Crisis Of Empire - Crown Of Empire Part 37

himself to his feet. "Is there anything to eat around here? I'm starving."

"Yes, there's food, in your apartments," said another Guard, a fair-haired youngster named Garring. "When the a.s.sault came and we couldn't reach you, we decided we'd better dig in and wait."

"Even when you were told I died?" Wiley asked.

"Well. we were told, sir, but we hadn't seen...

well, a body," said the corporal.

Wiley looked at the five Guards surrounding him. They were little older than he was, and unaccustomed to taking the initiative. "Good work," he said. "I'm glad you're here. Now, how about that food?"

The corporal opened her mouth to reply and was cut off by one other men.

"Look!"

A fully armed destroyer with Logistics flashes was coming in low from the north-east. Its pas- sage stirred up little tornadoes. Aircars in the vicinity were all but knocked out of die air by its turbulence. Laser-cannon and plasma batteries decorated the hull.

It came nearer, blotting out the view of most of the city. The destroyer was a quarter the size of the Palace grounds.

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Suddenly all the klaxons, sirens, bells, and whistles of the Palace came to life. The noise was overwhemung-

Wiley crouched down, hands over his ears. He could see the others had done the same.

The noise grew louder as the Navy craft crossed over the Palace wall and continued inexorably forward.

Then someone high in the top of the south- west tower turned a laser-cannon on the Logistics vessel.

Garring was shouting something but Wiley could not hear him over the noise.

A second laser-cannon - this one somewhere on the grounds - opened on the Logistics s.h.i.+p.

The little group on the platform flattened and tried to cling to the surface as huge winds buf- feted them, burning.

Wiley tugged at the corporal's sleeve. When she looked up, he gestured toward the nearest entrance. '"We'd better get inside," he yelled.

Another blast was fired from the ground sta- tion, but the huge s.h.i.+p's s.h.i.+elds held against the laser-cannon.

Then another combatant entered the fray, a high-alt.i.tude Protectorate surveillance platform.

It directed its plasma guns at the destroyer. The platform was designed to bring down armed and

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s.h.i.+elded s.p.a.cecraft; a single destroyer was no opposition to its deadly strength.

Wiley tore his gaze from the battle and tugged the corporal's sleeve again. This time she got it, and the group began to crawl toward shelter.

The destroyer was almost on top of them, per- haps seeking to use the Palace for protection, an additional s.h.i.+eld to the ones it already possessed.

A missile hissed from the Protectorate plat- form. But the destroyers s.h.i.+elds held and the mushrooming fire scorched and blackened the upper floors of the Secretarial Palace.

Wiley felt his hair singe and tasted burning at the back of his mouth. He was slighdy dazed. His eyes did not focus quite perfectly and he had to resist the urge to simply collapse where he was. 7 wonder if I have a concussion? he thought in some remote part of his brain.

The advance to safety was halted for the moment.

Another missile overshot the destroyer and struck a parking-and-storage building. The spec- tacular explosion that followed reduced it all to a few broken walls, like a broken child's toy.

A sound, deceptively soft, a deep, crinkling sound as if someone far away had dropped a gigantic chain onto steel, ricocheted along the battered Palace walls.

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Then the destroyer, almost direcdy overhead, s.h.i.+vered a bit, wriggling like a sleeper about to wake. Half a dozen of the turrets came loose and the enormous weapons dangled, two breaking away entirely.

Three lifeboats streaked away from the destroyer, which shook itself again. It drew in on itself, and then opened in a blaze that ballooned upward, sufrused with gaudy colors and harle- quin patches of black. Twisted metal shapes like lethal party favors began to fall.

Wiley buried his head in his elbow and hoped that if anything landed on him it would kill him quickly.

Ground fire from the hidden lasers brought down two of the lifeboats in blazing wreckage.

But the third lifeboat skittered and bobbed on the ferocious currents of air and miraculously came to rest at the far end of the landing pad. All the lifeboat's guns were trained on the Guards and Wiley,

'There's trouble," warned Garring, speaking loudly against the fading roar of the explosions.

"Real trouble."

"Good guess," said Wiley. He looked around.

A good part of a cargo hatch, now warped and charred, had fallen from the destroyer and landed not more than twenty paces away. It

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wasn't the door to inside, but it was better than an open platform.

He nudged the corporal and pointed.

The corporal glanced at the wreckage, then back at the lifeboat. She nodded. "I think we can make it, if we move fast."

"Let's do it," said Wiley, preparing to run.

There were a number of men piling out of the lifeboat, all in Navy Logistics uniforms. They had their weapons at the ready and were forming into three lines.

Wiley and his Guards lit out for the wrecked cargo hatch, finding little purchase on the soot slick surface. They stumbled into the metal just as the Navy troops opened fire.

Hunched down behind the tortured metal, Wiley flinched as another volley of sh.e.l.ls left pock-marks in the section of hatch. He glanced at Garring, noticing that the man seemed very calm, taking time to check his ammunition before selecting a place where he could fire.

There!" shouted one of the Guards, pointing toward the door they were seeking.

Peering around the end of the section of met- al, Wiley could just see men in Navy Logistics uniforms piling into the corridor beyond, a num- ber ofCemians with them.