


CHAPTER OPiE

They'd told Tyi Koopman that Bamberg City's
starport was on an island across the channel from
the city proper, so he hadn't expected much of a
skyline when the freighter's hatches opened.

Neither had he expected a curtain of steam
boiling up so furiously that the sun was only a
bright patch in mid-sky.

Tyi stepped back with a yelp. The crewman at
the controls of the giant cargo doors laughed and
said, "Well, you were in such a hurry, soldier. ..."

The Slammers-issue pack Tyi carried was all the
luggage he'd brought from six month's furlough on
Miesel. Strapped to the bottom of the pack was
a case of home-made jalapeno jelly that his aunt
was sure—correctly—was better than any he could
get elsewhere in the galaxy.

But altogether, the weight of Tyi's gear was
much less than he was used to carrying in weap-

2              David Drake

ons, rations, and armor when he led a company of
Alois Hammer's infantry. He turned easily and
looked at the crewman with mild sadness—the
visage of a dog that's been unexpectedly kicked
. . . and maybe just enough else beneath the sad-
ness to be disquieting.

The crewman looked down at his controls, then
again to the mercenary waiting to disembark. The
squealing stopped when the triple hatches locked
open. "Ah," called the crewman, "it'll clear up in
a minute er two. It's always like this on Bamberg
the first couple ships down after a high tide. The
port floods, y'see, and it always looks like half the
bloody ocean's waiting in the hollows t' burn off."

The steam—the hot mist; it'd never been dan-
gerous, Tyi realized how—was thinning quickly.
From the hatchway he could see the concrete pad
and, in the near distance, the bulk of the freighter
that must have landed just before theirs. The flecks
beyond the concrete were the inevitable froth
speckling moving water, the channel or the ocean
itself—and the water looked cursed close to some-
body who'd just spent six months on a place as dry
as Miesel.

"Where do they put the warehouses?" Tyi asked.
"Don't they flood?"

"Every three months or so they would," the
crewman agreed. "That's why they're on the main-
land, in Bamberg City, where there's ten meters
of cliff and seawall t' keep 'em dry. But out here's
flat, and I guess they figured they'd sooner the
landing point be on the island in case somebody,
you know, landed a mite hard."

The crewman grinned tightly. Tyi grinned back.
They were both professionals in fields that in-
volved risks. People who couldn't joke about the

3

COUNTING THE COST

risks of the jobs they'd chosen tended to find
other lines of work in a hurry.

The ones who survived.

"Well, I guess it's clear," Tyi said with enough
question in his tone to expect a warning if he were
wrong. "There'll be ground transport coming?"

"Yeah, hovercraft from Bamberg real soon," the
crewman agreed. "But look, there's a shelter on
the other side a' that bucket there. You might
want to get over to it right quick. There's some
others in orbit after us, and it can be pretty inter-
esting t' be out on the field when it's this wet and
there's more ships landing."

Tyi nodded to the man and strode down the
ramp that had been the lower third of the hatch
door. He was nervous, but it'd all be fine soon.
He'd be back with his unit and not alone, the way
he'd been on the ship—

And for the whole six months he'd spent with
his family and a planet full of civilians who under-
stood his words but not his language.

The mainland shore, a kilometer across Nevis
Channel, was a comiche. The harsh cliffs were
notched by the mouth of the wide river which was
responsible for Bamberg City's location and the
fact it was the only real city on the planet. Tyi
hadn't gotten the normal briefing because the reg-
iment shifted employers while he was on furlough,
but the civilian sources available on Miesel when
he got his movement orders were about all he
needed anyway.

Captain Tyi Koopman wasn't coming to the planet
Bamberia; he was returning to Hammer's Stam-
mers. After five years in the regiment and six
months back with his family, he had to agree with




4              David Drake

the veterans who'd warned him before he went on
furlough that he wasn't going home.

He had left home, because the Slammers were
the only home he'd got.

The shelter was a low archway, translucent green
from the outside and so unobtrusive that Tyi might
have overlooked it if there had been any other
structure on the island. He circled to one end,
apprehensive of the rumbling he heard in the
sky—and more than a little nervous about the pair
of star freighters already grounded in the port.

The ships were quiescent. They steamed and
gave off pings of differential cooling, but for the
next few days they weren't going to move any
more than would buildings of the same size. Nev-
ertheless, learned reflex told Tyi that big metal
objects were tanks . . . and no infantryman lived
very long around tanks without developing a healthy
respect for them.

The door opened automatically as Tyi reached
for it, wondering where the latch was. Dim shad-
ows swirled inside the shelter, behind a second
panel that rotated aside only when the outside
door had closed again.

There were a dozen figures spaced within a
shelter that had room for hundreds. All those
waiting were human; all were male; and all but
one were in civilian garb.

Tyi walked toward the man in uniform—almost
toward him, while almost meeting the other man's
eyes so that he could stop and find a clear spot at
the long window if the fellow glared or turned his
head as the Slammers officer approached.

No problem, though. The fellow's quirking grin
suggested that he was as glad of the company as
Tyi was.

COUNTING THE COST          5

It was real easy to embarrass yourself when you
didn't know the rules—and when nobody wore
the rank tabs that helped you figure out what
those rules might be.

From within the shelter, the windows had an
extreme clarity that proved they were nothing as
simple as glass or thermoplastic. The shelter was
unfurnished, without even benches, but its con-
struction proved that Bamberia was a wealthy,
high technology world.

There was a chance for real profit on this one.
Colonel Hammer must have been delighted.

"Hammer's Regiment?" the waiting soldier asked,
spreading his grin into a look of welcome.

"Captain Tyi Koopman," Tyi agreed, shaking
the other man's hand. "I'd just gotten E Company
when I went on furlough. But I don't know what
may've happened since, you know, since we've
shifted contracts."

He'd just blurted the thing that'd been bother-
ing him ever since Command Central had sent the
new location for him to report off furlough. He'd
sweated blood to get that company command—
sweated blood and spilled it ... and the revised
transit orders made him fear that he'd have to
earn it all over again because he'd been gone on
furlough when the Colonel needed somebody in
the slot.

Tyi hadn't bothered to discuss it with the folks
who'd been his friends and relatives when he was
a civilian; they already looked at him funny from
the time one of them asked about the scrimshaw
he'd given her and he was drunk enough to tell
the real story of the house-to-house on Cachalot.
But this guy would understand, even though Tyi




6              David Drake

didn't know him and didn't even recognize the
uniform.

"Charles Desoix," the man said, "United De-
fense Batteries." He flicked a collar tab with his
finger. "Lieutenant and XO of Battery D, if you
don't care what you say. It amounts to gopher,
mainly. I just broke our Number Five gun out of
Customs on Merrinet."

"Right, air defense," Tyi said with the enthusi-
asm of being able to place the man in a structured
universe. "Calliopes?"

"Yeah," agreed Desoix with another broad grin,
"and the inspectors seemed to think somebody in
the crew had stuffed all eight barrels with drugs
they were going to sell at our transfer stop on
Merrinet. Might just've been right, too—but we
needed the gun here more than they needed the
evidence."

The ship that had been a rumble in the sky
when Tyi ducked into the shelter was now within
ten meters of the pad. The shelter's windows did
an amazing job of damping vibration, but the con-
crete itself resonated like a drum to the freighter's
engine note. The two soldiers fell silent. Tyi shifted
his pack and studied Desoix.

The UDB uniform was black with silver piping
that muted to non-reflective gray in service condi-
tions. It was a little fancier than the Stammers'
khaki—but Desoix's unit wasn't parade-ground
pansies.

The Slammers provided their own defense against
hostile artillery. Most outfits didn't have the lux-
ury that Fire Central and the vehicle-mounted
powerguns gave Hammer. Specialists like United
Defense Batteries provided multi-barreled weapons
—calliopes—to sweep the sky clear over defended

COUNTING THE COST          7

positions and to accompany attacking columns which
would otherwise be wrecked by shellfire.

It wasn't a job Tyi Koopman could imagine him-
self being comfortable doing; but Via! he didn't
see himself leading a tank company either. A one-
man skimmer and a 2 cm powergun were about all
the hardware Tyi wanted to handle. Anything big-
ger cost him too much thought that would have
been better spent on the human portion of his
command.

"Your first time here?" Desoix asked diffidently.
The third freighter was down. Though steam hissed
away from the vessel with a high-pitched roar, it
was possible to talk again.

Tyi nodded. Either the tide was falling rapidly
or the first two ships had pretty well dried the pad
for later comers. The billows of white mist were
sparse enough that he could still see the city across
the channel: or at any rate, he could see a twenty-
story tower of metal highlights and transparent
walls on one side of the river, and a domed struc-
ture across from it that gleamed gold—except for
the ornate cross on the pinnacle whose core was
living ruby.

"Not a bad place," Desoix said judiciously. He
looked a few years older than the Slammers offi-
cer, but perhaps it was just that, looks, dark hair
and thin features contrasting with Tyi's broad pale
face and hair so blond that you could hardly see it
when it was cropped as short as it was now.

"The city, I mean," Desoix said, modifying his
earlier comment. "The sticks over on Continent
Two where it looks like the fighting's going to be,
well—they're the sticks."

He met Tyi's eyes. "I won't apologize for get-
ting a quiet billet this time 'round."

8              David Drake

"No need to," Tyi said . . . and they were both
lying, because nobody who knows the difference
brags to a combat soldier about a cushy assign-
ment; and no combat soldier but wishes, some-
where in his heart of hearts, that he'd gotten the
absolutely necessary assignment of protecting the
capital while somebody else led troops into sniper-
filled woodlands and endured the fluorescent drum-
beat of hostile artillery.

But Via! Somebody had to do the job.

Both of them.
"Hey, maybe the next time," Tyi said with a

false smile and a playful tap on the shoulder of the
man who wasn't a stranger any more.

Several boats—hovercraft too small to haul more
than a dozen men and their luggage—were put-
ting out from Bamberg City, spraying their way
toward the island with an enthusiasm that sug-
gested they were racing.

Tyi's view of them was unexpectedly cut off
when a huge surface-effect freighter slid in front of
the shelter and settled. The freighter looked like a
normal sub-sonic aircraft, but its airfoils were canted
to double their lift by skimming over water or
smooth ground. The bird couldn't really fly, but it
could carry a thousand tonnes of cargo at 200
kph—a useful trade-off between true ships and

true aircraft.

"Traders from Two," Desoix explained as men
began scuttling from the freighter before its hy-
draulic outriggers had time to lock it firmly onto
the pad. "They circle at a safe distance from the
island while the starships are landing. Then, if
they're lucky, they beat the Bamberg factors to
the pad with the first shot at a deal."

He shrugged. "And if their luck's really out,

COUNTING THE COST          9

there's another starship on its way in about the
time they tie up. Doesn't take much of a shock
wave to make things real interesting aboard one of
those."

Tyi squinted at the men scuttling from the
surface-effect vehicle. Several of those waiting in
the shelter were joining them, babbling and wav-
ing documents. "Say, those guys 're—"

"Yeah, rag-heads," Desoix agreed. "I mean, I'm
sure they're in church every day, kissing crosses
and all the proper things, but . . . yeah, they're
looking at some problems if President Delcorio
gets his crusade going."

"Well, that's what we're here for," Tyi said,
looking around horizons that were hemmed by
starships to the back and side and the surface-
effect vehicle before him.

"Now," he added, controlling his grimace, "how
do we get to the mainland if we're not cargo?"

"Ah, but we are," Desoix noted as he raised the
briefcase that seemed to be all the luggage he
carried. "Just not very valuable cargo, my friend.
But I think it's about time to—"

As he started toward the door, one of the
hovercars they'd watched put out from the city
drove through the mingled cluster of men from
the starships and the surface freighter. Water from
the channel surrounded the car in a fine mist that
cleared its path better than the threat of its rubber
skirts. While the driver in his open cab exchanged
curses with men from the surface freighter, the
rear of his vehicle opened to disgorge half a dozen
civilians in bright garments.

"Our transportation," Desoix said, nodding to
the hovercar as he headed out of the shelter.
"Now that it's dropped off the Bamberg factors to




10             David Drake

fight for their piece of the market. Everybody's
got tobacco, and everybody wants a share of what
may be the last cargoes onto the planet for a

while."

"Before the shooting starts," Tyi amplified as he

strode along with the UDB officer. They hadn't
sent a briefing cube to Miesel for him . .'. but it
didn't take that or genius to figure out what was
going to happen shortly after a world started hir-
ing mercenary regiments.

"That's the betting," Desoix agreed. He opened
the back of the car with his universal credit key, a
computer chip encased in noble metal and banded

to his wrist.

"Oh," said Tyi, staring at the keyed door.
"Yeah, everything's up to date here in Bamberg,"

said the other officer, stepping out of the doorway

and waving Tyi through. "Hey!" he called to the

driver. "My friend here's on mel"

"I can—" Tyi said.
"—delay us another ten minutes," Desoix broke

in, "trying to charge this one to the Hammer account
or pass the driver scrip from Lord knows where."

He keyed the door a second time and swung
into the car, both men moving with the trained
grace of soldiers who knew how to get on and off
air cushion vehicles smoothly—because getting
hung up was a good way to catch a round.

"Goes to the UDB account anyway," Desoix
added. "Via, maybe we'll need a favor from you

one of these days."

"I'm just not set up for this place, coming off

furlough," Tyi explained. "It's not like, you know,
Colonel Hammer isn't on top of things."

The driver fluffed his fans and the car began to
cruise in cautious arcs around the starships, look-

COUNTING 1

ing for other passengers.
were busy with merehar
themselves, preparing th<
would load the vacuum-s<
Bamberg tobacco when thi
deals.

No one looked at the <
interest. The driver spun
channel with a lurch and




CHAPTER TWO

"One thing," Desoix said, looking out the win-
dow even though the initial spray cloaked the
view. "Money's no problem here. Any banking
booth can access Hammer's account and probably
your account back home if it's got a respondent on
one of the big worlds. Perfectly up to date. But,
ah, don't talk to anybody here about religion, all
right?"

He met Tyi's calm eyes. "No matter how well
you know them, you don't know them that well.
Here. And don't go out except wearing your uni-
form. They don't bother soldiers, especially meres;

but somebody might make a mistake if you were
in civilian clothes."

Their vehicle was headed for the notch in the
sea cliffs. It was a river mouth as Tyi had assumed
from the spaceport, but human engineering had
overwhelmed everything natural about the site.

13

14 David Drake

The river was covered and framed into a triangu-
lar plaza by concrete seawalls as high as those
reinforcing the corniche.

Salt water from the tide-choked sea even now
gleamed on the plaza, just as it was streaming
from the spaceport. Figures—women as well as
men, Tyi thought, though it was hard to be sure
between the spray and the loose costumes they
wore here—were pouring into the plaza as fast as
the water had left it.

For the most part the walls were sheer and ten
meters high, but there were broad stairs at each
apex of the plaza—two along the seaside east and
west and a third, defended by massive flood works,
that must have been built over the channel of the
river itself.

"What's the problem?" Tyi asked calmly. From
what he'd read, the battle lines on Bamberia were
pretty clearly drawn. The planetary government
was centered on Continent One—wealthy and very
centralized, because the Pink River drained most
of the arable land on the continent. All the
uniquely-flavorful Bamberg tobacco could be barged
at minimal cost to Bamberg City and loaded in
bulk onto starships.

There hadn't been much official interest in Con-
tinent Two for over a century after the main set-
tlement. There was good land on Two, but it was
patchy and not nearly as easy to develop profitably
as One proved.

That didn't deter other groups who saw a chance
that looked good by their standards. Small starships
touched down in little market centers. Everything
was on a lesser scale: prices, quantities, and profit
margins. ...

But in time, the estimated total grew large

COUNTING THE COST           15

enough for the central government to get inter-
ested. Official trading ports were set up on the
coast of Two. Local tobacco was to be sent from
them to Bamberg City, to be assessed and trans-
shipped.

Some was; but the interloping traders contin-
ued to land in the back country, and central gov-
ernment officials gnashed their teeth over tax
revenues that were all the larger for being illusory.

It didn't help that One had been settled by
Catholic Fundamentalists from Germany and Latin
America, and that the squatters on Two were al-
most entirely Levantine Muslims.

The traders didn't care. They had done their
business in holographic entertainment centers and
solar-powered freezers, but there was just as much
profit in powerguns and grenades.

As for mercenaries like Alois Hammer—and Tyi
Koopman. . . They couldn't be said not to care;

because if there wasn't trouble, they didn't have
work.

Not that Tyi figured there was much risk of
galactic peace being declared.

Desoix laughed without even attempting to make
the sound humorous. "Well," he said, "do you
know when Easter is?"

"Huh?" said Tyi. "My family wasn't, you know,
real religious . . . and anyway, do you mean on
Earth or here or where?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Desoix answered,
glancing around the empty cabin just to be sure
there couldn't be a local listening to him.

"Some folks here," he continued, "figure Easter
according to Earth-standard days. You can tell
them because they've always got something red in
their clothing, a cap or a ribbon around their

16 David Drake COUNTING THE COST 17

sleeve if nothing else. And the folks that say,
'We're on Bamberia so God meant us to use
Bamberg days to figure his calendar . . . ,' well,
they wear black.

"And the people who wear cloaks, black or red,"
Desoix concluded. "Make sure they know you're a
soldier. Because they'd just as soon knock your
head in as that of any policeman or citizen—but
they won't, because they know that killing soldiers
gets expensive fast."

Tyi shook his head. "I'd say I didn't believe it,"
he said with the comfortable superiority of some-
body commenting on foolishness to which he doesn't
subscribe. "But sure, it's no screwier than a lot of
places. People don't need a reason to have prob-
lems, they make their own."

"And they hire us," agreed Desoix.

"Well, they hire us to give 'em more control
over the markets on Two," Tyi said, not quite
arguing. "This time around."

Their vehicle was approaching the plaza. It stood
two meters above the channel, barely eye-height
to the men in the back of the hovercar. A pontoon-
mounted landing stage slid with the tides in a
vertical slot in the center of the dam blocking the
river beneath the plaza; the car slowed as they
approached the stage.

"If they dam the river—" Tyi started to say,
because he wouldn't have commanded a company
of the Slammers had he not assessed the terrain
about him as a matter of course.

Before Desoix could answer, slotted spillways
opened at either end of the dam and whipped the
channel into froth with gouts of fresh water under
enough pressure to fling it twenty meters from the
concrete. The hovercar, settling as it made its

final approach to the stage, bobbed in the ripples;

the driver must have been cursing the operator
who started to drain the impoundment now in-
stead of a minute later.

"Hydraulics they know about," Desoix com-
mented as their vehicle grounded on the stage
with a blip of its fans and the pontoons rocked
beneath them. "They can't move the city—it's
here because of the river, floods or no. But for
twenty kilometers upstream, they've built con-
crete levees. When the tides peak every three
months or so—as they just did—they close the
gates here and divert the river around Bamberg
City."

He pointed up the coast. "When the tide goes
down a little, they vent water through the main
channel again until everything's normal. In about
two days, they can let barges across to the space-
port."

The hovercar's door opened, filling the back
with the roar of the water jetting from a quarter
kilometer to either side. "Welcome to Bamberg
City," Desoix shouted over the background as he
motioned Tyi ahead of him.

The Slammers officer paused outside the vehi-
cle to slip on his pack again. Steel-mesh stairs
extended through the landing stage, up to the
plaza—but down into the water as well: they did
not move with the stage or the tides, and they
were dripping and as slick as wet, polished metal
could be.

"No gear?" he asked his companion curiously.

Desoix waved his briefcase. "Some, but I'm
leaving it to be on-loaded with the gun. Remem-
ber, I'm travelling with a whole curst calliope."

"Well, you must be glad to have it back," said




18             David Drake

Tyl as he gripped the slick railing before he at-
tempted the steps.

"Not as glad as my battery commander, Major
Borodin," Desoix said with a chuckle. "It was his
ass, not mine, if the Merrinet authorities had de-
cided to keep it till it grew whiskers."

"But—" he added over the clang of his boots
and Tyi's as they mounted the stairs, "—he's not a
bad old bird, the Major, and he cuts me slack that
not every CO might be willing to do."

The stairs ended on a meter-wide walkway that
was part of the plaza but separated from it by a
low concrete building, five meters on the side
parallel to the dam beneath it—and narrower in
the other dimension. On top, facing inward to the
plaza, was an ornate, larger than life, crucifix.

Tyi hesitated, uncertain as to which way to walk
around the building. He'd expected somebody from
his unit to be waiting here on the mainland if not
at the spaceport itself. He was feeling alone again.
The raucous babble of locals setting up sales kiosks
on the plaza increased his sense of isolation.

"Either way," Desoix said, putting a hand on
the other man's shoulder—in comradeship as well
as direction. "This is just the mechanical room for
the locks—except—"

Desoix leaned over so that his lips were almost
touching Tyi's ear and said, "Except that it's the
altar of Christ the Redeemer, if you ask anybody
here. I really put my foot in it when I tried to get
permission to site one of my guns on it. Would've
been a perfect place to cover the sea approaches,
but it seems that they'd rather die here than have
their cross moved.

"Of course," the UDB officer added, a profes-
sional who didn't want another professional to think

COUNTING THE COST         19

that he'd done a bad job of placing his guns, "I
found an all-right spot on a demolition site just
east of here."

Desoix nodded toward the thronged steps at the
eastern end of the plaza. "Not quite the arc of fire,
but nothing we can't cover from the other guns.
Especially now we've got Number Five back."

In the time it had taken the hovercar to navi-
gate from the spaceport to the mainland, a city of
small shops had sprung up in the plaza. Tyi couldn't
imagine the development could be orderly—but it
was, at least to the extent that a field of clover has
order, because the individual plants respond to
general stimuli that force them into patterns.

There were city police present, obvious from
their peaked caps, green uniforms, and needle
stunners worn on white cross-belts . . . but they
were not organizing the ranks of kiosks. Men and
women in capes were doing that; and after a glance
at their faces, Tyi didn't need Desoix to tell him
how tough they thought they were.

They just might be right, too; but things have a
way of getting a lot worse than anybody expected,
and it was then that you got a good look at what
you and the rest of your crew were really made of.

Traffic in the plaza was entirely pedestrian. Ve-
hicles were blocked from attempting the staircases
at either sea-front comer by massive steel bol-
lards, and the stairs at the remaining apex were
closed by what seemed to be lockworks as massive
as those venting the river beneath the plaza. They'd
have to be, Tyi realized, because there needed to
be some way of releasing water from the top of its
levee-channelled course in event of an emergency.

But that wasn't a problem for Captain Tyi
Koopman just now. What he needed was some-

20             David Drake

body wearing the uniform of Hammer's Slammers,
and he sure as blazes didn't see such in all this

throng.

"Ah," he said, "Lieutenant ... do you—"

The transceiver implanted in his mastoid bone
beeped, and an unfamiliar voice began to answer
Tyi's question before he had fully formed it.

"Transit Base to Captain Tyi Koopman," said
the implant, scratchy with static and the frustra-
tion of the man at the other end of the radio link.
"Captain Koopman, are you reading me? Over."

Tyi felt a rush of relief as he willed his left little
finger to crook. The finger didn't move, but the
redirected nerve impulse triggered the transmit-
ter half of his implant. "Koopman to Transit," he
said harshly. "Where in blazes are you, anyway?

Over."

"Sir," said the voice, "this is Sergeant Major

Scratchard, and you don't need to hear that I'm
sorry about the cock-up. There's an unscheduled
procession, and I can't get into the main stairs
until it's over. If you'll tell me where you are, I
swear I'll get t' you as soon as the little boys put
away their crosses and let the men get back to

work."

"I'm—" Tyi began. Desoix was turned half aside

to indicate that he knew of the conversation going
on and knew it wasn't any of this business. That
gave the Slammers officer the mental base he
needed for a reasoned decision rather than ner-
vously agreeing to wait in place.

"Ah, sir," Scratchard continued; he'd paused
but not broken the transmission. "There's a load
of stuff for you here from Central. The Colonel
wants you to lead the draft over when you report
to Two. And, ah, the President, ah, Delcorio,

COUNTING THE COST         21

wants to see you ASAP because you're the ranking
officer now. Over."

"The main stairs," Tyi said, aloud rather than
sub-vocalizing the way he had done thus far through
the implant. Desoix could hear him. To under-
score that he wanted the UDB officer to listen,
Tyi pointed toward the empty stairs at the third
apex. "That's at the end farthest from the sea,

then?"

Desoix nodded. Scratchard's voice said, "Ah,
yessir," through the static.

"Fine, I'll meet you there when you can get
through," Tyi said flatly. "I'm in uniform and I
have one pack is all. Koopman over and out."

He smiled to Desoix. "It'll give me a chance to
look around," he explained. Now that his unit had
contacted him he felt confident—whole, for the
first time in ... Via, in six months, just about.

Desoix smiled back. "Well, you shouldn't have
any real problems here," he said. "But—" his
head tilted, just noticeably, in the direction of
three red-cloaked toughs "don't forget what I told
you. Myself, I'm going to check Number Three
gun so long as I'm down on the corniche anyway.
See you around, soldier."

"See you around," Tyi agreed confidently. He
grinned at his surroundings with a tourist's vague
interest. Captain Tyi Koopman was home again,
or he would be in a few minutes.




CHAPTER THREE

Charles Desoix thought about the House of Grace
as he mounted the eastern stairs from the plaza.
The huge hospital building, Bishop Trimer's latest
but not necessarily last attempt to impose his pres-
ence on Bamberg City, was about all a man could
see as he left the plaza in this direction. For that
matter, the twenty glittering stories of the House
of Grace were the only portions of the city visible
from the floor of the plaza, over the sea walls.

It was like looking at a block of blue ice; and it
was the only thing about being stationed in
Bamberg City that Desoix could really have done
without. But the Bishop certainly wasn't enough
of a problem that Desoix intended to transfer to
one of the batteries out in the boonies on Two,
rumbling through valleys you could be sure the
rag-heads had mined and staked for snipers.

Thousands of people, shoppers as well as shop-

23

24             David Drake

keepers, were still pouring into the plaza; Desoix
was almost alone in wanting to go in the opposite
direction. He wasn't in a big hurry, so he kept his
temper in check. An unscheduled inspection of
Gun Three was a good excuse for the battery XO
to be there, not just sneaking around. . . .

He had some business back at the Palace of
Government, too; but he wasn't so horny from the
trip to Merrinet that he was willing to make that

his first priority. Quite.

Three prostitutes, each of them carried by a

pair of servants to save their sandals and gossamer
tights, were on their way to cribs in the plaza
below. Desoix made way with a courteous bow;

but uniform or not, he was going to make way.
The phalanx of red-cloaked guards surrounding

the girls would have made sure of that.

One of the girls smiled at Desoix as she rocked
past. He smiled back at her, thinking of Anne
McGill . . . but Blood and Martyrs! he could last
another half hour. He'd get his job done Brst.

There was an unusual amount of congestion here,
but that was because the main stairs were blocked.
Another procession, no doubt; Bishop Trimer
playing his games while President Delcorio and
his wife tried to distract the populace with a cru-
sade on Two.

As for the populace, its members knocked in

each other's heads depending on what each was

wearing that day.

Just normal politics, was all. Normal for places

that hired the United Defense Batteries and other

mercenary regiments, at any rate.

At dawn, the shadow of the House of Grace lay

across the Cathedral on the other side of the plaza,
so that the gilded dome no longer gleamed. Desoix

COUNTING THE COST         25

wrinkled his nose and thought about dust-choked
roads on Two with a sniper every hundred meters
of the wooded ridges overlooking them.

To blazes with all of them.

There was even more of a crush at the head of
the stairs. Vehicles slid up to the bollards to drop
their cargo and passengers—and then found them-
selves blocked by later-comers, furious at being
stopped a distance from where they wanted to be.
A squad of city police made desultory efforts to
clear the jam, but they leaped aside faster than
the bystanders did when the real Bghting started.

Two drivers, one with a load of produce and the
other carrying handbags, were snarling. Three
black-cloaked toughs jumped the driver with the
red headband, knocked him down, and linked
arms in a circle about the victim so that they could
all three put the boot in.

At least a dozen thugs in red coalesced from
nowhere around the fight. It grew like a crystal in
a supersaturated solution of hate.

The police had their stunners out and were
radioing for help, but they kept their distance.
The toughs wore body armor beneath their cloaks,
and Desoix heard the slam of at least one slug-
throwing pistol from the ruck.

He willed his body to stay upright and to stride
with swift dignity between vehicles and out of the
potential line of fire. It would have griped his
soul to run from this scum; but more important,
anyone who ducked and scurried was a worthy
victim, while a recognized mercenary was safe
except by accident.

Anyway, that was what Desoix told himself.
But by the Lord! it felt good to get out of the
shouted violence and see Gun Three, its six-man




26 David Drake

crew alert and watching the trouble at the stair-
head with their personal weapons ready.

The calliope's eight stubby barrels were mounted
on the back of a large air-cushion truck. Instead of
rotating through a single loading station as did the
2 cm tri-barrels on the Stammers' combat cars,
each of the calliope's tubes was a separate gun.
The array gimballed together to fire on individual
targets which the defenders couldn't afford to miss.

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 defen-
sive 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 single-
layer coverage he had arranged for the whole pop-
ulated 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.

COUNTING THE COST         27

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 petro-
leum 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

28 David Drake

somebody. The men were wearing their body ar-
mor, 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. In-
ternal politics, that's not our business. And any-
how, it looks like the police have it pretty well
under control."

"For now," muttered Karsov.

The fighting had melted away, as much in reac-
tion to the firebomb as to the efforts of the civil
authorities. Thugs were carrying away injured mem-
bers 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 indi-
cated 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 prac-
tical solution.

"Look," he said, letting his eyes climb the sculp-
tured 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.

COUNTING THE COST           29

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; med-
ical personnel with crosses on their uniforms heal-
ing 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 skim-
ming 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 Bat-
tery XO . . . and he was also hard as nails when
he chose to be, as Blaney knew by longer experi-
ence than the private had.

"But more important ..." Desoix went on
with a nod of approval to Blaney. "Never site a
gun in a spot where you can't drive away if things
really get bad. Do you expect to ride down in the
elevators if a mob decides what they really ought
to do tomorrow is burn the hospital?"

"Well, they wouldn't ..." Karsov began.

30 David Drake COUNTING THE COST 31

He looked at the wreckage and smoke near the
plaza stairs and thought the better of saying what
a mob would or wouldn't do.

"Were you on Shinano, Sergeant?" Desoix asked
Blaney.

"Yessir," the non-corn said. "But I wasn't in the
city during the riots, if that's what you mean."

"I was a gun captain then," Desoix said with a
smile and a lilting voice, because it was always
nice to remember the ones you survived. "The
Battery Commander—this was Gilt, and they sacked
him for it—sited us on top of the Admin Building.
Ten stories in a central park.

"So we had a really good view of the mob,
because parts of it were coming down all five
radial streets with torches. And they'd blown up
the transformer station providing power to the
whole center of town.

He coughed and rubbed his face. "There were
air cars flying every which way, carrying business-
men who knew they weren't going to get out at
ground level . . . but we didn't have a car, and we
couldn't even get the blazes off the roof. It didn't
have a staircase, just the elevator—and that quit
when the power went off."

Blaney was nodding with grim agreement; so
were two of the other veterans in the gun crew.

"How—how'd you get out, sir?" Karsov asked
in a suitably chastened tone.

Desoix grinned again. It wasn't a pleasant ex-
pression. "Called to one of those businessmen on
a loud-hailer," he said. "Asked him to come pick
us up. When he saw where we had the calliope
pointed, he decided that was a good idea."

The slim officer paused and looked up at the
House of Grace again. "Getting lucky once doesn't

mean I'm going to put any of my men in that
particular bucket again, though," he said. "Down
here—" he smiled brightly, but there was more
than pure humor in this expression too "—at the
worst, you've got the gun to keep anybody at a
distance."

"Think it's going to be that bad, sir?" one of the
crewmen asked.

Desoix shrugged. "I need to report to the Pal-
ace," he said. "I guess it's clear enough to do that
now."

As he turned to walk away from the gun posi-
tion, he heard Sergeant Blaney saying, "Not for us
and the other meres, maybe. But yeah, it's going
to get that bad here. You wait and see."




CHAPTER FOUR

Tyi Koopman strolled through a series of the
short aisles into which the plaza was marked by
freshly-erected kiosks. In most cases the shop pro-
prietors were still setting out their goods, but they
were willing to call Tyi over to look at their mer-
chandise. He smiled and walked on—the smile
becoming fixed in short order.

He'd learned Spanish when the Slammers were
stationed on Cartagena three years before, so he
could have followed the local language without
difficulty. It was interesting that most of the shop-
keepers recognized Tyi's uniform and spoke to
him in Dutch, fluent at least for a few words of
enticement.

It was interesting also that many of those keep-
ing shops in the plaza were of Levantine extrac-
tion, like the merchants who had disembarked
from the surface-effect freighter. They were no-

33

David Drake

34

ticeable not only for their darker complexions but
also because their booths and clothing were so
bedecked with crosses that sometimes the color of
the underlying fabric was doubtful.

Not, as Lieutenant Desoix had suggested, that
their desperate attempts to belong to the majority
would matter a hoot in Hell when the Crusade
really got moving. Tyi wasn't a cynic. Like most
line mercenaries, he wasn't enough of an intellec-
tual to have abstract positions about men and

politics.

But he had a good mind and plenty of data
about the way things went when politicians hired
men to kill for them.

The section Tyi was walking through was given
over to tobacco and smoking products—shops for
visitors rather than staples for the domestic mar-
ket which seemed to Bll most of the plaza.

Tobacco from Bamberia had a smooth melding
of flavors that remained after the raw leaf was
processed into the cold inhalers in which most of
the galaxy used imported tobacco. Those who
couldn't afford imports smoked what they grew in
local plots on a thousand worlds . . . but those
who could afford the best and wanted the creosote
removed before they put the remainder of the
taste into their bodies, bought from Bamberia.

Most of the processing was done off-planet, fre-
quently on the user world where additional flavor-
ings were added to the inhalers to meet local
tastes. There were a few inhaler factories on the
outskirts of Bamberg City, almost the only manu-
facturing in a metropolis whose wealth was based
on transport and government. Their creations were
displayed on the tables in the plaza, brightly-

COUNTING THE COST           35

colored plastic tubes whose shapes counterfeited
everything from cigarillos to cigars big enough to
pass for riot batons.

But the local populace tended to follow tradi-
tional methods of using the herb that made them
rich. Products for the local market posed here as
exotica for the tourists and spacers who wanted
something to show the folks back home where
they'd been.

Tourists and spacers and mercenaries. The num-
ber of kiosks serving outsiders must have increased
radically since President Delcorio started hiring
mercenaries for his Crusade.

Tyi passed by displays of smoking tobacco and
hand-rolled cigars—some of the boxes worth a
week's pay to him, even now that he had his
captaincy. There were cigar cutters and pipe clean-
ers, cigarette holders and pipes carved from mi-
croporous meerschaum mined on the coasts of
Two.

Almost all the decoration was religious: crosses,
crucifixes, and other symbols of luxuriant Christi-
anity. That theme was almost as noticeable to Tyi
as the fact that almost everyone in the plaza—and
every kiosk—was decorated with either black or
red, and never both.

Each staggering aisle was of uniform background.
To underscore the situation, cloaked toughs faced
off at every angle where the two colors met, glow-
ering threats that did not quite—while Tyi saw
them—come to open violence.

