by David Drake
Desoix kept reminding himself that it would matter to him someday, when he wasn't so tired.
"They just shot when somebody ran up the stairs and gave them a target," he continued in the croak that was all the voice remaining to him until Blaney arrived with the water. "It wasn't like—"
He wanted to raise his arm to indicate the plaza's carpet of the dead, but waggling an index finger was as much as he had need or energy to accomplish. "It wasn't what we had, all targets, and it . . . ."
Desoix tried to remember how he would have felt if he had come upon this scene an hour earlier. He couldn't, so he let his voice trail off.
A lot of them must have gotten out when somebody opened the gates at either end of the mall. Desoix had tried to avoid raking the mall and the main stairs. The mercenaries had to end the insurrection and clear the plaza for their own safety, but the civilians swept out by fear were as harmless as their fellows who filled the sight picture as the calliope coughed and traversed.
There'd been just the one long burst which cleared the mall of riflemen.
Cleared it of life.
"Here you go, sir," said Blaney, skipping up the last few steps with a four-liter canteen and hopping onto the deck of the calliope.
"Took yer bloody time," Lachere repeated as he snatched the canteen another of the newcomers offered him. He began slurping the water down so greedily that he choked and sprayed a mouthful out his nostrils.
Senter was drinking also.He hunched down behind the breeches of the guns he had been feeding, so that he could not see any of what surrounded the calliope. Even so, the clerk's eyelids were pressed tightly together except for brief flashes that showed his dilated pupils.
"Ah, where's Major Borodin, sir?" Blaney asked.
Desoix closed his eyes again, luxuriating in the feel of warm water swirling in his mouth.
Gun Three had full supplies for its double crew before the shooting started. Desoix hadn't thought to load himself and his two clerks with water before they set out.
He hadn't been planning; just reacting, stimulus by stimulus, to a situation over which he had abdicated conscious control.
"The major's back at the Palace,"Desoix said. "President Delcorio told me he wanted a trustworthy officer with him, so I commanded the field operations myself."
He didn't care about himself anymore. He stuck to the story he had arranged with Delcorio because it was as easy to tell as the truth . . . and because Desoix still felt a rush of loyalty to his battery commander.
They'd succeeded, and Major Borodin could have his portion of the triumph if he wanted it.
Charles Desoix wished it had been him, not Borodin, who had spent the last two hours locked in a storeroom in the Palace. But his memory would not permit him to think that, even as a fantasy.
"Blaney," he said aloud. "I'm putting you in command of this gun until we get straightened around. I'm going down to check with Captain Koopman." He nodded toward the cluster of gray and khaki soldiers sprawled near the altar.
"Ah, sir?" Blaney said in a nervous tone. Desoix paused after swinging his leg over the gunner's saddle. He shrugged, as much response as he felt like making at the moment.
"Sir,we started taking sniper fire,had two guys hurt,"Blaney went on."We—I laid the gun on the hospital, put a burst into it to, you know, get their attention. Ah, the sniping stopped."
"Via, you really did, didn't you?"said the officer, amazed that he hadn't noticed the damage before.
Gun Three had a flat angle on the south face of the glittering building.Almost a third of the vitril panels on that side were gone in a raking slash from the ground floor to the twentieth. The bolts wouldn't have penetrated the hospital, though the Lord knew what bits of the shattered windows had done when they flew around inside.
Charles Desoix began to laugh. He choked and had to grip the calliope's chassis in order to keep from falling over. He hadn't been sure that he would ever laugh again.
"Sergeant," he said, shutting his eyes because Blaney's stricken face would set him off again if he watched it. "You're afraid you're in trouble because of that?"
He risked a look at Blaney. The sergeant was nodding blankly.
Desoix gripped his subordinate's hand."Don't worry,"he said."Don't.I'll just tell them to put it on my account."
He took the canteen with him as he walked down the stairs toward Tyl Koopman. Halfway down, he stumbled when he slipped on a dismembered leg.
That set him laughing again.
