by Grant, Peter
“What are they?”
“We call them sassabies. They’re good eating. That one third from the front is a young female. She won’t have bred yet, so there’s no danger of leaving an orphaned fawn. They won’t spook at the sight of a wagon as long as we don’t make any moves that appear threatening, so stay still. Once we’re past I’ll stand up and shoot over the wagon top. Cover your ears – that rifle’s much louder than modern weapons.”
“OK.”
Dave fumbled in his chest pocket, took out two earplugs and inserted them. He waited until the sassabies disappeared behind the edge of the wagon cover then reached around, picked up the rifle and handed it to Marvin.
“Hold this for a moment while I stop the wagon.”
He stepped on the brake and hauled on the reins, and the burro obediently came to a standstill. As soon as the wagon had halted he handed the reins to Marvin, took the rifle from him and stood up, turning in a smooth, fluid motion as he brought it to his shoulder and aimed back over the wagon cover. There was a momentary pause, then a thunderous bellow of sound, making Marvin jump even though his hands were over his ears. The burro whickered and moved restlessly, rocking the wagon. Dave sprang to the ground in an effortless jump, cycling the rifle’s action, ready to shoot again from a steadier platform if need be; but he relaxed almost at once.
“She’s down. Wait here.”
He lowered the hammer to the safety position, slid the rifle into the wagon, then took a refrigeration tub from the rear of the load bed and set out to where the animal now lay motionless on its side. The rest of the herd had vanished.
Marvin stood up to see over the wagon top and watched in fascination, feeling a little sick to his stomach, as Dave took out his knife and cut the sassaby’s throat, then neatly removed the best cuts of meat, separating them from the bone and hide before placing them in the tub. He wiped the knife clean and sheathed it, then carried the tub back to the wagon, grunting with the effort. He replaced it in the load bed, switched on its power pack, then washed his hands at the water butt lashed beneath the right side of the wagon.
“That’s about thirty kilograms of prime meat,” he said with a grin as he slid back onto the seat. “It’ll grill real well over coals tonight.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” Marvin grimaced. “I’ve never before seen an animal killed and cut up like that – it’s unsettling. I’ve only encountered meat as vat-produced protein in ration packs, or ready-cut joints and steaks in the shops.”
“Well, this is how meat starts. You’re going back to your ancient roots.”
~ ~ ~
Marvin set down his plate with a sigh of repletion, stretching and grunting in the firelight. “That sassaby lived up to your promises. I’ve paid good money in restaurants on New Bedford for meat that wasn’t half as tasty.” He burped gently, covering his mouth with his hand. “Excuse me.”
Jake grinned. “First time in a long while I’ve heard someone apologize for that. We tend to be a bit rough around the edges out here.” On the other side of the fire, Todd and Jaime laughed as they nodded in agreement.
Dave said thoughtfully, “Mom used to box my ears if I didn’t mind my manners, but for the past three years…” His face twisted with the remembered pain of loss. “Without families around to remind us about that sort of thing, we’ve let it slide.” He reached for the coffeepot and refilled his mug with the bitter black liquid, adding creamer and sweetener capsules.
“Yeah, there’s an ancient saying that a man can build a house, but it takes a woman to make it a home,” Marvin agreed.
“Those ancients knew what they were talking about,” Jaime said as he reached for the coffeepot in his turn. “Rissa’s been workin’ on me ever since we set up together last year.”
“I wondered where the improvement had come from,” Dave said with a grin.
“Gee, thanks! I wasn’t that bad, was I?” More laughter.
Dave took a tarpaulin from the back of his wagon, spread it on the ground by the fire, and laid on it his rifle, the short revolver he’d used in town, and a cleaning kit. Jake took out his smaller revolver as well, and they set about cleaning the guns.
“I thought that handgun would make a lot more noise than it did,” Marvin commented as he watched.
