"N elly, blast this out on every net you can get into, friendly or otherwise."
"You're on, Kris.
"This is Admiral Longknife, commanding the forces of the Imperial Combined Fleets on the ground in the capital. Shots have been fired and an assault by hostile forces repulsed at the gates to the Imperial Precincts. I have commanded my Navy forces to move to the assistance of the Imperial Guard. I have asked the clan chiefs of the Wo and Domm class to stop all troop movement. They have refused. I am giving all my forces authority to fire on any opposition forces that reach the boulevards. If you are allied with the We and Quo clans, please join with me in resisting any troops that are still moving. If you are not allied with us, accept this as your last warning. Halt immediately or be fired upon."
Kris could only hope that her knocked-together chain of command would hold together and get that order down to the gunner, nervously looking up the boulevard through his sights.
It must have. The first tanks of the Wo and Donn clan to roll into their assault boulevards were flames before they were more than halfway past the last building.
The drone take farther out from the palace sparkled as lasers lit tanks up and they exploded. The two sides were quickly going at each other hot and heavy.
Closer in, Kris's blocking forces were also heavily engaged. However, the enemy had assumed they controlled the battle and made the mistake of becoming predictable. Tank after tank rumbled into view along the cross avenue and were burned by Kris's Iteeche gunners waiting for them.
The Word went down the long line of tanks and Infantry fighting trucks that the planned exit onto Boulevards 1 and 2 were now blocked by flaming tanks. The commanders adjusted. Tanks headed for the boulevards now hooked a left and hurried down the radial avenue . . . right into the waiting blocking forces.
The battle around those avenues was fierce. Exploding vehicles lit up the night as they filled up the street. Others tried to drive around the exploding wrecks, gunning over the sidewalk and small patches of gardens. Lasers quickly nailed them, making the carnage hotter and the kill zone deeper.
Now, the tanks and mounted infantry roaring out of the clan palaces hooked a left and headed for the other radial avenue . . . only to come under fire just as soon as they snuck their armored noses past the last building.
Since there was only one exit from each palace, the flow of troops from them stalled.
However, they were not the only source of aggressive forces.
The garages where the loyal clan's warriors lived began to spit out tanks and armored infantry.
This was no surprise for Kris. She had tanks up the radial streets, covering those lateral roads. As soon as the first rigs drove out of the garage, they burned. One after the other.
Kris studied her board. The drone imagery showed that she'd stopped the initial rush. She'd lost a couple of tanks, but she'd surprised them. Now there was a pause in the battle as the clan's generals recovered and came up with a surprise for her.
Finally, Kris could afford a glance to check on her allies. Blessedly, the We clan's warriors were racing out of their tank parks and splitting up, headed in three different directions.
One took them down the radial avenue toward the Wo palace. Some forces headed for the Imperial Palace. They soon hit the circle concourse and come up behind Kris to reinforce her troops. The third set of troops headed out a bit before they turned toward the Wo side of town and closed to engage them. They would also be in a good position to engage the hostile allies as they came up.
Better that those Iteeche figure out who was friend and foe among the minor clans, than leave it to the humans.
Satisfied that the situation was at least moderately well in hand, Kris used the pause to call Ron.
"Ron, could you get Roth to call up the leaders of the Wo and Domm clan? Tell them their plan has failed execution. They have lost surprise. Do they still want to push this when it will mean a grinding fight through their territory? No one has died. No skyscrapers are burning. We can stop this now. We should stop this."
"Roth has been listening to you, Kris. Let me click off so he can make this call. Okay?"
"Let me know as soon as you can. Longknife 1 out."
Kris wished she was at least allowed to monitor that call, but they were Iteeche and she was human.
Meanwhile, the battle continued to develop if a bit less viciously. The vanguard of the Quo clan passed through Abba territory without any unpleasantries occurring. Kris did note that the Quo clan held forces back, both to protect the rear of those heading to confront the Domm clan warriors and to defend their palace from any surprise strikes.
Behold these Iteeche clans! See how they do not trust one another?
