“Blood Six to Bravo Six . . . Do you read me? Over.”
“That’s affirmative,” Santana replied. “Over.”
“Are you ready? Over.”
There was a distant flash as a mortar round detonated and a sudden wash of light as more flares went off. Santana looked back over his shoulder. The rafts were hidden in the darkness. Were the refugees ready to pass through a hail of bullets? No, of course not. Neither was he. But there was only one answer the officer could give. “Sir, yes sir. Over.”
“All right,” Seeba-Ka said somberly, “bring them in. Once you enter the combat zone, notify Alpha Eight. Good luck. Over.”
Santana hit the transmit button twice and turned to Hwa Nas. “Cut the line.” He looked at Busso. “Pass the word. Cut the lines.”
The missionary obeyed, the rafts drifted free, and the flotilla began to move downriver. It took less than fifteen minutes for the flagship to reach the edge of the plain and the point where the easternmost campfires burned. Santana waited for the inevitable cry of alarm but nothing was heard. It was just a matter of time however—and the platoon leader took one last look at his troops. They were positioned along both sides of the raft behind makeshift barricades. Each legionnaire carried a primary and secondary weapon, thirty magazines, and as many grenades as they could manage.
All of the soldiers knew the rafts would be forced to pass through what amounted to a shooting gallery and were determined to give as good as they got. The flagship continued to ghost along, seconds continued to tick away, and the battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
Seeba-Ka heard a boot scrape on stone and turned to discover that FSO Vanderveen had materialized at his side. She carried a scope-mounted hunting rifle which she proceeded to load with cartridges taken from her pocket. The Hudathan frowned. “No offense, ma’am, but what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m going to shoot some members of the Tro Wa,” the diplomat replied defiantly. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Seeba-Ka looked into the human’s level gaze and was reminded of females like his grandmother who carried their husbands’ weapons, guarded their backs, and tended their wounds. Santana, it occurred to him, was a very lucky man. “No, I don’t. Try to hit their leaders. And be careful . . . The same sniper who killed Major Miraby is still out there.”
Vanderveen nodded, found a place over the water gate, and waited for the killing to begin.
As chance would have it, it was Ply Pog, the same ruffian who had befriended Yao Che on his journey to Mys, who felt the need to pee and wandered down to the edge of the river. And there he was, busily adding his water to the Jade’s steady flow, when the first raft sailed past. The Tro Wa saw it, pointed, and yelled. He was busy trying to stuff himself back into his pants when Private Joan Fandel put a .50 caliber round through the center of the Claw’s chest. The battle had begun.
The cyborgs, all six of whom had been waiting for what seemed like an eternity, marched up out of the oily black water to take their places on the riverbank. Three faced north and three faced south. They were roughly a hundred feet apart and looked huge in the strange half-light cast by the flares.
The forward elements of the Claw had been stationed within twenty-five feet of the riverbank. They stared in horror as what looked like primordial monsters rose to confront them.
Muskets began to pop, an automatic weapon opened up, and the mortars put six illumination rounds up in the air. Suddenly the battlefield was bathed in ghostly light, the cyborgs opened fire, and the first raft passed behind their backs.
Snyder discovered that the targets were so thick that there was no need to aim. She, along with Hosakawa and a borg named Krisco, stuck their arms out and attacked like zombies. As they marched toward the north their machine guns harvested lives the way a combine cuts wheat. Rows of Tro Wa fell, campfires erupted into columns of sparks, and tents were torn to shreds. Energy cannons burped coherent light, a cannon toppled over onto to its side, and an entire squad of attackers was swept away. The LaNorians had never experienced anything like it before and many turned to run.
There were incoming rounds as well, lots of incoming rounds, and they made pinging sounds as they struck Snyder’s armor.
But the cyborgs seemed to be indestructible, were indestructible, until Lak Saa stumbled out of his tent, stared at the mayhem, and ignored the line of machine gun bullets that dug divots out of the ground in front of him. “Where are the rockets? Bring me a rocket!”
