Conventions of War (50 page)

“Of course, my lady.”

She sent them on their way and turned to the reserve units that were clustered around the square. The din at the funicular was dying away.

“Those were police in the lead this time,” Casimir reported. “Urban Patrol. I think they're running out of Fleet landing groups.” He gave a laugh that sounded like shale sliding down a slope. “It may be the Motor Patrol charging next.”

Cheered, Sula left the fountain, went to an area where a number of vehicles were parked and jumped onto the flat bed of a truck. “Gather around!” she called, and took off her helmet. She shook out her blond hair and gazed out over her fighters. There were three or four hundred, and she had never laid eyes on most of them before. They included the tall Lai-own with their feathery hair, the shorter Torminel with their large nocturnal eyes shaded by goggles or dark glasses, the pale expressionless Daimong with their gaping mouths and round, hollow, startled-looking eyes, the Cree with their huge ears and dark purple flesh, and the Terrans, who looked more like curious schoolchildren than determined soldiers.

Sula took a long, drawn-out breath, the air sweet with the scent of morning blossoms, and then shouted out into the morning.

“Which of you is the bravest?”

There was a moment of surprise, and then a half-articulate shout went up and she saw a sudden forest of pumping fists and waving rifles.

“Right,” she said, and began to point. “
You,
and
you,
and you there…” Then she looked down at the man with the beads dangling around his neck. “Not you, One-Step,” she said. “I've got other plans for you.”

When she had her dozen chosen, she brought them up to the hydraulic tailgate of the truck: five Torminel, two Daimong, three Terrans, and a pair of Lai-own so nearly identical that they might have been twins.

“I need the bravest,” she said, “because I need you to drive like hell right up the Boulevard of the Praxis and the Street of Righteous Peace. I need you to drive until your vehicles are so shot up they can't move any longer.”

The Naxids' computer-controlled heavy weapons were programmed to fire at movement, and would shoot at the nearest targets first. Her plan was to provide targets that would suck up all those enemy rounds, targets behind which the rest of her force could advance.

“You'll all be in trucks,” she told her dozen. “And you'll be charging in reverse, so that the rear of the trucks will take most of the damage and you won't be committing suicide.”
At least not so blatantly
.

Sula activated the record function on her sleeve display. “I want your names,” she said, “so that when they write the histories of this battle, you'll be in them.”

Pride sang in their voices when they spoke their names.

She made her assignments, then gave orders to the rest of the reserves. They were to fill their vehicles with fighters and charge up the streets behind the dozen of the advance group. They weren't to stop and take cover until all the advance group were stopped dead or until their own vehicles were hit.

“Move when you hear the horn blasts,” Sula said. “Now go!”

She turned to One-Step. “I need you to go back to the Ngeni Palace,” she said, “and bring all the groups waiting there to the square.”

She knew she might have to repeat this trick more than once, with fresh cannon fodder.

Firing began at the funicular once more as she waited on the Boulevard of the Praxis while her army got into position. Casimir reported that it was the same Naxid tactic as before—covering fire for an attack that hadn't started yet.

“Do you suppose all that shouting is meant to draw our attention away from something else?” he wondered.

She'd been thinking much the same thing. She tried to contact the teams she'd placed around the perimeter, but they reported nothing. Then she put on her headset and tried Macnamara.

“Nothing's happening here, my lady,” he said. “There's no sign of the Naxids at all. A few action groups are still coming up the road. We've blocked the gate with trucks and won't let them pass until they identify themselves, and then we send them on to the Ngeni Palace as you ordered.”

She told Macnamara to send them to Ashbar Square instead.

“Very good, my lady.”

“What is the status of the antimatter guns?” she asked. “Can you remove them from the emplacements?”

“Yes, my lady,” he replied. “They're the same guns we trained on, and we can take them out of the turrets. We'll have to remove and then reattach the big antiradiation shield, but all it will take is time.”

