Manna

by Lee Correy

  “They could hire mercenaries,” I pointed out.

  “Mercenaries often don’t fight well when the going gets deadly.”

  As we talked, the sun disappeared behind clouds. Thunder reverberated over Sayhuto Pass. When we left ten minutes later, the visibility was nearly zero in freezing drizzle.

  The western side of Sayhuto Pass was steeper, the curves tighter, the tunnels longer, and the bridged canyons deeper and more numerous. We went in and out of clouds, mist, snow showers, sleet, drizzle, fog, and warm sunlight.

  The culmination of the dream of Cecil J. Rhodes, the Rhodes Cape-to-Cairo Railway had been routed along the eastern and southern shores of Lake Nyira a hundred and fifty years ago with dynamite and hand labor. Kulala was settled as a railway division point from which the Germans blasted the Sayhuto Pass Railway through to the coast.

  Twenty klicks out of Kulala, Singh pulled into a passing track. A few minutes later, a goods train went by up Sayhuto Pass.

  Singh came back from the cab with a concerned look on his face. “Induno Moti,” he reported, “something’s wrong. Those were not ComTrans locomotives; they were Rhodes Railways Diesels. The brake van was also Rhodes. The consist was reefers, grain gondolas, and livestock wagons. Down goods trains never carry food from Kulala.” The Sikh was obviously disturbed at this unusual operation on the railways that were his life work.

  “Strange,” Kivalina remarked, then asked, “What does Kulala Despatch say?”

  “I received orders from them to cross the train here and to proceed after crossing. I reported the crossing and everything appears to be normal.”

  “Proceed then, Mister Singh,” Kivalina told him.

  As the railcar moved off the siding, Kivalina and Oriabu opened a cabinet in the galley.

  She handed me a rifle and a bandolier of ammunition. “Know what it is?” she asked.

  I looked it over. “Israeli copy of the Arisaka Type Twenty-one. No, it isn’t! Never seen it before.”

  “Commonwealth A-R-Three, our version of the Israeli copy of the Arisaka,” her aide Oraibu explained. “Same basic Arisaka action, almost impossible to jam, can be freed-up by spitting on it. Seven-point-six millimeter high-velocity directionally-solidified round, fifty to a clip. It’ll take the head off a man at a hundred meters or blow his guts out.”

  At the Academy, I’d studied every known weapon except this one. When Elwok told me what it was, I knew how it worked and what it would do because of the weapons it had been derived from. Short of an anti-vehicle cannon, it would stop anything and at long range, too. It had hitting power designed to take an enemy permanently out of action. Its 2.5-kilogram weight came from extensive use of high-stress composites, and the recoil of the high-velocity round was absorbed by gas cushion and venting. The Israeli version could be dragged through sand, dunked in mud, used to hammer tent stakes, and never cleaned. It would work perfectly years after being so abused, and it would keep on working. It was the ultimate soldier’s firearm.

  Kivalina checked hers. “It’s the Citlmpy rifle and the ammunition is everywhere.”

  “How many murders are committed with these every year?” I asked.

  “None. It’s too much for a social purpose weapon. And the penalty for mis-use is the public gallows, leaving the murderer’s family the burden and shame of paying the debts, obligations, and family support of the murdered.” Kivalina slung her AR-3 over her left shoulder and the bandolier over her right. “Load and lock,” she ordered. “We may have trouble at Kulala Despatch.”

  “Hijacked food train,” I remarked, “with an Ilkan crew looking like Commonwealthers.”

  “No, probably Kalihol troops,” Kivalina corrected me. “The food trains go northbound from the Emirate to the Ilkans who can’t feed themselves.”

  This was the incident I’d forecast! It would be made to look like the Commonwealthers had diverted a food train passing through their territory destined to feed the starving people of the Ilkan Empire. “Kivalina, if this isn’t the opening move in a brush-fire war, it’s certainly a preliminary.”

