by David Drake
The door behind him rattled sharply when a missile struck it. The vitril held as it was supposed to do.
"John, they aren't after me," Berne cried with more than personal concern in his voice. He was right, after all, everybody else here must know that, since it was so obvious to Tyl Koopman in his first day on-planet. "You mustn't—"
"If you hadn't failed, none of this would be happening," Eunice said, her scorn honed by years of personal hatred that found its outlet now in the midst of general catastrophe.
She turned to her husband, the ends of her black hair emphasizing the motion. "Why are you delaying? They want this criminal, and that will give us the time we need to deal with the filth properly with the additional troops."
Vividness made Eunice Delcorio a beautiful woman, but the way her lips rolled over the word "properly" sent a chill down the spine of everyone who watched her.
Berne made a break for the door to the hall.
Tyl's mind had been planning the defense of the Palace of Government.Squads of the local troops in each wing to fire as soon as rioters pried or blasted off a flood shutter to gain entrance. Platoons of mercenaries poised to react as fire brigades, responding to each assault with enough violence to smother it in the bodies of those who'd made the attempt. Grenadiers on the roof; they'd very quickly clear the immediate area of the Palace of everything except bodies and the moaning wounded.
Easy enough, but they were answers to questions that nobody was asking anymore. Besides, they could only hold the place for a few days against tens of thousands of besiegers—only long enough for the brigade to arrive from Two, if it came.
And Tyl was a lot less confident of that point than the President's wife seemed to be.
A middle-aged civilian tripped the City Prefect. One of Dowell's aides leaped on Berne and wrestled him to the polished floor as he tried to rise, while the other aide shouted into his communicator for support without bothering to lock his privacy screen in place.
Tyl looked away in disgust. He caught Lieutenant Desoix's eye. The UDB officer wore a bland expression.
But he wasn't watching the scuffle and the weeping prefect either.
"All right," said the President, bobbing his head in decision. "I'll tell them."
He took one stride,reached for the sliding door,and paused."You,"he said to Tyl. "Come with me."
Tyl nodded without expression. Another stone or possibly a light bullet whacked against the vitril. He set his face shield and stepped onto the porch ahead of the Regiment's employer.
He didn't feel much just now, though he wanted to take a piss real bad. Even so, he figured he'd be more comfortable facing the mob than he was over what had just happened in the Consistory Room.
The crowd roared. Behind his shield, Tyl grinned—if that was the right word for the way instinct drew up the corners of his mouth to bare his teeth. There was motion among the upturned faces gleaming like the sputum the sea leaves when it draws back from the strand.
Something pinged on the railing. Tyl's gun quivered, pointed—
"Wait!" thundered the bull-horn.
"My people!" boomed the President's voice from the roofline. He rested his palms wide apart on the railing.
He'd followed after all, a step behind the Slammers officer just in case a sniper was waiting for the first motion. Delcorio wasn't a brave man, not as a professional soldier came to appraise courage, but his spirit had a tumbling intensity that made him capable of almost anything.
At a given moment.
The mob was making a great deal of disconnected noise. Delcorio trusted his amplified voice to carry him through as he continued, "I have dismissed the miscreant Berne as you demanded. I will turn him over to the custody of the Church for safekeeping until the entire State can determine the punishment for his many crimes."
"Give us Berne!" snarled the bull-horn with echoing violence. It spoke in the voice of a priest but not a Christian; and the mob that took up the chant was not even human.
Delcorio turned and tried to shout something into the building with his unaided voice. Tyl couldn't hear him.
The President raised a hand for silence from the crowd. The chant continued unabated,but Delcorio and the Slammers officer were able to back inside without a rain of missiles to mark their retreat.
There was a squad of the Executive Guard in the Consistory Room. Four of the ten men were gripping the City Prefect. Several had dropped their rifles in the scuffle and no one had thought to pick the weapons up again.
