Ill Wind

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Take me to your leader,” he said to the guards.

  * * *

  His hands bound behind him, Lieutenant Bobby Carron stood facing Bayclock’s wrath.

  One of the airmen threw a rope over the crossbeam and dropped the rope down, letting the noose dangle at the height of Bobby’s shoulders. They would slip the noose over his neck, tighten it, and yank him into the air. No quick snapping of the neck for Bobby—he would kick and twist as the rough rope squeezed his throat shut.

  Arnie, the scientist who had accompanied Bobby and Catilyn’s first expedition, stood watching by the ruined aluminum building. His hands were loosely bound, another of Bayclock’s prisoners of war; he looked as though he were reliving the nightmare of when his family had died under martial law.

  Gilbert Hertoya sat with one broken leg crudely splinted and the other bandaged from several bloody gashes he had received in the explosion of the railgun. Unattended, Gilbert rested in the scant shade beside the wrecked capacitor banks and the long metal rails of the EM launcher. Both captive scientists looked angry, unable to believe what Bayclock was about to do.

  The Air Force captain gripped the noose, opening it wide as he stepped toward Bobby. The captain kept his eyes down, avoiding Bobby’s eyes. Bobby wished he could remember the officer’s name, but his mind blanked.

  General Bayclock stood with his hands behind his back, puffing his chest forward, as if his captive was transparent and insignificant.

  Bobby could think of nothing to say. His stomach knotted, and his vision seemed sharp, too focused, as if trying to absorb a lifetime’s worth of details in just a few minutes: a cloudless sky, the dry dust, the sweet smell of sage, razor-sharp shadows.

  Bayclock was not kidding. Not kidding at all.

  A rider came up the path to the blockhouses. He had pushed his mount hard, crossing the foothills to the general’s new base of operations. Breathless, he dismounted next to Bayclock, glanced at Bobby and the ready noose, then saluted the general.

  “What is it?” Bayclock asked. “Report!”

  “A white flag, sir!” the airman said. “The scientists have sent two representatives to surrender. I believe one of them is Dr. Lockwood himself, sir.”

  Bayclock suddenly looked relieved. “Very well. Bring them to me as soon as possible.”

  “They’re on their way, sir.”

  Bobby wanted to collapse in dismay. He couldn’t believe it! Why would Spencer give up after all they had accomplished? Bayclock’s army had been severely wounded by the scientists’ efforts, and their morale was shot. The general had occupied the launcher facility, but that was already ruined by the explosion. The cracks showed in Bayclock’s forces; they were ready to crumble in another few days, and he was sure the general knew it.

  Why couldn’t Spencer have held out just a little longer? Bobby had no other choice, nothing to lose. He raised his voice. “You better hang me in a hurry, General. Now that they’ve come under the flag of surrender, can you justify executing prisoners of war?”

  Bobby spat hard at Bayclock. “Yeah, General, I’m talking to you! If you string me up right now, I’m sure you can convince every one of your soldiers to pretend you hung me before anybody saw the white flag. That would cover your ass. In fact, why not just threaten to shoot any soldier who says otherwise?”

  Bayclock turned from the courier, and his face became livid, deeper than the sunburn on his broad face. The black bristles of his hair stood on end. Bobby thought of the old fighter-pilot adage: balls the size of grapefruits, and brains the size of peas. He wanted to continue provoking Bayclock, keep him torn between his conflicting wishes.

  “What’s the matter, General? Can’t make a snap decision?” Balls the size of grapefruits. “Good thing you’re not flying real aircraft anymore! You’re still fighting the last war. You’re better off flying a desk.”

  Bayclock took one step forward, shoving his face less than an inch away from Bobby’s. Bobby didn’t flinch. Bayclock back-handed him across the cheek. Brains the size of a pea.

  His face stinging, Bobby spat at him again. “You’re a coward, General, if you have to strike a man while he’s got his hands behind his back and waiting for a noose around his neck.”

