by Mike Moscoe
Jon had been fingering the different weapons dangling from his belt, as if trying to figure them out. Ray shot him the memory of shooting the antitank weapon, grabbed his own, aimed it at the seam between the tank body and the turret, and let fly.
Jon was right with him. Both missiles slammed into the tank’s weakest joint. As advertised, the tank came apart, the turret’s ready ammo adding to the explosion. When last seen, the President was headed skyward, riding his cartwheeling turret.
“That was easy.” Jon did a little victory dance.
“Don’t count on that being all there is to it,” Ray told him.
The field wavered. Grass was replaced with rock and pumice. Off in the distance, a crater rim reared up a thousand meters. So this was how they would fight it out, battle scenarios from his mind; Ray could do that. Still, even as he concentrated on the field problem at hand, a part of Ray wondered how what happened here was reflected in the “real world.” Before Ray was the hole in the rim Mary and her platoon had defended. Here was chance to refight that battle; this time he’d show Mary.
“Like hell,” he muttered, remembering what he was here for. Also remembering how he had taken control of his mental images and the projections of the Pres and his minions. “I’m the one defending!” Ray shouted at the black sky, President, wherever he might be. “This time I get the pass.” In a blink, Ray and his team were in the rill on the other side of the pass. Okay, he’d do it Mary’s way. How had she gotten him? Right, an observation post on the other side of the rim. “Stay here,” he told the kids and computers. “Glad to,” “No problem,” “Have fun, Colonel,” and a youthful “Do we have to?” followed him as he sank through the rock to Mary’s post, complete with the three dead bodies on her doorway. Right, we had her spotted, just couldn’t kill the lucky bastard.
Ray was having trouble remembering which side he was on. He picked up Mary’s targeting board, set the pipper on each of the approaching battle rigs, and ordered up a salvo of rockets. Dumb President didn’t think to use his Willy Peter, and Ray’s shots went hot, straight, and normal, right into the attack force. “Got you,” Ray chortled.
Naked, Ray stood in a green savanna. The kids were to his right, boys too busy ogling Rose to notice the approaching herd of mammoths. The computer dozen included two rather attractive women, Ray noted for the first time.
“Not fair,” came in Net Dancer’s voice.
“Spread out, crew! Don’t run away from them! They can outrun you! Hold still, get one running at you, then dodge! And look for a spear or something!” Ray shouted, dodging the lead hulking monster. Hitting the ground and bouncing up, Ray tested the rules. Shaking his hand twice, he grabbed a stone-tipped spear from thin air. He hurled it with all his might, hitting the woolly elephant right behind the ear.
It bounced off the hard skull of the damn thing.
“Aim low!” he shouted.
Several computer types had managed to dodge, but one was running. Not for long. The mammoth quickly trampled it down. There was a scream, cut off quickly. The walking mountains regrouped. Ray looked around. There had to be something better than throwing spears at those monsters. He saw what he was hunting for. “Everyone, to me. Bring your spears.”
They came, the kids quickly, the computers looking back where one of their own was now being circled by vultures.
“Form a line along here. Pair up. That way, one of you can throw a spear as it goes by, even if the other one is busy dodging. Got it. Like pairs of fighter planes. Remember.” He tossed the memory across to the kids and the computers.
“Neat,” Dancer said, pairing up with Rose.
Ray found the Dean closest to him. “Got the idea.”
“I’ll get out front. You do the throwing,” the Dean said, breaking his sentence up as if working up his courage. “Why did you pick this place?”
“Wait and see.”
The President’s elephant corps was ready for another run. “Spread out some more!” Ray shouted.
This time it was trickier. The mammoths were looking for them to dodge. The Dean was good; he started to go left, halted in his tracks as the four-legged mountain started to follow him, then cut right. The critter thundered past him. Ray got a spear off for the right eye. Hit just above it. Well, he’d never thrown one of those things. Not much of a guidance system on the damn thing, anyway.
It didn’t matter. Plan B worked like a charm. In the grass behind Ray was a small creek, cutting a steep-sided six- to eight-foot wash out of the plain. The mammoths charged right into it; unprepared, they went down headfirst.