Delcorio made a dismissing gesture. "Send him out to them," he said. "I've done all I can. Quickly, so I don't have to go out there—"
His face turned in the direction of his thoughts, toward the porch and the mob beneath. The flush faded and he began to shiver uncontrollably. Reaction and memory had caught up with the President.
There were only four civilian advisors in the room besides Berne. Five. A man whose suit was russet or gold, depending on the direction of the light, had been caught just short of getting into the elevator by Delcorio's return.
The Guards colonel was shaking his head."No,no,"he said."That won't do.If we open a shutter, they'll be in and, well, the way the fools are worked up, who knows what might happen?"
"But—" the President said, his jaw dropping. He'd aged a decade since he stepped off the porch. Hormonal courage abandoned him to reaction and remembrance. "But I must. But I promised them, Drescher, and if I don't—"
His voice would probably have broken off there anyway, but a bellow from the courtyard in thunderous synchrony smothered all sound within for a moment.
"Pick him up, then,"said Eunice Delcorio in a voice as clear as a sapphire laser. "You four—pick him up and follow. We'll give them their scrap of bone."
She strode toward the door, the motion of her legs a devouring flame across the intarsia.
Berne screamed as the soldiers lifted him. Because he was screaming, no one heard Tyl Koopman say in a choked voice, "Lady, you can't—"
But of course they could. And Tyl had done the same or worse, checking out suspicious movements with gunfire, knowing full well that nine chances in ten, the victims were going to be civilians trying to get back home half an hour after curfew . . . .
He'd never have spent one of his own men this way; and he'd never serve under an officer who did.
Colonel Drescher threw open the door himself, though he stood back from the opening with a care that was more than getting out of the way of the President's wife.
Tyl stepped out beside her, because he'd made it his job . . . or Hammer had made it his job . . . and who in blazes cared, he was there and the animal snarl of the mob brought answering rage to the Slammer's mind and washed some of the sour taste from his mouth.
The Guardsmen in azure uniforms and Berne in green made a contrast as brilliant as a parrot's plumage as they manhandled the prefect to the railing under the glare of lights. Floods were trained from at least three locations in the courtyard now, turned high; but that was all right, they needed to watch this, sure they did.
Eunice cried something inaudible but imperious. She gestured out over the railing. The soldiers looked at one another.
Berne was screaming wordlessly. His eyes were closed, but tears poured from beneath the lids. He had fouled himself in his panic. The smell added the only element necessary to make the porch a microcosm of Hell.
Eunice gestured again. The Guards threw their prisoner toward the courtyard.
Berne grabbed the railing with both hands as he went over. His legs flailed without the organization needed to boost him back onto the porch,but his hands clung like claws of east bronze.
Eunice gave a furious order that was no more than a grimace and a quick motion of her lips. Two of the soldiers tried gingerly to push Berne away. The prefect twisted his head and bit the hands of one. His eyes were open now and as mad as those of a backward psychotic. Bottles and stones began to fly from the crowd, clashing on the rail and floor of the porch.
The Guardsmen drew back into a huddle in the doorway. The man who still carried his rifle raised it one-handed to shield his face.
A bottle shattered on Tyl's breastplate. He didn't hear the shot that was fired a moment later, but the howl of a light slug ricocheting from the wall cut through even the roar of the crowd.
"Get inside!"Tyl's speakers bellowed to Eunice Delcorio as he stepped sideways to the railing where Berne thrashed. Tyl hammered the man's knuckles with the butt of his submachine-gun. One stroke, two—bone cracked—
Three and the prefect's screaming changed note. His broken left hand slipped and his right hand opened. Berne's throat made a sound like a siren as he fell ten meters to the mob waiting to receive him.
Tyl turned. If the Guardsmen had still been blocking the doorway, he might have shot them . . . but they'd fled inside and Eunice Delcorio was sweeping after them. Her head was regally high, and she was ignoring the streak of blood over one cheekbone where a stone had cut her.
