"Locked on," said the mechanical voice of Command Central in Tyl's ears. "Hold f—"
There was a wash of static as the adaptive optics of the satellite failed to respond quickly enough to a disturbance in the upper atmosphere.
"—or soft input," continued the voice from Colonel Hammer's headquarters, the words delayed in orbit while the antenna corrected itself.
The air on top of the City Office building was still stirred by the fans of aircars moving to and from the parking area behind. Their numbers had dropped off sharply since the last remnants of the riot were dispersed. In the twilight, it was easier to smell the saltiness from the nearby sea—or else the breezes three stories up carried scents trapped in the alleys lower down.
The bright static across Tyl's screen coalesced into a face, recognizable as a woman wearing a commo helmet like Tyl's own. Noise popped in his earphones for almost a second while her lips moved on the screen—the transmissions were at slightly different frequencies. Then her voice said, "Captain Koopman, how secure are these communications on your end?"
"Ma'am?" Tyl said, too recently back from furlough not to treat the communicator as a woman instead of an enlisted man. "I'm using a portable laser from the top of the police station. It's—I think it's pretty safe, but if the signal's a problem, I can use—"
"Hold one, Captain," the communicator said with a grin of sorts. Her visage blanked momentarily in static again.
A forest of antennas shared the roof of the building with the Slammers officer: local,regional,and satellite communications gear.Instead of borrowing a console within to call Central, Tyl squatted on gritty concrete.
His ten-kilo unit included a small screen, a twenty centimeter rectenna that did its best to align itself with Hammer's satellites above, and a laser transmitting unit which probably sent Central as fuzzy a signal as Tyl's equipment managed to receive.
But you can't borrow commo without expecting the folks who loaned it to be listening in; and if Tyl did have to stay in Bamberg City with the transit detachment, he didn't want the locals to know that he'd been begging Central to withdraw him.
The screen darkened into a man's face."Captain Koopman?" said the voice in his helmet. "I appreciate your sense of timing. I'm glad to have an experienced officer overseeing the situation there at the moment."
"Sir!" Tyl said, throwing a salute that was probably out of the restricted field of the pickup lens.
"Give me your appraisal of the situation, Captain," said the voice of Colonel Alois Hammer. His flat-surface image wobbled according to the vagaries of the upper atmosphere.
"At the moment . . ." Tyl said.He looked away from the screen in an unconscious gesture to gain some time for his thoughts.
The House of Grace towered above him. At the top of the high wall was the visage of Bishop Trimer enthroned. The prelate's eyes were as hard as the stone in which they were carved.
"At the moment, sir,it's quiet,"Tyl said to the screen."The police cracked down hard, arrested about fifty people. Since then—"
"Leaders?" interrupted the helmet in its crackling reproduction of the colonel's voice. Hammer's eyes were like light-struck diamonds, never dull—never quite the same.
"Brawlers,street toughs,"Tyl said contemptuously. "A lot of 'em, is all.But it's been quiet, and . . ."
He paused because he wasn't sure how far he ought to stick his neck out with no data, not really—but his commanding officer waited expectantly on the other end of the satellite link.
"Sir," Tyl said, determined to do the job he'd been set, even though this stuff scared him in a different way from a firefight. There he knew what he was supposed to do. "Sir, I haven't been here long enough to know what's normal, but the way it feels out there now . . ."
He looked past the corner of the hospital building and down into the plaza. Many of the booths were still set up and a few were lighted—but not nearly enough to account for the numbers of people gathering there in the twilight. It was like watching gas pool in low spots, mixing and waiting for the spark that would explode it.
"The only places I been that felt like this city does now are night positions just before somebody hits us."
"Rate the players, Captain," said Hammer's voice as his face on the screen flickered and dimmed with the lights of an aircar whining past, closer to the roof than it should have been for safety.
The vehicle was headed toward the plaza. Its red and white emergency flashers were on, but the car's idling pace suggested that they were only a warning.
As if he knew anything about this sort of thing, Tyl thought bitterly. But the colonel was right, he could give the same sort of assessment that any mercenary officer learned to do of the local troops he was assigned to support. It didn't really matter that these weren't wearing uniforms.
Some of them weren't wearing uniforms.
"Delcorio's hard but he's brittle,"Tyl said aloud."He'd do all right with enough staff to take the big shocks, but what he's got . . ."
He paused, collecting his thoughts further. Hammer did not interrupt, but the fluctuation of his image on the little screen reminded Tyl that time was passing.
"All right," the Slammers captain continued. "The police, they seem to be holding up pretty well. Berne, the City Prefect, don't have any friends and I don't guess much support. On that end, it's gone about as far as it can and keep the lid on."
Hammer was nodding, but Tyl ignored that too. He had his data marshalled, now, and he needed to spit things out while they were clear to him. "The army, Dowell at least, he's afraid to move and he's not afraid not to move. He won't push anything himself, but Delcorio won't get much help from there.
"And the rest of 'em, the staffs—" Tyl couldn't think of the word the group had been called here "—they're nothing, old men and young kids, nobody that matters . . . ah, except the wife, you know, sir? Ah, Lady Eunice. Only she wants to push harder than I think they can push here with what they got and what they got against 'em."
"The mob?" prompted the colonel. Static added a hiss to words without sibilants.
Tyl looked toward the plaza. The sky was still blue over the western horizon, behind the cathedral's dome and the Palace of Government. The sunken triangle of the plaza was as dark as a volcano's maw, lighted only by the sparks of lanterns and apparently open flames.
