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'Accelerating all schedules!' Trucker shouts. 'All units advance to seize
objectives nowV
On the oval video screen, the image jolts as the cameraman hangs on for dear
life, copters put their noses down and peel away from flight lanes toward
their objectives. The fantastic towers of the Aerial Palace appear on video
through the shimmer of rotor blades.
The mage attack is on the First Brigade. Because the brigade is late, the
mages who were supposed to protect it haven't joined it as yet, and the moving
columns are helpless beneath waves of fiery plasm.
04:55: trackline cars moving.
It's actually 04:51. The schedule's been advanced, or possibly just dissolved
altogether. The 'trackline cars'  in actuality artillery shells the size of
trackline cars - sit under canvas at railway sidings in neutral territory.
Plucked from their cradles by giant plasm hands, they commence their flight to
their target, directional fins deploying in midair.
The trackline cars rumble through the air on the way to their targets, a faint
line of vapor trailing from each fin. The huge shells are flung from their
mages' ectomorphic hands like darts into corkboards, plunging into the huge
concrete barges that support the headquarters and barracks of the Metropolitan
Guard and the Aerial Palace, which itself is defended by detached Guard
companies. Aside from the damage the shells can cause, the shells are supposed
to disrupt communications, stun the defenders and punch holes in the bronze
collection web that guards the buildings, making it possible for the
attackers' plasm to enter. The Guard's buildings are also splashed with
incendiaries, in part to mark their location with columns of smoke to aid
Geymard's air assault.
A loyalist mage locates another column of the First Brigade, and the lead
armored car erupts in a spectacular display of fuel, ammunition, and plasm
fire.
Aiah looks dry-mouthed at her dials and sees them feeding a constant supply of
the goods to the airship Paper-hanger that hovers gracefully over neutral
ground a thousand radii away. A staccato adrenaline pulse beats time in her
throat. A drop of sweat courses down her cheek from beneath her helmet.
She's as useless as any bystander, helpless to alter the situation one way or
another, but she's not a bystander. The whole thing is her fault  none of
this would be happening if not for her.
She looks up at the video screen and sees smoke columns rising above the
Metropolitan Guard complex  huge square-shouldered buildings, all concrete
and gunslits, bombproof roofs, transmission horns, radio antennae -and then
white trails of rockets reach into the jittering image like smoking fingers .
..
Team Four-A commencing strafing attack.
Explosions wink red against the massive Guard structures.
Aiah can't take her eyes away.
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06:0$: Judiciary and Popular Assembly occupied. Team Seven reserves deployed
as necessary.
Good news, bad news. Visible on a new video feed, rebels of the Marine Brigade
stand proudly in front of Government Harbor buildings, having occupied the
seat of government without resistance. But it's all symbolic, for the cameras;
nothing of importance is going to happen in those buildings in the next few
hours. Much of the Marine Brigade pushes forward to aid the Second Brigade in
storming the Aerial Palace, where companies of the Metropolitan Guard are
putting up a stiff resistance. Live feed shows the battle from a half-dozen
angles, the extravagant architecture of the Aerial Palace bright with
reflected tracer fire. The rest of the Metropolitan Guard is still confined
to its base, sheltering in the massive concrete buildings. Parts of the
buildings are on fire, coils of thick smoke rising from the gunslits, and a
fierce battle is being waged, with both gunfire and plasm. Geymard's
mercenaries, on the high buildings adjacent, have the Guard surrounded, but
can do little but pour more ammunition into the fight without any clear
indication that it's doing any good. Their gun-ships have exhausted their
ammunition, but fortunately the big aerocars with munitions and heavy weapons
all arrive without interference, crushing neat roof-garden rows as they drop
to disgorge cargo.
'AH gunships have exhausted their ammunition. Returning to base.'
'Report from Jewel One,' Red says. 'The necklacing was only a partial success.
Mages guarding the cables.'
Jewel One was Prince Aranax, the necklacing his attempt to blow the cables
carrying plasm to the loyalists. Aiah thinks of dolphins drifting downward
into darkness trailing mute streams of blood and bubbles ... plenty of plasm
for the defenders.
'Four-A's being hit again! Foreign troops!'
Clearly the First Brigade has no luck at all. Now Mond-ray's Regulars, the
mercenary troops imported by the Kere-maths, are racing to the rescue of their
employers. The First Brigade was supposed to seize bridges between the
mercenaries and the Aerial Palace, but now they're too late.
Aiah tastes blood in her mouth and realizes that she's been gnawing her cheek.
She looks up in alarm at a throaty cry from one of the plasm consoles: Aldemar
sounds as if she's just been punched hard in the solar plexus. Her body
thrashes on its padded chair. Her perfect white teeth are clenched, and her
eyes are closed in concentration.
Slim's eyes go wide. 'Paperhanger's under attack!' he shouts. 'Wizard Three,
Wizard Two - abandon security duty and defend the ship!'
No crushing plasm assault destroys Paperhanger, but rather a series of raids,
the government mages running at the airship for a slashing attack, then fading
away to attack from a new direction. Most of the attacks fail, but a few get
through. The airship's condition slowly worsens: enough gas cells are
punctured so that the ship slowly loses altitude and stability, more and more
water ballast must be dumped to keep the vessel on an even keel, and
eventually its captain announces that its crew will have to abandon ship. The
crew drag their wounded to the emergency aerofoils and the long glide to the
surface of the world.
'Shift the plasm beam to Red Bolt? Aldemar's voice, boosted by plasm, rings
off the roofbeams of the factory. Pigeons flutter nervously on their perches.
Red Bolt is the backup, a converted cargo plane cruising in neutral airspace.
But its facilities are more limited than those of the airship: its slim,
aerodynamic profile is less likely to soak up the entire plasm beam, and its
broadcast horns are smaller and less accurate. These handicaps can all be
overcome with care and attention on the part of the mages attending to the
plasm transmission, but the care and attention could be diverted to better
things.
Aiah licks her lips, tasting adrenaline in the sweat dotting her upper lip,
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and reaches for her dials. 'Does Red Bolt know they're getting the goods?' she
demands.
'Yes! Panther's told them!'
Panther is Sorya's all-too-apt code-name, as Constan-tine's is Big Man. Aiah
checks the orientation of the reserve horn again  correct for Red Bolt - and
readies her hands on the switches.
'Shifting to Red Bolt on my mark!' she says. 'Five! Four! Three!...'
On her mark she throws the switch; overhead she can hear the clatter of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]