by Jack Yeovil
"But unlikely."
"Even so, it's possible."
"I've never heard of anything like that, and I've been in the blue for fifteen years."
"In that case, the demons are in control of the fort. That's bad."
"You're telling me."
"No, it's worse than you think. Fort Apache is a node on the datanet. It's more complicated than St Werburgh's. The systems all interface. If our enemy builds up significant strength, it can launch an attack on El Paso, and if El Paso falls, then all of Central and South America will fell."
"Serves 'em right."
"Spoken like a true American. Do you really imagine that national boundaries count for much in Hell? If your neighbours go down in flames, they'll drag you too. El Paso is strategically placed for plenty of databases within the United States as well."
"I've got a legitimate grievance against the CAC, Sister. My father died in action in El Salvador in "73."
His Dad had been career army. He had been killed in a battle with socialist guerillas during the Intervention. It wasn't even supposed to be a shooting war.
Chantal was quiet for a moment. "My father, too, is dead. I'm sorry."
Stack caught something new in her voice, a touch of doubt, or fragility.
"When they shipped him out, he knew he wasn't coming back. Don't ask me how, he just knew. Before he left. Dad told me to do anything with my life except join the army. And here I am with stripes down my legs and none on my shoulder. Your old man, how did he feel about your…your calling?"
She flicked a row of switches on the dash. The windshield darkened against the glare of the sun. "I did not develop a vocation until after his death. He was not especially devout, but I hope he approves of my life. He too was a soldier, in a manner of speaking…"
"You said you were Swiss, didn't you? I thought Switzerland was neutral?"
"Switzerland, yes. My father, no. He was, in his way, a crusader. He fought in the international courts for a better world. His name was Thomas Juillerat. He was murdered. Perhaps you've heard of him?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"It doesn't matter. Europe must seem very remote from here. I think my father made a difference. I think he did something for the world."
"The world, huh? The same one you've retreated from?"
She turned to him. "I am not a member of a sequestered order, Stack. I'm as much in the world as you are."
"You sure aren't like Sister Bertrille."
Chantal laughed. "Sally Field, The Flying Nun, 1967 to l970. Not one of the finer moments of American popular culture."
"Is there anything you don't know?"
"The future."
"Yeah, that…"
VI
Lauderdale was washing his hands under the tap in the storeroom. He was being wilfully wasteful of the fort's recycled water. There was no one to stop him.
He could do whatever he wanted now.
His androids were still stood to attention. He saluted them, and laughed. The GloJo he had popped was taking effect. He needed the extra buzz. He had been under a lot of strain recently.
Under its dustsheet, one of the androids saluted back. Lauderdale jumped, his heart catching, and reached for his side-arm.
There was someone under there posing as an android.
He fired, and heard the slug ricochet off a durium skin. It was a real android, all right. The spent bullet spanged against the wall and fell to the floor.
With his gunbarrel, he tore the polygene away from the saluting form. It was an android all right, faceless and expressionless.
Could there be a malfunction?
Carefully, he approached. He had his access cardkey. The inspection plate was in the small of the thing's back.
"Yo, there major, gimme some skin…"
The flipper-hand descended from its salute and struck the hot gun from Lauderdale's hand.
"Yo, bro…"
"What?!"
The android stepped off its podium, loose-limbed and gyroscopically balanced.
"It's me, Gilbert the Filbert, the Colonel of the Nuts!"
The android clapped its hands and stamped its feet. The metal floor shook, and the noise rung in the air.
"You been doin' good work, sonny. Lots o' nice blood spilled. Jus' the thang for a long, hot afternoon. A tall, cool drink o' deepest-crimson gore."
The android hand-jived to an unheard tune. Its head nodded in time to the rhythm. Lauderdale backed against the door. He fought his fear.
"It's you, isn't it?" he said.
"Who were you expecting? Perhaps, Frank Sinatra?"
Lauderdale sank to his knees, and prayed. He gave thanks to the Summoner.
"Dooby-dooby-doo," sang the demon.