Dee Waa would never forget what happened next as the eunuch grabbed one of the mysterious weapons, loaded a rocket into the tube, and brought the device to his shoulder. The sight of Lak Saa standing there, the breeze whipping the long white nightshirt out and away from his body, was an image that the educator knew he would never forget.
Then the SAM went off, except that rather than being aimed at an aircraft, it was targeted on a cyborg. The missile didn’t care however. All it wanted to do was collide with the most intense source of heat available and the T-2 fit the bill.
Hosakawa’s sensors warned him about the missile the moment that the head started to track, but it was too late by then, and the cyborg was just starting to think about evasive action when the warhead struck the center of his chest.
Snyder felt pieces of the noncom’s body hit her armor followed by the sudden wash of heat. Her onboard computer provided the cyborg with coordinates for the probable point of launch and she sent death in that direction. It had been unwise to stack the SLMs like so much cordwood, but understandable given the Tro Wa’s lack of training, and they exploded with a single earthshaking roar. The shock wave lifted Lak Saa off his feet, threw the eunuch into the side of his tent, and knocked a dozen rebels to the ground. Terrified by the monsters that had appeared out of nowhere, not to mention the force of the subsequent explosion, the remainder of the Claw turned and fled.
But the Imperials had been awakened by then, and while some were only half-dressed, they marched south toward the river as rebels passed back through their ranks.
Seeba-Ka swore as the regular army entered the fray, ordered the cyborgs to fall back toward the river, and waited for the Imperials to commit themselves further.
Though not exactly sure of who they were about to engage, each and every one of the Imperial officers wanted to distinguish himself, and ordered their troops to enter the line. As that occurred the left flank extended itself east and well into the range. “Hold,” Seeba-Ka commanded his troops, “hold . . . Fire!”
Concentrated automatic weapons fire lashed out from the wall and the Imperial troops started to waver and fall. Entire ranks went down like dominoes as a storm of lead swept across the battlefield. Some of the Imperial officers attempted to turn their troops toward the incoming fire and were immediately marked down by Seeba-Ka’s snipers.
Vanderveen saw one such individual, led him by a hair, and squeezed the trigger. The slug, punched a hole through the old-fashioned armor, and exited through the LaNorian’s back.
Another officer stepped forward and the diplomat shot him as well, grimacing as her victim spun through a full circle, before falling to the ground.
Then, much to Vanderveen’s horror, yet another officer appeared, this one in his teens. Tears ran down her cheeks as she forced the crosshairs onto the new target. The diplomat aimed low, hoping to merely disable the youngster, and pulled the trigger.
The Sycor Scout thumped against her shoulder, the officer tripped, and fell into the path of the .300 magnum bullet. It entered through the top of his skull and drove deep into his body. He went down and stayed there.
Vanderveen watched that particular contingent of Imperials break and run toward the west where they collided with another group and shattered their formation.
Vanderveen swore as counterfire chipped the stone next to her head and sent a tiny fragment of rock into the side of her face. The diplomat ducked after that, partially to reload, but mostly to regain her composure. That was when Seeba-K
a happened by. He said, “Nice shooting! I’ll take more diplomats if any are available,” then continued on his way. New flares went off . . . and people on both sides continued to die.
Foro had cut through the lock and raised what remained of the grate by then. Something, Santana wasn’t sure what, caused the officer to look up as the raft’s bow slid under the archway from which the water gate was suspended.
And it was then, at that exact moment, that a flare went off and Vanderveen stood. Her face looked pale in the artificial light, like that of an angel, and the legionnaire waved as the flagship scraped the side of a quay and carried him into the city of Mys.
The diplomat ran to the other side of the walkway, returned the wave, and gave thanks that her payers had been answered. The rest of the rafts followed one after another until each of them had been accounted for—and every single refugee had been led off toward the Transcendental Cathedral.
There was something of a traffic jam at first, since it was necessary for all of the rafts to stop short of the bridge, or run the risk of taking fire from the northeast sector of the city, which was still infested with enemy soldiers.
