Ill Wind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Bayclock’s troops had bivouacked in a circular cluster a hundred yards across. Rita and the others split off, riding around the camp. Her breath quickened as horse hooves made a thumping sound in the desert night.

  The troops lay on the ground, using their packs as pillows; three men tended the fires. Someone in the camp struggled to his feet. His silhouette looked wildly around as he started shouting.

  Rita released the spring-wound timing mechanism on her first grenade and hurled it, rapidly followed by two other canisters. By the time the first explosion erupted, gunfire peppered the air. Bayclock’s troops shot their weapons blindly into the night. Rita could hear the zing of bullets ricocheting off the ground. Another boom rolled over them with a flash of light as they turned and galloped back toward the microwave farm.

  Only four of the canned explosives went off. Although the small bombs probably caused little damage, Rita could tell by the shouting and gunfire behind them that they had thoroughly stirred up Bayclock’s troops.

  * * *

  “Until we spotted your complex from Las Cruces pass, we didn’t know if we’d ever find you,” Todd Severyn said, squatting on the ground from sheer exhaustion. “It was pretty touch-and-go there for a while.”

  Beside him, Heather Dixon agreed. She looked ready to drop. Spencer felt sorry for them, and yelled for someone to bring a full canteen of water.

  Heather sat next to the fire, hugging her knees. Her face smudged with dirt, she stared mesmerized into the flames as Todd continued his tale. She looked lost, as though life had let her down once too often. It took an effort for Spencer not to stare at her. He wondered if she and Todd were somehow… involved. They sat apart, but after such a difficult journey, that wasn’t surprising.

  Lately Spencer found himself thinking about being alone, wondering if he might ever find that girl with the sunburned nose.

  He nodded at Todd’s description of the journey after Connor Brooks had killed their companions and stolen the satellites. The Wyoming man unballed his fist and rubbed his dusty jeans, as if to crush the memory of the disastrous trip.

  Spencer felt sick to hear the loss of the smallsats. They had come so close! He tried to find some hope that the lost satellites might somehow find their way to the microwave farm. With the Seven Dwarfs still working overhead, it was a shame they couldn’t use the low-orbiting satellites as part of their high-tech defense against Bayclock.

  But with the new set of satellites gone and the railgun apparently destroyed, not to mention the general’s troops massed in the foothills, he found it difficult to be optimistic. What did it matter anymore? Why were they fighting at all? Why the hell had Bayclock bothered to come here?

  Spencer wondered if his group should just abandon the microwave farm before the army slaughtered them all. They could hide out in the mountains, send out guerrilla teams to harass the occupied area, until one day they managed to drive away the military barbarians. Fat chance! His one small consolation was that another ten smallsats remained safe at JPL.

  Todd said, “So what’s the next step, Dr. Lockwood? You might as well put us to work helping you. No use moping around—not with the general here. Time to fight!”

  “We already fired the first shot,” Spencer said, “but that seems to have put our railgun out of business and damaged the whole launcher facility. That was really our best chance.”

  “Is there anything else you can fight with?” Todd asked.

  “We had an extensive war council before the troops got here,” said Spencer. “Gilbert Hertoya had experience fielding high-risk weapons in the Persian Gulf, and we did just about everything he suggested. We’ve still got the ranchers and people from the town lying in ambush, and of course there’s always the catapult squad. Right now we’ve got a team tossing some home-made grenades into the general’s camp. But every one of these is a last-ditch effort, nothing that can cause any sustained damage. I don’t have any more rabbits to pull out of my hat.”

  He hesitated, then dropped his voice. “I hope to God that everyone’s all right up at the launcher site.”

  Heather continued to stare at the flames, but she spoke in a low, deep voice. “What about your microwave antennas? If they provide so much electricity, why can’t you fry people?”

  Spencer had to pull himself out of Heather’s wide eyes before he answered. He glanced at Todd, but the oil man gave a tired smile, as if amused at Spencer’s preoccupation. “Uh, it takes too much power to harm anyone with microwaves—the atmosphere would break down long before the power levels got high enough to harm human beings.” He continued to think it through. “Relatively low powers can do nasty things to metals or electronics, but after the petroplague there’s not much of that stuff in use anymore.”

