CHAPTER OPiE 

They'd told Tyi Koopman that Bamberg City's 
starport was on an island across the channel from 
the city proper, so he hadn't expected much of a 
skyline when the freighter's hatches opened. 

Neither had he expected a curtain of steam 
boiling up so furiously that the sun was only a 
bright patch in mid-sky. 

Tyi stepped back with a yelp. The crewman at 
the controls of the giant cargo doors laughed and 
said, "Well, you were in such a hurry, soldier. ..." 

The Slammers-issue pack Tyi carried was all the 
luggage he'd brought from six month's furlough on 
Miesel. Strapped to the bottom of the pack was 
a case of home-made jalapeno jelly that his aunt 
was sure—correctly—was better than any he could 
get elsewhere in the galaxy. 

But altogether, the weight of Tyi's gear was 
much less than he was used to carrying in weap


ons, rations, and armor when he led a company of 
Alois Hammer's infantry. He turned easily and 
looked at the crewman with mild sadness—the 
visage of a dog that's been unexpectedly kicked 
. . . and maybe just enough else beneath the sadness 
to be disquieting. 

The crewman looked down at his controls, then 
again to the mercenary waiting to disembark. The 
squealing stopped when the triple hatches locked 
open. "Ah," called the crewman, "it'll clear up in 
a minute er two. It's always like this on Bamberg 
the first couple ships down after a high tide. The 
port floods, y'see, and it always looks like half the 
bloody ocean's waiting in the hollows t' burn off." 

The steam—the hot mist; it'd never been dangerous, 
Tyi realized how—was thinning quickly. 
From the hatchway he could see the concrete pad 
and, in the near distance, the bulk of the freighter 


that must have landed just before theirs. The flecks 
beyond the concrete were the inevitable froth 
speckling moving water, the channel or the ocean 
itself—and the water looked cursed close to somebody 
who'd just spent six months on a place as dry 
as Miesel. 

"Where do they put the warehouses?" Tyi asked. 
"Don't they flood?" 

"Every three months or so they would," the 
crewman agreed. "That's why they're on the mainland, 
in Bamberg City, where there's ten meters 
of cliff and seawall t' keep 'em dry. But out here's 
flat, and I guess they figured they'd sooner the 
landing point be on the island in case somebody, 
you know, landed a mite hard." 

The crewman grinned tightly. Tyi grinned back. 
They were both professionals in fields that involved 
risks. People who couldn't joke about the 

risks of the jobs they'd chosen tended to find 
other lines of work in a hurry. 

The ones who survived. 

"Well, I guess it's clear," Tyi said with enough 
question in his tone to expect a warning if he were 
wrong. "There'll be ground transport coming?" 

"Yeah, hovercraft from Bamberg real soon," the 
crewman agreed. "But look, there's a shelter on 
the other side a' that bucket there. You might 
want to get over to it right quick. There's some 
others in orbit after us, and it can be pretty interesting 
t' be out on the field when it's this wet and 
there's more ships landing." 

Tyi nodded to the man and strode down the 
ramp that had been the lower third of the hatch 
door. He was nervous, but it'd all be fine soon. 
He'd be back with his unit and not alone, the way 
he'd been on the ship— 

And for the whole six months he'd spent with 
his family and a planet full of civilians who understood 
his words but not his language. 


The mainland shore, a kilometer across Nevis 
Channel, was a comiche. The harsh cliffs were 
notched by the mouth of the wide river which was 
responsible for Bamberg City's location and the 
fact it was the only real city on the planet. Tyi 
hadn't gotten the normal briefing because the regiment 
shifted employers while he was on furlough, 
but the civilian sources available on Miesel when 
he got his movement orders were about all he 
needed anyway. 

Captain Tyi Koopman wasn't coming to the planet 
Bamberia; he was returning to Hammer's Stammers. 
After five years in the regiment and six 
months back with his family, he had to agree with 

the veterans who'd warned him before he went on 
furlough that he wasn't going home. 

He had left home, because the Slammers were 
the only home he'd got. 

The shelter was a low archway, translucent green 
from the outside and so unobtrusive that Tyi might 
have overlooked it if there had been any other 
structure on the island. He circled to one end, 
apprehensive of the rumbling he heard in the 
sky—and more than a little nervous about the pair 
of star freighters already grounded in the port. 

The ships were quiescent. They steamed and 
gave off pings of differential cooling, but for the 
next few days they weren't going to move any 
more than would buildings of the same size. Nevertheless, 
learned reflex told Tyi that big metal 
objects were tanks . . . and no infantryman lived 
very long around tanks without developing a healthy 
respect for them. 

The door opened automatically as Tyi reached 
for it, wondering where the latch was. Dim shadows 
swirled inside the shelter, behind a second 
panel that rotated aside only when the outside 
door had closed again. 

There were a dozen figures spaced within a 
shelter that had room for hundreds. All those 
waiting were human; all were male; and all but 


one were in civilian garb. 

Tyi walked toward the man in uniform—almost 
toward him, while almost meeting the other man's 
eyes so that he could stop and find a clear spot at 
the long window if the fellow glared or turned his 
head as the Slammers officer approached. 

No problem, though. The fellow's quirking grin 
suggested that he was as glad of the company as 
Tyi was. 

It was real easy to embarrass yourself when you 
didn't know the rules—and when nobody wore 
the rank tabs that helped you figure out what 
those rules might be. 

From within the shelter, the windows had an 
extreme clarity that proved they were nothing as 
simple as glass or thermoplastic. The shelter was 
unfurnished, without even benches, but its construction 
proved that Bamberia was a wealthy, 
high technology world. 

There was a chance for real profit on this one. 
Colonel Hammer must have been delighted. 

"Hammer's Regiment?" the waiting soldier asked, 
spreading his grin into a look of welcome. 

"Captain Tyi Koopman," Tyi agreed, shaking 
the other man's hand. "I'd just gotten E Company 
when I went on furlough. But I don't know what 
may've happened since, you know, since we've 
shifted contracts." 

He'd just blurted the thing that'd been bothering 
him ever since Command Central had sent the 
new location for him to report off furlough. He'd 
sweated blood to get that company command— 
sweated blood and spilled it ... and the revised 
transit orders made him fear that he'd have to 
earn it all over again because he'd been gone on 
furlough when the Colonel needed somebody in 
the slot. 

Tyi hadn't bothered to discuss it with the folks 
who'd been his friends and relatives when he was 
a civilian; they already looked at him funny from 


the time one of them asked about the scrimshaw 
he'd given her and he was drunk enough to tell 
the real story of the house-to-house on Cachalot. 
But this guy would understand, even though Tyi 

didn't know him and didn't even recognize the 
uniform. 

"Charles Desoix," the man said, "United Defense 
Batteries." He flicked a collar tab with his 
finger. "Lieutenant and XO of Battery D, if you 
don't care what you say. It amounts to gopher, 
mainly. I just broke our Number Five gun out of 
Customs on Merrinet." 

"Right, air defense," Tyi said with the enthusiasm 
of being able to place the man in a structured 
universe. "Calliopes?" 

"Yeah," agreed Desoix with another broad grin, 
"and the inspectors seemed to think somebody in 
the crew had stuffed all eight barrels with drugs 
they were going to sell at our transfer stop on 
Merrinet. Might just've been right, too—but we 
needed the gun here more than they needed the 
evidence." 

The ship that had been a rumble in the sky 
when Tyi ducked into the shelter was now within 
ten meters of the pad. The shelter's windows did 
an amazing job of damping vibration, but the concrete 
itself resonated like a drum to the freighter's 
engine note. The two soldiers fell silent. Tyi shifted 
his pack and studied Desoix. 

The UDB uniform was black with silver piping 
that muted to non-reflective gray in service conditions. 
It was a little fancier than the Stammers' 
khaki—but Desoix's unit wasn't parade-ground 
pansies. 

The Slammers provided their own defense against 
hostile artillery. Most outfits didn't have the luxury 
that Fire Central and the vehicle-mounted 
powerguns gave Hammer. Specialists like United 
Defense Batteries provided multi-barreled weapons 
—calliopes—to sweep the sky clear over defended 


positions and to accompany attacking columns which 
would otherwise be wrecked by shellfire. 

It wasn't a job Tyi Koopman could imagine himself 
being comfortable doing; but Via! he didn't 
see himself leading a tank company either. A one-
man skimmer and a 2 cm powergun were about all 
the hardware Tyi wanted to handle. Anything bigger 
cost him too much thought that would have 
been better spent on the human portion of his 
command. 

"Your first time here?" Desoix asked diffidently. 
The third freighter was down. Though steam hissed 
away from the vessel with a high-pitched roar, it 
was possible to talk again. 

Tyi nodded. Either the tide was falling rapidly 
or the first two ships had pretty well dried the pad 
for later comers. The billows of white mist were 
sparse enough that he could still see the city across 
the channel: or at any rate, he could see a twenty-
story tower of metal highlights and transparent 
walls on one side of the river, and a domed structure 
across from it that gleamed gold—except for 
the ornate cross on the pinnacle whose core was 
living ruby. 

"Not a bad place," Desoix said judiciously. He 
looked a few years older than the Slammers officer, 
but perhaps it was just that, looks, dark hair 
and thin features contrasting with Tyi's broad pale 
face and hair so blond that you could hardly see it 
when it was cropped as short as it was now. 

"The city, I mean," Desoix said, modifying his 
earlier comment. "The sticks over on Continent 
Two where it looks like the fighting's going to be, 
well—they're the sticks." 

He met Tyi's eyes. "I won't apologize for getting 
a quiet billet this time 'round." 

"No need to," Tyi said . . . and they were both 
lying, because nobody who knows the difference 
brags to a combat soldier about a cushy assignment; 
and no combat soldier but wishes, somewhere 
in his heart of hearts, that he'd gotten the 


absolutely necessary assignment of protecting the 
capital while somebody else led troops into sniper-
filled woodlands and endured the fluorescent drumbeat 
of hostile artillery. 


But Via! Somebody had to do the job. 


Both of them. 
"Hey, maybe the next time," Tyi said with a 


false smile and a playful tap on the shoulder of the 
man who wasn't a stranger any more. 


Several boats—hovercraft too small to haul more 
than a dozen men and their luggage—were putting 
out from Bamberg City, spraying their way 
toward the island with an enthusiasm that suggested 
they were racing. 


Tyi's view of them was unexpectedly cut off 
when a huge surface-effect freighter slid in front of 
the shelter and settled. The freighter looked like a 
normal sub-sonic aircraft, but its airfoils were canted 
to double their lift by skimming over water or 
smooth ground. The bird couldn't really fly, but it 
could carry a thousand tonnes of cargo at 200 
kph—a useful trade-off between true ships and 


true aircraft. 


"Traders from Two," Desoix explained as men 
began scuttling from the freighter before its hydraulic 
outriggers had time to lock it firmly onto 
the pad. "They circle at a safe distance from the 
island while the starships are landing. Then, if 
they're lucky, they beat the Bamberg factors to 
the pad with the first shot at a deal." 


He shrugged. "And if their luck's really out, 


there's another starship on its way in about the 
time they tie up. Doesn't take much of a shock 
wave to make things real interesting aboard one of 
those." 


Tyi squinted at the men scuttling from the 
surface-effect vehicle. Several of those waiting in 
the shelter were joining them, babbling and waving 
documents. "Say, those guys 're—" 



"Yeah, rag-heads," Desoix agreed. "I mean, I'm 
sure they're in church every day, kissing crosses 
and all the proper things, but . . . yeah, they're 
looking at some problems if President Delcorio 
gets his crusade going." 

"Well, that's what we're here for," Tyi said, 
looking around horizons that were hemmed by 
starships to the back and side and the surface-
effect vehicle before him. 

"Now," he added, controlling his grimace, "how 
do we get to the mainland if we're not cargo?" 

"Ah, but we are," Desoix noted as he raised the 
briefcase that seemed to be all the luggage he 
carried. "Just not very valuable cargo, my friend. 
But I think it's about time to—" 

As he started toward the door, one of the 
hovercars they'd watched put out from the city 
drove through the mingled cluster of men from 
the starships and the surface freighter. Water from 
the channel surrounded the car in a fine mist that 
cleared its path better than the threat of its rubber 
skirts. While the driver in his open cab exchanged 
curses with men from the surface freighter, the 
rear of his vehicle opened to disgorge half a dozen 
civilians in bright garments. 

"Our transportation," Desoix said, nodding to 
the hovercar as he headed out of the shelter. 
"Now that it's dropped off the Bamberg factors to 

fight for their piece of the market. Everybody's 
got tobacco, and everybody wants a share of what 
may be the last cargoes onto the planet for a 

while." 

"Before the shooting starts," Tyi amplified as he 

strode along with the UDB officer. They hadn't 
sent a briefing cube to Miesel for him . .'. but it 
didn't take that or genius to figure out what was 
going to happen shortly after a world started hiring 
mercenary regiments. 


"That's the betting," Desoix agreed. He opened 
the back of the car with his universal credit key, a 
computer chip encased in noble metal and banded 


to his wrist. 


"Oh," said Tyi, staring at the keyed door. 
"Yeah, everything's up to date here in Bamberg," 


said the other officer, stepping out of the doorway 


and waving Tyi through. "Hey!" he called to the 


driver. "My friend here's on mel" 


"I can—" Tyi said. 
"—delay us another ten minutes," Desoix broke 


in, "trying to charge this one to the Hammer account 
or pass the driver scrip from Lord knows where." 


He keyed the door a second time and swung 
into the car, both men moving with the trained 
grace of soldiers who knew how to get on and off 
air cushion vehicles smoothly—because getting 
hung up was a good way to catch a round. 


"Goes to the UDB account anyway," Desoix 
added. "Via, maybe we'll need a favor from you 


one of these days." 


"I'm just not set up for this place, coming off 


furlough," Tyi explained. "It's not like, you know, 
Colonel Hammer isn't on top of things." 


The driver fluffed his fans and the car began to 
cruise in cautious arcs around the starships, looking 
for other passengers. were busy with merehar 
themselves, preparing th< 
would load the vacuum-s< 
Bamberg tobacco when thi 
deals. 


No one looked at the < 
interest. The driver spun 
channel with a lurch and 



CHAPTER TWO 

"One thing," Desoix said, looking out the window 
even though the initial spray cloaked the 
view. "Money's no problem here. Any banking 
booth can access Hammer's account and probably 
your account back home if it's got a respondent on 
one of the big worlds. Perfectly up to date. But, 
ah, don't talk to anybody here about religion, all 
right?" 

He met Tyi's calm eyes. "No matter how well 
you know them, you don't know them that well. 
Here. And don't go out except wearing your uniform. 
They don't bother soldiers, especially meres; 

but somebody might make a mistake if you were 
in civilian clothes." 

Their vehicle was headed for the notch in the 
sea cliffs. It was a river mouth as Tyi had assumed 
from the spaceport, but human engineering had 
overwhelmed everything natural about the site. 

The river was covered and framed into a triangular 
plaza by concrete seawalls as high as those 
reinforcing the corniche. 

Salt water from the tide-choked sea even now 
gleamed on the plaza, just as it was streaming 
from the spaceport. Figures—women as well as 
men, Tyi thought, though it was hard to be sure 
between the spray and the loose costumes they 
wore here—were pouring into the plaza as fast as 
the water had left it. 

For the most part the walls were sheer and ten 
meters high, but there were broad stairs at each 
apex of the plaza—two along the seaside east and 
west and a third, defended by massive flood works, 
that must have been built over the channel of the 
river itself. 

"What's the problem?" Tyi asked calmly. From 
what he'd read, the battle lines on Bamberia were 


pretty clearly drawn. The planetary government 
was centered on Continent One—wealthy and very 
centralized, because the Pink River drained most 
of the arable land on the continent. All the 
uniquely-flavorful Bamberg tobacco could be barged 
at minimal cost to Bamberg City and loaded in 
bulk onto starships. 

There hadn't been much official interest in Continent 
Two for over a century after the main settlement. 
There was good land on Two, but it was 
patchy and not nearly as easy to develop profitably 
as One proved. 

That didn't deter other groups who saw a chance 
that looked good by their standards. Small starships 
touched down in little market centers. Everything 
was on a lesser scale: prices, quantities, and profit 
margins. ... 

But in time, the estimated total grew large 

enough for the central government to get interested. 
Official trading ports were set up on the 
coast of Two. Local tobacco was to be sent from 
them to Bamberg City, to be assessed and transshipped. 


Some was; but the interloping traders continued 
to land in the back country, and central government 
officials gnashed their teeth over tax 
revenues that were all the larger for being illusory. 

It didn't help that One had been settled by 
Catholic Fundamentalists from Germany and Latin 
America, and that the squatters on Two were almost 
entirely Levantine Muslims. 

The traders didn't care. They had done their 
business in holographic entertainment centers and 
solar-powered freezers, but there was just as much 
profit in powerguns and grenades. 

As for mercenaries like Alois Hammer—and Tyi 
Koopman. . . They couldn't be said not to care; 

because if there wasn't trouble, they didn't have 
work. 


Not that Tyi figured there was much risk of 
galactic peace being declared. 

Desoix laughed without even attempting to make 
the sound humorous. "Well," he said, "do you 
know when Easter is?" 

"Huh?" said Tyi. "My family wasn't, you know, 
real religious . . . and anyway, do you mean on 
Earth or here or where?" 

"That's the question, isn't it?" Desoix answered, 
glancing around the empty cabin just to be sure 
there couldn't be a local listening to him. 

"Some folks here," he continued, "figure Easter 
according to Earth-standard days. You can tell 
them because they've always got something red in 
their clothing, a cap or a ribbon around their 

sleeve if nothing else. And the folks that say, 
'We're on Bamberia so God meant us to use 
Bamberg days to figure his calendar . . . ,' well, 
they wear black. 

"And the people who wear cloaks, black or red," 
Desoix concluded. "Make sure they know you're a 
soldier. Because they'd just as soon knock your 
head in as that of any policeman or citizen—but 
they won't, because they know that killing soldiers 
gets expensive fast." 

Tyi shook his head. "I'd say I didn't believe it," 
he said with the comfortable superiority of somebody 
commenting on foolishness to which he doesn't 
subscribe. "But sure, it's no screwier than a lot of 
places. People don't need a reason to have problems, 
they make their own." 

"And they hire us," agreed Desoix. 

"Well, they hire us to give 'em more control 
over the markets on Two," Tyi said, not quite 
arguing. "This time around." 

Their vehicle was approaching the plaza. It stood 
two meters above the channel, barely eye-height 
to the men in the back of the hovercar. A pontoon



mounted landing stage slid with the tides in a 
vertical slot in the center of the dam blocking the 
river beneath the plaza; the car slowed as they 
approached the stage. 

"If they dam the river—" Tyi started to say, 
because he wouldn't have commanded a company 
of the Slammers had he not assessed the terrain 
about him as a matter of course. 

Before Desoix could answer, slotted spillways 
opened at either end of the dam and whipped the 
channel into froth with gouts of fresh water under 
enough pressure to fling it twenty meters from the 
concrete. The hovercar, settling as it made its 

final approach to the stage, bobbed in the ripples; 

the driver must have been cursing the operator 
who started to drain the impoundment now instead 
of a minute later. 

"Hydraulics they know about," Desoix commented 
as their vehicle grounded on the stage 
with a blip of its fans and the pontoons rocked 
beneath them. "They can't move the city—it's 
here because of the river, floods or no. But for 
twenty kilometers upstream, they've built concrete 
levees. When the tides peak every three 
months or so—as they just did—they close the 
gates here and divert the river around Bamberg 
City." 

He pointed up the coast. "When the tide goes 
down a little, they vent water through the main 
channel again until everything's normal. In about 
two days, they can let barges across to the spaceport." 


The hovercar's door opened, filling the back 
with the roar of the water jetting from a quarter 
kilometer to either side. "Welcome to Bamberg 
City," Desoix shouted over the background as he 
motioned Tyi ahead of him. 

The Slammers officer paused outside the vehicle 
to slip on his pack again. Steel-mesh stairs 
extended through the landing stage, up to the 
plaza—but down into the water as well: they did 


not move with the stage or the tides, and they 
were dripping and as slick as wet, polished metal 
could be. 

"No gear?" he asked his companion curiously. 

Desoix waved his briefcase. "Some, but I'm 
leaving it to be on-loaded with the gun. Remember, 
I'm travelling with a whole curst calliope." 

"Well, you must be glad to have it back," said 
Tyl as he gripped the slick railing before he attempted 
the steps. 

"Not as glad as my battery commander, Major 
Borodin," Desoix said with a chuckle. "It was his 
ass, not mine, if the Merrinet authorities had decided 
to keep it till it grew whiskers." 

"But—" he added over the clang of his boots 
and Tyi's as they mounted the stairs, "—he's not a 
bad old bird, the Major, and he cuts me slack that 
not every CO might be willing to do." 

The stairs ended on a meter-wide walkway that 
was part of the plaza but separated from it by a 
low concrete building, five meters on the side 
parallel to the dam beneath it—and narrower in 
the other dimension. On top, facing inward to the 
plaza, was an ornate, larger than life, crucifix. 

Tyi hesitated, uncertain as to which way to walk 
around the building. He'd expected somebody from 
his unit to be waiting here on the mainland if not 
at the spaceport itself. He was feeling alone again. 
The raucous babble of locals setting up sales kiosks 
on the plaza increased his sense of isolation. 

"Either way," Desoix said, putting a hand on 
the other man's shoulder—in comradeship as well 
as direction. "This is just the mechanical room for 
the locks—except—" 

Desoix leaned over so that his lips were almost 
touching Tyi's ear and said, "Except that it's the 
altar of Christ the Redeemer, if you ask anybody 
here. I really put my foot in it when I tried to get 
permission to site one of my guns on it. Would've 
been a perfect place to cover the sea approaches, 


but it seems that they'd rather die here than have 
their cross moved. 

"Of course," the UDB officer added, a professional 
who didn't want another professional to think 
that he'd done a bad job of placing his guns, "I 
found an all-right spot on a demolition site just 
east of here." 

Desoix nodded toward the thronged steps at the 
eastern end of the plaza. "Not quite the arc of fire, 
but nothing we can't cover from the other guns. 
Especially now we've got Number Five back." 

In the time it had taken the hovercar to navigate 
from the spaceport to the mainland, a city of 
small shops had sprung up in the plaza. Tyi couldn't 
imagine the development could be orderly—but it 
was, at least to the extent that a field of clover has 
order, because the individual plants respond to 
general stimuli that force them into patterns. 

There were city police present, obvious from 
their peaked caps, green uniforms, and needle 
stunners worn on white cross-belts . . . but they 
were not organizing the ranks of kiosks. Men and 
women in capes were doing that; and after a glance 
at their faces, Tyi didn't need Desoix to tell him 
how tough they thought they were. 

They just might be right, too; but things have a 
way of getting a lot worse than anybody expected, 
and it was then that you got a good look at what 
you and the rest of your crew were really made of. 

Traffic in the plaza was entirely pedestrian. Vehicles 
were blocked from attempting the staircases 
at either sea-front comer by massive steel bollards, 
and the stairs at the remaining apex were 
closed by what seemed to be lockworks as massive 
as those venting the river beneath the plaza. They'd 
have to be, Tyi realized, because there needed to 
be some way of releasing water from the top of its 
levee-channelled course in event of an emergency. 

But that wasn't a problem for Captain Tyi 
Koopman just now. What he needed was somebody 
wearing the uniform of Hammer's Slammers, 
and he sure as blazes didn't see such in all this 


throng. 

"Ah," he said, "Lieutenant ... do you—" 

The transceiver implanted in his mastoid bone 
beeped, and an unfamiliar voice began to answer 
Tyi's question before he had fully formed it. 

"Transit Base to Captain Tyi Koopman," said 
the implant, scratchy with static and the frustration 
of the man at the other end of the radio link. 
"Captain Koopman, are you reading me? Over." 

Tyi felt a rush of relief as he willed his left little 
finger to crook. The finger didn't move, but the 
redirected nerve impulse triggered the transmitter 
half of his implant. "Koopman to Transit," he 
said harshly. "Where in blazes are you, anyway? 

Over." 

"Sir," said the voice, "this is Sergeant Major 

Scratchard, and you don't need to hear that I'm 
sorry about the cock-up. There's an unscheduled 
procession, and I can't get into the main stairs 
until it's over. If you'll tell me where you are, I 
swear I'll get t' you as soon as the little boys put 
away their crosses and let the men get back to 

work." 

"I'm—" Tyi began. Desoix was turned half aside 

to indicate that he knew of the conversation going 
on and knew it wasn't any of this business. That 
gave the Slammers officer the mental base he 
needed for a reasoned decision rather than nervously 
agreeing to wait in place. 

"Ah, sir," Scratchard continued; he'd paused 
but not broken the transmission. "There's a load 
of stuff for you here from Central. The Colonel 
wants you to lead the draft over when you report 
to Two. And, ah, the President, ah, Delcorio, 

wants to see you ASAP because you're the ranking 
officer now. Over." 


"The main stairs," Tyi said, aloud rather than 
sub-vocalizing the way he had done thus far through 
the implant. Desoix could hear him. To underscore 
that he wanted the UDB officer to listen, 
Tyi pointed toward the empty stairs at the third 
apex. "That's at the end farthest from the sea, 

then?" 

Desoix nodded. Scratchard's voice said, "Ah, 
yessir," through the static. 

"Fine, I'll meet you there when you can get 
through," Tyi said flatly. "I'm in uniform and I 
have one pack is all. Koopman over and out." 

He smiled to Desoix. "It'll give me a chance to 
look around," he explained. Now that his unit had 
contacted him he felt confident—whole, for the 
first time in ... Via, in six months, just about. 

Desoix smiled back. "Well, you shouldn't have 
any real problems here," he said. "But—" his 
head tilted, just noticeably, in the direction of 
three red-cloaked toughs "don't forget what I told 
you. Myself, I'm going to check Number Three 
gun so long as I'm down on the corniche anyway. 
See you around, soldier." 

"See you around," Tyi agreed confidently. He 
grinned at his surroundings with a tourist's vague 
interest. Captain Tyi Koopman was home again, 
or he would be in a few minutes. 


CHAPTER THREE 

Charles Desoix thought about the House of Grace 
as he mounted the eastern stairs from the plaza. 
The huge hospital building, Bishop Trimer's latest 
but not necessarily last attempt to impose his presence 
on Bamberg City, was about all a man could 
see as he left the plaza in this direction. For that 
matter, the twenty glittering stories of the House 
of Grace were the only portions of the city visible 
from the floor of the plaza, over the sea walls. 

It was like looking at a block of blue ice; and it 
was the only thing about being stationed in 
Bamberg City that Desoix could really have done 
without. But the Bishop certainly wasn't enough 
of a problem that Desoix intended to transfer to 
one of the batteries out in the boonies on Two, 
rumbling through valleys you could be sure the 
rag-heads had mined and staked for snipers. 

Thousands of people, shoppers as well as shopkeepers, 
were still pouring into the plaza; Desoix 
was almost alone in wanting to go in the opposite 
direction. He wasn't in a big hurry, so he kept his 
temper in check. An unscheduled inspection of 
Gun Three was a good excuse for the battery XO 
to be there, not just sneaking around. . . . 

He had some business back at the Palace of 
Government, too; but he wasn't so horny from the 
trip to Merrinet that he was willing to make that 

his first priority. Quite. 

Three prostitutes, each of them carried by a 

pair of servants to save their sandals and gossamer 
tights, were on their way to cribs in the plaza 
below. Desoix made way with a courteous bow; 

but uniform or not, he was going to make way. 
The phalanx of red-cloaked guards surrounding 

the girls would have made sure of that. 

One of the girls smiled at Desoix as she rocked 
past. He smiled back at her, thinking of Anne 
McGill . . . but Blood and Martyrs! he could last 


another half hour. He'd get his job done Brst. 

There was an unusual amount of congestion here, 
but that was because the main stairs were blocked. 
Another procession, no doubt; Bishop Trimer 
playing his games while President Delcorio and 
his wife tried to distract the populace with a crusade 
on Two. 

As for the populace, its members knocked in 

each other's heads depending on what each was 

wearing that day. 

Just normal politics, was all. Normal for places 

that hired the United Defense Batteries and other 

mercenary regiments, at any rate. 

At dawn, the shadow of the House of Grace lay 

across the Cathedral on the other side of the plaza, 
so that the gilded dome no longer gleamed. Desoix 
wrinkled his nose and thought about dust-choked 
roads on Two with a sniper every hundred meters 
of the wooded ridges overlooking them. 

To blazes with all of them. 

There was even more of a crush at the head of 
the stairs. Vehicles slid up to the bollards to drop 
their cargo and passengers—and then found themselves 
blocked by later-comers, furious at being 
stopped a distance from where they wanted to be. 
A squad of city police made desultory efforts to 
clear the jam, but they leaped aside faster than 
the bystanders did when the real Bghting started. 

Two drivers, one with a load of produce and the 
other carrying handbags, were snarling. Three 
black-cloaked toughs jumped the driver with the 
red headband, knocked him down, and linked 
arms in a circle about the victim so that they could 
all three put the boot in. 

At least a dozen thugs in red coalesced from 
nowhere around the fight. It grew like a crystal in 


a supersaturated solution of hate. 

The police had their stunners out and were 
radioing for help, but they kept their distance. 
The toughs wore body armor beneath their cloaks, 
and Desoix heard the slam of at least one slug-
throwing pistol from the ruck. 

He willed his body to stay upright and to stride 
with swift dignity between vehicles and out of the 
potential line of fire. It would have griped his 
soul to run from this scum; but more important, 
anyone who ducked and scurried was a worthy 
victim, while a recognized mercenary was safe 
except by accident. 

Anyway, that was what Desoix told himself. 
But by the Lord! it felt good to get out of the 
shouted violence and see Gun Three, its six-man 
crew alert and watching the trouble at the stair-
head with their personal weapons ready. 

The calliope's eight stubby barrels were mounted 
on the back of a large air-cushion truck. Instead of 
rotating through a single loading station as did the 
2 cm tri-barrels on the Stammers' combat cars, 
each of the calliope's tubes was a separate gun. 
The array gimballed together to fire on individual 
targets which the defenders couldn't afford to miss. 

Any aircraft, missile, or artillery shell that came 
over the sector of the horizon which Gun Three 
scanned—when the weapon was live—would be 
met by a pulse of high-intensity 3 cm bolts from 
the calliope's eight barrels. Nothing light enough 
to fly through the air could survive that raking. 

A skillful enemy could saturate the gun's defensive 
screen by launching simultaneous attacks from 
several directions, but even then the interlocking 
fire of a full, properly-sited six-calliope battery 
should be able to hold out and keep the target it 
defended safe. 

Of course, proper siting was an ideal rather 
than a reality, since every irregularity of terrain—or 
a building like the House of Grace—kept guns 
from supporting one another as they could do on a 
perfectly flat surface. Bamberg City wasn't likely 


to be surrounded by hostile artillery batteries, 
though, and Charles Desoix was proud of the single-
layer coverage he had arranged for the whole populated 
area. 

He did hope his gunners had sense enough not 
to talk about saturating coverage when they were 
around civilians. Especially civilians who looked 
like they'd been born to squatter families on Two. 

"Good to see you back, sir," said Blaney, the 
sergeant in command of Gun Three on this watch. 
He was a plump man and soft looking, but he'd 
reacted well in an emergency on Hager's World, 
taking manual control of his calliope and using it 
in direct fire on a party of sappers that had made 
it through the perimeter Federal forces were trying 
to hold. 

"Say," asked a blond private Desoix couldn't 
call by name until his eye caught stenciling on the 
fellow's helmet: Karsov. "Is there any chance we're 
going to move, sir? Farther away from all this? It 
gets worse every day." 

"What's ..." Desoix began with a frown, but 
he turned to view the riot again before he finished 
the question—and then he didn't have to finish it. 

The riot that Desoix had put out of his mind by 
steely control had expanded like mold on bread 
while he walked the three hundred meters to the 
shelter of his gun and its crew. There must have 
been nearly a thousand people involved—many of 
them lay-folk with the misfortune of being caught 
in the middle, but at least half were the cloaked 
shock troops of the two Easter factions. 

Knives and metal bars flashed in the air. A 
shotgun thumped five times rapidly into a chorus 
of screams. 

"Via," Desoix muttered. 

A firebomb went off, spraying white trails of 
burning magnesium through the curtain of petroleum 
flames. Police air cars were hovering above 
the crowd on the thrust of their ducted fans while 
uniformed men hosed the brawlers indiscriminately 


with their needle stunners. 

"This is what we're defending?" Blaney asked 
with heavy irony. 

Desoix squatted, motioning the gun crew down 
with him. No point in having a stray round hit 
somebody. The men were wearing their body armor, 
but Desoix himself wasn't. He didn't need it 
on shipboard or during negotiations on Merrinet, 
and it hadn't struck him how badly the situation in 
Bamberg City could deteriorate in the two weeks 
he was gone. 

"Well," he said, more or less in answer. "They're 
the people paying us until we hear different. Internal 
politics, that's not our business. And anyhow, 
it looks like the police have it pretty well 
under control." 

"For now," muttered Karsov. 

The fighting had melted away, as much in reaction 
to the firebomb as to the efforts of the civil 
authorities. Thugs were carrying away injured members 
of their own parties. The police tossed the 
disabled battlers whom they picked up into air 
cars with angry callousness. 

"It'd be kinda nice, sir," said Blaney, turning 
his eyes toward the House of Grace towering above 
them, "if we could maybe set up on top of there. 
Get a nice view all around, you know, good for 
defense; and, ah, we wouldn't need worry about 
getting hit with the odd brick or the like if the 
trouble comes this way next time." 

The chorus of assent from the whole crew indicated 
that they'd been discussing the point at 
length among themselves. 

Desoix smiled. He couldn't blame the men, but 
wishing something strongly didn't make it a practical 
solution. 

"Look," he said, letting his eyes climb the sculptured 
flank of the hospital building as he spoke. 
The narrower sides of the House of Grace, the 
north and south faces, were of carven stone rather 


than chrome and transparent panels. The south face, 
toward Gun Three and the sea 
front, was decorated with the miracles of Christ: 
the sick rising from their beds; the lame tossing 
away their crutches; loaves and fishes multiplying 
miraculously to feed the throng stretching back in 
low relief. 


On the opposite side were works of human 
mercy: the poor being fed and lodged in church 
kitchens; orphans being raised to adulthood; medical 
personnel with crosses on their uniforms healing 
the sick as surely as Christ did on the south 
face. 


But over the works of human mercy, the ascetic 
visage of Bishop Trimer presided in a coruscance 
of sun-rays like that which haloed Christ on the 
opposite face. A determined man, Bishop Trimer. 
And very sure of himself. 


"Look," Desoix repeated as he reined in his 
wandering mind. "In the first place, it's a bad 
location because the gun can only depress three 
degrees and that'd leave us open to missiles skimming 
the surface." 


Karsov opened his mouth as if to argue, but a 
snarled order from Sergeant Blaney shut him up. 
Lieutenant Desoix was easy-going under normal 
circumstances; but he was an officer and the Battery 
XO . . . and he was also hard as nails when 
he chose to be, as Blaney knew by longer experience 
than the private had. 


"But more important ..." Desoix went on 
with a nod of approval to Blaney. "Never site a 
gun in a spot where you can't drive away if things 
really get bad. Do you expect to ride down in the 
elevators if a mob decides what they really ought 
to do tomorrow is burn the hospital?" 


"Well, they wouldn't ..." Karsov began. 
He looked at the wreckage and smoke near the 
plaza stairs and thought the better of saying what 
a mob would or wouldn't do. 


"Were you on Shinano, Sergeant?" Desoix asked 
Blaney. 



"Yessir," the non-corn said. "But I wasn't in the 
city during the riots, if that's what you mean." 

"I was a gun captain then," Desoix said with a 
smile and a lilting voice, because it was always 
nice to remember the ones you survived. "The 
Battery Commander—this was Gilt, and they sacked 
him for it—sited us on top of the Admin Building. 
Ten stories in a central park. 

"So we had a really good view of the mob, 
because parts of it were coming down all five 
radial streets with torches. And they'd blown up 
the transformer station providing power to the 
whole center of town. 

He coughed and rubbed his face. "There were 
air cars flying every which way, carrying businessmen 
who knew they weren't going to get out at 
ground level . . . but we didn't have a car, and we 
couldn't even get the blazes off the roof. It didn't 
have a staircase, just the elevator—and that quit 
when the power went off." 

Blaney was nodding with grim agreement; so 
were two of the other veterans in the gun crew. 

"How—how'd you get out, sir?" Karsov asked 
in a suitably chastened tone. 

Desoix grinned again. It wasn't a pleasant expression. 
"Called to one of those businessmen on 
a loud-hailer," he said. "Asked him to come pick 
us up. When he saw where we had the calliope 
pointed, he decided that was a good idea." 

The slim officer paused and looked up at the 
House of Grace again. "Getting lucky once doesn't 

mean I'm going to put any of my men in that 
particular bucket again, though," he said. "Down 
here—" he smiled brightly, but there was more 
than pure humor in this expression too "—at the 
worst, you've got the gun to keep anybody at a 
distance." 

