from the cathedral. The rest of the Slammers were moving at a nervous shuffle down the river drive bunched more than he liked, than anybody'd like, but they were going to need all the firepower available to clear the mall in a hurry. Those hydraulic gates were the key to the operation: the key to bare safety, much less success.
No one seemed to be out, but Tyl could hear occasional shouts in the distance as well as the antiphonal roars from the plaza—though the latter were directed upward,into the sulphurous dawn, by the flood walls. Litter of all sorts splotched the pavement, waste and shattered valuables as well as a few bodies.
One of the crumpled bodies jumped up ahead of them. The drunk tottered backward when his foot slipped on the bottle which had put him there in the first place.
Tyl's point man fired a ten-shot burst—far too long—at the drunk. The bolts splashed all around the target, cyan flashes and the white blaze of lime burned out of the concrete. None of the rounds hit the intended victim.
A sergeant jumped to the shooter's side and slapped him hard on the helmet. "Cop-head!" he snarled. "Cop-head! Get your ass behind me. And if you shoot again without orders, you better have the muzzle in your mouth!"
The drunk scrambled in the general direction of the cathedral, stumbling and rolling on the ground to rise and stumble again. The air bit with the odors of ozone and quicklime.
The company shuffled onward with a squad leader in front.
"Blue Six to all Blue and Orange units," said Tyl's commo helmet. Desoix sounded tight,a message played ten percent faster than it'd been recorded."We're moving into position—now."
The point man paused at the base of the ramp to the mall and the plaza's main stairs.
"Check your loads, boys," said Sergeant Major Scratchard over the unit push.
Jack was back with the three squads of the second wave, but Tyl didn't expect him to stay there long when the shooting started.
"Sir,"reported the point sergeant,using the command channel, "the gates are shut on this side."
"Orange Six to all Blue and Orange," Tyl ordered as he ran the ten meters to where the noncom paused. "Don't bloody move. We got a problem."
The gates separating the mall from the west river drive were as massive and invulnerable as those facing the plaza itself.
They were closed, just as the point man had said.
Tyl ran up the ramp, his bandoliers clashing against one another. The slung submachine-gun gouged his hip beneath the flare of his armor. The gates were solid, solid enough to shrug away tidal surges with more power than a battery of artillery.
There was no way one company without demolition charges or heavy weapons was going to force its way through.
The small vitril windows in the gate panels were too scarred and dirty to show more than hinted movement, but there was a speaker plate in one of the pillars. Nothing ventured . . . .
Tyl keyed the speaker and said, "Open these gates at once, in the name of Bishop Trimer!"
The crowd in the plaza cheered deafeningly, shaking the earth like a distant bomb blast.
Shadows, colors, shifted within the closed mall. The plate replied in the voice of Colonel Drescher, "Go away, little lapdog. The Executive Guard is neutral, as I told you. And this is where we choose to exercise our neutrality."
The crowd thundered, working itself into bloodthirsty enthusiasm.
Tyl turned his back on the reinforced concrete and touched his commo helmet. His troops were crouching, watching him. Those who wore their shields down had saffron bubbles for faces, painted by the glow which preceded the sun.
"Orange to Blue Six,"Tyl said."We're screwed. The Guards're holding the mall and they got it shut up. We can't get in, and if we tried we'd bring the whole bunch down on us. Save what you can, buddy. Over."
He'd forgotten that Anne McGill had access to the circuit. Before Desoix could speak, her voice rang like shards of crystal through Tyl's helmet, saying, "The river level has dropped. You can go under the plaza on a barge and come up beneath the altar."
The cross on the cathedral dome was beginning to blaze with sunlight.McGill's angle was on the seafront. She couldn't see any of the troops, Tyl's or the pair of calliopes, and she wouldn't have understood a bloody thing if she had been able to watch them. Bloody woman, bloody planet . . . .
Bloody fool, Captain Tyl Koopman, to be standing here. Nobody he saw was moving except Scratchard, clumping up the ramp to his captain's side. If Ripper Jack were bothered by his knees or the doubled load of weaponry, there was no sign of it on his expectant face.
"Tyl, she's right," Desoix was saying. "Most of the louvers are still closed, so there's no risk of drifting out to sea, but the maintenance catwalks lead straight up to the control house. The altar."
"Roger on the river level," the sergeant major muttered with his lips alone. He must've spoken to the noncomon the levee,using one of the support frequencies so as not to tie up the command push.
Tyl looked up at the sky, bright and clear after a night that was neither.
"Tyl, we'll give the support we can," Desoix said. Both officers knew exactly what the change of plan would mean. They weren't going to be able to talk to the mob when they came up into the plaza. Desoix was apparently willing to go along with the change.
Wonder what the colonel would say?
Colonel Hammer wasn't here. Tyl Koopman was, and he was ready to go along with it too. More fool him.
"Orange Six to all Orange personnel," he said on the unit push. "We're going to board the nearest barge and cut it loose so we drift to the dam at the other end of the plaza . . . ."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Some of the men were still scrambling aboard the barge, the second of the ten in line rather than the nearest, because it seemed less likely to scrape the whole distance along the concrete channel. Tyl didn't hear the order Jack Scratchard muttered into his commo helmet, but troopers standing by three of the fou
r cables opened fire simultaneously.
Arm-thick ropes of woven steel parted in individual flashes. The barge sagged outward, its stern thumping the fenders of the vessel to port. Only the starboard bow line beside Tyl and the sergeant major held their barge against the current sucking them seaward.
The vertical lights on the walls, faintly green, merged as the channel drew outward toward the river's broad mouth and the dam closing it. They reflected from the water surface, now five meters beneath the concrete roof though it was still wet enough to scatter the light back again in turn.
"Hold one, Jack,"Tyl said as he remembered there was another thing he needed to do before they slipped beneath the plaza. He keyed his helmet on the general interunit frequency and said, "Orange Six to all Orange personnel. I am ordering you to carry out an attack on the Bamberg citizens assembled in the plaza. Anyone who refuses to obey my order will be shot."
"Via!" cried one of the nearer soldiers. "I'm not afraid to go, sir!"
"Shut up, you fool!" snarled Ripper Jack. "Don't you understand? He's just covered your ass for afterward!"
Tyl grinned bleakly at the sergeant major. Everybody seemed to have boarded the vessel, clinging to one another and balancing on the curves of hogsheads.
"Cut 'er loose," he said quietly.
Scratchard's powergun blasted the remaining cable with a blue-green glare and a gout of white sparks whose trails lingered in the air as the barge lurched forward.
Their stern brushed along the portside barge until they drifted fully clear. The grind of metal against the polymer fenders was unpleasant. Friction spun them slowly counterclockwise until they swung free.
They continued to rotate for the full distance beneath the widening channel. One trooper vomited over his neighbor's backplate, though that was more likely nerves than the gentle, gently frustrating motion.
Light coming through the louvered flood gates was already brighter than the greenish artificial sources on either wall. It was still diffuse sky-glow rather than the glare of direct sun, but the timing was going to be very close.