Free Stories 2011

by Patrick Lundrigan, Larry Correia, Travis S. Taylor, Sharon Lee

  “Sundown, actually,” de Portola said. “Or rather, right afterward. We don’t want to throw big shadows everywhere we go.”

  “Darkness really doesn’t help that much in modern warfare,” Werle added. “It gives the illusion of concealment without actually providing any.”

  “If you say so.” Swenson gestured north. “By the way, one of my men spotted what he thought might be a way station by the river bend just south of Baxter’s Crossing. Is that going to be a problem?”

  “No, actually that’ll help,” de Portola said. “If there are spine leopards there it should keep the Archway contingent from heading that direction. You brought the rabbits we asked for, right?”

  “In the cooler,” Swenson said, nodding toward the plastic chest he’d set beside the rut-rider. “We were only able to get about a dozen—I hope that’ll be enough.” He gestured toward the squat equipment shed a hundred fifty meters back from the fence, its corrugated metal walls glistening in the noonday sun. “Oh, and I should warn you that the shed gets pretty hot on a sunny day like today. You’ll want to stay close to the floor where there’s at least a little ventilation.”

  “Already planned on doing that,” Werle said. “Don’t worry—a little heat exhaustion’s good for the soul. I read that somewhere.”

  “Right,” Swenson said dryly. “Well, I’m off. Good luck, and if you need anything else, let me know.”

  He climbed back onto his rut-rider and headed back across the field. “Good man,” de Portola murmured around his sandwich. “If we had enough like him, the Trofts wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “We have enough,” Werle assured him, feeling an unexpected stirring of pride. De Portola had grown up in Capitalia, and though he’d never said anything to lord it over the others Werle had nevertheless always felt a bit rustic and unsophisticated in his presence. Maybe de Portola saw things clearer than Werle had realized. “It’s just a matter of giving them the right spark.”

  “Then let’s do it.” De Portola took another bite of his sandwich. “Right after lunch.”

  #

  The sun dipped below the western stands of trees, and as it vanished so did the telltale shadows the Cobras had hoped to avoid.

  And it was time.

  Werle ran a hand over the fence section he and de Portola had spent the day building, checking the sturdiness of the quarter-meter lengths of cross beam jutting out from each of the uprights. It wasn’t going to be too heavy, he promised himself firmly.

  “There he goes,” de Portola murmured.

  Werle looked up. The armored truck running the clockwise circuit around Archway—there were indeed both clockwise and counterclockwise patrols, they’d discovered during the day—had made its way across the Caluma River bridge, across the northern edge of the city, and was nearly out of sight. As the two Cobras watched, it made a final turn and disappeared from view behind the fence’s curve.

  “And with the other patrol truck still a good fifteen minutes away, that’s the one they’ll send when the balloon goes up,” de Portola continued.

  Werle nodded, raising his eyes from the fence to the sky. That was their assumption, anyway. He just hoped that the Trofts didn’t find a way to rewrite the theory when he and de Portola weren’t looking. “Sky seems clear,” he reported. “You ready?”

  “I was born ready,” de Portola declared firmly, pulling on the thick work gloves he’d worn most of the day. “You ready to toss some rabbits?”

  “I was born ready,” Werle said, crouching down and opening the cooler.

  “Okay.” De Portola took a deep breath, let it out in a huff. “All of our gear was also born ready, right?”

  “So they tell me,” Werle said. “Don’t worry, you’ll do great.”

  “I know,” de Portola said. “Just make sure they spell my name right on the statue. See you.”

  Hooking his fingers into the fence’s links, he headed up.

  Werle picked up two of the rabbits as he watched the other’s progress. There was no need to climb, of course—with Cobra servos de Portola could easily have simply jumped over the fence. But there might be Trofts watching from the city, and they needed to conceal their true identities as long as possible.