"Think it's going to be that bad, sir?" one of the 
crewmen asked. 


Desoix shrugged. "I need to report to the Palace," 
he said. "I guess it's clear enough to do that 
now." 

As he turned to walk away from the gun position, 
he heard Sergeant Blaney saying, "Not for us 
and the other meres, maybe. But yeah, it's going 
to get that bad here. You wait and see." 


CHAPTER FOUR 

Tyi Koopman strolled through a series of the 
short aisles into which the plaza was marked by 
freshly-erected kiosks. In most cases the shop proprietors 
were still setting out their goods, but they 
were willing to call Tyi over to look at their merchandise. 
He smiled and walked on—the smile 
becoming fixed in short order. 

He'd learned Spanish when the Slammers were 
stationed on Cartagena three years before, so he 
could have followed the local language without 
difficulty. It was interesting that most of the shopkeepers 
recognized Tyi's uniform and spoke to 
him in Dutch, fluent at least for a few words of 
enticement. 

It was interesting also that many of those keeping 
shops in the plaza were of Levantine extraction, 
like the merchants who had disembarked 
from the surface-effect freighter. They were noticeable 
not only for their darker complexions but 
also because their booths and clothing were so 
bedecked with crosses that sometimes the color of 
the underlying fabric was doubtful. 

Not, as Lieutenant Desoix had suggested, that 
their desperate attempts to belong to the majority 
would matter a hoot in Hell when the Crusade 
really got moving. Tyi wasn't a cynic. Like most 
line mercenaries, he wasn't enough of an intellectual 
to have abstract positions about men and 
politics. 

But he had a good mind and plenty of data 
about the way things went when politicians hired 
men to kill for them. 

The section Tyi was walking through was given 
over to tobacco and smoking products—shops for 
visitors rather than staples for the domestic market 
which seemed to Bll most of the plaza. 

Tobacco from Bamberia had a smooth melding 
of flavors that remained after the raw leaf was 
processed into the cold inhalers in which most of 
the galaxy used imported tobacco. Those who 
couldn't afford imports smoked what they grew in 


local plots on a thousand worlds . . . but those 
who could afford the best and wanted the creosote 
removed before they put the remainder of the 
taste into their bodies, bought from Bamberia. 

Most of the processing was done off-planet, frequently 
on the user world where additional flavorings 
were added to the inhalers to meet local 
tastes. There were a few inhaler factories on the 
outskirts of Bamberg City, almost the only manufacturing 
in a metropolis whose wealth was based 
on transport and government. Their creations were 
displayed on the tables in the plaza, brightly-
colored plastic tubes whose shapes counterfeited 
everything from cigarillos to cigars big enough to 
pass for riot batons. 

But the local populace tended to follow traditional 
methods of using the herb that made them 
rich. Products for the local market posed here as 
exotica for the tourists and spacers who wanted 
something to show the folks back home where 
they'd been. 

Tourists and spacers and mercenaries. The number 
of kiosks serving outsiders must have increased 
radically since President Delcorio started hiring 
mercenaries for his Crusade. 

Tyi passed by displays of smoking tobacco and 
hand-rolled cigars—some of the boxes worth a 
week's pay to him, even now that he had his 
captaincy. There were cigar cutters and pipe cleaners, 
cigarette holders and pipes carved from microporous 
meerschaum mined on the coasts of 
Two. 

Almost all the decoration was religious: crosses, 
crucifixes, and other symbols of luxuriant Christianity. 
That theme was almost as noticeable to Tyi 
as the fact that almost everyone in the plaza—and 
every kiosk—was decorated with either black or 
red, and never both. 

Each staggering aisle was of uniform background. 
To underscore the situation, cloaked toughs faced 
off at every angle where the two colors met, glowering 
threats that did not quite—while Tyi saw 
them—come to open violence. 


Great place to live, Bamberg City. Tyi was glad 
of his khaki uniform. He wondered how often the 
silver and black of the United Defense Batteries 
was mistaken for black by somebody with a red 
cloak and a brick in his hand. 
Grimacing to himself, the Slammers officer strode 
more swiftly toward his goal, the empty stairs at 
the north end of the plaza. The scene around him 
was colorful, all right, and this was probably one 
of the few chances he'd have to see it. 

You served on a lot of worlds in a mercenary 
regiment, but what you mostly saw there were 
other soldiers and the wrack of war . . . which was 
universal, a smoky gray ambiance that you scanned 
and maybe shot at before you moved on. 

Even so, Tyi didn't want to spend any longer 
than he had to in this plaza. He could feel the 
edge of conflict which overlay it like the cloaks 
that covered the weapons and armor of the omnipresent 
bullies, waiting for an opportunity to strike 
out. He'd seen plenty of fighting during his years 
with the Slammers, but he didn't want it hovering 
around him when he was supposed to be in a 

peaceful rear area. 

The stairs were slimy with water pooling in low 
spots, but Nevis Island and its spaceport shielded 
the plaza from most of the sea-weed and marine 
life that the high tides would otherwise have washed 
up. Tyi picked his way carefully, since he seemed 
to be the first person to climb them since the tide 

dropped. 

A procession, Scratchard had said, blocking normal 
traffic. Maybe that would be a little easier to 
take than the human bomb waiting to go off below 

in the plaza. 

At the top of the stairs were ten pairs of steeland-
concrete doors. Each side-hung panel was five 
meters across and at least three meters high. The 
doors—lock-gates—were fully open now. They rotated 
out toward the plaza on trunnions in slotted 


rails set into the concrete. As Tyi neared them on 
his lonely climb, he heard the sound of chanted 
music echoing from beyond the doors. 

Tyi had expected to see gaily-bedecked vehicles 
when he reached the top of the stairs and could 
look into the covered mall beyond. Instead there 
were people on foot, and most of them were standing 
rather than marching from left to right. 

The mall was at least a hundred meters wide; its 
pavement was marked to pass heavy ground traffic 
from one side of the river to the other. At the 
moment, a sparse line of priests in full regalia was 
walking slowly down the center of the expanse, 
interspersed with lay-folk wearing robes of ceremonially-
drab coarseness. 

Some carried objects on display. Ornate crucifixes 
were the most common, but there were banners 
and a reliquary borne by four women which, 
ifpure gold, must have cost as much as a starship. 

Every few paces, the marchers paused and 
chanted something in Latin. When they began to 
move again, a refrain boomed back from the line 
of solid-looking men in white robes on either side 
of the procession route. The guards—they could 
be nothing else—wore gold crosses on the left 
shoulders of their garments, but they also bore 
meter-long staffs. 

There was no need for the procession to be 
blocking the whole width of the mall; but when 
Tyi stepped through the door, the nearest men in 
white gave him a look that made it real clear what 
would happen to anybody who tried to carry out 
secular business in an area the Church had marked 
for its own. 

Tyi stopped. He stood in a formal posture instead 
of lounging against a column while he waited. 
No point in offending the fellows who watched 
him with hard eyes even when they bellowed 
verses in a language he knew only well enough to 
recognize. 

No wonder Scratchard hadn't been able to make 
it to the plaza as he'd intended. The other two 


staircases were open and in use, but the procession 
route certainly extended some distance to 
either side of the river; and Scratchard, with business 
of his own to take care of, would have waited 
till the last minute before setting out to collect an 
officer returning from furlough. 

No problem. But it calmed Tyi to remember 
that there were other Slammers nearby, in event 
of a real emergency. 

The gorgeous reliquary was the end of the procession 
proper. When that reached the heavy doors 
at the west end of the mall, a barked order passed 
down the lines of guards, repeated by every tenth 
man. 

The men in white turned and began to double-
time in the direction the procession was headed, 
closing up as they moved. They carried their staffs 
vertically before them, and their voices boomed a 
chant beginning, "Fortis iuventus, virtus audax 
bellica. ..." as they strode away. 

They marched in better order than any mercenary 
unit Tyi could remember having seen—not 
that close-order drill was what folks hired the 
Slammers for. 

And there were a lot of them, for the double 
lines continued to shift past and contract for several 
minutes, more and more quick-stepping staff-
wielders appearing from farther back along the 
procession route to the east. They must have timed 
their withdrawal so that the whole route would be 
cleared the instant the procession reached its destination, 
presumably the cathedral. 

At least something in this place was organized. 
It just didn't appear to be what called itself the 
government. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


Tyi didn't follow the procession when the route 
cleared, nor did he try to raise Sergeant-Major 
Scratchard on his implant again. He'd told Scratchard 
where he'd be; and if the non-corn couldn't 
find him, then that was important information for 
Captain Tyi Koopman to know. 


There was a surge of civilians—into the mall 
and through it down the stairs to the plaza—as 
soon as the procession was clear. Normal folk, so 
far as Tyi could tell from the loose-fitting fashions 
current here. Most of them wore a red ribbon or a 
black one, but there was no contingent of cloaked 
thugs. 


Which meant that the bullies, the enforcers, 
had gotten word that the main stairs would be 
blocked when the tide cleared the plaza—although 
Scratchard and apparently a lot of civilians had 
been caught unaware. That could mean a lot of 
things: none of them particularly good, and none 
of them, thank the Lord, the business of Tyi 
Koopman or Hammer's Slammers. 
He caught sight of a uniform of the right color. 
Sergeant Major Scratchard muscled his way 
through the crowd, his rank in his eyes and his 
grizzled hair. His khaki coveralls were neat and 
clean, but there were shiny patches over the shoulders 
where body armor had rubbed the big man's 
uniform against his collarbone. 


Tyi hadn't recognized the name, but sight of the 
man rang a bell in his mind. He swung away from 
the pillar and, gripping the hand the non-corn 
extended to-him, said, "Sergeant Major Scratchard? 
Would that be Ripper Jack?" 


Scratchard's professional smile broadened into 
something as real and firm as his handshake. "Cap'n 
Koopman, then? Yeah, when I was younger, 
sir. . . . Maybe when I was younger." 


He shifted- his right leg and the hand holding 
Tyi's, just enough to point without apprising the 
civilians around of the gesture. 


Scratchard wore a knife along his right calf. 



Most of the sheathed blade was hidden within his 
boot but the hand-filling grip was strapped to 
mid-calf. "Pistols jam on you, happen," the big 
man half bragged, half explained. "This'n never 

did." 

His face hardened. "Though they got me pretty 
much retired to Admin now with my bum knees." 

"Didn't look that quiet a billet just now," Tyi 
said, pitching his voice lower than the civilians, 
scurrying on their own errands, could have overheard. 
"Down in the plaza just now, the enforcers 
in cloaks. . . . And I was talking to a UDB lieutenant 
landed the same time I did." 
"Yeah, you could maybe figure that," Scratchard 
said in a voice too quietly controlled to be really 
neutral. "Open your leg pocket, sir, and stand real 
close." 

Tyi, his face still, ran a finger across the seal of 
the bellows pocket on the right leg of his coveralls. 
He and the non-corn pressed against .one of 
the door pillars, their backs momentarily to the 
crowd moving past them. He felt the weight of 
what Scratchard had slipped into his pocket. 

Tyi didn't need to finger the object to know that 
he'd been given a service pistol, a 1 cm powergun. 
In the right hands, it could do as much damage as 
a shotgun loaded with buck. 

Tyi's were the right hands. He wouldn't have 
been in the Slammers if they weren't. But the 
implications. . . 

"We're issuing sidearms in Bamberg City, then?" 
he asked without any emotional loading. 

Scratchard, an enlisted man reporting to an officer, 
said stiffly, "Sir, while I was in charge of the 
Transit Detachment, I gave orders that none of 
the troopers on port leave were to leave barracks 
in groups of less than three. And no, sidearms 
aren't officially approved. But I won't have men 
under my charge disarmed when I sure as blazes 
wouldn't be disarmed myself. You can change the 
procedures if you like." 


"Yes, Sergeant Major, I can," Tyi said with just 
enough iron to emphasize that he was well aware 
of their respective ranks. "And if I see any reason 
to do so, I will." 

He smiled, returning the conversation to the 
footing where he wanted to keep it. "For now, 
let's get me to the barracks and see just what it is 
the Colonel has on line."Pray to the Lord that 
there'd be orders to take over E Company again. 

Scratchard hesitated, looking first toward the 
east, then the western lock doors. "Ah, sir," he 
said. "We're billeted in the City Offices—" he 
pointed toward the eastern end of the mall, the 
side toward the huge House of Grace. "Central's 
cut orders for you to carry the Transit Detachment 
over to Two for further assignment . . . but you 
know, nothing that can't wait another couple days. 
We've still got half a dozen other troopers due 

back from furlough." 

"All right," Tyi said, to show that he wasn't 
going to insist on making a decision before he'd 
heard Scratchard's appraisal of the situation. "What 

else?" 

"Well, sir," said the non-corn. "President Del


corio really wants to see the ranking Slammers 
officer in the city. Didn't call the message over, 
his nephew brought it this morning. I told him 
you were in orbit, due down as soon as the port 
cleared— 'cause I'm bloody not the guy to handle 
that sort of thing. I checked with Central, see if 
they'd courier somebody over from Two, but they 

didn't want. ..." 

Tyi understood why Colonel Hammer would 
have turned down Scratchard's request. It was 
obvious what President Delcorio wanted to discuss 
. . . and it wasn't something that Hammer 
wanted to make a matter of official regimental 
policy by sending over a staff officer. 


The Slammers hadn't been hired to keep public 
order in Bamberg City, and Colonel Hammer 
wanted all the time he could get before he had to 
officially make a decision that might involve the 
Bonding Authority either way. 

"Central said you should handle it for now," 
Scratchard concluded. "And I sure think somebody 
ought to report to the President ASAP." 

"Via," muttered Tyi Koopman. 

Well, he couldn't say that he hadn't been given 
a responsible job when he returned from furlough. 

He shrugged his shoulders, settling the pack 
more comfortably. "Right," he said. "Let's do it 
then. Sergeant Major." 

"Palace of Government," Scratchard said in evident 
relief, pointing west in the direction the 
procession had been headed. He stepped off with 
a stiff-legged stride that reminded Tyi that the 
non-corn had complained about his knees. 

The crowd had thinned enough that the Slammers 
officer could trust other pedestrians to avoid 
him even if he glanced away from his direction of 
movement. "You go by Jack when you're with 
friends?" he asked, looking at the bigger man. 

"Yessir, I do," Scratchard replied. 

He grinned, and though the expression wasn't 
quite natural, the non-corn was working on it. 

Mercenary units were always outnumbered by 
the indigenous populations that hired them—or 
they were hired to put down. Mercenaries depended 
on better equipment, better training—and 
on each other, because everything else in the 
world could be right and you were still dead if the 
man who should have covered your back let you 
down. 

Tyi and Scratchard both wanted—needed—there 
to be a good relationship between them. It didn't 
look like they'd be together long . . . but life itself 
was temporary, and that wasn't a reason not to 


make things work as well as they could while it 
lasted. "This way," said Scratchard as the two soldiers 
emerged from the mall crossing the river. "Give 
you a bit of a view, and we don't fight with trucks." 

There was a ramp from the mall down to interlocking 
vehicular streets—one of them paralleling 
the river, the plaza, and then sweeping west along 
the comiche. The other was a park-like boulevard 
which T-ed into the first after separating the gold-
domed cathedral from a large, three story building 
whose wings enclosed a central courtyard open in 
the direction of the river. 

"That's the . . . ?" Tyi said, trying to remember 

the name. 

"Palace of Government, yeah," Scratchard replied 
easily. He was taking them along the pedestrian 
walk atop the levee. 

Glancing over the railing to his right, Tyi was 
shocked to see the water was within two meters of 
the top of the levee. He could climb directly 
aboard the scores of barges moored there, silently 
awaiting for the locks to open. All he'd have to do 
was swing his legs over the guard rail. 

"Via!" he said, looking from the river to the 
street and the buildings beyond it. "What happens 
if it comes up another couple meters? All 
that down there floods, right?" 

"They've got flood shutters on all the lower 
floors," Scratchard explained/agreed. "They say it 
happened seventy-odd years ago when everything 
came together—tides and a storm that backed up 
the outlet channels up-coast. But they know what 
they're doing, their engineers." 

He paused, then added in a tone of disgust, 
"Their politicians, now. . . . But I don't suppose 
they know their asses from a hole in the ground, 
any of'em anywhere." 

He didn't expect an argument from an officer of 
Hammer's Slammers; and Tyi Koopman wasn't 


about to give him one. 

Bamberg City was clean, prosperous. The odor 
of toasted tobacco lead permeated it, despite the 
fact that the ranks of hogsheads on the waiting 
barges were all vacuum-sealed; but that was a 
sweet smell very different from the reeks that 
were the normal concomitant of bulk agriculture. 

Nothing wrong here but the human beings. 

A flagpole stood in the courtyard of the Palace 
of Government. Its twelve-man honor guard wore 
uniforms of the same blue and gold as the fabric of 
the drooping banner. 

In front of the cathedral were more than a thousand 
of the men in cross-marked white robes. 
They were still chanting and blocking vehicles, 
though the gaps in the ranks of staff-armed choristers 
permitted pedestrians to enter the cathedral 
building. The dome towered above this side of the 
river, though it in turn was dwarfed by the House 
of Grace opposite. 

There was a pedestrian bridge from the embankment 
to the courtyard of the Palace of Government, 
crossing the vehicular road. As they joined 
the traffic on it, heavy because of the way vehicles 
were being backed up by the tail end of the procession, 
Tyi asked, "Who wears white here? The 
ones who hold Easter on Christmas?" 

"Umm," said the sergeant major. The non-corn's 
tone reminded Tyi of the pistol that weighted his 
pocket—and the reason it was there. 

In a barely audible voice, Scratchard went on, 
"Those are orderlies from the House of Grace. 
They, ah, usually turn out for major religious 
events." 

Neither of the mercenaries spoke again until 
they had reached the nearly-empty courtyard of 
the government building. Then, while the honor 
guard was still out of earshot, Tyi said, "Jack, they 
don't look to me like they empty bedpans." 

"Them?" responded the big sergeant major. 


"They do whatever Bishop Turner tells them to 

do, sir," 

He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of 
the massed orderlies. His eyes held only flat appraisal, 
as if he were estimating range and the 
length of the burst he was about to fire. 

"Anything at all," he concluded. 

Tyi Koopman didn't pursue the matter as he 
and Scratchard—the latter limping noticeably— 
walked across the courtyard toward the entrance 
of the Palace of Government. 

He could feel the eyes of the honor guard following 
them with contempt. It didn't bother him 
much, any more. 

Five years in the Slammers had taught him that 
parade-ground soldiers always felt that way about 
killers in uniform. 


CHAPTER SIX 

The flood shutters of the Palace of Government 
were closed, and Charles Desoix wasn't naive 
enough to think that the thick steel plates had 
been set against the chance of a storm surge. 
Bamberg City had really come apart in the two 
weeks he was gone. 

Or just maybe it was starting to come together, 
but President John Delcorio wasn't going to be 
part of the new order. 

Desoix threw a sharp salute to the head of the 
honor guard. The Bamberg officer returned it while 
the men of his section presented arms. 

Striding with his shoulders back, Desoix proceeded 
toward the front entrance—the only opening 
on the first two stories of the palace that 
wasn't shuttered. 

As Desoix looked at it, the saluting was protective 
coloration. It was purely common sense to 
want the respect of the people around you . . . 
and when you've wangled billets for yourself and 
your men in the comfort of the Palace of Government, 
that meant getting along with the Executive 
Guards. 

By thumbing an epaulet loop, Desoix brightened 
the gray-spattered markings of his uniform 
to metallic silver—and it was easy to learn to 
salute, as easy as learning to hold the sight picture 
that would send a bolt of cyan death down-range 
at a trigger's squeeze. There was no point in not 
making it easy on yourself. 

He thought of making a suggestion to the Slammers 
officer who'd just arrived, but. . . Tyi Koopman 
seemed a good sort and as able as one of Colonel 
Hammer's company commanders could be expected 
to be. 

But Koopman also seemed the sort of man who 
might be happier with his troops in the police 
barracks beneath the City Offices than he would 
be in the ambiance of the Palace. 


The captain in command of the guards at the 
entrance was named Sanchez; he roomed next 
door to Desoix in the officers' quarters in the 
West Wing. Instead of saluting again, Desoix took 
the man's hand and said, "Well, Rene, I'm glad to 
be back on a civilized planet again . . . but what 
on earth has been going on in the city since I 
left?" 

The Guards captain made a sour face and looked 
around at the sergeant and ten men of his section. 
Everyone in the Executive Guard was at least 
sponsored by one of the top families on the planet. 
Not a few of them were members of those families, 
asserting a tradition of service without the 
potential rigors of being stationed on Two if the 
Crusade got under way. 

"Well, you know the people," Sanchez said, a 
gentleman speaking among gentlemen. "The recent 
taxes haven't been popular, since there are 
rumors that they have more to do with Lady Eunice's 
wardrobe than with propagation of Christ's 
message. Nothing that we need worry about." 

Desoix raised an eyebrow. The Executive Guards 
carried assault rifles whose gilding made them as 
ornamental as the gold brocade on the men's azure 
uniforms . . . but there were magazines in the 
rifles today. That was as unusual as the flood shutters 
being in place. 

"Ah, you can't really stay neutral if things get 
. . . out of hand, can you?" the UDB officer asked. 
He didn't like to suggest that he and Sanchez 
were on different standards; but that was better 
than using "we" when the word might seem to 
commit the United Defense Batteries. 

The guardsman's face chilled. "We'll follow orders, 
of course," he said. "But it isn't the business 
of the army to get involved in the squabbles of the 
mob—or to attempt to change the will of the 
people." 

"Exactly," said Desoix, nodding enthusiastic 
agreement. "Exactly." 

He was still nodding as he strode into the en



trance rotunda. He hoped he'd covered his slip 
with Sanchez well enough. 

But he certainly had learned where the army—or 
at least the Executive Guard—stood on the subject 
of the riots in the streets. 

There was a small, separately-guarded, elevator 
off the rotunda which opened directly onto the 
Consistory Room on the third floor. Desoix hesitated. 
The pager inset into his left cuff had lighted 
red with Major Borodin's anxiety, and Desoix knew 
what his commander wanted without admitting 
his presence by answering. 

It would be a very good idea to take the elevator. 
Borodin was awkward in the company of President 
Delcorio and his noble advisors; the major, 
the battery, and the situation would all benefit 
from the presence of Lieutenant Charles Desoix. 

But Desoix had some personal priorities as well, 
and. . . 

There was traffic up and down the central 
staircase—servants and minor functionaries, but 
not as many of them as usual. They had an air of 
nervousness rather than their normal haughty 
superiority. 

When the door of the small meeting room near 
the elevator moved, Desoix saw Anne McGill 
through the opening. 

Desoix strode toward her, smiling outwardly 
and more relieved than he could admit within. He 
wasn't the type who could ever admit being afraid 
that a woman wouldn't want to see him again—or 
that he cared enough about her that it would 
matter. 

The panel, dark wood placed between heavy 
engaged columns of pink-and-gray marble, closed 
again when he moved toward it. She'd kept it ajar, 
watching for his arrival, and had flashed a sight of 
herself to signal Desoix closer. 

But Lady Anne McGill, companion and confidante 
of the President's wife, had no wish to ad



vertise her presence here in the rotunda. 

Desoix tapped on the door. He heard the lock 
click before the panel opened, hiding Anne behind 
it from anyone outside. Maybe her ambivalence 
was part of the attraction, he thought as he 
stepped into a conference room. There was a small, 
massively-built table, chairs for six, and space for 
that many more people to stand if they knew one 
another well. 

All the room held at the moment was the odor 
of heavy tobaccos, so omnipresent on Bamberia 
that Desoix noticed it only because he'd been 
off-planet for two weeks . . . and Anne McGill in 
layers of silk chiffon which covered her like mist, 
hiding everything while everything remained 
suggested. 

Desoix put his arms around her. 

"Charles, it's very dangerous," she said, turning 
so that his lips met her cheek. 

He nuzzled her ear and, when she caught his 
right hand, he reached for her breast with his left. 

"Ah ..." he said as a different level of risk 
occurred to him. "Your husband's still stationed 
on Two, isn't he?" 

"Of course," Anne muttered scornfully. 

She was no longer fighting off his hands, but 
she was relaxing only slightly and that at a subconscious 
level. "You don't think Bertrand would be 
here when things are like this, do you? There's a 
Consistory Meeting every morning now, but things 
are getting worse. Anyone can see that. Eunice 
says that they're all cowards, all the men, even 
her husband." 

She let her lips meet his. Her body gave a 
shudder and she gripped Desoix to her as fiercely 
as her tension a moment before had attempted to 
repel him. "You should be upstairs now," she 
whispered as she turned her head again. "They 
need you and your Major, he's very upset." 


"My call unit would have told me that if I'd 

54 David Drake 

asked it," the UDB officer said as he shifted the 
grip of his hands. Anne was a big woman, large-
boned and with a tendency toward fat that she 
repressed fiercely with exercise and various diets. 
She wore nothing beneath the bottom layer of 
chiffon except the smooth skin which Desoix caressed. 
His hand ran up her thigh to squeeze the 
fat other buttock against the firm muscle beneath. 

"Then don't be long ..." Anne whispered as 
she reached for the fly of his trousers. 

Desoix didn't know quite what she meant by 

that. 

But he knew that it didn't matter as he backed 
his mistress against the table, lifting the chiffon 
dress to spill over the wood where there would be 
no risk of staining the fabric. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 

"Captain Tyi Koopman, representing Hammer's 
Regiment," boomed the greeter, holding the door 
of the Consistory Room ajar—and blocking Tyi 
away from it with her body, though without appearing 
to do so. 

"Enter," said someone laconically from within. 
The greeter swept the panel open with a flourish, 
bowing to Tyi. 

Machines could have done all the same things, 
Tyi thought with amusement; but they wouldn't 
have been able to do them with such pomp. Even 
so, the greeter, a plump woman in an orange and 
silver gown, was only a hint of the peacock-bright 
gathering within the Consistory Room. 

There were twenty or thirty people, mostly men, 
within the domed room above the rotunda. Natural 
lighting through the circumference of arched 
windows made the Slammers officer blink. It differed 
in quality (if not necessarily intensity) from 
the glowstrips in the corridors through which he 
had been guided to reach the room. 

The only men whose garments did not glitter 
with metallic threads were those whose clothing 
glowed with internal lambency from powerpacks 
woven into the seams. President John Delcorio, in 
black velvet over which a sheen trembled from 
silver to ultra-violet, was the most striking of the 
lot. 

"Good to see you at last. Captain," Delcorio 

boomed as if in assurance that Tyi would recognize 
him—as he did—from the holograms set in 
niches in the hallways of the Palace of Government. 
"Maybe your veterans can put some backbone 
into our own forces, don't you think? So that 
we can all get down to the real business of cleansing 
Two for Christ." 

He glowered at a middle-aged man whose uniform 
was probably that of a serving officer, because 
its dark green was so much less brilliant 
than what anyone else in the room seemed to be 


wearing. 

John Delcorio was shorter than Tyi had assumed, 
but he had the chest and physical presence of a 
big man indeed. His hair, moustache, and short 
beard were black with gray speckles that were 
probably works of art: the President was only thirty-
two standard years old. He had parlayed his position 
as Head of Security into the presidency when 
the previous incumbent, his uncle, died three 

years before. 

Delcorio's eyes sparkled, and the flush on his 
cheeks was as much ruddy good-health as a vestige 
of his present anger. Tyi could understand 
how a man with eyes that sharp could cut his way 
to leadership of a wealthy planet. 

But he could also see how such a man's pushing 
would bring others to push back, push hard. . . . 

Maybe too hard. 

"Sir," Tyi replied, wondering what you were 
supposed to call the President of Bamberia when 
you met him. "I haven't been fully briefed yet on 
the situation. But Hammer's Slammers carry out 
their contracts." 

He hoped that was neutral enough; and he hoped 
to the Lord that Delcorio would let him drop into 
the background now. 

"Yes, well," said Delcorio. The quick spin of his 
hand was more or less the dismissal Tyi had hoped 
for. "Introduce Major Koopman to the others, 
Thomas. Have something to drink—" There was a 
well-stocked sideboard beneath one of the windows, 
and most of those present had glasses in 
their hands. "We're waiting for Bishop Trimer, 
you see." 

"How long are you going to wait before you 
send for him, John?" asked the woman in the red 
dress that shimmered like a gasoline flame. She 
wasn't any taller than the President; but like him, 
she flashed with authority as eye-catching as her 


clothes. "You are the President, you know." 


It struck Tyi that Delcorio and this woman who 
could only be his wife wore the colors of the 
Easter factions he had seen at daggers-drawn in 
the plaza. That made as little sense as anything 
else in Bamberg City. 


"Major, then, is it?" murmured a slender fellow 
at Tyi's elbow, younger than the mercenary had 
been when he joined the Slammers. "I'm Thorn 
Chastain, don't you see, and this is my brother 
Richie. What would you like to drink?" 


"Ah, I'm really just a captain," Tyi said, wondering 
whether Delcorio had misheard, was being 
flattering—or was incensed that Hammer had sent 
only a company commander in response to a summons 
from his employer. "Ah, I don't think. . ." 


"Eunice," the President was saying in a voice 
like a slap, "this is scarcely the time to precipitate 
disaster by insulting the man who can stabilize the 


situation." 
"The army can stabilize—" the woman snapped. 


"It isn't the business of the army—" boomed 


the soldier in green. 


The volume of his interruption shocked him as 
well as the others in the wrangle. All three paused. 
When the discussion resumed, it was held in voices 
low enough to be ignored if not unheard. 


"Queen Eunice," said Thorn Chastain, shaking 
his head. There was a mixture of affection and 
amusement in his voice, but Tyi had been in enough 
tight places to recognize the flash of fear in the 
young man's eyes. "She's really a terror, isn't she?" 


"Ah," Tyi said while his mind searched for a 
topic that had nothing to do with Colonel Hammer's 
employers. "You gentlemen are in the army 


also, I gather?" 


There were couches around most of the walls. 



Near one end was a marble conference table that 
matched the inlaid panels between the single-
sheet vitril windows. Nobody was sitting down, 
and the groups of two or three talking always 
seemed to be glancing over their collective shoulders 
toward the door, waiting for the missing man. 

"Oh, well, these," said the other Chastain 
brother, Richie—surely a twin. He flicked the 
collar of his blue and gold uniform, speaking with 

the diffidence Tyi had felt at being addressed as 
"Major." 

"We're honorary colonels in the Guards, you 
know," said Thorn. "But it's because of our grandfather. 
We're not very inter. . ." 

"Well, Grandfather Chastain was, you know," 
said Richie, taking up where his brother's voice 
trailed off. "He was president some years ago. 
Esteban Delcorio succeeded him, but Thorn and I 
are something like colonels for life—" 

"—and so we wear—" 

They concluded, both together, "But we aren't 
soldiers the way you are. Major." 

"Or Marshal Dowell, either," Thorn Chastain 
added later, nodding to the man in green who had 
broken away from the Delcorios—leaving them to 
hiss at one another. "Now, what would you like to 
drink?" 

Just about anything, thought Tyi. So long as it 
had enough kick to knock him on his ass ... 
which, in a situation like this would get him sacked 
if the Colonel didn't decide he should instead be 
shot out of hand. Why in blazes hadn't somebody 
from the staff been couriered over on an "errand" 
that left him available to talk informally with the 
civil authorities? 

"Nothing for me, thank you," Tyi said aloud. 
"Or, ah, water?" 

Marshal Dowell had fallen in with a tall man 
whose clothes were civilian in cut, though they 


carried even more metallic brocade than trimmed 
the military uniforms. The temporary grouping 
broke apart abruptly when Dowell turned away 
and the tall man shouted at his back, "No, I don't 
think that's a practical solution. Marshal! Abdicating 
your responsibilities makes it impossible for 


me to carry out mine." 


"Berne is the City Prefect," Thorn whispered 
into Tyi's ear. The Chastain brothers were personable 
kids—but "kid" was certainly the word for 
them. They seemed even younger than their probable 
age—which was old enough to ride point in 
an assault force, in Tyi's terms of reference. 


From the other side, Richie was saying, "There's 
been a lot of trouble in the streets recently, you 
know. Berne keeps saying that he doesn't have 
enough police to take care of it." 


"It is not in the interests of God or the State," 
responded Marshal Dowell, his voice shrill and 
his face as red as a flag, "that we give up the 
Crusade on Two because of some rabble that the 
police would deal with if they were used with 


decision!" 
Tyi saw a man in uniform staring morosely out 


over the city. The uniform was familiar; desire 
tricked the Stammers officer into thinking that he 
recognized the man as well. 


" 'Scuse me," he muttered to the Chastains and 
strode across the circular room. "Ah, Lieutenant 


Desoix?" 
Tyi's swift motion drew all eyes in the room to 


him—so he felt/knew that everyone recognized 
his embarrassment when the figure in silhouette 
at the window turned: u man in his mid forties, 
jowls sagging, paunch sagging. . . . Twenty years 
older than Charles Desoix and twenty kilos softer. 


"Charles?" the older man barked as his eyes 
quested the room for the subject of Tyi's call. 



"Where have you—" 

Then he realized, from the way the Slammers 

officer's face went from enthusiastic to stricken, 

what had happened. He smiled, an expression 
that reminded Tyi of snow slumping away from a 
rocky hillside in the spring, and said, "You'd be 
Hammer's man? I'm Borodin, got the battery of 
the UDB here that keeps them all—" he nodded 
toward nothing in particular, pursing his lips to 
make the gesture encompass everyone in the room 
"—safe in their beds." 

The scowl with which Major Borodin followed 
the statement made a number of the richly-dressed 
Bamberg officials turn their interest to other parts 
of the room. 

Tyi was too concerned with controlling his own 
face to worry about the reason for Borodin's anger— 
which was explained when the UDB officer continued, 
"I gather we're looking for the same man. 
And I must say, if you could get down from orbit 
in time to be here, I don't understand what Charles' 
problem can be." 

"He—" said Tyi. Then he smiled brightly and 
replaced his intended statement with, "I'm sure 
Lieutenant Desoix will be here as soon as possible. 
It's very—difficult out there, getting around, 
it seems to me." 

"Tell me about it, boy," Borodin grunted as he 
turned again to the window, not so much rude as 
abstracted. 

They were looking out over the third-story porch 
which faced the front of the Palace of Government. 
In the courtyard below were the foreshortened 
honor guard and the flag, srill drooping and 
unrecognizable. The river beyond was visible only 
by inference. Its water, choked between the massive 
levees, was covered with barges ten and twelve 
abreast, waiting to be passed through beneath the 
plaza. 


On the other side of the river— 
"That's the City Offices, then?" Tyi asked. 
Where he and the men under his temporary 
charge were billeted. And where now police vehicles 
swarmed, disgorging patrolmen and comatose 


prisoners in amazing numbers. 


"Claims to be," Borodin grunted. "Don't see 
much sign that anything's being run from there, 


do you?" 


He glanced around. He was aware enough of 


his surroundings to make sure that nobody but the 
other mercenary officer would overhear the next 
comment. "Or from here, you could bloody well 


say." 
The door opened. The scattered crowd in the 


Consistory Room turned toward the sound with 
the sudden unanimity of a school of fish changing 


front. 


"Father Laughlin, representing the Church," 


called the greeter in a clear voice that left its 


message unmistakable. 


The President's face settled as if he had just 
watched one wing of the building crumble away. 
Eunice Delcorio swore like a transportation sergeant. 


"Wait out here, boys," said a huge man—softlooking 
but not far short of two meters in height—in 
white priestly vestments. "You won't be needed." 


He was speaking, Tyi saw through the open 
door, to a quartet of "hospital orderlies." They 
looked even more like shock troops than they had 
in the street, though these weren't carrying their 


staffs. 



Eunice Delcorio swore again. The skin over her 

broad cheekbones had gone sallow with rage. 
Father Laughlin appeared to be at ease and in 
perfect control of himself, but Tyi noticed that the 
priest ducked instinctively when he entered the 
room—though he would have had to be a full 
meter taller to bump his head on any of the lintels 
in the Palace of Government. 

"Where's Trimer?" Delcorio demanded in a voice 
that climbed a note despite an evident attempt to 
control it. 

"Bishop Trimer, you—" Laughlin began smoothly... 


"Where's Trimer?" 

"Holding a Service of Prayer for Harmony in 
the cathedral," the priest said, no longer trying to 
hide the ragged edges of emotion behind an unctuous 
wall. 

"He was told to be here!" said Berne, the City 
Prefect, breaking into the conversation because he 
was too overwhelmed by his own concerns to leave 
the matter to the President. He stepped toward 
the priest, his green jacket fluttering—a rangy 
mongrel snarling at a fat mastiff which will certainly 
make a meal of it should the mastiff deign to 
try; 

"Bishop Trimer appreciated the President's invitation," 
Laughlin said, turning and nodding courteously 
toward Delcorio. "He sent me in response 
to it. He was gracious enough to tell me that he 
had full confidence in my ability to report your 
concerns to him. But his first duty is to the 
Church—and to all members of his flock, rather 
than to the secular authorities who have their own 
duties." 

