The master sergeant threw himself into the motion, colliding with the commando's chest. The blow staggered both of them, though the Jehanan recovered instantly; his brawny, scaled chest easily absorbed the impact. The Jehanan kicked, smashing a long, clawed foot into the side of Colmuir's head. The Skawtsman slammed into the wall again, vision blurred, then choked as a second kick lashed into his stomach.
Gagging, Colmuir felt huge claws seize him and fling him against the other wall with a bone-shattering crash. He crumpled. The sound of a knife rasping from a sheath penetrated the blinding pain. The Skawtsman twisted, trying to roll up, and the knife sheared through his gunrig, pinning him to the wall.
A gaping jaw filled with chisel-sharp teeth yawned in front of Colmuir's face.
The Webley belched flame and a heavy 9mm round punched through the Jehanan's skull from side to side. Blood vomited out of the mouth, blinding the Skawtsman. The prince's voice was yelling something, but Colmuir had lost his earbug and he was deafened by the pistol blast. The master sergeant wiped gore from his eyes and tried to stand up. A hand seized his shoulder.
Tezozуmoc's face appeared over him, staring down with wild fear. The boy dragged at Colmuir's shoulders, but now the Eagle Knight's legs had gone weak and his medband was shrilling wildly. Over the prince's shoulder, the Skawtsman saw Petrel's face – pale as ghost, spotted with blood, her raven hair a black cloud behind her head – turning in alarm.
Two crisp shots rang out and Tezozуmoc was flung aside, his Fleet skinsuit crackling and turning gray as a bullet smashed into the back of each of the boy's knees. Petrel was raising the Webley when a long-barreled military pistol – Colmuir didn't recognize the type – pressed into her throat. Pale as a sheet, she released the pistol, letting the Express fall.
There was a frozen moment as the Eagle Knight slid to the floor, hands numb. A Jehanan commando with blacked-out officer's tabs gestured Petrel aside and reached down to seize the prince's neck. Colmuir forced his hand to move. Muscles and nerves responded with glacial speed. He saw the pistol turn over once in the air. His hand was out, reaching and -
The Jehanan's tail whipped around, slapping the Webley across the compartment with a ringing clatter. The officer grinned, hoisted Tezozуmoc up and dragged him away. A hoarse hooting sound filled the baggage car and Petrel, hands behind her head, hurried to keep ahead of the gesturing pistol.
Groaning, Colmuir scrabbled for purchase on the floor, trying to lever himself up. He came face to face with Cecily, whose lifeless eyes were filmed with blood. Her festival dress was torn, her chest and stomach oozing crimson. The Skawtsman swallowed, tasting iron, and groped for his backup pistol.
"Ghawww-yeh," rumbled an alien voice. Colmuir raised his eyes and found the muzzle of a HK-45B pressed against his forehead. The metal was hot and burned his skin.
Dawd scrambled down the third car passage, his way blocked by burning debris and scattered bodies. At least two Jehanan in uniform were sprawled among the wreckage. Buildings rushed past outside, the agricultural plain now filling with warehouses, single-family dwellings and kilometer after kilometer of brick yards. The Skawtsman had his backup Nambu in one hand and a combat knife in the other. A chorus of screams and hooting wails came from the compartments he passed, making him sweat.
He ducked past a half-open door near the end of the car, automatically swinging his pistol to cover the opening and froze – eye to eye with a sandy-haired, thin human and the huge black shape of a Hesht – each of whom were wielding lengths of splintered wood.
"Ay!" Dawd shouted, jumping aside and jerking the automatic back. "No quarrel!"
A club split the air where he'd been and the Skawtsman shook his head, scrambling on down the passage. Behind him, there was a shrieking growl and someone cursing in Nahuatl.
He slid around the corner at the end of the car, knife towards the washroom, then glimpsed – out of the corner of his eye – a Jehanan soldier's back, heavy with a rucksack and harness and a bandolier of ammunition for an assault rifle. Wooden doors separating the cars banged open and closed between them. Dawd paused, gathering himself, timed the swinging doors and then vaulted across the gap, crashing into the baggage car with his left shoulder forward.
