Two men in jumpsuits like the one Orichos wore—hers was now gray/yellow/red from grit it’d picked up during the run—looked over the side of the aircar to the right of the column. Deseau gave them the finger. The face of the cop who’d fired the carbine went black with anger. Orichos shouted into her communicator and the police vehicle rose quickly to a hundred meters.
“Sorry,” Orichos muttered over the intercom. Huber shrugged noncommittally.
Fencing Master’s bow slope was well within half a klick of the mob. Looking forward, his left hand on the tribarrel’s receiver and his right at his side instead of on the spade grip, Deseau said, “Some a’ them got guns, El-Tee. What do we do if they start shooting? Just take it?”
“Crew,” Huber said, “Nobody shoots till I do. Break. Six, this is Fox Three-six. If we start taking serious fire, my people aren’t going to stand here and be targets. Are we clear on that? Over.”
“Roger Three-six,” Sangrela said. “Delta Two-six—” Lieutenant Trogon “—if Fox Three-six opens fire, put a couple main gun rounds at his point of aim. Break. Sierra, Fox Three-six and Delta Two-six will do all the shooting till I tell you otherwise. Six out.”
“Roger, Three-six out,” Huber said. He was keyed up and felt as though he should be standing on the balls of his feet. Myers and Mitzi Trogon responded curtly as well.
Dinkybob slid to the left of Fencing Master’s track. Trogon was buttoned up in the turret. She’d elevated the 20-cm main gun to forty-five degrees for safety when the column entered an inhabited area; now she lowered it in line with the mob ahead. A crust of iridium redeposited from the bore made the muzzle look grimy.
If Dinkybob fired from close behind, the side-scatter from the burned-out gun was going to be curst uncomfortable in Fencing Master’s fighting compartment. But then, it was going to be curst uncomfortable regardless if this turned into a firefight.
The mob watched the column come on. Tranter closed the driver’s hatch. He’d been throttling back gradually, so by now Fencing Master was advancing no faster than a promenading couple. Huber and the troopers with him in the fighting compartment looked out through polarized faceshields as they aimed their forward-facing tribarrels. Normally the wing gunners’d be covering the flanks— and the good Lord knew, there might be snipers in the buildings, tall dwellings now instead of warehouses, to either side. The rest of the task force was going to have to deal with that threat, because Fencing Master had really immediate problems to her front.
Huber’d hoped the crowd’d scatter when the shouting civilians saw the huge vehicles coming at them, but they were holding steady. The front rank was of rough-looking men—almost all of them were men—with clubs. They didn’t have uniforms, but each of them and many of those behind wore red sweatbands. Banners with the red logo on a black ground waved from several places in the midst of the group.
Huber’s eyes narrowed. Those in front didn’t have guns, but many of the ones standing at the back of the crowd carried short-barreled slugthrowers much like the Gendarmery’s. You wouldn’t often have call for a long-range weapon in the forests of Plattner’s World, but at anything up to two hundred meters those carbines were as deadly as a powergun.
The trucks which’d been ferrying people in now landed in line across the Axis, forming a barrier behind the crowd. Grayle was doing everything she could to prevent her demonstration from melting away before the roaring bulk of the armored vehicles.
A good half of the mob was shouting and waving their fists in the air, often holding a club or a bludgeon. The other half seemed more scared than not, but they were in it now and knew there was no easy way out.
“What d’ye guess, El-Tee?” Deseau said. “Maybe three thousand of ’em?”
“Maybe more,” Huber said. “Just stay calm and let Tranter do the work. Ready, Sarge?”
“Roger that, sir,” Sergeant Tranter said, brightly cheerful. “Any time you say.”
It’d been a worse run for Tranter than for the line troopers—they were used to the hammering, or at least to some degree of it. Now at last Tranter was in his element, moving a combat car in precise, minuscule increments. As a repair technician, he’d regularly shifted cars and tanks in crowded maintenance parks where the tolerances were much tighter than anything combat troops dealt with in the field.
“Execute, then!” Huber said.
Huber felt the fans speed up through the soles of his feet; Fencing Master shivered. The crowd was shouting in unison, “Free-dom! Free-dom!” Compared to the intake roar, the sound of so many voices was no more than bird cries against the boom of the surf.
A dozen meters from the crowd, Tranter tilted the nacelles vertical and brought the fans up to maximum output so that the car drifted to a quivering halt. Dinkybob continued sliding forward till its bow slope overlapped Fencing Master’s stern. If they’d been directly in line, there’d have been a collision.
While Fencing Master balanced in place, dust and grit billowed out all around beneath her lifted skirts. Some flew toward the crowd, forcing the thugs in the front rank to cover their faces or turn their heads away.
“Watch the guys in the back!” Huber ordered, gripping the tribarrel with his thumbs deliberately lifted clear of the butterfly trigger. “Watch for anybody aiming at us!”
With the skill of a ballerina, Tranter cocked the two bow nacelles forward at the same time as he angled the six other fans slightly to the rear. The blast from the bow nacelles dug like a firehose into the gravel roadway, then sprayed the spoil into the crowd with the energy required to float thirty tonnes of combat vehicle.
The crowd broke. Those in the direct blast could no more stand against it than they could’ve swum through an avalanche. Spun away, battered away—some of the gravel was the size of a clenched fist—frightened away; blind from the dust and deafened by the howling air, they drove against those behind them.
The rout was as sudden and certain as the collapse of a house of cards. Tranter adjusted his throttles with the care of a chemist titrating a solution. The thugs at the front and the gunmen at the rear were no threat compared to the iridium sandstorm that ground forward, minutely but inexorably.
Dinkybob held station at Fencing Master’s left flank, her mass even more of a threat than the gape of her main gun’s pitted bore. She and the tank echeloned to the right behind her, Doomsayer, were buttoned up. There was nothing human about any of them, not even the mirrored facelessness of the gunners behind the combat car’s tribarrels.
When panic started the crowd running, it continued till there was nothing left but the sort of detritus a flood throws up at the edge of its channeclass="underline" clothing, clubs, papers of all manner and fashions, whirling in the wind from beneath Fencing Master’s steel skirts. A few bodies lay in the street as welclass="underline" people who’d been trampled, people who’d been squeezed breathless; probably a few who’d fainted.
Tranter cut his fan speed, adjusting the nacelles in parallel again to bring Fencing Master back into normal operation. They resumed forward movement at a walking pace.
Arne Huber relaxed for the first time in …well, he wasn’t sure how long. He raised his faceshield and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Good job, Tranter,” he said. “Now, park us in the grounds of that building up there on the mound.”
“Roger, El-Tee,” the driver said. “Ah, how about the landscaping, sir?”
“Fuck the landscaping!” said Sergeant Deseau.
Huber looked over his shoulder at Captain Orichos. She stood with the communicator in her hand but she wasn’t speaking into it. Huber grinned and said, “Frenchie’s right, Tranter. The bushes can take their chances.”
He took a deep breath and looked at the dust and debris in front of them. “The good Lord knows the rest of us just did,” he added.