"No."
"Trank 'em," I said.
I looked back up at Long.
Three seconds later, Lobo said, "Done."
"The three near my ship are now asleep," I said. "Even considering attacking it is far stupider than coming after me. Nothing in this complex is a match for its automatic defense systems."
"Automatic defense systems indeed!" Lobo said.
I ignored him and stood.
Long visibly tensed and pointed the pistol at my legs.
"Here's what we're going to do," I said. "You're going to tell me what building she's in and head there. Hide your guns as you walk. After I've finished my run, I'll meet you there, and we can all chat."
Long shook his head. "Our orders are different."
I shrugged. "Check on the three near my ship. Talk to Lim. Decide." I crossed my arms behind my head and leaned against the tree.
Long backed behind the cover of the tree nearest him and whispered briefly.
I waited.
When he stepped back into view, he tucked his gun into his waistband and pulled his shirt over it. "Easier for everyone," he said. "I can't say I liked this plan in the first place."
"Neither did I."
We both laughed.
"Do me a favor?" he said.
"What?"
"Show up, so I don't end up being the ass in all this. You know how she can be."
I nodded. "I do, and I will. About half an hour should do it."
"Thanks," he said. He turned and left.
"All are withdrawing," Lobo said.
I stayed where I was until Lobo told me they had reached the center of the complex. I resumed jogging. As I ran, I thought about my responses to Lim's questions and how she would react.
One thing was for certain: There was no chance she would be happy.
"Yes, you are going to tell us," Lim said. The air in the little room was hot and still from too many people sharing too small a space. Long stood beside me. Schmidt and Gustafson guarded the door behind me. Lim sat behind the small table in front of me. "This has gone on long enough."
I said nothing. Sweat ran down my arms and chest and back. My breathing was back to normal, but I still had the warm glow you get when you stop running.
"One boy on the roof," Lobo said, "at the left rear corner, left as you enter. Another under the small window opposite the entrance."
I motioned for Lim to continue talking and turned to face the door.
"What are—" Lim said.
I whipped around and gestured again for her to keep talking.
"—you going to do exactly?" she said, playing along.
I stepped to the door.
Gustafson and Schmidt blocked my exit. Long stepped next to me.
I mouthed, "Follow me" to him and waited.
They moved aside.
Long followed me out.
I crept around the corner of the building.
Inside, Lim kept talking. "You know that we have a right to participate in any planning that concerns this complex. As I'm sure you are aware—"
I tuned out her voice and focused on listening for movement overhead. I reached the rear corner. I stopped and motioned to Long to come closer. When he was next to me, I pointed down the side of the building. I leaned forward just far enough to spot the boy under the window. I pulled back immediately.
Long did the same.
I walked slowly backward until the edge of the roof was visible and tilted my head toward the boy waiting there.
Long saw him, too, and nodded.
We headed inside the building.
He whispered to Schmidt and Gustafson, and they all went outside.
A few seconds later, scuffling sounds crossed the roof, and I heard Long yell, "Eavesdropping on private conversations is rude and wrong!"
He returned, chuckling. "Two boys were listening to us," he said to Lim. "Moore knew about it."
Lim nodded. "So that's why you won't explain your plan?" she said to me.
"That's part of it," I said. "These boys know everything you guys say and do. They probably learned about Wylak's plan before you'd finished briefing all the adults. I heard about it from Bony, but the boys with him also knew. They all volunteered to help us fight." Before she could say anything, I added, "I told them, no."
"They're not listening now."
"No," I said, "they're not—not right this minute. Five minutes from now, they will be. If you keep them away from here, they'll eavesdrop on others on your staff. You can't expect all of these counselors to stay quiet all the time, so what they know, the boys will know. I can't have that."
"You can't have it?" she said. "Who put you in charge?"
I opened my mouth to answer but stopped as I understood for the first time how stupid I'd been. I'd never truly understood why she'd sent for me. Until now.
Part of me wanted to hate her for it, but I couldn't; I had too much invested in what happened here.
"Well?" she said.
"You did," I said, "though it took me a long time to realize it. You put me in charge of saving us, should we ever need saving, when you recruited me. You did it again when you took me to your meetings with Wylak. You didn't ask me to come just because you needed help in the assault on this place. You could have beaten those rebels without me, and we all know it. You brought me here because you knew that if things went nonlinear, I—no, my ship and I—could be very useful. You roped me into this mess as your insurance policy." I glanced at Schmidt and Gustafson. Schmidt wouldn't meet my gaze; Gustafson shrugged and mouthed, "Sorry." I put my hands on the desk and leaned closer to her. "You all used me—and you were right to do it, because I am going to do my damndest to save these boys—but I'm going to do it my way."
Lim gave me a hard stare.
I didn't turn away.
"And your way has to include keeping us in the dark?" she said.
"Yes." I straightened. My hands, still damp from the run, left prints on the wooden table. "Look, Alissa, you've worked with me before. We've served together. I've pulled you out of some bad situations, and you've saved my life." I nodded toward Schmidt and Gustafson. "They've worked with me, too. You all know that I didn't withhold information before. I'm asking you to trust that I'm doing so now for good reasons."
