by Leo Champion
“Focus on your feelings later, guys!” Lieutenant Hamill snapped, holding his sword up. “Let’s go, go, go!”
Before long they were out of where the fighting had been, the smoke mercifully clearing and the bodies thinning to a few prisoners, lying on their faces by the side of the street with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Then they were at a crossroads – the corner of Prince and Mulberry Streets.
“Get into those buildings across from the Cathedral and cover the place!” Hamill gestured to Mangoletti and the squad.
“Yessir!”
Musket balls pinged at them from slits in the cathedral as Brasci, with the others, followed Mangoletti at a fast run into a building whose industrial double doors were already open. The inside was gloomy but safe.
“Holy shit it’s good to see you,” said a young sergeant with a rapier. With him were a couple of streetgangers with bloody swords and axes.
“Move, move, move!” Mangoletti snapped. “Upstairs – Beppe, where’s the fuckin’ stairs here?”
“This way!” the young sergeant pointed, leading them past machinery in the gloom. One large piece involved rolls of paper strung along what looked like some kind of stamping device.
“What’s that?” Kimmy Giovetti asked as they ran.
“Looks like a printing press,” Brasci realized. What other sort of machinery would have rolls of paper run through it?
“It’s loot,” barked Mangoletti, “but focus on that shit later. Upstairs, upstairs, upstairs and cover that big fuckin’ church across the road!”
It occurred to Brasci that he was yet to fire his musket. Having seen the carnage on Prince Street, he wasn’t sure he wanted to any more. He tried to keep the bile from rising in his throat – he made himself think of Nellie’s pretty face; he was enduring this shit so that she and the kids could have a better life – as he ran with his squad and Sergeant Beppe up the flights of metal stairs.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Jacopo, war room’s yours,” said Hammer. “Ali and you two” – he gestured at a pair of messengers – “come with me. Mrs. Ferrara, your radio headset please. We’re going to the front.”
“Sure that’s safe, boss?” Jacopo Benzi asked.
Hammer shook his head curtly as he put the headset on, a pair of headphones and a mike with a channel dial attached. “Nothing’s a hundred percent, but First Company went through that area without resistance. We need to force their surrender and quickly, before South Bowery mobilizes. If they do.”
Best way to keep that from happening was to move fast and keep them off balance. Besides, he was wearing that kevlar undershirt he’d found in the Reverend’s closet.
A couple more Chapel sentries, lightly wounded soldiers with shotguns, joined them as they left the building, Hammer gesturing for them to follow with his own revolver in his hand. He led them west along Prince Street through the wafting grey gunsmoke, past dead and moaning bodies; there’d been heavy fighting here less than ten minutes ago and there were probably more than a few holdouts in the buildings on either side.
Reports continued to come in over the radio network, replied to by Ali Benzi and Lieutenant Thurston, who’d come along unarmed except for a large electronic tablet. Hammer kept a rapid pace and the elderly woman had to strain to keep up – but she did keep up, breathlessly gasping out updates as they stepped over bodies and around craters and flickering napalm.
“Chang force in the south’s fallen for our bluff,” Ali reported tersely as they passed the burned-out shell of an armored town car in the center of the street. Coils of rope indicated what had happened – a barrier balloon had fallen directly onto it and probably set off the gas tank. Flames licked at the inside and Hammer didn’t want to look too closely through the windows. Everything smelled like burned pork. “Two First Company squads flanked them on Kenmare Street and they surrendered to Lieutenant Haskins rather than face an airstrike.”
“Beppe here,” came over the radio. “Most of Sixth Company’s fallen out to loot. We’ve got… I’d say just Hoshi and a couple dozen at most left.”
“That’s fine, let ‘em,” Hammer replied. The melee-armed streetgangers had served their purpose. “Tell Hoshi they can take whatever they can carry, but no rape and no murder. Stay the fuck out of the basements, OK?”
