by Chris Bunch
Sten sent the gravsled, at full power, back down the street. It ricocheted away, caroming off buildings and providing an excellent diversion. Then everyone doubled back toward Koldyeze. Sten had ordered Sorensen's run aborted; he figured that the demolished track would not be recovered by specialists. Wichman's people were more adept at brute force—and Sorensen would be more than a little outgunned.
Sten went through the half-opened main gate, hoping that Koldyeze's water supply was still turned on. He smelled. Smelled like ... a dead horse.
A very dead horse.
* * * *
Sten was correct. The ruined track was bulldozed out of the street and through a tenement wall early in the morning by a second heavy tank. Sorensen's ritual butcher knife would not have done much good.
Wichman attacked, predictably at dawn.
And Virunga unmasked his artillery.
* * * *
It was not much.
The crypt had held four cannon. Real cannon, not lasers or masers: put shell and propellant in one end and yank a handle, and it works—maybe. Virunga thought the cannon were probably intended for some kind of ceremonial use, although that did not explain why they had sights, and ordered the barrels wire-wrapped for reinforcement. Virunga had marveled at the sights. They were primitive. It had been years since he had seen a laser ranging cannon, and then only in a museum.
Working parties had managed to hoist the cannon onto the battlements, and firing apertures had been bashed through the walls and then concealed. Virunga was pretty sure that the recoil mechanism of the cannon was rusted solid. Regardless, he did not plan on taking chances and had ringbolts spot-welded to the cannon and bolted to the cathedral walls themselves. Cables linked the guns to the wall bolts and, hopefully, would prevent the cannon from recoiling straight off the battlements when they were fired.
Virunga had found and trained cannoneers, then dubbed his four popguns “Battery A."
"Battery B” was eight multiple-tube rocket launchers, firing solid heads, powered by propellant picked from the projectile rounds stores in the crypts and then hard-packed into containers. At least there was more than enough propellant. Aiming consisted of squinting through a V-sight atop the tubes until the target was more or less aligned and then getting the hell out of the way while someone hit an electrical firing connection. The launchers were crewed and then sited atop other battlements.
"Battery C” was even worse.
Observing that the castle's plumbing seemed built for all eternity, Virunga had ordered sections of pipe to be cut into meter-and-a-half sections and wire-reinforced. He was making mortars. Very, very big mortars.
Micrometers, small inspection telescopes, bubble levels, gears, and knobs had been stolen from the various workshops that the POWs slave-labored for and had been cobbled together to make sights for the mortars.
Virunga discovered that the propellant used in the rifle rounds could be liquefied and cast without harm. He decided to use that powder, cast into round increments, to fire his mortar rounds. The rounds themselves were smaller sections of pipe built up again with wire to approximate the interior dimensions of the mortar tubes. They were handgrooved so the pipe would shrapnel on impact, but not deeply enough that the round would explode on firing.
Maybe.
The rounds were packed with more propellant. Nitric acid, alk, and mercury were gingerly mixed by self-taught POW chemists to make the horribly dangerous mercury fulminate that would be used to detonate the rounds on impact.
Maybe.
Virunga readied firing positions in the courtyard for the mortars, with high-stacked stone around them in case the bad guys had mortars of their own.
The tiny com units that had been brought to Heath by Sten and smuggled into Koldyeze by Chetwynd were the only modern items Virunga had. They linked the observers to the batteries. In spite of the risk—the observers were located anywhere the streets around Koldyeze could be seen from—there was no shortage of volunteers.
Thirty seconds after the first tank popped into open, Virunga opened fire.
"Battery A. Armor in the open. Acquire targets visually. Fire on individual control."
The gun commander of the first cannon had one of the recon tracks in his sights. He held his breath and yanked the firing lever. The cannon cracked and slammed back against the cable restraints. The commander stared down at the streets below. The round slammed into a wall about five meters from the recon track.