"And if I don't?" she said. "If I decide to make you tell me?"
I didn't stop looking into her eyes as I stepped backward until I was leaning against the wall opposite her. "You'll fail, and you'll jeopardize the only plan anyone has for saving these boys."
"We might succeed, and we might be able to execute your plan better than you can."
"You won't, and you can't." I crossed my arms. "I appreciate how hard this is for you. I understand it better than you'll believe. But we both know how this will turn out if you try to get information from me, so we both know you won't." Lim had seen Lobo in action, so even though she had no clue as to just how powerful he was, she understood enough to realize that he could take out her entire team way before I'd break.
She closed her eyes for a minute. "I hate this."
"That's a lot to ask, Gunny," Gustafson said.
I nodded. "It is, and I'm sorry, but it has to be this way."
"What can we usefully do?" Schmidt said.
"Exactly what we discussed before: Keep helping the boys. Prepare them to live normally. Teach them ways to cope with what's happened to them. Do the best you can with the time you have."
"And when Wylak comes?" she said. "When he shows up way before we can finish with the boys, long before they're ready for reintegration, then what do we do?"
"Hope my plan works, and follow my lead."
She shook her head and chuckled. "That's a lousy answer."
I smiled. "Yeah, but it's the only one I have."
"We don't have a better option," Gustafson said. "I say we let Moore do his job."
"Jon played by our rules," Schmidt said, "even when it meant cleaning barracks and walking useless pat
rols."
Lim looked over my shoulder at them and nodded. Her shoulders sagged. "It's going to be hard," she said, " going about our business as usual while the days fall away, knowing he's coming."
"The time will pass faster than you'd believe," I said. In that moment, with all of them finally agreeing to let me run my plan, I felt the cost to them and hated that I was making them pay it. I wanted to tell them about the accelerated timetable, to tell them all of it, but I didn't. My reasoning had been sound before. It still was. I had to do everything I could to increase our chances of success, so I stayed quiet as I walked out of the small building and back to Lobo.
"Look at the bright side," Lobo said over the comm. "You only have to lie to them for six and a half more days."
Chapter 57
In the former rebel complex, planet Tumani
By morning, I was going stir-crazy. Lim and all the other adults were angry and frustrated with me. Bony and his friends wanted to fight alongside me, and I didn't know how to dissuade them. Leaving would only bring me trouble. Though most of the complex was wooded, the rebels had cleared it enough that people outside the trees could easily spot others moving around inside them.
Remaining in Lobo, however, would drive me insane, because all I could do there was exercise or sleep. I needed to stay busy, or the remaining five full days until Wylak's visit would pass painfully slowly.
Staying busy.
I wasn't the only one with that problem.
Standing alone in Lobo, staring at nothing and only moments before having felt trapped and frustrated, I now smiled broadly.
"I'm going to see Lim," I said. "She's going to love this."
"You want to do what?" she said.
"Lead a bunch of the counselors and as many boys as will join in a work project," I said.
"That's not what you said before. You said you wanted to cut down a huge square of trees near the gate where Wylak's troops will enter."
I shrugged. "Same place, different descriptions. We need space for the kids to play in groups. That's a great location." I recalled Long leading the boys in the kick-the-ball game. "And, it'll help build teamwork."
She took off walking toward the food tent nearest that gate and motioned me to follow.
I fell into place beside her.
"It'll also help pass the remaining time," she said.
I said nothing.
"If I ask you if this has anything to do with your plan, you either won't answer me or lie to me, right?"
I stayed quiet.
"Learning to work together in non-violent pursuits is a valid form of therapy for the boys," she said. "Did you know that, were you guessing, or don't you care?"
I hadn't known more than what Long had told me, but it had seemed only sensible that teaching new skills to the boys would be good.
"For those who return to farming," she said, "knowing how to clear land is a very useful skill on such a heavily forested planet."
"Yes," I said. I motioned to her to stop. "We'd clear from here all the way over to the barracks, and go back into the woods about a hundred and fifty meters. The physical labor would be good for all of us, boys and counselors alike. When we finished, we'd have a great clear space." I smiled. "Plus, using cutting tapes to drop the trees would be a lot of fun."
"I could shoot down some of them," Lobo said. "Put a twig on the ground, and I could drop a tree on it."
I ignored him.
"So, what do you think?" I said. "I need your approval and the help of the counselors to make it happen."
She chuckled. "When we're done on Tumani, you're going to explain all this to me."
"If any explanation is necessary," I said, "sure, I'll provide it. What do you say?"
"You can do it," she said. "I'll call a meeting of the team leads for right after breakfast. When do you want to start?"
"As soon as you've told them," I said. I pointed at the trees in front of us. "We have a lot of work to do."
"It would be a lot more efficient to measure and calculate the angles first," Gustafson said, "and then drop them in bunches."
"Since when do you know about clearing forests?" Schmidt said. Her smile was the biggest I'd seen on her in a long time.
