Revenge of the Damned (45 page)

The scared civilian behind the tank's controls was that dumb.

And the Imperial soldier behind the chaingun's triggers was a very good shot.

Ten rounds blew the hatch off its locks—
into
the tank's crew compartment—and then ricocheted. Heavy armor could keep things in as well as out.

There were two survivors, and they were shot down by riflemen as they scrambled out the rear hatch for safety.

"Not bad," the loader said.

"Not bad at all," the gunner said.

Ten seconds later smoke wisped out of the tank's atmosphere exhausts, and the track "brewed up" in flames.

The easy way to take Koldyeze had been cut.

Virunga wondered what his still-unknown attacker would try next.

Probably an infantry assault.

That indeed was what Wichman had in mind. But his cobbled-together assault unit was still getting itself organized, and most of the improvised platoons were nowhere near the line of departure when whistles shrilled.

About a company of grunts started up the hill. They were quickly shot down or into shelter. There was no second wave. Instead, they started building barricades across the streets and creating fighting positions inside the tenements.

Perfectly fine, Virunga thought. We have no intention of counterattacking, and if they turn this into a siege, perhaps we can hold on until the Imperial Forces arrive.

Perhaps. He went to prepare what he was trying to convince himself was his artillery.

At twilight, Sten and Alex were crouched on the roof of one of the tenements, looking for a way in.

Below them, hidden in wreckage, was the larger gravsled, its cargo slooping and stinking, just as Kilgour had promised.

Sten saw an opportunity to create some chaos.

The cadets manning the gravsleds were evidently trying to attack Koldyeze as if they were Scythians bashing out a Roman legion. Their sleds darted back and forth and up and down, the sleds' gunners occasionally blasting off a burst or two. Good shots. They hit Koldyeze almost every other time.

Sten waited until dark, then flipped on the light-enhancing sights of his sniper rifle. It was a fairly nasty weapon that fired a tiny, shielded AM2 round that on impact would blow a hole in a man's chest that a gravsled could be driven through. But unlike the issue willygun, the heavy sniper rifle used a modified linear accelerator to propel the round. The scope was used not merely to give a precise range and fix on the target but could be turned if the target happened to go behind a wall. On firing, the accelerator would spin the round at the appropriate time—and the gun was quite capable of shooting around a corner.

Sten did not need that much trickery.

He put the scope's cross hairs on a gravsled pilot and blew him out of his seat. When the gunner jumped for the controls, he died, too.

A few seconds later, five gravsleds were orbiting around the ruined streets below Koldyeze aimlessly.

That would provide the necessary chaos.

Kilgour and Sten dropped down the shattered tenement steps and into their own sled and moved slowly forward. Their advance went seemingly unobserved—at least none of the rounds that slammed into the ground nearby seemed particularly aimed.

They reached the still-smoldering tank, and Kilgour steered the sled around it. He turned, free hand questionmarked, then pointed down.
Here
? Sten signed:
Ten meters more
. Kilgour obeyed and then grounded the gravsled.

And they almost got themselves killed.

In spite of Virunga's bellows and protests about losing his battle computer and fifty percent of Gaaronk's operators, Sorensen put together an ambush team. He was—at least as far as he knew—the only Mantis operative inside Koldyeze. But there were POWs from other hands-on lethal units who wanted a bit of close-in revenge. They slid out of the cathedral toward the destroyed track.

Sorensen knew that Wichman's forces had to remove that hulk before they could send in more armor. Figuring that combat engineers were few and far between those days, he intended to kill a few recovery specialists.

He saw the gravsled ground and crept toward the two Tahn—he thought—getting out of it. Eyes away, he reminded himself. His backup men flanked him. Sorensen readied the long ceremonial knife he was carrying. He would take the heavier one first. Then—

A flare bloomed on the horizon, and all five men became bushes. The flare sank down, and Sorensen's two targets were alive once more. The smaller man's hands moved to one side, then together, as if holding a package. Patrol sign language, Sorensen realized. Had the Tahn stolen that from the Imperials? He decided to take a chance and hissed sibilantly.