Great place to live, Bamberg City. Tyi was glad
of his khaki uniform. He wondered how often the
silver and black of the United Defense Batteries
was mistaken for black by somebody with a red
cloak and a brick in his hand.

36

David Drake

Grimacing to himself, the Slammers officer strode
more swiftly toward his goal, the empty stairs at
the north end of the plaza. The scene around him
was colorful, all right, and this was probably one
of the few chances he'd have to see it.

You served on a lot of worlds in a mercenary
regiment, but what you mostly saw there were
other soldiers and the wrack of war . . . which was
universal, a smoky gray ambiance that you scanned
and maybe shot at before you moved on.

Even so, Tyi didn't want to spend any longer
than he had to in this plaza. He could feel the
edge of conflict which overlay it like the cloaks
that covered the weapons and armor of the omni-
present bullies, waiting for an opportunity to strike
out. He'd seen plenty of fighting during his years
with the Slammers, but he didn't want it hovering
around him when he was supposed to be in a

peaceful rear area.

The stairs were slimy with water pooling in low
spots, but Nevis Island and its spaceport shielded
the plaza from most of the sea-weed and marine
life that the high tides would otherwise have washed
up. Tyi picked his way carefully, since he seemed
to be the first person to climb them since the tide

dropped.

A procession, Scratchard had said, blocking nor-
mal traffic. Maybe that would be a little easier to
take than the human bomb waiting to go off below

in the plaza.

At the top of the stairs were ten pairs of steel-
and-concrete doors. Each side-hung panel was five
meters across and at least three meters high. The
doors—lock-gates—were fully open now. They ro-
tated out toward the plaza on trunnions in slotted

COUNTING THE COST           37

rails set into the concrete. As Tyi neared them on
his lonely climb, he heard the sound of chanted
music echoing from beyond the doors.

Tyi had expected to see gaily-bedecked vehicles
when he reached the top of the stairs and could
look into the covered mall beyond. Instead there
were people on foot, and most of them were stand-
ing rather than marching from left to right.

The mall was at least a hundred meters wide; its
pavement was marked to pass heavy ground traffic
from one side of the river to the other. At the
moment, a sparse line of priests in full regalia was
walking slowly down the center of the expanse,
interspersed with lay-folk wearing robes of cere-
monially-drab coarseness.

Some carried objects on display. Ornate cruci-
fixes were the most common, but there were ban-
ners and a reliquary borne by four women which,
ifpure gold, must have cost as much as a starship.

Every few paces, the marchers paused and
chanted something in Latin. When they began to
move again, a refrain boomed back from the line
of solid-looking men in white robes on either side
of the procession route. The guards—they could
be nothing else—wore gold crosses on the left
shoulders of their garments, but they also bore
meter-long staffs.

There was no need for the procession to be
blocking the whole width of the mall; but when
Tyi stepped through the door, the nearest men in
white gave him a look that made it real clear what
would happen to anybody who tried to carry out
secular business in an area the Church had marked
for its own.

Tyi stopped. He stood in a formal posture in-

38 David Drake

stead of lounging against a column while he waited.
No point in offending the fellows who watched
him with hard eyes even when they bellowed
verses in a language he knew only well enough to
recognize.

No wonder Scratchard hadn't been able to make
it to the plaza as he'd intended. The other two
staircases were open and in use, but the proces-
sion route certainly extended some distance to
either side of the river; and Scratchard, with busi-
ness of his own to take care of, would have waited
till the last minute before setting out to collect an
officer returning from furlough.

No problem. But it calmed Tyi to remember
that there were other Slammers nearby, in event
of a real emergency.

The gorgeous reliquary was the end of the pro-
cession proper. When that reached the heavy doors
at the west end of the mall, a barked order passed
down the lines of guards, repeated by every tenth
man.

The men in white turned and began to double-
time in the direction the procession was headed,
closing up as they moved. They carried their staffs
vertically before them, and their voices boomed a
chant beginning, "Fortis iuventus, virtus audax
bellica. ..." as they strode away.

They marched in better order than any merce-
nary unit Tyi could remember having seen—not
that close-order drill was what folks hired the
Slammers for.

And there were a lot of them, for the double
lines continued to shift past and contract for sev-
eral minutes, more and more quick-stepping staff-
wielders appearing from farther back along the
procession route to the east. They must have timed

COUNTING THE COST           39

their withdrawal so that the whole route would be
cleared the instant the procession reached its des-
tination, presumably the cathedral.

At least something in this place was organized.
It just didn't appear to be what called itself the
government.

CHAPTER FIVE

Tyi didn't follow the procession when the route
cleared, nor did he try to raise Sergeant-Major
Scratchard on his implant again. He'd told Scratch-
ard where he'd be; and if the non-corn couldn't
find him, then that was important information for
Captain Tyi Koopman to know.

There was a surge of civilians—into the mall
and through it down the stairs to the plaza—as
soon as the procession was clear. Normal folk, so
far as Tyi could tell from the loose-fitting fashions
current here. Most of them wore a red ribbon or a
black one, but there was no contingent of cloaked
thugs.

Which meant that the bullies, the enforcers,
had gotten word that the main stairs would be
blocked when the tide cleared the plaza—although
Scratchard and apparently a lot of civilians had
been caught unaware. That could mean a lot of

41

42             David Drake

things: none of them particularly good, and none
of them, thank the Lord, the business of Tyi
Koopman or Hammer's Slammers.
He caught sight of a uniform of the right color.
Sergeant Major Scratchard muscled his way
through the crowd, his rank in his eyes and his
grizzled hair. His khaki coveralls were neat and
clean, but there were shiny patches over the shoul-
ders where body armor had rubbed the big man's
uniform against his collarbone.

Tyi hadn't recognized the name, but sight of the
man rang a bell in his mind. He swung away from
the pillar and, gripping the hand the non-corn
extended to-him, said, "Sergeant Major Scratchard?
Would that be Ripper Jack?"

Scratchard's professional smile broadened into
something as real and firm as his handshake. "Cap'n
Koopman, then? Yeah, when I was younger,
sir. . . . Maybe when I was younger."

He shifted- his right leg and the hand holding
Tyi's, just enough to point without apprising the
civilians around of the gesture.

Scratchard wore a knife along his right calf.
Most of the sheathed blade was hidden within his
boot but the hand-filling grip was strapped to
mid-calf. "Pistols jam on you, happen," the big
man half bragged, half explained. "This'n never

did."

His face hardened. "Though they got me pretty
much retired to Admin now with my bum knees."

"Didn't look that quiet a billet just now," Tyi
said, pitching his voice lower than the civilians,
scurrying on their own errands, could have over-
heard. "Down in the plaza just now, the enforcers
in cloaks. . . . And I was talking to a UDB lieu-
tenant landed the same time I did."

COUNTING THE COST           43

"Yeah, you could maybe figure that," Scratchard
said in a voice too quietly controlled to be really
neutral. "Open your leg pocket, sir, and stand real
close."

Tyi, his face still, ran a finger across the seal of
the bellows pocket on the right leg of his cover-
alls. He and the non-corn pressed against .one of
the door pillars, their backs momentarily to the
crowd moving past them. He felt the weight of
what Scratchard had slipped into his pocket.

Tyi didn't need to finger the object to know that
he'd been given a service pistol, a 1 cm powergun.
In the right hands, it could do as much damage as
a shotgun loaded with buck.

Tyi's were the right hands. He wouldn't have
been in the Slammers if they weren't. But the
implications. . .

"We're issuing sidearms in Bamberg City, then?"
he asked without any emotional loading.

Scratchard, an enlisted man reporting to an offi-
cer, said stiffly, "Sir, while I was in charge of the
Transit Detachment, I gave orders that none of
the troopers on port leave were to leave barracks
in groups of less than three. And no, sidearms
aren't officially approved. But I won't have men
under my charge disarmed when I sure as blazes
wouldn't be disarmed myself. You can change the
procedures if you like."

"Yes, Sergeant Major, I can," Tyi said with just
enough iron to emphasize that he was well aware
of their respective ranks. "And if I see any reason
to do so, I will."

He smiled, returning the conversation to the
footing where he wanted to keep it. "For now,
let's get me to the barracks and see just what it is
the Colonel has on line."

44

David Drake

Pray to the Lord that there'd be orders to take

over E Company again.

Scratchard hesitated, looking first toward the
east, then the western lock doors. "Ah, sir," he
said. "We're billeted in the City Offices—" he
pointed toward the eastern end of the mall, the
side toward the huge House of Grace. "Central's
cut orders for you to carry the Transit Detachment
over to Two for further assignment . . . but you
know, nothing that can't wait another couple days.
We've still got half a dozen other troopers due

back from furlough."

"All right," Tyi said, to show that he wasn't
going to insist on making a decision before he'd
heard Scratchard's appraisal of the situation. "What

else?"

"Well, sir," said the non-corn. "President Del-

corio really wants to see the ranking Slammers
officer in the city. Didn't call the message over,
his nephew brought it this morning. I told him
you were in orbit, due down as soon as the port
cleared— 'cause I'm bloody not the guy to handle
that sort of thing. I checked with Central, see if
they'd courier somebody over from Two, but they

didn't want. ..."

Tyi understood why Colonel Hammer would
have turned down Scratchard's request. It was
obvious what President Delcorio wanted to dis-
cuss . . . and it wasn't something that Hammer
wanted to make a matter of official regimental
policy by sending over a staff officer.

The Slammers hadn't been hired to keep public
order in Bamberg City, and Colonel Hammer
wanted all the time he could get before he had to
officially make a decision that might involve the
Bonding Authority either way.

COUNTING THE COST          45

"Central said you should handle it for now,"
Scratchard concluded. "And I sure think somebody
ought to report to the President ASAP."

"Via," muttered Tyi Koopman.

Well, he couldn't say that he hadn't been given
a responsible job when he returned from furlough.

He shrugged his shoulders, settling the pack
more comfortably. "Right," he said. "Let's do it
then. Sergeant Major."

"Palace of Government," Scratchard said in evi-
dent relief, pointing west in the direction the
procession had been headed. He stepped off with
a stiff-legged stride that reminded Tyi that the
non-corn had complained about his knees.

The crowd had thinned enough that the Slam-
mers officer could trust other pedestrians to avoid
him even if he glanced away from his direction of
movement. "You go by Jack when you're with
friends?" he asked, looking at the bigger man.

"Yessir, I do," Scratchard replied.

He grinned, and though the expression wasn't
quite natural, the non-corn was working on it.

Mercenary units were always outnumbered by
the indigenous populations that hired them—or
they were hired to put down. Mercenaries de-
pended on better equipment, better training—and
on each other, because everything else in the
world could be right and you were still dead if the
man who should have covered your back let you
down.

Tyi and Scratchard both wanted—needed—there
to be a good relationship between them. It didn't
look like they'd be together long . . . but life itself
was temporary, and that wasn't a reason not to
make things work as well as they could while it
lasted.

David Drake

46

"This way," said Scratchard as the two soldiers
emerged from the mall crossing the river. "Give
you a bit of a view, and we don't fight with trucks."

There was a ramp from the mall down to inter-
locking vehicular streets—one of them paralleling
the river, the plaza, and then sweeping west along
the comiche. The other was a park-like boulevard
which T-ed into the first after separating the gold-
domed cathedral from a large, three story building
whose wings enclosed a central courtyard open in
the direction of the river.

"That's the . . . ?" Tyi said, trying to remember

the name.

"Palace of Government, yeah," Scratchard re-
plied easily. He was taking them along the pedes-
trian walk atop the levee.

Glancing over the railing to his right, Tyi was
shocked to see the water was within two meters of
the top of the levee. He could climb directly
aboard the scores of barges moored there, silently
awaiting for the locks to open. All he'd have to do
was swing his legs over the guard rail.

"Via!" he said, looking from the river to the
street and the buildings beyond it. "What hap-
pens if it comes up another couple meters? All
that down there floods, right?"

"They've got flood shutters on all the lower
floors," Scratchard explained/agreed. "They say it
happened seventy-odd years ago when everything
came together—tides and a storm that backed up
the outlet channels up-coast. But they know what
they're doing, their engineers."

He paused, then added in a tone of disgust,
"Their politicians, now. . . . But I don't suppose
they know their asses from a hole in the ground,
any of'em anywhere."

COUNTING THE COST         47

He didn't expect an argument from an officer of
Hammer's Slammers; and Tyi Koopman wasn't
about to give him one.

Bamberg City was clean, prosperous. The odor
of toasted tobacco lead permeated it, despite the
fact that the ranks of hogsheads on the waiting
barges were all vacuum-sealed; but that was a
sweet smell very different from the reeks that
were the normal concomitant of bulk agriculture.

Nothing wrong here but the human beings.

A flagpole stood in the courtyard of the Palace
of Government. Its twelve-man honor guard wore
uniforms of the same blue and gold as the fabric of
the drooping banner.

In front of the cathedral were more than a thou-
sand of the men in cross-marked white robes.
They were still chanting and blocking vehicles,
though the gaps in the ranks of staff-armed choris-
ters permitted pedestrians to enter the cathedral
building. The dome towered above this side of the
river, though it in turn was dwarfed by the House
of Grace opposite.

There was a pedestrian bridge from the embank-
ment to the courtyard of the Palace of Govern-
ment, crossing the vehicular road. As they joined
the traffic on it, heavy because of the way vehicles
were being backed up by the tail end of the pro-
cession, Tyi asked, "Who wears white here? The
ones who hold Easter on Christmas?"

"Umm," said the sergeant major. The non-corn's
tone reminded Tyi of the pistol that weighted his
pocket—and the reason it was there.

In a barely audible voice, Scratchard went on,
"Those are orderlies from the House of Grace.
They, ah, usually turn out for major religious
events."

David Drake

48

Neither of the mercenaries spoke again until
they had reached the nearly-empty courtyard of
the government building. Then, while the honor
guard was still out of earshot, Tyi said, "Jack, they
don't look to me like they empty bedpans."

"Them?" responded the big sergeant major.
"They do whatever Bishop Turner tells them to

do, sir,"

He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of
the massed orderlies. His eyes held only flat ap-
praisal, as if he were estimating range and the
length of the burst he was about to fire.

"Anything at all," he concluded.

Tyi Koopman didn't pursue the matter as he
and Scratchard—the latter limping noticeably—
walked across the courtyard toward the entrance
of the Palace of Government.

He could feel the eyes of the honor guard fol-
lowing them with contempt. It didn't bother him
much, any more.

Five years in the Slammers had taught him that
parade-ground soldiers always felt that way about
killers in uniform.

CHAPTER SIX

The flood shutters of the Palace of Government
were closed, and Charles Desoix wasn't naive
enough to think that the thick steel plates had
been set against the chance of a storm surge.
Bamberg City had really come apart in the two
weeks he was gone.

Or just maybe it was starting to come together,
but President John Delcorio wasn't going to be
part of the new order.

Desoix threw a sharp salute to the head of the
honor guard. The Bamberg officer returned it while
the men of his section presented arms.

Striding with his shoulders back, Desoix pro-
ceeded toward the front entrance—the only open-
ing on the first two stories of the palace that
wasn't shuttered.

As Desoix looked at it, the saluting was protec-
tive coloration. It was purely common sense to

49

50 David Drake

want the respect of the people around you . . .
and when you've wangled billets for yourself and
your men in the comfort of the Palace of Govern-
ment, that meant getting along with the Executive
Guards.

By thumbing an epaulet loop, Desoix bright-
ened the gray-spattered markings of his uniform
to metallic silver—and it was easy to learn to
salute, as easy as learning to hold the sight picture
that would send a bolt of cyan death down-range
at a trigger's squeeze. There was no point in not
making it easy on yourself.

He thought of making a suggestion to the Slam-
mers officer who'd just arrived, but. . . Tyi Koopman
seemed a good sort and as able as one of Colonel
Hammer's company commanders could be expected
to be.

But Koopman also seemed the sort of man who
might be happier with his troops in the police
barracks beneath the City Offices than he would
be in the ambiance of the Palace.

The captain in command of the guards at the
entrance was named Sanchez; he roomed next
door to Desoix in the officers' quarters in the
West Wing. Instead of saluting again, Desoix took
the man's hand and said, "Well, Rene, I'm glad to
be back on a civilized planet again . . . but what
on earth has been going on in the city since I
left?"

The Guards captain made a sour face and looked
around at the sergeant and ten men of his section.
Everyone in the Executive Guard was at least
sponsored by one of the top families on the planet.
Not a few of them were members of those fami-
lies, asserting a tradition of service without the

COUNTING THE COST           51

potential rigors of being stationed on Two if the
Crusade got under way.

"Well, you know the people," Sanchez said, a
gentleman speaking among gentlemen. "The re-
cent taxes haven't been popular, since there are
rumors that they have more to do with Lady Eu-
nice's wardrobe than with propagation of Christ's
message. Nothing that we need worry about."

Desoix raised an eyebrow. The Executive Guards
carried assault rifles whose gilding made them as
ornamental as the gold brocade on the men's azure
uniforms . . . but there were magazines in the
rifles today. That was as unusual as the flood shut-
ters being in place.

"Ah, you can't really stay neutral if things get
. . . out of hand, can you?" the UDB officer asked.
He didn't like to suggest that he and Sanchez
were on different standards; but that was better
than using "we" when the word might seem to
commit the United Defense Batteries.

The guardsman's face chilled. "We'll follow or-
ders, of course," he said. "But it isn't the business
of the army to get involved in the squabbles of the
mob—or to attempt to change the will of the
people."

"Exactly," said Desoix, nodding enthusiastic
agreement. "Exactly."

He was still nodding as he strode into the en-
trance rotunda. He hoped he'd covered his slip
with Sanchez well enough.

But he certainly had learned where the army—or
at least the Executive Guard—stood on the sub-
ject of the riots in the streets.

There was a small, separately-guarded, elevator
off the rotunda which opened directly onto the
Consistory Room on the third floor. Desoix hesi-

52 David Drake

tated. The pager inset into his left cuff had lighted
red with Major Borodin's anxiety, and Desoix knew
what his commander wanted without admitting
his presence by answering.

It would be a very good idea to take the eleva-
tor. Borodin was awkward in the company of Pres-
ident Delcorio and his noble advisors; the major,
the battery, and the situation would all benefit
from the presence of Lieutenant Charles Desoix.

But Desoix had some personal priorities as well,
and. . .

There was traffic up and down the central
staircase—servants and minor functionaries, but
not as many of them as usual. They had an air of
nervousness rather than their normal haughty
superiority.

When the door of the small meeting room near
the elevator moved, Desoix saw Anne McGill
through the opening.

Desoix strode toward her, smiling outwardly
and more relieved than he could admit within. He
wasn't the type who could ever admit being afraid
that a woman wouldn't want to see him again—or
that he cared enough about her that it would
matter.

The panel, dark wood placed between heavy
engaged columns of pink-and-gray marble, closed
again when he moved toward it. She'd kept it ajar,
watching for his arrival, and had flashed a sight of
herself to signal Desoix closer.

But Lady Anne McGill, companion and confi-
dante of the President's wife, had no wish to ad-
vertise her presence here in the rotunda.

Desoix tapped on the door. He heard the lock
click before the panel opened, hiding Anne be-
hind it from anyone outside. Maybe her ambiva-

COUNTING THE COST           53

lence was part of the attraction, he thought as he
stepped into a conference room. There was a small,
massively-built table, chairs for six, and space for
that many more people to stand if they knew one
another well.

All the room held at the moment was the odor
of heavy tobaccos, so omnipresent on Bamberia
that Desoix noticed it only because he'd been
off-planet for two weeks . . . and Anne McGill in
layers of silk chiffon which covered her like mist,
hiding everything while everything remained
suggested.

Desoix put his arms around her.

"Charles, it's very dangerous," she said, turning
so that his lips met her cheek.

He nuzzled her ear and, when she caught his
right hand, he reached for her breast with his left.

"Ah ..." he said as a different level of risk
occurred to him. "Your husband's still stationed
on Two, isn't he?"

"Of course," Anne muttered scornfully.

She was no longer fighting off his hands, but
she was relaxing only slightly and that at a subcon-
scious level. "You don't think Bertrand would be
here when things are like this, do you? There's a
Consistory Meeting every morning now, but things
are getting worse. Anyone can see that. Eunice
says that they're all cowards, all the men, even
her husband."

She let her lips meet his. Her body gave a
shudder and she gripped Desoix to her as fiercely
as her tension a moment before had attempted to
repel him. "You should be upstairs now," she
whispered as she turned her head again. "They
need you and your Major, he's very upset."

"My call unit would have told me that if I'd

54 David Drake

asked it," the UDB officer said as he shifted the
grip of his hands. Anne was a big woman, large-
boned and with a tendency toward fat that she
repressed fiercely with exercise and various diets.
She wore nothing beneath the bottom layer of
chiffon except the smooth skin which Desoix ca-
ressed. His hand ran up her thigh to squeeze the
fat other buttock against the firm muscle beneath.

"Then don't be long ..." Anne whispered as
she reached for the fly of his trousers.

Desoix didn't know quite what she meant by

that.

But he knew that it didn't matter as he backed
his mistress against the table, lifting the chiffon
dress to spill over the wood where there would be
no risk of staining the fabric.

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Captain Tyi Koopman, representing Hammer's
Regiment," boomed the greeter, holding the door
of the Consistory Room ajar—and blocking Tyi
away from it with her body, though without ap-
pearing to do so.

"Enter," said someone laconically from within.
The greeter swept the panel open with a flourish,
bowing to Tyi.

Machines could have done all the same things,
Tyi thought with amusement; but they wouldn't
have been able to do them with such pomp. Even
so, the greeter, a plump woman in an orange and
silver gown, was only a hint of the peacock-bright
gathering within the Consistory Room.

There were twenty or thirty people, mostly men,
within the domed room above the rotunda. Natu-
ral lighting through the circumference of arched
windows made the Slammers officer blink. It dif-

55

56

David Drake

fered in quality (if not necessarily intensity) from
the glowstrips in the corridors through which he
had been guided to reach the room.

The only men whose garments did not glitter
with metallic threads were those whose clothing
glowed with internal lambency from powerpacks
woven into the seams. President John Delcorio, in
black velvet over which a sheen trembled from
silver to ultra-violet, was the most striking of the

lot.

"Good to see you at last. Captain," Delcorio

boomed as if in assurance that Tyi would recog-
nize him—as he did—from the holograms set in
niches in the hallways of the Palace of Govern-
ment. "Maybe your veterans can put some back-
bone into our own forces, don't you think? So that
we can all get down to the real business of cleans-
ing Two for Christ."

He glowered at a middle-aged man whose uni-
form was probably that of a serving officer, be-
cause its dark green was so much less brilliant
than what anyone else in the room seemed to be

wearing.

John Delcorio was shorter than Tyi had assumed,
but he had the chest and physical presence of a
big man indeed. His hair, moustache, and short
beard were black with gray speckles that were
probably works of art: the President was only thirty-
two standard years old. He had parlayed his posi-
tion as Head of Security into the presidency when
the previous incumbent, his uncle, died three

years before.

Delcorio's eyes sparkled, and the flush on his
cheeks was as much ruddy good-health as a ves-
tige of his present anger. Tyi could understand

COUNTING THE COST          57

how a man with eyes that sharp could cut his way
to leadership of a wealthy planet.

But he could also see how such a man's pushing
would bring others to push back, push hard. . . .

Maybe too hard.

"Sir," Tyi replied, wondering what you were
supposed to call the President of Bamberia when
you met him. "I haven't been fully briefed yet on
the situation. But Hammer's Slammers carry out
their contracts."

He hoped that was neutral enough; and he hoped
to the Lord that Delcorio would let him drop into
the background now.

"Yes, well," said Delcorio. The quick spin of his
hand was more or less the dismissal Tyi had hoped
for. "Introduce Major Koopman to the others,
Thomas. Have something to drink—" There was a
well-stocked sideboard beneath one of the win-
dows, and most of those present had glasses in
their hands. "We're waiting for Bishop Trimer,
you see."

"How long are you going to wait before you
send for him, John?" asked the woman in the red
dress that shimmered like a gasoline flame. She
wasn't any taller than the President; but like him,
she flashed with authority as eye-catching as her
clothes. "You are the President, you know."

It struck Tyi that Delcorio and this woman who
could only be his wife wore the colors of the
Easter factions he had seen at daggers-drawn in
the plaza. That made as little sense as anything
else in Bamberg City.

"Major, then, is it?" murmured a slender fellow
at Tyi's elbow, younger than the mercenary had
been when he joined the Slammers. "I'm Thorn

58

David Drake

Chastain, don't you see, and this is my brother
Richie. What would you like to drink?"

"Ah, I'm really just a captain," Tyi said, won-
dering whether Delcorio had misheard, was being
flattering—or was incensed that Hammer had sent
only a company commander in response to a sum-
mons from his employer. "Ah, I don't think. . ."

"Eunice," the President was saying in a voice
like a slap, "this is scarcely the time to precipitate
disaster by insulting the man who can stabilize the

situation."
"The army can stabilize—" the woman snapped.

"It isn't the business of the army—" boomed

the soldier in green.

The volume of his interruption shocked him as
well as the others in the wrangle. All three paused.
When the discussion resumed, it was held in voices
low enough to be ignored if not unheard.

"Queen Eunice," said Thorn Chastain, shaking
his head. There was a mixture of affection and
amusement in his voice, but Tyi had been in enough
tight places to recognize the flash of fear in the
young man's eyes. "She's really a terror, isn't she?"

"Ah," Tyi said while his mind searched for a
topic that had nothing to do with Colonel Ham-
mer's employers. "You gentlemen are in the army

also, I gather?"

There were couches around most of the walls.
Near one end was a marble conference table that
matched the inlaid panels between the single-
sheet vitril windows. Nobody was sitting down,
and the groups of two or three talking always
seemed to be glancing over their collective shoul-
ders toward the door, waiting for the missing man.

"Oh, well, these," said the other Chastain
brother, Richie—surely a twin. He flicked the

COUNTING THE COST

59

collar of his blue and gold uniform, speaking with

the diffidence Tyi had felt at being addressed as
"Major."

"We're honorary colonels in the Guards, you
know," said Thorn. "But it's because of our grand-
father. We're not very inter. . ."

"Well, Grandfather Chastain was, you know,"
said Richie, taking up where his brother's voice
trailed off. "He was president some years ago.
Esteban Delcorio succeeded him, but Thorn and I
are something like colonels for life—"

"—and so we wear—"

They concluded, both together, "But we aren't
soldiers the way you are. Major."

"Or Marshal Dowell, either," Thorn Chastain
added later, nodding to the man in green who had
broken away from the Delcorios—leaving them to
hiss at one another. "Now, what would you like to
drink?"

Just about anything, thought Tyi. So long as it
had enough kick to knock him on his ass ...
which, in a situation like this would get him sacked
if the Colonel didn't decide he should instead be
shot out of hand. Why in blazes hadn't somebody
from the staff been couriered over on an "errand"
that left him available to talk informally with the
civil authorities?

"Nothing for me, thank you," Tyi said aloud.
"Or, ah, water?"

Marshal Dowell had fallen in with a tall man
whose clothes were civilian in cut, though they
carried even more metallic brocade than trimmed
the military uniforms. The temporary grouping
broke apart abruptly when Dowell turned away
and the tall man shouted at his back, "No, I don't
think that's a practical solution. Marshal! Abdicat-

60

COUNTING THE COST

David Drake

61

ing your responsibilities makes it impossible for

me to carry out mine."

"Berne is the City Prefect," Thorn whispered
into Tyi's ear. The Chastain brothers were person-
able kids—but "kid" was certainly the word for
them. They seemed even younger than their prob-
able age—which was old enough to ride point in
an assault force, in Tyi's terms of reference.

From the other side, Richie was saying, "There's
been a lot of trouble in the streets recently, you
know. Berne keeps saying that he doesn't have
enough police to take care of it."

"It is not in the interests of God or the State,"
responded Marshal Dowell, his voice shrill and
his face as red as a flag, "that we give up the
Crusade on Two because of some rabble that the
police would deal with if they were used with

decision!"
Tyi saw a man in uniform staring morosely out

over the city. The uniform was familiar; desire
tricked the Stammers officer into thinking that he
recognized the man as well.

" 'Scuse me," he muttered to the Chastains and
strode across the circular room. "Ah, Lieutenant

Desoix?"
Tyi's swift motion drew all eyes in the room to

him—so he felt/knew that everyone recognized
his embarrassment when the figure in silhouette
at the window turned: u man in his mid forties,
jowls sagging, paunch sagging. . . . Twenty years
older than Charles Desoix and twenty kilos softer.

"Charles?" the older man barked as his eyes
quested the room for the subject of Tyi's call.

"Where have you—"

Then he realized, from the way the Slammers

officer's face went from enthusiastic to stricken,

what had happened. He smiled, an expression
that reminded Tyi of snow slumping away from a
rocky hillside in the spring, and said, "You'd be
Hammer's man? I'm Borodin, got the battery of
the UDB here that keeps them all—" he nodded
toward nothing in particular, pursing his lips to
make the gesture encompass everyone in the room
"—safe in their beds."

The scowl with which Major Borodin followed
the statement made a number of the richly-dressed
Bamberg officials turn their interest to other parts
of the room.

Tyi was too concerned with controlling his own
face to worry about the reason for Borodin's anger—
which was explained when the UDB officer con-
tinued, "I gather we're looking for the same man.
And I must say, if you could get down from orbit
in time to be here, I don't understand what Charles'
problem can be."

"He—" said Tyi. Then he smiled brightly and
replaced his intended statement with, "I'm sure
Lieutenant Desoix will be here as soon as possi-
ble. It's very—difficult out there, getting around,
it seems to me."

"Tell me about it, boy," Borodin grunted as he
turned again to the window, not so much rude as
abstracted.

They were looking out over the third-story porch
which faced the front of the Palace of Govern-
ment. In the courtyard below were the foreshort-
ened honor guard and the flag, srill drooping and
unrecognizable. The river beyond was visible only
by inference. Its water, choked between the mas-
sive levees, was covered with barges ten and twelve
abreast, waiting to be passed through beneath the
plaza.




62

David Drake

On the other side of the river—
"That's the City Offices, then?" Tyi asked.
Where he and the men under his temporary
charge were billeted. And where now police vehi-
cles swarmed, disgorging patrolmen and comatose

prisoners in amazing numbers.

"Claims to be," Borodin grunted. "Don't see
much sign that anything's being run from there,

do you?"

He glanced around. He was aware enough of

his surroundings to make sure that nobody but the
other mercenary officer would overhear the next
comment. "Or from here, you could bloody well

say."
The door opened. The scattered crowd in the

Consistory Room turned toward the sound with
the sudden unanimity of a school of fish changing

front.

"Father Laughlin, representing the Church,"

called the greeter in a clear voice that left its

message unmistakable.

The President's face settled as if he had just
watched one wing of the building crumble away.
Eunice Delcorio swore like a transportation ser-
geant.

"Wait out here, boys," said a huge man—soft-
looking but not far short of two meters in height—in
white priestly vestments. "You won't be needed."

He was speaking, Tyi saw through the open
door, to a quartet of "hospital orderlies." They
looked even more like shock troops than they had
in the street, though these weren't carrying their

staffs.

Eunice Delcorio swore again. The skin over her

broad cheekbones had gone sallow with rage.
Father Laughlin appeared to be at ease and in

COUNTING THE COST           63

perfect control of himself, but Tyi noticed that the
priest ducked instinctively when he entered the
room—though he would have had to be a full
meter taller to bump his head on any of the lintels
in the Palace of Government.

"Where's Trimer?" Delcorio demanded in a voice
that climbed a note despite an evident attempt to
control it.

"Bishop Trimer, you—" Laughlin began smooth-
ly...

"Where's Trimer?"

"Holding a Service of Prayer for Harmony in
the cathedral," the priest said, no longer trying to
hide the ragged edges of emotion behind an unc-
tuous wall.

"He was told to be here!" said Berne, the City
Prefect, breaking into the conversation because he
was too overwhelmed by his own concerns to leave
the matter to the President. He stepped toward
the priest, his green jacket fluttering—a rangy
mongrel snarling at a fat mastiff which will cer-
tainly make a meal of it should the mastiff deign to
try;

"Bishop Trimer appreciated the President's in-
vitation," Laughlin said, turning and nodding cour-
teously toward Delcorio. "He sent me in response
to it. He was gracious enough to tell me that he
had full confidence in my ability to report your
concerns to him. But his first duty is to the
Church—and to all members of his flock, rather
than to the secular authorities who have their own
duties."

The Chastain brothers were typical of those in
the Consistory Room, men of good family gath-
ered around the President not so much for their
technical abilities but because they controlled large

64 David Drake

blocks of wealth and personnel on their estates.
They watched from the edges of the room with
the fascination of spectators at a bloody accident,
saying nothing and looking away whenever the
eyes of one of the principals glanced across them.

"All right," said Eunice Delcorio to her hus-
band. Her eyes were as calm as the crust on a
pool of lava. "Now you've got to recall troops. Tell
him."

She pointed toward Marshal Dowell scorning to
look at the military commander directly.

"Your will, madam—" Dowell began with evi-
dent dislike.

"My will is that you station two regiments in
the city at once, Marshal Dowell," Eunice Delcorio
said with a voice that crackled like liquid oxygen
flowing through a field of glass needles. "Or that
you wait in the eells across the river until some
successor of my husband chooses to release you."

"With your leave, sir," Dowell huffed in the
direction of the President.

The Marshal was angry now, and it wasn't the
earlier flashing of someone playing dangerous po-
litical games with his peers. He was lapsing into
the normal frustration of a professional faced with
laymen who didn't understand why he couldn't do
something they thought was reasonable.

"Madam," Dowell continued with a bow to Eu-
nice Delcorio, "your will impresses me, but it
doesn't magically make transport for three thou-
sand men and their equipment available on Two.
It doesn't provide rations and accommodations for
them here. And if executed with no more consid-
eration than I've been able to give it in this room,
away from my staff, it will almost certainly precip-
itate the very disasters that concern you.

r

COUNTING THE COST

65

"You—" Dowell went on.
"You—" Eunice Delcorio snapped.
"You—" the City Prefect shouted.
"You—" Father Laughlin interrupted weightily.
"You will all be silent!" said John Delcorio, and
though the President did not appear to raise his
voice to an exceptional level, none of the angry

people squabbling in front of him continued to
speak.

The two mercenary officers exchanged glances.
It had occurred to both of them that any situation
was salvageable if the man in charge retained the
poise that President Delcorio was showing now.

"Gentlemen, Eunice," Delcorio said, articulat-
ing the thought the mercenaries had formed. "We
are the government, not a mob of street brawlers.
So long as we conduct ourselves calmly but firmly,
this minor storm will be weathered and we will
return to ordinary business."

He nodded to the priest. "And to the business
of God, to the Crusade on Two. Father Laughlin,
I trust that Bishop Trimer will take all necessary
precautions to prevent his name from being used
by those who wish to stir up trouble?"

Delcorio's voice was calm, but nobody in the
room doubted how intense the reaction might be
if the priest did not respond properly.

"Of course. President Delcorio," Laughlin said,
bowing low.

There was a slight motion on the western edge
of the room as a door opened to pass a big woman
floating in a gown of white chiffon. She wasn't
announced by a greeter, and she made very little
stir at this juncture in the proceedings as she
slipped through the room to stand near Eunice
Delcorio.

66 David Drake

"Lord Berne," Delcorio continued to his tall
prefect, "I expect your police to take prompt, firm
action wherever trouble erupts." His eyes were
piercing.

