Breathing hard, the two giants knelt over the twitching body.
“Incredible,” breathed Jarmo. “If this is an indigenous life-form, it’s something they left out of the briefings.”
Jun wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. “Almost had you.”
Jarmo nodded, “I don’t know if I could have pulled it off alone. I want you to take this thing back to the security center. See if the medical center people can identify it.”
Jun looked disgusted for a moment, then pulled off his jacket and wrapped the thing in it. Jarmo accompanied him out into the terminal, waving off the security people who had come to investigate the plasma burst.
Before he was halfway back to the security center, Jarmo heard the crackle of gunfire outside. He was already trotting when his phone beeped. Beginning to run, he snapped, “I’m on my way.”
Thirteen
At about ten o’clock Thursday night, the battle for the spaceport began in earnest. The first steps went according to plan for Steinbach, as he succeeded in drawing off the enemy Stormbringers with his own. Steinbach followed up by sending in his tactical squad, almost fully accounted for now, with the militia men backing them up.
The tactical squad moved through the parking lot at a brisk trot. Captain Qing at the point felt invulnerable in his full body-shell armor. The men behind him cheered as they broke from cover and charged the remaining distance to the doors. A wild volley of covering fire from the militia lashed the building in front of them.
Inside, the front line of security people pulled back to the escalators, leaving their dead behind. A group of giants let them pass, then opened up with plasma rifles as the tactical squad tackled the barricades. Despite their body-shell armor, several men went down. The rest took cover and opened up with automatic rifles and exploding slugs. A vicious firefight at close range began.
“Pull them back, Jarmo,” insisted the Governor.
“They have to hold until the Mechs arrive, sir,” replied the giant.
“Pull them back! We can’t let them get slaughtered. We can hold the security center, let them have the rest.”
Jarmo swiveled his great head. “If we give up the rest of the terminal now, they will gain a great morale boost. We need to hold until either they break, or the Mechs arrive.”
The Governor paced back and forth in the security center reception area, fuming. Sergeant Manstein, Jun and Jarmo all watched him. Finally, he gestured impatiently. “All right, all of you go up, but keep your heads down! Just hold them until the Mechs land.”
The tactical squad had carried the fight down to the second floor and now the fighting was desk to desk, door to door. A gigantic leg, blown clean off, was draped over the escalator handrail. A headless suit of body-shell lay nearby.
When Jarmo committed himself and the last of his reserves, it was too much for Captain Qing. He had already lost half his men and there seemed to be no sign of a break in the enemy defenses. The security center in particular, should he even manage to get that far, looked impregnable.
He called an orderly retreat, which combined with Jarmo’s last ditch charge to turn into a rout. Men danced in their body-shell armor as countless rounds struck them. Upstairs, the militiamen had just triumphantly entered the terminal, expecting little resistance. The sight of the tactical squad in full retreat, dragging their wounded, set up a panic. Jarmo, with the handful of giants and security men still standing, chased them from the building and back into the relative safety of the parking lot.
Jarmo sat halfway up the escalator, his great chest heaving. Through a bullet-shattered skylight overhead he examined the night sky. The mechs should have arrived by now. What could have stopped them?
The first flakes of snow fell as Steinbach stood behind a lifter with his field glasses leveled on the terminal. Every militia trooper was engaged in the assault, except for Steinbach himself, who preferred to survey the battle from a more comfortable angle.
He startled when Major Drick Lee appeared at his side. He grimaced, turning slowly to face the man, whom he was rapidly coming to despise.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought I ordered everyone into the attack.”
Major Lee snorted and said nothing.
Steinbach returned his eyes to his field glasses. He ground his teeth. “Just because you’re related to a senator doesn’t make you God, Major. You’re a soldier out here, just like the rest of us.”
“Look, General,” began Major Lee, “I don’t want trouble with you, but if you think I’m charging through that parking lot just to save a building, you’re out of your mind.”
“We aren’t fighting for a building, Major.”
“Then let’s just blow the place up! Unlimber the big batteries and have done with this little fiasco. Then we’ll have another eight to ten years of profits before the Nexus bothers to ship the next fool out here.”
Steinbach jumped a bit at the mention of the missile batteries. He swiveled to examine the walls of Fort Zimmerman, just visible on the horizon. He looked for smoke trails, but as yet there were none. It was only a matter of time, however. Whatever had possessed him to put his satchel into that locker?
“We’ll do this my way,” Steinbach told him.
Major Lee shrugged disinterestedly. “Suit yourself, but count me out of the heroics.”
Fifteen minutes later, the tactical squad was repulsed and came staggering back to the lifters. Medical corpsmen shouted and rushed about. Steinbach slumped down in the seat of his limo, defeated. The missiles would have to come now.
They waited, regrouping and applying first aid, until midnight. Steinbach kept a sharp lookout on Fort Zimmerman, and tried to get a hold of someone over there on his phone several times without success. He kept waiting for the batteries to wind up and snap off their missiles, but nothing happened. Hours passed and Steinbach became increasingly apprehensive. He had just sent a cruiser up to the fort to see what was going on when Major Lee sauntered over to his car.
“Reports of fighting up at the fort are coming in over KXUT,” remarked Major Lee. He had been sitting in one of the lifters, idling the engine to run the heater. “They say some kind of riot is going on. Maybe the banquet got seriously out of hand.”
Steinbach looked up the hill to the fort, noting for the first time that the floodlights on the guardtowers were out.
What was going on up there?
One of the few official events that Governor Zimmerman truly enjoyed attending was New Grunstein’s annual militiamen’s banquet and ball. Held in the central hall of Fort Zimmerman, he always found the food excellent and the entertainment reasonable. Moreover, each year he was asked to make a speech, which was always well-received by the agreeable crowd. Sitting at the high table mounted on the stage, he argued good-naturedly with a militia officer, his mouth full of Garmish polar cod.
“Females are best at the age of fifteen, I tell you, and I speak from vast experience,” expounded Zimmerman. His face was florid from too much hork-leaf wine. “These days I will have nothing to do with a paygirl who is over sixteen. After that, it seems to me that something of the glow of youth begins to fade from them. It’s difficult to put your finger on, but it’s there.”
The officer made a polite gesture of agreement. “Isn’t it about time for you to address the assembly, Governor?”
“Quite right, quite right,” said Zimmerman. He stood ponderously, his ample belly brushing the table edge as he heaved himself erect.
“The stairs are right there, Governor,” said a deputy, taking his elbow. “I’ll just help you put on this throat-mike.”
The Governor and the deputy fumbled with the microphone for several seconds before it was in place. Zimmerman pushed the larger man away in irritation and mounted the steps on unsteady legs. The deputy followed to stand beside the podium, his thick arms crossed and his autoshades in place.