Diane Duane: X-COM: UFO Defense

“Bad moment for an upsurge of religious feeling, Boss,” Matt said as they headed up through the square.

Before Ari could answer, plasma fire rained down around them from a window up on their left. It was one of those snipers that Mihaul had missed, Ari thought. Matt lifted that rocket launcher again as the others scattered. He took aim, waited, fired.

The front of the building fell off. “I really love that,” Matt said, catching up with the group as it reformed.

Ari sighed. “There was a great pastry shop in there.”

“First religion, now food,” Paula said, and chuckled. “Boss, you’re a fickle one.”

“Religion first. Come on.”

They made their way up through the square, past the now-disabled alien Terror Ship, picking their way over burned and crushed café tables and chairs, and around many bodies, both human and alien. Ari was pleased enough about their response time on this one: they had been no more than five minutes behind the alien craft, though he would have preferred to force it down outside the city Still, just good luck that we were in the right place at the right time. If we’d had to come all the way up from Irhil on this run, none of this would be left now. None of that, either….

He glanced at the church. Muzzle flashes and the reports and billowing explosions of grenades were thick off to the right side of it, near the head of the Via Alighieri. But there were no flashes any farther down.

“Who’s holding the corner there?” he said down the commlink. “By that pale-colored building?”

“Us, Boss,” Roddy McGrath’s voice came back. “We’ve got a good bunch bottled up here. Some trapped behind the big church, some others between it and the stone tit.”

“Good. You hold ‘em there. I’m gonna get you some light to work with.”

“Gonna get the moon to rise this late, Boss? Nice trick,” said Elsabetta’s voice.

“Not quite. Just hang on.”

All around them, it began to rain white-hot fire from plasma rifles and God knew what else. Ari and his team zigzagged their way up the piazza, and all around them shots hit the burnt-out cars and soot-covered, upended café tables. Cobbles were kicked out of burning mortar by the plasma fire, and any stone not made of igneous rock to begin with immediately blew up, splintering with the heat. Fragments flew in every direction like some kind of primitive fléchette grenade. Ari dodged and jumped and cursed when splinters glanced-off of his armored legs. One struck him squarely somewhere rather more embarrassing, but there was nothing to do about it but keep running.

They were getting quite close to the church, but as they approached it, the downpouring fire got so serious that Ari and his team were forced to take refuge up against the buildings on the left side of the square. They stood in front of what used to be a department store, now wall after wall of broken plate glass and shocked-looking, blast-denuded mannequins. “They’re up there, Boss,” Matt said, jerking his head up at the church tower, another of the low domes that seemed popular in this part of the world. “No one’s going to get anything done until we get that bunch killed.”

Ari breathed in, breathed out. “Damned Sectoids. On the dome?”

Matt was already limbering up his rocket launcher. “Yup.”

“OK. See that rectangular bit sticking out there, on the left? That’s the church’s chancel. Don’t hit that. When you fire, make sure the debris doesn’t fall on it.”

“You got relatives in there, Boss?” But Matt was loading up already.

“I’ll explain later. Just keep firing. I’ve got something else to do.” Ari stared around him for a moment, wearing what must have looked to his team like an oddly quizzical expression. “Listen,” he said, “any of you have a couple of hundred-lire coins?”

Paula, through her armor’s thick faceplate, and all the rest of them from under their helmets or eyeshades, looked at Ari as though he had just landed from Saturn. He looked back, and after a few seconds—one after another and with all kinds of bemused expressions—they began to check their pockets.

“I’ve got a dollar—”

“Uh—I’ve got eighty dirhams, fifty francs, and a Kenyan shilling.”

“Sorry, Boss. I don’t usually bring my wallet on these shindigs. I always figure somebody else’ll pay for the drinks—”

“Never mind,” Ari said. “I’ll fake it. Matt, start firing. The rest of you, cover me too. Don’t you stop until— you’ll know when.” And he shouldered his heavy plasma and plunged off across the piazza, toward the church’s bronze doors.

They were not his main objective, but they were where the best cover was. Under the massive, arched tympanum sheltering the main doors, no fire could reach him from above—assuming he could reach the tympanum. Behind him, a number of indiscreet burping noises, like a giant paying the price for bolting his nachos, suggested that Matt was getting into his assignment. Above and behind Ari, burning stone and ancient brick leaped away from the dome. Above the noise of the explosions, he thought he heard a couple of screams in the little high voices of Sectoids. “Good,” he muttered to himself. There was something particularly satisfying about shooting Sectoids, with their sinister looks, like dark-eyed elfin children stolen and turned into something sinister and deadly. Ari paused by the last street corner, across from the brick walls of the church, getting his breath for the big run across the exposed space. “You guys in the back,” he muttered down the link, “that light is coming up. I expect you to drive all your targets down into the piazza. Matt, when you finish with the dome, you and Roddy’s bunch get ready to turn all your attention to the middle of the piazza, between the church and the tomb. About thirty seconds. Ready?”

Acknowledgments came from one team leader after another. “Matt,” Ari said, “hammer it—!” And he ran out into the open.

The Sectoid snipers above had little time to get off more than two or three volleys of plasma bolts before Matt’s really serious attack on them began. The old brick cornices around the dome practically leapt into the air, raining down into the piazza. Miss the chancel, miss the chancel! Ari thought as he ran desperately, zigzagging again, for the shelter of the church’s tympanum. Thirty yards—twenty—

He was under, in cool black shadow, looking out into night only occasionally lighted by weapons flashes and explosions. Ari paused, listening to the tempo and ferocity of the fire increasing from the back of San Vitale’s Church, as the other teams started to drive their assailants around front. Better move now, before they come around the church and find you right out there in the middle of things.

Ari sucked in one last deep breath. Odd, how sweet these frantic breaths could taste, when you weren’t sure you were ever going to get another one. He ran for it, up the piazza and to his right, across the empty space and toward the massive iron-grille gates of Galla Placidia’s mausoleum. Explosions in the night, shouts of the living, snarls of the dying, the sounds of alarms and excursions everywhere, but nothing came close to him, none of the flying fire came to lodge in his flesh. Ari came up against the iron grille with a clang, seized it, shook it: locked. After hours. No way to get in and under cover. Never mind.

Ari made his way over to the right of the grille. There it was, the plain little steel box fastened to the gate, with its stenciled message. LUMINATIO AUTOMATICO, 200 L

Ari shook his head with a look both bemused and grim. “Sorry, guys,” he said, and unslung his heavy plasma. With the greatest possible care in this darkness, he shot one corner of the box off.