The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Tyl Koopman wasn't going to be the only target on the balcony while the mob waited for a response it might not care for. He kept his featureless face to the front—with the gun muzzle beneath it for emphasis—as he retreated after the rest.

Chapter Fifteen

"Firing me won't—" Berne began even before Tyl 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 semicircle. 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 Tyl followed Eunice out to confront the mob, but they were gone now.

Gone from the room, gone from the Palace if they could arrange it—and assuredly gone from the list of President Delcorio's supporters.

That bothered Tyl less than the look of those who remained. They glared at the City Prefect with the expression of gorgeously attired fish viewing 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 quiteimpossible to defend the Palace from numbers like that.We can't even think of—"

"Yeah, we could hold it," Tyl broke in.

He'd forgotten his face shield 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 automatically so theyweren'tgoing 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. "Curstgood ones, and the troops the UDB's got here in the Palace know how to handle—"