The Chastain brothers were typical of those in 
the Consistory Room, men of good family gathered 
around the President not so much for their 
technical abilities but because they controlled large 
blocks of wealth and personnel on their estates. 
They watched from the edges of the room with 


the fascination of spectators at a bloody accident, 
saying nothing and looking away whenever the 
eyes of one of the principals glanced across them. 


"All right," said Eunice Delcorio to her husband. 
Her eyes were as calm as the crust on a 
pool of lava. "Now you've got to recall troops. Tell 
him." 


She pointed toward Marshal Dowell scorning to 
look at the military commander directly. 


"Your will, madam—" Dowell began with evident 
dislike. 


"My will is that you station two regiments in 
the city at once, Marshal Dowell," Eunice Delcorio 
said with a voice that crackled like liquid oxygen 
flowing through a field of glass needles. "Or that 
you wait in the eells across the river until some 
successor of my husband chooses to release you." 


"With your leave, sir," Dowell huffed in the 
direction of the President. 


The Marshal was angry now, and it wasn't the 
earlier flashing of someone playing dangerous political 
games with his peers. He was lapsing into 
the normal frustration of a professional faced with 
laymen who didn't understand why he couldn't do 
something they thought was reasonable. 


"Madam," Dowell continued with a bow to Eunice 
Delcorio, "your will impresses me, but it 
doesn't magically make transport for three thousand 
men and their equipment available on Two. 
It doesn't provide rations and accommodations for 
them here. And if executed with no more consideration 
than I've been able to give it in this room, 
away from my staff, it will almost certainly precipitate 
the very disasters that concern you. 


"You—" Dowell went on. 
"You—" Eunice Delcorio snapped. 
"You—" the City Prefect shouted. 
"You—" Father Laughlin interrupted weightily. 
"You will all be silent!" said John Delcorio, and 
though the President did not appear to raise his 
voice to an exceptional level, none of the angry 



people squabbling in front of him continued to 
speak. 


The two mercenary officers exchanged glances. 
It had occurred to both of them that any situation 
was salvageable if the man in charge retained the 
poise that President Delcorio was showing now. 


"Gentlemen, Eunice," Delcorio said, articulating 
the thought the mercenaries had formed. "We 
are the government, not a mob of street brawlers. 
So long as we conduct ourselves calmly but firmly, 
this minor storm will be weathered and we will 
return to ordinary business." 


He nodded to the priest. "And to the business 
of God, to the Crusade on Two. Father Laughlin, 
I trust that Bishop Trimer will take all necessary 
precautions to prevent his name from being used 
by those who wish to stir up trouble?" 


Delcorio's voice was calm, but nobody in the 
room doubted how intense the reaction might be 
if the priest did not respond properly. 


"Of course. President Delcorio," Laughlin said, 
bowing low. 


There was a slight motion on the western edge 
of the room as a door opened to pass a big woman 
floating in a gown of white chiffon. She wasn't 
announced by a greeter, and she made very little 
stir at this juncture in the proceedings as she 
slipped through the room to stand near Eunice 
Delcorio. 


"Lord Berne," Delcorio continued to his tall 
prefect, "I expect your police to take prompt, firm 
action wherever trouble erupts." His eyes were 
piercing. 


"Yes sir," Berne said, his willing enthusiasm 
pinned by his master's fierce gaze. Alone of the 
civilians in the room, he owed everything he had 
to his position in the government. The richness of 
his garments showed just how much he had acquired 
in that time. 



"I've already done that," he explained. "I've 
canceled leaves and my men have orders that all 
brawling is to be met with overwhelming force 
and the prisoners jailed. I've suspended normal 
release procedures for the duration of the emergency 
also." 

Berne hesitated as the implications of what he 
had just announced struck him anew. "Ah, in 
accordance with your previous directions, sir. And 
your assurance that additional support would be 
available from the army as required." 

Nobody spoke. The President nodded as he 
turned slowly to his military commander and said, 
"Marshal, I expect you to prepare for the transfer 
of two regular regiments back to the vicinity of the 
capital-." 

Dowell did not protest, but his lips pursed. 

"Prepare, Marshal," Delcorio repeated harshly. 
"Or do you intend to inform me that you're no 
longer fit to perform your duties?" 

"Sir," Dowell said. "As you order, of course." 

"And you will further coordinate with the City 
Prefect so that the Executive Guard is ready to 
support the police if and when I order it?" 

Not a command but a question, and a fierce 
promise of what would happen if the wrong answer 
were given. 

"Yes sir," Marshal Dowell repeated. "As you 
order." Berne was nodding and rubbing his hands 

together as if trying to return life to them after a 
severe chill. 

"Then, gentlemen ..." Delcorio said, with 
warmth and a smile as engaging as his visage 
moments before had threatened. "I believe we 
can dismiss this gathering. Father Laughlin, convey 
my regrets to the Bishop that he couldn't be 
present, but that I trust implicitly his judgment as 
to how best to return civil life to its normal calm." 


The priest bowed again and turned toward the 
door. He was not the same man in demeanor as 
the one who had entered the meeting, emphasizing 
his importance by blatantly displaying his 
bodyguards. 

"Praise the Lord," Tyi muttered, more to himself 
than to Major Borodin. "I've been a lotta 
places I liked better 'n this one—and some of 
them, people were shooting at me." 

Nodding to take his leave of the UDB officer, 
Tyi started for the door that was already being 
opened from the outside. 

"Lieutenant Desoix of United Defense Batteries," 
the greeter announced. 

"You there," Eunice Delcorio called in a throaty 
contralto—much less shrill than her previous words 
had led Tyi to imagine her ordinary voice would 
be. "Captain Koopman. Wait a moment." 

Father Laughlin was already out of the room. 
Borodin was bearing down on his subordinate with 

obvious wrath that Desoix prepared to meet with 

a wry smile. 

Everybody else looked at Tyi Koopman. 
She'd gotten his name and rank right, he thought 
as his skin flashed hot and his mind stumbled over 
itself wondering what to say, what she wanted, 
and why in blazes Colonel Hammer had put him 
in this bucket. He was a line officer and this was a 
job for the bloody staffl 

"Yes, ma'am," he said aloud, turning toward his 
questioner. His eyes weren't focusing right because 
of the unfamiliar strain, so he was seeing the 
president's wife as a Bery blur beneath an imperious 
expression. 

"How many men are there under your command, 
Captain?" Eunice continued. There was no 
hostility in her voice, only appraisal. It was the 
situation that was freezing Tyi's heart—having to 
answer questions on this level, rather than the 


way in which the questions were being asked. 


"Ma'am, ah?" he said. What had Scratchard told 
him as they walked along the levee? "Ma'am, 
there's about a hundred men here. That's twenty 
or so in the base establishment, and the rest the 
transit unit that, you know, I'll be taking to Two 
in a few days." 


"No," the woman said, coolly but in a voice that 
didn't even consider the possibility of opposition. 
"We certainly aren't sending any troops away, 
now." 


"Yes, that's right," Delcorio agreed. 


A tic brushed the left side of the President's 
face. The calm with which he had concluded the 
meeting was based on everything going precisely 
as he had choreographed it in his mind. Eunice 
was adding something to the equation, and even 
something as minor as that was dangerous to his 
state of mind if he hadn't foreseen it. 
"Ah . , ." said TyI. "I'll need to check with 
<^en— 


"Well, do it, then!" Delcorio blazed. "Do I 


need to be bothered with details that a corporal 


ought to be able to deal with?" 


"Yes sir!" said the Stammers officer. 
He threw the President a salute because it felt 


And because that was a good opening to spinning 
on his heel and striding rapidly toward the 
door, on his way out of this room. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

Headquarters and billets for the enlisted men of 
Battery D were in a basement room of the Palace 
of Government, converted to the purpose from a 
disused workers' cafeteria. Desoix sighed to see it 
again, knowing that here his superior would let 
out the anger he had bottled up while the two of 
them stalked through hallways roamed by folk 
from outside the unit. 

Control, the artificial intelligence/communications 
center, sat beside a wall that had been pierced for 
conduits to antennas on the roof. It was about a 
cubic meter of electronics packed into thirty-two 
resin-black modules, some of them redundant. 

Control directed the battery in combat because 
no human reactions were fast enough to deal with 
hypersonic missiles—though the calliopes, pulsing 
with light-swift violence, could rip even those from 
the sky if their tubes were slewed in the right 
direction. 
The disused fixtures were piled at one end of 
the room. Control's waste heat made the room a 
little warmer, a little drier; but the place still 
reminded Desoix of basements in too many bombed-
out cities. 

Major Borodin pulled shut the flap of the curtain 
which separated his office from the bunks on 
which the off-duty shift was relaxing or trying to 
sleep. In theory, the curtain's microprocessors 
formed adaptive ripples in the fabric and canceled 
sounds. In practice— 

Well, it didn't work that badly. And if you're 
running an eighty-man unit in what now had to be 
considered combat conditions, you'd better figure 
your troops were going to learn what was going on 
no matter how you tried to conceal it. 

"You should have called in at once!" the battery 
commander said, half furious, half disappointed, 
like a parent whose daughter has come home three 
hours later than expected. 

"I needed you at that meeting," he added, the 
anger replaced by desperate memory. "I ... you 


know, Charles, I never know what to say to them 
up there. We're supposed to be defending the air 
space here, not mixed up in riots." 

"I got a good look at that this morning, Sergei," 
Desoix said quietly. He seated himself carefully 
on the collapsible desk and, by his example, urged 
Borodin into the only chair in the curtained-off 
corner. "I think we need to reposition Gun Three. 
It's too close to where—things are going on. Some 
of our people are going to get hurt." 

Borodin shook his craggy head abruptly. "We 
can't do that," he said. "Coverage." 

"Now that Five's back on-planet—" Desoix began. 

"You were with that woman, weren't you?" 
Borodin said, anger hardening his face as if it were 
concrete setting. "That's really why you didn't 
come to me when I needed you. I saw her slip in 
just before you did." 

Yes, Daddy, Desoix thought. But Borodin was a 
good man to work for—good enough to humor. 

"Sergei," he said calmly, "now that we've got a 
full battery again, I can readjust coverage areas. 
We can handle the seafront from the suburbs east 
and west, I'm pretty—" 

"Charles, you're going to get into really terrible 
trouble," Borodin continued, his voice now sepulchral. 
"Get us all into trouble." 

He looked up at his subordinate and added, "Now, 
I was younger too, I understand. . . . But believe 
me, boy, there's plenty of it going around on a 
businesslike basis. And that's a curst sight safer." 

Desoix found himself getting angry—and that 
made him even angrier, at himself, because it 
meant that Anne mattered to him. 

Who you screwed wasn't nearly as dangerous as 
caring about her. 

"Look," he said, hiding the edge in his voice 
but unable to eliminate the tremble. "I just shook 


a calliope loose on Merrinet, and it cost the unit 
less than three grand plus my transportation. I 
solve pro—" 


"You paid a fine?" 


"Via, no! I didn't pay a fine," Desoix snapped. 


Shifting into a frustrated and disappointed tone 
of his own—a good tactic in this conversation, but 
exactly the way Desoix was really feeling at the 
moment also—he continued, "Look, Sergei, I 
bribed the Customs inspectors to switch manifests. 
The gun was still being held in the transit 
warehouse, there wasn't a police locker big enough 
for a calliope crated for shipment. If I'd pleaded it 
through the courts, the gun would be on Men-met 
when we were old and gray. I—" 


He paused, struck by a sudden rush of empathy 


for the older man. 


Borodin was a fine combat officer and smart 
enough to find someone like Charles Desoix to 
handle the subtleties of administration that the 
major himself could never manage. But though he 
functioned ably as battery commander, he was as 
lost in the job's intricacies as a man in a snowstorm. 
Having an executive officer to guide him 
made things safe—until they weren't safe, and he 
wouldn't know about the precipice until he plunged 
over it. 


Desoix was just as lost in the way he felt about 
Lady Anne McGill; and, unlike Borodin, he didn't 
even have a guide. 


He gripped Borodin's hand. "Sergei," he said, 
"I won't ask you to trust me. But I'll ask you to 
trust me not to do anything that'll hurt the battery. 
All right?" 


Their eyes met. Borodin's face worked in a moue 
that was as close to assent as he was constitutionally 
able to give to the proposition. 


"Then let's get back to business," Charles Desoix 
said with a bright smile. "We need t6 get a crew 



to Gun Five for set-up, and then we'll have to 
juggle duty rosters for permanent manning—unless 
we can get Operations to send us half a dozen 
men from Two to bring us closer to strength." 

Borodin was nodding happily as his subordinate 
outlined ordinary problems with ordinary solutions. 

Desoix just wished that he could submerge his 
own concerns about what he was doing. 


CHAPTER NINE 

"Locked on," said the mechanical voice of Command 
Central in Tyi's ears. "Hold f—" 

There was a wash of static as the adaptive optics 
of the satellite failed to respond quickly enough to 
a disturbance in the upper atmosphere. 

"—or soft input," continued the voice from Colonel 
Hammer's headquarters, the words delayed 
in orbit while the antenna corrected itself. 

The air on top of the City Office building was 
still stirred by the fans of air cars moving to and 
from the parking area behind. Their numbers had 
dropped off sharply since the last remnants of the 
riot were dispersed. In the twilight, it was easier 
to smell the saltiness from the nearby sea—or else 
the breezes three stories up carried scents trapped 
in the alleys lower down. 

The bright static across Tyi's screen coalesced 
into a face, recognizable as a woman wearing a 
commo helmet like Tyi's own. Noise popped in 
his earphones for almost a second while her lips 
moved on the screen—the transmissions were at 
slightly different frequencies. Then her voice said, 
"Captain Koopman, how secure are these communications 
on your end?" 

"Ma'am?" Tyi said, too recently back from furlough 
not to treat the communicator as a woman 
instead of an enlisted man. "I'm using a portable 
laser from the top of the police station. It's—I 
think it's pretty safe, but if the signal's a problem, 
I can use—" 

"Hold one. Captain," the communicator said 
with a grin of sorts. Her visage blanked momentarily 
in static again. 

A forest of antennas shared the roof of the building 
with the Slammers officer: local, regional, and 
satellite communications gear. Instead of borrowing 
a console within to call Central, Tyi squatted 
on gritty concrete. 

His ten-kilo unit included a small screen, a 20 


centimeter rectenna that did its best to align itself 
with Hammer's satellites above, and a laser transmitting 
unit which probably sent Central as fuzzy 
a signal as Tyi's equipment managed to receive. 

But you can't borrow commo without expecting 
the folks who loaned it to be listening in; and if 
Tyi did have to stay in Bamberg City with the 
transit detachment, he didn't want the locals to 
know that he'd been begging Central to withdraw 

him. 

The screen darkened into a man's face. "Captain 
Koopman?" said the voice in his helmet. "I 
appreciate your sense of timing. I'm glad to have 
an experienced officer overseeing the situation there 
at the moment." 
"Sir!" Tyi said, throwing a salute that was probably 
out of the restricted field of the pick-up lens. 

"Give me your appraisal of the situation. Captain," 
said the voice of Colonel Alois Hammer. 
His flat-surface image wobbled according to the 
vagaries of the upper atmosphere. 

"At the moment..." Tyi said. He looked away 
from the screen in an unconscious gesture to gain 
some time for his thoughts. 

The House of Grace towered above him. At the 
top of the high wall was the visage of Bishop 
Trimer enthroned. The prelate's eyes were as hard 
as the stone in which they were carved. 

"At the moment, sir, it's quiet," Tyi said to the 
screen. "The police cracked down hard, arrested 
about fifty people. Since then—" 

"Leaders?" interrupted the helmet in its crackling 
reproduction of the Colonel's voice. Hammer's 
eyes were like light-struck diamonds, never 
dull—never quite the same. 

"Brawlers, street toughs," Tyi said contemptuously. 
"A lot of 'em, is all. But it's been quiet, 
and.. ." 

He paused because he wasn't sure how far he 


ought to stick his neck out with no data, not 
really—but his commanding officer waited expectantly 
on the other end of the satellite link. 

"Sir," Tyi said, determined to do the job he'd 
been set, even though this stuff scared him in a 
different way from a firefight. There he knew what 
he was supposed to do. "Sir, I haven't been here 
long enough to know what's normal, but the way 
it feels out there now. . ." 

He looked past the corner of the hospital building 
and down into the plaza. Many of the booths 
were still set up and a few were lighted—but not 
nearly enough to account for the numbers of people 
gathering there in the twilight. It was like 
watching gas pool in low spots, mixing and waiting 
for the spark that would explode it. 

"The only places I been that felt like this city 
does now are night positions just before somebody 

hits us." 

"Rate the players. Captain," said Hammer's voice 

as his face on the screen flickered and dimmed 
with the lights of an air car whining past, closer to 
the roof than it should have been for safety. 

The vehicle was headed toward the plaza. Its 
red and white emergency flashers were on, but 
the car's idling pace suggested that they were only 

a warning. 

As if he knew anything about this sort of thing, 

Tyi thought bitterly. But the Colonel was right, 
he could give the same sort of assessment that any 
mercenary officer learned to do of the local troops 
he was assigned to support. It didn't really matter 
that these weren't wearing uniforms. 

Some of them weren't wearing uniforms. 
"Delcorio's hard but he's brittle," Tyi said aloud. 
"He'd do all right with enough staff to take the big 
shocks, but what he's got. . ." 


He paused, collecting his thoughts further. Hammer 
did not interrupt, but the fluctuation of his 
image on the little screen reminded Tyi that time 

was passing. 

"All right," the Slammers captain continued. 
"The police, they seem to be holding up pretty 
well. Berne, the City Prefect, don't have any friends 
and I don't guess much support. On that end, it's 
gone about as far as it can and keep the lid on." 

Hammer was nodding, but Tyi ignored that too. 
He had his data marshaled, now, and he needed 
to spit things out while they were clear to him. 
"The army, Dowell at least, he's afraid to move 
and he's not afraid not to move. He won't push 
anything himself, but Delcorio won't get much 
help from there. 

"And the rest of 'em, the staff—" Tyi couldn't 
think of the word the group had been called here 
"—they're nothing, old men and young kids, nobody 
that matters ... ah, except the wife, you 
know, sir? Ah, Lady Eunice. Only she wants to 
push harder than I think they can push here with 
what they got and what they got against 'em." 

"The mob?" prompted the Colonel. Static added 
a hiss to words without sibilants. 

Tyi looked toward the plaza. The sky was still 
blue over the western horizon, behind the cathedral's 
dome and the Palace of Government. The 
sunken triangle of the plaza was as dark as a 
volcano's maw, lighted only by the sparks of lanterns 
and apparently open flames. 

"Naw, not the mobs," Tyi said, letting his helmet 
direct his voice while his eyes gathered data 
instead of blinking toward his superior. "Them, 
they'd handle each other if it wasn't any more. 
But—" 

He looked up. The sunset slid at an angle across 
the side of the House of Grace. The eyes of Bishop 
Trimer's carven face were as red as blood. 

"Sir," Tyi blurted, "it's the Church behind it, 


the Bishop, and he's going to walk off with the 
whole thing soon unless Delcorio's luckier 'n anybody's 
got a right to expect. I think— " 

No, say it right. 

"Sir," he said, "I recommend that all regimental 
forces be withdrawn from Bamberg City at once, 
to avoid us being caught up in internal fighting. 
There are surface-effect freighters at the port right 
now. With your authorization, I'll charter one immediately 
and have the unit out of here in three 

hours." 

Two hours, unless he misjudged the willingness 
and efficiency of the sergeant major; but he'd promise 
what he was sure of and surprise people later 
by bettering the offer if he could. 

Hammer's lips moved. Tyi thought that the words 
were delayed by turbulence, but the Colonel was 
only weighing what he was about to say before he 
put it into audible syllables. After a moment, the 
voice and fuzzy screen said in unison, "Captain, 
I'm going to tell you what my problem is." 

Tyi's lungs filled again. He'd been holding his 
breath unknowingly, terrified that his colonel was 
about to strip him of his rank for saying too much, 
saying the wrong thing. Anything else, that was all 

right. . . . 

Even command problems that weren't any business 
of a captain in the line. 

"Our contract," Hammer said carefully, "is with 
the government of Bamberia, not precisely with 

President Delcorio." 

The image of the screen glared as if reading on 
Tyi's face the interjection his subordinate would 
never have spoken aloud. "The difference is the 
sort that only matters in formal proceedings—like 
a forfeiture hearing before the Bonding Authority, 
determining whether or not the Regiment has 
upheld its end of the contract." 


"Yes sir/" Tyi said. 

Hammer's face lost its hard lines. For a moment, 
Tyi thought that the hint of grayness was 
more than merely an artifact of the degraded signal. 

"There's a complication," the Colonel said with 
a precision that erased all emotional content from 
the statement. "Bishop Trimer has been in contact 
with the Eaglewing Division regarding taking over 
conduct of the Crusade in event of a change of 
government." 

He shrugged. "My sources," he added needlessly. 
"It's a small community, in a way." 

Then, with renewed force and no hint of the 
fatigue of moments before. Hammer went on, "In 
event of Trimer taking over, as you accurately 
estimated was his intention, we're out of work. 
That's not the end of the world, and I certainly 
don't want any of my men sacrificed pointlessly—" 

"No sir," Tyi barked in response to the fierceness 
in his commander's face. 

"—but I need to know whether a functional 
company like yours might be able to give Delcorio 
the edge he needs." 

Hammer's voice asked, but his eyes demanded. 
"Stiffen Dowell's spine, give Trimer enough of a 
wild card to keep him from making his move 
before the Crusade gets under way and whoever's 
in charge won't be able to replace units that're 
already engaged." 

And do it, Tyi realized, without a major troop 
movement that could be called a contract violation 
by Colonel Hammer, acting against the interests 
of a faction of his employers. 

It might make a junior captain—acting on his 
own initiative—guilty of mutiny > of course. 

"Sir," Tyi said crisply, vibrant to know that he 
had orders now that he could understand and 
execute. "We'll do the job if it can be done. 


Ripper Jack's a good man, cursed good. I don't 
know the others yet, most of 'em, but it's three-
quarters veterans back from furlough and only a 
few newbie recruits coming in." 

"Understand me. Captain," Hammer said—again 
fiercely. "I don't want you to become engaged in 
fighting unless it's necessary for your own safety. 
There aren't enough of you to make any difference 
if the lid really comes off, and I won't throw away 
good men just to save a contract. But if your being 
in the capital keeps President Delcorio in power 
for another two weeks . . . ?" 

"Yes sir/" Tyi repeated brightly, marveling that 
his commander seemed relieved at his reaction. 
Via, he was an officer of Hammer's Slammers, 
wasn't he? Of course he'd be willing to carry out 
orders that were perfectly clear—or as clear as 

combat orders ever could be. 

Keep the men in battle dress and real visible; 

hint to Dowell that there was a company of panzers 
waiting just over the horizon to land and 
really kick butt as soon as he said the word. Make 
waves at the staff meetings. They couldn't bother 
him now with their manners and fancy clothes. 

The Colonel had told Tyi Koopman what to do, 
and a few rich fops weren't going to affect the way 

he did it. 

"Then carry on. Captain," Hammer said with a 
punctuation of static in the middle of the words 
that did not disguise the pleasure in his voice. 

"There's a lot—" 

The sky was a lighter gray than the ground or 
the sea, but the sun had fully set. The cyan flash 
of a powergun lanced the darkness like a scream 

in silence. 

"Holdl" Tyi shouted to his superior, rising from 


his crouch to get a better view past the microwave 
dish beside him. 
A volley of bolts spat from at least half a dozen 
locations in the plaza. The orbiting police air car 
staggered and lifted away. Its plastic hull had been 
hit. The driver's desperate attempt to increase 
speed fanned the flames to sluggish life; a trail of 
smoke marked the vehicle's path. 

A huge roar came from the crowd in the plaza. 
Led by a line of torches and lightwands, it crawled 
like a living thing up both the central and eastern 
stairs. 

They weren't headed for the Palace of Government 
across the river. They were coming here. 

Tyi flipped his helmet's manual switch to the 
company frequency. "Sar'ent Major," he snapped, 
"all men in combat gear and ready t' move 
soonest! Three days rations and all the ammo we 
can carry." 

He switched back to the satellite push and began 
folding the screen—not essential to the transmission—
while the face of Colonel Alois Hammer 
still glowed on it with tigerish intensity. 

"Sir," Tyi said without any emotion to waste on 
the way he was closing his report, "I'll tell you 
more when I know more." 

Then he collapsed the transceiver antenna. Hammer 
didn't have anything as important to say as 
the mob did. 


CHAPTER TEN 

The mob was pulsing toward the City Offices 
like the two heads of a flood surge. Powergun 
bolts spiked out of the mass, some aimed at policemen 
but many were fired at random. 

That was the natural reaction of people with the 
opportunity to destroy something—an ability which 
carries its own imperatives. Tyi wasn't too worried 
about that, not if he had his men armed and 
equipped before they and the mob collided. 

But when he clumped down the stairs from the 
trap door in the roof, he threw a glance over his 
shoulder. The north doors of the House of Grace 
had opened, disgorging men who marched in 
ground-shaking unison as they sang a Latin hymn. 

That was real bad for President Delcorio, for 
Colonel Hammer's chances of retaining his contract— 
And possibly real bad for Tyi Koopman and the 
troops in his charge. 

The transit detachment was billeted on the second 
floor, in what was normally the turn-out room. 
Temporary bunks, three-high, meant the troops 
on the top layer couldn't sit up without bumping 
the ceiling. What floor-space the bunks didn't fill 
was covered by the foot-lockers holding the troops' 
personal gear. 

Now most of the lockers had been flung open 
and stood in the disarray left by soldiers trying to 
grab one last valuable—a watch; a holo projector; 

a letter. They knew they might never see their 
gear again. 

For that matter, they knew that the gear was 
about as likely to survive the night as they themselves 
were—but you had to act as if you were 
going to make it. 

Sergeant Major Scratchard stumped among the 
few troopers still in the bunk room, slapping them 
with a hand that rang on their ceramic helmets. 
"Move!" he bellowed with each blow. "It's yer 


butts!" 

If the soldier still hesitated with a fitting or to 
grab for one more bit of paraphernalia, Scratchard 
gripped his shoulder and spun him toward the 
door. As Tyi stuck his head into the room, a 
female soldier with a picture of her father crashed 
off the jamb beside him, cursing in a voice that 
was a weapon itself. 

"All clear, sir," Scratchard said as the last pair 
of troopers scampered for the door ahead of him, 
geese waddling ahead of a keeper with a ready 
switch. "Kekkonan's running the arms locker, he's 
a good man." 

Tyi used the pause to fold the dish antenna of 
his laser communicator. The sergeant major glanced 
at him. He said in a voice as firm and dismissing 
as the one he'd been using on his subordinates, 
"Dump that now. We don't have time fer it." 

"I'll gather 'em up outside," Tyi said. "You send 
'em down to me. Jack." 

He clipped the communicator to his equipment 
belt. Alone of the detachment, he didn't have 
body armor. Couldn't worry about that now. 

The arms locker, converted from an interrogation 
room, was next door to the bunk room. The 
hall was crowded with troopers waiting to be issued 
weapons and those pushing past, down the 
stairs with armloads of lethal hardware that they 
would organize in the street were there was more 
space. 

Tyi joined the queue thumping its way downstairs. 
As he did so, he glanced over his shoulder 
and called, "We'll have time, Sar'ent Major. And 
by the Lord! we'll have a secure link to Central 
when we do." 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 

For a moment, the exterior of the City Offices 
was lighted by wall sconces as usual. A second or 
two after Tyi stepped from the door into bulk of 
his troops, crouching as they awaited orders, the 
sconces, the interior lights, and all the street lights 
visible on the east side of the river switched off. 

There was an explosion louder than the occasional 
popping of slug-throwers in the distance. A 
transformer installation had been blown up or 
shorted into self-destruction. 

That made the flames, already painting the low 
clouds pink, more visible. 

A recruit turned on his hand light. The veteran 
beside him snarled, "Fuckhead! Use infra-red on 
your helmet shield!" 

The trooper on the recruit's other side—more 
direct—slapped the light away and crushed it beneath 
her boot. 
"Sergeants to me," Tyi ordered on the unit 
push. He flashed momentarily the miniature 
lightwand that he carried clipped to a breast 
pocket—for reading and for situations like this, 
when his troops needed to know where he was. 

Even at the risk of drawing fire when he showed 

them. 

He hadn't called for non-corns, because the men 
here were mostly veterans with a minimum of the 
five-years service that qualified them for furlough. 
Seven sergeants crawled forward, about what Tyi 
had expected and enough for his purposes. 

'Twelve-man squads," he ordered, using his 
commo helmet instead of speaking directly to the 
cluster of sergeants. That way all his troops would 
know what was happening. 

As much as Tyi did himself, at any rate. 

"Gather 'em fast, no screwing around. We're 
going to move as soon as everybody's clear." He 


looked at the sergeants, their faceshields down, 
just as his was—a collection of emotionless balls, 
and all of them probably as worried as he was: 

worried about what they knew was coming, and 
more nervous yet about all the things that might 
happen in darkness, when nobody at all knew 
which end was up. 

"And no shooting, troopers. Unless we got to." 

If they had to shoot their way out, they were 
well and truly screwed. Just as Colonel Hammer 
had said—there weren't enough of them to matter 
a fart in a whirlwind if it came down to that. 

A pair of emergency vehicles—fire trucks swaying 
with the weight of the water on board them—roared 
south along the river toward the City Offices. A 
huge block of masonry hurtled from the roof of an 
apartment building just up the street. Tyi saw its 
arc silhouetted against the pink sky for a moment. 

The stone hit the street with a crash and half-
bounced, half-rolled, into the path of the lead 
truck. The fire vehicle slewed to the side, but its 
wheels weren't adequate to stabilize the kiloliters 
of water in its ready-use tank. The truck went 
over and skidded, rotating on its side in sparks 
and the scream of tortured metal—even before its 
consort rammed it from behind. 

Someone began to fire a slug-thrower from the 
roof. The trucks were not burning yet, but a stray 
breeze brought the raw, familiar odor of petroleum 
fuel to the hunching Slammers. 

There wasn't anything in Hell worse than street-
fighting in somebody else's city— 

And Tyi, like most of the veterans with him, 
had done it often enough to be sure of that. 

A clot of soldiers stumbled out the doorway. 
Scratchard was the last, unrecognizable for a moment 
because of the huge load of equipment he 
carried. 

Looked as if he'd staggered out with everything 


the rest of the company had left in the arms 
locker, Tyi thought. A veteran like Jack Scratchard 
should've known to— 

Reinforced windows blew out of the second floor 
with a cyan flash, a bang, and a deep orange 
whoom! that was simultaneously a sound and a 
vision. The sergeant major hadn't tried to empty 
the arms locker after all. 

"Put this on, sir," Scratchard muttered to the 
captain as the fire trucks up the street ignited in 
the spray of burning fragments hurled from the 
demolition of the Slammers' excess stores. The 
actinics of the powergun ammunition detonating 
in its storage containers made exposed skin prickle, 
but the exploding gasoline pushed at the crouching 
men with a warm, stinking hand. 

Roof floodlights, driven by the emergency generator 
in the basement, flared momentarily around 
the City Offices. Shadows pooled beneath the waiting 
troops. They cursed and ducked lower—or 
twisted to aim at the lights revealing them. 

Volleys of shots from the mob shattered the 
lenses before any of the Slammers made up their 
minds to shoot. The twin pincers, from the plaza 
and from the House of Grace, were already beginning 
to envelope the office building. 

The route north and away was awash in blazing 
fuel. The police air car that roared off that way, 
whipping the flames with its vectored thrust, 
pitched bow-up and stalled as an automatic weapon 
ranked it from the same roof as the falling 
masonry had come. 

Scratchard had brought a suit of clamshell body 
armor for Tyi to wear—and a submachinegun to 
carry along with a bandolier holding five hundred 
rounds of ammo in loaded magazines. 

"We're crossing the river," Tyi said in a voice 
that barely danced on the spikes of his present 
consciousness. "By squad." 

He hadn't gotten around to numbering the 
squads. There was a clacking sound as the ser



geant major latched Tyi's armor for him. 

Tyi pointed at one of the sergeants—he didn't 
know any bloody names!—with his lightwand. "You 
first. And you. Next—" 

In the pause, uncertain in the backlit darkness 
where the other non-corns were, Scratchard broke 
in on the command frequency saying, "Haskins, 
third. Hu, Pescaro, Bogue and Hagemann. Move, 
you dickheads!" 

Off the radio, his head close to Tyi's as the 
captain clipped his sling reflexively to the epaulet 
tab of his armor and shrugged the heavy bandolier 
over the opposite shoulder, the sergeant major 
added, "You lead 'em, sir—I'll hustle their butts 
from here." 

Even as Tyi opened his mouth to frame a reply, 
Scratchard barked at one of the men who'd appeared 
just ahead of him, "Kekkonan—you give 
'im a hand with names if he needs it, right?" 

Sergeant Kekkonan, short and built like one of 
the tanks he'd commanded, clapped Tyi on the 
shoulder hard enough that it was just as well the 
captain had already started in the direction of the 
thrust—toward the river and the squad running 
toward the levee wall as swiftly as their load of 
weapons and munitions permitted. 

A column of men came around the northern 
corner of the building. Their white tunics rippled 
orange in the glare of the burning vehicles. The 
leaders carried staffs as they had when they guarded 
the procession route, but in the next rank back 
winked the iridium barrels of powerguns and the 
antennas of sophisticated communications gear. 

They were no more than three steps from the 
nearest of the nervous Slammers. When the leading 
orderlies shouted and threw themselves out of 
the way, there were almost as many guns pointed 
at the troops as pointed by them. 

"Hold!" Tyi Koopman ordered through his 
commo helmet as his skin chilled and his face 
went stiff. Almost they'd made it, but now— 


He was running toward the mob of orderlies— 
Via! They weren't a mob!—with his hands raised, 
palms forward. 

"This isn't our fight!" he cried, hoping he was 
close enough to the orderlies to be understood by 
them as well as by the troops on his unit push. 
"Squads, keep moving—over the levee!" 

The column of orderlies had stopped and flattened 
like the troops they were facing, but there 
were three men erect at the new head of the line. 
One carried a shoulder-pack radio; one a bullhorn; 
and the man in the middle was a priest with 
a crucifix large enough to be the standard that the 
whole column followed. 

Tyi looked at the priest, wondering if he could 
grab the butt of his slung weapon fast enough to 
take some of them with him if the words the priest 
murmured to the man with the bull-horn brought 
a blast of shots from the guns aimed at the Slammers 
captain. 

The burning trucks roared. Sealed parts ruptured 
with plosive sounds and an occasional sharp 
crack. 

"Go on, get out of here," the bull-horn snarled, 
its crude amplification making the words even 
harsher than they were when they came from the 
orderly's throat. 

Tyi spun and brandished his lightwand. "Third 
Squad," he ordered. "Move!" 

A dozen of his troopers picked themselves up 
from the ground and shambled across the street 
behind him—toward the guns leveled on the mob 
from the levee's top. The first two squads were 
deployed there with the advantages of height and 
a modicum of cover if any of the locals needed a 
lesson about what it meant to take on Hammer's 
Stammers. 

Tyi's timing hadn't been quite as bad as he'd 
thought. Hard to tell just what might have happened 
if the column from the House of Grace had 


arrived before Tyi's company had a base of fire 
across the street. 

Two more squads were moving together. The 
leaders of the mob's other arm, bawling their way 
up the river road, had already reached the south 
corner of the City Offices. The cries of "Freedom! 
Freedom!" were suddenly punctuated with screams 
as a dozen or so of the leaders collapsed under a 
burst of electrostatic needles fired by one of the 
policemen inside. 

Tyi heard the shots that answered the stunner, 
slug-throwers as well as powerguns, but the real 
measure of the response was the barely-audible 
clink of bottles shattering. 

Then the gasoline bombs ignited and silhouetted 
the building from the south. 

Tyi stood on the pedestrian way atop the levee, 
wondering when somebody would get around to 
taking a shot at him just because he was standing. 

"Three and four," he ordered as the heavily-
laden troops scrambled up the steps to join him. 
"Across the river, climb over the barges. Kekkonan, 
you lead 'em, set up a perimeter on the other 
side. 

"And iwit!" he added, though Kekkonan didn't 
look like the sort you had to tell that to. 

The rest of the company was moving in a steady 
stream, lighted between the two fires of the trucks 
and the south front of the building they had 
abandoned. 

"Take 'em across, take 'em across!" Tyi shouted 
as the Slammers plodded past. The non-corns would 
take the words as an order, and the rest of the 
troops would get the idea. 

The first two squads squirmed as they waited, 
their guns now aimed toward both pincers of the 
mob. Fifty meters of the west frontage of the City 
Offices were clear of the rioters who would otherwise 
have lapped around it. It wasn't a formal 
stand-off; just the tense waiting of male dogs growl



ing as they sidled toward each other, not quite 
certain what the next seconds would bring. 

The last man was Sergeant Major Scratchard, 
falling a further step behind his troops with every 
step he took. 

