The Tin Whistle

by Erik Hanberg

  “Did you know what would happen?” Shaw asked Ignatius.

  “No, Grand Master. Once we saw you didn’t want to think about the question, we committed exactly no computing power to the problem. The enemy’s AI realized the risk, but by that point the drones and bots were already engaged. It was clever.”

  “It’s too easy to think of the drones and bots as little lights on a holographic map when you’re in a war room hundreds of miles away,” Shaw said. “I made that mistake earlier. But drones and bots don’t just disappear when they’re disabled.”

  “As they say, the map is not the territory.”

  “Exactly.” Shaw studied the enemy lines just outside the square, and just out of range. In the Civil War, there used to be a lot of time between charges. But Shaw suspected he wouldn’t have that luxury. The Lattice and the AIs meant that things would be moving much more quickly.

  As if to prove his point, the rear-guard of the Northerners army split into two columns and began marching—away from the square. One went north and headed around the north colonnades and the other around the south. The force that remain was still larger than his own, but he was now far more worried about where the columns were going.

  “Report,” Shaw said.

  “Each column has two platoons,” Ignatius reported. “Their intent is to scale the colonnades on either side of the square and fire down on us from an elevated position.”

  Shaw immediately looked up and studied the massive colonnades that formed the square. The columns were now surrounded with rubble from demolished buildings and the paving stones. But he’d left the tiled roofs intact as a barrier.

  If the Northerners could successfully scale the structures, they could stay on the far side of the peaked roof and be able to fully cover the square with their fire. Snipers, especially if they could take aim from behind Shaw’s defensive embankment, could fatally undermine the entire battle. If Fassino ordered an advance up the hill at the same time, Shaw’s troops would be under fire from two different directions, likely with the same deadly results he’d just inflicted on the Northerners.

  He kicked himself for not already positioning units on top of the colonnades. He had thought the blockade at the street level would be enough to force the Northerners to confront him directly. But fifty soldiers on even one side could inflict serious casualties.

  “The remaining Northerners are regrouping,” Ignatius continued. “Another advance is imminent.”

  Sure enough, the army at the base of hill was preparing for another advance. Learning the lessons from their first assault, they were closer together now: a row of twenty soldiers with their shiny black shields nearly interlocked. Behind the vanguard was another row of twenty, and then another and another, all the way back. Rifles poked out between shields.

  “I believe you would call that a modern phalanx,” Ignatius observed. “That formation hasn’t been used in battle for a thousand years.”

  Shaw shook his head in wonder. “What’s your analysis?”

  “The phalanx was abandoned because archers and cavalry could pierce them too easily, and in battles on uneven terrain they weren’t flexible enough. We have open terrain, and no equivalent to archers or cavalry. They are playing to their strength,” Ignatius said.

  “And the men who went around the colonnades? Will they find a way to scale them and reach the roof?”

  “Their AI has found a solution that will get them to the top. We agree it is workable. Pairs of soldiers will reach the roof on the north colonnade in about four minutes and the south colonnade in about six minutes.”

  Shaw turned his attention back to the Northerners at the bottom of the hill. He knew what he would do if he were in Fassino’s shoes. “They won’t advance the phalanx until they have men on the roof.” And when that happened, he would have no recourse but to retreat the entire army into the Basilica itself, and from there the battle would certainly be lost, or he’d be trapped helplessly in a church while Galway ran out the clock. “I am open to any recommendations,” he said to the saints.

  “You could destroy the colonnades,” Ignatius said. “You have the missiles available.”

  “Wouldn’t that order a missile attack on my own flank?”

  “If the blast pushed away from the square, instead of into the square, casualties on our side would be limited.”

  “Let’s say we did that. Wouldn’t the destroyed colonnades be able to be scaled as well? And then we’re right back in the same place.”

  “Not with the same ease, but you are correct. It would likely only delay the issue,” Ignatius said. “Though, you would still have sixteen more missiles.”

  “Isn’t it likely we will want those for something else?”

  Ignatius was silent.

  Shaw was reluctant to blow up the colonnades around Saint Peter’s Square, not because they were beautiful, or historic, but because it seemed counterproductive and a waste of his highly limited resources.

  “How long will it be from the time I order the missile strike until the colonnades are destroyed?”

  “Less than thirty seconds.”

  Shaw rubbed his jaw. That gave him about three minutes to find another strategy to deal with the problem before the Northerners would hold the rooftops.

  “Do you have any other recommendations?”

  Ignatius was silent again. If the AIs couldn’t come up with something, perhaps his irrational, sloppy, and weak human brain could find something. What had Aquinas called a human/computer team? A centaur.

  “Can we get our men on top of the colonnades before the Northerners?” Shaw asked.

  “No, Grand Master. Or we would have recommended that option. We could send troops through the Basilica and up onto the rooftops from the interior, but that would take at least seven minutes.”

  “Send them,” Shaw ordered. “Twenty men on each side.”

  “They will be too late.”

  “Send them,” he repeated. Even if they arrived too late to hold the roof of the colonnades, they could fire at the Northerners on the roof and give him cover for a retreat.