"Praise be to Joseph."
"Aww, quit grovellin', babe. That's such a bring-down. It ain't lawful to be that awful. Lawdy-lawdy, Lauderdale, get yo ass in gear or face the fear."
Lauderdale stood up, unsteadily. He looked into the metal face, trying to see the ghost in the machine.
"That's better, hepcat."
"The power. You have built up the power?"
"Ain't yet, but it's gonna be…"
The plan was going perfectly. Soon, El Paso would fall. And then the Continental Americas would be easy meat. The Hour of Joseph was within sight. Lauderdale felt a great thirst, a ravening hunger, an unquenchable lust, a ferocious aggression, a delicious need for food and drink and women and blood. He remembered Elder Seth's promises of a future untrammelled by laws, restraints and codes, when the strong would have all their desires effortlessly fulfilled, and the weak would exist only to serve them. He could taste it in his dry mouth. "When?"
"Soon, son. But we ain't had all our fun here yet. Are there or are there not people still walkin' around alive in this place?" Lauderdale was overcome by the magnitude of the entity before him. His mind opened in all sorts of interesting ways, and he tasted the rewards that would surely be his before the day was done. The GloJo had loosened him up, but this creature was pulling him apart. The old Lauderdale, the yessir nossir pleasemaylkissyerasssir Lauderdale was as dead as…As dead as Rexroth, Badalamenti, Willeford, Brecher…As dead as all the others.
"Let's get down and boogie to the band, Lauderdale," said the demon. "We're expecting company. Won't that be a treat? A nice lady. She's from Switzerland. A nice country, Switzerland. Lots of nice people live there. Her name is Chantal Juillerat, and she's a nun. A nice name for a nice nun. Isn't that nice, nice, NICE? I want you to do this one little thing for me, I want you to help me kill her. Do you think you can do that?"
Lauderdale nodded. He was nearly at the door. The wallpanel was open. The console humming.
"Goooooood!"
Lauderdale threw the switches. Slowly, the androids began to stir, to throw off their transparent shrouds, to line up behind their leader.
"Sir?" Lauderdale asked.
The android was straight and tall, its mechanisms ticking gently, the cadre lined up behind it.
"Sir?"
The android saluted again, but it was an automatic response.
The demon was in some other part of the fort. The killing machines waited patiently for his orders.
VII
Chantal let Stack drive. Federico did most of the work, adjusting to the Trooper's slightly different style in the helmet. She was amused to note the Ferrari was slightly more curt with Stack than it usually was with her, as if bridling under a new master.
In the passenger seat, she tried to clear her mind. Mother Kazuko had taught her zen meditation techniques, and explained the equivalence with Western forms of prayer. It was at once a form of self-hypnosis and of devotion, a purging of physical and emotional pains, and a preparation for combat, or for death,
She wished the Mother could be here. She had come through in California last year, at great personal cost. After this was over, if she was still alive, Chantal would visit Kazuko in the San Clemente Retreat.
There was
no shortage of parent figures in her life, she realized. Thomas and Isabella, for all their railings. In the church, Rape Georgi, Father Daguerre, Mother Kazuko, Father O'Shaughnessy. Outside, Mlle Fornier, Isabella's admirers, Thomas' bodyguards. Even Federico could seem paternal at odd moments. Of course, there was Our Father Who Art in Heaven. And, though she had never yet met him race to face, there was the Evil Father in Salt Lake City who had probably been distantly involved in the California business, who was certainly the prime mover in the current possession. Fathers, mothers, teachers, confessors. Good parents, evil parents.
She prayed for guidance. She prayed for strength.
If she were to die, she would leave so much undone. She would have liked to have found her father's murderers. Not for vengeance, she told herself, but for Justice and to do his name honour. She would have liked a genuine reconciliation with her mother, to have found in her own prideful heart a way to forgive Isabella her shortfallings. She would have liked to have helped Father O'Shaugnessy find that point where the cybernet and the earthly plane intersect with the Divine. She would have liked to see the church grow under Georgi to the point when it no longer needed to deploy those with her special skills. Then, perhaps, she would seek out an enclosed order and atone for her sins by putting aside computers, martial arts, weapons and learning and devoting herself to tilling the soil.
