All four were dead. Winward glared down at them, gasping for air... and as his rage subsided into the rivers of new pain coming from arms, cheek, and shoulder, his brain began to function again and his eyes searched out the weapons his enemies had been manning.
Mortars, or something very much like them. Simple tubes with a firing mechanism at the bottom, the shells stacked nearby. By inference, they were designed with an equally simple impact detonator. Scooping up an armful, he trotted back to the rear of the roof.
A couple of faces were peering upwards from the window he'd smashed, and his first shell therefore went in there. The explosion blew out a couple more windows, and Winward followed it with one aimed more toward the monitor room's center. Then he turned his attention to the guns and ground crews shooting uselessly at him from below. By the time his arms were empty it was abundantly clear that those cannons wouldn't be firing again for a long time.
Behind him, the roof stairway door slammed open. Winward didn't even bother to look, but grabbed the parapet edge and swung down into the room below. His nanocomputer compensated for a slight overbalance, and he landed among the glass shards on his feet.
The place was a mess. Where the two mortar shells had hit, floor and ceiling were torn and blackened. Dozens of the monitor screens had been smashed by flying debris; the rest were blank. At least six bodies were visible.
I did all this. The thought hit him with unexpected force, sending a queasy shiver through his body. For the first time in his life, he truly understood why the Dominion of Man had won its war against the Trofts... and why its citizens had rejected their returning protectors.
Gingerly, he picked his way through the rubble to the elevator and pushed the call button. Risky, perhaps, if the Qasamans hadn't learned yet not to send piles of people against him. But the emotional reaction combined with loss of blood was making him feel light-headed, and for the moment the elevator seemed safer than trying to handle stairs.
An instant later a flash of light from the side caught his eye, and he turned to find the woods beyond the Dewdrop on fire. Involuntarily, he hissed with the fear that he'd been too late, that the ship was being attacked. But on the heels of that came the memory of his instructions to Telek before he left. F'ahl had heard the explosions and obediently swept the forest with laser fire. What it had done to the soldiers waiting there was uncertain; but it had sure as hell not done much for the foliage, and if any surviving Qasamans were still at their posts they were probably thinking more of escape than attack.
Speaking of which....
The elevator car arrived-empty-and he punched the second button from the top.
For a wonder, the elevator performed as directed-perhaps the override controls had been on the top floor?-and he bounded out into a small, deserted room.
Deserted, but not quiet. Like the floor above, this one was filled with electronic gear, and from a panel near the middle two voices were speaking.
Propping open the elevator doors, Winward stepped over to the talkative board.
Communications, probably, left running when the people on duty heard the ruckus overhead and wisely cut out. He wondered whether the mike at this end was still open, decided there was a simple way to find out. "Can you hear me?" he called.
The voices stopped abruptly. "Who are you?" one of them asked a moment later in passable Anglic.
"Michael Winward, currently in charge of this tower," he said. If he was lucky, they'd tell him why he wasn't really in control yet, and he'd know where he needed to attack next. Link should already be on his way over from the Dewdrop; together the two of them should be able to make a respectable showing-
"Michael, this is Almo," Pyre's voice cut unexpectedly into the line. "What's your situation?"
Winward had to try twice to get any words out. "Almo! Where are you?"
"In the mayor's underground command center," Pyre replied. "Your return from the dead seems to have rattled him somewhat."
Despite his pain and weakness, Winward felt a grim smile spread across his face.
Rattled, indeed. Out-and-out terrified, if the man had any sense at all.
Pyre was speaking again. "Now, Mr. Mayor, the situation seems to have changed. I have you, Winward has the tower-"
"He does not control the tower," Kimmeron put in. "I have been speaking to the tower commander-"
"I can take control whenever I wish," Winward interrupted harshly. Pyre was clearly attempting to negotiate with the Qasamans; the stronger the hand Winward could give him, the better the chances he could get back to the ship before he passed out from loss of blood. "And the weapons trained on the Dewdrop have been neutralized. F'ahl can lift any time he wants to."
Kimmeron's voice was low, but his words were precise. "You seek to trade your lives for more of ours. I have said that that is an unacceptable bargain. You know too much about us; at whatever additional cost, you must not be allowed to leave."
Winward didn't wait for Pyre's reply, but stepped quickly back into the elevator. In Kimmeron's place he would probably have made the same decision, and before Pyre's negotiations officially broke down he wanted to be on his way back to the Dewdrop. The long floor-selection panel gleamed at him as he reached toward it-
And paused.
All those buttons... far more than a building this size needed....
Blocking the doors open again, he stepped back into the communications room.
Pyre was saying something about mass destruction; Winward didn't bother to let him finish. "Almo?" he called. "Listen-remember the idea someone had that a lot of the Qasaman industry was underground? I think this tower is an entrance to the place. Shall I go out and get Dorjay and head down to take a look?"
He waited, heart pounding, hoping Pyre would know how to use the opening he'd just given him. Winward had a dim idea, but his mind was beginning to fog over, and he knew instinctively he couldn't trust it to follow any straight logical lines. He hoped Pyre was in better shape.
"You seem upset, Mr. Mayor," Pyre's voice came through the fog. "May I assume your underground facilities are something you'd rather we not see?" There was no response, and after a moment Pyre went on, "We can get down there, you know.
You've seen what we can do, and how little effect your guns have on us. With our ship free and clear, we can go down the tower, take a good look, and still get off Qasama alive."
"We will kill you all," Kimmeron said.
"You know better than that. So I'll offer you a deaclass="underline" release all our people unharmed and we'll leave without seeing what you've got down there."
Kimmeron's laugh was a harsh bark. "You seek to trade something for a lack of something. Even if I wanted to agree, how could I persuade others to do so?"
"You explain that we take home details of city and village life, or we take home every secret you've got," Pyre told him coldly. "And your time is running out.
Winward will start down the tower in three minutes, and I can't guarantee Link won't find his way underground even sooner."
It took the full three minutes and a little more, but in the end Kimmeron agreed.
Chapter 22
It took another fifteen minutes for Kimmeron to get the agreement of the Purma officials who were holding Cerenkov and Rynstadt. The radio jamming wasn't lifted for five minutes longer, but Pyre had already been allowed to send Link a message via the tower's outside speakers, warning the other Cobra to lie low and hold off on any attack. Telek, when Pyre was finally allowed through to her, agreed to the arrangement and directed Link to wait in the tower with Winward until Pyre made it back. Then, with Kimmeron his reluctant companion, Pyre got into a car and headed down the broad avenues toward the airfield... and waited with lasers ready for the inevitable ambush.