"It's started," said Sookie Foyle. Her fingers trembled, but they were precise enough to throw the toggle switch which would do the rest.
The ship's radioman watched the brunette approvingly from the bridge proper. TheCommunicationsBay of theKatynForest was little more than a one-man alcove off the bridge. With additional equipment welded to its bulkheads, even someone as short as Communicator Foyle had to watch her head as she stood up. The crewman smiled through the tangle. "Come have a drink with me, hey?" he said. "Relax."
"Are you out of your mind?" Foyle retorted. "Go on, I'm busy."
Pavlovich tapped the crewman on the shoulder. He murmured something in low-voiced Russian. The two men walked down the corridor together while the Communicator strained to listen through the welter of recorded orders and dialogues she had just set theKatynForest to broadcast.
There were demands to police and security forces, directing them to deal with riots, bombings, and commando raids in various parts of the city. There were reports from firemen and patrol vehicles of wrecks, robberies, and tenement blazes. There was even an order, tight-beam and scrambled, to Spaceport Control, that all vessels lift off at once to avoid rebel attack. All the signals were broadcast from the starship. Its transmitter hopped frequencies automatically with the abruptness of a scanning receiver. And all of the messages were recorded, because nobody aboard now was competent to carry on a live dialogue inCzech. It could not be expected that the blurted demands would be obeyed, but at worst they would increase the confusion and cause real orders to be discounted as well.
Between each flurry of signals there was a five-second pause. During these pauses, the transmitter of theKatynForest was not blanking her own receivers. It was then that Sookie Foyle strained to hear a message on the Company's emergency push.
Not, of course, that therewas a great deal those remaining on the starship could do, except listen to their comrades die.
The back of the van had eight passengers for six seats, and one of the eight was Del Hoybrin. Albrecht Waldstejn was not complaining. The choice was more room and the sullen faces of a real firing party watching him. Still, when Sergeant Hummel said, "Hell, forgot the cuffs!" she poked him in the eye with the key.
The rescued officer cursed by reflex, then took the key and said in apology, "Youpeople shouldn't have done it. I… I mean-"
"Yeah, well," said the non-com, "save the congratulations for about ten blocks, huh?"
The only view from the back of the van was through the small communication window into the cab and through the windshield. Dwyer and Gratz were standing bent over, trying to peer out. Trooper Hoybrin braced his partner against the jolting vehicle, while Gratz tried to grip the side panel with one hand and Dwyer with the other. A third trooper was slitting the sheet metal with his knife. His eyes would not have time to react to the blur through so small an opening, but Waldstejn could not see that it would do any harm to try.
The squeal of the brakes was no adequate warning. Deceleration slammed everyone against the back of the cab.
"Roadblock!" said Churchie Dwyer as he struggled to clear his weapon from ben Mehdi's legs.
Waldstejn could hear Private Hodicky shouting, "Out of the way, fast! We've got orders to arrest saboteurs at the Port immediately!"
"Blue berets, "Gratz whispered. Sergeant Hummel had elbowed her way to the glass to look for herself. "Two trucks across the steet."
"Defense Police," the Cecach lieutenant said. He realized as he spoke that the identification was valueless at this juncture. It had been spewed out by a mind that wanted to avoid the realities of the moment by focusing on trivia.
"Sorry, sir," said a Czech speaker who did not sound in the least sorry. "My orders say nobody, so nobody gets through. You want to take it up with my Colonel, fine."
"All right," murmured Sergeant Hummel. "Dwy-er, Hoybrin, Gratz, and Diesson-out the back on three, turn rigjit, and kill it if it breathes." She touched the door latch with her left hand. In her right she held the assault rifle which had been part of her disguise. It was better for this job anyway. "Rest of you bastards, follow me to the left. Same drill."
"I need a gun," said Albrecht Waldstejn.
Hummel looked back at him through the tangle of soldiers sorting themselves to her instructions. There was no anger in her expression, only grim appraisal. "ForGod's sake," the non-com said, "will you keep your head the hell down?"