Tyl turned for a last look into the courtyard. The rioters were passing Berne hand to hand, over their heads, like a bit of green algae seen sliding through the gut of a paramecium. There was greater motion also; the mob was shifting back—only a compression in the crowd at the moment, but soon to turn into real movement that would clear the courtyard.
They were leaving, now that they had their bone.
As the City Prefect was passed along, those nearest were ripping bits away. For the moment, the bits were mostly clothing.
Tyl stepped into the Consistory Room and slammed the door behind him hard enough to shatter a panel that hadn't been armored. He left his face-shield down, because if none of them could see his expression, he could pretend that he wasn't really here.
"Lieutenant Desoix," said Major Borodin. He wasn't speaking loudly, but no one else in the room was speaking at all. "Gun Three needs to be withdrawn. Will you handle that at once."
The battery commander's face looked like a mirror of what Tyl thought was on his own features.
"Nobody's withdrawing," said President Delcorio. He had his color back, and he stroked his hands together briskly as if to warm them. His eyes shifted like a sparkling fire and lighted on the Guards colonel. The hands stopped.
"Colonel Drescher,"Delcorio said crisply."I want your men on combat footing at once. Don't you have some other sort of uniforms? Like those."
One spade-broad hand gestured toward Tyl in khaki and armor. "Something suitable. This isn't a parade. We're at war. War."
"Well, I—" Drescher began. Everyone in the room was in a state of shock, hammered by events into a state that made them ready to be pressed in any direction by a strong personality.
For a moment, until the next stimulus came along.
"Well,get on with it!"the Presidents napped.While the squad of gay uniforms was just shifting toward the hall door, Delcorio's attention had already flashed across the other faces in the Consistory Room.
And found very few.
"Where's—" Delcorio began. "Where's—" His voice rose, driven by an emotion that was either fury or panic—and perhaps had not yet decided which it would be.
"Sir," said one of the Chastains, stepping forward to take the President by the hand. "Thom and I will—"
"You!" Delcorio screamed. "What are you doing here?"
"Sir," said Thom Chastain with the same hopeful puppy expression as his brother. "We know you'll weather this—"
"You're spying, aren't you?" Delcorio cried, slapping at the offered hands as if they were beasts about to bite him. "Get out, don't you think I know it!"
"Sir—" said the two together in blank amazement.
The President's nephew Pedro stepped between the Chastains and Delcorio. "Go on!" he snarled, looking like a bulldog barking at a pair of gangling storks. "We don't need you here. Get out!"
"But—" Richie Chastain attempted helplessly. Pedro, as broadly built as his uncle, shoved the other men toward the door.
They fled in a swirl of robes and words whimpered to one another or to fate.
"You there,"the President continued briskly."Dowell.You'll have the additional troops in place by noon tomorrow. Do you understand? I don't care if they have to loot shops for their meals, they'll be here."
Delcorio spoke with an alert dynamism. It was hard to imagine that the same man had been on the edge of violent madness a moment before, and in a funk brief minutes still earlier.
Dowell saluted with a puzzled expression. He mumbled something to his aides. The three of them marched out the hall door without looking backward.
If they caught the President's eye again, he might hold them.
"And you, Major Borodin, you aren't going to strip our city of its protection against the Christ-deniers," Delcorio said as he focused back on the battery commander.
The President should have forgotten the business of moving the gun—so much had gone on in the moments since. He hadn't forgotten, though. There was a mind inside that skull, not just a furnace of emotions.
If John Delcorio were as stupid as he was erratic, Tyl might have been able to figure out what in the Lord's name he ought best to be doing.
" Do you understand?" Delcorio insisted, pointing at the battery commander with two blunt fingers in a gesture as threatening as anything short of a gun muzzle could be.
"Yes sir," replied Major Borodin, his voice as stiff as the brace in which he held his body. "But I must tell you that I'm obeying under protest, and when I contact my superiors—"
"You needn't tell me anything, mercenary," the President interrupted without even anger to leaven the contempt in his words. "You need only do your job and collect your pay—which I assure you, your superiors show no hesitation in doing either."