  She nodded. “I’ll bet there’s trouble at Kulala Despatch.” She stepped over to another cabinet that housed military comm gear. A few minutes later, she closed it. “Electronic counter-measures. But we’ll beat that game…”

  She had Singh stop the railcar about five kilometers from where Kulala lay sleepily on the edge of Lake Nyira. Oraibu and I went with her back along the track to what appeared to be a signal box. Lifting the cover of the box, revealed a mike and a speaker. “As I said, Sandy,” Kivalina remarked as she pulled the equipment out, “any military organization that relies on a single technology is out of business in the opening minutes of any fracas. To satisfy your whetted curiousity, opticom cables buried under our railways. If they get cut, we have an I-R lasercom with relays on most of the Dilkon summits.” Kivalina then spoke into the mike, “Tondro Six, this is Onklino One! Do you read?”

  “Onklino One, this is Malmola Lead! Where are you? We’ve been trying to contact you for an hour!” I recognized Induno Pahtu’s gravelly voice. The circuit was all the way through to the Vershatets Headquarters.

  “We’re five from destination,” Kivalina replied.

  “There’s a down goods train from Kulala. Stop it.”

  “Too late. It passed us ten minutes ago,” my host reported back. “It can be stopped at Sayhuto Pass.”

  “We don’t think it’ll get there,” Induno Pahtu’s voice came through again. “We’re on lasercom and opticom to Kulala garrison. Kulala Despatch was overrun by people with Citlmpy brassards who diverted an up food train to Ilkan with a Kalihol crew aboard. Get to Kulala, assess the situation, and report.”

  “Will do. Put the Citlmpy units in Kulala district on Alert Plan Domo, units report to assembly points. I’ll call from Kulala.”

  By the time we got back to the railcar, the sun was obscured by heavy clouds and rain had started to fall. Kivalina ordered Singh to proceed into the Kulala marshalling yard at reduced speed.

  She and Oraibu slipped bright orange brassards over their left arms. She handed me one.

  “Put it on so you won’t get shot at. Under Plan Domo, Citlmpy’s identified by orange brassards.”

  The railcar shuddered to a stop.

  We went up to the cab to find out what was going on. A bright red double signal light glared down the rain-slick track. Singh explained apologetically, “Induno, I cannot pass a double red.”

  Kivalina snapped, “Emergency over-ride! Proceed at cautious speed. The terrorists in Kulala Despatch probably set the signals against arrivals. Sandy, take the right cab door and cover. Elwok, take the left.”

  In the rain and deepening dusk, I couldn’t see anything beyond a hundred meters. Kulala gave me the impression of being an old colonial village. Huts and fences clustered along the right of way. Domestic animals huddled under shelter or foraged about in door yards.

  Nobody was out in the rain which was now falling heavily. I spotted the yard limit sign. The single track became a network of crossovers. A cluster of railway sheds loomed ahead.

  The railcar’s headlamp went out with a pop and the unmistakable splat of a bullet’s shock wave.

  I was thrown hard against the forward edge of the door as Singh applied emergency brakes. Swinging the bottom half of the door inward, I dropped to the deck plates.

  Almost immediately, automatic weapon fire raked the railcar. I heard the sound of a body falling to the deck.

  There wasn’t anything to shoot at in the gloom. I wished there was an I-R scope on my AR-3.

  Over the sighing of the railcar, I heard sporadic rifle fire ahead.

  A wet hand touched my leg. I looked back to see Kivalina crawling into the doorway next to me. Her hand and arm weren’t wet with rain but with blood.

  “Despatch signals control tower is about two hundred meters ahead,” she breathed.

  “They’ve got us ranged from there. We’ve got to get out of here.”


  “You’re hit.”

  “Just cuts on my right arm from pieces of windscreen glass. I put up my arm to protect my face,” the leader of the Citlmpy explained curtly. “I’ve got my field pack. I can bandage my arm after we get out of this death trap. Let’s go for that coaling bunker about twenty meters to the right. Give me covering fire. I’ll go first. Then Sandy. Then Elwok.”

  “What about Singh?” I wanted to know.

  “He died at his railcar controls,” Kivalina said with no trace of emotion in her voice.

  “Cover me!” She dropped to the ground and ran hunched through the gloom toward a coal bunker. She drew no fire, so neither Elwok or I shot back.