  De Portola made it to the top, got his legs over, and headed down the other side. As he reached the ground Werle lobbed the two rabbits over the top. De Portola caught them and headed for the Archway fence at a fast jog, aiming for the replacement patch the Trofts had added used to cover the hole.

  Werle studied the patch for a moment, wondering briefly which of Archway’s citizens had tried to ram his way out. But the how of the gap didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the hole was there, and that it had been patched with something that should be relatively easy for de Portola to cut through.

  Speaking of which, Werle had some cutting of his own to do. Stepping up to the two-meter-wide section of fencing he and de Portola had prepared, he set the tip of his gloved little finger against the mesh and triggered his metalwork laser.

  Normally, the laser flashed with a bright blue beam, distinctive enough to alert any Troft who spotted it. But with his fingertip pressed against the metal, there was no such telltale blaze to alert anyone that there was a Cobra at work.

  Unfortunately, while there was no telltale light, there was a small but nasty mist of molten metal droplets. The work gloves absorbed most of it, but there were bits of exposed skin where his laser had cut its way through the glove. The droplets that landed there hurt like hell.

  But there was nothing to do but get through it. Clenching his teeth, wincing every time a droplet found its way through the glove, Werle kept going, slicing the section free from the rest of the fence.

  He had the first side finished in under a minute. Grabbing the cooler, he headed to the other side of the section, peering through the links to see if de Portola was on schedule.

  He was. Even as Werle reached the other end of the section he saw the other Cobra cross the road that encircled the city and come to a halt in front of the Trofts’ patch. As Werle watched, de Portola tossed one of his two dead rabbits over the top, then set to work burning through the edge of the patch with his own metalwork laser.

  He’d been at it for barely fifteen seconds when a spine leopard appeared from nowhere and pounced on the rabbit. Even as he tore hungrily at it, two more of the predators emerged from around buildings, clearly intent on scoring free meals of their own. De Portola paused long enough to throw his other rabbit over the fence, then got back to work. The two waiting spine leopards dived for it, one of them won, and suddenly there were half a dozen of the creatures milling watchfully around the patch.

  Werle smiled tightly. This part of the plan, at least, was definitely going to work. Pulling more of the rabbits out of the cooler, he began throwing them over his fence, increasing the distance with each toss and creating a line of free spine leopard meals leading from near de Portola’s fence all the way back to his own. When the cooler was empty, he kicked it aside and got back to work freeing the other end of his fence section.

  He was working on the last link when, from across the open space came a stuttering crash as the Troft patch came down.

  He looked up. De Portola was on the ground, the section of mesh he’d cut away completely covering him as at least twenty spine leopards charged through the opening, leaping on, over, or around him. With their foreleg quills extended to ward off their fellows, they raced madly for the line of dead rabbits.

  Werle keyed in his telescopics, his breath freezing in his throat as he focused on de Portola. If he’d been knocked over by the predators before he was ready…

  But to his relief de Portola was in exactly the pose he and Werle had worked out earlier that day: lying flat on his back, his arms and knees rigidly extended against the mesh to keep the predator’s claws and spines away from his head and torso.

  And with all those claws and spines rushing furiously across the drainage field, it was high tim
e Werle got into position himself. Cutting the last connector, he took a long step to the middle of the freed section, braced his hands against the links, and rolled onto his back. The spine leopards were nearly to him; extending his arms, he locked the joints in place and braced himself.

  A second later they hit, thudding across the links as they ran up the angled section of fence and then bounded off into the wide expanse of Swenson’s property. Werle craned his neck to watch, ready to bring one of his fingertip lasers to bear if one of the predators noticed him lying here and decided a meal of human meat would be even better than dead rabbit.

  But none of them so much as glanced back. Everything else was forgotten as the predators sensed the presence of rich and unclaimed hunting ground. They dashed off in all directions, each intent on staking claim to his own piece of that territory.

  And as the last of them took off through the twilight, Werle heard a new and distant rumble. Raising his head, he peered down along his body.

  The armored truck that he and de Portola had seen sedately rounding the curve of the city on its patrol was back.

