“Have you called the police?” Martinez asked him.
“Yes, my lord. They said they would come.”
“Turn off the lights in here. And better make sure the kitchen door is locked.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Sodak, could you call for an ambulance? Tell them we’ll need more than one.”
“Yes.” Sodak’s voice seemed to come from half a dozen light-years away. “Yes, I’ll do that.”
Kelly’s bloody head lolled against Martinez’s shoulder. He carried her up the stairs to the lounge and laid her on one of the couches. Beneath the gore her skin was pale, and freckles stood out against her pallor. He had never noticed the freckles till now.
Breath whistled past her bloody lips. He checked for a pulse, found one, then lifted her eyelids. Both her pupils were vast, dark, empty pools.
Martinez needed to wash away the blood to continue his examination, and he went into the washroom to find a cloth. He turned on the light, saw himself in the mirror, and paused to view the damage. Cuts on his forehead and scalp bled freely. His knuckles were swollen. His lower lip had been cut, and one eye was swollen half shut. He moistened a towel and cleaned himself as well as he could, then soaked another towel in warm water and brought it out to Kelly. He cleaned her face gently, then took her head in his hands and carefully probed with his fingers to discover if there was any damage to the skull. Blood oozed onto his fingertips from the cuts. When he found nothing, relief filled him like a breath of wind.
But then his fingers worked around to the back of Kelly’s head and his heart sank. There was a soft depression at the very back of her skull, and he could imagine all too well Kelly being knocked into the storefront and her head smashed into the unyielding wall.
He didn’t want to probe further lest he drive shards of bone into Kelly’s brain, so as gently as possible he laid her head back on the sofa. He rose, felt blood dripping down his forehead, and wiped it with his towel.
A tread sounded on the stairs, and he turned to see Ti-car enter the room. “I’ve locked all the doors, my lord.” His golden eyes turned toward Kelly. “Is Lieutenant Kelly badly hurt?”
“Skull fracture. Did Sublieutenant Sodak call for an ambulance?”
“She did, my lord.”
But the ambulances could only come if they could get through the crowd, and they might not come at all unless they could get a police escort. It was time to call the police again. Martinez was about to turn to his sleeve display when Ti-car spoke again.
“I have a first aid kit, my lord. Should I bring it?”
“Yes—wait. I don’t suppose there’s a firearm in the building?”
Ti-car hesitated. “I’m afraid not, my lord.”
“How many staff are here now?”
“Besides myself, there’s three kitchen staff, and Mock the waitron, so that’s five—no, my lord, six, because Sekalog is still here. I just saw him closing the bar.”
“Make sure they all know not to leave the building.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Martinez wiped away another trickle of warm blood. “Then bring the first aid kit.”
He raised his left arm and triggered the sleeve display just as a crash sounded from the front of the building. He told the display to call the police as he left the lounge and went down the stairs to the ground floor. Sodak and Lady Kosch stood at the foot of the stairs, watching as members of the crowd smashed a waste container against one of the front windows.
“Don’t worry,” Martinez said. “That window’s up to code. Nothing short of a bomb will break it.”
Kosch looked over her shoulder at him. The fur around her mouth, and down her throat, was matted with blood. “Worried?” she said. “Hardly!” She bared her fangs. “The impudence of that rabble! If I only had a sidearm, I’d send the lot of them to the crematorium!”
Martinez did not reply. Lady Kosch’s belligerence had almost certainly made the situation worse, but then that very belligerence had just saved him from a mob. Any comment would be superfluous.
He called the police on his sleeve display, and to his surprise was answered by a Naxid in the uniform of a corporal of the Urban Patrol. Martinez reported a riot in progress, with several people injured, one—a Fleet lieutenant—critically.
“We are aware of all that, my lord,” said the Naxid. “But all our officers are deployed on traffic control, and we—”
“That means they’re right here,” Martinez said. “If they’re on traffic control, they’re already deployed in this area. All they need to do is put a few squads together and—”
“Captain Klarvash is trying to do that,” said the Naxid. “But control has broken down and it’s very difficult.”