"We're releasing the prisoners!" boomed the 
array of loudspeakers on the building roof. Simultaneous 
words from a dozen locations echoed themselves 
by the amount of time that sound from the 
mechanical diaphragms lagged behind the electronic 
pulses feeding them. 

"Second Squad, withdraw," Tyi ordered. He 
felt as if his load of gear had halved in weight 
when the eyes of the rioters, orange flecks lighted 
by the fires of their violence, turned away from 
him and his men to stare at the City Offices. 

Tyi jumped back down the steps and put his left 
arm—the submachinegun was under his right armpit—
around the sergeant major's chest. Scratchard 
weighed over a hundred kilos, only a little of it in 
the gut that had expanded with his desk job. Tyi's 
blood jumped with so much adrenalin that he 
noticed only Scratchard's inertia—not his weight. 

"Lemme go!" Scratchard rasped in a voice tight 
with the ache in his knees. 

"Shut the hell up!" Tyi snarled back. The laser 
communicator was crushed between them, biting 
both men's thighs. If he'd had a hand free, he'd 
have thrown the cursed thing against the concrete 
levee. 

The mob's chanted, "Freedom!" gave way suddenly 
to a long bellow, loud and growing like a 
peal of thunder. Tyi's back was to the City Offices, 
and the rolling triumph had started on the far side 
anyway, where the jail entrance opened onto the 
parking area. He knew what was happening, 
though. 

And he knew, even before the shouts turned to 
"Kill them! Kill them!" that this mob wasn't going 
to be satisfied with freeing their fellows. 


Likely the police trapped inside the building 
had known that too; but they didn't have any 
better choices either. 

"You, give us a hand!" Tyi ordered as he and 
Scratchard stumbled toward the railing across the 
walkway. He pointed to the nearest trooper with 
the gun that filled his right hand. She jumped to 
her feet and took the sergeant major's other arm 
while Tyi boomed over the radio, "First Squad, 
withdraw. Kekkonan, make sure you've got us 
covered." 

The river here was half a kilometer wide between 
the levees, but with night sights and 
powerguns, trained men could sweep the far walkway 
clear if some of the rioters decided it'd be safe 
to pursue. 

The river had fallen more than a meter since 
Tyi viewed it six hours before. The barges still 
floated a safe jump beneath the inner walkway of 
the levee— but not safe for Jack Scratchard with a 
load of gear. 

"Gimme my arms free," the sergeant major 
ordered. 

Tyi nodded and stepped away with the trooper 
on the other side. Scratchard gripped the railing 
with both hands and swung himself over. He 
crouched on the narrow lip, choosing his support, 
and lowered himself onto the hogsheads with which 
the barge was loaded. The troopers waiting to 
help the senior non-corn had the sense to get out 
of the way. 

"I'm fine now," Scratchard grunted. "Let's move!" 
The barges were moored close, but there was 
enough necessary slack in the lines that some of 
them were over a meter apart while their rubber 
bumpers squealed against those of the vessel on 
the opposite flank. Tyi hadn't thought the problem 
through, but Kekkonan or one of the other 
sergeants had stationed pairs of troopers at every 
significant gap. They were ready to guide and 
help lift later-comers over the danger. 

"Thank the Lord," Tyi muttered as four strong 


arms boosted him from the first barge to the next 
in line. He wasn't sure whether he meant for the 
help or for the realization that the men he commanded 
were as good as anybody could pray. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 

Charles Desoix wore a commo helmet to keep 
in touch with his unit, but he was looking out over 
Bamberg City with a hand-held image intensifier 
instead of using the integral optics of the helmet's 
face shield. The separate unit gave him better 
illumination, crisper details. He held the imager 
steady by resting his elbows on the rail of the 
porch outside the Consistory Room, overlooking 
the courtyard and beyond— 

The railing jiggled as someone else leaned against 
it, bouncing Desoix's forty-magnification image of 
a window in the City Office building off his screen. 

"Lord cur—" Desoix snarled as he spun. He 
wasn't the sort to slap the clumsy popinjay whom 
he assumed had disturbed him, but he was willing 
to give the contrary impression at the moment. 

Anne McGill was at the rail beside him. 

"They told me—" Desoix blurted. 
"Yes, but I couldn't—" Anne said, both of them 
trying to cover the angry outburst that would disappear 
from reality if they pretended it hadn't 
occurred. 

She'd closed the clear doors behind her, but 
Desoix could see into the Consistory Room. Enough 
light fell onto the porch to illuminate them for 
anyone looking in their direction. 

He put his arms around Anne anyway, being 
careful not to gouge her back with a corner of the 
imaging unit. She didn't protest as he thought she 
might—but she gasped in surprise as her breasts 
flattened against her lover. 

"Ah," Desoix said. "Yeah, I thought I'd wear 
my armor while I was out. . . . Ah, maybe we 
ought to go inside." 

"No," Anne said, squeezing him tighter. "Just 
hold me." 

Desoix stroked her back with his free hand while 
the breeze brought screams and the smell of smoke 


from across the river. 

His helmet hissed with the sound of a Situation 
Report. He'd programmed Control to call for a 
sitrep every fifteen minutes during the night. That 
was the only way you could be sure an outlying 
unit hadn't been wiped out before they could 
sound an alarm. . . . 

That wasn't a way Charles Desoix liked to think. 

"Just a second, love," he muttered, blanking his 
mind of what the woman with her arms around 
him had started to say. 

"Two to Control, all clear," a human voice said. 
Over. 

Gun Two was north of the city on a bluff overlooking 
the river. It had a magnificent field of 
fire—and there was very little development in the 
vicinity, which made it fairly safe in the present 
circumstances. 

"Control to Three," said the emotionless artificial 
intelligence in the palace basement. "Report, 
over." 

The hollow sound of gasoline bombs igniting, 
deadened by the pillow of intervening air, accompanied 
the gush of fresh orange flames from across 
the river. One side of the City Offices was covered 
with crawling fire. 

"Three t' Control," came the voice of Sergeant 
Blaney. 

There was a whining noise behind the words, 
barely audible through the commo link. It nagged 
at Desoix's consciousness, but he couldn't quite 
remember. . . . 

"It's all right here," the human voice continued, 
"but there's a lot of traffic in and out of the plaza. 
There's fires north of us, and there's shots all 
round." 

The sergeant paused. He wasn't speaking to 
Control but rather in the hope that Borodin or 


Desoix were listening even without an alert—and 
that they'd do something about the situation. 

"Nothing aimed at us, s' far as we can tell," 
Blaney concluded. "Over." 

The mechanical whining had stopped some seconds 
before. 

Men, lighted by petroleum flares in both direction, 
were headed from the City Offices to the 
adjacent levee. Desoix couldn't make out who they 
were without the imaging unit, but he had a pretty 
good idea. 

His left hand massaged Anne McGill's shoulders, 
to calm her and calm him as well. He reached 
for his helmet's commo key with his right hand, 
careful not to clash the two pieces of sophisticated 
hardware together, and said, "Blue to Three. Give 
me an azimuth on your gun, Blaney. Over." 

Major Borodin was Red. With luck, he wasn't 
monitoring the channel just now. 

Blaney hesitated, but he knew the XO could get 
the data from Control as easily—and that if Desoix 
asked, he already knew the answer even though 
Gun Three was far out of direct sight of the Palace 
of Government. "Sir," he said at last. "It's two-
five-zero degrees. Over." 

Normal rest position for Gun Three was 165°, 
pointing out over Nevis Channel in the direction 
from which hostile ship-launched missiles were 
most likely to come. The crew had just re-aimed 
their weapon to cover the east stairs of the plaza. 
That was what they obviously thought was the 
most serious threat of their own well-being. 

"Blue to Three," said Charles Desoix. "Over 
and out." 

He wasn't down there with them, and he wasn't 
about to overrule their assessment of the situation 
from up here. 

"Eunice is so angry," Anne McGill murmured. 
Communicating with the man beside her was as 


important to her state of mind as the strength of 
his arm around her shoulders. "I'm afraid, mostly—" 
and the simplicity of the statement belied its truth 
"—and so's John, I think, though it's hard to tell 
with him. But Eunice would like to hang them all, 
starting with the Bishop." 

"Not going to be easy to do," Desoix said calmly 
while he adjusted the imager one-handed and 
prayed that it wouldn't show what he thought he 
saw in the shuddering flames. 

It did. Men and women in police uniforms were 
being thrown from the roof of the office building. 
They didn't fall far: just a meter or two, before 
they were halted jerking by the ropes around 
their necks. 

Within the Consistory Room, voices burbled. 
Light brightened momentarily as someone turned 
up a wall sconce. It dimmed again as abruptly 
when common sense overcame a desire for gleaming 
surroundings. 

The clear panels surrounding the circular room 
were shatterproof vitril. They were supposed to 
stop bricks or a slug from any weapon a man could 
fire from his shoulder, and the layer of gold foil 
within the thermoplastic might even deflect a 
powergun bolt. 

But only a fool would insist on testing them 
while he was on the other side of the panel. That 
kind of test was a likely result of making the 
Consistory Room a beacon on a night like this. 

Anne straightened slightly when she heard the 
sounds in the room behind them, but she didn't 
move away as Desoix had expected her to do. 
"There!" she said in a sharp whisper, pointing 
down toward the river. "They're moving . . . 
They—are they coming for us?" 

Desoix used both hands to steady the imager, 
though he kept the magnification down to ten 
power. The fuel fires provided quite a lot of light, 
and the low clouds scattered it broadly for the 
intensification circuits. 


"Those are Hammer's men," the UDB officer 
said as the scene glowed saffron in the imager's 
field of view. 

The troopers crossing the river on the barges 
moored there were foreshortened by the angle 
and flattened into two dimensions by the imaging 
circuitry, but there were a lot of them. Enough to 
be the whole unit, the Lord willing—and better 
the Slammers have the problems than United Defense 
Batteries. 

Desoix's helmet said in Control's calm voice, 
"Captain Koopman of Hammer's Regiment has 
been calling the officer of the day on the general 
frequency. The OOD has not replied. Now Captain 
Koopman is calling you. Do you wish—" 

"Patch him through," Desoix ordered. Anne's 
startled expression reminded him that she would 
think he was speaking to her, but there wasn't 
time to clear that up now. 

"—warn the guards not to shoot at us?" came 
the voice of the Slammers captain he'd met just 
that morning. "I can't raise the bastards and I 
don't want any trouble." 

"Desoix to Slammers, over?" the UDB officer 
said. 

"Roger Desoix, over," Koopman responded instantly. 
The relief in the infantry captain's voice 
was as obvious as the threat in the previous phrase: 

if anybody started shooting at him and his men, 
he was planning to finish the job and worry later 
about the results. 

"Tyi, I'm headed down to the front entrance 
right now," Desoix said. "It's quiet on this side, so 
don't let some recruit get nervous at the wrong 
time." 

He'd lowered the imager and was stroking Anne's 
back fiercely with his free hand, feeling the soft 
cloth bunch and ripple over skin still softer. Her 
arm was around his hips, beneath the rim of his 
armor, caressing him as well. Hard to believe this 


was the woman who'd always refused to lie down 
on a bed with him, because if her hair-do was 
mussed, people might guess what she'd been doing. 

Desoix turned and kissed her, vaguely amazed 
that the tension of the moment increased his sexual 
arousal instead of dampening it. 

"Love," he said, and meant "love," for the first 
time in a life during which he'd used the word to a 
hundred woman on a score of planets. "I'm going 
downstairs for a moment. I'll be back soon, but 
wait inside." 

Even as he kissed her warm lips again, he was 
moving toward the door and carrying the woman 
with him by the force of his arm as well as by his 
personality. 

Desoix felt a moment's concern as he strode for 
the elevator across the circular room that he'd left 
his mistress to be spiked by the wondering eyes of 
the dozen or more men who stood in nervous 
clumps amidst the furniture. Anne was going to 
have to handle that herself, because he couldn't 
take her with him into what he was maybe getting 
into— 

And if he didn't go, well—he didn't need what 
he'd heard in Tyi Koopman's voice to know how a 
company of Hammer's Slammers was going to respond 
if a bunch of parade-ground soldiers tried to 
bar their escape from a dangerous situation. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

The way some of the Executive Guards in the 
rotunda were waving their weapons around would 
have bothered Desoix less if he'd believed the 
men involved had ever fired their guns deliberately. 
A couple of them might honestly not know 
the difference between the trigger and the safety 
catch, making the polished-marble room as dangerous 
as a foxhole at the sharp end of the front. 

If Koopman's unit blew off the flood shutters 
and tossed in grenades, the rotunda was going to 
be as dangerous as an abattoir. 

Captain Rene Sanchez must have been off-duty 
by now, but there were more guards in the rotunda 
than the usual detachment and he was among 
them. 

"Rene," Desoix called cheerfully as he stepped 
off the elevator, noticing that the Bamberg officer 
had unlatched the flap covering his pistol. "I've 
come to give you a hand. We're getting some 
reinforcements. Hammer's men. They're on the 
way now." 

Sanchez turned with a wild expression. "Nobody 
comes in or out," he said in a voice whose 
high pitch increased the effect of his eyes being 
focused somewhere close to infinity. The Guardsman 
was either drugged to a razor's edge, or his 
nerves unaided had honed him to the same dangerous 
state. 

"We're going to take care of this, Rene," Desoix 
said, putting a friendly hand on Sanchez's shoulder. 

The local man was quivering and it wasn't just 
fear. Sanchez was ready to go, go off in any direction. 
He was in prime shape to lead a night assault 
with knives and grenades—and he was just about 
as lethal as a live grenade, too. 

You could never tell about the ones who'd never 
in their lives done anything real. They could react 
any way at all when the universe forced itself to 
their attention. About all a professional like Charles 
Desoix knew to expect was that he wouldn't like 


the result, whatever it turned out to be. 

The Guard Commandant, Colonel Drescher, was 
present. Arm in arm with Sanchez, the UDB officer 
walked toward him. Desoix had nodded to 
Drescher in the past, but they had never spoken. 

"Colonel," he said, using Rene Sanchez and a 
brisk manner as his entree, "We've got some reinforcements 
coming in a few moments. I'm here to 
escort them in." 

"Charles, I got a squad in the courtyard now," 
said Desoix's helmet. "Let's get a door open, all 
right? Over." 

He didn't respond to Koopman's call, because 
the Guards colonel was saying, "You? UDB? I'm 
sorry, mister mercenary, the Marshal has given 
orders that the shutters not be opened." 

"I just came from Marshal Dowell in the Consistory 
Room," Desoix said, letting his voice rise 
as only control had kept it from doing earlier. The 
best way to play this was to pretend to be on the 
edge of blind panic. That wasn't so great a pretense 
as he would have wished. 

"He ordered me down here to inform you," 
Desoix continued. He thought he'd glimpsed 
Dowell upstairs. Certainly that was possible, at 
any rate. "By the Lord! man. Do you realize what 
the Marshal will do if you endanger him by keeping 
out his reinforcements? He'll have you—well, 
it's obvious." 

The Guards colonel blinked. "Jorge Dowell 
doesn't give me orders!" he snapped, family pride 
overwhelming whatever trace of military obedience 
was in Drescher's make-up. 

The Executive Guard was enough a law unto 
itself that Desoix had been sure that Drescher's 
references to army orders was misdirection—though 
Dowell might well have given such orders if anybody 
had bothered to ask him. 

But because they hadn't . . . Desoix's present 
bluff wasn't beyond the realm of Dowell's possible 


response either. 

"Still," Colonel Drescher continued. "Since 
you're here, we'll make an exception for courtesy's 
sake." 

The waxen calm of his expression lapsed into 
gray fear for a moment. "But be quick, Lieutenant, 
or I swear I'll shut you out with them and the 
animals across the river." 

Soldiers who'd been listening to the exchange 
touched the undogging mechanism without orders, 
but they paused and drew back instead of 
engaging the gears to slide the shutters away. 
"Well get on with it!" cried another voice. 

One of the guards pressed the switch before 
Desoix's hand reached it; the UDB officer glanced 
at the speaker instead. 

There were four men together. They were wearing 
civilian clothes now in place of the ornate 
uniforms they'd worn in the Consistory Room this 
morning and in days past. The considerable entourage 
behind them stretched beyond the rotunda; 
servants, very few of them real bodyguards 
—but most of the males were now armed with 
rifles and pistols which looked as though they 
came from government stores. 

"Charles, how we holding?" came Tyi Koopman's 
voice through the commo helmet. "Over." 

The words lacked the overtone of threat that 
had been in his earlier query. The Slammers could 
see or at least hear that a door was opening. 

"Blue to Slammers," Desoix responded. He could 
feel a smile starting to twitch the corners of his 
mouth. "Just a second. There's some restructuring 
going on in here and we're, ah, making room for 
you in the guest quarters. Let these folks pass." 

Desoix made sure that he was with the quartet 
of wealthy landholders as they forced their way 
through the door ahead of their servants. 

"No, no," one of the men was saying to another. 


"My townhouse will have to take care of itself. I'm 
off to my estates to rally support for the President. 
I'll inform John of what I'm doing just as soon as I 
get there, but of course I couldn't waste time now 
with goodbyes." 

Desoix thought for a moment that Captain Sanchez 
would step outside with him because that 
was the direction in which the Guards officer had 
last been pointed. Sanchez was lost in the turmoil, 
though, and Desoix stood alone beside the door as 
minor rats streamed out past him, following the 
lead of the noble rats they served. 

Fires glowed against the cloud cover from at 
least a dozen directions in the city, not just the 
vicinity of the City Offices directly across the river. 
The smell of burning was more noticeable here 
than it had been on the porch six meters high. 

Desoix looked up. The porch was a narrow roof 
above him. He couldn't tell from this angle whether 
Anne McGill had stayed inside as he'd ordered, or 
if she were out in the night again watching for 
him, watching for hope. 

"You, sir," a soldier said with enough emphasis 
to make the question a demand. "You our UDB 
liaison?" 

"Roger," Desoix said. "I'm—" 

But the close-coupled soldier in Slammers battle-
dress was already relaying the information on his 
unit frequency. 

There were several dozen of Hammer's men in 
the courtyard already. More were arriving with 
every passing moment. He didn't see Captain 
Koopman or the sergeant major he'd met once or 
twice before Tyi had arrived to take command. 

The troopers jogged across the open street, 
hunched over. When they reached the courtyard 
they slowed. The veterans swept the Palace's 
empty, shuttered walls with their eyes, waiting for 
the motion that would unmask gunports and turn 
the paved area into a killing ground unless they 
shot first. 


The new recruits only stared, more confused 
than frightened but certainly frightened enough. 
"They know something we don't?" asked the 
Slammers non-corn with KEKKONAN stenciled 
on his helmet. He nodded in the direction of the 
servants, the last of whom were clearing the 
doorway. 

"They know they're scared," Desoix said. 

Kekkonan laughed. "That just shows they're breathin'," 
he said. 

He grunted something into his commo helmet— 
waved left-handed to Desoix because his right 
hand was on the grip of his slung submachinegun— 
and trotted into the rotunda with his troopers 
filing along after him. 

The UDB officer had intended to lead the Slammers 
inside himself to avoid problems with the 
Bamberg guards. He hadn't moved quickly enough, 
but that wasn't likely to matter. Nobody with good 
sense was going to get in the way of those jacked-up 
killers. 

Ornamental lighting still brightened the exterior 
of the palace, though the steel-shuttered facade 
looked out of place in a glittering myriad of 
tiny spotlights. It illuminated well the stooped 
forms in khaki and gray ceramic armor as they 
arrived, jogging because their loads were too heavy 
for them to run faster. 

There were six in the last group, four troopers 
carrying a fifth while Captain Tyi Koopman trotted 
along behind with a double load of guns and 
bandoliers. 

Casualty, Desoix thought, but Sergeant Major 
Scratchard was cursing too fluently for anyone to 
think his wound was serious. 

"Listen, you idiots," Scratchard said in a voice 
of sudden calm as the UDB officer ran up to help. 
"If you don't let me down now we're under the 
lights, I got no authority from here on out. Your 
choice, Cap'n." 


"Right, we'll all walk from here," said Koopman 
easily. He handed one of the guns he carried to 
Scratchard while looking at Desoix. "Lieutenant," 
he added, "I'm about as glad to see you as I 
remember being." 

Desoix looked over the other officer's shoulder 
toward the fires and shouts across the river. For a 
moment he thought it was his imagination that the 
sounds were coming closer. 

Light flickering through the panels of the mall 
disabused him of his hopes. A torch-lit column 
was marching over the river. What the rioters had 
done to the City Offices suggested that they weren't 
headed for the cathedral now to pray for peace. 

"Let's get inside," said Charles Desoix. "When 
this is all over, then you can thank me." 

He didn't need to state the proviso: assuming 
either of us is still alive. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

Tyi hadn't ridden in the little elevator off the 
back of the rotunda before. He and the UDB 
officer just about filled it, and neither of them was 
a big man. 

Of course, in his armor and equipment Tyi wasn't 
the slim figure he would have cut in coveralls 
alone. 

"Don't like to leave the guys before we know 
just what's happening here," he said aloud, though 
he was speaking as much to his own conscience as 
to the UDB officer beside him. 

Tyi would have hated to be bolted behind steel 
shutters below, where the sergeant major was arranging 
temporary billets for the troops. The 
windowed Consistory Room was the next best thing 
to being outside— 

And headed away from this Lord-stricken place! 

"Up here is where we learn what's happening," 
Desoix said reasonably, nodding toward the elevator's 
ceiling. "Or at least as much as anyone in the 
government knows," he added with a frown which 
echoed the doubt in his words. 

The car stopped with only a faint burring from 
its magnetic drivers. The doors opened with less 
sound even than that. Tyi strode into the Consistory 
Room. 

He was Colonel Hammer's representative and 
the ranking Slammer on this continent. So long as 
he remembered that, nobody else was likely to 

forget. 

There were fewer people in the big room than 
there had been in the morning, but their degree 
of agitation made the numbers seem greater. Marshal 
Dowell was present with a pair of aides, but 
those three and the pair of mercenaries were the 
only men in uniform. 

The Chastain brothers smiled with frozen en



thusiasm when Tyi nodded to them. They wore 
dark suits of conservative cut—and of natural off-
planet fabrics that gave them roughly the value of 
an air car. Everyone else in the room was avoiding 
the Chastains. Backs turned whenever one of the 
twins attempted to make eye contact. 

Berne, the City Prefect, didn't have even a twin 
for company. He huddled in the middle of the 
room like a clothes-pole draped with the green 
velour of his state robe. 

"Where are—" Tyi began, but he'd already lost 
his companion. Lieutenant Desoix was walking 
briskly toward the large-framed woman who seemed 
to be an aide to the President's wife. Neither the 
President nor Eunice Delcorio were here at— 

Servants opened the door adjacent to the elevator. 
John Delcorio entered a step ahead of his 
wife, but only because of the narrowness of the 
portal. Eunice was again in a flame-red dress. This 
one was demure in the front but cut with no back 
at all and a skirt that stretched to allow her legs to 
scissor back and forth as she moved. 

Tyi hadn't found a sexual arrangement satisfactory 
to him on the freighter that brought him to 
Bamberia, and there'd been no time to take care 
of personal business since he touched down. He 
felt a rush of lust. It was a little disconcerting 
under the circumstances— 

But on the other hand, it was nice to be reminded 
that there was more to life than the sorts 
of things that'd been going on in the past few 
hours. 

"You there!" President Delcorio said unexpectedly. 
He glared at Tyi, his black eyes glowing like 
coal in a coking furnace. "Do you have to wear 
that?" 

Tyi glanced down at where Delcorio pointed 
with two stubby, sturdy fingers together. 

"This?" said the Slammers officer. His submachinegun 
hung from his right shoulder in a patrol 
sling that held it muzzle forward and grip down at 


his waist. He could seize it by reflex and spray 
whatever was in front of him without having to 
aim or think. 

"Yessir," he explained. He spoke without concern, 
because it didn't occur to him that anyone 
might think he was offering insolence instead of 
information. "Example for the troops, you know. I 
told 'em nobody moved without a gun and bandolier 
—sleeping, eating, whatever." 

Tyi blinked and looked back at the President. 
"Besides," he added. "I might need it, the way 
things are." 
Delcorio flushed. Tyi realized that he and the 
President were on intersecting planes. Though 
the two of them existed in the same universe, 
almost none of their frames of reference were 

identical. 

That was too bad. But it wasn't a reason for Tyi 
Koopman to change; not now, when it was pretty 
curst obvious that the instincts he'd developed in 
Hammer's Slammers were the ones most applicable 
here. 

Eunice Delcorio laughed, a clear, clean sound 
that cut like a knife. "At least there's somebody 
who understands the situation," she said, echoing 
Tyi's thought and earning the Slammers officer 
another furious glance by her husband. 

"I think we can all agree that the situation won't 
be improved by silly panic," Delcorio said mildly 
as his eyes swept the room. "Dowell, what do you 

have to report?" 

There had been movement all around the room 
with the arrival of the Delcorios' but it was mostly 
limited to heads turning. Major Borodin, who'd 
been present after all—standing so quietly by a 
wall that Tyi's quick survey had missed him—was 
marching determinedly toward his executive officer. 
Desoix himself was alone. His lady-friend had 
left him at once to join her mistress, the President's 
wife. 


But at the moment, everyone's attention 'was on 
Marshal Dowell, because that was where the President 
was looking. 

"Yes, well," the army chief said. "I've given 
orders that a brigade be returned from Two as 
quickly as possible. You must realize that it's necessary 
for the troops to land as a unit so that their 
effect won't be dissipated." 
"What about now?" cried the City Prefect. He 
stepped forward in an access of grief and rage, 
fluttering his gorgeous robes like a peacock preparing 
to fly. "You said you'd support my police, 
but your precious soldiers did nothing when those 
scum attacked the City Offices!" 

One of Dowell's aides was speaking rapidly into 
a communicator with a shield that made the discussion 
inaudible to the rest of the gathering. The 
marshal glanced at him, then said, "We're still not 
sure what the situation over there is, and at any 
rate—" 

"They took the place," Tyi said bluntly. 

In the Slammers you didn't stand on ceremony 
when your superiors had bad data or none at all in 
matters that could mean the life of a lot of people. 
"Freed their friends, set fire to the building—hung 
at least some of the folks they caught. Via, you can 
see it from here, from the window." 

He gestured with an elbow, because to point 
with his full arm would have moved his hand 
further from the grip of his weapon than instinct 
wanted to keep it at present. 

Perhaps because everyone followed the gesture 
toward the panels overlooking the courtyard, the 
chanted . . . freedom . . . echoing from that direction 
became suddenly audible in the Consistory 
Room. 

Across the room, the concealed elevator suctioned 
and snapped heads around. The officer Desoix had 
nodded to downstairs, the CO of the Executive 
Guard, stepped out with a mixture of arrogance 
and fear. He moved like a rabbit loaded with 
amphetamines. "Gentlemen!" he called in a clear 


voice. "Rioters are in the courtyard with guns and 
torches!" 
Tyi was waiting for a recommendation—do I 
have your permission to open fire? was how a Slammers 
officer would have proceeded—but this fellow 
had nothing in mind save the theatrical 

announcement. 

What Tyi didn't expect—nobody expected—was 
for Eunice Delcorio to sweep like a torch flame to 
the door and step out onto the porch. 

The blast of noise when the clear doors opened 
was a shocking reminder of how well they blocked 
sound. There was an animal undertone, but the 
organized chant of "Freedom!" boomed over and 
through the snarl until the mob recognized the 
black-haired, glass-smooth woman facing them from 

the high porch. 

Tyi moved fast. He was at Eunice's side before 
the shouts of surprise had given way to the hush 
of a thousand people drawing breath simultaneously. 
He thought there might be shots. At the first bang 
or spurt of light he was going to hurl Eunice back 
into the Consistory Room, trusting his luck and 

his clamshell armor. 

Not because she was a woman; but because if 
the President's wife got blown away, there was as 
little chance of compromise as there seemed to be 
of winning until the brigade from Two arrived. 
And maybe a little because she was a woman. 
"What will you have, citizens?" Eunice called. 
The porch was designed for speeches. Even 
without amplification, the modeling walls threw 
her powerful contralto out over the crowd. "Will 
you abandon God's Crusade for a whim?" 

The uplifted faces were a blur to Tyi in the 
scatter of light sources that the mob carried. The 
crosses embroidered in white cloth on the left 
shoulders of their garments were clear enough to 
be recognized, though—and that was true whether 
the base color was red or black. 


There was motion behind him, but Tyi had eyes 
only for the mob. 

Weapons glinted there. He couldn't tell if any 
of them were being aimed. The night-vision sensors 
in his faceshield would have helped; but if he 
locked the shield down he'd be a mirror-faced 
threat to the crowd, and that might be all it took 
to draw the first shots. . . . 

Desoix'd stepped onto the porch. He stood on 
the other side of Eunice Delcorio, and he was 
cursing with the fluency of a mercenary who's 
sleep-learned a lot of languages over the years. 

The other woman was on the porch too. From 
the way the UDB officer was acting, she'd preceded 
rather than followed him. 

The crowd's silence had dissolved in a dozen 
varied answers to Eunice's question, all underlain 
by blurred attempts to continue the chant of 
"Freedom!" 

Something popped from the center of the mob. 
Tyi's left arm reached across Eunice's waist and 
was a heartbeat short of hurling the woman back 
through the doors no matter who stood behind 
her. A white flare burst fifty meters above the 
courtyard, harmless and high enough that it could 
be seen by even the tail of the mob stretching 
across the river. 

The mob quieted after an anticipatory growl 
that shook the panels of the doors. 

There was a motion at the flagstaff, near where 
the flare had been launched. Before Tyi could be 
sure what was happening, a hand-held floodlight 
glared over the porch from the same location. 

He stepped in front of the President's wife, 
bumping her out of the way with his hip, while his 
left hand locked the faceshield down against the 
blinding radiance. The muzzle of his submachinegun 
quested like an adder's tongue while his finger 
took up slack on the trigger. 

"Wait!" boomed a voice from the mob in ampli



fied startlement. The floodlight dimmed from a 
threat to comfortable illumination. 

"I'll take over now, Eunice," said John Delcorio 
as his firm hand touched Tyi's upper arm, just 
beneath the shoulder flare of the clamshell armor. 

The Slammers officer stepped aside, knowing it 
was out of his hands for better or for worse, now. 

President Delcorio's voice thundered to the 
crowd from roof speakers, "My people, why do 
you come here to disturb God's purpose?" 

Through his shield's optics, Tyi could see that 
there were half a dozen priests in dark vestments 
grouped beside the flagpole. They had a guard of 
orderlies from the House of Grace, but both the 
man with the light and the one raising a bull-horn 
had been ordained. Tyi thought, though the distance 
made uncertain, that the priest half-hidden 
behind the pole was Father Laughlin. 

None of the priests carried weapons. All the 
twenty or so orderlies of their bodyguard held guns. 

"We want the murderer Berne!" called the bull 
horn. The words were indistinct from the out-ofsynchronous 
echoes which they waked from the 
Palace walls. "Berne sells justice and sells lives!" 

"Berne!" shouted the mob, and their echoes 
thundered BERNEfcerneberne. 

As the echoes died away, Tyi heard Desoix 
saying in a voice much louder than he intended, 
"Anne, for the Lord's sake! Get back inside!" 

"Will you go back to your homes in peace if I 

replace the City Prefect?" Delcorio said, pitching 
his words to make his offered capitulation sound 
like a demand. His features were regally arrogant 
as Tyi watched him sidelong behind the mirror of 
his faceshield. 

The priest with the bull-horn leaned sideways 
to confer with the bigger man behind the flagpole, 
certainly Father Laughlin. While the mob waited 


for their leaders' response, the President used the 
pause to add, "One man's venality can't be permitted 
to jeopardize God's work!" 
"Give us Berne!" demanded the courtyard. 
"I'll replace—" Delcorio attempted. 
GIVEgwegive roared the mob. GIVEgiwgive. . . . 
Eunice leaned over to say something to her 
husband. He held up a hand to silence the crowd. 
The savage voices boomed louder, a thousand of 
them in the courtyard and myriads more filling 
the streets beyond. 


A woman waved a doll in green robes above her 
head. She held it tethered by its neck. 


Delcorio and his wife stepped back into the 
Consistory Room. Their hands were clasped so 
that it was impossible to tell who was leading 
the other. The President reached to slide the 
door shut for silence, but Lieutenant Desoix was 
close behind with an arm locked around the other 
woman's waist. His shoulder ^blocked Delcorio's 
intent. 


Tyi Koopman wasn't going to be the only target 
on the balcony while the mob waited for a response 
it might not care for. He kept his featureless 
face to the front—with the gun muzzle beneath 
it for emphasis—as he retreated after the rest. 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


"Firing me won't—" Berne began even before 
Tyi slid the door shut on the thunder of the mob. 


"I'm not sure we can defend—" Marshal Dowell 
was saying with a frown and enough emphasis that 
he managed to be heard. 


"Be silent!" Eunice Delcorio ordered in a glass-
sharp voice. 


The wall thundered with the low notes of the 
shouting in the courtyard. 


Everyone in the Consistory Room had gathered 
in a semi-circle. They were facing the porch and 
those who had been standing on it. 


There were only a dozen or so of Delcorio's 
advisors present. Twice that number had awaited 
when Tyi followed Eunice out to confront the 
mob, but they were gone now. 


Gone from the room, gone from the Palace if 
they could arrange it—and assuredly gone from 
the list of President Delcorio's supporters. 


That bothered Tyi less than the look of those 
who remained. They glared at the City Prefect 
with the expression of gorgeously-attired fish viewing 
an injured one of their number ... an equal 
moments before, a certain victim now. The eyes 
of Dowell's aides were hungry as they slid over 
Berne. 


Eunice Delcorio's voice had carved a moment 
of silence from the atmosphere of the Consistory 
Room. The colonel of the Executive Guard filled 
the pause with, "It's quite impossible to defend 
the Palace from numbers like that. We can't even 
think of— " 


"Yeah, we could hold it," Tyi broke in. 


He'd forgotten his faceshield was locked down 
until he saw everyone start away from him as if he 
were something slime-covered that had just crawled 
through a window. With the shield in place, the 



loudspeaker built into his helmet cut in automatically—
so they weren't going to ignore him if he 
raised his voice. 

He didn't want to be ignored, but he flipped up 
the shield to be less threatening now that he had 
the group's attention. 

"You've got what, two companies?" he went on, 
waving his left index finger toward the glittering 
colonel. All right, they weren't the Slammers; but 
they had assault rifles and they weren't exactly 
facing combat infantry either. 

"We've got a hundred men," he said. "Curst 
good ones, and the troops the UDB's got here in 
the Palace know how to handle— " 

Tyi had nodded in the direction of Lieutenant 
Desoix, but it was Borodin, the battery commander, 
who interrupted, "I have no men in the Palace." 

"Huh?" said the Slammers officer. 

"What?" Desoix said. "We have the off-duty 

c—" 

"I'm worried about relieving the crews with 
the, ah—" Borodin began. 

He looked over at the President. The mercenary 
commander couldn't whisper the explanation, 
not now. "The conditions in the streets are 
such that I wasn't sure we'd be able to relieve the 
gun crews normally, so I ordered the reserve crews 
to billet at the guns so that we could be sure that 
there'd be a full watch alert if the enemy tries to 
take advantage of... events." 

"Events!" snarled John Delcorio. 

The door behind him rattled sharply when a 
missile struck it. The vitril held as it was supposed 
to do. 

"John, they aren't after me," Berne cried with 
more than personal concern in his voice. He was 
right, after all, everybody else here must know 


that, since it was so obvious to Tyi Koopman in his 
first day on-planet. "You mustn't—" 

"If you hadn't failed, none of this would be 
happening," Eunice said, her scorn honed by years 
of personal hatred that found its outlet now in the 
midst of general catastrophe. 

She turned to her husband, the ends of her 
black hair emphasizing the motion. "Why are you 
delaying? They want this criminal, and that will 
give us the time we need to deal with the filth 
properly with the additional troops." 

Vividness made Eunice Delcorio a beautiful 
woman, but the way her lips rolled over the word 
"properly" sent a chill down the spine of everyone 
who watched her. 

Berne made a break for the door to the hall. 

Tyi's mind had been planning the defense of the 
Palace of Government. Squads of the local troops 
in each wing to fire as soon as rioters pried or 
blasted off a flood shutter to gain entrance. Platoons 
of mercenaries poised to react as fire brigades, 
responding to each assault with enough 
violence to smother it in the bodies of those who'd 
made the attempt. Grenadiers on the roof; they'd 
very quickly clear the immediate area of the Palace 
of everything except bodies and the moaning 
wounded. 

Easy enough, but they were answers to questions 
that nobody was asking any more. Besides, 
they could only hold the place for a few days 
against tens of thousands of besiegers—only long 
enough for the brigade to arrive from Two, if it 
came. 

And Tyi was a lot less confident of that point 
than the President's wife seemed to be. 

A middle-aged civilian tripped the City Prefect. 
One of Dowell's aides leaped on Berne and wrestled 
him to the polished floor as he tried to rise, 
while the other aide shouted into his communicator 
for support without bothering to lock his privacy 
screen in place. 


Tyi looked away in disgust. He caught Lieutenant 
Desoix's eye. The UDB officer wore a bland 
expression. 

