Though Hell Should Bar the Way - eARC

by David Drake

  We talked about the history of Saguntum through cutlets—I’m not sure of the animal—with potatoes and corn. The portions had been modest, but from the clattering in the kitchen, the parade of entrees was far from finished. I’d learned to pace myself at my parents’ formal dinners.

  Beechy came in through the hall doorway instead of from the kitchen. Foliot looked up at him and said, “A problem with the chicken?”

  “Sir,” Beechy said, sounding very worried. “Augustin and I noticed the guards at the rear had withdrawn, and I just checked the front. I saw Samuels leaving—”

  “I gave him permission!”

  “—and the guards at the front gate are gone also. I don’t—”

  Beechy jumped out of the way as Colonel Foliot strode through the hall door. I followed without anything in mind except to stick close to the man in charge.

  Foliot ducked into his office and pulled open the top drawer of the big desk. “The gun’s gone!” he said. “The front door—”

  I was there a half step ahead of him, reaching for the prominent turnbolt above the latch plate. The door burst open, pushed by two men in civilian clothes. The one in front was drawing a pistol from a shoulder holster.

  I shot half a dozen times. The recoil punched my hand. The slug that hit the half-open door ricocheted up the staircase beside the hall. At least one round hit the leading attacker because he lost his grip on the pistol and fell to his knees. The second man dodged out of my line of sight.

  Foliot jerked the wounded man out of the way so that I could slam the door. I heard Monica shout, “The phone is dead!”

  As I threw the bolt left-handed, I saw Foliot scoop up the fallen pistol. An instant later there was a Crack! as Foliot shot the wounded man in the head. The corpse sprawled forward, voiding its bowels.

  I dropped my pistol back into the side pocket and took out the communicator with my left hand. I squeezed it live and shouted, “Olfetrie to base! Emergency! Colonel Foliot’s house on East Madeira, armed”—there was a crash at the back of the house, maybe a door being broken in—“attackers. Backup! Backup!”

  Monica screamed from the dining room.

  I reached into my pocket for my pistol and burned my fingers on the hot barrel shroud. It startled me into dropping the communicator in my other hand. I left that on the floor but got my right hand firmly around the grip of the pistol by holding the weapon steady with my left through the cloth.

  Colonel Foliot ran back into the dining room with me behind him. I could see Beechy’s feet under the table. A man had come through the kitchen door and was struggling with Monica. He was a big fellow and wouldn’t have had much trouble if he’d had both hands free, but he was holding a pistol in his right and trying to point it toward Foliot coming in from the hall.

  The stranger suddenly screamed and slammed Monica against the wall above the sideboard. A serving fork stuck out of his thigh where she’d stabbed him. Foliot shot him twice at the base of the throat. He fell backward, choking out a spray of blood.

  There were men in the kitchen behind him. The colonel shot and ran to the kitchen door. I caught Monica before she slumped to the floor.

  Six or eight shots crashed from the kitchen. Foliot backed away and let the connecting door swing shut.

  Monica squirmed onto her feet. I let her go. Several guns within the kitchen fired, chewing pieces out of the door. The colonel had backed clear. The right shoulder of his jacket was bloody but he continued to hold his pistol out.

  “Upstairs!” Monica called behind us. “We can hold them there!”

  The kitchen door twitched. Foliot and I both shot into it. “Colonel, go back with Monica. I’ll hold them till you’re clear!”

  The pistol fell from Foliot’s fingers. “Bloody hell!” he snarled and bent. He picked the gun up with his left hand. His upper right sleeve was dark with blood.

  “Olfetrie!” he rasped. “We both fire one shot and move into the hall. Got it?”

  “Right,” I said. My stomach was churning with the stench of ozone and blood. I was on the verge of vomiting, though I guess that wouldn’t matter.

  “Now!” said Foliot. We both shot at the tattered door panel. Foliot backed through the hall door ahead of me, then fell down as he tried to turn.

  Monica reached over her father and took the pistol. She began to drag him down the corridor one handed. I crouched between them and the door, pointing my pistol but suddenly wondering if it was loaded.