“Good. Pull one out and put it on the back of a truck. Let me know when you're ready,” she concluded.

She had been worried about the antiproton guns—they were an invincible weapon right up to the moment when the Naxids brought up antiproton guns of their own and blew them to radioactive dust. Getting the weapons out of the conspicuous turrets and putting them in a more camouflaged location might be the best way of preserving them.

There was a sudden burst of fire up ahead. Sula couldn't see where it was coming from, and had to assume that one of the groups she'd sent into the lanes and alleys had run into the enemy. She didn't want the Naxids to think of sending reinforcements there, so she decided it was time to launch her next attack.

“Blow your horns!” she shouted. “Let's go!”

The cars, vans, and trucks began honking their horns, each producing anything from a saucy little blip to a bass organ roar. Her suicide squads rolled ahead, driving very large vehicles in reverse. Even in reverse they managed a good pace, though some were clearly better drivers than others. She hoped the swerving would help keep them alive.

When the advance wave hit the Naxid guns' preprogrammed defense area, the air suddenly filled with hammering that began to shred the trucks. The driving grew more erratic as pieces flew off and clattered in the street.

There were at least three machine guns, she thought, because at least three of the trucks were getting hit at once.

The rest of the reserves followed in a dense swarm, firearms thrusting out the windows, some spraying the buildings ahead. Sula followed at a run, dashing up one of the walks until she encountered the first scattered bodies, then she ducked into a shop where bullets had marred the neat window displays.

Five Torminel looked at her in surprise from amid a collection of pens and stationery. “Move up!” she shouted. “We need your unit to move ahead and leapfrog the forces I've just sent in!”

The Torminel seemed to see the point of this, and they ran out of the shop, beating on doors and windows as they advanced and calling out to their comrades to join them.

Ahead, the street was noisy chaos. The smell of burning caught at the back of her throat. Bullets cracked overhead. Sula sprinted across the boulevard and jumped over a dead body that lay sprawled in the doorway of a vegetable market.

Something about the body made her stop before she entered the store. She braced her back against the solid doorway and saw that it was PJ Ngeni.

He had been hit in the chest and had fallen backward to the pavement. His elaborate hunting rifle lay across his body. His face bore an expression of wistful surprise.

Sula felt as if a soft pillow were pressed on her face, and she forced herself to breathe.

She had liked PJ. She had liked his amiable goodwill, and his foolish bravery, and the accuracy of his social sense. He had been everything that was fond and silly in the old order, and everything that the war had doomed.

A bullet glanced off the pavement nearby. She opened the door and stepped into the vegetable store.

Three Terrans looked at her. One was the surprised-looking man with the receding chin who had refused her orders to advance. Another was a young woman with greasy hair, and a third a teenage boy with bad skin, his lips stained with berry juice. Apparently they'd been having a feast of food gathered off the ration.

“Get your people together,” Sula told them. “Get up the street. You're going to leapfrog the units that just went in.”

“Well,” the man said, “that's going to be hard because—”

“I don't
care
how hard it is!” Sula said. “Just get out there and
do
it.”

“Well,” the young man said, “we were
supposed
to be attacking a prison. I don't even know what we're
doing
up here on the hill.”

Rage flared in Sula's veins. “What we're
doing,
” she said, “is winning the war, you incompetent fuck! Now get
out
there!”

He nodded, as if acknowledging a minor rhetorical point. “You know,” he said, “I don't think this thing is very well thought out, because—”

Sula remembered that she'd left her rifle behind at the Ngeni Palace. She reached for her pistol, pulled it out of the holster, touched the activation stud and pointed it at the group leader.

“Brave soldiers are dying for every second you hide in here,” she said. “Now are you going to show some leadership, or am I going to shoot you like I promised in our
last
conversation?”

The woman and the boy gaped at the sight of the pistol. A stubborn expression crossed the leader's face. “Not till I have my say,” he said, “because—”

Sula shot him in the head. The woman gave a little shriek as blood and brains spattered her. The boy took a step back and knocked over a crate of pomegranates. The little purple-red fruits bounced as they rolled along the floor.