The young officer could see himself in the veteran's glance, even after she had faced back and started the count."One."Pasty and soft from ten days in a narrow cell. "Two." Unarmed and hopeless with a gun if there had been one available. "Three!" and Hummel took her troops onto the street like blue-fish into a school of herring.
Albrecht Waldstejn followed them out anyway.
The officer in charge of the roadblock died before he could glance toward what was happening at the back of the van. Dwyer's shot snapped through both his temples and splashed the colloid of his brain in ripples from the interior of his skull. Simultaneously, Sergeant Hummel sprayed three soldiers who were still on the open back of their ground-effect truck. After that, it was a shooting gallery; but the ducks shot back.
Two air cushion trucks had been swung across the street with a platoon of Defense Police aboard. The road behind the mercenaries had already jammed solidly, but their van was the first westbound vehicle to have been stopped. Ten seconds earlier and they would have gotten through unchallenged. As it was, the blue-capped troops were still deploying and were more concerned with setting up the roadblock than with the vehicles they had begun to stop with it. The Federals wilted under the unexpected fire.
The eight mercenaries rushed the trucks. The Defense Police who had not died in the first blast flopped to cover behind their vehicles. Trooper Gratz fired through the door of one of the truckcabs, then jerked it open. The driver was hunched down on the seat. He shot Gratz in the face with his assault rifle. The mercenary stumbled backward to the street. Waldstejn snatched at the dead man's gun and fought his rigid muscles for it. He twisted back with the weapon to receive the shot which he knew must be coming.
The police driver was dead. Gratz' preliminary round had drilled through the Federal's body from neck to pelvis. The tiny, directionally-stable projectile had killed the man quite surely, but the massive internal haemorrhage had not been fatal in time to prevent the victim from revenging himself.
Waldstejn jumped into the cab and locked the far door.
The truck clanged as mercenaries fired through its skirts to get at the Federals on the other side. Somebody had crawled onto the bed of the vehicle, but a burst of rifle fire had stopped or killed him. The Cecach officer dropped the weapon he had appropriated in order to drag the driver's body aside with both hands. The corpse slid out from under the wheel, and Waldstejn took its place.
The power was on. Waldstejn found it hard to see the controls while he bent over because his nose was almost on the dashboard. A Federal was tugging at the locked left-side door, shouting questions at him. Waldstejn let the turbine rev to full power for several seconds. Then he reached for the attitude control.
Someone fired an assault rifle point-blank into the door.
The light bullets disintegrated on the outer panel. They hit the inner panel as a spray of steel and glass. The portion that burned through into the cab proper flicked across the tall officer like a line of boils. He screamed. His fist slammed the control forward so abruptly that only the immense torque of the electric drive motors kept the fans from stalling. The truck lurched, then buried itself in the shop window across the sidewalk.
There was another ripping burst from an assault rifle. Waldstejn rose and twisted to look out the back window. His left arm and side were alive with cold fire. Jo Hummel was reloading her captured weapon by the cab of the second truck. When Waldstejn slid the lead truck forward, the Sergeant had the shot she had been waiting for. Her burst raked the line of Federals whose cover had just driven away from them. A dozen Defense Police sprawled on the pavement now. Trooper Powers sent the van through the gap between the trucks. She made a tire-squealing left turn as she cleared the cab of the vehicle which was still in position. Blue-bereted soldiers leaped away from her bumper.
The mercenaries stood and shot them down like driven deer.
"Come on, come on!" Powers was shouting. She reversed to clear the line of east-bound vehicles which the roadblock had stopped also. Most of them were already abandoned. One of the mercenaries began firing into them deliberately until a fuel tank blew up.
Waldstejn staggered out of the shop into which he had driven. He was dragging Gratz' weapon by the sling. His body was not working as it should have. All his mind could hold was his determination to reach the van before it drove away. He stepped blindly into Del Hoybrin and recoiled, nearly falling.
