by John Dalmas
***
Something to hell was happening, the Kalif realized. He felt seriously isolated by his lack of a radio. Obviously there'd been a cease-fire, which had been broken by an intense fire-fight. This had since eased off markedly. Then a gunship had plummeted into the quadrangle with a jar he could almost feel; presumably an aerial battle was going on. As he watched and listened, the gunfire had picked up, particularly the turret fire from the enemy troop carriers parked in the quadrangle. A series of explosions burst in their midst. Some of the carriers were ruptured or rolled over.
Apparently the Caps were arriving.
Then more troop carriers landed amidst the wreckage, and farther away, he could see four others squatting over the Admin Building, presumably unloading troops. The troops being unloaded in the quadrangle wore blue dress jackets, apparently so they could tell one another from the rebels. The shooting was intensifying, but the odds of his surviving seemed to have improved. Again he wondered about Tain, and again told himself that she was a survivor by nature. It didn't reassure him this time either.
***
Captain Iighil Dhotmariloku, commanding A Company, 1st Battalion, 103rd Infantry, was observing the fighting from a window in the west wing of the Administration Building. As far as he knew, he was the senior rebel officer inside the Sreegana, since that fiasco in the Quadrangle. The fighting hadn't gone well since then, but he hadn't tried to take command. There was no point in it. He had no strategy, nothing to steer by.
Things improved markedly when the 11th Gunship Wing finally arrived. But the improvement could only be temporary; he didn't delude himself that the coup was going to succeed. Not now. They'd needed to take the Kalif-needed his body to display. As it was… No doubt a forest of stakes would soon sprout in the square, decorated with bodies of what the government would call traitors.
Iighil, he told himself, what you need is a bargaining chip. But what the hell that could be…
Meanwhile he had A Company-A Company plus the two penal platoons that had been attached to it after fire had driven them out of the palace. He'd had them lifted to the roof of the Administration Building, and used them to spearhead the penetration downward in this wing. Progress had been better here than elsewhere because of them, but they'd taken heavy casualties, including both their officers.
Then the Caps had arrived, and had driven his people from the roof. Now, with the gunships of the 11th controlling the air, he held the roof again, and had stabilized his situation inside the building.
He wasn't trying to do anything with it; there was no point to that either. The Caps would get reinforcements, the 11th would surrender or be driven away, and there'd be all those stakes going up for the officers of the 103rd, those who survived the fighting. Nor did he delude himself that the enlisted men would make any last ditch fight.
A bargaining chip…
Then it hit him! He had no notion that the Kalif might still be alive, but perhaps a better hostage was available: SUMBAA. The general had stressed strongly that they must not damage the great computer, that it was essential to government. If he could capture it, he'd be in a strong bargaining position, might come out of this without a steel stake up his ass. Which was better than Old Iron Jaw could look forward to.
He turned to his 1st sergeant. "Mazhiib, how many effectives in 2nd platoon?"
"About twenty-five, sir."
"And in 3rd?"
"Maybe thirty."
Enough for a convincing-looking rush, a good diversion. He turned to the man on the other side of him, a sergeant, the acting CO. of the 1st Penal Platoon. "Skosh, I've got a job for you. For you and your five best men."
***
Thoga had opened the kalifa's abdomen, bonded crudely the damage that seemed most serious, applied antibiotics, even installed a drain. Then, totally inadequate to close her up properly, he'd simply applied clamps and abundant tape.
After which he'd collapsed, exhausted and disconsolate. It seemed to him he'd bungled, horribly and uselessly. That to open her up as he had, splash and wallow ignorantly and ineptly, then leave the job unfinished, had been a gruesome violation of her dignity, to little or no benefit.
On top of everything else, of course, she'd miscarried-aborted her fetus. It would have been a miracle if she hadn't.
One of the two surgeons brought in by the Caps had reopened her and finished the job, awed that a layman could have accomplished what Thoga had, and irritated that he'd done it so crudely. But, he said, she might live. She just might. If they got her to a hospital promptly. And if she did live, he added, Thoga's work would have made the difference.
