by Leo Champion
More raff were organizing the trucks’ raw content by type: organics, metallics, plastics, usables, other. It was hard, dirty work and Hammer felt bad for the ragged men and women doing it.
I’ve promised to improve your lives. One step at a time.
“There seems to be an unusual amount of pink and blue in the organics feeds,” Hammer observed. There was a lot of shredded cloth in those colors.
“Yeah, happens every year. Valentine’s Day remains, sir,” said the plant manager, a tall lean man named Myers.
“There a reason” – Hammer eyed the ragged clothing most of his workers were wearing, and the managers were in just a jot above – “they have to shred everything?”
Myers shrugged. “Don’t know, sir. They just do.”
For no reason, then.
Hammer turned toward the Washington Building and its cluster behind it.
Someday, he thought, you people and I will have a Discussion.
* * *
“We’re just giving them the weapons?” Staff Sergeant Jimmy Beppe asked Hoshi.
The tough streetganger turned. They were in an abandoned building, Sixth Company the lighter to the tune of a load of swords and axes. Those had been handed to the locals in return for no more than sworn pledges that in Beppe’s world weren’t worth the paper they hadn’t even been signed on. Boots and blades, the things you needed to improve streetganger effectiveness. And cans of glop, because ‘gangers were always hungry.
“Yes,” said Hoshi. “You calling me stupid?”
Sergeant Billy Greig cradled his crossbow next to Beppe, but there was no way he’d take down more than one or two guys before they ended his life. Beppe was young, but he wasn’t dumb – he knew Greig wouldn’t die for him.
“No, Captain.”
So that was the end of that.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It started a little before seven, Wednesday evening.
“Revenue is up nine percent from last week, boss,” Lock was saying to Hammer in his office when the damn Chang trumpets began to blow again. “Amazing what competent people can do when they’re given a motivation and allowed to get on with their jobs.”
“Hold on while I close the windows,” Hammer said, and was getting up from his desk to do so when Ali Benzi pushed open the door without knocking.
“Mrs – Lieutenant – Thurston says this time it’s the real one, boss.”
“Get under cover,” Hammer told his production manager. “And you may want to start thinking of a safe way out.”
There was said to be ten thousand on Lock’s head too, now, and while the production manager carried a pistol Hammer had no reason to think he knew the first thing about how to defend himself with it.
* * *
People in the war room saluted Hammer as he strode in, except for Lieutenant Thurston at the plotting table. She’d pinned gold bars to the shoulders of her dress instead of finding a uniform, and she didn’t look up as she deftly placed strings of Chang squad counters into position on the map, focused on that and the reports coming through her radio headset.
Somehow she sensed the boss anyway as he took a place at the plotting table. The war room’s windows were closed but you could hear the damn horns through them anyway; they’d become more annoying than anything else over the last couple of days.
“Real thing, Boss Hammer,” she said as she moved counters.
Sergeant Ferrara, the other woman at the plotting table, was responsible for friendly tokens. She, too, had a radio headset and was placing squads into line as their captains reported them forming.
Hammer had come to trust these women’s guesses.
“Boss, looks like they’re clearing the streets,” wounded Corporal Adkins reported.
“Then get our people inside too. Seventh Company will defend their homes and fire from windows,” said Hammer.
“Spreading that word now.”
“Tell Lieutenant Santos to get her people ready,” Hammer ordered, deciding. This felt real somehow. “Have the Marauders launch, and Denonile’s to lower our own balloons. We don’t want the Marauders flying into them.”
It was the right time, just after evening shift… dark, but the arkscraper lights that loomed over everywhere in the city kept it ever from getting too dark; if the city’s light pollution had allowed him to ever have seen the moon he’d read about in the sky, he would have called the city default ‘bright full moonlight’. It would be fine to fight in, at least until white gunsmoke filled the streets. Hammer had seen that from above, but never ground level. He hoped it wouldn’t confuse Marder too much.
