Ричард Бейкер - Valiant Dust

“If you can see a way to stop it without killing a lot of people, you’re smarter than I am,” Sikander said. “We’ll stand our ground if the captain orders us to stay. Otherwise, I intend to get our troops out of the way and let this mob burn itself out.”

“Mr. North, this is Randall. You are ordered to withdraw. We’re sending your pilots a flight path to a safe location fifteen kilometers northeast of the city. Get the civilians and your people out of there, over.”

“Acknowledged,” Sikander replied. The consulate staff and bank employees would be a tough fit in the two shuttles alongside Hector ’s landing party, but for a short flight they’d make do. He met Larkin’s eyes. “Time to go, Ms. Larkin. Pass the word, please.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. She took a deep breath, then broke cover and ran back toward the consulate in a low crouch, already shouting orders as she went along.

Sikander watched her move off, thinking about the implications of what Larkin had told him earlier, and replaying any of a half-dozen interactions with her over the last couple of months. She should have told someone about her family history with Kashmir before he’d ever set foot on board … but of course she wouldn’t have wanted to seem like she was prejudiced against Kashmiris, even if she had reason to associate him with difficult emotions. But perhaps by bringing her story out into the open she could begin to move past it.

Another rifle shot interrupted his thoughts, and he ducked again. His eye fell on the Gadiran bank manager, lying motionless a few meters from the shuttle. In just a minute or two, they’d need to bring all the consulate personnel through the courtyard again. We’ve got to do something about the snipers, he realized. Suppressing fire might keep their heads down—and might play directly into the narrative the initiators of the riot hoped to create. But if there were some way to screen the civilians from potshots as they moved to the shuttles …

“Landing force, this is Lieutenant North,” he said over the tactical net. “I want everybody to pop your smoke markers inside the courtyard. First squad, smoke the east wall. Second squad, smoke the west wall. Third squad, cover the front gate.” The consulate building itself would cover the fourth side. “We need a smoke screen to cover the evacuation.”

“Yes, sir,” the various squad leaders replied. Sikander pulled out his own smoke grenade, pulled the pin, and rolled it a few meters away, producing a thick white cloud by the shuttle. He heard the sharp hiss of other grenades going off all around him, and saw dozens of smoke clouds billowing up from the ground along the walls before he was completely engulfed. Outside, the roar of the crowd swelled and echoed; the Caidist demonstrators could see that something was happening, but they didn’t know whether it was dangerous or not.

“Good thinking, sir,” Darvesh told him.

“We’ll see,” Sikander replied. He keyed his comm button. “Ms. Larkin, get the civilians to the shuttles. Lead them by hand if you have to.” He waited in the shifting smoke. Shots still echoed through the air. Some of the snipers were shooting blindly into the smoke, he guessed. Well, there was nothing he could do about that. A moment later, a line of gray shapes appeared in the smoke, shuffling forward in single file with joined hands—the consulate civilians, coughing and cringing as they hurried to the shuttle hatch.

“Everyone aboard,” Sikander told the first of them. He turned his attention back to the perimeter, trying to gauge how long the billowing clouds would last. People in business dress clambered into the shuttle one after another, murmuring words of thanks or stifling sobs of terror as they passed by. Then Chief Trent jogged up, with the squad of sailors from the consulate building and Consul Garcia at her side.

“The consulate’s clear, sir,” she reported to him.

“Good.” Sikander raised his voice and called into the smoke. “Ms. Larkin? Embark your troops.”

Garcia paused by the hatch, checking to see that his people were on board. Then he turned to Sikander. “My thanks, Mr. North. I hate to leave like this, though.”

“I do, too,” Sikander replied. “You’d better—” That was as far as he got, because at that moment Garcia suddenly grimaced and clapped a hand to his neck. A distant rifle report echoed above the noise of the crowd; whether the persistent sniper had found a clear patch of air to shoot through or had simply gotten ridiculously lucky, Sikander never knew. But a terrible spurt of blood burst out of Franklin Garcia’s mouth, and he sagged to his knees with a wet, strangled gasp.

“Mr. Garcia!” Sikander cried. The consul clutched at Sikander’s trouser leg, fighting for breath. Sikander reached down, grabbed him by the shoulders, and half carried, half threw the wounded man through the hatch into the shuttle’s passenger compartment. A woman, one of the consulate secretaries, screamed at the sight, but Sikander didn’t see what else he could do; the smoke was thinning, and his sailors pelted in from all sides, throwing themselves on board the shuttles.

“The compound’s clear, Mr. North,” Larkin reported over the tactical comms. “All the landing force is accounted for. We’re buttoning up Shuttle Two.”

Sikander stared for a moment at the bloody handprints Garcia had left on his trousers and arm. “Buttoning up Shuttle One,” he replied, and climbed through the hatch. “Petty Officer Long, get us out of here.”

He had one last glimpse of the smoke-filled consulate and the surging crowds filling the streets outside before the shuttle streaked away. Franklin Garcia died five minutes later.

12

Harthawi Basin, Gadira II

Otto Bleindel counted forty-one operational grav tanks camped around the water station—the better part of an armored battalion. A third or so were the new Léopards. The rest were older Tatous, slower and less heavily armored than the recent additions, although still quite immune to anything short of a small K-cannon or antitank rocket. Mounted infantry in heavy-duty scout cars accompanied the Royal Guard armor, although in the heat of the afternoon none of them moved about the laager. City-dwelling Gadirans cultivated the midday qaylulah as a matter of comfort and ease; here, in the depths of the planet’s unforgiving desert, resting during the hottest part of the day was a matter of life and death.

Good enough, Bleindel decided. He’d been following the reports from Tanjeer on his news feed all morning long. The capital was almost halfway around the planet; it was a few hours before dawn there now. Alonzo Khouri and his revolutionaries had kept the Royal Guard busy all night with riots and attacks in their backyard, but now it was up to the desert tribes to strike the next blow. Toppling a government was like chopping down a tree; no one was strong enough to bring it down with one clean stroke, but the cumulative effect of many small ax bites would serve just as well … and if you knew what you were doing, the weight of the tree itself would finish the job for you.

The Dremish agent swept his binoculars over the force below him one more time, looking for anything he might have missed. Not many trees here, that was for certain. More important, he didn’t see any combat flyers, either. The desert Caidists had made a point of targeting the sultan’s airpower at every opportunity, expending surface-to-air missiles at a prodigious rate to whittle down the Royal Guard’s most important advantage.

Bleindel finished his observation and scooted back carefully behind the brush, moving slowly to avoid raising a telltale puff of dust on the long, low hillside. He turned to Caid Harsaf el-Tayib, who likewise was lying on his belly studying the sultan’s tanks. “It looks like they’ve settled exactly where we thought they would, Caid Harsaf,” he said. “I can’t see any reason to wait.”