They had other wounded ready to evacuate, too, more than they had ambulance space for just now. Besides the kalifa, there were a number of guardsmen, soldiers, rebels, and two Sisters of the Faith. The kalifa would leave in the first one out.
By that time the Caps had just lost control of the air over the Sreegana, but there was no reason to believe that the rebels would refuse to let the ambulances take out wounded. After all, they'd let them come in and land.
It was Jilsomo who pointed out the problem. The rebels were certain to insist on inspecting them, to make sure the Kalif wasn't smuggled out. And if they found the kalifa, they'd undoubtedly take her hostage.
So hurriedly the surgeon shaved her head like those of the Sisters of the Faith, painted her exposed skin brown with tincture of benzoin, and partly concealed her features with bandage. Her gown covered her smooth arms. The coloring didn't look at all natural, but the surgeon waved it off. She looked so bad anyway, he said, it wouldn't make any difference. Jilsomo was doubtful, but there wasn't much more they could do. And certainly she wouldn't be exposing her violet-blue eyes.
Then orderlies, led by a man with a medevac flag, struggled the stretchers to the roof and loaded them into the ambulance. As Jilsomo had foreseen, when they'd finished loading, a gunship hailed them, and the rebels landed a utility floater on the roof. Several businesslike soldiers got out, a lieutenant and three non-coms, boarded the ambulance, and hastily inspected its cargo of wounded. Two of the wounded wore rebel uniforms; that made the right impression to start with. And the kalifa appeared to be simply another Sister of the Faith, the one who looked closest to death.
The rebels were clearly in a hurry. Their lieutenant apologized, saluted the on-board surgeon, and left the ambulance. Which lifted at once and swung away hurriedly, bound for a government hospital in the western outskirts of Ananporu. Apologized! The pilot said the rebels must have picked up the same radio report he had: that a wing of gunships was on its way from the marine base at Bajapor, some three hours away. They had to be sweating.
***
Sergeant Skosh Viilenga watched from a light utility floater with the five men he'd picked. He'd gotten to pick from both platoons, and chosen only noncoms. Which pissed off Sergeant Jodharka in charge of the other penal platoon. He'd only had four noncoms left, and to lose two of them like this… But Captain Iighil had backed his selection; Iighil was a good officer, a hardnose.
As the floater lifted from its vantage atop the west wing of the Admin Building, the two regular platoons began to move in short rushes toward the almost blank-walled House of SUMBAA. Rifle fire had erupted at them, but they hadn't shot back. A helluva way to attack, Skosh thought. Apparently the two platoons thought so, too. Their attack lasted five seconds at most, then they broke and ran for cover, leaving fifteen or twenty men dead or wounded on the ground.
By that time the light utility floater was over the building. Carefully it settled to the roof, on the side farthest from the Admin Building, where they'd be cut off from view by the roof's curvature. Skosh was the first man onto the curved structure, the other five following closely.
The floater stayed. Crouching, Skosh moved up the roof to what looked like an access hatch. Its cover sat flat and snug atop the low coaming. There was no handle-it was built to open only from below-but the trench knife in his boot was enough to pry it with. Wi
th strong steel and strong fingers, he got it up.
It opened onto a shaft with rungs on one side. Without hesitating, Skosh lowered his legs inside and began to climb down. The shaft was less than ten feet long, with its ladder continuing out of it, emerging high in a poorly lit room bigger than a hay barn.
The ladder ended on a catwalk, and when he reached it, he unslung his rifle and looked around, moving out of the way of the men who followed. The place was silent. Not just without sound of its own; he couldn't hear the fighting outside, either.
Somehow it gave him the willies; it was as if he'd climbed down into another world. Beneath the catwalk were assorted housings, interconnected. And apparently without dust. That was strange, too. It seemed to him that there should have been dust.
Near the far end of the catwalk, another ladder went down, presumably to the floor. Softly, rifle ready in his hands, Skosh started toward it. As he neared the end, he could see the floor below, with a pair of seats at what appeared to be a console. There was no one there.