Another crash sounded from the front window. “Do you hear that?” Martinez said. “We’re under siege here. They’re trying to break in.”
“Captain Klarvash is doing his best, my lord.”
“Let me speak to Captain Klarvash.”
“That’s not possible, my lord.”
Klarvash was a Naxid name, and the corporal-dispatcher was another Naxid. Though Naxids were no longer permitted in the Fleet with its planet-searing weaponry, they still served in some of the security services, mostly on the grounds that they were better than other species at policing other Naxids. A demonstration this large had probably called in a lot of police from all sorts of districts, and apparently this Klarvash was in charge of them.
Martinez had killed a great many Naxids in the war, and he had to wonder if Klarvash and his dispatcher had any reason to resent it.
Lady Kosch snarled. “Who is that imbecile to refuse you?” she demanded. The Naxid corporal blinked his bright red eyes.
“I’m following procedure, my lord.”
Martinez ended the call, then jumped as yet another crash boomed out, strong enough to shake the entire building. Something in the next room clanged as it toppled from a shelf. Martinez looked out to see that the rioters had carried away a heavy iron bench from the nearest transit stop and were trying to ram it through the window. On the second strike a skull-shattering alarm bell began to clatter. Sodak put her hands over her ears.
The alarm might spur the police, Martinez thought. But probably not. And certainly it wasn’t a deterrent to the rioters, who smashed the bench into the window again.
“Upstairs,” Martinez said, and turned for the stairs. Sodak followed, but Lady Kosch remained, glaring out the windows at the attackers. Martinez had to shout over the alarm bell. “We’ll hear them if they break in! We need to make plans!”
Kosch snarled at the rioters, then followed Martinez up the stairs. The sound of the alarm faded slightly. In the lounge, Martinez found Ti-car kneeling by Kelly, applying healing patches to Kelly’s wounds.
“Be careful with her,” Martinez said. “The back of her skull’s been damaged. Don’t touch her there.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Martinez knelt by Ti-car and helped him apply the bandages. Kelly’s skin was clammy, and Martinez assumed she was in shock. He found a blanket in a cupboard, returned, and covered Kelly’s body.
The building shook twice more to an assault, and then the crashes stopped. The alarm clattered on. Sodak, hands still over her ears, collapsed into a chair.
Then while Ti-car was applying fast-healers to Martinez’s head, he called Roland. An automated secretary answered, and Martinez told it that this was an emergency. Roland answered in a few seconds.
“What just happened?” he asked. He knew Martinez wouldn’t call at this hour unless something startling had occurred.
Martinez outlined the situation. “You need to light a fire underneath Captain Klarvash,” he said.
“I’ll do better than that,” Roland said, and then the orange end-stamp filled Martinez’s sleeve display as Roland ended the call.
Lady Kosch had prowled down the corridor to the library overlooking the street in order to keep an eye on the attackers, and now she came b
ack in a hurry.
“That bitch of a petty officer is haranguing them again,” she said. “If only I had a rifle!”
Then there was another crash, this time in a somewhat higher timbre. Kosch dashed back out to the library, then dashed back. “They’re ramming the door now,” she said. “Will it hold?”
“The doors are steel,” Ti-car said. “The glass in them is made from the same compound used for the windows. There are substantial bolts shot from the doors into the steel frame.”
“The doors should hold for a while, then,” Martinez said. An idea struck him, and as he turned to Ti-car he inadvertently tore a fast-healing patch from his scalp. He winced, but managed his question anyway. “The windows over the street can open, yes?”
“Yes, my lord.” Ti-car was trying to reapply the patch.
“Get the staff up here. Tell them to bring whatever they can find to use as weapons.”
“The kitchen staff can bring knives.”
Martinez winced as Ti-car’s fingers pressed the patch firmly to his scalp.
