Body-armored figures swarmed forward down the corridor, groups forming fire-parties and then leapfrogging forward. Pulser rifles whined as they "checked" the rooms to either side with fire, and an occasional grenade blasted fragments and dust out into the corridor itself. The view narrowed as the man leaning against the door let his head droop; all they could see then was the circle of sopping carpet, and the dead bodies scattered across it, insurrectionist and Chairman's Guard.
"We need the access code, traitor," a voice said, cold with hate.
The man looked up again, seeing his own bloody face reflected in the visor-shield of the enemy standing over him. Boots kicked away weapons.
"Don't, George! Don't do it!" Evidently the attackers could hear that clearly too, and they looked up and around. The one with the visored helmet laughed.
"Don't be brave, George—be smart." He ground his foot down on the prone man's shattered leg, bringing a convulsive moan of agony. "The access code! Give it to us, now!"
"I'll . . . give . . ." the man wheezed.
The visored face nodded, bent to hear. At that range Pierre could see through the visor, see the flicker of horror as the wounded man's fingers dropped the lighter to the carpet and he realized what was about to happen.
"Don't George, don't—it's useless, don't—"
An instant's searing flame showed through the pickup, and then the rippling bubble of melted plastic. A long hollow boooomm sounded through the fabric of the building, echoing up through ventilators and elevator shafts. Two dozen pairs of eyes swivelled to the exterior view, and halfway up the tower they saw windows punched out in an echoing bellow of flame.
Saint-Just was busy at his console. "That was part of the automated defenses," he said, in his colorless bureaucrat's voice. "Inoperable. George Henderson led a party back down through the shafts to enemy-held floors to try and activate it manually." The pale, passionless eyes rose for a second. "He succeeded."
"How long until we have the systems back?"
"One hour forty-five minutes," the head of Security said. "Captain Henderson has bought us some time; besides their casualties, they'll have to wait for that level to cool, or bring in firefighting equipment. On the other hand, we've also suffered very severe losses. It's going to be a tossup."
Not for the first or last time that day, Rob S. Pierre wished that he could pray.
Liberty and Equality massed fourteen million tons each, more than twice the weight of a superdreadnaught like the Rousseau, and they were armored and armed to match. Ordinarily a close-range engagement would crush the ship like a food pack under a power-armor boot. Their problem was that they couldn't approach the planetary surface as closely as a mobile ship. Everything they could throw towards Rousseau would also be thrown towards the planetary surface where their families lived. Even fanatics would hesitate at that prospect.
"Hesitate, but not forever," Captain Robert Norton muttered to himself, leaning back in the command chair. Aloud: "Hold station."
"Citizen Captain." His Tac officer spoke, and Norton glanced at the appropriate repeater.
Goddammit, Citizen ThisandthatRank not only sounds ridiculous, it's cumbersome when you're in a hurry, some distant part of his mind fumed. Probably the irritation was comforting because it was so familiar. Few of the officers who'd served before the Revolution were comfortable with the new titles.
"They're launching their LACs," he said, watching the display's schematics indicate small vessels swarming out of the fortresses' holds. "Logical."
Light Attack Craft were designed for close-in point defense. They had no armor to speak of, no sidewalls, and only a single light energy gun and strap-on pods of single-shot missiles. Putting them up against a superdreadnaught was like sending ants against an elephant. But ants could sting, and enough of them . . . and he was a stationary target, too.
"Launch," he said. "Let's try and close up the net."
The huge ship shuddered as her broadside batteries went to salvo, and scores of heavy missiles streaked across the screens. Engagement ranges were insanely close; the forts would have cut him into drifting wreckage if they'd dared use their laser and graser batteries, but Rousseau was shooting up. They might still blast him, if they were desperate enough. He glanced around. Point defense was active, treating the LACs as if they were missiles themselves. Insane. Nobody was going to have time to react to anything.
"Closing," the Tac officer said. "Ten point two seconds to launch. Mark."
Spots of brilliant light began to flare silently against the blackness and unwinking stars of space; the tank listed them as nuke warheads, the stabbing flicker of bomb-pumped X-ray swords, the fuzzier explosions of fusion bottles rupturing under the massive fists of Rousseau's energy batteries. Machines were dueling with machines, and men and women died.
And here I am a sitting duck, he thought bitterly. Nothing for a captain to do; the ship couldn't maneuver.
He looked to another screen, this one showing his assigned targets for bombardment. That made him lick dry lips. Insane, he thought again. Kinetic energy bombardment, warheadless missiles fired straight down at—literally—astronomical velocities. When they met the surface, mass in motion would be converted into heat. They didn't need warheads. The thought of that type of strike on a populated area, on Nouveau Paris, for Christ's sake, made his testicles try to crawl up back inside his abdomen.
"We didn't start it," he reminded himself. The gang of madmen who did start it had used nukes in a populated zone, and that showed you the sort of thing they'd do and order him to do if they got their hands on the levers of power.
He still tasted vomit at the thought of what he had to do, and what the Admiral was going to order herself. McQueen, when I'm fighting the Manties, I'd trust you to the limit. She was a hard CO, but she got the job done and she didn't flinch herself. Can I trust you here?
Rousseau's eight million tons leaped and shuddered as an energy lance went through her sidewalls and blasted into her armor.
"Damage control," he said in a metronome-steady voice.
"Compartments twenty-six through eight open to vacuum. Graser one down."
"Reconfigure—"
There was no need to look at the display screens anymore, though some still did. Rob S. Pierre sat with his hands on the table, looking ahead, ignoring the worried glances and whispers where Oscar Saint-Just and Cordelia Ransom had their heads together.
Everyone looked up as a couple of Security noncoms came through the door, their arms full of pulse rifles.
"Citizens," one of them said. "It's time."
They began handing the weapons out.
"Hit them," McQueen said.
They were coming in over the city of Nouveau Paris at twenty-five thousand meters, and even from here the pillars of smoke were obvious. One or two of the huge towers must have fallen to create the gaps she saw. There was an ominous-looking crater, and her skin crawled as she watched the readout. Oh, it wasn't really a very large weapon—subcrit squeeze job—and it was designed to be relatively clean, but "relatively" was the operative word there. She remembered an old, old grisly joke: A tactical nuclear weapon is one that explodes a thousand kilometers downwind of you.
"That used to be Regional Intervention Battalions HQ, didn't it?" she said.