Bred for war

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Hall's Hellbringer came into view to the right through the swirling sheets of reddish, wind-whipped sand. "It looks as if the Gash is still useful for bringing troops into our rear area. That is, if you still intend to fight the Falcons on the Plain of Curtains."

  "I do. Any Falcon units sent to oppose us here are going to be thinking about the last time they fought here and how badly they were mauled and humiliated. They'll be afraid of being disgraced again, and that will eat into them. It will help us win this fight, then push on to Wotan."

  Static prefaced Hall's comment. "You really think they will come here?"

  "They can't avoid it." Natasha shook her head as the storm draped a sheet of red sand across her canopy. "They'll come and, if we're lucky, Chistu will be leading them. History repeats itself and here on Twycross the Falcons will once again know the bitter taste of defeat."

  36

  I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.

  —The Duke of Wellington, Irish-born military leader and statesman

  Wotan, Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  27 November 3057

  Khan Vandervahn Chistu stood in his holotank looking first at one data window and then the next. On the right he had Khan Natasha Kerensky's unbelievable statement of her strength—relayed to him by the Steel Vipers. He had also seen the casualty reports. His agents had sent him terrabytes of information about how much damage Natasha had taken so far in this campaign. The idea that she still boasted five full Clusters was incredible—in the truest sense of that word.

  To his left hovered Khan Phelan Ward's stated strength in the polar wastes of Morges. His Alpha Galaxy had five line Clusters. Of the garrison Galaxy traveling in his task force there was no report, but Khan Phelan had added two regiments of a mercenary unit—the Kell Hounds—to his forces. That put him at effectively nine Clusters in strength—as formidable a force as had yet been mustered in the Wolf campaign.

  The Jade Falcon Khan shook his head. "Oh, how foolish you must think I am." He knew better than to doubt the reports sent by his own people about Natasha's strength. Though her command had been badly hammered, it would be so like her to exaggerate her strength in some vain attempt to awe or even frighten him. He knew she expected him to react rashly to punish her for the audacity of trying to intimidate him.

  Natasha expects me to stop thinking, but I am not the sort of Jade Falcon she knew in her far distant youth. Had he been such a retro-thinker, he would have tossed line units at Twycross, stripping away the forces he had brought to Wotan in order to destroy her on Twycross. She would have dodged him, lifting off with her troops into space once his force landed, then jumped out to Wotan.

  Were I as old as she is, I would not have seen through her subterfuge. Chistu knew the substitution of a mercenary unit for a Clan Galaxy in Phelan's force was a problem because it left one Galaxy unaccounted for. The Khan might have assumed it was being held in reserve for some purpose, but in that case Phelan would have included it in the roster of his forces on Morges. Phelan did not mention it, but he did not have to.

  Its location was obvious.

  "You wanted too much, Natasha. You inflated your numbers to get me to send all my best troops to destroy you. Meanwhile you would hit me here on Wotan." Chistu smiled. "And if you cannot trick me into that, then you expect me to underestimate your numbers and send units for you to grind up. You have obviously reinforced your units with Phelan's missing Galaxy. If I do not take the bait that you are stronger than you seem, you expect me to challenge you with fewer troops than I should. I will do neither."

  Chistu spoke into the air. "Computer, issue orders for Delta Galaxy to report to Wotan." That brought the number of line Clusters on Wotan to four, which equaled Natasha's self-reported strength. "Report Phelan Ward's position on Morges to Peregrine and Omicron Galaxies and tell them to destroy him and the mercenaries—with no quarter given. Send the following units to Twycross: Fifth Talon Cluster, Sixth Provisional Garrison Cluster, Eighteenth Falcon Regulars and ..."

  Chistu's voice trailed off as he considered the last unit he would send. The first three were second-line troops of the same caliber Natasha had already ground up in her campaign. They would be sufficient to inflict heavy damage, especially in the close-quarters fighting engendered by the endless sandstorms on Twycross. He would have been content to send a fourth garrison unit, but Crichell would wonder at that choice when there were perfectly good frontline units on Wotan. He needed a unit, one he could count on to hurt Natasha. He needed the unit to seem, on paper, a good choice, and an appropriate choice as well.