  Heather said, “The general’s rifles are made of metal.”

  Spencer opened his mouth to respond, but stopped as her words sank in. “You’ve got a point. I’ve been thinking about using microwaves to attack the wrong target!

  “We’re beaming energy from space at relatively low power levels, about a hundred times less than the sunlight that strikes the Earth—that won’t hurt anyone if they stand in it all day long. Remember the cellular telephone scare? Cellular phones were monsters compared to this.”

  He spoke faster as he started to get excited. “But Bayclock’s troops are carrying all kinds of metal. Guns, knives, bayonets—and that stuff heats up like crazy when exposed even to the microwave power levels we’re beaming down right now!”

  Todd grinned. “It would give them one hell of a hot foot!”

  Spencer chewed on his lip. “If we can boost the energy by a factor of four and irradiate his troops for twenty minutes, things might get hot enough even to set off explosives. At the very least the troops might drop their weapons and head for the hills!”

  Todd looked down at his big hands and flexed them. “So what do we do?”

  Spencer thought for a moment. As far as he could tell, it was sometime after midnight by now. He hadn’t heard the sentry warn of Bayclock’s approach, and that would give them at least an hour warning. Perhaps Gilbert’s pre-emptive railgun strike had set Bayclock back, or maybe the general had sent his vengeful troops up to take over the launcher facility instead.

  Spencer said, “The Seven Dwarfs come overhead every day at noon, over eleven hours from now. If we can hold Bayclock off until then, I might be able to reprogram the solar satellites to irradiate his troops. It won’t be as destructive as the railgun, but it might be enough to keep them at bay.”

  “Seven Dwarfs?” said Todd. “What are you talking about?” He looked to Heather. “What Dwarfs?”

  “You’ve got computers here?” Heather sounded incredulous.

  Spencer shrugged, looking at her and ignoring Todd’s question. “Mostly what we’ve scavenged from the workstations, a few big analog circuit boards that run on the batteries recharged every day at noon when the satellites fly over.”

  Todd frowned. “I don’t know squat about satellites or computers… or dwarfs for that matter.”

  Heather looked suddenly awake. “I’d like to stay here and help, if that’s what you need.”

  “Sounds better than rolling over and playing dead,” said Todd. “If the soldiers are so riled up they can’t get here by noon, a blast of your microwaves might just push them over the edge to retreat.” He stood up, ready for action. “Count me in.”

  Spencer squinted in the direction of the EM launcher. They would have to send Bobby Carron up in the balloon again early in the morning to get a birds-eye view of the battlefield before they planned their detailed strategy—if Bobby was all right.

  Todd repeated himself. “Is there anything I could do? I can ride and I can shoot.”

  “Help keep a lookout for a sneak attack. When Rita returns, we’ll decide how best to keep tabs on Bayclock’s troops.”

  Heather brushed dirt from her jeans. “Just point me to the bathroom and some wash water, then I’ll be ready to wor
k.” She wrinkled her nose and scratched. “I don’t suppose you have anything to treat a sunburn?”

  Spencer stopped, stunned. Sun-burned nose? He managed to shake his head. No matter how bad things looked, he had a feeling that the sun was going to shine extra bright tomorrow morning.

  * * *

  “Halt! Who the hell are you?” a woman’s voice growled.

  Todd Severyn stood his ground, but he could see little in the dark. “Yeah, who the hell are you?”

  He heard the sound of a rifle brought to bear. “You’ve got five seconds, cowboy, or you’ll be dancing without any toes. Identify yourself!”

  His arms waved in the air. “I’m Todd Severyn—I’m waiting for Rita to show up. Spencer Lockwood sent me.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth? Bayclock could have sent a point squad.”

