Hidden Empire

by Orson Scott Card

  There wasn't a soul waiting for them out in the open, and they had jumped high enough to see that there was no ambush on the lower roofs, anyway.

  But somebody was there with a nice welcome for them, because After Cole and Cat landed, and while Arty and Babe were in the air, there was a savage popping sound from the Noodle and suddenly Cole's Bones became a dead weight, still flexible but dragging him down instead of giving him a boost.

  Then there were yells from both Arty and Babe as they landed without benefit of their Bones. Only Cole didn't hear them over the Noodle, he just heard them with his ears, kind of muffled because of the helmet covering them.

  Cole flashed on the two jets that he had seen brought down by the electromagnetic-pulse death ray during the assault on New York. This had to be something similar, an EMP that jolted their electronics.

  That was the problem with high-tech equipment. If you got dependent on it, and somebody figured out a way to shut it down, you were in deep poo.

  But there was a chance that their equipment had only been stunned, not killed. Cole clicked twice and said, "Reboot," and to his relief, the boot sequence initiated. His electronics weren't permanently fried, they'd just been given the old blue screen of death.

  The boot sequence was only about thirty seconds, but that was long enough to die.

  "Reboot!" Cole yelled. "And get close to the building! Crawl!"

  It was the hardest five yards Cole had ever crawled, dragging the Bones along with him. They were heavy and awkward, and it didn't help that almost at once there were bullets flying. But because they had moved immediately, they were in the shelter of the embassy, and the gunmen weren't in a position to see them.

  They were in a perfect position, however, for the bad guys to drop grenades on them, so they couldn't stay there long.

  "What good does rebooting do?" asked Arty. "They'll just zap us again."

  "They can't," said Cole. "It takes them a lot longer to recharge than it does for us to reboot."

  "What if they've got a dozen spares already fully charged?" asked Cat.

  "So they get to knock us down three more times," said Cole, "and then they're done. But I think we just saw all they've got."

  He was back online and gave the backdoor team a quick account of what happened to them in the front yard. "They might have an EMP for you, too," said Cole, "or they might have something different. One thing's for sure—they absolutely knew we were coming."

  "Gotcha," said Mingo, who was leading the other team. "We'll come in soft and low."

  "We're bouncing onto the roof," said Cole to his own team. "On 'go.' Ready … set … "

  Cole didn't actually say go, because he didn't have to. They were all in the air at the exact moment he would have said it, and with their Bones working again, they were at roof level in a split second. They grabbed the parapet and flipped themselves over onto the roof, then came up ready to shoot.

  Apparently somebody had promised the bad guys that their little EMP weapon would completely disable the Americans, because Cole had never seen such horrified surprise as was on the faces of the bandits on the roof. On his end of the embassy building, where he and Cat were pointing their weapons at the bad guys, there wasn't even a fight. They just threw down their weapons, ran for the edge of the roof, and jumped down onto the low security building that guarded the gate.

  There was shooting on the other side, though, so Arty and Babe must have run into some guys with more fight in them. It took only a few moments, though, and there was stillness again. Cole checked only to see that both Babe and Arty were still moving, then flipped to his view of Mingo's team. They were at the back door, having met no resistance.

  "Ground floor is yours, Mingo," said Cole. "Remember that only one of the Americans is white, so they might have dressed our other guys up to look like bandits. Be careful who you shoot."

  "Yes mom," said Load.

  But they all knew that reminders were a good idea in combat, to make sure something didn't slip out of memory in the heat of the moment.

  It was quick progress through the building. Cole fired his weapon only three times before he and Cat came through the door of the big conference room and found the hostages tied to chairs, with four men holding automatic weapons to their heads. Cole clicked the code to send the picture to the other guys, which would bring them straight here as fast as they could come. Meanwhile, though, he had no time to wait.