"Churchie's hit!" the big man wailed. He had just slid his comrade's form off the back of the truck. Dwyer was as limp in his arms as a grain sack. The front of his tunic was bloody from shoulder to waist.
"We'll get him back," wheezed the Cecach officer. He pointed to the van. Sergeant Hummel was poised beside the vehicle. She fired into a clot of Federal bodies where movement had suggested volition.
Trooper Hoybrin swept his left arm around Waldstejn's chest. He began trotting for the van, ignoring the weight of the two men and three weapons which he carried. Albrecht Waldstejn began to lose consciousness.
Blackness was a welcome relief from pain.
There was a check-point at Gate 2, a tunnel under the blast wall of the spaceport. The checkpoint was unmanned, and that was a very bad sign.
Hussein ben Mehdi got out of the van awkwardly. The two sprawled casualties made a close fit closer, though Hummel had ridden off in the cab and Gratz was not taking up any room at all.
"Well, I can drive in," the petite blonde was saying.
Sergeant Hummel stood beside her open door, peering across the boulevard. There was no traffic on it, presumably as a result of roadblocks elsewhere in the city. "Hodicky," the non-com asked, "did you ever know them not to have gate attendants here?"
The Praha native shook his head. "Let me check the Lieutenant, huh?" he said. He squeezed past Hummel as ben Mehdi walked forward.
The three-story buildings around the port were all sixty years old or less. That was the date that the fusion bottle of a freighter too large for the docking pits had failed. The first construction that had taken place afterwards was the encirclement of the whole port with a berm instead of trusting pits to deflect catastrophe from the city. An arched ramp with broadcast pylons led the largest vehicles up the vertical eight-meter outer face of the berm and down the inner slope. Radial tunnels ducked below ground level to serve lesser traffic. But there were always movement controls, especially now in wartime. And with multiple emergencies, real and imagined, crackling over the airwaves… the booth should not have been empty.
"Well," said Lieutenantben Mehdi, "the attendant ran away. Big deal."
Sergeant Hummel frowned. Passers-by were nervously watching the van and the troops around it. The squad was a nexus for the crisis that worried the civilians. "Maybe," said Hummel, "and maybe they decided there wasn't any way to hold this side." She waved at the blank wall across the peripheral boulevard. It was defended only by the empty kiosk and a tipping-bar gate. "Let's you and me walk through and see what's on the other side, Lieutenant."
Ben Mehdi went cold. Trooper Powers got out of the cab on her own side. "I'll go along," she said.
"Not till you learn some Czech, Bunny," said the non-com. Her voice sounded light until it cracked. "Lieutenant, leave that-" she pointed to the grenade launcher-"and take Diesson's rifle." She looked up at the troopers around her. "How's Dwyer?" she asked.
"Be okay if he gets to Doc pretty quick," said one of the men. "The Captain's coming around, sort of."
Hummel nodded. "Okay. Diesson, you're in charge. If this one's blocked, head for the ramp- Hodicky'll know where to find it. Let's go, Lieutenant."
Ben Mehdi followed the Sergeant numbly. There was, by Allah, no question of who was in charge, not here. He supposed he should be thankful to be considered an acceptable follower at a time like this. She would not have brought him a month ago, the bitch.
The Lieutenant was getting dizzy, in part because his torso was too tight to permit him to breath. His clam-shell armor had not been among the loot in theKatynForest.
Hummel glanced into the kiosk as they walked past it. The little booth was as empty as it had appeared to be from across the street. They could flip the pole up easily if they wanted. The van would not even have to break it off as they drove into the tunnel. "Well, who knows, Lieutenant?" the non-com said as she settled her rifle where she wanted it. "You might even be right about everything being clear."
They started down.
The tunnel dipped, then rose in a single fluid curve. Like the berm itself, the tunnel was designed to redirect a blast. It was quite impossible to hope to absorb the full potential of a fusion unit. The tunnel was concrete lined and three meters high, although the vehicular height was less since roof lines cut the chord rather than following the arc. There were steps along the right wall, but the two mercenaries kept to the vehicle way. The grade lengthened ben Mehdi's strides despite his nervousness.
