by David Drake
"Yes," said Clargue. "I'm afraid you're right"
He didn't ask Lamartiere where he intended to go. The only possible answer was away. They needed to go some place where there wasn't anybody else around to be harmed by what Hoodoo attracted.
Residents were coming down by pairs in the basket. Even so the process would take at least an hour. The Shrine of the Blessed Catherine hadn't been intended for its present population, at least not in the years since the ground-level gate had been blocked. The walls were little defense against heavy weapons, but they protected the handful of Brothers from the small arms and banditry of the Boukasset during normal times.
Hoodoo could turn the shrine into a pile of rubble in a matter of seconds. Not that anyone would bother to do so . . . except, perhaps, as a whim along the lines of pulling the wings off flies.
Clargue slid clumsily down the bow and walked toward the basket. Civilians coming in the other direction murmured greetings to the doctor. Everyone here was glad of his presence.
Indeed, most of them probably thought of Hoodoo herself as protection for the shrine and themselves. They were wrong. Even if Lamartiere could have used the ammunition he knew was in the storage magazines, the tank was sure to summon increasing levels of violence until everything in its vicinity was shattered to dust and vapor.
Lamartiere supposed he was dozing in the hatch, though his eyes were open. He wasn't consciously aware of his surroundings until Dr. Clargue said, "I will watch now, Denis," and Lamartiere realized direct sunlight stabbed across the plain through the notch in the hills by which Hoodoo had entered.
"Right," Lamartiere said, trying to clear his brain. He crawled out of the hatch, bitterly aware that he was in terrible shape. He supposed it didn't matter. The best option he could see now was to drive Hoodoo fifty kilometers out into the desert, and the AI could handle that once he got her under way.
De Laburat had been right about one thing. Dr. Clargue might be able to return to helping the sick in a village lost in the mountains, but there was no longer any place on Ambiorix for Denis Lamartiere. Like Hoodoo herself, he was a valuable resource: a tank crewman, to be captured if possible but otherwise killed to prevent another faction from gaining his expertise.
He stepped into the basket as a mother and her twins got out. The woman nodded while the children whispered excitedly to one another. They'd been close enough to the soldier to touch him!
The basket jogged its way up the wall of the shrine. His shadow sprawled across the hard sandstone blocks.
Below Lamartiere, most of the residents were trudging toward the orchard. Parties of the healthiest refugees were loading two-man cradles with blocks crumbled from the cliff face. Ordinary wheelbarrows would be useless on this terrain of sand and irregular stone. Human beings were more adaptable than even the simplest of machines.
Rasile was on the winch, somewhat to Lamartiere's surprise, but Marie sat nearby. She was embellishing a piece of canvas with a Maltese cross in needlepoint, holding the frame against her thighs with her left wrist and using her good right hand to direct the needle. The pattern of tight, small stitches was flawless so far as Lamartiere could tell.
"Will you lower Mr. Rasile to the ground?" Marie said to Lamartiere. "Or are you still—"
"I'm healthy enough," Lamartiere said. "Tired, is all."
And so frustrated that he felt like kicking a hole in the battlements, but neither fact would prevent him from turning a crank.
Children played within the courtyard, their voices shrilly cheerful. Lamartiere saw a pair of them momentarily, chasing one another among the rows of pole beans. The shrine wasn't really the Garden of Eden; but it was closer to that, and to Paradise, than most of the refugees could have hoped to find.
"I'm not going down," Rasile said. "I have permission from Father Blenis to read my scriptures here today."
He reached into the knapsack at his feet and brought out a fabric-bound volume. It was probably the Revelations of Moses, though Lamartiere couldn't see the title. Despite the book in his hand, Rasile looked even more like a pimp—or a rat—than usual.
"What?" Marie said, both angry and amazed.
"I have permission!" Rasile said. "I'm not shirking. It's hard work to bring people up in the basket!"
"I wouldn't know that?" said the woman. "Father Blenis's so gentle he'd give you permission to carry off all the communion dishes, but we're not all of us such innocent saints here, Rasile!"