  A tall, grinning man in a business suit was holding a pistol. "Just put your weapons down, Americans," he said in French- and African-accented English. "Or we kill your friends. I am Idi Amin Muham—"

  He didn't have a chance to finish because Cole put a bullet through his head, then turned and took out two of the guys pointing guns at the embassy staffers. Cat took out the other two.

  The other bandits in the room were already throwing their weapons on the floor. With their genius leader dead, what was the point of fighting now?

  Cat kept vigil while Cole cut through the duct tape holding the embassy staffers to their chairs.

  The first person he cut loose was not the ambassador or the white CIA station chief—it was the sergeant-at-arms. When the duct tape came off the young man's mouth, Cole asked him, "Sergeant Seibt?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good work."

  "I had no idea they knew you were coming, sir," said Seibt.

  "I know," said Cole. "And we used every speck of info you gave us."

  With Seibt helping, it took only a few more moments to get the others unbound, so that everybody was standing up and ready to go when the backdoor team came in. Mingo looked around at the five dead bodies and the cringing not-dead bandits against the walls, and said, "Nifty."

  Cole said into his Noodle, "Got all four, safe so far, come pick us up."

  Getting out was going to be tricky—anybody set to ambush them out here wouldn't know that Idi de Gaulle had bought the farm. For that matter, it might not be de Gaulle's boys waiting for them. Somebody had given them small EMP devices. That was very, very high tech, which means it definitely was not invented here. So whoever supplied them might be waiting with another set to take them down on the way out. Or even nastier surprises.

  "Let's go through the west wall," said Cole. "On the ground floor."

  Mingo, Drew, Load, and Benny each picked up one of the embassy guys in their arms like babies. The ambassador protested but Cole just said, "Shut up and do what you're told or we'll leave you here." The ambassador was furious, but he shut up and did what he was told.

  The Bones gave them the strength to carry these full-grown men as if they were light as a feather, and with Cole's team leading and following them, they raced down the stairs to the main floor.

  Cat found the spot they wanted on the west wall, set four charges, then went back out of the room to where the rest were waiting. He detonated the explosives with a sharp short whistle into his Noodle, and when they went back into the room there wasn't a west wall.

  With four of them still carrying the embassy staff, they ran through the gap and into the alley between the embassy and the shops next door. They heard gunfire but didn't stop to fight—none of it was coming close. They bounded into the air to cross Avenue David Dacko and in five seconds they were behind the wall where Cole's team had stashed their supplies.

  Using a drone, Cole saw that the chopper was in place beyond the barges, hovering only a foot or so above the river. "We need any of this stuff?" he asked the others.

  But instead of waiting for an answer, he picked up his package. The other guys in his jeesh did the same. So everybody had their arms full as they bounded down Avenue Colonel Conus. They leapt over a wall just as the chopper came over the barges and set down on the dirt road that fronted the river inside the boatyard. They got the embassy staffers on board first, then tossed in the parcels and the chopper was already rising as Cole's team clambered on behind them.

  There were more shots as they flew down the river, just above
the water, but nothing dangerous, and now it was time to debrief.

  "Anybody see anything that looked like the EMP device they used on us?" asked Cole.

  Mingo might have, but he couldn't be sure. "I mean, what would it look like? A sci-fi raygun or what?"

  "What did you see?"

  "Like an old-fashioned tommy gun, with the round clip, only it was way deeper, like this." He held up his hands to draw it in midair. "And the barrel came out of the middle of it. No sights, tripod mounted."

  "Sounds likely," said Cole. "The cylinder would be the array of batteries."

  Mingo took over. "That's why it only made us reboot and didn't kill our electronics. Even if they've got batteries as good as ours, and even if they've got some brilliant way to discharge all the power at once, there's just not enough electricity in Bangui to do a real EMP. The ones that brought down those jets in New York caused a citywide brownout. A really portable aimable EMP device is just not possible."

  "But they came close," said Cole. "What if we hadn't read the manual? What if we'd just shed the Bones and gone in without them?"

