Neither she nor the sergeant was down before one of the enemy let fly. The burst only hit the sergeant with three rounds, but one of them knocked off his helmet and another hit him in the throat, so that he was mortally wounded twice over when he hit the bricks head first.
Ryder and the Sea Fencibles returned fire, shooting low to keep overs from hitting the children. The children immediately started running again, and the soldiers seemed to have enough nerve to attack—at least for about ten seconds.
After that, more than a dozen of them were down, one of them propped up against a swing set, choking on his own blood. Ryder suspected that she would see that man in her nightmares for a while.
Then some of the school windows blew out, and more hostile fire smashed a Sea Fencible off the wall. A moment later an explosion tore a hole in the playground wall to the left. As bricks crashed down and the dust blew away, one of Euvinophan's Peep-surplus tanks came grinding improbably across the rubble.
Still more improbably, it swung its turret and let fly with both its plasma cannon and the ball-mounted bow tribarrel at the school's upper floor. Both were firing at maximum elevation, but that was enough. Suddenly the school had much less of an upper floor than before, and bricks, tiles, timber, furniture, and bodies (all adult-sized and in uniform, mercifully) rained down onto the playground.
A scout car with a ring-mounted Peep tribarrel followed the tank over the rubble. It cleared its field of fire just as several Euvinophan troops hurried in the gate, brave enough to try rescuing their fallen comrades. Their courage did not keep them alive against tribarrel fire, but some of them got off shots, and one of them actually hit Shuna Ryder.
It didn't penetrate the armor, and anyway she had been described as well-padded in the relevant area. She did pick up a selection of bruises and scrapes when she hit the ground, not to mention what felt like a couple of cracked ribs. She also knew that she would be standing up when awake and lying on her stomach when asleep, until the bruise healed.
Somehow an SBA was beside her even before she tried moving. Before the SBA finished, Fernando Chung was standing over her, looking unprofessionally concerned.
'Would you believe where I was shot?' Ryder muttered.
'I see where the painkiller is going in,' Chung said. 'I will modify my massage techniques.'
Ryder felt more like blushing from that remark than she did from having her pants around her knees.
When the painkiller had taken hold and the scan showed no fractures or internal injuries, the SBA let her stand. 'I really think a medevac is—'
'Going to have to wait,' Chung interrupted. 'I want to get a few more tanks out, if we have time. The power packs for the plasma guns only hold about ten full shots apiece, but that's enough direct fire that we won't need
A sonic boom sent glass cascading out of windows. Ryder wiped a suddenly stinging cheek, and her hand came away smeared with a grisly mixture of blood, sweat, and camouflage paint.
The SBA laid a field dressing over the demolitions sergeant's face, and watched the silver shape of the pinnace race overhead.
Her eloquent curse spoke for everyone.
Testaniere saw the Navy people from the airbase drive up just as he saw Citizen Sergeant Pescu leading a handful of ragged SS survivors from the direction of the vehicle park. Then everybody stopped to stare or cheer as the pinnace blasted the city with its sonic boom.
Testaniere doubted that the People's Republic would appreciate the bill for the chimneys, roofs, and windows broken by the supersonic approach, but he would take his share of the responsibility for it. After all, he had ordered the pinnace to hurry.
The pinnace was now slowing and banking, to let its on-board fire control systems pick out the enemy bombardment ship and paint an accurate picture of it for the missiles. The commissioner hoped that Weldon had not shot off too much of his ammunition, and that he would not go in close, to grab glory and also come within range of any air-defense weapons the ship might have. Those, he suspected, would be Manticore-supplied; the precision of the incoming fire and the modern ammunition would have been beyond the primitive technology that their Kirk imposed on the Canmore Republic.
Meanwhile, the SS personnel had their personal weapons and some ammunition, and Pescu was no longer the only one who looked like a warrior. The Navy people looked scared half out of whatever wits their training had left them, but all were armed and they had brought several crated anti-tank missiles as well. Two of them were even driving a hover truck with a light plasma gun in a fixed bow mount.
Testaniere wondered how Weldon had managed to acquire the extra weaponry. But that was a question that would not need answering until after they had saved the People's mission to liberate Silvestria.
Testaniere knew that was defeatism, but in the privacy of his own mind he could refuse to observe political propriety when it didn't match the facts. The leaders of the People were not only going to have to learn that all over again, they were going to have to teach it to a great many of their fighters and workers.
'We have the resources for a quick counterattack. If somebody can have Euvinophan's people reform on the left flank, and the next trucks bring their people around to reinforce us, and somebody gets at least one freighter airborne with a bomb load—'
'The Royal Army has put a no-fly order into effect until further notice, and they have a tracked missile- launcher bearing on the air base,' a citizen petty officer said. She looked and sounded as if she would rather have confessed to child molesting.
Testaniere understood how she felt. He swallowed. 'We can still make a useful ground counterattack with what we have here or can rally.'
'Won't that make us a big target?' the citizen petty officer asked. She had a rocket crate slung across her back, a helmet on her cropped head, and an assault rifle in her hands, so he knew this was not a coward asking.
'If we form out here, the enemy won't dare strike us for fear of hitting the city. Once we've closed in, they'll be afraid of hitting their own people. No reactionaries or elitists can be superhuman.'
He thought he heard someone mutter, 'Neither can the People's fighters,' but all his attention was suddenly elsewhere. As the pinnace raced overhead, white smoke and some kind of silver vapor suddenly filled the sky ahead of it. The pinnace banked, increased speed, shredded the smoke and vapor clouds with its slipstream, then vanished to the south.
For once Testaniere did not suspect Weldon of cowardice. He didn't know what the raiders had suddenly sprung, either. He hoped that in the pinnace, Weldon would have a better view and the weaponry to handle it.
* * *
Ryder had seen the tank suddenly hurl smoke grenades and chaff into the sky, and the pinnace's reaction. She'd hoped to see the pinnace's turbines simply ingest debris and fall out of the sky that way, but either there wasn't any solid debris or the pilot was both smart and lucky.
Then the tank's turret hatch opened, and Fernando Chung stuck his head out.
'I told you we were going to need some Peep hardware. What's more, we've been lucky. The San Martinos built all the weapons on these things with anti-air capabilities, and high-elevation mounts, and either the Peeps left well enough alone or one of their ordnance software people has the brains God gave cave slugs.'
'Is everybody out of the buildings?' Ryder shouted. She wanted to say something to Fernando, but knew that her voice might not be quite steady for anything but orders. A tank-vs.-pinnace duel was both unavoidable and mortally dangerous.
Besides, it was time to haul her aching posterior and everybody else's out of the range of any fuel dump explosion, since it might no longer wait for the demolition charges. Peep air-to-ground equipment was usually marginal and their training worse; they could barely hit a building if they hovered over the skylight.
'Move, move, move!' Ryder yelled. So did all the NCO's, then everybody in hearing took up the cry. She called to her radio operator to take over relaying data to