“Boss,” said Don Karstein. “Permission to head out and take command on Prince Street.”
“Granted,” said Hammer, and turned to the man. He was dressed in black body armor over his uniform, triple-tracked major’s insignia on the front of his helmet, and was as tense as everyone else in the room.
“Good luck,” he said to the major, and extended a hand. Don Karstein was going into the hottest part of the fight, to prove the theories he and Hammer had been developing for the last week.
Karstein shook it respectfully.
“Ain’t luck,” said Major Karstein. “Like you said, it’s physics.”
Hammer grinned. “Remember the plan.”
* * *
A hundred yards down Prince Street, there were hundreds of Changs facing Cam Krasner as he stood with the rest of Second Company with musket loaded. Hundreds of them. This was the critical part of the battlefield; there were two companies, Second and Third, here. Expected to hold against – how many damn Changs? Behind the Chang infantry was an armored car with a barrier balloon on a rope, anchored to the car so it could move forwards with the main attack.
“Major. Good to have you here.”
Behind him – he turned to see – Captain Karstein was greeting her half-brother, who with a couple of bodyguards had shown up. The officers and some of the experienced men in B Company had body armor, but that wasn’t a luxury the recruits and most of the grunts had.
“Definitely the real thing,” said Major Karstein. “Captain, are your people ready?”
“Yes sir!” Captain Karstein was all business now the shit was about to start flying.
The shit’s about to start flying, Krasner thought. Miya, am I going to see you again?
The trumpets stopped, a silence that was scary for a moment. From down the street Krasner heard Chang sergeants and officers shouting last-minute orders.
There’s so many of them.
Krasner felt his bowels give way but from the smell, he hadn’t been the first.
* * *
The cavernous interior of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral was packed with Chang executives and high-ups. A projector display mirrored the tactical map John Moncreve Senior stood at on the stage, with President Chang, eldest son Vice-President Jin Chang, and several aides with radios and counter-movers.
“Boss,” said an aide with sergeant’s stripes, “streets are cleared and Vice-President Bo reports that his force is ready.”
“Companies all in position,” confirmed another aide, with a nod at one of the young men on the tactical table. The view cut to a camera on Bo Chang’s command vehicle, looking over the heads of three hundred fighters down Prince Street at the minimal force blocking them.
“Looks like they know it’s for real this time,” observed John Moncreve Junior. “That’s Don Karstein behind them, it looks like.”
A shame, thought John Moncreve. That man had saved his life once, when they’d both been younger. But he’d repaid the Garson family for this elevation with greedy treason. He had better hope to die in the fighting; President Chang had plans for him and his sister should they be taken alive, as a warning.
“No chivalry, no fun games,” President Chang warned. “No one-on-ones. Bo, you clear on that?”
“Yes Dad,” came that man’s voice.
“Something unusual’s happening,” came another report. �
�Yes – Mr. President, it looks like West Bowery is lowering their barrier balloons.”
“Not surprising,” said John Moncreve. “They do have their pigeon friends nearby. We have the mobile ones on Bo’s car and the wagon behind it.”
President Chang glanced at a digital clock on the wall. John Moncreve followed his eyes. 6:58 pm.
“Seven on the dot, we move.”
* * *
“All loaded and ready?” Captain Goldblatt asked Corporal Benny Frick and the other fighters of B Company. They were poised, next to their A Company rivals, on Prince Street to spearhead the main assault. It looked to Frick’s combat-experienced eye like they outnumbered the enemy about three to one, which would be more than they’d need.
“Eyes down and gun front!” Frick hissed at the man next to him, a fifteen year old recruit called Billy McKee. Everyone had heard about what had happened to C and F Companies during the coup last week, when a precision airstrike followed by streetganger attack had driven them back along this very ground.
“What if they do hit us from above, Corp?” McKee asked nervously, but did as he was told. He wasn’t the only recruit whose musket was wavering upwards, and Frick was not the only man warning them not to.
