by Timothy Zahn
“That’s the sort of nonsense we’ve had to put up with all day,” Wince murmured, making a face as he stretched muscles and joints that had been frozen too long in the same position. “God, but we’re vulnerable here. The sooner Connor gets us out of L.A., the better.”
Blair ran her fingers gently over the jagged rims of the bullet holes in her plane. He was right, of course. Skynet had way too good a bead on them here, and the noose was only going to get tighter each time they were forced to run from one rat hole to the next.
But where could they go? L.A. surrounded them for dozens of kilometers in every direction, a hell of a long walk when you had to carry everything on your own back. The team itself had no vehicles, and even if they could find a truck that still worked there was no gasoline to put into it.
But that was Connor’s problem, not hers. He would figure something out.
He always did.
“At least until then we’ve got this nice building to keep the rain off,” she said.
“Actually, a little rain would be nice,” Wince said, almost wistfully. “Might clear the air a little.”
He shook his head. “Anyway, you’d probably better get back to the bunker. Get some food, and then get to bed.”
“Don’t worry about me—I had almost six hours last night,” Blair said. “I was just thinking you probably need sleep more than I do.” She cocked her head. “And food, too.”
“I’ve got some lunch over there I never got around to eating,” Wince said, nodding toward the back of the hangar. “We could split it if you’d like.”
“No, that’s okay,” Blair said. Wince was famous for trying to foist food off on people he suspected were hungrier than he was. Blair had fallen for that trick five times in a row before she’d finally caught on. “I’m not hungry.”
“That was your stomach sending out audible distress signals, wasn’t it?” he reminded her dryly.
“Come on, there’s plenty for both of us.”
“In which case we can deduce that you missed at least two meals, not just one,” Blair countered.
“So go eat, then get some sleep. That’s an order.”
Wince shook his head sadly.
“You young people,” he said, mock-mournfully. “Always ordering around your elders.”
“Call it enlightened self-interest,” Blair told him. She had a few tricks of her own, after all. “I don’t want someone tired and hungry working on my plane.”
“Ah,” Wince said. “Well, when you put it that way…”
“I do,” Blair said. “Now go. I’ll stay here until Yoshi gets back.”
“Okay,” Wince said. “Thanks, Blair.” He touched her shoulder, almost shyly. “Don’t worry, I’ll find a way to get you those extra rounds.”
“Thanks,” Blair said. “You pull it off, and I guarantee they won’t go to waste.”
“I know they won’t,” Wince said. “See you later.”
He headed off toward the back, where the hangar’s compact housekeeping corner had been set up. Blair waited until he was digging ravenously into his neglected food pack, then took a few minutes to wander around the hangar, checking on the security of walls and boarded-up windows and doors. By the time she’d finished her tour, Wince was stretched out on one of the hangar’s two sleeping mats, sound asleep.
Blair shook her head. A meal that disappeared that quickly had definitely not been enough to share. Just as well she hadn’t let him talk her into it.
Her stomach rumbled again. Ignoring the emptiness down there, she picked up the other sleeping mat and moved it to a spot where she could keep a simultaneous eye on the door, both of the planes, and Wince.
Drawing her gun, she sat down on the mat, laying the weapon beside her. Nearly out of fuel, nearly out of spare parts, nearly out of ammo, nearly out of food. Life, she reflected, was definitely not looking good for the good guys. All the more reason to be glad this mess was in Connor’s hands, not hers.
She just hoped he could still find a trick or two up his sleeve.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
For Orozco, the day began as so many of them did: with a fight over food.
“But it’s mine,” Candace Tomlinson insisted, her plaintive five-year-old’s whine especially jarring coming from a seventeen-year-old’s mouth. “I found it. It’s mine.”
“But it was my stuff she found it in,” Sumae Chin, the twenty-two-year-old complainant snapped back.
“And where exactly was this private cache of yours?” Grimaldi asked, his eyes steady on Sumae as he stared at the two girls across his scarred office desk. “In your room?”