The two men crouch-spun, weapons coming up. But they did not fire.

"ID," Sorensen whispered.

Sten realized that the whisper was not in Tahn. He assumed that the ambushers must have come out of Koldyeze.

"Imperials."

"One forward."

Kilgour rumbled toward Sorensen.

Sorensen's night vision was almost gone—the vitamin-lousy diet the Tahn had fed them ensured that. Even with the added rations from the discovered stores, he still was looking at a blur when Alex recognized him.

"Wee Sorensen," he whispered.

The accent was enough.

Sorensen waved his team forward and hand question-marked.
Need help
? Sten nodded ostentatiously, then indicated. Two out as security. The rest—start pouring.

Sten lifted the gravsled's nose slightly, and the semiliquid cargo sloshed out. As Sten shoveled glop out onto the cobblestones, he wondered if it was a lum. Kilgour was always closing letters with some nonsense phrase about somebody's lum reeking. And dead hearse—horse, he corrected—did reek. Kilgour had been quite correct—no one had looted the rendering works. And the liquefied fat from the vats should work very well.

They finished and regrouped. Sten had planned on reentering Koldyeze with Alex through the still-undiscovered tunnel. But obviously Sorensen had a better way.

Sten sent the gravsled, at full power, back down the street. It ricocheted away, caroming off buildings and providing an excellent diversion. Then everyone doubled back toward Koldyeze. Sten had ordered Sorensen's run aborted; he figured that the demolished track would not be recovered by specialists. Wichman's people were more adept at brute force—and Sorensen would be more than a little outgunned.

Sten went through the half-opened main gate, hoping that Koldyeze's water supply was still turned on. He smelled. Smelled like… a dead horse.

A very dead horse.

Sten was correct. The ruined track was bulldozed out of the street and through a tenement wall early in the morning by a second heavy tank. Sorensen's ritual butcher knife would not have done much good.

Wichman attacked, predictably at dawn.

And Virunga unmasked his artillery.

It was not much.

The crypt had held four cannon. Real cannon, not lasers or masers: put shell and propellant in one end and yank a handle, and it works—maybe. Virunga thought the cannon were probably intended for some kind of ceremonial use, although that did not explain why they had sights, and ordered the barrels wire-wrapped for reinforcement. Virunga had marveled at the sights. They were primitive. It had been years since he had seen a laser ranging cannon, and then only in a museum.

Working parties had managed to hoist the cannon onto the battlements, and firing apertures had been bashed through the walls and then concealed. Virunga was pretty sure that the recoil mechanism of the cannon was rusted solid. Regardless, he did not plan on taking chances and had ringbolts spot-welded to the cannon and bolted to the cathedral walls themselves. Cables linked the guns to the wall bolts and, hopefully, would prevent the cannon from recoiling straight off the battlements when they were fired.

Virunga had found and trained cannoneers, then dubbed his four popguns "Battery A."

"Battery B" was eight multiple-tube rocket launchers, firing solid heads, powered by propellant picked from the projectile rounds stores in the crypts and then hard-packed into containers. At least there was more than enough propellant.

Aiming consisted of squinting through a V-sight atop the tubes until the target was more or less aligned and then getting the hell out of the way while someone hit an electrical firing connection. The launchers were crewed and then sited atop other battlements.

"Battery C" was even worse.

Observing that the castle's plumbing seemed built for all eternity, Virunga had ordered sections of pipe to be cut into meter-and-a-half sections and wire-reinforced. He was making mortars. Very, very big mortars.

Micrometers, small inspection telescopes, bubble levels, gears, and knobs had been stolen from the various workshops that the POWs slave-labored for and had been cobbled together to make sights for the mortars.

Virunga discovered that the propellant used in the rifle rounds could be liquefied and cast without harm. He decided to use that powder, cast into round increments, to fire his mortar rounds. The rounds themselves were smaller sections of pipe built up again with wire to approximate the interior dimensions of the mortar tubes. They were handgrooved so the pipe would shrapnel on impact, but not deeply enough that the round would explode on firing.

