"Yes sir?"
The colonel grinned with the same death's-head humor as before. "Bishop Trimer decided Hammer's Slammers weren't worth their price," Hammer said. "It wouldn't bother me if by the end of today, His Eminence had decided he was wrong on that."
Hammer touched a hidden switch and static flooded the screen.
"Four-six to Six," came Scratchard's voice, delayed until the laser link was broken. "We're ready, sir. Over."
"Four-six," Tyl said as he shrugged his armor loose over his sweating torso. "I'm on my way."
He left the laser communicator set up where it was. He'd need it again after the operation was over.
In the event that he survived.
Chapter Twenty-Six
"—gathered together at the dawn of a new age for our nation, our planet, and our God," said the voice.
Bishop Trimer's words had a touch of excitement remaining to them, despite being attenuated through multiple steps before they got to Tyl's helmet. Anne McGill aimed a directional microphone from the cathedral to the seafront altar, below her and over a kilometer away.
Trimer's speech was patched through the commo gear hidden between the woman's breasts, then shuttled by the UDB artificial intelligence over the inter-unit frequency to Tyl Koopman.
"We could shoot the bastard easy as listen to him," Scratchard said as he held out a shoulder weapon to his captain.
Only the two of them among the ninety-eight troopers in the rotunda had helmets that would receive the transmission. The other Slammers watched in silence as varied as their individual personalities: frightened; feral; cautious; and not a few with anticipation that drew back their lips in memory of past events . . . .
"Might break the back of the rebellion," Tyl said.
He had to will his eyes to focus on Scratchard's face, on anything as near as the walls of the big room."Sure as blood that lot—" he touched his helmet over the tiny speaker "—they'd burn the city down to bricks 'n bare concrete. Might as well nuke 'em as that."
His voice didn't sound, even to him, as if he much cared. He wasn't sure he did care. He wasn't really involved with things that could be or might be . . . or even were.
"With dawn comes the light," the Bishop was saying. "With this dawn, the Lord brings us also the new light of freedom in the person of the man he has commanded me to anoint President of Bamberia."
"Jack, I don't need that," Tyl said peevishly. Sight of the 2cm weapon being pushed toward him had brought him back to reality; irritation had succeeded where abstracts like survival and success could not. "I got a gun, remember?"
He slapped the receiver of the submachine-gun under his arm, then noticed that the whole company was carrying double as well as being festooned with bandoliers and strings of grenades.
"UDB's weapons stores were here in the Palace," the sergeant major explained patiently."Their el-tee, he told us go ahead. Sir, we don't got far to go.And I swear, they all jam."
Scratchard grinned sadly.He lifted his right boot to display the hilt of his fighting knife, though with his hands full he couldn't touch it for emphasis. "Even these, the blade can break. When you really don't want t' see that."
"Sorry," said Tyl, glad beyond words to be back in the present with sweaty palms and an itch between his shoulder blades that he couldn't have scratched even if it weren't covered by his clamshell armor.
"Blazes," he added as he checked the load—full magazine, chamber empty. "Here's my treatment a' choice anyhow. I'll take punch over pecka-pecka-pecka any day."
He looked up and glared around the circle of his troops as if seeing them for the first time. Pretty nearly he was. Good men, good soldiers; and just the team to pull the plug on Trimer and the bully boys who thought they owned the streets when the Slammers were in town.
"Thomas Chastain has mounted the dais," said Anne McGill. She sounded calm, but the distance in her voice was more than an electronic artifact. "Both Chastain brothers. The faction heads are present, and so are several churchmen, standing beneath the crucifix."
Tyl keyed the command channel while ducking through the bandolier of 2cm magazines the sergeant major held for him.
"Orange to Blue Six," he said, using the code he and the UDB officer had set up in a few seconds when they realized that they'd need it. "Report."
"Blue Six ready," said Desoix's voice.
"Orange to Blue Three. Report."
"Blue Three ready," said a voice Tyl didn't recognize, the noncom in charge of the Gun Three near the east entrance to the plaza.
"Orange Six to Blue," Tyl said. "We're moving into position . . . now."
He cut down with his right index finger.Before the gesture ended, Sergeant Kekkonan was leading the first squad into the incipient dawn over Bamberg City.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"I figured they'd a' burned it down, the way they was going last night," said Lachere, blinking around the warehouse from the driver's seat.
"Tonight," he said, correcting himself in mild wonder.
"Senter, what's the street look like?"Desoix asked from the gun saddle.Beneath him the calliope quivered like a sleeping hound, its being at placid idle—but ready to rend and bellow the instant it was aroused.
Desoix couldn't blame his subordinate for thinking more than a few hours had passed since they first entered this warehouse. It seemed like a lifetime—
And that wasn't a thought Lieutenant Charles Desoix wanted to pursue, even in the privacy of his own mind.
"I don't see anybody out, sir," the other clerk called from the half-open pedestrian door. "Maybe lookin' out a window, I can't tell. But none a' the big mobs like when we got here."
Reentering the warehouse without being caught up—or cut down—by the bands of bravos heading toward the plaza had been the trickiest part of the operation so far. Stealth was the only option open to Desoix and his two companions. Even if Koopman had been willing—been able, it didn't matter—to spare a squad in support, a firefight would still mean sure disaster for the plan as well as for the unit.
"All right, Senter," Desoix said. "Open the main doors and climb aboard."
Lachere was bringing the fans up to driving velocity without orders. He wasn't a great driver, but he'd handled air-cushion vehicles before and could maneuver the calliope well enough for present needs.
The suction roar boomed in the cavernous room while Senter struggled with the unfamiliar door mechanism. The warehouse staff—manager, loaders, and guards—had disappeared at the first sign of trouble, leaving nothing behind but crated goods and the heavy effluvium of tobacco to be stirred into a frenzy by the calliope's drive fans.
The door rumbled upward; Senter scampered toward the gun vehicle. Desoix smiled. He'd been ready to clear their way with his eight 3cm guns if necessary.
He had ordered Control to lock the general frequency out of his headset. Captain Koopman was in charge of this operation, so Desoix didn't have to listen to the running commentary about what the mob in the plaza was doing.
If he listened on that frequency, he would hear Anne; and he would have to remember where she was and how certainly she would die if he failed.