Chapter Thirty-Five
"Got twelve could use help," said the sergeant major as Tyl shuddered under the jets of topical anesthetic he was spraying onto his own chest.
Scratchard frowned and added, "Maybe you too, hey?"
"Via, I'm fine," Tyl said, trying to smooth the grimace that wanted to twist his face awry. "No dead?"
He looked around sharply and immediately wished he hadn't tried to move quite that fast.
Tyl's ceramic breastplate had stopped the bullet and spread its impact across the whole inner surface of the armor. That was survivable; but now, with the armor and his tunic stripped off, Tyl's chest was a symphony of bruising. His ribs and the seams of his tunic pockets were emphasized in purple, and the flesh between those highlights was a dull yellow-gray of its own.
Scratchard shrugged."Krasinski took one in the face,"he said."Had 'er shield down too, but when your number's up . . . ."
Tyl sprayed anesthetic. The curse that ripped out of his mouth could have been directed at the way the mist settled across him and made the bruised flesh pucker as it chilled.
"Timmons stood on a grenade," Scratchard continued, squatting beside his captain. "Prob'ly his own. Told 'em not to screw with grenades after we committed, but they never listen, not when it gets . . ."
Scratchard's fingers were working with the gun he now carried, a slug-firing machine pistol. The magazine lay on the ground beside him. The trigger group came out, then the barrel tilted from the receiver at the touch of the sergeant major's experienced fingers.
Jack wasn't watching his hands. His eyes were open and empty, focused on the main stairs because there were no fallen troopers there. They'd been his men too.
"One a' the recruits," Scratchard continued quietly, "he didn't want to go up the ladder."
Tyl looked at the noncom.
Scratchard shrugged again."Kekkonan shot him.Wasn't a lotta time to discuss things."
"Kekkonan due another stripe?" Tyl asked.
"After this?" Scratchard replied, his voice bright with unexpected emotion. "We're all due bloody something, sir!"
His face blanked. His fingers began to reassemble the gun he'd picked up when he'd fired all the ammunition for both the powerguns he carried.
Tyl looked at their prisoners, the half-dozen men who'd survived when Jack sprayed the group on the altar. Now they clustered near the low building, under the guns of a pair of troopers who'd been told to guard them.
The soldiers were too tired to pay much attention. The prisoners were too frightened to need guarding at all.
Thom Chastain still wore a gold-trimmed scarlet robe. A soldier had ripped away the chain and pendant Tyl remembered vaguely from earlier in the morning. Thom smiled like a porcelain doll, a hideous contrast with the tears which continued to shiver down his cheeks.
The tears were particularly noticeable because one of the gang bosses beside Thom on the altar had been shot in the neck. He'd been very active in his dying, painting everyone nearby with streaks of bright, oxygen-rich blood. The boy's tears washed tracks in the blood.
Bishop Trimer and three lesser priests stood a meter from the Chastains—and as far apart as turned backs and icy expressions could make them.
Father Laughlin was trying to hunch himself down to the height of other men. His white robes dragged the ground when he forgot to draw them up with his hands; their hem was bloody.
The prisoners weren't willing to sit down the way the Slammers did.But nobody was used to a sc
ene like this.
"I never saw so many bodies," said Charles Desoix.
"Yeah, me too," Tyl agreed.
He hadn't seen the UDB officer walk up beside him. His eyes itched. He supposed there was something wrong with his peripheral vision from the ozone or the actinics—despite his face shield.
"Water?" Desoix offered.
"Thanks,"Tyl said, accepting the offer though water still sloshed in the canteen on his own belt. He drank and paused, then sipped again.
Where the calliope had raked the mob, corpses lay in rows like flotsam thrown onto the strand by a storm. Otherwise, the half of the plaza nearer the seafront was strewn rather than carpeted with bodies.You could walk that far and,if you were careful, step only on concrete.
Bloody concrete.
Where the plaza narrowed toward the main stairs, there was no longer room even for the corpses. They were piled one upon another . . . five in a stack . . . a ramp ten meters deep, rising at the same angle as the stairs and composed of human flesh compressed by the weight of more humans—each trying to escape by clambering over his fellows, each dying in turn as the guns continued to fire.
