David Drake: The Forlorn Hope

"Sister to White One," hissed the voice of Hussein ben Mehdi, "we made it to the wall but we can't get through and we can't get back. They got us bottled in a building across-" there was a blast of white noise which was not atmospherically generated. Something had exploded close enough to the commo helmet to overload its filters. The Lieutenant's voice resumed, "Save what you can, Stack. This was a good try but it-" an automatic weapon overprinted his signal- "Over."

Sergeant Mboko was on the bridge. Captain Ortschugin stood at the lip of theCommoBay, listening to the speaker as intently as Foyle did.

"Sister, hold what you got!" Mboko said. "You're at the entry point? Over."

"See you inParadise, White One. Over and out."

Sookie Foyle stared at Ortschugin as the Captain turned away. "I'll prepare to lift ship," she heard him say to Sergeant Mboko.

The roof of the adjacent building was afire. That meant there would not be another attempt to rush them from it. Six Federal soldiers had died before one had fired his grenade launcher as he fell back through the trap door. That had ended the rush, but it had not helped the trooper sprawled beside Albrecht Waldstejn with a bulged skull and a hole between his eyes.

Automatic rifles yammered across the boulevard. Waldstejn cursed and fired back. He cursed again. The recoil had hurt him, as usual, and he had, as usual, missed. There was one body crumpled on the inner slope of the blast wall, but Del Hoybrin had nailed it there. Now Federals within the spaceport slid only far enough up the berm to fire in the general direction of the roof overlooking them across the boulevard. They would probably duck back even if Waldstejn did not respond… but the next time they might pause long enough toaim, and that could be all she wrote for the two men still alive on the roof.

There were wrecked emergency vehicles in either direction along the boulevard. A truck and several police cars were burning. Water still leaked from the riot control vehicle which a garbled message had sent to the scene with its water cannon. Surprise and confusion had made cold meat of the first waves who did not realize they were being dropped straight into a war. But killing Federal troops was not going to do any long-term good for Albrecht Waldstejn and the team which had tried to rescue him.

Nothing was.

Del Hoybrin fired across the radial street. He was too late. Theshoop from a window there became the shattering detonation of an anti-tank rocket. It demolished much of the second floor of the building in which the mercenaries were holed up. The van in which they had arrived burned in the street. Its smoke was at least an edge of cover for the rest of the team on the ground floor with the wounded.

The Cecach officer had stumbled up the stairs, pushed by the big trooper since there was not enough room to be carried. Churchie Dwyer had been alive when they left him, and Jo Hummel was breathing though unconscious with streaks of dried blood beneath her nose and ears. Enforced motion and the pain of his cracked ribs had ridden Waldstejn out of the state of shock into which he had begun to slip. Now he was becoming increasingly dizzy. The building seemed to tremble even after the warhead's racket had died away. The blast wall across the boulevard was expanding as his eyes tried to focus on it.

The blast wall was not moving. A'starship was sliding toward it, broadside, at a measured pace.

The rest of the Companywere coming for them, and they were bringing theKatynForest.

"Clear the area!" blatted the starsliip's external speakers in badCzech. "This area is about to be destroyed! Clear the area!"

Cooper tensed as the volleys ripped out from Holds Two and Three. "Getdown," croaked Gunner Jensen. The skin of his face was red, and it would be weeks before he had eyelashes again; but he was master of his gun and his section, by Saint Ultruda!

The inner face of the berm was turf. It absorbed the hail of projectiles with no sign of their passage. The score of Federal troops there had been concerned only with the building on the other side of the blast wall. They leaped and died against the turf, scythed down by the shots from behind them. There was no target worthy of the automatic cannon as yet, and Jensen did not want his three crewmen endangered by rising to fire their shoulder weapons when the infantry sections had the business well in hand.

Herzenberg tried to smile at her section leader. The effect was grim, but the thought brought her an equally-awful rictus from Jensen in reply. Herzenberg had insisted on being in Hold One with the rest of Gun Section, though she could not have been of much practical use even if she were better trained. The polymer splints on her right arm and leg permitted her to move without restriction. Nothing could change the blinding pain such movement caused, however, except enough drugs to knock her flat anyway.

TheKatynForest was steadier under her own power than she had been when she drew from the broadcast grid, but she still bucked as she started to lift. The sloping berm dropped below as they approached it. Someone stood on the nearest of the buildings, waving a gun butt-upward.

The brick and stone facades of other buildings began to powder as the troopers in Holds Two and Three opened fire. They were leaning over their copper breastworks to shoot down at an angle. The cannon could not be depressed in its present mounting. A target had to be in the same plane for the gun to bear. The speakers continued to call their warning, but it was doubtful whether words could be heard over the muzzle blasts. Still, it was the most chance that Mboko could give non-combatants under the circumstances.

TheKatynForest began to settle as if to land on the peripheral boulevard. With her belly ten meters in the air, the vessel paused. The intercom boomed in Ortschugin's gruff English, "Bridge to Guns-here we go." With a gentleness that belied the Swobodan's looks, the starship managed the incredibly difficult job of rolling two degrees on its axis. Jensen's sights swung down across building fronts, then over the Cecach soldiers and vehicles huddled along the structures where the angle protected them from the trapped mercenaries. The Federal troops were blazing away furiously at theKatynForest, though bodies and cratered facades showed the damage the Company's infantry was wreaking.

Sergeant Jensen started a block in front of the starship's bow and traversed left on Continuous Fire.

The big osmium slugs took buildings down in a row like a demonstration of controlled demolition. The lighter weapons had blown gaps in the facing walls. The cannon's slow traverse sawed through the massive but brittle structures, including the load-bearing firewalls separating adjacent buildings. Bricks and blocks and humans, most of them civilians huddled in their rooms, cascaded into the boulevard. Federal soldiers flattened to the pavement while Jensen's fire ripped overhead. The debris avalanched over them.

The shattering fire paused momentarily while Pavlovich slid a fresh drum into the ammunition feed. Then Jensen dumped the full hundred rounds down the street by which the rescue commando had approached the port. The gun raked buildings on both sides with the exception of the one on the left corner from which Albrecht Waldstejn had waved as the starship loomed over the blast wall. Secondary explosions blew geysers of brick and stone from the stately cascades that filled the street.

"Set her down, Control!" Jensen called as Cooper this time reloaded the automatic cannon. TheKatyn Forest rocked level and settled onto the boulevard. The ship had hovered less than a full minute to give the big gun a chance before the locals were ready to react to the situation.