“Well,” the man said, “that’s going to be hard because-”
“I don’tcare how hard it is!” Sula said. “Just get out there anddo it.”
“Well,” the young man said, “we weresupposed to be attacking a prison. I don’t even know what we’redoing up here on the hill.”
Rage flared in Sula’s veins. “What we’redoing, ” she said, “is winning the war, you incompetent fuck! Now getout there!”
He nodded, as if acknowledging a minor rhetorical point. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think this thing is very well thought out, because-”
Sula remembered that she’d left her rifle behind at the Ngeni Palace. She reached for her pistol, pulled it out of the holster, touched the activation stud and pointed it at the group leader.
“Brave soldiers are dying for every second you hide in here,” she said. “Now are you going to show some leadership, or am I going to shoot you like I promised in ourlast conversation?”
The woman and the boy gaped at the sight of the pistol. A stubborn expression crossed the leader’s face. “Not till I have my say,” he said, “because-”
Sula shot him in the head. The woman gave a little shriek as blood and brains spattered her. The boy took a step back and knocked over a crate of pomegranates. The little purple-red fruits bounced as they rolled along the floor.
Sula saw Caro Sula lying dead on the cart, her translucent skin paper-white. She saw Caro vanish into the river, her hair a flash of gold.
For a moment, as she looked down at the body, she saw Caro Sula’s face staring back at her.
The coppery smell of blood swamped her senses and she clamped down hard as her stomach tried to quease its way past her throat. The pistol swayed in her hand. “Get out onto the street!” she told the other two. “And do itnow! And if you head anywhere but toward the battle, I’ll shoot the both of you, I swear.”
They edged around her, their weapons held in their hands as if they’d never seen them before. “Get up the road!” Sula shouted. The two reached the doorway, stepped gingerly over PJ Ngeni, and broke into a trot as they jogged up the street, toward the fighting.
Sula followed. She picked up PJ’s rifle and looked at its display. It hadn’t fired a single shot.
She slung it over her shoulder and moved up the street, pounding on doors and windows as she went.
“Come out of there,” she called, “you cowardly sacks of shit! Get moving! Move, you useless ass-wipes!”
Fighters emerged from their hiding places, and she sent them into the firestorm ahead. All of the vehicles had pulled off the road or been destroyed. Gunfire was roaring nonstop.
Having dug out as many fighters as she could, she trudged back to Ashbar Square, where new units were beginning to arrive. If the current attack failed, she decided, she’d pull the trick with the suicide trucks again.
It wasn’t necessary. Sidney and the other infiltrators had worked their way through the maze of lanes and alleys and gotten behind the Naxid positions. They attacked seized some of the heavy weapons positions and turned the weapons on the other hardened positions. The fighters trying to move up the street suddenly surged forward as the Naxid defense disintegrated.
The Naxids had no reserves to speak of, and their positions had no depth. Once their line was breached, they had to pull back everywhere to avoid being cut off. Most were overrun before they could retreat. Sula’s fighters seized the Ministry of Right and Dominion, the Ministry of Police, the Ministry for the Defense of the Praxis, and the High Court with its admirable view of the surrounding terrain.
Mad triumph raged in her veins. She called Casimir.
“We’ve thrown down another attack,” Julien replied. “We’re just slaughtering them. I don’t know why they keep on coming.”
“Julien?” Sula said in surprise. “Where’s Casimir?” Then she remembered communications protocols and repeated the question using the proper form.
“He’s gone to sort out some of the units with poor fire control,” Julien said. “They keep wasting ammunition. He gave me his comm protocols while he’s running his errand.”
Sula sagged with relief. “Comm: to Wind,” she said. “Tell him that I love him madly. Tell him that it looks like we’re taking all the government buildings on this end. Comm: send.”
“We figured you would,” came the answer.
She spoke too soon. When the army tried to move on to the Commandery, they ran into serious trouble.
“They’ve installed one of those units they’ve been using against snipers,” Sula was told. “Fire one bullet across their perimeter, and a whole series of automated weapons blast the hell out of you.”
Fortunately, Macnamara reported that he’d pulled an antiproton gun out of its turret and mounted it on the back of a truck. Sula ordered it to the Commandery.
The automated defense system could pinpoint any bullet or rocket aimed in its direction. But it wasn’t capable of spotting a minute charge of antiprotons traveling along an electron beam at one-third the speed of light.
Macnamara demolished the Commandery’s defenses with ten minutes of careful fire. The loyalists charged forward with a great roar, chasing the remaining guards through the maze of corridors and capturing the entire Naxid Fleet staff in the situation room.
The Ministry of Wisdom was taken without a fight. The Naxid security forces tried to make a stand in the courtyard of the Hall of the Convocation but were swarmed from all sides and massacred.
Forty of the rebels’ tame Convocation were captured hiding in various parts of the building. Lady Kushdai, who chaired the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis, was captured in the quarters formerly belonging to the Lord Senior of the Convocation.
Sula had launched the only ground battle fought in the empire’s history, and won it.