In her mind, she saw herself as a tough old lady in a nun's penguin suit, working with the sick, wresting crops out of rocky ground, singing in the choir rather than as a soloist, perhaps married, probably not…
"You are an ace, not cannon fodder," Father O'Shaughnessy had told her once, "a gunslinger, not a grunt. And you must live with that for the rest of your rife, always trying to live on a level with the rest of us. It will not be easy."
She prayed wordlessly, inviting God into the void within herself.
She floated back, and found herself cross-legged in the passenger seat, her hands loosely together in her lap.
"There," Stack said, "up ahead. No place like home. Fort Apache."
VIII
"Colonel Rintoon," said Lieutenant Colosanto, "we have a ve-hickle on the approach road."
"One of ours?"
"No, but it's been logged out of the fort. It's the Ferrari that came with the Swiss Op, Juillerat."
"She was a Maniak spy. It must be an attack."
Finney swung round in her seat, and saw the Colonel, wild-haired and red-eyed, bending over Colosanto's console.
"Sir," she said, "Juillerat has diplomatic immunity."
Rintoon stared at her balefully. He hadn't shaved, and his stubble was mostly grey. He had bitten his forefingernails to the bleeding quicks, but curiously left his other fingers alone.
"That's what I said, Finney. She's an agent of a foreign power. She is on a mission to subvert this command. I will not be subverted. I will not be liquidated. I will not be terminated. They'll rue the day they crossed swords with Colonel Vladek W. Rintoon!"
Finney observed that Lieutenant-cum-Major Lauderdale had his holster flap undone. The uniform he had scavved from a dead officer was a size or so too large on him. He looked like a little boy dressed up in his father's domes. His face was impassive, as if Rintoon were running through a list of toiletry items the fort needed to restock on. She wondered which of her superiors was the more cracked.
"Colosanto, are the fort's defensive systems operational?"
"Yes sir."
"Then do your duty. Protect us from this aggressive enemy."
Finney got up. Colosanto looked at her, chewing her lower lip.
"Snap to it, woman," spat Rintoon.
Colosanto brought up the defence menu on her screen. In an inset, the bridge road appeared in an aerial view. A blip was advancing along it, tripping a succession of alarms. It wasn't moving with any particular speed.
The lieutenant looked unhappily at her console, as if selecting a course of action.
A light flashed. Colosanto heaved a sigh of disproportionate relief. "Sir, they're trying to open a channel of communication. It's not an attack. It's not an attack."
Rintoon exploded, spittle flying. "Oldest trick in the book, woman. Attacking under a flag of truce. Typical Maniak strategy. Never appease, never compromise, never surrender. Be a good girl, and get me some weapons systems on line."
Colosanto's face fell.
"Come on, come on you freaking hagwitch. Do I have to do everything here myself?"
The Colonel was drooling. Everyone in the Ops Centre was huddled around Colosanto's console. Finney took a look at Lauderdale, who was observing with a bland lack of interest. Colosanto's fingers hovered in the air above her keyboard. "What is today's attack codeword?" Rintoon asked.
Colosanto was still frozen. Finney saw she was crying. She was sobbing quietly. Her hands shook, and fell to her lap. "The codeword, soldier? Now? Cough up!" Rintoon cuffed the back of Colosanto's head. The lieutenant's hair fell over her free.
"The codeword?"
Colosanto snuffled something.
"What was that? Lauderdale, on the count of three, shoot this officer unless she tells me what I need to know."
"Yes sir."
Lauderdale's put his gun to the back of Colosanto's bead.
"One!"
Her face was in her hands, and her shoulders were heaving. The blip was on the bridge.
"Two!"
Jagged, painful sobs escaped from Colosanto's lungs.
"Three!"
An eternal second passed.
"SWORDFIST!" Finney said.
