He let down several times in areas that had already been
taken, and talked to company and platoon officers. For one thing, King
Yoorkerk's flamboyantly-named regiments weren't quite as bad as Paula
had thought. She'd been spoiled by the Kragans in her appreciation of
other native troops. They had good, standard-quality, Volund-made
arms; they were brave and capable; and they had been just enough
insulted by being integrated into Kragan regiments to try to make a
good showing.
By noon, resistance in the city was beginning to cave in. Surrender
flags were appearing on one after another of the Konkrookan rebel
strong-points, and at 1430, after he had returned to the Island, a
delegation, headed by the Konkrookan equivalent of Lord Mayor and
composed largely of prominent merchants, came across the channel under
a flag of truce to surrender the city's Spear of State, with abject
apologies for not having Gurgurk's head on the point of it. Gurgurk,
they reported had fled to Keegark by air the night before, which
explained the incident of the unaccountable aircar and lorry. The
Channel Battery stopped firing, and, with the exception of an
occasional spatter of small-arms fire, the city fell silent.
At 1600, von Schlichten visited the headquarters Pickering had set up
in the office building at the power-plant. As he stepped off the lift
on the third floor, a girl, running down the hall with her arms full
of papers in folders, collided with him; the load of papers flew in
all directions.
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