But he wasn't watching the scuffle and the weeping 
prefect either. 

"All right," said the President, bobbing his head 
in decision. "I'll tell them." 

He took one stride, reached for the sliding door, 
and paused. "You," he said to Tyi. "Come with 
me. 

Tyi nodded without expression. Another stone 
or possibly a light bullet whacked against the vitril. 
He set his faceshield and stepped onto the porch 
ahead of the Regiment's employer. 

He didn't feel much just now, though he wanted 
to take a piss real bad. Even so, he figured he'd 
be more comfortable facing the mob than he was 
over what had just happened in the Consistory 
Room. 

The crowd roared. Behind his shield, Tyi grinned 
—if that was the right word for the way instinct 
drew up the corners of his mouth to bare his 
teeth. There was motion among the up-turned 
faces gleaming like the sputum the sea leaves 
when it draws back from the strand. 

Something pinged on the railing. Tyi's gun quivered, 
pointed— 

"Wait!" thundered the bull-horn. 

"My people!" boomed the President's voice from 
the roofline. He rested his palms wide apart on 
the railing. 

He'd followed after all, a step behind the Slammers 
officer just in case a sniper was waiting for 
the first motion. Delcorio wasn't a brave man, not 
as a professional soldier came to appraise courage, 
but his spirit had a tumbling intensity that made 
him capable of almost anything. 


At a given moment. 

The mob was making a great deal of disconnected 
noise. Delcorio trusted his amplified voice 
to carry him through as he continued, "I have 
dismissed the miscreant Berne as you demanded. 
I will turn him over to the custody of the Church 
for safekeeping until the entire State can determine 
the punishment for his many crimes." 

"Give us Berne!" snarled the bull-horn with 
echoing violence. It spoke in the voice of a priest 
but not a Christian; and the mob that took up the 
chant was not even human. 

Delcorio turned and tried to shout something 
into the building with his unaided voice. Tyi 
couldn't hear him. 

The President raised a hand for silence from the 
crowd. The chant continued unabated, but Delcorio 
and the Slammers officer were able to back inside 
without a rain of missiles to mark their retreat. 

There was a squad of the Executive Guard in 
the Consistory Room. Four of the ten men were 
gripping the City Prefect. Several had dropped 
their rifles in the scuffle and no one had thought 
to pick the weapons up again. 

Delcorio made a dismissing gesture. "Send him 
out to them," he said. "I've done all I can. Quickly, 
so I don't have to go out there—" 

His face turned in the direction of his thoughts, 
toward the porch and the mob beneath. The flush 
faded and he began to shiver uncontrollably. Reaction 
and memory had caught up with the President. 


There were only four civilian advisors in the 
room besides Berne. Five. A man whose suit was 
russet or gold, depending on the direction of the 
light, had been caught just short of getting into 
the elevator by Delcorio's return. 

The Guards colonel was shaking his head. "No, 
no," he said. "That won't do. If we open a shutter, 
they'll be in and well, the way the fools are worked 


up, who knows what might happen?" 


"But—" the President said, his jaw dropping. 
He'd aged a decade since he stepped off the porch. 
Hormonal courage abandoned him to reaction and 
remembrance. "But I must. But I promised them, 
Drescher, and if I don't—" 


His voice would probably have broken off there 
anyway, but a bellow from the courtyard in thunderous 
synchrony smothered all sound within for a 
moment. 


"Pick him up, then, " said Eunice Delcorio in a 
voice as clear as a sapphire laser. "You four—pick 
him up and follow. We'll give them their scrap of 
bone." 


She strode toward the door, the motion of her 
legs a devouring flame across the intaglio. 


Berne screamed as the soldiers lifted him. Because 
he was screaming, no one heard Tyi Koopman 
say in a choked voice, "Lady, you can't—" 


But of course they could. And Tyi had done the 
same or worse, checking out suspicious movements 
with gunfire, knowing full well that nine 
chances in ten, the victims were going to be civilians 
trying to get back home half an hour after 
curfew. . . . 


He'd never have spent one of his own men this 
way; and he'd never serve under an officer who 
did. 


Colonel Drescher threw open the door himself, 
though he stood back from the opening with a 
care that was more than getting out of the way of 
the President's wife. 


Tyi stepped out beside her, because he'd made 
it his job ... or Hammer had made it his job . . . 
and who in blazes cared, he was there and the 
animal snarl of the mob brought answering rage to 
the Slammer's mind and washed some of the sour 
taste from his mouth. 



The Guardsmen in azure uniforms and Berne in 
green made a contrast as brilliant as a parrot's 
plumage as they manhandled the prefect to the 
railing under the glare of lights. Floods were trained 
from at least three locations in the courtyard now, 
turned high; but that was all right, they needed to 
watch this, sure they did. 

Eunice cried something inaudible but imperious. 
She gestured out over the railing. The soldiers 
looked at one another. 

Beme was screaming wordlessly. His eyes were 
closed, but tears poured from beneath the lids. 
He had fouled himself in his panic. The smell 
added the only element necessary to make the 
porch a microcosm of Hell. 

Eunice gestured again. The Guards threw their 
prisoner toward the courtyard. 

Berne grabbed the railing with both hands as he 
went over. His legs flailed without the organization 
needed to boost him back onto the porch, but 
his hands clung like claws of cast bronze. 

Eunice gave a furious order that was no more 
than a grimace and a quick motion of her lips. 
Two of the soldiers tried gingerly to push Berne 
away. The prefect twisted his head and bit the 
hands of one. His eyes were open now and as mad 
as those of a back-ward psychotic. Bottles and 
stones began to fly from the crowd, clashing on 
the rail and floor of the porch, 

The Guardsmen drew back into a huddle in the 
doorway. The man who still carried his rifle raised 
it one-handed to shield his face. 

A bottle shattered on Tyi's breastplate. He didn't 
hear the shot that was Bred a moment later, but 
the howl of a light slug ricocheting from the wall 
cut through even the roar of the crowd. 
"Get inside!" Tyi's speakers bellowed to Eunice 
Delcorio as he stepped sideways to the railing 
where Berne thrashed. Tyi hammered the man's 
knuckles with the butt of his submachinegun. One 
stroke, two—bone cracked— 


Three and the prefect's screaming changed note. 
His broken left hand slipped and his right hand 
opened. Berne's throat made a sound like a siren 
as he fell ten meters to the mob waiting to receive 
him. 

Tyi turned. If the Guardsmen had still been 
blocking the doorway, he might have shot them 
. . . but they'd fled inside and Eunice Delcorio 
was sweeping after them. Her head was regally 
high, and she was ignoring the streak of blood 
over one cheekbone where a stone had cut her. 

Tyi turned for a last look into the courtyard. 
The rioters were passing Berne hand to hand, 
over their heads, like a bit of green algae seen 
sliding through the gut of a paramecium. There 
was greater motion also; the mob was shifting 
back—only a compression in the crowd at the 
moment, but soon to turn into real movement that 
would clear the courtyard. 

They were leaving, now that they had their 
bone. 

As the City Prefect was passed along, those 
nearest were ripping bits away. For the moment, 
the bits were mostly clothing. 

Tyi stepped into the Consistory Room and 
slammed the door behind him hard enough to 
shatter a panel that hadn't been armored. He left 
his faceshield down, because if none of them could 
see his expression, he could pretend that he wasn't 
really here. 

"Lieutenant Desoix," said Major Borodin. He 
wasn't speaking loudly, but no one else in the 
room was speaking at all. "Gun Three needs to be 
withdrawn. Will you handle that at once." 

The battery commander's face looked like a 
mirror of what Tyi thought was on his own 
features. 

"Nobody's withdrawing," said President Delcorio. 
He had his color back, and he stroked his hands 
together briskly as if to warm them. His eyes 
shifted like a sparkling Bre and lighted on the 


Guards colonel. The hands stopped. 

"Colonel Drescher," Delcorio said crisply. "I 
want your men on combat footing at once. Don't 
you have some other sort of uniforms? Like those." 

One spade-broad hand gestured toward Tyi in 
khaki and armor. "Something suitable. This isn't a 
parade. We're at war. War." 

"Well, I—" Drescher began. Everyone in the 
room was in a state of shock, hammered by events 
into a state that made them ready to be pressed in 
any direction by a strong personality. 

For a moment, until the next stimulus came 
along. 

"Well, get on with it!" the President snapped. 
While the squad of gay uniforms was just shifting 
toward the hall door, Delcorio's attention had already 
flashed across the other faces in the Consistory 
Room. 

And found very few. 

"Where's—" Delcorio began. "Where's—" His 
voice rose, driven by an emotion that was either 
fury or panic—and perhaps had not yet decided 
which it would be. 

"Sir," said one of the Chastains, stepping forward 
to take the President by the hand. "Thorn 
and I will—" 
"You!" Delcorio screamed. "What are you doing 
here?" 

"Sir," said Thorn Chastain with the same hopeful-
puppy expression as his brother. "We know you'll 
weather this—" 

"You're spying, aren't you?" Delcorio cried, slapping 
at the offered hands as if they were beasts 
about to bite him. "Get out, don't you think I 
know it!" 

"Sir—" said the two together in blank amazement. 



The President's nephew Pedro stepped between 
the Chastain's and Delcorio. "Go on!" he snarled, 
looking like a bulldog barking at a pair of gangling 
storks. "We don't need you here. Get out\' 

"But—" Richie Chastain attempted helplessly. 
Pedro, as broadly-built as his uncle, shoved the 
other men toward the door. 

They fled in a swirl of robes and words whimpered 
to one another or to fate. 

"You there," the President continued briskly. 
"Dowell. You'll have the additional troops in place 
by noon tomorrow. Do you understand? I don't 
care if they have to loot shops for their meals, 
they'll he here." 

Delcorio spoke with an alert dynamism. It was 
hard to imagine that the same man had been on 
the edge of violent madness a moment before, and 
in a funk brief minutes still earlier. 

Dowell saluted with a puzzled expression. He 
mumbled something to his aides. The three of 
them marched out the hall door without looking 
backward. 

If they caught the President's eye again, he 
might hold them. 

"And you. Major Borodin, you aren't going to 
strip our city of its protection against the Christ-
deniers," Delcorio said as he focused back on the 
battery commander. 

The President should have forgotten the business 
of moving the gun—so much had gone on in 
the moments since. He hadn't forgotten, though. 
There was a mind inside that skull, not just a 
furnace of emotions. 

If John Delcorio were as stupid as he was erratic, 
Tyi might have been able to figure out what 
in the Lord's name he ought best to be doing. 

"Do you understand?" Delcorio insisted, pointing 
at the battery commander with two blunt fingers 
in a gesture as threatening as anything short 


of a gun muzzle could be. 

"Yes sir," replied Major Borodin, his voice as 
stiff as the brace in which he held his body. "But I 
must tell you that I'm obeying under protest, and 
when I contact my superiors—" 

"You needn't tell me anything, mercenary," the 
President interrupted without even anger to leaven 
the contempt in his words. "You need only do 
your job and collect your pay—which I assure 
you, your superiors show no hesitation in doing 
either." 

"John," said Eunice Delcorio with a shrug that 
dismissed everything that was going on around 
her at the moment. "I'm going to call my brother 
again. They said they couldn't raise him when I 
tried earlier." 

"Yes, I'll talk to him myself," the President 
agreed, falling in step beside the short woman as 
he headed toward the door to their private apartments. 
"He'd have nothing but a ten-hectare sharecrop 
if it weren't for me. If he thinks he can duck 
his responsibilities now. ..." 
Anne," Desoix said in a low voice as Eunice's 
aide hesitated. She looked from her mistress to 
the UDB officer—and stayed 

Pedro Delcorio raised an eyebrow, then nodded 
to the others as he followed his uncle out of the 
Consistory Room. There were only four of them 
left: the three mercenaries and Desoix's lady-friend. 

The four of them, and the smell of fear. 


CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

"Let's get out of here," Koopman said. 

Charles Desoix's heart leaped in agreement— 
then bobbed back to normalcy when he realized 
that the Slammers officer meant only to get out of 
the Consistory Room, onto the porch where the 
air held fewer memories of the immediate past. 

Sure, Koopman was the stolid sort who probably 
didn't realize how badly things were going 
. . . and Charles Desoix wasn't going to support a 
mutiny, wasn't going to desert his employers because 
of trouble that hadn't—if you wanted to be 
objective about it—directly threatened the United 
Defense Batteries at all. 

It was hard to be objective when you were 
surrounded by a mob of perhaps fifty thousand 
people, screaming for blood and quite literally 
tearing a man to pieces. 
They were welcome to Berne—he was just as 
crooked as the bull-horn had claimed. But. . . 

"What did you say, Charles?" Anne asked—which 
meant that Desoix had been speaking things that 
he shouldn't even have been thinking. 

He hugged her reflexively. She jumped, also by 
reflex because she didn't try to draw further away 
when she thought about the situation. Major 
Borodin didn't appear to notice—or to care. 

The courtyard was deserted, but the mob had 
left behind an amazing quantity of litter—bottles, 
boxes, and undeBnable scraps; even a cloak, scarlet 
and apparently whole in the light of the wall 
sconces. It was as if Desoix were watching a beach 
just after the tide had ebbed. 

Across the river, fires burned from at least a 
score of locations. Voices echoed, harsh as the 
occasional grunt of shots. 

Like the tide, the mob would return. 

"We've got to get out of here," Desoix mused 


aloud. 

"She'll leave," Anne said with as much prayer 
in her voice as certainty. "If she stays, they'll do 
terrible things to. . . She knows that, she won't 

let it happen." 

"Colonel wants me to hold if there's any chance 
to keep Delcorio in power," Koopman said to the 
night. There was a snicker of sound as he raised 
his faceshield, but he did not look at his companions 
as he spoke. "What's your bet on that, 

Charles?" 

"Something between zip and zero," Desoix said. 

He was careful not to let his eyes fall on Anne or 
the major when he spoke; but it was no time to 

tell polite lies. 

" 'bout what I figured too," the Slammers offi


cer said mildly. He was leaning on his forearms 
while his fingers played with a dimple in the rail. 
After a moment, Desoix realized that the dimple 
had been hammered there by a bullet. 

"I don't see any way we can abandon our positions 
in defiance of a direct order," Major Borodin 
said. 

The battery commander set his fingers in his 
thinning hair and squeezed firmly, as though that 
would change the blank rotation of his thoughts. 
He took his hands away and added hurriedly to 
the Slammers officer, "Of course, that has nothing 
to do with you. Captain. My problem is that I 
have to defend the city, so I'm in default of the 
contract if I move my guns. Well, Gun Three. But 
that's the only one that seems to be in danger." 

"Charles, you'll protect her if we leave, won't 
you?" asked Anne in sudden fierceness. She pulled 
on Desoix's shoulder until he turned to face her 
worries directly. "You won't let them have her to, 
to escape yourself, will you?" 


He cupped her chin with his left hand. "Anne," 
he said. "If Eunice and the President just say the 
word, we'll have them safely out of here within 
the hour. Won't we, Tyi?" he added as he turned 
to the Slammers officer. 

"Colonel says, maybe just a week or two," 
Koopman said unexpectedly. When his index finger 
burnished the bullet scar, the muzzle of his 
own slung weapon chinked lightly against the rail. 
"Suppose Delcorio could hold out a week?" 

"Suppose we could hold out five minutes if they 
come back hard?" Desoix snapped, furious at the 
infantryman's response when finally it looked as if 
there were a chance to clear out properly. There 
wasn't any doubt that Eunice Delcorio could bend 
her husband to her own will. She was inflexible, 
with none of John Delcorio's flights and falterings. 

If Anne worked on her mistress, it could all 
turn out reasonably. Exile for Delcorio on his 
huge private estates; safety for Anne McGill, whose 
mistress wasn't the only one with whom the mob 
would take its pleasure. 

And release for the mercenaries who were at 
the moment trapped in this place by ridiculous 
orders. 

"Yeah," said Koopman with a heavy sigh. He 
turned at last to face his companions. "Well, I'm 
not going to get any of my boys wasted for nothing 
at all. We aren't paid to be heroes. Guess I'll go 
down and tell Jack to pack up to move at daylight." 

The Slammers officer quirked a grin to Desoix 
and nodded to Anne and the major as he stepped 
toward the door. 

"Tyi, wait ..." Desoix said as a word rang 
echoes. "Can you. . . Major, how many men do 
you have downstairs still?" 

Borodin shrugged out of the brown study into 
which he had fallen as he watched the fires burning 
around him. "Men?" he repeated. "Senter and 
Lachere is all. We're still short—" 


"Tyi, can you, ah—" Desoix went on. He paused, 
because he didn't want to use the wrong word, 
since what he was about to ask was no part of the 
Slammers' business. 

"I need to get down to the warehouses on the 
corniche," Desoix said, rephrasing the question to 
make the request personal rather than military. 
"All I've got here are the battery clerks and they're 
not, ah, trained for this. Could you detail a few 
men, five or six, to go along with me in case there 
was a problem?" 

"Lieutenant," Borodin said gruffly. "What do—" 
"Sir," Desoix explained as the plan drew itself 
in glowing lines in his mind, the alternative sites 
and intersecting fields of fire. "When we get Gun 
Five set up, we can move Three a kilometer east 
on the corniche and still be in compliance. Five 
on the outskirts of town near Pestini's Chapel, 
Three on Guizer Head—and we've got everything 
Delcorio can demand under the contract." 

"Without stationing any of our men down . . . ." 
Borodin said as the light dawned. He might have 
intended to point toward the plaza, but as his gaze 
turned out over the city, his voice trailed off instead. 
Both UDB officers stared at Tyi Koopman. 
Koopman shrugged. "I'll go talk to the guys," 
he said. 

And they had to be satisfied with that, because 
he said nothing more as he walked back into the 
building. 


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

Tyi's functional company had taken over the 
end of a second-floor hallway abandoned by the 
entourage of six noble guests of the President. 
The hundred troopers had a great deal more room 
than there'd been in the City Office billet—or any 
normal billet. 

And, though they'd lost their personal gear when 
the office building burned, the nobles' hasty departure 
meant that the soldiers could console themselves 
for the objects they'd lost across the river. 
Jewelry and rich fabrics peeked out the edges of 
khaki uniforms as Tyi strode past the corridor 
guard and into the billeting area. 

Too bad about Aunt Sandra's jelly, though. He 
could turn over a lot of rich folks' closets and not 
find anything to replace that. 

Troopers with makeshift bedrolls in the hallway 
were jumping to attention because somebody else 
had. The heads that popped from doorways were 
emptying the adjoining guest suites as effectively 
as if Tyi had shouted, "Fall in!" 

Which was about the last thing he wanted. 
"Settle down," he said with an angry wave of 
his arm, as if to brush away the commotion. They 
were all tight. The troops didn't know much, and 
that made them rightly nervous. 

Tyi Koopman knew a good deal more, and what 
he'd seen from the porch wasn't the sort of knowledge 
to make anybody feel better about the 

situation. 

"Captain?" said Jack Scratchard as he muscled 
his way into the hall. 

Tyi motioned the sergeant major over. He keyed 
his connmo helmet with the other hand and said 
loudly—most of the men didn't have their helmets 
on, and only the senior non-corns were fitted with 
implants—"At present, I'm expecting us to get the 
rest of the night's sleep here, but maybe not be 
around much after dawn. When I know more, 


you'll hear." 

Scratchard joined him. The two men stepped 
out of the company area for the privacy they 
couldn't find within it. Tyi paused and called over 
his shoulder, "Use a little common sense in what 
you try to pack, all right?" 

He glared at a corporal with at least a dozen 
vibrantly-colored dresses in her arms. 

The remaining six suites off the hallway were as 
empty as those Scratchard had appropriated. He 
must have decided to keep the troops bunched up 
a little under the present circumstances, and Tyi 
wasn't about to argue with him. 

The doors of all the suites had been forced. As 
they stepped into the nearest to talk, Tyi noticed 

that the richly-appointed room had been turned 
over with great care, although none of his soldiers 
were at present inside continuing their looting. 

Loot and mud were the two constants of line 
service. If you couldn't get used to either one, 
you'd better find a rear-echelon slot somewhere. 

"Talk to the Old Man?" Scratchard muttered 
when he was sure they were alone in the tumbled 
wreckage. 

Tyi shrugged. "Not yet," he said. "Sent an all-
clear through open channels, is all. It's mostly 
where we left it earlier, and I don't want Central—" 
he wasn't comfortable saying "Hammer" or even 
"the Old Man" "—thinking they got to wet-nurse 
me." 

He paused, and only then got to the real business. 
"Desoix—the UDB Number Two," he said. 
"He wants a few guys to cover his back while he 
gets a calliope outa storage down to the seafront. 
Got everybody but a couple clerks out with the 
other tubes." 

The sergeant major knuckled his scalp, the ridge 
where his helmet rode. "What's that do for us, the 
other calliope?" he asked. 


"Bloody zip," Tyi answered with a shrug. He 
was in charge, but this was the sort of thing that 
the sergeant major had to be brought into. 

Besides, nothing he'd heard about Ripper Jack 
Scratchard suggested that there'd be an argument 
on how to proceed. 

"What it does," Tyi amplified, "is let them withdraw 
the gun they got down by the plaza. Desoix 
doesn't like having a crew down there, the way 
things're going." 

Scartchard frowned. "Why can't he—" he began. 

"Don't ask," Tyi said with a grimace. 
The question made him think of things he'd 
rather forget. He thumbed in what might have 
been the direction of the Consistory Room and 
said, "It got real strange up there. Real strange." 

He shook his head to rid it of the memories and 
added, "You know, he's the one I finally raised to 
get us into here before it really dropped in the 
pot. None of the locals were going to do squat for 
us. 

"Doing favors is a good way t' get your ass 
blown away," Scratehard replied, sourly but without 
real emphasis. "But sure. 111 look up five guys 
that'd like t' see the outside again." 

He grinned around the clothing strewn about 
them from forced clothes presses, "Don't guess 
it'll be too hard to look like civilians, neither." 

"Ah," said Tyi. He was facing a blank wall. 
"Thought I might go along, lead 'em, you know." 

"Like hell," said the sergeant major with a grin 
that seemed to double the width of his grizzled 
face. "J might, except for my knees. You're going 
to stay bloody here, in charge like you're supposed 
t' be." 

His lips pursed. "Kekkonan '11 take 'em. He 

won't buy into anything he can't buy out of." 


Tyi clapped the non-corn on the shoulder. "Round 
'em up," he said as he stepped into the hall. "I'll 
tell Desoix. This is the sort of thing that should've 
been done, you know, last week." 

As he walked down the hall, the Slammers officer 
keyed his helmet to learn where Desoix was at 
the moment. Putting this sort of information on 
open channels didn't seem like a great idea, unless 
you had a lot more confidence in the Bamberg 
army than Tyi Koopman did. 

Asking for volunteers in a business like this was 

a waste of time. They were veteran troops, these; 

men and women who would parrot "never volunteer" 
the way they'd been told by a thousand 
generations of previous veterans . . . but who knew 
in their hearts that it was boredom that killed. 

You couldn't live in barracks, looking at the 
same faces every waking minute, without wanting 
to empty a gun into one of them just to make a 
change. 

So the first five soldiers Scratehard asked would 
belt on their battle gear with enthusiasm, hitching 
all the time about "When's it somebody else's turn 
to take the tough one?" They didn't want to die, 
but they didn't think they would . . . and just 
maybe they would have gone anyway, whatever 
they thought the risk was, because it was too easy 
to imagine the ways a fort like the Palace of Government 
could became a killing bottle. 

They were Hammer's Slammers. They'd done 
that to plenty others over the years. 

Tyi didn't have any concern that he'd be able to 
hand Desoix his bodyguards, primed and ready 
for whatever the fire-shot night offered. 

And he knew that he'd give three grades in rank 
to be able to go along with them himself. 


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

The porch off the Consistory Room didn't have 
a view of anything Tyi wanted to see—the littered 
courtyard and, across the river, the shell of the 
City Offices whose windows were still outlined by 
the sullen glow in its interior. The porch was as 
close as he could come to being outside, though, 
and that was sufficient recommendation at the 
moment. 

The top of the House of Grace was barely visible 
above the south wing of the Palace. The ghost 
of firelight from the office building painted the 
eyes and halo of the sculptured Bishop Trimer 
also. 

Tyi didn't want company, so when the door slid 
open behind him, he turned his whole body. That 
way his slung submachinegun pointed, an "accident" 
that he knew would frighten away anyone 
except his own troopers—whom he could order to 
leave him alone. 
Lieutenant Desoix's woman stopped with a little 
gasp in her throat, but she didn't back away. 

"Via!" Tyi said in embarrassment, lifting the 
gun muzzle high and cursing himself in his head 
for the dumb idea. One of those dandies, he'd 
figured, or a smirking servant . . . except that the 
President's well-dressed advisors seemed to have 
pretty well disappeared, and the flunkies also. 

Servants were getting thin on the ground, too. 

"If you'd like to be alone . . . ?" the woman 
said, either polite or real perceptive. 

"Naw, you're fine," Tyi said, feeling clumsy and 
a lot the same way as he had a few months ago. 
Then he'd been to visit a girl he might have 
married if he hadn't gone off for a soldier the way 
he had. "You're, ah—Lady Eunice's friend, aren't 

you?" 

"That too," said the woman drily. She took the 


place Tyi offered at the railing and added, "My 
name's Anne McGill. And I believe you're Captain 
Koopman?" 


"Tyi," the soldier said. "Rank's not for—" He 


gestured. "Out here." 


She didn't look as big as she had inside. Maybe 
because he had his armor on now that he was 


standing close to her. 


Maybe because he'd recently watched five big 
men put looted cloaks on over their guns and 
armor to go off with Lieutenant Desoix. 


"Have you known Charles long?" she asked, 
calling Tyi back from a stray thought that had the 
woman wriggling out of her dark blue dress and 


offering herself to him. 


He shook his head abruptly to clear the thought. 


Not his type, and he sure wasn't hers. 
"No," he said, forgetting that she thought he'd 


answered with the shake of his head. "I just got in 
today, you see. I don't recall we ever served with 
the UDB before. Anyhow, mostly you don't see 
much of anybody's people but your own guys." 


It wasn't even so much that he was horny. 
Screwing was just something he could really lose 
himself in. 


Killing was that way too. 


"It's dangerous out there, isn't it?" she said. 
She wasn't looking at the city because her face was 
lifted too high. From the way her capable hands 
washed one another, she might well have been 
Praying. 


"Out there?" Tyi repeated bitterly. "Via, it's 
dangerous here, and we can't anything but bloody 
twiddle our thumbs." 



Anne winced, as much at the violence as the 
words themselves. 


Instantly contrite, Tyi said, "But you know, if 
things stay cool a little longer—no spark, you know, 
setting things off. ... It may all work out." 


He was repeating what Colonel Hammer had 
told him a few minutes before, through the laser 
communicator now slung at his belt again. To focus 
on the satellite from here, he'd had to aim just 
over the top of the House of Grace. . . . 


"When the soldiers from Two come, there'll be 
a spark, won't there?" she asked. She was looking 
at Tyi now, though he didn't expect she could see 
any more of his face in the darkness than he could 
of her. Firelight winked on her necklace of translucent 
beads. 


The scent she wore brought another momentary 
rush of lust. 


"Maybe not," he said, comfortable talking to 
somebody who might possibly believe the story he 
could never credit in discussions with himself. 
"Nobody really wants that kind a' trouble." 


Not the army, that was for sure. They weren't 


going to push things. 


"Delcorio makes a few concessions—he already 
gave 'em Beme, after all. The troops march around 
with their bayonets all polished to look pretty. 
And then everybody kisses and makes up." 


So that Tyi Koopman could get back to the 
business of a war whose terms he understood. 


"I hope ..." Anne was murmuring. 


She might not have finished the phrase even if 
they hadn't been interrupted by the door sliding 


open behind them. 


Tyi didn't recognize Eunice Delcorio at first. 
She was wearing a dress of mottled gray tones and 



he'd only seen her in scarlet in the past. With the 
fabric's luminors powered-up, the garment would 
have shone with a more-than-metallic luster; but 
now it had neither shape nor color, and Eunice's 
voice glittered like that of a brittle ghost as she 
said, "Well, my dear, I wouldn't have interrupted 
you if I'd known you were entertaining a gentleman. 
" 

"Ma'am," Tyi said, bracing to attention. Eunice 
sounded playful, but so was a cat with a field 
mouse—and he didn't know what she could do to 
him if she wanted, it wasn't in the normal chain of 

command. . . . 

"Captain Koopman and I were discussing the 
situation, Eunice," Anne said evenly. If she were 
embarrassed, she hid the fact; and there was no 
trace of fear in her voice. "You could have called 

me." 

Eunice toyed with the hundred-millimeter wand 
that could either page or track a paired unit. "I 
thought I'd find you instead, my dear," she said. 

The President's wife wasn't angry, but there 
was fierce emotion beneath the surface sparkle. 
The wand slipped from her fingers to the floor. 

Tyi knelt swiftly—you don't bend when you're 
wearing a ceramic back-and-breast—and rose as 
quickly with the wand offered in his left hand. 

Eunice batted the little device out into the courtyard. 
It was some seconds before it hit the stones 
below. 

"I told the captain," Anne said evenly, "that I 
was concerned about your safety in view of the 
trouble that's occurring here in the city." 

"Well, that should be over very shortly, shouldn't 
it?" Eunice said. Nothing in her voice hinted at 
the way her body had momentarily lost control. 
"Marshall Dowell has gone to Two himself to expedite 
movement of the troops." 


The technical phrase came from her full lips 
with a glitter that made it part of a social event. 

Which, in a manner of speaking, it was. 

"Blood and Martyrs," Tyi said. He wasn't sure 
whether or not he'd spoken the curse aloud, and 
at this point he didn't much care. 

He straightened. "Ma'am," he said, nodding 
stiffly to the President's wife. "Ah, rna'am," with a 
briefer nod to Anne. 

He strode back into the building without waiting 
for formal leave. Over his shoulder, he called, 
"I need to go check on the dispositions of my 
troops." 

Especially the troops out there with Desoix, in 
a city that the local army had just abandoned to 
the rebels. 


CHAPTER NINETEEN 

There were at least a dozen voices in the street 
outside, bellowing the bloodiest hymn Charles 
Desoix had ever heard. They were moving on, 
strolling if not marching, but the five Slammers 
kept their guns trained on the door in case somebody 
tried to join them inside the warehouse. 

What bothered Desoix particularly was the clear 
soprano voice singing the descant, "Sew their manhood 
to our flags. ..." 

"All right," he said, returning his attention to 
the business of reconnecting the fusion powerplant 
which had been shut down for shipping. "Switch 
on." 

Nothing happened. 

Desoix, half inside the gun carriage's rear access 
port, straightened to find out what was happening. 
Lachere, the clerk he'd brought along because 
he needed another pair of hands, leaned 
hopefully from the open driver's compartment forward. 
"It's on, sir," he said. 

"Main and Start-up are on?" Desoix demanded. 

And either because they hadn't been or because 
a contact had been a little sticky, he heard the 
purr of the fusion bottle beginning to bring up its 
internal temperature and pressure. 

Success. In less than an hour— 

"The representative of Hammer's Regiment has 
an urgent message," said Control's emotionless 

voice. "Shall I patch him through?" 

"Affirmative," Desoix said, blanking his mind so 
that it wouldn't flash him a montage of disaster as 
it always did when things were tight and the unexpected 
occurred. 

Wouldn't show him Anne McGill in the arms of 

a dozen rioters, not dead yet and not to die for a 


long time. . . . 

"We got a problem," Koopman said, as if his flat 

voice and the fact of his call hadn't already proved 
that. "Dowell just did a bunk to Two. I don't see 
the situation holding twenty-four hours. Over." 
Maybe not twenty-four minutes. 
"Is the Executive Guard ..." Desoix began. 
While he paused to choose his phrasing, Xoopman 
interrupted with, "They're still here, but 
they're all in their quarters with the corridor 
blocked. I figure they're taking a vote. It's that 
sorta outfit. And I don't figure the vote's going any 

way I'd want it to. Over." 

"All right," Desoix said, glancing toward the 
pressure gauge that he couldn't read in this light 
anyway. "All right, we'll have the gun drivable in 
thirty, that's three-oh, minutes. We'll—" 

"Negative. Negative." 

"Listen," the UDB officer said with his tone 
sharpening. "We're this far and we're not—" 

Kekkonan, the sergeant in charge of the detachment 
of Slammers, tapped Desoix's elbow for attention 
and shook his head. "He said negative," 
Kekkonan said. "Sir." 

The sergeant was getting the full conversation 
through his mastoid implant. Desoix didn't have 
to experiment to know it would be as much use to 
argue with a block of mahogany as with the dark, 
flat face of the non-corn. 

"Go ahead, Tyi," Desoix said with an inward 
sigh. "Over." 

"You're not going to drive a calliope through 
the streets tonight, Charles," Koopman said. "Come 
dawn, maybe you can withdraw the one you got 
down there, maybe you just spike it and pull your 
guys out. This is save-what-you-got time, friend. 
And my boys aren't going to be part a' some fool 
stunt that sparks the whole thing off." 


Kekkonan nodded. Not that he had to. 

"Roger, we're on the way," Desoix said. He 
didn't have much emotion left to give the words, 
because his thoughts were tied up elsewhere. 

Via, she was married. It was her bloody husband's 
business to take care of her, wasn't it? 


CHAPTER TWENTY 


"Go," said Desoix without emphasis. 
Kekkonan and another of the Slammers flared 
from the door in opposite directions. Their cloaks— 
civilian and of neutral colors, green and gray— 
fluffed widely over their elbows, hiding the submachineguns 
in their hands. 


"Clear," muttered Kekkonan. Desoix stepped 
out in the middle of the small unit. He felt as 
much a burden to his guards as the extra magazines 
that draped them beneath the loose garments. 


It remained to be seen if either he or the ammunition 
would be of any service as they marched 
back to the Palace. 


"Don't remember that," Lachere said, looking 
to the west. 


"Keep moving," Kekkonan grunted. There was 
enough tension in his voice to add a threat of 
violence to the order. 
One of the warehouses farther down the cor-
niche—half a kilometer—had been set on fire. 
The flames reflected pink from the clouds and as a 
bloody froth from sea foam in the direction of 
Nevis Island. The boulevard was clogged by rioters 
watching the fire and jeering as they flung 


bodies into it. 


Desoix remembered the descant, but he clasped 


Lachere's arm and said, "We weren't headed in 


that direction anyway, were we?" 


"Too bloody right," murmured one of the Slammers, 
the shudder in his tone showing that he 
didn't feel any better about this than the UDB 


men did. 


"Sergeant," Desoix said, edging close to Kek


konan and wishing that the two of them shared a 
command channel. "I think the faster we get off 



the seafront, the better we'll be." 

He nodded toward the space between the warehouse 
they'd left and the next building—not so 
much an alley as a hedge against surveyors' errors. 
"Great killing ground," Kekkonan snorted. 
Flares rose from the plaza and burst in metallic 
showers above the city. Shots followed, tracers 
and the cyan flicker of powergun bolts aimed at 
the drifting sparks. There was more shooting, some 
of it from building roofs. Rounds curved in flat 

arcs back into the streets and houses. 

A panel in the clear reflection of the House of 
Grace shattered into a rectangular scar. 

"Right you are," said Kekkonan as he stepped 

into the narrow passage. 

They had to move in single file. Desoix saw to it 

that he was the second man in the squad. Nobody 

objected. 

He'd expected Tyi to give him infantrymen. 
Instead, all five of these troopers came from vehicle 
crews, tanks and combat cars. The weapon of 
choice under this night's conditions was a submachinegun, 
not the heavier, 2 cm semi-automatic 
shoulder weapon of Hammer's infantry. Koopman 
or his burly sergeant major had been thinking 
when they picked this team. 

Desoix's submachinegun wasn't for show either. 
Providing air defense for front-line units meant 
you were right in the middle of it when things 
went wrong . . . and they'd twice gone wrong 
very badly to a battery Charles Desoix crewed or 
captained. 

Though it shouldn't come to that. The seven of 
them were just another group in a night through 
which armed bands stalked in a truce that would 
continue so long as there was an adequacy of 
weaker prey. 


The warehouses fronted the bay and the spaceport 
across the channel, but their loading docks 
were in the rear. Across the mean street were 
tenements. When Desoix's unit shrugged its way 
out of the cramped passage, they found every one 
of the windows facing them lighted to display a 
cross as large as the sashes would allow. 

"Party time," one of the troopers muttered. 

Some of the residents were watching the events 
from windows or rooftops, but most of them were 
down in the street in amorphous clots like those of 
white cells surrounding bacteria. There were shouts, 
both shrill and guttural, but Desoix couldn't distinguish 
any of the words. 

Not that he had any trouble understanding what 
was going on without hearing the words. There 
were screams coming from the center of one of 
the groups ... or perhaps Desoix's mind created 
the sound it knew would be there if the victim 
still had the strength to make it, 

A dozen or so people were on the loading dock 
to the unit's right, drinking and either having sex 
or making as good an attempt at it as their drinking 
permitted. Somebody threw a bottle that 
smashed close enough to Kekkonan that the sergeant's 
cloak flapped as he turned; but there didn't 
appear to have been real malice involved. Perhaps 
not even notice. 
Party time. 