“Tell them to bring all the knives,” he said.
A few minutes later they were assembled in the darkened library, watching the crowd mill in the gleam of the streetlights. The Torminel petty officer was prominent among them, urging the attackers on, sending parties running off on errands. Her night-adapted eyes glowed as she prowled among the rioters. A broad patch of blood was still visible on the pavement where the Daimong casualty had bled out, but the body had been carried out of sight.
The club’s staff were gathered around Martinez: Ti-car the Lai-own maître d’, the Daimong waitron Mock, the Terran chef, his Daimong sous-chef, and their Terran apprentice. Sekalog, the Cree bartender, was reopening the bar to provide bottles to be used as missiles.
The alarm bell continued to clatter downstairs. The building echoed to another ramming attack on the door.
Martinez had a couple carving knives stuck in his belt, and he felt faintly ridiculous, as if he’d just shown up at an elite cocktail party in the costume of a pirate.
“Who’s good at throwing?” he asked. “Anyone taken up the Pitcher’s Post in indoor fatugui? Or thrown the shot in lepper?”
There was no response. Martinez sighed, unbuttoned his tunic, and rotated his arm in hopes of warming his throwing muscles. Sekalog scurried into the room carrying a case of wine bottles.
“I hope you brought the cheap stuff,” Martinez said. No one laughed.
Lady Kosch seized a bottle and hefted it approvingly. “I’m going to try to brain that fucking petty officer,” she said.
“Bring more bottles,” Martinez told Sekalog. He planned never to run out of ammunition again.
He, Kosch, and Sodak positioned themselves behind the three tall windows and triggered the panes. They were hinged in the middle and pivoted open, the lower halves of the panes opening out over the street, the upper halves tipping into the room. No one in the crowd seemed to take notice.
Martinez could see the Torminel petty officer plainly but doubted he could reach her with a bottle. The lower part of the windowpane was in the way, and he feared the bottle would bounce off. If the window had just opened like a door, he’d have had all the room he needed. But Lady Kosch was indefatigable.
“I’ll have to throw sidearm,” she said. Martinez decided he might as well follow her example and leaned to the right as he practiced a sidearm shot.
The building quaked as the improvised ram struck again.
“Are we ready?” Martinez said. “On my mark—three, two, one, mark!”
The three bottles winged out into the crowd. Martinez’s grazed the window frame and whirled out of sight. The other two bottles spun like boomerangs in flight and landed short, detonating at the petty officer’s feet. She looked up in shock as glass fragments sprayed her legs, and she bounded back out of range.
Martinez reached a hand behind him, and the Terran chef slapped a fresh bottle into his hand. He stepped closer to the window and fired his missile directly at the crowd trying to ram open the front doors. It struck a Daimong rioter directly on the shoulder, and he fell in a tangle of limbs. Bottles followed from Sodak and Kosch, and one more attacker fell sprawling.
Screams of rage rose from the crowd. Three more bottles were hurled onto the besiegers before they dropped the iron bench and scurried to safety, leaving one of their number lying on the pavement in a growing pool of red. The rest of the crowd formed a semicircle in front of the Corona Club, safely out of range.
“Cowards!” Kosch raged. “Filth!” She turned to Martinez. “We should get some brandy or whisky, and tie burning rags around the neck. Set the lot of them on fire!”
“I don’t think we want to give them any ideas about fire,” Martinez cautioned.
Kosch snarled, then stuck her head out the window. “Cowards!” she called again.
“We’re not hiding!” The mocking voice came from the petty officer. “Come out and say hello!”
Martinez began to suspect he was now caught in the middle of a feud between a pair of Torminel, by far the most dangerous place to be in all the worlds under the Praxis. Still, he might be able to do a bit of damage to the alliances that the rioters had forged among themselves. He bent to look out the window. “Oh, you’ll fight all right!” he called. “You’ll fight to the last Daimong! You’ll fight to the last Lai-own! But you won’t do any fighting yourself!”
