The Grapple

by Moshe Ben-Or

  Some of the equipment is sensitive, and requires special procedures. Some is heavy, and must be decontaminated in place before it is lifted by block and tackle, or by crane. But most can be gathered quickly, and passed along by hand. Gatherers move forward. A bucket brigade forms.

  Yosi is part of the bucket brigade up in the hallway. There are no idle spectators in this place.

  The airlock is open again, but a plasma window glows electric blue in the gap. This cavern is at negative pressure, and will remain so indefinitely, until it falls from use and is permanently resealed, regardless of the stringent hard decon procedures that will be followed after the equipment leaves.

  Shimshon trusts the magic’s seeming quiescence not at all, never mind that the system is supposedly self-checking, and that all the nanites should theoretically have run out of energy by now. The vivid images of historical-themed horror VR must be foremost in his mind, as they are in Yosi’s own. Possibly, it is more than that.

  Between the lock’s two widely-separated plasma windows, there is a second decon zone. Additional gatherers and decontaminators are coming forward. Soon, the men with the rebreathers are free to walk out, and shed the clumsy masks. Most turn right around to go back in, stopping quickly by the long table set up courtesy of the girls who run the dining facility, to grab a sandwich and down a glass of tea. It had taken only a few hours to unleash the Golden Age magic. The work of gathering the magic’s fruits will take far longer than that.

  Yosi remains in the antechamber, where the fruits of the magic are being stacked as they emerge. His hands reach for the familiar comfort of a Barak gauss rifle, automatically running the weapon through its clearance procedure, then the diagnostics and function check.

  The Barak is in perfect working order. Its poncho handshake is instantaneous. The stock adjusts flawlessly. The barrel steers with smooth perfection as he moves his eye. The backup sight responds instantly. Its aiming chevron is photo-crisp. The vibro bayonet extends and contracts in an eyeblink at his command, out to its maximum five-meter length and back. A lethal menace, quicker than a striking cobra.

  Covered by a thin film of adaptive camouflage layer, the receiver is mirror-smooth to the touch. Literally, not an atom out of place.

  There is a full load of coolant in the heatsink. The power pack is topped off with DL. The standard-issue bandolier it came with handshakes perfectly with his poncho, blending immediately into his fighting preset as he slaps it into place at his waist. Six full magazines wait for action, ready to go.

  He could take it into battle this instant. It is the most flawless specimen of its type he has ever held in hand.

  Over by the neat rows of military-grade lasers, a boy and a girl in their tweens are loading gear into a runabout. A crusty-looking old sweat is interrogating each piece with a battered Royal Army field tester that looks as ancient as he does, before it gets picked up. He looks as pleased with the quality of the lasers as Yosi is with the rifle. Not a single red light on his display panel. Not even amber. Perfect in every respect.

  Chief Warrant Officer Carlos Lupo, offers Yosi’s poncho AI, helpfully. Same exact rank he’d held eighty-three years ago, under the king. A master gunner then, and a master gunner again now. Even his epaulets look exactly the same, if incongruous on the shapeless, green, government-issue pullover shirt, which resembles nothing more than prison garb, rather than any form of military uniform. His granddaughter sewed them herself. An eleven-year-old’s hobby of needlepoint, put unexpectedly to martial use. He loves every minute of it.

  “How come they sent us all this laser stuff, Papa Carlos?” asks the boy, grunting as he lowers the second of a pair of M27 power packs into the cargo bed and reaches for the Bulova emitter that goes with them.

  “’Cause ‘is Excellency ask fer it, Carlito, that why,” replies Chief Lupo, lovingly patting the emitter. “Lanzas an’ Mazas, jus’ like we ‘ad under ‘is Majesty. Sights ‘re new, tho’. Better capacitors, too, than we ‘ad back ‘en. Rates o’ fire gonna be a bit higher. Smart material stocks. No mo’ foldin’ bipods an’ tripods. Lanzas ‘re all sniper-quality. That’ll come in handy. Everythin’ all modernized, but still me good ol’ dependables!”

  “But didn’t General Palmer get rid of these, because they were obsolete?” asks the girl as she lifts another power pack into the bed.

  “Heh!” laughs the old chief. “An’ that why Señora Morales hire ‘is Excellency an’ Colonel Weismann to run ‘is ‘ere army, an’ not some stupid sot who useta work fer General Palmer!