The tunnel was only fifty meters long. The mercenaries were halfway through, at the nadir of the curve, when six armed soldiers appeared in silhouette at the spaceport end. "All right!" one of them shouted. "State your business."
"Sir," Hussein ben Mehdi called back, too caught up in the situation to be worried about the quality of his Czech, "we were ordered to stand by at the freighterBoudicca and await further orders." He could not tell the sex, much less the rank, of the troops because the bright daylight was behind them. Their weapons were clear enough, though. Automatic rifles like the one he carried, deadly in trained hands as his were not… and the squat, solid outline of a heavy grenade launcher whose capacity ben Mehdi was well able to imagine. But Allah would not permit his servant to be trapped in this hollow killing ground when A seventh figure strode against the background of the sky. "What's this?" the newcomer demanded. "You there, drop those guns! And-say, / know you!"
It was the Morale Section Colonel who had met theKatynForest when she docked.
"Run!" shouted Jo Hummel as she sprayed the Federal soldiers. Ben Mehdi ran, because there was nothing else to do.
The Colonel and two of his squad flopped face down on the concrete. The others sprang away as if flung by the muzzle blasts. The angle protected them from the second burst which Hummel sent up the tunnel as she herself turned. The opening behind her danced with motes of concrete settling upon the bodies.
"Tell-" the Lieutenant heard her shout. Then the grenade went off.
There was no reality in the tunnel but that of the blast. The Federal grenadier had lobbed the round in without exposing himself to rifle fire. That showed a competence the Lieutenant could appreciate, even as the shock wave pitched him forward. The grenade detonated on the tunnel roof. The curve protected even Sergeant Hummel from the shrapnel that rusticated the smooth concrete from which it ricochetted. Ben Mehdi glanced back as he rose. The Sergeant was sprawled in a fog of white lime and smoke from the bursting charge. She did not move, the bitch, thebitch, and the Lieutenant scrambled back to her side.
The shadows against the dust-smeared daylight were more than bodies and blast residues now. Federal troops were peering into the tunnel to see whether the grenade had cleared it. Ben Mehdi swung his rifle toward them. The unfamiliar weapon would not fire. Perhaps the safety was still on or he had not charged the rifle properly. He threw it down and began dragging Hummel by the arms.
A rifle bullet winked on the tunnel wall and spattered both mercenaries with bits ofitself. "Hold it there, you swine!" one of the oncoming figures shouted. The Federal's instincts were those of a policeman, not a combat soldier. At the moment, ben Mehdi was as defenseless as any deserter dragged out of an attic.
"Get down!" somebody cried in English.
The Lieutenant threw himself flat. Trooper Iris Powers squatted on the steps, halfway down the slope. She held her weapon low. The first armor-piercing projectile would bring a storm of automatic fire which would sweep all three of them into The little blonde emptied her magazine in a single twenty-round burst that was almost a directed explosion. Not even Del Hoybrin could have stood up to that recoil and kept the muzzle down. Powers managed by butting the weapon against a step and letting the concrete instead of her shoulder receive the jack-hammer blows. Precise aim was as impossible as it was unnecessary. The osmium projectiles ricocheted instead of shattering like bullets from the assault rifles. Buzzing projectiles and chunks of concrete ripped through the dusty tunnel like a round of canister.
Lieutenant ben Mehdi rose to his hands and knees again. His fingertips were bleeding from the way he had unconsciously tried to dig himself into the pavement. It hurt his hands too much to drag Hummel. He threw one of the non-com's arms over his shoulder and began to stagger up the slope with her in a packstrap carry.
Iris Powers did not help him with the burden. She reloaded and backed out behind the others with her weapon to her shoulder. Twice she fired into the reeking fog. The mercenaries were well clear before there was return fire from the inner mouth of the tunnel.
The truck and the troops with it waited as the trio stumbled back across the boulevard. There were sirens converging on them from three directions. To their rear, the wall around the port was as bleak as the one against which the condemned are stood.
