He was having trouble getting the papers out because his fingers were still numb from the way they'd been squeezing the tribarrel's grips.
For that matter, the National Government might 've proclaimed a general call-up overnight—if there was still a National Government.
"Buddy,"snarled the senior noncomat the door of the communications center, "I can't help you. I don't care if you got authorization from God 'n his saints. I don't care if you are God 'n his saints!"
"I'm not that," the reporter said in a soft, raspy voice. Ozone and smoke had flayed his throat. "But I need to get through to Kohang—and it's your ass if I don't."
He flicked at his shirtfront. Some of what was stuck there came off.
Suilin's wrist and the back of his right hand were black where vaporized copper from the buzzbomb had recondensed.All the fine hairs were burned off, but the skin beneath hadn't blistered. His torso was badly bruised where the bullet-struck armor had punched into him.
The butt of the pistol he now carried in his belt prodded the bruise every time he moved.
"Well, I'm not God neither, buddy," the noncom said, his tone frustrated but suddenly less angry.
He waved toward his set-up and the two junior technicians struggling with earphones and throat mikes."The land lines're down, the satellites're down, and there's jamming right across all the bands. If you think you can get something through, you just go ahead and try. But if you want my ass, you gotta stand in line."
The National side of Camp Progress had three commo centers. The main one was—hadbeen—in the shielded basement of Headquarters.A few Consies were still holed up thereafter the rest of the fighting had died down.A Slammers' tank had managed to depress its main gun enough to finish the job.
The training detachment had a separate system, geared toward the needs of homesick draftees. It had survived, but Colonel Banyussuf—who'd also survived—had taken over the barracks in which it was housed as his temporary headquarters. Suilin hadn't bothered trying to get through the panicked crowd now surrounding the building.
The commo room of the permanent maintenance section at Camp Progress was installed in a three-meter metal transport container. It was unofficial—the result of scrounging over the years. Suilin hadn't ever tried to use it before; but in the current chaos, it was his only hope.
"What do you mean, the satellites are down?" he demanded.
He was too logy with reaction to be sure that what he'd heard the noncom say was as absurd as he thought it was. The microwave links were out? Not all
of them, surely . . . .
"Out," the soldier repeated. "Gone. Blitzed. Out."
"Blood and martyrs," Suilin said.
The Consie guerrillas couldn't have taken down all the comsats. The Terran enclaves had to have become directly involved. That was a stunning escalation of the political situation—
And an escalation which was only conceivable as part of a planned deathblow to the National Government of Prosperity.
"I've got to call Kohang," said Dick Suilin, aloud but without reference to the other men nearby. All he could think of was his sister, in the hands of Consies determined to make an example of the governor's wife. "Suzi . . ."
"You can forget bloody Kohang," said one of the techs as he stripped off his headphones. He ran his fingers through his hair. The steel room was hot, despite the cool morning and the air conditioner throbbing on the roof."It's been bloody overrun."
Suilin gripped the pistol in his belt. "What do you mean?" he snarled as he pushed past the soldier in the doorway.
"They said it was," the technician insisted. He looked as though he intended to get out of his chair, but the reporter was already looming over him.
"Somebody said it was,"argued the other tech."Look,we're still getting signals from Kohang, it's just the jamming chews the bugger outa it."
"There's fighting all the hell over the place," said the senior noncom, putting a gently restraining hand on Suilin's shoulder." 'Cept maybe here.Look,buddy, nobody knows what the hell's going on anywhere just now."
"Maybe the mercs still got commo," the first tech said. "Yeah, I bet they do."
"Right," said the reporter. "Good thought."
He walked out of the transport container. He was thinking of what might be happening in Kohang.
He gripped his pistol very hard.
The chip recorder sitting on the cupola played a background of guitar music while a woman wailed in Tagalog, a language which Henk Ortnahme had never bothered to learn. The girls on Esperanza all spoke Spanish. And Dutch. And English. Enough of it.
The girls all spoke money, the same as everywhere in the universe he'd been since.
The warrant leader ran his multitool down the channel of the close-in defense system. The wire brush he'd fitted to the head whined in complaint, but it never quite stalled out.
It never quite got the channel clean, either. Pits in the steel were no particular problem—Herman's Whore wasn't being readied for a parade, after all. But crud in the holes for the bolts which both anchored the strips and passed the detonation signals . . . that was something else again.
Something blew up nearby with a hollow sound, like a grenade going off in a trash can. Ortnahme looked around quickly, but there didn't seem to be an immediate problem.Since dawn there'd been occasional shooting from the Yokel end of the camp, but there was no sign of living Consies around here.
Dead ones, sure. A dozen of 'em were lined up outside the TOC, being checked for identification and anything else of intelligence value. When that was done—done in a pretty cursory fashion, the warrant leader expected, since Hammer didn't have a proper intelligence officer here at Camp Progress—the bodies would be hauled beyond the berm, covered with diesel, and barbecued like the bloody pigs they were.
Last night had been a bloody near thing.
Ortnahme wasn't going to send out a tank whose close-in defenses were doubtful. Not after he'd had personal experience of what that meant in action.
He bore down harder. The motor protested; bits of the brush tickled the face shield of his helmet. He'd decided to wear his commo helmet this morning instead of his usual shop visor, because—
Via, why not admit it? Because he'd really wished he'd had the helmet the night before. He couldn't change the past, couldn't have all his gear handy back then when he needed it; but he could sure as hell have it on him now for a security blanket.
There was a 1cm pistol in Ortnahme's hip pocket as well. He'd never seen the face of the Consie who'd chased him with the bomb, but today the bastard leered at Ortnahme from every shadow in the camp.
The singer moaned something exceptionally dismal. Ortnahme backed off his multitool, now that he had a sufficient section of channel cleared. He reached for a meter-long strip charge.