Lamartiere turned his head away as he would have done if he'd stumbled into someone else's family quarrel. Only then did he see the six-wheeled truck driving up from the south. It had an open cab and cargo of some sort in the bed under a reflective tarp, but there were no signs of weapons. The driver was alone.
"What's that?" Lamartiere said sharply. Marie and Rasile instantly stopped bickering to stare over the battlements. Fear made the woman look drawn and a decade older than she'd been a moment before; Rasile's expression was harder to judge, but fear was a large part of it also.
"It's just the provisions truck," Marie said. She sighed in relief. "It's a day early, but it seems . . ."
The driver parked near the wall and pulled the tarp back to uncover his cargo. He was carrying several hundred-kilo burlap grain sacks and a number of less-definable bags and boxes. It all looked perfectly innocent.
The residents who were still close to the shrine gathered around the truck. Others, including a pair of black-robed Brothers, were on their way back from the orchard.
Lamartiere noticed with approval that Dr. Clargue had closed the tank's hatches and was even aiming his tribarrel at the truck. Some of the shrine's residents sprawled away in panic when the weapon moved, but the driver didn't seem to care. If the fellow made this trip across the Boukasset regularly, he must be used to having guns pointed at him.
Rasile said, "Ah!" with a shudder. He'd dropped the book in his haste, but he'd grabbed the knapsack itself and was holding it in front of him. It was a sturdy piece of equipment and apparently quite new.
"I was hoping to wash up before we go," Lamartiere said quietly to the woman. "We'll be leaving soon. And I'd like to thank Father Blenis for his hospitality."
"He's usually in the chapel till midday," Marie said with a nod. "I'll get you some breakfast. You can draw the water yourself now, can't you?"
"Yes, I—" Lamartiere said.
Hoodoo's siren began to wind. Lamartiere looked down. The tank's turret gimbaled southward, pointing the guns at the line of vehicles racing toward the shrine.
Maury was returning.
"Let me down!" Lamartiere said. He stepped toward the basket, wondering if he could reach the tank before the armed band arrived.
Rasile backed away, fumbling inside his knapsack. His right hand came out holding a bell-mouthed mob gun. The weapon fired sheaves of aerofoils that spread enough to hit everyone in a normal-sized room with a single shot. As close as Lamartiere was to the muzzle, the charge would cut him in half.
"Don't either of you try to move!" Rasile screamed.
An oncoming vehicle fired its automatic cannon. Lamartiere suspected that the gunner had intended to shoot over the heads of the people streaming back from the orchard, but it was hard to aim accurately from a bouncing vehicle. Several shells exploded near the civilians. A woman remained standing after those around her had flung themselves to the ground. She finally toppled, her blood soaking the sand around her back.
The truck firing had dual rear wheels and an enclosure of steel plates welded onto the bed. The gun projected through a slot in the armor over the cab. Hoodoo's tribarrel hit the vehicle dead center. The bolts of cyan plasma turned the steel into white fire an instant before the truck's fuel tank boomed upward in an orange geyser.
One round would have been enough for the job. Dr. Clargue fired all seven, emptying the loading tube. Lamartiere supposed that was a waste, but he saw where the woman sprawled on a flag of her own blood and he couldn't feel too unhappy. At least the short-te
rm result was good.
Maury's surviving vehicles bounced and wallowed toward the shrine. None of them shot at Hoodoo, demonstrating a level of discipline Lamartiere wouldn't have expected of the gang. Several of the band were firing in the air, though. Their muzzle flashes flickered in the sunlight.
"Don't move or I'll kill you!" Rasile said, squeaking two octaves up from his normal voice. He waggled the mob gun.
Maury's agent in the shrine was as high as a kite either from drugs he'd taken to nerve himself up, or from simple adrenaline. Lamartiere guessed there was a radio in Rasile's knapsack. He'd signaled his master when Lamartiere was out of the tank. Dr. Clargue was the better of the two men in Hoodoo's crew, but he wasn't a danger to Maury's plans.
Maury's vehicles pulled up in a ragged semicircle around the shrine's southern wall. Hoodoo and the provisions truck were within the arc, but the gang had cut most of the residents off from the structure.
