by Mike Moscoe
“I know I can.” Ray tapped off, wondering if a barely teenage girl could find a way to open the damn box. Trying not to wonder if the box came with only so many shots, and it was all used up.
It was raining hard; the wind lashed them. Jeff figured the first hurricane must be hitting Refuge. He hadn’t looked at Harry’s overlay to see how high the fourth or fifth hurricane would get. After they blew the next rockbed they’d head inland.
There were now three on each team. Harry drilled. Jeff poured explosives. Annie was halfway back with the spare horse and another load of the starman’s best boom stuff. His commlink came alive. He listened, then shouted at Harry, “Dancer says the Pres is edging around the Provost! Using the weak spots we’ve created to hit him on two sides, not just one!”
“Good physics. Exert pressure on the full surface of the medium,” Harry answered, pausing in his drilling to wipe rain from his face. “Hope the damn computer is obliged for our help.”
Annie led the horse up the gentle slope toward him. Clothes dripping, hair bedraggled, her face still lit up in a beautiful smile as she approached Jeff. He leaned forward to kiss her. She accepted it, then broke away far too soon to hand him the loaded horse’s reins and take his now unburdened one.
“How much farther?”
Jeff pointed. “Maybe another thirty holes.”
“One more load,” she estimated. “Lil wants one more, too,” she said, leading the horse downhill.
“You could ride it, you know,” Jeff called after her.
“The poor thing’s exhausted. And won’t we be needing it to carry all we’ve got to the last rock? I can walk.”
“Ow!” came from uphill. “That hurts!” Zed shouted.
“What hurts?” Lil called from where she poured explosives.
“I don’t know. I got this rash on my hands.”
Jeff eyed Harry. “You got one, too?”
“A bit. Nothing to worry about. This damn drill is blowing hot rock all around. Bound to irritate a guy’s skin.” Jeff ignored the holes he needed to fill, stepped off the distance to his old friend, reached for his hands.
“Don’t touch me,” Harry cut him off. “If I’ve got nanites, you don’t want them. You stuff holes. Apparently it hasn’t figured out that’s as dangerous as the drilling.”
“Harry!”
“Don’t Harry me. If we have to, you’ll drill when I can’t. Right now I still can. Stuff those holes, kid.”
Jeff swallowed, He couldn’t argue with Harry. Hell, Harry had won every argument they’d ever had. Still. “I can’t just stand here and let whatever’s happening…”
“Whatever’s happening is happening. You got a magic wand that’ll change these damn computers, wave it. For now, we suffer whatever they think to pass along to us. Let’s get a move on. It’s learning too damn fast for my liking. Besides, maybe if we put the Provost out of business, the Pres won’t know what to do with the nanos I’ve picked up. Move, kid.”
Jeff moved.
Nikki tried to think. Daga would know. Oh, God, how she wanted to talk to Daga. Daga always made her laugh, no matter what trouble she was in. Nikki wanted to laugh, to make all the troubles go away. Ma said you had to take care of yourself, that you were responsible for what you did. A baby wasn’t. A woman was. What do you want to be, a baby or a woman?
At the moment, Nikki would very much like to be a baby, a cute little bundle that people were always glad to take care of.
But babies didn’t make messes like she had.
Nikki walked slowly around the box. It wouldn’t open. Why not? They’d pushed the places that opened it that time on the hill. Nikki tried to remember what it had been like surrounded by her friends. A warm summer day. Getting warmer. The sun had seemed close enough to touch. Here, high in the foothills of the mountains that raised like a white wall ahead of them, it was so cold Nikki kept a blanket wrapped around herself.
Nikki touched the box. It was cold. Not freezing cold, but cool. Like it had been when she and Daga first picked it up. “Help me close the lid.” Two mechanics leaned on it. The lid slid down the fraction of an inch. There wasn’t even a click as the tiny crack around the midsection disappeared.
“What are you thinking?” Kat asked.
“It was cold when we started walking. Daga found it in a cave. Then the morning sun warmed it. I remember it felt pleasantly warm when I touched it. When it opened.”
