by Jake Elwood
“Get out of there, you damned fool. Those walls won’t stop a bullet. They wouldn’t even stop an angry housecat.” The voice belonged to a woman on the far side of the street. She wore a brown jumpsuit and Dawn Alliance body armor with a hole in it, the original burgundy color covered in a camouflage pattern of brown and green. More guerillas were pressed to the storefront behind her. The Prairie Dogs were in Greenport.
Leaving through the front door would be suicidal. I wonder if there's a back exit. He turned and walked through the store, coughing as the dust in the air tickled his nostrils. He stepped over spreading pools of liquid, wrinkling his nose. As he stepped past a set of shelves a shape in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was a window set high in the wall, and he stared at it. I better get out of the-
The window frame exploded and something slammed into his head with impossible force. He didn't feel the impact when he hit the floor.
Chapter 16
Alice stood with her back against the wall of a sturdy-looking building, Garth Ham on one side and a spacer named Darlene Sanchez on the other. Alice had no idea what the building was, but she dubbed it “the bank” in her mind. It gave her a solid sense of security. Nothing could come at her from behind, and with her crewmates on either side of her she could focus safely on what was dead ahead.
Across the street from the bank was a narrow lane between buildings. Alice could see some sort of plaza beyond. The factory was no more than a block away, off to her right. So far she hadn't seen a single Dawn Alliance soldier, but she'd heard gunfire. Lots of gunfire. Somewhere, the Dawn Alliance was fighting back.
Beside her, Sanchez stiffened. Garth Ham said, “What's that sound?”
Alice glanced at Ham. He held a pistol in a two-handed grip, his knuckles white. His nerves were stretched to the breaking point, and she wished there was a way to get him away from the front lines. He was looking from side to side, moving his head in quick, jerky movements as he tried to find the source of a mechanical rumble echoing from the walls around them and rising in volume.
Sanchez said, “It's coming from that way.” She pointed across the street.
Alice concentrated her attention on the narrow lane. A man appeared at the far end, a short, burly figure with an oversized blast rifle in a shoulder sling. She started to take aim, then lowered her laser rifle. That's … Horace? Jorge? A Prairie dog, anyway. I guess they decided to get their hands dirty and join us in the streets.
Jorge passed the mouth of the lane, backing up, his eyes fixed on something off to the right.
Something in the direction of the factory.
He didn't so much as glance in Alice's direction. Sloppy, she thought. For all he knows there could be a Dawn Alliance soldier taking aim at him, instead of me.
But the Prairie Dogs weren't sloppy. The sloppy ones were long dead. Whatever Jorge was retreating from, it had his undivided attention.
More Prairie Dogs went past the end of the lane. A few of them shot quick glances her way, but their attention was focused in the direction of the factory.
On whatever they were retreating from.
She counted seven or eight militia. Then, for ten long seconds, no one went past. The rumbling sound, however, grew in volume. She caught a hint of a vibration through the soles of her boots, and a mechanical smell, like exhaust smoke and oil. It made her nostalgic for the Free Bird, the ship that had been her home for years.
Whatever was coming, though, was no ship.
She lifted her rifle to her shoulder and curled her finger around the trigger. Ham and Sanchez crowded close enough that they could take quick peeks down the lane.
“Spread out,” said Alice irritably. “If-”
“Holy shit,” said Ham as a massive vehicle rolled into view. It was painted a dull gray with burgundy markings, a steel behemoth with treads that broke up the street beneath it as it lumbered forward.
In addition to being armor plated, the machine was formidably well armed. A turret dominated the top, with a thick gun barrel bigger around than Alice's thigh and longer than she was tall. A smaller turret sprouted from the side of the machine, and it moved as it came into view, a meter-long barrel lining up on her. She dove to the side, swearing, crashing into Sanchez and falling in a tangle of limbs.
A small shell exploded against the wall of the bank where she'd been standing. The wall was as sturdy as she thought; it took no real damage.
Alice got shakily to her feet, retrieved her dropped rifle, and leaned to the side until she could peek down the lane.