  Only it was no longer being sedate. With its engine revving at a level Werle hadn’t yet heard from one of the things, it was bearing down on the bridge at almost reckless speed.

  Werle took a deep breath. And now, with the truck’s return, came the moment of truth. The question of whether the plan would succeed as he and de Portola had hoped.

  Or whether it would cost one of the Cobras his life.

  Because if the Trofts inside the truck saw only the gaping hole in the city’s fence and the escaping spine leopards, de Portola should have a chance to roll beneath the truck as it passed across the bridge and—if he was very lucky—find a way to disable it. The rest of the endgame would still be a little touch-and-go, but an immobilized vehicle would at least be unable to chase anyone down.

  But if the aliens spotted de Portola lying motionless beneath the mesh and decided he was worth shooting where he lay, the whole plan would instantly fall apart. De Portola would be dead, Werle would have no chance of getting to cover before they shot him too, and anyone inside Archway who tried to get out would also be chased down and killed.

  De Portola hadn’t seen it ending in quite so dramatic a disaster, of course. Or at least he’d pretended not to. Even as he insisted on taking that part of the scheme, he’d also insisted that Werle would have a good chance of slipping away if the whole thing went sideways. While the Trofts dealt with him, he’d argued, Werle would be able to get to the distant shed, where he could hide until the aliens gave up the search, safe to fight another day.

  And Werle had pretended to believe him…because what de Portola didn’t know was that at the first hint that the truck’s swivel gun was moving to target the Cobra lying in ambush, Werle would be on his feet, charging the truck and trying to draw the Trofts’ attention and weapons away from his friend.

  Which probably meant he would die tonight. But at least de Portola would have a chance.

  The truck was nearly across the bridge. Bracing his heels and shoulders against the ground, Werle focused his attention on the swivel gun. If it moved—if it even started to move—

  And with his full attention on the weapon, he was taken completely by surprise when a man dropped out of nowhere and landed squarely on the top of the truck.

  Werle jerked violently, the chain-link section rattling with the movement. He wrenched his eyes away from the swivel gun just in time to see a second man arc smoothly over the city fence and land with laser-cut accuracy on the truck beside the other man.

  And as he watched even more amazement, the two men produced soft-looking fist-sized globes and smashed them against the truck’s front and side windows. The globes burst into splashes of a thick-looking black liquid that spread out to completely cover the windows.

  He was belatedly keying in his telescopics and zooming in on their faces when both men’s left legs blazed with laser fire focused at the base of the swivel gun.

  “Werle!” a hoarse voice called.

  Werle looked toward the breech in the city fence, his mouth dropping open. He and de Portola had hoped that two or three of the Cobras in this part of Archway would spot the work they were doing and realize that there was a plan for getting them past the spine leopards without having to reveal their identities to the invaders. Maybe a civilian or two would see the exodus and impulsively join in.

  But it wasn’t just a handful of Cobras and a couple of civilians racing toward him across the open field. There were at least twenty men, plus a few women, and only about half of them were Cobras. And there was nothing impulsive about it—most of the civilians were carrying rifles or shotguns, and several had bulging backpacks riding their shoulders.

  “Where to?” the voice called again.

  And this time Werle was able to recognize it. “In here!” he called back to Commandant Ishikuma as he shoved the section of chain-link away and scrambled to his feet. “Bring them all.”

  He had picked up the extra six-meter section of fencing he and de Portola had constructed when the mass of Cobras and civilians arrived. “Here—grab this and wrap it around you,” he ordered the group, shoving the fencing into the hands of those in the lead. “Use those pieces of crossbeam as handholds. Keep it closed, and the spine leopards shouldn’t be able to get to you. Your target is that shed over there.” He pointed to the distant metal structure. “Get inside and lie flat on the floor. Someone will be by later to take you to the ranch op center.”

  “And take the fencing inside with you,” Ishikuma added as the group gathered into a tight group and pulled the fencing into an upright cylinder around them.

