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

Any aircraft, missile, or artillery shell that came over the sector of the horizon which Gun Three scanned - when the weapon was live - would be met by a pulse of high-intensity 3 cm bolts from the calliope's eight barrels. Nothing light enough to fly through the air could survive that raking.

A skillful enemy could saturate the gun's defensive screen by launching simultaneous attacks from several directions, but even then the interlocking fire of a full, properly-sited six-calliope battery should be able to hold out and keep the target it defended safe.

Of course, proper siting was an ideal rather than a reality, since every irregularity of terrain - or a building like the House of Grace - kept guns from supporting one another as they could do on a perfectly flat surface. Bamberg City wasn't likely to be surrounded by hostile artillery batteries, though, and Charles Desoix was proud of the singlelayer coverage he had arranged for the whole populated area.

He did hope his gunners had sense enough not to talk about saturating coverage when they were around civilians. Especially civilians who looked like they'd been born to squatter families on Two.

"Good to see you back, sir," said Blaney, the sergeant in command of Gun Three on this watch. He was a plump man and soft looking, but he'd reacted well in an emergency on Hager's World, taking manual control of his calliope and using it in direct fire on a party of sappers that had made it through the perimeter Federal forces were trying to hold.

"Say," asked a blond private Desoix couldn't call by name until his eye caught stenciling on the fellow's helmet: Karsov. "Is there any chance we're going to move, sir? Farther away from all this? It gets worse every day."

"What's..." Desoix began with a frown, but he turned to view the riot again before he finished the question - and then he didn't have to finish it.

The riot that Desoix had put out of his mind by steely control had expanded like mold on bread while he walked the three hundred meters to the shelter of his gun and its crew. There must have been nearly a thousand people involved - many of them lay-folk with the misfortune of being caught in the middle, but at least half were the cloaked shock troops of the two Easter factions.

Knives and metal bars flashed in the air. A shotgun thumped five times rapidly into a chorus of screams.

"Via," Desoix muttered.

A firebomb went off, spraying white trails of burning magnesium through the curtain of petroleum flames. Police air cars were hovering above the crowd on the thrust of their ducted fans while uniformed men hosed the brawlers indiscriminately with their needle stunners.

"This is what we're defending?" Blaney asked with heavy irony.

Desoix squatted, motioning the gun crew down with him. No point in having a stray round hit somebody. The men were wearing their body armor, but Desoix himself wasn't. He didn't need it on shipboard or during negotiations on Merrinet, and it hadn't struck him how badly the situation in Bamberg City could deteriorate in the two weeks he was gone.

"Well," he said, more or less in answer. "They're the people paying us until we hear different. Internal politics, that's not our business. And anyhow, it looks like the police have it pretty well under control."

"For now," muttered Karsov.

The fighting had melted away, as much in reaction to the firebomb as to the efforts of the civil authorities. Thugs were carrying away injured members of their own parties. The police tossed the disabled battlers whom they picked up into air cars with angry callousness.

"It'd be kinda nice, sir," said Blaney, turning his eyes toward the House of Grace towering above them, "if we could maybe set up on top of there. Get a nice view all around, you know, good for defense; and, ah, we wouldn't need worry about getting hit with the odd brick or the like if the trouble comes this way next time."

The chorus of assent from the whole crew indicated that they'd been discussing the point at length among themselves.

Desoix smiled. He couldn't blame the men, but wishing something strongly didn't make it a practical solution.

"Look," he said, letting his eyes climb the sculptured flank of the hospital building as he spoke. The narrower sides of the House of Grace, the north and south faces, were of carven stone rather than chrome and transparent panels.

The south face, toward Gun Three and the sea front, was decorated with the miracles of Christ: the sick rising from their beds; the lame tossing away their crutches; loaves and fishes multiplying miraculously to feed the throng stretching back in low relief.

On the opposite side were works of human mercy: the poor being fed and lodged in church kitchens; orphans being raised to adulthood; medical personnel with crosses on their uniforms healing the sick as surely as Christ did on the south face.

But over the works of human mercy, the ascetic visage of Bishop Trimer presided in a coruscance of sun-rays like that which haloed Christ on the opposite face. A determined man, Bishop Trimer. And very sure of himself.

"Look," Desoix repeated as he reined in his wandering mind. "In the first place, it's a bad location because the gun can only depress three degrees and that'd leave us open to missiles skimming the surface."

Karsov opened his mouth as if to argue, but a snarled order from Sergeant Blaney shut him up. Lieutenant Desoix was easy-going under normal circumstances; but he was an officer and the Battery XO... and he was also hard as nails when he chose to be, as Blaney knew by longer experience than the private had.