The machine was gone from sight. She could hear it rumbling, the volume dropping with increasing distance.
Soldiers appeared, men and women in burgundy uniforms trailing after the armored vehicle. They looked eager and excited as they hurried after the unstoppable machine. A few of them glanced down the lane, but if they saw her peeking around the corner they didn't react.
“Come on,” said Ham.
Alice looked at him, expecting him to suggest a prudent retreat. He gestured up the street, though, in the direction the armor had gone.
“We can't do anything against that monster,” she said. She held up her rifle. “I don't think we can even scratch the paint.”
“We'll keep our distance.” Ham set off at a brisk walk. “We'll go parallel, one block over. Maybe there will be something we can do.”
Alice looked at Sanchez. The other woman was clearly scared, but she shrugged and gave Alice a death’s-head grin.
Well, I didn't come back to Novograd because I thought it would be safe. Alice returned the shrug with a shrug of her own, and they started after Ham.
The Prairie Dogs made their stand a block away in a small park. They took cover behind a statue of David Finch, one of the colony’s founders, or behind the base of a fountain. One woman stepped behind an ancient elm tree. Alice and her companions, a block over, stood frozen. Every instinct told Alice to rush over and help, but the Prairie Dogs were doomed. Dead heroes are no use to anyone.
She didn't see the shell that hit the statue. She saw the explosion, though. It was spectacular, a flash of light and a blast of sound that made her close her eyes reflexively and lift a protective hand in front of her face. When she lowered her hand the statue was on the ground, broken off at ankle height. The Prairie Dogs behind the statue’s stone base fired madly, presumably at the armored vehicle, which was out of sight.
The next shell hit the elm tree. The woman behind the tree flew back, tumbling and bouncing. The tree exploded, and the top half dropped. For a moment it stood balanced on the splintered end of the trunk. Then it toppled, the sound of breaking branches drowned out by the rumble of the tank.
The roar of the engine deepened, telling Alice it was accelerating. It came into view, racing across the park, chunks of grass and soil flying up from the treads. It sped toward the statue, and the Prairie Dogs broke and ran. They fled, and a smaller turret on the front of the vehicle opened up, spraying bullets at the fleeing guerillas.
A cry went up from the soldiers following the machine, and they ran, whooping, trying to catch up.
Alice ran toward them. It was foolish. A voice in the back of her head told her she couldn't achieve anything. She would get herself killed, and Ham and Sanchez as well. They were with her, of course, one on either side, moved by the same impulse that drove Alice.
The armored vehicle and the soldiers left the park and vanished into a gap between buildings, oblivious to Alice and her companions. She reached the park, panting and out of breath, and came to a stop in the middle of the torn-up track left by the machine.
She turned, looking down the street where the armored vehicle had disappeared.
She was just in time to see the counterattack.
She couldn't tell if the fleeing Prairie Dogs had deliberately led the machine into a trap. She suspected not. Another group of guerrillas had noticed their trajectory and seen the opportunity it was about to create.
The street was
narrow, with concrete buildings pressing so close on either side that the small side turrets had to swivel back to keep the gun barrels from being damaged. The squad of soldiers following the machine were pressed in close, and they had nowhere to go when a grenade dropped from a rooftop and landed among them.
The explosion was spectacular, a burst of flame and smoke, the noise amplified by the buildings on either side. For a moment Alice thought the entire squad had been wiped out. But several had survived, leaping into doorways or diving behind a utility box. They rose now, four of them, dazed but not injured. They kept close to whatever shelter they'd found, wary of another grenade, as they looked around, trying to spot the threat.
Instead of a grenade, it was a person who next dropped from above. Karen Sharpe, her arm no longer in a sling, sprang from a rooftop and landed in a crouch on top of the tank. She had a gun in each hand. She kept her injured arm close to her side, firing without aiming. Her good arm extended full-length as she shot a man on her left twice in the chest. A lucky shot from her other pistol hit the woman beside him in the shoulder. She cried out and ducked into a doorway.
