Grace barely suppressed a laugh as she followed Ben down the stairs from the steeple map room. In the vestibule, Lieutenant Hicks stood with his sergeant. Between them was a small man with sweat pouring off his bald head.
Betsy Ross was just coming through the side door. She took one look at the man and actually growled. The man saw her and stumbled back as far as the chain between his handcuffs and the sergeant would let him.
“We meet again,” Betsy said, advancing on the Field Marshal. She didn’t sound pleased to see him.
“Down, girl,” Ben said, putting out an arm to restrain her. “I want him to tell Grace what he did with his loan payment book. The one for the Atlas we now own.” Ben eyed the man, then Betsy. “Then, if Grace doesn’t have any further use for him, you can have him.”
“Please,” the former maid said to Grace. “This scum has nothing of interest to you.”
“Yes I do. I do,” the man begged. “I told him, and he said you’d want to hear this,” he said, nodding to Ben then pleaded with Grace. “Let me talk.”
“Talk,” Grace ordered.
“Yes,” Betsy said, pulling a knife from the lieutenant’s belt and playing it lightly across the captive’s face. “Talk.”
L. J. climbed the steps to the steeple of the Congregational Church. As promised, it gave him the best view of Kilkenny and its environs. To the southeast several large grain elevators blocked his view, but his main interest was to the north.
To his surprise, he found a table and chair already there. Mallary was right behind him, leading the Chief and the specialist who nursed the jury-rigged long-range radio. The radio operator hooked a wire to both of the bells as the Chief spread a map over the table.
“Fits. Think someone had a map up here yesterday?” he said.
“I never said Grace was dumb,” L. J. muttered as he glanced down. In front of the church stood his command van. Two maintenance types were going over it, his Koshi and Mallary’s Arbalest. The two ’Mechs were fast and together provided a balanced force. At the moment they were the main protection the advance headquarters company had.
The Chief put weighted markers on the map—the wind up here was strong, hot and dusty. “C Company moved through town as ordered and set up a perimeter at the dry riverbed about three klicks north of town.”
“They’re taking fire, sir,” the radio operator reported. “Nothing they can’t handle. Mostly rifle shit.”
“Repeat only what you’re told, Specialist,” the Chief said.
“That’s what he said, Chief.”
“Then clean up Captain Graf’s language for him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“D Company should be pulling into town about now, sir,” the Chief said. “We’ll have them dismount and police the place, burn the fertilizer plant, and serve as our reserve.”
L. J. looked down the main road he’d just come up and saw a line of tanks and trucks with ’Mechs along their flanks. “Pass the word to Captain Chang. Tonight he’s our reserve, but first he has to clean this place out.”
“Yes, sir,” the radio operator said, and passed along his orders.
L. J. was looking to the east, so he missed the incoming missile until it exploded close enough to make him duck to the floor. Silly reaction when you’re twenty meters in the air.
He turned to see a second missile arcing in from the west. It fell short—or at least it impacted a block short of the church. Another one was already in the air and aimed more to the south. It exploded just ahead of C Company’s lead gun truck.
“Give me the radio,” L. J. said, and took the phone from the specialist. “Chang, you there?”
“Still here, sir,” came with a dry laugh.
“Slight change in plans. Hook a hard left and go see what’s happening on the west side of town. I’ve got a low hill blocking my view, but there’s another rocket heading in. Be advised, we don’t know what the west flank has, but somebody on our left took out the Black and Reds.”
“I’ll give them the regiment’s thanks, sir. But if they’ve only faced that crap, they don’t know what a real fight is.”
“Knock ’em down, dust ’em off, and bring ’em in,” L. J. said, even as the column that was C Company did a left wheel, spread out, and took off. Two more rockets and the fire died away. That could be all that the west had to offer. Then again, L. J. would wait to see what Chang reported.
“Where are A and B?” L. J. asked.
“A is just pulling into town on River Road, sir,” Chief reported. “B’s a bit behind them. It was held up by an ambush earlier today. Captain St. George left them to clean it up, and pushed on with A.”
L. J. nodded. Art knew he wanted the battalion here, so he was making sure at least one of his two companies was.
It didn’t take binoculars to spot A Company. Their ’Mechs strode into town from the southeast, walking past the grain elevator. A missile came in from a hill to the east, lazy and slow. If the battalion had had any area antimissile defense, shooting this one down would have been duck soup.
But Santorini hadn’t funded them for that.
“It’s going to miss,” Mallary said. L. J. nodded. The missile was well short of the road. If anything, it was going to hit the grain elevator. Huge complex, must be a block long.
Something niggled at the back of his brain. Grain silos. They exploded if people weren’t careful about the dust in them. “Oh my God. Everyone down!” L. J. shouted, and pushed Mallary to the floor just as the elevator blew with a force that probably exceeded anything the planet had seen. He landed atop Mallary as the steeple tried to launch itself into orbit. Failing that, it swayed back and forth beneath them.
When the swinging slowed, L. J. rolled off Mallary. He tried to get up, but either his legs were still shaking or the tower was. It took him a moment to work his way up to his knees. “You okay?” he asked Mallary.
She took his offered hand. “Wasn’t quite what I’d fantasized, but for a first time, you weren’t too bad.” She managed a grin as she got to her knees.
“It was good for me, too,” he told her, risking putting his weight on a broken railing to pull himself up. Mallary put her hand on the table leg in front of her, then thought differently and took his offered hand to stand up.
The operator had grabbed for his radio when L. J. shouted the warning. He was still holding on to it, but the table had been upended, and the left side had come down hard on his groin.
The Chief pulled the table away, then knelt down. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, sir,” the man said, but there was blood on his lips. “Hurts a bit.”
“We need a medic up here,” L. J. shouted to his command van.
“On her way,” a sergeant shouted as a blonde with a first-aid box raced into the church. She was beside the radio operator a minute later.
“A few steps will need watching on the way down,” was her only comment about the trip up. She took over caring for the radio operator as L. J. gently removed the equipment from his bloodstained hands. Mallary righted the table, and the Chief again spread out the map.
L. J. checked the radio, found it still on A’s allotted command frequency and called Art. “XO, you there?”
“Yes, but I’ll never enjoy the smell of a bakery again,” he said. “We’ve got wheat and corn burying half the company. We’ve got hovertanks on their backs like turtles. We’re digging troops out as fast as we can.” From the sound of heavy breathing, Art was doing that while talking. “Is anything else headed our way?”
“I’m up a church steeple in the center of town. I can’t see past the smoke in your sector.”
“Fourth Platoon, get an observation post on the other side of that damn river,” came as a distant shout over the radio. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I know anything. We’re kind of busy, sir.”