  There was an enormous crash from the foyer. The door burst open, smashed off its hinges by a stone planter. “Coming through!” someone shouted and Cory and Barnes charged in. I squeezed myself to the side.

  Barnes kicked open the dining room door. Both spacers emptied their submachine guns into the dining room and perhaps the kitchen beyond—I couldn’t tell from my angle. They stepped aside, loading fresh tubes into their glowing weapons, while two more spacers entered the shattered dining room and began shooting into the kitchen.

  “Help me get Dad into the medicomp!” Monica said. “There’s one under the stairs.”

  I dropped the pistol back into my pocket. The wool had charred earlier. I wondered how I’d be able to replace the jacket.

  I grabbed Foliot under the shoulders and took three shambling steps to get him to the door which Monica had opened under the stairs. Now she was removing the cover of the medicomp. I took a breath and heaved Foliot up and into the chest-style medicomp, dragging the colonel’s legs over the lip because Monica couldn’t get around my body in time to help me.

  I felt bones grinding under my left hand when I lifted the wounded man. It was like my damaged jacket: Needs must when the devil drives.

  Monica closed the medicomp over her father and began adjusting its dials. I stepped away, breathing hard. The hall was full of people carrying guns and talking in loud, angry voices.

  The man standing next to me waved a hand slowly across the direction in which my face was pointing. I focused and saw Captain Leary. He held a submachine gun.

  “Sorry, sir,” I said. I wanted to brace to attention, but my brain couldn’t seem to communicate with my body. “I was just…” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “We were having dinner and they broke in. And they’d cut communication.”

  That reminded me of the communicator which had saved our lives. I looked around the room and found it squarely between my two feet. I picked it up and put it in my tunic pocket again, wondering if it still worked.

  “Did they give any notion of their particular target?” Leary said.

  “No, sir.” The question reminded me that I’d thought I recognized the man who’d first shoved through the door. I lifted his torso so that I could see his face. Foliot had shot him through the base of the brain so that his face was still identifiable.

  I straightened. “Sir, he was with the Karst official who tried to seize the Alfraz on Benedict,” I said. “What was he doing here?”

  “He was one of three personnel who landed yesterday by lighter from the Meduse in orbit,” said Officer Mundy, who was suddenly beside us with her servant. “The remainder of the force appear to have been on planet already, at the Karst Residency.”

  Hogg joined us—coming from the back of the house. He carried a stocked impeller. “A couple of ’em got away,” he said, including all of us. “I didn’t figure a nice quiet neighborhood like this needed me shooting it up with this”—he patted the fore-end of his impeller—“since the slug’s going to keep going after it exits. Ma’am”—he focused on Lady Mundy—“I guess you know where we can find them, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Mundy. “That won’t be a problem.”

  “Is it okay—” I started to say. Then I decided that if I didn’t get some fresh air, I was going to throw up in front of everybody. I bolted out the front door.

  Outside I bent over, placing my hands on my knees to support my torso. After a few deep breaths of air that didn’t stink of gunfire and dead men, my stomach settled d
own.

  Half the dirt from the planter which Woetjans had used to break down the door was spilled here on the stoop. The other half was in the entry hall, where at least it was soaking up blood.

  Woetjans had been standing beside the front door, though I hadn’t noticed her when I rushed out. I straightened and smiled at her. “Thank you, Chief,” I said. “You saved time that we needed a lot.”

  “You all right, kid?” she said. The remaining planter stood on the right side of the stoop. How even Woetjans had been able to move its mate was beyond my imagination. She looked exhausted, and no mistake.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “The colonel was wounded but I think he’ll come through.”

  I frowned. I didn’t have a clear picture of what had just happened, but the timing didn’t make sense. I said, “You really got here fast after I called for help. Thank heaven you did, but I don’t see how.”

  “I think the Mistress heard something before you called,” Woetjans said. “Anyway, it was her that got us moving. We were just a couple blocks away when I heard the shots.”