“We’ve got the two mobile barrier balloons to keep them off our heads as we advance,” said Frick, with a look at Captain Goldblatt. “Focus ahead on the Chapel.”
“One minute to go,” said Captain Goldblatt, the man’s voice carrying clearly across the company’s fighters. “Guns up and fire on my command!”
“Fire on his command!” the sergeants repeated, and Frick raised his musket to his shoulder.
* * *
In the ruined buildings north of East Houston Street, Sixth Company was moving. It was a relief to Staff Sergeant Jimmy Beppe, although he wished he were fighting in the line – his older brother had stories of that, of real stand-up fights, but here he was roughing it, as he had been for the last few days, in abandoned buildings with Hoshi and almost a hundred ragged streetgangers, green armbands around their shoulders.
Beppe and Sergeant Greig, and four men with Greig who also carried crossbows, were the only ones in actual uniforms beyond Hoshi himself.
“Bossman says it’s the real thing,” Hoshi was telling his crew, while Greig and his team hustled toward a stairwell they’d verified earlier. “Get yourselves ready.”
“Why don’t we just go in now? The pigeons are flying!” someone whined.
Hoshi slapped the girl across the jaw, hard.
“We go in when boss says. You wanna get your asses kicked, go right ahead. We’re working with Boss Hammer’s plan, y’all hear me?”
Beppe drew his rapier as eyes turned toward him. He was the only one in the force with a radio, now that Greig was out of sight and gone.
Hoshi, his katana drawn, came up to Beppe. “They’re getting antsy. We gonna hit them soon, right?” he asked Beppe quietly.
“When they say to. Changs know we’ve got streetgangers up here somewhere – it takes a company or two away from their main attack just to be ready to deal with us when we do come out.”
“Once they hear shit happening in the main fight,” Hoshi warned, “they’re gonna get jumpy like I said. Might not be able to keep all the new ones from charging in.”
Beppe shook his head.
“Captain, all I know is what I’m hearing over the radio. This is definitely real.”
* * *
Billy Greig was breathless from racing up the stairs to the ninth floor, and the south side of this building, this high up, didn’t feel structurally stable under his boots. There were cracks in the bare concrete, but… Hoshi’s guys had assured him and his team that it was stable.
Greig wasn’t sure how much he trusted streetganger evaluations of engineering, but they did know abandoned buildings. The local gang was one of the ones that had inhabited this building, and they probably knew their own home.
As he approached a gaping floor-to-ceiling hole that had once been a glass window, he un-safetied his crossbow. The three women and one man behind him – women made better snipers, in Greig’s experience, they were more patient and seemed to be better shots – followed his cue.
“See their barrier balloons? I’m taking the one on the left. Pick your targets and fire when ready.”
“Got it, sarge,” came the voices of his team.
Greig hadn’t trained with these guys, but Jacopo Benzi – Colonel now! – had handpicked them as good shots. Greig had known that man almost twenty years, been alongside him in any number of fights ranging from streetganger skirmishes to all-out war, and he knew he could trust the guy’s judgment. He had his own shot to worry about now, as he raised his crossbow to his shoulder and squinted.
The barrier balloons were bobbing in the wind about three hundred yards south of where they stood, but at a comparable height. Greig only had iron sights on his crossbow, but that was good enough. He raised the weapon slightly, squeezed the trigger, and proing!
Five magnesium-tipped crossbow bolts lashed out through the darkness like tracer rounds, leaving actinic white streaks in their trails. As Greig watched, one then another of the barrier balloons above the Chang force began to burn.
* * *
Diana Angela was almost an hour into a serious workout, pushing herself on the treadmills as her gaze looked down past abandoned-building rooftops toward the area she knew included the West Bowery precinct. Something was happening, she could tell – the barrier balloons above West Bowery had been lowered in the last few minutes, but from this high up in the One Building it was hard to see any more than that. Certainly the high-buildings kept her from viewing the streets proper. Gliders were in the air, though, an increasing number of them.
