“Fox Three-six to Sierra Six,” Huber said. “Any word what we’re supposed to be doing? Over.”
The cars’ passage splashed the guards as well. A Gendarme officer retrieved the hat that’d been blown into a puddle and shook his fist at the big vehicles. Deseau snickered and said, “Bad move. Could’ve been a real bad move if the dumb bastard’d decided to wave his gun instead.”
“Sierra, this is Six,” Captain Sangrela said, replying to the whole unit. “I’ve been told we’re to hold ourselves in readiness to support Flamingo as required. If that sounds to you like, ‘Go play, kiddies, while the big boys get on with business,’ then you’ve got company thinking that. Six out!”
The incoming infantry drove their skimmers off while the wrenchmobiles were still slowing. Huber noticed with some amusement that they didn’t perform the operation as smoothly as Captain Sangrela’s troopers had. The White Mice were real soldiers as well as being the Regiment’s police and enforcers, but they didn’t use skimmers nearly as much as the line infantry did.
The newcomers began to deploy along the southern length of the cage. There were only forty of them, so that meant almost ten meters between individuals. They carried 1-cm sub-machine guns rather than a mix of the automatic weapons with 2-cm shoulder weapons.
Deseau must’ve been thinking along the same lines as Huber was, because he said, “Blow apart the first man who moves with one a’ these—”
He patted the receiver of the 2-cm weapon wedged muzzle-down beside his position between two ammo boxes and the armor.
“—and you quiet a mob a lot faster than spraying it with a buzz-gun.”
Learoyd looked at him. “Did you ever do that, Frenchie?” he said. “To a mob?”
Huber kept his frown inside his head. You didn’t generally ask another trooper about his past. Learoyd had an utter, undoubted innocence that allowed him to say things nobody else could get away with …and a lack of mental wattage that made it very likely he would.
Deseau said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. He nodded to Huber, explicitly including him, and said, “Naw, that was back on Helpmeet when I was a kid, Learoyd. I was on the other side of the powergun, you see. So when things quieted down, I joined the Regiment before they shipped out again.”
The moving dirigible settled so that all three containers dragged, then detached them. The center box stuck momentarily. The airship bounced upward when the weight of the other two released, so the third clanged loudly to the ground when it finally dropped. It hit on a corner which bent upward, kinking the bars.
“Good thing it wasn’t full of cattle,” Huber muttered, frowning at the thought of broken legs and beasts bellowing in pain and terror. Now that he’d seen dirigibles in operation, he realized that they were about as unwieldy a form of transportation as humans had come up with. Useful here on Plattner’s World, though.
“The cows’re gonna be killed anyway, El-Tee,” Deseau said. “It don’t matter much, right?”
“Maybe not,” Huber said; not agreeing, just ending a discussion that didn’t have anywhere useful to go. Maybe nothing at all mattered, but on a good day Arne Huber didn’t feel that way.
The command car pulled up alongside the chute, making a half turn so that its bow angled toward the camp proper. Though it was an hour short of sunset and the clouds had cleared, the driver switched on his headlights. In their beams the strands of razor ribbon glittered like jagged icicles. Two troopers with sub-machine guns got out of the vehicle and walked over to the wire.
“Prisoners of Hammer’s Regiment!” a voice boomed through the command car’s loudspeakers. “You will walk in line through the passage at the southeast corner of this camp. As you pass my vehicle—”
The whip antenna on top of the car glowed, becoming a wand of soft red light.
“—you will turn to face it. Then you will walk on to the containers in which you’ll be transported to Midway. There you’ll be released.”
The words were being repeated on the north side of the POW encampment. It wasn’t an echo from the volcano, as Huber thought for a moment. The A Company combat cars were relaying the speech through their public address systems.
“Who’s that in the car?” Deseau said. From the way his eyes were narrowed, he already knew the answer to his question.
“It sounds like Major Steuben,” Huber said. “As you’d expect.”
A full company of Gendarmes stood by the shipping containers. Mauricia Orichos was among them, her hands linked behind her back. Huber had been watching her as Steuben spoke. Orichos hadn’t been best pleased at the words “prisoners of Hammer’s Regiment.”
That was tough. She knew she’d been the only member of the Point forces present when Fort Freedom fell. The Slammers had taken these prisoners, and if the Gendarmery wanted to get snooty about it, the Slammers could take the prisoners away from their present guards any time they wanted to.
A prisoner bellowed something toward the car. Though he made a megaphone of his hands, Huber couldn’t catch the word or brief phrase.
Steuben did, however. The loudspeakers boomed, “A gentleman has expressed doubt that you will actually be released. Let me assure you, mesdames and sirs, that if I wished to kill you all I would not bother with play acting. When you get to Midway, you will be told to sin no more and be released.”
The trucks had unloaded their pallets of black-banded gas cylinders. Five of them shut down. The sixth lifted and lumbered past Task Force Sangrela to settle again beside the command car. The driver opened the cab door and stood on his mounting step, looking at the camp. Another squad of White Mice dismounted from the back and walked over to the chute.
“Very well,” the PA system thundered. Amplification softened Steuben’s clipped tones, making his words sound pompous. Huber found the contrast with the real man chilling. “Start coming through. The sooner you get moving, the sooner we can all get on to more congenial tasks.”
A prisoner near the front looked around, then shambled into the chute. One of the White Mice reached an arm over the wire to halt the man in the headlights. His head rose in surprise and sudden fear.
“Keep going!” the amplified voice ordered.
The trooper’s arm dropped; the prisoner jogged the rest of the way to where Gendarmes herded him into the first container. Several more prisoners followed, shuffling forward in a mixture of desperation and apathy.
“I suggest reconsideration on the part of anyone who thinks he’ll remain in the tents,” Steuben continued, the catlike humor of his tone coming through despite mechanical distortion. “We’re going to destroy the entire site, starting at the north side. We can see you through cloth as surely as we’ll be able to see you in the dead of night, so don’t be foolish.”
There was a hollow boop, then a second later a white flash and a shattering crash. A second boop, Wham! followed immediately. Troopers in the combat cars on the north side were firing grenade launchers into the tents.
Thermal viewing would show any holdouts, so there was no need for the grenades. Major Steuben was just making a point, to the Gendarmes as surely as to the captive Volunteers.
“Sierra, this is Flamingo Six-three,” said the A Company signals officer. “Fox Three-six is to report to the command car ASAP. Out.”
Deseau and Learoyd both looked at Huber. From the driver’s compartment, Sergeant Tranter said over the intercom, “El-Tee? What’s going on?”
Huber cued his intercom and said, “Curst if I know, Sarge. I’ll tell you when I get back. Assuming.”
He swung his left leg over the armor, then paused. He unclipped the sling of his 2-cm weapon from the epaulet and offered the big gun to Learoyd, saying, “Trade me, will you, Herbert?”
“Sure, sir,” the trooper said. He took the 2-cm weapon and slapped the butt of his sub-machine gun into Huber’s palm.