  He smiled coldly. "... and the Falcon Guards. Their mission is to destroy the Black Widow's expeditionary force. This will be their final act of redemption. If they succeed, then the Pryde faction will owe their success to me. And if they fail ... well, another potential rival for power is removed."

  Using the Falcon Guards suited his plan perfectly. The Guards were as much a disgrace as Natasha herself, and sending them back to Twycross, the scene of their most mortifying defeat, would undermine their ability to fight. They would soften Natasha up, and he would kill her on Wotan.

  And then he would be elected ilKhan, and would lead the Clans to their destiny.

  Daosha, Zurich

  Zurich People's Republic, League Liberation Zone

  Noble Thayer flipped the remote control over and double-checked that it was the one operating on 49mhz before he flipped the On switch into position. The red LED lit up on the toy plane's pilot canopy. "Rick, open the garage door. Cathy, start the plane's engine."

  They did as commanded, filling the warehouse with the high-pitched whine of the plane's little motor. The propeller spun into a blur as the blue toy rolled toward the open garage door. Picking up speed it lifted off as it hit the street. Noble punched the Program button on the remote control. The plane, with the image of the Dancing Joker on its wings and tail section, soared up past the streetlights and vanished into Daosha's night-shrouded, concrete canyons.

  Cathy turned and smiled at Noble, holding up both hands with her fingers crossed. "T-minus two minutes and counting."

  Rick Bradford shivered. "It's weird to be using a toy as a weapon."

  Noble smiled. "The Dancing Joker will use any means necessary to do the job. Some might see this as the perversion of innocence, but we are up against people who have butchered their enemies over planetwide video hookups. The Dancing Joker finds the hypocrisy deserving of punishment." Noble saw Cathy's smile ebb as he spoke. He knew she didn't like him speaking as if the Dancing Joker were a separate person, but Noble viewed the Joker as his own little internal cell system and occasionally indulged himself aloud.

  "Better mount up." Noble set the controller down on top of a rusty oil drum, then opened the back of the hover-ambulance. Offering his hand to Cathy, he gave her a broad wink. "Don't want you to get your white uniform dirty going over this dust-skirt."

  "You are most kind, sir."

  "And you are most gracious to notice." Noble closed the white doors behind her, then went around to the cab and climbed in behind the driver's seat. He keyed in the vehicle's ignition code. All three fans, the one in front and the two in back, came online immediately.

  Rick Bradford slid into the seat beside him and patted the vehicle's dashboard. "This baby cost the Rencide Medical Center a bundle and gave us a lot of good service." He shook his head. "If we could have afforded a new one, this would have been long gone. Now it's just as well we're using it for this."

  Noble tugged a cap onto his head, then patted Rick's left knee. "Don't worry, Doc. After tonight Xu Ning will regret shutting down the hospital and slaughtering people like your colleagues at Daosha Public. Get the radio, will you?"

  Rick flipped it on and set it to the municipal emergency frequency. "Thirty seconds."

  "Bringing the fans up." Noble eased all three throttle levers forward. The diagram on the dashboard indicated the vehicle should h
ave lifted up at thirty percent, but carrying this much weight, it did not clear the concrete floor until he brought it up to fifty-five percent of full power. "It's going to be sluggish."

  Rick shrugged. "Always did handle like a sow. I don't think we ever had it this full—but close."

  Packed into the rear, into every cargo bay, drawer, and even between the interior and exterior hulls, a metric ton of home-brewed plastic explosive weighed the ambulance down significantly. Noble figured it to have roughly half the power of military-grade plastique. When it went up, it would make a big hole and, if things went as planned, would trigger an even bigger explosion.

  Rick's watch beeped. "Bingo."

