Desoix's submachine-gun wasn't for show either. Providing air defense for frontline units meant you were right in the middle of it when things went wrong . . . and they'd twice gone wrong very badly to a battery Charles Desoix crewed or captained.
Though it shouldn't come to that. The seven of them were just another group in a night through which armed bands stalked in a truce that would continue so long as there was an adequacy of weaker prey.
The warehouses fronted the bay and the spaceport across the channel, but their loading docks were in the rear. Across the mean street were tenements. When Desoix's unit shrugged its way out of the cramped passage, they found every one of the windows facing them lighted to display a cross as large as the sashes would allow.
"Partytime,"one of the troopers muttered.Some of the residents were watching the events from windows or rooftops, but most of them were down in the street in amorphous clots like those of white cells surrounding bacteria. There were shouts, both shrill and guttural, but Desoix couldn't distinguish any of the words.
Not that he had any trouble understanding what was going on without hearing the words. There were screams coming from the center of one of the groups . . . or perhaps Desoix's mind created the sound it knew would be there if the victim still had the strength to make it.
A dozen or so people were on the loading dock to the unit's right, drinking and either having sex or making as good an attempt at it as their drinking permitted. Somebody threw a bottle that smashed close enough to Kekkonan that the sergeant's cloak flapped as he turned; but there didn't appear to have been real malice involved. Perhaps not even notice.
Party time.
"All right,"Kekkonan said just loudly enough for the soldiers with him to hear. "There's an alley across the way, a little to the left. Stay loose, don't run . . . and don't bunch up, just in case. Go."
Except for Lachere, they were all veterans; but they were human as well. They didn't run, but they moved much faster than the careless saunter everybody knew was really the safest pace.
And they stayed close, close enough that one burst could have gotten them all.
Nothing happened except that a score of voices followed them with varied suggestions, and a woman naked to the waist stumbled into Charles Desoix even though he tried his best to dodge her.
She was so drunk that she didn't notice the contact, much less that she'd managed to grab the muzzle of his submachine-gun for an instant before she caromed away.
The alley stank of all the garbage the rains hadn't washed away; somebody, dead drunk or dead, was sprawled just within the mouth of it.
Desoix had never been as eager to enter a bedroom as he was that alley.
"Ah, sir," one of the Slammers whispered as the foetor and its sense of protection enclosed them. "Those people, they was rag-heads?"
The victims,he meant; and he was asking Desoix because Desoix was an officer who might know about things like that.
The Lord knew he did.
"Maybe," Desoix said.
They had enough room here to walk two abreast, though the lightless footing was doubtful and caused men to bump. "Landlords—building superintendents. The guy you owe money to, the guy who screwed your daughter and then married the trollop down the hall."
"But . . .?" another soldier said.
"Any body you're quick enough to point a dozen of your neighbors at," Desoix explained forcefully. "Before he points them at you. Party time."
The alley was the same throughout its length, but its other end opened onto more expensive facades and, across the broad street, patches of green surrounding the domed mass of the cathedral.
Traffic up the steps to the cathedral's arched south entrance was heavy and raucous. The street was choked by ground vehicles. Some of them trying to move but even these blocked by the many which had been parked in the travel lanes.
"Hey there!"shouted the bearded leader of the group striding from the doorway just to the left of the alley. He wore two pistols in belt holsters; the cross on the shoulder of his red cape was perfunctory. "Where're you going?"
"Back!" said Kekkonan over his shoulder, twisting to face the sudden threat.
Even before the one syllable order was spoken, the torchlight and echoing voices up the alley behind them warned the unit that they couldn't retreat the way they had come without shooting their way through.
Which would leave them in a street with five hundred or a thousand aroused residents who had pretty well used up their local entertainment.
"Hey!" repeated the leader. The gang that had exited the building behind him were a dozen more of the same, differing only in sex, armament, and whether or not they carried open bottles.
Most of them did.
They'd seen Kekkonan's body armor—and maybe his gun—when he turned toward them.
"Hey,"Desoix said cheerfully as he stepped in front of the sergeant."You know us. We're soldiers."
He'd been stationed in Bamberg City long enough that his Spanish had some of the local inflections that weren't on the sleep-learning cube. He wouldn't pass for a local, but neither did his voice put him instantly in the foreign—victim—category to these thugs.
"From the Palace?" asked the leader. His hand was still on a pistol, but his face had relaxed because Desoix was relaxed.
Desoix wasn't sure his legs were going to hold him up.
He'd been this frightened before, but that was when he was under fire and didn't have anything to do except crouch low and swear he'd resign and go home if only the Lord let him live this once.
"Sure,"he said aloud, marvelling at how well his voice worked."Say, chickie—got anything there for a thirsty man?"
"Up your ass with it!" a red-caped female shrieked in amazement.
All the men in the group bellowed laughter.
One of them offered Desoix a flask of excellent wine, an off-planet vintage as good as anything served in the Palace.
"You're comin' to the cathedral, then?" the leader said as Desoix drank, tasting the liquid but feeling nothing. "Well, come on, then. The meeting's started by now or I'll be buggered."
"Not by me, Easton!" one of his henchmen chortled.
"Come on, boys," Desoix called, waving his unit out of the alley before there was a collision with the mob following. "We're already late for the meeting!"
Thank the Lord, the troopers all had the discipline or common sense to obey without question. Hemmed by the gang they'd joined perforce, surrounded by hundreds of other citizens wearing crosses over a variety of clothing, Desoix's unit tramped meekly up the steps of the cathedral.
Just before they entered the building, Desoix took the risk of muttering into his epaulet mike, "Tyl, we're making a necessary detour, but we're still coming back. If the Lord is with us, we're still coming back."
Chapter Twenty-One
The nave was already full. Voices echoing in debate showed that the gang leader had been correct about the meeting having started. Hospital orderlies with staves guarded the entrance—keeping order rather than positioned to stop an attack.
Bishop Trimer and those working with him knew there would be no attack—until they gave the order.