Clavell didn’t know about that, although he rather hoped the newsies were wrong about how low the anarchist casualties had been. The more he heard about the way things were going out in the boonies, the more in favor he was of showing the yokels the error of their way before things got completely out of hand. Or even spread to Landing, for that matter!
Some of his fellow Guardsmen scoffed at his worries, and he was careful not to be too vocal about them. But he heard things, even when he wasn’t supposed to. Like that shootout in Brazelton, for instance. SINS hadn’t so much as mentioned it, and even the Guard’s daily intelligence reports had treated it as only one more minor incident in a sleepy little town of no more than a hundred and twenty thousand or so. Clavell wasn’t so certain, though. True, Brazelton wasn’t Landing, and the security assets concentrated here in the capital were a lot better than anything a provincial town boasted. And, true again, they were talking about small town cops who probably hadn’t had a clue what real security measures were all about. But even having said all of that that, he personally might have argued that the assassination of a city police chief—and the successful ambush of his entire six-man security detail—came under the heading of a fairly major incident, no matter where it happened. Of course, everybody from General Yardley on down was denying Chief Brinkman was dead, and confidence that the perpetrators would soon be run to earth was high, but Clavell figured he could believe as much of that as he wanted to.
Stupid, he thought, checking the time again and then scanning the Scorpion’s displays. What? They think scuttlebutt isn’t going to pass the word around anyway? And given the fact that at least half—probably a hell of a lot more than half, since the official report says ‘less than half’—of the bastards got away, the other side sure as hell knows how much damage it did. I mean, go ahead and put a lid on it for the proles. Fine. I’m all in favor of that. But don’t hand a line of obvious bullshit to the Guard, for God’s sake!
He shook his head. The brass had better get a clue pretty damned quick, in his humble opinion. So far, things hadn’t been that bad here in Landing—since the Trifecta Tower attack, at least—but if the sort of crap happening in Granger and Brazelton ever did spread to the capital, it was going to get ugly. He didn’t doubt the Guard could deal with these MLF bastards if they’d only come out into the open and stop skulking around in the shadows like the cowards they were, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to do a lot of damage first. And the sooner General Yardley and the rest of President Lombroso’s advisers figured that out and turned the Guard loose on the “resistance’s” sympathizers with open hunting licenses and no bag limit the better it was going to be for all concerned. The last thing they needed was to let the MLF build up some kind of effective support structure in Landing! In fact—
A shrill, high-pitched buzz interrupted Captain Clavell’s reflections. He jerked upright in his chair, reaching for his console, and his blood ran cold as the bright red icon flashed in his helmet visor’s HUD.
Laser! his brain screamed. We’re being lased, but—
The five-kilo kinetic penetrator struck the Scorpion’s thinner, vulnerable rear armor at thirty kilometers per second, within less than a centimeter of the target designation laser’s aiming point. Not that it really mattered where it had hit, of course; no light AFV had the protection to resist that kind of attack, and Captain Peter Clavell, late of the Presidential Guard, united with the alloy and fuel of his light tank—and the other two members of its crew—in a fireball that towered against the night.
Three more penetrators struck within half a second of the first one, killing the remaining Scorpions of Clavell’s platoon. More fireballs billowed, painting the faces of surrounding towers and buildings in bloody crimson light, and then the tribarrels opened up, scything down the Guard infantry troopers lounging in their unarmored personnel transports while they waited for their relief.
One of the infantry noncoms, protected in the heavily sandbagged CP, had time to scream for support, but she never got through to HQ. She was still trying to get a com response when one of the antitank launchers retargeted on the command post and turned it into an expanding cloud of dust, debris, and human remains.
It wouldn’t have mattered if she had gotten through, really. No one could possibly have gotten there in time to do any good. Besides, the elimination of Captain Clavell’s security detail was only one of dozens of simultaneous attacks spread across the city of Landing.
* * *
“Where the hell are they all coming from?!” Svein Lombroso demanded, his expression haggard as he stared at the map displays in the command center under Presidential Palace. Leprous scarlet splotches glared across them, marking the death and destruction which had exploded out of the night all across the capital city. “My God, there must be thousands of them!”
“I doubt it, Mister President,” Olivia Yardley replied. She wore two separate earbugs, and her own attention was focused on a much larger scale holographic display of the residential area around Summerhill Tower. “Not here in Landing, anyway.”
“Oh, really? Well just why in hell should I listen to what you doubt?” Lombroso snarled. “You were the one who thought it was such a wonderful idea to turn the screws on the MLF! Get them to come out into the open, you said. Force their hands. Suck them out where we could get at them!” He glared at her. “Well that’s working out just goddammed fine, isn’t it?!”
Yardley swallowed an almost overwhelming impulse to snarl right back at him. He’d seen the same analyses she had, and it was clear she’d been right about the dangerous escalation in the Mobius Liberation Front’s organization and equipment. In fact, she’d obviously underestimated both of them! And it was just like him to vent his frustration and his fear by blaming the situation on everyone—anyone!—other than himself.
Yet tempting though it was to point that out to him, actually yielding to the temptation would all too probably have been a fatal mistake. He was perfectly capable of ordering her shot, and she could think of at least three of her own subordinates who’d pull the trigger themselves if it let them step into her shoes. That would have been uncommonly stupid of them under the current circumstances, but that minor fact wouldn’t have prevented any of them from doing it.
“Mister President,” she said instead, interrupting the reports she should have been listening to and the orders she should have been giving, “this is exactly what the analysts and I warned might happen.” She met his fiery eyes levelly. “It’s happening on a lot wider scale than we ever anticipated, and I have to admit the MLF’s degree of organization outside Landing’s taken us by surprise, but it was the influx of modern weapons and the MLF’s increasing militancy that had all of us concerned in the first place! God only knows what would’ve happened if we’d sat back and let them choose the moment to kick off their offensive!”
“Well, I don’t see how it could be a whole hell of a lot worse,” Lombroso shot back. He jabbed an index finger at the maps. “Brazelton, Granger, Lewisville—how many more towns are we planning to give them?”
“I said their organization and strength outside Landing came as a surprise, Sir,” Yardley replied coldly. “Apparently, our intelligence assets let us down pretty badly in that respect. I’m sure General Mátyás shared all of his information with the rest of us, but you saw the analyses.” She saw the president’s eyes flicker at the mention of Mátyás’ name. “I’m not trying to pass the blame,” she continued with consummate insincerity, “because all of us screwed up in that regard. But the truth is that we can lose all of those towns, and half a dozen more, if we have to. As long as we hold the capital, we can always take them back again, especially after the gendarme battalions get here. And with all due respect, Sir, they have come out into the open. I think it’s obvious we’re going to get hurt more badly than any of us wanted or expected, but they’re going to get hurt even worse because now we know where to find them.”