The troops in the cargo compartment could be hit-one of the Feds dropped in the instant the situation formed in Sal's mind. But there were a lot of them, and the vehicle gave them better protection than Stephen and his fellows had. The squadron wouldn't be down before-
'
Sal jumped from the hatch. The ground was still too hot for slippers, but she was three steps around the vessel before she noticed the heat. It wouldn't have mattered anyway.
'Captain?' Brantling called from the hatch with nervous concern in his voice.
'Mind the console!' she shouted back.
The revolver holster slapped her left thigh as she ran for the gun tower. The tower platform was ten meters off the ground, supported on four squat concrete legs. Spiral steps were cast into each leg. There was a hatch into the platform at the top of the helix. Halfway up Sal realized she was mounting the northwest leg while Major Cardiff had led his troops up the southwest stairs.
Harrigan shouted from the ground. Sal ignored him. Gunfire from the Commandatura was a constant muffled rattle, and she tried to ignore that as well. She grabbed the latch lever and turned it. There wasn't a lock mechanism.
Sal jerked the door open. The Fed hiding in the compartment beyond screamed, '
Sal shot him in the face. The muzzle flash was a saturated red-orange, so vivid in the dimness that she almost didn't notice the thunderous report.
The Fed flopped backward. His forelock was burning. Sal stepped over the body and lifted the trap door to the gun platform beyond.
A Venerian soldier with his faceshield raised saw her, jumped back, and tried to aim his shotgun. Major Cardiff knocked the weapon aside with a shout of fear and anger.
'Where's the fire director?' Sal demanded as she clambered out. There were a dozen corpses on the platform, most of them Molts. Cardiff's men were dragging more bodies from the four metal turrets. The cannon still pointed skyward.
'Mistress Blythe, you shouldn't have come here!' Cardiff said. 'You could have been killed!'
'Where's the fire director, you stupid whoreson?' Sal shouted. 'There's men dying at the Commandatura now, and there'll be more unless we get our fingers out of our butts and help them!'
Cardiff's head jerked as he looked toward the Commandatura. He'd been too involved with his own operation to consider what was happening across the spaceport. 'Yes, I see,' he said.
He glanced across his visible troops. 'Davis, Podgorny!' he shouted. 'Let's get these guns working!'
The northeast turret was the same diameter as the others but was taller by two meters to add space for equipment. Cardiff ran toward it, sluggish in his hard suit. 'They've been gunners,' the major added as he saw Sal was keeping pace with him.
The fire director was a Janus-faced console in the center of the room beneath the turret. On one side was a narrow Molt-style bench; integral to the other side was a cushioned human chair. The walls and equipment were splashed with ichor, already crusting in the heat, but the bodies had been removed.
'Get one of these guns to bear on the car that's attacking the Commandatura!' Cardiff said to his men. 'Can you do it? And don't on your souls hit the building!'
The major stepped back. Davis and Podgorny-Sal didn't know which was which-stepped gingerly to the console. They took off their gauntlets and tossed them clashing to the floor.
'Tubes are loaded, at least,' muttered the soldier with a black mustache flowing into his sideburns. He squinted at the screen's pastel images. 'Standard gear, but it's not going to track a car flitting like that.'
'Just get moving, wormshit!' Sal said. 'If you put a twenty-centimeter bolt through the air beside that car, they aren't going to stick around to see where the next shot goes.'
The soldier looked up, startled at the words in a woman's voice. The other man said, 'Here, I think I've got a solution. I'm not sure which-'
Gear motors whined in the roof of the control room. A soldier outside shouted, 'Hey! The turret's moving!'
'It's all right!' Major Cardiff shouted out the hatchway. 'Everybody put your visors down, though!'
Cardiff noticed the forearm of a Molt, severed by a cutting bar. He half scraped, half kicked the limb out onto the platform. Sal heard a nearby rifleshot.
'The concrete's a honeycomb, not solid,' Cardiff explained. He raised his voice to be heard over the rumble of the turret mechanism. Tonnes of metal were turning in perfect balance. 'The gun crews were living up here. The bugs in the crews, at least. The boys are still flushing some of them out.'
Sal nodded to indicate she understood. Her face felt stiff. She moved behind the mustached soldier so that she could view his display. He had to lean over the chair to reach the keyboard, since his hard suit was too bulky for him to sit normally at the console.
The upper left corner of the display read Armed in scarlet letters and Manual below them in blue. At the bottom of the screen was a bar with a mass of data regarding temperature, atmospheric conditions, and other matters of no significance at what was point-blank range for the big cannon.
Four green radial lines at 90° to one another midway on the display implied a centerpoint above the right edge of the Commandatura. A similar set of radii trembled slowly down and across the display from the upper right corner, indicating the cannon's true current boresight.
The fire director was capable of zeroing onto a target through the full depth of a planet's roiling atmosphere. The screen's image of the nearby Commandatura was as sharp as a miniature in a glass case. Sal could see the bodies, one sprawled beside the landing barge and the other at the doorway down to the interior of the building. If she dialed up the magnification, she could probably identify the members of the assault force who'd been killed.
The soldier glanced over his shoulder at her. 'The guns won't depress enough to bear on the city,' he explained. 'There's a lockout in the gun mechanism itself. Fuckers in that car aren't quite so low, though.'
He grinned. His front teeth were missing.
Sal noticed she was still holding her revolver. She tried twice unsuccessfully to slide it into the holster. After the second attempt, she glanced down and realized she needed to lift the holster flap.
The Fed's crowbar had showered sparks as it clanged against the concrete. If it had struck her head. .
The orange radii crawled toward congruence with the green point of aim. 'I have the controls!' warned the soldier on the other side of the console.
The man on Sal's side raised his hands to indicate he wouldn't interfere in his enthusiasm. His armored forearm jolted her.
The radii mated. The paired set became orange and began to pulse. The turret mechanism stopped its rumbling movement.
In the sudden silence, Sal heard three shots and a howling ricochet from the platform. Men shouted together in triumph.
The image of the aircar curved slowly around that of the Commandatura. The pilot was holding his speed and attitude steady to help the gunmen in the cargo compartment. Five muzzle flashes, as regular as metronome strokes, winked from one corner of the roof coping.
The aircar slid into the indicated point of aim. For a moment, the vehicle's motion relative to the plasma cannon was almost nil. The soldier controlling the gun touched a control.
The crash of the cannon made the world jump. A miniature thermonuclear explosion flung the forged stellite gun tube back in recoil. Solid-seeming pearly radiance reflected through the open hatch of the director room.
Sal had never seen so large a plasma cannon before, nor had she ever been around a gun when it was fired in an atmosphere. The shock of light and sound crushed her inward like a mass of bricks. Major Cardiff gasped, 'Christ Jesus!' and jumped back from the hatch.