  “Whadda ya need ta fire all ‘em fancy gauss guns over ‘ere, Juanita?”

  “Uh, I dunno. Ammo, I guess.”

  “Yeah, ammo. Flechettes. ‘Xpensive, ‘ard-ta-make, ‘ard-ta-get flechettes, an’ lots of ‘em. Basic load for one of ‘em fancy Raio rifles ‘s six hunderd flechettes. Basic load for that ‘ere Alabarda ‘s two thousand. One good firefight, and they all gone. Plenty men, they carry double basic load, so they don’t go runnin’ out at th’ worse possible time.

  “Now, how good ‘re we gonna be at supplyin’ a whole army wi’ those?

  “Er, not very, I guess. We got some for the gato rifles...”

  “Yeah, we got some. Don’t ask me where an’ how, ‘cause I woudna tell ya, e’en if I know. But we ain’t got no more but a ‘andful at a time, ever. That ain’t no way to run no army. We ain’t never gonna make enough League flechettes for no whole big army, neither, even wi’ all th’ fancy nanofactory gear ‘is Excellency’s grandpa sent us.”

  “I guess...”

  “Now whadda ya need ta fire ‘ese ‘ere ‘obsolete’ lasers, Carlito?”

  “Uh...”

  “DL, nietito. Nuthin’ but good ol’ DL an’ coolant. Same stuff they put in yer ‘aciendados’ tractors an’ ‘arvesters an’ th’ big trucks they use ta run produce ta market. Same stuff they put in yer jefes’ village generators ‘fore th’ war, so there’d be juice fer yer mopeds and yer ‘overbikes an’ yer pickup trucks, an’ th’ lights in yer houses. Same stuff Sanchez need now, fo’ everythin’. Planes, trains, trucks, aircars, suborbitals, power plants, ya name it. Ain’t nuthin’ on ‘is planet run withou’ DL.

  “Th’ damn cats and th’ Sanchez gub’ment can control flechettes nice an’ close. Flechettes ain’t got but one purpose. How they gonna control DL an’ coolant, mis nietitos? They own Reconstructors ‘re out ‘ere droppin’ jerry cans full o’ th’ stuff wi’ every generator they set up an’ toppin’ off th’ storage tanks at every ‘acienda they visit. E’en th’ new pickups an’ ‘overbikes they Ministry o’ Infrastructure’s puttin’ out all got they own fusion coils. When they fix some ‘aciendado’s stuff, it all get fusion coil APUs ta charge th’ batteries, if it don’ jus’ get a drop-in fusion unit outright. That’s jus’ how it gotta be, wi’ everythin’ th’ way it is.

  “So what they gonna do, stop reconstruction? Shut down th’ planet? Track every jerry can an’ plastic bottle? Put a Yellow Rat wi’ a gun on every fusion coil?

  “E’en lez say they do. Spend a double-buttload o’ cash that they ain’t got ‘n couldna get i’ a billion years. Turn th’ clock back to th’ stone age out in th’ countryside. Put guards at every fuel station, stick nanites i’ every bottle, tag every milliliter o’ product from th’ momen’ it leave th’ plant to th’ momen’ it get burnt up. Turn th’ planet inta a total surveillance society the likes o’ which General Palmer couldna’ve even dreamt of.

  “Where’s that get ‘em? How many ruined ‘aciendas ‘re out ‘ere? How many wrecked tractors, combines, trucks, generators, ya name it? DL don’ never spoil. It jus’ ‘eavy water an’ lithium salt. It be everywhere. Savvy now?

  “’is Excellency an’ th’ Colonel gonna run this ‘ere bidness th’ way ‘is Majesty th’ King useta run th’ Royal Army. We gonna ‘ave ourselves one elite strike force armed wi’ fancy gauss guns, an’ we gonna keep it well supplied. Ya an’ me both know who be that ‘ere strike force, and who be commandin’ it. Everyo
n’ else gets these ‘ere modernized lasers. They may be bulky. They may be ‘eavy. They sure as heck ain’t fancy. But they get th’ job done.”