  Shaw watched as forty men broke off from the embankment and ran at full speed back into Saint Peter’s Basilica.

  “The Northerners have completed their scaffolding on the north colonnade. The first two men are beginning to climb. We have two and a half minutes until they have scaled the colonnade. And the phalanx is beginning its advance.”

  Shaw only had to glance to see that it was true. The phalanx was descending into the gully that had been carved from the square. They would begin climbing out of it and ascending the hill in a few seconds.

  “Maybe we can’t prevent them from reaching the roof. But is there a way we can delay them long enough to get into position?” Shaw said.

  “We have no one who can bring the fight to them without abandoning our position,” Ignatius answered.

  “Is there nothing we can do?” Shaw asked.

  The saints were silent. Shaw had nothing. So much for the centaur, he thought bitterly. He prepared to call for a retreat.

  “Send me,” a voice said.

  Shaw turned. Even the other saints seemed surprised. Joan of Arc had floated forward, defiant.

  “I appreciate the spirit,” Shaw said, “But you can’t pick up a weapon of any kind. What can a hologram do?”

  “For this, I’d rather think of myself as… a ghost.”

  “Your plan is to shout ‘boo’ and scare them off the scaffolding?”

  “I scare you,” Joan replied. “Why shouldn’t I scare them as well?”

  Shaw didn’t have a ready response to that.

  “And if one Joan of Arc is scary…” she said, with a touch of malice. In the blink of an eye, the square was filled with thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of floating ghostly Joans of Arc.

  “…imagine what an army of us will feel like?” they all said in unison.

  Shaw heard some screams from his own soldiers behind the embankment
who had discovered they were surrounded by exact copies of the defiant girl with the piercing stare.

  He shook his head in amazement. “Happy haunting.”

  All the Joans smiled malevolently, and then all at once the holograms flew up into the sky and out of the square.

  Shaw put his ring to his temple, and the saints showed him exactly what he wanted to see: the other side of the north colonnade. The structure the Northerners had used to ascend the colonnades was a rickety hodgepodge of excavated material and wrecked vehicles at the base, and then ropes and wood beams on top of those that created a path to scale the sixty-foot tall barrier. There were eight soldiers on the structure right now, and a queue of men at the bottom waiting to get up.

  As Shaw watched, the holographic army of Joans of Arc swooped toward the scaffold from over the top of the colonnades. Others came through the rubble barrier inside the colonnades themselves, surprising and terrifying the men already climbing. Still more Joans floated up through the cobblestones around the soldiers waiting their turn.

  There were so many Joans of Arc that they obscured his vision, with several holograms surrounding every single Northerner. Joan of Arc didn’t have to give a ghostly wail. She didn’t have to shout boo. She stared, her bright floating eyes centimeters away from each soldier, and Shaw knew from his own experience what they were feeling. Like she was looking into their souls.

  Several soldiers fell in their attempts to get away from her, flailing and then plunging into the soldiers below. Those on the ground closed their eyes against Joan’s stare, or tried to flee from the falling bodies, causing even more confusion as they bumped into and tripped over each other.

  After a few more seconds, with the soldiers distracted, one of the pillars of the scaffolding gave way. The entire structure teetered, paused, and then collapsed, scattering the soldiers even more.

  The entire Northerners’ operation had been confounded by a holographic teenage saint.

  Shaw left the jump and was back in the center of Saint Peter’s Square.

  “She did it,” he said in wonder, and the three saints nodded their heads in agreement.

  There was a single Joan left in the square. “A centaur,” she said. “You were thinking about centaurs. Body of a machine, mind of a human. You thought how your mind was irrational, sloppy, and weak,” she said. “It is, of course. But that’s when I realized—so are theirs. I preyed on that.”

  “I thank you,” Shaw said with a formal nod.

  “It is very good news. Our soldiers will be on the rooftops before the Northerners can recover and scale the colonnades,” Ignatius reported. “Fassino has already ordered the troops attempting to flank us back. But,” he continued and turned his body to take in the square. “The phalanx is still advancing.”

  “Can we haunt them too?” Shaw said with something close to a smile.

  “They are already prepared,” Ignatius reported. “Surprise attacks like that only work once.”

  Shaw tried to refocus on the advancing phalanx, but he was still feeling ebullient from the success of Joan of Arc’s strategy. “How long until our men are on the roof?”

  “Less than a minute.”

  “I want them to fire down into the phalanx as soon as they are within range. They can be our equivalent of archers. We can disrupt them that way.”

  As Shaw finished speaking, shields in the middle of the phalanx were raised up above their heads. Now the Northerners were protected from the front and the top.

  “For about two and a half seconds, you had an excellent plan,” Ignatius said.

  Shaw glowered at the saint. “Recommendations? And don’t say ‘missile.’”

  “The way they are bunched together, a single missile strike would give you an immediate victory,” Ignatius said.

  “It’s not the winning, it’s how we win, isn’t that what you said?” Shaw asked, looking to Aquinas, who nodded. “My wife and child would be dead in a minute if I ordered that strike.”

  “You know in your heart it would be wrong as well,” Aquinas said to Ignatius, scolding him as if he were a child.