"Yes sir," Berne said, his willing enthusiasm
pinned by his master's fierce gaze. Alone of the
civilians in the room, he owed everything he had
to his position in the government. The richness of
his garments showed just how much he had ac-
quired in that time.

"I've already done that," he explained. "I've
canceled leaves and my men have orders that all
brawling is to be met with overwhelming force
and the prisoners jailed. I've suspended normal
release procedures for the duration of the emer-
gency also."

Berne hesitated as the implications of what he
had just announced struck him anew. "Ah, in
accordance with your previous directions, sir. And
your assurance that additional support would be
available from the army as required."

Nobody spoke. The President nodded as he
turned slowly to his military commander and said,
"Marshal, I expect you to prepare for the transfer
of two regular regiments back to the vicinity of the
capital-."

Dowell did not protest, but his lips pursed.

"Prepare, Marshal," Delcorio repeated harshly.
"Or do you intend to inform me that you're no
longer fit to perform your duties?"

"Sir," Dowell said. "As you order, of course."

"And you will further coordinate with the City
Prefect so that the Executive Guard is ready to
support the police if and when I order it?"

Not a command but a question, and a fierce

COUNTING THE COST         67

promise of what would happen if the wrong an-
swer were given.

"Yes sir," Marshal Dowell repeated. "As you
order." Berne was nodding and rubbing his hands

together as if trying to return life to them after a
severe chill.

"Then, gentlemen ..." Delcorio said, with
warmth and a smile as engaging as his visage
moments before had threatened. "I believe we
can dismiss this gathering. Father Laughlin, con-
vey my regrets to the Bishop that he couldn't be
present, but that I trust implicitly his judgment as
to how best to return civil life to its normal calm."

The priest bowed again and turned toward the
door. He was not the same man in demeanor as
the one who had entered the meeting, emphasiz-
ing his importance by blatantly displaying his
bodyguards.

"Praise the Lord," Tyi muttered, more to him-
self than to Major Borodin. "I've been a lotta
places I liked better 'n this one—and some of
them, people were shooting at me."

Nodding to take his leave of the UDB officer,
Tyi started for the door that was already being
opened from the outside.

"Lieutenant Desoix of United Defense Batter-
ies," the greeter announced.

"You there," Eunice Delcorio called in a throaty
contralto—much less shrill than her previous words
had led Tyi to imagine her ordinary voice would
be. "Captain Koopman. Wait a moment."

Father Laughlin was already out of the room.
Borodin was bearing down on his subordinate with

obvious wrath that Desoix prepared to meet with

a wry smile.

Everybody else looked at Tyi Koopman.




68 David Drake

She'd gotten his name and rank right, he thought
as his skin flashed hot and his mind stumbled over
itself wondering what to say, what she wanted,
and why in blazes Colonel Hammer had put him
in this bucket. He was a line officer and this was a
job for the bloody staffl

"Yes, ma'am," he said aloud, turning toward his
questioner. His eyes weren't focusing right be-
cause of the unfamiliar strain, so he was seeing the
president's wife as a Bery blur beneath an imperi-
ous expression.

"How many men are there under your com-
mand, Captain?" Eunice continued. There was no
hostility in her voice, only appraisal. It was the
situation that was freezing Tyi's heart—having to
answer questions on this level, rather than the
way in which the questions were being asked.

"Ma'am, ah?" he said. What had Scratchard told
him as they walked along the levee? "Ma'am,
there's about a hundred men here. That's twenty
or so in the base establishment, and the rest the
transit unit that, you know, I'll be taking to Two
in a few days."

"No," the woman said, coolly but in a voice that
didn't even consider the possibility of opposition.
"We certainly aren't sending any troops away,
now."

"Yes, that's right," Delcorio agreed.

A tic brushed the left side of the President's
face. The calm with which he had concluded the
meeting was based on everything going precisely
as he had choreographed it in his mind. Eunice
was adding something to the equation, and even
something as minor as that was dangerous to his
state of mind if he hadn't foreseen it.

COUNTING THE COST

69

"Ah . , ." said TyI. "I'll need to check with
<^en—

"Well, do it, then!" Delcorio blazed. "Do I

need to be bothered with details that a corporal

ought to be able to deal with?"

"Yes sir!" said the Stammers officer.
He threw the President a salute because it felt

And because that was a good opening to spin-
ning on his heel and striding rapidly toward the
door, on his way out of this room.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Headquarters and billets for the enlisted men of
Battery D were in a basement room of the Palace
of Government, converted to the purpose from a
disused workers' cafeteria. Desoix sighed to see it
again, knowing that here his superior would let
out the anger he had bottled up while the two of
them stalked through hallways roamed by folk
from outside the unit.

Control, the artificial intelligence/communications
center, sat beside a wall that had been pierced for
conduits to antennas on the roof. It was about a
cubic meter of electronics packed into thirty-two
resin-black modules, some of them redundant.

Control directed the battery in combat because
no human reactions were fast enough to deal with
hypersonic missiles—though the calliopes, pulsing
with light-swift violence, could rip even those from
the sky if their tubes were slewed in the right
direction.

71

72             David Drake

The disused fixtures were piled at one end of
the room. Control's waste heat made the room a
little warmer, a little drier; but the place still
reminded Desoix of basements in too many bombed-
out cities.

Major Borodin pulled shut the flap of the cur-
tain which separated his office from the bunks on
which the off-duty shift was relaxing or trying to
sleep. In theory, the curtain's microprocessors
formed adaptive ripples in the fabric and canceled
sounds. In practice—

Well, it didn't work that badly. And if you're
running an eighty-man unit in what now had to be
considered combat conditions, you'd better figure
your troops were going to learn what was going on
no matter how you tried to conceal it.

"You should have called in at once!" the battery
commander said, half furious, half disappointed,
like a parent whose daughter has come home three
hours later than expected.

"I needed you at that meeting," he added, the
anger replaced by desperate memory. "I ... you
know, Charles, I never know what to say to them
up there. We're supposed to be defending the air
space here, not mixed up in riots."

"I got a good look at that this morning, Sergei,"
Desoix said quietly. He seated himself carefully
on the collapsible desk and, by his example, urged
Borodin into the only chair in the curtained-off
corner. "I think we need to reposition Gun Three.
It's too close to where—things are going on. Some
of our people are going to get hurt."

Borodin shook his craggy head abruptly. "We
can't do that," he said. "Coverage."

"Now that Five's back on-planet—" Desoix began.

"You were with that woman, weren't you?"
Borodin said, anger hardening his face as if it were

COUNTING THE COST         73

concrete setting. "That's really why you didn't
come to me when I needed you. I saw her slip in
just before you did."

Yes, Daddy, Desoix thought. But Borodin was a
good man to work for—good enough to humor.

"Sergei," he said calmly, "now that we've got a
full battery again, I can readjust coverage areas.
We can handle the seafront from the suburbs east
and west, I'm pretty—"

"Charles, you're going to get into really terrible
trouble," Borodin continued, his voice now sepul-
chral. "Get us all into trouble."

He looked up at his subordinate and added, "Now,
I was younger too, I understand. . . . But believe
me, boy, there's plenty of it going around on a
businesslike basis. And that's a curst sight safer."

Desoix found himself getting angry—and that
made him even angrier, at himself, because it
meant that Anne mattered to him.

Who you screwed wasn't nearly as dangerous as
caring about her.

"Look," he said, hiding the edge in his voice
but unable to eliminate the tremble. "I just shook
a calliope loose on Merrinet, and it cost the unit
less than three grand plus my transportation. I
solve pro—"

"You paid a fine?"

"Via, no! I didn't pay a fine," Desoix snapped.

Shifting into a frustrated and disappointed tone
of his own—a good tactic in this conversation, but
exactly the way Desoix was really feeling at the
moment also—he continued, "Look, Sergei, I
bribed the Customs inspectors to switch mani-
fests. The gun was still being held in the transit
warehouse, there wasn't a police locker big enough
for a calliope crated for shipment. If I'd pleaded it

74

David Drake

through the courts, the gun would be on Men-met
when we were old and gray. I—"

He paused, struck by a sudden rush of empathy

for the older man.

Borodin was a fine combat officer and smart
enough to find someone like Charles Desoix to
handle the subtleties of administration that the
major himself could never manage. But though he
functioned ably as battery commander, he was as
lost in the job's intricacies as a man in a snow-
storm. Having an executive officer to guide him
made things safe—until they weren't safe, and he
wouldn't know about the precipice until he plunged

over it.

Desoix was just as lost in the way he felt about
Lady Anne McGill; and, unlike Borodin, he didn't

even have a guide.

He gripped Borodin's hand. "Sergei," he said,
"I won't ask you to trust me. But I'll ask you to
trust me not to do anything that'll hurt the bat-
tery. All right?"

Their eyes met. Borodin's face worked in a moue
that was as close to assent as he was constitution-
ally able to give to the proposition.

"Then let's get back to business," Charles Desoix
said with a bright smile. "We need t6 get a crew
to Gun Five for set-up, and then we'll have to
juggle duty rosters for permanent manning—unless
we can get Operations to send us half a dozen
men from Two to bring us closer to strength."

Borodin was nodding happily as his subordinate
outlined ordinary problems with ordinary solutions.

Desoix just wished that he could submerge his
own concerns about what he was doing.

CHAPTER mriE

"Locked on," said the mechanical voice of Com-
mand Central in Tyi's ears. "Hold f—"

There was a wash of static as the adaptive optics
of the satellite failed to respond quickly enough to
a disturbance in the upper atmosphere.

"—or soft input," continued the voice from Col-
onel Hammer's headquarters, the words delayed
in orbit while the antenna corrected itself.

The air on top of the City Office building was
still stirred by the fans of air cars moving to and
from the parking area behind. Their numbers had
dropped off sharply since the last remnants of the
riot were dispersed. In the twilight, it was easier
to smell the saltiness from the nearby sea—or else
the breezes three stories up carried scents trapped
in the alleys lower down.

The bright static across Tyi's screen coalesced
into a face, recognizable as a woman wearing a

75

David Drake

76

commo helmet like Tyi's own. Noise popped in
his earphones for almost a second while her lips
moved on the screen—the transmissions were at
slightly different frequencies. Then her voice said,
"Captain Koopman, how secure are these commu-
nications on your end?"

"Ma'am?" Tyi said, too recently back from fur-
lough not to treat the communicator as a woman
instead of an enlisted man. "I'm using a portable
laser from the top of the police station. It's—I
think it's pretty safe, but if the signal's a problem,
I can use—"

"Hold one. Captain," the communicator said
with a grin of sorts. Her visage blanked momen-
tarily in static again.

A forest of antennas shared the roof of the build-
ing with the Slammers officer: local, regional, and
satellite communications gear. Instead of borrow-
ing a console within to call Central, Tyi squatted
on gritty concrete.

His ten-kilo unit included a small screen, a 20
centimeter rectenna that did its best to align itself
with Hammer's satellites above, and a laser trans-
mitting unit which probably sent Central as fuzzy
a signal as Tyi's equipment managed to receive.

But you can't borrow commo without expecting
the folks who loaned it to be listening in; and if
Tyi did have to stay in Bamberg City with the
transit detachment, he didn't want the locals to
know that he'd been begging Central to withdraw

him.

The screen darkened into a man's face. "Cap-
tain Koopman?" said the voice in his helmet. "I
appreciate your sense of timing. I'm glad to have
an experienced officer overseeing the situation there
at the moment."

COUNTING THE COST

77

"Sir!" Tyi said, throwing a salute that was prob-
ably out of the restricted field of the pick-up lens.

"Give me your appraisal of the situation. Cap-
tain," said the voice of Colonel Alois Hammer.
His flat-surface image wobbled according to the
vagaries of the upper atmosphere.

"At the moment..." Tyi said. He looked away
from the screen in an unconscious gesture to gain
some time for his thoughts.

The House of Grace towered above him. At the
top of the high wall was the visage of Bishop
Trimer enthroned. The prelate's eyes were as hard
as the stone in which they were carved.

"At the moment, sir, it's quiet," Tyi said to the
screen. "The police cracked down hard, arrested
about fifty people. Since then—"

"Leaders?" interrupted the helmet in its crack-
ling reproduction of the Colonel's voice. Ham-
mer's eyes were like light-struck diamonds, never
dull—never quite the same.

"Brawlers, street toughs," Tyi said contemptu-
ously. "A lot of 'em, is all. But it's been quiet,
and.. ."

He paused because he wasn't sure how far he
ought to stick his neck out with no data, not
really—but his commanding officer waited expec-
tantly on the other end of the satellite link.

"Sir," Tyi said, determined to do the job he'd
been set, even though this stuff scared him in a
different way from a firefight. There he knew what
he was supposed to do. "Sir, I haven't been here
long enough to know what's normal, but the way
it feels out there now. . ."

He looked past the corner of the hospital build-
ing and down into the plaza. Many of the booths
were still set up and a few were lighted—but not

78             David Drake

nearly enough to account for the numbers of peo-
ple gathering there in the twilight. It was like
watching gas pool in low spots, mixing and waiting
for the spark that would explode it.

"The only places I been that felt like this city
does now are night positions just before somebody

hits us."

"Rate the players. Captain," said Hammer's voice

as his face on the screen flickered and dimmed
with the lights of an air car whining past, closer to
the roof than it should have been for safety.

The vehicle was headed toward the plaza. Its
red and white emergency flashers were on, but
the car's idling pace suggested that they were only

a warning.

As if he knew anything about this sort of thing,

Tyi thought bitterly. But the Colonel was right,
he could give the same sort of assessment that any
mercenary officer learned to do of the local troops
he was assigned to support. It didn't really matter
that these weren't wearing uniforms.

Some of them weren't wearing uniforms.
"Delcorio's hard but he's brittle," Tyi said aloud.
"He'd do all right with enough staff to take the big
shocks, but what he's got. . ."

He paused, collecting his thoughts further. Ham-
mer did not interrupt, but the fluctuation of his
image on the little screen reminded Tyi that time

was passing.

"All right," the Slammers captain continued.
"The police, they seem to be holding up pretty
well. Berne, the City Prefect, don't have any friends
and I don't guess much support. On that end, it's
gone about as far as it can and keep the lid on."

Hammer was nodding, but Tyi ignored that too.
He had his data marshaled, now, and he needed

COUNTING THE COST         79

to spit things out while they were clear to him.
"The army, Dowell at least, he's afraid to move
and he's not afraid not to move. He won't push
anything himself, but Delcorio won't get much
help from there.

"And the rest of 'em, the staff—" Tyi couldn't
think of the word the group had been called here
"—they're nothing, old men and young kids, no-
body that matters ... ah, except the wife, you
know, sir? Ah, Lady Eunice. Only she wants to
push harder than I think they can push here with
what they got and what they got against 'em."

"The mob?" prompted the Colonel. Static added
a hiss to words without sibilants.

Tyi looked toward the plaza. The sky was still
blue over the western horizon, behind the cathe-
dral's dome and the Palace of Government. The
sunken triangle of the plaza was as dark as a
volcano's maw, lighted only by the sparks of lan-
terns and apparently open flames.

"Naw, not the mobs," Tyi said, letting his hel-
met direct his voice while his eyes gathered data
instead of blinking toward his superior. "Them,
they'd handle each other if it wasn't any more.
But—"

He looked up. The sunset slid at an angle across
the side of the House of Grace. The eyes of Bishop
Trimer's carven face were as red as blood.

"Sir," Tyi blurted, "it's the Church behind it,
the Bishop, and he's going to walk off with the
whole thing soon unless Delcorio's luckier 'n any-
body's got a right to expect. I think— "

No, say it right.

"Sir," he said, "I recommend that all regimental
forces be withdrawn from Bamberg City at once,
to avoid us being caught up in internal fighting.

David Drake

80

There are surface-effect freighters at the port right
now. With your authorization, I'll charter one im-
mediately and have the unit out of here in three

hours."

Two hours, unless he misjudged the willingness
and efficiency of the sergeant major; but he'd prom-
ise what he was sure of and surprise people later
by bettering the offer if he could.

Hammer's lips moved. Tyi thought that the words
were delayed by turbulence, but the Colonel was
only weighing what he was about to say before he
put it into audible syllables. After a moment, the
voice and fuzzy screen said in unison, "Captain,
I'm going to tell you what my problem is."

Tyi's lungs filled again. He'd been holding his
breath unknowingly, terrified that his colonel was
about to strip him of his rank for saying too much,
saying the wrong thing. Anything else, that was all

right. . . .

Even command problems that weren't any busi-
ness of a captain in the line.

"Our contract," Hammer said carefully, "is with
the government of Bamberia, not precisely with

President Delcorio."

The image of the screen glared as if reading on
Tyi's face the interjection his subordinate would
never have spoken aloud. "The difference is the
sort that only matters in formal proceedings—like
a forfeiture hearing before the Bonding Author-
ity, determining whether or not the Regiment has
upheld its end of the contract."

"Yes sir/" Tyi said.

Hammer's face lost its hard lines. For a mo-
ment, Tyi thought that the hint of grayness was
more than merely an artifact of the degraded signal.

"There's a complication," the Colonel said with

COUNTING THE COST         81

a precision that erased all emotional content from
the statement. "Bishop Trimer has been in contact
with the Eaglewing Division regarding taking over
conduct of the Crusade in event of a change of
government."

He shrugged. "My sources," he added need-
lessly. "It's a small community, in a way."

Then, with renewed force and no hint of the
fatigue of moments before. Hammer went on, "In
event of Trimer taking over, as you accurately
estimated was his intention, we're out of work.
That's not the end of the world, and I certainly
don't want any of my men sacrificed pointlessly—"

"No sir," Tyi barked in response to the fierce-
ness in his commander's face.

"—but I need to know whether a functional
company like yours might be able to give Delcorio
the edge he needs."

Hammer's voice asked, but his eyes demanded.
"Stiffen Dowell's spine, give Trimer enough of a
wild card to keep him from making his move
before the Crusade gets under way and whoever's
in charge won't be able to replace units that're
already engaged."

And do it, Tyi realized, without a major troop
movement that could be called a contract violation
by Colonel Hammer, acting against the interests
of a faction of his employers.

It might make a junior captain—acting on his
own initiative—guilty of mutiny > of course.

"Sir," Tyi said crisply, vibrant to know that he
had orders now that he could understand and
execute. "We'll do the job if it can be done.
Ripper Jack's a good man, cursed good. I don't
know the others yet, most of 'em, but it's three-

82

David Drake

quarters veterans back from furlough and only a
few newbie recruits coming in."

"Understand me. Captain," Hammer said—again
fiercely. "I don't want you to become engaged in
fighting unless it's necessary for your own safety.
There aren't enough of you to make any difference
if the lid really comes off, and I won't throw away
good men just to save a contract. But if your being
in the capital keeps President Delcorio in power
for another two weeks . . . ?"

"Yes sir/" Tyi repeated brightly, marveling that
his commander seemed relieved at his reaction.
Via, he was an officer of Hammer's Slammers,
wasn't he? Of course he'd be willing to carry out
orders that were perfectly clear—or as clear as

combat orders ever could be.

Keep the men in battle dress and real visible;

hint to Dowell that there was a company of pan-
zers waiting just over the horizon to land and
really kick butt as soon as he said the word. Make
waves at the staff meetings. They couldn't bother
him now with their manners and fancy clothes.

The Colonel had told Tyi Koopman what to do,
and a few rich fops weren't going to affect the way

he did it.

"Then carry on. Captain," Hammer said with a
punctuation of static in the middle of the words
that did not disguise the pleasure in his voice.

"There's a lot—"

The sky was a lighter gray than the ground or
the sea, but the sun had fully set. The cyan flash
of a powergun lanced the darkness like a scream

in silence.

"Holdl" Tyi shouted to his superior, rising from

his crouch to get a better view past the microwave
dish beside him.

COUNTING THE COST         83

A volley of bolts spat from at least half a dozen
locations in the plaza. The orbiting police air car
staggered and lifted away. Its plastic hull had been
hit. The driver's desperate attempt to increase
speed fanned the flames to sluggish life; a trail of
smoke marked the vehicle's path.

A huge roar came from the crowd in the plaza.
Led by a line of torches and lightwands, it crawled
like a living thing up both the central and eastern
stairs.

They weren't headed for the Palace of Govern-
ment across the river. They were coming here.

Tyi flipped his helmet's manual switch to the
company frequency. "Sar'ent Major," he snapped,
"all men in combat gear and ready t' move
soonest! Three days rations and all the ammo we
can carry."

He switched back to the satellite push and be-
gan folding the screen—not essential to the trans-
mission—while the face of Colonel Alois Hammer
still glowed on it with tigerish intensity.

"Sir," Tyi said without any emotion to waste on
the way he was closing his report, "I'll tell you
more when I know more."

Then he collapsed the transceiver antenna. Ham-
mer didn't have anything as important to say as
the mob did.

CHAPTER TEM

The mob was pulsing toward the City Offices
like the two heads of a flood surge. Powergun
bolts spiked out of the mass, some aimed at po-
licemen but many were fired at random.

That was the natural reaction of people with the
opportunity to destroy something—an ability which
carries its own imperatives. Tyi wasn't too worried
about that, not if he had his men armed and
equipped before they and the mob collided.

But when he clumped down the stairs from the
trap door in the roof, he threw a glance over his
shoulder. The north doors of the House of Grace
had opened, disgorging men who marched in
ground-shaking unison as they sang a Latin hymn.

That was real bad for President Delcorio, for
Colonel Hammer's chances of retaining his con-
tract—

85

86 David Drake

And possibly real bad for Tyi Koopman and the
troops in his charge.

The transit detachment was billeted on the sec-
ond floor, in what was normally the turn-out room.
Temporary bunks, three-high, meant the troops
on the top layer couldn't sit up without bumping
the ceiling. What floor-space the bunks didn't fill
was covered by the foot-lockers holding the troops'
personal gear.

Now most of the lockers had been flung open
and stood in the disarray left by soldiers trying to
grab one last valuable—a watch; a holo projector;

a letter. They knew they might never see their
gear again.

For that matter, they knew that the gear was
about as likely to survive the night as they them-
selves were—but you had to act as if you were
going to make it.

Sergeant Major Scratchard stumped among the
few troopers still in the bunk room, slapping them
with a hand that rang on their ceramic helmets.
"Move!" he bellowed with each blow. "It's yer
butts!"

If the soldier still hesitated with a fitting or to
grab for one more bit of paraphernalia, Scratchard
gripped his shoulder and spun him toward the
door. As Tyi stuck his head into the room, a
female soldier with a picture of her father crashed
off the jamb beside him, cursing in a voice that
was a weapon itself.

"All clear, sir," Scratchard said as the last pair
of troopers scampered for the door ahead of him,
geese waddling ahead of a keeper with a ready
switch. "Kekkonan's running the arms locker, he's
a good man."

Tyi used the pause to fold the dish antenna of

COUNTING THE COST

87

his laser communicator. The sergeant major glanced
at him. He said in a voice as firm and dismissing
as the one he'd been using on his subordinates,
"Dump that now. We don't have time fer it."

"I'll gather 'em up outside," Tyi said. "You send
'em down to me. Jack."

He clipped the communicator to his equipment
belt. Alone of the detachment, he didn't have
body armor. Couldn't worry about that now.

The arms locker, converted from an interroga-
tion room, was next door to the bunk room. The
hall was crowded with troopers waiting to be is-
sued weapons and those pushing past, down the
stairs with armloads of lethal hardware that they
would organize in the street were there was more
space.

Tyi joined the queue thumping its way down-
stairs. As he did so, he glanced over his shoulder
and called, "We'll have time, Sar'ent Major. And
by the Lord! we'll have a secure link to Central
when we do."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

For a moment, the exterior of the City Offices
was lighted by wall sconces as usual. A second or
two after Tyi stepped from the door into bulk of
his troops, crouching as they awaited orders, the
sconces, the interior lights, and all the street lights
visible on the east side of the river switched off.

There was an explosion louder than the occa-
sional popping of slug-throwers in the distance. A
transformer installation had been blown up or
shorted into self-destruction.

That made the flames, already painting the low
clouds pink, more visible.

A recruit turned on his hand light. The veteran
beside him snarled, "Fuckhead! Use infra-red on
your helmet shield!"

The trooper on the recruit's other side—more
direct—slapped the light away and crushed it be-
neath her boot.

David Drake

90

"Sergeants to me," Tyi ordered on the unit
push. He flashed momentarily the miniature
lightwand that he carried clipped to a breast
pocket—for reading and for situations like this,
when his troops needed to know where he was.

Even at the risk of drawing fire when he showed

them.

He hadn't called for non-corns, because the men
here were mostly veterans with a minimum of the
five-years service that qualified them for furlough.
Seven sergeants crawled forward, about what Tyi
had expected and enough for his purposes.

'Twelve-man squads," he ordered, using his
commo helmet instead of speaking directly to the
cluster of sergeants. That way all his troops would
know what was happening.

As much as Tyi did himself, at any rate.

"Gather 'em fast, no screwing around. We're
going to move as soon as everybody's clear." He
looked at the sergeants, their faceshields down,
just as his was—a collection of emotionless balls,
and all of them probably as worried as he was:

worried about what they knew was coming, and
more nervous yet about all the things that might
happen in darkness, when nobody at all knew
which end was up.

"And no shooting, troopers. Unless we got to."

If they had to shoot their way out, they were
well and truly screwed. Just as Colonel Hammer
had said—there weren't enough of them to matter
a fart in a whirlwind if it came down to that.

A pair of emergency vehicles—fire trucks swaying
with the weight of the water on board them—roared
south along the river toward the City Offices. A
huge block of masonry hurtled from the roof of an

COUNTING THE COST         91

apartment building just up the street. Tyi saw its
arc silhouetted against the pink sky for a moment.

The stone hit the street with a crash and half-
bounced, half-rolled, into the path of the lead
truck. The fire vehicle slewed to the side, but its
wheels weren't adequate to stabilize the kiloliters
of water in its ready-use tank. The truck went
over and skidded, rotating on its side in sparks
and the scream of tortured metal—even before its
consort rammed it from behind.

Someone began to fire a slug-thrower from the
roof. The trucks were not burning yet, but a stray
breeze brought the raw, familiar odor of petro-
leum fuel to the hunching Slammers.

There wasn't anything in Hell worse than street-
fighting in somebody else's city—

And Tyi, like most of the veterans with him,
had done it often enough to be sure of that.

A clot of soldiers stumbled out the doorway.
Scratchard was the last, unrecognizable for a mo-
ment because of the huge load of equipment he
carried.

Looked as if he'd staggered out with everything
the rest of the company had left in the arms
locker, Tyi thought. A veteran like Jack Scratchard
should've known to—

Reinforced windows blew out of the second floor
with a cyan flash, a bang, and a deep orange
whoom! that was simultaneously a sound and a
vision. The sergeant major hadn't tried to empty
the arms locker after all.

"Put this on, sir," Scratchard muttered to the
captain as the fire trucks up the street ignited in
the spray of burning fragments hurled from the
demolition of the Slammers' excess stores. The
actinics of the powergun ammunition detonating

92 David Drake

in its storage containers made exposed skin prickle,
but the exploding gasoline pushed at the crouch-
ing men with a warm, stinking hand.

Roof floodlights, driven by the emergency gen-
erator in the basement, flared momentarily around
the City Offices. Shadows pooled beneath the wait-
ing troops. They cursed and ducked lower—or
twisted to aim at the lights revealing them.

Volleys of shots from the mob shattered the
lenses before any of the Slammers made up their
minds to shoot. The twin pincers, from the plaza
and from the House of Grace, were already begin-
ning to envelope the office building.

The route north and away was awash in blazing
fuel. The police air car that roared off that way,
whipping the flames with its vectored thrust,
pitched bow-up and stalled as an automatic weap-
on ranked it from the same roof as the falling
masonry had come.

Scratchard had brought a suit of clamshell body
armor for Tyi to wear—and a submachinegun to
carry along with a bandolier holding five hundred
rounds of ammo in loaded magazines.

"We're crossing the river," Tyi said in a voice
that barely danced on the spikes of his present
consciousness. "By squad."

He hadn't gotten around to numbering the
squads. There was a clacking sound as the ser-
geant major latched Tyi's armor for him.

Tyi pointed at one of the sergeants—he didn't
know any bloody names!—with his lightwand. "You
first. And you. Next—"

In the pause, uncertain in the backlit darkness
where the other non-corns were, Scratchard broke
in on the command frequency saying, "Haskins,

COUNTING THE COST         93

third. Hu, Pescaro, Bogue and Hagemann. Move,
you dickheads!"

Off the radio, his head close to Tyi's as the
captain clipped his sling reflexively to the epaulet
tab of his armor and shrugged the heavy bandolier
over the opposite shoulder, the sergeant major
added, "You lead 'em, sir—I'll hustle their butts
from here."

Even as Tyi opened his mouth to frame a reply,
Scratchard barked at one of the men who'd ap-
peared just ahead of him, "Kekkonan—you give
'im a hand with names if he needs it, right?"

Sergeant Kekkonan, short and built like one of
the tanks he'd commanded, clapped Tyi on the
shoulder hard enough that it was just as well the
captain had already started in the direction of the
thrust—toward the river and the squad running
toward the levee wall as swiftly as their load of
weapons and munitions permitted.

A column of men came around the northern
corner of the building. Their white tunics rippled
orange in the glare of the burning vehicles. The
leaders carried staffs as they had when they guarded
the procession route, but in the next rank back
winked the iridium barrels of powerguns and the
antennas of sophisticated communications gear.

They were no more than three steps from the
nearest of the nervous Slammers. When the lead-
ing orderlies shouted and threw themselves out of
the way, there were almost as many guns pointed
at the troops as pointed by them.

"Hold!" Tyi Koopman ordered through his
commo helmet as his skin chilled and his face
went stiff. Almost they'd made it, but now—

He was running toward the mob of orderlies—

94 David Drake

Via! They weren't a mob!—with his hands raised,
palms forward.

"This isn't our fight!" he cried, hoping he was
close enough to the orderlies to be understood by
them as well as by the troops on his unit push.
"Squads, keep moving—over the levee!"

The column of orderlies had stopped and flat-
tened like the troops they were facing, but there
were three men erect at the new head of the line.
One carried a shoulder-pack radio; one a bull-
horn; and the man in the middle was a priest with
a crucifix large enough to be the standard that the
whole column followed.

Tyi looked at the priest, wondering if he could
grab the butt of his slung weapon fast enough to
take some of them with him if the words the priest
murmured to the man with the bull-horn brought
a blast of shots from the guns aimed at the Slam-
mers captain.

The burning trucks roared. Sealed parts rup-
tured with plosive sounds and an occasional sharp
crack.

"Go on, get out of here," the bull-horn snarled,
its crude amplification making the words even
harsher than they were when they came from the
orderly's throat.

Tyi spun and brandished his lightwand. "Third
Squad," he ordered. "Move!"

A dozen of his troopers picked themselves up
from the ground and shambled across the street
behind him—toward the guns leveled on the mob
from the levee's top. The first two squads were
deployed there with the advantages of height and
a modicum of cover if any of the locals needed a
lesson about what it meant to take on Hammer's
Stammers.

COUNTING THE COST          95

Tyi's timing hadn't been quite as bad as he'd
thought. Hard to tell just what might have hap-
pened if the column from the House of Grace had
arrived before Tyi's company had a base of fire
across the street.

Two more squads were moving together. The
leaders of the mob's other arm, bawling their way
up the river road, had already reached the south
corner of the City Offices. The cries of "Freedom!
Freedom!" were suddenly punctuated with screams
as a dozen or so of the leaders collapsed under a
burst of electrostatic needles fired by one of the
policemen inside.

Tyi heard the shots that answered the stunner,
slug-throwers as well as powerguns, but the real
measure of the response was the barely-audible
clink of bottles shattering.

Then the gasoline bombs ignited and silhouet-
ted the building from the south.

Tyi stood on the pedestrian way atop the levee,
wondering when somebody would get around to
taking a shot at him just because he was standing.

"Three and four," he ordered as the heavily-
laden troops scrambled up the steps to join him.
"Across the river, climb over the barges. Kekkonan,
you lead 'em, set up a perimeter on the other
side.

"And iwit!" he added, though Kekkonan didn't
look like the sort you had to tell that to.

The rest of the company was moving in a steady
stream, lighted between the two fires of the trucks
and the south front of the building they had
abandoned.

"Take 'em across, take 'em across!" Tyi shouted
as the Slammers plodded past. The non-corns would

96 David Drake

take the words as an order, and the rest of the
troops would get the idea.

The first two squads squirmed as they waited,
their guns now aimed toward both pincers of the
mob. Fifty meters of the west frontage of the City
Offices were clear of the rioters who would other-
wise have lapped around it. It wasn't a formal
stand-off; just the tense waiting of male dogs growl-
ing as they sidled toward each other, not quite
certain what the next seconds would bring.

The last man was Sergeant Major Scratchard,
falling a further step behind his troops with every
step he took.

"We're releasing the prisoners!" boomed the
array of loudspeakers on the building roof. Simul-
taneous words from a dozen locations echoed them-
selves by the amount of time that sound from the
mechanical diaphragms lagged behind the elec-
tronic pulses feeding them.

"Second Squad, withdraw," Tyi ordered. He
felt as if his load of gear had halved in weight
when the eyes of the rioters, orange flecks lighted
by the fires of their violence, turned away from
him and his men to stare at the City Offices.

Tyi jumped back down the steps and put his left
arm—the submachinegun was under his right arm-
pit—around the sergeant major's chest. Scratchard
weighed over a hundred kilos, only a little of it in
the gut that had expanded with his desk job. Tyi's
blood jumped with so much adrenalin that he
noticed only Scratchard's inertia—not his weight.

"Lemme go!" Scratchard rasped in a voice tight
with the ache in his knees.

"Shut the hell up!" Tyi snarled back. The laser
communicator was crushed between them, biting
both men's thighs. If he'd had a hand free, he'd

COUNTING THE COST         97

have thrown the cursed thing against the concrete
levee.

The mob's chanted, "Freedom!" gave way sud-
denly to a long bellow, loud and growing like a
peal of thunder. Tyi's back was to the City Offices,
and the rolling triumph had started on the far side
anyway, where the jail entrance opened onto the
parking area. He knew what was happening,
though.

And he knew, even before the shouts turned to
"Kill them! Kill them!" that this mob wasn't going
to be satisfied with freeing their fellows.

Likely the police trapped inside the building
had known that too; but they didn't have any
better choices either.

"You, give us a hand!" Tyi ordered as he and
Scratchard stumbled toward the railing across the
walkway. He pointed to the nearest trooper with
the gun that filled his right hand. She jumped to
her feet and took the sergeant major's other arm
while Tyi boomed over the radio, "First Squad,
withdraw. Kekkonan, make sure you've got us
covered."

The river here was half a kilometer wide be-
tween the levees, but with night sights and
powerguns, trained men could sweep the far walk-
way clear if some of the rioters decided it'd be safe
to pursue.

The river had fallen more than a meter since
Tyi viewed it six hours before. The barges still
floated a safe jump beneath the inner walkway of
the levee— but not safe for Jack Scratchard with a
load of gear.

"Gimme my arms free," the sergeant major
ordered.

Tyi nodded and stepped away with the trooper

98. David Drake

on the other side. Scratchard gripped the railing
with both hands and swung himself over. He
crouched on the narrow lip, choosing his support,
and lowered himself onto the hogsheads with which
the barge was loaded. The troopers waiting to
help the senior non-corn had the sense to get out
of the way.