"Come on down a little bit and right a skosh,” the commander advised the gunner. He was not, needless to say, a trained artillerybeing.
The third round ventilated the thinly armored recon track, and its crew bailed out.
Virunga smiled in pleasure.
His other three guns were also firing and hitting.
Down below, the three heavy tracks ground up the street toward the cathedral. One of them took a direct hit from a cannon, but the solid round ricocheted off the track's armor plating.
Sten peered through a battlement's machicolations and swore. He had hoped that somehow Virunga's cannon would have enough power to punch holes in the heavy tracks. The only thing that could stop them, he realized, was his deceased horses.
The tank clattered slowly up the cobblestones toward Koldyeze, infantry moving forward in its shelter. Then the track hit the grease. Its tracks spun uselessly on the cobblestones. The huge tank slid sideways and back down the hill, slamming into the first hulk.
And then the defenders of Koldyeze got lucky.
Not, of course, that luck was ever mentioned by either Sergeant Major Isby, observing for Battery C, or by the mortar crew. Isby, even though he was a supply specialist, had been given infantry training, which at one time had included artillery/mortar observation. He remembered his lessons quite well.
"Charlie Two,” he broadcast. “This is Observer Six. Fire Mission. Azimuth 5250 down 30. Distance 3200. Tanks and infantry in the open. Will adjust."
The sights of the mortar were adjusted, and two still-brawny women, VIP hostages, fitted firing charges onto the mortar bomb and hoisted it up over the mortar's mouth, let go, and ducked away.
The mortar thudded. Sten saw the wobbling pipe climb high into the sky, then turn and drop downward. The first round hit the stalled track directly on top of its engine exhaust plates and exploded. The tank itself blew up, sending its turrets cartwheeling away into the infantry around it.
Once again, the way was blocked.
Isby and the mortar crew, of course, said that the first-round hit proved how good they were. They bragged accordingly. They did not think it worthy of note to mention that they hit nothing else for the rest of that day.
And then the infantry began its assault.
They came in cautiously, keeping to the cover of the tenements and rubble. But they still had to come into the open eventually.
Sten methodically sniped down an entire squad of grunts who were hiding behind what they thought was solid stone. Other marksbeings, now familiar with the projectile sport weapons they were equipped with, decimated the infantry.
But the siege of Koldyeze was still being lost by the ex-prisoners.
Slowly the ring of Wichman's troops closed on Koldyeze. There was just too many of them.
The single chaingun that survived atop the second watch-tower was smashed by three accurate rounds from another heavy tank firing over the corpse of its brother. Tahn soldiers countersniped from positions on the roofs of tenements.
Sten saw a POW lying on the battlement not far from him slump, the top of her head suddenly missing.
"Dinnae y’ hope, young Sten,” Alex observed, “thae our wee Guardsmen aren't takin't long mess breaks?"
Sten hoped that very desperately.
* * * *
Chief Warrant Officer Rinaldi Hernandes had wondered what would happen if he survived imprisonment long enough to get a weapon in his hands. Could he kill—even beings who had been responsible for his grandchild's death?
> He could.
Somewhere Hernandes had found an enormous rifle—nearly as long as he was—that single-fired a round the size of the cheroots he missed desperately. It was an ancient rifle fitted with a museum-quality optical sight.
But it was a very effective antique.
Hernandes held his sights on the target—a Tahn in the gunner's seat of a gravsled. He breathed in deeply. Then he let out half the breath and held. His finger pulled the forward trigger, then moved back to the set trigger. It touched the metal, and the rifle slammed him.
Kilgour had taken one look at Hernandes's weapon and dubbed it a “dinosaur gun."
"Because it'd kill a dinosaur,” Sten straight-manned.
"Na, clot. Because it takit a dinosaur to fire the beast."
It damn near did. The rifle kicked—hard. Hernandes was pretty sure that his shoulder was if not broken at least cracked a lot.