  "Almost did," said Arty. "I was about to push the escape bar when I heard you shout to reboot."

  "So what do we know?" asked Cole.

  "Best guess," said Cat, "is this was a setup from the start. This Idi Amin de Gaulle clown was the front. Somebody wanted to try out his little EMP device on our electronics, so they got de Gaulle to take over the embassy. They probably promised him that their device would make us sitting ducks so he couldn't lose."

  "Whoever it was," said Mingo, "they were able to clear the streets of the rival bandit gangs."

  "They probably paid them to come and pretend to be besieging the place," said Babe. "Then told them when to go home."

  "The thing is," said Benny, "it worked. They brought down the suits. If you weren't all such amazingly strong, agile, and intelligent human beings, you really would have been sitting ducks. And if they'd had the brains to deploy properly, they could have killed you all as you crawled across open ground to the embassy, or else during the reboot."

  "Couldn't deploy like that," said Drew. "They had to stay out of sight of the Preds. Everybody knows we've got eyes in the sky wherever we go. No place to set up a killing ground without us spotting them in advance."

  "But the manual EMP-shooters, where did they have those?" asked Arty.

  "Inside the building," said Mingo. "It can shoot its pulse through a window without damaging it. Nothing we could have seen."

  "Wish we could have taken one home with us," said Cole.

  "Not our mission," said Mingo. "Want to go back for it?"

  "By now the EMP-shooters are long gone," said Cole. "The real owners of them had to be waiting in hiding somewhere to grab their toys and take them back to wherever they're from in order to report on how they worked."

  "It's no secret that we were electronically enhanced," said Babe. "We were demonstrating our Bones all over Nigeria. But am I right in thinking that this handheld EMP thing is designed specifically to counter our Bones and Noodles? I mean, soldiers use a lot of electronics in the field, but nothing they couldn't work around and keep going if it got trashed."

  "How many weeks we been showing our stuff?" asked Benny. "You can't tell me they invented that peashooter in three or four weeks."

  "They knew what was being developed," said Drew. "And when we demonstrated the goods in Nigeria, they set up the ambush."

  "Were they trying to capture the Bones?" asked Arty. "Maybe they were deliberately trying not to destroy our stuff, because they wanted to study and copy it."

  "Maybe," said Cole. "Makes sense."

  "So the EMP might really be stronger," said Arty. "Might really be able to kill our Bones."

  "I don't think so," said Mingo. "Unless they've got a way better battery than we have, and can drain it all in a microsecond, what we saw was already at the cutting edge of what's possible in something that size."

  "But they might have that better battery," said Cole. "I can't help thinking. Whoever made the big device the rebels had in New York City, it's got to be the same people who came up with the handheld version. And it's worth remembering that up till the moment the nictovirus emerged, the Chinese were all over Africa."

  Everybody nodded.

  "We Asians are naturally good with electronic toys," said Arty. "And all those machines the Progressive Restoration had must have been built somewhere, too."

  "Time to go have a talk with Aldo Verus," said Cole.

  "Why? He won't tell us the truth," said Cat.

  "But we might force him to tell a better grade of lie," said Cole. "And he might tell the truth. When he was using the big EMP weapon in New York, he was trying to take over the U.S. Doesn't mean he's not patriotic, he just hated the previous president. Why should he hate this one?"

  The guys looked around at one another, faces showing nothing—but the fact that they looked at one another meant something.

  "Absolutely right," said Cat. "Aldo Verus would have no reason to hate this president."

  Again, there was an ugly implication: That Torrent was exactly the president Aldo Verus wanted to install.

  But this was not the time to go into a discussion like this—not with four embassy personnel on the chopper, even if they were huddled miserably at the back. And the jeesh were talking through the Noodles, so there was no way they could be overheard, and they had their breathing masks on, there was no way a lip-reader could make sense of anything they said. But for all they knew, the Army kept a recording of everything they said over the Noodles. So when this discussion came, it needed to be under better circumstances than this.

