"David Drake - Hammer's Slammers - Counting the Cost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

"I'm - " Tyl began. Desoix was turned half aside to indicate that he knew of the conversation going on and knew it wasn't any of this business. That gave the Slammers officer the mental base he needed for a reasoned decision rather than nervously agreeing to wait in place.

"Ah, sir," Scratchard continued; he'd paused but not broken the transmission. "There's a load of stuff for you here from Central. The Colonel wants you to lead the draft over when you report to Two. And, ah, the President, ah, Delcorio, wants to see you ASAP because you're the ranking officer now. Over."

"The main stairs," Tyl said, aloud rather than sub-vocalizing the way he had done thus far through the implant. Desoix could hear him. To underscore that he wanted the UDB officer to listen, Tyl pointed toward the empty stairs at the third apex. "That's at the end farthest from the sea, then?"

Desoix nodded. Scratchard's voice said, "Ah, yessir," through the static.

"Fine, I'll meet you there when you can get through," Tyl said flatly. "I'm in uniform and I have one pack is all. Koopman over and out."

He smiled to Desoix. "It'll give me a chance to look around," he explained. Now that his unit had contacted him he felt confident - whole, for the first time in... Via, in six months, just about.

Desoix smiled back. "Well, you shouldn't have any real problems here," he said. "But - " his head tilted, just noticeably, in the direction of three red-cloaked toughs "don't forget what I told you. Myself, I'm going to check Number Three gun so long as I'm down on the corniche anyway. See you around, soldier."

"See you around," Tyl agreed confidently. He grinned at his surroundings with a tourist's vague interest. Captain Tyl Koopman was home again, or he would be in a few minutes. Charles Desoix thought about the House of Grace as he mounted the eastern stairs from the plaza. The huge hospital building, Bishop Trimer's latest but not necessarily last attempt to impose his presence on Bamberg City, was about all a man could see as he left the plaza in this direction. For that matter, the twenty glittering stories of the House of Grace were the only portions of the city visible from the floor of the plaza, over the sea walls.

It was like looking at a block of blue ice; and it was the only thing about being stationed in Bamberg City that Desoix could really have done without. But the Bishop certainly wasn't enough of a problem that Desoix intended to transfer to one of the batteries out in the boonies on Two, rumbling through valleys you could be sure the rag-heads had mined and staked for snipers.

Thousands of people, shoppers as well as shopkeepers, were still pouring into the plaza; Desoix was almost alone in wanting to go in the opposite direction. He wasn't in a big hurry, so he kept his temper in check. An unscheduled inspection of Gun Three was a good excuse for the battery XO to be there, not just sneaking around....

He had some business back at the Palace of Government, too; but he wasn't so horny from the trip to Merrinet that he was willing to make that his first priority. Quite.

Three prostitutes, each of them carried by a pair of servants to save their sandals and gossamer tights, were on their way to cribs in the plaza below. Desoix made way with a courteous bow; but uniform or not, he was going to make way. The phalanx of red-cloaked guards surrounding the girls would have made sure of that.

One of the girls smiled at Desoix as she rocked past. He smiled back at her, thinking of Anne McGill... but Blood and Martyrs! he could last another half hour. He'd get his job done Brst.

There was an unusual amount of congestion here, but that was because the main stairs were blocked. Another procession, no doubt; Bishop Trimer playing his games while President Delcorio and his wife tried to distract the populace with a crusade on Two.

As for the populace, its members knocked in each other's heads depending on what each was wearing that day.

Just normal politics, was all. Normal for places that hired the United Defense Batteries and other mercenary regiments, at any rate.

At dawn, the shadow of the House of Grace lay across the Cathedral on the other side of the plaza, so that the gilded dome no longer gleamed. Desoix wrinkled his nose and thought about dust-choked roads on Two with a sniper every hundred meters of the wooded ridges overlooking them.

To blazes with all of them.

There was even more of a crush at the head of the stairs. Vehicles slid up to the bollards to drop their cargo and passengers - and then found themselves blocked by later-comers, furious at being stopped a distance from where they wanted to be. A squad of city police made desultory efforts to clear the jam, but they leaped aside faster than the bystanders did when the real Bghting started.

Two drivers, one with a load of produce and the other carrying handbags, were snarling. Three black-cloaked toughs jumped the driver with the red headband, knocked him down, and linked arms in a circle about the victim so that they could all three put the boot in.

At least a dozen thugs in red coalesced from nowhere around the fight. It grew like a crystal in a supersaturated solution of hate.

The police had their stunners out and were radioing for help, but they kept their distance. The toughs wore body armor beneath their cloaks, and Desoix heard the slam of at least one slugthrowing pistol from the ruck.

He willed his body to stay upright and to stride with swift dignity between vehicles and out of the potential line of fire. It would have griped his soul to run from this scum; but more important, anyone who ducked and scurried was a worthy victim, while a recognized mercenary was safe except by accident.

Anyway, that was what Desoix told himself. But by the Lord! it felt good to get out of the shouted violence and see Gun Three, its six-man crew alert and watching the trouble at the stairhead with their personal weapons ready.

The calliope's eight stubby barrels were mounted on the back of a large air-cushion truck. Instead of rotating through a single loading station as did the 2 cm tri-barrels on the Slammers' combat cars, each of the calliope's tubes was a separate gun. The array gimballed together to fire on individual targets which the defenders couldn't afford to miss.