  Bayclock yanked the combat knife from his belt and sawed at the ropes around Bobby’s wrists. Bobby couldn’t believe how easily provoked the man was. The general tossed the cut rope and the knife over by the metal rails of the electromagnetic launcher. “All right then, traitor! Come at me!”

  Bobby did not wait for the numbness to leave his hands. He charged at Bayclock, swinging with both hands as the other spectators stepped back.

  * * *

  Connor Brooks knew that even if the general’s troops moved at top speed, they’d still be hours behind him. He had walked all night, and the only thing he could see to the far distance was scrub brush and frail yucca plants. Overhead, some kind of hawk wheeled around, a dark check-mark in the clear sky.

  Another few miles and he’d be at the solar-power facility. Then he could do some fast talking.

  Earlier that morning, Connor had hidden as a group of people headed out from the metal trailers by the antenna farm, making their way north toward Bayclock. The idiots carried a white surrender flag—as if Bayclock would have mercy! The general would probably try to draft them too, or throw them in a dungeon somewhere.

  He saw the snowy tops of gypsum sand dunes south of him, shimmering in the distance as heat rose from the desert. To the north, immense metal rails of the electromagnetic launcher rose up the side of Oscura Peak. If he could make it to the trailer at the microwave facility, he might find something he could use as a bargaining chip. Connor had always considered himself a resourceful person. After all, he had managed to walk away in the middle of the night, right under Bayclock’s nose.

  He twisted his face at the very thought of that butthead general. Damned Napoleon. There had to be something about command that turned people into assholes. First there was Captain Uma on the Zoroaster, and now General Bayclock.

  Connor laughed at the thought of getting back at the general, just as he had with Uma. If the solar-power facility was so precious to the son of a bitch, maybe Connor could even sabotage the place. That would really piss Bayclock off! In fact, the troops might even rebel once they discovered that their forced march all the way from Albuquerque had been for nothing.

  Connor Brooks pulled the aluminum frame of his pack higher on his back and arrowed straight for the trailers. The pounding sun was high in the sky, and he cast very little shadow. If he could get to the trailer by noon, he’d have plenty of time to wreck some of the equipment, or snatch something with which he could barter.

  The sunlight seemed magnified by the glittering white sands. If he had only swiped a hat from one of the soldiers, anything to keep off the sun.

  “I’d like to see Bayclock’s troops march through this shit!” he muttered. He stopped and shrugged off his backpack. He pulled out the reflective thermal blanket and fixed it around him like an Arab kefiyeh. “If the towel-heads can do it, so can I,” he said to himself. Connor donned the makeshift headgear and soon felt cooler. He picked up his metal-frame backpack and whistled.

  As he hiked toward the trailers, he spotted glints of sunlight reflected from the harsh ground in front of him. He walked up a small rise, and the bright flashes grew stronger, like a mile-wide field of whiplike chrome wires covering the basin between himself and the trailers.

  He could see the blockhouse trailers more clearly now, even with just one eye. The three aluminum-sided structures with corrugated tops sat at angles to each other, forming a triangle. If he cut straight across the basin of whip-wires to get to the trailers, he could trim at least a mile off his path.

  He looked behind him. Still no sign of Bayclock’s troops, but Connor didn’t want to screw up by getting there too late. He knew the importance of timing—he remembered his good timing running up the stairs on the Oilstar Zoroaster after se
tting off the fire alarm; he remembered finding out just in time about that lunatic Uma back at the camp… and he remembered getting double-crossed by Bayclock, because of bad timing. No way was he going to let that military fuckhead get there before him!

  Connor grinned and started for the trailers.

  As he stepped into the field, he discovered that the glints came not from wires, but from thousands of slender metal poles low to the ground, like a giant pin cushion in the desert.

  He ducked through the strands of a barbed wire fence that ran around the antenna complex. It felt weird, walking through the field of metal poles. He stepped on fine wires that ran from the bottoms of the poles, kicking a few loose.

  Picking up the pace, he made his way to the trailers. It wouldn’t be long now.

  * * *

  From his team’s camouflaged position at the top of the EM launcher rails, Todd Severyn watched Bayclock’s soldiers camped near the control building below. The troops had dug in, pitching their tents in the foothills, while the general set up his command post inside the burned shell of the building itself.