***
The Kalif stood just back from the entrance, pistol in hand, while guardsmen fired their automatic rifles at the attacking rebel troops. It seemed unreal; the rebels were simply charging, not firing as they came.
It lasted only seconds before they broke and ran back for the poor cover of a hedge and a row of barbered vaasera trees, leaving their dead and wounded where they'd fallen.
A strange attack in a strange kind of fight, thought the Kalif. A fight between brothers, so to speak, men some of whom might have served together at one time or another, who'd drunk together and called each other buddy.
Meanwhile he could hear plenty of shooting at a little distance, but none of it seemed to be in his direction. "Corporal," he said to the man in charge of the entry, "if anyone tries to remove their wounded, let them."
He turned then, Sergeant Yalabiin beside him, and strode down the perimeter corridor some forty yards to the window in that side. After repeating to its two defenders what he'd told the men at the entry, he backtracked to the door to SUMBAA's chamber. He'd see if the computer could fill in for him what was happening out there.
Yalabiin pushed the door open, stepped in and turned, holding it for him. From inside came an unexpected burst of rifle fire, and Yalabiin crumpled. There was a loud, harsh, electric crackling, and the Kalif's eyes jerked upward from the fallen sergeant to the catwalk, where three soldiers writhed in blue wreaths of miniature lightning that came from a small globe atop SUMBAA. In front of him, staring back at the sound, was a soldier, a sergeant. At the foot of a ladder stood another, and beside that one, another who'd dropped from the ladder when the lightnings began. They looked confused and shocked at what was happening to their buddies, afraid it might happen to themselves.
As the Kalif jerked his pistol from his holster, the lightnings stopped, dropping three dead soldiers onto the grating. He could smell their burnt flesh.
In front of him, the sergeant turned and saw him. Saw also the pistol muzzle pointing at him. "Your Reverence!" he said fervently. "Thank Kargh you're all right!" He stepped back as if expecting the Kalif to come in. The Kalif stayed where he was.
"Yab's not all right," he answered. The muzzle of his weapon flicked toward the fallen Yalabiin, then back at the intruder. "Who in hell are you, and what are you doing here?"
"I'm Sergeant Viilenga, Your Reverence." He said it loudly enough that his two remaining men would hear, and realize who he spoke to. "Captain Iighil sent us to get you out of here. We're from the Capital Division, attached to an armored company that's got stalled on the way by the rebels. The C.O. figured it might take too long to break through, so he asked division to send a rescue team by air. That's us. We came in through the roof."
He's lying, the Kalif decided. It felt like a lie, and the man's tunic was green, not blue. Still he wasn't entirely sure. The man wore no unit blazon on his sleeve; he could be part of the Caps penal platoon.
The sergeant looked over his shoulder and spoke to his remaining two men. "Go back to the roof and make sure everything's clear for an escape. Snap it up! We'll be along in a minute."
He watched them start climbing, then turned to the Kalif to find the pistol still pointing at him. He shrugged. "I don't know why that stupid bastard opened fire like that. Jumpy, I guess. Our floater took a lot of fire coming in, and I lost three men." He half turned. "We'd better get up there and get clear, sir. We heard radio traffic that the rebs have a bunch more air support on the way."
"Drop your rifle," the Kalif said quietly.
It clattered to the concrete.
"Who's your division C.O.?" he asked.
The sergeant's eyes sharpened, and abruptly he threw himself sideways to the floor as the Kalif triggered a burst that ripped past him. The man rolled, grabbing at his own sidearm while the Kalif's aim followed him. The racket of their firing overlapped. Skosh Viilenga's face burst red. Twisting, the Kalif crumpled, gutshot.
A guardsman at the nearest window saw him fall into the corridor, and shouting, jumped to his feet and came running.
***
Major Tagurt Meksorli wore his arm in a sling cut from a dead man's trousers. The battalion command floater had been disabled and made a hard landing. Broken arm and all, he'd had to run hard to reach cover. The battalion commander had been less lucky; bullets had torn through his chest, killing him.
