The Naxids then contacted someone in the Ministry of Works to order the Daimong to lower the funicular. The Daimong refused on the grounds that it was the military who had ordered him to keep the funicular at the terminus. The Naxids then contacted the Commandery, and a senior captain of the Naxid Fleet contacted the terminus and countermanded the order. The Daimong replied that the order hadn’t come from the Fleet, so the Fleet couldn’t countermand it. The Daimong was asked what service had given the order, and the Daimong said he didn’t know.
Successive calls came from the District Patrol, the Motor Patrol, and the Legion of Diligence. In all cases, the Daimong replied that they couldn’t countermand his order since it hadn’t come from that service.
“What officer gave the order?”the Naxid finally demanded.
“The one right here,” the Daimong finally said.
“Let me speak to him!”
The Daimong stepped aside to let Casimir step to the comm unit, wearing his Fleet-issue armor and carrying his rifle. The Naxid stared speechlessly while his scales flashed red, unreadable patterns.
“What doyou want?” Casimir asked.
The Naxid overcame his surprise enough to manage a command. “You must lower the train at once.”
Casimir looked straight into the camera pickup. “Piss on you,” he said. “I work for the White Ghost.”
Sula laughed when she heard this from Casimir. He and the cooperative Daimong operator had kept the Naxids stuck at the lower terminus for over half an hour, during which they couldn’t interfere in the battle of the High City.
Now, however, the Naxids came up the railway, a whole swarm marching up the steep track and the maintenance paths on either side. Most of Casimir’s teams, in good positions in palaces overlooking the Lower Town, opened fire and sent them tumbling down the slope again. Casimir reported that he was having a hard time getting some of the teams to stop shooting once they’d started and that he was worried about poor fire discipline eating up his ammunition supply.
The Naxids took a few minutes to reorganize, and then Casimir reported that he could hear them all shouting slogans in unison: Death to anarchists! Long live our leaders! On to the High City!
On they came, better organized this time, with Fleet security forces in the lead in viridian armor, scuttling up the steep slope as fast as their four legs could carry them. Casimir’s fighters met them with a blast of fire that cut them down by rows but the Naxids charged on, trampling the wounded and dying. Then the two antimatter cannons began to fire, and the head of the long column faltered and turned back. Those at the rear still drove them forward, however, and the collision sent Naxids flying off the track and tumbling down sheer granite slabs to lie broken at the bottom of the acropolis. The survivors pulled back into cover.
“They’re bound to get smarter about this,” Casimir told her.
Sula was concerned that, failing the attack up the funicular, the enemy would try to scale the High City at some other point along its lengthy perimeter. Naxids weren’t exactly built for mountaineering, but it could be done, and at the moment there was no one to stop them. She sent action teams as lookouts to various points on the city’s cliffside to make certain that no Naxids were turning mountain goat.
Reports came in to her that the Glory of Hygiene Hospital had been taken. It was guarded, but hospital security were private and non-Naxid and stood aside. Some of them had joined the loyalists, which would have been more encouraging had they been armed with anything more effective than sidearms and stun batons.
A growing crackle of fire, heard through the open windows of the dining room, told Sula that the coordinated offensive on the government complex had gone forward on schedule. The firing rose to a tremendous din, died away to a continual crackle, then diminished still further, to what sounded like desultory sniping. Sula was in a near frenzy to contact her units to find out what had gone wrong. It seemed that all groups had run into resistance, gone to cover, and were now awaiting further developments.
“Get your people moving!” she told one group leader over her comm unit. He was a youngish Terran with a receding, unshaven chin and a startled expression, as if he hadn’t ever expected to be in this situation.
Perhaps he hadn’t. Few of her army had ever been in actual combat before. The teams that had been passing information and copies ofResistance, firebombing Naxid homes and vehicles, or sniping at the enemy from a reasonably safe distance were now discovering what a genuine battle was like, one where the enemy fought back.
“Well,” the leader said, “getting the people moving is going to be hard. We were advancing up the road, see, and when the Naxids opened fire, everybody jumped into these offices and shops. They’re all kind of scattered out now. I don’t know how I’m going to get them all going again or-”
“Just get out there and round them up!” Sula demanded.
“Well, see,” the man said, “I’d have to get out on the street to do that, and they’ve got machine guns, you know.”
“Bring up the vehicles to give you covering fire!”
“Well,” he answered, “those cars don’t want to come any closer, see. They’d get shot up, and they don’t have armor or anything.”
“Get those people moving, you cowardly son of a bitch!”Sula shrieked,“or I’ll come up there and personally shoot you in the fucking head!”
The young man’s startled face took on an expression of deep indignation. “If you’re going to talk like that,” he said, “I don’t see why I should continue this conversation.”
Sula stared open-mouthed as the orange end-stamp filled the screen.“The bastard!” she shouted, and cocked her arm to throw her comm unit through the open window. Then she thought better of it and lowered her arm.
She called more units and received promises that they would try to move forward. Firing briefly increased, then died away again. The fierce hammering of machine guns sounded clear in the morning air. She knew that those guns were programmable to fire at any movement detected within a certain defined area. It would be hard to move fighters in against them as long as their ammunition supply held out.