But once the refugees were safely ashore Les Foro and a couple of his cybernetic buddies went to work dismantling the rafts and used dockside cranes to heave the logs up onto the bank where they could be used to reinforce the city’s defensive barricades.
The patients had come through fine, but water had gotten into the RAVs, causing both to malfunction. One of the wooden riverside cranes was used to lift the robots out of the water on the chance that the techs could get one or both of them up and running again.
Later, as soon as it could be repaired, the grate would be reinstalled in an attempt to keep the Tro Wa from entering the city via the water gate.
Santana checked to make sure that all five of the surviving T-2’s had made it into the city, thanked them for their efforts, and made a note to put every single one of the cyborgs in for a decoration.
Amazingly, almost unbelievably, Sergeant Hosakawa had been the Legion’s only casualty. In fact, due to the fact that that the so-called flagship had been five feet below the top of the riverbanks, and the cyborgs had done such a good job driving the enemy back away from the river, most of the platoon leader’s troopers never had the opportunity to fire their weapons. But the legionnaires were tired, very tired, and happy to make the relatively short journey down the south bank to the bridge, north along Embassy Row, and through the secondary barricade that had been established at the north end of the span.
Santana was amazed to see the ways in which Mys had changed during his absence. It was dark, but flares continued to pop, and bathed the area in their uncertain light. The trees that once marched down Embassy Row had been cut down and hauled away. Most of the buildings and other structures had been damaged by bullets, cannon fire, or incendiary rockets. The upper floors of the buildings had been taken over by snipers, counter-snipers, and counter-counter-snipers, who plied their deadly trade both day and night. Lower windows had been boarded up and blacked out. Bits of clothing, bloodied bandages, empty ration packs, scraps of paper, empty shell casings, and stray household items littered the streets. All within a thin fog of gray smoke, the reek of unprocessed sewage, and the stench of bodies that no one could reach.
It was like a stroll through hell, and Santana was happy to escape the street for the relative order of the now-overcrowded barracks. It had taken two hits, but still remained intact, and was surrounded by freshly stacked sandbags. They were made from fabric that Chien-Chu and his civilians had “liberated” from the hodos and given to the refugees to sew, which meant that the coverings came in a wild assortment of colors and designs.
There was no one to celebrate their return—the allied military forces were stretched far too thin for that—but Seeba-Ka stopped by to thank them, as did Ambassador Pas Rasha. Then, having cleared their weapons, the legionnaires did the one thing they wanted to do most: They went to sleep.
Clouds had moved into the area, and the first light was so weak, that it seemed as if night would never surrender to it. But finally, more as a result of persistence rather than any real conviction the sun managed to push a sickly yellow glow down through the intervening clouds.
Fynian Isu Hybatha, the Thraki ambassador to LaNor, left the embassy via the back door rather than risk the snipers who lurked on the other side of Embassy Row and eyed the two-wheeled cart. It was a dilapidated affair, which judging from the few remaining patches of paint, might have been blue once. Just the sort of vehicle favored by Polwa’s less-prosperous merchants.
Hybatha hated the damned things but what choice did she have? The Empress had invited, no summoned her to the Imperial palace, and she had little choice but to go. The alternative, which was to surrender the subsea mineral deposits to Chien-Chu Enterprises, was too horrible to consider. Especially after all the effort dedicated to buying Shi Huu off.
Which raised an interesting question: Where was the human industrialist anyway? The cyborg had dropped out of sight a few days earlier. Some of her staff believed that he had taken refuge on the Seadown, where he could wait out the siege in relative comfort, but the diplomat had her doubts. Chien-Chu had never struck her as a person who was overly concerned about a little hardship. No, if the industrialist was missing there was a reason and Hybatha wondered what it was.
Flight Warrior Garla Tru Sygor cleared his throat. “Greetings. The ambassador’s transportation is ready.”
In spite of the fact that the nearest Thraki aerospace fighter was located thousands of light-years away, he had chosen to wear full flight gear. It looked absurd and the diplomat made a note to find out which one of her bureaucratic enemies had saddled her with the idiot and extract some sort of suitable revenge. First, she would have to survive the journey into Polwa however. Hybatha forced herself to be civil. “Thank you for stating the obvious. Now, should anyone ask any questions, you know what to say.”