"I'm fine now," Scratchard grunted. "Let's move!"
The barges were moored close, but there was
enough necessary slack in the lines that some of
them were over a meter apart while their rubber
bumpers squealed against those of the vessel on
the opposite flank. Tyi hadn't thought the prob-
lem through, but Kekkonan or one of the other
sergeants had stationed pairs of troopers at every
significant gap. They were ready to guide and
help lift later-comers over the danger.

"Thank the Lord," Tyi muttered as four strong
arms boosted him from the first barge to the next
in line. He wasn't sure whether he meant for the
help or for the realization that the men he com-
manded were as good as anybody could pray.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Charles Desoix wore a commo helmet to keep
in touch with his unit, but he was looking out over
Bamberg City with a hand-held image intensifier
instead of using the integral optics of the helmet's
face shield. The separate unit gave him better
illumination, crisper details. He held the imager
steady by resting his elbows on the rail of the
porch outside the Consistory Room, overlooking
the courtyard and beyond—

The railing jiggled as someone else leaned against
it, bouncing Desoix's forty-magnification image of
a window in the City Office building off his screen.

"Lord cur—" Desoix snarled as he spun. He
wasn't the sort to slap the clumsy popinjay whom
he assumed had disturbed him, but he was willing
to give the contrary impression at the moment.

Anne McGill was at the rail beside him.

"They told me—" Desoix blurted.

99

100 David Drake

"Yes, but I couldn't—" Anne said, both of them
trying to cover the angry outburst that would dis-
appear from reality if they pretended it hadn't
occurred.

She'd closed the clear doors behind her, but
Desoix could see into the Consistory Room. Enough
light fell onto the porch to illuminate them for
anyone looking in their direction.

He put his arms around Anne anyway, being
careful not to gouge her back with a corner of the
imaging unit. She didn't protest as he thought she
might—but she gasped in surprise as her breasts
flattened against her lover.

"Ah," Desoix said. "Yeah, I thought I'd wear
my armor while I was out. . . . Ah, maybe we
ought to go inside."

"No," Anne said, squeezing him tighter. "Just
hold me."

Desoix stroked her back with his free hand while
the breeze brought screams and the smell of smoke
from across the river.

His helmet hissed with the sound of a Situation
Report. He'd programmed Control to call for a
sitrep every fifteen minutes during the night. That
was the only way you could be sure an outlying
unit hadn't been wiped out before they could
sound an alarm. . . .

That wasn't a way Charles Desoix liked to think.

"Just a second, love," he muttered, blanking his
mind of what the woman with her arms around
him had started to say.

"Two to Control, all clear," a human voice said.

«/-x        "

Over.

Gun Two was north of the city on a bluff over-
looking the river. It had a magnificent field of
fire—and there was very little development in the

COUNTING THE COST         101

vicinity, which made it fairly safe in the present
circumstances.

"Control to Three," said the emotionless artifi-
cial intelligence in the palace basement. "Report,
over."

The hollow sound of gasoline bombs igniting,
deadened by the pillow of intervening air, accom-
panied the gush of fresh orange flames from across
the river. One side of the City Offices was cov-
ered with crawling fire.

"Three t' Control," came the voice of Sergeant
Blaney.

There was a whining noise behind the words,
barely audible through the commo link. It nagged
at Desoix's consciousness, but he couldn't quite
remember. . . .

"It's all right here," the human voice continued,
"but there's a lot of traffic in and out of the plaza.
There's fires north of us, and there's shots all
round."

The sergeant paused. He wasn't speaking to
Control but rather in the hope that Borodin or
Desoix were listening even without an alert—and
that they'd do something about the situation.

"Nothing aimed at us, s' far as we can tell,"
Blaney concluded. "Over."

The mechanical whining had stopped some sec-
onds before.

Men, lighted by petroleum flares in both direc-
tion, were headed from the City Offices to the
adjacent levee. Desoix couldn't make out who they
were without the imaging unit, but he had a pretty
good idea.

His left hand massaged Anne McGill's shoul-
ders, to calm her and calm him as well. He reached
for his helmet's commo key with his right hand,

102 David Drake

careful not to clash the two pieces of sophisticated
hardware together, and said, "Blue to Three. Give
me an azimuth on your gun, Blaney. Over."

Major Borodin was Red. With luck, he wasn't
monitoring the channel just now.

Blaney hesitated, but he knew the XO could get
the data from Control as easily—and that if Desoix
asked, he already knew the answer even though
Gun Three was far out of direct sight of the Palace
of Government. "Sir," he said at last. "It's two-
five-zero degrees. Over."

Normal rest position for Gun Three was 165°,
pointing out over Nevis Channel in the direction
from which hostile ship-launched missiles were
most likely to come. The crew had just re-aimed
their weapon to cover the east stairs of the plaza.
That was what they obviously thought was the
most serious threat of their own well-being.

"Blue to Three," said Charles Desoix. "Over
and out."

He wasn't down there with them, and he wasn't
about to overrule their assessment of the situation
from up here.

"Eunice is so angry," Anne McGill murmured.
Communicating with the man beside her was as
important to her state of mind as the strength of
his arm around her shoulders. "I'm afraid, mostly—"
and the simplicity of the statement belied its truth
"—and so's John, I think, though it's hard to tell
with him. But Eunice would like to hang them all,
starting with the Bishop."

"Not going to be easy to do," Desoix said calmly
while he adjusted the imager one-handed and
prayed that it wouldn't show what he thought he
saw in the shuddering flames.

It did. Men and women in police uniforms were

COUNTING THE COST

103

being thrown from the roof of the office building.
They didn't fall far: just a meter or two, before
they were halted jerking by the ropes around
their necks.

Within the Consistory Room, voices burbled.
Light brightened momentarily as someone turned
up a wall sconce. It dimmed again as abruptly
when common sense overcame a desire for gleam-
ing surroundings.

The clear panels surrounding the circular room
were shatterproof vitril. They were supposed to
stop bricks or a slug from any weapon a man could
fire from his shoulder, and the layer of gold foil
within the thermoplastic might even deflect a
powergun bolt.

But only a fool would insist on testing them
while he was on the other side of the panel. That
kind of test was a likely result of making the
Consistory Room a beacon on a night like this.

Anne straightened slightly when she heard the
sounds in the room behind them, but she didn't
move away as Desoix had expected her to do.
"There!" she said in a sharp whisper, pointing
down toward the river. "They're moving . . .
They—are they coming for us?"

Desoix used both hands to steady the imager,
though he kept the magnification down to ten
power. The fuel fires provided quite a lot of light,
and the low clouds scattered it broadly for the
intensification circuits.

"Those are Hammer's men," the UDB officer
said as the scene glowed saffron in the imager's
field of view.

The troopers crossing the river on the barges
moored there were foreshortened by the angle
and flattened into two dimensions by the imaging

104 David Drake

circuitry, but there were a lot of them. Enough to
be the whole unit, the Lord willing—and better
the Slammers have the problems than United De-
fense Batteries.

Desoix's helmet said in Control's calm voice,
"Captain Koopman of Hammer's Regiment has
been calling the officer of the day on the general
frequency. The OOD has not replied. Now Cap-
tain Koopman is calling you. Do you wish—"

"Patch him through," Desoix ordered. Anne's
startled expression reminded him that she would
think he was speaking to her, but there wasn't
time to clear that up now.

"—warn the guards not to shoot at us?" came
the voice of the Slammers captain he'd met just
that morning. "I can't raise the bastards and I
don't want any trouble."

"Desoix to Slammers, over?" the UDB officer
said.

"Roger Desoix, over," Koopman responded in-
stantly. The relief in the infantry captain's voice
was as obvious as the threat in the previous phrase:

if anybody started shooting at him and his men,
he was planning to finish the job and worry later
about the results.

"Tyi, I'm headed down to the front entrance
right now," Desoix said. "It's quiet on this side, so
don't let some recruit get nervous at the wrong
time."

He'd lowered the imager and was stroking Anne's
back fiercely with his free hand, feeling the soft
cloth bunch and ripple over skin still softer. Her
arm was around his hips, beneath the rim of his
armor, caressing him as well. Hard to believe this
was the woman who'd always refused to lie down

COUNTING THE COST          105

on a bed with him, because if her hair-do was
mussed, people might guess what she'd been doing.

Desoix turned and kissed her, vaguely amazed
that the tension of the moment increased his sex-
ual arousal instead of dampening it.

"Love," he said, and meant "love," for the first
time in a life during which he'd used the word to a
hundred woman on a score of planets. "I'm going
downstairs for a moment. I'll be back soon, but
wait inside."

Even as he kissed her warm lips again, he was
moving toward the door and carrying the woman
with him by the force of his arm as well as by his
personality.

Desoix felt a moment's concern as he strode for
the elevator across the circular room that he'd left
his mistress to be spiked by the wondering eyes of
the dozen or more men who stood in nervous
clumps amidst the furniture. Anne was going to
have to handle that herself, because he couldn't
take her with him into what he was maybe getting
into—

And if he didn't go, well—he didn't need what
he'd heard in Tyi Koopman's voice to know how a
company of Hammer's Slammers was going to re-
spond if a bunch of parade-ground soldiers tried to
bar their escape from a dangerous situation.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The way some of the Executive Guards in the
rotunda were waving their weapons around would
have bothered Desoix less if he'd believed the
men involved had ever fired their guns deliber-
ately. A couple of them might honestly not know
the difference between the trigger and the safety
catch, making the polished-marble room as dan-
gerous as a foxhole at the sharp end of the front.

If Koopman's unit blew off the flood shutters
and tossed in grenades, the rotunda was going to
be as dangerous as an abattoir.

Captain Rene Sanchez must have been off-duty
by now, but there were more guards in the ro-
tunda than the usual detachment and he was among
them.

"Rene," Desoix called cheerfully as he stepped
off the elevator, noticing that the Bamberg officer
had unlatched the flap covering his pistol. "I've

107

108 David Drake

come to give you a hand. We're getting some
reinforcements. Hammer's men. They're on the
way now."

Sanchez turned with a wild expression. "No-
body comes in or out," he said in a voice whose
high pitch increased the effect of his eyes being
focused somewhere close to infinity. The Guards-
man was either drugged to a razor's edge, or his
nerves unaided had honed him to the same dan-
gerous state.

"We're going to take care of this, Rene," Desoix
said, putting a friendly hand on Sanchez's shoulder.

The local man was quivering and it wasn't just
fear. Sanchez was ready to go, go off in any direc-
tion. He was in prime shape to lead a night assault
with knives and grenades—and he was just about
as lethal as a live grenade, too.

You could never tell about the ones who'd never
in their lives done anything real. They could react
any way at all when the universe forced itself to
their attention. About all a professional like Charles
Desoix knew to expect was that he wouldn't like
the result, whatever it turned out to be.

The Guard Commandant, Colonel Drescher, was
present. Arm in arm with Sanchez, the UDB offi-
cer walked toward him. Desoix had nodded to
Drescher in the past, but they had never spoken.

"Colonel," he said, using Rene Sanchez and a
brisk manner as his entree, "We've got some rein-
forcements coming in a few moments. I'm here to
escort them in."

"Charles, I got a squad in the courtyard now,"
said Desoix's helmet. "Let's get a door open, all
right? Over."

He didn't respond to Koopman's call, because
the Guards colonel was saying, "You? UDB? I'm

COUNTING THE COST

109

sorry, mister mercenary, the Marshal has given
orders that the shutters not be opened."

"I just came from Marshal Dowell in the Con-
sistory Room," Desoix said, letting his voice rise
as only control had kept it from doing earlier. The
best way to play this was to pretend to be on the
edge of blind panic. That wasn't so great a pre-
tense as he would have wished.

"He ordered me down here to inform you,"
Desoix continued. He thought he'd glimpsed
Dowell upstairs. Certainly that was possible, at
any rate. "By the Lord! man. Do you realize what
the Marshal will do if you endanger him by keep-
ing out his reinforcements? He'll have you—well,
it's obvious."

The Guards colonel blinked. "Jorge Dowell
doesn't give me orders!" he snapped, family pride
overwhelming whatever trace of military obedi-
ence was in Drescher's make-up.

The Executive Guard was enough a law unto
itself that Desoix had been sure that Drescher's
references to army orders was misdirection—though
Dowell might well have given such orders if any-
body had bothered to ask him.

But because they hadn't . . . Desoix's present
bluff wasn't beyond the realm of Dowell's possible
response either.

"Still," Colonel Drescher continued. "Since
you're here, we'll make an exception for courtesy's
sake."

The waxen calm of his expression lapsed into
gray fear for a moment. "But be quick, Lieuten-
ant, or I swear I'll shut you out with them and the
animals across the river."

Soldiers who'd been listening to the exchange
touched the undogging mechanism without or-

David Drake

110

ders, but they paused and drew back instead of
engaging the gears to slide the shutters away.
"Well get on with it!" cried another voice.

One of the guards pressed the switch before
Desoix's hand reached it; the UDB officer glanced
at the speaker instead.

There were four men together. They were wear-
ing civilian clothes now in place of the ornate
uniforms they'd worn in the Consistory Room this
morning and in days past. The considerable en-
tourage behind them stretched beyond the ro-
tunda; servants, very few of them real bodyguards
—but most of the males were now armed with
rifles and pistols which looked as though they
came from government stores.

"Charles, how we holding?" came Tyi Koopman's
voice through the commo helmet. "Over."

The words lacked the overtone of threat that
had been in his earlier query. The Slammers could
see or at least hear that a door was opening.

"Blue to Slammers," Desoix responded. He could
feel a smile starting to twitch the corners of his
mouth. "Just a second. There's some restructuring
going on in here and we're, ah, making room for
you in the guest quarters. Let these folks pass."

Desoix made sure that he was with the quartet
of wealthy landholders as they forced their way
through the door ahead of their servants.

"No, no," one of the men was saying to another.
"My townhouse will have to take care of itself. I'm
off to my estates to rally support for the President.
I'll inform John of what I'm doing just as soon as I
get there, but of course I couldn't waste time now
with goodbyes."

Desoix thought for a moment that Captain San-
chez would step outside with him because that

COUNTING THE COST

111

was the direction in which the Guards officer had
last been pointed. Sanchez was lost in the turmoil,
though, and Desoix stood alone beside the door as
minor rats streamed out past him, following the
lead of the noble rats they served.

Fires glowed against the cloud cover from at
least a dozen directions in the city, not just the
vicinity of the City Offices directly across the river.
The smell of burning was more noticeable here
than it had been on the porch six meters high.

Desoix looked up. The porch was a narrow roof
above him. He couldn't tell from this angle whether
Anne McGill had stayed inside as he'd ordered, or
if she were out in the night again watching for
him, watching for hope.

"You, sir," a soldier said with enough emphasis
to make the question a demand. "You our UDB
liaison?"

"Roger," Desoix said. "I'm—"

But the close-coupled soldier in Slammers battle-
dress was already relaying the information on his
unit frequency.

There were several dozen of Hammer's men in
the courtyard already. More were arriving with
every passing moment. He didn't see Captain
Koopman or the sergeant major he'd met once or
twice before Tyi had arrived to take command.

The troopers jogged across the open street,
hunched over. When they reached the courtyard
they slowed. The veterans swept the Palace's
empty, shuttered walls with their eyes, waiting for
the motion that would unmask gunports and turn
the paved area into a killing ground unless they
shot first.

The new recruits only stared, more confused
than frightened but certainly frightened enough.

112 David Drake

"They know something we don't?" asked the
Slammers non-corn with KEKKONAN stenciled
on his helmet. He nodded in the direction of the
servants, the last of whom were clearing the
doorway.

"They know they're scared," Desoix said.

Kekkonan laughed. "That just shows they're brea-
thin'," he said.

He grunted something into his commo helmet—
waved left-handed to Desoix because his right
hand was on the grip of his slung submachinegun—
and trotted into the rotunda with his troopers
filing along after him.

The UDB officer had intended to lead the Slam-
mers inside himself to avoid problems with the
Bamberg guards. He hadn't moved quickly enough,
but that wasn't likely to matter. Nobody with good
sense was going to get in the way of those jacked-up
killers.

Ornamental lighting still brightened the exte-
rior of the palace, though the steel-shuttered fa-
cade looked out of place in a glittering myriad of
tiny spotlights. It illuminated well the stooped
forms in khaki and gray ceramic armor as they
arrived, jogging because their loads were too heavy
for them to run faster.

There were six in the last group, four troopers
carrying a fifth while Captain Tyi Koopman trot-
ted along behind with a double load of guns and
bandoliers.

Casualty, Desoix thought, but Sergeant Major
Scratchard was cursing too fluently for anyone to
think his wound was serious.

"Listen, you idiots," Scratchard said in a voice
of sudden calm as the UDB officer ran up to help.

COUNTING THE COST         113

"If you don't let me down now we're under the
lights, I got no authority from here on out. Your
choice, Cap'n."

"Right, we'll all walk from here," said Koopman
easily. He handed one of the guns he carried to
Scratchard while looking at Desoix. "Lieutenant,"
he added, "I'm about as glad to see you as I
remember being."

Desoix looked over the other officer's shoulder
toward the fires and shouts across the river. For a
moment he thought it was his imagination that the
sounds were coming closer.

Light flickering through the panels of the mall
disabused him of his hopes. A torch-lit column
was marching over the river. What the rioters had
done to the City Offices suggested that they weren't
headed for the cathedral now to pray for peace.

"Let's get inside," said Charles Desoix. "When
this is all over, then you can thank me."

He didn't need to state the proviso: assuming
either of us is still alive.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Tyi hadn't ridden in the little elevator off the
back of the rotunda before. He and the UDB
officer just about filled it, and neither of them was
a big man.

Of course, in his armor and equipment Tyi wasn't
the slim figure he would have cut in coveralls
alone.

"Don't like to leave the guys before we know
just what's happening here," he said aloud, though
he was speaking as much to his own conscience as
to the UDB officer beside him.

Tyi would have hated to be bolted behind steel
shutters below, where the sergeant major was ar-
ranging temporary billets for the troops. The
windowed Consistory Room was the next best thing
to being outside—

And headed away from this Lord-stricken place!

"Up here is where we learn what's happening,"

115

David Drake

116

Desoix said reasonably, nodding toward the eleva-
tor's ceiling. "Or at least as much as anyone in the
government knows," he added with a frown which
echoed the doubt in his words.

The car stopped with only a faint burring from
its magnetic drivers. The doors opened with less
sound even than that. Tyi strode into the Consis-
tory Room.

He was Colonel Hammer's representative and
the ranking Slammer on this continent. So long as
he remembered that, nobody else was likely to

forget.

There were fewer people in the big room than
there had been in the morning, but their degree
of agitation made the numbers seem greater. Mar-
shal Dowell was present with a pair of aides, but
those three and the pair of mercenaries were the
only men in uniform.

The Chastain brothers smiled with frozen en-
thusiasm when Tyi nodded to them. They wore
dark suits of conservative cut—and of natural off-
planet fabrics that gave them roughly the value of
an air car. Everyone else in the room was avoiding
the Chastains. Backs turned whenever one of the
twins attempted to make eye contact.

Berne, the City Prefect, didn't have even a twin
for company. He huddled in the middle of the
room like a clothes-pole draped with the green
velour of his state robe.

"Where are—" Tyi began, but he'd already lost
his companion. Lieutenant Desoix was walking
briskly toward the large-framed woman who seemed
to be an aide to the President's wife. Neither the
President nor Eunice Delcorio were here at—

Servants opened the door adjacent to the eleva-
tor. John Delcorio entered a step ahead of his

COUNTING THE COST         117

wife, but only because of the narrowness of the
portal. Eunice was again in a flame-red dress. This
one was demure in the front but cut with no back
at all and a skirt that stretched to allow her legs to
scissor back and forth as she moved.

Tyi hadn't found a sexual arrangement satisfac-
tory to him on the freighter that brought him to
Bamberia, and there'd been no time to take care
of personal business since he touched down. He
felt a rush of lust. It was a little disconcerting
under the circumstances—

But on the other hand, it was nice to be re-
minded that there was more to life than the sorts
of things that'd been going on in the past few
hours.

"You there!" President Delcorio said unexpect-
edly. He glared at Tyi, his black eyes glowing like
coal in a coking furnace. "Do you have to wear
that?"

Tyi glanced down at where Delcorio pointed
with two stubby, sturdy fingers together.

"This?" said the Slammers officer. His subma-
chinegun hung from his right shoulder in a patrol
sling that held it muzzle forward and grip down at
his waist. He could seize it by reflex and spray
whatever was in front of him without having to
aim or think.

"Yessir," he explained. He spoke without con-
cern, because it didn't occur to him that anyone
might think he was offering insolence instead of
information. "Example for the troops, you know. I
told 'em nobody moved without a gun and bandolier
—sleeping, eating, whatever."

Tyi blinked and looked back at the President.
"Besides," he added. "I might need it, the way
things are."

David Drake

118

Delcorio flushed. Tyi realized that he and the
President were on intersecting planes. Though
the two of them existed in the same universe,
almost none of their frames of reference were

identical.

That was too bad. But it wasn't a reason for Tyi
Koopman to change; not now, when it was pretty
curst obvious that the instincts he'd developed in
Hammer's Slammers were the ones most applica-
ble here.

Eunice Delcorio laughed, a clear, clean sound
that cut like a knife. "At least there's somebody
who understands the situation," she said, echoing
Tyi's thought and earning the Slammers officer
another furious glance by her husband.

"I think we can all agree that the situation won't
be improved by silly panic," Delcorio said mildly
as his eyes swept the room. "Dowell, what do you

have to report?"

There had been movement all around the room
with the arrival of the Delcorios' but it was mostly
limited to heads turning. Major Borodin, who'd
been present after all—standing so quietly by a
wall that Tyi's quick survey had missed him—was
marching determinedly toward his executive offi-
cer. Desoix himself was alone. His lady-friend had
left him at once to join her mistress, the Presi-
dent's wife.

But at the moment, everyone's attention 'was on
Marshal Dowell, because that was where the Presi-
dent was looking.

"Yes, well," the army chief said. "I've given
orders that a brigade be returned from Two as
quickly as possible. You must realize that it's nec-
essary for the troops to land as a unit so that their
effect won't be dissipated."

COUNTING THE COST         119

"What about now?" cried the City Prefect. He
stepped forward in an access of grief and rage,
fluttering his gorgeous robes like a peacock pre-
paring to fly. "You said you'd support my police,
but your precious soldiers did nothing when those
scum attacked the City Offices!"

One of Dowell's aides was speaking rapidly into
a communicator with a shield that made the dis-
cussion inaudible to the rest of the gathering. The
marshal glanced at him, then said, "We're still not
sure what the situation over there is, and at any
rate—"

"They took the place," Tyi said bluntly.

In the Slammers you didn't stand on ceremony
when your superiors had bad data or none at all in
matters that could mean the life of a lot of people.
"Freed their friends, set fire to the building—hung
at least some of the folks they caught. Via, you can
see it from here, from the window."

He gestured with an elbow, because to point
with his full arm would have moved his hand
further from the grip of his weapon than instinct
wanted to keep it at present.

Perhaps because everyone followed the gesture
toward the panels overlooking the courtyard, the
chanted . . . freedom . . . echoing from that direc-
tion became suddenly audible in the Consistory
Room.

Across the room, the concealed elevator suctioned
and snapped heads around. The officer Desoix had
nodded to downstairs, the CO of the Executive
Guard, stepped out with a mixture of arrogance
and fear. He moved like a rabbit loaded with
amphetamines. "Gentlemen!" he called in a clear
voice. "Rioters are in the courtyard with guns and
torches!"

120

David Drake

Tyi was waiting for a recommendation—do I
have your permission to open fire? was how a Slam-
mers officer would have proceeded—but this fel-
low had nothing in mind save the theatrical

announcement.

What Tyi didn't expect—nobody expected—was
for Eunice Delcorio to sweep like a torch flame to
the door and step out onto the porch.

The blast of noise when the clear doors opened
was a shocking reminder of how well they blocked
sound. There was an animal undertone, but the
organized chant of "Freedom!" boomed over and
through the snarl until the mob recognized the
black-haired, glass-smooth woman facing them from

the high porch.

Tyi moved fast. He was at Eunice's side before
the shouts of surprise had given way to the hush
of a thousand people drawing breath simultaneously.
He thought there might be shots. At the first bang
or spurt of light he was going to hurl Eunice back
into the Consistory Room, trusting his luck and

his clamshell armor.

Not because she was a woman; but because if
the President's wife got blown away, there was as
little chance of compromise as there seemed to be
of winning until the brigade from Two arrived.
And maybe a little because she was a woman.
"What will you have, citizens?" Eunice called.
The porch was designed for speeches. Even
without amplification, the modeling walls threw
her powerful contralto out over the crowd. "Will
you abandon God's Crusade for a whim?"

The uplifted faces were a blur to Tyi in the
scatter of light sources that the mob carried. The
crosses embroidered in white cloth on the left
shoulders of their garments were clear enough to

COUNTING THE COST          121

be recognized, though—and that was true whether
the base color was red or black.

There was motion behind him, but Tyi had eyes
only for the mob.

Weapons glinted there. He couldn't tell if any
of them were being aimed. The night-vision sen-
sors in his faceshield would have helped; but if he
locked the shield down he'd be a mirror-faced
threat to the crowd, and that might be all it took
to draw the first shots. . . .

Desoix'd stepped onto the porch. He stood on
the other side of Eunice Delcorio, and he was
cursing with the fluency of a mercenary who's
sleep-learned a lot of languages over the years.

The other woman was on the porch too. From
the way the UDB officer was acting, she'd pre-
ceded rather than followed him.

The crowd's silence had dissolved in a dozen
varied answers to Eunice's question, all underlain
by blurred attempts to continue the chant of
"Freedom!"

Something popped from the center of the mob.
Tyi's left arm reached across Eunice's waist and
was a heartbeat short of hurling the woman back
through the doors no matter who stood behind
her. A white flare burst fifty meters above the
courtyard, harmless and high enough that it could
be seen by even the tail of the mob stretching
across the river.

The mob quieted after an anticipatory growl
that shook the panels of the doors.

There was a motion at the flagstaff, near where
the flare had been launched. Before Tyi could be
sure what was happening, a hand-held floodlight
glared over the porch from the same location.

He stepped in front of the President's wife,

122 David Drake COUNTING THE COST 123

bumping her out of the way with his hip, while his
left hand locked the faceshield down against the
blinding radiance. The muzzle of his submachinegun
quested like an adder's tongue while his finger
took up slack on the trigger.

"Wait!" boomed a voice from the mob in ampli-
fied startlement. The floodlight dimmed from a
threat to comfortable illumination.

"I'll take over now, Eunice," said John Delcorio
as his firm hand touched Tyi's upper arm, just
beneath the shoulder flare of the clamshell armor.

The Slammers officer stepped aside, knowing it
was out of his hands for better or for worse, now.

President Delcorio's voice thundered to the
crowd from roof speakers, "My people, why do
you come here to disturb God's purpose?"

Through his shield's optics, Tyi could see that
there were half a dozen priests in dark vestments
grouped beside the flagpole. They had a guard of
orderlies from the House of Grace, but both the
man with the light and the one raising a bull-horn
had been ordained. Tyi thought, though the dis-
tance made uncertain, that the priest half-hidden
behind the pole was Father Laughlin.

None of the priests carried weapons. All the
twenty or so orderlies of their bodyguard held guns.

"We want the murderer Berne!" called the bull
horn. The words were indistinct from the out-of-
synchronous echoes which they waked from the
Palace walls. "Berne sells justice and sells lives!"

"Berne!" shouted the mob, and their echoes
thundered BERNEfcerneberne.

As the echoes died away, Tyi heard Desoix
saying in a voice much louder than he intended,
"Anne, for the Lord's sake! Get back inside!"

"Will you go back to your homes in peace if I

replace the City Prefect?" Delcorio said, pitching
his words to make his offered capitulation sound
like a demand. His features were regally arrogant
as Tyi watched him sidelong behind the mirror of
his faceshield.

The priest with the bull-horn leaned sideways
to confer with the bigger man behind the flagpole,
certainly Father Laughlin. While the mob waited
for their leaders' response, the President used the
pause to add, "One man's venality can't be per-
mitted to jeopardize God's work!"
"Give us Berne!" demanded the courtyard.
"I'll replace—" Delcorio attempted.
GIVEgwegive roared the mob. GIVEgiwgive. . . .
Eunice leaned over to say something to her
husband. He held up a hand to silence the crowd.
The savage voices boomed louder, a thousand of
them in the courtyard and myriads more filling
the streets beyond.

A woman waved a doll in green robes above her
head. She held it tethered by its neck.

Delcorio and his wife stepped back into the
Consistory Room. Their hands were clasped so
that it was impossible to tell who was leading
the other. The President reached to slide the
door shut for silence, but Lieutenant Desoix was
close behind with an arm locked around the other
woman's waist. His shoulder ^blocked Delcorio's
intent.

Tyi Koopman wasn't going to be the only target
on the balcony while the mob waited for a re-
sponse it might not care for. He kept his feature-
less face to the front—with the gun muzzle beneath
it for emphasis—as he retreated after the rest.




CHAPTER riFTEEM

"Firing me won't—" Berne began even before
Tyi slid the door shut on the thunder of the mob.

"I'm not sure we can defend—" Marshal Dowell
was saying with a frown and enough emphasis that
he managed to be heard.

"Be silent!" Eunice Delcorio ordered in a glass-
sharp voice.

The wall thundered with the low notes of the
shouting in the courtyard.

Everyone in the Consistory Room had gathered
in a semi-circle. They were facing the porch and
those who had been standing on it.

There were only a dozen or so of Delcorio's
advisors present. Twice that number had awaited
when Tyi followed Eunice out to confront the
mob, but they were gone now.

Gone from the room, gone from the Palace if

125

126 David Drake

they could arrange it—and assuredly gone from
the list of President Delcorio's supporters.

That bothered Tyi less than the look of those
who remained. They glared at the City Prefect
with the expression of gorgeously-attired fish view-
ing an injured one of their number ... an equal
moments before, a certain victim now. The eyes
of Dowell's aides were hungry as they slid over
Berne.

Eunice Delcorio's voice had carved a moment
of silence from the atmosphere of the Consistory
Room. The colonel of the Executive Guard filled
the pause with, "It's quite impossible to defend
the Palace from numbers like that. We can't even
think of— "

"Yeah, we could hold it," Tyi broke in.

He'd forgotten his faceshield was locked down
until he saw everyone start away from him as if he
were something slime-covered that had just crawled
through a window. With the shield in place, the
loudspeaker built into his helmet cut in automa-
tically—so they weren't going to ignore him if he
raised his voice.

He didn't want to be ignored, but he flipped up
the shield to be less threatening now that he had
the group's attention.

"You've got what, two companies?" he went on,
waving his left index finger toward the glittering
colonel. All right, they weren't the Slammers; but
they had assault rifles and they weren't exactly
facing combat infantry either.

"We've got a hundred men," he said. "Curst
good ones, and the troops the UDB's got here in
the Palace know how to handle— "

Tyi had nodded in the direction of Lieutenant

COUNTING THE COST

127

Desoix, but it was Borodin, the battery commander,
who interrupted, "I have no men in the Palace."

"Huh?" said the Slammers officer.

"What?" Desoix said. "We have the off-duty

c—"

"I'm worried about relieving the crews with
the, ah—" Borodin began.

He looked over at the President. The merce-
nary commander couldn't whisper the explana-
tion, not now. "The conditions in the streets are
such that I wasn't sure we'd be able to relieve the
gun crews normally, so I ordered the reserve crews
to billet at the guns so that we could be sure that
there'd be a full watch alert if the enemy tries to
take advantage of... events."

"Events!" snarled John Delcorio.

The door behind him rattled sharply when a
missile struck it. The vitril held as it was supposed
to do.

"John, they aren't after me," Berne cried with
more than personal concern in his voice. He was
right, after all, everybody else here must know
that, since it was so obvious to Tyi Koopman in his
first day on-planet. "You mustn't—"

"If you hadn't failed, none of this would be
happening," Eunice said, her scorn honed by years
of personal hatred that found its outlet now in the
midst of general catastrophe.

She turned to her husband, the ends of her
black hair emphasizing the motion. "Why are you
delaying? They want this criminal, and that will
give us the time we need to deal with the filth
properly with the additional troops."

Vividness made Eunice Delcorio a beautiful
woman, but the way her lips rolled over the word

128 David Drake

"properly" sent a chill down the spine of everyone
who watched her.

Berne made a break for the door to the hall.

Tyi's mind had been planning the defense of the
Palace of Government. Squads of the local troops
in each wing to fire as soon as rioters pried or
blasted off a flood shutter to gain entrance. Pla-
toons of mercenaries poised to react as fire bri-
gades, responding to each assault with enough
violence to smother it in the bodies of those who'd
made the attempt. Grenadiers on the roof; they'd
very quickly clear the immediate area of the Pal-
ace of everything except bodies and the moaning
wounded.

Easy enough, but they were answers to ques-
tions that nobody was asking any more. Besides,
they could only hold the place for a few days
against tens of thousands of besiegers—only long
enough for the brigade to arrive from Two, if it
came.

And Tyi was a lot less confident of that point
than the President's wife seemed to be.

A middle-aged civilian tripped the City Prefect.
One of Dowell's aides leaped on Berne and wres-
tled him to the polished floor as he tried to rise,
while the other aide shouted into his communica-
tor for support without bothering to lock his pri-
vacy screen in place.

Tyi looked away in disgust. He caught Lieuten-
ant Desoix's eye. The UDB officer wore a bland
expression.

But he wasn't watching the scuffle and the weep-
ing prefect either.

"All right," said the President, bobbing his head
in decision. "I'll tell them."

He took one stride, reached for the sliding door,

COUNTING THE COST         129

and paused. "You," he said to Tyi. "Come with

me.

Tyi nodded without expression. Another stone
or possibly a light bullet whacked against the vitril.
He set his faceshield and stepped onto the porch
ahead of the Regiment's employer.

He didn't feel much just now, though he wanted
to take a piss real bad. Even so, he figured he'd
be more comfortable facing the mob than he was
over what had just happened in the Consistory
Room.

The crowd roared. Behind his shield, Tyi grinned
—if that was the right word for the way instinct
drew up the corners of his mouth to bare his
teeth. There was motion among the up-turned
faces gleaming like the sputum the sea leaves
when it draws back from the strand.

Something pinged on the railing. Tyi's gun quiv-
ered, pointed—

"Wait!" thundered the bull-horn.

"My people!" boomed the President's voice from
the roofline. He rested his palms wide apart on
the railing.

He'd followed after all, a step behind the Slam-
mers officer just in case a sniper was waiting for
the first motion. Delcorio wasn't a brave man, not
as a professional soldier came to appraise courage,
but his spirit had a tumbling intensity that made
him capable of almost anything.

At a given moment.

The mob was making a great deal of discon-
nected noise. Delcorio trusted his amplified voice
to carry him through as he continued, "I have
dismissed the miscreant Berne as you demanded.
I will turn him over to the custody of the Church

130 David Drake

for safekeeping until the entire State can deter-
mine the punishment for his many crimes."

"Give us Berne!" snarled the bull-horn with
echoing violence. It spoke in the voice of a priest
but not a Christian; and the mob that took up the
chant was not even human.

Delcorio turned and tried to shout something
into the building with his unaided voice. Tyi
couldn't hear him.

The President raised a hand for silence from the
crowd. The chant continued unabated, but Delcorio
and the Slammers officer were able to back inside
without a rain of missiles to mark their retreat.

