The Guard Commandant, Colonel Drescher, was present. Arm in arm with Sanchez, the UDB officer walked toward him. Desoix had nodded to Drescher in the past, but they had never spoken.
"Colonel," he said, using Rene Sanchez and a brisk manner as his entree. "We've got some reinforcements coming in a few moments. I'm here to escort them in."
"Charles, I got a squad in the courtyard now," said Desoix's helmet. "Let's get a door open, all right? Over."
He didn't respond to Koopman's call, because the Guards colonel was saying, "You? UDB? I'm sorry, mister mercenary, the marshal has given orders that the shutters not be opened."
"I just came from Marshal Dowell in the Consistory Room," Desoix said, letting his voice rise as only control had kept it from doing earlier. The best way to play this was to pretend to be on the edge of blind panic. That wasn't so great a pretense as he would have wished.
"He ordered me down here to inform you,"Desoix continued. He thought he'd glimpsed Dowell upstairs.Certainly that was possible, at any rate."By the Lord! man. Do you realize what the marshal will do if you endanger him by keeping out his reinforcements? He'll have you—well, it's obvious."
The Guards colonel blinked. "Jorge Dowell doesn't give me orders!" he snapped, family pride overwhelming whatever trace of military obedience was in Drescher's makeup.
The Executive Guard was enough a law unto itself that Desoix had been sure that Drescher's references to army orders was misdirection—though Dowell might well have given such orders if anybody had bothered to ask him.
But because they hadn't . . . Desoix's present bluff wasn't beyond the realm of Dowell's possible response either.
"Still," Colonel Drescher continued. "Since you're here, we'll make an exception for courtesy's sake."
The waxen calm of his expression lapsed into gray fear for a moment."But be quick, Lieutenant, or I swear I'll shut you out with them and the animals across the river."
Soldiers who'd been listening to the exchange touched the undogging mechanism without orders, but they paused and drew back instead of engaging the gears to slide the shutters away.
"Well get on with it!" cried another voice.
One of the guards pressed the switch before Desoix's hand reached it; the UDB officer glanced at the speaker instead.
There were four men together. They were wearing civilian clothes now in place of the ornate uniforms they'd worn in the Consistory Room this morning and in days past. The considerable entourage behind them stretched beyond the rotunda: servants, very few of them real bodyguards—but most of the males were now armed with rifles and pistols which looked as though they came from government stores.
"Charles, how we holding?" came Tyl Koopman's voice through the commo helmet. "Over."
The words lacked the overtone of threat that had been in his earlier query. The Slammers could see or at least hear that a door was opening.
"Blue to Slammers," Desoix responded. He could feel a smile starting to twitch the corners of his mouth. "Just a second. There's some restructuring going on in here and we're, ah, making room for you in the guest quarters. Let these folks pass."
Desoix made sure that he was with the quartet of wealthy landholders as they forced their way through the door ahead of their servants.
"No, no," one of the men was saying to another. "My townhouse will have to take care of itself. I'm off to my estates to rally support for the President. I'll inform John of what I'm doing just as soon as I get there, but of course I couldn't waste time now with goodbyes."
Desoix thought for a moment that Captain Sanchez would step outside with him because that was the direction in which the Guards officer had last been pointed. Sanchez was lost in the turmoil, though, and Desoix stood alone beside the door as minor rats streamed out past him, following the lead of the noble rats they served.
Fires glowed against the cloud cover from at least a dozen directions in the city, not just the vicinity of the City Offices directly across the river. The smell of burning was more noticeable here than it had been on the porch six meters high.
Desoix looked up. The porch was a narrow roof above him. He couldn't tell from this angle whether Anne McGill had stayed inside as he'd ordered, or if she were out in the night again watching for him, watching for hope.
"You, sir,"a soldier said with enough emphasis to make the question a demand. "You our UDB liaison?"
"Roger," Desoix said. "I'm—"
But the close-coupled soldier in Slammers battledress was already relaying the information on his unit frequency.
There were several dozen of Hammer's men in the courtyard already. More were arriving with every passing moment. He didn't see Captain Koopman or the sergeant major he'd met once or twice before Tyl had arrived to take command.
The troopers jogged across the open street, hunched over. When they reached the courtyard they slowed. The veterans swept the Palace's empty, shuttered walls with their eyes, waiting for the motion that would unmask gunports and turn the paved area into a killing ground unless they shot first.
The new recruits only stared, more confused than frightened but certainly frightened enough.
"They know something we don't?" asked the Slammers noncom with KEKKONAN stenciled on his helmet. He nodded in the direction of the servants, the last of whom were clearing the doorway.
"They know they're scared," Desoix said.
Kekkonan laughed. "That just shows they're breathin'," he said.
He grunted something into his commo helmet—waved left-handed to Desoix because his right hand was on the grip of his slung submachine-gun—and trotted into the rotunda with his troopers filing along after him.
The UDB officer had intended to lead the Slammers inside to avoid problems with the Bamberg guards. He hadn't moved quickly enough, but that wasn't likely to matter. Nobody with good sense was going to get in the way of those jacked-up killers.
Ornamental lighting still brightened the exterior of the Palace, though the steel-shuttered facade looked out of place in a glittering myriad of tiny spotlights. It illuminated well the stooped forms in khaki and gray ceramic armor as they arrived, jogging because their loads were too heavy for them to run faster.
There were six in the last group, four troopers carrying a fifth while Captain Tyl Koopman trotted along behind with a double load of guns and bandoliers.
Casualty, Desoix thought, but Sergeant Major Scratchard was cursing too fluently for anyone to think his wound was serious.
"Listen, you idiots," Scratchard said in a voice of sudden calm as the UDB officer ran up to help. "If you don't let me down now we're under the lights, I got no authority from here on out. Your choice, Cap'n."
"Right, we'll all walk from here," said Koopman easily. He handed one of the guns he carried to Scratchard while looking at Desoix. "Lieutenant," he added, "I'm about as glad to see you as I remember being."
Desoix looked over the other officer's shoulder toward the fires and shouts across the river. For a moment he thought it was his imagination that the sounds were coming closer.