Meksorli missed the screen array he'd enjoyed in the command floater. He'd set up his command post in one of the massive gate towers, and found its narrow windows a miserable substitute. Just now there wasn't much happening to watch in the quadrangle. Neither side could use it. His immediate challenge was to maintain control of the tough, hull-metal gate.
Or rather, the small ports which flanked it, their gates blown clear when the rebels held them. They very much wanted them back. His radio told him that A Company, 27th Armored Battalion, with its "mobile forts," was within a few blocks of the square, catching hell from gunships and anti-armor squads. The rebels had nothing really heavy on the ground, but even so, the 27th had lost several tanks getting that far. They kept coming, though, wasting the rebel anti-armor equipment as they came. When they reached the square, the rebel situation would be critical. The rebels couldn't hold the square against tanks, and they'd have no hope at all of reconnecting with their troops in the Sreegana.
Actually their situation was critical already. It would simply become more obvious then. Their officers had to be sweating; they could hardly win the battle now, and if they surrendered, they could expect only execution. He wondered what they'd told their peasant soldiers to keep them fighting. Probably that they'd be impaled, too. With peasants, that would work only so long, though. Sooner or later they'd quit anyway.
"Major!" called a man from an outside window. "There's a tank entering the square. Man! Some of the rebels are running already!"
Meksorli switched to an outside window himself. The rebel troops in the square were indeed breaking. The tank was under heavy fire from surrounding buildings, most of it ineffective. Hovering on its AG pressors, a mobile fort was hard to stop, short of holing its thick armor. Her guns were engaged mainly with the gunships overhead; they were the greater threat.
Then something apparently did hole it, for it slewed and stopped. But at the same time, another and then two more moved into the square after it, and with that, the giving way became a rout.
The major's radio sounded. "Dog One, Dog One, this is Bull Two. If you can open that gate, I'll send Bull Four in. The rest of us will park against the wall and suppress fire from the surrounding buildings."
"Got that, Bull Two," Meksorli answered. "We'll see if it'll open."
A tank in the quadrangle would end things quickly inside, he had no doubt, and backed against the wall, the others would be far less exposed to the gunships. Meksorli closed the gate switch, and almost at once could feel the tower shudder as the rocket-damaged gate tried to open. Something somewhere broke with a sound like
a cannon blast, and with a mind-threatening screech, then a rumbling, the gate began to slide into its housing. He was quite sure he'd never get it closed again. The sound stopped, and the tank passed from his view, through the tunnellike opening, into the quadrangle. Back at an inside window, Meksorli watched it park with the wall at its back. He told its commander what parts of the Admin Building he knew for sure were held by rebels, then watched and listened as it began to pump shells into it.
"Caps Command, Caps Command." It was his radio. "This is Captain Iighil Dhozmariloku, commanding 103rd Infantry. Call off your tank."
"This is Caps Command. Are you prepared to end hostilities and surrender?"
"Negative. Negative. My men hold the House of SUMBAA. Call off your tank or I'll order SUMBAA's destruction."
It sounded unlikely. If the rebel held SUMBAA, he'd have used it to bargain with already. Still, there'd been a report of a light floater moving as if to land on its roof… He held off on the order until four more rounds had been pumped into the Admin Building, then spoke to the tank commander. "Bull Four, hold your fire for now.
"Rebel Command, I'll make a deal with you. You get your people out of there right away and surrender your regiment, and I'll guarantee with my own life that you, personally, will not go on the stake."
There was a long lag. "Caps Command, you'll have to do better than that. You'll have to guarantee my life and that of my officers."
Meksorli didn't hesitate. "Rebel Command, set your radio to your own frequency. I repeat, set your radio to your own frequency and hear my reply." He paused then and set his own on the rebel frequency. "Rebel Command," he said, his voice hard, "I retract my earlier offer. I retract my earlier offer. If SUMBAA is damaged in any way-repeat, damaged in any way-I will recommend that you and your officers get the slow stake. I repeat, I will recommend that you, your officers, and whoever is directly responsible for the damage, get the slow stake. If SUMBAA is damaged by air action, I will also recommend that all your gunship commanders get the slow stake. Caps Command out."