The Jehanan snapped around, rifle coming up and Dawd shot him twice in the chest, pitching the creature back. The soldier flailed, HK-45B flying out of his hands. The sergeant leapt a pair of bodies without noticing who they were and landed in a slippery pool of intestines. His foot flew out – he shouted – and fell hard. The Jehanan staggered up, wailing a warning cry, and ripped the crumpled shirt of ceramic armor from his chest.
Dawd slid in gore, twisting his feet under, and fired the automatic wildly at the soldier. Both shots missed, pock-marking the far wall of the compartment. The Jehanan lunged, tail lashing and batted the Skawtsman's outstretched hand away. His finger jammed painfully in the trigger guard, Dawd blocked a vicious kick with his knife.
Monofil sheared through scale and bone. The soldier screamed horribly, stumbling, useless leg collapsing. Dawd reversed the blade, slashing open the side of the slick's head from shoulder blade to snout. The Jehanan toppled over, gargling. The Skawtsman lunged, clearing the slippery pool and reached the far door of the compartment. Pressing his back to the wall, he extracted his mangled finger from the pistol, switched it to his off hand and jammed the wounded arm into his gunrig.
Flames licked along the ceiling over his head as the baggage car filled with smoke.
"Dawd," a familiar voice coughed. The sergeant's head snapped up. Colmuir crawled out from under the bodies by the door, combat visor gone, hair greased to his head. "They've got the prince and the Resident's wife…quickly now, lad, quickly! There's only one or two of them left."
Wrenching his attention around, Dawd swayed into the doorway, timing his motion to the jump and rattle of the train car. The sliding door banged back and the sergeant dodged through, automatic close to his chest. Sunlight blazed around him – he was exposed on an open platform, facing a tender stacked with firewood – and Dawd flung himself to the side. His hip struck a railing, he tipped over halfway and was staring down at tracks and gravel rushing past. Bullets shattered the door and tore chunks of wood out of the end of the baggage car.
Dawd folded himself back, falling to the floor of the little platform, and crawled on one hand and both knees to the other side. Craning his neck, he glimpsed a Jehanan in black body armor and a modern pair of combat goggles crouched on the far end of the fuel tender.
Cursing all arms merchants for fools, Dawd forced his injured hand to work, plucked the last grenade from his gunrig, armed the device and flipped it up and into the back of the tender. In the next motion, he rolled out from the platform, legs hooked into the railing and the automatic blazed twice in his hand as the Jehanan flinched back from the flash of the grenade bursting atop the firewood.
The commando jerked aside, hit twice in the chest, and then the blast of the grenade knocked him over the side with a scream. Dawd hauled himself back onto the platform, shucked a clip from the automatic and jammed in a fresh one. Gathering himself, he vaulted up into the fuel tender, which was now smoldering. Keeping low, he scrambled up along the cords of firewood and hurried forward. He could make out the chuffing smokestack of the engine ahead. Cinders dinged from his combat visor.
The railroad tracks split and split again as the express entered the Parus rail-yards. Despite this, the train did not slow down, roaring ahead at full steam.
Parker picked his way down the hallway, duffel digging into his shoulders as if it were filled with lead bars. Smoke bit at his throat and fouled the air. The passenger car behind him was now burning furiously, the flames fed by the rushing air of the train's passage. Gingerly, the pilot climbed over a dead Jehanan and found himself staring into a blood-streaked baggage car littered with bodies.
"Oh, Maggie," he groaned, hands clutching the sides of the connecting door, "this does not look good!"
"
Move it, witless!" The Hesht shoved his duffel with her shoulder, forcing Parker to scramble across the gap and into the next car. "We'll be burned alive if we stay here."
Inside the ruined baggage car, Parker kept to the wall, trying to avoid the lake of blood, urine, intestinal fluid and limbs sloshing back and forth on the floor. He stared with amazement at the crumpled bodies of two young human women and then froze, terrified to see that one of the bodies leaning against the wall was alive. Fierce brown eyes met his and the seeming-corpse stirred.
"Ahhh…Maggie! Maybe we should…"
The Hesht was caught in the sliding doorway, but, by dint of a rasping growl and main strength, she managed to force her way through, despite the pair of duffel bags on her back catching in the mechanism. Panting, she shucked the bags, letting them splash to the noisome floor.
