by David Drake
"All right," Desoix said, glancing toward the pressure gauge that he couldn't read in this light anyway. "All right, we'll have the gun drivable in thirty, that's three-oh, minutes. We'll—"
"Negative. Negative."
"Listen," the UDB officer said with his tone sharpening. "We're this far and we're not—"
Kekkonan, the sergeant in charge of the detachment of Slammers, tapped Desoix's elbow for attention and shook his head. "He said negative," Kekkonan said. "Sir."
The sergeant was getting the full conversation through his mastoid implant. Desoix didn't have to experiment to know it would be as much use to argue with a block of mahogany as with the dark, flat face of the noncom.
"Go ahead, Tyl," Desoix said with an inward sigh. "Over."
"You're not going to drive a calliope through the streets tonight, Charles," Koopman said. "Come dawn, maybe you can withdraw the one you got down there, maybe you just spike it and pull your guys out. This is save-what-you-got time, friend. And my boys aren't going to be part a' some fool stunt that sparks the whole thing off."
Kekkonan nodded. Not that he had to.
"Roger, we're on the way," Desoix said. He didn't have much emotion left to give the words, because his thoughts were tied up elsewhere.
Via, she was married. It was her bloody husband's business to take care of her, wasn't it?
Chapter Twenty
"Go," said Desoix without emphasis.
Kekkonan and another of the Stammers flared from the door in opposite directions. Their cloaks—civilian and of neutral colors, green and gray—fluffed widely over their elbows, hiding the submachine-guns in their hands.
"Clear," muttered Kekkonan. Desoix stepped out in the middle of the small unit. He felt as much a burden to his guards as the extra magazines that draped them beneath the loose garments.
It remained to be seen if either he or the ammunition would be of any service as they marched back to the Palace.
"Don't remember that," Lachere said, looking to the west.
"Keep moving," Kekkonan grunted. There was enough tension in his voice to add a threat of violence to the order.
One of the warehouses farther down the corniche—half a kilometer—had been set on fire. The flames reflected pink from the clouds and as a bloody froth from sea foam in the direction of Nevis Island. The boulevard was clogged by rioters watching the fire and jeering as they flung bodies into it.
Desoix remembered the descant, but he clasped Lachere's arm and said, "We weren't headed in that direction anyway, were we?"
"Too bloody right," murmured one of the Slammers, the shudder in his tone showing that he didn't feel any better about this than the UDB men did.
"Sergeant," Desoix said, edging close to Kekkonan and wishing that the two of them shared a command channel. "I think the faster we get off the seafront, the better we'll be."
He nodded toward the space between the warehouse they'd left and the next building—not so much an alley as a hedge against surveyors' errors.
"Great killing ground," Kekkonan snorted.
Flares rose from the plaza and burst in metallic showers above the city. Shots followed, tracers and the cyan flicker of powergun bolts aimed at the drifting sparks. There was more shooting, some of it from building roofs. Rounds curved in flat arcs back into the streets and houses.
A panel in the clear reflection of the House of Grace shattered into a rectangular scar.
"Right you are," said Kekkonan as he stepped into the narrow passage.
They had to move in single file. Desoix saw to it that he was the second man in the squad. Nobody objected.
He'd expected Tyl to give him infantrymen. Instead, all five of these troopers came from vehicle crews,tanks and combat cars.The weapon of choice under this night's conditions was a submachine-gun , not the heavier, 2cm semiautomatic shoulder weapon of Hammer's infantry. Koopman or his burly sergeant major had been thinking when they picked this team.
Desoix's submachine-gun wasn't for show either. Providing air defense for frontline units meant you were right in the middle of it when things went wrong . . . and they'd twice gone wrong very badly to a battery Charles Desoix crewed or captained.
Though it shouldn't come to that. The seven of them were just another group in a night through which armed bands stalked in a truce that would continue so long as there was an adequacy of weaker prey.
The warehouses fronted the bay and the spaceport across the channel, but their loading docks were in the rear. Across the mean street were tenements. When Desoix's unit shrugged its way out of the cramped passage, they found every one of the windows facing them lighted to display a cross as large as the sashes would allow.
"Partytime,"one of the troopers muttered.Some of the residents were watching the events from windows or rooftops, but most of them were down in the street in amorphous clots like those of white cells surrounding bacteria. There were shouts, both shrill and guttural, but Desoix couldn't distinguish any of the words.
Not that he had any trouble understanding what was going on without hearing the words. There were screams coming from the center of one of the groups . . . or perhaps Desoix's mind created the sound it knew would be there if the victim still had the strength to make it.
A dozen or so people were on the loading dock to the unit's right, drinking and either having sex or making as good an attempt at it as their drinking permitted. Somebody threw a bottle that smashed close enough to Kekkonan that the sergeant's cloak flapped as he turned; but there didn't appear to have been real malice involved. Perhaps not even notice.
Party time.
"All right,"Kekkonan said just loudly enough for the soldiers with him to hear. "There's an alley across the way, a little to the left. Stay loose, don't run . . . and don't bunch up, just in case. Go."