She caught the signal just as another dummy message began to cycle through the transmitter. Foyle's hand flashed out and killed the transmitter's power in time for her to catch his tag, "-in Allah's name, Big Brother!"
Sookie Foyle slapped in the patch which fed all the intercoms into the main unit. "Big Brother has you," she said, hearing echoes of her voice from the bridge speakers and each compartment stern-ward in a reflected-mirror pattern. "Hold one for-"
Before the Communicator could get the word out, Sergeant Mboko's voice boomed "White One to Sister, tell us what you need."
Foyle listened with her eyes open as she always did. If her duties had required her to find a switch or dial instantly, her body would have responded. Her mind was in the world of visualized sounds crackling out of the speaker.
"Sister to White One," hissed the voice of Hussein ben Mehdi, "we made it to the wall but we can't get through and we can't get back. They got us bottled in a building across-" there was a blast of white noise which was not atmospherically generated. Something had exploded close enough to the commo helmet to overload its filters. The Lieutenant's voice resumed, "Save what you can, Stack. This was a good try but it-" an automatic weapon overprinted his signal- "Over."
Sergeant Mboko was on the bridge. Captain Ortschugin stood at the lip of theCommoBay, listening to the speaker as intently as Foyle did.
"Sister, hold what you got!" Mboko said. "You're at the entry point? Over."
"See you inParadise, White One. Over and out."
Sookie Foyle stared at Ortschugin as the Captain turned away. "I'll prepare to lift ship," she heard him say to Sergeant Mboko.
The roof of the adjacent building was afire. That meant there would not be another attempt to rush them from it. Six Federal soldiers had died before one had fired his grenade launcher as he fell back through the trap door. That had ended the rush, but it had not helped the trooper sprawled beside Albrecht Waldstejn with a bulged skull and a hole between his eyes.
Automatic rifles yammered across the boulevard. Waldstejn cursed and fired back. He cursed again. The recoil had hurt him, as usual, and he had, as usual, missed. There was one body crumpled on the inner slope of the blast wall, but Del Hoybrin had nailed it there. Now Federals within the spaceport slid only far enough up the berm to fire in the general direction of the roof overlooking them across the boulevard. They would probably duck back even if Waldstejn did not respond… but the next time they might pause long enough toaim, and that could be all she wrote for the two men still alive on the roof.
There were wrecked emergency vehicles in either direction along the boulevard. A truck and several police cars were burning. Water still leaked from the riot control vehicle which a garbled message had sent to the scene with its water cannon. Surprise and confusion had made cold meat of the first waves who did not realize they were being dropped straight into a war. But killing Federal troops was not going to do any long-term good for Albrecht Waldstejn and the team which had tried to rescue him.
Nothing was.
Del Hoybrin fired across the radial street. He was too late. Theshoop from a window there became the shattering detonation of an anti-tank rocket. It demolished much of the second floor of the building in which the mercenaries were holed up. The van in which they had arrived burned in the street. Its smoke was at least an edge of cover for the rest of the team on the ground floor with the wounded.
The Cecach officer had stumbled up the stairs, pushed by the big trooper since there was not enough room to be carried. Churchie Dwyer had been alive when they left him, and Jo Hummel was breathing though unconscious with streaks of dried blood beneath her nose and ears. Enforced motion and the pain of his cracked ribs had ridden Waldstejn out of the state of shock into which he had begun to slip. Now he was becoming increasingly dizzy. The building seemed to tremble even after the warhead's racket had died away. The blast wall across the boulevard was expanding as his eyes tried to focus on it.
The blast wall was not moving. A'starship was sliding toward it, broadside, at a measured pace.
The rest of the Companywere coming for them, and they were bringing theKatynForest.
"Clear the area!" blatted the starsliip's external speakers in badCzech. "This area is about to be destroyed! Clear the area!"