Colmuir glanced from the thin human to the Hesht and back again. "Civilians," he choked, sounding amused. "Give a man a hand up, would you?"
Magdalena stared down at him with cool interest. "You're the brainless kit who tossed a grenade into our compartment, I think."
"Did I?" The master sergeant swallowed, trying to muster the strength to stand. One thigh bone seemed to be broken and his chest stabbed with pain each time he took a breath. "Sorry about that, I was in a bit of a hurry."
"Luckily, Parker has quick hands." The Hest leaned down, nostrils flaring. "Pfah! You stink." She stood up, reaching for her duffel bags. "Let's leave him. The fire will reach this car soon, and we'd best be -"
All three heads turned, hearing the blast of a grenade and the rattle of gunfire.
"Ah now, the lad's in trouble again." Colmuir beckoned to Parker. "C'mon, sport, help me up. There's still work to be done. You haven't a gun to hand do you?"
Parker stared at Maggie, who snarled, showing a great many white teeth in her black face.
"Leave him!"
"But -"
The train lurched, making a shockingly loud grinding sound. Something metallic shrieked in agony and everyone in the baggage car was abruptly thrown the length of the compartment with tremendous violence.
Dawd surged up over the top of the last stack of cordwood, automatic in both hands and caught sight of the enormous glassed-in roof of the Parus train station looming ahead of the train engine. Four tracks ran into the building, and the train, still barreling ahead at full speed was rushing into siding number two. Smoke stained the sky and an unexpectedly large number of multistory buildings loomed on all sides. The sight of panicked Jehanan scattering away from the passenger platform froze him for just one tiny instant.
His eyes snapped down, the gun leveling, and he glimpsed – in a moment of crystalline, unforgettable clarity – Mrs. Petrel staring up at him with open, glad relief; the prince lying limply on the floor of the engineer's compartment; the engine-mouth blazing red; and the Jehanan officer swinging around, a long-barreled pistol lined up along his shoulder, the muzzle looming huge in Dawd's vision.
Too fucking late, he had time to think, squeezing the trigger of his automatic.
The native pistol flashed, Dawd's Nambu bucked and something slammed into his chest, smashing through the tools hanging on his gunrig and flattened violently against the combatskin. The light armor stiffened automatically, absorbing the hammer-blow of the slug, but the Skawtsman pitched backwards, spilling across the cordwood and crashing into the side of the tender. His head rang, a cloud of sparks flooded his vision and – despite the valiant efforts of his medband – Dawd blacked out.
At that very moment, while the Jehanan officer was distracted, Mrs. Petrel threw herself on the brake lever of the engine, bearing down with all her strength. A rippling shock leapt through the train cars as each set of brakes engaged in turn, shrilling deafeningly with the agony of metal on metal. The wheels skidded, gouting sparks and the entire train slid wildly out of control into the station at forty kilometers an hour.
An Undisclosed Location Central Parus
A string of portable lamps hanging from the ceiling of the bunker jiggled, sending shadows chasing across concrete walls. Bhrigu, kujen of Parus and the principality of Venadan, halted in the midst of incessant pacing and lifted his long, cream-colored snout. Nervous, he turned an Imperial-made comm over and over in his claws. Rubbing the hard plastic case against his scales distracted his thoughts from veering into bleak despair.
"What was that?" The prince rasped, glaring at the commander of his guard.
"A bomb," the Jehanan soldier replied, holding a bulky set of headphones to one ear-hole. Insulated wires trailed off under wooden tables covered with papers and boxes of ammunition. One entire wall of the subterranean room was covered with an immensely detailed, hand-drawn map of the city and the surrounding countryside. Three thin little females were busy chattering into speaking tubes and moving back and forth, updating a forest of pins, flags and stickers adorning the chart. "There is fighting in the western portico. Looters are trying to break into the palace."
"With what? A tank? A battering ram?" Bhrigu wrinkled his snout in disbelief. His lower stomach felt pinched and the sensation did not improve a habitually nervous disposition. "Are we being bombed? Didn't I order our aircraft to stay hidden?"