“Of course,” the officer answered loftily. “The ambassador undertook a journey into Polwa in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire.”
“Exactly,” Hybatha replied. “Pas Rasha won’t like it . . . but so what? Let the skinny bastard stew.”
The flight warrior nodded agreeably. “Of course . . . Can I send a detachment of troops with the ambassador to protect her?”
Hybatha sighed. “Yes, Sygor, and while you’re at it, why not paint a target on the side of my cart? I have a pass from the Empress—not from the Claw. My only hope is to get through unnoticed.”
The officer inclined his head but was otherwise expressionless as the diplomat climbed into the enclosed passenger compartment, pulled the musty side curtains into position, and rapped on the back of the forward partition. The driver, a LaNorian named Bok How, cracked his whip. The razbul gave a snort of indignation, passed a prodigious amount of gas, and plodded toward the south.
By passing to the rear of the Confederacy’s embassy, Bok How hoped to avoid taking fire from Claw snipers who haunted the other side of Embassy Row, and weren’t aware of the fact that he was a red. An allegiance driven more by the fact that the Tro Wa had kidnapped the teamster’s family rather than a sincere belief in the rebel cause.
The cart turned toward the east, passed through the checkpoint that bordered the Confederacy’s embassy, and headed south. A squad of Seebos ordered Bok How to stop in front of the bridge barricade, but Hybatha pulled the curtain back so they could see her face, and the soldiers waved the cart through.
Farther on, beyond the bridge, there was a great deal of cross-street traffic as hundreds of LaNorians, many carrying multicolored sandbags, streamed out of Dig Town headed for the Transcendental Cathedral. Bok How waited for a break, urged the razbul forward, and was forced to pause in front of the next barrier where a Thraki noncom stepped forward to confront him. It was no accident that Hybatha had chosen that particular hour to leave Mys. The L-8 saw the diplomat’s face, came to attention, and delivered a sal
ute as the conveyance passed him.
The next stop, at the gate into Polwa, was equally uncontested thanks to the Imperial pass which Bok How slipped through the slot in the heavily reinforced door. The barrier made a creaking sound as it was pulled open. A group of Imperial soldiers made as if to rush through the gap but stopped when their officer realized that it would be quite a while before reinforcements arrived, and thought better of the plan.
Bok How slapped the razbul with the reins, felt the cart jerk forward, and heard the gate close behind him. A persistent emptiness was gathering at the pit of his stomach. The threats had been quite graphic. One false move, one tiny mistake, and his family would die screaming. In contrast to Mys, the streets of Polwa bustled with life, and seemed completely unaffected by the horrors taking place only a hundred units away.
The Tro Wa operatives appeared from both sides of the road, jumped onto the cart’s running boards, and blocked the doors.
Hybatha felt the impact, heard a noise, and peeked through a curtain. A member of the Claw leered back at her, waved a well-honed knife, and gestured for silence. That was the moment when the diplomat knew that she had been hijacked.
Hybatha reached for her day pouch, fumbled for the pistol, and pulled the weapon out of the bag. The longer she remained on the cart the farther she would be from Mys and the possibility of a rescue. It wasn’t clear whether Bok How had betrayed her, or was a victim himself, but it didn’t really matter. The diplomat wanted the vehicle to stop, and there was only one way to make sure that it would.
The Thraki took aim at the spot where she judged the driver’s back would be, fired two shots, and saw holes appear in the wood partition. There was a thump as Bok How pitched forward off his seat, inadvertently jerked on the reins, and brought the razbul to a halt.
Hybatha fired two shots through the left door, heard the Tro Wa scream, and was just about to do the same thing on the right side when a fist shattered the cheap window glass, fingers wrapped themselves around her wrist, and shook the weapon free. Then, careless of her struggles, the Claw pulled the diplomat across the bench-style seat, let go long enough to open the door, and slid in beside her.
For More Than Glory Page 40