  Noble smiled. "The Dancing Joker strikes again."

  The plan Noble had come up with had not been particularly inventive or complicated. Anne Thompson had easily managed to purchase a radio-controlled toy plane and controller. The only thing unusual about it was that the plane was one of the higher-priced models that included enough computer memory for a two-minute "course memory." That allowed the user to put the toy plane through a complex series of maneuvers that the plane would remember whenever the program was engaged from the remote control.

  The plane had been slightly modified for its part in the mission. The Dancing Joker insignia had been painted on the wings and tail section. The antenna that would allow another control unit to take over and break the program had been snipped off. Once the plane got beyond twenty meters, even Noble's little team could not have called it back.

  Once it took off it was locked into a course that would take it from their warehouse to the Armory's front door.

  Noble had also provided the plane with an explosive pay-load. He packed it with four ounces of the homemade plastic explosive he'd rolled in a dish full of 20-gauge shot. As a detonator he used crystals obtained from mixing two chemicals: picric acid and lead oxide. He coated one end of the bomb with these crystals so that when the plane hit the building, inertia would drive the bomb forward, smashing the crystals against the engine, thereby triggering the explosion.

  The radio squawked. "All available units, we have report of an explosion at the Zhongdade Armory. Report to the site, code three."

  Jamming the throttles forward, Noble started the hover-ambulance moving. Rick reached up and flicked on the lights and siren. Traffic parted before them like magic as they began to race toward the Armory.

  Preparing the ambulance to become a bomb had presented less in the way of problems than the others had expected. The only difficulty in creating the explosive itself was the sheer quantity they wanted to make. Fortunately for their effort, reeducation classes had local schools open around the clock and adults could move around freely on the campuses without attracting undue attention. Breaking into unused chemistry labs got them the more difficult to obtain chemical supplies they needed and in sufficient quantities.

  Bribing warehousemen to load a truck with close to a ton of petroleum jelly had been simple. The singular nature of the cargo had raised a few eyebrows, but Ken Fox telling them he was catering a Peoples' Party function turned their suspicion into laughter. Noble had watched Ken drive the truck out of the warehouse, then signaled him to take it to their bomb factory after he was certain no one had followed the truck.

  Ken's daughter Rose and her husband, Fabian Wilson, had helped mix up the plastic explosive. Noble had not liked Fabian when he bought his computer from him, but Ken said his daughter would be good for the organization and Fabian came as part of the package. Noble did not trust the man, but as long as he had someone keeping an eye on him, he figured any harm Fabian might do would be minimized. As it was, Rose and Fabian only did the mixing and knew nothing about the target or timing of the strike.

  Their biggest problem was figuring out how to detonate the bomb, a problem that actually broke down into two parts: how to prime the explosive and how to detonate the primer. The plastic explosive required a small explosion to make it go off. Blasting caps, which were available from Daosha's black market, would normally have done the trick, but with a homemade explosive, Noble wanted something more reliable.

  Ken Fox came to the rescue. One of his friends worked in construction in Daosha and, before that, had been a demolitions expert in Ken's AFFC unit. Ken had described the man as being paranoid—which made Noble consider Ken a bit of an optimist—and cited that as the reason why he had a wide range of detonators and blasting caps in his possession.

  From this man they purchased a kilo of military-grade plastique, a handful of blasting caps, and three meters of detonation cord. This latter acquisition especially pleased Noble because it virtually guaranteed success in their mission. With the det-cord, a centimeter-thick, fiber-wrapped cylinder of plastique, they could trigger the military plastique and that would make his own explosive detonate.

  Still a problem was the ignition system to make the blasting caps blow the det-cord. A timing device was less than satisfactory because the mission had to be quick and they didn't want to risk the explosives being discovered and disarmed. Worse, if they had trouble leaving the site after setting the timer, they would be caught in the blast.