  Why do I always meet women who’d rather wrestle rattlesnakes than bake cookies? “Are you going to ask me who won the World Series in 1964, for Chis’sakes!” He tried to remember the right words even if he didn’t understand them. “I’m supposed to say something about a plan to zap Bayclock with the Seven Dwarfs.”

  He saw the rifle being lowered, then heard a chuckle. The woman spat tobacco to one side. “Okay, Tex, you can tell Spencer that Rita’s back. Let’s get moving.”

  Todd sourly brought down his hands, wishing that someone would recognize his Wyoming accent and not call him Tex.

  * * *

  Spencer sat next to Heather in the enclosed trailer as dawn broke, working on three crude workstations at once. Even with the nonvolatile memory and low-energy cathode-ray tubes, the battery drain was substantial, and they could only refine their simulations for another hour or so without running down the batteries.

  Soft battery light reflected off of Heather’s face. She had tied her damp hair back after scrubbing up, and Spencer could see a pinkish cast of sunburn on her nose and cheeks.

  Juan Romero’s circuit board took up most of the table, and naked wires lay in labyrinthine paths. Heather pushed knife-switch buttons down laboriously, inputting code from Spencer—one letter at a time. She stared at the phosphors on the glass screen of the canted cathode-ray tube. “Okay, I’ve keyed in the equation you gave me. You’ll have to take over from here.”

  “Thanks.” He slid into the seat next to her as he waited for the code to compile. Inside the trailer, the heat pouring from the primitive circuit board felt stifling, and he prayed he could stave off a meltdown for a little while longer.

  Just having Heather present to type in the long-winded perturbations to the orbital equations freed him to calculate the necessary solid-viewing angles by hand with pencil and paper. If everything worked, they might be able to nudge the Seven Dwarfs to redirect their microwave transmissions away from the antenna farm and onto Bayclock’s encampment. Temporarily increasing the power output by a factor of four was trivial compared to this, requiring much less code.

  “Spencer?” Rita’s voice came from the trailer entrance. She sounded weary. He turned and saw Todd standing with her just outside the door.

  “Rita! How did the raid go?”

  “The grenades worked well enough. Got some dozing soldiers to wet their beds, but once they realize we didn’t cause much damage, they’ll just be pissed off instead. The cowboy here tells me you need another scouting party.” She looked at Heather. “Oh, hello.”

  Heather brushed back a strand of hair. “Hi.”

  Todd worked his way into the trailer. Rita pulled out a chair by the workstation and ran a hand through her hair. Her long legs pushed up against the table. “The telegraph’s up. Romero made his way back from the launcher—he apparently ran all the way here, while the others tried to put out the fire and barricade themselves in the facility.”

  Spencer sat up, ignoring the satellite calculations. “Romero’s back! What’s the report?”

  “Gilbert is badly injured—both his legs, I think. One tech is dead, and the railgun ist kaput. Arnie stayed behind to watch everything, but if Bayclock sent some point men up, he doesn’t have much chance to hold them off by himself.”

  “Great,” Spencer said. He wanted to pound on something. “Now what do we do?”

  Rita wiped her forehead. “Bobby’s going up in the balloon again at first light to get a good look. He thinks Bayclock will probably hold off attacking for another day. So far we’ve zapped him with one salvo from the railgun and tossed a bunch of grenades into his camp—he thought we were a bunch of unarmed wimps, but now he’s not going to take any chances. I say we keep giving the general a healthy respect for our abilities.” She glanced at Heather, then at Spencer, and raised an eyebrow. A grin slowly grew on her face.

  Spencer stood, more to dismiss any comment from Rita than anything else. “Okay, let’s hit them with the catapult first thing in the morning. After that, we call in the townspeople.”

  * * *

  Exhausted, sore, and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, Juan Romero stood next to his gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight catapult operators. Morning light spilled over the gypsum plains in a whiter shade of pale; the shadows of the mountains retreated across the white sands.

  Below, Bayclock’s army began forming up and making ready to relocate. Romero’s people took longer than expected to move to the highlands where the hidden catapult waited to hurl projectiles. From what they could tell, the single shot with Gilbert Hertoya’s railgun had dealt a shocking and devastating psychological blow—but Romero had little hope that his shorter-range medieval weapon would do the same.