Maybe.

The rounds were packed with more propellant. Nitric acid, alk, and mercury were gingerly mixed by self-taught POW chemists to make the horribly dangerous mercury fulminate that would be used to detonate the rounds on impact.

Maybe.

Virunga readied firing positions in the courtyard for the mortars, with high-stacked stone around them in case the bad guys had mortars of their own.

The tiny com units that had been brought to Heath by Sten and smuggled into Koldyeze by Chetwynd were the only modern items Virunga had. They linked the observers to the batteries. In spite of the risk—the observers were located anywhere the streets around Koldyeze could be seen from—there was no shortage of volunteers.

Thirty seconds after the first tank popped into open, Virunga opened fire.

"Battery A. Armor in the open. Acquire targets visually. Fire on individual control."

The gun commander of the first cannon had one of the recon tracks in his sights. He held his breath and yanked the firing lever. The cannon cracked and slammed back against the cable restraints. The commander stared down at the streets below. The round slammed into a wall about five meters from the recon track.

"Come on down a little bit and right a skosh," the commander advised the gunner. He was not, needless to say, a trained artillerybeing.

The third round ventilated the thinly armored recon track, and its crew bailed out.

Virunga smiled in pleasure.

His other three guns were also firing and hitting.

Down below, the three heavy tracks ground up the street toward the cathedral. One of them took a direct hit from a cannon, but the solid round ricocheted off the track's armor plating.

Sten peered through a battlement's machicolations and swore. He had hoped that somehow Virunga's cannon would have enough power to punch holes in the heavy tracks. The only thing that could stop them, he realized, was his deceased horses.

The tank clattered slowly up the cobblestones toward Koldyeze, infantry moving forward in its shelter. Then the track hit the grease. Its tracks spun uselessly on the cobblestones. The huge tank slid sideways and back down the hill, slamming into the first hulk.

And then the defenders of Koldyeze got lucky.

Not, of course, that luck was ever mentioned by either Sergeant Major Isby, observing for Battery C, or by the mortar crew. Isby, even though he was a supply specialist, had been given infantry training, which at one time had included artillery/mortar observation. He remembered his lessons quite well.

"Charlie Two," he broadcast. "This is Observer Six. Fire Mission. Azimuth 5250 down 30. Distance 3200. Tanks and infantry in the open. Will adjust."

The sights of the mortar were adjusted, and two still-brawny women, VIP hostages, fitted firing charges onto the mortar bomb and hoisted it up over the mortar's mouth, let go, and ducked away.

The mortar thudded. Sten saw the wobbling pipe climb high into the sky, then turn and drop downward. The first round hit the stalled track directly on top of its engine exhaust plates and exploded. The tank itself blew up, sending its turrets cartwheeling away into the infantry around it.

Once again, the way was blocked.

Isby and the mortar crew, of course, said that the first-round hit proved how good they were. They bragged accordingly. They did not think it worthy of note to mention that they hit nothing else for the rest of that day.

And then the infantry began its assault.

They came in cautiously, keeping to the cover of the tenements and rubble. But they still had to come into the open eventually.

Sten methodically sniped down an entire squad of grunts who were hiding behind what they thought was solid stone. Other marksbeings, now familiar with the projectile sporter weapons they were equipped with, decimated the infantry.

But the siege of Koldyeze was still being lost by the ex-prisoners.

Slowly the ring of Wichman's troops closed on Koldyeze. There was just too many of them.

The single chaingun that survived atop the second watch-tower was smashed by three accurate rounds from another heavy tank firing over the corpse of its brother. Tahn soldiers countersniped from positions on the roofs of tenements.

Sten saw a POW lying on the battlement not far from him slump, the top of her head suddenly missing.

"Dinnae y' hope, young Sten," Alex observed, "thae our wee Guardsmen aren't takin't long mess breaks?"

Sten hoped that very desperately.

Chief Warrant Officer Rinaldi Hernandes had wondered what would happen if he survived imprisonment long enough to get a weapon in his hands. Could he kill—even beings who had been responsible for his grandchild's death?

He could.