  Yosi smiles as the runabout drives out of the antechamber. His Majesty Alonzo VIII wasn’t the only one to run his army that way. Yes, League infantrymen had last carried lasers into battle sixty-eight years ago, when grandpa Shimon, may he rest in peace, had stormed New Helena in the Second Imperial War. Even back then, only the second-category reserve divisions hadn’t yet switched to gauss guns. Yes, a fully-fueled Hanit massed nine and a quarter kilos, while a Barak with an equivalent ammo load pulled just under six and a half. Yes, the Bulova’s M27 power pack topped off with DL and coolant weighed in at a hefty twenty-one kilos, and yes, you needed two packs hooked into the built-in Fire Dancer mux to give the three-kilo emitter three thousand armor-piercing shots at seven hundred and twenty discharges per minute, while a Znamensky with six full drums would do the same job at only seventeen kilos, and its cyclic rate could theoretically put eight hundred flechettes into the air in the time it took the Bulova to pump out those seven hundred and twenty pulse trains. But you could buy eight Hanits for the cost of a single Barak, and six Bulovas for the cost of a single Znamensky. Add in the cost of flechette ammunition on one side and subtract the savings in logistical complexity inherent in not having to bother with same on the other, and things became even more interesting.

  Both the Hanit and the Bulova had stayed in production, long after the League had phased them out of infantry service. Vehicle-mounted versions of the emitters still soldiered on, and probably would for centuries to come. The last big IMI-ROE contract for modernized man-portable laser weapons had been signed three weeks before the war, with the Jagobaran principality of Surguja. Plenty of armies still did business the way His Majesty King Alonzo had, before his own Chief of Staff had overthrown him. Including two of the three Great Powers.

  He’d like to thank whomever in Doctor Weinberger’s Ministry of Infrastructure had decided that every vehicle out in the countryside should have its own fusion coil. Nice of the Ministry’s Reconstructors to drop off a small pile of expendables at every single generator while they ran around fixing up local microgrids, too. The whole damned province is awash in DL and fusion coil coolant, thanks to them. How very convenient.

  As for himself, he still remembered how to work a Smith and Johnson squad laser, how to interpret an automortar firing table gradated in feet instead of meters, and how to siphon DL and coolant out of a shot-up Andersen jeep. The day had come when all the Civil Defense caches around Sha’ar Hashalom had finally been found by the enemy or scraped dry. But that did not end the fighting.

  More invisible robotic birds had come, just the other night, two nights after the darkness above had blossomed suddenly with handfuls of bright, short-lived blue stars. From the south, this time. Flying all the way around the globe, perhaps, from some random spot in the sky over the opposite hemisphere, setting their course ever toward the setting sun until they saw the edge of the continent, somewhere just north of the southern polar cap.

  He had other friends, also. Friends right here on this world. Courageous, invisible men and women, as silent and stealthy as Duke Reginald’s winged messengers. They, too, had come through. Not with high-tech wonders, but with the ordinary, simple bread and butter of war.

  Just the other day, another hundred untraceable ponchos had arrived from the Rio Oro textile mill. Last week, it had been bags full of untagged explosives, from Ferreira Chemical. A week before that, a load of government laser cartridges without serial numbers, from the factory in Peñaflor.

  They did not know who he was, or what he fought for. They didn’t even know their own comrades at the same plant, so heavily compartmentalized were their cells. They moved in the very heart of the enemy’s power, where the slightest misstep meant certain and horrible death. Yet they moved, and worked, and gave all they could to help. Their every assistance...

  Billions of credits had been spent. Countless people had risked their lives. Were risking their lives even now, as he stood in this cave, staring at the work of wonder in his hands. All of them had put their trust in him, and in the men and women beneath this mountain. He would justify their trust. Patty’s two battalions would turn into four, and then eight, and then sixteen…

  The workmen who’d built this mountain stronghold are already busy elsewhere. And they would get busier still.

  Yosi looks up from the rifle, blinking away a momentary haze as he meets Shimshon’s disconcerting cobra stare. Must be residual dust left over after decon, he thinks, to set his eyes watering so.

  “I think,” smiles Shimshon, raising an ironic eyebrow as he lights his ever-present pipe, “now that we’ve received so many fine presents from our gracious well-wishers, we should put them to good use. They’ve gone to such trouble and expense, it would be a shame to disappoint them. You think we can manage, no?”

  End of Book Two

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