“Get those people moving, you cowardly son of a bitch!”Sula shrieked,“or I’ll come up there and personally shoot you in the fucking head!”
The young man’s startled face took on an expression of deep indignation. “If you’re going to talk like that,” he said, “I don’t see why I should continue this conversation.”
Sula stared open-mouthed as the orange end-stamp filled the screen.“The bastard!” she shouted, and cocked her arm to throw her comm unit through the open window. Then she thought better of it and lowered her arm.
She called more units and received promises that they would try to move forward. Firing briefly increased, then died away again. The fierce hammering of machine guns sounded clear in the morning air. She knew that those guns were programmable to fire at any movement detected within a certain defined area. It would be hard to move fighters in against them as long as their ammunition supply held out.
She considered sending in her reserves, but was afraid they would get pinned down as well. There was no one she could trust to scout the enemy who didn’t have another vital job. It was a job, she realized, that she was going to have to do herself.
She rolled up her maps and left the palace, passing the Torminel guards at the gate. Several groups of fighters, just arrived, had parked in the street, waiting for orders.
“I need someone to give me a ride,” she said.
A Lai-own rose to open the door of his long violet-colored car, but a familiar voice spoke.
“That would be me, beauteous lady.”
Sula grinned. “One-Step!”
The onetime vagrant of Riverside was dressed in clean coveralls and heavy boots. A Sidney Mark One was slung over his shoulder, and there were strands of cheap glass beads around his neck.
She ran to his truck and gave him a hug. “One-Step hasn’t seen you,” he said reproachfully. “The lovely lady’s been too busy for One-Step.”
“I’m about to get busier,” Sula said.
“Here.” He took off a strand of beads and put them around Sula’s neck. “These will keep you safe.”
She blinked. “Thanks.”Whatever works, she thought.
She jumped into the passenger seat of his truck, and One-Step pushed the throttle forward and eased it into the crowded street.
For the next twenty minutes she viewed the areas where the attack had gone in, and saw where wrecked vehicles and scattered bodies signaled the high-water mark of the advance. The long straight streets provided ideal fields of fire for enemy heavy weapons. The Naxids dominated the streets from the far end and were hardening their positions. Something, she thought, would have to break things loose.
As she was finishing her survey, she heard a torrent of fire from somewhere else in the city. She paused and waited for a communication.
“Four-nine-one,” came Casimir’s voice in her helmet, “this is Wind. The Naxids are up to something. We’re getting a lot of fire from positions in those hotels down there. It’s obviously meant to make us keep our heads down. I can hear them starting to shout again, so they’ll be charging again fairly soon.”
Sula asked if he thought he was in any trouble.
“We’re just fine, lover,” he said. “You do what you need to do, and don’t worry about us.”
She asked if he could spare Sidney.
“Sidney? Sure. Where do you want him sent?”
She had him brought to Ashbar Square, where she had collected her reserves. There, amid the scent of blossoming ayaca trees, she unrolled her maps on a marble bench beneath the statue of Enlightenment Bringing Joy to the People. Sidney arrived just as the firing at the funicular grew to a vast roar.
“You live on the High City,” she asked him. “How do we get around those Naxid positions?”
In addition to the long, straight streets in the High City, there were also small pedestrian lanes lined with small shops, and alleys and little squares behind the shops intended for service vehicles. Sula had first entered Sidney’s shop through just such an alley. They were marked on her maps, but it was difficult to tell from the maps exactly how to enter the lanes and what could be found there.
Sidney pointed out the byways he knew and explained how to access them. Sula called several of her commanders and gave them instructions.
“Stay off the main roads,” she said. “Leave your vehicles behind and move up through the alleys. We can expect that the Naxids will have guards here, but they won’t be in commanding positions, they’ll be close, where you can reach them. Keep moving and you’ll get behind those heavy gun positions and can take them out.” She looked at Sidney. “You can lead one group, can’t you?”
“Of course, my lady.”
She sent them on their way and turned to the reserve units that were clustered around the square. The din at the funicular was dying away.
“Those were police in the lead this time,” Casimir reported. “Urban Patrol. I think they’re running out of Fleet landing groups.” He gave a laugh that sounded like shale sliding down a slope. “It may be the Motor Patrol charging next.”
Cheered, Sula left the fountain, went to an area where a number of vehicles were parked and jumped onto the flat bed of a truck. “Gather around!” she called, and took off her helmet. She shook out her blond hair and gazed out over her fighters. There were three or four hundred, and she had never laid eyes on most of them before. They included the tall Lai-own with their feathery hair, the shorter Torminel with their large nocturnal eyes shaded by goggles or dark glasses, the pale expressionless Daimong with their gaping mouths and round, hollow, startled-looking eyes, the Cree with their huge ears and dark purple flesh, and the Terrans, who looked more like curious schoolchildren than determined soldiers.
Sula took a long, drawn-out breath, the air sweet with the scent of morning blossoms, and then shouted out into the morning.
“Which of you is the bravest?”
There was a moment of surprise, and then a half-articulate shout went up and she saw a sudden forest of pumping fists and waving rifles.
“Right,” she said, and began to point. “You,andyou, and you there…” Then she looked down at the man with the beads dangling around his neck. “Not you, One-Step,” she said. “I’ve got other plans for you.”
When she had her dozen chosen, she brought them up to the hydraulic tailgate of the truck: five Torminel, two Daimong, three Terrans, and a pair of Lai-own so nearly identical that they might have been twins.
“I need the bravest,” she said, “because I need you to drive like hell right up the Boulevard of the Praxis and the Street of Righteous Peace. I need you to drive until your vehicles are so shot up they can’t move any longer.”
The Naxids’ computer-controlled heavy weapons were programmed to fire at movement, and would shoot at the nearest targets first. Her plan was to provide targets that would suck up all those enemy rounds, targets behind which the rest of her force could advance.
“You’ll all be in trucks,” she told her dozen. “And you’ll be charging in reverse, so that the rear of the trucks will take most of the damage and you won’t be committing suicide.”At least not so blatantly.
Sula activated the record function on her sleeve display. “I want your names,” she said, “so that when they write the histories of this battle, you’ll be in them.”
Pride sang in their voices when they spoke their names.
She made her assignments, then gave orders to the rest of the reserves. They were to fill their vehicles with fighters and charge up the streets behind the dozen of the advance group. They weren’t to stop and take cover until all the advance group were stopped dead or until their own vehicles were hit.