The guard-captain shook his head. "No bombs, sire. A runner-cart filled with cheap explosives was used to break down the gate. Sirkar Khanus and his company are holding them off." The soldier flashed his teeth in amusement. "They do not like machine-gun fire, this rabble."
"Huh! I hope not…" Bhrigu turned back to the map wall, hopping nervously from foot to foot as he studied the latest reports. Once, long ago, and well before the kujen's ancestors had hared down from the hill-country of Agen to pillage and then seize the ruined metropolis of Parus from the degenerate, cannibalistic tribes scratching out a living amid the decaying grandeur of old Jagan, the series of chambers under the palace had been equipped with comps and display panels and all matter of technological wonders.
Now there were only gaping cavities in the walls, filled with stacks of leather-bound pypil booklets and boxes of dried meat and fish. The ancient gipu-lights had been replaced by portable oil lamps and strings of imported camping lanterns. Bhrigu's technicians and craftsmen told him there were kilometers of tunnels beneath the city, filled with an intricate network of old cable, but the equipment required to use the decaying telecom network was beyond their ability to manufacture.
The prince had spent every coin he could scrape together on guns and parts to repair the ancient tanks and aircraft his grandfather had collected in secret depots. Weren't the Imperials going to build us a shiny new communications system, he thought, rather bitterly, staring at the comm in his hand. And they did, and it worked wonderfully for a year. And now? So much expensive trash littering the rooftops…
Bhrigu picked at his teeth with the edge of a small-claw. His lesser stomach continued to clench intermittently, making his entire lower body queasy with pain. "How stands the battle?" he demanded, rather querulously, of the females updating the huge map. "Has Humara taken the Legation yet?"
"No, sire." The seniormost of the scribes shook her head. "The asuchau defenders received reinforcements by air during the initial assault. The kurbardar is preparing to attack from several directions at once, as soon as his reinforcements are in position."
"Huh! Well then, we will see if old Scar can prove his reputation against a real foe."
Bhrigu rolled from foot to foot, trying not to feel queasy. His relationship with Humara had never been entirely cordial. The general had been hatched with the kujen's father and they had always been close. Shell of shell, they were. The prince started to gnaw at his claw. He possessed an abiding suspicion the kurbardar intended to ride any victory over the Imperials straight to the high seat of the kujenate itself. "What about the attack on the Imperial cantonment?"
The scribes put their heads together, huddled near the section of map showing the sprawling Imperial encampment on the southern edge of the city. Bhrigu had a to
o-clear memory of the tricky negotiations which had led to his 'leasing' an entire district to the soft-skinned humans for fifty-two solar orbits. At least it was marsh-land and refuse dumps, he thought sourly. And their primary presence is here, rather than in Takshila or Patala. Denying his northern and southern rivals direct access to Imperial goods was some leavening to the bitterness of watching their aerocars come and go in his sky. Counting the duties his tax collectors imposed on imports from Sobipurй did bring a sweet taste to his mouth, even if he was reviled as a traitor throughout Jagan.
"There is heavy fighting there," the scribe reported. "The lance-commanders are pressing the attack, but casualties are rising very rapidly. Several detachments of the enemy have fought their way in from the countryside. Initial gains have been reversed." One of her subordinates removed several flags from the map and plucked a set of pins out of the diagrams showing the cantonment buildings.
"Hrrr…" Bhrigu felt his upper stomach clench as well. His nostrils wrinkled. "Have any of the Imperial detachments been destroyed? Even one?"
The kujen had received the news of the asuchau regiment dispersing to 'protect Imperial interests' with cautious optimism. His generals had been ecstatic, believing the enemy had played directly into their claws by reducing his concentration of forces to a 'manageable level.' Bhrigu was notoriously cautious, however, and had taken the human Timonen's offhand remark about the power of Imperial weapons to heart.
If a squad of their troops can match a brigade of ours, he remembered thinking, then scattering their maneuver elements gives them a free field of fire…and the reach to come to grips with more of us than would otherwise be the case.
"We have reports from various commanders," the scribe said, nostrils wrinkling in obvious disbelief, "indicating thousands of the enemy have fallen. Entire regiments," she continued, "have been destroyed, their bodies scattered, vehicles and weapons captured, females taken as prizes and young crushed alive in their shells."
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