"All right," Kekkonan said just loudly enough 
for the soldiers with him to hear. "There's an alley 
across the way, a little to the left. Stay loose, don't 
run . . . and don't bunch up, just in case. Go." 

Except for Lachere, they were all veterans; but 
they were human as well. They didn't run, but 
they moved much faster than the careless saunter 
everybody knew was really the safest pace. 

And they stayed close, close enough that one 
burst could have gotten them all. 

Nothing happened except that a score of voices 


followed them with varied suggestions, and a 
woman naked to the waist stumbled into Charles 
Desoix even though he tried his best to dodge 

her. 

She was so drunk that she didn't notice the 

contact, much less that she'd managed to grab the 
muzzle of his submachinegun for an instant before 

she caromed away. 

The alley stank of all the garbage the rains 
hadn't washed away; somebody, dead drunk or 
dead, was sprawled just within the mouth of it. 

Desoix had never been as eager to enter a bedroom 
as he was that alley. 

"Ah, sir," one of the Slammers whispered as the 

foetor and its sense of protection enclosed them. 
"Those people, they was rag-heads?" 

The victims, he meant; and he was asking Desoix 
because Desoix was an officer who might know 
about things like that. 

The Lord knew he did. 

"Maybe," Desoix said. 

They had enough room here to walk two abreast, 
though the lightless footing was doubtful and caused 
men to bump. "Landlords—building superintendents. 
The guy you owe money to, the guy who 
screwed your daughter and then married the trollop 
down the hall." 

"But . . . ?" another soldier said. 

"Anybody you're quick enough to point a dozen 
of your neighbors at," Desoix explained forcefully. 
"Before he points them at you. Party time." 

The alley was the same throughout its length, 
but its other end opened onto more expensive 
facades and, across the broad street, patches of 


green surrounding the domed mass of the cathedral. 

Traffic up the steps to the cathedral's arched 
south entrance was heavy and raucous. The street 
was choked by ground vehicles, some of them 
trying to move but even these blocked by the 
many which had been parked in the travel lanes. 

"Hey there!" shouted the bearded leader of the 
group striding from the doorway just to the left of 
the alley. He wore two pistols in belt holsters; the 
cross on the shoulder of his red cape was perfunctory. 
"Where 're you going?" 

"Back!" said Kekkonan over his shoulder, twisting 
to face the sudden threat. 

Even before the one-syllable order was spoken, 
the torchlight and echoing voices up the alley 
behind them warned the unit that they couldn't 
retreat the way they had come without shooting 

their way through. 

Which would leave them in a street with five 
hundred or a thousand aroused residents who had 
pretty well used up their local entertainment. 

"Hey!" repeated the leader. The gang that had 
exited the building behind him were a dozen more 
of the same, differing only in sex, armament, and 
whether or not they carried open bottles. 

Most of them did. 

They'd seen Kekkonan's body armor—and maybe 
his gun—when he turned toward them. 

"Hey," Desoix said cheerfully as he stepped in 
front of the sergeant. "You know us. We're 

soldiers." 

He'd been stationed in Bamberg City long 
enough that his Spanish had some of the local 
inflections that weren't on the sleep-learning cube. 
He wouldn't pass for a local, but neither did his 
voice put him instantly in the foreign—victim— 


category to these thugs. 


"From the Palace?" asked the leader. His hand 
was still on a pistol, but his face had relaxed 
because Desoix was relaxed. 


Desoix wasn't sure his legs were going to hold 
him up. He'd been this frightened before, but 
that was when he was under fire and didn't have 
anything to do except crouch low and swear he'd 
resign and go home if only the Lord let him live 


this once. 
"Sure," he said aloud, marveling at how well his 


voice worked. "Say, chickie—got anything there 


for a thirsty man?" 
"Up your ass with it!" a red-caped female shrieked 


in amazement. 


All the men in the group bellowed laughter. 
One of them offered Desoix a flask of excellent 
wine, an off-planet vintage as good as anything 
served in the Palace. 


"You're comin' to the cathedral, then?" the leader 
said as Desoix drank, tasting the liquid but feeling 
nothing. "Well, come on, then. The meeting's 
started by now or I'll be buggered." 


"Not by me, Easton!" one of his henchmen 
chortled. 


"Come on, boys," Desoix called, waving his 
unit out of the alley before there was a collision 
with the mob following. "We're already late for 
the meeting!" 


Thank the Lord, the troopers all had the discipline 
or common sense to obey without question. 
Hemmed by the gang they'd joined perforce, surrounded 
by hundreds of other citizens wearing 
crosses over a variety of clothing, Desoix's unit 
tramped meekly up the steps of the cathedral. 


Just before they entered the building, Desoix 
took the risk of muttering into his epaulet mike, 



"Tyi, we're making a necessary detour, but we're 
still coming back. If the Lord is with us, we're still 
coming back." 


CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 

The nave was already full. Voices echoing in 
debate showed that the gang leader had been 
correct about the meeting having started. Hospital 
orderlies with staves guarded the entrance—keeping 
order rather than positioned to stop an attack. 

Bishop Trimer and those working with him knew 
there would be no attack—until they gave the 
order. 

Easton blustered, but there was no bluffing the 
white-robed men blocking the doorway. One of 
the orderlies spoke into a radio with a belt-pack 
power source, while the man next to him keyed a 
hand-held computer. A hologram of the bearded 
thug bloomed atop the computer in green light. 

"Right, Easton," the guard captain said. "Left 
stairs to the north gallery. You and your folks 
make any trouble, we'll deal with it. Throw anything 
into the nave and you'll all decorate lamp 

posts. Understood?" 

"Hey, I'm important!" the gang boss insisted. "I 
speak for the whole Seventeenth Ward, and I 
belong down with the bosses on the floor!" 

"Right now, you belong on the Red side of the 
gallery," said the orderly. "Or out on your butts. 

Take your pick." 

"You'll regret this!" Easton cried as he shuffled 
toward the indicated staircase. "I got friends! I'll 
make it hot fer you!" 

"Who're you?" the guard captain asked Charles 
Desoix. His face was as grizzled as that of the 
Slammers sergeant major; his eyes were as flat as 

death. 

If Desoix hadn't seen the platoon of orderlies 
with assault rifles rouse from the ante-chamber 
when the gang boss threatened, he would have 
been tempted to turn back down the steps instead 


of answering. He couldn't pick his choice of realities, 
though. 

"We're soldiers," he said, leaving the details 
fuzzy as he had before. "Ah—this isn't official, we 
aren't, you see. We just thought we'd, ah ... be 
ready ourselves to do our part . . . ." 

He hoped that meant something positive to the 
guard captain, without sounding so positive that 
they'd wind up in the middle of real trouble. 

The fellow with the radio was speaking into it as 
his eyes locked with Desoix's. The UDB officer 
smiled brightly. The guard captain was talking to 
another of his men while both of them also looked 

at Desoix. 

"All right," the captain said abruptly. "There's 
plenty of room in the south gallery. We're glad to 

have more converts to the ranks of active righteousness." 


"We shoulda bugged out," muttered one of the 
troopers as they mounted the helical stairs behind 
Desoix. 

"Keep your trap shut and do what the el-tee 
says," Sergeant Kekkonan snarled back. 

For good or ill, Charles Desoix was in command 
now. 

Given the sophistication of the commo unit the 
orderly at the door held, Desoix didn't dare try to 
report anything useful to those awaiting him back 
in the Palace. He hoped Anne would have had 
sense enough to flee the city before he got back to 
the Palace. 

Almost as much as another part of him prayed 
that she would be waiting when he returned; because 
he was very badly going to need the relaxation 
she brought him. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 


In daytime the dome would have floated on 
sunlight streaming through the forty arched win-j 
dows on which it was supported. The hidden floods 
directed from light-troughs to reflect from the in-' 
ner surface were harsh and metallic by contrast, ^ 
even though the metal was gold. 


Desoix and his unit muscled their way to the g 
railing of colored marble overlooking the nave. It | 
might have been smarter to hang back against the 1 
gallery windows, but they 'were big men and ag-| 
gressive enough to have found a career in institu-g 
tionalized murder. 


They were standing close to the east end and 
the hemicycle containing the altar, where the major 
figures in the present drama now faced the 
crowd of their supporters and underlings. 


Between the two groups was a line of orderlies 
kneeling shoulder to shoulder. Even by leaning 
over the rail, Desoix could not see the faces of 
those on the altar dais. 


But there were surprises in the crowd. 
"That's Cerulio," Desoix said, nudging Kekkonan 
to look at a sumptuously dressed man in the front 
rank. His wife was with him, and the four men in 
blue around them were surely liveried servants. 
"He was in the Palace an hour ago. Said he was 
going to check his townhouse, but that he'd be 
back before morning." 


"Don't know him," grunted Kekkonan. "But that 
one, three places over—" he didn't point, which 
reminded Desoix that pointing called attention to 
both ends of the outstretched arm "—he's in the 
adjutant general's staff, a colonel I'm pretty sure. 
Saw him when we were trying to requisition 


bunks." 


Desoix felt a chill all the way up his spine. 
Though it didn't change anything beyond what 
they had already determined this night. 



The man speaking wore white and a mitre, so 
that even from above there could be no mistaking 

Bishop Trimer. 

"—wither away," his voice was saying. "Only in 
the last resort would God have us loose the righteous 
indignation that this so-called president has 
aroused in our hearts, in the heart of every Christian 
on Bamberia." 

One shot, thought Charles Desoix. 

He couldn't see Trimer's face, but there was a 
line of bare neck visible between mitre and chasuble. 
No armor there, no way to staunch the blood 
when a cyan bolt blasts a crater the size of a 

clenched fist. 

And no way for the small group of soldiers to 

avoid being pulled into similarly fist-sized gobbets 

when the mob took its revenge in the aftermath. 
"Not our fight," Desoix muttered to himself. 

He didn't have to explain that to any of his 
companions. He was pretty sure that Sergeant 
Kekkonan would kill him in an eye-blink if he 
thought the UDB officer was about to sacrifice 
them all. 

"We will wait a day, in God's name," the Bishop 
said. He was standing with his arms outstretched. 

Trimer had a good voice and what was probably 
a commanding manner to those who didn't see 
him from above—like Charles Desoix and God, 
assuming God was more than a step in Bishop 
Trimer's pursuit of temporal power. He could almost 
have filled the huge church with his unaided 
voice, and the strain of listening would have 
quieted the crowd that was restive with excitement 
and drink. 

As it was, Trimer's words were relayed through 
hundreds of speakers hidden in the pendentives 
and among the acanthus leaves of the column 


capitals. Multiple sources echoed and fought one 
another, creating a busyness that encouraged whispering 
and argument among the audience. 

Desoix had been part of enough inter-unit staff 
meetings to both recognize and explain the strain 
that was building in the Bishop's voice. Trimer 
was used to being in charge; and here, in his own 
cathedral, circumstances had conspired to rob him 
of the absolute control he normally exercised. 

The man seated to Trimer's right got up. Like 
the Bishop, he was recognizable by his clothing—a 
red cape and a red beret in which a bird plume of 
some sort bobbed when he moved his head. 

The Bishop turned. The gallery opposite Desoix 
exploded with cheers and cat-calls. Red-garbed 
spectators in the nave below were jumping, making 
their capes balloon like bubbles boiling through 
a thick red sauce, despite the efforts of the hospital 
orderlies keeping the two factions separate. 

All the men on the dais were standing with 
their hands raised. The noise lessened, then paused 
in a great hiss that the pillared aisles drank. 

"Ten minutes each, we agreed," one of the 
faction leaders said to the Bishop in a voice amplified 
across the whole cathedral. 

"Speak, then!" said the Bishop in a voice that 
was short of being a snarl by as little as the commotion 
below had avoided being a full-fledged 
riot. 

Trimer and most of the others on the dais seated 
themselves again, leaving the man in red to stand 
alone. There was more cheering and, ominously, 
boos and threats from Desoix's side of the hall. 
Around the soldiers, orderlies fought a score of 
violent struggles with thugs in black. 

The man in red raised his hands again and 
boomed, "Everybody siddown, curse it! We're 
friends here, friends—" 

When the sound level dropped minusculy, he 
added, "Rich friends we're gonna be, every one of 


us!" 

The cheers were general loud enough to make 
the light troughs wobble. 

"Now all you know there's no bigger supporter 
of the Bishop than I am," the gang boss continued 
in a voice whose nasality was smoothed by the 
multiple echoes. "But there's something else you 
all know, too. I'm not the man to back off when I 
got the hammer on some bastid neither." 

He wasn't a stupid man. He forestalled the 
cheers—and the threats from the opposing side of 
the great room—that would have followed the 
statement by waving his arms again for silence 
even as he spoke. 

"Now the way I sees it," he went on. "The way 
anybody sees it—is we got the hammer on Delcorio. 
So right now's the time we break 'is bloody neck 
for 'im. Not next week or next bloody year when 
somebody's cut another deal with 'im and he's got 
the streets full a' bloody soldiers!" 

In the tumult of agreement, Desoix saw a woman 
wearing black cross-belts fight her way to the front 
of the spectators' section and wave a note over the 
heads of the line of orderlies. 

The black-caped gang boss looked a question to 
the commo-helmeted aide with him on the dais. 
The aide shrugged in equal doubt, then obeyed 
the nodded order to reach across the orderlies and 
take the note from the woman's hand. 

"Now the Bishop says," continued the man in 
red, " 'give him a little time, he'll waste right 
away and nobody gets hurt.' And that's fine, sure 
. . . but maybe it's time a few a' them snooty 
bastids does get hurt, right?" 

The shouts of yes and kill were punctuated with 
other sounds as bestial as the cries of panthers 
hunting. It was noticeable that the front rank of 
spectators, the men and women with estates and 
townhouses, either sat silent or looked about nervously 
as they tried to feign enthusiasm. 


While the red leader waited with his head thrown 
back and arms akimbo, the rival gang boss read 
the note he had been passed. He reached toward 
Bishop Trimer with it and, when another priest 
tried to take the document from his hand, swatted 
the man away. Trimer leaned over to read the 
note. 
"Now I say," the man in red resumed in a lull, 
"all right, we give Delcorio time. We give the 
bastid as much time as it takes fer us to march 
over to the Palace and pull it down—" 

The black-caped gang boss got up, drawing the 
Bishop's gaze to follow the note being thrust at 
the leader of the other street gang. 

The timbre of the shouting changed as the spectators 
assessed what was happening in their own 
terms—and prepared for the immediate battle those 
terms might entail. 

"The rightful President of Bamberia is Thomas 
Chastain," cried the black-caped leader as the cathedral 
hushed and his rival squinted at the note 

in the red light. 

The man in red looked up but did not interrupt 
as the other leader thundered in a deep bass, "He 
was robbed of his heritage by the Delcorios and 
held under their guards in the Palace—but now 
he's escaped! Thorn Chastain's at his house right 
now, waiting for us to come and restore him to his 

position!" 

Everyone on the dais was standing. Some of the 
leaders. Church and gangs and surely the business 
community as well, tried to speak to one another 
over the tumult. Unless they could read lips, that 
was a useless exercise. 

Desoix was sure of that. He'd been caught in an 
artillery barrage, and the decibel level of the bursting 
shells had been no greater than that of the 
voices reverberating now in the cathedral. 

Bishop Trimer touched the gang bosses. They 
conferred with looks, then stepped back to give 


the Bishop the floor again. Though they did not sit 
down, they motioned their subordinates into chairs 
on the dais. After a minute or two, the room had 
quieted enough for Trimer to speak. 
"My people," he began with his arms outstretched 
in benediction. "You have spoken, and 
the Lord God has made his will known to us. We 
will gather at dawn here—" 

The gang bosses had been whispering to one 
another. The man in black tugged the Bishop's 
arm firmly enough to bring a burly priest—Father 
Laughlin?—from his seat. Before he could intervene, 
the red-garbed leader spoke to Trimer with 
forceful gestures of his hand. 

The Bishop nodded. Desoix couldn't see his 
face, but he could imagine the look of bland agreement 
wiped thinly over fury at being interrupted 
and dictated to by thugs. 

"My people," he continued with unctuous 
warmth, "we will meet at dawn in the plaza, where 
all the city can see me anoint our rightful president 
in the name of God who rules us. Then we 
will carry President Chastain with us to the Palace 
to claim his seat—and God will strengthen our 
arms to smite anyone so steeped in sin that they 
would deny his will. At dawn!" 

The cheering went on and on. Even in the 
gallery, where the floor and the pillars of colored 
marble provided a screen from the worst of the 
noise, it was some minutes before Kekkonan could 
shout into Desoix's ear, "What's that mean for us, 
sir?" 

"It means," the UDB officer shouted back, "that 
we've got a couple hours to load what we can and 
get the hell out ofBamberg City." 

He paused a moment, then added, "It means 
we've had a good deal more luck the past half 
hour than we had any right to expect." 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

"We got 'em in sight," said Scratchard's voice 
through Tyi's commo helmet. The sergeant major 
was on the roof with the ten best marksmen in the 
unit. "Everybody together, no signs they're being 
followed." 

Tyi started to acknowledge, but before he could 
Scratchard concluded, "Plenty units out tonight 
besides them, but nobody seems too interested in 
them nor us. Over." 

"Over and out," Tyi said, letting his voice stand 
for his identification. 

He locked eyes with the sullen Guards officer 
across the doorway from him, Captain Sanchez, 
and said, "Open it up, sir. I got a team coming 
in." 

There were two dozen soldiers in the rotunda: 

the ordinary complement of Executive Guards and 
the squad Tyi had brought with him when Desoix 
blipped that they were clear again and heading in. 

Earlier that night, the UDB officer had talked 
Tyi and his men through the doors that might 
have been barred to them. Tyi wasn't at all sure 
his diplomacy was good enough for him to return 
the favor diplomatically. 

But he didn't doubt the locals would accept any 
suggestion he chose to make with a squad of Slam


mers at his back. 

Sanchez didn't respond, but the man at the 
shutter controls punched the right buttons instantly. 
Warm air, laced with smoke more pungent than 
that of the omnipresent cigars, puffed into the 

circular hall. 

Tyi stepped into the night. 

The height and width of the House of Grace 
was marked by a cross of bluish light, a polarized 


surface discharge from the vitril glazing. It was 
impressive despite being marred by several shattered 
panels. 

And it was the only light in the city beyond 
handcarried lanterns and the sickly pink-orangered 
of spreading fires. Street lights that hadn't 
been cut when transformers shorted were tempting 
targets for gunmen. 

So were lighted windows, now that the meeting 
in the cathedral had broken up and the gangs 
were out in force again. 

Tyi clicked his faceshield down in the lighted 
courtyard and watched the seven soldiers jogging 
toward him with the greenish tinge of enhanced 

ambient light. 

"All present 'n accounted for, sir," muttered 
Kekkonan when he reached Tyi, reporting because 
he was the senior Slammer in the unit. 
"Sergeant major's got a squad on the roof," Tyi 
explained. "Make sure your own gear's ready to 
move, then relieve Jack. All right?" 

"Yes sir," said Kekkonan and ducked off after 
his men. The emotion in his agreement was the 
only hint the non-corn gave of just how tight things 
had been an hour before. 

"Lachere, make sure Control's core pack's ready 
to jerk out," Desoix said. "We've got one jeep, so 
don't expect to leave with more than you can carry 
walking." 

The clerk's boots skidded on the rotunda's stone 
flooring as he scampered to obey. 

Desoix put his arm around Tyi's shoulders as 
they followed their subordinates through armored 
doors which the guard immediately began to close 
behind them. Tyi was glad of the contact. He felt 
like a rat in a maze in this warren of corridors and 
blocked exits. 

"I appreciate your help," Desoix said. "It might 
have worked. And without those very good people 


you lent me, it would—" 


He paused. "It wouldn't have been survivable. 
And I'd have probably made the attempt anyway, 
because I didn't understand what it was like out 
there until we started back." 


"I guess ..." Tyi said. "I guess we better 
report to, to the President before we go. Unless 
he was tapping the push. I guess we owe him 
that, for the contract." 


They stepped together into the small elevator. 
It was no longer separately guarded. The Executive 
Guardsmen watched them without expression. 


A few of the Slammers stationed in the rotunda 
threw ironic salutes. They were in a brighter mood 
than they'd been a few minutes before. They knew 
from their fellows who'd just come in that the 
whole unit would be bugging out shortly. 


"You're short of transport too?" Tyi asked, trying 
to keep the concern out of his voice as he watched 


Desoix sidelong. 


"I can give my seat to your sergeant major, if 
that's what you mean," Desoix replied. "I've hiked 
before. But yes, this was the base unit they robbed 
to outfit all the batteries on Two that had to be 


mobile." 


That was exactly what Tyi had meant. 
The elevator stopped. In the moment before 
the door opened, Desoix added, "There's vehicles 
parked in the garage under the Palace here. If 
we're providing protection, there shouldn't be a 
problem arranging rides." 


If it's safe to call attention to yourself with a 
vehicle, Tyi thought, remembering the fire trucks. 
Luxury cars with the presidential seal would be 


even better targets. 


Tyi expected Anne McGill to be at the open 
door connecting the Consistory Room with the 



presidential suite, where she could be in sight of 
her mistress and still able to hear the elevator 
arrive. She was closer than that, arm's length of 
the elevator—and so was Eunice Delcorio. 

The President was across the room, in silhouette 
against the faint flow which was all that remained 
of the City Offices toward which he was 
staring. His nephew stood beside him, but there 
was no one else—not even a servant—in the darkened 
room. 

"Charles?" Anne said. Her big body trembled 
like a spring, but she did not reach to clasp her 

lover now, in front of Eunice. 
Tyi let Desoix handle the next part. They hadn't 
discussed it, but the UDB officer knew more about 
things like this . . . politics and the emotions that 
accompany politics. 

Desoix stepped forward and bowed to Eunice 
Delcorio, expertly sweeping back the civilian cape 
he still wore over his gun and armor. "Madam," 
he said. "Sir—" John Delcorio had turned to watch 
them, though he remained where he was. "I very 
much regret that it's time for you to withdraw 
from the city." 

The President slammed the bottom of his fist 
against the marble pillar beside him. Anne was 
nodding hopeful agreement; her mistress was still, 
though not calm. 

"There's still time to get out," Desoix continued. 

Tyi marveled at Desoix's control. He wanted to 
get out, wanted it so badly that he had to consciously 
restrain himself from jumping into the 
elevator and ordering the unit to form on him in 
the courtyard. 

"But barely enough time. The—they are going 
to anoint Thorn Chastain President at dawn in the 
plaza, and then they'll come here. Even if they 
haven't gotten heavy weapons from one of the 
military arsenals, there's no possible way that the 
Palace can be defended." 


"I knew the swine were betraying me," Delcorio 
shouted. "I should never have let them live, never!" 

"We can cover the way out if you move fast 
enough," Tyi said aloud. "Ten minutes, maybe." 

What he'd seen in the Consistory Room and 
heard from Desoix's terse report on the way back 
to the Palace convinced him that Delcorio, not 
Thorn Chastain, was responsible for the present 
situation. But why didn't matter any more. 

"All right," the President said calmly. "I've already 
packed the seal and robes of state. I had to 
do it myself because they'd all run, even Heinrich. 
..." 

"No," said Eunice Delcorio. "No!" 

"Eunice," begged Anne McGill. 

"Ma'am," said Tyi Koopman desperately. "There's 

no way." 

He was unwilling to see people throw themselves 
away. You learn that when you fight for 
hire. There's always another contract, if you're 
around to take it up. . . . 

"I've been mistress of this city, of this planet," 
the President's wife said in a voice that hummed 
like a cable being tightened. "If they think to 
change that, well, they can burn me in the Palace 

first." 

She turned to stare, either at her husband or at 
the smoldering night beyond him. "It'll be a fitting 
monument, I think," she said. 

"And I'll set the fires myself-—" whirling, her 
eyes lashed both the mercenary officers "—if no 
one's man enough to help me defend it." 

Anne McGill fell to her knees, praying or crying. 

"Madam," said Major Borodin, entering from 
the hall unannounced because there was no greeter 


in the building to announce him. 

The battery commander looked neither nervous 
nor frustrated. There was an aura of vague distaste 
about him, the way his sort of officer always looked 
when required to speak to a group of people. 

This was a set speech, not a contribution to the 

discussion. 

"I urge you," Borodin went on, reeling the 
words off a sheaf of mental notes, "to use common 
sense in making personal decisions. So far as public 
decisions go, I must inform you that I am 

withdrawing my battery from the area affected by 
the present unrest, under orders of my commander 
—and with the concurrence of our legal staff." 

"I said—" John Delcorio began, ready to blaze 
up harmlessly at having his nose rubbed in a 
reality of which he was already aware. 

"No, of course we can defeat them!" said Eunice, 
pirouetting to Borodin's side with a girlish 
sprightliness that surprised everyone else in the 
room as much as it did the major. 

"No, no," the President's wife continued brightly, 
one hand on Borodin's elbow while the other hand 
gestured to her audience. "It's really quite possible, 
don't you see? There's many of them and only 
a few of us—but if they're in the plaza, well, we 
just hold the entrances." 

She stroked Borodin's arm and waved, palm up, 
to Tyi and Desoix. Her smile seemed to double 
the width of her face. "You brave lads can do that, 
can't you? Just the three stairs, and you'll have the 
Executive Guard to help you. The Bishop won't 
make any trouble about coming to the Palace alone 
to discuss matters if the choice is. ..." 

Eunice paused delicately. This wasn't the woman 
who moments before had been ready—had been 
ready—to burn herself alive with the Palace. "And 
this way, all the trouble ends and no one more 
gets hurt, all the rioting and troubles. ..." 


"No," said Major Borodin. His eyes were bulging 
and he didn't appear to be seeing any of his 
present surroundings. His mental notes had been 
hopelessly disarrayed by this— 

"Yes, yes, of course!" President Delcorio said, 
rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "We'll 
see how much Trimer blusters when he's asked to 
come and there's a gun at his head to see that he 
does!" 

Tyi had pointed enough guns to know that they 
weren't the kind of magic wand Delcorio seemed 
to be expecting. He looked at Desoix, certain of 
agreement and hopeful that the UDB officer would 
be able to express the plan's absurdity in a more 
tactful fashion than Tyi could. 

Desoix had lifted Anne McGill to her feet. His 
hand was on the woman's waist, but she wasn't 
paying any conscious attention to him. Instead, 
her eyes were on Eunice Delcorio. 

"No," muttered Borodin. "No, no! We've got to 
withdraw at once." 

Maybe it was the rote dismissal by the battery 
commander that made Tyi really start thinking. 
Colonel Hammer wanted Delcorio kept in power 
for another week—and no deal Trimer cut with 
the present government was likely to last longer 
than that, but a week . . . ? 

Two hundred men and a pair of calliopes—blazes, 
maybe it would work! 

"Of course," Tyi said aloud, "Marshal Dowell's 
on the other side, sure as can be, so the Guard 
downstairs . . . ?" 

"Dowell isn't the Executive Guard," said the 
President dismissively. "He's nothing but a jumped-
up shopkeeper. I was a fool to think he'd be loyal 
because he owed everything to me." 

Like City Prefect Berne, Tyi thought. He kept 
his mouth shut. 


"But the Guard, they're the best people in the 
State," Delcorio continued with enthusiasm. "They 
won't give in to trash and gutter-sweepings now 
that we've found a way to deal with them." 

"Lieutenant," said the battery commander, "I'll 
oversee the loading. Give the withdrawal orders 
as soon as you've determined the safest routes." 

He pivoted on his left heel, rotating his elbow 
from Eunice's seductive touch. He stamped out of 
the room. 

"Yes sir," Desoix said crisply, but he made no 
immediate motion to follow his superior. 

"Well," said Tyi, feeling the relief that returned 
with resignation—it'd been a crazy notion, but 

just for a minute he'd thought. . . . "Well, I better 
tell—" 

"Wait!" Anne McGill said. She stepped toward 
her mistress, but she was no longer ignoring Charles 
Desoix. Halfway between the two she spun toward 
her lover and set a jewel-ringed hand at the 
scooped collar of the dress she wore beneath her 
cloak. She pulled fiercely. 

The hem of lustrous synthetic held. White and 

red creases sprang out where the straps crossed 
her shoulders. 

"Anne?" the President's wife called from behind 
her companion. 

Anne wailed, "Mary, Queen of Heaven!" and 
tugged again, pulling the left strap down to her 
elbow instead of trying again to tear the fabric. 
Her breast, firm but far too heavy not to sag, 
flopped over the bodice which had restrained it. 

"Is this what you want to give to them?" she 
cried. Her eyes were blind, even before she shut 
them in a vain attempt to hold back the tears. 
"Give the, the mob? I won't go! I won't leave 
Eunice even if you are all cowards!" 


"Anne," Desoix pleaded. "President Delcorio— 
the front row in the cathedral was the best people 
in the State. Some of them were here with you 
this morning. Colonel Drescher isn't going to—" 
"How do you know until you ask him?" Eunice 
demanded in a voice like a rapier. Her arm was 
around Anne McCill now, drawing the dark cloak 
over the naked breast. Tyi couldn't say whether 
the gesture was motherly or simply proprietary. 

This hasn't got anything t' do with ... his 
surface mind started to tell him; but deeper down, 
he knew it did. Like as not it always did, one way 
or another; who was screwing who and how everybody 
felt about it. 

"All right!" Desoix shouted. "We'll go ask him!" 
"I'll go myself," said President Delcorio, sucking 
in his belly and adding a centimeter to his 
height by straightening up. 

'That's not safe. Uncle John," said Pedro Delcorio 
unexpectedly. "I'll go with the men." 

"Well ..." Tyi said as the President's nephew 
gestured him toward the elevator. Desoix, his face 
set in furious determination, was already inside. 
It was going to be cramped with three of them. 
"Via, why not?" Tyi said. It was easier to go 
along than to refuse to, right now. Nothing would 
come of it. He'd seen too many parade-ground 
units to expect this one to find guts all of a sudden. 

But if just maybe it did work. . . . Via, nobody 
liked to run with their tail between their legs, did 
they? 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 


Koopman's idiotic grin was just one more irritation 
to Charles Desoix as the elevator dropped. 


"Bit of a chance you're taking, isn't it?" the 
Slammers officer asked. "Going against your major's 
orders and all?" 


Desoix felt himself become calm and was glad of 
it. None of this made any sense. If Tyi decided to 
laugh—well, that was a saner response than Desoix's 


own. 


"Only if something comes of it," he said, wishing 
that he didn't sound so tired. Wrung out. 


He was wrung out. "And if I'm alive afterward, 
of course." 


Pedro's eyes were darting between the mercenaries. 
His bulky body—soft but not flabby—would 
have given him presence under some circumstances. 
In these tight quarters he was overwhelmed 
by the men in armor—and by the way they considered 
the future in the light of similar past. 


The car settled so gently that only the door 
opening announced the rotunda. Desoix swung 
out to the left side, noticing that identical reflex 
had moved Koopman to the right—as if they were 
about to clear a defended position. 


Half a dozen powerguns were leveled at the 
opening door, though the Slammers here on guard 
jerked their muzzles away when they saw who had 


arrived. 
The rotunda was empty except for Hammer's 


men. 


"Where's the guards?" Koopman demanded in 


amazement. 


One of his men shrugged. "A few minutes back, 
they all moved out." 



He pointed down the corridor that led toward 
the Guard billets. "I called the sar'ent major, but 
he said hold what we got, he and the rest a' the 
company'd be with us any time now." 

"Let's go, then!" said Pedro Delcorio, trotting 
in the direction of the gesture. 

Desoix followed, because that was what he'd set 
out to do. He hunched himself to settle his armor 
again. When he felt cold, as now, he seemed to 
shrink within the ceramic shell. 

"Carry on," Koopman said to his guard squad. 
As the Slammers officer strode along behind the 
other two men, Desoix heard him speaking into 
his commo helmet in a low voice. 

The barracks of the Executive Guard occupied 
the back corridor of the Palace's south wing. It 
had its own double gate of scissor-hinged brass 
bars over a panel of imported hardwood, both 
portions polished daily by servants. 

The bars were open, the panel—steel-cored, 
Desoix now noticed—ajar. Captain Sanchez and 
the squad he'd commanded in the rotunda stood 
in the opening, arguing with other Guardsmen in 
the corridor beyond. When they heard the sound 
of boots approaching, they whirled. Several of 
them aimed their rifles. 

Charles Desoix froze, raising his hands and moving 
them out from his sides. He had been close to 
death a number of times already this night. 

But never closer than now. 

"What do you men think you're doing?" Pedro 
demanded in a voice tremulous with rage. "Don't 
you recognize me? I'm—" 

"No\" Sanchez snapped to the man at his side. 
The leveled assault rifle wavered but did not 
fire—as both Desoix and the Guards captain had 
expected. 

"Wha . . . ?" Delcorio said in bewilderment. 


"Rene, it's me," Desoix called in an easy voice. 
He sidled a step so that Sanchez could see him 
clearly past the President's nephew. Walking 
forward was possible suicide. "Charles, you know? 
We came to discuss the present situation with 
Colonel Drescher." 


The words rolled off Desoix's tongue, amazing 
him with their blandness and fluency. Whatever 
else that scene upstairs with Anne had done, it 
had burned the capacity to be shocked out of him 
for a time. 


Drescher stepped forward when his name was 
spoken. He had been the other half of the argument 
in the gateway. The lower ranking Guardsmen 
grounded their weapons as if embarrassed to be 
touching real hardware in the presence of their 
commander. 
"Master Desoix," said Drescher, "we're very 
busy just now. I have nothing to discuss with you 
or any of John Delcorio's by-blows." 


"What?" Pedro Delcorio shouted, able this time 
to get the full syllable out in his rage. 


Koopman put a hand, his left hand, on the 
young civilian's shoulder and shifted him back a 
step without being too obvious about the force 


required. 


Desoix walked forward, turning his spread arms 
into gestures as he said, "Sir, it's become possible 
to quell the rioting without further bloodshed or 
the need for additional troops. We'd like to discuss 
the matter with you for a moment." 


As if Drescher's deliberate ignorance of his military 
rank didn't bother him, Desoix added with an 
ingratiating smile, "It will make you the hero of 
the day, sir. Of the century." 


"And who's that?" Drescher said, waving his 
swagger stick in the direction of the Slammers 
officer. "Your trained dog, Desoix?" 


Recent events had shocked the Guard Commandant 
into denial so deep that he was being 



more insulting than usual—to prove that civilization 
and the rule of law still maintained in his 
presence. Charles Desoix knew that, but Tyi 
Koopman with a submachinegun under his arm— 

"No sir," said the Slammers officer. "I'm Captain 
Koopman of Hammer's Regiment. My unit's 
part of the defense team." 

"Sir," Desoix said in the pause that followed 
Koopman's response and sudden awareness of what 
the mercenary's response could have been. "The 
mob will have gathered in the plaza by dawn. By 
sealing the three exits, we can bring their, ah, 
leaders, to a reasonable accommodation with the 
government." 

"The government of the State," said Drescher 
icily, cutting through Desoix's planned next phrase, 
"is what God and the people choose it to be. The 
Executive Guard would not presume to interfere 
with that choice." 

"Colonel," Desoix said. He could feel his eyes 
widening, but he didn't see the Guardsmen in 
front of him. In his mind, a dozen men were 
raping Anne McGill while shrill-voiced women 
urged them on. "If they attack the Palace, there'll 
be a bloodbath." 

"Then it's necessary to evacuate the Palace, isn't 
it?" Drescher replied. "Now, if you gentle—" 

"Don't you boys take oaths?" Koopman asked 
curiously. There wasn't any apparent emotion in 
his tone. "Don't they matter to you?" 

Colonel Drescher went white. "You foreign mercenaries 
have a vision of Bamberg politics," he 
said, "that a native can only describe as bizarre." 
His voice sounded as though he would have been 
screaming if his lungs held enough air. 

"Now get away from here!" 

Charles Desoix bowed low. "Gentlemen," he 
murmured to his companions as he turned. "We 
have no further business here." 


They didn't look behind them as they marched 
to where the corridor jogged and the wall gave 
them cover against a burst of shots into their 
backs. Pedro Delcorio was shaking. 

So was Koopman, but it showed itself as a lilt in 
his voice as he said, "Well, they're frightened. 
Can't blame 'em, can we, Charles? And they'd not 
have been much use, just stand there and nobody 
who'd seen 'em in their prettiness was going to be 
much scared, eh?" 

Adrenalin was babbling through the lips of the 
Slammers officer. His right hand was working in 
front of him where the Guardsmen couldn't see it, 
clenching and unclenching, because if it didn't 
move, it was going to find its home on the grip of 
his submachinegun. . . . 

Anne was waiting around the corner. She looked 
at the faces of the three men and closed her eyes. 

"Anne, we can't—" Desoix began. He was sure 
there had to be something he could say that would 
keep her from the suicide she'd threatened, at the 
hands of the mob or more abruptly here with a 
rope or the gun he knew she kept in her bedroom. 