“The full-sized ones do,” Dave confirmed, tapping the butt of the long-barreled revolver that had taken the smaller weapon’s place in his holster. “You heard my rifle this afternoon. This fires the same cartridge. You need a heavy bullet, and a big charge of powder to throw it, to deal with some of the larger critters. These smaller guns are different. One of our designers immigrated here from Old Home Earth, where he was a design engineer and military history buff. He told us about a silenced round developed during something called the Vietnam War, at the dawn of the Space Age. It fired a piston that stopped inside the cartridge case, expelling a shot charge but preventing most of the noise from getting out. He duplicated the design for us. They’re not completely silent, as you heard, but their sound won’t carry too far. They’re not very powerful, but if you hit the right spot they’ll get the job done.”
“I never heard of anything like that. Why not use pulsers?”
“They radiate a power signature, just like carbines or rifles. The occupiers have filled every major town with sensors that sniff out those emissions, so if you carry modern weapons there you’ll have them on top of you in no time.”
Jake added, “They’re illegal for civilian use. When the Bactrians took over they banned civilian ownership of all weapons on pain of instant execution; but farmers and ranchers needed them to control predators that hunted their cattle. Without them the critters ran the herds ragged and scattered them all over the range. Also, rural folks couldn’t hunt for meat any longer, so they had to eat more farm animals. Bactrian garrisons soon found they couldn’t buy as much meat as they wanted, so they allowed people out here to use chemically-propelled weapons only. Burt duplicated the designs of late-nineteenth-century rifles and revolvers for us, updated the metallurgy, and wrote programs to produce them on the fabbers at most farms and ranches. They’re not as efficient as powered weapons and they’re harder to learn to use properly – the recoil’s a pain, literally! – but within their shorter range they’re just as deadly.”
“Makes sense,” Marvin observed, impressed. He stretched again. “Damn, I’m stiff – and my kidneys hurt! I thought I was fitter than this.”
“Bouncing around on a wagon will do that to you,” Dave observed. “Not to worry. At midnight we’ll switch to something a lot faster and more comfortable.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
~ ~ ~
The dark shape whined slowly towards the group of men, black against the darkness of night, showing no lights. Dust sprayed out from beneath its lift fans as it settled to the ground. The noise died away, a hatch opened, and a figure looked out.
“Magic Carpet Rides at your service,” a contralto female voice called softly.
Dave smiled as he switched off the beacon that had guided the airvan to them. “And the pilot is an unexpected bonus. Hi, Tamsin.”
“Dave! I didn’t know you were going to be here!” The tall, rangy figure jumped down, ran over and hugged him fiercely. “How’s my favorite Lieutenant?”
“Happy to see his favorite Sergeant.”
“All right,” Jake growled. “We’ve got a long way to go. Everyone aboard.” He turned to Jaime. “Give our regards to Rissa, and our apologies for having to interrupt your home leave. I hope the rest of the sassaby meat will help her to forgive us.”
“She’ll understand. Todd and I will leave the wagons and burros at Gunter’s place, then ride into town with him next day. We’ll pass the word to your gather crew that you won’t make the rendezvous, so they’re to bring in the cattle themselves.”
“Thanks. Tell them I said to head for Falfura rather than Caristo. I don’t want them running into any trouble tha
t may follow the disappearance of those four troopers.”
Jake shook hands with both men then followed the others into the airvan, closing the entrance hatch behind him. The dark interior was lit only by dim red diodes around the cargo compartment. He pulled a fold-out chair from the nearest bulkhead and sat down, fastening its seatbelt.
“Departing,” Tamsin warned from the pilot’s console, and the craft lurched slightly as the lift fans hauled it into the air. She stabilized it, turned ninety degrees to starboard, and fed power to the motors. “We’re going to take the scenic route,” she added. “The Bactrians seeded a grid ten kilometers south of the perimeter three nights ago. They dropped a couple of dozen nanobugs and flitterbugs from a hoversat. Looks like their usual technique, searching a randomly selected map reference – they’re all staying within two kilometers of their landing point. I left from the north-east quadrant of the base to avoid them, just in case, and we’ll re-enter to the north-west.”