She considered sending in her reserves, but was afraid they would get pinned down as well. There was no one she could trust to scout the enemy who didn’t have another vital job. It was a job, she realized, that she was going to have to do herself.
She rolled up her maps and left the palace, passing the Torminel guards at the gate. Several groups of fighters, just arrived, had parked in the street, waiting for orders.
“I need someone to give me a ride,” she said.
A Lai-own rose to open the door of his long violet-colored car, but a familiar voice spoke.
“That would be me, beauteous lady.”
Sula grinned. “One-Step!”
The onetime vagrant of Riverside was dressed in clean coveralls and heavy boots. A Sidney Mark One was slung over his shoulder, and there were strands of cheap glass beads around his neck.
She ran to his truck and gave him a hug. “One-Step hasn’t seen you,” he said reproachfully. “The lovely lady’s been too busy for One-Step.”
“I’m about to get busier,” Sula said.
“Here.” He took off a strand of beads and put them around Sula’s neck. “These will keep you safe.”
She blinked. “Thanks.”Whatever works, she thought.
She jumped into the passenger seat of his truck, and One-Step pushed the throttle forward and eased it into the crowded street.
For the next twenty minutes she viewed the areas where the attack had gone in, and saw where wrecked vehicles and scattered bodies signaled the high-water mark of the advance. The long straight streets provided ideal fields of fire for enemy heavy weapons. The Naxids dominated the streets from the far end and were hardening their positions. Something, she thought, would have to break things loose.
As she was finishing her survey, she heard a torrent of fire from somewhere else in the city. She paused and wait
ed for a communication.
“Four-nine-one,” came Casimir’s voice in her helmet, “this is Wind. The Naxids are up to something. We’re getting a lot of fire from positions in those hotels down there. It’s obviously meant to make us keep our heads down. I can hear them starting to shout again, so they’ll be charging again fairly soon.”
Sula asked if he thought he was in any trouble.
“We’re just fine, lover,” he said. “You do what you need to do, and don’t worry about us.”
She asked if he could spare Sidney.
“Sidney? Sure. Where do you want him sent?”
She had him brought to Ashbar Square, where she had collected her reserves. There, amid the scent of blossoming ayaca trees, she unrolled her maps on a marble bench beneath the statue of Enlightenment Bringing Joy to the People. Sidney arrived just as the firing at the funicular grew to a vast roar.
“You live on the High City,” she asked him. “How do we get around those Naxid positions?”
In addition to the long, straight streets in the High City, there were also small pedestrian lanes lined with small shops, and alleys and little squares behind the shops intended for service vehicles. Sula had first entered Sidney’s shop through just such an alley. They were marked on her maps, but it was difficult to tell from the maps exactly how to enter the lanes and what could be found there.
Sidney pointed out the byways he knew and explained how to access them. Sula called several of her commanders and gave them instructions.
“Stay off the main roads,” she said. “Leave your vehicles behind and move up through the alleys. We can expect that the Naxids will have guards here, but they won’t be in commanding positions, they’ll be close, where you can reach them. Keep moving and you’ll get behind those heavy gun positions and can take them out.” She looked at Sidney. “You can lead one group, can’t you?”
“Of course, my lady.”
She sent them on their way and turned to the reserve units that were clustered around the square. The din at the funicular was dying away.
“Those were police in the lead this time,” Casimir reported. “Urban Patrol. I think they’re running out of Fleet landing groups.” He gave a laugh that sounded like shale sliding down a slope. “It may be the Motor Patrol charging next.”
Cheered, Sula left the fountain, went to an area where a number of vehicles were parked and jumped onto the flat bed of a truck. “Gather around!” she called, and took off her helmet. She shook out her blond hair and gazed out over her fighters. There were three or four hundred, and she had never laid eyes on most of them before. They included the tall Lai-own with their feathery hair, the shorter Torminel with their large nocturnal eyes shaded by goggles or dark glasses, the pale expressionless Daimong with their gaping mouths and round, hollow, startled-looking eyes, the Cree with their huge ears and dark purple flesh, and the Terrans, who looked more like curious schoolchildren than determined soldiers.
Sula took a long, drawn-out breath, the air sweet with the scent of morning blossoms, and then shouted out into the morning.
“Which of you is the bravest?”
There was a moment of surprise, and then a half-articulate shout went up and she saw a sudden forest of pumping fists and waving rifles.
“Right,” she said, and began to point. “You,andyou, and you there…” Then she looked down at the man with the beads dangling around his neck. “Not you, One-Step,” she said. “I’ve got other plans for you.”
When she had her dozen chosen, she brought them up to the hydraulic tailgate of the truck: five Torminel, two Daimong, three Terrans, and a pair of Lai-own so nearly identical that they might have been twins.
“I need the bravest,” she said, “because I need you to drive like hell right up the Boulevard of the Praxis and the Street of Righteous Peace. I need you to drive until your vehicles are so shot up they can’t move any longer.”
