The bone stuck out a centimeter beyond where the charred muscle had shrunk back toward the gunner’s shoulder. “He’s—” Suilin said. “It’s—”
“Right,” shouted Cooter. He turned back to his tribarrel.
“I’m all right,” said Otski. He tried to push himself erect. His stump clattered on the top of an ammunition box. His face went white and pinched in.
Don’t mean nothin’, Otski’s lips formed. Then his pupils rolled up and he collapsed.
The combat car spun in its own length and circled the blasted Headquarters building. There were figures climbing the berm behind the structure. Cooter fired.
Dick Suilin leaned over Otski and took the grips of his tribarrel. Another car was following them; a third had rounded the building from the other side.
When Suilin pressed the thumb button, droplets of fire as constant as a strobe-lit fountain streamed from his rotating muzzles.
Sod spouted in a line as the reporter walked toward the black-clad figure trying desperately to climb the steep berm ahead of them. At the last moment the guerrilla turned with his hands raised, but Suilin couldn’t have lifted his thumbs in time if he’d wanted to.
Ozone and gases from the empty cases smothered the stink of Otski’s arm.
For a moment, Consies balanced on top of the berm. A scything crossfire tumbled them as the tanks and combat cars raked their targets from both sides.
When nothing more moved, the vehicles shot at bodies in case some of the guerrillas were shamming. Twice Suilin managed to explode the grenades or ammunition that his targets carried.
Cooter had to pry the reporter’s fingers from the tribarrel when Tootsie Six called a ceasefire.
Chapter Four
“I’ve got authorization,” said Dick Suilin, fumbling in the breast pocket of his fatigues. The “Extend all courtesies” card signed by his brother-in-law, Governor Samuel Kung, was there, along with his Press ID and his Military Status Papers.
Suilin’s military status was Exempt-III. That meant he would see action only in the event of a call-up of all male citizens between the ages of sixteen and sixty.
He was having trouble getting the papers out because his fingers were still numb from the way they’d been squeezing the tribarrel’s grips.
For that matter, the National Government might’ve proclaimed a general call-up overnight—if there was still a National Government.
“Buddy,” snarled the senior non-com at the door of the communications center, “I can’t help you. I don’t care if you got authorization from God ‘n his saints. I don’t care if you are God ‘n his saints!”
“I’m not that,” the reporter said in a soft, raspy voice. Ozone and smoke had flayed his throat. “But I need to get through to Kohang—and it’s your ass if I don’t.”
He flicked at his shirtfront. Some of what was stuck there came off.
Suilin’s wrist and the back of his right hand were black where vaporized copper from the buzzbomb had recondensed. All the fine hairs were burned off, but the skin beneath hadn’t blistered. His torso was badly bruised where the bullet-struck armor had punched into him.
The butt of the pistol he now carried in his belt prodded the bruise every time he moved.
“Well, I’m not God neither, buddy,” the non-com said, his tone frustrated but suddenly less angry.
He waved toward his set-up and the two junior technicians struggling with earphones and throat mikes. “The land lines’re down, the satellites’re down, and there’s jamming right across all the bands. If you think you can get something through, you just go ahead and try. But if you want my ass, you gotta stand in line.”
The National side of Camp Progress had three commo centers. The main one was—had been—in the shielded basement of Headquarters. A few Consies were still holed up there after the rest of the fighting had died down. A Slammers’ tank had managed to depress its main gun enough to finish the job.
The training detachment had a separate system, geared toward the needs of homesick draftees. It had survived, but Colonel Banyussuf—who’d also survived—had taken over the barracks in which it was housed as his temporary headquarters. Suilin hadn’t bothered trying to get through the panicked crowd now surrounding the building.