  Lieutenant Bobby Carron had built a fire in the metal gondola of his bright survey balloon and rose aloft on the tether cable, sending telegraphed messages back to another listener in the blockhouse at the antenna farm. Romero wished he could be down there instead of up here, watching his team make all the mistakes he expected of them.

  The old retirees argued with each other about who would turn the crank, who would aim the shot, who would release the hook. Then they started arguing about which of the barrels of scrap metal would make the best first load.

  Bayclock’s army began to spread out, breaking camp and marching in several prongs—one headed toward the burned-out railgun facility, another toward the microwave farm. A small group of riders mounted up, ready for a charge. A large part of the troops remained in camp, preparing a second-wave assault.

  “Come on, people!” Romero shouted. “If we don’t use the catapult soon, we’ll lose the most concentrated target.”

  “We’re just about ready!” one of the old men snapped.

  “We won’t hit anything, so it doesn’t really matter,” someone else grumbled.

  “Now there’s optimism!” an old woman scolded. “One more word like that and you’ll be in the bucket for the first shot! Now give me that range finder!”

  Finally, they cranked down the arm and cocked the weapon. It took three people to work the pulley and hoist the barrel of rusty scrap iron into the cradle. Fully loaded, the catapult seemed to vibrate with tension, ready to spring.

  Romero took the trigger cord himself. In his mind flashed a ridiculous scene from a Road Runner cartoon, when Wile E. Coyote had used a similar catapult against the brainless bird—no matter where he stood, the seige machine somehow managed to dump its boulder on top of him.

  Romero held his breath and yanked the wire.

  The catapult smashed forward with the sound of an explosion, slamming against the front barricade and hurling its payload in an arc toward the encampment.

  Oblivious below, Bayclock’s assault team followed some sort of signal and trotted out on horseback, bringing rifles to bear. They rode toward the base installation where Bobby’s balloon was tethered. The bastards were going to shoot down the balloon!

  On the far side of the camp, the great mass of loose metal crashed into the ground, splattering outward. Through a spyglass, Romero could see that the catapult shot had taken out two small tents and a supply wagon, belching a cloud o
f dust and sand into the air. People scrambled around like stirred-up hornets.

  “Good shot!” Romero cried. “Let’s try to step up the ranging just a bit and hit them in the center of camp. We’ve got only a couple more shots. Once they figure out where we are, they’ll come after us, and we’ll have to abandon ship.”

  As the gang that couldn’t shoot straight worked at cranking down the catapult again—this time with much more enthusiasm and cooperation—Romero heard a volley of sharp, distant rifle shots. The group of riders approached the observation balloon and fired repeatedly at the gondola, the balloon itself, and the tether cable. The tiny form of Bobby Carron ducked down to the protection of the flat aluminum gondola.

  “Ready!” one of the old men shouted. “Look out, Mr. Romero!”

  The catapult slammed forward again, sending another payload of iron pieces toward the scrambling expedition force, but this time the debris pummeled the desert a hundred feet short of camp.

  Below, General Bayclock’s soldiers began to figure out where the catapult shots were originating.

  Bobby’s balloon had obviously been hit by dozens of direct shots and began to drift wildly on its tether rope. The hand-sewn seams of the parachute material, never meant to take such stress, began to split apart. The colorful sack sagged as it deflated. After another round of rifle shots, one of the marksmen was either extremely skilled or extremely lucky. The tether rope snapped, and the balloon began to move.

  The third catapult shot also missed. A group of Bayclock’s soldiers pointed toward Romero’s position and spread out into the foothills toward the location of the medieval weapon.

  “Here they come. We’ve got to get to safety!” Romero shouted. “Time to retreat!”

  As they fled into the tangled foothills, he looked down at the great basin to see Bobby Carron’s balloon drifting free and falling toward the ground as the general’s men each dropped to one knee and fired their rifles.