“You live on the High City,” she asked him. “How do we get around those Naxid positions?”
In addition to the long, straight streets in the High City, there were also small pedestrian lanes lined with small shops, and alleys and little squares behind the shops intended for service vehicles. Sula had first entered Sidney’s shop through just such an alley. They were marked on her maps, but it was difficult to tell from the maps exactly how to enter the lanes and what could be found there.
Sidney pointed out the byways he knew and explained how to access them. Sula called several of her commanders and gave them instructions.
“Stay off the main roads,” she said. “Leave your vehicles behind and move up through the alleys. We can expect that the Naxids will have guards here, but they won’t be in commanding positions, they’ll be close, where you can reach them. Keep moving and you’ll get behind those heavy gun positions and can take them out.” She looked at Sidney. “You can lead one group, can’t you?”
“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,andyou, 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.