"Naw,not the mobs," Tyl said,letting his helmet direct his voice while his eyes gathered data instead of blinking toward his superior. "Them, they'd handle each other if it wasn't any more. But—"
He looked up. The sunset slid at an angle across the side of the House of Grace. The eyes of Bishop Trimer's carven face were as red as blood.
"Sir," Tyl blurted, "it's the Church behind it,the Bishop, and he's going to walk off with the whole thing soon unless Delcorio's luckier 'n anybody's got a right to expect. I think—"
No, say it right.
"Sir," he said, "I recommend that all regimental forces be withdrawn from Bamberg City at once, to avoid us being caught up in internal fighting. There are surface-effect freighters at the port right now. With your authorization, I'll charter one immediately and have the unit out of here in three hours."
Two hours, unless he misjudged the willingness and efficiency of the sergeant major; but he'd promise what he was sure of and surprise people later by bettering the offer if he could.
Hammer's lips moved. Tyl thought that the words were delayed by turbulence, but the colonel was only weighing what he was about to say before he put it into audible syllables. After a moment, the voice and fuzzy screen said in unison, "Captain, I'm going to tell you what my problem is."
Tyl's lungs filled again. He'd been holding his breath unknowingly, terrified that his colonel was about to strip him of his rank for saying too much, saying the wrong thing. Anything else, that was all right . . . .
Even command problems that weren't any business of a captain in the line.
"Our contract,"Hammer said carefully,"is with the government of Bamberia, not precisely with President Delcorio."
The image of the screen glared as if reading on Tyl's face the interjection his subordinate would never have spoken aloud. "The difference is the sort that only matters in formal proceedings—like a forfeiture hearing before the Bonding Authority, determining whether or not the Regiment has upheld its end of the contract."
"Yes sir!" Tyl said.
Hammer's face lost its hard lines. For a moment, Tyl thought that the hint of grayness was more than merely an artifact of the degraded signal.
"There's a complication," the colonel said with a precision that erased all emotional content from the statement."Bishop Trimer has been in contact with the Eagle wing Division regarding taking over conduct of the Crusade in event of a change of government."
He shrugged. "My sources," he added needlessly. "It's a small community, in a way."
Then, with renewed force and no hint of the fatigue of moments before, Hammer went on, "In event of Trimer taking over, as you accurately estimated was his intention, we're out of work. That's not the end of the world, and I certainly don't want any of my men sacrificed pointlessly—"
"No sir," Tyl barked in response to the fierceness in his commander's face.
"—but I need to know whether a functional company like yours might be able to give Delcorio the edge he needs."
Hammer's voice asked, but his eyes demanded. "Stiffen Dowell's spine, give Trimer enough of a wild card to keep him from making his move before the Crusade gets under way and whoever's in charge won't be able to replace units that're already engaged."
And do it, Tyl realized, without a major troop movement that could be called a contract violation by Colonel Hammer, acting against the interests of a faction of his employers.
It might make a junior captain—acting on his own initiative—guilty of mutiny, of course.
"Sir," Tyl said crisply, vibrant to know that he had orders now that he could understand and execute. "We'll do the job if it can be done.Ripper Jack's a good man, cursed good. I don't know the others yet,most of 'em, but it's three-quarters veterans back from furlough and only a few newbie recruits coming in."
"Understand me, Captain," Hammer said—again fiercely. "I don't want you to become engaged in fighting unless it's necessary for your own safety. There aren't enough of you to make any difference if the lid really comes off, and I won't throw away good men just to save a contract. But if your being in the capital keeps President Delcorio in power for another two weeks . . . ?"
"Yes sir!" Tyl repeated brightly,marvelling that his commander seemed relieved at his reaction. Via, he was an officer of Hammer's Slammers, wasn't he? Of course he'd be willing to carry out orders that were perfectly clear—or as clear as combat orders ever could be.
Keep the men in battledress and real visible; hint to Dowell that there was a company of panzers waiting just over the horizon to land and really kick butt as soon as he said the word. Make waves at the staff meetings. They couldn't bother him now with their manners and fancy clothes.
The colonel had told Tyl Koopman what to do, and a few rich fops weren't going to affect the way he did it.
"Then carry on, Captain," Hammer said with a punctuation of static in the middle of the words that did not disguise the pleasure in his voice. "There's a lot—"
The sky was a lighter gray than the ground or the sea, but the sun had fully set. The cyan flash of a powergun lanced the darkness like a scream in silence.
"Hold!" Tyl shouted to his superior,rising from his crouch to get a better view past the microwave dish beside him.
A volley of bolts spat from at least half a dozen locations in the plaza. The orbiting police aircar staggered and lifted away. Its plastic hull had been hit. The driver's desperate attempt to increase speed fanned the flames to sluggish life; a trail of smoke marked the vehicle's path.
A huge roar came from the crowd in the plaza. Led by a line of torches and light wands, it crawled like a living thing up both the central and eastern stairs.
They weren't headed for the Palace of Government across the river. They were coming here.
Tyl flipped his helmet's manual switch to the company frequency. "Sar'ent Major," he snapped, "all men in combat gear and ready t' move soonest! Three days rations and all the ammo we can carry."
He switched back to the satellite push and began folding the screen—not essential to the transmission while the face of Colonel Alois Hammer still glowed on it with tigerish intensity.
"Sir," Tyl said without any emotion to waste on the way he was closing his report, "I'll tell you more when I know more."
Then he collapsed the transceiver antenna. Hammer didn't have anything as important to say as the mob did.