“Now, while they’re stunned, stab ’em, crew!”
Only one mammoth got out, charging madly down the creek, trumpeting in pain from the many slashes on its flanks.
“Good going, crew!” Ray shouted, again wondering how the creek and spears related to the battle taking place between him and the President on the ground in front of the base. No time for much thought; the scene flickered.
Ray stood on a hill, some kind of primitive slug-throwing weapon in his hand. Right. “A flintlock, crew, slow to load, not accurate for very far.”
“Colonel, down the hill,” David pointed. A hundred-plus red-coated troops marched shoulder to shoulder, their weapons presented in front of them, showing a wall of long, gleaming knifes on the end. “Bayonets,” Ray named them.
He looked around. The computer crew was missing a member. Apparently their losses each scenario were cumulative. Ray shook his hand twice, calling mentally for an M-6. No effect. Apparently you only got what was available in each of these situations. “Bunker Hill,” Ray muttered, eyeing the harbor to both sides of the peninsula, one of his father’s favorite defenses. “Or Breed’s Hill,” he corrected himself. “Hey, we’re supposed to have a defensive position here,” he called. Behind him appeared a shallow ditch, dirt piled up on this side.
“Okay, crew, into the redoubt.” Quickly he explained his idea. They at least liked the last part of it.
Pres was going for full psychological impact. Flags fluttering, his troops moved in perfect step, their uniforms impressive, hats making them seem ten feet tall. “Don’t fire until you can see the whites of their eyes,” Ray told his troops.
“You’re kidding,” Dancer said incredulously. “There’s got to be a better way.”
“There is. I think if I set my mind to it, I can call the next scenario,” Ray snapped. “For now we play it his way.” With measured steps, booted tread adding emphasis to the drumbeat, they came on. Damn, this was a hell of a way to fight. They were only fifty paces out. “On my count of three. Volley fire,” Ray ordered.
Two paces closer. “One.” Three paces this time. “Two.” One of the computers fired. “Hold your fire. Hold your fire. Now. Three.” Ray pulled on his own trigger. Damn, it took pull. Then the musket fired and damn near threw Ray backward out of the ditch. Before him was a cloud of black smoke. He wondered how many he’d hit. His plan didn’t call for wasting any time looking. “Everyone. Up. Run like hell.”
They needed no encouragement; his crew headed downhill as fast as their trembling legs could carry them. They were halfway down, a good hundred-plus yards from their ditch, when the redcoats marched over the hill. They were a lot fewer than they had been when Ray ordered the volley. At the top of the hill, the officer leading them ordered a halt. The front row knelt.
“They’re going to take a shot at us. When the officer orders ‘Fire,’ everyone drop, roll. Got it?”
Nobody had breath to answer.
“Ready…aim…” the officer shouted. “Drop!” Ray yelled. “Fire” came a second later.
A scream came from one of the computer types. “You hit?” Ray called, rolling to his feet and getting ready to keep up the run.
“No, hit a rock,” the computer image answered.
“Run.”
Ray pulled his head away from the stone. Doc was right next to him. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad. Depends on what’s happen
ing in the real world, where the computer is trying to hack into us.” Ray paused. There was noise in the base compound. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve got problems. Nothing for you to worry about. Why’d you come out?”
“Tell Jeff to blow every damn track he can. Every time we kill some of this thing, it comes at us with more. We got to cut his line of communications or he’s going to wear us down.”
“I’ll call Jeff. So far, you and the kids are doing fine. Boys showing some interesting brain activity for their age. Nothing else.”
“Talk later.” Ray rested his head on the stone, concentrating on the battle he wanted next.
Du searched the crowd with his rifle on high zoom. His night goggles showed him person after person in crosshairs. They were not targets, just people where Du didn’t want them. What he wanted was the one with the gun. That one was his.
“We took another shot here” came over the net. So far, another guard was dead, one wounded. Three helmets had done their job, though their owners had been sent for a medical check. Didn’t that bastard ever miss? Would make a good marine, Du thought. Too bad I’m gonna kill his ass.