There was a squad of the Executive Guard in
the Consistory Room. Four of the ten men were
gripping the City Prefect. Several had dropped
their rifles in the scuffle and no one had thought
to pick the weapons up again.

Delcorio made a dismissing gesture. "Send him
out to them," he said. "I've done all I can. Quickly,
so I don't have to go out there—"

His face turned in the direction of his thoughts,
toward the porch and the mob beneath. The flush
faded and he began to shiver uncontrollably. Re-
action and memory had caught up with the Pre-
sident.

There were only four civilian advisors in the
room besides Berne. Five. A man whose suit was
russet or gold, depending on the direction of the
light, had been caught just short of getting into
the elevator by Delcorio's return.

The Guards colonel was shaking his head. "No,
no," he said. "That won't do. If we open a shutter,
they'll be in and well, the way the fools are worked
up, who knows what might happen?"

"But—" the President said, his jaw dropping.

COUNTING THE COST

131

He'd aged a decade since he stepped off the porch.
Hormonal courage abandoned him to reaction and
remembrance. "But I must. But I promised them,
Drescher, and if I don't—"

His voice would probably have broken off there
anyway, but a bellow from the courtyard in thun-
derous synchrony smothered all sound within for a
moment.

"Pick him up, then, " said Eunice Delcorio in a
voice as clear as a sapphire laser. "You four—pick
him up and follow. We'll give them their scrap of
bone."

She strode toward the door, the motion of her
legs a devouring flame across the intaglio.

Berne screamed as the soldiers lifted him. Be-
cause he was screaming, no one heard Tyi Koopman
say in a choked voice, "Lady, you can't—"

But of course they could. And Tyi had done the
same or worse, checking out suspicious move-
ments with gunfire, knowing full well that nine
chances in ten, the victims were going to be civil-
ians trying to get back home half an hour after
curfew. . . .

He'd never have spent one of his own men this
way; and he'd never serve under an officer who
did.

Colonel Drescher threw open the door himself,
though he stood back from the opening with a
care that was more than getting out of the way of
the President's wife.

Tyi stepped out beside her, because he'd made
it his job ... or Hammer had made it his job . . .
and who in blazes cared, he was there and the
animal snarl of the mob brought answering rage to
the Slammer's mind and washed some of the sour
taste from his mouth.

132

David Drake

The Guardsmen in azure uniforms and Berne in
green made a contrast as brilliant as a parrot's
plumage as they manhandled the prefect to the
railing under the glare of lights. Floods were trained
from at least three locations in the courtyard now,
turned high; but that was all right, they needed to
watch this, sure they did.

Eunice cried something inaudible but imperi-
ous. She gestured out over the railing. The soldi-
ers looked at one another.

Beme was screaming wordlessly. His eyes were
closed, but tears poured from beneath the lids.
He had fouled himself in his panic. The smell
added the only element necessary to make the
porch a microcosm of Hell.

Eunice gestured again. The Guards threw their
prisoner toward the courtyard.

Berne grabbed the railing with both hands as he
went over. His legs flailed without the organiza-
tion needed to boost him back onto the porch, but
his hands clung like claws of cast bronze.

Eunice gave a furious order that was no more
than a grimace and a quick motion of her lips.
Two of the soldiers tried gingerly to push Berne
away. The prefect twisted his head and bit the
hands of one. His eyes were open now and as mad
as those of a back-ward psychotic. Bottles and
stones began to fly from the crowd, clashing on
the rail and floor of the porch,

The Guardsmen drew back into a huddle in the
doorway. The man who still carried his rifle raised
it one-handed to shield his face.

A bottle shattered on Tyi's breastplate. He didn't
hear the shot that was Bred a moment later, but
the howl of a light slug ricocheting from the wall
cut through even the roar of the crowd.

COUNTING THE COST         133

"Get inside!" Tyi's speakers bellowed to Eunice
Delcorio as he stepped sideways to the railing
where Berne thrashed. Tyi hammered the man's
knuckles with the butt of his submachinegun. One
stroke, two—bone cracked—

Three and the prefect's screaming changed note.
His broken left hand slipped and his right hand
opened. Berne's throat made a sound like a siren
as he fell ten meters to the mob waiting to receive
him.

Tyi turned. If the Guardsmen had still been
blocking the doorway, he might have shot them
. . . but they'd fled inside and Eunice Delcorio
was sweeping after them. Her head was regally
high, and she was ignoring the streak of blood
over one cheekbone where a stone had cut her.

Tyi turned for a last look into the courtyard.
The rioters were passing Berne hand to hand,
over their heads, like a bit of green algae seen
sliding through the gut of a paramecium. There
was greater motion also; the mob was shifting
back—only a compression in the crowd at the
moment, but soon to turn into real movement that
would clear the courtyard.

They were leaving, now that they had their
bone.

As the City Prefect was passed along, those
nearest were ripping bits away. For the moment,
the bits were mostly clothing.

Tyi stepped into the Consistory Room and
slammed the door behind him hard enough to
shatter a panel that hadn't been armored. He left
his faceshield down, because if none of them could
see his expression, he could pretend that he wasn't
really here.

"Lieutenant Desoix," said Major Borodin. He

134 David Drake

wasn't speaking loudly, but no one else in the
room was speaking at all. "Gun Three needs to be
withdrawn. Will you handle that at once."

The battery commander's face looked like a
mirror of what Tyi thought was on his own
features.

"Nobody's withdrawing," said President Delcorio.
He had his color back, and he stroked his hands
together briskly as if to warm them. His eyes
shifted like a sparkling Bre and lighted on the
Guards colonel. The hands stopped.

"Colonel Drescher," Delcorio said crisply. "I
want your men on combat footing at once. Don't
you have some other sort of uniforms? Like those."

One spade-broad hand gestured toward Tyi in
khaki and armor. "Something suitable. This isn't a
parade. We're at war. War."

"Well, I—" Drescher began. Everyone in the
room was in a state of shock, hammered by events
into a state that made them ready to be pressed in
any direction by a strong personality.

For a moment, until the next stimulus came
along.

"Well, get on with it!" the President snapped.
While the squad of gay uniforms was just shifting
toward the hall door, Delcorio's attention had al-
ready flashed across the other faces in the Consis-
tory Room.

And found very few.

"Where's—" Delcorio began. "Where's—" His
voice rose, driven by an emotion that was either
fury or panic—and perhaps had not yet decided
which it would be.

"Sir," said one of the Chastains, stepping for-
ward to take the President by the hand. "Thorn
and I will—"

COUNTING THE COST         135

"You!" Delcorio screamed. "What are you doing
here?"

"Sir," said Thorn Chastain with the same hopeful-
puppy expression as his brother. "We know you'll
weather this—"

"You're spying, aren't you?" Delcorio cried, slap-
ping at the offered hands as if they were beasts
about to bite him. "Get out, don't you think I
know it!"

"Sir—" said the two together in blank amaze-
ment.

The President's nephew Pedro stepped between
the Chastain's and Delcorio. "Go on!" he snarled,
looking like a bulldog barking at a pair of gangling
storks. "We don't need you here. Get out\'

"But—" Richie Chastain attempted helplessly.
Pedro, as broadly-built as his uncle, shoved the
other men toward the door.

They fled in a swirl of robes and words whim-
pered to one another or to fate.

"You there," the President continued briskly.
"Dowell. You'll have the additional troops in place
by noon tomorrow. Do you understand? I don't
care if they have to loot shops for their meals,
they'll he here."

Delcorio spoke with an alert dynamism. It was
hard to imagine that the same man had been on
the edge of violent madness a moment before, and
in a funk brief minutes still earlier.

Dowell saluted with a puzzled expression. He
mumbled something to his aides. The three of
them marched out the hall door without looking
backward.

If they caught the President's eye again, he
might hold them.

"And you. Major Borodin, you aren't going to

136 David Drake

strip our city of its protection against the Christ-
deniers," Delcorio said as he focused back on the
battery commander.

The President should have forgotten the busi-
ness of moving the gun—so much had gone on in
the moments since. He hadn't forgotten, though.
There was a mind inside that skull, not just a
furnace of emotions.

If John Delcorio were as stupid as he was er-
ratic, Tyi might have been able to figure out what
in the Lord's name he ought best to be doing.

"Do you understand?" Delcorio insisted, point-
ing at the battery commander with two blunt fin-
gers in a gesture as threatening as anything short
of a gun muzzle could be.

"Yes sir," replied Major Borodin, his voice as
stiff as the brace in which he held his body. "But I
must tell you that I'm obeying under protest, and
when I contact my superiors—"

"You needn't tell me anything, mercenary," the
President interrupted without even anger to leaven
the contempt in his words. "You need only do
your job and collect your pay—which I assure
you, your superiors show no hesitation in doing
either."

"John," said Eunice Delcorio with a shrug that
dismissed everything that was going on around
her at the moment. "I'm going to call my brother
again. They said they couldn't raise him when I
tried earlier."

"Yes, I'll talk to him myself," the President
agreed, falling in step beside the short woman as
he headed toward the door to their private apart-
ments. "He'd have nothing but a ten-hectare share-
crop if it weren't for me. If he thinks he can duck
his responsibilities now. ..."

COUNTING THE COST

137

Anne," Desoix said in a low voice as Eunice's
aide hesitated. She looked from her mistress to
the UDB officer—and stayed

Pedro Delcorio raised an eyebrow, then nodded
to the others as he followed his uncle out of the
Consistory Room. There were only four of them
left: the three mercenaries and Desoix's lady-friend.

The four of them, and the smell of fear.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Let's get out of here," Koopman said.

Charles Desoix's heart leaped in agreement—
then bobbed back to normalcy when he realized
that the Slammers officer meant only to get out of
the Consistory Room, onto the porch where the
air held fewer memories of the immediate past.

Sure, Koopman was the stolid sort who proba-
bly didn't realize how badly things were going
. . . and Charles Desoix wasn't going to support a
mutiny, wasn't going to desert his employers be-
cause of trouble that hadn't—if you wanted to be
objective about it—directly threatened the United
Defense Batteries at all.

It was hard to be objective when you were
surrounded by a mob of perhaps fifty thousand
people, screaming for blood and quite literally
tearing a man to pieces.

COUNTING THE COST

141

David Drake

140

They were welcome to Berne—he was just as
crooked as the bull-horn had claimed. But. . .

"What did you say, Charles?" Anne asked—which
meant that Desoix had been speaking things that
he shouldn't even have been thinking.

He hugged her reflexively. She jumped, also by
reflex because she didn't try to draw further away
when she thought about the situation. Major
Borodin didn't appear to notice—or to care.

The courtyard was deserted, but the mob had
left behind an amazing quantity of litter—bottles,
boxes, and undeBnable scraps; even a cloak, scar-
let and apparently whole in the light of the wall
sconces. It was as if Desoix were watching a beach
just after the tide had ebbed.

Across the river, fires burned from at least a
score of locations. Voices echoed, harsh as the
occasional grunt of shots.

Like the tide, the mob would return.

"We've got to get out of here," Desoix mused

aloud.

"She'll leave," Anne said with as much prayer
in her voice as certainty. "If she stays, they'll do
terrible things to. . . She knows that, she won't

let it happen."

"Colonel wants me to hold if there's any chance
to keep Delcorio in power," Koopman said to the
night. There was a snicker of sound as he raised
his faceshield, but he did not look at his compan-
ions as he spoke. "What's your bet on that,

Charles?"

"Something between zip and zero," Desoix said.

He was careful not to let his eyes fall on Anne or
the major when he spoke; but it was no time to

tell polite lies.

" 'bout what I figured too," the Slammers offi-

cer said mildly. He was leaning on his forearms
while his fingers played with a dimple in the rail.
After a moment, Desoix realized that the dimple
had been hammered there by a bullet.

"I don't see any way we can abandon our posi-
tions in defiance of a direct order," Major Borodin
said.

The battery commander set his fingers in his
thinning hair and squeezed firmly, as though that
would change the blank rotation of his thoughts.
He took his hands away and added hurriedly to
the Slammers officer, "Of course, that has nothing
to do with you. Captain. My problem is that I
have to defend the city, so I'm in default of the
contract if I move my guns. Well, Gun Three. But
that's the only one that seems to be in danger."

"Charles, you'll protect her if we leave, won't
you?" asked Anne in sudden fierceness. She pulled
on Desoix's shoulder until he turned to face her
worries directly. "You won't let them have her to,
to escape yourself, will you?"

He cupped her chin with his left hand. "Anne,"
he said. "If Eunice and the President just say the
word, we'll have them safely out of here within
the hour. Won't we, Tyi?" he added as he turned
to the Slammers officer.

"Colonel says, maybe just a week or two,"
Koopman said unexpectedly. When his index fin-
ger burnished the bullet scar, the muzzle of his
own slung weapon chinked lightly against the rail.
"Suppose Delcorio could hold out a week?"

"Suppose we could hold out five minutes if they
come back hard?" Desoix snapped, furious at the
infantryman's response when finally it looked as if
there were a chance to clear out properly. There
wasn't any doubt that Eunice Delcorio could bend




142 David Drake

her husband to her own will. She was inflexible,
with none of John Delcorio's flights and falterings.

If Anne worked on her mistress, it could all
turn out reasonably. Exile for Delcorio on his
huge private estates; safety for Anne McGill, whose
mistress wasn't the only one with whom the mob
would take its pleasure.

And release for the mercenaries who were at
the moment trapped in this place by ridiculous
orders.

"Yeah," said Koopman with a heavy sigh. He
turned at last to face his companions. "Well, I'm
not going to get any of my boys wasted for nothing
at all. We aren't paid to be heroes. Guess I'll go
down and tell Jack to pack up to move at daylight."

The Slammers officer quirked a grin to Desoix
and nodded to Anne and the major as he stepped
toward the door.

"Tyi, wait ..." Desoix said as a word rang
echoes. "Can you. . . Major, how many men do
you have downstairs still?"

Borodin shrugged out of the brown study into
which he had fallen as he watched the fires burn-
ing around him. "Men?" he repeated. "Senter and
Lachere is all. We're still short—"

"Tyi, can you, ah—" Desoix went on. He paused,
because he didn't want to use the wrong word,
since what he was about to ask was no part of the
Slammers' business.

"I need to get down to the warehouses on the
corniche," Desoix said, rephrasing the question to
make the request personal rather than military.
"All I've got here are the battery clerks and they're
not, ah, trained for this. Could you detail a few
men, five or six, to go along with me in case there
was a problem?"

COUNTING THE COST         143

"Lieutenant," Borodin said gruffly. "What do—"
"Sir," Desoix explained as the plan drew itself
in glowing lines in his mind, the alternative sites
and intersecting fields of fire. "When we get Gun
Five set up, we can move Three a kilometer east
on the corniche and still be in compliance. Five
on the outskirts of town near Pestini's Chapel,
Three on Guizer Head—and we've got everything
Delcorio can demand under the contract."

"Without stationing any of our men down . . . ."
Borodin said as the light dawned. He might have
intended to point toward the plaza, but as his gaze
turned out over the city, his voice trailed off instead.
Both UDB officers stared at Tyi Koopman.
Koopman shrugged. "I'll go talk to the guys,"
he said.

And they had to be satisfied with that, because
he said nothing more as he walked back into the
building.

CHAPTER SEVEriTEEN

Tyi's functional company had taken over the
end of a second-floor hallway abandoned by the
entourage of six noble guests of the President.
The hundred troopers had a great deal more room
than there'd been in the City Office billet—or any
normal billet.

And, though they'd lost their personal gear when
the office building burned, the nobles' hasty de-
parture meant that the soldiers could console them-
selves for the objects they'd lost across the river.
Jewelry and rich fabrics peeked out the edges of
khaki uniforms as Tyi strode past the corridor
guard and into the billeting area.

Too bad about Aunt Sandra's jelly, though. He
could turn over a lot of rich folks' closets and not
find anything to replace that.

Troopers with makeshift bedrolls in the hallway
were jumping to attention because somebody else

145

146

David Drake                                       COUNTING THE COST

147

had. The heads that popped from doorways were
emptying the adjoining guest suites as effectively
as if Tyi had shouted, "Fall in!"

Which was about the last thing he wanted.
"Settle down," he said with an angry wave of
his arm, as if to brush away the commotion. They
were all tight. The troops didn't know much, and
that made them rightly nervous.

Tyi Koopman knew a good deal more, and what
he'd seen from the porch wasn't the sort of knowl-
edge to make anybody feel better about the

situation.

"Captain?" said Jack Scratchard as he muscled
his way into the hall.

Tyi motioned the sergeant major over. He keyed
his connmo helmet with the other hand and said
loudly—most of the men didn't have their helmets
on, and only the senior non-corns were fitted with
implants—"At present, I'm expecting us to get the
rest of the night's sleep here, but maybe not be
around much after dawn. When I know more,
you'll hear."

Scratchard joined him. The two men stepped
out of the company area for the privacy they
couldn't find within it. Tyi paused and called over
his shoulder, "Use a little common sense in what
you try to pack, all right?"

He glared at a corporal with at least a dozen
vibrantly-colored dresses in her arms.

The remaining six suites off the hallway were as
empty as those Scratchard had appropriated. He
must have decided to keep the troops bunched up
a little under the present circumstances, and Tyi
wasn't about to argue with him.

The doors of all the suites had been forced. As
they stepped into the nearest to talk, Tyi noticed

that the richly-appointed room had been turned
over with great care, although none of his soldiers
were at present inside continuing their looting.

Loot and mud were the two constants of line
service. If you couldn't get used to either one,
you'd better find a rear-echelon slot somewhere.

"Talk to the Old Man?" Scratchard muttered
when he was sure they were alone in the tumbled
wreckage.

Tyi shrugged. "Not yet," he said. "Sent an all-
clear through open channels, is all. It's mostly
where we left it earlier, and I don't want Central—"
he wasn't comfortable saying "Hammer" or even
"the Old Man" "—thinking they got to wet-nurse
me."

He paused, and only then got to the real busi-
ness. "Desoix—the UDB Number Two," he said.
"He wants a few guys to cover his back while he
gets a calliope outa storage down to the seafront.
Got everybody but a couple clerks out with the
other tubes."

The sergeant major knuckled his scalp, the ridge
where his helmet rode. "What's that do for us, the
other calliope?" he asked.

"Bloody zip," Tyi answered with a shrug. He
was in charge, but this was the sort of thing that
the sergeant major had to be brought into.

Besides, nothing he'd heard about Ripper Jack
Scratchard suggested that there'd be an argument
on how to proceed.

"What it does," Tyi amplified, "is let them with-
draw the gun they got down by the plaza. Desoix
doesn't like having a crew down there, the way
things're going."

Scartchard frowned. "Why can't he—" he began.

"Don't ask," Tyi said with a grimace.




148

COUNTING THE COST         149

David Drake

The question made him think of things he'd
rather forget. He thumbed in what might have
been the direction of the Consistory Room and
said, "It got real strange up there. Real strange."

He shook his head to rid it of the memories and
added, "You know, he's the one I finally raised to
get us into here before it really dropped in the
pot. None of the locals were going to do squat for

us.

"Doing favors is a good way t' get your ass
blown away," Scratehard replied, sourly but with-
out real emphasis. "But sure. 111 look up five guys
that'd like t' see the outside again."

He grinned around the clothing strewn about
them from forced clothes presses, "Don't guess
it'll be too hard to look like civilians, neither."

"Ah," said Tyi. He was facing a blank wall.
"Thought I might go along, lead 'em, you know."

"Like hell," said the sergeant major with a grin
that seemed to double the width of his grizzled
face. "J might, except for my knees. You're going
to stay bloody here, in charge like you're sup-
posed t' be."

His lips pursed. "Kekkonan '11 take 'em. He

won't buy into anything he can't buy out of."

Tyi clapped the non-corn on the shoulder. "Round
'em up," he said as he stepped into the hall. "I'll
tell Desoix. This is the sort of thing that should've
been done, you know, last week."

As he walked down the hall, the Slammers offi-
cer keyed his helmet to learn where Desoix was at
the moment. Putting this sort of information on
open channels didn't seem like a great idea, un-
less you had a lot more confidence in the Bamberg
army than Tyi Koopman did.

Asking for volunteers in a business like this was

a waste of time. They were veteran troops, these;

men and women who would parrot "never volun-
teer" the way they'd been told by a thousand
generations of previous veterans . . . but who knew
in their hearts that it was boredom that killed.

You couldn't live in barracks, looking at the
same faces every waking minute, without wanting
to empty a gun into one of them just to make a
change.

So the first five soldiers Scratehard asked would
belt on their battle gear with enthusiasm, hitching
all the time about "When's it somebody else's turn
to take the tough one?" They didn't want to die,
but they didn't think they would . . . and just
maybe they would have gone anyway, whatever
they thought the risk was, because it was too easy
to imagine the ways a fort like the Palace of Gov-
ernment could became a killing bottle.

They were Hammer's Slammers. They'd done
that to plenty others over the years.

Tyi didn't have any concern that he'd be able to
hand Desoix his bodyguards, primed and ready
for whatever the fire-shot night offered.

And he knew that he'd give three grades in rank
to be able to go along with them himself.




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The porch off the Consistory Room didn't have
a view of anything Tyi wanted to see—the littered
courtyard and, across the river, the shell of the
City Offices whose windows were still outlined by
the sullen glow in its interior. The porch was as
close as he could come to being outside, though,
and that was sufficient recommendation at the
moment.

The top of the House of Grace was barely visi-
ble above the south wing of the Palace. The ghost
of firelight from the office building painted the
eyes and halo of the sculptured Bishop Trimer
also.

Tyi didn't want company, so when the door slid
open behind him, he turned his whole body. That
way his slung submachinegun pointed, an "acci-
dent" that he knew would frighten away anyone
except his own troopers—whom he could order to
leave him alone.

151

152

COUNTING THE COST         153

David Drake

Lieutenant Desoix's woman stopped with a lit-
tle gasp in her throat, but she didn't back away.

"Via!" Tyi said in embarrassment, lifting the
gun muzzle high and cursing himself in his head
for the dumb idea. One of those dandies, he'd
figured, or a smirking servant . . . except that the
President's well-dressed advisors seemed to have
pretty well disappeared, and the flunkies also.

Servants were getting thin on the ground, too.

"If you'd like to be alone . . . ?" the woman
said, either polite or real perceptive.

"Naw, you're fine," Tyi said, feeling clumsy and
a lot the same way as he had a few months ago.
Then he'd been to visit a girl he might have
married if he hadn't gone off for a soldier the way
he had. "You're, ah—Lady Eunice's friend, aren't

you?"

"That too," said the woman drily. She took the

place Tyi offered at the railing and added, "My
name's Anne McGill. And I believe you're Cap-
tain Koopman?"

"Tyi," the soldier said. "Rank's not for—" He

gestured. "Out here."

She didn't look as big as she had inside. Maybe
because he had his armor on now that he was

standing close to her.

Maybe because he'd recently watched five big
men put looted cloaks on over their guns and
armor to go off with Lieutenant Desoix.

"Have you known Charles long?" she asked,
calling Tyi back from a stray thought that had the
woman wriggling out of her dark blue dress and

offering herself to him.

He shook his head abruptly to clear the thought.

Not his type, and he sure wasn't hers.
"No," he said, forgetting that she thought he'd

answered with the shake of his head. "I just got in
today, you see. I don't recall we ever served with
the UDB before. Anyhow, mostly you don't see
much of anybody's people but your own guys."

It wasn't even so much that he was horny.
Screwing was just something he could really lose
himself in.

Killing was that way too.

"It's dangerous out there, isn't it?" she said.
She wasn't looking at the city because her face was
lifted too high. From the way her capable hands
washed one another, she might well have been
Praying.

"Out there?" Tyi repeated bitterly. "Via, it's
dangerous here, and we can't anything but bloody
twiddle our thumbs."

Anne winced, as much at the violence as the
words themselves.

Instantly contrite, Tyi said, "But you know, if
things stay cool a little longer—no spark, you know,
setting things off. ... It may all work out."

He was repeating what Colonel Hammer had
told him a few minutes before, through the laser
communicator now slung at his belt again. To focus
on the satellite from here, he'd had to aim just
over the top of the House of Grace. . . .

"When the soldiers from Two come, there'll be
a spark, won't there?" she asked. She was looking
at Tyi now, though he didn't expect she could see
any more of his face in the darkness than he could
of her. Firelight winked on her necklace of trans-
lucent beads.

The scent she wore brought another momentary
rush of lust.

"Maybe not," he said, comfortable talking to
somebody who might possibly believe the story he




COUNTING THE COST

155

David Drake

154

could never credit in discussions with himself.
"Nobody really wants that kind a' trouble."

Not the army, that was for sure. They weren't

going to push things.

"Delcorio makes a few concessions—he already
gave 'em Beme, after all. The troops march around
with their bayonets all polished to look pretty.
And then everybody kisses and makes up."

So that Tyi Koopman could get back to the
business of a war whose terms he understood.

"I hope ..." Anne was murmuring.

She might not have finished the phrase even if
they hadn't been interrupted by the door sliding

open behind them.

Tyi didn't recognize Eunice Delcorio at first.
She was wearing a dress of mottled gray tones and
he'd only seen her in scarlet in the past. With the
fabric's luminors powered-up, the garment would
have shone with a more-than-metallic luster; but
now it had neither shape nor color, and Eunice's
voice glittered like that of a brittle ghost as she
said, "Well, my dear, I wouldn't have interrupted
you if I'd known you were entertaining a gentle-
man. "

"Ma'am," Tyi said, bracing to attention. Eunice
sounded playful, but so was a cat with a field
mouse—and he didn't know what she could do to
him if she wanted, it wasn't in the normal chain of

command. . . .

"Captain Koopman and I were discussing the
situation, Eunice," Anne said evenly. If she were
embarrassed, she hid the fact; and there was no
trace of fear in her voice. "You could have called

me."

Eunice toyed with the hundred-millimeter wand
that could either page or track a paired unit. "I
thought I'd find you instead, my dear," she said.

The President's wife wasn't angry, but there
was fierce emotion beneath the surface sparkle.
The wand slipped from her fingers to the floor.

Tyi knelt swiftly—you don't bend when you're
wearing a ceramic back-and-breast—and rose as
quickly with the wand offered in his left hand.

Eunice batted the little device out into the court-
yard. It was some seconds before it hit the stones
below.

"I told the captain," Anne said evenly, "that I
was concerned about your safety in view of the
trouble that's occurring here in the city."

"Well, that should be over very shortly, shouldn't
it?" Eunice said. Nothing in her voice hinted at
the way her body had momentarily lost control.
"Marshall Dowell has gone to Two himself to ex-
pedite movement of the troops."

The technical phrase came from her full lips
with a glitter that made it part of a social event.

Which, in a manner of speaking, it was.

"Blood and Martyrs," Tyi said. He wasn't sure
whether or not he'd spoken the curse aloud, and
at this point he didn't much care.

He straightened. "Ma'am," he said, nodding
stiffly to the President's wife. "Ah, rna'am," with a
briefer nod to Anne.

He strode back into the building without wait-
ing for formal leave. Over his shoulder, he called,
"I need to go check on the dispositions of my
troops."

Especially the troops out there with Desoix, in
a city that the local army had just abandoned to
the rebels.




CHAPTER rilMETEEn

There were at least a dozen voices in the street
outside, bellowing the bloodiest hymn Charles
Desoix had ever heard. They were moving on,
strolling if not marching, but the five Slammers
kept their guns trained on the door in case some-
body tried to join them inside the warehouse.

What bothered Desoix particularly was the clear
soprano voice singing the descant, "Sew their man-
hood to our flags. ..."

"All right," he said, returning his attention to
the business of reconnecting the fusion powerplant
which had been shut down for shipping. "Switch
on."

Nothing happened.

Desoix, half inside the gun carriage's rear access
port, straightened to find out what was happen-
ing. Lachere, the clerk he'd brought along be-
cause he needed another pair of hands, leaned

157

158

COUNTING THE COST         159

David Drake

hopefully from the open driver's compartment for-
ward. "It's on, sir," he said.

"Main and Start-up are on?" Desoix demanded.

And either because they hadn't been or because
a contact had been a little sticky, he heard the
purr of the fusion bottle beginning to bring up its
internal temperature and pressure.

Success. In less than an hour—

"The representative of Hammer's Regiment has
an urgent message," said Control's emotionless

voice. "Shall I patch him through?"

"Affirmative," Desoix said, blanking his mind so
that it wouldn't flash him a montage of disaster as
it always did when things were tight and the unex-
pected occurred.

Wouldn't show him Anne McGill in the arms of

a dozen rioters, not dead yet and not to die for a

long time. . . .

"We got a problem," Koopman said, as if his flat

voice and the fact of his call hadn't already proved
that. "Dowell just did a bunk to Two. I don't see
the situation holding twenty-four hours. Over."
Maybe not twenty-four minutes.
"Is the Executive Guard ..." Desoix began.
While he paused to choose his phrasing, Xoop-
man interrupted with, "They're still here, but
they're all in their quarters with the corridor
blocked. I figure they're taking a vote. It's that
sorta outfit. And I don't figure the vote's going any

way I'd want it to. Over."

"All right," Desoix said, glancing toward the
pressure gauge that he couldn't read in this light
anyway. "All right, we'll have the gun drivable in
thirty, that's three-oh, minutes. We'll—"

"Negative. Negative."

"Listen," the UDB officer said with his tone
sharpening. "We're this far and we're not—"

Kekkonan, the sergeant in charge of the detach-
ment of Slammers, tapped Desoix's elbow for at-
tention and shook his head. "He said negative,"
Kekkonan said. "Sir."

The sergeant was getting the full conversation
through his mastoid implant. Desoix didn't have
to experiment to know it would be as much use to
argue with a block of mahogany as with the dark,
flat face of the non-corn.

"Go ahead, Tyi," Desoix said with an inward
sigh. "Over."

"You're not going to drive a calliope through
the streets tonight, Charles," Koopman said. "Come
dawn, maybe you can withdraw the one you got
down there, maybe you just spike it and pull your
guys out. This is save-what-you-got time, friend.
And my boys aren't going to be part a' some fool
stunt that sparks the whole thing off."

Kekkonan nodded. Not that he had to.

"Roger, we're on the way," Desoix said. He
didn't have much emotion left to give the words,
because his thoughts were tied up elsewhere.

Via, she was married. It was her bloody hus-
band's business to take care of her, wasn't it?




CHAPTER TWENTY

"Go," said Desoix without emphasis.
Kekkonan and another of the Slammers flared
from the door in opposite directions. Their cloaks—
civilian and of neutral colors, green and gray—
fluffed widely over their elbows, hiding the sub-
machineguns in their hands.

"Clear," muttered Kekkonan. Desoix stepped
out in the middle of the small unit. He felt as
much a burden to his guards as the extra maga-
zines that draped them beneath the loose garments.

It remained to be seen if either he or the am-
munition would be of any service as they marched
back to the Palace.

"Don't remember that," Lachere said, looking
to the west.

"Keep moving," Kekkonan grunted. There was
enough tension in his voice to add a threat of
violence to the order.

161

162            David Drake

One of the warehouses farther down the cor-
niche—half a kilometer—had been set on fire.
The flames reflected pink from the clouds and as a
bloody froth from sea foam in the direction of
Nevis Island. The boulevard was clogged by riot-
ers watching the fire and jeering as they flung

bodies into it.

Desoix remembered the descant, but he clasped

Lachere's arm and said, "We weren't headed in

that direction anyway, were we?"

"Too bloody right," murmured one of the Slam-
mers, the shudder in his tone showing that he
didn't feel any better about this than the UDB

men did.

"Sergeant," Desoix said, edging close to Kek-

konan and wishing that the two of them shared a
command channel. "I think the faster we get off

the seafront, the better we'll be."

He nodded toward the space between the ware-
house they'd left and the next building—not so
much an alley as a hedge against surveyors' errors.
"Great killing ground," Kekkonan snorted.
Flares rose from the plaza and burst in metallic
showers above the city. Shots followed, tracers
and the cyan flicker of powergun bolts aimed at
the drifting sparks. There was more shooting, some
of it from building roofs. Rounds curved in flat

arcs back into the streets and houses.

A panel in the clear reflection of the House of
Grace shattered into a rectangular scar.

"Right you are," said Kekkonan as he stepped

into the narrow passage.

They had to move in single file. Desoix saw to it

that he was the second man in the squad. Nobody

objected.

He'd expected Tyi to give him infantrymen.

COUNTING THE COST          163

Instead, all five of these troopers came from vehi-
cle crews, tanks and combat cars. The weapon of
choice under this night's conditions was a sub-
machinegun, not the heavier, 2 cm semi-automatic
shoulder weapon of Hammer's infantry. Koopman
or his burly sergeant major had been thinking
when they picked this team.

Desoix's submachinegun wasn't for show either.
Providing air defense for front-line units meant
you were right in the middle of it when things
went wrong . . . and they'd twice gone wrong
very badly to a battery Charles Desoix crewed or
captained.

Though it shouldn't come to that. The seven of
them were just another group in a night through
which armed bands stalked in a truce that would
continue so long as there was an adequacy of
weaker prey.

The warehouses fronted the bay and the space-
port across the channel, but their loading docks
were in the rear. Across the mean street were
tenements. When Desoix's unit shrugged its way
out of the cramped passage, they found every one
of the windows facing them lighted to display a
cross as large as the sashes would allow.

"Party time," one of the troopers muttered.

Some of the residents were watching the events
from windows or rooftops, but most of them were
down in the street in amorphous clots like those of
white cells surrounding bacteria. There were shouts,
both shrill and guttural, but Desoix couldn't dis-
tinguish any of the words.

Not that he had any trouble understanding what
was going on without hearing the words. There
were screams coming from the center of one of
the groups ... or perhaps Desoix's mind created




164

David Drake COUNTING THE COST 165

the sound it knew would be there if the victim
still had the strength to make it,

A dozen or so people were on the loading dock
to the unit's right, drinking and either having sex
or making as good an attempt at it as their drink-
ing permitted. Somebody threw a bottle that
smashed close enough to Kekkonan that the ser-
geant's cloak flapped as he turned; but there didn't
appear to have been real malice involved. Perhaps
not even notice.
Party time.

"All right," Kekkonan said just loudly enough
for the soldiers with him to hear. "There's an alley
across the way, a little to the left. Stay loose, don't
run . . . and don't bunch up, just in case. Go."

Except for Lachere, they were all veterans; but
they were human as well. They didn't run, but
they moved much faster than the careless saunter
everybody knew was really the safest pace.

And they stayed close, close enough that one
burst could have gotten them all.

Nothing happened except that a score of voices
followed them with varied suggestions, and a
woman naked to the waist stumbled into Charles
Desoix even though he tried his best to dodge

her.

She was so drunk that she didn't notice the

contact, much less that she'd managed to grab the
muzzle of his submachinegun for an instant before

she caromed away.

The alley stank of all the garbage the rains
hadn't washed away; somebody, dead drunk or
dead, was sprawled just within the mouth of it.

Desoix had never been as eager to enter a bed-
room as he was that alley.

"Ah, sir," one of the Slammers whispered as the

foetor and its sense of protection enclosed them.
"Those people, they was rag-heads?"

The victims, he meant; and he was asking Desoix
because Desoix was an officer who might know
about things like that.

The Lord knew he did.

"Maybe," Desoix said.

They had enough room here to walk two abreast,
though the lightless footing was doubtful and caused
men to bump. "Landlords—building superinten-
dents. The guy you owe money to, the guy who
screwed your daughter and then married the trol-
lop down the hall."

"But . . . ?" another soldier said.