"Sure we can," said Tyi Koopman. His voice 
had no emotion, and his eyes had an eerie, 
thousand-meter stare. 

"You've got a calliope aimed at both side-stairs, 
sure, they won't buck that, one burst and that's 
over. And me and the boys, sure, we'll take the 
main stairs, those lock gates, they're like vaults, 
no problem." 

"Then it's all right?" Anne said in amazement. 
Her beautiful face was lighting as if she were 
watching a theophany. "You can still save us, 
Charles?" 

She touched her fingertips to his chest, assuring 
herself of her lover's continuing humanity. 

"I—" said Charles Desoix. He looked at the 
Slammers officer, then back into the eyes of Anne 
McGill. 


They'd have to do something about Major 
Borodin—literally put the old man under restraint. 
Maybe Delcorio still had a few servants around 
who could handle that. 
"I—" Desoix repeated. 


Then he squared his shoulders and said, "Certainly, 
darling, Tyi and I can handle it without the 
help of those fools." 


It amazed the UDB officer to realize how easily 
he had decided to ruin his life. The saving grace 
was the fact that there wouldn't be many hours of 
life remaining to him after this decision. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 


Tyi watched the antenna of his laser communicator 
quest on the porch outside the Consistory 
Room, making a keening sound as it searched for 
its satellite. The link was still thirty seconds short 
of completion when his commo helmet said, "Four-
six to Six, over." 


Tyi jumped, ringing the muzzle of his submachine-
gun against the rail as he spun. 


"Go ahead. Four-six," he said to Sergeant Major 
Scratchard when he realized that the call was 
on the unit push, not the laser link he'd been 
setting up. He was a hair late in his response, but 
nobody else knew the unexpected call had scared 
him like that. 


"Sir," said Scratchard, "the Palace troops, they're 
all marching out one a' the side doors right now. 
Over." 
Good riddance, Tyi thought. "Let 'em go. Jack," 
he said. "Over and out." 


•;Six?" 
"Go ahead, Four-six." 
"Sir, should we secure the doors after them? 
Over." 

"Negative, Four-six," Tyi snapped. "Ignore this 

bloody building and carry out your orders! Six 

out." 

It hadn't been that silly a question. Jack was 
nervous because he didn't know much, because 
Tyi hadn't told him very much. The non-corn was 
trying to cross all possible tees because he couldn't 
guess which ones would turn out to be of critical 

importance. 

Neither could his captain. Which was the real 
reason Tyi had jumped down the sergeant major's 

throat. 


A dim red light pulsed on the antenna's tracking 
head, indicating that the unit had locked on. Tyi 
switched modes on his helmet, grimaced, and said, 
"Koopman to Central, over." 

Seconds of flickering static, aural and visual, 
took his mind off the cross dominating the skyline 
toward which the laser pointed. It was only an 
hour before dawn. The streets were alive with 
bands of men and women, ant-small at this distance 
and moving like foraging ants toward the 

plaza. 

"Hold one," said the helmet. The screen surged 
into momentary crystal sharpness. Colonel Hammer 
glared from it. 

He looked very tired. All but his eyes. 
"Go ahead. Captain," Hammer said, and the 
static fuzzing his voice blurred his image a mo


ment later as well, as though a bead curtain had 
been drawn between Tyi and his commander. 

Tyi found that a lot more comfortable. Funny 
the things you worry about instead of the really 
worrisome things. . . . 

"Sir," he said, knowing that his voice sounded 
dull—it had to, he couldn't let emotion get out 
during this report because he hadn't any idea of 
what emotion he'd find himself displaying. "I've 
alerted my men for an operation at dawn to bottle 
up the rioters and demand the surrender of their 
leaders. We'll be operating in concert with elements 
of the UDB." 

There was no need to say "over," since the speakers 
could see one another—albeit with a lag of a 
few seconds. Tyi keyed the thumb-sized unit on 
his sending head, a module loaded with the street 
plan, routes, and make-up of the units taking part 
in the operation. The pre-load burped out like an 
angry katydid. 

Hammer's eyes, never at rest, paused briefly on 
a point to the left of the pick-up feeding Tyi's 
screen. A separate holotank was displaying the 


schematic, while Tyi's face continued to fill the 
main unit. 

Hammer's face wore no expression as it clicked 
to meet Tyi's eyes again. "What are the numbers 
on the other side?" he asked emotionlessly. 

"Sir, upwards of twenty kay. Maybe fifty, the 
plaza'd hold that much and more." 

Tyi paused. "Sir," he added, "we can't fight 
'em, we know that. But maybe we can face them 
down, the leaders." 

People were moving in the courtyard beneath 
him, four cloaked figures slipping out of the Palace 
on their missions. Desoix and his two clerks to the 
warehouse and the calliope they'd set up only 

hours before. And. . . 

"How are you timing your assault?" the Colonel 
asked calmly. "If the ringleaders aren't 
present, you've gained nothing. And if you wait 

too long. . . ?" 

"Sir, one of the women from the Palace," Tyi 
explained. "She's, ah, getting in position right 
now in the south gallery of the cathedral. There's 
a view to the altar on the seafront, that's where 
the big ones '11 be. She'll cue us when she spots 
the ones we need." 

He thought he was done speaking, but his tongue 
went on unexpectedly, "Sir, we thought of using a 
man, but a woman going to pray now—it's not 
going to upset anything. She'll be all right." 

The Colonel frowned as if trying to understand 
why a line captain was apologizing for using a 
female look-out. It didn't make a lot of sense to 
Tyi either, after he heard his own words—but 
he'd been away for a long time. 

And anyway, the only similarity between Anne 
McGill and the dozen females in Tyi's present 
command was that their plumbing was the same. 


"What happens if they don't back down?" Hammer 
said in a voice like a whetstone, apparently 
smooth but certain to wear away whatever it rubs 
against, given time and will. 

"We bug out," Tyi answered frankly. "The mall 
at the main stairs, that's where we'll be, it's got 
gates like bank vaults on all four sides. Things 
don't work out, Trimer ducks instead of putting 
his hands up and his buddies start shooting—well, 
we slam the plaza-side doors and we're gone." 

"And your supports?" Hammer asked. His mouth 

wavered in what might have been either static or 
an incipient grin. 

"Desoix's men, they're mounted," Tyi said. It 
was an open question whether or not you could 
really load a double crew on a calliope and drive 
away with it, but that was one for the UDB to 
answer. "Worst case, there's going to be too much 
confusion for organized pursuit. Unless. . ." 

"Unless the streets are already blocked behind 
you," said Colonel Hammer, who must have begun 
speaking before Tyi's voice trailed off on the 
same awareness. "Unless there's a large enough 
group of rioters between your unit and safety to 
hold you for their fifty thousand friends to arrive." 

"Yes sir," said Tyi. 

He swallowed. "Sir," he said, "I can't promise 
it'll work. If it does, it'll give you the time you 
wanted for things to hot up over there. But I can't 
promise." 

"Son," said Colonel Hammer. He was grinning 
like a skull. "When you start making promises on 
chances like this, I'll remove you from command 
so fast your ears '11 ring." 

His face straightened into neutral lines again. 
"For the record," Hammer said, "you're operating 
without orders. Not in violation of orders, just on 
your own initiative." 

"Yes sir," Tyi said. 


Hammer hadn't paused for agreement. He was 
saying, "I expect you to withdraw as soon as you 
determine that there is no longer a realistic chance 
of success. Nobody's being paid to be heroes, 
and—" 

He leaned closer to the pick-up. His face was 
grim and his eyes glared like gun muzzles. "Captain, 
if you throw my men away because you want 
to be a hero, I'll shoot you with my own hand. If 

you survive." 

"Yes sir," Tyi said through a swallow. This time 
his commander had waited for an acknowledgment. 

Hammer softened. "Then good luck to you, son," 
he said. "Oh—and son?" 

"Yes sir?" 

The Colonel grinned with the same death'shead 
humor as before. "Bishop Trimer decided 
Hammer's Slammers weren't worth their price," 
Hammer said. "It wouldn't bother me if by the 
end of today, his Eminence had decided he was 
wrong on that." 

Hammer touched a hidden switch and static 
flooded the screen. 

"Four-six to Six," came Scratchard's voice, delayed 
until the laser link was broken. "We're ready, 

sir. Over." 

"Four-six," Tyi said as he shrugged his armor 
loose over his sweating torso. "I'm on my way." 

He left the laser communicator set up where it 
was. He'd need it again after the operation was 

over. 

In the event that he survived. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 

"—gathered together at the dawn of a new age 
for our nation, our planet, and our God," said the 
voice. 

Bishop Trimer's words had a touch of excitement 
remaining to them, despite being attenuated 
through multiple steps before they got to Tyi's 
helmet. Anne McGill aimed a directional microphone 
from the cathedral to the seafront altar, 
below her and over a kilometer away. 

Trimer's speech was patched through the commo 
gear hidden between the woman's breasts, then 
shuttled by the UDB artificial intelligence over 
the inter-unit frequency to Tyi Koopman. 

"We could shoot the bastard easy as listen to 
him," Scratchard said as he held out a shoulder 
weapon to his captain. 

Only the two of them among the ninety-eight 
troopers in the rotunda had helmets that would 
receive the transmission. The other Slammers 
watched in silence as varied as their individual 
personalities: frightened; feral; cautious; and not a 
few with anticipation that drew back their lips in 
memory of past events. . . . 

"Might break the back of the rebellion," Tyi 
said. 

He had to will his eyes to focus on Scratchard's 
face, on anything as near as the walls of the big 
room. "Sure as blood that lot—" he touched his 
helmet over the tiny speaker "—they'd burn the 
city down to bricks 'n bare concrete. Might as well 
nuke 'em as that." 

His voice didn't sound, even to him, as if he 
much cared. He wasn't sure he did care. He wasn't 
really involved with things that could be or might 
be ... or even were. 

"With dawn comes the light," the Bishop was 
saying. "With this dawn, the Lord brings us also 
the new light of freedom in the person of the man 
he has commanded me to anoint President of 


Bamberia." 

"Jack, I don't need that," Tyi said peevishly. 
Sight of the 2 cm weapon being pushed toward 
him had brought him back to reality; irritation had 
succeeded where abstracts like survival and success 
could not. "I got a gun, remember?" 

He slapped the receiver of the submachinegun 
under his arm, then noticed that the whole company 
was carrying double as well as being festooned 
with bandoliers and strings of grenades. 

"UDB's weapons stores were here in the Palace," 
the sergeant major explained patiently. "Their 
el-tee, he told us go ahead. Sir, we don't got far t' 
go. And I swear, they all jam." 

Scratchard grinned sadly. He lifted his right 
boot to display the hilt of his fighting knife, though 
with his hands full he couldn't touch it for emphasis. 
"Even these, the blade can break. When you 
really don't want t' see that." 

"Sorry," said Tyi, glad beyond words to be 
back in the present with sweaty palms and an itch 
between his shoulder blades that he couldn't have 
scratched even if it weren't covered by his clamshell 
armor. 

"Blazes," he added as he checked the load—full 
magazine, chamber empty. "Here's my treatment 
a' choice anyhow. I'll take punch over pecka-peckapecka 
any day." 

He looked up and glared around the circle of 
his troops as if seeing them for the first time. 
Pretty nearly he was. Good men, good soldiers; 

and just the team to pull the plug on Trimer and 
the bully-boys who thought they owned the streets 
when the Slammers were in town. 

"Thomas Chastain has mounted the dais," said 
Anne McGill. She sounded calm, but the distance 
in her voice was more than an electronic artifact. 
"Both Chastain brothers. The faction heads are 
present, and so are several churchmen, standing 
beneath the crucifix." 


Tyi keyed the command channel while ducking 
through the bandolier of 2 cm magazines the sergeant 
major held for him. 

"Orange to Blue Six," he said, using the code 
he and the UDB officer had set up in a few 
seconds when they realized that they'd need it. 
"Report." 

"Blue Six ready," said Desoix's voice. 

"Orange to Blue Three. Report." 

"Blue Three ready," said a voice Tyi didn't recognize, 
the non-corn in charge of the Gun Three 
near the east entrance to the plaza. 

"Orange Six to Blue," Tyi said. "We're moving 

into position . . . now." 

He cut down with his right index finger. Before 
the gesture ended. Sergeant Kekkonan was leading 
the first squad into the incipient dawn over 
Bamberg City. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 

"I figured they'd a' burned it down, the way 
they was going last night," said Lachere, blinking 
around the warehouse from the driver's seat. 

"Tonight," he said, correcting himself in mild 
wonder. 

"Senter, what's the street look like?" Desoix 
asked from the gun saddle. Beneath him the calliope 
quivered like a sleeping hound, its being at 
placid idle—but ready to rend and bellow the instant 
it was aroused. 

Desoix couldn't blame his subordinate for thinking 
more than a few hours had passed since they 
first entered this warehouse. It seemed like a 
lifetime— 

And that wasn't a thought Lieutenant Charles 
Desoix wanted to pursue, even in the privacy of 
his own mind. 

"I don't see anybody out, sir," the other clerk 
called from the half-open pedestrian door. "Maybe 
lookin' out a window, I can't tell. But none a' the 
big mobs like when we got here." 

Re-entering the warehouse without being caught 
up—or cut down—by the bands of bravos heading 
toward the plaza had been the trickiest part of the 
operation so far. Stealth was the only option open 
to Desoix and his two companions. Even if Koopman 
had been willing—been able, it didn't matter 
—to spare a squad in support, a firefight would 
still mean sure disaster for the plan as well as for 
the unit. 

"All right, Senter," Desoix said. "Open the main 
doors and climb aboard." 

Lachere was bringing the fans up to driving 
velocity without orders. He wasn't a great driver, 
but he'd handled air cushion vehicles before and 
could maneuver the calliope well enough for present 
needs. 

The suction roar boomed in the cavernous room 


while Senter struggled with the unfamiliar door 
mechanism. The warehouse staff—manager, loaders, 
and guards—had disappeared at the first sign 
of trouble, leaving nothing behind but crated goods 
and the heavy effluvium of tobacco to be stirred 
into a frenzy by the calliopes drive fans. 

The door rumbled upward; Senter scampered 
toward the gun vehicle. Desoix smiled. He'd been 
ready to clear their way with his eight 3 cm guns if 
necessary. 

He had ordered control to lock the general frequency 
out of his headset. Captain Koopman was 
in charge of this operation, so Desoix didn't have 
to listen to the running commentary about what 
the mob in the plaza was doing. 

If he listened on that frequency, he would hear 

Anne; and he would have to remember where she 
was and how certainly she would die if he failed. 

"Ready, sir?" Lachere demanded, shouting as 
though his voice weren't being transmitted over 
the intercom channel. 

Desoix raised a hand in bar. "Blue Six to all 
Blue and Orange units," he said. "We're moving 
into position—now." 

He chopped his hand. 

Lachere accelerated them into the street with a 
clear view of the plaza's south stairhead, two blocks 
away. 

Metal shrieked as Lachere side-swiped the doorjamb, 
but none of the calliope's scratch crew noticed 
the sound. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 


"I'm with you!" said Pedro Delcorio, gripping 
Tyi's shoulder from behind. 


He was almost with the angels, because TyI 
spun and punched the young noble in the belly 
with the weapon he'd just charged, his finger 
taking up slack. 


"Careful, sonny," the Slammers officer said as 
intellect twitched away the gun that reflex had 
pointed. 


TyI felt light, as though his body were suspended 
on wires that someone else was holding. 
His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat that 
had nothing to do with the night's mild breezes. 


Pedro wore a uniform—a service uniform, probably; 
though the clinking, glittering medals on 
both sides of the chest indicated that the kid still 
had something to learn about combat conditions. 
He also wore a determined expression and a pistol 
in a polished holster. 
"You're doing this for my family," Pedro said. 
"One of us should be with you." 


"That why we're doing it?" Tyi asked, marveling 
at the lilt in his own voice. Tyi wasn't sure the 
kid knew how close he'd come to dying a moment 
before. "Well, it'll do unless a better reason comes 
along. Stick close, boy, and leave that—" he nodded 
toward the gun "—in its holster." 


He had a squad on the levee and a squad deployed 
to cover the boulevard and medians separating 
the Palace from the cathedral. The rest of 
the Slammers were moving at a nervous shuffle 
down the river drive—bunched more than he liked, 
than anybody'd like, but they were going to need 
all the firepower available to clear the mall in a 
hurry. Those hydraulic gates were the key to the 
operation: the key to bare safety, much less success. 


No one seemed to be out, but Tyi could hear 
occasional shouts in the distance as well as the 
antiphonal roars from the plaza—though the latter 
were directed upward, into the sulphurous dawn, 



by the flood walls. Litter of all sorts splotched the 
pavement, waste and shattered valuables as well 
as a few bodies. 

One of the crumpled bodies jumped up ahead 
of them. The drunk tottered backward when his 
foot slipped on the bottle which had put him there 

in the first place. 

Tyi's point man fired a ten-shot burst—far too 
long—at the drunk. The bolts splashed all around 
the target, cyan flashes and the white blaze of 
lime burned out of the concrete. None of the 
rounds hit the intended victim. 

A sergeant jumped to the shooter's side and 
slapped him hard on the helmet. "Cop-head!" he 
snarled. "Cop-head! Get your ass behind me. And 
if you shoot again without orders, you better have 
the muzzle in your mouth!" 

The drunk scrambled in the general direction of 
the cathedral, stumbling and rolling on the ground 
to rise and stumble again. The air bit with the 
odors of ozone and quicklime. 

The company shuffled onward with a squad leader 
in front. 

"Blue Six to all Blue and Orange units," said 
Tyi's commo helmet. Desoix sounded tight, a message 
played ten percent faster than it'd been recorded. 
"We're moving into position—now." 

The point man paused at the base of the ramp 
to the mall and the plaza's main stairs. 

"Check your loads, boys," said Sergeant Major 
Scratchard over the unit push. Jack was back with 
the three squads of the second wave, but Tyi 
didn't expect him to stay there long when the 
shooting started. 

"Sir," reported the point sergeant, using the 
command channel, "the gates are shut on this 
side." 

"Orange Six to all Blue and Orange," Tyi or



dered as he ran the ten meters to where the 
non-corn paused. "Don't bloody move. We got a 
problem." 

The gates separating the mall from the west 
river drive were as massive and invulnerable as 
those facing the plaza itself. 

They were closed, just as the point man had 
said. 

Tyi ran up the ramp, his bandoliers clashing 
against one another. The slung submachinegun 
gouged his hip beneath the flare of his armor. The 
gates were solid, solid enough to shrug away tidal 
surges with more power than a battery of artillery. 
There was no way one company without demolition 
charges or heavy weapons was going to force 
its way through. 

The small vitril windows in the gate panels were 
too scarred and dirty to show more than hinted 
movement, but there was a speaker plate in one of 
the pillars. Nothing ventured. . . . 

Tyi keyed the speaker and said, "Open these 
gates at once, in the name of Bishop Trimer!" 

The crowd in the plaza cheered deafeningly, 
shaking the earth like a distant bomb-blast. 

Shadows, colors, shifted within the closed mall. 
The plate replied in the voice of Colonel Drescher, 
"Go away, little lap-dog. The Executive Guard is 
neutral, as I told you. And this is where we choose 
to exercise our neutrality." 

The crowd thundered, working itself into bloodthirsty 
enthusiasm. 

Tyi turned his back on the reinforced concrete 
and touched his commo helmet. His troops were 
crouching, watching him. Those who wore their 
shields down had saffron bubbles for faces, painted 
by the glow which preceded the sun. 

"Orange to Blue Six," Tyi said. "We're screwed. 
The Guards 're holding the mall and they got it 
shut up. We can't get in, and if we tried we'd 


bring the whole bunch down on us. Save what you 
can, buddy. Over." 

He'd forgotten that Anne McGill had access to 
the circuit. Before Desoix could speak, her voice 
rang like shards of crystal through Tyi's helmet, 
saying, "The river level has dropped. You can go 
under the plaza on a barge and come up beneath 
the altar." 

The cross on the cathedral dome was beginning 
to blaze with sunlight. McGill's angle was on the 

seafront. She couldn't see any of the troops, Tyi's 
or the pair of calliopes, and she wouldn't have 
understood a bloody thing if she had been able to 
watch them. Bloody woman, bloody planet. . . . 

Bloody fool. Captain Tyi Koopman, to be standing 
here. Nobody he saw was moving except 
Scratchard, clumping up the ramp to his captain's 
side. If Ripper Jack were bothered by his knees or 
the doubled load of weaponry, there was no sign 
of it on his expectant face. 

"Tyi, she's right," Desoix was saying. "Most of 
the louvers are still closed, so there's no risk of 
drifting out to sea, but the maintenance catwalks 
lead straight up to the control house. The altar." 

"Roger on the river level," the sergeant major 
muttered with his lips alone. He must've spoken 
to the non-corn on the levee, using one of the 
support frequencies so as not to tie up the command 
push. 

Tyi looked up at the sky, bright and clear after a 
night that was neither. 

"Tyi, we'll give the support we can," Desoix said. 

Both officers knew exactly what the change of 
plan would mean. They weren't going to be able 
to talk to the mob when they came up into the 
plaza. Desoix was apparently willing to go along 
with the change. 

Wonder what the Colonel would say? 


Colonel Hammer wasn't here. Tyi Koopman was, 
and he was ready to go along with it too. More 
fool him. 

"Orange Six to all Orange personnel," he said 
on the unit push. "We're going to board the nearest 
barge and cut it loose so we drift to the dam at 
the other end of the plaza. ..." 


CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 

Some of the men were still scrambling aboard 
the barge, the second of the ten in line rather 
than the nearest, because it seemed less likely to 
scrape the whole distance along the concrete channel. 
Tyi didn't hear the order Jack Scratchard 
muttered into his commo helmet, but troopers 
standing by three of the four cables opened fire 
simultaneously. 

Arm-thick ropes of woven steel parted in individual 
flashes. The barge sagged outward, its stern 
thumping the fenders of the vessel to port. Only 
the starboard bow line beside Tyi and the sergeant 
major held their barge against the current 
sucking them seaward. 

The vertical lights on the walls, faintly green, 
merged as the channel drew outward toward the 
river's broad mouth and the dam closing it. They 
reflected from the water surface, now five meters 
beneath the concrete roof—though it was still wet 
enough to scatter the light back again in turn. 

"Hold one. Jack," Tyi said as he remembered 
there was another thing he needed to do before 
they slipped beneath the plaza. He keyed his 
helmet on the general inter-unit frequency and 
said, "Orange Six to all Orange personnel. I am 
ordering you to carry out an attack on the Bamberg 
citizens assembled in the plaza. Anyone who refuses 
to obey my order will be shot." 

"Via!" cried one of the nearer soldiers. "I'm not 
afraid to go, sir!" 

"Shut up, you fool!" snarled Ripper Jack. "Don't 
you understand? He's just covered your ass for 
afterwards!" 

Tyi grinned bleakly at the sergeant major. Everybody 
seemed to have boarded the vessel, clinging 
to one another and balancing on the curves of 
hogsheads. "Cut 'er loose," he said quietly. 

Scratchard's powergun blasted the remaining cable 
with a blue-green glare and a gout of white 
sparks whose trails lingered in the air as the barge 


lurched forward. 

Their stern brushed along the portside barge 
until they drifted fully clear. The grind of metal 
against the polymer fenders was unpleasant. Friction 
spun them slowly counterclockwise until they 
swung free. 

They continued to rotate for the full distance 
beneath the widening channel. One trooper vomited 
over his neighbor's backplate, though that 
was more likely nerves than the gentle, gently 
frustrating, motion. 

Light coming through the louvered flood gates 
was already brighter than the greenish artificial 
sources on either wall. It was still diffuse sky-glow 

rather than the glare of direct sun, but the timing 
was going to be very close. 

The barge grounded broadside with a crash that 
knocked down anybody who was standing. Perhaps 
because of their rotation, they'd remained 
pretty well centered in the channel. Individually 
and without waiting for orders, the troopers nearest 
the catwalk jumped to it and began to lower a 
floating stage like the one on the dam's exterior. 

"They must 've heard something," Tyi grumbled. 
The variety of metallic sounds the barge 
made echoed like a boiler works among the planes 
of water and concrete. But as soon as the barge 
had slipped its lines, Tyi had been unable to hear 
even a whisper of what he knew was a sky-shattering 
clamor from the crowded plaza. Probably those 
above were equally insulated. 

And anyway, it didn't matter now. Tyi pressed 
forward to the pontoon-mounted stage and the 
stairs of steel grating leading up to the open hatch 
of the control room. Tyi's rank took him through 
his jostling men, but it was all he could do not to 
use his elbows and gun butt to force his way 
faster. 

He had to remember that he was commanding a 
unit, not throwing his life away for no reason he 
could explain even to himself. He had to act as if 


there were military purpose to what he was about 
to do. 

Only two men could stand abreast on the 
punched-steel stair treads, and that by pressing 
hard against the rails. The control room was almost 
as tight, space for ten men being filled by a 
dozen. Tyi squeezed his way in, pausing in the 
hatchway. When he turned to address his troops, 
he found the sergeant major just behind him. 
It would have been nice to organize this better; 

but it would have been nicer yet for somebody 
else to be doing it. Or no one at all. 

"Stop bloody pushing!" Tyi snapped on the unit 
frequency. Inside the control room, his signal would 
have been drunk by the meter-thick floor of the 
plaza. No wonder sound didn't get through. 

Motion stopped, except for the gentle resilience 
of the barge's fenders against the closed 
flood-gates. 

"There's one door out into the plaza," Tyi 
said simply. "We'll deploy through it, spread 
out as much as possible. If it doesn't work out, 
try to withdraw toward the east or west stairs, 
maybe the calliopes can give us some cover. Do 
your jobs, boys, and we'll come through this all 
right." 

Scratchard laid a hand on the captain's elbow, 
then keyed his own helmet and said, "Listen up. 
This is nothin' you don't know. There's a lot of 
people up there." 

He pumped the muzzle of his submachinegun 
toward the ceiling. "So long as there's one of 'em 
standing, none of us 're safe. Got that?" 

Heads nodded, hands stroked the iridium barrels 
ofpowerguns. Some of the recruits exchanged 
glances. 

"Then let's go," the sergeant major said simply. 
He hefted himself toward the hatchway. 

Tyi blocked him. "I want you below. Jack," he 


said. "Last man out." 


Scratchard grinned and shook his head. "I briefed 
Kekkonan for that," he said. 


Tyi hesitated. 


Scratchard's face sobered. "Cap'n," he said. "This 
don't take good knees. What it takes, I got." 
"All right, let's go," said Tyi very softly. "But 
Im the first through the door." 


He pushed his way to the door out onto the 
plaza, hearing the sergeant major wheezing a step 
behind. 



CHAPTER THIRTY 

Anne McGill couldn't see the sun, but the edges 
of the House of Grace gleamed as they bent light 
from the orb already over the horizon to the 
northeast. 

The crucifix on the seafront altar was golden 
and dazzling. The sun had not yet reached it, but 
Bishop Trimer was too good a showman not to 
allow for that: the gilt symbol was equipped with a 
surface-discharge system like that which made expensive 
clothing shimmer. What was good enough 
for the Consistory Room was good enough for 
God—as he was represented here in Bamberg 
City. 

"Anne, what's happening in the plaza?" said the 
tiny phone in her left ear. "Do you see any sign of 
the, of Koopman? Over." 

She was kneeling as if in an attitude of prayer, 
though she faced the half-open window. There 
were scores of others in the cathedral this morning, 
but no one would disturb another penitent. 
Like her, they were wrapped in their cloaks and 
their prayers. 

And perhaps all of their prayers were as complex 
and uncertain as those of Anne McGill, lookout 
for a pair of mercenary companies and mistress 
of a man whom she had prevented from retreating 
with her to a place of safety. 

"Oh Charles," she whispered. "Oh Charles." 

Then she touched the control of her throat mike 
and said in a firm voice, "Chastain is kneeling 
before Bishop Trimer in front of the crucifix. He's 
putting a —I don't know, maybe the seal of office 
around his neck but I thought that was still in the 
Palace. ..." 

The finger-long directional microphone was 
clipped to the window transom which held it steady 
and unobtrusive. UDB stores included optical 
equipment as powerful and sophisticated as the 
audio pick-up; but in use, an electronic telescope 
looked like exactly what it was—military hard



ware, and a dead give-away of the person using it. 

She had only her naked eyes. Though she 
squinted she couldn't be sure— 

"The Slammers, curse it!" her lover's voice 
snapped in her ear. Charles' tongue suppressed 
the further words, "you idiot," but they were there 
in his tone. "Is there any sign of them?" 

"No, no," she cried desperately. She'd forgotten 
to turn on her microphone. "Charles, no," she 
said with her thumb pressing the switch as if to 
crush it. "Chastain is rising and the crowd—" 

Anne didn't see the door beneath the altar open 
the first time. There was only a flicker of movement 
in her peripheral vision, ajar and then closed. 
Her subconscious was still trying to identify it 

when a dozen flashes lighted the front of the crowd 
facing the altar. 

For another moment, she thought those were 
part of the celebration, but people were sprawling 
away from the flashes. A second later, the popping 

sound of the grenades going off reached her vantage 
point. 

Men were spilling out of the altar building. The 
bolts from their weapons hurt Anne's eyes, even 
shielded by distance and full dawn. 

"Charles!" she cried, careless now of who might 
hear her in the gallery. "It's started! They're—" 

The air near the seafront echoed with a crashing 
hiss like that of a dragon striking. Anne McGill 
had never heard anything like it before. She didn't 
know that it was a calliope firing—but she knew 
that it meant death. 

Buildings hid her view of the impact zone at the 
west stairhead of the plaza, but some of the debris 
flung a hundred meters in the air could still be 
identified as parts of human bodies. 


CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 

When the grenades burst, Scratchard jerked 
the metal door open again—a milli-second before 
a slow fuse detonated the last of their greeting 
cards. A scrap of glass-fiber shrapnel drew a line 
across the back of Tyi's left thumb. 

He didn't notice it. He was already shooting 
from the hip at the first person he saw as he 
swung through the doorway, a baton-waving orderly 
whose face was almost as white as his robe 
except where blood spattered both of them. 

Tyi's target was a meter and a half away from 
his gun muzzle. He missed. The red cape and 
shoulder of a woman beside the orderly exploded 
in a cyan flash. 

The orderly swung his baton in desperation, but 
he was already dead. Jack Scratchard put a burst 
into his face before pointing his submachinegun at 
the group on the altar above and behind them. 
Trimer flattened, carrrying Thorn Chastain with 
him, but blue-green fire flicked the chests of both 
gang bosses. 

Tyi hadn't appreciated the noise. It beat on 
him, a pressure squeezing him into his armor and 
engulfing the usual thump\ of his bolts heating the 
air like miniature lightning. He butted his weapon 
firmly against his shoulder and fired three times to 
clear the area to his right. 

The targets fell. Their eyes were still startled 
and blinking, though the 2 cm bolts had scooped 
their chests into fire and a sludge of gore. 

Tyi strode onward, making room for the troopers 
behind him as he'd planned, as he'd ordered 
in some distant other universe. 

An army officer leaped from the altar with a 
pistol in his hand, either seeking shelter in the 
crowd or fleeing Scratchard's quick gun in blind 
panic. The Bamberg soldier doubled up as fate 
carried him past Tyi's muzzle and reflex squeezed 
the powergun's trigger. 


Short range but a nice crossing shot. Tyi was 
fine and the noise, the shouting, was better protection 
than his helmet and clamshell. But there 
were too many of the bastards, a mass like the sea 
itself, and Tyi was all alone in a tide that would 
wash over him and his men no matter what they— 

One calliope, then the other, opened fire. Not 
even crowd noise and the adrenalin coursing 
through his blood could keep the Slammers officer 
from noticing that. 

He stepped forward, his right shoulder against 
the altar building to keep him from slipping. Each 
shot was aimed, and none of them missed. 

In a manner of speaking, Tyi Koopman's face 
wore a smile. 


CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 

The bollards at the stairhead were hidden by 
the units on guard, thugs wearing the colors of 
both factions and a detachment of hospital orderlies. 
There were at least fifty heavily-armed men 
and women in plain sight ofDesoix's calliope—and 
it was only a matter of moments before one of them 
would turn from the ceremony and look up the street. 
There weren't many options available then. 
"Is there any sign of them?" Desoix shouted 
to—at—his mistress as she nattered on about what 

Trimer was using as he swore in his stooge as 
President. 

Lachere was twisted around in the driver's saddle, 
peering back at his lieutenant and chewing 
the end of a cold cigar, a habit he'd picked up in 
the months they'd been stationed here. He didn't 
look worried, but Senter had enough fear in his 
expression for both clerks as he stared at Desoix's 
profile from his station at the loading console. 
"Charles!" cried the voice he had let through to 
him again for necessity. "It's—" 

Desoix had already heard the muffled exclamation 
points of the grenades. 

"Blue Six to Blue Three," he said, manually 
cutting away to the unit frequency. "Open fire." 

As his mouth voiced the final flat syllable, his 
right foot rocked forward on the firing pedal. Traversing 
left to right, Desoix swept the stairhead 
clear of all obstructions with the eight ravening 
barrels of his calliope. 

The big weapon was intended for computer-
directed air defense. Under manual control, its 
sights were only a little more sophisticated than 
those of shoulder-fired powerguns: a hologrammatic 
sight picture with a bead in the center to mark the 
point of impact. 

Nothing more was required. 

Several of the guards turned when the grenades 
went off, instinctively looking for escape and in



stead seeing behind them the calliope's lowered 
muzzles. One of the orderlies got off a burst with 
his submachinegun. 

The bullets missed by a hundred meters in the 
two blocks they were meant to travel. Concrete, 
steel, and flesh—most particularly flesh—vaporized 
as the calliope chewed across the stairhead in a 
three-second burst. 

Desoix switched to intercom with the hand he 
didn't need for the moment on the elevation control 
and said, "Lachere, advance toward the stair-
head at a—" 

Faces appeared around the seawall just north of 
where the bollards had been before the gun burned 
them away. The high-intensity 3 cm ammunition 
had shattered concrete at the start of the burst 
before Desoix traversed away. His right hand rolled 
forward on the twist-grip, reversing the direction 
in which the barrel array rotated on its gimbals. 

More of the wall disintegrated in cyan light and 
the white glare of lime burned free of the concrete 
by enormously concentrated energy. Most of the 
rioters had time to duck back behind the wall 
before the second burst raked it. 

The wall didn't save them. Multiple impacts 
tore it apart and then flash-heated the water in 
their own bodies into steam explosions. 

Beneath Desoix, the skirts of the calliope's plenum 
chamber dragged the pavement. Air had 
enough mass to recoil when it was heated to a 
plasma and expelled from the eight tubes as the 
gun fired. Lachere drove forward, correcting inexpertly 
against the calliope's pitch and yaw. 

Gunfire was a blue-green shield against the roar 
from the plaza, but in the moments between bursts 
the mob's voice asserted itself over the numbness 
of ringing breech-blocks and slamming air. The 
stairhead was now within a hundred meters as the 
gun drove onward. There was a haze over the 

target area—steam and dust, burnt lime and burning 
bodies. 


Desoix's faceshield protected him from the sun-
hot flash of his guns. Events, thundering forward 
as implacably as an avalanche, shielded him from 

awareness that would have been as devastating to 
him as being blinded. 

With no target but the roiling haze, Desoix 
triggered another burst when they were ten meters 
from the stairhead. Fragments blown clear by 
the impacts proved that there had been people 

sheltering beneath eye level but accessible to the 
upper pair of gun tubes. 
"Sir?" a voice demanded, Lachere slowing and 
ready to ground the vehicle before they lurched 
over the scars where the bollards had been and 
their bow tilted down the steps. 

"Go!" Desoix shouted, knowing that the plenum 
chamber would spill its air in the angle of the 
stair treads and that their unaided fans would 
never be able to lift the calliope away once they 
had committed. 

Koopman and his company of Slammers weren't 
going anywhere either, unless they all succeeded 
in the most certain and irrevocable way possible. 

The stench of ozone and ruin boiled out from 
beneath the drive fans an instant before the calliope 
rocked forward. Gravity aided its motion for 
an instant before the friction of steel against stone 
grounded the skirts. The plaza was a sea of faces 
with a roar like the surf. 

Bullets rang off the hull and splashed the glowing 
indium of one port-side barrel. The doors of 
the mall at the head of the main stairs were open 
toward the plaza. Men there were firing assault 
rifles at the calliope. Some of them were either 
good or very lucky. 

Desoix rotated his gun carriage. 

"Sir!" Senter cried with his helmet against the 
lieutenant's. "Those aren't the mob! They're the 
Guard!" 


"Feed your guns, soldier!" said Charles Desoix. 
The open flood gates filled his sight hologram. 

He rocked the firing pedal down and began to 
traverse his target in a blaze of light. 


CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 

Tyi's index finger tightened. The gunstock pummeled 
his shoulder. The center of his faceshield 
went momentarily black as it mirrored away the 
flash that would otherwise have blinded him. 

A finger of plastic flipped up into his sight picture, 
indicating that he'd just fired the last charge 
in his weapon. He reached for another magazine. 