“Uh…”
“I’m gonna hold Hoshi personally responsible for anything out of line his gangers do, tell him that.” Hammer softened his tone a little: “They’re our people now. We treat them as our own. Got it?”
Beppe didn’t sound certain, but that was his problem. Hoshi’s problem to the tune of a .38 slug, if his streeters misbehaved too badly.
“Yessir.”
Marder’s voice came in over the network. “We’re re-loading. What’s next, boss?”
Nitroglycerine decayed rapidly, if it wasn’t already bad – as too much of it was – when it came out of the labs at the Airedale. You didn’t want to keep that stuff on hand, but blackpowder was more stable and reliable; the bang was usually nowhere near as big, but you could count on it and store the stuff. Hammer had paid for the Marauders to have a healthy stock of blackpowder-based munitions for that reason.
“Your flight gets into the air with high explosives and thermite. Get ready to level the Cathedral on my word, if needed. DiIorio, you still got those frags?”
“Yes, boss.” The last of them, Hammer suspected, cores of blackpowder surrounded by paint cans’ worth of loose metal with thermite yank-fuses that Santos had triple-checked. There were stories of those going off immediately, not in three seconds as they were supposed to.
“Stay in the air and keep an eye on South Bowery. Do not attack – I repeat, do not attack, but let us know immediately of any troop movements or gatherings. But you’re recon for now, got it?”
“Got it. So far they’re not doing anything – there’s a lot of bustle on the top of their highest building, but no companies forming up on the street.”
Thank God. But he could bet Lei Chang and John Moncreve would be calling around for assistance, desperately offering money. He needed to resolve this before they achieved something, because his spread-out and dispersed forces would not be in shape, even with air support, to put up more than token resistance to a serious attack from any direction at this point.
Gunfire to the north and east reminded him that there were still organized Chang remnants left. Yes, he had to resolve this. Now.
“Ali,” he said to the woman next to him as they came out onto Mulberry Street. From a building next to the Cathedral, its roof overlooking it, came a rakish-haired sergeant Hammer recognized as Eddie Haskins.
“Boss? Major Karstein’s in here, sir. Snipers everywhere on Mulberry, I wouldn’t go much further.”
Hammer headed up the steps and over the stoop into the lobby of an upscale corner apartment building.
“Ali,” he said, “get me President Chang. Sergeant Haskins, find me something white and a stick to put it on.”
* * *
For John Moncreve, Senior, in the Cathedral, the war had started according to plan – and then gone badly amiss. Bo Chang’s calm reporting from the main force had disintegrated into panicked screams and nobody could tell why; messengers with a radio sent out to report on the main Prince Street force had not returned or communicated.
Reports had come of airstrikes on the free road, and then his younger son’s voice had started issuing desperate commands to fall back. Commands that had been amplified across the gathering of Chang and Garsons upper-class people watching from the pews, before with a curt hand-across-throat gesture President Chang had killed the feed.
Since then, several minutes ago, there’d been nothing but silence and nerves.
Now John Junior came stumbling in, guards stepping out of his way as he staggered up toward the pulpit.
“Main force is gone, Dad,” he breathed. “Airstrikes destroyed them and right on their heels came…”
“President Ch
ang,” came a voice over the radio network. A drawl Moncreve Senior recognized. Jeff Hammer.
“Sir, captain’s here,” Lieutenant Grimaldi reported. “We’re taking final defensive positions around the building.”
What was X Company doing here?
“You weren’t willing to offer our people surrender terms,” said Hammer to President Chang. “But I’m the better man. Your guys fought well, given their leadership.”
“Where’s Bo?” Jin Chang demanded.
“Bo Chang burned alive when a barrier balloon fell on top of his car,” Hammer said. “I’m sorry.”
“The force pushing up Elizabeth Street?”
“Has been cut off. Your youngest son’s in charge of them, correct? They have the duration of an airborne reload to throw down their weapons and surrender, or they get what the main force got—OK, no, they’ve seen the light. Our Fifth Company is taking a lot of prisoners,” Hammer said.