Suddenly, the barrier balloons to the west of West Bowery started to burn! They lit up in orange flame, one after the other.
Implant? Zoom.
A fourth balloon caught on fire and then a fifth, pinpricks from where her body ran on autopilot; an hour’s run at this pace was hard but normal for her. She wondered, as a sixth barrier balloon – the Changs? She wasn’t sure, but it probably wasn’t West Bowery – exploded into flame, where her boy in the precinct was, with regard to what was going on. What was his name again?
Eddie, that was it – Sergeant Eddie Haskins. He was no more to her, really, than an information source with a nice cock, and getting attached to those was not something she allowed herself to do. Getting attached to men at all wasn’t something she allowed herself, because of what had happened the last time she had made that mistake.
The man in question had been Spartacus, of Greenwich Village. Killing him and twenty-five of his Central Committee friends – having to kill him, and them, as she’d semi-successfully convinced herself in the time since, but not completely – had really done a number on both her ability and her willingness to fall in love. What if she had to kill the next guy, too? She knew she wouldn’t be able to survive that psychologically.
Sex was different, provided you kept them at arm’s length. She did have those physical needs. And Haskins was a nice kid. She hoped he’d make it through whatever looked to be starting down there, as three of the airbornes circling her building peeled off and headed in.
She knew from experience in Greenwich Village that her skills were next to useless on the battlefield – she was an assassin, not a soldier.
Damnit. Compartmentalizing this was going to be a bitch, but she couldn’t go down for days…
* * *
Cam Krasner’s world had become a tunnel of eye-burning white smoke, repetitive actions, noise and death.
“Squad!” Sergeant Haskins barked, “fire!”
Krasner remembered to keep his musket aimed downwards as Squad Dunleavy, in line in front of him, dropped to a crouch and the way became clear to fire. He pulled the trigger and there was a bang, and then Sergeant Haskins was shouting at them to get down. With the others in line, he dropped to a crouch so the guards behi
nd them could in turn fire. Little flecks of powder burn stung him through the back of his shirt.
Lead and gold balls whipped through the billowing white smoke around him as he shoved another cartridge’s worth of blackpowder down the muzzle of his gun, followed it with a ball that he rammed down, good and hard. A percussion cap went into the pan, right way up this time, and then the sergeant was yelling “Squad, up!” and they rose to fire again.
“Look!” Corporal Antonini next to him said, pointing forwards. Something up high and ahead of them was burning, burning brightly enough that the flames were dully visible through the ocean of gunsmoke. No – two or three somethings, burning as they slowly descended!
“It’s their barrier balloons,” Lieutenant Frusci said from behind Krasner. “We’re bringing ‘em down!”
“Task force!” Major Karstein’s voice carried through the noise. “Load and hold!”
“Second company! Load and hold!” Captain Karstein shouted.
“Squad Haskins! Load and hold!” Sergeant Haskins’ voice relayed the order.
For Krasner the movements, drilled into him over the last few days, had become automatic. Powder, ball, ram the ball down, cap goes into the pan but this time don’t ready the gun…
Load and hold meant upcoming company volley fire. Had the officers heard something, gotten news from the airbornes circling in their gliders above, about that huge force they were facing moving? It would be volley fire and then hand-to-hand with the survivors, and he’d heard Frusci confirm that they were outnumbered three to one here.
“Task force! Fix bayonets!” Major Karstein shouted.
Krasner drew his, a mean two-foot blade with an edge as well as a point, although in formation combat you mostly used the point. Following Corporal Antonini’s movements, he set his musket down on its butt and jammed the bayonet’s ring mount onto the muzzle; you could fire the gun with the bayonet in, but reloading was a bit harder because the thing got in the way of your ramrod.