Sharpe dropped onto her stomach on top of the armored vehicle just before a couple of blast shots sizzled through the air above her head. Chips of concrete erupted from the wall behind her.
“Let's go!” Alice cried. The exhortation was completely unneeded. Ham and Sanchez were already running, and she had to hurry to catch up. Don't die, Alice pleaded silently. Now more than ever she was convinced that Novograd needed Karen Sharpe.
She needn't have worried. The injured soldier, huddling in her doorway, jerked away as the door beside her flew open. Then she tumbled backward, landing in a sprawl in the street. Smoke curled up from a wound in her chest.
A Prairie Dog appeared in her doorway, a stocky woman holding a blast carbine tucked against her hip. She fired three quick shots into a doorway across the street, and a man sprawled on the sidewalk. The Prairie Dog ducked back inside as the remaining soldier returned fire.
Two more Prairie Dogs appeared on rooftops, one on each side of the street. The remaining soldier stepped out of his doorway, firing frantically at the rooftop across the street.
He didn't last long.
The big gun on top of the armored vehicle could do nothing. There was a smaller turret with twin barrels on the back of the machine, however. That turret swiveled upward, and the Prairie Dogs on the roofs drew back before it could fire.
With no other targets to concentrate on, the turret swiveled back down and took aim at Alice.
Oh, crap. She didn't have the breath to curse out loud. There was a doorway on her right, five interminable steps away, and she headed for it. The gun opened up, both barrels vomiting fire, and Alice threw herself into the doorway. She put her hands up to soak up her momentum as she crashed into a door, grunting with the impact. Then she turned and pressed her back against the door and watched blasts of energy flash past her doorway.
She could see Ham and Sanchez in a much deeper doorway just across the street. Smoke rose from the baggy sleeve of Sanchez's coat. Sanchez patted at the sleeve, shaking her head in disbelief, apparently unhurt.
The barrage ended. Alice waited a moment, then took a careful peek around the edge of the doorway. The rear turret was elevated once again, jerking back and forth as it tried to cover rooftops on both sides of the street at once. For the moment there was a stalemate. If the driver has any sense, he'll head back to the factory. He can't catch the Prairie Dogs, and if he waits here, someone will bring a thermal lance or a good big bomb.
A metallic tapping sound echoed down the street. Alice frowned, puzzled. She looked at Sharpe, still pressed flat on top of the machine. The woman's arm was moving.
She was rapping on the top of the vehicle.
She's trying to get a response. Any response. She's making them worry about what she's doing. But surely they won't be stupid enough to-
Sharpe rose suddenly to a crouch. She shoved a hand into a thigh pocket as a hatch on the top of the machine rose just a few centimeters and the barrel of a pistol appeared. Sharpe was behind the hatch, invisible to the soldier inside. She put her hands together, twisting something that Alice couldn't see. Then she reached around and dropped something through the gap and into the armored vehicle.
The hatch flew open, knocking Sharpe backward. A man rose up, head and shoulders coming into view, a fat pistol swinging around to point at Sharpe.
Then the grenade she had dropped exploded. Flames erupted through the hatch, and the man screamed, a ragged sound that twisted Alice's stomach. He fell back inside the machine.
Sharpe took out another grenade, dropped it into the vehicle, then slammed the hatch. The grenade exploded, the sound a muted thump. Sharpe looked around, then called, “It seems to be clear.”
Three Prairie Dogs came into view, one from a doorway and two on the edges of roofs. Alice shook her head as she stepped out of her doorway. It had seemed like an ambush in overwhelming force while it was happening.
Sharpe turned, looking past the front of the armored machine and bringing a pistol up. She lowered the gun as sheepish Prairie Dogs edged past the vehicle. Alice recognized the squad that had fled the park.
Alice and her companions walked up the middle of the street, keeping their weapons pointed in neutral directions. The danger of the jumpy Prairie Dog snapping a shot at them was small, but not zero.
