The crowds grew bigger. Instead of rocks, they were throwing firebombs and nail-wrapped improvised grenades built out of low-grade explosives.
According to Dr. Iskra's flunky, J'Dean, these people represented the righteous wrath of Jochi. Wrath about what, Sten did not bother to ask. J'Dean told him that Dr. Iskra, who was quite busy at the moment, would happily send out troops to clear the area, if Sten so requested it. Right, Sten thought. Another massacre, which will be clearly and positively laid at my hands, since I know this conversation is being recorded.
"No," Sten said politely. "The Empire will not harm innocent Jochians freely expressing their political opinions as is their right.'' He broke the connection. He didn't think even Iskra's tape doctors could butcher that into a statement of slaughter.
Then the sniping started. Projectile weapons, being fired by marksmen who had seen at least some training. One secretary was shot in the leg, and one clerk was temporarily blinded when a near miss shrapneled rock from a wall into her face.
That was enough. Sten ordered everyone nonmilitary inside, and only essential movement to be made during daylight hours even by troops.
Naturally, the next stage would be a direct attack.
Sten put all nonessential personnel into the many levels of sub-basements under the embassy building. He stationed anyone with any military training or weapons familiarity near the entrances and exits to the compound buildings.
The Bhor had been quite busy following Kilgour's blueprints. The somewhat monstrous beings may have been thought of as barbaric killers—which they were, of course—but they were also sophisticated traders and pilots. Which meant that each of them had, by now almost at a genetically transmitted level, talents as shade-tree mechanics. Any of them could, for instance, weld anything, up to and including radioactive materials, by hand, safely, and with minimum shielding. Or rebuild a broken engine never seen before—given no more than hobbyist's machine tools and an hour to puzzle it out.
The embassy already had two elderly riot-control armored vehicles. The guns were stripped off, and Alex rearmed the clunkers with his own choice of devices. Four embassy vehicles, including the stretched luxury ceremonial gravlighter that Sten had inherited from his predecessor, were stripped, given improvised armor, and equipped with the same weaponry as the riot vehicles.
Four of the Gurkha trooplighters were also modified, with heavy iron vee-blades welded to their prows. These four were stationed near one of the embassy compound's sally ports.
Sten and Alex were building and camouflaging bombs, then planting them at ground level on the compound's outer walls.
That night, Lalbahadur Thapa, who Sten had commissioned Jemedar, took two unmodified lighters and a platoon of Gurkhas out a side gate on a smash and grab on a central hardware depot. He returned having taken zero casualties and having accomplished his mission, although, he told Sten, he had never seen a mongery so large but with so little stock in trade. "How can these Jochians find so much time to be killing their neighbor and have so little time to be taking care of their own food and shelter?"
Sten didn't know, either.
Kilgour told off twelve members of the embassy's own security staff for special duties. They would be armed with the stolen "weaponry" and were dubbed, with Alex's archaic sense of humor, Tomcat Teams.
By dawn, the embassy was ready. Sten thought the assault would come sometime between noon and dusk—it takes time to organize, fuel, oil, and motivate any mob.
The Gurkhas and the Bhor were put on standby for reaction forces, in the event the mob made it through the gates or over the wall, or if a charge became necessary.
That left two tasks.
Alex took care of the first—he ran a last-minute, complete check on the embassy's security, concentrating on any structures outside the embassy grounds that had line of sight on the compound and could be used as command centers. These included two buildings—one a new office structure, the other one of the near-abandoned vertical slums. Each had a new com antenna on the roof.
They were marked.
Cind had her best riflemen in the embassy courtyard, and targets set up. The range was subminiature, of course, and was intended only to let the snipers make sure the sights of their weaponry hadn't been jarred or shifted since fired last.
Cind was grateful that the rounds to be fired were AM2 and not projectile-type, so she did not have to calculate at what centimetric range a target would give the same zero as the desired thousand-meter flat zero or any other stone-age nonsense. The AM2 went, without deflection and with a straight-line trajectory, straight for its target.
Their weapons were Imperial sniper rifles. These ultralethal devices were modified-issue willyguns, using the standard AM2 round.
But the "propellant" was not a laser, as on the standard infantry rifles, but modified linear accelerators hung around the barrels. A conventional-looking sight automatically found the range to the target. If the target had moved out of sight—behind a wall, perhaps—the scope was twisted until its cross hairs were where the sniper imagined the target to be, invisible on the other side of the wall. A touch of the trigger, and the weapon shot around corners.
Cind had her own personally modified sniper rifle, fitted with every comfort known, from thumbhole stock to set trigger to heavy barrel. One of the Gurkhas, Naik
Ganjabahadur Rai, spotted for her.
Sten hoped the crash of gunfire from behind the embassy walls might deter some of the prospective rioters' enthusiasm, but he doubted it.
They waited.
The day built, with shouts, rocks, bottles, and chants coming over the embassy walls. It was midafternoon before Sten felt the mob was all frenzied up and ready to be dealt with. It probably took so long since the day was raw and windy—not exactly perfect weather to destroy an embassy.
He moved Cind's snipers to the roof of the embassy. One floor below, lurking in an office with the windows removed, Alex waited with two Bhor antimissile teams.
All of Sten's assault troops were on a single command freek, which normally would produce instant com babble. But since he was using the superexperienced Gurkha and Bhor soldiery, Sten thought he could keep the gabble within reasonable limits. Their coms were also set for an instant-override section band.
"All sections, all troops," he opened. "On standby, this band. Section leaders, make your com check, both freeks, and report. Sten, out."
He was broadcasting en clair, since there was no time for codes, and no particular need, either. If whoever was masterminding this "spontaneous demonstration'' wanted to listen in and try to react, that was fine with Sten.
All elements checked in five-by and zed probs, except that one section leader had to replace two com units. One of these centuries, Sten thought, they will actually come up with an infantry radio that is reliable five meters beyond the manufacturer's bench. But not this one.
Sten moved a tripod-mounted high-power set of binocs into position and decided it was time to check the street scene outside.
Shouts. Banners. Horn blasts. Screaming rabble-rousers. Barricades blocking the side streets. The dull crack of a couple of small-caliber weapons, aimed at he knew not. The embassy was completely surrounded by a sea of madness. The mob swayed, roaring.
Roaring like that wind in the Place of Smokes, he thought, and then turned that part of his mind off.
Quite a crowd, he estimated. Nearly... let's see. He guessed over a hundred thousand beings.