Kat nodded. “I’ve had it wrapped in that backpack since we got it. Let’s leave it out in the sun for a while.”
Nikki looked up. Thin clouds obscured the sun, leaving her chilled. How much sun did the vanishing box need?
Mary prowled the wall. For the riot police, she had good words. For her marines leading them, she urged caution. “We’ve got all the firepower we need. No need to flash it around. See over there on the factory. That’s Du and his sharpshooters. Anyone takes a potshot at you, they’ll get ‘im.”
For herself, she had nothing. What she wanted to do was stand on the ramparts and scream at the people to go away. We have nothing for you. We’re just as destitute as you. There’s plenty of land that won’t be flooded. Why stay around here? She didn’t. She knew better.
Inside they had food, though the servings were already pretty skimpy. They had shelter against the rain and cold, though the sewers were already backing up. They had leaders to help them believe that somehow this would all come out right. Strange, Mary never considered herself a little ray of hope. Still, that was what she saw in the eyes of the wall details as she talked to them and from the grandmothers as she circulated around the living quarters.
And that was what she felt around the Colonel. Somehow he would fix this. Even as she felt it, she knew it was half dream, half wish. Hell, she’d damn near killed him once. What made her now want to root for him, believe in him while he took on something so much bigger than she and her tiny platoon? She guessed that was what you called leadership.
Mary’s eyes wandered over the crowd huddled in the rain outside the wall. Do you have a leader? Is there someone giving you hope? Outside, a fight broke out. People stepped back, made a hole for the two fighting men. A big man pummeled another hardly half his size.
“Stop that!” Mary shouted. “You out there, stop them!”
Eyes with no purpose looked up empty at her. The bigger man smashed the smaller down into the mud. Took something off him and stomped away, leaving the other bleeding into a reddening puddle. No one did anything.
Purpose. Meaning. Order. Leadership. That was what Mary gave those beside her on the wall. “That’s why you’re here,” she snapped to the troops around her. “To keep that shit out there away from your families. Any questions?” There was none.
Mary continued her inspection of the troops on the wall as the unseen sun slipped lower in the sky.
Ray sat with the kids while the doc gave them a thorough going-over. “You draft these kids into your war, they sure as hell get a physical. You, too, Colonel. You’re transferring from a desk to a whatever it is you think you’re gonna do, I want to have a good look at you.”
Ray went along, partially to keep the doc happy, partially to spend time with the kids, but mainly because he had nothing else to do. He’d played nearly every card he had. He would not lay the last one down ahead of time. Whether this would be another Roarkes Drift or Alamo would be clear soon enough.
The kids were quiet— no racing around, no shouting. They sat in the clinic’s chairs playing finger games.
“My mommy doesn’t say anything,” Rose told the boys.
“My grandda is so worried,” David gave back. “I wish it would stop raining.”
“My ma and da take turns putting on those silly things and standing out in the rain on the wall,” Jon offered. “I think they’d rather go home.”
Slowly Ray tried to explain what was happening. He drew blank stares from the kids. “A com-uter? Is that like an ogre?” Jon asked.
“Something li
ke one,” Ray admitted. “And it is blowing the rain and weather at us,” he improvised.
Jon and David blew as hard as they could. “It must be very big,” Rose concluded.
Gently, as he might his own child, in images more than truths, Ray told the kids what he wanted them to do. “Like in the cave?” Rose said. “But that was a nice old man,” David pointed out. “And I liked him,” Jon insisted.
“This time it may be different. I’ll need you to do what I do, say what I say. And keep saying it, even if I start saying other things. Could you do that for me?”
All three children slowly nodded their heads. “My grandda likes you.” “So does my da and ma.” “I think my mommy would like that.” Rose was the last, and maybe the only doubtful one. “Are you sure it’s an ogre?” she insisted.
“Very much like one,” Ray said, rising to go.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” the doc whispered angrily as Ray passed him at the door.
“So do I, Jerry, So do I.”