"Since I was a boy about the age of these here," he said. "There's a lot about my past you don't know."
"Are we going to take down this tree," Bony said, "or try to talk it into falling?"
We all laughed.
Though most of the boys had ignored our invitation, Bony and five of his friends had wandered over to see what we were going to do.
"We're going to take it down," I said, "and I'm even going to let you trigger the cutting tapes—" Bony reached for the remote, but I didn't give it to him. "—on one condition."
He pulled back his hand. "What's that?" he said.
"You guys help us cut up and haul off the pieces."
"That sounds like hard work," he said.
"It is, but as soon we clear the first one, we're going to try out Top's idea and drop a bunch of them at once."
"I bet that'll make one big noise, maybe shake the ground," Bony said.
"I bet it will," I said.
He looked at his friends.
They all nodded.
"Okay," he said. "We'll help. Now, give me that thing. Let's drop that tree!"
His friends cheered.
Gustafson and Schmidt laughed.
Gustafson tilted his head slightly, absorbed for a second in whatever he was hearing on his comm. "Long says the entire path is clear. Are we going to stand here all day, or are you going to let that young man kick off the project?"
I smiled and handed Bony the remote.
He took it and stared intently ahead at the target tree. He lifted the remote over his head and, as his friends cheered, he pressed the button.
I could barely hear the pop of the cutting tape over the applause of his friends. When nothing happened, however, they fell silent.
"It didn't work," Bony said. He looked around at all his friends. "We should have known better."
"Wait for it," I said. The chemicals and the short-duration nanomachines the tape had released would be eating into the wood and creating a cutout area. The tree's weight and gravity would do the rest. "The goal was control, not a big noise."
"How can we make a big tree fall without an explosion?" Bony said. "Big things take big shots; that's what they taught us."
With a loud crack, the tree bent and crashed toward the earth. As it fell, it tore off branches of other trees but did not knock over any of them. It hit with a huge thud and bounced twice. Dirt and debris flew from the impact area.
"I guess they taught you wrong," I said.
"The trunk covered the target," Lobo said over the comm. "Considering Gustafson applied the tape without the aid of any visible computational devices, that's rather impressive. For a human, of course."
Bony and his friends turned away from the tree and faced me. They were all smiling.
"Let's do another one!" he said.
"Yeah!" they all cheered.
"Absolutely," I said, "as soon as we cut up and haul off this one. Ready to get to it?"
Bony nodded.
He and Gustafson and I headed for the top of the tree.
The others fell in behind us.
A group of half a dozen boys trotted up to us. "Did you guys do that?" the one in front said.
Bony smiled. "Yeah."
"Can we blow up the next one?" the other kid said.
Bony shook his head. "We didn't blow it up." He glanced at me. "We used special stuff to make it fall where we wanted it to go. The next one is ours, too—but if you help us with 'em both, you can do the third." He checked with me again. "Right?"
"Absolutely," I said.
"Deal," the other kid said.
Gustafson shook his head and smiled. "Not bad, Moore," he whispered. "Not bad."
"I hope the boys aren't discouraged," I said to Lobo as I walked
to the clearing site the next morning. Our crew had stayed small, our tools were basic, and the trees were large, so we had to cut up and haul off about half of the second one before we could drop another. "We didn't get as far as I'd hoped yesterday."
"I don't think you need to worry about team morale," Lobo said.
A few seconds later, I heard boys shouting and laughing. When I passed the last of the buildings between me and the half-demolished tree, I saw the source of the sounds: almost three dozen boys stood in two groups facing one another, pointing fingers and laughing and occasionally kicking balls back and forth.
Long stood behind one of the sets of boys; Gustafson paced beside the one that included Bony.
"About time you got here," Bony said. "These fools think they can take us."
I looked first at Gustafson and then at Long, but neither one offered any explanation.
"Huh?" I finally said.
Bony pointed at the group opposite him. "These guys sleep in the dorms two over from ours. They don't know anything about clearing trees—"
Boos and shouts of "Yeah we do!" from the other boys drowned out his voice for a moment.
"—but they think they do," Bony said, when the others were quiet again. "They've challenged us to see who could cut up and haul off the most wood today."
"We have enough of the autocarts for everyone to stay busy," Long said, "though our team may move so fast that we have to borrow some of yours."
"Not a chance," Gustafson said.
I smiled. "Only one way to settle this," I said. I walked along the downed tree and subvocalized, "Tell me when I'm halfway—by mass, not length."
After ten more steps, Lobo said over the comm, "Stop. You're there."
I drew a line in the sand and pointed at the meter-thick trunk. "Put a mark here, at the halfway line for what's left of this one." I pointed at Long. "You guys, head up tree to my right; that's your half. The rest of you, take the bottom."
"That's not fair," Bony said. "We have the thicker part."
"Yeah, but it's shorter," I said, "and besides, do you really think these guys can compete with you?"
He nodded. "No way. You're right: It doesn't matter what part we have."
The two groups of boys drifted into position.
Children No More-ARC Page 30