"John," said Eunice Delcorio with a shrug that dismissed everything that was going on around her at the moment. "I'm going to call my brother again. They said they couldn't raise him when I tried earlier."
"Yes, I'll talk to him myself," the President agreed, falling in step beside the short woman as he headed toward the door to their private apartments. "He'd have nothing but a ten-hectare share-crop if it weren't for me. If he thinks he can duck his responsibilities now . . . ."
"Anne," Desoix said in a low voice as Eunice's aide hesitated. She looked from her mistress to the UDB officer—and stayed.
Pedro Delcorio raised an eyebrow, then nodded to the others as he followed his uncle out of the Consistory Room. There were only four of them left: the three mercenaries and Desoix's lady friend.
The four of them, and the smell of fear.
Chapter Sixteen
"Let's get out of here," Koopman said.
Charles Desoix's heart leaped in agreement—then bobbed back to normalcy when he realized that the Slammers officer meant only to get out of the Consistory Room, onto the porch where the air held fewer memories of the immediate past.
Sure,Koopman was the stolid sort who probably didn't realize how badly things were going . . . and Charles Desoix wasn't going to support a mutiny, wasn't going to desert his employers because of trouble that hadn't—if you wanted to be objective about it—directly threatened the United Defense Batteries at all.
It was hard to be objective when you were surrounded by a mob of perhaps fifty thousand people, screaming for blood and quite literally tearing a man to pieces.
They were welcome to Berne—he was just as crooked as the bull-horn had claimed. But . . . .
"What did you say, Charles?"Anne asked—which meant that Desoix had been speaking things that he shouldn't even have been thinking.
He hugged her reflexively. She jumped, also by reflex because she didn't try to draw further away when she thought about the situation. Major Borodin didn't appear to notice her to care.
The courtyard was deserted, but the mob had left behind an amazing quantity of litter—bottles, boxes, and indefinable scraps; even a cloak, scarlet and apparently whole in the light of the wall sconces. It was as if Desoix were watching
a beach just after the tide had ebbed.
Across the river, fires burned from at least a score of locations. Voices echoed, harsh as the occasional grunt of shots.
Like the tide, the mob would return.
"We've got to get out of here," Desoix mused aloud.
"She'll leave," Anne said with as much prayer in her voice as certainty. "If she stays, they'll do terrible things to . . . She knows that, she won't let it happen."
"Colonel wants me to hold if there's any chance to keep Delcorio in power," Koopman said to the night. There was a snicker of sound as he raised his face shield, but he did not look at his companions as he spoke. "What's your bet on that, Charles?"
"Something between zip and zero,"Desoix said.He was careful not to let his eyes fall on Anne or the major when he spoke; but it was no time to tell polite lies.
"'Bout what I figured too,"the Slammers officer said mildly. He was leaning on his forearms while his fingers played with a dimple in the rail. After a moment, Desoix realized that the dimple had been hammered there by a bullet.
"I don't see any way we can abandon our positions in defiance of a direct order," Major Borodin said.
The battery commander set his fingers in his thinning hair and squeezed firmly, as though that would change the blank rotation of his thoughts. He took his hands away and added hurriedly to the Slammers officer, "Of course, that has nothing to do with you, Captain. My problem is that I have to defend the city, so I'm in default of the contract if I move my guns. Well, Gun Three. But that's the only one that seems to be in danger."
"Charles, you'll protect her if we leave, won't you?" asked Anne in sudden fierceness. She pulled on Desoix's shoulder until he turned to face her worries directly. "You won't let them have her to, to escape yourself, will you?"
He cupped her chin with his left hand. "Anne," he said. "If Eunice and the President just say the word, we'll have them safely out of here within the hour. Won't we, Tyl?" he added as he turned to the Slammers officer.
"Colonel says, maybe just a week or two," Koopman said unexpectedly. When his index finger burnished the bullet scar, the muzzle of his own slung weapon chinked lightly against the rail. "Suppose Delcorio could hold out a week?"