Asking for volunteers in a business like this was a waste of time. They were veteran troops, these; men and women who would parrot "never volunteer" the way they'd been told by a thousand generations of previous veterans . . . but who knew in their hearts that it was boredom that killed.
You couldn't live in barracks, looking at the same faces every waking minute, without wanting to empty a gun into one of them just to make a change.
So the first five soldiers Scratchard asked would belt on their battle gear with enthusiasm, bitching all the time about "When's it somebody else's turn to take the tough one?" They didn't want to die, but they didn't think they would . . . and just maybe they would have gone anyway, whatever they thought the risk was, because it was too easy to imagine the ways a fort like the Palace of Government could become a killing bottle.
They were Hammer's Slammers. They'd done that to plenty others over the years.
Tyl didn't have any concern that he'd be able to hand Desoix his bodyguards, primed and ready for whatever the fire-shot night offered.
And he knew that he'd give three grades in rank to be able to go along with them himself.
Chapter Eighteen
The porch off the Consistory Room didn't have a view of anything Tyl wanted to see—the littered courtyard and, across the river, the shell of the City Offices whose windows were still outlined by the sullen glow in its interior. The porch was as close as he could come to being outside, though, and that was sufficient recommendation at the moment.
The top of the House of Grace was barely visible above the south wing of the Palace. The ghost of firelight from the office building painted the eyes and halo of the sculptured Bishop Trimer also.
Tyl didn't want company, so when the door slid open behind him, he turned his whole body.That way his slung submacbine-gun pointed,an "accident" that he knew would frighten away anyone except his own troopers—whom he could order to leave him alone.
Lieutenant Desoix's woman stopped with a little gasp in her throat, but she didn't back away.
"Via!" Tyl said in embarrassment, lifting the gun muzzle high and cursing himself in his head for the dumb idea. One of those dandies, he'd figured, or a smirking servant . . . except that the President's well-dressed advisors seemed to have pretty well disappeared, and the flunkies also.
Servants were getting thin on the ground, too.
"If you'd like to be alone? . . ." the woman said, either polite or real perceptive.
"Naw, you're fine," Tyl said, feeling clumsy and a lot the same way as he had a few months ago. Then he'd been to visit a girl he might have married if he hadn't gone off for a soldier the way he had. "You're, ah—Lady Eunice's friend, aren't you?"
"That too,"said the woman drily.She took the place Tyl offered at the railing and added, "My name's Anne McGill. And I believe you're Captain Koopman?"
"Tyl," the soldier said. "Rank's not form—" He gestured. "Out here."
She didn't look as big as she had inside. Maybe because he had his armor on now that he was standing close to her.
Maybe because he'd recently watched five big men put looted cloaks on over their guns and armor to go off with Lieutenant Desoix.
"Have you known Charles long?" she asked, calling Tyl back from a stray thought that had the woman wriggling out of her dark blue dress and offering herself to him.
He shook his head abruptly to clear the thought. Not his type, and he sure wasn't hers.
"No," he said, forgetting that she thought he'd answered with the shake of his head. "I just got in today, you see. I don't recall we ever served with the UDB before. Anyhow, mostly you don't see much of anybody's people but your own guys."
It wasn't even so much that he was horny. Screwing was just something he could really lose himself in.
Killing was that way too.
"It's dangerous out there, isn't it?" she said. She wasn't looking at the city because her face was lifted too high. From the way her capable hands washed one another, she might well have been praying.
"Out there?" Tyl repeated bitterly. "Via, it's dangerous here, and we can't do anything but bloody twiddle our thumbs."
Anne winced, as much at the violence as the words themselves.
Instantly contrite,Tyl said,"But you know,if things stay cool a little longer—no spark, you know, setting things off . . . It may all work out."
He was repeating what Colonel Hammer had told him a few minutes before, through the laser communicator now slung at his belt again. To focus on the satellite from here, he'd had to aim just over the top of the House of Grace . . . .
"When the soldiers from Two come,there'll be a spark, won't there?" she asked. She was looking at Tyl now, though he didn't expect she could see any more of his face in the darkness than he could of her. Firelight winked on her necklace of translucent beads.
The scent she wore brought another momentary rush of lust.
"Maybe not," he said, comfortable talking to somebody who might possibly believe the story he could never credit in discussions with himself. "Nobody really wants that kind a' trouble."
Not the army, that was for sure. They weren't going to push things.
"Delcorio makes a few concessions—he already gave 'em Berne, after all. The troops march around with their bayonets all polished to look pretty. And then everybody kisses and makes up."
So that Tyl Koopman could get back to the business of a war whose terms he understood.
"I hope . . ." Anne was murmuring.
She might not have finished the phrase even if they hadn't been interrupted by the door sliding open behind them.
Tyl didn't recognize Eunice Delcorio at first.She was wearing a dress of mottled gray tones and he'd only seen her in scarlet in the past.With the fabric's luminors powered up, the garment would have shone with a more-than-metallic luster; but now it had neither shape nor color, and Eunice's voice guttered like that of a brittle ghost as she said, "Well, my dear, I wouldn't have interrupted you if I'd known you were entertaining a gentleman."
"Ma'am," Tyl said, bracing to attention. Eunice sounded playful, but so was a cat with a field mouse—and he didn't know what she could do to him if she wanted, it wasn't in the normal chain of command . . . .
"Captain Koopman and I were discussing the situation, Eunice," Anne said evenly. If she were embarrassed, she hid the fact; and there was no trace of fear in her voice. "You could have called me."
Eunice toyed with the hundred millimeter wand that could either page or track a paired unit. "I thought I'd find you instead, my dear," she said.
The President's wife wasn't angry, but there was fierce emotion beneath the surface sparkle. The wand slipped from her fingers to the floor.
Tyl knelt swiftly—you don't bend when you're wearing a ceramic back-and breast—and rose as quickly with the wand offered in his left hand.
Eunice batted the little device out into the courtyard. It was some seconds before it hit the stones below.
"I told the captain,"Anne said evenly,"that I was concerned about your safety in view of the trouble that's occurring here in the city."