"Anybody you're quick enough to point a dozen
of your neighbors at," Desoix explained forcefully.
"Before he points them at you. Party time."

The alley was the same throughout its length,
but its other end opened onto more expensive
facades and, across the broad street, patches of
green surrounding the domed mass of the cathedral.

Traffic up the steps to the cathedral's arched
south entrance was heavy and raucous. The street
was choked by ground vehicles, some of them
trying to move but even these blocked by the
many which had been parked in the travel lanes.

"Hey there!" shouted the bearded leader of the
group striding from the doorway just to the left of
the alley. He wore two pistols in belt holsters; the
cross on the shoulder of his red cape was perfunc-
tory. "Where 're you going?"

"Back!" said Kekkonan over his shoulder, twist-
ing to face the sudden threat.

Even before the one-syllable order was spoken,
the torchlight and echoing voices up the alley
behind them warned the unit that they couldn't




166

David Drake

retreat the way they had come without shooting

their way through.

Which would leave them in a street with five
hundred or a thousand aroused residents who had
pretty well used up their local entertainment.

"Hey!" repeated the leader. The gang that had
exited the building behind him were a dozen more
of the same, differing only in sex, armament, and
whether or not they carried open bottles.

Most of them did.

They'd seen Kekkonan's body armor—and maybe
his gun—when he turned toward them.

"Hey," Desoix said cheerfully as he stepped in
front of the sergeant. "You know us. We're

soldiers."

He'd been stationed in Bamberg City long
enough that his Spanish had some of the local
inflections that weren't on the sleep-learning cube.
He wouldn't pass for a local, but neither did his
voice put him instantly in the foreign—victim—

category to these thugs.

"From the Palace?" asked the leader. His hand
was still on a pistol, but his face had relaxed
because Desoix was relaxed.

Desoix wasn't sure his legs were going to hold
him up. He'd been this frightened before, but
that was when he was under fire and didn't have
anything to do except crouch low and swear he'd
resign and go home if only the Lord let him live

this once.
"Sure," he said aloud, marveling at how well his

voice worked. "Say, chickie—got anything there

for a thirsty man?"
"Up your ass with it!" a red-caped female shrieked

in amazement.

All the men in the group bellowed laughter.

COUNTING THE COST         167

One of them offered Desoix a flask of excellent
wine, an off-planet vintage as good as anything
served in the Palace.

"You're comin' to the cathedral, then?" the leader
said as Desoix drank, tasting the liquid but feeling
nothing. "Well, come on, then. The meeting's
started by now or I'll be buggered."

"Not by me, Easton!" one of his henchmen
chortled.

"Come on, boys," Desoix called, waving his
unit out of the alley before there was a collision
with the mob following. "We're already late for
the meeting!"

Thank the Lord, the troopers all had the disci-
pline or common sense to obey without question.
Hemmed by the gang they'd joined perforce, sur-
rounded by hundreds of other citizens wearing
crosses over a variety of clothing, Desoix's unit
tramped meekly up the steps of the cathedral.

Just before they entered the building, Desoix
took the risk of muttering into his epaulet mike,
"Tyi, we're making a necessary detour, but we're
still coming back. If the Lord is with us, we're still
coming back."

CHAPTER TWEMTY-OriE

The nave was already full. Voices echoing in
debate showed that the gang leader had been
correct about the meeting having started. Hospital
orderlies with staves guarded the entrance—keeping
order rather than positioned to stop an attack.

Bishop Trimer and those working with him knew
there would be no attack—until they gave the
order.

Easton blustered, but there was no bluffing the
white-robed men blocking the doorway. One of
the orderlies spoke into a radio with a belt-pack
power source, while the man next to him keyed a
hand-held computer. A hologram of the bearded
thug bloomed atop the computer in green light.

"Right, Easton," the guard captain said. "Left
stairs to the north gallery. You and your folks
make any trouble, we'll deal with it. Throw any-

169

170

David Drake                                       COUNTING THE COST

171

thing into the nave and you'll all decorate lamp

posts. Understood?"

"Hey, I'm important!" the gang boss insisted. "I
speak for the whole Seventeenth Ward, and I
belong down with the bosses on the floor!"

"Right now, you belong on the Red side of the
gallery," said the orderly. "Or out on your butts.

Take your pick."

"You'll regret this!" Easton cried as he shuffled
toward the indicated staircase. "I got friends! I'll
make it hot fer you!"

"Who're you?" the guard captain asked Charles
Desoix. His face was as grizzled as that of the
Slammers sergeant major; his eyes were as flat as

death.

If Desoix hadn't seen the platoon of orderlies
with assault rifles rouse from the ante-chamber
when the gang boss threatened, he would have
been tempted to turn back down the steps instead
of answering. He couldn't pick his choice of reali-
ties, though.

"We're soldiers," he said, leaving the details
fuzzy as he had before. "Ah—this isn't official, we
aren't, you see. We just thought we'd, ah ... be
ready ourselves to do our part . . . ."

He hoped that meant something positive to the
guard captain, without sounding so positive that
they'd wind up in the middle of real trouble.

The fellow with the radio was speaking into it as
his eyes locked with Desoix's. The UDB officer
smiled brightly. The guard captain was talking to
another of his men while both of them also looked

at Desoix.

"All right," the captain said abruptly. "There's
plenty of room in the south gallery. We're glad to

have more converts to the ranks of active righte-
ousness."

"We shoulda bugged out," muttered one of the
troopers as they mounted the helical stairs behind
Desoix.

"Keep your trap shut and do what the el-tee
says," Sergeant Kekkonan snarled back.

For good or ill, Charles Desoix was in command
now.

Given the sophistication of the commo unit the
orderly at the door held, Desoix didn't dare try to
report anything useful to those awaiting him back
in the Palace. He hoped Anne would have had
sense enough to flee the city before he got back to
the Palace.

Almost as much as another part of him prayed
that she would be waiting when he returned; be-
cause he was very badly going to need the relax-
ation she brought him.




CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In daytime the dome would have floated on
sunlight streaming through the forty arched win-      j
dows on which it was supported. The hidden floods
directed from light-troughs to reflect from the in-      '
ner surface were harsh and metallic by contrast,      ^
even though the metal was gold.

Desoix and his unit muscled their way to the      g
railing of colored marble overlooking the nave. It      |
might have been smarter to hang back against the       1
gallery windows, but they 'were big men and ag-       |
gressive enough to have found a career in institu-       g
tionalized murder.

They were standing close to the east end and
the hemicycle containing the altar, where the ma-
jor figures in the present drama now faced the
crowd of their supporters and underlings.

Between the two groups was a line of orderlies
kneeling shoulder to shoulder. Even by leaning

173

174

COUNTING THE COST         175

David Drake

over the rail, Desoix could not see the faces of
those on the altar dais.

But there were surprises in the crowd.
"That's Cerulio," Desoix said, nudging Kekkonan
to look at a sumptuously dressed man in the front
rank. His wife was with him, and the four men in
blue around them were surely liveried servants.
"He was in the Palace an hour ago. Said he was
going to check his townhouse, but that he'd be
back before morning."

"Don't know him," grunted Kekkonan. "But that
one, three places over—" he didn't point, which
reminded Desoix that pointing called attention to
both ends of the outstretched arm "—he's in the
adjutant general's staff, a colonel I'm pretty sure.
Saw him when we were trying to requisition

bunks."

Desoix felt a chill all the way up his spine.
Though it didn't change anything beyond what
they had already determined this night.

The man speaking wore white and a mitre, so
that even from above there could be no mistaking

Bishop Trimer.

"—wither away," his voice was saying. "Only in
the last resort would God have us loose the righ-
teous indignation that this so-called president has
aroused in our hearts, in the heart of every Chris-
tian on Bamberia."

One shot, thought Charles Desoix.

He couldn't see Trimer's face, but there was a
line of bare neck visible between mitre and chasu-
ble. No armor there, no way to staunch the blood
when a cyan bolt blasts a crater the size of a

clenched fist.

And no way for the small group of soldiers to

avoid being pulled into similarly fist-sized gobbets

when the mob took its revenge in the aftermath.
"Not our fight," Desoix muttered to himself.

He didn't have to explain that to any of his
companions. He was pretty sure that Sergeant
Kekkonan would kill him in an eye-blink if he
thought the UDB officer was about to sacrifice
them all.

"We will wait a day, in God's name," the Bishop
said. He was standing with his arms outstretched.

Trimer had a good voice and what was probably
a commanding manner to those who didn't see
him from above—like Charles Desoix and God,
assuming God was more than a step in Bishop
Trimer's pursuit of temporal power. He could al-
most have filled the huge church with his unaided
voice, and the strain of listening would have
quieted the crowd that was restive with excite-
ment and drink.

As it was, Trimer's words were relayed through
hundreds of speakers hidden in the pendentives
and among the acanthus leaves of the column
capitals. Multiple sources echoed and fought one
another, creating a busyness that encouraged whis-
pering and argument among the audience.

Desoix had been part of enough inter-unit staff
meetings to both recognize and explain the strain
that was building in the Bishop's voice. Trimer
was used to being in charge; and here, in his own
cathedral, circumstances had conspired to rob him
of the absolute control he normally exercised.

The man seated to Trimer's right got up. Like
the Bishop, he was recognizable by his clothing—a
red cape and a red beret in which a bird plume of
some sort bobbed when he moved his head.

The Bishop turned. The gallery opposite Desoix
exploded with cheers and cat-calls. Red-garbed




176 David Drake

spectators in the nave below were jumping, mak-
ing their capes balloon like bubbles boiling through
a thick red sauce, despite the efforts of the hospi-
tal orderlies keeping the two factions separate.

All the men on the dais were standing with
their hands raised. The noise lessened, then paused
in a great hiss that the pillared aisles drank.

"Ten minutes each, we agreed," one of the
faction leaders said to the Bishop in a voice ampli-
fied across the whole cathedral.

"Speak, then!" said the Bishop in a voice that
was short of being a snarl by as little as the com-
motion below had avoided being a full-fledged
riot.

Trimer and most of the others on the dais seated
themselves again, leaving the man in red to stand
alone. There was more cheering and, ominously,
boos and threats from Desoix's side of the hall.
Around the soldiers, orderlies fought a score of
violent struggles with thugs in black.

The man in red raised his hands again and
boomed, "Everybody siddown, curse it! We're
friends here, friends—"

When the sound level dropped minusculy, he
added, "Rich friends we're gonna be, every one of
us!"

The cheers were general loud enough to make
the light troughs wobble.

"Now all you know there's no bigger supporter
of the Bishop than I am," the gang boss continued
in a voice whose nasality was smoothed by the
multiple echoes. "But there's something else you
all know, too. I'm not the man to back off when I
got the hammer on some bastid neither."

He wasn't a stupid man. He forestalled the
cheers—and the threats from the opposing side of

COUNTING THE COST         177

the great room—that would have followed the

statement by waving his arms again for silence
even as he spoke.

"Now the way I sees it," he went on. "The way
anybody sees it—is we got the hammer on Delcorio.
So right now's the time we break 'is bloody neck
for 'im. Not next week or next bloody year when
somebody's cut another deal with 'im and he's got
the streets full a' bloody soldiers!"

In the tumult of agreement, Desoix saw a woman
wearing black cross-belts fight her way to the front
of the spectators' section and wave a note over the
heads of the line of orderlies.

The black-caped gang boss looked a question to
the commo-helmeted aide with him on the dais.
The aide shrugged in equal doubt, then obeyed
the nodded order to reach across the orderlies and
take the note from the woman's hand.

"Now the Bishop says," continued the man in
red, " 'give him a little time, he'll waste right
away and nobody gets hurt.' And that's fine, sure
. . . but maybe it's time a few a' them snooty
bastids does get hurt, right?"

The shouts of yes and kill were punctuated with
other sounds as bestial as the cries of panthers
hunting. It was noticeable that the front rank of
spectators, the men and women with estates and
townhouses, either sat silent or looked about ner-
vously as they tried to feign enthusiasm.

While the red leader waited with his head thrown
back and arms akimbo, the rival gang boss read
the note he had been passed. He reached toward
Bishop Trimer with it and, when another priest
tried to take the document from his hand, swatted
the man away. Trimer leaned over to read the
note.

David Drake

178

"Now I say," the man in red resumed in a lull,
"all right, we give Delcorio time. We give the
bastid as much time as it takes fer us to march
over to the Palace and pull it down—"

The black-caped gang boss got up, drawing the
Bishop's gaze to follow the note being thrust at
the leader of the other street gang.

The timbre of the shouting changed as the spec-
tators assessed what was happening in their own
terms—and prepared for the immediate battle those
terms might entail.

"The rightful President of Bamberia is Thomas
Chastain," cried the black-caped leader as the ca-
thedral hushed and his rival squinted at the note

in the red light.

The man in red looked up but did not interrupt
as the other leader thundered in a deep bass, "He
was robbed of his heritage by the Delcorios and
held under their guards in the Palace—but now
he's escaped! Thorn Chastain's at his house right
now, waiting for us to come and restore him to his

position!"

Everyone on the dais was standing. Some of the
leaders. Church and gangs and surely the business
community as well, tried to speak to one another
over the tumult. Unless they could read lips, that
was a useless exercise.

Desoix was sure of that. He'd been caught in an
artillery barrage, and the decibel level of the burst-
ing shells had been no greater than that of the
voices reverberating now in the cathedral.

Bishop Trimer touched the gang bosses. They
conferred with looks, then stepped back to give
the Bishop the floor again. Though they did not sit
down, they motioned their subordinates into chairs
on the dais. After a minute or two, the room had
quieted enough for Trimer to speak.

COUNTING THE COST          179

"My people," he began with his arms out-
stretched in benediction. "You have spoken, and
the Lord God has made his will known to us. We
will gather at dawn here—"

The gang bosses had been whispering to one
another. The man in black tugged the Bishop's
arm firmly enough to bring a burly priest—Father
Laughlin?—from his seat. Before he could inter-
vene, the red-garbed leader spoke to Trimer with
forceful gestures of his hand.

The Bishop nodded. Desoix couldn't see his
face, but he could imagine the look of bland agree-
ment wiped thinly over fury at being interrupted
and dictated to by thugs.

"My people," he continued with unctuous
warmth, "we will meet at dawn in the plaza, where
all the city can see me anoint our rightful presi-
dent in the name of God who rules us. Then we
will carry President Chastain with us to the Palace
to claim his seat—and God will strengthen our
arms to smite anyone so steeped in sin that they
would deny his will. At dawn!"

The cheering went on and on. Even in the
gallery, where the floor and the pillars of colored
marble provided a screen from the worst of the
noise, it was some minutes before Kekkonan could
shout into Desoix's ear, "What's that mean for us,
sir?"

"It means," the UDB officer shouted back, "that
we've got a couple hours to load what we can and
get the hell out ofBamberg City."

He paused a moment, then added, "It means
we've had a good deal more luck the past half
hour than we had any right to expect."

CHAPTER TWEMTY-THREE

"We got 'em in sight," said Scratchard's voice
through Tyi's commo helmet. The sergeant major
was on the roof with the ten best marksmen in the
unit. "Everybody together, no signs they're being
followed."

Tyi started to acknowledge, but before he could
Scratchard concluded, "Plenty units out tonight
besides them, but nobody seems too interested in
them nor us. Over."

"Over and out," Tyi said, letting his voice stand
for his identification.

He locked eyes with the sullen Guards officer
across the doorway from him, Captain Sanchez,
and said, "Open it up, sir. I got a team coming
in."

There were two dozen soldiers in the rotunda:

the ordinary complement of Executive Guards and

David Drake

182

the squad Tyi had brought with him when Desoix
blipped that they were clear again and heading in.

Earlier that night, the UDB officer had talked
Tyi and his men through the doors that might
have been barred to them. Tyi wasn't at all sure
his diplomacy was good enough for him to return
the favor diplomatically.

But he didn't doubt the locals would accept any
suggestion he chose to make with a squad of Slam-

mers at his back.

Sanchez didn't respond, but the man at the
shutter controls punched the right buttons instantly.
Warm air, laced with smoke more pungent than
that of the omnipresent cigars, puffed into the

circular hall.

Tyi stepped into the night.

The height and width of the House of Grace
was marked by a cross of bluish light, a polarized
surface discharge from the vitril glazing. It was
impressive despite being marred by several shat-
tered panels.

And it was the only light in the city beyond
handcarried lanterns and the sickly pink-orange-
red of spreading fires. Street lights that hadn't
been cut when transformers shorted were tempt-
ing targets for gunmen.

So were lighted windows, now that the meeting
in the cathedral had broken up and the gangs
were out in force again.

Tyi clicked his faceshield down in the lighted
courtyard and watched the seven soldiers jogging
toward him with the greenish tinge of enhanced

ambient light.

"All present 'n accounted for, sir," muttered
Kekkonan when he reached Tyi, reporting be-
cause he was the senior Slammer in the unit.

r

COUNTING THE COST          183

"Sergeant major's got a squad on the roof," Tyi
explained. "Make sure your own gear's ready to
move, then relieve Jack. All right?"

"Yes sir," said Kekkonan and ducked off after
his men. The emotion in his agreement was the
only hint the non-corn gave of just how tight things
had been an hour before.

"Lachere, make sure Control's core pack's ready
to jerk out," Desoix said. "We've got one jeep, so
don't expect to leave with more than you can carry
walking."

The clerk's boots skidded on the rotunda's stone
flooring as he scampered to obey.

Desoix put his arm around Tyi's shoulders as
they followed their subordinates through armored
doors which the guard immediately began to close
behind them. Tyi was glad of the contact. He felt
like a rat in a maze in this warren of corridors and
blocked exits.

"I appreciate your help," Desoix said. "It might
have worked. And without those very good people
you lent me, it would—"

He paused. "It wouldn't have been survivable.
And I'd have probably made the attempt anyway,
because I didn't understand what it was like out
there until we started back."

"I guess ..." Tyi said. "I guess we better
report to, to the President before we go. Unless
he was tapping the push. I guess we owe him
that, for the contract."

They stepped together into the small elevator.
It was no longer separately guarded. The Execu-
tive Guardsmen watched them without expression.

A few of the Slammers stationed in the rotunda
threw ironic salutes. They were in a brighter mood
than they'd been a few minutes before. They knew

184

David Drake

from their fellows who'd just come in that the
whole unit would be bugging out shortly.

"You're short of transport too?" Tyi asked, trying
to keep the concern out of his voice as he watched

Desoix sidelong.

"I can give my seat to your sergeant major, if
that's what you mean," Desoix replied. "I've hiked
before. But yes, this was the base unit they robbed
to outfit all the batteries on Two that had to be

mobile."

That was exactly what Tyi had meant.
The elevator stopped. In the moment before
the door opened, Desoix added, "There's vehicles
parked in the garage under the Palace here. If
we're providing protection, there shouldn't be a
problem arranging rides."

If it's safe to call attention to yourself with a
vehicle, Tyi thought, remembering the fire trucks.
Luxury cars with the presidential seal would be

even better targets.

Tyi expected Anne McGill to be at the open
door connecting the Consistory Room with the
presidential suite, where she could be in sight of
her mistress and still able to hear the elevator
arrive. She was closer than that, arm's length of
the elevator—and so was Eunice Delcorio.

The President was across the room, in silhou-
ette against the faint flow which was all that re-
mained of the City Offices toward which he was
staring. His nephew stood beside him, but there
was no one else—not even a servant—in the dark-
ened room.

"Charles?" Anne said. Her big body trembled
like a spring, but she did not reach to clasp her

lover now, in front of Eunice.
Tyi let Desoix handle the next part. They hadn't

COUNTING THE COST         185

discussed it, but the UDB officer knew more about
things like this . . . politics and the emotions that
accompany politics.

Desoix stepped forward and bowed to Eunice
Delcorio, expertly sweeping back the civilian cape
he still wore over his gun and armor. "Madam,"
he said. "Sir—" John Delcorio had turned to watch
them, though he remained where he was. "I very
much regret that it's time for you to withdraw
from the city."

The President slammed the bottom of his fist
against the marble pillar beside him. Anne was
nodding hopeful agreement; her mistress was still,
though not calm.

"There's still time to get out," Desoix continued.

Tyi marveled at Desoix's control. He wanted to
get out, wanted it so badly that he had to con-
sciously restrain himself from jumping into the
elevator and ordering the unit to form on him in
the courtyard.

"But barely enough time. The—they are going
to anoint Thorn Chastain President at dawn in the
plaza, and then they'll come here. Even if they
haven't gotten heavy weapons from one of the
military arsenals, there's no possible way that the
Palace can be defended."

"I knew the swine were betraying me," Delcorio
shouted. "I should never have let them live, never!"

"We can cover the way out if you move fast
enough," Tyi said aloud. "Ten minutes, maybe."

What he'd seen in the Consistory Room and
heard from Desoix's terse report on the way back
to the Palace convinced him that Delcorio, not
Thorn Chastain, was responsible for the present
situation. But why didn't matter any more.

"All right," the President said calmly. "I've al-

186

David Drake COUNTING THE COST 187

ready packed the seal and robes of state. I had to
do it myself because they'd all run, even Hein-
rich. ..."

"No," said Eunice Delcorio. "No!"

"Eunice," begged Anne McGill.

"Ma'am," said Tyi Koopman desperately. "There's

no way."

He was unwilling to see people throw them-
selves away. You learn that when you fight for
hire. There's always another contract, if you're
around to take it up. . . .

"I've been mistress of this city, of this planet,"
the President's wife said in a voice that hummed
like a cable being tightened. "If they think to
change that, well, they can burn me in the Palace

first."

She turned to stare, either at her husband or at
the smoldering night beyond him. "It'll be a fit-
ting monument, I think," she said.

"And I'll set the fires myself-—" whirling, her
eyes lashed both the mercenary officers "—if no
one's man enough to help me defend it."

Anne McGill fell to her knees, praying or crying.

"Madam," said Major Borodin, entering from
the hall unannounced because there was no greeter
in the building to announce him.

The battery commander looked neither nervous
nor frustrated. There was an aura of vague distaste
about him, the way his sort of officer always looked
when required to speak to a group of people.

This was a set speech, not a contribution to the

discussion.

"I urge you," Borodin went on, reeling the
words off a sheaf of mental notes, "to use common
sense in making personal decisions. So far as pub-
lic decisions go, I must inform you that I am

withdrawing my battery from the area affected by
the present unrest, under orders of my commander
—and with the concurrence of our legal staff."

"I said—" John Delcorio began, ready to blaze
up harmlessly at having his nose rubbed in a
reality of which he was already aware.

"No, of course we can defeat them!" said Eu-
nice, pirouetting to Borodin's side with a girlish
sprightliness that surprised everyone else in the
room as much as it did the major.

"No, no," the President's wife continued brightly,
one hand on Borodin's elbow while the other hand
gestured to her audience. "It's really quite possi-
ble, don't you see? There's many of them and only
a few of us—but if they're in the plaza, well, we
just hold the entrances."

She stroked Borodin's arm and waved, palm up,
to Tyi and Desoix. Her smile seemed to double
the width of her face. "You brave lads can do that,
can't you? Just the three stairs, and you'll have the
Executive Guard to help you. The Bishop won't
make any trouble about coming to the Palace alone
to discuss matters if the choice is. ..."

Eunice paused delicately. This wasn't the woman
who moments before had been ready—had been
ready—to burn herself alive with the Palace. "And
this way, all the trouble ends and no one more
gets hurt, all the rioting and troubles. ..."

"No," said Major Borodin. His eyes were bulg-
ing and he didn't appear to be seeing any of his
present surroundings. His mental notes had been
hopelessly disarrayed by this—

"Yes, yes, of course!" President Delcorio said,
rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "We'll
see how much Trimer blusters when he's asked to




188 David Drake

come and there's a gun at his head to see that he
does!"

Tyi had pointed enough guns to know that they
weren't the kind of magic wand Delcorio seemed
to be expecting. He looked at Desoix, certain of
agreement and hopeful that the UDB officer would
be able to express the plan's absurdity in a more
tactful fashion than Tyi could.

Desoix had lifted Anne McGill to her feet. His
hand was on the woman's waist, but she wasn't
paying any conscious attention to him. Instead,
her eyes were on Eunice Delcorio.

"No," muttered Borodin. "No, no! We've got to
withdraw at once."

Maybe it was the rote dismissal by the battery
commander that made Tyi really start thinking.
Colonel Hammer wanted Delcorio kept in power
for another week—and no deal Trimer cut with
the present government was likely to last longer
than that, but a week . . . ?

Two hundred men and a pair of calliopes—blazes,
maybe it would work!

"Of course," Tyi said aloud, "Marshal Dowell's
on the other side, sure as can be, so the Guard
downstairs . . . ?"

"Dowell isn't the Executive Guard," said the
President dismissively. "He's nothing but a jumped-
up shopkeeper. I was a fool to think he'd be loyal
because he owed everything to me."

Like City Prefect Berne, Tyi thought. He kept
his mouth shut.

"But the Guard, they're the best people in the
State," Delcorio continued with enthusiasm. "They
won't give in to trash and gutter-sweepings now
that we've found a way to deal with them."

"Lieutenant," said the battery commander, "I'll

COUNTING THE COST

189

oversee the loading. Give the withdrawal orders
as soon as you've determined the safest routes."

He pivoted on his left heel, rotating his elbow
from Eunice's seductive touch. He stamped out of
the room.

"Yes sir," Desoix said crisply, but he made no
immediate motion to follow his superior.

"Well," said Tyi, feeling the relief that returned
with resignation—it'd been a crazy notion, but

just for a minute he'd thought. . . . "Well, I bet-
ter tell—"

"Wait!" Anne McGill said. She stepped toward
her mistress, but she was no longer ignoring Charles
Desoix. Halfway between the two she spun to-
ward her lover and set a jewel-ringed hand at the
scooped collar of the dress she wore beneath her
cloak. She pulled fiercely.

The hem of lustrous synthetic held. White and

red creases sprang out where the straps crossed
her shoulders.

"Anne?" the President's wife called from behind
her companion.

Anne wailed, "Mary, Queen of Heaven!" and
tugged again, pulling the left strap down to her
elbow instead of trying again to tear the fabric.
Her breast, firm but far too heavy not to sag,
flopped over the bodice which had restrained it.

"Is this what you want to give to them?" she
cried. Her eyes were blind, even before she shut
them in a vain attempt to hold back the tears.
"Give the, the mob? I won't go! I won't leave
Eunice even if you are all cowards!"

"Anne," Desoix pleaded. "President Delcorio—
the front row in the cathedral was the best people
in the State. Some of them were here with you
this morning. Colonel Drescher isn't going to—"

190 David Drake

"How do you know until you ask him?" Eunice
demanded in a voice like a rapier. Her arm was
around Anne McCill now, drawing the dark cloak
over the naked breast. Tyi couldn't say whether
the gesture was motherly or simply proprietary.

This hasn't got anything t' do with ... his
surface mind started to tell him; but deeper down,
he knew it did. Like as not it always did, one way
or another; who was screwing who and how every-
body felt about it.

"All right!" Desoix shouted. "We'll go ask him!"
"I'll go myself," said President Delcorio, suck-
ing in his belly and adding a centimeter to his
height by straightening up.

'That's not safe. Uncle John," said Pedro Delcorio
unexpectedly. "I'll go with the men."

"Well ..." Tyi said as the President's nephew
gestured him toward the elevator. Desoix, his face
set in furious determination, was already inside.
It was going to be cramped with three of them.
"Via, why not?" Tyi said. It was easier to go
along than to refuse to, right now. Nothing would
come of it. He'd seen too many parade-ground
units to expect this one to find guts all of a sudden.

But if just maybe it did work. . . . Via, nobody
liked to run with their tail between their legs, did
they?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Koopman's idiotic grin was just one more irrita-
tion to Charles Desoix as the elevator dropped.

"Bit of a chance you're taking, isn't it?" the
Slammers officer asked. "Going against your ma-
jor's orders and all?"

Desoix felt himself become calm and was glad of
it. None of this made any sense. If Tyi decided to
laugh—well, that was a saner response than Desoix's

own.

"Only if something comes of it," he said, wish-
ing that he didn't sound so tired. Wrung out.

He was wrung out. "And if I'm alive afterward,
of course."

Pedro's eyes were darting between the merce-
naries. His bulky body—soft but not flabby—would
have given him presence under some circum-
stances. In these tight quarters he was overwhelmed




192

COUNTING THE COST

David Drake

193

by the men in armor—and by the way they con-
sidered the future in the light of similar past.

The car settled so gently that only the door
opening announced the rotunda. Desoix swung
out to the left side, noticing that identical reflex
had moved Koopman to the right—as if they were
about to clear a defended position.

Half a dozen powerguns were leveled at the
opening door, though the Slammers here on guard
jerked their muzzles away when they saw who had

arrived.
The rotunda was empty except for Hammer's

men.

"Where's the guards?" Koopman demanded in

amazement.

One of his men shrugged. "A few minutes back,
they all moved out."

He pointed down the corridor that led toward
the Guard billets. "I called the sar'ent major, but
he said hold what we got, he and the rest a' the
company'd be with us any time now."

"Let's go, then!" said Pedro Delcorio, trotting
in the direction of the gesture.

Desoix followed, because that was what he'd set
out to do. He hunched himself to settle his armor
again. When he felt cold, as now, he seemed to
shrink within the ceramic shell.

"Carry on," Koopman said to his guard squad.
As the Slammers officer strode along behind the
other two men, Desoix heard him speaking into
his commo helmet in a low voice.

The barracks of the Executive Guard occupied
the back corridor of the Palace's south wing. It
had its own double gate of scissor-hinged brass
bars over a panel of imported hardwood, both
portions polished daily by servants.

The bars were open, the panel—steel-cored,
Desoix now noticed—ajar. Captain Sanchez and
the squad he'd commanded in the rotunda stood
in the opening, arguing with other Guardsmen in
the corridor beyond. When they heard the sound
of boots approaching, they whirled. Several of
them aimed their rifles.

Charles Desoix froze, raising his hands and mov-
ing them out from his sides. He had been close to
death a number of times already this night.

But never closer than now.

"What do you men think you're doing?" Pedro
demanded in a voice tremulous with rage. "Don't
you recognize me? I'm—"

"No\" Sanchez snapped to the man at his side.
The leveled assault rifle wavered but did not
fire—as both Desoix and the Guards captain had
expected.

"Wha . . . ?" Delcorio said in bewilderment.
"Rene, it's me," Desoix called in an easy voice.
He sidled a step so that Sanchez could see him
clearly past the President's nephew. Walking
forward was possible suicide. "Charles, you know?
We came to discuss the present situation with
Colonel Drescher."

The words rolled off Desoix's tongue, amazing
him with their blandness and fluency. Whatever
else that scene upstairs with Anne had done, it
had burned the capacity to be shocked out of him
for a time.

Drescher stepped forward when his name was
spoken. He had been the other half of the argu-
ment in the gateway. The lower ranking Guardsmen
grounded their weapons as if embarrassed to be
touching real hardware in the presence of their
commander.




David Drake

194

"Master Desoix," said Drescher, "we're very
busy just now. I have nothing to discuss with you
or any of John Delcorio's by-blows."

"What?" Pedro Delcorio shouted, able this time
to get the full syllable out in his rage.

Koopman put a hand, his left hand, on the
young civilian's shoulder and shifted him back a
step without being too obvious about the force

required.

Desoix walked forward, turning his spread arms
into gestures as he said, "Sir, it's become possible
to quell the rioting without further bloodshed or
the need for additional troops. We'd like to dis-
cuss the matter with you for a moment."

As if Drescher's deliberate ignorance of his mili-
tary rank didn't bother him, Desoix added with an
ingratiating smile, "It will make you the hero of
the day, sir. Of the century."

"And who's that?" Drescher said, waving his
swagger stick in the direction of the Slammers
officer. "Your trained dog, Desoix?"

Recent events had shocked the Guard Com-
mandant into denial so deep that he was being
more insulting than usual—to prove that civiliza-
tion and the rule of law still maintained in his
presence. Charles Desoix knew that, but Tyi
Koopman with a submachinegun under his arm—

"No sir," said the Slammers officer. "I'm Cap-
tain Koopman of Hammer's Regiment. My unit's
part of the defense team."

"Sir," Desoix said in the pause that followed
Koopman's response and sudden awareness of what
the mercenary's response could have been. "The
mob will have gathered in the plaza by dawn. By
sealing the three exits, we can bring their, ah,

COUNTING THE COST

195

leaders, to a reasonable accommodation with the
government."

"The government of the State," said Drescher
icily, cutting through Desoix's planned next phrase,
"is what God and the people choose it to be. The
Executive Guard would not presume to interfere
with that choice."

"Colonel," Desoix said. He could feel his eyes
widening, but he didn't see the Guardsmen in
front of him. In his mind, a dozen men were
raping Anne McGill while shrill-voiced women
urged them on. "If they attack the Palace, there'll
be a bloodbath."

"Then it's necessary to evacuate the Palace, isn't
it?" Drescher replied. "Now, if you gentle—"

"Don't you boys take oaths?" Koopman asked
curiously. There wasn't any apparent emotion in
his tone. "Don't they matter to you?"

Colonel Drescher went white. "You foreign mer-
cenaries have a vision of Bamberg politics," he
said, "that a native can only describe as bizarre."
His voice sounded as though he would have been
screaming if his lungs held enough air.

"Now get away from here!"

Charles Desoix bowed low. "Gentlemen," he
murmured to his companions as he turned. "We
have no further business here."

They didn't look behind them as they marched
to where the corridor jogged and the wall gave
them cover against a burst of shots into their
backs. Pedro Delcorio was shaking.

So was Koopman, but it showed itself as a lilt in
his voice as he said, "Well, they're frightened.
Can't blame 'em, can we, Charles? And they'd not
have been much use, just stand there and nobody

196 David Drake

who'd seen 'em in their prettiness was going to be
much scared, eh?"

Adrenalin was babbling through the lips of the
Slammers officer. His right hand was working in
front of him where the Guardsmen couldn't see it,
clenching and unclenching, because if it didn't
move, it was going to find its home on the grip of
his submachinegun. . . .

Anne was waiting around the corner. She looked
at the faces of the three men and closed her eyes.

"Anne, we can't—" Desoix began. He was sure
there had to be something he could say that would
keep her from the suicide she'd threatened, at the
hands of the mob or more abruptly here with a
rope or the gun he knew she kept in her bedroom.

"Sure we can," said Tyi Koopman. His voice
had no emotion, and his eyes had an eerie,
thousand-meter stare.

"You've got a calliope aimed at both side-stairs,
sure, they won't buck that, one burst and that's
over. And me and the boys, sure, we'll take the
main stairs, those lock gates, they're like vaults,
no problem."

"Then it's all right?" Anne said in amazement.
Her beautiful face was lighting as if she were
watching a theophany. "You can still save us,
Charles?"

She touched her fingertips to his chest, assuring
herself of her lover's continuing humanity.

"I—" said Charles Desoix. He looked at the
Slammers officer, then back into the eyes of Anne
McGill.

They'd have to do something about Major
Borodin—literally put the old man under restraint.
Maybe Delcorio still had a few servants around
who could handle that.

COUNTING THE COST         197

"I—" Desoix repeated.

Then he squared his shoulders and said, "Cer-
tainly, darling, Tyi and I can handle it without the
help of those fools."

It amazed the UDB officer to realize how easily
he had decided to ruin his life. The saving grace
was the fact that there wouldn't be many hours of
life remaining to him after this decision.




