If it wasn’t for the insurgency and radiation storms.
He grabbed the spoon, and followed the baguette down with a mouthful of chocolate.
Something whistled high above them. Gallo’s mouth froze in mid-bite. Logan looked up from his chocolate. He’d heard that sound before, in training. Except then, it was muffled through the microphones and speakers of his suit.
“Incoming,” he yelled.
CHAPTER 17
Logan dove to the deck beside the table. His chest slammed down onto the wooden planks outside the cafe, and the impact knocked the breath from his lungs. Gallo slammed down on the far side of the table. Heinrichs and Joffer followed.
Then the ground shook beneath them, followed by the booms of half a dozen explosions around the town.
Dirt sprayed into the air at the end of the alley across the street as a mortar round exploded over there, throwing out a shower of glowing, white-hot shrapnel that faded to red before it slammed into the dirt piled over the surrounding buildings. The table shook, and Logan’s helmet fell to the ground beside him. He grabbed it, and slammed it onto his head.
More whistling followed, as another flight of mortar rounds came their way. The cracking of the point-defence guns at the airport joined the noise, and at least half a dozen of the mortar rounds exploded high in the air, scattering shrapnel in a cloud that hit the ground like metal rain.
Two more impacted intact, exploded, and sprayed the street with dirt and high-speed shrapnel. A loud, shrill scream joined the noise of the mortar rounds and guns. A woman’s scream, from somewhere down the street.
As the whistling and explosions faded, Logan clambered to his feet and stepped into the building.
The others grabbed their helmets, and followed.
The girl and an older man crouched behind a counter inside the cafe. The girl peered around it.
“What’s going on?” she said.
More whistling. More point-defence fire.
Logan stepped behind the counter. Then dropped to the floor, and pulled her down beside him.
“The insurgents are firing mortars. Stay down.”
The other Legionnaires hit the floor near the thick, dirt-covered walls, away from the door. More explosions rattled the wooden sign outside the cafe. Shrapnel clattered against the open door of the building. More screams joined the first. Male and female, this time. And more whistling.
How many damn mortars did these people have? So much for the insurgents having no heavy weapons.
“Why do they attack us?” the girl said. Her eyes were wide, and she was shaking beside him.
“Because they’re evil little bastards,’ Gallo muttered as he chewed on his baguette on the other side of the cafe.
More whistling.
“How can you eat at a time like this?” Heinrichs said.
“If you’d seen the kind of food we get in the hospital, you wouldn’t miss a chance to get something decent down you. And we’ll be on those damn patrol rations again in a few days.”
“Probably tomorrow, after this,” Joffer said.
More explosions outside. More screaming. More yelling. And more mortar shells flying. The wooden floor of the cafe rattled as a shell exploded just outside the building. The girl screamed, and Logan grabbed her as shrapnel bounced through the doorway, and scattered across the floor. It was spent by the time it landed; no match for the Legion helmets, but still jagged and glowing red hot. It would hurt if it hit bare skin.
And then the whole thing was over. No more mortar shells flying, no more guns firing. Just the screaming outside, the girl whimpering beside him, and Gallo’s teeth grinding together as he chewed on his baguette.
Logan waited for a moment, but no more shells came.
The helmet radio was full of Legion chatter as they began to respond to the attack. No shells had fallen near the spaceport where the point-defence guns would have stopped most or all of them. The insurgents had deliberately attacked the town. Medics were heading there to help out.
He waited a moment longer, then helped the girl to her feet, and Joffer consoled her as she cried on his shoulder. Logan pulled twenty francs from his pocket for the food, and tossed them on the counter. After this attack, he wasn’t going to be getting time off again any day soon.
Then he stepped out into the street. The mortar explosions had blown the table onto its side. The remains of the chocolate were splattered across the wall of the cafe. A dog was eagerly digging into the remains of his baguette. Blood dripped down the dog’s side from a twisted piece of shrapnel that protruded from its fur by its back legs.
Heinrichs stepped out of the cafe beside him. “I’ll see if I can help out.”
Logan surveyed the damage in the main street as he and Gallo walked back to look for Bairamov and Desoto. Chunks of shrapnel from the mortar shells protruded from the dirt piles covering of the buildings all around him. Medics worked over the wounded townspeople in the street, and carried the worst toward Pierre’s Place, laying the wounded on the tables inside, where blood dripped from the tabletops onto the dirt floor.
Bairamov strolled out into the street from the whorehouse, adjusting his fatigue jacket, and tightening his body armour and helmet straps.
“Glad to see you’re OK, sir.”
“Hiding under the bed behind a metre of dirt is a pretty safe place to be in a mortar attack. And I barely even had to break my stroke.”
“Wouldn’t have done much good for you if there’d been a direct hit on the whorehouse.”
“But at least I’d have died happy. And the girl was glad to have a big, strong man to protect her.” Bairamov smirked. “I reckon I might get a discount next time.”
“What about Desoto?”
“Last I saw, he was chasing his girl around the place, trying to calm her down after she ran away screaming during all the explosions. I’m sure he’ll join us once he’s done.”
Half a dozen suits strode along the street behind them, from the direction of the spaceport. Volkov and Lieutenant Merle were easy to identify from the way they seemed to command the ground around them as they moved. The others kept their distance ahead of and behind the officers, holding their rifles ready, and scanning the area around them. Mortars would just be an annoyance to anyone wearing a suit, unless there was a direct hit. But who knew whether the insurgents might have something more planned? Logan began to feel naked standing out there in the street, but he’d be no safer standing beside an IED hidden in the dirt walls of the nearby buildings.
“How bad was the attack?” Merle’s voice said from Logan’s helmet speakers.
“Three dead so far, sir,” one of the medics replied. “At least a dozen wounded.”
Volkov’s familiar voice joined the chatter on the company net. “Would have been much worse without the point-defence guns, sir. They hit most of the mortar bombs.”
“The ones that got through still caused a lot of damage.”
“They’re all we’ve got, sir. We’re spread thin on this planet. We have to pick and choose were to put them.”
“No-one expected the insurgents to attack their own people just to get at us. What kind of psychos would do that?”
Governor Porcher strolled along the street toward them, with Poulin at his side. Chaput followed close behind them. Porcher’s suit looked as though it had just been cleaned.
Chaput’s was dishevelled and smeared with dirt, as though he’d been crawling on the floor. His face was smeared with dirt and sweat that glittered in the fading sunlight.
Poulin’s sleek but crumpled black dress looked nothing like her military clothing. Nor did her pointed, high-heeled shoes, which would have been more at home on a dance floor than the dirt streets of Estérel.