  Tovera had come out of the house. She nodded to the bosun, then said to me, “Do you mind if I take a look at your pistol, kid?”

  I reached into my pocket and handed it to her, butt first. The barrel shroud was warm but no longer fiercely hot. I said, “It saved our lives.”

  “Good,” said Tovera, ejecting the loading tube. She replaced it with a fresh one from a pack of five and returned the weapon to me. “Did you hit anything?”

  “I wounded the first man through the door and locked it behind him,” I said. I swallowed, remembering the scene. “Colonel Foliot shot him in the head then.”

  Tovera laughed. “Foliot’s a stone pro,” she said. “I knew from the first time I saw him that I’d have to shoot him in the back.”

  She handed me the pack of ammunition with four tubes remaining. “Here,” she said. “If you carry them in the opposite pocket, they’ll balance the weight of the gun.”

  I took the pack silently. She’d been praising the colonel, I realized. This is the world I’ve chosen to be in.

  Monica came out the front door. She looked pale. “Roy,” she said. “Dad wants to talk to you and Captain Leary. Can you come in?”

  I dropped the pistol and ammunition into the right and left jacket pockets respectively, nodded to Tovera and Woetjans, and followed Monica inside.

  There must have been about a dozen people clustered around the door to the medicomp facility; there was only room for two, of course. In a clear voice Monica called, “Captain Leary? Will you please let me and Roy through to pull my father out into the hall so that he can address all of us?”

  I winced when I heard her, but Six was grinning as he turned and mimed forcing a path for us—which of course opened. There were several men in the battledress of Foliot’s police commando. They must have arrived while I was trying to get control of my stomach. I recognized Cassidy and Briggs from the Alfraz.

  Monica unlocked the medicomp’s casters and guided the front in while I slithered around to the back and pushed. She was speaking in a low voice to her father. His complexion was yellowish, but his eyes were bright and his expression was as lively as an electric arc.

  She gestured me to stop, then set the casters. “All right, Dad,” she said. “Everybody can hear now.”

  Foliot’s voice was neither firm nor loud, but I think all those standing around the cabinet could hear him. “I recognized the men who came through the back and grabbed my daughter,” he said. “They’re from the Karst Residency. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s bloody well not going to happen again. Cassidy, how many troops can we get together in two hours?”

  “A hundred and twenty, give or take,” Cassidy said. His skin was extremely dark, and his body was on the same design as that of Woetjans: tall, and as knobby as a length of rattan.

  “Get them together,” Foliot said. “Form up at the Councillor’s Palace. That’s close to the Karst Residency, which is where we’re going, but keep that under your hat. You’ll be in command, but I’ll be going along. Understood?”

  “Yessir,” Cassidy said. “Do we kill them all?”

  “No,” said Lady Mundy. “I’ll want prisoners and particularly I want to capture the electronic files intact. Which they won’t be if killing the personnel is the priority.”

  Foliot looked at her hard when she interrupted, but his expression softened as he listened. He nodded and said, “Leary, that was why I wanted you. Look, my people can do the job easy enough, but you know stuff that we don’t. The way you got here tonight proves that. You don’t owe me anything, but I’d be glad of your help.”

  “A pleasure,” the captain said, “and a duty. Karst is no friend of Cinnabar.”

  Foliot turned to me. “Roy,” he said, “this isn’t work you’re used to, but if you want to come along you’ll be welcome.”

  “Sir,” I said. “I do want to come along.”

  Heaven help me, but that was the truth.

  CHAPTER 37

  Colonel Foliot’s aircar had two seats in front and six—three abreast, facing one another—in the passenger compartment. I was in the middle of the back row, between Hogg and Six. Each of them held the fore-end of a stocked impeller, the butt on the floor and the muzzle hovering close to the roof. Mundy was across from me with Tovera and Woetjans to either side of her.

  I wore my tweed suit. I didn’t have anything handy to change into, and I figured it would do as well as a set of spacers’ slops for the current job. It had served me for one gunfight tonight, after all.

