Nobody could get down the east stairs without smearing his boots to the ankles with blood.
"They could hurry up with the water," Lachere muttered.
"They didn't see it happen," Desoix said. He lay across the firing console, his chin on his hands and his elbows on the control grips he no longer needed to twist.
He closed his eyes for a moment instead of rubbing them.
Desoix's hands and face,like those of his men,were black with iridium burned from the calliope's bores by the continuous firing. The vapor had condensed in the air and settled as dust over everything within ten meters of the muzzles. Rubbing his eyes before he washed would drive the finely divided metal under the lids, into the orbits.
Desoix kept reminding himself that it would matter to him someday, when he wasn't so tired.
"They just shot when somebody ran up the stairs and gave them a target," he continued in the croak that was all the voice remaining to him until Blaney arrived with the water. "It wasn't like—"
He wanted to raise his arm to indicate the plaza's carpet of the dead, but waggling an index finger was as much as he had need or energy to accomplish. "It wasn't what we had, all targets, and it . . . ."
Desoix tried to remember how he would have felt if he had come upon this scene an hour earlier. He couldn't, so he let his voice trail off.
A lot of them must have gotten out when somebody opened the gates at either end of the mall. Desoix had tried to avoid raking the mall and the main stairs. The mercenaries had to end the insurrection and clear the plaza for their own safety, but the civilians swept out by fear were as harmless as their fellows who filled the sight picture as the calliope coughed and traversed.
There'd been just the one long burst which cleared the mall of riflemen.
Cleared it of life.
"Here you go, sir," said Blaney, skipping up the last few steps with a four-liter canteen and hopping onto the deck of the calliope.
"Took yer bloody time," Lachere repeated as he snatched the canteen another of the newcomers offered him. He began slurping the water down so greedily that he choked and sprayed a mouthful out his nostrils.
Senter was drinking also.He hunched down behind the breeches of the guns he had been feeding, so that he could not see any of what surrounded the calliope. Even so, the clerk's eyelids were pressed tightly together except for brief flashes that showed his dilated pupils.
"Ah, where's Major Borodin, sir?" Blaney asked.
Desoix closed his eyes again, luxuriating in the feel of warm water swirling in his mouth.
Gun Three had full supplies for its double crew before the shooting started. Desoix hadn't thought to load himself and his two clerks with water before they set out.
He hadn't been planning; just reacting, stimulus by stimulus, to a situation over which he had abdicated conscious control.
"The major's back at the Palace,"Desoix said. "President Delcorio told me he wanted a trustworthy officer with him, so I commanded the field operations myself."
He didn't care about himself anymore. He stuck to the story he had arranged with Delcorio because it was as easy to tell as the truth . . . and because Desoix still felt a rush of loyalty to his battery commander.
They'd succeeded, and Major Borodin could have his portion of the triumph if he wanted it.
Charles Desoix wished it had been him, not Borodin, who had spent the last two hours locked in a storeroom in the Palace. But his memory would not permit him to think that, even as a fantasy.
"Blaney," he said aloud. "I'm putting you in command of this gun until we get straightened around. I'm going down to check with Captain Koopman." He nodded toward the cluster of gray and khaki soldiers sprawled near the altar.
"Ah, sir?" Blaney said in a nervous tone. Desoix paused after swinging his leg over the gunner's saddle. He shrugged, as much response as he felt like making at the moment.
"Sir,we started taking sniper fire,had two guys hurt,"Blaney went on."We—I laid the gun on the hospital, put a burst into it to, you know, get their attention. Ah, the sniping stopped."
"Via, you really did, didn't you?"said the officer, amazed that he hadn't noticed the damage before.
Gun Three had a flat angle on the south face of the glittering building.Almost a third of the vitril panels on that side were gone in a raking slash from the ground floor to the twentieth. The bolts wouldn't have penetrated the hospital, though the Lord knew what bits of the shattered windows had done when they flew around inside.
Charles Desoix began to laugh. He choked and had to grip the calliope's chassis in order to keep from falling over. He hadn't been sure that he would ever laugh again.
"Sergeant," he said, shutting his eyes because Blaney's stricken face would set him off again if he watched it. "You're afraid you're in trouble because of that?"
He risked a look at Blaney. The sergeant was nodding blankly.
Desoix gripped his subordinate's hand."Don't worry,"he said."Don't.I'll just tell them to put it on my account."
He took the canteen with him as he walked down the stairs toward Tyl Koopman. Halfway down, he stumbled when he slipped on a dismembered leg.
That set him laughing again.
Chapter Thirty-Five
"Got twelve could use help," said the sergeant major as Tyl shuddered under the jets of topical anesthetic he was spraying onto his own chest.
Scratchard frowned and added, "Maybe you too, hey?"
"Via, I'm fine," Tyl said, trying to smooth the grimace that wanted to twist his face awry. "No dead?"
He looked around sharply and immediately wished he hadn't tried to move quite that fast.
Tyl's ceramic breastplate had stopped the bullet and spread its impact across the whole inner surface of the armor. That was survivable; but now, with the armor and his tunic stripped off, Tyl's chest was a symphony of bruising. His ribs and the seams of his tunic pockets were emphasized in purple, and the flesh between those highlights was a dull yellow-gray of its own.
Scratchard shrugged."Krasinski took one in the face,"he said."Had 'er shield down too, but when your number's up . . . ."
Tyl sprayed anesthetic. The curse that ripped out of his mouth could have been directed at the way the mist settled across him and made the bruised flesh pucker as it chilled.
"Timmons stood on a grenade," Scratchard continued, squatting beside his captain. "Prob'ly his own. Told 'em not to screw with grenades after we committed, but they never listen, not when it gets . . ."
Scratchard's fingers were working with the gun he now carried, a slug-firing machine pistol. The magazine lay on the ground beside him. The trigger group came out, then the barrel tilted from the receiver at the touch of the sergeant major's experienced fingers.
Jack wasn't watching his hands. His eyes were open and empty, focused on the main stairs because there were no fallen troopers there. They'd been his men too.
"One a' the recruits," Scratchard continued quietly, "he didn't want to go up the ladder."