The teams on the wall were taking the need to be sitting ducks pretty Well. Du knew they were counting on him and his crew to get the shooter. Damn it, he was trying.
Du followed the red arrow on his night goggles as Mary moved his fire plan to the left. The shooter had been edging to the left consistently. “Dumb,” Du muttered.
“Yeah,” Tor agreed. “Good shooter, dumb planning. Hold it.” Tor’s voice took on excitement. “I got a gun. Just went under a brown raincoat.”
Du slaved his gunsight to Tor. With a dizzying click, Du’s screen showed a guy in brown raingear. Something bulged under that coat. “Sure it’s a gun?”
“It looked like one, but you know those damn popguns, they can look like just about anything.”
“Keep watching that bastard, but do not take the shot. You hear me. No shot until we’re damn sure.”
“Understood.” Tor spat the word as if it tasted bad. Damn right it did. Du ordered Tor’s gunsight to save the last minute, then zoomed out; he had more area to cover. What if brown coat there wasn’t the shooter? Wasn’t the only shooter?
“I got something going on in front of me,” Mary announced. Du followed her red arrow back right. Yep, a lot of people were standing shoulder to shoulder in front of Mary’s section of wall. Arms went up in unison. “We want food. We want food.” Pushing and shoving went with the chant. They’d have to push awfully hard to get across the ditch, push down the wall.
“Gun’s out,” Tor snapped. Du switched pictures, blinked to adjust. The coat was open; the gun was out. The guy crouched down, hiding behind a woman holding a kid. The bastard! The coldhearted bastard!
“Don’t take the shot.”
“Right,” Tor growled. “Stand up, you son of a bitch. Stand up!” Tor ordered.
The guy leaped to his feet, leveling the gun over the woman’s shoulder. She saw it for the first time. In horror, she tried to duck, “Shoot,” Du ordered.
The crack came even as he spoke the word. Tor was good. One needle took the brown coat in the head. As he collapsed, his airgun popped. The woman screamed.
“He shot her in the back,” Tor snarled. “The bastard shot her.” The crowd ran, most away. A man ran to the fallen woman.
He pulled the limp body of a child from the woman’s dying grasp. “They killed her!” he shouted. “They killed her and her baby! Those star bastards are killing us!”
“Mary,” Du called over the net, “we got the bad guy. He popped the woman in front of him after we hit him. We got the bad guy,” he repeated, helpless to change the words shooting like electricity through the crowd.
Mary leaned over the parapet, the network bullhorn making her words large. “We have shot the man who killed two of us. He shot a woman as he died. We did not shoot the woman.” Her words blasted out over the crowd, growing muffled in the falling rain. The words hung there, fighting against the whispers, the desperation, the cold and hunger.
Mary’s words came from a stranger to these people. Whispers came from others in the crowd. Others just as lost and hungry and cold. Misery gave trust to the words from the miserable, denied truth to the words from above, The crowd changed, roared. As one, the mob surged forward. The front row went down into the muddy trench, began clawing its way up. With a growing thunder, more were driven into the mud. Their screams as they went down were lost in the maniacal rumble from those shoving from behind.
Du choked on the sight. More were dying than if he’d fired. “Mary, let me shoot over them. Do something to stop them.”
“I’ll handle this. Corporals, prepare for single shots over the crowd. Steady fire on my order. No auto. Single shots only. High. Prepare to fire. Fire.” Two rifles began to shoot. Every second, another beat in their slow staccato. The crowd froze. In the silence you could hear the screams of those caught in the trench. Du prayed to every god he didn’t believe in. “Stop them. Pull back.”
“They’re killing us!” someone in the mob shouted. More screams backed him up. “Get them! Get them! Get them!” came at Du. He wanted to cry. He and his were doing everything they could to save these people’s lives. Didn’t they know that? Couldn’t they see it?
He selected for single shot, thumbed off the safety, and sighted his rifle on a man, one who seemed so sure of what he yelled. “Mary, permission to take out the leaders.”
“Granted,” she whispered.