  They refueled in midair just inside the Cameroon border, and then returned to Calabar and set down on the university grounds just south of the medical school. They all got out of the chopper, but the rescued embassy staffers transferred directly to a Marine chopper and headed out to sea. The Marines were wearing complete hazmat suits, and the message was clear: Nobody knew whether the hostages had been exposed to the nictovirus during their close association with Idi de Gaulle's bandits, so they were going to be quarantined for a while.

  A month? Or was there a blood test that would give results sooner?

  Just how good are our breathing masks? Cole wondered. We were in awfully close proximity to these guys, or at least the men who carried them were.

  After the Marine chopper lifted off and swung out toward the ocean, Cole took off his breathing mask. So did the rest of the jeesh, one by one.

  "Wouldn't it be just our luck," said Benny, "to take all this trouble saving them, only they already caught the nicto and so they all die anyway."

  "I don't know," said Mingo. "I think it would be their shitty luck, not ours."

  "Ah, General Coleman, to smell fresh air again!"

  Cole turned to Cat, who was taking a deep breath and stretching.

  Then, suddenly, Cat made an almost convulsive movement forward, bending at the waist. It brought his face within inches of Cole's, and at that exact moment, he sneezed.

  Cole felt the spray all over his face. Instinctively he recoiled, but part of recoiling is also a quick inhalation. A gasp. Drawing whatever was still in the air from the sneeze deep into Cole's lungs.

  "Cat," said Cole. "What the hell?"

  "It was kind of a surprise for me, too," said Cat. "Don't worry, not every sneeze is the nictovirus. I always sneezed coming out of scuba gear. Change of air, you know."

  Cole leaned close and whispered in Cat's ear. "Bullshit."

  Cat just laughed and turned away. "Suit yourself," he said.

  "No," said Cole. "You guys have all been 'suiting yourselves,' and I want to know what this is about."

  They were far from any of the university buildings, the Noodles were off, and the chopper crew certainly couldn't hear them as they worked on refueling and checking out their bird. This was as good a place as any.

  "Aw, guys, the general saw through our li
ttle show," said Mingo. "Don't worry, Cat, you did a good job, he's just smart, that's all."

  "What little show?" asked Cole.

  "There's no way to get home from this assignment," said Mingo, "as long as we haven't caught the nictovirus. Because we might have it. So they're going to leave us here for a long, long time."

  "And we don't want to," said Arty. "Don't get me wrong, we love our job, it's been great. We've just got a few things to do in the States. So if we get the nictovirus, and then live through it, we're immune, right? So we can go home and come back, go home and come back."

  Babe added, "I got the idea from Chinma. There he was, straight from Nigeria, right from the heart of the epidemic, and yet he walks into a conference room in the White House and the President puts his arm around his shoulders and nobody bats an eye. Because he's immune, see? The safest houseguest in the world."

  "Great plan," said Cole, "except for the thirty percent kill-off. Or more."

  "We thought of that," said Benny, "and we decided that we'd just have to chance it. We'll never get home till we've had the nicto. Right? So better at a time of our choosing. Whoever dies, dies."

  "Did it ever occur to you I might not feel that way?" asked Cole.

  "Yes," said Drew. "That's why we didn't discuss it with you."

  "Just went ahead and infected me," said Cole.

  "You're our commander," said Mingo. "We're a jeesh. All for one, one for all."

  Cole turned to Cat. "How did you catch it?"

  "Not the way those clowns from Muslim Nigeria caught it, if that's what you're thinking," said Cat. "I just caught it."

  "But not by accident."

  Cat raised his eyebrows. "Can't say," he said.

  "Well hey, thanks for maybe killing me, Cat."

  "No sweat," said Cat. "We saved one another's lives often enough before, at the mountain, you know, and here in Africa, that I figured your life was mine and mine was yours."