Here in a city, gun jeeps would look a lot more useful that the pair of automatic mortars Sierra did have along; but they’d make do. They always did.
More aircars appeared, circling above the column instead of buzzing from place to place across the sky. The Slammers’ sudden appearance had taken the city by surprise, but now the citizens were reacting like wasps around an opened hive.
Deseau looked up and muttered a curse. His hand tightened on his tribarrel’s grip, raising the muzzles minutely before Huber touched his arm.
Huber leaned close and said, “They’re friendly, Frenchie.”
“Says you!” Deseau snarled, but he lowered the big gun again.
Huber coughed. “I’m surprised the streets here are so wide, Captain Orichos,” he said, looking at the local officer again. With Fencing Master idling along like this he could’ve spoken to her also without using the intercom, but he didn’t see any reason to. “In the United Cities, even the boulevards twist around under the trees.”
“This street—the Axis—is wide,” Orichos explained. “We don’t have a separate landing ground here at Midway. The warehouses where the rangers sell their Moss are on both sides—”
She gestured.
“—here, so the dirigibles from Solace set down in front of the establishment they’re trading with. They unload goods, mostly from the spaceport, of course—then they lift off again with the bales of Moss.”
Now that Orichos had told him the adjacent buildings were warehouses, Huber could see the outside elevators on each one and the doors at each story wide enough to take corrugated steel shipping containers which would then be shifted within by an overhead suspension system. The windows were narrow, providing light and ventilation, but with no concern for the view out them.
Orichos’ face blanked. She turned her head away from Huber and began talking into her communicator again.
Huber locked his faceshield down and concentrated on the terrain to the left front of his vehicle. That was the area his tribarrel’d be responsible for if the task force was suddenly ambushed . . . which they wouldn’t be, of course, but his irritation with the local officer cooled when he thought about a hose of cyan bolts lashing the buildings Fencing Master slid past.
Chances were Orichos would inform him of whatever crisis had called her attention away. Besides, it was a near certainty that the signals equipment in Sangrela’s jeep could break whatever encryption system the Point Gendarmery was using if Huber really thought the task force needed to know. . . .
Which he didn’t. He was just in a bad mood from the long run.
Captain Orichos lowered the communicator and said, “Lieutenant Huber, there’s a problem. Grayle’s gotten word of your arrival. She’s ordered her supporters to gather in the Axis in front of the Freedom Party offices. There’s already hundreds of them there, blocking the street. There may be thousands by the time we arrive.”
Even if there’d been no previous contact between Solace and the Freedom Party, somebody there had certainly given Grayle a heads-up when they realized where Task Force Sangrela was bound. Grayle probably wasn’t pro-Solace, but they were both opposed to the Point’s present government.
At the word “problem,” Huber had cut Sierra Six into the intercom channel. Orichos looked startled when Sangrela rather than Huber replied, “Are they armed, then? Do we have to shoot our way through? Six over.”
“Via, no!” Orichos cried in horror. “A bloodbath would do exactly what Grayle hopes! Everybody’d turn against you mercenaries and the government! These are just people standing in the street!”
In the distance ahead of Fencing Master stood the stone Assembly Building on a terraced hillside. A quick flash of Huber’s map display showed him that the Axis circled the building and continued its broad way northward.
Huber’s eyes narrowed. The map also emphasized that Midway was a large city compared to most of the places the Slammers operated. A company-sized task force would drown in a place this big if it turned hostile. And gunning down a few hundred citizens in the street would be a good way to make the hundreds of thousands of survivors hostile. . . .