The vehicle gate closed with a whir. Torminel guards armed with Sidneys stood behind the gate out of sight, while others quietly fortified the Ngeni Palace against any attack. His balding head bowed, PJ marched with his rifle at port arms in the shadow of the palace, awaiting his moment of glory.
In the cottage, Sula donned her cuirass and helmet, not because she expected to be shot at, but because it held her secure communications equipment and battery packs. She opened the visor, took her binoculars, and left the cottage for the shadow of one of the trees, where she could watch the Naxid guards without giving herself away.
Eskatars, scaly four-legged birds from Naxas, rained down angry cries from above her head, as if warning their distant kin of mischief afoot. Dead leaves and twigs pattered down on her shoulders.
The teams maintained radio silence on the approach. Then Sula heard a pair of signals.
“Four-nine-one, Thunder ready.” Spence’s voice, a little loud, a little excited.
“Four-nine-one, Rain ready.” Macnamara’s voice.
“Four-nine-one, Wind ready.” Sula’s heart gave a lurch at the sound of Casimir’s grating tones.
Her mouth was dry. She summoned saliva to moisten her sandpaper tongue and gave the orders.
“Comm: to Rain. Launch Rain. Comm: send.
“Comm: to Wind. Launch Wind. Comm: send.”
Rain and Wind, the seizure of the two entrances to the High City. Sula’s words were coded, compressed into microsecond bursts, and fired into the city at the speed of light. Brief acknowledgments sang in her headphones.
There was a moment of stillness, and she could swear that, in the morning stillness, even with the headphones and the helmet over her head, she could hear the distant sound of a pair of trucks pulling around a corner and heading toward the Naxids at the Gate of the Exalted.
Her pulse sang in her veins. Her forehead ached where the padded rim of the binoculars were pressed against it.
These were trucks painted in the viridian green of the Fleet, the same model of Sun Ray the Fleet used, and they would arrive just ahead of the time the Naxids would expect a pair of trucks bringing their relief. The Naxids moved casually toward the vehicles as they rolled onto the broad terrace, expecting to see their own emerge as the rear ramps began to come down and the side doors to roll up.
What emerged were a swarm of Bogo Boys spitting bullets and hurling grenades. Though surprised, the Naxids managed to fight back, and they were well-armored and tenacious, but were badly placed and in the end simply mowed down. Any Naxids that come near the open doors of the antiproton gun turrets were killed by Fer Tuga, the Axtattle sniper, who had crept up on the Naxid position in a chameleon-weave cape capable of projecting active camouflage, rendering him nearly invisible against his background.
The snap of rifles stunned the Eskatars into silence. It was as if they knew their side had just lost.
“Rain has secured its objective,” Macnamara said. His voice was a little breathless.
“Comm: to Rain. Can you use the antimatter guns? Comm: send.”
“I’m checking that now.”
The distant sound of fire reached Sula’s ears. The fight over the funicular terminal was still going on. Casimir was leading that fight, with Sidney as the group’s sniper.
There was the far-off crack of a grenade, and then the fading echoes of the explosion reverberating off the buildings of the High City and the great sprawl below. Then silence. Then, finally, Casimir’s deep voice.
“This is Wind. We’ve taken the funicular. We’re having the operator move the train to the High City terminus, and we’ll lock it here.”
A flood of joy filled Sula’s heart. She wanted to send Casimir a torrent of love, but instead made a brief acknowledgment and ran to the parapet as she sent another message.
“Launch Thunder. Repeat, launch Thunder.”
Thunder was the attack on the Great Destiny and the Imperial hotels. At Sula’s command, Spence launched the two big plows off their trailers, to hurl themselves with lowered blades to knock away the barriers placed around the buildings.
Sula turned her binoculars to the scene at the foot of the granite acropolis, where the Naxids stationed at the two blockhouses guarding the switchback road were reacting to the firefight overhead. It was clear they heard the shots, but it seemed they weren’t sure where the sound had come from. Some were crouching with raised weapons, others had stopped all traffic approaching the High City. Probably the rest were in their bunkers.
While Sula gazed down at the Naxids, she heard a breathless commentary from Spence, little excited bursts of prose that she sent when she remembered to, and when she had nothing more important to do.
“The plow’s hit the barrier! Wa—Did youhear that? The first barrier just went down!..Nothing left but bits of concrete and twisted rebar…Backing up to start again…heard a crash from the second plow…guards reacting…Keep those guards pinned down!”
Sula turned her binoculars on the Gate of the Exalted once more. Macnamara’s action group was taking up positions in the buildings behind the gate, ready to repel any counterattack aimed at retaking the position from behind. Spence’s one-sided comments continued, her voice a shout over the rattling sound of fire.
“The second barrier’s down! The guards are running!..Send in the carnow!..Go! Go!..She’sin! She’s got the carright in the lobby of the hotel! …I’m hearing shooting from the Imperial. It’s hard to see what’s happening there…Suppressive fire! Suppressive fire!..The driver’s away, she’s gotten out! She’s jumped up behind the plow blade and she’s using it for cover…Stand by, everybody! Fall back!..”
Sula lowered her binoculars and wondered if she should take cover herself, if, as far as she was from the Great Destiny Hotel, she was in any danger, standing on the open terrace.
The explosion came in three stages, a very fast one-two-three, first a massive bang that seemed to stun the world into brief silence, then a great percussion that Sula felt as a blast of wind against her face, then the great shivering roar that came up from the High City’s granite heart. A huge plume of debris and dust jetted high above the acropolis, glittering as it rose into the brilliant dawn.
Wellthat should wake the Naxids up, she thought.
“Success!” Spence’s excited voice was faint against the continuous noise that still dinned Sula’s ears. “We’ve taken out the Great Destiny Hotel!”
And with it some six hundred mid-level Naxids, Sula knew. Naxid fleet officers, police officials, officers in the Legion of Diligence, bureaucratic functionaries in the government ministries…
When planning the operation, she and Casimir had joked that the Naxid government might well run more efficiently once their mid-level bureaucrats were eliminated, but she knew that the middle layer were exactly those with the technical skills to keep the Naxid government running. Many of their superiors had been promoted on the basis of family or political connections, and the middle layers were the people who actually kept things functioning.
“Comm: to Thunder. Good work! What’s happening at the Imperial Hotel?”
“I’m not sure,” came the reply. “We’re in a huge dust cloud. So are they, probably. The reports I got were confusing, and I can’t seem to contact the plow operator.”
Gradually reports came in. The other half of Thunder wasn’t going well. The plow had got hung up on a barrier, and while trying to maneuver clear, the operator had apparently been shot. At any rate, he wasn’t replying and had ceased to maneuver the plow. Spence sent the Great Destiny plow to provide backup, but the huge machine had to detour around the vast pile of rubble that was the wrecked hotel and got lost in the dust cloud. The explosive car following the plow had been badly shot up by the hotel’s guards, and when the dust cloud rolled up from the Great Destiny Hotel, the driver had taken the opportunity to abandon the vehicle and run for it.