Ray’s commlink buzzed as he walked down the hall, reflecting on the children’s view of things. It was Kat. “Sir, I think we’ve got the vanishing box charged. It’s late up here, and I doubt we’ll get another shot before dark. Have our priorities changed since we left? Should we wait until tomorrow?”
“Damned-if-I-know” was not an acceptable answer. The Pres’s capacity to scramble their DNA had been the number one priority when Kat launched. At the moment, the Provost’s nanos were eating Harry and Zed alive; taking out a major chunk of his resources might help them. But taking out any northern target now might give both of them a night to reflect. Might they come up with a counter, a defense, a workaround?
Dithering was not a command quality Ray approved of. “Lek, ask Dancer where the President’s DNA scrambler is.” Of all his computer allies, Dancer was the only one he trusted. Of course, he was also the one who’d set them up for the hurricanes.
“Boss, I think I got some good scoop from Dancer.” Ray’s wrist unit showed a tiny map of Norm Continent, zooming down to the towering range that separated plush south half from arid north. Ray passed the map through to Kat. “That one,” he said.
“Sir, that’s target twelve, the lowest priority. You trust the data?” Kat asked, the skeptical analyst to the end.
“It’s the best we got, Midshipman. Execute your attack.”
“Stand by.”
Ray flipped on his poncho and began to cross between hospital and HQ. Up north, his orders were being carried Out. A mountain was being reduced to dust, maybe even the right one. “Mountain’s gone, sir. Tomorrow I’ll start at target number one and work down the list unless I hear different from you. Maybe I can get one more off tonight, but I doubt it.”
“Thanks, Kat. I strongly suspect we needed that.”
Kat signed off. Ray asked Lek to check with Dancer about the effect of the latest assault as he trudged to the HQ. It was near dinnertime, but Ray wasn’t hungry. He went past his office to his quarters and stretched out on the bed. Maybe he’d sleep. Maybe he’d have a second chance to talk with the President and/or Provost. Maybe he could yet negotiate his way out of this.
The mule died halfway to the last rockbed. “Harry,” Jeff suggested, “why don’t you and Zed stay here. Maybe, once we’ve taken out the Proctor, whatever killed our mule will let it go.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Lil agreed.
“You’re both lying bastards,” Zed snapped. “The mule is hosed, and it’s gonna stay hosed no matter who wins.” But he was grimacing through the pain even as he grouched.
Zed and Harry stayed in the mule while Jeff and Lil selected the best-working of the two drills; they’d lug only one. The horses would carry as much explosives as possible. Lil pulled the battery out of the chosen drill, replaced it with a fresh one. “That’ll do us.”
“Travel light,” Jeff said. “I’ll do the drilling.”
“Kid, don’t tell an old miner how to do her business,” the woman snapped, rummaging through the first-aid kit. “This is the spray we put on your hands last night. Puts a layer of plastic over ’em. I’ll use this before I drill.” She glanced back at the mule. “That rash on Zed don’t look more than skin deep. This ought to hold them nanos long enough for me to get the job done.”
Annie joined them, lost under a spare poncho. “What you doing?” Jeff demanded.
“Someone has to lead the third horse.”
“Ned can do it.”
“He’s taking care of Harry and Zed.”
“Then I’ll lead both of them. You stay here.”
“Listen, Mr. Bossy Sterling, I can walk with you, or I can follow a half mile behind you. Which you want?”
“Damn headstrong woman,” Jeff snapped.
“Thank God you got one, mister. You want your kids to be half jellyfish?” Lil asked.
Jeff didn’t know what a jellyfish was, but the words painted a pretty good image. Outgunned two females to one him, he led off with the first horse. Lil and Annie followed.
They left Jeff in the lead long enough for him to stomp out his huff; then Lil took point. Her reader showed a small trail that would take them most of the way, farther if they didn’t mind walking a longer route. A few minutes on the trail’s better footing showed the shortest route wasn’t the fastest.
Before long, Jeff found himself walking beside Annie, holding her free hand. Lil pulled a bit ahead of them, leaving them a space to talk. “Why, Annie? Why did you have to come? I can take care of this.”
