Кристофер Банч - Revenge of the Damned

The new arrivals were not there for a casual investigation.

Virunga got on the com to Sten.

The rest of the symphony would be y'zz.

Sten, even though he had gone through the long, drawn-out defeat in the Fringe Worlds, still had not realized there were so many ways of being told he was clotted.

He stood in the middle of what had formerly been the K'ton Klub's main lounge and was now his com center. Koldyeze was up against it. There was no way that Virunga and the rest of the POWs could hold out against an armored attack. And there appeared to be nothing that could be done. His link with the Imperial Forces around Heath told him their attacks were stalled. They had three days minimum until they broke through. Negative on tacair. There were still enough AA missiles sited to make any air support run nearly suicidal. And Wichman's units were too close to hazard even an operator-guided missile attack.

He glanced out a window and winced. He did not need a weatherman to tell him that a storm front was closing in. He saw drizzle and fog. Across the room, Kilgour was already at a computer terminal. A wallscreen cleared, and a map appeared. The map showed Heath's capital with five-meter contour lines. The map shifted, and Koldyeze was suddenly at the map's center.

Sten crossed to the map and studied it. The contour lines grouped very close together around Koldyeze, and Sten's leg muscles memory-ached, remembering the number of times he had groaned up that steep cobblestone street when he was a prisoner. Oh-ho.

"Turn that sucker and animate it," he ordered.

The map changed, and Sten was staring at a lateral projection of Koldyeze showing that outlined, ruined cathedral atop the rise.

"Alex," he wondered aloud, "you got any read on what kinda crunchies Wichman's got?"

"Negative, boss. But Ah'll bet it's nae th' Tahn's finest."

Probably not, Sten thought. "Spin it again."

Once more Sten stared "straight down" at Koldyeze.

He had an idea—of sorts. But he needed one thing.

He asked Kilgour.

"Ah lack exact whae y' need, but Ah hae a wee ersatz."

"Nobody's looted it?"

"Ah gie m' word, wee Sten. Nae e'en a desperate Tahn'd go near it."

"You got two gravsleds running?"

"Ah hae."

And Kilgour was out the door.

Sten, who had planned to spend the last few days of the war sitting in his web being big daddy spider, grabbed the waiting combat harness from the wall and tugged it on.

He looked across the room at St. Clair. She shook her head in disbelief, and he shrugged, then went down the stairs.

Kilgour, already in fighting gear, was waiting outside at the controls of the gravsled. Behind him were two of Chetwynd's agents at the controls of a cargo sled. Both vehicles were battered and battle-damaged but still lift-capable. Sten clambered in, and Alex took off.

"How do you know the stuff's still there?"

"D' ye ken," Alex went on, "thae quadrped we noted, aye back th' day we arrived ae Heath?"

Sten thought back—and recalled that four-legged creature ridden by a Tahn officer. "A hearse?"

"Close, lad. At any rate, dinnae y' wonder whae happens to horses when they die?"

Sten had not.

"The term is renderin't. An' stinkit. Th' recyclin't center's still there an' reekin't. We'll hae our social lubricant."

Kilgour did not have an order of battle for Wichman's assault unit, but his guess had been correct.

The recon squadron was a recently activated reserve unit made up of soldiers previously invalided out of combat; the gravsled unit had been formed by cadets from one of the Tahn military secondary schools; and the infantrymen had been grabbed from the walking wounded, replacement centers, and transport depots.

The heavy tracks were factory-fresh and intended to be driven directly to the front lines and sent into combat. They were so new that they lacked even a coat of camouflage anodizing. Their crews were civilian—final line inspectors who had been grabbed and given orders by Wichman's people. Only one inspector had objected—and been promptly shot by H'nrich, Wichman's chief of security. The others did what they were told.

They attacked Koldyeze.

The first tank made Sten's plan possible.

The first watchtower destroyed, the tank ground into motion up the cobbled street, its cannon finger probing for a new target. The gunner's sights swept across the second watch-tower on the other side of Koldyeze's gates. There was no sign of motion. The gunner looked for a better target.

Very slowly, the chaingun in that second watchtower swiveled. The skinny man crouching in the gunner's seat turned to the equally emaciated man kneeling beside him. "Is it loaded?"

"I think so. You figure out how to shoot it?"

"Hell if I know."

"You know that popgun ain't gonna punch through that tin can down there, don't you?"

"Shaddup. I live a clean life."

The ex-POW loading the chaingun would have been correct—under normal circumstances. The antipersonnel rounds in the chaingun should have spattered off the heavy tank like raindrops. But the tank's designers had assumed that no clotting driver would ever be dumb enough to take that track over a pile of rubble and expose its belly and extremely vulnerable escape hatch.

The scared civilian behind the tank's controls was that dumb.

And the Imperial soldier behind the chaingun's triggers was a very good shot.

Ten rounds blew the hatch off its locks— into the tank's crew compartment—and then ricocheted. Heavy armor could keep things in as well as out.

There were two survivors, and they were shot down by riflemen as they scrambled out the rear hatch for safety.

"Not bad," the loader said.

"Not bad at all," the gunner said.

Ten seconds later smoke wisped out of the tank's atmosphere exhausts, and the track "brewed up" in flames.

The easy way to take Koldyeze had been cut.

Virunga wondered what his still-unknown attacker would try next.

Probably an infantry assault.

That indeed was what Wichman had in mind. But his cobbled-together assault unit was still getting itself organized, and most of the improvised platoons were nowhere near the line of departure when whistles shrilled.

About a company of grunts started up the hill. They were quickly shot down or into shelter. There was no second wave. Instead, they started building barricades across the streets and creating fighting positions inside the tenements.

Perfectly fine, Virunga thought. We have no intention of counterattacking, and if they turn this into a siege, perhaps we can hold on until the Imperial Forces arrive.

Perhaps. He went to prepare what he was trying to convince himself was his artillery.

At twilight, Sten and Alex were crouched on the roof of one of the tenements, looking for a way in.

Below them, hidden in wreckage, was the larger gravsled, its cargo slooping and stinking, just as Kilgour had promised.

Sten saw an opportunity to create some chaos.

The cadets manning the gravsleds were evidently trying to attack Koldyeze as if they were Scythians bashing out a Roman legion. Their sleds darted back and forth and up and down, the sleds' gunners occasionally blasting off a burst or two. Good shots. They hit Koldyeze almost every other time.

Sten waited until dark, then flipped on the light-enhancing sights of his sniper rifle. It was a fairly nasty weapon that fired a tiny, shielded AM2 round that on impact would blow a hole in a man's chest that a gravsled could be driven through. But unlike the issue willygun, the heavy sniper rifle used a modified linear accelerator to propel the round. The scope was used not merely to give a precise range and fix on the target but could be turned if the target happened to go behind a wall. On firing, the accelerator would spin the round at the appropriate time—and the gun was quite capable of shooting around a corner.