If Lamartiere had been in Hoodoo, he'd have driven straight through one or more of the gang's vehicles: not even the heavy truck was a real barrier to a tank's weight and power. Clargue didn't think in those terms; and anyway, he couldn't drive the tank.
Most of the gangsters got out of their vehicles. Today Maury wore expensive battledress of chameleon fabric which took on the hues of its surroundings. He carried a submachine gun, but that was no more his real weapon than the saber of the previous day had been. Maury may have been a thug to begin with, but now he'd risen to a level that he ordered people killed instead of having to kill them himself.
"I'll be his chief man after this," Rasile said. A line of drool hung from the corner of his mouth. "I'll have all the women I want. Any woman at all."
Maury glanced up to make sure Lamartiere was out of the way. He waved the submachine gun cheerfully, then spoke to two henchmen. They grabbed an old man who'd been standing nearby. One gangster twisted the victim's hands behind his back while the other put a pistol to his temple.
The driver of the provisions truck got up from where he'd lain beside his vehicle while the shooting was going on. He also looked toward Lamartiere, lifting his cap in a casual salute.
The driver was Sergeant Heth, Hoodoo's commander until Lamartiere stole the tank from Brione.
"Come on out, Doctor!" Maury said in a voice loud enough for those on the battlements to hear. "We're going to start killing these people. We'll kill every one of them unless you give us the tank!"
Lamartiere opened his mouth but remained silent because he didn't know what advice to give Clargue. He didn't doubt that Maury would carry out his threat, and since the doctor couldn't drive Hoodoo—
The gangster fired. Ionized plasma from the projectile's driving skirt ignited a lock of the hair it blew from the victim's scalp. Hydrostatic shock fractured the cranial vault, deforming the skull into softer lines.
The shooter laughed. His partner flung the body down with a curse and wiped spattered blood from his face.
Hoodoo's hatches opened. Dr. Clargue climbed out of the cupola, bent and dejected. He might have been planning to surrender the tank anyway. Maury's men had acted before he'd really had a chance to make up his mind.
Rasile cackled in triumph. "Any woman—" he said.
Lamartiere caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. An antitank missile hit the side of Maury's big armored truck. The warhead blew the slab of concrete into pebbles and a worm of reinforcing mesh twisted away.
The blast threw everyone within twenty meters to the ground. Dr. Clargue lost his grip and bounced down Hoodoo's flank. He lay still on the ground. Ammunition inside the stricken vehicle went off in a series of red secondary explosions like a string of firecrackers, reducing to blazing junk whatever the warhead had left .
Rasile stared disbelievingly at the destruction. Lamartiere twisted the mob gun's broad muzzle skyward, then punched the smaller man at the corner of the jaw.
Rasile toppled over the battlements. For a moment he kept his grip on the butt of the pistol whose barrel Lamartiere held. Marie leaned forward and jabbed her needle into the back of Rasile's hand. His screams as he fell were lost in the sudden ripping destruction below.
Two more missiles hit, each destroying its target with a blast intended to gut purpose-built armored vehicles. A shockwave flipped the provisions truck onto its back; Lamartiere didn't see what had happened to Sergeant Heth.
Even before the third warhead exploded, automatic cannons firing from the hills west of the shrine began to rake Maury's other vehicles. Three kilometers was well within their accurate range.
Maury's air-cushion vehicles disintegrated like tissue paper in a storm. The steel armor of some wheeled trucks wasn't thick enough to stop the shells, and the concrete slabs protecting the others fractured at the first impact. Following shells passed through unhindered, igniting cataclysms of fuel and stored ammunition.
"Let me down!" Lamartiere said as he jumped into the basket. He should have waited. Marie had to struggle with the locking pin because Lamartiere's weight was already on the winch, but she jerked it loose before he realized the problem. The basket wobbled downward.
Still shooting, the attacking vehicles drove out of the hills where they'd waited in ambush. There were three of them, air-cushion armored personnel carriers of the type used by government forces.
Each thirty-tonne APC could carry a platoon of troops behind armor thick enough to stop small-arms projectiles. The small turret near the bow carried a light electromotive cannon as well as a launching rail on the left side for an antitank missile. The hatches on the APCs' back decks opened. Troops leaned out, aiming rifles and submachine guns.
