The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“Guiltpuke gas,” Ace said. The area behind the police line was finally clearing. Owensford swiveled his head. Lysander, and what was his fiancée doing there; she had the back of one hand to her mouth . . . guiltpuke gas, a nausea agent with an indelible dye mixed in, so you could identify the suspects later. The sick-sweet smell of vomitus filled the air, and underlying it came a tang he recognized, the salt-iron-shit smell of violent death.

“Ace, get those troops in here NOW. I don’t like this at all.”

“Nor me,” Barton said. “Only one problem. They’ve got our frequency too. With better gear than we have.”

Better than we have? How? “We’d better—” he began. The world came apart in a slamming roar.

* * *

“Field Prime says now,” Two-knife said. He and Bobber were waiting perilously close, around a corner that gave on a parking lot. The gray fibrocrete wall was pockmarked, and slashed with graffiti; variations on WEREWOLVES FOREVER, mostly. And a new one: HELOTS RULE OK with the red = sign. He shrugged off the fifty-kilo load of rockets and began handing them out to the other gang-members; they seized one each and dashed or crawled off into the darkness.

“Me first,” Bobber said. “Remember that, Werewolves.”

Better you than me, defiling bitch, Two-knife thought, going down on one knee and drawing the pistol-shaped designator as he lowered the goggles over his eyes. They were nightsight devices and more, also showing the red line of the designator’s laser, invisible to the naked eye. He held the communicator to his face and spoke, in Mayan. Not likely anyone else on this world spoke it, beside him and the señora.

“All in readiness here,” he said.

“Go.”

Bobber had unwrapped her launcher, a molded plastic tube with pistol grips and a scope sight; Friedlander-made, a one-shot disposable. Her smile was wide and wet as she pivoted around the corner and raised the launcher to her shoulder. Two-knife dropped flat and scuttled sideways, taking up the slack of the designator’s trigger. He could see the Spartosky clearly now; a police groundcar was parked in front of it, with a man in the hatch signaling to the vehicle floating above. The red blip of the designator settled effortlessly on the control bubble: only seventy meters; he could usually put four bullets out of five in a man-sized target at that range.

The first rocket was Bobber’s; it whumped out of the tube, propelled by a light charge and balanced by the shower of plastic confetti that blasted out of the rear. Then the sustainer motor cut in, with a scream like a retching cat.

* * *

“Down!” Owensford yelled. Needlessly for his own men; as he dove to the pavement he saw Cornet Gordon trip Melissa, Lysander’s fiancée, and throw herself over the older girl before drawing her pistol. Lysander and Harv hit the dirt and rolled into the gutter in well-trained unison, their sidearms out and eyes searching for targets.

The mob was running now, but that was the least of their problems.

The flight path of the rocket was a bright streak across his retinas. Where it struck the Peacemaker a pancake of fire expanded as the shaped-charge warhead slammed its lance of incandescent plasma through the armor. The big vehicle lurched in the air, then forward. It caromed into the side of the building opposite the Spartosky with an impact that made the paving stones of the forecourt shudder beneath his stomach like the hide of some huge beast shuddering in its sleep. Then it pinwheeled end over end to strike the empty roadway a hundred meters farther down. Fuel tanks ruptured, spraying vaporized kerosene into the air; Owensford buried his head in his arms and held his breath. The curve of the walls protected him from the wash of flame, that and the pillars that ringed the area under the marquee and the stone lip at the end of the roadway.

Savage heat passed over him, and a soft strong whump of shockwave that tried to pick him up and roll him; the exposed areas of his skin were tight and painful. He raised his head as soon as it was safe, to see the police groundcar settling back on its springs; it had taken the main force of the blast. Saunders was still in the hatchway, burning and screaming and waving his arms. For a few seconds, and then two more rockets blasted into the groundcar. The top blew off in a vertical gout of fire, metal slashing into the walls and into the backs of those Milice not incapacitated by the burning fuel. Saunders was silhouetted for a moment against the fireball, until he struck the opposite building with enough force to turn his body into a lose sack of ruptured cells and bone fragments inside the armor.

Owensford turned, his vision jumping in snapshots of relevant data. Barton and most of the remaining Legion officers were behind pillars, the stocks of the Microuzis extended as they scanned the windows opposite for movement. Gordon was just pushing Melissa back through the door of the Spartosky; a junior lieutenant was using his uniform coat to smother the flames in the hair and gown of a guest. He staggered, grunted, fell; still moving, but grasping at a bullet wound in his thigh.

“You Milice,” Owensford called. Some of them were still on their feet, and they had all abandoned the useless riot gear for the guns on their backs. “Get the wounded in here under cover. You, Sergeant, get me ten, we’ve got to secure the building across the way.”

The police-militia noncom turned, a look of grateful relief on his face that someone was taking charge. His mouth opened; then he staggered, a red splotch opening on the front of his jacket, and dropped bonelessly to the ground.

“Cover, cover!” Owensford called.

“I’ll clear the building,” Lysander said. He dashed forward, diving and rolling as bullets chipped the pavement at his feet, Harv skipping sideways behind him and snapping off covering shots at the windows. The Milice rallied and followed, driving into the dead ground at the base of the building across the street. The prince kicked in a door and dove through, the militia of the Brotherhoods at his heels.

Ace Barton was firing controlled three-round bursts from behind a pillar. “Fifth floor, second from the right,” he shouted as he ducked back behind the stone to reload. Return fire pocked the column; he dodged down and to the other side, snapping off another burst.

“Where the hell is the battalion?”

“Coming.”

* * *

“¡Mierda!” Skilly said, dropping down behind the window ledge.

Light pistol-caliber bullets hammered at the stone below; she rose and squeezed off the five rounds left in the clip, phut-phut-phut-phut-phut.

“Somebody down there too good a shot,” she said with respect, slapping another magazine into the well in the pistol grip of the carbine and stepping back out of the line of fire. “That enough, everyone out!”

The dark-clad Meijian at the com unit snapped it closed, picked up his personal weapon and darted to the door. “Niles!”

The young Englishman squeezed off another round and turned. “Got one, by god!” he said.

“Good,” Skilly replied impatiently. “Doan matter, we gots nice pictures, cameras knocked out just before the first rocket. Papers will tell, but people we interested in doan read, is all. Hoped we’d get the kings . . . you take rear, my mon. Go, go, go.”

The corridor outside was cool white silence, insanely distant from the fire and blood outside. Niles crouched, his weapon covering the long hallway as the others dashed toward the staircase; the corridors were shaped like a capital “I,” with elevators in the middle and stairs at either end. He skipped backward crabwise, conscious of the steadiness of his hands and the bright concentration in his mind. Read about this, Grand-Uncle, he thought. Tell me I’m a useless playboy now, father.

They were to the stairs; he could hear the thunder of feet on the metal slats. And the door at the other end of the corridor was opening.

“Hostiles!” Niles shouted, dropping into prone position. Elbows on the ground, and the stock smacked into his shoulder, squeeze off two rounds. Star-shaped holes in the frosted glass, and a scream of pain. Then the door opened again, just enough to let a muzzle through. Shots blazed, a military automatic rifle, ugly crack sounds above his head, hammering into the plasterwork and leaving stinging dust in the air.

“Come on, mon, we leaving,” Skilly said behind him.

Niles shook his head, fired again. “Got to give them something to think about,” he said. “Grenade, please?”

She handed one forward to him, a standard plastic concussion-model egg. He waited until the opposite door began to open, then pulled the tab and lobbed it with a cricketer’s expert overarm snap; it bounced into the narrow gap between door and wall and exploded, tearing the door from the hinges.