The pinnace was now slowing and banking, to let its on-board fire control systems pick out the enemy bombardment ship and paint an accurate picture of it for the missiles. The commissioner hoped that Weldon had not shot off too much of his ammunition, and that he would not go in close, to grab glory and also come within range of any air-defense weapons the ship might have. Those, he suspected, would be Manticore-supplied; the precision of the incoming fire and the modern ammunition would have been beyond the primitive technology that their Kirk imposed on the Canmore Republic.

Meanwhile, the SS personnel had their personal weapons and some ammunition, and Pescu was no longer the only one who looked like a warrior. The Navy people looked scared half out of whatever wits their training had left them, but all were armed and they had brought several crated anti-tank missiles as well. Two of them were even driving a hover truck with a light plasma gun in a fixed bow mount.

Testaniere wondered how Weldon had managed to acquire the extra weaponry. But that was a question that would not need answering until after they had saved the People's mission to liberate Silvestria.

Or at least kept it from being driven from the field in its first battle.

Testaniere knew that was defeatism, but in the privacy of his own mind he could refuse to observe political propriety when it didn't match the facts. The leaders of the People were not only going to have to learn that all over again, they were going to have to teach it to a great many of their fighters and workers.

"We have the resources for a quick counterattack. If somebody can have Euvinophan's people reform on the left flank, and the next trucks bring their people around to reinforce us, and somebody gets at least one freighter airborne with a bomb load—"

"The Royal Army has put a no-fly order into effect until further notice, and they have a tracked missile-launcher bearing on the air base," a citizen petty officer said. She looked and sounded as if she would rather have confessed to child molesting.

Testaniere understood how she felt. He swallowed. "We can still make a useful ground counterattack with what we have here or can rally."

"Won't that make us a big target?" the citizen petty officer asked. She had a rocket crate slung across her back, a helmet on her cropped head, and an assault rifle in her hands, so he knew this was not a coward asking.

"If we form out here, the enemy won't dare strike us for fear of hitting the city. Once we've closed in, they'll be afraid of hitting their own people. No reactionaries or elitists can be superhuman."

He thought he heard someone mutter, "Neither can the People's fighters," but all his attention was suddenly elsewhere. As the pinnace raced overhead, white smoke and some kind of silver vapor suddenly filled the sky ahead of it. The pinnace banked, increased speed, shredded the smoke and vapor clouds with its slipstream, then vanished to the south.

For once Testaniere did not suspect Weldon of cowardice. He didn't know what the raiders had suddenly sprung, either. He hoped that in the pinnace, Weldon would have a better view and the weaponry to handle it.

* * *

Ryder had seen the tank suddenly hurl smoke grenades and chaff into the sky, and the pinnace's reaction. She'd hoped to see the pinnace's turbines simply ingest debris and fall out of the sky that way, but either there wasn't any solid debris or the pilot was both smart and lucky.

Then the tank's turret hatch opened, and Fernando Chung stuck his head out.

"I told you we were going to need some Peep hardware. What's more, we've been lucky. The San Martinos built all the weapons on these things with anti-air capabilities, and high-elevation mounts, and either the Peeps left well enough alone or one of their ordnance software people has the brains God gave cave slugs."

"Is everybody out of the buildings?" Ryder shouted. She wanted to say something to Fernando, but knew that her voice might not be quite steady for anything but orders. A tank-vs.-pinnace duel was both unavoidable and mortally dangerous.

Besides, it was time to haul her aching posterior and everybody else's out of the range of any fuel dump explosion, since it might no longer wait for the demolition charges. Peep air-to-ground equipment was usually marginal and their training worse; they could barely hit a building if they hovered over the skylight.

"Move, move, move!" Ryder yelled. So did all the NCO's, then everybody in hearing took up the cry. She called to her radio operator to take over relaying data to Nautilus, because if the pinnace had to fight the tank it couldn't attack the ship, and the mortars and rockets might be able to hit the depot once the raiders were clear of it.

Then it would be house-to-house fighting until they reached the open country or met the Royal Army, which had to be alerted and sending somebody besides Field Police to see what was going on. As long as the Royal Army wouldn't turn them over to Euvinophan's people, that would be coming out on top. Even if Euvinophan did catch up with them, his people might be slow to push home an attack, and the Royal Army might break up the fight before the raiders exhausted their ammunition.

But damn it, we are taking everybody who can walk or be carried when we go! 

That was the Royal Marine tradition, but there was no harm in spreading the gospel to other peoples' forces.

Then too much happened too fast. The pinnace came back, and Chung's turret-mounted launchers went to rapid, automatic fire, throwing out a stream of anti-laser grenades on the bearing to its airborne enemy. The cloud of aerosol hung between it and the Peeps, depriving the pinnace of the laser which was its sole light-speed weapon. The pinnace still had its pulsers, but the probability of a kill on a vehicle as heavily armored as the tank was poor, whereas the tanks' plasma cannon would blow right through the aerosol . . . and kill any pinnace ever built with a single clean hit.

But whoever was piloting that pinnace knew what he was about. He came in fast and low, using the city's buildings to block Chung's line of fire on the approach. The Sea Fencibles' net of ground sensors told the Erewhonese colonel where the pinnace was, while the pinnace knew only the tank's approximate location. That meant the pilot would have to pop up and stay high long enough to acquire the tank. But the pinnace was vastly more maneuverable than the tank. It could dodge and weave on its approach, which meant Chung could bring his main armament to bear only on the general threat axis. He had to wait for direct observation before he could actually target his foe, while the pinnace carried missiles which could be launched even off-bore in fire-and-forget mode. If the pilot had long enough to lock Chung up at all, the missiles would do the rest whatever happened to the pinnace . . . unless the San Martin vehicle's point defense could stop modern, short-range, hyper-velocity missile fire, and that simply wasn't going to happen.

Which meant it all came down to a crap shoot. Both combatants knew what they had to do, and what their enemy had to do, and roughly where to look for one another. The question of who would survive came down to how quickly each of them could generate a firing solution and get his shot off.

All of that flashed through Shuna Ryder's mind in a flicker of an instant, and then the pinnace popped up and came screaming in on them, and Chung had laid his main armament almost perfectly. But the tank held its fire. It simply sat there, tracking the enemy without firing while eternities flashed by in the unbearable dragging of fractions of seconds until Ryder was screaming at her lover to shoot.

Something in her mind screamed back that he was trying not to shoot down the pinnace in the city, where its crash would slaughter civilians.