The men in the APCs wore government uniforms, though with cut-off sleeves and flourishes of metal and bright fabrics. Maury had played his card; now de Laburat's Ralliers were trumping the hand.
The gangs' alliance of convenience had broken down under the weight of loot that couldn't be shared and which gave the party owning it an overwhelming advantage over the other. In this at least, Hoodoo's presence had benefited the other inhabitants of the Boukasset.
Most of Maury's men had thrown themselves to the ground or were running toward the rocks behind the shrine, the only available cover. Their leader stood and emptied his submachine gun at the oncoming vehicles.
The APCs' turrets were stabilized to fire accurately on the move. Two of the automatic cannon shot back simultaneously. Maury's head and torso disintegrated in white flashes. An arm flew skyward; the legs below the knees remained upright for an instant before toppling onto the sand.
Lamartiere was halfway to the ground when a Rallier noticed the mob gun and took him for one of Maury's gang. Chips of sandstone flew from the wall close enough to cut Lamartiere's arm: the shooter was either lucky or better than any man had a right to be when firing from a moving platform.
Lamartiere saw a cannon tracking toward him. The ground was still five meters below but there was no choice. Cradling the mob gun to his belly and hoping it wouldn't go off when he hit, he jumped. A burst of shells devoured the basket as he left it, stinging his back with fragments of casing and stone.
He knew to flex his knees as he hit, but his feet flew backward and he slapped the ground hard enough to knock his breath out and bloody his chin. He'd dropped the mob gun. He snatched it up again, then staggered toward Hoodoo with knife-blade pains jetting from two lower ribs.
The APCs closed to within thirty meters of the burning vehicles and flared broadside to a halt. The Ralliers wanted to stay beyond range of a hand-thrown bomb as they finished off the survivors of Maury's band. Bullets sparkled on the APCs' sides; a Rallier sprawled, bleeding down the sloping armor. Gunfire from the vehicles was twenty to one compared to what they received.
Lamartiere grabbed a headlight bracket with his left hand. Behind him a woman's voice shrilled, "Stop him, Pietro!" through the roar of gunfire.
Lamartiere swung his right leg up. Pietro closed a hand like a bear trap on his ankle and jerked him b
ack. With the muzzle of the mob gun tight against the giant's body, Lamartiere pulled the trigger.
Recoil bashed the gun butt hard against Lamartiere's ribs. He doubled up. Pietro stepped back with a look of blank incomprehension on his face. There was a hole two centimeters in diameter just above his navel. His tunic was smoldering.
Pietro pivoted and fell on his face. The cavity in his back was bigger than a man's head. Sections of purple-veined intestine squirmed out of the general red mass.
Louise stood behind her brother's body. "You bastard!" she cried and drew a small pistol from the bosom of her blouse.
Lamartiere hesitated a heartbeat, but there was no choice. Louise and her brother were combatants, agents working for de Laburat just as Rasile had worked for Maury—and she was about to kill him.
He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Excessive chamber pressure when he'd fired with the muzzle against Pietro's chest had ruptured the cartridge case. The mob gun was jammed.
Sergeant Heth grabbed the woman's wrist from behind, spun her, and broke her elbow neatly over his knee. The mercenary had lost the loose robe he'd worn for a disguise, and his left arm and shoulder were black with oil or soot.
"You drive, kid!" he shouted. He used Hoodoo's toolbox as a handhold and a patch welded on the side skirt for a step to lift himself up the tank's side. "I'll take care of the rest!"
Lamartiere climbed the bow slope and dropped into the driver's compartment. He switched the fans on and closed the hatch above him.
De Laburat must have ordered his troops not to fire at the tank since its capture undamaged was the whole purpose of the attack, but now a dozen shells exploded against the side of the turret. They were as harmless as so many raindrops.
Fan speed built smoothly; only the ragged line of Number 7's readout reminded Lamartiere that there was a problem. Hoodoo's systems were coming alive all around him. There were hums and purrs and the demanding whine of a hydraulic accumulator building pressure.