“Why are you here? Couldn’t Lil do it all by herself?”
“Two can work faster. If something happens to her, I can take over,” Jeff shot back without a moment’s thought.
“If two is good, three is better,” Annie said flatly.
“But I want you safe.”
“And you don’t think I want the same for you?”
That had Jeff. He walked along for a while, mulling that over. “Thank you for coming,” he finally said.
“Keep that one, honey,” Lil called over her shoulder. “He’s dumb, but he’s educatable.”
Annie squeezed his hand. He felt like a million pounds of copper. An hour later, his legs seemed to weigh a million pounds. Slogging through the mud, up hills flowing like streams with runoff, downhill where the water and mud wanted him and his horse to slide like a wind skier, he and Annie struggled.
Twilight was a muddy memory before they cut cross-country for the ridge they wanted to bust up. Without the goggles, Jeff was pretty sure he’d have drowned crossing the field. The map showed a small creek flowing down the middle of the valley. Now it was wide and dangerous. It was Annie who suggested they go upstream to a marshy spot. It was still bad, but there was no deep creek. Horses and humans floundered, hunting for footing, finding a little here, enough there.
Across, they collapsed on the only dry ground around. Lil studied the ridge as they caught their breath. “I got an idea about that puppy. We don’t have to blast that rock, just thump it enough to crack their connections.”
“What are you getting at?” Jeff gulped.
“There’s a lot of dirt and crud around the base of that hill. Solid rock inside it and along the top of the ridge. What if we drilled in through the dirt? No nanos there.”
“But wouldn’t the mud just slide down?” Annie asked.
“Not if we did it high enough up. Close to where the rock outcropping begins, but not actually on it. Game?”
“You’re the one with thirty years of drilling,” Jeff said.
It was muddy work; Lil sprayed the plastic on her hands and peeled it off every fifteen minutes. The holes were fewer, and deeper into the mountain. It was a gamble, but if the computer was learning how to fight them, Jeff was damned if he wouldn’t show it humans can think of new ways to hit it.
It was midnight when they mounted their horses and rode around the valley, keeping to the hills. At the top of the valley, they paused while Lil set off the blast. I
n the dark, the ground shook, but they could see nothing of what they’d done.
Ray made his usual midnight trip to the bathroom. The crazy planet had healed his broken back but missed his plumbing problem. Oh, well, he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
The gift horse was waiting for him as he dozed off again.
The President sat in a plush leather chair behind a vast wooden desk. What must be the Provost stood off to one side, purple robes flowing over his three-piece suit, a staff in his right hand, a large, multisided silver ball at its head.
“Glad to see you two again,” Ray quipped. “You talking to each other?” In answer to his question, they both glowered at him…ignoring each other.
“You are trying to annoy me,” the Provost snapped.
“You are trying to exterminate me,” Ray snapped back.
“You threatened me.”
“After you threatened me,” Ray pointed out.
“This is getting us nowhere,” the President grumbled.
“And you”—the Provost turned on him—“you coddle them. Side with them. They attack me, and you push me back. Don’t you see what they are doing? We should eradicate them.”
“Maybe we should have. But that is not an issue anymore.”
“Not an issue. You could control them. You can take away their memories, turn them to jelly! Strike, you idiot!”
“I can’t. I just lost a major node up North. I no longer have that capacity,” the President admitted sourly.
“You fool. You slow-witted imbecile. You’ve let them…let them…” At a loss for words, the Provost swung his staff at the President’s head. A sword appeared in the President’s hand. He slashed the Provost’s staff in two. The Provost threw the half of the staff he held at the President and produced a sword of his own. The two went at it.
Ray awoke with the feeling of being too close to a bad brawl. Negotiation was not an option with folks who wouldn’t stop fighting long enough to talk; that option was closed. Well, at least now he knew that Dancer had given them good targeting data. The threat to every human cell on the planet was gone. Feeling good about the day, Ray rolled over and went back to sleep.