the others still being in transit. Slow, too slow. Site B in Boston, heavy gunfire—damn you, man, what do you mean,
heavy
gunfire returned? That group has gun carriers! What's going on out there?"
The doctor, placidly munching on a desert platter, paused to dab at his lips with a napkin. "I told you to expect organized resistance from that crowd," he reminded Reynolds.
"What is Site B putting up against our people?" Reynolds demanded.
The overstaffofficer paled: "Sir, there is word of machine-gun fire from inside the grounds. Casualties are three dead and eight injured so far; the supervisor-lieutenant on site has cordoned off the area and our men are exchanging fire with the defenders. One of the gun carriers was damaged by some sort of artillery piece when it tried to force the front gates."
"Damaged,
by god?" Reynolds glared at him. "This was how long ago? Why haven't you called on the navy?"
"Sir, I can't order a shore bombardment of one of our own cities! If you want to request one it has to go up to the Joint Command Council for authorization—"
Reynolds cut him off with a chopping gesture. "Later. They're pinned down for now, yes? What about Site C?"
"Site C was overrun on schedule, sir. One casualty, apparently self-inflicted—negligent discharge. Six prisoners consigned for detention and received by the
Burke.
Two dead, killed resisting arrest or attempting to flee."
"Good." Reynolds nodded jerkily. "Site S?"
"I don't have a report for Site S, sir." The overstaffofficer riffled through his message sheets, increasingly concerned. "Sir, by your leave—"
"Go. Find out what happened. Report back. Dismissed." Reynolds turned to yen Hjalmar as his adjutant made himself scarce. "Damn it, you'd almost think—"
"They have radio—telautograph, I think you call it? Between sites. Between people." Ven Hjalmar was clearly irritated. "I told you that timing was essential."
"But how can they have notified the—my men cut all the wires! The transmission wires are vulnerable, yes?"
"Transmission wires?" Ven Hjalmar squinted. "What, you mean for transmitting the wireless signal? They don't use wires for that—just a stub antenna, so big." He spread the fingers of one hand. "I think we may have found a regrettable source of confusion: Their radios—the telautograph sets—are pocket-sized. They'll all be carrying them, at least one per group when they're off base—"
"Nonsense." Reynolds stared at him. "Pocket
telautographs?
That's ridiculous."
"Really?" Ven Hjalmar pushed his chair back from the table. "I was under the impression that the Lee family had taught you that when visitors from other universes come calling it's a good idea to keep an open mind." He stood up. "Sitting around up here and trying to convey the appearance of being in charge of the situation is all very well, but perhaps it would be a good idea to take a more hands-on approach before the enemy get inside your decision loop—"
A deep thudding sound vibrated through the walls and floor, rattling the crockery and shaking a puff of plaster dust from the ceiling.
"Damn." Reynolds flipped open the lid of his holster and headed towards the door. "We appear to have visitors," he said dryly. He glanced back at yen Hjalmar. "Come along, now."
The doctor nodded and bent to pick up his medical bag, which he tucked beneath one arm, keeping a grip on the handle with his other hand. "As you wish."
The lights flickered as Reynolds marched out into the corridor. The two guards snapped to attention. "Follow me," he told them. "This fellow is with us." He strode towards the staircase leading down to the operations and communications offices below, just as a burst of rapid gunfire reverberated up the stairwell. "Huh." Reynolds drew his gun.
"We need to get to ground level as fast as possible," ven Hjalmar said urgently. "If we're at ground level I can get you out of here, but if we're—"
"The
enemy
are at ground level," Reynolds cut him off. "They appear to be—" He listened. More gunfire, irregular and percussive, rattled the walls like an out-of-control drummer. "We can stop them ascending, however." He gestured his guards forward, to take up positions to either side of the stairs. "We wait here until the communications staff have organized a barricade—"
"But we've got to get down!" Ven Hjalmar was agitated now. "If we aren't at ground level I can't world-walk, which means—"
But Commissioner Reynolds was never to hear the end of yen Hjalmar's sentence.
Sir Alasdair and his men—just two had stayed behind at Site B to keep the security militia engaged—had exfiltrated to the backwoods landscape of the Gruinmarkt. The vicinity of Boston was well-mapped, crisscrossed by tracks and occasional roads and villages: maps, theodolites, and sensitive inertial platforms had built up a good picture of the key landmarks over the months since Miriam had pioneered a business start-up a couple of miles from Erasmus Burgeson's pawnbroker shop (and Leveler quartermaster's cellar). The Polis headquarters building, not far from Faneuil Hall, was a site of interest to Clan Security; with confirmation from Lin Lee that Reynolds and yen Hjalmar were present, it took Sir Alasdair less than an hour to arrange a counterattack.
Robard yen Hjalmar was not a soldier; he had no more (and no less) knowledge of the defensive techniques evolved by the Clan's men of arms over half a century of bloody internicine feuding than any other civilian. Stephen Reynolds was not a civilian, but had only an outsider's insight into the world-walkers. Both of them knew, in principle, of the importance of doppelgangering their safe houses—of protecting them against infiltration by enemy attackers capable of bypassing doors and walls by entering from the world next door.
However, both of them had independently made different—and fatal—risk calculations. Reynolds had assumed that because Elder Huan's "Eastern cousins" came from a supposedly primitive world, and had demonstrated no particular talent for mayhem within his ambit, the most serious risk they presented was the piecemeal violence of the gun and the knife. And ven Hjalmar had assumed that the presence of armed guards downstairs (some of them briefed and alert to the risk of attackers appearing out of nowhere in their midst) would be sufficient.
What neither of them had anticipated was a systematic assault on the lobby of the headquarters building, conducted by a lance of Clan Security troops under the command of Sir Alasdair ven Hjorth-Wasser—who had been known as Sergeant Al "Tiny" Schroder, at the end of his five years in the USMC—troops in body armor, with grenades and automatic weapons, who had spent long years honing their expertise in storming defended buildings in other worlds. Nor had they anticipated Sir Alasdair's objective: to suppress the defenders for long enough to deliver a wheelbarrow load of ANNM charges, emplace them around the load-bearing walls, and world-walk back to safety. Two hundred kilograms of ammonium nitrate/nitromethane explosives, inside the six-story brick and stone structure, would be more than enough to blow out the load-bearing walls and drop the upper floors; building codes and construction technologies in New Britain lagged behind the United States by almost a century.
It was an anonymous and brutal counterattack, and left Sir Alasdair (and Commissioner Burgeson) with acid indigestion and disrupted sleep for some days, until the last of the bodies pulled from the rubble could finally be identified. If either ven Hjalmar or Reynolds had realized in time that their location had been betrayed, the operation might have failed, as would the cover story: a despicable Royalist cell's attack on the Peace and Justice Subcommittee's leading light, the heroic death of Commissioner Reynolds as he led the blackcoats in a spirited defense of the People's Revolution, and the destruction of the dastardly terrorists by their own bombs. But it