Pulser rifles snarled. A plasma gun answered them, and droplets of burning metal and plastic scattered backward. A man rolled past the pickup's lens, beating at the molten stuff that coated his legs. Another rose to fire over the burning barricade and toppled backward with his helmet and brains splashing away from his headless trunk. Pierre forced back the hand that would have turned off the input. He deserved to have to watch this. They all did, but he suspected that most of his dear friends and associates would never know why.

"This is going to require careful coordination," McQueen said, in the pinnace's co-pilot seat.

The figures in the screens nodded at her. She smiled at them; it was rare, unexpected, and had just the effect she was looking for.

"Actually, it's going to require a fucking miracle, but we're going to do it anyway, people. Now let's go."

The pinnace rolled and dived. The huge white-and-blue shield of the planet grew before her, swelling with alarming speed. The pinnace had been made for high-speed atmosphere transits, and the scanners compensated for the growing ball of incandescent air around it. Her mouth quirked. One side-benefit of the confusion the Leveler coup attempt had created was that Traffic Control was completely screwed up, along with the ground-based point defense systems.

"Orbital Fortresses Liberty and Equality are signalling." That was a relayed voice from Rousseau. "Citizen Captain, they demand we vacate prohibited space immediately."

Norton's voice came through, harsh and authoritative. "Record. Rousseau is acting in aid to the civil power, under the direct instructions of the Committee. Any interference in her mission will be treated as treason to the People's Republic. End."

"Wait," McQueen said over the relay. Good man, she thought. Not imaginative, but extremely solid. "Sir, would you please sign off on that for the transmission as well, as Citizen Captain Norton's Commissioner?" Fontein nodded and added his voice.

He'd insisted on coming down with her. He hadn't asked aloud, but . . . she leaned towards him. "Because I'm going to be the one who handled this situation," she said softly. "Not commanded it from orbit, not ordered it done, but the one who did it."

Fontein nodded. That would also make her the one who'd saved the Committee . . . if, that was, she intended to save the Committee and not complete its execution, possibly as a "mistake" in the strike that took out the Levelers. He knew her people would follow her whatever decision she made.

"Speed down to Mach Seven and dropping," the pilot reported. "Nothing so—acquisition! We're being painted!"

McQueen nodded to herself as the shock cages clamped around them and the world outside spun with crazed, chaotic viciousness. Something whined past, dark and solid for a fleeting instant. Close enough to see it, by God, she thought. That meant really inspired piloting. The pinnace juddered in its path as a warhead blew up behind them, and static hashed an electromagnetic pickup.

"Maniacs," she said softly. They were using nuke warheads within the atmosphere. Not total fools, though. They hadn't put all their faith in the logic bomb to keep the Navy from intervening while their coup went on.

Rob S. Pierre kept his eyes on the wall display, hands kneading at the gray streaks over his temples. Everyone else was looking now too, and the fighting was close enough that the building shuddered continuously with the outrages being done to its structural members. Anguish shouted from the speakers: "Don't, George, don't!"

The pickup showed a wounded man slumped back against a ceramacrete-armored door. He looked up, his face knotted into a rictus, and worked doggedly at the hose connector that lay across his lap. A fumbling grip undid it at last, and the man's head slumped back in exhaustion against the metal. His tongue licked lips gone paper-dry with the thirst that blood-loss brings, but his eyes opened again as cautious steps sounded in the corridor outside. The battered, scorched furniture had been luxurious once, and the floor was covered in a pile of deep sea-green carpet. It sopped up the rather thick liquid that gouted out of the armored cable, leaving it an inconspicuous spreading stain rather than the slippery mass it would have been on bare pavement or metal.

Body-armored figures swarmed forward down the corridor, groups forming fire-parties and then leapfrogging forward. Pulser rifles whined as they "checked" the rooms to either side with fire, and an occasional grenade blasted fragments and dust out into the corridor itself. The view narrowed as the man leaning against the door let his head droop; all they could see then was the circle of sopping carpet, and the dead bodies scattered across it, insurrectionist and Chairman's Guard.

"We need the access code, traitor," a voice said, cold with hate.

The man looked up again, seeing his own bloody face reflected in the visor-shield of the enemy standing over him. Boots kicked away weapons.

"Don't, George! Don't do it!" Evidently the attackers could hear that clearly too, and they looked up and around. The one with the visored helmet laughed.

"Don't be brave, George—be smart." He ground his foot down on the prone man's shattered leg, bringing a convulsive moan of agony. "The access code! Give it to us, now!"

"I'll . . . give . . ." the man wheezed.

The visored face nodded, bent to hear. At that range Pierre could see through the visor, see the flicker of horror as the wounded man's fingers dropped the lighter to the carpet and he realized what was about to happen.

"Don't George, don't—it's useless, don't—"

An instant's searing flame showed through the pickup, and then the rippling bubble of melted plastic. A long hollow boooomm sounded through the fabric of the building, echoing up through ventilators and elevator shafts. Two dozen pairs of eyes swivelled to the exterior view, and halfway up the tower they saw windows punched out in an echoing bellow of flame.

Saint-Just was busy at his console. "That was part of the automated defenses," he said, in his colorless bureaucrat's voice. "Inoperable. George Henderson led a party back down through the shafts to enemy-held floors to try and activate it manually." The pale, passionless eyes rose for a second. "He succeeded."

"How long until we have the systems back?"

"One hour forty-five minutes," the head of Security said. "Captain Henderson has bought us some time; besides their casualties, they'll have to wait for that level to cool, or bring in firefighting equipment. On the other hand, we've also suffered very severe losses. It's going to be a tossup."

Not for the first or last time that day, Rob S. Pierre wished that he could pray.

Liberty and Equality massed fourteen million tons each, more than twice the weight of a superdreadnaught like the Rousseau, and they were armored and armed to match. Ordinarily a close-range engagement would crush the ship like a food pack under a power-armor boot. Their problem was that they couldn't approach the planetary surface as closely as a mobile ship. Everything they could throw towards Rousseau would also be thrown towards the planetary surface where their families lived. Even fanatics would hesitate at that prospect.

"Hesitate, but not forever," Captain Robert Norton muttered to himself, leaning back in the command chair. Aloud: "Hold station."

"Citizen Captain." His Tac officer spoke, and Norton glanced at the appropriate repeater.

Goddammit, Citizen ThisandthatRank not only sounds ridiculous, it's cumbersome when you're in a hurry, some distant part of his mind fumed. Probably the irritation was comforting because it was so familiar. Few of the officers who'd served before the Revolution were comfortable with the new titles.