John Moncreve looked up from his collapsed, gasping elder son to meet President Chang’s eyes.
“Medic! Get a doctor over here!” Moncreve Senior shouted into the pews.
A couple of people got up. Others were moving to flee. Gunfire was coming from immediately outside the fortified Cathedral.
“We’ll hold here. Wait for South Bowery reinforcements,” President Chang stammered. “Aloysius, get them on the line!”
“I know,” Hammer said, “that you’re calling for help as we speak. That’s why you have three minutes to surrender before I level the building.”
John Moncreve felt bile rising in his throat.
“A word with you, President Chang?” he said, as a doctor in a white coat arrived on the stage to attend to his elder son.
President Chang looked down, then nodded.
* * *
“South Bowery isn’t ready,” John Moncreve whispered to President Chang, the transmitters of both men’s headsets firmly off. Just now, over the Chang radio network, had come news of the Changs’ southern force, two companies under the youngest Chang son, surrendering wholesale rather than face an airstrike. Aside from three or four squads on the western and southern borders, there was nothing left of the Chang force alive and not-cuffed!
“If fucking Lin hadn’t surrendered they wouldn’t have the munitions to hit us!”
“But he has,” Moncreve said calmly. He’d lost his own precinct when he’d made that damnable deal to become an underboss after his best friend had been murdered last week. Not much mattered now but preserving what was left of his family. “The pigeon isn’t going to fuck around and wait for them to get ready, Lei. He’s simply going to kill us all.”
“He’s going to kill us all anyway!” Lei Chang spat back, clearly fighting to keep his voice lowered. Both men were aware of the aides and subordinates craning their ears to listen while pretending not to.
Moncreve shook his head. “He’s a pigeon, and those guys have that ‘honor’ thing going on. He’d have saved himself a lot of trouble if he’d had his gangers fall on us as we left the Chapel after his coup. Didn’t do that. He’ll keep his word now.”
“Sir!” Lieutenant Grimaldi’s voice broke the conversation. “President Hammer just said, you have one minute to show a white flag and appear outside the Cathedral or he’ll level the place with you inside! Sorry, sir, he said it was urgent you know that.”
President Chang snarled.
“Very well. But you’re coming with me.”
* * *
Hammer and Ali Benzi, the captain holding a handkerchief on a bayonet, approached the front steps of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Snipers from the Cathedral and the upscale apartment buildings across from it watched them; Hammer could feel their eyes.
He hoped the Changs realized that so much as a single shot would bring obliteration onto the Cathedral and those inside it. He hoped no dispossessed X Company guy would risk that fate anyway.
Out came President Lei Chang and John Moncreve, Moncreve holding a white handkerchief of his own.
“We’re armed in here and ready for a siege,” the elderly Tong man said belligerently.
Hammer resisted the urge to spit in his face.
“Not according to the deserter Major Karstein’s been talking to,” he said. “You may have guns but you don’t have food.”
“We have more than you think,” President Chang growled. “And we’re ready to withstand an assault. You won’t take us easily.”
Hammer shrugged.
“Don’t plan to try.” He thumbed his radio, spoke into the headset: “Marder, you can come in now.”
It wasn’t Marder’s black glider but a black and green one that flew at three hundred feet over the street a moment later. President Chang gasped as a hundred fragments fell from it.
“There was a truce, you bastard.”
Thirty pounds of rocks and gravel pounded the cathedral, and there was the sound of glass breaking. From inside there came horrified screams and loud shouts.
“That was a demonstration,” said Hammer. “I’m not going to waste lives attacking the building, I’m just going to level it and kill you all. This is not up for debate.”
“So what terms do you propose?” John Moncreve said.
“Let’s make it damn clear,” said Hammer. “I’m not ‘proposing’ anything. These are the terms under which you will surrender, and they’re not negotiable. You take the deal or the truce ends and the bombs come in.