“She can’t just steal my stuff,” Sumae insisted, glaring at Candace.
“Where was the cache?” Grimaldi asked again, his voice going a few degrees sterner. “Sumae?”
Sumae sent Orozco a hooded look.
“In the lower storage room,” she said reluctantly. “Under some cracked drywall.”
Orozco sighed to himself. All the residents had their own rooms, as well as lockers Grimaldi’s men had lugged all the way from the remains of a high school, almost a mile away. In theory, everyone had all the room they needed for their personal items.
But too many of them had gone the squirrel route, hiding stuff around the building. Some did it because they didn’t want anyone else even knowing how much they’d managed to accumulate, while others were out-and-out paranoid about the Board swooping down someday and confiscating everybody’s private treasures.
The problem, of course, was that one battered can of processed lunchmeat looked pretty much like any other. Once it was outside anyone’s official storage, it was well-nigh impossible to establish ownership. Especially since—even after all this time—it was still possible to occasionally find food items everyone else had missed buried in the building’s rubble.
Which left Grimaldi with really only one possible ruling.
“I’m sorry, Sumae,” the chief said, his voice regretful but firm. “If you choose to hide items outside your designated areas—if the pickles Candace found were, in fact, yours to begin with—”
“But they were,” Sumae protested. “I told you where I’d—”
Grimaldi stopped her with an upraised hand.
“Even if they were yours to begin with, you forfeited all claims when you left the jar unattended outside your area. You know that. I’m sorry, but Candace owns them now.”
Sumae flashed the younger girl a look of pure hatred.
“Just wait,” she said, her voice low and menacing. “Someday you’ll drop something—”
“Sumae,” Grimaldi warned.
“—and I’ll be right there to pick it up,” Sumae finished.
“And if and when that happens, I suspect I’ll be seeing the two of you again,” Grimaldi said wearily. “You may return to your rooms or your work now. And you, Sumae, had best collect anything else you might have hidden around the building.”
Sumae held her glare on Candace for another heartbeat, then tried to transfer it to Grimaldi. But Grimaldi wasn’t sixteen, and he’d no doubt been glared at by experts. Sumae’s expression faltered as her glower bounced harmlessly off the stone that his face had become.
“Yes, sir,” she muttered, and slunk away out of the room. Candace triumphantly snatched up the dusty jar of pickles and followed.
“And so begins another glorious day in Moldavia Los Angeles,” Grimaldi said with a sigh.
“So it does,” Orozco agreed. He and Grimaldi had their differences, God knew, but Orozco had always respected Grimaldi’s insistence on handling these disputes personally, instead of hiding behind his desk and title and foisting the unpleasant duty off onto someone else. “Let’s hope things go uphill from here.”
“I don’t think they will,” Grimaldi said. “I talked to Evans and Kemper last night. They’re pretty sure they’ve seen your empty-revolver gang before.”
“Over on the far southern edge of the neighborhood,” Orozco said
, nodding. “Yes, I got the same thing from Hamm.”
“Which means those kids were not, in fact, the new gang Nguyen and his buddies spotted on their way in yesterday afternoon,” Grimaldi said. “Which means that group is still out there, and we’re eventually going to run into each other.”
“I’ve already doubled the sentry shifts and put two of the fire teams on quick-response,” Orozco told him. “Unless you want to go out hunting, there’s not much more we can do.”
“We definitely don’t want to go looking for them,” Grimaldi said firmly. “The lower the profile we can keep, the better.”
“Agreed,” Orozco said. “Unfortunately, we’re about five years past the low profile stage.
Everyone for ten or twelve blocks around at least knows we’re here somewhere, even if they don’t know exactly which building we’re in. We have to assume our newcomers will try to pick up as much intel as they can on the territory they’re trying to move into.”
“Fortunately, everyone who knows we’re here also knows that everyone who’s tried taking us on has lost,” Grimaldi said. “Maybe they’ll be smart enough to learn from the mistakes of others.”