Zanshaa High City was now hers, and so was the government.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The technicians at the Ministry of Wisdom were mostly non-Naxids, and happy to cooperate with the forces that had stormed their workplace. Thus it was that an expressionless Daimong news reader, droning through the statistics of the northern hemisphere’s most recent spelt harvest, interrupted his recital to announce a special proclamation.
The image then switched to Sula, who had occupied a desk in the next studio. She was still wearing her cuirass, and despite the last minute attention of a cosmetician on the department staff, her hair was stringy and still bore the impressions of her helmet liner. One-Step’s necklace hung over her armor plate. Her helmet and PJ’s rifle lay on the desk in front of her.
The image went out on every video channel on the planet. Audio channels carried it as well.
Sula looked at the nearest camera and lifted her chin. She tried to remember how she had acted and spoken when she first met Sergius Bakshi, how Lady Sula had looked down her nose at the assembled cliquemen and demanded their allegiance.
“I am Caroline, Lady Sula,” she said in her best High City accent. “I serve the empire as Military Governor of Zanshaa and commander of the secret army. This morning forces under my command took the High City of Zanshaa and captured the rebel Naxid government. Lady Kushdai surrendered to me shortly thereafter, on behalf of the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis.”
She paused for dramatic effect, and let an arrogant curve develop along her upper lip. “As Lady Governor,” she said, “I decree the following:
“All hostages and political prisoners taken by the rebel government are to be released immediately.
“All Naxids in the military and police forces are to surrender their weapons at once to units of the secret army, or to any captain of the Urban Patrol or Motor Patrol provided that he is not a Naxid. Naxid forces will then return to their barracks and await further orders. Those with families on the planet may return home.
“All promotions in the civil service, judiciary, and military made since the arrival of the Naxid rebels are canceled. Those placed in positions of authori
ty by the previous administration may return to work at their old jobs and at their old rates of pay.
“All units of the secret army are ordered to cease offensive action against any rebel force that is in obedience to my instructions. Those who disobey may still be attacked. Units of the secret army are to hold themselves ready for further orders.”
She paused again, and tried to glare into the cameras as if it were an enemy.
“Disobedience of my orders will be met with the highest possible penalty. The cooperation of all citizens in the restoration of legitimate and orderly government will be required. Further announcements will be made as necessary.
“This is Caroline, Lady Sula. This announcement is at an end.”
We now return you to spelt prices,she thought, and had a hard time containing a sudden eruption of laughter until one of the techs signaled her that they’d cut back to the Daimong announcer.
Presumably, Naxids on other parts of the planet would be acting to cut off the broadcasts in their own areas, so Sula and her crew acted to get as much information into the hands of the public while it was still possible.
The announcers and staff at the ministry were ordered to repeat her announcement regularly, along with any news or analysis they cared to add that was favorable to the point of view of the loyalists. They were professionals, and had spent their careers cleaving to one ideological line or another, and they all understood their instructions. Camera crews were sent out to take pictures of the fighters standing around the various public buildings and monuments and wandering through the Convocation and the Commandery.
Sula realized that her claim that Lady Kushdai had surrendered to her would be considerably bolstered if Lady Kushdai actuallydid surrender to her, so she had the elderly Naxid brought from the bloodstained courtyard of the Convocation, where prisoners were being held, into the hall itself and onto the speaker’s platform. Behind Sula was the huge glass wall that looked out onto the Lower Town, where towers of rising smoke marked the acts of sabotage that she had called for in that morning’s edition ofResistance.
Lady Kushdai was escorted to the platform and presented with the formal articles of surrender, written by Sula herself a few minutes earlier.
“No flashing your scales, now,” Sula said. The red flashes could be used to send messages to other Naxids, messages that other species found it difficult to translate. Kushdai obeyed, and scratched her signature onto the sheet of paper that Sula had cribbed from one of the convocates’ desks.
She looked up at Sula from her black-on-red eyes. “I hope you will provide me with the means to kill myself,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” Sula replied. “You’re too valuable to throw away.”
The circumstances of her death, Sula suspected, would be a good deal more imaginative than any official act Lady Kushdai had attempted during her term on Zanshaa.
She picked up a pen and signed, just the single title “Sula.”
A camera crew from the Ministry of Wisdom recorded the event, and the recording was broadcast immediately on all video stations, along with the text of the surrender message, calling for all Naxid forces throughout the empire to surrender unconditionally.
It occurred to Sula that she was pressing her luck with such a demand, but she thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
She decided to make the Ministry of Wisdom her headquarters. Unlike the Commandery, where all the comm techs had been Naxids, now dead or imprisoned, the ministry was stuffed with communications equipment, and with techs who knew how to use it. She walked across the road to the ministry just as another burst of fire broke out to the west.
Spence at the Imperial Hotel and Julien at the funicular told her what was happening. The Naxids had made an attempt to break out of the Imperial Hotel in the direction of the funicular, an attack coordinated with another charge from the base of the incline railway. Sula sent some groups to the area as reinforcements, but they weren’t needed. Though both attacks were pressed with great determination, they were driven back with slaughter.
She wondered why the Naxids were so persistent in their hopeless attacks up the funicular. Possibly, she thought, they were responding to orders: their superiors were trapped in the Imperial, were demanding immediate rescue, and weren’t willing to tolerate delay or excuses.
