We had been standing guard for an hour, listening to the echoing shouts and crashes of Inspectorate raids coming closer and closer, when the first protesters walked out onto the plaza.
They came out through the great double doors of the main administration building, a handful of young men and women carrying placards and painted banners. They advanced down the front steps and stopped in a little line halfway across the plaza. They didn’t seem to care that a hundred watchmen and Ministry soldiers had them in their sights.
“Either brave or stupid,” Jandra muttered. She stepped forward and nervously raised the shotgun to her shoulder, though the protesters were too far away to easily hit with a knockdown shell. I gently grabbed her arm, stopping her from leaving the safe shadows of the archway.
“My money’s on stupid,” Movar said, smoking what had to be his fifth cigarette of the hour. The nicotine wasn’t doing much to help with his shakes. His words slurred noticeably, even through his heavy accent. “They could have stayed inside. The black-bands might have left them alone. No chance, now.”
I looked further down the arcade to where Lokh and Geisden stood. “Watch-sergeant,” I called out. “Orders?”
“Hold position,” Lokh replied. “Fourth Watch has jurisdiction here. It’s up to them whether we move in to arrest.”
The Fourth Watch squads on the other side of the plaza didn’t move. Neither did the Interior Ministry troops guarding the main approach. I heard the indistinct crackle and buzz of handheld radios as they called their superiors for instructions. The protesters stayed where they were, silent and calm. No defiant chants or shouted slogans. They just stood there and watched us.
“What the fuck are they playing at?” Jaganh growled. He was of Ralkan extraction like Movar, though I didn’t know which of the kingdoms he hailed from. “Their friends are getting hauled away all over campus. They’re not getting let off with a warning this time.”
“Maybe they want to be martyrs,” Jandra said.
“The Ministry troops will be happy to oblige them, in that case.” I squinted at the huge pedimented roof of the administration building, trying to spot any telltale human silhouettes against the overcast sky. I knew the Ministry would have its drones on full alert for snipers – they might have already spotted some, and quietly neutralised them – but there were a lot of places to hide up there.
“Look.” Jaganh pointed at the main doors. “More fucking idiots.”
Another group of protesters was filing out of the administration building. A much larger group this time – dozens and dozens of them, all wandering out with a relaxed, almost lazy gait, as if this was a normal school day for them. They waved flags and fluttering ribbons above them as they walked. They were mostly white Kauln kids, though I saw a few dark-skinned Esuloans and Foresters scattered among them. The Metropolitan had desegregated several years ago, one of the first universities in the kingdom to do so.
“So much for the bloody curfew,” Jandra remarked.
Movar gave a hollow chuckle. “They’re serving themselves up for breakfast.”
Jaganh shook his head. “They must be trying to distract us. Not even syndicalists could be this dumb.”
“Distract us from what? The Inspectorate are the ones raiding the university,” Jandra pointed out. “When they’ve finished with the halls of residence, they’ll just sweep in here and round them all up.”
“Lokh, should we still hold position?” I called down the arcade.
“Yes,” the Hannevara replied. “Sit tight. Still awaiting orders from Thariu and Aikerl.”
More and more protesters walked down the steps into the grey sunlight. There were easily a hundred of them now, gathering into a loose crowd in the very centre of the plaza. Their flags and placards danced mockingly to and fro in the air. They didn’t make a sound.
I couldn’t make out any faces from where we stood. It was impossible to know whether Helina was in that crowd.
“Do you see any weapons?” Jaganh asked me. He had drawn his pistol, though he kept the barrel pointing at the ground.
“No. They might have stuff concealed,” I replied. Many of the protesters wore long summer coats, though it was a cool enough day to justify that. “They have to know they’ll get mown down if any of them pulls a gun.” Unless they spring Modvehl’s venator on us, and mow us down instead.
“I don’t like this,” Jandra said. She held her shotgun in a skittish death-grip. “I really don’t fucking like this.”
The sound of rotors rose suddenly above the clamour of the nearby raids. Two Inspectorate drones came burbling over the plaza, coming sharply to a halt high overhead, before descending to hover directly above the growing crowd of protesters. “Attention,” barked a man’s magnified voice, reverberating across the plaza. “You are all in breach of curfew, and subject to immediate arrest under the amended Security of the Realm Act. Remain where you are and permit the City Watch to review your identification documents.”
The Fourth Watch men on the opposite arcade began to move, slowly and hesitantly heading for the protesters. The Interior Ministry troops stayed where they were, faceless beneath their black-visored combat helmets, rifles held ready. If they started shooting from there, they would hit students and watchmen alike. I could only hope they were under orders to hold their fire.
“Seventh Watch, move in,” Lokh ordered us. “Shotgunners in the lead, but no shooting unless someone tries to run. Give these kids a chance to come quietly.”