Except for Lachere, they were all veterans; but they were human as well. They didn't run, but they moved much faster than the careless saunter everybody knew was really the safest pace.
And they stayed close, close enough that one burst could have gotten them all.
Nothing happened except that a score of voices followed them with varied suggestions, and a woman naked to the waist stumbled into Charles Desoix even though he tried his best to dodge her.
She was so drunk that she didn't notice the contact, much less that she'd managed to grab the muzzle of his submachine-gun for an instant before she caromed away.
The alley stank of all the garbage the rains hadn't washed away; somebody, dead drunk or dead, was sprawled just within the mouth of it.
Desoix had never been as eager to enter a bedroom as he was that alley.
"Ah, sir," one of the Slammers whispered as the foetor and its sense of protection enclosed them. "Those people, they was rag-heads?"
The victims,he meant; and he was asking Desoix because Desoix was an officer who might know about things like that.
The Lord knew he did.
"Maybe," Desoix said.
They had enough room here to walk two abreast, though the lightless footing was doubtful and caused men to bump. "Landlords—building superintendents. The guy you owe money to, the guy who screwed your daughter and then married the trollop down the hall."
"But . . .?" another soldier said.
"Any body you're quick enough to point a dozen of your neighbors at," Desoix explained forcefully. "Before he points them at you. Party time."
The alley was the same throughout its length, but its other end opened onto more expensive facades and, across the broad street, patches of green surrounding the domed mass of the cathedral.
Traffic up the steps to the cathedral's arched south entrance was heavy and raucous. The street was choked by ground vehicles. Some of them trying to move but even these blocked by the many which had been parked in the travel lanes.
"Hey there!"shouted the bearded leader of the group striding from the doorway just to the left of the alley. He wore two pistols in belt holsters; the cross on the shoulder of
his red cape was perfunctory. "Where're you going?"
"Back!" said Kekkonan over his shoulder, twisting to face the sudden threat.
Even before the one syllable order was spoken, the torchlight and echoing voices up the alley behind them warned the unit that they couldn't retreat the way they had come without shooting their way through.
Which would leave them in a street with five hundred or a thousand aroused residents who had pretty well used up their local entertainment.
"Hey!" repeated the leader. The gang that had exited the building behind him were a dozen more of the same, differing only in sex, armament, and whether or not they carried open bottles.
Most of them did.
They'd seen Kekkonan's body armor—and maybe his gun—when he turned toward them.
"Hey,"Desoix said cheerfully as he stepped in front of the sergeant."You know us. We're soldiers."
He'd been stationed in Bamberg City long enough that his Spanish had some of the local inflections that weren't on the sleep-learning cube. He wouldn't pass for a local, but neither did his voice put him instantly in the foreign—victim—category to these thugs.
"From the Palace?" asked the leader. His hand was still on a pistol, but his face had relaxed because Desoix was relaxed.
Desoix wasn't sure his legs were going to hold him up.
He'd been this frightened before, but that was when he was under fire and didn't have anything to do except crouch low and swear he'd resign and go home if only the Lord let him live this once.
"Sure,"he said aloud, marvelling at how well his voice worked."Say, chickie—got anything there for a thirsty man?"
"Up your ass with it!" a red-caped female shrieked in amazement.
All the men in the group bellowed laughter.
One of them offered Desoix a flask of excellent wine, an off-planet vintage as good as anything served in the Palace.
"You're comin' to the cathedral, then?" the leader said as Desoix drank, tasting the liquid but feeling nothing. "Well, come on, then. The meeting's started by now or I'll be buggered."
"Not by me, Easton!" one of his henchmen chortled.
"Come on, boys," Desoix called, waving his unit out of the alley before there was a collision with the mob following. "We're already late for the meeting!"
Thank the Lord, the troopers all had the discipline or common sense to obey without question. Hemmed by the gang they'd joined perforce, surrounded by hundreds of other citizens wearing crosses over a variety of clothing, Desoix's unit tramped meekly up the steps of the cathedral.
Just before they entered the building, Desoix took the risk of muttering into his epaulet mike, "Tyl, we're making a necessary detour, but we're still coming back. If the Lord is with us, we're still coming back."
Chapter Twenty-One
The nave was already full. Voices echoing in debate showed that the gang leader had been correct about the meeting having started. Hospital orderlies with staves guarded the entrance—keeping order rather than positioned to stop an attack.
Bishop Trimer and those working with him knew there would be no attack—until they gave the order.
Easton blustered, but there was no bluffing the white-robed men blocking the doorway. One of the orderlies spoke into a radio with a belt-pack power source, while the man next to him keyed a handheld computer. A hologram of the bearded thug bloomed atop the computer in green light.
"Right, Easton," the guard captain said. "Left stairs to the north gallery. You and your folks make any trouble, we'll deal with it. Throw anything into the nave and you'll all decorate lamp posts. Understood?"
"Hey,I'm important!"the gang boss insisted."I speak for the whole Seventeenth Ward, and I belong down with the bosses on the floor!"
"Right now, you belong on the Red side of the gallery," said the orderly. "Or out on your butts. Take your pick."
