Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Without talking about it much, they fell into an improvised formation there in the alley, where they had a bit of room to maneuver. The Zulus went in front, whirling their poles over their heads and hollering some kind of traditional war-cry that drove a good many of the Chinese out of their path. One of the Jews went behind the Zulus, using his skull gun to pick off any Fists who charged them. Then came Carl Hollywood, who, with his height and his rifle, seemed to have ended up with the job of long-range reconnaissance and defense. Colonel Spence and the other Israeli brought up the rear, walking backward most of the time.

This got them down the alley without much trouble, but that was the easy part; when they reached the street, they were no longer the only focus of action but mere motes in a sandstorm. Colonel Spence discharged most of a clip into the air; the explosions were nearly inaudible in the chaos, but the gouts of light from the weapon's barrel drew some attention, and people in their immediate vicinity actually got out of their way. Carl saw one of the Zulus do something very ugly with his long weapon and looked away; then he reflected that it was the Zulus' job to break trail and his to concentrate on more distant threats. He turned slowly around as he walked, trying to ignore the threat that was just beyond arm's length and to get a view of the larger scene.

They had walked into a completely disorganized street fight between the Coastal Republic forces and the Fists of Righteous Harmony, which was not made any clearer by the fact that many of the Coastals had defected by tying strips of red cloth round the arms of their uniforms, and that many of the Fists were not wearing any markings at all, and that many others who had no affiliation were taking advantage of the situation to loot stores and were being fought off by private guards; many of the looters were themselves being mugged by organized gangs.

They were on Nanjing Road, a broad thoroughfare leading straight to the Bund and the Huang Pu, lined with four– and five-story buildings so that many windows looked out over them, any one of which might have contained a sniper.

A few of them did contain snipers, Carl realized, but many of these were shooting across the street at each other, and the ones who were firing into the street could have been shooting at anyone. Carl saw one fellow with a laser-sighted rifle emptying clip after clip into the street, and he reckoned that this constituted a clear and present danger; so at a moment when their forward progress had stalled momentarily, while the Zulus were waiting for an especially desperate Coastal/Fist melee to resolve itself ahead of them, Carl planted his feet, swung his rifle up to his shoulder, took aim, and fired. In the dim fire– and torch-light rising up from the street, he could see powder explode from the stone window frame just above the sniper's head. The sniper cringed, then began to sweep the street with his laser, looking for the source of the bullet.

Someone jostled Carl from behind. It was Spence, who had been hit with something and lost the use of his leg. A Fist was in the Colonel's face. Carl rammed the butt of the rifle into the man's chin, sending him backward into the melee with his eyes rolled up into their sockets. Then he levered in another shell, raised the weapon to his shoulder again, and tried to find the window with his sniper friend.

He was still there, tracing a ruby-red line patiently across the boiling surface of the crowd. Carl took in a deep breath, released it slowly, prayed that no one would bump into him, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle butted him hard in the shoulder, and at the same moment he saw the sniper's rifle fall out of the window, spinning end over end, the laser beam sweeping through the smoke and steam like the trace on a radar scope.

The whole thing had probably been a bad idea; if any of the other snipers had seen this, they'd be wanting to get rid of him, whatever their affiliation. Carl levered in another shell and then let the rifle dangle from one hand, pointed down at the street, where it wouldn't be so conspicuous. He got the other hand into Spence's armpit and helped him continue down the street. The ends of Spence's mustache wiggled as he continued with his endless and unflappable line of patter; Carl couldn't hear a word but nodded encouragingly. Not even the most literal-minded neo-Victorian could take that stiff-upper-lip thing seriously; Carl realized now that it was all done with a nod and a wink. It was not Colonel Spence's way of saying that he wasn't scared; it was, rather, a code of sorts, a face-saving way for him to admit that he was terrified half out of his wits, and for Carl to admit likewise.