  “What would you have us do?” Ignatius asked Aquinas. Now that they weren’t part of the same AI, they were arguing more, he noticed.

  Shaw put it out of his mind and studied the approaching phalanx. The vanguard of the column was halfway up the slope, and the shields protecting the soldiers from the sides looked to be nearly a hundred rows deep. His own troops were firing at the column, but to little effect.

  It truly was tempting to order a missile strike and be done with them. Enough with the scalpel, let him bring a hammer down. But Shaw knew the consequences to his family, let alone to the two thousand soldiers he would be killing.

  He thought of the blast created by the missiles when they destroyed the plows and he was certain he couldn’t bring himself to use those to kill dozens, if not hundreds, at a time.

  But what about next to someone?

  Shaw surveyed the square. It wasn’t a square, but an ellipsis formed by the colonnades, with a rectangle at one end—the steps of the Basilica. Overall, it was like standing in an antique keyhole, with the Via della Conciliazione opening into the top of the keyhole, and the Basilica at the bottom of it. Shaw had built his defensive line toward the Basilica end of the ellipse, leaving as much room as possible for the hill the drones had created, while also not letting his troops get bunched in the narrow part of the keyhole on the Basilica’s steps.

  That meant that the long column, twenty Northerners wide, was a narrow ribbon of soldiers in the middle of an expansive plaza.

  Shaw thought about the blasts resulting from his missile strikes on the plows. He’d been in a jump talking to Fassino and he’d seen the range of destruction. He’d seen how far the shock wave spread.

  Shaw turned to Ignatius. “Two missiles, one on each side of the column, far enough that we won’t incinerate them, but close enough they’ll be blasted off their feet. And tell everyone to get down!”

  The last part had to be shouted, because the missiles were already in the air, screaming up into the sky so that they could drop down into the square.

  Shaw watched the two missiles complete their arc and begin rushing downward toward the square. From their height, it was easily possible to think that they were heading his way as well. As the missiles screamed toward the square, the phalanx fell apart. A few soldiers were running backward, others had thrown themselves to the ground.

  Shaw ducked behind the embankment at the last moment and covered his ears.

  Launch another two, he thought, before the first two had even landed. Same placement. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, against all the rational decisions he’d made about conserving his small stockpile of missiles. But he ordered it because it would be so unexpected.

  The dual explosions shook the ground, and the air was hot and loud.

  Shaw stayed crouched, and a few seconds later two more simultaneous explosions rocked the square.

  The explosions echoed and he could smell the smoke.

  Before the reverberations had fully ceased, Shaw stood and surveyed the results.

  The fountains the pope had prized so highly had been demolished, that was certain. And the phalanx had been totally broken, that was also certain. Fassino was trying to lead an orderly retreat—the Northerners had made it close enough to the embankment that Shaw could actually pick him out. Many of his soldiers were still on the ground, though. They were alive, but disoriented. Some were still covering their ears against the immense noise.

  “Force them back,” Shaw whispered. He felt a growing sense of unease. He’d successfully countered two frontal assaults and an attempt to flank his position. It was an impressive result considering he had initially been outnumbered two to one. Too impressive, though? Was he risking Galway’s wrath against Ellie and Jane?

  His troops began firing on the Northerners, not just from the embankment but from the rooftops of the colonnades as well. With alm
ost no return fire, they were easily sweeping the square with laser fire and bullets. He had to wonder if Fassino was thinking about surrendering, just to stop the carnage.

  “Trust me,” Aquinas said. “He’s not.”

  Shaw nodded. A rout like that would either fill someone with despair or a burning anger. Fassino had chosen anger. “How many Northerners are alive?” Shaw asked.

  “We are evenly matched now,” Ignatius answered. “Perhaps a little ahead, depending on whether all of them can still fight.”

  “And how many have we lost?”

  “Less than twenty.”

  “To their thousand?” Shaw closed his eyes. He pictured Ellie. He couldn’t risk it. “Tell the men to hold their fire and let the Northerners retreat.”

  Aquinas and Ignatius relayed the message.

  It took a few seconds, but all firing stopped.

  “Galway, or even Fassino for that matter, would not have extended the same mercy to us,” Ignatius said bitterly.

  “I know,” Shaw said. “But they have a different definition of victory. Are Ellie and Jane still alive?” he asked Aquinas.

  Aquinas nodded. “Yes. Though Galway has considered firing. She believes that if she kills them at this point, there would be nothing to stop you from using your remaining missiles to wipe out the troops.”

  Shaw said nothing.

  “The cartel is planning their next attack,” Ignatius said.

  Shaw looked at the Northerners, who had all nearly scrambled out of the gully and back onto the paving stones where Via della Conciliazione met Saint Peter’s Square. They were disorderly and injured. He couldn’t imagine they were already getting ready for another attack. “From where?” he asked.

  “Cartel missiles.”

  “You said they didn’t have any within range!”

  “I told you they were building new ones and mobilizing more. These just barely got within range. These are being launched from a ship in the Aegean.”

  “That far away?”

  “Yes. As I said: barely within range.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Nearly thirty minutes. A long time, thanks to their range.”