The stench of scattered viscera was a sour miasma as the sun began to warm the plaza.
"How many, d'ye guess?" Tyl asked as he handed back the canteen.
He was sure his voice was normal, but he felt his body begin to shiver uncontrollably. It was the drugs, it had to be the anesthetic.
"Twenty thousand, thirty thousand," Desoix said. He cleared his throat, but his voice broke anyway as he tried to say, "They did, they . . ."
Desoix bent his head. When he lifted it again, he said in a voice as clear as the glitter of tears in his eyes, "I think as many were crushed trying to get away as we killed ourselves. But we killed enough."
Something moved at the head of the main stairs. Tyl aimed the submachine-gun he'd picked up when he stood. Pain filled his torso like the fracture lines in breaking glass, but he didn't shudder anymore. The sight picture was razor sharp.
An aircar with the gold and crystal markings of the Palace slid through the mall and cruised down the main stairs. The vehicle was being driven low and slow, just above the surface, because surprising the troops here meant sudden death.
Even laymen could see that.
Tyl lowered his weapon, wondering what would have happened if he'd taken up the last trigger pressure and spilled John and Eunice Delcorio onto the bodies of so many of their opponents.
The car's driver and the man beside him were palace servants, both in their sixties. They looked out of place, even without the pistols in issue holsters belted over their blue livery.
Major Borodin and Colonel Drescher rode in the middle pair of seats, ahead of the presidential couple.
The battery commander was the first to get out when the car grounded beside the mercenary officers. The electronic piping of Borodin's uniform glittered brighter than sunlight on the metal around him. He blinked at his surroundings, at the prisoners. Then he nodded to Desoix and said, "Lieutenant, you've, ah—carried out your orders in a satisfactory fashion."
Desoix saluted. "Thank you, sir," he said in a voice as dead as the stench of thirty thousand bodies.
Colonel Drescher followed Borodin, moving like a marionette with a broken wire. The flap of his holster was closed, but there was no gun inside. One of the Guard commander's polished boots was missing.He held the sole of the bare foot slightly above the concrete, where it would have been if he were fully dressed.
President Delcorio stepped from the vehicle and handed out his wife as if they were at a public function. Both of them were wearing cloth of gold, dazzling even though the cat's fans had flung up bits of the carnage as it carried them through the plaza.
"Gentlemen," Delcorio said, nodding to Tyl and Desoix. His throat hadn't been wracked by the residues of battle, so his voice sounded subtly wrong in its smooth normalcy.
Pedro Delcorio was walking to join his uncle from the control room beneath the altar. He carried a pistol in his right hand. The bore of the powergun was bright and not scarred by use.
The President and his wife approached the prisoners. Major Borodin fluffed the thighs of his uniform; Drescher stood on one foot, his eyes looking out over the channel.
President Delcorio stared at the Bishop. The other priests hunched away, as if Delcorio's gaze were wind-blown sleet.
Trimer faced him squarely. The Bishop was a short man and slightly built even in the bulk of his episcopal garments, but he was very much alive. Looking at him, Tyl remembered the faint glow that firelight had washed across the eyes of Trimer's face carven on the House of Grace.
"Bishop,"said John Delcorio."I'm so glad my men were able to rescue you from this—"his foot delicately gestured toward the nearest body, a woman undressed by the grenade blast that killed her "—rabble."
Father Laughlin straightened so abruptly that he almost fell when he kicked the pile of communications and data transfer equipment which his two fellows had piled on the ground. No one had bothered to strip the priests of their hardware, but they had done so themselves as quickly as they were able.
Perhaps the priests felt they could distance themselves from what had gone before . . . or what they expected to come later.
"Pres . . ." said Bishop Trimer cautiously. His voice was oil smooth—until it cracked. "President?"
"Yes,very glad,"Delcorio continued."I think it must be that the Christ-denying elements were behind the riot. I'm sure they took you prisoner when they heard you had offered all the assets of the Church to support our crusade."
