“Move when you hear the horn blasts,” Sula said. “Now go!”
She turned to One-Step. “I need you to go back to the Ngeni Palace,” she said, “and bring all the groups waiting there to the square.”
She knew she might have to repeat this trick more than once, with fresh cannon fodder.
Firing began at the funicular once more as she waited on the Boulevard of the Praxis while her army got into position. Casimir reported that it was the same Naxid tactic as before—covering fire for an attack that hadn’t started yet.
“Do you suppose all that shouting is meant to draw our attention away from something else?” he wondered.
She’d been thinking much the same thing. She tried to contact the teams she’d placed around the perimeter, but they reported nothing. Then she put on her headset and tried Macnamara.
“Nothing’s happening here, my lady,” he said. “There’s no sign of the Naxids at all. A few action groups are still coming up the road. We’ve blocked the gate with trucks and won’t let them pass until they identify themselves, and then we send them on to the Ngeni Palace as you ordered.”
She told Macnamara to send them to Ashbar Square instead.
“Very good, my lady.”
“What is the status of the antimatter guns?” she asked. “Can you remove them from the emplacements?”
“Yes, my lady,” he replied. “They’re the same guns we trained on, and we can take them out of the turrets. We’ll have to remove and then reattach the big antiradiation shield, but all it will take is time.”
“Good. Pull one out and put it on the back of a truck. Let me know when you’re ready,” she concluded.
She had been worried about the antiproton guns—they were an invincible weapon right up to the moment when the Naxids brought up antiproton guns of their own and blew them to radioactive dust. Getting the weapons out of the conspicuous turrets and putting them in a more camouflaged location might be the best way of preserving them.
There was a sudden burst of fire up ahead. Sula couldn’t see where it was coming from, and had to assume that one of the groups she’d sent into the lanes and alleys had run into the enemy. She didn’t want the Naxids to think of sending reinforcements there, so she decided it was time to launch her next attack.
“Blow your horns!” she shouted. “Let’s go!”
The cars, vans, and trucks began honking their horns, each producing anything from a saucy little blip to a bass organ roar. Her suicide squads rolled ahead, driving very large vehicles in reverse. Even in reverse they managed a good pace, though some were clearly better drivers than others. She hoped the swerving would help keep them alive.
When the advance wave hit the Naxid guns’ preprogrammed defense area, the air suddenly filled with hammering that began to shred the trucks. The driving grew more erratic as pieces flew off and clattered in the street.
There were at least three machine guns, she thought, because at least three of the trucks were getting hit at once.
The rest of the reserves followed in a dense swarm, firearms thrusting out the windows, some spraying the buildings ahead. Sula followed at a run, dashing up one of the walks until she encountered the first scattered bodies, then she ducked into a shop where bullets had marred the neat window displays.
Five Torminel looked at her in surprise from amid a collection of pens and stationery. “Move up!” she shouted. “We need your unit to move ahead and leapfrog the forces I’ve just sent in!”
The Torminel seemed to see the point of this, and they ran out of the shop, beating on doors and windows as they advanced and calling out to their comrades to join them.
Ahead, the street was noisy chaos. The smell of burning caught at the back of her throat. Bullets cracked overhead. Sula sprinted across the boulevard and jumped over a dead body that lay sprawled in the doorway of a vegetable market.
Something about the body made her stop before she entered the store. She braced her back against the solid doorway and saw that it was PJ Ngeni.
He had been hit in the chest and had fallen backward to the pavement. His elaborate hunting rifle lay across his body. His face bore an expression of wistful surprise.
Sula felt as if a soft pillow were pressed on her face, and she forced herself to breathe.
She had liked PJ. She had liked his amiable goodwill, and his foolish bravery, and the accuracy of his social sense. He had been everything that was fond and silly in the old order, and everything that the war had doomed.
A bullet glanced off the pavement nearby. She opened the door and stepped into the vegetable store.
Three Terrans looked at her. One was the surprised-looking man with the receding chin who had refused her orders to advance. Another was a young woman with greasy hair, and a third a teenage boy with bad skin, his lips stained with berry juice. Apparently they’d been having a feast of food gathered off the ration.
“Get your people together,” Sula told them. “Get up the street. You’re going to leapfrog the units that just went in.”
“Well,” the man said, “that’s going to be hard because—”
“I don’tcare how hard it is!” Sula said. “Just get out there anddo it.”
“Well,” the young man said, “we weresupposed to be attacking a prison. I don’t even know what we’redoing up here on the hill.”
Rage flared in Sula’s veins. “What we’redoing, ” she said, “is winning the war, you incompetent fuck! Now getout there!”
He nodded, as if acknowledging a minor rhetorical point. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think this thing is very well thought out, because—”
Sula remembered that she’d left her rifle behind at the Ngeni Palace. She reached for her pistol, pulled it out of the holster, touched the activation stud and pointed it at the group leader.
“Brave soldiers are dying for every second you hide in here,” she said. “Now are you going to show some leadership, or am I going to shoot you like I promised in ourlast conversation?”
The woman and the boy gaped at the sight of the pistol. A stubborn expression crossed the leader’s face. “Not till I have my say,” he said, “because—”
Sula shot him in the head. The woman gave a little shriek as blood and brains spattered her. The boy took a step back and knocked over a crate of pomegranates. The little purple-red fruits bounced as they rolled along the floor.
Sula saw Caro Sula lying dead on the cart, her translucent skin paper-white. She saw Caro vanish into the river, her hair a flash of gold.
For a moment, as she looked down at the body, she saw Caro Sula’s face staring back at her.
The coppery smell of blood swamped her senses and she clamped down hard as her stomach tried to quease its way past her throat. The pistol swayed in her hand. “Get out onto the street!” she told the other two. “And do itnow! And if you head anywhere but toward the battle, I’ll shoot the both of you, I swear.”
They edged around her, their weapons held in their hands as if they’d never seen them before. “Get up the road!” Sula shouted. The two reached the doorway, stepped gingerly over PJ Ngeni, and broke into a trot as they jogged up the street, toward the fighting.
Sula followed. She picked up PJ’s rifle and looked at its display. It hadn’t fired a single shot.
She slung it over her shoulder and moved up the street, pounding on doors and windows as she went.
“Come out of there,” she called, “you cowardly sacks of shit! Get moving! Move, you useless ass-wipes!”
Fighters emerged from their hiding places, and she sent them into the firestorm ahead. All of the vehicles had pulled off the road or been destroyed. Gunfire was roaring nonstop.