and the girl appeared. They had clubs; maybe some of them had guns besides. The light on the pole overhead concealed features instead of revealing them.
'Who are you?' Hera called in a voice of clear command. 'Attendant! Where's the lot attendant?'
'Get back into the restaurant,' Huber said. 'Now!'
He grabbed the girl's shoulder with his left hand and swung her behind him, a more brutal repetition of what he'd done with her earlier. Patroklos had been posturing in the restaurant. These thugs of his, though -- this was meant for real.
Huber thumbed open his holster flap and drew his pistol. He held it muzzle-down by his thigh for the moment.
'He's got a gun!' said one of the shadowy figures in a rising whisper. That was a good sign; it meant they hadn't figured on their victim being armed.
'Shut up, Lefty!' another voice snarled.
The pistol had a ten-round magazine. Huber knew how to use the weapon, but if these guys were really serious he wouldn't be able to put down more than two or three of them before it turned into work for clubs and knives... .
Huber backed a step, hoping Hera had done as he ordered; hoping also that there wasn't another gang of them waiting at the restaurant door to close the escape route. If Huber got around the corner again, he could either wait and shoot every face that appeared or he could run like Hell was on his heels. Running was the better choice, but he didn't think --
'Easy now,' said the second voice. 'Now, all to -- '
A big aircar -- it might've been the one that ferried Huber from Base Alpha to Benjamin -- came down the street in a scream of fans. It hit hard, lifting a doughnut of dust from the unpaved surface. That wasn't a bad landing, it was a combat insertion where speed counted and grace just got you killed.
Half the score of men filling the back of the vehicle wore khaki uniforms; they unassed the bouncing aircar with the ease of training and experience. The civilians were clumsier, but they were only a step or two behind when the Slammers tore into the local thugs with pipes, wrenches, and lengths of reinforcing rod.
'Run for it!' shouted the voice that'd given the orders before. He was preaching to the converted; none of his gang had stayed around to argue with the rescue party. Huber stood where he was, now holding the pistol beside his ear.
'Arne!' Doll Basime called. 'This way, fast!'
She stood in the vehicle's open cab, her sub-machine gun ready but not pointed. Sergeant Tranter was at the rear of the aircar; he had a 2-cm shoulder weapon. Both wore their faceshields down, probably using light-enhanced viewing. If a thug had decided to turn it into a gunfight, he and his buddies were going to learn what a real gunfight was like.
Huber ran for the truck. He heard screams from the parking lot; thumps followed by crackling meant that some of the expensive aircars were going to have body damage from being used as trampolines by troops in combat boots.
That didn't even begin to bother Huber. He remembered the eyes on him in the restaurant.
'Recall! Recall! Recall!' bellowed the loudspeaker built into Tranter's commo helmet. The other troopers had helmet intercoms, but the civilians didn't.
'How'd you get the word, Doll?' Huber said as he jumped into the back of the vehicle, just behind Basime. Another of the party had been driving; the cab would be crowded even with two.
Doll was too busy doing her job to answer him. Her throat worked as she snarled an order over the intercom, though with the faceshield down her helmet muted the words to a shadow.
Sirens sounded from several directions. They were coming closer.
The rescue party piled into the back of the truck. Two Slammers and a civilian remained in the parking lot, putting the boot in with methodical savagery. Their victim was out of sight behind the parked cars. One of the thugs must've tried to make a fight out of it -- that, or he'd hit somebody while flailing about in panic.
'Move it, Bayes!' Tranter called.
Huber pointed his pistol skyward and fired. The thump! and blue flash both reflected from overhanging foliage. For a moment the bolt was as striking as the blast from a tank's main gun. The three stragglers looked up in palpable shock, then ran to join their fellows.
Huber hung over the truck's sidewall to make sure Hera was all right. She wasn't in sight, so she'd probably gotten back into the restaurant. If she hadn't, well, better the local cops look into it than that the cops spend their energy discussing matters with the rescue party. That was a situation that could go really wrong fast.
The fans roared. Kelso, a civilian clerk from Log Section, was in the driver's seat. From the way the vehicle'd nosed in, Huber'd guessed a trooper was at the controls.
The aircar slid forward, gathering speed but staying within a centimeter of the gravel. Faces staring from the restaurant's front windows vanished as the car roared by in cascades of dust and pebbles.
Only when the vehicle had reached 90 kph and the end of the block did Kelso lift it out of ground effect. He banked hard through a stand of towering trees.
Huber could still hear sirens, but they didn't seem to be approaching nearly as fast as a moment before. Witnesses being what they were, Huber's single pistol shot had probably been described as a tank battle.
Doll put her hand on Huber's shoulder. Raising her faceshield she shouted over the windrush, 'That was a little too close on the timing, Arne. Sorry about that.'
'It was perfect, Doll,' he shouted back. The aircar was racketing along at the best speed it could manage with the present overload. That was too fast for comfort in an open vehicle, but torn metal showed where the folding top had been ripped off in a hurry to lower the gross weight. 'Perfect execution, too. What brought you?'
They were heading in the direction of the Liaison Office, staying just over the treetops. Kelso had his running lights off. Red strobes high in the sky marked the emergency vehicles easing gingerly toward the summons.
'That's a funny thing,' Doll said, her pretty face scrunched into a frown. 'Every trooper billeted at Base Benjamin got an alert, saying a trooper needed help -- and if there was shooting, the best result would be courts martial for everybody involved. It gave coordinates that turned out to be you. We hauled ass till we got here.'
She shrugged. 'Sergeant Tranter invited some civilian drivers from Log Section, too. I guess there was a card game going when the call came.'
'But who gave the alert?' Huber said. 'Did the -- '
He'd started to ask if the restaurant manager had called it in; that was dumb, so he swallowed the final words. There hadn't been time for a civilian to get an alarm through the regimental net.
'There was no attribution,' Basime said. She lifted her helmet and ran a hand through her short hair; it was gleaming with sweat. 'That means it had to come from Base Alpha; and it had to be a secure sector besides, not the regular Signals Office.'
'The White Mice?' Huber said. That was the only possible source, but ... 'But if it was them, why didn't they respond themselves?'
'You're asking me?' Doll said. She grinned, but the released strain had aged her by years. She'd known she was risking her career -- and life -- to respond to the call.
'I will say, though,' she added quietly, 'that whoever put out the alarm seems to be a friend of yours. And that's better than having him for an enemy.'
'Yeah,' said Huber. Through the windscreen he could see the converted school and the temporary buildings behind it. Kelso throttled back.
Much better to have him for a friend; because the people whom Joachim Steuben considered enemies usually didn't live long enough to worry about it.
This time Huber had his equipment belt unbuckled and his knife in his hand before he stepped out of the four- place aircar in which Sergeant Tranter had brought him to the Provost Marshal's office. The sky of Plattner's World had an omnipresent high overcast; it muted what would otherwise be an unpleasantly brilliant sun and was turning the present dawn above Base Alpha into gorgeous pastels.
Tranter had shut down the car in the street. He sat with his arms crossed, staring into the mirrored faceshields of the White Mice on guard.
The guards didn't care, but the trivial defiance made Tranter feel better; and Huber felt a little better also. He