As her Iteeche allies took up positions to block the minor clans from the palace, Kris began to shuffle her freed-up troops closer to the palace. She needed to control the wide-open squares in front of each of the six main entrances.
She had some incoming battlecruisers to park.
Kris began to suspect that peace negotiations were going nowhere when rocket fire from several of the high-rises took dozens of her tanks by surprise. Some forty burned before Nelly could modify their tops against shaped charges and Kris could pull them back.
Both the Wo and Domm clans were now deploying their infantry against Kris's tanks. Likely, these troops had been in the basement, mounted and waiting to join the traffic jam their loss of surprise was causing in the streets in front of them. Now, they were deploying to assault her tanks and move the ground game from the streets to the buildings above them.
The space between the circular concourse around the palace and the radial road the clan palaces was on was filled up with six rows of high-rise buildings full of businesses, eateries, and residences. They were serviced by two-lane radial roads. In pairs, the high-rises would face outward or inward to a street. The one exception was the row of high-rises across the beltway from the moat and palace. They faced outward and were serviced by small roads twisting around the other buildings.
It was those six rows of buildings, all clan affiliated, that now became the battleground for clan infantry as their clan lords sought to outflank the blocking forces that held their armored strike in check.
Kris and her allies quickly gave up the road parallel to the first beltway with its traffic jam and its two rows of high-rises. With the first row occupied, hostile infantry now jogged toward the next row of apartments. There they found no resistance, so they set up their defenses.
Meanwhile, armored infantry fighting vehicles of the We clan raced into the first street out. There, they dismounted and began their own race to occupy the third row of buildings.
It was there the battle was joined. These buildings were held by a weak force that was more police than infantry. They had not expected to fight and had been alerted to be ready for a truck ride to occupy the palace. You can imagine their surprise when they found themselves facing heavily armed and armored infantry.
The battle was short and involved a lot of quickly raised hands after the assaulting We infantry used a bullhorn to let them know they were in arms against the Emperor.
Whether it was that announcement, or the sight of the heavy forces arrayed against them, they quit.
Their surrender came just in time. Hostile infantry from the second row were infiltrating the residential block. The foyers became a battleground for competing heavy infantry. Automatic weapons fire was punctuated by the explosion of grenades and rockets.
The inevitable happened. Explosions lead to fire which brought panicked residents stampeding into the foyer and out any door available.
Somehow, reasonable heads prevailed, and the firefights were put on hold for the time being as terrified Iteeche civilians fled their homes. The residential volunteer fire battalion was even given safe passage to fight the fires.
Indeed, for the time being, the battle of the high-rises was put on pause as common humanity dictated. The battle lines were drawn. Each side knew who held which position in each building.
It was a strange truce to Kris. She'd always considered the Iteeche to be bloodthirsty, to fight to the last cartridge. There was, however, a clear reason for this interlude. For the Wo clan warriors, these were their wives and children, elders and friends. They had not expected to turn their own homes into a battleground. Now they stood back and let these people flee from the bullets and fire.
For the We clan warriors, there was little to be gained from the slaughter of these unarmed civilians. Every soldier knew that the bloodier this insurrection became, the harder it would be to bring it to an end. Their officers saw no reason to wade through blood to the other side of these residences.
Thus, they waited as fear-crazed civilians fled the fight the warriors were intent on having with those across the foyer or down the hall from them.
This bit of reason and humanity presented Kris with a problem.
Tens of thousands of Iteeche were fleeing their homes right into the circular concourse around the palace and into the plazas in front of the gates. All those civilians made it impossible for any vehicles to move from one place to the other. Kris was losing her mobility.
She was also losing her landing pads for the battlecruisers she had only thirty minutes out.
Nelly quickly got her the senior Navy officers at each of the palace entrances.
"Captains, we need to pass these civilians through into the palace ground and clear the beltway and squares."
"Admiral, that is impossible!" one captain said with unusual willingness for an Iteeche to speak truth to power.
Rather than snap his head off, Kris chose to ask, "Why is that impossible?"