“I’ll ransom you. You pay your workers in scrip that I’m told exchanges at thirty of your scrip dollars to one hard buck. You and everyone else in the cathedral will be walked to the nearest Exchange to empty your bank accounts, a few at a time with reprisals if the people at the Exchange get uncooperative. Your personal property beyond the clothes you’re wearing is forfeit.
“Your cash will be exchanged for Chang scrip. One cash dollar to one scrip dollar. This will finance a buyback of all the Chang and Garson scrip, and whatever’s left over goes into my war chest. I’m leaving you a thirtieth of your fortunes. Be happy.
“Oh, and one other thing. President Chang, you can in fact keep your residence. Move your family in. You, Moncreve, are moving in with him. Free accommodation for the rest of your lives. No need to worry about rent.”
“You’re putting us under house arrest,” President Chang growled.
“Yes. I am. You’ll be treated well and allowed visitors, but the security will be as much for your own protection. There’s a fifteen thousand dollar bounty on your head, Chang, and five thousand on yours, Moncreve. Those haven’t been lifted, but I’ll suspend them for as long as you behave yourselves under guard.”
“It leaves us with our lives,” John Moncreve said to President Chang.
“We’ve taken your accounting and pay records intact,” said Hammer, “when the Central House techs defected to us. So please don’t try to fuck me over too badly, because we’ll know.”
“How much time do we have to consider this?” President Chang asked slowly.
Hammer looked up at Marder’s circling gliders.
“When this truce ends you’ve got about a minute before the first bombs hit,” he said. He raised his voice to a shout: “We will accept the surrenders of any individuals who leave on their own!”
“You’re not giving us any time to consider it?”
“Whether you want to live or not is a pretty simple decision,” said Hammer. Destroying the cathedral would cost him a lot of money, easily millions in missed money, so much for being able to afford a scrip buyback – but there was still a chance of someone intervening. He had to end this thing decisively before South Bowery did organize a force.
There were women and kids in the cathedral. He hoped they were in the basement.
The two men looked at each other. Hammer kept his face impassive. After a moment he shrugged and started to turn around.
“OK. We’ll do it the hard—”
“Wait,” said President Chang. “OK. OK, you pigeon bastard. For the sa
ke of my family – I give in.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hammer looked out the window as soldiers in green and black escorted Chang civilians from the cathedral down its front steps into cars waiting outside. On the other side of the street, carloads of Chang high-ups were being released, having come back from the Exchanges with their bank accounts turned into West Bowery cash.
“We’re at six million dollars and counting,” he observed to Major Karstein from the temporary field HQ overlooking St. Patrick’s. “What’s going to happen to them, anyway, now we’ve taken their homes and their money?”
Don Karstein shrugged.
“They’ve all got family elsewhere in the city. They’re going to be clerks and guards, not raff. But their fortunes have fallen. Big time, boss.”
There’d been more cash than Hammer had remotely anticipated – President Lei Chang himself had had two and a quarter million dollars in his personal account, and that wasn’t counting the precinct account of two million. The retainers and hangers-on who’d been in the Cathedral had four-figure balances mostly, but they added up.
“Looks like we can afford to buy back the scrip.”
“The Chang scrip as well, boss?” Karstein asked.
“They’re my people now – our people, not a subject population. Their raff are my raff, and we need a less-loaded word for those guys now they’re free humans. So yes. The Chang scrip as well.”
* * *
Cameron Krasner opened his eyes to see his foot gone. His whole lower right leg gone, in fact, amputated just below the knee. He knew because it, a bloody pale mess still in its boot, was on the ground by his chest. He remembered tying those shoelaces that morning…
It started to hurt. It hurt incredibly, as the morphine wore off. A doctor, a long blond haired woman in a bloodied white coat, knelt down by him as he staggered to raise himself and see what had been done to him. He’d thought he was dead!
