Nobody answered. Huber thought he heard the sound of boots running down the staircase. Grayle was poised like a roach caught by the light, momentarily frozen.
“Captain Orichos?” Huber said.
“Yes, open the door,” Orichos said.
Instead of reaching, Huber kicked out with his right boot and sprung the latch. The panel bounced open. The hallway was empty.
Grayle jumped through so quickly that she slid on the blood pooling from the dead technician’s body. She caught herself on the wall and ran toward the stairs, leaving a handprint on the wall behind her.
Nothing else moved for over a minute.
Huber let out his breath. He switched his helmet back to receive mode and said, “Fox Three-six to Sierra. We’re holding our present position on the fourth floor of the Freedom Party headquarters until somebody comes to fetch us out. And give me plenty of warning before you show yourselves, people, because I’m as jumpy as I’ve ever been in my life!”
* * *
Captain Sangrela’s driver had bounced his jeep up the Assembly Building steps and parked it under the porch. The officers and senior sergeants of Task Force Sangrela stood on the patterned stone, listening to the holographic image of Danny Pritchard speaking from Base Alpha.
Around them the citizens of Midway noisily celebrated their release from Freedom Party domination. In the street below whirled a round dance with hundreds of participants. A fiddler stood on a raised platform in the middle of the circle; beside him, occasionally crowding his elbow, gyrated a young woman wearing only briefs. Huber didn’t think she was professional—just exuberant and very happy. As far up and down the Axis as Huber could see there were similar dances as well as free buffets, speakers on makeshift podiums, and crowds of people drinking and singing in good fellowship.
“The Volunteers are gathering at their base on Bulstrode Bay on the northern coast,” said Danny Pritchard’s holographic image. “They call it Fort Freedom, and it’s going to be a tough nut to crack.”
Aircars spun and swooped overhead, often with sirens blaring. The drivers were as excited and as generally drunk as the people in the street. Huber had seen two collisions and heard a worse one that sent a car crashing to the ground on the other side of the Mound.
“Why us, sir?” Captain Sangrela asked. His voice was calm, but the way his hands tightly gripped the opposite elbows indicated his tension.
“Because you can, Captain,” Pritchard said simply. “Because we can’t leave ten thousand armed enemies in a state whose support we need. And because the locals can’t do it themselves—”
He grinned harshly.
“—which is generally why people hire the Slammers, right?”
The Gendarmery had been conspicuous by its absence during the events of the afternoon. Now the Point’s gray-uniformed police were out in force, though they seemed more to be showing themselves than making an effort to control the good-natured partying that was going on. The Gendarmes on foot patrol carried only pistols; those in the cruising aircars may have had carbines but they weren’t showing them.
“Ten thousand of ’em, sir?” said C-1’s platoon sergeant, a rangy man named Dunsterville. He sounded incredulous rather than afraid at what he’d heard. “You mean the guys with red sweatbands?”
“The Volunteers, yes,” Pritchard agreed with a grim nod. “You won’t have to deal with all of them—indeed, that’s why we’ve decided to move on Fort Freedom immediately. We expect that at least half of Grayle’s Volunteers will decide to stay home in the woods if they know that joining her means facing tanks. If we withdraw from the Point and the Volunteers don’t have anybody to worry about except the locals, then they’ll everyone of them march back into Midway and this time loot the place.”
When Pritchard said, “we’ve decided,” he meant Colonel Hammer and his regimental command group. The “we” who’d be carrying out the operation meant Call-Sign Sierra, ten vehicles and less than a hundred troopers under Captain Sangrela. Huber was a volunteer, and he knew that the senior officers had all been at the sharp end in their day too . . . but Via! Fifty to one was curst long odds!