“We can hope,” Orozco agreed. “But in case they don’t—”
He broke off as the door was suddenly thrown open, and Mick the Binocular-Breaker ran into the room.
“Sentry signal,” he said, panting. “Four and one.”
“Damn,” Orozco snarled as he rose quickly from his chair. Four and one was a positive threat coming from the north. Ten to one it was Nguyen’s gang. “Chief—”
“I got it,” Grimaldi interrupted. He was on his feet, checking the chambers of the shotgun he kept under his desk. “Get to the entrance—I’ll roust the fire teams.”
Ninety seconds later Orozco was back at the archway. Kyle and Star were already there, Kyle with Orozco’s M16 gripped in his hands.
“They’re coming,” he reported tightly.
“I know,” Orozco said, stepping to the arms locker and pulling out their one true sniper rifle, a Remington 700 with a Leupold VX-1 scope “Are they visible?”
Kyle stepped beneath the archway, leaning cautiously out from behind the building’s broken facade.
“Not yet,” he said. “They may be on the other side of that broken truck three blocks up.”
“Take this,” Orozco said, taking the M16 from Kyle and handing him the Remington in exchange. “Go to the sniper nest.”
Kyle’s forehead creased uncertainly as he fingered the Remington.
“Evan’s a better shot than I am,” he said.
“Evan’s not here,” Orozco said. “You are. Get going.”
With a grimace, Kyle nodded and headed across the street, Star right on his heels.
Orozco waited until the two kids had disappeared into the sniper’s nest. Then, checking the M16’s clip and chamber, he settled in to wait for their visitors.
He had received one follow-up report from the sentry, and was waiting for a second, when they arrived.
In impressively sophisticated military fashion, too. The sentry had said there were ten of them, but only four came striding into Orozco’s view along the street, spaced far enough apart that they couldn’t be taken down in a quick four-shot. The other six weren’t visible, but Orozco suspected they could see him, or at least they could see the building’s archway. Backup forces, ready to provide covering fire or a second attack wave, whichever was needed.
Not that the first group wasn’t a wave and a half all by itself. Orozco counted ten heavy weapons among the four men, plus holstered sidearms and whatever hidden grenades or knives they might be carrying.
They were well-armed, well-trained, and at least slightly better-fed than the average L.A. citizen.
If they had been a new gang trying to move into the area, Orozco would have been worried.
But they weren’t a gang. The red sashes tied around their sleeves showed that. They were, in fact, Resistance.
Which made it even worse.
“Morning,” Orozco called courteously, keeping the muzzle of his M16 moving gently back and forth between them. “Just passing through?”
“Mostly,” one of them said. He was a big black man with a fringe of a beard and a totally bald head. Along with his guns he was also carrying a couple of ammo packs, but he didn’t even seem to notice all the weight. His eyes flicked once to the M16, then came back to Orozco’s face. “You must be the Orozco everyone talks about.”
“Sergeant Orozco, actually,” Orozco said. “Formerly of the U.S. Marine Corps.”
The other gave a snort that seemed to double as a laugh.
“That supposed to impress me?”
“Just want to make it clear I know how to use this,” Orozco said, hefting the M16 a bit. “You have a name?”
“Barnes,” the man said. He nodded toward the red armband. “This is my unit.”
“Yeah, I see it,” Orozco said. “Is that supposed to impress me?”
“It should,” Barnes growled. “We’re the ones keeping Skynet off your back.”
“Or you’re the ones drawing Skynet’s fire onto everyone else,” Orozco countered. “That’s the way a lot of people around here see it.”
Barnes gave him a long, measuring look.
“You can’t be that stupid,” he said at last. “Not if you were really a soldier.”
“Marine,” Orozco corrected automatically.
“Whatever.” Barnes nodded past Orozco’s shoulder.
“Mind if we come in? We’ve got some snacks to share out with your people in there.”