But it was far worse on the arrival end.
The gunner in the gravsled had time enough to notice that he lacked a pelvis before he died.
Hernandes carefully scratched a mark on the stone next to him. That made twenty-seven.
He looked for another target.
Downslope, a Tahn sergeant spotted the movement, sighted, and touched a trigger.
The three-round burst blew Hernandes's abdomen apart.
The decimation went on.
* * * *
Virunga reflexively ducked when the explosion went off, the blast echoing seemingly endlessly around the courtyard walls.
And then the screams started.
The first of the mortars had exploded. Thirty-one people were dead or maimed around the shattered metal. Medics scurried to help.
Virunga kept his expression untroubled. At least the blast walls had provided an unexpected side benefit and kept the damage moderate. But Virunga knew that the three remaining mortars would be shot on a duck-and-fire principle. Koldyeze, he estimated, could hold no more than another day, at best. And that night Wichman's forces mined the wall.
* * * *
Wichman gave precise orders. Even though he was inexperienced at combat, he was learning rapidly.
I could have served better, he realized with resentment. I should have resigned my post for a combat command when this war began. Perhaps...
But he was not egotistic enough to think he could have changed things.
But this would be enough: a final revenge against the traitors and a final strike against the Imperials. Koldyeze was to be completely illuminated, both by flares and from six mobile searchlights that one of his aides had scrounged. Chainguns on the recon tracks were to sweep the walls. Any Imperial prisoner who stuck his head up would be slaughtered.
His plan worked.
When he was satisfied that all fire from the cathedral had been suppressed, he sent in the troops with demopacks. Nearly ten tons of high explosive was arranged at the foot of the wall. His next assault, which would occur an hour before dawn, was certain to succeed.
Unfortunately, Lord Wichman did not survive to see whether his tactics were successful.
* * * *
Sten, outranking Sorensen, pulled the plug on the young man's commando operations. Virunga was right—they could not stand to lose him. Especially not now, with Virunga's cannon firing by calculation, calculation made possible only by Sorensen's mind functioning as a battle computer.
But those orders did not hold true for Sten.
After dusk, he and Alex went out looking for trouble. They went through the Tahn perimeter easily, all the old Mantis moves returning. Beyond the front lines, they split up and began their head-hunting.
Sten carried a miniwillygun with a single magazine of ammunition. If he was blown, he knew better than to imagine he would be able to shoot his way out. He carried four Mantis demolition packs with him, along with two grenades and a Gurkkha kukri he had brought back to Heath.
The demopacks were the first to go. With a variable time set on the fuses, they were deposited, one on the deck of a recon track, one in the middle of four parked gravsleds, the third on one of the searchlight's generators, and the final one under what Sten thought was a com trailer.
Large cables led from that trailer into a well-guarded building. Sten found that interesting. He slipped into that building's neighbor and found an appropriate-length section of metal stair banister. On the roof, he positioned the banister across to the guarded building and hand-over-handed his way onto its roof, the rusty metal bending slightly as he went. He crept down the stairs, keeping low and close to the wall.
Lousy blackout, he thought, seeing a gleam of light from the curtained doorway of a room on the second floor. Then he saw the bulk next to it.
H'nrich might have been an excellent bodyguard against normal intruders.
Sten was not normal.
H'nrich'e eye registered a flash in the dimness as the kukri came up from below. That was all.
Sten yanked the kukri out of H'nrich's neck—he had pulled the slash so he would not have to worry about a head bouncing around the hallway—caught the sagging, blood-spouting body, and eased it down. He sheathed the kukri, wiped stickiness from his face, and took three deep breaths.
The question was not what was going to happen next but what would happen next next. Specifically, would Sten have time to get out with his vital signs vital before the reaction.
Possibly.
He took the two grenades from his webbing and rolled the timer until the X was under his fingers. Ten seconds.
Come on, son. Don't get cowardly now.