  Todd saw Spencer’s white flag approach the encampment, surrounded by escorts. Waiting within view on the other side of the long metal rails, Rita Fellenstein signaled Todd. She had seen Spencer’s arrival as well.

  Time to move in.

  Todd jammed his cowboy hat on his head, then bent low over the horse’s neck. Rita tightened the string on her bush hat, and waved for the ranch hands to follow. With Todd came seven other ranchers from Alamogordo, all on horseback and carrying crude grenades made from the potent-smelling citrus-based explosives.

  Todd and Rita both led their horses, picking up speed as they trotted down the service trail on either side of the long electromagnetic launcher. They would attack in two prongs, striking from either side of the supply camp. He just hoped they could manage not to blow themselves up when they lobbed the home-made grenades into Bayclock’s troops.

  Unable to restrain themselves once they urged their horses into a full gallop, Todd’s attackers let out a loud war yell as they charged toward the camp.

  * * *

  Sitting in the shade near the blockhouses, Gilbert Hertoya watched the confrontation between General Bayclock and Bobby Carron. The two men crouched in a coiled stance, circling and glaring. The empty noose still dangled from the utility pole, and Spencer Lockwood was coming in under a white flag.

  The short engineer felt his hope draining. He didn’t want to give up, but their chances seemed to be fading away. It had been absurd in the first place to think they could drive off a fully armed invasion force.

  The nerves in Gilbert’s legs hurt with a throbbing, insistent pain, but he tried to ignore it. He had to focus his thoughts to formulate some way he could help Bobby, or stop Spencer from surrendering—or at the very least hurt Bayclock.

  Bobby Carron lunged at the general, feinting with a left-handed blow to the stomach, which Bayclock blocked, then lashing out with a quick hammer-punch to the general’s face. Bobby struck him squarely in the nose, once, twice, before snapping backward to avoid a counterpunch.

  Though he himself wasn’t much of a hand-to-hand fighter, Gilbert knew that the nose was a non-crippling but singularly effective place for a blow to land. Bobby’s punch would have sent a bright explosion of pain into Bayclock’s head, blinding him with a sudden flood of reflexive tears. A splash of scarlet blood dribbled out of his nostrils and splattered on the pale sands.

  “Face it, you’re too old, General,” Bobby said.

  Some of Bayclock’s troops had drawn up as spectators, but they remained oddly subdued and silent, as if they refused to cheer for the general but were afraid to cheer for his opponent. They stepped back, giving the two fighting men room.

  Bayclock launched himself forward, moving his legs like pistons and butting Bobby in the stomach. Bobby let out an “oof!” but managed to sidestep part of the attack. As Bayclock crashed into him, Bobby caught the general’s foot with his own and tripped them both. They tumbled to the ground.

  Bobby scrambled to get to his feet again, rolling away from Bayclock’s grasping hands. “Can’t fly, can’t fight—what else can’t you do, old man?” he gasped.

  Bobby got to his knees, white dust covering his blue Air Force uniform. Bayclock’s nose continued to bleed onto the sand.

  Gilbert tore his concentration away from the fight and looked into the sky. He had no way of telling accurate time, but the sun stood at about noon, and the Seven Dwarfs would orbit overhead any moment now.

  He lay by the wreckage of the railgun. In the explosion, the capacitors had ruptured and the banks of storage batteries had burned. During the day of waiting and recovery, Arnie had lovingly disconnected and removed the blackened shapes. Given time and resources, they could repair everything—but it did not look like the general would give them the opportunity.

  Every day at noon, though, when the Seven Dwarfs passed over the White Sands antenna farm, the solar energy beamed down to the collectors was distributed through the repaired power grid, charging up caches of batteries to run various equipment. A direct power line ran up to the EM launcher to charge the batteries for the railgun, but now those batteries had been destroyed and the ruined capacitors taken off-line.