“This feels like a trap, watch-sergeant,” Falcieni protested, from her position further along the arcade. “They’re baiting us out.”
“We have our orders,” Lokh said with weary insistence. He sounded like he agreed with her. “We’ve got an army’s worth of backup here. The drones will spot anyone trying to draw a bead on us from the roof.”
“Don’t worry yourself, Falcieni.” Geisden wore a sneer of undisguised contempt. “These aren’t rubble gangers. Just a load of student queers and darkskins. I bet none of them has been in a fight in their whole life.”
We left the cover of the arcade, making sure to keep our weapons lowered but very visible. Jandra, Geisden and the other shotgunners formed a ragged vanguard, ready to unleash a hail of knockdowns at any sign of resistance. The rest of us followed close behind, watching the windows and rooftops for movement. The drones repeated their loudspeakered orders at a deafening volume. Their rotor downwash made the protesters’ flags and ribbons flutter and snap around wildly.
None of the protesters made any attempt to flee. They watched us close in on them with unnervingly calm expressions. A few even seemed to be smiling.
Are they high? Insane? I wondered. Or just true believers?
Their placards carried the expected slogans – REMEMBER RYVALAN and FREE MAR-ILHANDE and NO BLOOD FOR THE CROWN. I didn’t see the five words I was dreading. Nor did I spot Helina in the crowd. But then again, she had been a covert organiser, a liaison and messenger-girl for Modvehl, not a warrior. She would never have put herself on the front lines like this. And, anyway, there was no guarantee she was even still alive.
“Attention,” blared the drones, for a third time. “You are all in breach of-”
Their loudspeakers cut off with an electronic shriek, followed by a few seconds of distorted static. They wobbled in the air, rotors buzzing madly.
“What the fuck is wrong with those things?” Rosbry grunted.
Without warning, the drones wheeled around in the air. They dropped low, almost to the flagstones of the plaza, swaying drunkenly before righting themselves. I saw stubby black muzzles click out of the recessed housings in their underbellies.
They opened fire, their guns raking the line of Interior Ministry troops at the far end of the plaza. Half a dozen of the black-uniformed soldiers were cut down in an instant. Their comrades yelled and swore and scattered for the cover of the arcades. The drones whirred after them, firing in rapid merciless bursts, raining spent casings in their wake.
“Fucking Almighty!” Geisden roared. “Everyone, get into cover! Into cover, now!” Some of the Fourth Watch men were already running. The Ministry troops were now firing back at the traitorous drones. Stray shots whined frighteningly close overhead. Windows shattered in the upper floors of the administration building.
Then something exploded on the edge of the plaza, sending fire blooming up in roiling red tongues. Another, larger explosion followed a second later, and I saw the blackened wreck of a watchcar rise into the air, lifted on a bright fireball. It might even have been our own Continental.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Move to cover! Bring the civilians along! We can’t leave them out in the open!” Lokh shouted over the chorus of panicked yells. He turned to the nearest protester, a dark-blonde young woman in a summer coat. “Come with us. It’s not safe out here.”
The girl didn’t move. She was smiling. All the protesters were smiling now, I saw to my rising horror. None of them seemed at all afraid of the drones or the gunfire or the rippling explosions. Their eyes were filled with bright, hateful cheer.
I realised, then, that the protest wasn’t the bait for a trap. It was the trap.
“Lokh, leave her, we need to get away-” I began.
The dark-blonde girl grabbed Lokh’s forearm and twisted it. She was a skinny little thing, smaller than Jandra, but she moved in an impossibly quick blur. I heard Lokh’s arm break with a grisly snap. The Hannevara screamed hoarsely and tried to pull himself away, to no avail. The girl grabbed Lokh’s concussion grenade launcher with her other hand, yanking it free of its tough leather strap as easily as breaking a cotton thread, and crushed the weapon’s barrel in her fingers.
Her gloved fingers. Her jacket sleeves had hidden the odd metallic gloves she wore. They looked like they were woven out of cords of brushed steel, but I knew they were nothing so simple as that.
“Armour!” I yelled. “They’re in contraband armour!”
“Bloody well shoot them!” Rosbry bellowed. He levelled his shotgun and blasted the girl who had attacked Lokh. The knockdown shell ripped a hole in her jacket, revealing the dark metal beneath, and otherwise did no apparent damage. It didn’t even wind her. She pulled the shotgun from the old watchman’s hands so forcefully that several of Rosbry’s fingers audibly broke.
“Fuck the knockdowns! Lethal force!” Geisden snarled. “Shoot these fucks dead!” He brought up his pistol and, without hesitation, shot the nearest protester in the chest.