Orozco suppressed a grimace. He’d called it, all right, straight from the top, the minute he’d seen those red armbands. These guys were here to recruit.
Grimaldi, if he were here instead of up on the balcony, would absolutely forbid them to pass the archway. He saw the people of Moldering Lost Ashes the same way he’d seen his inventory list back in the day, and he took it badly—and personally—when any of them chose to leave. The best thing Orozco could do right now would be to send Barnes and his team away.
And then, Orozco’s eyes fell on all the weaponry the men were carrying.
A hard knot settled into his stomach. Recruiters didn’t lug that much stuff around. Not if all they were doing was looking for fresh faces and able bodies.
Something was about to go down. Something bad.
And if Barnes’ recruitment pitch meant even a couple of the people here got out before it was too late…
“If you’re here to sign folks up, you’re going to be disappointed,” he warned. Some people, he knew, worked better and harder if you told them something couldn’t be done. Barnes looked like that type. “But if you want to try, it’s your time to waste.”
“Thanks,” Barnes said. He lifted his left hand above his head—
“But you’ll have to leave your weapons here at the archway,” Orozco added. Grimaldi, he knew, would insist on that.
Barnes froze, his arm still lifted.
“You thinking about trading up?” he asked, looking pointedly at Orozco’s M16.
“Not at all,” Orozco assured him. “You’re welcome to leave a guard with the gear. Two or three of your six backstops should be enough.”
Barnes grinned suddenly, bright white teeth against his dark skin.
“I guess maybe you were a Marine,” he said. He flashed a couple of hand signals, then lowered his arm again to his weapon, swiveling the muzzle to point it at the ground. “That’s okay—the rest of the crowd can stay out here,” he added. “Don’t want to make your people nervous.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Orozco said dryly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just call ’em in and line ’em up,” Barnes said as he and the other three men walked in under the archway. “Tell ’em we’re springing for breakfast.”
Orozco nodded. “I’ll pass the word.”
This whole “Breakfast with the Resistance” thing had been one hu
ndred percent Connor’s brainstorm, and Barnes had disliked it right from the start.
He’d argued vigorously against it, in fact, the minute he’d been able to get Connor alone. The group barely had enough food for its own, and the idea of handing out freebies to a hunch of civilian parasites had struck him as complete and utter insanity.
But he had to admit that the scheme had gotten them into a lot more places over the past two days than they probably could have managed without it.
Not that they’d actually gotten any new recruits out of all that time and effort. Most of the people they’d talked to were small, close-knit family groups that you couldn’t break up if you lobbed in a brick of C4.
But for once, Barnes didn’t mind the lack of results. When you were in the process of infiltrating a Skynet staging area, every hour spent off the street and out of sight was a good hour. Even if all the civilians did was eat your food, listen to your sales pitch, and then throw you out.
This place was the last one on Connor’s list, and it was looking to be more of the same. Barnes couldn’t tell about Orozco—the man had a poker face like a T-600. But the boss man who’d showed up as soon as the team had cached their weapons had been as easy to read as a Terminator’s footprint.
Grimaldi didn’t like Barnes, he didn’t like the Resistance, and he especially didn’t like these intruders breathing his nice, clean non-violent head-in-the-sand civilian air. He’d been picking restlessly at the strap of his shotgun ever since slinging it, and Barnes could tell the man would like nothing better than to swing that gun back up to firing position and order Barnes and the others back onto the street.
But the man also knew better than to buck the crowd, and the swarm of children, teens, and adults that had come out of the woodwork at the mention of free food was definitely a crowd and a half.
“So what exactly are you offering my people?” Grimaldi asked as he stood beside Barnes, watching as the team passed out snack bars to the eager residents.
“Mostly, the chance to fight back,” Barnes told him.
“And to die while they’re doing it?” Grimaldi countered, raising his volume a little. A few nearby heads turned toward them in response. “Very heroic, I suppose, if you buy into all that glorious epic hero nonsense. But what I meant was what can you offer in the way of safety or community compared to what we have here already?”