David Drake - When the Tide Rises

Straight ahead was an archway made shimmeringly opaque by holographic distortion; Daniel guessed that there'd be a band of active noise cancellation at the same point to provide complete privacy for those inside. The trouble was, the only way to tell what was on the other side of the curtain of light was to go through it into whatever was waiting Hogg lifted the muzzle of his sub-machine gun and raked the transom. Bits of cast synthetic flew in all directions. Sparks popped as the burst slashed away several projectors; strips amounting to half the screen vanished, showing a huge bed. Its rumpled duvet was in the same hideous gold-on-malachite pattern as the chairs in the drawing room.

The bed was empty. On the far wall between built-in bookcases-false ones, Daniel suspected-was another armored door, this one slowly swinging to. Beyond, the powerful fans of an aircar whined, then bogged as the driver tried to bring them up to speed too quickly.

"No you don't!" said Hogg. He leaped into the bedroom, ignoring the risk that a shooter waited in ambush.

Daniel turned and ran back through the garden. The hedge was dense and the sculptured boxwood branches raked him like so many fingernails, but he'd hunted in brush before. He forced his way between trunks, holding the impeller vertical before him.

If necessary he'd have run on the lip of the planter in which the boxwoods were set, but there was a good five feet between the hedge and the second level's roof coping. Daniel sprinted around the penthouse to reach the back, just as an open aircar roared out of the garage housed in the rear half of the suite.

Hogg fired a burst, pocking the quarter panel. Where the sub-machine gun's light projectiles hit, they stressed the black thermoplastic skin to gray-white.

The driver hauled his vehicle into a tight spiral as he gained altitude. The car banked, fifty yards out from the garage and ten or a dozen feet above the level of Daniel's head.

He fired twice. The impeller's heavy recoil woke nostalgic memories of his childhood. He'd actually become a better wing shot than Hogg, who took the reasonable attitude that birds shot off a branch tasted the same as those he'd shot out of the air. The aircar was just a bigger bird, and the butt-plate's punch against his shoulder was much the same as that of a shotgun using full charges.

Daniel saw a tiny spark in the car's rear fan housing. For a moment the vehicle continued to spiral upward, its fans howling.

Hogg stepped out of the garage, pointing his sub-machine gun. "Don't shoot!" Daniel shouted. He kept his cheek weld on the stock but he'd lifted his finger from the trigger.

"Shoot, you pup!" Hogg shouted. "You bloody missed it, you did!"

The car howled. There was aBlang! and the rear fan blasted shreds of itself out of the housing.

Daniel heard shrill cries from the cabin. He lowered his impeller.

"Sorry, master," Hogg muttered in embarrassment. "Shoulda knowed you wouldn't miss a clout shot like that."

"I put holes in a couple blades instead of shooting out the motor," Daniel explained quietly. "I want them to have a chance to set down. Remember, I'm trying to capture the Governor alive."

The driver-a woman in uniform, Daniel saw as the car came around-fought her controls as the unbalanced rear fan shook itself increasingly to ruin. With the nose continuing to rise despite anything the driver could do, the aircar slanted toward the pad from which it'd lifted.

Daniel and Hogg flattened themselves against the wall in case the vehicle landedbe side rather thanin side the garage, but the driver managed to hold it straight as it slid down. The nose cleared the transom by no more than a hair. There was a crash, screaming metal, and a second crash which shook the wall that Daniel was leaning against.

The fan motors shut off. They're not all dead. Somebody was sobbing. Holding his impeller at port arms, Daniel walked around the end of the building and looked into the garage.

The car's bow was wedged against the back wall; the frame had bent enough to crack. The driver climbed out of the front seat. Her mouth was open and, though she was moving, there was nothing behind her eyes.

All three men in the rear compartment were bloodied, but they didn't appear to be seriously injured. The two chubby youths were nude except for rings and other piercings; one's penis stud had tufts of feather at both ends.

The male in his sixties was even fatter than his catamites. He'd thrown on a shimmering robe before running to the car, but it didn't cover as much as Daniel wished it did. His blubbering made tracks down the blood oozing from his nose.

"Governor Platt," Daniel said, "I'm Admiral Daniel Leary. I'm here to demand your capitulation to the Independent Republic of Bagaria."

Hogg began to laugh. He was laughing so hard that he had to kneel on the plaza to keep from falling over.

Adele switched to the last of the six intercom channels and grimaced: no matter what she did, she couldn't get rid of the 50-cycle hum. Fort Douaumont had an excellent communications system as installed, but it apparently hadn't received maintenancesince that installation.

She supposed the background interference resulted from moisture and failing insulation in a distribution node which also contained a lighting circuit. Now that four of the fort's five sectors had surrendered to the Bagarians, she might escape the problem by going to another command center.

She'd decided not to move, at least for the time being. Something could go wrong with the process, and anyway-they'd paid for this location. She wondered if Woetjans was still alive.

"Captain Ringo…," Daniel said to the commander of Sector Two. "You've proved yourself to be a brave and loyal soldier. It's time to lay down your arms as Governor Platt has ordered and spare your own life and the lives of your troops. I give you my word as an officer of Cinnabar that you'll be treated with full military courtesy after your surrender, over."

Adele was channeling all communications through her position, though it was obviously possible for Daniel in the Governor's suite to speak directly to the Sector Twocommand center or anywhere else in Fort Douaumont. She felt better believing that she knew everything that was going on, and it allowed Daniel to use his RCN commo helmet instead of fumbling with Alliance equipment.

"Fuck you Cinnabar monkeys and fuck that pansy Platt!" Ringo replied. A burst from an automatic impeller rang off theSkye Defender 's hull. His troops must've manhandled the gun from its emplacement on the outer wall and aligned it to fire through one of the small-arms ports on the courtyard side of the rampart.

Most units of the Conyers garrison were nationalized planetary militia like the Maintenon battalion which the Bagarians had impersonated. There was one company of Home Office troops, however, sent to enforce discipline generally and Guarantor Porra's will in particular. Ringo commanded them. It was Adele's good fortune that she and her team had entered the fortress in Sector Three, not Two, though it might not've made any difference. Tovera was ruthless and a dead shot, and so was Tovera's mistress.

An alarm sounded from Station B, the artillery emplacement above Ringo's sector. Adele expanded the visual link to the site, a pair of 10-cm plasma cannon on a disappearing carriage which nestled behind an armored breastwork while they were at rest.

Though the weapons were fully automated, the designers had provided for manual control in an emergency. They hadn't expected the emergency to be that a command post would be captured by a Cinnabar intelligence officer who understood the system better than the Alliance garrison had, though.

Six soldiers in field gray had come through the floor hatch and were trying to put the guns in action. They'd figured out that the Bagarians had taken electronic control of the installation, so two of them with chisels and heavy hammers were trying to cut the conduit. That wouldn't actually free the guns as they hoped, but it showed a degree of imagination which couldn't be permitted in an enemy.