The petty officer brandished a fist. “I’ll fight to the last Terran!” she screamed. An enormous roar of approval rolled up from the crowd, and Martinez saw fists and weapons brandished.
For a moment there was a stalemate filled only by the endless clatter of the alarm. Martinez took advantage of the opportunity to call Roland again. There was no answer, and Martinez assumed his brother was busy rounding up reinforcements. But then there was movement in the crowd, and Martinez could see the petty officer busy assembling parties of rioters. One group of a dozen or fifteen ran off to the right, and Martinez could see tools in their hands.
“I think they’re going to try to break in the back of the building,” he said. He turned to the sous-chef. “Could you go down the back stairs and let me know if they start trying to get in through the alley? And does anyone know if there’s a window overlooking that back door?”
“Yes, my lord,” said the chef. “A small one, off a landing on the stairs.”
“Perhaps we’d better set up another defensive post there.”
Sodak and the sous-chef went to the rear of the building, lugging two cases of wine. Martinez continued to look out the front. The rioters, he saw, had been reinforced by a group of Torminel, who would provide a tenacious, belligerent core around which further assaults could be launched. Their glowing night-eyes moved through the crowd like little lamps. No Terran was in sight, though Martinez remembered seeing Terrans in the march. They knew better than to appear here, where they might fall victim to the mob.
Martinez hadn’t seen Naxids connected with the march at all. Since the war they’d been discreet about appearing in public, even those—the vast majority—who’d had nothing to do with the rebellion.
But no, the Naxids, in the person of Captain Klarvash, were in charge of the response, and they, too, were standing aside.
Sekalog the bartender arrived with another case of wine, his winglike ears tuned toward the windows and the sound of the crowd. He put the case down with a clatter. Then he straightened, turning, one ear reaching toward the door behind him.
“They are behind us,” he said. “They are attempting the back door.”
“Are we responding?” Martinez asked.
Somehow the Cree’s eyeless, purple-fleshed face gave the impression of careful attention. “We are trying to get the window open on the stairs landing,” he said. “And that Torminel female out front is ordering up a barrage for the windows, followed by an attempt to pry the front door and windows open.”
Well, Martinez thought, that was comprehensive. And Sekalo
g was managing to overhear this despite the sonic interference of the clanging alarm.
“When are they—” Martinez began.
“Now.”
A yelling chorus rushed forward on the street, hurling bottles and bricks and knives at the defenders waiting behind the windows. Most of the weapons caromed off the building or the windows, but Martinez had to sidestep a heavy wrench as it tumbled toward his head. The defenders responded, hurling bottles among the incensed enemy, knocking a few down. The apprentice chef, who had stepped into Sodak’s place at one of the windows, was hit in the elbow by a bottle and had to start throwing with her left arm.
Ti-car returned and had to shout over the blaring alarm and the shouts of the crowd. “They’re trying to open the back door,” he said, “but Sodak’s repelling them.”
“Make sure she has enough bottles,” Martinez gasped, and hurled a magnum of champagne that exploded splendidly among the rioters.
The odor of spilled wine clogged the air. The missiles thinned as the attackers began to run low on ammunition, so another group of rioters, with crowbars, chisels, and axes, dashed forward to the building. The windowpanes had proved invulnerable to their attacks, and now they were going to try simply to pry the windows out of their frames. This, Martinez thought, stood a fair chance of success, and he hurled bottles down directly on the heads of the improvised assault engineers and did his best to dash their brains out. A water bottle bounced off his forehead without doing any damage, and in response he hurled a hearty wine from Cavado that dropped an attacker to the pavement.
His breath rasped in his lungs. He shook sweat from his eyes. Throwing bottles was a lot more work than he’d ever imagined.
Still, he thought his defenders were doing well. The attackers were so busy fending off missiles that they were making very little progress breaking in.
The Accidental War Page 22