Cooper tensed as the volleys ripped out from Holds Two and Three. "Getdown," croaked Gunner Jensen. The skin of his face was red, and it would be weeks before he had eyelashes again; but he was master of his gun and his section, by Saint Ultruda!
The inner face of the berm was turf. It absorbed the hail of projectiles with no sign of their passage. The score of Federal troops there had been concerned only with the building on the other side of the blast wall. They leaped and died against the turf, scythed down by the shots from behind them. There was no target worthy of the automatic cannon as yet, and Jensen did not want his three crewmen endangered by rising to fire their shoulder weapons when the infantry sections had the business well in hand.
Herzenberg tried to smile at her section leader. The effect was grim, but the thought brought her an equally-awful rictus from Jensen in reply. Herzenberg had insisted on being in Hold One with the rest of Gun Section, though she could not have been of much practical use even if she were better trained. The polymer splints on her right arm and leg permitted her to move without restriction. Nothing could change the blinding pain such movement caused, however, except enough drugs to knock her flat anyway.
TheKatynForest was steadier under her own power than she had been when she drew from the broadcast grid, but she still bucked as she started to lift. The sloping berm dropped below as they approached it. Someone stood on the nearest of the buildings, waving a gun butt-upward.
The brick and stone facades of other buildings began to powder as the troopers in Holds Two and Three opened fire. They were leaning over their copper breastworks to shoot down at an angle. The cannon could not be depressed in its present mounting. A target had to be in the same plane for the gun to bear. The speakers continued to call their warning, but it was doubtful whether words could be heard over the muzzle blasts. Still, it was the most chance that Mboko could give non-combatants under the circumstances.
TheKatynForest began to settle as if to land on the peripheral boulevard. With her belly ten meters in the air, the vessel paused. The intercom boomed in Ortschugin's gruff English, "Bridge to Guns-here we go." With a gentleness that belied the Swobodan's looks, the starship managed the incredibly difficult job of rolling two degrees on its axis. Jensen's sights swung down across building fronts, then over the Cecach soldiers and vehicles huddled along the structures where the angle protected them from the trapped mercenaries. The Federal troops were blazing away furiously at theKatynForest, though bodies and cratered facades showed the damage the Company's infantry was wreaking.
Sergeant Jensen started a block in front of the starship's bow and traversed left on Continuous Fire.
The big osmium slugs took buildings down in a row like a demonstration of controlled demolition. The lighter weapons had blown gaps in the facing walls. The cannon's slow traverse sawed through the massive but brittle structures, including the load-bearing firewalls separating adjacent buildings. Bricks and blocks and humans, most of them civilians huddled in their rooms, cascaded into the boulevard. Federal soldiers flattened to the pavement while Jensen's fire ripped overhead. The debris avalanched over them.
The shattering fire paused momentarily while Pavlovich slid a fresh drum into the ammunition feed. Then Jensen dumped the full hundred rounds down the street by which the rescue commando had approached the port. The gun raked buildings on both sides with the exception of the one on the left corner from which Albrecht Waldstejn had waved as the starship loomed over the blast wall. Secondary explosions blew geysers of brick and stone from the stately cascades that filled the street.
"Set her down, Control!" Jensen called as Cooper this time reloaded the automatic cannon. TheKatyn Forest rocked level and settled onto the boulevard. The ship had hovered less than a full minute to give the big gun a chance before the locals were ready to react to the situation.
When the cannon opened up, the infantry had shifted its fire to concentrate on the buildings to the left of the one in which their comrades were trapped. The Federals in that stretch too had already been silenced. But as familiar figures staggered from the corner building, the Gunner opened fire again. In part, it was for safety's sake, demolishing everything in sight that faced the boulevard. That way no one could crawl to a window and shoot a trooper on the edge of safety.
There was more to it than good technique, however. Roland Jensen was a veteran who knew that killing was a matter of business, not emotion. But there were two figures fewer than there should have been running toward the ship, and three of those he did see were being dragged or carried by others.
It gave Gunner Jensen a certain pleasure to see Cecach buildings collapsing with a roar as he drew his sights through them.