  Then it was my turn. I dropped the meter to the ground, alighting on the sharp ballast rocks. That was the easy part. The ground between the tracks was a morass of gluey mudthat sucked at my feet. I drew fire. I hate mud and the sound of high-velocity rounds whiffling past. I heard covering fire from Kivalina and Elwok.

  I didn’t think I was ever going to get there. I made it to the bunker whose mass of coal was more than adequate protection against anything except mortar fire.

  Kivalina was shooting around a corner near the ground. “Eleven o’clock, two hundred meters, about four meters up,” she gasped, still out of breath. “Take this side of the bunker. It’s easier for me to shoot left-handed on the other side.”

  We should have run for it together. Kivalina’s break had identified a target. I gave them the range. Elwok didn’t make it although I squeezed off a full clip to cover him.

  The rainy dusk of the marshalling yard was suddenly lit by Allakaket Mountain blowing up. A round found her boiler. When 20 atmospheres of steam lets loose, it tears things up.

  The coal gas from the fluid-bed combustor mixed immediately with the air, creating a fire ball. Pieces of glowing coal were flung outward in the violent disintegration of the railcar.

  In the flare of light from Engineman Kirpal Sandhu Singh’s funeral pyre, I clearly saw the Kulala Despatch control tower.

  And I could see how to get to it.

  So I emptied a fifty-round clip toward what was left of the second floor windows, then yelled at Kivalina, “Keep shooting! I’m going around to the right behind the sheds and clean out the tower building.”

  Blood was running down her right side from her lacerated arm. “Don’t do do it! We don’t know where the garrison troops are and when they’ll attack!”

  “From the looks of things, they don’t even have the building under fire,” I pointed out.

  “One A-P rifle grenade will take care of that second floor.”

  “And disable all the railway control and switching circuitry! That’ll will put the railway out of action for weeks!”

  “Then how the hell can we flush those bastards out of there?”

  “I don’t know. Wait and see what the Landlmpy does. Stay here. The area’s full of Citlmpy. You’ll get shot.”

  I really didn’t trust Kivalina’s citizen irregulars who might shoot at anything. On the other hand, I didn’t want to stay pinned down behind a coal bunker in the pouring rain with a wounded woman all night. Someone had to do something because the terrorists in the tower could wreck everything there anyway, and the Commonwealth would catch the blame regardless.

  I’d been a passive participant in Commonwealth affairs long enough. “I’m going to clean out that tower.”

  “Be careful! Don’t shoot at orange brassards!”

  “I’ll shoot anyone who shoots at me!” I told her and dashed across five meters of open area to a shed.

  I slowly worked my way to within fifteen meters of the control tower in the growingdarkness. As I was sizing up the stairway on the north side of the tower, a bullet smacked into the bricks above my head.

  I reacted by swinging in a crouching turn, the butt of the AR-3 against my hip and the selector on full-auto. In the alley between two buildings, a form became a rag doll thrown violently backwards. Someone else stepped out, rifle at the ready. He got off two wild shots before I hit him, too.

  “Cease fire, you trigger-happy Citlmpys!” came a yell. “The enemy’s in the tower, not down here!” A helmeted man stuck his head over a window sill. “Plan code password!”

  “Plan Domo!” I called. “I’m from the railcar!”

  “Domo it is!” A uniformed warrior stepped out of a doorway while someone else pinned me in the beam of a spot light. “Orange brassard!” he confirmed.

  In a few seconds, I was surrounded by Landlmpy warriors. These were the men I needed to do the job.

  “Induno Baldwin from Vershatets,” I identified myself and took command whether I was supposed to or not. “Citlmpy Induno Moti’s wounded behind the coal bunker back there. You: get a medic and help her. The rest of us are going to clean out that tower. You and you and you: up the ladder to the roof of that shed. When you see me start up the stairway, put covering fire into those upper windows…but don’t hit me! You and you I want at the base of the stairs and under the landing to shoot anyone who steps out. Move out!”

  I presumed they were trained professional troops who’d follow orders, so I worked my way to the tower and laid myself against the north wall by the stairway. I looked for the three warriors on top of the building across the alley. I saw a gun barrel there and started up the stairs.