  The solar smallsats didn’t know that, however. They would continue to beam their power, and the electrical lines would run the current up to the railgun facility. Disconnected from any source, the cable would become a live wire for the twenty minutes that the satellites passed overhead transmitting their energy.

  A live wire. As everyone watched the fistfight, Gilbert Hertoya took the disconnected cable, praying as he touched it that the deadly current wasn’t already flowing. No guard watched him closely, with both of his legs heavily bandaged.

  Gilbert dragged himself to the metal superstructure of the railgun. He jammed the end of the wire into the steel base, then backed away—ignoring the sharp darts of pain jabbing his legs in a thousand places. He collapsed back on the dirt, trying to keep from passing out.

  From the other side of the group of buildings, Arnie saw what Gilbert had done, and his eyes widened. Gilbert winked and crossed his fingers. In response, Arnie crossed his fingers, too.

  Bayclock attacked Bobby again, and the fight went on.

  * * *

  Seven hundred kilometers overhead, seven satellites flew in a constellation of four planar orbits, inclined at 45 degrees from the equator. Tiny solar-electric thrusters boiled plasma off their electrodes, keeping the satellites positioned in orbit, cancelling perturbations caused by gravitational variations in the Earth’s crust.

  The satellites updated their position using the military’s still-functioning Global Positioning Satellites, making necessary corrections. Each smallsat carried a tiny atomic clock, attuned to the energy of a certain fundamental transition frequency to know when they were. Isolated from the events taking place below, the satellites functioned as programmed.

  One minute before noon, Mountain Standard Time, the lead satellite swung its gimboled antenna toward the horizon. Energy collected by the array of inflatable solar-cell panels was converted into electricity, which trickled into the transmitter.

  The satellites silently began to irradiate the microwave antenna farm at White Sands.

  * * *

  Connor Brooks was within two hundred yards of the edge of the antenna farm when he heard sparks jumping from the metal poles of his backpack. The sound scared him—it was if he had fallen into the middle of a huge popcorn popper.

  At the same instant, his head began to grow hot. Very hot. The thermal blanket felt as if it had suddenly turned into napalm. The searing fabric pressed down upon his skull, across the back of his neck. Only seconds earlier, he had enjoyed the relative coolness of being shielded from the sun, but it now felt like molten lead.

  Connor screamed and tore at the metal-backed cloth. But already the fabric smoldered. The metal snapped and popped in an inferno
of blue sparks; the poles on his backpack burned hot-iron slices into his back. Acidic smoke billowed out; even the metal eyelets on his boots crackled with tiny arcs of flame.

  The pain went on and on. Connor fell to his knees, clutching at the melting blanket that spread over his head, over his skin.

  In a final effort, Connor tried to pry the covering from his scalp, but his fingers refused to respond, turning into burned, bloody stumps by the boiling metal. Sparks continued to crackle in a cocoon around him. He screamed, and hot arcs lanced from the fillings in his teeth.

  The pain… wouldn’t… stop….

  * * *

  Seven hundred kilometers above the Earth, the second satellite locked on and started to beam its microwaves down to the target.

  Five others waited patiently behind for their own turns.

  * * *

  Todd and Rita galloped in on either side of the base camp near the burned-out railgun facility, yelling their loudest battle cries. Todd set the spring-loaded timer on his crude grenade canister and lobbed the explosive toward a supply tent.

  The Air Force men saw what he had thrown, and they scrambled in the opposite direction. Some ran for their rifles, but most ducked for cover.

  Rita Fellenstein headed them off from the other direction, tossing another grenade in among the campfires. Following closely behind, the ranch hands fired their own rifles and shouted.

  One colonel stood in the middle of it all, with a wounded arm in a sling, staring at Todd and the other riders. Very carefully, the colonel tossed his own rifle to the ground.

  Bayclock’s other troops, as if waiting to surrender, took this as a sign of permission. Other explosions erupted from the citrus-based explosives. Gunfire rattled around the hills, but nobody seemed to be shooting at anything.

  Todd had intended only to ride in, cause damage, panic, and confusion, make the troops scatter, then hit the road as fast as possible to hide in an overgrown arroyo.