The protester, a tall Forester youth, barely flinched. The ten-mil bullet pinged off the armoured breastplate hidden beneath his shirt. He grinned, drew back his hand, and dealt Geisden a savage uppercut. Blood and teeth sprayed out as Geisden’s skull deformed from the impact, his jaw shattering gruesomely before my eyes. He was flung aside to collapse in an ungainly heap, his gun spinning away from his lifeless hand. The Forester’s metal-clad fist dripped red.
“Oh, fuck, retreat, retreat!” someone screamed. More gunshots rang out on every side, both the heavy boom of shotguns and the sharper report of pistols. Then there came more thuds and crunches and screams as the armoured students struck back.
Jandra fired her shotgun with a cry of terrified fury. The man she hit was smacked to the floor and left wheezing and groaning by the knockdown shell. So they weren’t all in armour, then. I ran to her side, spinning around to fire off a few shots, unsure if any of them found their mark.
“Let’s go, Jand, let’s fucking go!” I yelled at her. I began to drag her by the arm towards the south arcade, trampling clumsily over discarded placards and protest flags. The far end of the plaza was shrouded in drifting smoke now, but I could make out the corpses of a score of Ministry soldiers and the strewn wreckage of at least one drone. Automatic gunfire and the mad whirr of rotors sounded from within the murk. Further off, another watchcar exploded, spraying up flaming debris.
“What about Lokh?” Jandra pointed frantically at the acting watch-sergeant, who was on his knees on the flagstones, clutching his broken arm and moaning weakly in pain. Around us, the armoured dissidents were methodically hunting down fleeing watchmen, breaking arms and legs and (in several cases) necks with casual ease. Each blow of their fists seemed to have the power of an industrial jackhammer behind it. Was this what those hard-eyed estate kids had been smuggling around the city? Suits of armour that made men into monsters?
“He Above, Jand, we can’t help him-” I wasn’t even sure we could outrun those suits. The dissidents were helmetless – I could try for a headshot – but even if I took down one or two of them, there were so many, and they could kill us with one punch.
“We can fucking try!” Jandra wrenched herself free of my grip and went for Lokh. I ran after her, cursing heartily. The smoke of the wider battle was spreading now, blotting out more and more of the plaza. Our fleeing comrades were reduced to hazy silhouettes receding into the distance, illuminated by sporadic muzzle flashes. The dead and wounded on the ground became shadowy obstacles to stumble over. I nearly tripped on what turned out to be the sprawled corpse of Jaganh.
Jandra threw her shotgun aside and crouched down beside Lokh. “Watch-sergeant, can you walk?” she yelled.
“I…” Lokh grimaced in agony. His already pale features were shock-white. His uniform sleeve was torn and bloody, and a snapped end of bone poked out visibly through the fabric. “Yes, I can walk. Where…where’s Geisden?”
“Dead,” I told him flatly. A long burst of gunfire echoed across the plaza. Further away, the red flash of another explosion pulsed through the smoke. “We have to get off the plaza. They’re ripping us apart.”
“She was so strong, that girl,” Lokh rasped. He stared up at me, shaking his head, looking half-delirious. “How was she so strong? Her fingers were like iron.”
“They’ve got some kind of body armour on. Contraband tech.” I took hold of his uninjured arm, and nodded to Jandra. Together, we helped the wounded watch-sergeant to his feet. He groaned in pain with every movement.
“Where do we go?” Jandra coughed. The smoke was getting thicker and thicker, billowing from a string of spot fires burning in the north arcade. “Evaris, I can’t fucking see anything!”
I looked up, and made out the ornate peak of the administration building’s pediment, a hundred yards away. That was where the dissidents had come from – there would be no safety there. I pointed in the perpendicular direction. “The south arcade is that way. We can follow it to the outer quads. Find some Ministry troops to cover us and get the fuck off this campus.”
We moved off into the smoke as fast as we could go, supporting Lokh between us. I kept my pistol up and ready, alert for anyone coming our way. Above us in the shrouded sky, unseen drones zipped back and forth, shooting at each other and at unfortunates on the ground, seemingly at random.
“I can’t fucking believe this. They could control the Inspectorate drones all along?” Jandra flinched at the thunder of another explosion somewhere behind us. “Why didn’t they use it before?”
“Because they wanted us in the right place,” I replied bitterly. “For a massacre.”
“Not quite,” cut in another voice from nearby. It was female, youthful, viciously merry.
I spun around, cursing, to find the armoured girl with the dark-blonde hair right in front of me. She grabbed the pistol from my hand before I could squeeze off a shot. I had the presence of mind to let go before she broke my fingers. She crumpled the gun into a bent, useless lump and threw it aside.
“Oh, fucking Almighty!” Jandra reached for her pistol.
“Don’t,” the girl warned her. “Give it to me. Slowly. Or you’ll get what he got.” She nodded at Lokh, who stared at her in mute, agonised disbelief.