  And received no covering fire to pin down the tower occupants.

  I went up four steps before having second thoughts. In my moment of hesitation, a man stepped out on the landing and opened up with a sub machine gun.

  I got off four rounds which hit him, pitched him over the railing, and dropped him to the ground.

  I discovered I couldn’t stand up. Something was wrong with my legs. I fell backwards down the stairs.

  Then I heard my covering fire! And two warriors trampled on me where I lay in the mud.

  There was a lot of rifle fire, but I didn’t care. Rain fell in my eyes and soaked me while nauseating waves of pain rippled up from my legs.

  There were bright lights in the sky. I’d always wanted to see a flying saucer, and as my lights went out I saw one hovering over me.

  Chapter 13

  History Books Do Lie

  “Old comrade, you feel better now?”

  I was warm and dry and floating on a cloud in a brightly lighted room. Nothing seemed to matter. I couldn’t feel anything anywhere. Things were dreamlike.

  “If I’m dead,” I muttered, having a hard time getting the words out, “it’s better than mud and rain.”

  A man grinned at me, the ends of his bushy black mustache pointing straight out. It had to be Omer. “Out of the mud, Sandy. You took a seven-point-six in left leg and two in right, above knees, missed bones. Old Pay-pay-shah Sixty good only for shooting flies off the wall.”

  “But shot my legs to hell…Still in Kulala?” I asked thickly.

  “Da. Bad weather to fight in, but we don’t get a choice. Tough to fly an aerodyne through it. Brought a MEST team. They patched you up. Rest easy. We lift from Kulala at sunrise. I won’t fly Dilkons at night in this weather except in emergency.”

  I slipped back in the bliss of nothingness.

  Bright sunlight hit my eyes. I heard a turbine whine and felt an aerodyne rocking as it broke ground and stabilized.

  “Welcome back.” Kivalina had her right arm covered with synflesh. “You should be dead because of what you did.”

  “Terrorist in the tower hit me with a sub machine gun. Didn’t get covering fire. Luck of the draw. Your armed citizens almost got me first,” I told her. “Those idiots shot at everyone.”

  “I told you they would. They’re supposed to make it hazardous for everybody around. We expect they’ll shoot a few of their own. Landlmpy troops pull back when the Citlmpy goes into action,” she explained.

  “Lose lots of citizens that way?”

  “We’ve got almost two million in the Citlmpy, only nine months to train each of them, and only one chance to do it.
We can’t expect them to be as good as professional warriors. Their duty is to make an invasion very difficult and costly.”

  For both sides, I thought.

  I guess I’d lost a lot of blood before somebody found me at the bottom of the Kulala Despatch tower stairs. There were good medical facilities and people at Vershatets where I was taken, but I was sluggy the rest of the day.

  The following day, a nurse gave me a glass of sweet glop and I could walk for a short distance without getting whoozy with pain. Must have been some of that Commonwealth folk medicine Tsaya told me was integrated into their medical procedures.

  I wanted Tsaya to fix me, but she was still in L-5.On the third day, I discovered an R&R ward outside on the mountain slopes. The doctors were reluctant to let me move there because of “bad weather.” On the fourth day, I walked out of the mountain to the R&R ward during my required afternoon stroll and refused to go back. They let me stay where I could see the mountains, the valley, the sky, and the clouds.

  They were right. The weather was lousy. And at 2400 meters even in the tropics, it was cold. But I didn’t care. I grew up camping and hiking in mountains—the Santa Ynez range above Santa Barbara, the Bradshaws during pre-Academy prep in Prescott, and the Front Range of the Rockies.

  Omer, Wahak, Kivalina, Defense Commissioner Abiku, and even Rayo Vamori visited me. Vaivan came the day after the ruckus caused by my voluntary relocation from the bowels of the mountain to the outside R&R ward. She was more beautiful than ever, and that made up for not being able to see Tsaya.

  “I’m glad you survived,” Vaivan told me. “When I learned you’d gone to Kulala, I was worried.”

  “On my account, Vaivan?”

  “No, not totally on your account,” she replied, taking some of the puff out of my ego. “I had information that something was brewing over there.”