Sula saw Caro Sula lying dead on the cart, her translucent skin paper-white. She saw Caro vanish into the river, her hair a flash of gold.

For a moment, as she looked down at the body, she saw Caro Sula's face staring back at her.

The coppery smell of blood swamped her senses and she clamped down hard as her stomach tried to quease its way past her throat. The pistol swayed in her hand. “Get out onto the street!” she told the other two. “And do it
now
! And if you head anywhere but toward the battle, I'll shoot the both of you, I swear.”

They edged around her, their weapons held in their hands as if they'd never seen them before. “Get up the road!” Sula shouted. The two reached the doorway, stepped gingerly over PJ Ngeni, and broke into a trot as they jogged up the street, toward the fighting.

Sula followed. She picked up PJ's rifle and looked at its display. It hadn't fired a single shot.

She slung it over her shoulder and moved up the street, pounding on doors and windows as she went.

“Come out of there,” she called, “you cowardly sacks of shit! Get moving! Move, you useless ass-wipes!”

Fighters emerged from their hiding places, and she sent them into the firestorm ahead. All of the vehicles had pulled off the road or been destroyed. Gunfire was roaring nonstop.

Having dug out as many fighters as she could, she trudged back to Ashbar Square, where new units were beginning to arrive. If the current attack failed, she decided, she'd pull the trick with the suicide trucks again.

It wasn't necessary. Sidney and the other infiltrators had worked their way through the maze of lanes and alleys and gotten behind the Naxid positions. They attacked seized some of the heavy weapons positions and turned the weapons on the other hardened positions. The fighters trying to move up the street suddenly surged forward as the Naxid defense disintegrated.

The Naxids had no reserves to speak of, and their positions had no depth. Once their line was breached, they had to pull back everywhere to avoid being cut off. Most were overrun before they could retreat. Sula's fighters seized the Ministry of Right and Dominion, the Ministry of Police, the Ministry for the Defense of the Praxis, and the High Court with its admirable view of the surrounding terrain.

Mad triumph raged in her veins. She called Casimir.

“We've thrown down another attack,” Julien replied. “We're just slaughtering them. I don't know why they keep on coming.”

“Julien?” Sula said in surprise. “Where's Casimir?” Then she remembered communications protocols and repeated the question using the proper form.

“He's gone to sort out some of the units with poor fire control,” Julien said. “They keep wasting ammunition. He gave me his comm protocols while he's running his errand.”

Sula sagged with relief. “Comm: to Wind,” she said. “Tell him that I love him madly. Tell him that it looks like we're taking all the government buildings on this end. Comm: send.”

“We figured you would,” came the answer.

She spoke too soon. When the army tried to move on to the Commandery, they ran into serious trouble.

“They've installed one of those units they've been using against snipers,” Sula was told. “Fire one bullet across their perimeter, and a whole series of automated weapons blast the hell out of you.”

Fortunately, Macnamara reported that he'd pulled an antiproton gun out of its turret and mounted it on the back of a truck. Sula ordered it to the Commandery.

The automated defense system could pinpoint any bullet or rocket aimed in its direction. But it wasn't capable of spotting a minute charge of antiprotons traveling along an electron beam at one-third the speed of light.

Macnamara demolished the Commandery's defenses with ten minutes of careful fire. The loyalists charged forward with a great roar, chasing the remaining guards through the maze of corridors and capturing the entire Naxid Fleet staff in the situation room.

The Ministry of Wisdom was taken without a fight. The Naxid security forces tried to make a stand in the courtyard of the Hall of the Convocation but were swarmed from all sides and massacred.

Forty of the rebels' tame Convocation were captured hiding in various parts of the building. Lady Kushdai, who chaired the Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis, was captured in the quarters formerly belonging to the Lord Senior of the Convocation.