CHAPTER TWEnTY-FIVE

Tyi watched the antenna of his laser communi-
cator quest on the porch outside the Consistory
Room, making a keening sound as it searched for
its satellite. The link was still thirty seconds short
of completion when his commo helmet said, "Four-
six to Six, over."

Tyi jumped, ringing the muzzle of his submachine-
gun against the rail as he spun.

"Go ahead. Four-six," he said to Sergeant Ma-
jor Scratchard when he realized that the call was
on the unit push, not the laser link he'd been
setting up. He was a hair late in his response, but
nobody else knew the unexpected call had scared
him like that.

"Sir," said Scratchard, "the Palace troops, they're
all marching out one a' the side doors right now.
Over."

199

200

COUNTING THE COST

David Drake

201

Good riddance, Tyi thought. "Let 'em go. Jack,"
he said. "Over and out."
•;Six?"
"Go ahead, Four-six."
"Sir, should we secure the doors after them?

Over."

"Negative, Four-six," Tyi snapped. "Ignore this

bloody building and carry out your orders! Six

out."

It hadn't been that silly a question. Jack was
nervous because he didn't know much, because
Tyi hadn't told him very much. The non-corn was
trying to cross all possible tees because he couldn't
guess which ones would turn out to be of critical

importance.

Neither could his captain. Which was the real
reason Tyi had jumped down the sergeant major's

throat.

A dim red light pulsed on the antenna's tracking
head, indicating that the unit had locked on. Tyi
switched modes on his helmet, grimaced, and said,
"Koopman to Central, over."

Seconds of flickering static, aural and visual,
took his mind off the cross dominating the skyline
toward which the laser pointed. It was only an
hour before dawn. The streets were alive with
bands of men and women, ant-small at this dis-
tance and moving like foraging ants toward the

plaza.

"Hold one," said the helmet. The screen surged
into momentary crystal sharpness. Colonel Ham-
mer glared from it.

He looked very tired. All but his eyes.
"Go ahead. Captain," Hammer said, and the
static fuzzing his voice blurred his image a mo-

ment later as well, as though a bead curtain had
been drawn between Tyi and his commander.

Tyi found that a lot more comfortable. Funny
the things you worry about instead of the really
worrisome things. . . .

"Sir," he said, knowing that his voice sounded
dull—it had to, he couldn't let emotion get out
during this report because he hadn't any idea of
what emotion he'd find himself displaying. "I've
alerted my men for an operation at dawn to bottle
up the rioters and demand the surrender of their
leaders. We'll be operating in concert with ele-
ments of the UDB."

There was no need to say "over," since the speak-
ers could see one another—albeit with a lag of a
few seconds. Tyi keyed the thumb-sized unit on
his sending head, a module loaded with the street
plan, routes, and make-up of the units taking part
in the operation. The pre-load burped out like an
angry katydid.

Hammer's eyes, never at rest, paused briefly on
a point to the left of the pick-up feeding Tyi's
screen. A separate holotank was displaying the
schematic, while Tyi's face continued to fill the
main unit.

Hammer's face wore no expression as it clicked
to meet Tyi's eyes again. "What are the numbers
on the other side?" he asked emotionlessly.

"Sir, upwards of twenty kay. Maybe fifty, the
plaza'd hold that much and more."

Tyi paused. "Sir," he added, "we can't fight
'em, we know that. But maybe we can face them
down, the leaders."

People were moving in the courtyard beneath
him, four cloaked figures slipping out of the Palace
on their missions. Desoix and his two clerks to the




202

COUNTING THE COST        203

David Drake

warehouse and the calliope they'd set up only

hours before. And. . .

"How are you timing your assault?" the Col-
onel asked calmly. "If the ringleaders aren't
present, you've gained nothing. And if you wait

too long. . . ?"

"Sir, one of the women from the Palace," Tyi
explained. "She's, ah, getting in position right
now in the south gallery of the cathedral. There's
a view to the altar on the seafront, that's where
the big ones '11 be. She'll cue us when she spots
the ones we need."

He thought he was done speaking, but his tongue
went on unexpectedly, "Sir, we thought of using a
man, but a woman going to pray now—it's not
going to upset anything. She'll be all right."

The Colonel frowned as if trying to understand
why a line captain was apologizing for using a
female look-out. It didn't make a lot of sense to
Tyi either, after he heard his own words—but
he'd been away for a long time.

And anyway, the only similarity between Anne
McGill and the dozen females in Tyi's present
command was that their plumbing was the same.

"What happens if they don't back down?" Ham-
mer said in a voice like a whetstone, apparently
smooth but certain to wear away whatever it rubs
against, given time and will.

"We bug out," Tyi answered frankly. "The mall
at the main stairs, that's where we'll be, it's got
gates like bank vaults on all four sides. Things
don't work out, Trimer ducks instead of putting
his hands up and his buddies start shooting—well,
we slam the plaza-side doors and we're gone."

"And your supports?" Hammer asked. His mouth

wavered in what might have been either static or
an incipient grin.

"Desoix's men, they're mounted," Tyi said. It
was an open question whether or not you could
really load a double crew on a calliope and drive
away with it, but that was one for the UDB to
answer. "Worst case, there's going to be too much
confusion for organized pursuit. Unless. . ."

"Unless the streets are already blocked behind
you," said Colonel Hammer, who must have be-
gun speaking before Tyi's voice trailed off on the
same awareness. "Unless there's a large enough
group of rioters between your unit and safety to
hold you for their fifty thousand friends to arrive."

"Yes sir," said Tyi.

He swallowed. "Sir," he said, "I can't promise
it'll work. If it does, it'll give you the time you
wanted for things to hot up over there. But I can't
promise."

"Son," said Colonel Hammer. He was grinning
like a skull. "When you start making promises on
chances like this, I'll remove you from command
so fast your ears '11 ring."

His face straightened into neutral lines again.
"For the record," Hammer said, "you're operating
without orders. Not in violation of orders, just on
your own initiative."

"Yes sir," Tyi said.

Hammer hadn't paused for agreement. He was
saying, "I expect you to withdraw as soon as you
determine that there is no longer a realistic chance
of success. Nobody's being paid to be heroes,
and—"

He leaned closer to the pick-up. His face was
grim and his eyes glared like gun muzzles. "Cap-
tain, if you throw my men away because you want




204

David Drake

to be a hero, I'll shoot you with my own hand. If

you survive."

"Yes sir," Tyi said through a swallow. This time
his commander had waited for an acknowledgment.

Hammer softened. "Then good luck to you, son,"
he said. "Oh—and son?"

"Yes sir?"

The Colonel grinned with the same death's-
head humor as before. "Bishop Trimer decided
Hammer's Slammers weren't worth their price,"
Hammer said. "It wouldn't bother me if by the
end of today, his Eminence had decided he was
wrong on that."

Hammer touched a hidden switch and static
flooded the screen.

"Four-six to Six," came Scratchard's voice, de-
layed until the laser link was broken. "We're ready,

sir. Over."

"Four-six," Tyi said as he shrugged his armor
loose over his sweating torso. "I'm on my way."

He left the laser communicator set up where it
was. He'd need it again after the operation was

over.

In the event that he survived.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"—gathered together at the dawn of a new age
for our nation, our planet, and our God," said the
voice.

Bishop Trimer's words had a touch of excite-
ment remaining to them, despite being attenuated
through multiple steps before they got to Tyi's
helmet. Anne McGill aimed a directional micro-
phone from the cathedral to the seafront altar,
below her and over a kilometer away.

Trimer's speech was patched through the commo
gear hidden between the woman's breasts, then
shuttled by the UDB artificial intelligence over
the inter-unit frequency to Tyi Koopman.

"We could shoot the bastard easy as listen to
him," Scratchard said as he held out a shoulder
weapon to his captain.

Only the two of them among the ninety-eight
troopers in the rotunda had helmets that would

205




206 David Drake

receive the transmission. The other Slammers
watched in silence as varied as their individual
personalities: frightened; feral; cautious; and not a
few with anticipation that drew back their lips in
memory of past events. . . .

"Might break the back of the rebellion," Tyi
said.

He had to will his eyes to focus on Scratchard's
face, on anything as near as the walls of the big
room. "Sure as blood that lot—" he touched his
helmet over the tiny speaker "—they'd burn the
city down to bricks 'n bare concrete. Might as well
nuke 'em as that."

His voice didn't sound, even to him, as if he
much cared. He wasn't sure he did care. He wasn't
really involved with things that could be or might
be ... or even were.

"With dawn comes the light," the Bishop was
saying. "With this dawn, the Lord brings us also
the new light of freedom in the person of the man
he has commanded me to anoint President of
Bamberia."

"Jack, I don't need that," Tyi said peevishly.
Sight of the 2 cm weapon being pushed toward
him had brought him back to reality; irritation had
succeeded where abstracts like survival and suc-
cess could not. "I got a gun, remember?"

He slapped the receiver of the submachinegun
under his arm, then noticed that the whole com-
pany was carrying double as well as being fes-
tooned with bandoliers and strings of grenades.

"UDB's weapons stores were here in the Pal-
ace," the sergeant major explained patiently. "Their
el-tee, he told us go ahead. Sir, we don't got far t'
go. And I swear, they all jam."

Scratchard grinned sadly. He lifted his right

COUNTING THE COST

207

boot to display the hilt of his fighting knife, though
with his hands full he couldn't touch it for empha-
sis. "Even these, the blade can break. When you
really don't want t' see that."

"Sorry," said Tyi, glad beyond words to be
back in the present with sweaty palms and an itch
between his shoulder blades that he couldn't have
scratched even if it weren't covered by his clam-
shell armor.

"Blazes," he added as he checked the load—full
magazine, chamber empty. "Here's my treatment
a' choice anyhow. I'll take punch over pecka-pecka-
pecka any day."

He looked up and glared around the circle of
his troops as if seeing them for the first time.
Pretty nearly he was. Good men, good soldiers;

and just the team to pull the plug on Trimer and
the bully-boys who thought they owned the streets
when the Slammers were in town.

"Thomas Chastain has mounted the dais," said
Anne McGill. She sounded calm, but the distance
in her voice was more than an electronic artifact.
"Both Chastain brothers. The faction heads are
present, and so are several churchmen, standing
beneath the crucifix."

Tyi keyed the command channel while ducking
through the bandolier of 2 cm magazines the ser-
geant major held for him.

"Orange to Blue Six," he said, using the code
he and the UDB officer had set up in a few
seconds when they realized that they'd need it.
"Report."

"Blue Six ready," said Desoix's voice.

"Orange to Blue Three. Report."

"Blue Three ready," said a voice Tyi didn't rec-

David Drake

208

ognize, the non-corn in charge of the Gun Three
near the east entrance to the plaza.

"Orange Six to Blue," Tyi said. "We're moving

into position . . . now."

He cut down with his right index finger. Before
the gesture ended. Sergeant Kekkonan was lead-
ing the first squad into the incipient dawn over
Bamberg City.

CHAPTER TWEriTY-SEVEM

"I figured they'd a' burned it down, the way
they was going last night," said Lachere, blinking
around the warehouse from the driver's seat.

"Tonight," he said, correcting himself in mild
wonder.

"Senter, what's the street look like?" Desoix
asked from the gun saddle. Beneath him the calli-
ope quivered like a sleeping hound, its being at
placid idle—but ready to rend and bellow the in-
stant it was aroused.

Desoix couldn't blame his subordinate for think-
ing more than a few hours had passed since they
first entered this warehouse. It seemed like a
lifetime—

And that wasn't a thought Lieutenant Charles
Desoix wanted to pursue, even in the privacy of
his own mind.

"I don't see anybody out, sir," the other clerk

209

210            David Drake

COUNTING THE COST

211

called from the half-open pedestrian door. "Maybe
lookin' out a window, I can't tell. But none a' the
big mobs like when we got here."

Re-entering the warehouse without being caught
up—or cut down—by the bands of bravos heading
toward the plaza had been the trickiest part of the
operation so far. Stealth was the only option open
to Desoix and his two companions. Even if Koop-
man had been willing—been able, it didn't matter
—to spare a squad in support, a firefight would
still mean sure disaster for the plan as well as for
the unit.

"All right, Senter," Desoix said. "Open the main
doors and climb aboard."

Lachere was bringing the fans up to driving
velocity without orders. He wasn't a great driver,
but he'd handled air cushion vehicles before and
could maneuver the calliope well enough for pres-
ent needs.

The suction roar boomed in the cavernous room
while Senter struggled with the unfamiliar door
mechanism. The warehouse staff—manager, load-
ers, and guards—had disappeared at the first sign
of trouble, leaving nothing behind but crated goods
and the heavy effluvium of tobacco to be stirred
into a frenzy by the calliopes drive fans.

The door rumbled upward; Senter scampered
toward the gun vehicle. Desoix smiled. He'd been
ready to clear their way with his eight 3 cm guns if
necessary.

He had ordered control to lock the general fre-
quency out of his headset. Captain Koopman was
in charge of this operation, so Desoix didn't have
to listen to the running commentary about what
the mob in the plaza was doing.

If he listened on that frequency, he would hear

Anne; and he would have to remember where she
was and how certainly she would die if he failed.

"Ready, sir?" Lachere demanded, shouting as
though his voice weren't being transmitted over
the intercom channel.

Desoix raised a hand in bar. "Blue Six to all
Blue and Orange units," he said. "We're moving
into position—now."

He chopped his hand.

Lachere accelerated them into the street with a
clear view of the plaza's south stairhead, two blocks
away.

Metal shrieked as Lachere side-swiped the door-
jamb, but none of the calliope's scratch crew no-
ticed the sound.




CHAPTER TWEPiTY-EIQHT

"I'm with you!" said Pedro Delcorio, gripping
Tyi's shoulder from behind.

He was almost with the angels, because TyI
spun and punched the young noble in the belly
with the weapon he'd just charged, his finger
taking up slack.

"Careful, sonny," the Slammers officer said as
intellect twitched away the gun that reflex had
pointed.

TyI felt light, as though his body were sus-
pended on wires that someone else was holding.
His skin was covered with a sheen of sweat that
had nothing to do with the night's mild breezes.

Pedro wore a uniform—a service uniform, prob-
ably; though the clinking, glittering medals on
both sides of the chest indicated that the kid still
had something to learn about combat conditions.
He also wore a determined expression and a pistol
in a polished holster.

214

David Drake

"You're doing this for my family," Pedro said.
"One of us should be with you."

"That why we're doing it?" Tyi asked, marvel-
ing at the lilt in his own voice. Tyi wasn't sure the
kid knew how close he'd come to dying a moment
before. "Well, it'll do unless a better reason comes
along. Stick close, boy, and leave that—" he nod-
ded toward the gun "—in its holster."

He had a squad on the levee and a squad de-
ployed to cover the boulevard and medians sepa-
rating the Palace from the cathedral. The rest of
the Slammers were moving at a nervous shuffle
down the river drive—bunched more than he liked,
than anybody'd like, but they were going to need
all the firepower available to clear the mall in a
hurry. Those hydraulic gates were the key to the
operation: the key to bare safety, much less success.

No one seemed to be out, but Tyi could hear
occasional shouts in the distance as well as the
antiphonal roars from the plaza—though the latter
were directed upward, into the sulphurous dawn,
by the flood walls. Litter of all sorts splotched the
pavement, waste and shattered valuables as well
as a few bodies.

One of the crumpled bodies jumped up ahead
of them. The drunk tottered backward when his
foot slipped on the bottle which had put him there

in the first place.

Tyi's point man fired a ten-shot burst—far too
long—at the drunk. The bolts splashed all around
the target, cyan flashes and the white blaze of
lime burned out of the concrete. None of the
rounds hit the intended victim.

A sergeant jumped to the shooter's side and
slapped him hard on the helmet. "Cop-head!" he
snarled. "Cop-head! Get your ass behind me. And

COUNTING THE COST        215

if you shoot again without orders, you better have
the muzzle in your mouth!"

The drunk scrambled in the general direction of
the cathedral, stumbling and rolling on the ground
to rise and stumble again. The air bit with the
odors of ozone and quicklime.

The company shuffled onward with a squad leader
in front.

"Blue Six to all Blue and Orange units," said
Tyi's commo helmet. Desoix sounded tight, a mes-
sage played ten percent faster than it'd been re-
corded. "We're moving into position—now."

The point man paused at the base of the ramp
to the mall and the plaza's main stairs.

"Check your loads, boys," said Sergeant Major
Scratchard over the unit push. Jack was back with
the three squads of the second wave, but Tyi
didn't expect him to stay there long when the
shooting started.

"Sir," reported the point sergeant, using the
command channel, "the gates are shut on this
side."

"Orange Six to all Blue and Orange," Tyi or-
dered as he ran the ten meters to where the
non-corn paused. "Don't bloody move. We got a
problem."

The gates separating the mall from the west
river drive were as massive and invulnerable as
those facing the plaza itself.

They were closed, just as the point man had
said.

Tyi ran up the ramp, his bandoliers clashing
against one another. The slung submachinegun
gouged his hip beneath the flare of his armor. The
gates were solid, solid enough to shrug away tidal
surges with more power than a battery of artillery.

216

COUNTING THE COST          217

David Drake

There was no way one company without demoli-
tion charges or heavy weapons was going to force
its way through.

The small vitril windows in the gate panels were
too scarred and dirty to show more than hinted
movement, but there was a speaker plate in one of
the pillars. Nothing ventured. . . .

Tyi keyed the speaker and said, "Open these
gates at once, in the name of Bishop Trimer!"

The crowd in the plaza cheered deafeningly,
shaking the earth like a distant bomb-blast.

Shadows, colors, shifted within the closed mall.
The plate replied in the voice of Colonel Drescher,
"Go away, little lap-dog. The Executive Guard is
neutral, as I told you. And this is where we choose
to exercise our neutrality."

The crowd thundered, working itself into blood-
thirsty enthusiasm.

Tyi turned his back on the reinforced concrete
and touched his commo helmet. His troops were
crouching, watching him. Those who wore their
shields down had saffron bubbles for faces, painted
by the glow which preceded the sun.

"Orange to Blue Six," Tyi said. "We're screwed.
The Guards 're holding the mall and they got it
shut up. We can't get in, and if we tried we'd
bring the whole bunch down on us. Save what you
can, buddy. Over."

He'd forgotten that Anne McGill had access to
the circuit. Before Desoix could speak, her voice
rang like shards of crystal through Tyi's helmet,
saying, "The river level has dropped. You can go
under the plaza on a barge and come up beneath
the altar."

The cross on the cathedral dome was beginning
to blaze with sunlight. McGill's angle was on the

seafront. She couldn't see any of the troops, Tyi's
or the pair of calliopes, and she wouldn't have
understood a bloody thing if she had been able to
watch them. Bloody woman, bloody planet. . . .

Bloody fool. Captain Tyi Koopman, to be stand-
ing here. Nobody he saw was moving except
Scratchard, clumping up the ramp to his captain's
side. If Ripper Jack were bothered by his knees or
the doubled load of weaponry, there was no sign
of it on his expectant face.

"Tyi, she's right," Desoix was saying. "Most of
the louvers are still closed, so there's no risk of
drifting out to sea, but the maintenance catwalks
lead straight up to the control house. The altar."

"Roger on the river level," the sergeant major
muttered with his lips alone. He must've spoken
to the non-corn on the levee, using one of the
support frequencies so as not to tie up the com-
mand push.

Tyi looked up at the sky, bright and clear after a
night that was neither.

"Tyi, we'll give the support we can," Desoix said.

Both officers knew exactly what the change of
plan would mean. They weren't going to be able
to talk to the mob when they came up into the
plaza. Desoix was apparently willing to go along
with the change.

Wonder what the Colonel would say?

Colonel Hammer wasn't here. Tyi Koopman was,
and he was ready to go along with it too. More
fool him.

"Orange Six to all Orange personnel," he said
on the unit push. "We're going to board the near-
est barge and cut it loose so we drift to the dam at
the other end of the plaza. ..."




CHAPTER TWEnTY-niNE

Some of the men were still scrambling aboard
the barge, the second of the ten in line rather
than the nearest, because it seemed less likely to
scrape the whole distance along the concrete chan-
nel. Tyi didn't hear the order Jack Scratchard
muttered into his commo helmet, but troopers
standing by three of the four cables opened fire
simultaneously.

Arm-thick ropes of woven steel parted in indi-
vidual flashes. The barge sagged outward, its stern
thumping the fenders of the vessel to port. Only
the starboard bow line beside Tyi and the ser-
geant major held their barge against the current
sucking them seaward.

The vertical lights on the walls, faintly green,
merged as the channel drew outward toward the
river's broad mouth and the dam closing it. They
reflected from the water surface, now five meters

219

David Drake

220                                                                   COUNTING THE COST

221

beneath the concrete roof—though it was still wet
enough to scatter the light back again in turn.

"Hold one. Jack," Tyi said as he remembered
there was another thing he needed to do before
they slipped beneath the plaza. He keyed his
helmet on the general inter-unit frequency and
said, "Orange Six to all Orange personnel. I am
ordering you to carry out an attack on the Bamberg
citizens assembled in the plaza. Anyone who re-
fuses to obey my order will be shot."

"Via!" cried one of the nearer soldiers. "I'm not
afraid to go, sir!"

"Shut up, you fool!" snarled Ripper Jack. "Don't
you understand? He's just covered your ass for
afterwards!"

Tyi grinned bleakly at the sergeant major. Ev-
erybody seemed to have boarded the vessel, cling-
ing to one another and balancing on the curves of
hogsheads. "Cut 'er loose," he said quietly.

Scratchard's powergun blasted the remaining ca-
ble with a blue-green glare and a gout of white
sparks whose trails lingered in the air as the barge
lurched forward.

Their stern brushed along the portside barge
until they drifted fully clear. The grind of metal
against the polymer fenders was unpleasant. Fric-
tion spun them slowly counterclockwise until they
swung free.

They continued to rotate for the full distance
beneath the widening channel. One trooper vom-
ited over his neighbor's backplate, though that
was more likely nerves than the gentle, gently
frustrating, motion.

Light coming through the louvered flood gates
was already brighter than the greenish artificial
sources on either wall. It was still diffuse sky-glow

rather than the glare of direct sun, but the timing
was going to be very close.

The barge grounded broadside with a crash that
knocked down anybody who was standing. Per-
haps because of their rotation, they'd remained
pretty well centered in the channel. Individually
and without waiting for orders, the troopers near-
est the catwalk jumped to it and began to lower a
floating stage like the one on the dam's exterior.

"They must 've heard something," Tyi grum-
bled. The variety of metallic sounds the barge
made echoed like a boiler works among the planes
of water and concrete. But as soon as the barge
had slipped its lines, Tyi had been unable to hear
even a whisper of what he knew was a sky-shattering
clamor from the crowded plaza. Probably those
above were equally insulated.

And anyway, it didn't matter now. Tyi pressed
forward to the pontoon-mounted stage and the
stairs of steel grating leading up to the open hatch
of the control room. Tyi's rank took him through
his jostling men, but it was all he could do not to
use his elbows and gun butt to force his way
faster.

He had to remember that he was commanding a
unit, not throwing his life away for no reason he
could explain even to himself. He had to act as if
there were military purpose to what he was about
to do.

Only two men could stand abreast on the
punched-steel stair treads, and that by pressing
hard against the rails. The control room was al-
most as tight, space for ten men being filled by a
dozen. Tyi squeezed his way in, pausing in the
hatchway. When he turned to address his troops,
he found the sergeant major just behind him.




222 David Drake

It would have been nice to organize this better;

but it would have been nicer yet for somebody
else to be doing it. Or no one at all.

"Stop bloody pushing!" Tyi snapped on the unit
frequency. Inside the control room, his signal would
have been drunk by the meter-thick floor of the
plaza. No wonder sound didn't get through.

Motion stopped, except for the gentle resil-
ience of the barge's fenders against the closed
flood-gates.

"There's one door out into the plaza," Tyi
said simply. "We'll deploy through it, spread
out as much as possible. If it doesn't work out,
try to withdraw toward the east or west stairs,
maybe the calliopes can give us some cover. Do
your jobs, boys, and we'll come through this all
right."

Scratchard laid a hand on the captain's elbow,
then keyed his own helmet and said, "Listen up.
This is nothin' you don't know. There's a lot of
people up there."

He pumped the muzzle of his submachinegun
toward the ceiling. "So long as there's one of 'em
standing, none of us 're safe. Got that?"

Heads nodded, hands stroked the iridium bar-
rels ofpowerguns. Some of the recruits exchanged
glances.

"Then let's go," the sergeant major said simply.
He hefted himself toward the hatchway.

Tyi blocked him. "I want you below. Jack," he
said. "Last man out."

Scratchard grinned and shook his head. "I briefed
Kekkonan for that," he said.

Tyi hesitated.

Scratchard's face sobered. "Cap'n," he said. "This
don't take good knees. What it takes, I got."

COUNTING THE COST        223

"All right, let's go," said Tyi very softly. "But
Im the first through the door."

He pushed his way to the door out onto the
plaza, hearing the sergeant major wheezing a step
behind.




CHAPTER THIRTY

Anne McGill couldn't see the sun, but the edges
of the House of Grace gleamed as they bent light
from the orb already over the horizon to the
northeast.

The crucifix on the seafront altar was golden
and dazzling. The sun had not yet reached it, but
Bishop Trimer was too good a showman not to
allow for that: the gilt symbol was equipped with a
surface-discharge system like that which made ex-
pensive clothing shimmer. What was good enough
for the Consistory Room was good enough for
God—as he was represented here in Bamberg
City.

"Anne, what's happening in the plaza?" said the
tiny phone in her left ear. "Do you see any sign of
the, of Koopman? Over."

She was kneeling as if in an attitude of prayer,
though she faced the half-open window. There

225

226 David Drake

were scores of others in the cathedral this morn-
ing, but no one would disturb another penitent.
Like her, they were wrapped in their cloaks and
their prayers.

And perhaps all of their prayers were as com-
plex and uncertain as those of Anne McGill, look-
out for a pair of mercenary companies and mistress
of a man whom she had prevented from retreating
with her to a place of safety.

"Oh Charles," she whispered. "Oh Charles."

Then she touched the control of her throat mike
and said in a firm voice, "Chastain is kneeling
before Bishop Trimer in front of the crucifix. He's
putting a —I don't know, maybe the seal of office
around his neck but I thought that was still in the
Palace. ..."

The finger-long directional microphone was
clipped to the window transom which held it steady
and unobtrusive. UDB stores included optical
equipment as powerful and sophisticated as the
audio pick-up; but in use, an electronic telescope
looked like exactly what it was—military hard-
ware, and a dead give-away of the person using it.

She had only her naked eyes. Though she
squinted she couldn't be sure—

"The Slammers, curse it!" her lover's voice
snapped in her ear. Charles' tongue suppressed
the further words, "you idiot," but they were there
in his tone. "Is there any sign of them?"

"No, no," she cried desperately. She'd forgot-
ten to turn on her microphone. "Charles, no," she
said with her thumb pressing the switch as if to
crush it. "Chastain is rising and the crowd—"

Anne didn't see the door beneath the altar open
the first time. There was only a flicker of move-
ment in her peripheral vision, ajar and then closed.

COUNTING THE COST        227

Her subconscious was still trying to identify it

when a dozen flashes lighted the front of the crowd
facing the altar.

For another moment, she thought those were
part of the celebration, but people were sprawling
away from the flashes. A second later, the popping

sound of the grenades going off reached her van-
tage point.

Men were spilling out of the altar building. The
bolts from their weapons hurt Anne's eyes, even
shielded by distance and full dawn.

"Charles!" she cried, careless now of who might
hear her in the gallery. "It's started! They're—"

The air near the seafront echoed with a crashing
hiss like that of a dragon striking. Anne McGill
had never heard anything like it before. She didn't
know that it was a calliope firing—but she knew
that it meant death.

Buildings hid her view of the impact zone at the
west stairhead of the plaza, but some of the debris
flung a hundred meters in the air could still be
identified as parts of human bodies.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

When the grenades burst, Scratchard jerked
the metal door open again—a milli-second before
a slow fuse detonated the last of their greeting
cards. A scrap of glass-fiber shrapnel drew a line
across the back of Tyi's left thumb.

He didn't notice it. He was already shooting
from the hip at the first person he saw as he
swung through the doorway, a baton-waving or-
derly whose face was almost as white as his robe
except where blood spattered both of them.

Tyi's target was a meter and a half away from
his gun muzzle. He missed. The red cape and
shoulder of a woman beside the orderly exploded
in a cyan flash.

The orderly swung his baton in desperation, but
he was already dead. Jack Scratchard put a burst
into his face before pointing his submachinegun at
the group on the altar above and behind them.
Trimer flattened, carrrying Thorn Chastain with

229

230 David Drake

him, but blue-green fire flicked the chests of both
gang bosses.

Tyi hadn't appreciated the noise. It beat on
him, a pressure squeezing him into his armor and
engulfing the usual thump\ of his bolts heating the
air like miniature lightning. He butted his weapon
firmly against his shoulder and fired three times to
clear the area to his right.

The targets fell. Their eyes were still startled
and blinking, though the 2 cm bolts had scooped
their chests into fire and a sludge of gore.

Tyi strode onward, making room for the troop-
ers behind him as he'd planned, as he'd ordered
in some distant other universe.

An army officer leaped from the altar with a
pistol in his hand, either seeking shelter in the
crowd or fleeing Scratchard's quick gun in blind
panic. The Bamberg soldier doubled up as fate
carried him past Tyi's muzzle and reflex squeezed
the powergun's trigger.

Short range but a nice crossing shot. Tyi was
fine and the noise, the shouting, was better pro-
tection than his helmet and clamshell. But there
were too many of the bastards, a mass like the sea
itself, and Tyi was all alone in a tide that would
wash over him and his men no matter what they—

One calliope, then the other, opened fire. Not
even crowd noise and the adrenalin coursing
through his blood could keep the Slammers officer
from noticing that.

He stepped forward, his right shoulder against
the altar building to keep him from slipping. Each
shot was aimed, and none of them missed.

In a manner of speaking, Tyi Koopman's face
wore a smile.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The bollards at the stairhead were hidden by
the units on guard, thugs wearing the colors of
both factions and a detachment of hospital order-
lies. There were at least fifty heavily-armed men
and women in plain sight ofDesoix's calliope—and
it was only a matter of moments before one of them
would turn from the ceremony and look up the street.
There weren't many options available then.
"Is there any sign of them?" Desoix shouted
to—at—his mistress as she nattered on about what

Trimer was using as he swore in his stooge as
President.

Lachere was twisted around in the driver's sad-
dle, peering back at his lieutenant and chewing
the end of a cold cigar, a habit he'd picked up in
the months they'd been stationed here. He didn't
look worried, but Senter had enough fear in his
expression for both clerks as he stared at Desoix's
profile from his station at the loading console.

231




232 David Drake

"Charles!" cried the voice he had let through to
him again for necessity. "It's—"

Desoix had already heard the muffled exclama-
tion points of the grenades.

"Blue Six to Blue Three," he said, manually
cutting away to the unit frequency. "Open fire."

As his mouth voiced the final flat syllable, his
right foot rocked forward on the firing pedal. Trav-
ersing left to right, Desoix swept the stairhead
clear of all obstructions with the eight ravening
barrels of his calliope.

The big weapon was intended for computer-
directed air defense. Under manual control, its
sights were only a little more sophisticated than
those of shoulder-fired powerguns: a hologrammatic
sight picture with a bead in the center to mark the
point of impact.

Nothing more was required.

Several of the guards turned when the grenades
went off, instinctively looking for escape and in-
stead seeing behind them the calliope's lowered
muzzles. One of the orderlies got off a burst with
his submachinegun.

The bullets missed by a hundred meters in the
two blocks they were meant to travel. Concrete,
steel, and flesh—most particularly flesh—vaporized
as the calliope chewed across the stairhead in a
three-second burst.

Desoix switched to intercom with the hand he
didn't need for the moment on the elevation con-
trol and said, "Lachere, advance toward the stair-
head at a—"

Faces appeared around the seawall just north of
where the bollards had been before the gun burned
them away. The high-intensity 3 cm ammunition
had shattered concrete at the start of the burst

COUNTING THE COST         233

before Desoix traversed away. His right hand rolled
forward on the twist-grip, reversing the direction
in which the barrel array rotated on its gimbals.

More of the wall disintegrated in cyan light and
the white glare of lime burned free of the concrete
by enormously concentrated energy. Most of the
rioters had time to duck back behind the wall
before the second burst raked it.

The wall didn't save them. Multiple impacts
tore it apart and then flash-heated the water in
their own bodies into steam explosions.

Beneath Desoix, the skirts of the calliope's ple-
num chamber dragged the pavement. Air had
enough mass to recoil when it was heated to a
plasma and expelled from the eight tubes as the
gun fired. Lachere drove forward, correcting inex-
pertly against the calliope's pitch and yaw.

Gunfire was a blue-green shield against the roar
from the plaza, but in the moments between bursts
the mob's voice asserted itself over the numbness
of ringing breech-blocks and slamming air. The
stairhead was now within a hundred meters as the
gun drove onward. There was a haze over the

target area—steam and dust, burnt lime and burn-
ing bodies.

Desoix's faceshield protected him from the sun-
hot flash of his guns. Events, thundering forward
as implacably as an avalanche, shielded him from

awareness that would have been as devastating to
him as being blinded.

With no target but the roiling haze, Desoix
triggered another burst when they were ten me-
ters from the stairhead. Fragments blown clear by
the impacts proved that there had been people

sheltering beneath eye level but accessible to the
upper pair of gun tubes.

234 David Drake

"Sir?" a voice demanded, Lachere slowing and
ready to ground the vehicle before they lurched
over the scars where the bollards had been and
their bow tilted down the steps.

"Go!" Desoix shouted, knowing that the ple-
num chamber would spill its air in the angle of the
stair treads and that their unaided fans would
never be able to lift the calliope away once they
had committed.

Koopman and his company of Slammers weren't
going anywhere either, unless they all succeeded
in the most certain and irrevocable way possible.

The stench of ozone and ruin boiled out from
beneath the drive fans an instant before the calli-
ope rocked forward. Gravity aided its motion for
an instant before the friction of steel against stone
grounded the skirts. The plaza was a sea of faces
with a roar like the surf.

Bullets rang off the hull and splashed the glow-
ing indium of one port-side barrel. The doors of
the mall at the head of the main stairs were open
toward the plaza. Men there were firing assault
rifles at the calliope. Some of them were either
good or very lucky.

Desoix rotated his gun carriage.

"Sir!" Senter cried with his helmet against the
lieutenant's. "Those aren't the mob! They're the
Guard!"

"Feed your guns, soldier!" said Charles Desoix.
The open flood gates filled his sight hologram.

He rocked the firing pedal down and began to
traverse his target in a blaze of light.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Tyi's index finger tightened. The gunstock pum-
meled his shoulder. The center of his faceshield
went momentarily black as it mirrored away the
flash that would otherwise have blinded him.

A finger of plastic flipped up into his sight pic-
ture, indicating that he'd just fired the last charge
in his weapon. He reached for another magazine.

A hospital orderly stopped trying to claw through
the mass of other panicked humans and turned to
face Tyi. He was less than ten meters away and
held a pistol.

Tyi raised the tube of 2 cm ammunition to the
loading gate in the forestock and burned the nail
and third knuckle of all the fingers on his left
hand. He'd already put several magazines through
the powergun, so its barrel was white hot.

He dropped the magazine. The orderly shot
him in the center of the chest.

235




236

COUNTING THE COST         237

David Drake

There was no sound any more in the plaza. Tyi
could see everything down to the last hair on the
moustache of the orderly collapsing around a bolt
from somebody else's powergun. His armor spread
the bullet's impact, but it felt as if they'd driven a
tank over his chest. Maybe if he didn't move. . . .