  Using a radio transmitter to blow the bomb posed other problems. Because radio-controlled bombs were not uncommon, the Armory and other important buildings in Daosha had been equipped with counter-bombing transmitters. Those transmitters sent out pulses on the most commonly used frequencies, causing the bombs to detonate at a significant and safe distance from their target. Noble had even seen SecCom transmitter trucks roaming through Daosha, putting out signals in the hopes of triggering any bombs being worked on by the Dancing Joker, Jacko Diamond, or other anti-government forces.

  Using a cellular phone as the receiver would have worked well and eliminated the hazards associated with less sophisticated devices. Unfortunately Xu Ning had ordered all local cellular networks shut down because calls placed from the devices could not be traced. Until those networks went down, it had been possible for anti-government forces to use cellular communications to plot operations against the government.

  Direct-wire detonation was one of the oldest and surest forms of triggering blasting caps. A spool of two-line wire and a common battery were all that were needed. Simple and very effective, but not as safe as Noble wanted. The problem with a simple electrical system was that static electricity might complete the circuit before he was out of the blast radius, which would not let him live long enough to regret his choice.

  Luckily, one other method of detonation finally suggested itself to him. With the purchase of two phones and some cable, the last obstacle to the mission was removed.

  The ambulance swung right and was waved on past the crowd of spectators lining the street. Noble proceeded forward to a spot directly in front of the Armory, then brought the hover-ambulance up onto the sidewalk and killed the fans. With dust billowing out from beneath it, the hovercraft settled into place and Rick killed the siren.

  Noble opened his door and leaned out to address one of the Military Police standing guard. "How many you got down?"

  "None, that I know of." The MP pointed at the Armory door. A big black burn mark showed where the plane had hit. "Looks like that Dancing Joker thought he could blow us up with a fistful of dynamite or something. Could have been worse if the door was open, but it wasn't."

  "Bastard. You sure no one is hurt? No one got anxious, had heart pains or nothing?"

  "The Director might be having palpitations, but he's not here." The MP smiled and Noble returned the smile. "Looks like you made the trip over for nothing."

  "If you say so." Noble shrugged. "We'll batten some things down in back and file a quick report before we head out. You might want to double check, just in case we're needed. I mean, we're here."

  "I'll ask around. See you in five."

  "Great."

  Noble closed the vehicle door, then stepped between the two buckets seats and into the back. Behind him he drew a little white curtain with red crosses on
it. Seeing that Cathy had done the same with the curtains over the small windows in back, Noble nodded to Rick. "Go."

  Rick Bradford pried up a plate in the bottom of the vehicle's bed and dropped down to the sidewalk beneath it. There he used his prybar to get the manhole cover up and rolled aside. Reaching down into the sewer hole, he pulled up a spool of phone chord and handed it to Noble.

  Cathy ducked beneath Noble's right arm and dropped to the sidewalk with Rick. Noble opened one of the equipment compartments and tossed each of them a flashlight. "Get going."

  As they descended into the darkness, he turned back to prepare the bomb. From a drawer he took a pair of foot-long loops of det-cord to which had been taped two blasting caps. The free ends of the cord, along with the blasting caps, had been taped together and the leads from the blasting caps had been screwed down onto a little black cube bearing the phone company's logo. These were his fuses.

  From another drawer he pulled out the two blocks of military plastique he had created from the kilogram he and Fox had purchased. Shaped like a brick, with a four-centimeter-wide channel running down the length of it, each block had been wrapped up with det-cord. Noble threaded the head of the loops through the channel, beneath the winding det-cord, then pulled the blasting caps through the lead curve of the loop, securing the fuses to the plastique.

  In the back of the compartment from which he had taken the flashlights, a brick-sized hole had been made in the homemade explosive. Noble placed one plastique brick in that hole and the other in a similar hole at the back of another compartment. Satisfied they would stay in place, he laughed softly to himself.

  Hardly the sort of thing a mild-mannered chemistry teacher should be doing. But, then, the Dancing Joker is hardly a mild-mannered chemistry teacher.