  We overflew a platoon of the police commando, coming up the street in loose order. A moment later we landed at the gate of the Karst Residency. On the other side of the fence stood a squad of soldiers in the same sharp green uniforms as those who had abandoned their posts at the Foliot home earlier. They were clutching their carbines with expressions of concern.

  “Hold this,” Captain Leary said to me, thrusting the impeller toward me. He got out his door at the same time that Foliot opened the cab. Both men walked to the gate. The colonel was stiff but didn’t stumble; his right arm was in a sling. Leary didn’t support him, but he was obviously ready to grab the wounded man if necessary.

  Foliot’s driver had shut the fans down. I could easily hear the colonel say, “Canfield, I’m relieving you and your squad immediately. We’ve got intelligence that there’s an attack planned on the Residency tonight. I’m taking over personally with the Special Police.”

  “But, sir,” the officer said. “We haven’t gotten any orders about that.”

  “You’re getting them now from me, the Director of Public Safety,” Foliot said. He didn’t shout, but there was no question about the order. He pointed to the sling with his left hand and added, “Do you see what they did to me? Get out of here now, before I decide you’re part of the problem!”

  “Right!” said the army officer. He pulled the gate open; it had been latched but not locked. “Back to barracks, men.”

  As the soldiers filed out, the officer said to Foliot in a voice I could barely hear, “Sir, we could stay and help?”

  The colonel squeezed his shoulder and said, “Thanks, Canfield, but I’ve got this covered.”

  The soldiers passed the police coming the other way. Captain Leary got into the aircar beside me and a noncom from the commando took the front seat where Foliot had been.

  The colonel remained at the gate with the arriving platoon. He pointed toward us.

  “All right, driver,” Leary said. The privacy panel between the front and the passenger compartment was down.

  The aircar rose smoothly, then curved to the right to take us over the stone Residency as the troops swept into the landscaped grounds. As we banked, I saw that several pairs of Foliot’s men carried frame charges between them.

  The building was arranged around a courtyard. We dropped into the middle abruptly and pancaked in. The driver must have done somethin
g besides just cutting the fans, because we didn’t hop upward again as I’d expected. This vehicle was a limousine with inlays and luxurious seats, but this wasn’t the driver’s first assault landing.

  Leary, Hogg, Tovera, and Woetjans were out while the car’s resilient skirt was still flexing. They’d had their doors half-open from the moment we took off.

  A man was starting across the courtyard. As we swept in, he turned and ran toward a doorway in the right sidewall at its corner with the rear wing. He got the door open when a clatter from Tovera’s miniature submachine gun dropped him dead on the threshold.

  A door was rolling up in the opposite sidewall; I heard lift fans revving from there. Leary and Hogg leaned over the front and rear decks of our car and began shooting. Their impellers crashed instead of crackling the way Tovera’s weapon did.

  Fan motors came apart as heavy slugs crashed through the car’s body and into the motor housings. Windings shorted. Metal which had been blown from the leading motors sprayed the blades of fans farther back; unbalanced, they tore themselves out of their housings. The car tried to dive onto its nose, but the back end hit the ceiling of its stall. The vehicle bounced sideways and turned over, spilling passengers.

  Colonel Foliot had said the Residency had an aircar. During the planning for the assault, I’d asked why Captain Leary was going in as one of the shooters tasked with making sure the vehicle didn’t get away. “Don’t the police”—I nodded to Colonel Foliot—“have marksmen?”

  Hogg gave me the kind of look you do for something on your shoe and said, “Because the young master’s a better snap shot than I am, which makes him plenty bloody good. Myself, I’d rather whack them when they’re asleep.”

  Lady Mundy was running with a small pistol in her left hand. I followed, figuring my body covered hers from anybody trying to shoot her from behind. The second-floor windows all overlooked the courtyard and it wouldn’t be hard for somebody to start popping shots at our backs.

  I left my own pistol in my pocket. It wasn’t hard to imagine myself tripping with a gun in my hand and putting a slug into the back of somebody in front of me. There were plenty of things that I couldn’t control, but at least I could avoid making situations worse.