Lauderdale's gun jerked upwards, bumping the back of Colosanto's skull but not discharging.
Rintoon and Lauderdale looked at Finney.
"I know the codes," she said. "SWORDFIST is the defence systems keyword today."
Lauderdale pulled Colosanto's chair away from her console arid spun her across the room. Then he put his gun down, bent over the board and typed. A dull tone sounded. Lauderdale had scored a MISS.
"She lied," he said, reaching for his gun. "SWORDFISH doesn't load."
"Another Maniak unmasked," crowed Rintoon. "Well, shoot her dead, my boy. No, perhaps we ought to teach her a lesson first. Get me a whip and some rope."
"What did you type?" Finney asked.
"SWORDFISH, ratskag! Like you said. It wasn't acknowledged."
Lauderdale's knuckles went white as he gripped his gun.
"SWORDFIST, Lauderdale. SWORDFIST."
Lauderdale made a gesture of exasperation, and typed in the correct codeword.
The screen changed colour. The HIT beep sounded, playing the first few notes of "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon".
"Attention, attention," cooed the seductive, recorded voice on the tannoy (the US Cav had hired Lola Stechkin for the purpose), "this facility is now under attack. Everyone will report to their battle stations. Thank you for co-operating."
"What do you want to try first?" Lauderdale asked Rintoon. "The rockets, the lases, the napalm or the mortars?"
Rintoon was standing to attention. There must be an incredible band playing inside his head. He raised his hand in a slow salute.
"I think we should all take a moment to talk to God, soldiers," he said. "I think if Jesus Christ were here today, He'd be urging us on to Victory. We should Love our Enemies, soldiers, for without them we have not the chance for Victory."
"Colonel?" said Lauderdale "What about the androids? I have them operational?"
"Everything," Rintoon said, "hit the scum with everything."
Finney helped Colosanto up off the floor. The lieutenant clung desperately to her, shaking with hysteria.
"God forgive me," Finney said to herself. "God forgive me."
Part Eight: Last Stand
I
"We have incoming fire," said Federico, "I suggest we take a course of evasive action."
They were half-way across London Bridge when Fort Apache's lases opened up and burned towards them.
"That's some welcome hom
e," Stack said.
"Don't worry," said Chantal. "The fort isn't feeling itself today."
Stack wrenched the wheel over hard, but Federico didn't respond. The car slipped into reverse and withdrew at 200 miles per…
"What!"
"Federico has a very strong sense of self-preservation. It's just overridden the driving helmet and is taking evasive action of its own. It can react faster than you. Don't feel humiliated."
"That's easy to say. Mother Superior!"
Stack thumped the wheel, and tried to damp down his anger. He resented being taught to drive by a fancy foreign car.
Federico's responses, however, were startling. A squirted curtain of burning napalm descended, and the car avoided so much as a splash on the paintwork. Stack thought the car was showing off its virtuoso techniques. Chantal was playing with her laptop console. White darts streaked out of the central turret of Fort Apache. "Heat-seeking missiles coming in," said Federico.
“I'm on it," she replied. "I can reach and reprogram them with an APOSTLE," she explained. "There."
The missiles converged and exploded harmlessly, puffs of black and red in the air.
A battery of robot guns rose out of the desert like a whale breaking the surface, sand pouring from the casings. The guns swivelled, but Federico disabled the platform with a surgical lase strike, and the battery discharged its shells in frustration. "That was a silly thing to do," Chantal said. "No machine would waste ammunition like that. The fort is possessed."
"Funnily enough, I believe it."
Federico did a figure eight to avoid heavy flack. Stack held onto his seatbelt. One corner of the windscreen cracked as a stray bullet struck.
"Took a nick, did'ja, Fed?" Stack sneered, taking something like satisfaction from the car's proven fallibility. Then, as he watched, the white impact patch went pale and transparent. "It's smart glass. All top-of-the-line Ferraris have it."
"What…? How…?”
"My field is computers, not cars, but it has something to do with recombinant DNA."