She supposed she should be grateful that the Naxid officers weren’t giving their subordinates time to come up with anything clever.
“To: Wind. Where’s Casimir?” she asked Julien after the fighting had died down. “Is he still trying to kick some discipline into those fighters? Comm: send.”
The silence that followed was long enough that cold dread began to seep into the pit of her stomach.
“I’m sorry, Gredel,” the answer finally came. “He made me promise not to tell you till we’d won the battle. I guess we’ve won now, haven’t we?”
There was another silence in which Sula felt a scream building deep in her chest, a howl of pain and rage that she bottled inside only because she couldn’t yet be sure that Julien’s next words would be what she feared.
“Casimir was wounded earlier this morning,” he said. “It was the suppressive fire from those hotels down below. He’s been sent to the hospital. He was awake and talking when we sent him away, and like I said, he made me promise not to tell…He didn’t want you distracted when you had a battle to fight.”
“I need a car!” Sula shouted to the people around her. “I need a carnow!” People began to bustle.
And then she used proper communications protocols to respond to Julien.
“Comm: to Rain. Where in the hospital is he? Have you heard from him? Comm: send.”
“I sent two of the boys with him,” Julien replied. “One came back and said he was getting treatment and that it looked as if he’d be all right. The other’s still with him. I’ll call him and get right back to you with as much information as I can.”
Sula left Macnamara in charge of the headquarters and referred all immediate problems to him. One-Step shuttled her and a pair of walking wounded to the hospital. The wheels threw up clouds of choking dust, the drifting remains of the New Destiny Hotel. By the time she arrived, Sula knew which hospital ward Casimir was in and learned that he’d been through an operation and was still alive. The wounds were minor, the report said, and he was resting peacefully in his bed.
The hospital was a nightmare. Beneath the barrel-vaulted ceilings, with their mosaics of medical personnel flying to the aid of gracefully injured citizens, hundreds of wounded jammed the corridors, most of them High City residents caught in a cross fire. They were waiting for treatment because the secret army’s wounded, who had guns, demanded to be treated first. There was a small pile of dead Naxids in front of the building, mostly security forces who had come for treatment and then been dealt summary justice by the loyalist army. Some of the dead were medical personnel who had displeased the fighters one way or another. Others were civilians who had simply been in the wrong place.
The very fact that she had to observe any of this while she was on an urgent errand drove Sula into fury. She was barking angry orders as soon as she stepped out of One-Step’s truck, demanding that all group and team leaders meet her in Casimir’s ward.
The place smelled of blood, panic, and despair. The corridors were tracked with the rust-brown debris of the New Destiny Hotel that no one had time to clear. Fighters swaggered along the corridors brandishing weapons, and insolently supervised the work of the medical personnel. The wounded moaned, screamed, or cried for help as Sula passed. She pictured Casimir lying on the floor in some dingy, blood-soaked ward and hurried onward.
Her heart surged with relief as she saw him lying, as the report had indicated, on a bed in one of the wards. His eyes were open and she could hear the deep croak of his voice even over the continuous murmur of the other wounded in the ward.
She rushed toward him. His chest and one shoulder were bandaged and a pastel blue sheet was drawn up t
o his waist. An intravenous tube ran from a plastic bag on a rack to one arm. The ward was crowded, and the bed had been shoved in among a group of injured, many of whom did not have beds, only cushions and thin mattresses. Casimir’s guard-one of his Torminel-stood by the head of the bed, rifle propped on his hip and a stolid expression on his furry face.
Casimir’s dark eyes turned to her as she approached, and his face lit with surprise and weary delight. She pressed herself to him and kissed his cheek. His flesh was cold. She drew back and touched his cheek, feeling the stubble against her fingertips.
His eyes were somber, though there remained the shadow of a smile on his face. “I thought I wouldn’t see you again,” he rumbled. “I’ve been making my will.”
“Wh-What?” she said, the word stumbling across her tongue.
“I’m leaving everything to you. I’m trying to remember the passwords to the hidden safes.”
She touched his chest, his arm. He was bloodless and cold. She looked at the Torminel. “Why’s he saying that?”
Uncertainty edged the Torminel’s voice. “The doctor said he’d be all right. He said the wounds weren’t serious and that he got all the shrapnel out. But the boss has this idea he’s dying, and so I’m recording his will on my sleeve display.” He gave an indifferent flip of one hand. “I mean, why not? He’ll laugh over it later.”
Casimir’s eyelids drooped over his solemn eyes. “Something went wrong. I can feel it.”
Sula looked at the bed displays and saw that none of them were lit. “Why isn’t the bed working?” she asked.
The Torminel looked at the displays as if seeing them for the first time. “The bed?” he said.
The bed wasn’t connected to the power supply, apparently because there were too many beds in the room. Someone else’s bed had to be disconnected before Casimir’s could be jacked into a wall socket. Casimir watched without interest as the displays over his head brightened as Sula told the bed that its contents was a male Terran.
Alarms began chirping immediately. Casimir’s blood pressure was dangerously low.
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