Vilyamo used up all his ten minutes before leaving the Admin Building with his sergeant major, his make-believe Kalif, and three volunteer officers. They were halfway to the planter before the enemy commander appeared with his own little party of officers.
Vilyamo had expected that. He felt entirely calm.
The rebel commander's delay was more than a matter of protococlass="underline" He'd waited to examine the Kalif and the party of Guard officers on his central screen, using maximum magnification. Only when he was satisfied with what he saw did he get up from his seat and leave with his staff.
He didn't care for this charade, this pretense of negotiation. He felt uncomfortable with it. And while waiting for the Guard commander to reappear with the Kalif, he'd considered not going out-considered simply ordering his people to shoot down the Kalif and his party as they approached the meeting place.
Then his radio reported that floaters had appeared over the Anan Hills, which had to mean the Caps were finally moving. And it seemed to him that, orders notwithstanding, it would be very useful, when the Caps arrived, to have the Kalif in his hands alive, as a hostage if one was needed.
He turned. "Let's go," he said.
Free for the moment of rebel gunfire, guardsmen, rifles in hand, peered from the windows of the Administration Building. They knew what they were seeing, unreal though it seemed, and they had their instructions. They'd even found targets as the rebel troops relaxed their cover discipline. The difficult part was to keep their eyes on those targets, instead of watching the charade taking shape in the quadrangle. As the two parties approached the planter, pistols appeared in the hands of Vilyamo and his men, and they shot down the rebel commander and his party. That served as a signal, and the guardsmen at the windows opened fire on their own targets. Only after a long, shocked moment did rebel fire erupt, shooting Colonel Vilyamo Parsavamaatu and his party to bloody rags.
That done, it seemed to the rebel troops that they'd killed the Kalif. Surely now the fighting would stop and the Guard would surrender.
But only the truce was over. Meanwhile, time had been gained, and within the Sreegana, at least for the moment, the rebels had no one in charge. Inside the command floater, only a captain, a sublieutenant, and some noncoms remained.
Fifty-seven
The weather was cooperating. Although it was still the major rainy season, as yet the day had brought neither rain nor threat of it. A complete light infantry battalion, with equipment and supplies, had been loaded onto troop carriers. In the armored command floater, Major Tagurt Meksorli sat beside the battalion commander, as the division commander's personal observer and liaison. Two of the division's three gunship squadrons would support the battalion, and they lifted first, to form an escort formation. Then the troop carriers lifted by company.
When they were all in the air and in formation, they flew eastward, moving fast, and in a few minutes had crossed the Anan Hills. The screens arrayed in front of Meksorli all showed the same thing-the city close ahead. Suburbs passed beneath them, and in the middle distance, smoke arose from the Sreegana.
And something else: rebel gunships coming toward them, a squadron at least. He got on the radio to the CO. One flight of his own gunships were out ahead. He'd soon see his first air battle; indeed the first air battle any of them had seen. His own force seemed to have an advantage in numbers, but they were constrained by the need to cover the troop carriers.
They clashed less than a minute later, the troop carriers continuing more slowly now. The Sreegana was only about two miles away when the command floater shook from a hit. They were beginning to take ground fire; the rebels had forces along the Avenue of The Prophet. As Meksorli let the division commander know, he felt the floater surge upward and saw the troop carriers follow suit.
Within minutes an armored unit would be on the way, but on the surface and much more slowly. And the rebels had no doubt anticipated that, with defensive positions to slow it further and give it losses, stop it if they could.
The report was that the rebels were from 1st Corps, at Fashtar, 2,100 miles north, but there were conflicting reports as to how large the force was. Apparently quite large, if they had units this far from the Sreegana.
General Songhidalarsa's command floater was parked at 17,000 feet elevation, twenty miles east of the Sreegana. It was considerably larger than the floater Meksorli rode, and extravagantly furnished. Just now his screen array included one with a map of the Ananporu District; he'd been watching the progress and engagement of the Caps relief force, as reported by brigade G-2.
Songhidalarsa had been parked somewhat farther east. Then brigade command had reported the occupation of the War Ministry; and regimental command, by code, the impending surrender of the Kalif. With that he'd started toward Ananporu to announce his dictatorship. But apparently regimental command had been tricked and killed, with the status of the Kalif uncertain. And by then, despite the capture of the Imperial General Staff's offices, the Caps had had a relief force on the way. So he'd held off.
It still seemed probable that the Kalif lay dead somewhere. The palace was fire-gutted, and his body could well lie somewhere inside, charred and undiscovered.
Something to hell was happening, the Kalif realized. He felt seriously isolated by his lack of a radio. Obviously there'd been a cease-fire, which had been broken by an intense fire-fight. This had since eased off markedly. Then a gunship had plummeted into the quadrangle with a jar he could almost feel; presumably an aerial battle was going on. As he watched and listened, the gunfire had picked up, particularly the turret fire from the enemy troop carriers parked in the quadrangle. A series of explosions burst in their midst. Some of the carriers were ruptured or rolled over.
Apparently the Caps were arriving.
Then more troop carriers landed amidst the wreckage, and farther away, he could see four others squatting over the Admin Building, presumably unloading troops. The troops being unloaded in the quadrangle wore blue dress jackets, apparently so they could tell one another from the rebels. The shooting was intensifying, but the odds of his surviving seemed to have improved. Again he wondered about Tain, and again told himself that she was a survivor by nature. It didn't reassure him this time either.
Captain Iighil Dhotmariloku, commanding A Company, 1st Battalion, 103rd Infantry, was observing the fighting from a window in the west wing of the Administration Building. As far as he knew, he was the senior rebel officer inside the Sreegana, since that fiasco in the Quadrangle. The fighting hadn't gone well since then, but he hadn't tried to take command. There was no point in it. He had no strategy, nothing to steer by.
Things improved markedly when the 11th Gunship Wing finally arrived. But the improvement could only be temporary; he didn't delude himself that the coup was going to succeed. Not now. They'd needed to take the Kalif-needed his body to display. As it was… No doubt a forest of stakes would soon sprout in the square, decorated with bodies of what the government would call traitors.
Iighil, he told himself, what you need is a bargaining chip. But what the hell that could be…
Meanwhile he had A Company-A Company plus the two penal platoons that had been attached to it after fire had driven them out of the palace. He'd had them lifted to the roof of the Administration Building, and used them to spearhead the penetration downward in this wing. Progress had been better here than elsewhere because of them, but they'd taken heavy casualties, including both their officers.