Alice couldn't hear the dressing-down that Sharpe gave to the guerrillas who had been so thoroughly routed, but she saw shoulders slumping and heads hanging as they took in her words. Men and women moved aside, not making eye contact, as Alice and her companions approached.
“Alice. Garth. Maria.” Sharpe knew all their names, another hallmark of her leadership skills. “I was wondering when we would catch up to you.”
“This was a slick piece of work,” Alice said, nodding at the armored vehicle.”
Sharpe waved a dismissive hand, holstered her pistol, and began awkwardly climbing down. Her injured shoulder, which she had so blithely ignored during the battle, was clearly paining her. “A tank like this is not designed for urban warfare.” Her voice was muffled by the fact that her back was to Alice, and interrupted by grunts as she tried to climb down one-handed. “Narrow streets and stone walls are a nightmare for a behemoth like this. We’d have to be a dismal excuse for a militia if we couldn't crack an egg in a trap like this.”
She reached the ground at last, and used her good arm to cradle her injured arm. “You did a good job.” The compliment sounded grudging, but sincere. “Evacuating the town. It was well done.”
“I'm glad you joined the party,” Alice said, “instead of using the mortar.”
Sharpe grimaced. “We couldn't hack it. It's tied to the network. It's not going to fire again without a call from the server.”
Alice raised an eyebrow.
“The really big stuff is networked. They link it to a server, and if there's trouble, they can lock the hardware so it needs a signal from the server to unlock it.” She jerked a thumb at the armored vehicle. “It's the reason we don't try to steal these things. They can’t be unlocked.”
“Pity,” said Alice. She figured she could probably get an armored vehicle working if she stripped out every electronic component and replaced it with something homemade. The problem was, it would take days of work with access to a decent workshop. The guerrillas wouldn't get that kind of opportunity with a colossus like this. “So what's the plan?”
Sharp leaned against the back of the armored vehicle. “I'm waiting for a squad with a thermal lance. We'll cut the axle on this thing. By that time we should have the town pretty much scouted. We'll mop up the last of the resistance, and then we'll take the factory.” Her expression went hard and cold. “And then we'll kill them all.” She looked from Ham to Sanchez and back to Alice. “Don't go far. We can use you.”
Alice nodded.
“Karen? Can you take a look at this?” The voice came
from the far side of the machine.
Sharpe straightened up and walked around the armored vehicle. As soon as her back was turned, Alice spun on her heel. “Let's go.”
Ham and Sanchez didn't hesitate. They turned with her, one at each elbow as she hurried down the street. Ham said, “Where are we going?”
I'll get your mommy out. I'll keep her safe. “We're going to the factory. We need to clear it out before the Prairie Dogs get there.”
Chapter 17
Tom regained consciousness by degrees, an awareness that he was being moved and jostled growing until at last he groaned and opened his eyes.
“Hold still, Buddy. You've got a head injury.”
Tom squeezed his eyes shut, then opened again them again, trying to orient himself. A man loomed above him, then bent at the waist. Tom descended, his shoulders and the back of his head bumping the ground. He grunted.
“Sorry about that,” the man said, then stepped away, vanishing from Tom's field of view. Tom lifted his head. Pain burst through his skull, washing from one temple to the other and then sloshing into the back of his neck. The world spun around him. It was like being drunk and hung over at the same time, but he gritted his teeth and made himself look around.
He lay on a stretcher on scraggly grass marred by lumps of stone and crystal. Other casualties lay around him, three Prairie Dogs and a couple of civilians, all of them decorated with bandages or blotches of medical gel.
He was back on the ridge near the mortar. The ruined concrete outpost building stood a dozen meters away, blackened and cracked, the flames out now. The trucks they’d arrived in still stood in a ragged row, partially obscured by a tent set up on a more-or-less flat bit of ground near the crest of the ridge. The tent, something scrounged by the guerillas, might have been made for a circus. It had bright red and yellow stripes, and bells along the top that jangled in the breeze. It was so surreal that he lay back, wondering if he was hallucinating.