Another shape resolved itself out of the smoke. Another dissident, a dark-skinned man this time. His outer clothes had been shredded by Ministry gunfire, leaving cotton rags hanging loosely off his sleek gunmetal-grey armour suit. The suit was full-body and form-fitting, almost elegant in its sculpted musculature. I couldn’t understand how something so sleek could grant such inhuman strength.
“You heard her,” the newcomer said. He had a strong Esuloan accent.
“Jand, do it,” I said. I still had the revolver hidden in my boot, but there was no way I could draw it out in time.
Jandra pulled her pistol from its holster, her eyes blazing with anger and fear. She handed it to the armoured girl, grip-first.
The girl took it, crushed it, and tossed it away into the gloom. “Yours, too, cripple,” she said to Lokh. I could tell she was enjoying herself.
“His arm’s broken, you syndicalist bitch,” Jandra hissed.
The girl laughed. “Mouthy, aren’t you? Even for a watchman.” She gestured to her friend, who took Lokh’s pistol. Instead of destroying it, the Esuloan attached it to the thigh of his armour, which seemed to magnetise itself to hold the gun in place. The Esuloan took the remaining concussion grenades and pistol magazines from Lokh’s belt and secured them in the same way.
Even with Modvehl’s toys, they still need all the guns they can get, I thought.
“Now, then. Decision time, watchmen,” the girl declared. Tendrils of smoke swirled around her smiling face. She was a pretty girl, dismayingly young, with pale, icy blue eyes. “You can come with us, alive, as hostages. Or you can refuse, in which case we’ll break your necks.”
“You’ll kill us either way,” Jandra spat.
“Maybe, maybe not,” the Esuloan said. “Depends on whether you behave yourselves.” He put one hand on Jandra’s shoulder, making her flinch back in revulsion. Those armoured fingers tightened, and she gave a whimper of pain. “If I turn these force multipliers up just a little bit, I can rip your arm right out of its socket. What’s it going to be?”
I wanted to leap at the Esuloan, to dig my thumbs into his unprotected eyes, even though it would have swiftly resulted in my own death. “Take…take me,” I said through gritted teeth. “Leave her alone.” I hadn’t felt so pitifully helpless since the day I lost my father.
“Oh, my. Are you two more than friends?” the dark-blonde girl cooed in mockery. The Esuloan sniggered. “No. You all come with us, or you all die here.”
“If we come along, what guarantee do we have that you won’t hurt us?” I demanded.
“None,” the Esuloan said simply. “But you have the guarantee that we will kill you if you don’t.”
“Morre,” Lokh coughed. His face was a rictus mask of pain. “Go with them. We’ve lost too many people today already.”
“Hear that, Morre? Your cripple friend has some common sense,” the girl sneered. “Now, move, all of you.”
“Lokh needs a medic,” Jandra protested.
The Esuloan laughed. “Tough shit.” He shoved her forward, keeping his augmented grip on her shoulder.
The dark-blonde girl pointed me and Lokh in the same direction. “This way. Quickly, and keep your hands visible. If any of you try anything, we’ll break you in half.”
“Where are you taking us?” Lokh grunted. He cradled his shattered arm as he walked, wincing and stumbling along. His uniform sleeve was now black with blood.
“The waterfront,” the girl replied. “We have a boat ready to take us upriver.”
“You can’t go that way,” I told her. I looked feverishly around the clouded plaza for any angle of escape, no matter how unlikely, but all I saw was smoke and the dim shapes of the fallen. Gunfire continued to rattle in the distance. “There’s an Interior Ministry cordon locking down that whole area.”
The girl laughed. “There was. They didn’t last very long against their own drones.”
More people joined us out of the haze as we reached the scorched north arcade. Dissidents, some armoured, some not, several cradling stolen Ministry assault rifles. They had more hostages with them, shuffling along in silence with bowed heads. Movar, Cherdane and Falcieni were among them, along with a couple of Fourth Watch men. Cherdane was bleeding badly from a deep head wound, and Movar looked to have a broken hand.
“Any more coming?” the Esuloan asked one of the armoured newcomers.
“A few. Artheym’s group is going through the admin building. They said they’ll link up with us by the river,” the man replied. “We don’t have long. The drones are keeping the Ministry troops busy, but it sounds like heavy units are coming in from across the river. Tiltrotor gunships, too.”
“All right. Pick up the bloody pace,” the Esuloan barked at Lokh, Jandra and I. “If you hold us up too much, you’re not hostages, you’re dead weight.”
Wordlessly, we obeyed. Our captors kept us in a close line as they marched us through the arcade, towards the outer quads beyond. Stolen rifles and pistols were aimed at our backs, and the armoured dissidents walked close beside us, flexing their metal-sheathed fingers in casual threat.
“Don’t look so glum, watchmen,” the dark-blonde girl told us, with an airy smile. “You’re about to become part of something great. You’ll get to watch the stars come down.”