A hospital orderly stopped trying to claw through 
the mass of other panicked humans and turned to 
face Tyi. He was less than ten meters away and 
held a pistol. 

Tyi raised the tube of 2 cm ammunition to the 
loading gate in the forestock and burned the nail 
and third knuckle of all the fingers on his left 
hand. He'd already put several magazines through 
the powergun, so its barrel was white hot. 

He dropped the magazine. The orderly shot 
him in the center of the chest. 
There was no sound any more in the plaza. Tyi 
could see everything down to the last hair on the 
moustache of the orderly collapsing around a bolt 
from somebody else's powergun. His armor spread 
the bullet's impact, but it felt as if they'd driven a 
tank over his chest. Maybe if he didn't move. . . . 

The calliope which was canted down the west 

staircase opened fire again. 

Only three of the eight barrels were live at the 
moment. Individual bolts made a thump as ionized 
air ripped from the barrel; they crossed the 
plaza a few meters over Tyi's head as a microsecond 
hiss! and a flash of light so saturated that it 

seemed palpable. 

Everything the bolts hit was disintegrated with 
a crash sharper than a bomb going off, solids converted 
to gas and plasma as suddenly as the light-
swift bursts of energy had snapped through the 
air. The plaza's concrete flooring gouted in explosions 
of dazzling white— 


But the crowd was packed too thickly for that to 
happen often. The calliope's angle allowed its crew 
to rake the mob from above. Each 3 cm bolt hit 
like the hoof of a horse galloping over soft ground, 
hurling spray and bits of the footing in every 
direction before lifting to hammer the surface again. 

Bodies crumpled in windrows. Screaming rioters 
climbed the fallen on their way toward the 
main stairs, already packed with their fellows. 
The guns continued to fire. 
"If I can hear, I can move," Tyi said, mouthing 
the words because that was his first movement 
since the bullet hit him. 

He knelt to pick up the magazine he had 
dropped. The pain that flooded him, hot needles 

being jabbed into his whole chest, made him drop 
the empty gun instead. 

He couldn't breathe. He didn't fall down because 
his muscles were locked in a web of flesh 
surrounding a center of pulsing red agony. 

The spasm passed. 

Tyi's troopers were spread in a ragged semicircle, 
centering on the building from which they'd 
deployed. He was near the east stairs; the treads 
were covered with bodies. 

Rebels had been shot in the back as they tried 
to run from the soldiers and the blue-green 
scintillance of hand weapons. If they reached the 
top of the stairs, Gun Three on the seafront hurled 
them back as a puree and a scattering of fragments. 

The west stairs were relatively empty, because 
the mob had time to clear it in the face of the 
calliope staggering toward them. They died on the 
plaza floor, because they'd run toward the debouching 
infantry; but the steps gleamed white in 
the sunlight and provided a pure contrast to the 
bodies and garments crumpled everywhere else in 
muddy profusion. 

Tyi left the 2 cm weapon where he'd dropped 


it; he raised his submachinegun. It felt light by 
contrast with the thick iridium barrel of the shoulder 
weapon, but he still had trouble aiming. 

It was hot, and Tyi was as thirsty as he ever 
remembered being. Ozone had lifted all the mucus 
away from the membranes of his nose and 
throat. The mordant gas was concentrated by shooting 
in the enclosed wedge of the plaza. The skin of 
Tyi's face and hands prickled as if sunburned. 

He aimed at a face and missed high, the barrel 
wobbling, sending the round into the back of somebody 
a hundred meters away on the main stairs. 
He lowered the muzzle and fired again, fired again, 
fired again. 

Single shots, aimed at anyone who looked 
toward him instead of trying to get away. Second 
choice for targets were the white robes of orderlies, 
most of whom had been armed—though few 
enough had the discipline to stand in chaos against 
the mercenaries' armor and overwhelming firepower. 

Third choice was whoever filled the sight picture 
next. None of the mercenaries were safe so 
long as one of the others was standing. 

The calliope opened up again. Desoix had unjammed 
or reloaded six of the barrels. A thick line 
staggered through the mob like the track of a 
tornado across a corn field. 

Tyi fired; fired ag^in; fired again. . . . 


CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 

It was very quiet. 

Desoix watched the men from Gun Three's doubled 
crew as they picked their way across the 
plaza at his orders. Sergeant Blaney was leading 
the quartet himself. They were carrying their 
submachineguns ready and moving with a gingerly 
awkwardness, trying to avoid stepping in the 
carnage. 

Nobody could get down the east stairs without 
smearing his boots lo the ankles with blood. 

"They could hurry up with the water," Lachere 
muttered. 

"They didn't see it happen," Desoix said. He 
lay across the firing console, his chin on his hands 
and his elbows on the control grips he no longer 
needed to twist. 

He closed his eyes for a moment instead of 
rubbing them. 
Desoix's hands and face, like those of his men, 
were black with indium burned from the calli-
ope's bores by the continuous firing. The vapor 
had condensed in the air and settled as dust over 
everything within ten meters of the muzzles. Rubbing 
his eyes before he washed would drive the 
finely-divided metal under the lids, into the orbits. 

Desoix kept reminding himself that it would 
matter to him some day, when he wasn't so tired. 

"They just shot when somebody ran up the 
stairs and gave them a target," he continued in 
the croak that was all the voice remaining to him 
until Blaney arrived with the water. "It wasn't 
like—" 

He wanted to raise his arm to indicate the plaza's 
carpet of the dead, but waggling an index 
finger was as much as he had need or energy to 
accomplish. "It wasn't what we had, all targets, 
and it. ..." 

Desoix tried to remember how he would have 


felt if he had come upon this scene an hour earlier. 
He couldn't, so he let his voice trail off. 

A lot of them must have gotten out when somebody 
opened the gates at either end of the mall. 
Desoix had tried to avoid raking the mall and the 
main stairs. The mercenaries had to end the insurrection 
and clear the plaza for their own safety, 
but the civilians swept out by fear were as harmless 
as their fellows who filled the sight picture as 
the calliope coughed and traversed. 

There'd been just the one long burst which 
cleared the mall of riflemen. 

Cleared it of life. 

"Here you go, sir," said Blaney, skipping up the 
last few steps with a four-liter canteen and hopping 
onto the deck of the calliope. 
"Took yer bloody time," Lachere repeated as he 
snatched the canteen another of the newcomers 
offered him. He began slurping the water down so 
greedily that he choked and sprayed a mouthful 
out his nostrils. 

Senter was drinking also. He hunched down 
behind the breeches of the guns he had been 
feeding, so that he could not see any of what 
surrounded the calliope. Even so, the clerk's eyelids 
were pressed tightly together except for brief 
flashes that showed his dilated pupils. 

"Ah, where's Major Borodin, sir?" Blaney asked. 

Desoix closed his eyes again, luxuriating in the 
feel of warm water swirling in his mouth. 

Gun Three had full supplies for its double crew 
before the shooting started. Desoix hadn't thought 
to load himself and his two clerks with water 
before they set out. 

He hadn't been planning; just reacting, stimulus 
by stimulus, to a situation over which he had 
abdicated conscious control. 

"The Major's back at the Palace," Desoix said. 
"President Delcorio told me he wanted a trust



worthy officer with him, so I commanded the field 
operations myself." 

He didn't care about himself any more. He 
stuck to the story he had arranged with Delcorio 
because it was as easy to tell as the truth . . . and 
because Desoix still felt a rush of loyalty to his 
battery commander. 

They'd succeeded, and Major Borodin could have 
his portion of the triumph if he wanted it. 

Charles Desoix wished it had been him, not 
Borodin, who had spent the last two hours locked 
in a storeroom in the Palace. But his memory 
would not permit him to think that, even as a 
fantasy. 

"Blaney," he said aloud. "I'm putting you in 
command of this gun until we get straightened 
around. I'm going down to check with Captain 
Koopman." He nodded toward the cluster of gray 
and khaki soldiers sprawled near the altar. 

"Ah, sir?" Blaney said in a nervous tone. 

Desoix paused after swinging his leg over the 
gunner's saddle. He shrugged, as much response 
as he felt like making at the moment. 

"Sir, we started taking sniper fire, had two guys 
hurt," Blaney went on. "We—I laid the gun on 
the hospital, put a burst into it to, you know, get 
their attention. Ah, the sniping stopped." 

"Via, you really did, didn't you?" said the officer, 
amazed that he hadn't noticed the damage 
before. 

Gun Three had a flat angle on the south face of 
the glittering building. Almost a third of the vitril 
panels on that side were gone in a raking slash 
from the ground floor to the twentieth. The bolts 
wouldn't have penetrated the hospital, though the 
Lord knew what bits of the shattered windows had 
done when they flew around inside. 

Charles Desoix began to laugh. He choked and 
had to grip the calliope's chassis in order to keep 


from falling over. He hadn't been sure that he 
would ever laugh again. 

"Sergeant," he said, shutting his eyes because 
Blaney's stricken face would set him off again if he 
watched it. "You're afraid you're in trouble because 
of that?" 

He risked a look at Blaney. The sergeant was 
nodding blankly. 

Desoix gripped his subordinate's hand. "Don't 
worry," he said. "Don't. I'll just tell theK 
on my account." 

He took the canteen with him as he wa^ 
down the stairs toward Tyi Koopman. Haliw&y 
down he stumbled when he slipped on a dismembered 
leg. 

That set him laughing again. 


CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 

"Got twelve could use help," said the sergeant 
major as Tyi shuddered under the jets of topical 
anesthetic he was spraying onto his own chest. 

Scratchard frowned and added, "Maybe you too, 
hey?" 

"Via, I'm fine," Tyi said, trying to smooth the 
grimace that wanted to twist his face awry. "No 
dead?" 

He looked around sharply and immediately 
wished he hadn't tried to move quite that fast. 

Tyi's ceramic breastplate had stopped the bullet 
and spread its impact across the whole inner surface 
of the armor. That was survivable; but now, 
with the armor and his tunic stripped off, Tyi's 
chest was a symphony of bruising. His ribs and 
the seams of his tunic pockets were emphasized in 
purple, and the flesh between those highlights 
was a dull yellow-gray of its own. 
Scratchard shrugged. "Krasinski took one in the 
face," he said. "Had 'er shield down too, but 
when your number's up. ..." 

Tyi sprayed anesthetic. The curse that ripped 
out of his mouth could have been directed at the 
way the mist settled across him and made the 
bruised flesh pucker as it chilled. 

"Timmons stood on a grenade," Scratchard continued, 
squatting beside his captain. "Prob'ly his 
own. Told 'em not to screw with grenades after we 
committed, but they never listen, not when it 
gets. . . 

Scratchard's fingers were working with the gun 
he now carried, a slug-firing machine pistol. The 
magazine lay on the ground beside him. The trigger 
group came out, then the barrel tilted from 
the receiver at the touch of the sergeant major's 
experienced fingers. 

Jack wasn't watching his hands. His eyes were 
open and empty, focused on the main stairs because 
there were no fallen troopers there. 


They'd been his men too. 

"One a' the recruits," Scratchard continued 
quietly, "he didn't want to go up the ladder." 

Tyi looked at the non-corn. 

Scratchard shrugged again. "Kekkonan shot him. 
Wasn't a lotta time to discuss things." 

"Kekkonan due another stripe?" Tyi asked. 

"After this?" Scratchard replied, his voice bright 
with unexpected emotion. "We're all due bloody 
something, sir!" 

His face blanked. His fingers began to reassemble 
the gun he'd picked up when he'd fired all the 
ammunition for both the powerguns he carried. 

Tyi looked at their prisoners, the half dozen 
men who'd survived when Jack sprayed the group 

on the altar. Now they clustered near the low 
building, under the guns of a pair of troopers 
who'd been told to guard them. 

The soldiers were too tired to pay much attention. 
The prisoners were too frightened to need 
guarding at all. 

Thorn Chastain still wore a gold-trimmed scarlet 
robe. A soldier had ripped away the chain and 
pendant Tyi remembered vaguely from earlier in 
the morning. Thorn smiled like a porcelain doll, a 
hideous contrast with the tears which continued to 
shiver down his cheeks. 

The tears were particularly noticeable because 
one of the gang bosses beside Thorn on the altar 
had been shot in the neck. He'd been very active 
in his dying, painting everyone nearby with streaks 
of bright, oxygen-rich blood. The boy's tears washed 
tracks in the blood. 

Bishop Trirner and three lesser priests stood a 
meter from the Chastains—and as far apart as 
turned backs and icy expressions could make them. 


Father Laughlin was trying to hunch himself 
down to the height of other men. His white robes 
dragged the ground when he forgot to draw them 
up with his hands; their hem was bloody. 


The prisoners weren't willing to sit down the 
way the Slammers did. But nobody was used to a 
scene like this. 


"I never saw so many bodies," said Charles 
Desoix. 


"Yeah, me too," Tyi agreed. 


He hadn't seen the UDB officer walk up beside 
him. His eyes itched. He supposed there was 
something wrong with his peripheral vision from 
the ozone or the actinics—despite his faceshietd. 


"Water?" Desoix offered. 
"Thanks," Tyi said, accepting the offer though 
water still sloshed in the canteen on his own belt. 
He drank and paused, then sipped again. 


Where the calliope had raked the mob, corpses 
lay in rows like flotsam thrown onto the strand by 
a storm. Otherwise, the half of the plaza nearer 
the sea-front was strewn rather than carpeted with 
bodies. You could walk that far and, if you were 
careful, step only on concrete. 


Bloody concrete. 


Where the plaza narrowed toward the main stairs, 
there was no longer room even for the corpses. 
They were piled one upon another . . . five in a 
stack ... a ramp ten meters deep, rising at the 
same angle as the stairs and composed of human 
flesh compressed by the weight of more humans— 
each trying to escape by clambering over his fellows, 
each dying in turn as the guns continued to 


fire. 


The stench of scattered viscera was a sour miasma 
as the sun began to warm the plaza. 


"How many, d'ye guess?" Tyi asked as he handed 



back the canteen. 

He was sure his voice was normal, but he felt 
his body begin to shiver uncontrollably. It was the 
drugs, it had to be the anesthetic. 

"Twenty thousand, thirty thousand," Desoix said. 
He cleared his throat, but his voice broke anyway 
as he tried to say, "They did, they. . ." 

Desoix bent his head. When he lifted it again, 
he said in a voice as clear as the glitter of tears in 
his eyes, "I think as many were crushed trying to 
get away as we killed ourselves. But we killed 

enough." 

Something moved at the head of the main stairs. 
Tyi aimed the submachinegun he'd picked up when 

he stood. Pain filled his torso like the fracture 
lines in breaking glass, but he didn't shudder any 
more. The sight picture was razor sharp. 

An air car with the gold and crystal markings of 
the Palace slid through the mall and cruised down 
the main stairs. The vehicle was being driven low 
and slow, just above the surface, because surprising 
the troops here meant sudden death. 

Even laymen could see that. 

Tyi lowered his weapon, wondering what would 
have happened if he'd taken up the last trigger 
pressure and spilled John and Eunice Delcorio 
onto the bodies of so many of their opponents. 

The car's driver and the man beside him were 
Palace servants, both in their sixties. They looked 
out of place, even without the pistols in issue 
holsters belted over their blue livery. 

Major Borodin and Colonel Drescher rode in 
the middle pair of seats, ahead of the presidential 
couple. 

The battery commander was the first to get out 
when the car grounded beside the mercenary offi



cers. The electronic piping of Borodin's uniform 
glittered brighter than sunlight on the metal around 
him. He blinked at his surroundings, at the prisoners. 
Then he nodded to Desoix and said, "Lieutenant, 
you've, ah—carried out your orders in a 
satisfactory fashion." 

Desoix saluted. "Thank you, sir," he said in a 
voice as dead as the stench of thirty thousand 
bodies. 

Colonel Drescher followed Borodin, moving like 
a marionette with a broken wire. The flap of his 
holster was closed, but there was no gun inside. 
One of the Guard commander's polished boots 
was missing. He held the sole of the bare foot 
slightly above the concrete, where it would have 
been if he were fully dressed. 

President Delcorio stepped from the vehicle 
and handed out his wife as if they were at a public 
function. Both of them were wearing cloth of gold, 
dazzling even though the car's fans had flung up 
bits of the carnage as it carried them through the 
plaza. 

"Gentlemen," Delcorio said, nodding to Tyi and 
Desoix. His throat hadn't been wracked by the 
residues of battle, so his voice sounded subtly 
wrong in its smooth normalcy. 

Pedro Delcorio was walking to join his uncle 
from the control room beneath the altar. He carried 
a pistol in his right hand. The bore of the 
powergun was bright and not scarred by use. 

The President and his wife approached the prisoners. 
Major Borodin fluffed the thighs of his uniform; 
Drescher stood on one foot, his eyes looking 
out over the channel. 

President Delcorio stared at the Bishop. The 
other priests hunched away, as if Delcorio's gaze 
were wind-blown sleet. 

Trimer faced him squarely. The Bishop was a 
short man and slightly built even in the bulk of his 
episcopal garments, but he was very much alive. 
Looking at him, Tyi remembered the faint glow 


that firelight had washed across the eyes of Trimer's 
face carven on the House of Grace. 

"Bishop," said John Delcorio. "I'm so glad my 
men were able to rescue you from this—" his foot 
delicately gestured toward the nearest body, a 
woman undressed by the grenade blast that killed 
her "—rabble." 

Father Laughlin straightened so abruptly that 
he almost fell when he kicked the pile of communications 
and data-transfer equipment which his 
two fellows had piled on the ground. No one had 
bothered to strip the priests of their hardware, 
but they had done so themselves as quickly as 
they were able. 

Perhaps the priests felt they could distance themselves 
from what had gone before ... or what 
they expected to come later. 

"Pres ..." said Bishop Trimer cautiously. His 
voice was oil-smooth—until it cracked. "President?" 

"Yes, very glad," Delcorio continued. "I think it 
must be that the Christ-denying elements were 
behind the riot. I'm sure they took you prisoner 
when they heard you had offered all the assets of 
the Church to support our crusade." 

Laughlin threw his hands to his face, covering 
his mouth and a look of horror. 

"Yes, all Church personalty," said Trimer. "Except 
what is needed for the immediate sustenance 
of the Lord's servants." 

"All assets, real and personal, is what I'd heard," 
said the President. His voice was flat. The index 
finger of his right hand was rising as if to make a 
gesture, a cutting motion. 

"Yes, personal property and all the estates of 
the Church outside of Bamberg City itself," said 
Bishop Trimer. He thrust out his chin, looking 
even more like the bas relief on the shot-scarred 
hospital. 

Delcorio paused, then nodded. "Yes," he said. 


"That's what I understood. We'll go back to—" 


Eunice Delcorio looked at Tyi. "You," she said 
in a clear voice, ignoring her husband and seemingly 
ignoring the fact that he had spoken. "Shoot 
these two." 


She pointed toward the Chastains. 
Tyi raised his submachinegun's muzzle skyward 
and stepped toward the President's wife. 


"Sir!" shouted Ripper Jack Scratchard, close 
enough that his big hand gripped Tyi's shoulder. 
"Don't!" 


Tyi pulled free. He took Eunice's right hand in 
his left and pressed her palm against the grip of 
the submachinegun. He forced her fingers closed. 
"Here," he said. "You do it." 


He hadn't thought he was shouting, but he 
must have been from the way all of them stared at 
him, their faces growing pale. 


He spun Eunice around to face the ramp of 
bodies. She was a solid woman and tried to resist, 
but that was nothing to him now. "It's easy," he 
said. "See how bloody easy it is? 


"Do you see?" 


A shot cracked. He had been shouting. The 
muzzle blast didn't seem loud at all. 


Tyi turned. Scratchard fired his captured weapon 
again. Richie Chastain screamed and stumbed across 
his twin; Thorn was already down with a hole 
behind his right ear and a line of blood from the 
corner of his mouth. 


Scratchard fired twice more as the boy thrashed 
on his belly. The second bullet punched through 
the chest cavity and ricocheted from the ground 
with a hum of fury. 


Tyi threw his gun down. He turned and tried to 
walk away, but he couldn't see anything. He would 
have fallen except that Scratchard took one of his 
arms and Desoix the other, holding him and stand



ing between him and the Delcorios. 

"Bishop Trimer," he heard the President saying. 
"Will you adjourn with us, please, to the Palace." 
There was no question in the tone. "We have 

some details to work out, and I think we'll be 

more comfortable there, though my servant situation 
is a—" 

Tyi turned. 

"Wait," be said. Everyone was watching him. 
There was a red blotch on the back of Eunice's 
hand where he'd held her, but he was as controlled 
as the tide, now. "I want doctors for my 
men." 

He lifted his hand toward the House of Grace, 
glorying in the pain of moving. "You got a whole 
hospital, there. I want doctors, now, and I want 
every one of my boys treated like he was Christ 
himself. Understood?" 

"Of course, of course," said Father Laughlin in 
the voice Tyi remembered from the Consistory 
Meeting. 

The big priest turned to the man who had been 
wearing the commo set and snarled, "Well, get on 
it, Ryan. You heard the man!" 

Ryan knelt and began speaking into the handset, 
glancing sometimes up at the hospital's shattered 
facade and sometimes back at the Slammers 
captain. The only color on the priest's face was a 
splotch of someone else's blood. 

Trimer walked to the air car, arm in arm with 
President Delcorio. 

Borodin and Drescher had already boarded. Neither 
of them would let their eyes focus on anything 
around them. When Pedro Delcorio squeezed 
in between them, the two officers made room 
without comment. 

Father Laughlin would have followed the Bishop, 


but Eunice Delcorio glanced at his heavy form 
and gestured dismissingly. Laughlin watched the 
car lift into a hover; then, sinking his head low, he 
strode in the direction of the east stairs. 

Tyi Koopman stood between his sergeant major 
and the UDB lieutenant. He was beginning to 
shiver again. 

"What's it mean, d'ye suppose?" he whispered 
in the direction of the main stairs. 

"Mean?" said Charles Desoix dispassionately. 
"It means that John Delcorio is President—President 
in more than name—for the first time. It 
means that he really has the resources to prosecute 
his crusade, the war on Two, to a successful 
conclusion. I doubt that would have been possible 
without the financial support of the Church." 

"But who cares!" Tyi shouted. "D'ye mean we've 
got jobs for the next two years? Who bloody cares? 
Somebody'd 've hired us, you know that!" 

"It means," said Jack Scratchard, "that we're 
alive and they're dead. That's all it means, sir." 

"It's got to mean more than that," Tyi whispered. 

But as he looked at the heaps and rows of 
bodies, tens of thousands of dead human beings 
stiffening in the sun, he couldn't put any real 
belief into the words. ^ 


CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 

The Slammers were gone. 

Ambulances had carried their wounded off, each 
with a guard of other troopers ready to add a few 
more bodies to the day's bag if any of Trimer's 
men seemed less than perfectly dedicated to healing 
the wounded. Desoix thought he'd heard the 
sergeant major say something about bivouacking 
in the House of Grace, but he hadn't been paying 
much attention. 

There was nothing here for him. He ought to 
leave himself. 

Desoix turned. Anne McGill was walking toward 
him. She had thrown off the cloak that covered 
her in the cathedral and was wearing only a 
dress of white chiffon like the one in which she 
had greeted him the day before. 

Her face was set. She was moving very slowly, 
because she would not look down and her feet 
kept brushing the things that she refused to see. 

Desoix began to tremble. He had unlatched his 
body armor, but he still had it on. The halves 
rattled against one another as he watched the 
woman approach. 

There was nothing there. There couldn't be 
anything left there now. 

It didn't matter. That was only one of many 
things which had died this morning. No doubt 
he'd feel it was an unimportant one in later years. 

Anne put her arms around him, crushing her 
cheek against his though he was black with indium 
dust and dried blood. "I'm so sorry," she 
whispered. "Charles, I—we. . . . Charles, I love 
you." 
As if love could matter now. 
Desoix put his arms around her, squeezing gently 
so that the edges of his armor would not bite into 
her soft flesh. 

Love mattered, even now. 


Afterword to Counting the Cost 
HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY 

I gained my first real insight into tanks when I 
was about eight years old and the local newspaper 
ran a picture of one, an M41 Walker Bulldog, on 
the front page. 

The M41 isn't especially big. It's longer than 
the Studebaker my family had at the time but still 
a couple feet shorter than the 1960 Plymouth we 
owned later. At nine feet high and eleven feet 
wide, the tank was impressive but not really out of 
automotive scale. 

What was striking about it was the way it had 
flattened a parked car when the tank's driver goofed 
during a Christmas Parade in Chicago. That picture 
proved to me that the power and lethality of a tank 
are out of all proportion to the size of the package. 

I learned a lot more about tanks in 1970 when I 
was assigned to the llth Armored Cavalry Regiment 
in Viet Nam. 

Normally, interrogators like me were in slots at 
brigade level or higher. The Eleventh Cav was 
unusual in that each of its three squadrons in the 
field had a Battalion Intelligence Collection Center 
—pronounced like the pen—of four to six men. 
After a week or two at the rear echelon headquarters 
of my unit, I requested assignment to a BICC. 
A few weeks later, I joined Second Squadron in 

Cambodia, 

Our BICC had a variety of personal and official 
gear—the tent was our largest item—which fitted 
into a trailer about the size of a middling-big 
U-Haul-It. We didn't have a vehicle of our own. 
When the squadron moved (as it generally did every 
week or two), the trailer was towed by one of the 
Headquarters Troop tracks; and we, the personnel, 
were split up as crew among the fighting vehicles. 

The tanks were M48s, already obsolescent because 
the 90 mm main gun couldn't be trusted 


to penetrate the armor of new Soviet tanks. 
That wasn't a problem for us, since most of the 
opposition wore black pajamas and sandals cut 
from tire treads. 

M48s have a normal complement of four men, 
but that was exceptionally high in the field. In one 
case, I rode as loader on a tank which would have 
been down to two men—driver and commander— 
without me. The Eleventh Cav was at almost double 
its official (Table of Organization) strength, but 
the excess personnel didn't trickle far enough from 
headquarters to reach the folks who were expected 
to do the actual fighting. 

While I was there, a squadron in the field operated 
as four linked entities. Squadron headquarters 
(including the BICC) was a firebase, so called 
because the encampment included a battery of 
self-propelled 155 mm howitzers—six guns if none 
were deadlined. 

Besides How Battery, the firebase included Headquarters 
Troop with half a dozen Armored Cavalry 
Assault Vehicles—ACAVs. These were simply M113 
armored personnel carriers modified at the factory 
into combat vehicles. Each had a little steel cupola 
around a fifty caliber machinegun and a pintle-
mounted M60 machinegun (7.62 mm) on either flank. 

There were also a great number of other vehicles 
at the firebase: armored personnel carriers modified 
into trucks, high-sided command vehicles, and 
mobile flamethrowers (Zippos); maintenance vehicles 
with cranes to lift out and replace engines in 
the field; and a platoon of combat engineers with a 
modified M48 tank as well as the bulldozers that 
turned up an earthen berm around the whole site. 

Apart from these headquarters units, the squadron 
was made up of a company of (nominally) 
seventeen M48 tanks; and three line troops with 
twelve ACAVs and six Sheridans apiece. The Sheridan 
is a deathtrap with a steel turret, an aluminum 
hull, and a 152 mm cannon whose ammunition 
generally caught fire if the vehicle hit a forty 
pound mine. 

Either a line troop or the tank company laa



gered at the firebase at night for security. The 
other three formed separate night defensive positions 
within fire support range of How Battery. 

I talked with a lot of people in the field, and I 
got a good first-hand look at the way an armored 
regiment conducts combat operations. 

When I got back to the World, I resumed my 
hobby of writing fantasies. I'd sold three stories to 
August Derleth in the past; now I sold him a 
fourth, set in the late Roman Empire. Mr. Derleth 
paid for that story the day before he died. 

With him gone, there was no market for what I 
was writing: short stories in the heroic fantasy 
subgenre. I kept writing them anyway, becoming 
more and more frustrated that they didn't 
sell. (I wasn't real tightly wrapped back then. 
It was a while before I realized just how screwy 
I was.) 

Fortunately, writer-friends in Chapel Hill, 
Manly Wade Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner, 
suggested that I use Viet Nam as a setting. I 
tried it with immediate success, selling a horror 
fantasy to F&SF and a science fiction story to 
ANALOG. 

I still had a professional problem. There were 
very few stories that someone with my limited 
skills could tell which were SF or fantasy, and 
which directly involved the Eleventh Cav. I decided 
to get around the issue by telling a story 
that was SF because the characters used ray guns 
instad of M16s . . . but was otherwise true, the 
way it had been described to me by the men 
who'd been there. 

The story was THE BUTCHER'S BILL, and for 
it I created a mercenary armored regiment called 
Hammer's Slammers. 

The hardware was easy. I'd spent enough time 
around combat vehicles to have a notion of their 
strengths and weaknesses. Hammer's vehicles 


were designed around the M48s and ACAVs I'd 

ridden, with some of the most glaring faults 
eliminated. 

All the vehicles in the field with the Eleventh 
Cav were track-laying; that is, they had caterpillar 
treads instead of wheels. This was necessary because 
we never encamped on surfaced roads. Part 
of any move, even for headquarters units, was 
across stretches of jungle cleared minutes before 
by bulldozers fitted with Rome Plow blades. 

The interior of a firebase was also bulldozed 
clear. Rain turned the bare soil either gooey or 
the consistency of wet soap. In both cases, it was 
impassable for wheeled vehicles. Our daily supplies 
came in by helicopter. 

Tracks were absolutely necessary; and they were 

an absolute curse for the crewmen who had to 
maintain them. 

Jungle soils dry to a coarse, gritty stone that 
abrades the tracks as they churn it up. When 
tracks wear, they loosen the way a bicycle chain 
does. To steer a tracked vehicle, you brake one 
tread while the other continues to turn. If the 

tracks are severely worn, you're certain to throw 
one. 

If they're not worn, you may throw one anyway. 


Replacing a track in the field means the crew 
has to break the loop; drive off it with the road 
wheels and the good track while another vehicle 
stretches the broken track; reverse onto the straightened 
track, hand-feeding the free end up over the 
drive sprocket and along the return rollers; and 
then mate the ends into a loop again. 

You may very well throw the same track ten 
minutes later. 

Because of that problem (and suspension prob



lems. Want to guess how long torsion bars last on 
a fifty ton tank bouncing over rough terrain?) I 
decided my supertanks had to be air cushion vehicles. 
That would be practical only if fuel supply 
weren't a problem, so that the fans could be powerful 
enough to keep the huge mass stable even 
though it didn't touch the ground. 

I'm a writer, not an engineer. I didn't have any 
difficulty in giving my tanks and combat cars 
(ACAVs with energy weapons) the fusion power-
plants without which they'd be useless. 

Armament required the same sort of decision. 
Energy weapons have major advantages over projectile 
weapons; but although tanks may some day 
mount effective lasers, I don't think an infantryman 
will ever be able to carry one. I therefore 
postulated guns that fired bolts of plasma liberated— 
somehow—from individual cartridges. 

That took care of the hardware. The organization 
was basically that of the Eleventh Cav, with a 
few changes for the hell of it. 

The unit itself was not based on any US unit 
with which I'm familiar. Its model was the French 
Foreign Legion; more precisely, the French Foreign 
Legion serving in Viet Nam just after World 
War Two—when most of its personnel were veterans 
of the SS who'd fled from Germany ahead of 
the Allied War Crimes Commission. 

The incident around which I plotted THE 
BUTCHER'S BILL was the capture of Snuol the 
day before I arrived in Cambodia. That was the 
only significant fighting during the invasion ofCambodia, 
just as Snuol was the only significant town 
our forces reached. 

G, one of the line troops, entered Snuol first. 
There was a real street, lined with stucco-faced 
shops instead of the grass huts on posts in the 
farming hamlets of the region. The C-100 Anti-
Aircraft Company, a Viet Cong unit, was defending 
the town with a quartet of fifty-one caliber 
machineguns. 

A fifty-one cal could put its rounds through an 


ACAV the long way, and the aluminum hull of a 
Sheridan wasn't much more protection. Before G 
Troop could get out, the concealed guns had destroyed 
one of either type of vehicle. 

The squadron commander responded by sending 
in H Company, his tanks. 

The eleven M48s rolled down the street in line 
ahead. The first tank slanted its main gun to the 
right side of the street, the second to the left, and 
so on. Each tank fired a round of canister or 
shrapnel into every structure that slid past the 
muzzle of its 90 mm gun. 

On the other side of Snuol, they formed up 

to go back again. There wasn't any need to do 
that. 

The VC had opened fire at first. The crews of 
the M48s didn't know that, because the noise 
inside was so loud that the clang of two-ounce 
bullets hitting the armor was inaudible. Some of 
the slugs flattened and were there on the fenders 
to be picked up afterwards. The surviving VC 
fled, leaving their guns behind. 

There was a little looting—a bottle of whiskey, a 
sack of ladies' slippers, a step-through Honda (which 
was flown back to Quan Loi in a squadron helicopter). 
But for all practical purposes, Snuol ceased to 
have human significance the moment H Company 
blasted its way down the street. 

The civilian population? It had fled before the 
shooting started. 

Not that it would have made any difference to 
the operation. 

So I wrote a story about what wars cost and 
how decisions get made in the field—despite 
policy considerations back in air-conditioned 
offices. It was the best story I'd written so far, 
and the first time I'd tackled issues of real importance. 


Only problem was, THE BUTCHER'S BILL 


didn't sell. 


Mostly it just got rejection slips, but one very 
competent editor said that Joe Haldeman and Jerry 
Pournelle were writing as much of that sort of 
story as his magazine needed. (Looking back, I 
find it interesting that in 1973 magazine terms, 
the stories in THE FOREVER WAR, THE MERCENARY, 
and HAMMER'S SLAMMERS were 
indistinguishable.) 


One editor felt that THE BUTCHER'S BILL 
demanded too much background, both SF and 
military, for the entry-level anthology he was planning. 
That was a good criticism, to which I responded 
by writing UNDER THE HAMMER. 


UNDER THE HAMMER had a new recruit as 
its viewpoint character, a kid who was terrified 
that he was going to make an ignorant mistake and 
get himself killed. (I didn't have to go far to find a 
model for the character. Remember that I hadn't 
had advanced combat training before I became an 
ad hoc tank crewman.) Because the recruit knew 
so little, other characters could explain details to 
him and to the reader. 


I made the kid a recruit to Hammer's Slammers, 
because I already had that background clear 


in my mind. I hadn't intended to write a series, it 
just happened that way. 


UNDER THE HAMMER didn't sell either. 
I went about a year and a half with no sales. 
This was depressing, and I was as prone as the 


next guy to whine "My stuff's better 'n some of 
the crap they publish." 


In hindsight, I've decided that when an author 
doesn't sell, it's because: 


1) he's doing something wrong; or 


2) he's doing something different, and he 


isn't good enough to get away with being different. 



In my case, there was some of both. The two 
Hammer stories were different—and clumsy; I was 
new to the job. Most of the other fiction I wrote 
during that period just wasn't very good. 


But the situation was very frustrating. 


The dam broke when Cordy Dickson took THE 
BUTCHER'S BILL for an anthology he was editing. 
It wasn't a lot of money, but I earned my 


living as an attorney. This was a sale, and it had 
been a long time coming. 


Almost immediately thereafter, the editor at 
GALAXY (who'd rejected the Hammer stories) 
was replaced by his assistant, a guy named Jim 
Baen. Jim took the pair and asked for more. 


I wrote three more stories in the series before 
Jim left to become SF editor of Ace Books. One of 
the three was the only piece I've written about 
Colonel Hammer himself instead of Hammer's 
Slammers. It was to an editorial suggestion; tell 
how it all started. Jim took that one, and though 
he rejected the other two, they sold elsewhere. 
The dam really had broken. 


I moved away from Hammer and into other 
things, including a fantasy novel. Then Jim, now 
at Ace, asked for a collection of the 35,000 words 
already written plus enough new material in the 
series to fill out a book. Earlier I'd had an idea 
that seemed too complex to be done at a length a 
magazine would buy from me. I did it—HANGMAN—
for the collection and added a little end-
cap for the volume also—STANDING DOWN. 


To stand between the stories, I wrote essays 
explaining the background of the series, social 
and economic as well as the hardware. In some 
cases I had to work out the background for the 
first time. I hadn't started with the intention of 
writing a series. 


HAMMER'S SLAMMERS came out in 1979. 
That was the end of the series, so far as I was 
concerned. But as the years passed, I did a novelet. 



Then the setting turned out to be perfect for my 
effort at using the plot of the ODYSSEY as an SF 
novel (CROSS THE STARS). I did a short novel, 
AT ANY PRICE, that was published with the 
earlier novelet and a story I did for the volume. . . . 

And I'm going to do more stories besides this 
one in the series, because Hammer's Slammers 
have become a vehicle for a message that I think 
needs to be more widely known. Veterans who've 
written or talked to me already understand, but a 
lot of other people don't, 

When you send a man out with a gun, you 
create a policymaker. When his ass is on the line 
he will do whatever he needs to do. 

And if the implications of that bother you the 
time to do something about it is before you decide 
to send him out. 

Dave Drake 
Chapel Hill, N.C.