Du pulled the trigger; the man crumpled. Beside him, Tor fired. Du roved his sights over the mob, looking for the sure ones, the raving mad ones. Three shots, five shots, he lost count. Each pull of the trigger put a man or woman down.
The crowd wavered. Now it hung suspended between hate and fear. Finally, fear won. They turned as a body, fled, leaving behind those Du had shot, those they trampled in their panic. It was impossible to tell who were his, who were theirs.
Guards peered over the wall, down into the trampled mud of the ditch. “Can we help them?” came on net. Mary looked over the parapet, shook her head. Du couldn’t see the carnage in the trench. At least that much tonight was saved him.
“Sergeant, we got a problem on the southwest side of camp” came from Heave, the corporal in charge on the shuttle roof. Du trotted to the far corner of his roof, zoomed out his goggles. There were ropes over the wooden parapet at the far corner of the wall. Guards cut them, but more ropes came faster than they could cut. A length of wall fell into the ditch, making a kind of bridge.
Cassie stood in the breach. “Wait for Cassie’s orders,” Du told Heave. “No firing until she calls for it.”
Cassie stood her ground, but all around her, members of the mob raced by. She shouted at them; they ignored her. More and more of the mob bled over the wall. Without orders, guards started falling back, trying to keep the mob to their front. In a moment, Cassie stood alone.
“Mary, something’s wrong,” Du called. “Cassie’s not doing anything.”
“Oh, shit! I’m on my way” was Mary’s answer.
Du watched as more and more of the wall went down, more of the crowd poured through. The guards retreated farther, trying to form a shield wall behind the hole. The mob pushed against them, pushed them back. There were only five hundred meters between the wall there and the landing field, with its load of wagons, carts and people. Once the mob got in among them…Du didn’t want to think about that.
“Cassie, what do you think you’re doing?” Du whispered.
Jeff took the call. “Where’s the Colonel?” he asked after getting his orders.
“Busy at the moment. He says the computer seems to have unlimited resources. He’s counting on you to cut them off.”
“You better believe we will.”
The explosions started like distant thunder, line blowing track and bed in the next valley over. The second fire line was around the bend, only two miles away from wher
e they worked now. Jeff had to hurry the tired horses along to get them clear of the third daisy chain. Once it started, the horses found enough energy to damn near run away from him. “Now let’s plant some more!” Lil shouted before the dirt quit flying.
“Someone coming,” Annie called from her place in the lead. Jeff hurried up to her. Thirty, forty people clomped toward them out of the rain. Some had kitchen knives, others axes. A few only sticks. They lumbered forward in silence.
“Stop where you are. That’s close enough,” Jeff ordered.
They kept coming.
Lil came up beside him. “Looks like the computer is making zombies,” Jeff said, unslinging his rifle. Lil did the same. In unison they pulled the arming bolts. “One round over their heads,” Jeff suggested.
“Not much over,” Lil said, and nearly parted the hair of the lead guy. He didn’t even flinch.
Jeff didn’t think of them as people, at least not people who were people. They were something else, something a computer had made. He pitied their families. These, he was freeing.
Ray stood on a low ridge, ancient optical binoculars to his eyes. He had imposed his will on the President; this battle was the one he wanted. Before him, twelve behemoths chewed up the land, tearing up grass and dirt. Gray paint covered their blockish silhouette. Black crosses identified their country of origin. Tiger tanks.
Ray glanced up at the wide Russian sky; fighters contested for control of the blue. On the second day of the Kursk offensive, the air war was still in doubt Hell, the entire battle was anyone’s bet. He looked back at the Tigers. “Dancer, you see what I’m looking at. One shot from one of those will flame your tank. You hit it, it won’t even slow down.”
“So why am I here in this flimsy thing?”
Ray hardly considered a T-34/85 flimsy; still, compared to these monsters, a lot of even modern stuff was lightweight. “I need you to hold their attention. They’ve got to chase you. I want you zigzagging for all you’re worth, backing up all the time. Keep your front armor to them and fire any chance you get. Don’t stop, just shoot.”