Laughlin threw his hands to his face, covering his mouth and a look of horror.
"Yes, all Church personalty," said Trimer. "Except what is needed for the immediate sustenance of the Lord's servants."
"All assets, real and personal, is what I'd heard," said the President. His voice was flat. The index finger of his right hand was rising as, if to make a gesture, a cutting motion.
"Yes, personal property and all the estates of the Church outside of Bamberg City itself," said Bishop Trimer. He thrust out his chin, looking even more like the bas relief on the shot-scarred hospital.
Delcorio paused, then nodded. "Yes," he said. "That's what I understood. We'll go back to—"
Eunice Delcorio looked at Tyl."You,"she said in a clear voice,ignoring her husband and seemingly ignoring the fact that he had spoken. "Shoot these two."
She pointed toward the Chastains.
Tyl raised his submachine-gun's muzzle skyward and stepped toward the President's wife.
"Sir!" shouted Ripper Jack Scratchard,close enough that his big hand gripped Tyl's shoulder. "Don't!"
Tyl pulled free. He took Eunice's right hand in his left and pressed her palm against the grip of the submachine-gun . He forced her fingers closed. "Here," he said. "You do it."
He hadn't thought he was shouting, but he must have been from the way all of them stared at him, their faces growing pale.
He spun Eunice around to face the ramp of bodies. She was a solid woman and triedto resist,but that was nothing to him now. "It's easy," he said. "See how bloody easy it is?
"Do you see?"
A shot cracked. He had been shouting. The muzzle blast didn't seem loud at all.
Tyl turned. Scratchard fired his captured weapon again. Richie Chastain screamed and stumbled across his twin; Thom was already down with a hole behind his right ear and a line of blood from the corner of his mouth.
Scratchard fired twice more as the boy thrashed on his belly. The second bullet punched through the chest cavity and ricocheted from the ground with a hum of fury.
Tyl threw his gun down. He turned and tried to walk away, but he couldn't see anything. He would have fallen except that Scratchard took one of his arms and Desoix the other, holding him and standing between him and the Delcorios.
"Bishop Trimer," he heard the President saying. "Will you adjourn with us, please,to the Palace."There was no question in the to
ne. "We have some details to work out, and I think we'll be more comfortable there, though my servant situation is a—"
Tyl turned.
"Wait," he said. Everyone was watching him. There was a red blotch on the back of Eunice's hand where he'd held her, but he was as controlled as the tide, now. "I want doctors for my men."
He lifted his hand toward the House of Grace, glorying in the pain of moving. "You got a whole hospital, there. I want doctors, now, and I want every one of my boys treated like he was Christ himself. Understood?"
"Of course,of course,"said Father Laughlin in the voice Tyl remembered from the Consistory Meeting.
The big priest turned to the man who had been wearing the commo set and snarled, "Well, get on it, Ryan. You heard the man!"
Ryan knelt and began speaking into the handset, glancing sometimes up at the hospital's shattered facade and sometimes back at the Slammers captain. The only color on the priest's face was a splotch of someone else's blood.
Trimer walked to the aircar, arm in arm with President Delcorio.
Borodin and Drescher had already boarded. Neither of them would let their eyes focus on anything around them.When Pedro Delcorio squeezed in between them, the two officers made room without comment.
Father Laughlin would have followed the Bishop, but Eunice Delcorio glanced at his heavy form and gestured dismissingly. Laughlin watched the car lift into a hover; then, sinking his head low, he strode in the direction of the east stairs.
Tyl Koopman stood between his sergeant major and the UDB lieutenant. He was beginning to shiver again.
"What's it mean, d'ye suppose?" he whispered in the direction of the main stairs.
"Mean?"said Charles Desoix dispassionately. "It means that John Delcorio is President—President in more than name—for the first time. It means that he really has the resources to prosecute his Crusade, the war on Two, to a successful conclusion. I doubt that would have been possible without the financial support of the Church."
"But who cares!" Tyl shouted."D'ye mean we've got jobs for the next two years? Who bloody cares? Somebody'd 've hired us, you know that!"