His hand blurred the pistol from its holster, and Sten went through the blackout curtain.
There were seven beings in the room. One of them, Sten's mind registered, was wearing a dress uniform, and then he ID'd Lord Wichman as his finger pulled the trigger to its stop and the AM2 rounds spit around the room.
Four rounds tore Wichman's body apart. Sten's free hand lobbed the grenades at the com console, and then he was gone.
There were screams and shouts and somebody outside shooting at something.
Sten was back up the steps, three at a time, almost falling through a broken lift, then on the roof and across. Running. He hit the far edge, eyes telling him he could make the jump, mind saying you ain't no Kilgour, and then he was in the air.
He landed at least a meter on the other side of that third building's parapet. Getting cowardly, he thought once more, and then melted into the night toward Koldyeze.
* * * *
Sten came back to an impending catastrophe.
He had seen the searchlights blinding on the walls of Koldyeze, realized that he could not return the way he had come out, and went once more through the tunnel.
Virunga brought him quickly up to speed; they had heard, and seen, the demolition charges being planted. When the Tahn had pulled back, four brave men and women had tried to get to the charges.
Their bodies lay only a few meters beyond the gate.
Not, Sten thought privately, that they could have accomplished much. He assumed that the demo charges were not only separately det-timed but booby-trapped as well. The romantic days of putting the fuse seconds before the bang banged were as ancient as Hernandes's rifle.
"Ordered,” Virunga said, “all troops back from wall. If Koldyeze doesn't fall on our heads ... will retake fighting positions after blast.
"Better suggestion?” he asked Sten hopefully.
Sten had none. Neither did Kilgour when he returned an hour later.
They looked for a big rock to hide behind.
* * * *
Wichman might have been dead, but his troops soldiered on.
The blast went off—on schedule.
The shock wave blew down five entire rows of already-shattered tenements. The ground earthquake-shook, and in their still-separate battle two kilometers away, Imperial guardsmen ducked, sure that somebody had set off a nuke. The blast cloud rose more than three kilometers into the clouds despite the continui
ng drizzle.
The entire front wall of the cruciform-shaped cathedral crumbled, and slid down the hill.
But only six POWs died. Koldyeze had indeed been built to withstand almost anything.
The Tahn mounted what was to be the final attack—and ran instantly into trouble.
The ruins of that front wall made an excellent tank trap—far superior even to Sten's grease. Even the heavies could not grind through the building-high boulders.
Only the gravsleds could provide support for the infantry.
* * * *
Somewhat surprised that they were still alive, the Imperial defenders boiled out of their holes and found fighting positions.
Gravsled pilots were hit, and the gravsleds orbited out of the battle. The first wave of the Tahn infantry was obliterated.
But the second wave found forward positions and laid down a base of fire.
The third wave attacked, and the gravsleds were able to move in.
The prisoners pulled back. Back and down.
Into the crypts.
* * * *
"Clottin’ convenient place to die,” Kilgour observed, sourly looking around the cellar. “Thae'll be na need to dig a wee grave."
Virunga herded the last of the hostages down more stone steps deeper into the subbasements and limped back toward Sten.
Sten had hastily reorganized the surviving fighters into five-man squads and given each one a position to hold: a stairwell, a landing, a portion of the huge basement he himself was in. Anything bullet-resistant had been dragged up as a barricade.
He had not needed to tell his squads they were to hold till the last—none of the Imperial prisoners were stupid enough to believe the Tahn were interested in recapturing them.
Kilgour, three-gee muscles straining, had lifted a stone altar into position for his and Sten's personal last stand. He spread out his remaining grenades and ammunition in front of him.
Sten followed suit.
"Y’ know, wee Sten,” Kilgour observed. “If thae clottin’ Tahn hae brain one, thae'll just filter gas down the steps an’ be done wi’ us. Thae's nae a filtermask't’ be had."
At least, Sten thought, that would be relatively painless.