David Drake - When the Tide Rises

Daniel looked through the doorway to make sure that the Bagarian soldiers really were coming as announced. The detached squad placed themselves against the wall to either side of the guardroom door.

"Colonel Chatterjee," Daniel said, "secure the lower floors with your troops while-"

Ashburn cocked her right arm back with the grenade poised to throw. A member of her squad jerked the guardroom door fully open and dived out of the way. The remaining six spacers pointed impellers and sub-machine guns into the doorway.

"Freeze!" Ashburn shouted. "Freeze or you're for it, pongoes!"

Half a dozen soldiers, two in their undershirts, were playing poker. The man with the deck let it get away from him; cards fluttered through the air like mayflies in a mating dance. There were guns leaning against the back wall, but nobody was foolish enough to try to grab one.

"Very good," Daniel said. "As I was saying, Colonel, I'm taking my detachment to the Governor on the top floor where I hope to end this business without bloodshed."

He cleared his throat and added, "We've kept it relatively peaceful thus far. I'd like that to continue."

Chatterjee nodded curtly, watching Ashburn' squad bind the guards with cargo tape. "I've been a real estate lawyer for the past fifteen years, Admiral," he said. "I hope to go back to that profession. If Inever hear a shot fired in anger, it'll be too soon."

Daniel clapped him on the shoulder. "Sissies to me!" he called. "Up three floors to the Governor's suite, spacers. The pongoes can take care of things on the ground, right?"

There was a broad staircase of polished gneiss at the far end of the hall. Halfway up it split into a Y and reversed direction onto both sides of a mezzanine; it didn't appear to go higher. Hogg had located a spiral staircase in the alcove to the left of the entrance door, however. He stood at the foot of it.

"Follow me!" Daniel said, waving his sub-machine gun as he strode toward his servant. "Sun, bring up the rear!"

"Trade me!" said Hogg, tossing his stocked impeller to Daniel, who handed over the sub-machine gun without pointless argument. The man in the lead in these close quarters should have the automatic weapon. Hogg was the proper person to lead because decades of poaching had honed his senses to react to the slightest sound or movement. Daniel was good, but he knew he wasn't in the same league as his servant.

Besides, Hogg wasgoing to lead in a situation like this, even if that meant clubbing his master down and tying him to keep him out of the way. Relationships generally, not just political ones, were the art of the possible. Daniel'd had his whole life to learn what was-and wasn't-possible in dealing with his old servant.

Their soft-soled bootswhisk ed on the cast concrete stairs. Hogg and Daniel both kept their faces turned up instead of looking down at their feet. The muzzles of their weapons pointed to the left, the direction of the doors off the clockwise spiral staircase, but that to the mezzanine was closed.

The detachment following banged and rattled like a busy day in a bucket shop. The spacers were all sure-footed: quite apart from the riggers, the wear-polished steel treads of the companionways that the Power Room crews negotiated many times a day were slicker and trickier than this.

On the other hand, though all his Sissies'd had firearms training, theyweren't ideal people to have running behind you with guns in their hands. The spiral was some protection; and anyway, if Daniel'd made personal safety a priority, he wouldn't be in the RCN.

The door to the second level was closed also, but as Hogg reached it a siren outside began to wind up and hooters-one of them in the stair tower-blatted. Almost at once an automatic impeller on the first-level plaza began to fire. The clang of heavy slugs ricocheting from steel indicated the gunner was shooting at the transport.

"Sector Two, that's northwest, has given the alarm," said Adele as dispassionately as if she were ordering lunch. "I've rung down the barriers between sectors, but troops can get out through the courtyard doors if they care to, over."

Hogg paused and glanced at Daniel. Daniel looked back in turn and found-not surprisingly-that the spacer directly behind him was Sayer.

"You!" Daniel said. One petty officer was as good as another in a crisis, and the engineer's mate had proved he was a quick thinker. "Take half the detachment and clear this side of the plaza. Tell Sun to take the other half and clear the west side. Hogg and I'll take care of the Governor."

"Come on, Sissies!" Sayer shouted down the staircase. "We got wogs to teach what's what!"

"I've relayed your order to Sun," Adele said, as primly as a senior professor. "The captain on duty in Sector Three has informed Governor Platt that the building is under attack. Over."

"We're on our way, Signals," Daniel said. He followed Hogg up the stairs as the spacers clumped through the door onto the second floor.

His spacers'd be hitting the gun crews from an unexpected direction. He'd have liked to be leading them. He'd have liked to be bringing theLadouceur down-and to be sitting at the cruiser's gunnery console, demonstrating what a 6-inch plasma bolt did to reinforced concrete.

He'd have liked to be doing a lot of things, but he was an RCN officer so the job nobody else could do became his priority. Admiral Daniel Leary was in command of the Bagarian assault force, so he would treat with the Alliance commander.

The door at the stair head was open; the heavy automatic weapon had stopped firing, but bursts from sub-machine guns and individualwhang s from stocked impellers came up from the plaza. There were shouts, screams, and frequently the ringing growl of projectiles ricocheting off gun mountings.

Daniel followed Hogg into the corner of a garden twenty feet on a side. Sparkling gravel walks wound between rough stone planters set with colorful flowers from several planets including Earth. Boxwood hedges enclosed three sides. The polarizing screen overhead let light through but from above appeared to extend the roof of the penthouse whose end wall-with a door flanked by bay windows-formed the garden's fourth side.

Hogg headed for the door between a planter of flowers streaming like red flags and one of blue, purple and violet cups. Even in haste he planted his feet with such delicacy that his fur-lined poaching boots barely disturbed the gravel path.

He twisted the latch with his left hand, pointing the sub-machine gun in his right like a pistol; the outward-opening door didn't move. He backed, tensing his right leg to kick.

"Get back," Daniel snapped, raising the impeller to his shoulder. The door panel was wood-grained metal. The wide troughs in which the clear panels of the casements were set implied that the windows were armored also.

Hogg stepped aside, reflexively careful not to cross in front of the gun muzzle. Daniel fired, blasting the latch into shards. The door itself jounced barely ajar.

Checking to see that Daniel still had the impeller leveled, Hogg stuck his sub-machine gun's muzzle into the hole where the latch had been and levered the door open. He couldn't use his bare hand, because the opening was white-hot and as sharp as a jumble of razorblades.

Beyond was a sitting room with a malachite table on which a vase of roses had been recently overset; water still dripped to the carpeted floor. The chairs had ornate frames of gilt wood and upholstery which matched the tabletop, picked out with stylized gold stars. It costs a great deal of money to buy things so tastelessly ugly, Daniel thought.

"I'm in!" Hogg said. He slanted through the doorway in a crouch that kept him below the line of Daniel's impeller.

"I'm in!" Daniel said. He followed at the opposite angle.

To the right was a well appointed office. It could be closed off from the drawing room, but the slatted door made from mirror-finished synthetic was collapsed against the wall. There was no one in either room.