The Naxids’ computer-controlled heavy weapons were programmed to fire at movement, and would shoot at the nearest targets first. Her plan was to provide targets that would suck up all those enemy rounds, targets behind which the rest of her force could advance.
“You’ll all be in trucks,” she told her dozen. “And you’ll be charging in reverse, so that the rear of the trucks will take most of the damage and you won’t be committing suicide.”At least not so blatantly.
Sula activated the record function on her sleeve display. “I want your names,” she said, “so that when they write the histories of this battle, you’ll be in them.”
Pride sang in their voices when they spoke their names.
She made her assignments, then gave orders to the rest of the reserves. They were to fill their vehicles with fighters and charge up the streets behind the dozen of the advance group. They weren’t to stop and take cover until all the advance group were stopped dead or until their own vehicles were hit.
“Move when you hear the horn blasts,” Sula said. “Now go!”
She turned to One-Step. “I need you to go back to the Ngeni Palace,” she said, “and bring all the groups waiting there to the square.”
She knew she might have to repeat this trick more than once, with fresh cannon fodder.
Firing began at the funicular once more as she waited on the Boulevard of the Praxis while her army got into position. Casimir reported that it was the same Naxid tactic as before-covering fire for an attack that hadn’t started yet.
“Do you suppose all that shouting is meant to draw our attention away from something else?” he wondered.
She’d been thinking much the same thing. She tried to contact the teams she’d placed around the perimeter, but they reported nothing. Then she put on her headset and tried Macnamara.
“Nothing’s happening here, my lady,” he said. “There’s no sign of the Naxids at all. A few action groups are still coming up the road. We’ve blocked the gate with trucks and won’t let them pass until they identify themselves, and then we send them on to the Ngeni Palace as you ordered.”
She told Macnamara to send them to Ashbar Square instead.
“Very good, my lady.”
“What is the status of the antimatter guns?” she asked. “Can you remove them from the emplacements?”
“Yes, my lady,” he replied. “They’re the same guns we trained on, and we can take them out of the turrets. We’ll have to remove and then reattach the big antiradiation shield, but all it will take is time.”
“Good. Pull one out and put it on the back of a truck. Let me know when you’re ready,” she concluded.
She had been worried about the antiproton guns-they were an invincible weapon right up to the moment when the Naxids brought up antiproton guns of their own and blew them to radioactive dust. Getting the weapons out of the conspicuous turrets and putting them in a more camouflaged location might be the best way of preserving them.
There was a sudden burst of fire up ahead. Sula couldn’t see where it was coming from, and had to assume that one of the groups she’d sent into the lanes and alleys had run into the enemy. She didn’t want the Naxids to think of sending reinforcements there, so she decided it was time to launch her next attack.
“Blow your horns!” she shouted. “Let’s go!”
The cars, vans, and trucks began honking their horns, each producing anything from a saucy little blip to a bass organ roar. Her suicide squads rolled ahead, driving very large vehicles in reverse. Even in reverse they managed a good pace, though some were clearly better drivers than others. She hoped the swerving would help keep them alive.
When the advance wave hit the Naxid guns’ preprogrammed defense area, the air suddenly filled with hammering that began to shred the trucks. The driving grew more erratic as pieces flew off and clattered in the street.
There were at least three machine guns, she thought, because at least three of the trucks were getting hit at once.
The rest of the reserves followed in a dense swarm, firearms thrusting out the wi
ndows, some spraying the buildings ahead. Sula followed at a run, dashing up one of the walks until she encountered the first scattered bodies, then she ducked into a shop where bullets had marred the neat window displays.
Five Torminel looked at her in surprise from amid a collection of pens and stationery. “Move up!” she shouted. “We need your unit to move ahead and leapfrog the forces I’ve just sent in!”
The Torminel seemed to see the point of this, and they ran out of the shop, beating on doors and windows as they advanced and calling out to their comrades to join them.
Ahead, the street was noisy chaos. The smell of burning caught at the back of her throat. Bullets cracked overhead. Sula sprinted across the boulevard and jumped over a dead body that lay sprawled in the doorway of a vegetable market.
Something about the body made her stop before she entered the store. She braced her back against the solid doorway and saw that it was PJ Ngeni.
He had been hit in the chest and had fallen backward to the pavement. His elaborate hunting rifle lay across his body. His face bore an expression of wistful surprise.
Sula felt as if a soft pillow were pressed on her face, and she forced herself to breathe.
She had liked PJ. She had liked his amiable goodwill, and his foolish bravery, and the accuracy of his social sense. He had been everything that was fond and silly in the old order, and everything that the war had doomed.
A bullet glanced off the pavement nearby. She opened the door and stepped into the vegetable store.
Three Terrans looked at her. One was the surprised-looking man with the receding chin who had refused her orders to advance. Another was a young woman with greasy hair, and a third a teenage boy with bad skin, his lips stained with berry juice. Apparently they’d been having a feast of food gathered off the ration.
“Get your people together,” Sula told them. “Get up the street. You’re going to leapfrog the units that just went in.”
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