“Works for me,” Jake acknowledged.
Marvin, seated across the narrow cabin, asked, “Why not disable them?”
“That’d be a good way to let the Bactrians know we’re nearby,” Dave replied before Jake could speak. “If all their newly-dropped sensors went out, it’d be as good as a flashing red light announcing ‘The enemy is here!’ Instead we’ll avoid the area and leave them alone until they run out of power, which takes a week or two. After that we’ll pick them up and bring them in, so we can recharge and reprogram them for our own use. We’ve captured plenty of Bactrian nanobugs and flitterbugs that way, so we know how they work and how to deal with them.”
“What are we going to do when we get to your base?” Marvin asked.
Jake replied, “You’ll wait there while we round up the members of the Council. That’ll take several days, because some of them live in places where we can’t travel very easily or safely. As soon as they’re assembled, you’ll report to them and they’ll consider what to do next.”
“The General will be real glad to see you and Dave,” Tamsin called from her seat at the pilot’s console. “There’s a problem. You guys might be the solution.”
February 28th 2850 GSC
RESISTANCE HEADQUARTERS
Jake walked into the small meeting-room and nodded to the figure at the table. “Morning, Sir.”
Brigadier-General Allred looked up, and his tired, lined face broke into a smile. “Jake! Good to see you again. How are things with Niven’s Regiment?”
“What’s left of it is doing OK, Sir. I’ve prepared a brief report summarizing our operations over the past few weeks.” He laid a data chip on the table. “All routine, except that we ambushed a bank convoy to Falfura. We walked away with no casualties plus several million bezants. I’ve kept half to fund our own operations, as usual, and I’ve just delivered the other half to your Paymaster.”
“He’ll be pleased to have it. We’ve found another bribable enemy Quartermaster who’ll sell his own mother with no questions asked, provided he gets enough money for her. Sit down, man! Don’t tower over me like a tree.”
Grinning, Jake did so. “What did you want to see me about, Sir?”
The military commander of the Resistance ran his fingers through his rapidly graying, thinning hair. “Did you hear about the disaster in the Matopo Hills?”
Jake nodded sadly. “Yeah, we picked up their farewell signal. How bad is it, Sir?”
“Drake’s Regiment lost most of its surviving people. It’s down to no more than fifty now, many of them wounded. They’re on their way here.”
Jake winced. “Damn! I thought Niven’s Regiment was in bad shape with only about seventy survivors. That must have been a hell of a fight. How did the Bactrians find them?”
“According to Captain Tredegar, who’s their senior surviving officer, one of their patrols ambushed a Bactrian convoy about three weeks ago. They took the weapons and equipment from the enemy dead, as usual, then headed back to base. He says the Lieutenant in charge reported that after a couple of days’ travel, he opened the pack containing the enemy transmitter and noticed that its power indicator light was on. He says he switched it off for sure after the ambush. Anyway, he turned it off and watched. Within five minutes it came on again.”
“Sounds as if they were activating it remotely, to use it as a tracking device.”
“It sure looks that way. He alerted the base, then made a dog-leg to the north to try to make the Bactrians think it was in that direction; but by then he’d laid a trail for two days straight towards it. Captain Tredegar reckons someone on the Bactrian side figured out what had happened, drew a line extending the patrol’s original direction of travel, and saw where it crossed the Matopo Hills. With that to guide them, it’s likely they used reconnaissance drones to observe for a couple of days and picked up other traffic in and out of the base. They mounted a full-scale assault the following week. Two companies were airlifted in by assault shuttles, followed by a ground element that cut a road to the base through the bush. It brought engineering gear to clear a way through our defenses and destroy the base once they’d finished searching it.”
“I don’t get it. Drake’s Regiment should have been strong enough to handle that many – at the very least to hold them off long enough for most of their people to get clean away.”