"Most Eminent Admiral, the Imperial Precincts are sacred. Common people can not walk those grounds."
"Gentlemen, then we have a problem. In a very short amount of time, I will be landing six battlecruisers in the squares where you are. From where I'm sitting, those people have two futures: flee across the moat into the Imperial grounds or getting squashed horribly."
"Battlecruisers! Darkness and chaos, Admiral, the rocket blast will kill us all!"
"There will be no rocket engines. Didn't you hear about me and my computer landing rocket ships in the middle of my embassy? Most of you have been working and maybe living in the magic metal from those two ships."
"Yes, we have," came from several of the Navy captains on line. Several others were still too mute to reply.
Admiral Tong who had been monitoring this discussion now entered it. "Who is the senior guard officer present?"
It took a bit of checking around, but it soon became clear that General of the Imperial Guard Konga was now observing developments from the back gate, close to where Kris was.
"Let me talk with him," Tong said. "I'm now two gates away from him. It may take me a while to make my way through the crowd, but I think it will work out best if I talk to him face-to-face."
"Okay, Admiral," Kris said, "but remember. Those spaceships are deorbiting and they have only one place to go, and that's down. They won't be much good to us if we have to abort them to someplace way out of here."
"I fully understand, Admiral. I sincerely believe that I can make this happen."
"I'll be waiting."
Kris found herself worrying her lower lip as the milling crowd got thicker and thicker. Even if she got permission to move these people onto the palace grounds, it was going to take time.
Several minutes went by as the ceasefire held and more civilians abandoned their apartments and streamed into the street.
"How do you move one hell of a lot of civilians?" Kris muttered to herself.
"Tell them that if they move quickly," Jacques said, very sociologist, "they can walk the grounds and gardens forbidden for centuries."
"That sounds like a dinner winner," Abby drawled.
"Most Eminent Admiral Longknife," Admiral Tong broke in without preamble, "the Most Eminent General of the Guard Konga wishes to talk with you."
"I am glad to see him," Kris said.
"Human, do you honestly say that you intend to land rocket ships on the very gates of the Imperial Palace grounds?"
"Iteeche, as Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel, commanding the Empire's Combined Fleets, I intend to bring Marines from my command to reinforce the forces that are presently preserving your Emperor from harm. There will be no rocket flames from space ships. You must have seen how I landed two ships in the middle of my palace. All landed with rotary wings controlling them to within millimeters of their intended target."
Kris paused to let that sink in, but only for a second. Before the general could open his beak, Kris continued. "I intend to land a division of Marines in front of each of your gates. Now, I had not expected this battle to develop into fighting for each building. I had hoped that could be avoided. However, it has developed, and people have fled into the streets, the very streets I need to land ships in.
"Now, you can stand by and watch Iteeche get squashed like bugs, or you can stand aside and let them flee onto some of the palace grounds. There, you can guard them and restrict their movements. However, if you don't, the blood is on your hands, not mine."
"We can talk later about whose hands this blood is on. However, I will open the gates and move these people in," replied General Konga.
"Thank you, Most Eminent General of the Guard," Kris said. "Please move with all speed. Time is fleeting and fifty thousand tons of magic metal cannot stop gravity from doing its work once they are committed to landing."
"Yes," the general said, darkly. Then he began issuing orders. Soon, all six gates were open, and people began to move into the palace grounds. They moved, not nearly quickly enough for Kris's needs.
Bull horns announced that they had been invited into the safety of the Forbidden Imperial Precincts. They must get clear of the streets. Fighting would soon be moving into this same thoroughfare.
That got people moving, but Kris feared a stampede with people dying and families being torn apart. Smart MetalTM needed little time to stretch bridges across the moat. Now, people fled into the grounds through entrances that had never been intended for an entrance. Flower beds were trampled; flowering bushes were torn apart or uprooted and hurled into the moat.
Kris got an enraged call from General Konga, which she managed to pass off to Admiral Tong, poor fellow. After all, she did have a battle to fight.