"Ready, sir?" Lachere demanded, shouting as though his voice weren't being transmitted over the intercom channel.
Desoix raised a hand in bar. "Blue Six to all Blue and Orange units," he said. "We're moving into position—now."
He chopped his hand.
Lachere accelerated them into the street with a clear view of the plaza's south stair head, two blocks away.
Metal shrieked as Lachere sideswiped the door jamb, but none of the calliope's scratch crew noticed the sound.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"I'm with you!" said Pedro Delcorio, gripping Tyl's shoulder from behind. He was almost with the angels, because Tyl spun and punched the young noble in the belly with the weapon he'd just charged, his finger taking up slack.
"Careful, sonny," the Slammers officer said as intellect twitched away the gun that reflex had pointed.
Tyl felt light, as though his body were suspended on wires that someone else was holding. His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat that had nothing to do with the night's mild breezes.
Pedro wore a uniform—a service uniform,probably; though the clinking, glittering medals on both sides of the chest indicated that the kid still had something to learn about combat conditions. He also wore a determined expression and a pistol in a polished holster.
"You're doing this for my family," Pedro said."One of us should be with you."
"That why we're doing it?" Tyl asked, marvelling at the lilt in his own voice. Tyl wasn't sure the kid knew how close he'd come to dying a moment before."Well, it'll do unless a better reason comes along. Stick close, boy, and leave that—" he nodded toward the gun "—in its holster."
He had a squad on the levee and a squad deployed to cover the boulevard and medians separating the Palace from the cathedral. The rest of the Slammers were moving at a nervous shuffle down the river drive bunched more than he liked, than anybody'd like, but they were going to need all the firepower available to clear the mall in a hurry. Those hydraulic gates were the key to the operation: the key to bare safety, much less success.
No one seemed to be out, but Tyl could hear occasional shouts in the distance as well as the antiphonal roars from the plaza—though the latter were directed upward,into the sulphurous dawn, by the flood walls. Litter of all sorts splotched the pavement, waste and shattered valuables as well as a few bodies.
One of the crumpled bodies jumped up ahead of them. The drunk tottered backward when his foot slipped on the bottle which had put him there in the first place.
Tyl's point man fired a ten-shot burst—far too long—at the drunk. The bolts splashed all around the target, cyan flashes and the white blaze of lime burned out of the concrete. None of the rounds hit the intended victim.
A sergeant jumped to the shooter's side and slapped him hard on the helmet. "Cop-head!" he snarled. "Cop-head! Get your ass behind me. And if you shoot again without orders, you better have the muzzle in your mouth!"
The drunk scrambled in the general direction of the cathedral, stumbling and rolling on the ground to rise and stumble again. The air bit with the odors of ozone and quicklime.
The company shuffled onward with a squad leader in front.
"Blue Six to all Blue and Orange units," said Tyl's commo helmet. Desoix sounded tight,a message played ten percent faster than it'd been recorded."We're moving into position—now."
The point man paused at the base of the ramp to the mall and the plaza's main stairs.
"Check your loads, boys," said Sergeant Major Scratchard over the unit push.
Jack was back with the three squads of the second wave, but Tyl didn't expect him to stay there long when the shooting started.
"Sir,"reported the point sergeant,using the command channel, "the gates are shut on this side."
"Orange Six to all Blue and Orange," Tyl ordered as he ran the ten meters to where the noncom paused. "Don't bloody move. We got a problem."
The gates separating the mall from the west river drive were as massive and invulnerable as those facing the plaza itself.
They were closed, just as the point man had said.
Tyl ran up the ramp, his bandoliers clashing against one another. The slung submachine-gun gouged his hip beneath the flare of his armor. The gates were solid, solid enough to shrug away tidal surges with more power than a battery of artillery.
There was no way one company without demolition charges or heavy weapons was going to force its way through.
The small vitril windows in the gate panels were too scarred and dirty to show more than hinted movement, but there was a speaker plate in one of the pillars. Nothing ventured . . . .
Tyl keyed the speaker and said, "Open these gates at once, in the name of Bishop Trimer!"
The crowd in the plaza cheered deafeningly, shaking the earth like a distant bomb blast.
Shadows, colors, shifted within the closed mall. The plate replied in the voice of Colonel Drescher, "Go away, little lapdog. The Executive Guard is neutral, as I told you. And this is where we choose to exercise our neutrality."
The crowd thundered, working itself into bloodthirsty enthusiasm.
Tyl turned his back on the reinforced concrete and touched his commo helmet. His troops were crouching, watching him. Those who wore their shields down had saffron bubbles for faces, painted by the glow which preceded the sun.
"Orange to Blue Six,"Tyl said."We're screwed. The Guards're holding the mall and they got it shut up. We can't get in, and if we tried we'd bring the whole bunch down on us. Save what you can, buddy. Over."
He'd forgotten that Anne McGill had access to the circuit. Before Desoix could speak, her voice rang like shards of crystal through Tyl's helmet, saying, "The river level has dropped. You can go under the plaza on a barge and come up beneath the altar."
The cross on the cathedral dome was beginning to blaze with sunlight.McGill's angle was on the seafront. She couldn't see any of the troops, Tyl's or the pair of calliopes, and she wouldn't have understood a bloody thing if she had been able to watch them. Bloody woman, bloody planet . . . .
Bloody fool, Captain Tyl Koopman, to be standing here. Nobody he saw was moving except Scratchard, clumping up the ramp to his captain's side. If Ripper Jack were bothered by his knees or the doubled load of weaponry, there was no sign of it on his expectant face.
"Tyl, she's right," Desoix was saying. "Most of the louvers are still closed, so there's no risk of drifting out to sea, but the maintenance catwalks lead straight up to the control house. The altar."
"Roger on the river level," the sergeant major muttered with his lips alone. He must've spoken to the noncomon the levee,using one of the support frequencies so as not to tie up the command push.
Tyl looked up at the sky, bright and clear after a night that was neither.
"Tyl, we'll give the support we can," Desoix said. Both officers knew exactly what the change of plan would mean. They weren't going to be able to talk to the mob when they came up into the plaza. Desoix was apparently willing to go along with the change.
Wonder what the colonel would say?
Colonel Hammer wasn't here. Tyl Koopman was, and he was ready to go along with it too. More fool him.