  “Right,” Werle said. There a crack from the direction of the bridge, and he turned to see the muted flash of an arcthrower from beneath the Troft armored truck, the light almost invisible against the glare from the two Cobras still lasing the swivel gun. There was another flash and boom, and another, and another.

  And abruptly, the truck went quiet.

  “So an arcthrower under the engine compartment will kill it,” Ishikuma said, his tone grimly satisfied. “That’s good to know.”

  “Where’d all these people come from?” Werle asked, frowning at the group hurrying across the field inside their makeshift spine leopard shield. As he watched, one of the predators veered toward them, raked its paw once across the fence, then veered off elsewhere into the night in search of an easier meal.

  “What, you didn’t think we’d notice a couple of Cobras working on a fence?” Ishikuma scoffed, scanning the sky. “Help me keep an eye out for drones, will you?”

  “Yes, we figured you’d spot us,” Werle said, raising his eyes to the darkening sky. “That was the whole point, to try to get a few more Cobras out. My question was how all the civilians knew to make a break for it when the fence came down. I thought all the comms were dead.”

  “Not dead, but probably being monitored,” Ishikuma said. “Whoa—watch it.” He swiveled up on his right leg and sent an antiarmor blast back toward the shed.

  Werle spun around, just in time to see a spine leopard falter in its charge toward the fence-wrapped group. Ishikuma fired a second time, and the predator collapsed and lay motionless. “That one looked a little more determined,” the commandant said with a grunt. “Anyway, we didn’t want to use the comms, so we used the putty-ball system instead.”

  Werle blinked. Putty-ball? “Never heard of it.”

  “Not surprising, given we just made it up today,” Ishikuma said with a malicious grin. “It’s a really simple game: you write out a message, wrap it in a ball of putty, and lob it over the roving spine leopards to someone else’s house. He reads the note, writes out his own or rewraps the original, and throws it to the next house over. The putty’s sticky enough to hang onto windows long enough to be retrieved, but soft enough not to break them.”

  “And with Cobra servos behind the throws, you can probably send one of them a block away,” W
erle said, nodding.

  “Actually, the current record’s a block and a half,” Ishikuma said. “Sumara to Rafe.”

  “Impressive.” Werle gestured to the fence segment he’s been hiding under earlier. “Help me get this back in place, will you?”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  “Just hold it up against the opening,” Werle told him, going over and picking up the two extra fenceposts. As Ishikuma held the section in place, he slid the two posts into the holes he and de Portola had dug just inside the original line of fenceposts, wedging the section between them and the original posts. “That should keep out any new spine leopards until we can get it properly welded in place,” he said, checking the fit.

  “And it isn’t so obvious that it’ll lead the Trofts straight here,” Ishikuma agreed, giving the section a quick stability check. “Nice. Now, you’ll be on your own, so the decisions are ultimately yours. But I recommend—”

  “What do you mean, on our own?” Werle asked, frowning. “Aren’t you—?”

  “Shut up and listen,” Ishikuma cut him off. “Travel will be risky, but if you stay in one place too long the Trofts will eventually run you down. You’ll need to either keep moving between ranches or else set up a base somewhere in neutral territory. You might try the cave system behind Braided Falls—it’s shallow and not very roomy, but all that cold water ought to nicely hide your IR signatures. Plan your attacks carefully—hit quick, hit hard, and get out. And remember that the civilians are willing and eager, but they haven’t had the training we have. Good luck.”

  Bending his knees, he leaped up and over the fence. “Wait a second,” Werle said. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “I’m the commandant here, Cobra Werle,” Ishikuma said somberly. “I’m responsible for all the people of the province, starting with Archway. I’ll be fighting, but I have to fight from the inside where I can keep an eye on all the rest of the civilians. Watch yourselves, and be as big a pain in the butt to the Trofts as you can.” His lip twitched in a brief smile. “And don’t die.”