"You'll regret this!" Easton cried as he shuffled toward the indicated staircase. "I got friends! I'll make it hot fer you!"
"Who're you?"the guard captain asked Charles Desoix. His face was as grizzled as that of the Slammers sergeant major; his eyes were as flat as death.
If Desoix hadn't seen the platoon of orderlies with assault rifles rouse from the antechamber when the gang boss threatened, he would have been tempted to turn back down the steps instead of answering. He couldn't pick his choice of realities, though.
"We're soldiers," he said, leaving the details fuzzy as he had before. "Ah—this isn't official, we aren't, you see. We just thought we'd, ah . . . be ready ourselves to do our part . . . ."
He hoped that meant something positive to the guard captain, without sounding so positive that they'd wind up in the middle of real trouble.
The fellow with the radio was speaking into it as his eyes locked with Desoix's.
The UDB officer smiled brightly. The guard captain was talking to another of his men while both of them also looked at Desoix.
"All right,"the captain said abruptly."There's plenty of room in the south gallery. We're glad to have more converts to the ranks of active righteousness."
"We shoulda bugged out," muttered one of the troopers as they mounted the helical stairs behind Desoix.
"Keep your trap shut and do what the el-tee says," Sergeant Kekkonan snarled back.
For good or ill, Charles Desoix was in command now.
Given the sophistication of the commo unit the orderly at the door held, Desoix didn't dare try to report anything useful to those awaiting him back in the Palace. He hoped Anne would have had sense enough to flee the city before he got back to the Palace.
Almost as much as another part of him prayed that she would be waiting when he returned; because he was very badly going to need the relaxation she brought him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In daytime the dome would have floated on sunlight streaming through the forty arched windows on which it was supported. The hidden floods directed from light troughs to reflect from the inner surface were harsh and metallic by contrast, even though the metal was gold.
Desoix and his unit muscled their way to the railing of colored marble overlooking the nave. It might have been smarter to hang back against the gallery windows, but they were big men and aggressive enough to have found a career in institutionalized murder.
They were standing close to the east end and the hemicycle containing the altar, where the major figures in the present drama now faced the crowd of their supporters and underlings.
Between the two groups was a line of orderlies kneeling shoulder to shoulder. Even by leaning over the rail, Desoix could not see the faces of those on the altar dais.
But there were surprises in the crowd.
"That's Cerulio," Desoix said, nudging Kekkonan to look at a sumptuously dressed man in the front rank. His wife was with him, and the four men in blue around them were surely liveried servants."He was in the Palace an hour ago.Said he was going to check his townhouse, but that he'd be back before morning."
"Don't know him," grunted Kekkonan. "But that one, three places over—" he didn't point, which reminded Desoix that pointing called attention to both ends of the out stretched arm"—he's in the adjutantgeneral's staff,acolonelI'm pretty sure. Saw him when we were trying to requisition bunks."
Desoix felt a chill all the way up his spine. Though it didn't change anything beyond what they had already determined this night.
The man speaking wore white and a mitre, so that even from above there could be no mistaking Bishop Trimer.
"—wither away,"his voice was saying."On lyin the last resort would God have us loose the righteous indignation that this so-called president has aroused in our hearts, in the heart of every Christian on Bamberia."
One shot, thought Charles Desoix.
He couldn't see Trimer's face, but there was a line of bare neck visible between mitre and chasuble. No armor there, no way to staunch the blood when a cyan bolt blasts a crater the size of a clenched fist.
And no way for the sm
all group of soldiers to avoid being pulled into similarly fist-sized gobbets when the mob took its revenge in the aftermath. "Not our fight," Desoix muttered to himself.
He didn't have to explain that to any of his companions. He was pretty sure that Sergeant Kekkonan would kill him in an eye-blink if he thought the UDB officer was about to sacrifice them all.
"We will wait a day, in God's name," the Bishop said. He was standing with his arms outstretched.
Trimer had a good voice and what was probably a commanding manner to those who didn't see him from above—like Charles Desoix and God, assuming God was more than a step in Bishop Trimer's pursuit of temporal power. He could almost have filled the huge church with his unaided voice, and the strain of listening would have quieted the crowd that was restive with excitement and drink.
As it was, Trimer's words were relayed through hundreds of speakers hidden in the pendentives and among the acanthus leaves of the column capitals. Multiple sources echoed and fought one another, creating a busyness that encouraged whispering and argument among the audience.
Desoix had been part of enough interunit staff meetings to both recognize and explain the strain that was building in the Bishop's voice. Trimer was used to being in charge; and here, in his own cathedral, circumstances had conspired to rob him of the absolute control he normally exercised.
The man seated to Trimer's right got up. Like the Bishop, he was recognizable by his clothing—a red cape and a red beret in which a bird plume of some sort bobbed when he moved his head.
The Bishop turned. The gallery opposite Desoix exploded with cheers and catcalls. Red-garbed spectators in the nave below were jumping, making their capes balloon like bubbles boiling through a thick red sauce, despite the efforts of the hospital orderlies keeping the two factions separate.
All the men on the dais were standing with their hands raised. The noise lessened, then paused in a great hiss that the pillared aisles drank.