But no panic, no panic at all. Sten watched proudly as the weapons came off the men's shoulders and the perimeter specialists hit it. set up their crew-served weapons and began spattering return fire into the Jann units.
A vee-bank of Bhor lighters swept across the field at the height of a man's chest, cannon and rockets pumping and fire drizzling out of their sterns.
Smoke began roiling up from the Jann positions.
"Let's go! Let's go! Move! Move!" And why the clot can't I do anything more inspiring than shout as Sten and his team doubled around the corner of the hangar, toward their own assigned demo targets.
And why the hell am I shouting when it's so quiet? Clot, man, you're deaf. No, you aren't, as Sten realized that the only fire was coming from his own troops as they moved out, blindly following the assault plan.
Alex was shouting for cease-fire, and Otho grumbled his way toward Sten, bloodily grinning.
"We have one hour. Colonel, and then by my mother's beard this whole world of the black ones will go down and down to hell."
Less poetically Sten decided that Otho was telling him he'd set the timer on the ship's charges—conventional explosives, but enough to equal a 2KT nuke.
Khorea briskly returned the salute as he entered Urich's main command post. The command staff in the bunker were calm, he noted with approval, and all observation screens were on. "Situation?"
"We have approximately one thousand invaders on the ground," an officer reported. "No sign of major support or assault ships entering atmosphere. All ships are tac/air support. No sign of potential nuke deployment."
"The invaders—the mercenaries?"
"It would appear so. General."
"And that"—he gestured at the screen, where the crumpled hulk of the Atherson lay, still buried in the mating plant's shattered doors—"was their mission?"
"Yes," another Jann said. "Evidently their intelligence incorrectly estimated the thickness of those doors. No plant damage is reported. In fact, General, after the raiders are removed, we can have the plant operational in three, perhaps four cycles."
"Excellent."
Khorea mused to himself as he sat down at the main control board. The cursed of Theodomir have tried another raid. This time they failed, but they will try to commit as much damage as possible. With no pickup ships reported, they must expect to be able to take and hold Urich. Which means they expect us to surrender.
Impossible, his mind told him. The mercenaries cannot know so little about the Jann. So they are suicide troops? Equally impossible. Well, possibly not for those—he eyed a screen— red-uniformed ones we have heard reports about, who call themselves Mathias' Companions. But the others are mercenaries. Mercenaries simply do not die for their clients.
Therefore—analysis complete. Further input needed, Khorea's mind told him as he issued a string of orders intended to close the Jann circle about the raiders and destroy them utterly.
"Out. You people must get out of here," Ffillips chided. She stood, weapon ready, over a cluster of workmen kneeling in one shop. Behind her two of her teams reeled det wire across the shop.
"We do not kill civilians," Ffillips said. "Now you run. Get very far away from here."
The workmen came to their feet and shambled toward the exit. Ffillips sighed in satisfaction and turned back to watch her teams at work.
But one Jann workman stooped hastily near a dead commando and had a projectile weapon up, raised, aimed at Ffillips as the white-haired woman leaped sideways, turning and firing. The spatter of rounds cut the man in half.
Ffillips got back to her feet and shook her head sadly. "But still, you must admire dedication," she told herself.
"Kill them! Kill the Jann!" Mathias raved as a wave of his Companions poured into a barracks door. The barracks, however, was a dispensary. Lying in the beds were the normally injured and sick of any industrial center.
None of them was armed.
It did not matter to Mathias or to his Companions.
The patients died as they squirmed for shelter under their beds.
From overhead, as the Bhor strafing ships dipped and swooped, firing at anything resembling a black uniform, the port of Urich was in chaos. Here smoke or flame flared; there a building mushroomed outward. Troops scuttled from shelter to shelter.
The raid was progressing very well.
"Pretty." Kurshayne said.
They were. Sten/Alex/Kurshayne's own target was the Jann design center, specifically the complex design computers in the building's basement.
But the booths for the designers were hung with sketches and models. Some of them, Sten knew, must have been made by people who loved the clean, swept beauty of interstellar ships.
So? Sten pulled the toggle on the twenty-second timer, and electricity pulsed through the portuguese-man-of-war-swirl that the det blocks and wiring made across the building's floor.
Kurshayne was still staring, fascinated, at one ship model.
Sten grabbed the model and shoved it deep into the man's nearly empty backpack. "Move, man, if you don't want to go into orbit."
As the three men doubled-timed out of the building, the charges rumbled and then went off and the center fell into its own basement.
No, Ffillips decided. No man, even a Jann, should die like that.
She and three commando teams were crouched behind a ruined building. Across the square from them was a skirmish line of Jann. And, above them, a huge tank of chem fuel.
Between the two forces one of Ffillips' men lay wounded in the center of the square.
"Recovery!" one of Ffillips' men shouted, and she sprinted out into the open. A Jann calmly broke cover, aimed, and put a shell through the would-be rescuer. Then switched his aim and gut-shot the wounded man.
Which effectively made up Ffillips' mind, and she sprayed rounds into the chem tank above the Jann. Liquid fire turned the black-uniformed killers into dancing puppets of death.
"All first-wave units committed. General," the Jann said.
"Thank you, Sigfehr," Khorea returned, and eyed his battle screen. Very well, very well. My first wave has held the mercenaries in place. Now my second wave will break their lines and the third wave will wipe them out.
He was curious as to what possible intentions the mercenary captain had-he still could see no rationale for the suicide raid.
The charges on the Atherston were quadruple-fused, just to make sure nothing could go wrong. Even so, two of them had been smashed out-of-circuit in the landing.
But two more ticked away their small, molecular-decay timers.
Brave men of the Jann reinfiltrated back to their AA positions, and slowly the weapons pits returned to life. Suddenly it was worth a Bhor's life for him to lift his lighter higher than the port's buildings.
The commando team edged forward, out of the shadows toward their target. As they moved into the open, a Jann missile lost its intended target-a Bhor lighter-in ground-clutter and impacted into a building.
All those commandos might have heard was the explosion of the missile and then the crumble as the ten-story structure poured down on them.
Their target would not be destroyed, and, for years afterward, some of their friends would wonder, over narcobeers, just what had happened.
The second wave of Jann, Khorea observed, was moving most efficiently. They did seem to be making inroads against the raiders' perimeter.
The third wave, now that the Bhor tac/air ships had to keep their distance, was drawn up in attack formation on the landing field, close to that ruined freighter.
Very well, Khorea thought. Now the Jann will show their courage.