The calliope which was canted down the west

staircase opened fire again.

Only three of the eight barrels were live at the
moment. Individual bolts made a thump as ion-
ized air ripped from the barrel; they crossed the
plaza a few meters over Tyi's head as a micro-
second hiss! and a flash of light so saturated that it

seemed palpable.

Everything the bolts hit was disintegrated with
a crash sharper than a bomb going off, solids con-
verted to gas and plasma as suddenly as the light-
swift bursts of energy had snapped through the
air. The plaza's concrete flooring gouted in explo-
sions of dazzling white—

But the crowd was packed too thickly for that to
happen often. The calliope's angle allowed its crew
to rake the mob from above. Each 3 cm bolt hit
like the hoof of a horse galloping over soft ground,
hurling spray and bits of the footing in every
direction before lifting to hammer the surface again.

Bodies crumpled in windrows. Screaming riot-
ers climbed the fallen on their way toward the
main stairs, already packed with their fellows.
The guns continued to fire.
"If I can hear, I can move," Tyi said, mouthing
the words because that was his first movement
since the bullet hit him.

He knelt to pick up the magazine he had
dropped. The pain that flooded him, hot needles

being jabbed into his whole chest, made him drop
the empty gun instead.

He couldn't breathe. He didn't fall down be-
cause his muscles were locked in a web of flesh
surrounding a center of pulsing red agony.

The spasm passed.

Tyi's troopers were spread in a ragged semi-
circle, centering on the building from which they'd
deployed. He was near the east stairs; the treads
were covered with bodies.

Rebels had been shot in the back as they tried
to run from the soldiers and the blue-green
scintillance of hand weapons. If they reached the
top of the stairs, Gun Three on the seafront hurled
them back as a puree and a scattering of fragments.

The west stairs were relatively empty, because
the mob had time to clear it in the face of the
calliope staggering toward them. They died on the
plaza floor, because they'd run toward the de-
bouching infantry; but the steps gleamed white in
the sunlight and provided a pure contrast to the
bodies and garments crumpled everywhere else in
muddy profusion.

Tyi left the 2 cm weapon where he'd dropped
it; he raised his submachinegun. It felt light by
contrast with the thick iridium barrel of the shoul-
der weapon, but he still had trouble aiming.

It was hot, and Tyi was as thirsty as he ever
remembered being. Ozone had lifted all the mu-
cus away from the membranes of his nose and
throat. The mordant gas was concentrated by shoot-
ing in the enclosed wedge of the plaza. The skin of
Tyi's face and hands prickled as if sunburned.

He aimed at a face and missed high, the barrel
wobbling, sending the round into the back of some-
body a hundred meters away on the main stairs.




238 David Drake

He lowered the muzzle and fired again, fired again,
fired again.

Single shots, aimed at anyone who looked
toward him instead of trying to get away. Second
choice for targets were the white robes of order-
lies, most of whom had been armed—though few
enough had the discipline to stand in chaos against
the mercenaries' armor and overwhelming firepower.

Third choice was whoever filled the sight pic-
ture next. None of the mercenaries were safe so
long as one of the others was standing.

The calliope opened up again. Desoix had unjam-
med or reloaded six of the barrels. A thick line
staggered through the mob like the track of a
tornado across a corn field.

Tyi fired; fired ag^in; fired again. . . .

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It was very quiet.

Desoix watched the men from Gun Three's dou-
bled crew as they picked their way across the
plaza at his orders. Sergeant Blaney was leading
the quartet himself. They were carrying their
submachineguns ready and moving with a gin-
gerly awkwardness, trying to avoid stepping in the
carnage.

Nobody could get down the east stairs without
smearing his boots lo the ankles with blood.

"They could hurry up with the water," Lachere
muttered.

"They didn't see it happen," Desoix said. He
lay across the firing console, his chin on his hands
and his elbows on the control grips he no longer
needed to twist.

He closed his eyes for a moment instead of
rubbing them.




240 David Drake

Desoix's hands and face, like those of his men,
were black with indium burned from the calli-
ope's bores by the continuous firing. The vapor
had condensed in the air and settled as dust over
everything within ten meters of the muzzles. Rub-
bing his eyes before he washed would drive the
finely-divided metal under the lids, into the orbits.

Desoix kept reminding himself that it would
matter to him some day, when he wasn't so tired.

"They just shot when somebody ran up the
stairs and gave them a target," he continued in
the croak that was all the voice remaining to him
until Blaney arrived with the water. "It wasn't
like—"

He wanted to raise his arm to indicate the pla-
za's carpet of the dead, but waggling an index
finger was as much as he had need or energy to
accomplish. "It wasn't what we had, all targets,
and it. ..."

Desoix tried to remember how he would have
felt if he had come upon this scene an hour ear-
lier. He couldn't, so he let his voice trail off.

A lot of them must have gotten out when some-
body opened the gates at either end of the mall.
Desoix had tried to avoid raking the mall and the
main stairs. The mercenaries had to end the insur-
rection and clear the plaza for their own safety,
but the civilians swept out by fear were as harm-
less as their fellows who filled the sight picture as
the calliope coughed and traversed.

There'd been just the one long burst which
cleared the mall of riflemen.

Cleared it of life.

"Here you go, sir," said Blaney, skipping up the
last few steps with a four-liter canteen and hop-
ping onto the deck of the calliope.

COUNTING THE COST        241

"Took yer bloody time," Lachere repeated as he
snatched the canteen another of the newcomers
offered him. He began slurping the water down so
greedily that he choked and sprayed a mouthful
out his nostrils.

Senter was drinking also. He hunched down
behind the breeches of the guns he had been
feeding, so that he could not see any of what
surrounded the calliope. Even so, the clerk's eye-
lids were pressed tightly together except for brief
flashes that showed his dilated pupils.

"Ah, where's Major Borodin, sir?" Blaney asked.

Desoix closed his eyes again, luxuriating in the
feel of warm water swirling in his mouth.

Gun Three had full supplies for its double crew
before the shooting started. Desoix hadn't thought
to load himself and his two clerks with water
before they set out.

He hadn't been planning; just reacting, stimu-
lus by stimulus, to a situation over which he had
abdicated conscious control.

"The Major's back at the Palace," Desoix said.
"President Delcorio told me he wanted a trust-
worthy officer with him, so I commanded the field
operations myself."

He didn't care about himself any more. He
stuck to the story he had arranged with Delcorio
because it was as easy to tell as the truth . . . and
because Desoix still felt a rush of loyalty to his
battery commander.

They'd succeeded, and Major Borodin could have
his portion of the triumph if he wanted it.

Charles Desoix wished it had been him, not
Borodin, who had spent the last two hours locked
in a storeroom in the Palace. But his memory

242 David Drake

would not permit him to think that, even as a
fantasy.

"Blaney," he said aloud. "I'm putting you in
command of this gun until we get straightened
around. I'm going down to check with Captain
Koopman." He nodded toward the cluster of gray
and khaki soldiers sprawled near the altar.

"Ah, sir?" Blaney said in a nervous tone.

Desoix paused after swinging his leg over the
gunner's saddle. He shrugged, as much response
as he felt like making at the moment.

"Sir, we started taking sniper fire, had two guys
hurt," Blaney went on. "We—I laid the gun on
the hospital, put a burst into it to, you know, get
their attention. Ah, the sniping stopped."

"Via, you really did, didn't you?" said the offi-
cer, amazed that he hadn't noticed the damage
before.

Gun Three had a flat angle on the south face of
the glittering building. Almost a third of the vitril
panels on that side were gone in a raking slash
from the ground floor to the twentieth. The bolts
wouldn't have penetrated the hospital, though the
Lord knew what bits of the shattered windows had
done when they flew around inside.

Charles Desoix began to laugh. He choked and
had to grip the calliope's chassis in order to keep
from falling over. He hadn't been sure that he
would ever laugh again.

"Sergeant," he said, shutting his eyes because
Blaney's stricken face would set him off again if he
watched it. "You're afraid you're in trouble be-
cause of that?"

He risked a look at Blaney. The sergeant was
nodding blankly.

Desoix gripped his subordinate's hand. "Don't

COUNTING THE Cos't

worry," he said. "Don't. I'll just tell theK
on my account."

He took the canteen with him as he wa^
down the stairs toward Tyi Koopman. Haliw&y
down he stumbled when he slipped on a dismem-
bered leg.

That set him laughing again.




CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"Got twelve could use help," said the sergeant
major as Tyi shuddered under the jets of topical
anesthetic he was spraying onto his own chest.

Scratchard frowned and added, "Maybe you too,
hey?"

"Via, I'm fine," Tyi said, trying to smooth the
grimace that wanted to twist his face awry. "No
dead?"

He looked around sharply and immediately
wished he hadn't tried to move quite that fast.

Tyi's ceramic breastplate had stopped the bullet
and spread its impact across the whole inner sur-
face of the armor. That was survivable; but now,
with the armor and his tunic stripped off, Tyi's
chest was a symphony of bruising. His ribs and
the seams of his tunic pockets were emphasized in
purple, and the flesh between those highlights
was a dull yellow-gray of its own.

246            David Drake                                      COUNTING THE COST

247

Scratchard shrugged. "Krasinski took one in the
face," he said. "Had 'er shield down too, but
when your number's up. ..."

Tyi sprayed anesthetic. The curse that ripped
out of his mouth could have been directed at the
way the mist settled across him and made the
bruised flesh pucker as it chilled.

"Timmons stood on a grenade," Scratchard con-
tinued, squatting beside his captain. "Prob'ly his
own. Told 'em not to screw with grenades after we
committed, but they never listen, not when it

•            "

gets. . .

Scratchard's fingers were working with the gun
he now carried, a slug-firing machine pistol. The
magazine lay on the ground beside him. The trig-
ger group came out, then the barrel tilted from
the receiver at the touch of the sergeant major's
experienced fingers.

Jack wasn't watching his hands. His eyes were
open and empty, focused on the main stairs be-
cause there were no fallen troopers there.

They'd been his men too.

"One a' the recruits," Scratchard continued
quietly, "he didn't want to go up the ladder."

Tyi looked at the non-corn.

Scratchard shrugged again. "Kekkonan shot him.
Wasn't a lotta time to discuss things."

"Kekkonan due another stripe?" Tyi asked.

"After this?" Scratchard replied, his voice bright
with unexpected emotion. "We're all due bloody
something, sir!"

His face blanked. His fingers began to reassem-
ble the gun he'd picked up when he'd fired all the
ammunition for both the powerguns he carried.

Tyi looked at their prisoners, the half dozen
men who'd survived when Jack sprayed the group

on the altar. Now they clustered near the low
building, under the guns of a pair of troopers
who'd been told to guard them.

The soldiers were too tired to pay much atten-
tion. The prisoners were too frightened to need
guarding at all.

Thorn Chastain still wore a gold-trimmed scarlet
robe. A soldier had ripped away the chain and
pendant Tyi remembered vaguely from earlier in
the morning. Thorn smiled like a porcelain doll, a
hideous contrast with the tears which continued to
shiver down his cheeks.

The tears were particularly noticeable because
one of the gang bosses beside Thorn on the altar
had been shot in the neck. He'd been very active
in his dying, painting everyone nearby with streaks
of bright, oxygen-rich blood. The boy's tears washed
tracks in the blood.

Bishop Trirner and three lesser priests stood a
meter from the Chastains—and as far apart as
turned backs and icy expressions could make them.

Father Laughlin was trying to hunch himself
down to the height of other men. His white robes
dragged the ground when he forgot to draw them
up with his hands; their hem was bloody.

The prisoners weren't willing to sit down the
way the Slammers did. But nobody was used to a
scene like this.

"I never saw so many bodies," said Charles
Desoix.

"Yeah, me too," Tyi agreed.

He hadn't seen the UDB officer walk up beside
him. His eyes itched. He supposed there was
something wrong with his peripheral vision from
the ozone or the actinics—despite his faceshietd.

"Water?" Desoix offered.




248

COUNTING THE COST          249

David Drake

"Thanks," Tyi said, accepting the offer though
water still sloshed in the canteen on his own belt.
He drank and paused, then sipped again.

Where the calliope had raked the mob, corpses
lay in rows like flotsam thrown onto the strand by
a storm. Otherwise, the half of the plaza nearer
the sea-front was strewn rather than carpeted with
bodies. You could walk that far and, if you were
careful, step only on concrete.

Bloody concrete.

Where the plaza narrowed toward the main stairs,
there was no longer room even for the corpses.
They were piled one upon another . . . five in a
stack ... a ramp ten meters deep, rising at the
same angle as the stairs and composed of human
flesh compressed by the weight of more humans—
each trying to escape by clambering over his fel-
lows, each dying in turn as the guns continued to

fire.

The stench of scattered viscera was a sour mi-
asma as the sun began to warm the plaza.

"How many, d'ye guess?" Tyi asked as he handed

back the canteen.

He was sure his voice was normal, but he felt
his body begin to shiver uncontrollably. It was the
drugs, it had to be the anesthetic.

"Twenty thousand, thirty thousand," Desoix said.
He cleared his throat, but his voice broke anyway
as he tried to say, "They did, they. . ."

Desoix bent his head. When he lifted it again,
he said in a voice as clear as the glitter of tears in
his eyes, "I think as many were crushed trying to
get away as we killed ourselves. But we killed

enough."

Something moved at the head of the main stairs.
Tyi aimed the submachinegun he'd picked up when

he stood. Pain filled his torso like the fracture
lines in breaking glass, but he didn't shudder any
more. The sight picture was razor sharp.

An air car with the gold and crystal markings of
the Palace slid through the mall and cruised down
the main stairs. The vehicle was being driven low
and slow, just above the surface, because surpris-
ing the troops here meant sudden death.

Even laymen could see that.

Tyi lowered his weapon, wondering what would
have happened if he'd taken up the last trigger
pressure and spilled John and Eunice Delcorio
onto the bodies of so many of their opponents.

The car's driver and the man beside him were
Palace servants, both in their sixties. They looked
out of place, even without the pistols in issue
holsters belted over their blue livery.

Major Borodin and Colonel Drescher rode in
the middle pair of seats, ahead of the presidential
couple.

The battery commander was the first to get out
when the car grounded beside the mercenary offi-
cers. The electronic piping of Borodin's uniform
glittered brighter than sunlight on the metal around
him. He blinked at his surroundings, at the pris-
oners. Then he nodded to Desoix and said, "Lieu-
tenant, you've, ah—carried out your orders in a
satisfactory fashion."

Desoix saluted. "Thank you, sir," he said in a
voice as dead as the stench of thirty thousand
bodies.

Colonel Drescher followed Borodin, moving like
a marionette with a broken wire. The flap of his
holster was closed, but there was no gun inside.
One of the Guard commander's polished boots
was missing. He held the sole of the bare foot




250            David Drake

slightly above the concrete, where it would have
been if he were fully dressed.

President Delcorio stepped from the vehicle
and handed out his wife as if they were at a public
function. Both of them were wearing cloth of gold,
dazzling even though the car's fans had flung up
bits of the carnage as it carried them through the
plaza.

"Gentlemen," Delcorio said, nodding to Tyi and
Desoix. His throat hadn't been wracked by the
residues of battle, so his voice sounded subtly
wrong in its smooth normalcy.

Pedro Delcorio was walking to join his uncle
from the control room beneath the altar. He car-
ried a pistol in his right hand. The bore of the
powergun was bright and not scarred by use.

The President and his wife approached the pris-
oners. Major Borodin fluffed the thighs of his uni-
form; Drescher stood on one foot, his eyes looking
out over the channel.

President Delcorio stared at the Bishop. The
other priests hunched away, as if Delcorio's gaze
were wind-blown sleet.

Trimer faced him squarely. The Bishop was a
short man and slightly built even in the bulk of his
episcopal garments, but he was very much alive.
Looking at him, Tyi remembered the faint glow
that firelight had washed across the eyes of Tri-
mer's face carven on the House of Grace.

"Bishop," said John Delcorio. "I'm so glad my
men were able to rescue you from this—" his foot
delicately gestured toward the nearest body, a
woman undressed by the grenade blast that killed
her "—rabble."

Father Laughlin straightened so abruptly that
he almost fell when he kicked the pile of commu-

COUNTING THE COST          251

nications and data-transfer equipment which his
two fellows had piled on the ground. No one had
bothered to strip the priests of their hardware,
but they had done so themselves as quickly as
they were able.

Perhaps the priests felt they could distance them-
selves from what had gone before ... or what
they expected to come later.

"Pres ..." said Bishop Trimer cautiously. His
voice was oil-smooth—until it cracked. "President?"

"Yes, very glad," Delcorio continued. "I think it
must be that the Christ-denying elements were
behind the riot. I'm sure they took you prisoner
when they heard you had offered all the assets of
the Church to support our crusade."

Laughlin threw his hands to his face, covering
his mouth and a look of horror.

"Yes, all Church personalty," said Trimer. "Ex-
cept what is needed for the immediate sustenance
of the Lord's servants."

"All assets, real and personal, is what I'd heard,"
said the President. His voice was flat. The index
finger of his right hand was rising as if to make a
gesture, a cutting motion.

"Yes, personal property and all the estates of
the Church outside of Bamberg City itself," said
Bishop Trimer. He thrust out his chin, looking
even more like the bas relief on the shot-scarred
hospital.

Delcorio paused, then nodded. "Yes," he said.
"That's what I understood. We'll go back to—"

Eunice Delcorio looked at Tyi. "You," she said
in a clear voice, ignoring her husband and seem-
ingly ignoring the fact that he had spoken. "Shoot
these two."

She pointed toward the Chastains.

252            David Drake                                     COUNTING THE COST

253

Tyi raised his submachinegun's muzzle skyward
and stepped toward the President's wife.

"Sir!" shouted Ripper Jack Scratchard, close
enough that his big hand gripped Tyi's shoulder.
"Don't!"

Tyi pulled free. He took Eunice's right hand in
his left and pressed her palm against the grip of
the submachinegun. He forced her fingers closed.
"Here," he said. "You do it."

He hadn't thought he was shouting, but he
must have been from the way all of them stared at
him, their faces growing pale.

He spun Eunice around to face the ramp of
bodies. She was a solid woman and tried to resist,
but that was nothing to him now. "It's easy," he
said. "See how bloody easy it is?

"Do you see?"

A shot cracked. He had been shouting. The
muzzle blast didn't seem loud at all.

Tyi turned. Scratchard fired his captured weapon
again. Richie Chastain screamed and stumbed across
his twin; Thorn was already down with a hole
behind his right ear and a line of blood from the
corner of his mouth.

Scratchard fired twice more as the boy thrashed
on his belly. The second bullet punched through
the chest cavity and ricocheted from the ground
with a hum of fury.

Tyi threw his gun down. He turned and tried to
walk away, but he couldn't see anything. He would
have fallen except that Scratchard took one of his
arms and Desoix the other, holding him and stand-
ing between him and the Delcorios.

"Bishop Trimer," he heard the President saying.
"Will you adjourn with us, please, to the Palace."
There was no question in the tone. "We have

some details to work out, and I think we'll be

more comfortable there, though my servant situa-
tion is a—"

Tyi turned.

"Wait," be said. Everyone was watching him.
There was a red blotch on the back of Eunice's
hand where he'd held her, but he was as con-
trolled as the tide, now. "I want doctors for my
men."

He lifted his hand toward the House of Grace,
glorying in the pain of moving. "You got a whole
hospital, there. I want doctors, now, and I want
every one of my boys treated like he was Christ
himself. Understood?"

"Of course, of course," said Father Laughlin in
the voice Tyi remembered from the Consistory
Meeting.

The big priest turned to the man who had been
wearing the commo set and snarled, "Well, get on
it, Ryan. You heard the man!"

Ryan knelt and began speaking into the hand-
set, glancing sometimes up at the hospital's shat-
tered facade and sometimes back at the Slammers
captain. The only color on the priest's face was a
splotch of someone else's blood.

Trimer walked to the air car, arm in arm with
President Delcorio.

Borodin and Drescher had already boarded. Nei-
ther of them would let their eyes focus on any-
thing around them. When Pedro Delcorio squeezed
in between them, the two officers made room
without comment.

Father Laughlin would have followed the Bishop,
but Eunice Delcorio glanced at his heavy form
and gestured dismissingly. Laughlin watched the




254 David Drake

car lift into a hover; then, sinking his head low, he
strode in the direction of the east stairs.

Tyi Koopman stood between his sergeant major
and the UDB lieutenant. He was beginning to
shiver again.

"What's it mean, d'ye suppose?" he whispered
in the direction of the main stairs.

"Mean?" said Charles Desoix dispassionately.
"It means that John Delcorio is President—Presi-
dent in more than name—for the first time. It
means that he really has the resources to prose-
cute his crusade, the war on Two, to a successful
conclusion. I doubt that would have been possible
without the financial support of the Church."

"But who cares!" Tyi shouted. "D'ye mean we've
got jobs for the next two years? Who bloody cares?
Somebody'd 've hired us, you know that!"

"It means," said Jack Scratchard, "that we're
alive and they're dead. That's all it means, sir."

"It's got to mean more than that," Tyi whispered.

But as he looked at the heaps and rows of
bodies, tens of thousands of dead human beings
stiffening in the sun, he couldn't put any real
belief into the words. ^

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The Slammers were gone.

Ambulances had carried their wounded off, each
with a guard of other troopers ready to add a few
more bodies to the day's bag if any of Trimer's
men seemed less than perfectly dedicated to heal-
ing the wounded. Desoix thought he'd heard the
sergeant major say something about bivouacking
in the House of Grace, but he hadn't been paying
much attention.

There was nothing here for him. He ought to
leave himself.

Desoix turned. Anne McGill was walking to-
ward him. She had thrown off the cloak that cov-
ered her in the cathedral and was wearing only a
dress of white chiffon like the one in which she
had greeted him the day before.

Her face was set. She was moving very slowly,




256 David Drake

because she would not look down and her feet
kept brushing the things that she refused to see.

Desoix began to tremble. He had unlatched his
body armor, but he still had it on. The halves
rattled against one another as he watched the
woman approach.

There was nothing there. There couldn't be
anything left there now.

It didn't matter. That was only one of many
things which had died this morning. No doubt
he'd feel it was an unimportant one in later years.

Anne put her arms around him, crushing her
cheek against his though he was black with ind-
ium dust and dried blood. "I'm so sorry," she
whispered. "Charles, I—we. . . . Charles, I love
you."

As if love could matter now.

Desoix put his arms around her, squeezing gently
so that the edges of his armor would not bite into
her soft flesh.

Love mattered, even now.

Afterword to Counting the Cost
HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY

I gained my first real insight into tanks when I
was about eight years old and the local newspaper
ran a picture of one, an M41 Walker Bulldog, on
the front page.

The M41 isn't especially big. It's longer than
the Studebaker my family had at the time but still
a couple feet shorter than the 1960 Plymouth we
owned later. At nine feet high and eleven feet
wide, the tank was impressive but not really out of
automotive scale.

What was striking about it was the way it had
flattened a parked car when the tank's driver goofed
during a Christmas Parade in Chicago. That picture
proved to me that the power and lethality of a tank
are out of all proportion to the size of the package.

257




258

David Drake

COUNTING THE COST

259

I learned a lot more about tanks in 1970 when I
was assigned to the llth Armored Cavalry Regi-
ment in Viet Nam.

Normally, interrogators like me were in slots at
brigade level or higher. The Eleventh Cav was
unusual in that each of its three squadrons in the
field had a Battalion Intelligence Collection Center
—pronounced like the pen—of four to six men.
After a week or two at the rear echelon headquar-
ters of my unit, I requested assignment to a BICC.
A few weeks later, I joined Second Squadron in

Cambodia,

Our BICC had a variety of personal and official
gear—the tent was our largest item—which fitted
into a trailer about the size of a middling-big
U-Haul-It. We didn't have a vehicle of our own.
When the squadron moved (as it generally did every
week or two), the trailer was towed by one of the
Headquarters Troop tracks; and we, the personnel,
were split up as crew among the fighting vehicles.

The tanks were M48s, already obsolescent be-
cause the 90 mm main gun couldn't be trusted
to penetrate the armor of new Soviet tanks.
That wasn't a problem for us, since most of the
opposition wore black pajamas and sandals cut
from tire treads.

M48s have a normal complement of four men,
but that was exceptionally high in the field. In one
case, I rode as loader on a tank which would have
been down to two men—driver and commander—
without me. The Eleventh Cav was at almost dou-
ble its official (Table of Organization) strength, but
the excess personnel didn't trickle far enough from
headquarters to reach the folks who were expected
to do the actual fighting.

While I was there, a squadron in the field oper-
ated as four linked entities. Squadron headquar-
ters (including the BICC) was a firebase, so called
because the encampment included a battery of
self-propelled 155 mm howitzers—six guns if none
were deadlined.

Besides How Battery, the firebase included Head-
quarters Troop with half a dozen Armored Cavalry
Assault Vehicles—ACAVs. These were simply M113
armored personnel carriers modified at the factory
into combat vehicles. Each had a little steel cupola
around a fifty caliber machinegun and a pintle-
mounted M60 machinegun (7.62 mm) on either flank.

There were also a great number of other vehicles
at the firebase: armored personnel carriers mod-
ified into trucks, high-sided command vehicles, and
mobile flamethrowers (Zippos); maintenance vehi-
cles with cranes to lift out and replace engines in
the field; and a platoon of combat engineers with a
modified M48 tank as well as the bulldozers that
turned up an earthen berm around the whole site.

Apart from these headquarters units, the squad-
ron was made up of a company of (nominally)
seventeen M48 tanks; and three line troops with
twelve ACAVs and six Sheridans apiece. The Sher-
idan is a deathtrap with a steel turret, an alumi-
num hull, and a 152 mm cannon whose ammunition
generally caught fire if the vehicle hit a forty
pound mine.

Either a line troop or the tank company laa-
gered at the firebase at night for security. The
other three formed separate night defensive posi-
tions within fire support range of How Battery.

I talked with a lot of people in the field, and I
got a good first-hand look at the way an armored
regiment conducts combat operations.




260 David Drake

When I got back to the World, I resumed my
hobby of writing fantasies. I'd sold three stories to
August Derleth in the past; now I sold him a
fourth, set in the late Roman Empire. Mr. Derleth
paid for that story the day before he died.

With him gone, there was no market for what I
was writing: short stories in the heroic fantasy
subgenre. I kept writing them anyway, becom-
ing more and more frustrated that they didn't
sell. (I wasn't real tightly wrapped back then.
It was a while before I realized just how screwy
I was.)

Fortunately, writer-friends in Chapel Hill,
Manly Wade Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner,
suggested that I use Viet Nam as a setting. I
tried it with immediate success, selling a horror
fantasy to F&SF and a science fiction story to
ANALOG.

I still had a professional problem. There were
very few stories that someone with my limited
skills could tell which were SF or fantasy, and
which directly involved the Eleventh Cav. I de-
cided to get around the issue by telling a story
that was SF because the characters used ray guns
instad of M16s . . . but was otherwise true, the
way it had been described to me by the men
who'd been there.

The story was THE BUTCHER'S BILL, and for
it I created a mercenary armored regiment called
Hammer's Slammers.

The hardware was easy. I'd spent enough time
around combat vehicles to have a notion of their
strengths and weaknesses. Hammer's vehicles

COUNTING THE COST         261

were designed around the M48s and ACAVs I'd

ridden, with some of the most glaring faults
eliminated.

All the vehicles in the field with the Eleventh
Cav were track-laying; that is, they had caterpillar
treads instead of wheels. This was necessary be-
cause we never encamped on surfaced roads. Part
of any move, even for headquarters units, was
across stretches of jungle cleared minutes before
by bulldozers fitted with Rome Plow blades.

The interior of a firebase was also bulldozed
clear. Rain turned the bare soil either gooey or
the consistency of wet soap. In both cases, it was
impassable for wheeled vehicles. Our daily sup-
plies came in by helicopter.

Tracks were absolutely necessary; and they were

an absolute curse for the crewmen who had to
maintain them.

Jungle soils dry to a coarse, gritty stone that
abrades the tracks as they churn it up. When
tracks wear, they loosen the way a bicycle chain
does. To steer a tracked vehicle, you brake one
tread while the other continues to turn. If the

tracks are severely worn, you're certain to throw
one.

If they're not worn, you may throw one any-
way.

Replacing a track in the field means the crew
has to break the loop; drive off it with the road
wheels and the good track while another vehicle
stretches the broken track; reverse onto the straight-
ened track, hand-feeding the free end up over the
drive sprocket and along the return rollers; and
then mate the ends into a loop again.

You may very well throw the same track ten
minutes later.

262 David Drake

Because of that problem (and suspension prob-
lems. Want to guess how long torsion bars last on
a fifty ton tank bouncing over rough terrain?) I
decided my supertanks had to be air cushion vehi-
cles. That would be practical only if fuel supply
weren't a problem, so that the fans could be pow-
erful enough to keep the huge mass stable even
though it didn't touch the ground.

I'm a writer, not an engineer. I didn't have any
difficulty in giving my tanks and combat cars
(ACAVs with energy weapons) the fusion power-
plants without which they'd be useless.

Armament required the same sort of decision.
Energy weapons have major advantages over pro-
jectile weapons; but although tanks may some day
mount effective lasers, I don't think an infantry-
man will ever be able to carry one. I therefore
postulated guns that fired bolts of plasma liberated—
somehow—from individual cartridges.

That took care of the hardware. The organiza-
tion was basically that of the Eleventh Cav, with a
few changes for the hell of it.

The unit itself was not based on any US unit
with which I'm familiar. Its model was the French
Foreign Legion; more precisely, the French For-
eign Legion serving in Viet Nam just after World
War Two—when most of its personnel were veter-
ans of the SS who'd fled from Germany ahead of
the Allied War Crimes Commission.

The incident around which I plotted THE
BUTCHER'S BILL was the capture of Snuol the
day before I arrived in Cambodia. That was the
only significant fighting during the invasion ofCam-

COUNTING THE COST         263

bodia, just as Snuol was the only significant town
our forces reached.

G, one of the line troops, entered Snuol first.
There was a real street, lined with stucco-faced
shops instead of the grass huts on posts in the
farming hamlets of the region. The C-100 Anti-
Aircraft Company, a Viet Cong unit, was defend-
ing the town with a quartet of fifty-one caliber
machineguns.

A fifty-one cal could put its rounds through an
ACAV the long way, and the aluminum hull of a
Sheridan wasn't much more protection. Before G
Troop could get out, the concealed guns had de-
stroyed one of either type of vehicle.

The squadron commander responded by send-
ing in H Company, his tanks.

The eleven M48s rolled down the street in line
ahead. The first tank slanted its main gun to the
right side of the street, the second to the left, and
so on. Each tank fired a round of canister or
shrapnel into every structure that slid past the
muzzle of its 90 mm gun.

On the other side of Snuol, they formed up

to go back again. There wasn't any need to do
that.

The VC had opened fire at first. The crews of
the M48s didn't know that, because the noise
inside was so loud that the clang of two-ounce
bullets hitting the armor was inaudible. Some of
the slugs flattened and were there on the fenders
to be picked up afterwards. The surviving VC
fled, leaving their guns behind.

There was a little looting—a bottle of whiskey, a
sack of ladies' slippers, a step-through Honda (which
was flown back to Quan Loi in a squadron helicop-




264 David Drake

ter). But for all practical purposes, Snuol ceased to
have human significance the moment H Company
blasted its way down the street.

The civilian population? It had fled before the
shooting started.

Not that it would have made any difference to
the operation.

So I wrote a story about what wars cost and
how decisions get made in the field—despite
policy considerations back in air-conditioned
offices. It was the best story I'd written so far,
and the first time I'd tackled issues of real im-
portance.

Only problem was, THE BUTCHER'S BILL
didn't sell.

Mostly it just got rejection slips, but one very
competent editor said that Joe Haldeman and Jerry
Pournelle were writing as much of that sort of
story as his magazine needed. (Looking back, I
find it interesting that in 1973 magazine terms,
the stories in THE FOREVER WAR, THE MER-
CENARY, and HAMMER'S SLAMMERS were
indistinguishable.)

One editor felt that THE BUTCHER'S BILL
demanded too much background, both SF and
military, for the entry-level anthology he was plan-
ning. That was a good criticism, to which I re-
sponded by writing UNDER THE HAMMER.

UNDER THE HAMMER had a new recruit as
its viewpoint character, a kid who was terrified
that he was going to make an ignorant mistake and
get himself killed. (I didn't have to go far to find a
model for the character. Remember that I hadn't
had advanced combat training before I became an
ad hoc tank crewman.) Because the recruit knew

COUNTING THE COST         265

so little, other characters could explain details to
him and to the reader.

I made the kid a recruit to Hammer's Slam-
mers, because I already had that background clear

in my mind. I hadn't intended to write a series, it
just happened that way.

UNDER THE HAMMER didn't sell either.
I went about a year and a half with no sales.
This was depressing, and I was as prone as the

next guy to whine "My stuff's better 'n some of
the crap they publish."

In hindsight, I've decided that when an author
doesn't sell, it's because:

1) he's doing something wrong; or

2) he's doing something different, and he

isn't good enough to get away with being dif-
ferent.

In my case, there was some of both. The two
Hammer stories were different—and clumsy; I was
new to the job. Most of the other fiction I wrote
during that period just wasn't very good.

But the situation was very frustrating.

The dam broke when Cordy Dickson took THE
BUTCHER'S BILL for an anthology he was edit-
ing. It wasn't a lot of money, but I earned my

living as an attorney. This was a sale, and it had
been a long time coming.

Almost immediately thereafter, the editor at
GALAXY (who'd rejected the Hammer stories)
was replaced by his assistant, a guy named Jim
Baen. Jim took the pair and asked for more.

I wrote three more stories in the series before
Jim left to become SF editor of Ace Books. One of
the three was the only piece I've written about



266 David Drake

Colonel Hammer himself instead of Hammer's
Slammers. It was to an editorial suggestion; tell
how it all started. Jim took that one, and though
he rejected the other two, they sold elsewhere.
The dam really had broken.

I moved away from Hammer and into other
things, including a fantasy novel. Then Jim, now
at Ace, asked for a collection of the 35,000 words
already written plus enough new material in the
series to fill out a book. Earlier I'd had an idea
that seemed too complex to be done at a length a
magazine would buy from me. I did it—HANG-
MAN—for the collection and added a little end-
cap for the volume also—STANDING DOWN.

To stand between the stories, I wrote essays
explaining the background of the series, social
and economic as well as the hardware. In some
cases I had to work out the background for the
first time. I hadn't started with the intention of
writing a series.

HAMMER'S SLAMMERS came out in 1979.
That was the end of the series, so far as I was
concerned. But as the years passed, I did a novelet.
Then the setting turned out to be perfect for my
effort at using the plot of the ODYSSEY as an SF
novel (CROSS THE STARS). I did a short novel,
AT ANY PRICE, that was published with the
earlier novelet and a story I did for the volume. . . .

And I'm going to do more stories besides this
one in the series, because Hammer's Slammers
have become a vehicle for a message that I think
needs to be more widely known. Veterans who've
written or talked to me already understand, but a
lot of other people don't,

When you send a man out with a gun, you

COUNTING THE COST        267

create a policymaker. When his ass is on the line
he will do whatever he needs to do.

And if the implications of that bother you the
time to do something about it is before you decide
to send him out.

Dave Drake
Chapel Hill, N.C.