Allred shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid someone on the enemy side has been using his head. It was only a matter of time before that happened, of course. We’ve killed an awful lot of their idiots, so we’ve cleared the way for smarter leaders to step up to the plate. This time they did something different. Their attack was spearheaded by large quantities of assault nanobugs and flitterbugs. They penetrated our defenses en masse, spreading throughout the caves and tunnels, shooting at everything that moved. The base had no defenses against a massed onslaught like that – for that matter, we don’t have any here either. If the Bactrians ever figure out where our headquarters are, we’re just as vulnerable to that as they were in Matopo. All our underground bases are.”
Jake nodded slowly. “I guess we’ll have to look for ways to disrupt communications between the bugs and their controllers.”
“I’ve put Mac onto that already. Trouble is, Captain Tredegar reports the bugs he saw were bigger than usual and much more aggressive. He’s bringing in a few for Mac to look at. Based on their behavior, he thinks they may be a new, autonomous model that doesn’t need to be in constant communication with a controller. They appear to be programmed to hit anything that moves for a certain period, then shut down and signal their location so they can be collected.”
“Bastards! If he’s right, they’re going to be almost impossible to counter. We don’t have the tech resources to whomp up a bunch of counter-bugs to intercept them.”
“I’m afraid so.” The General shook his head sadly. “We’ve always known there’ll only be one ending to this war, Jake. Given the disparity in numbers and resources, sooner or later the Bactrians are going to roll right over what’s left of us. They left us no alternative but to fight on, which was very stupid of them, because we’ve killed three or four of theirs for every one of our casualties and wounded heaven knows how many more; but if they’ve smartened up to this extent…”
“Yeah. If they’re deploying trackable hardware and assault bugs, what else have they got up their sleeves?”
Allred nodded. “It means the end’s in sight for us, Jake. It’s only a matter of time now, and not much of it.”
They looked at each other in wordless anguish. There was nothing more to be said.
At last the General shook his head, visibly gathering himself. “Enough of that! No sense in getting depressed over something we knew was unavoidable. Your Mr. Ellis couldn’t have arrived at a better time. I’d begun to despair that we’d ever find a way to get our evidence off-planet into the Vice-President’s hands, or our bearer bank keys for that matter. He’s just a messenger, of course, not some sort of secret agent, but he’s been able to arr
ange for a visiting spaceship to collect him and our evidence, which is exactly what we needed. Gloria and I have some ideas about how best to take advantage of this opportunity. We’ll put them to the Council of the Resistance for approval before I tell you more about them.
“That brings me back to the Matopo Hills. We scattered our most critical evidence of Bactrian atrocities – original documents, the most sensitive captured material, stuff like that – among several bases, including Matopo. As far as we know – as far as Captain Tredegar was able to recall – it was still there when he left. It was concealed in Lieutenant-Colonel Yardley’s office. He was killed early in the assault, so he never had a chance to retrieve it or hand it over to anyone else.”
“Let me guess. You want me to go get it?”
“Not you – we’ll need your input when the Council meets. This will almost certainly be our one and only chance to get this stuff off-planet, so I want to think of every possible contingency and have plans in place to deal with them. We can’t afford to fail. No, I want you to send a patrol there, first rendezvousing with Captain Tredegar so he can brief them about what he experienced and warn them what to look out for. I want them to try to make their way through the wreckage to Lieutenant-Colonel Yardley’s office, retrieve the package, and bring it back here.”
Jake frowned. “The Bactrians are sure to have demolished the place. How the hell is our patrol supposed to penetrate a destroyed underground cavern system?”
“I don’t know. I said ‘try’, remember? If they can’t, they can’t – which would be a tragedy, because in that package is some of the most damning evidence against Bactria. It includes the written demand from Major-General Strato to me shortly after the invasion, warning that unless we surrendered at once Banka would be destroyed.”