They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 38

How many more of these battles could he take?

Ray stood, eyed the field of burning tanks, then turned to the line of defenders. The Dean was looking his way, shock blanking his face. The next gun pit down was a blackened wreck. Four computer images would not answer the next muster.

"Ca.s.sie, fall back! Get out of there!" screamed Mary's voice on net. On the wall, Ca.s.sie held her arms up, as if to stop a runaway train with the wave of her hand.

Surrounded by the mob, Ca.s.sie went down. Du didn't see anyone hit her; the rabble just swallowed her, stomped her into the mud. "Stand by," Du whispered over the squad net, hoping, begging for orders.

Mary's mule screeched to a halt where the four or five hundred riot police struggled to form a line to keep the raging mob away from their families. "All personnel, this is Captain Rodrigo speaking." Mary's voice had a bitter resignation to it as it came over the general net. "The wall has been breached. Marines, by riot police platoons, prepare to fall back."

As leaders called preparatory orders to their formations on the wall, the base public-address system came alive with Mary's voice. "All families on base, please a.s.semble in the three largest buildings: the hangar, the fabrication building, and the factory. I repeat: All women, children, and others not in riot formations, please a.s.semble in the fab, hangar, or factory buildings. The crowd outside the base is about to break in. We cannot keep you safe if you do not go now to those buildings."

Around the wagons on the airstrip, mothers gathered little ones in their arms, grandmothers herded running children, like mother geese chasing goslings. Here and there, very elderly were helped along by older children. In a hurried wave of humanity, the latest arrivals fled across the fields toward the safety of the large buildings. It was gonna get awfully cramped inside.

Mary continued on net. "Platoons one through ten, form up on the hangar building." Off-duty platoons were already forming around each of the three main refuge buildings. Now the five struggling to form a s.h.i.+eld wall began to back up. Their flanks hung in midair. Some of the rampaging mob slipped around them. Most were unaware of the open s.p.a.ce so close.

"Permission to shoot down a few folks outflanking the retreating riot formation," Heave asked on net.

"Permission denied," snapped Mary. "Platoons eleven through twenty, fall back on the factory. Twenty-one through thirty, fall back on the fab. All navy and marine personnel, fall back on the hospital."

"Ma'am, does that mean us leading platoons have to leave our people?" came like a shot over net. Du could hear Mary twisting slowly on the fire spit of that one. She wanted the marines at the hospital, but if those platoons lost their leaders.h.i.+p now, they'd never form, never hold the rioters away from their families. Du shouted for his crew to get moving; they double-timed for the stairs.

"Sergeant Dumont, how fast can you get your squad on the hospital roof?"

"We're moving, ma'am!" Du shouted. "Five minutes at most!"

"Middies?"

"Chief Barber here, ma'am. I've already got middies covering the hospital's doors. All the navy not with riot police are here. We're standing by."

"Marines a.s.signed riot platoons will stay with them," Mary ordered. "Du, I want you on that hospital roof yesterday."

"We were," Du grinned as he hit the bottom of the stairs and bolted out a side door. Kip slammed it behind him, made sure it was locked, and the six galloped for the hospital.

"Marines coming in!" his lead shouted as he hit the door. Five middies, a petty officer first cla.s.s providing mature judgment, looked at them over the sights of their M-6s. Du spotted one of his marines disappearing up a flight of stairs and followed. He burst onto the front of the roof as Heave led her fire team from the rear stairwell. With quick hand signals, Du sent pairs of his marines to cover each corner.

"Du here. Hospital roof is secure. Perimeter is under my field of fire. We await your orders, Captain."

"I'm coming" was Mary's answer.

Du evaluated the situation. The fleeing families from the runway had washed up on three large buildings and been sucked inside. To his left, a late navy type was pointing Ms. San Paulo and her cronies toward the fab. The circle chair seemed unable to believe the starfolk would abandon her and their HQ. Mary's mule detoured to pick up two hobbling elders and race across to the fab. Abandoning the mule, Mary double-timed to the hospital.

"Now hear this," she said, breathless, and punctuated by the slamming of a door. "This hospital is where we make our stand. No retreat. We hold for as long as the Colonel needs us to. I plan to wait them out. We will show no lights. We will take no actions unless I say so. I don't want those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds roaming our base to even suspect we're here. Understood?" There were a lot of quiet nods around Du.

Across the field, the first five platoons completed their withdrawal to the hangar in good order. Others formed a defensive line around the fab and the factory. Most of the mob, attracted by the smell, headed for the dining hall. Someone had even left the lights on; it drew them like moths. Mary was at Du's elbow, watching the mob rush the mess, a smile on her lips. "Supper's long gone. Unless they can eat tables and chairs, they're going to be as hungry as they were."

"Where's the food stored?"

"In the fab, factory, and hangar. Where else?"

On the runway, wagons were being turned over, knocked aside, torn apart as rioters hunted for food. "They know what they want, but they got no idea where to find it. I figure they'll spend what's left of tonight knocking around the wrong places and wasting a lot of energy on nothing."

"Unless they find us," Du pointed out.

"As the Colonel says, they also serve who only stand and wait. We start shooting and every one of 'em'll be here. The doors are locked. That should keep the likes of them out."

"And the guards around the other buildings."

"Will draw them. But I don't expect any concerted action against any one place."

"So we just stand and wait."

"That's the idea. The Colonel's fighting the main battle. Jeff and Kat are supporting him as they can. Our job is to keep anyone from jiggling his elbow. We can do that just as well without firing a shot as we can by mowing 'em down. You got a preference?"

Du slung his rifle over his shoulder, happy to keep it there until the sun came up.

Doc Isaacs served by standing, watching the kids and the Colonel. Even without the monitors he could see the heat rising from them. Their temperatures were skyrocketing.

"Medic," he called softly, "bring me every bottle of rubbing alcohol we've got. Mary, I need two middies in here."

Mary rattled off names; in a second, middies were there, rifles slung across their chests. "They're burning up," Jerry told them. "We've got to wipe them down in alcohol, help them evaporate the heat. Wash 'em," he said pouring the liquid straight from the bottle onto Ray's head. A cloth caught the runoff. Jerry swabbed his neck and chest. In the goggles, Ray's body was red, wreathed in steaming waves.

"What's going on in there?" he wondered.

"You think you're so smart, dancing around me, hindering me a little here, diverting me a little there. Enough of that. Know the full power of my intelligence." Out of the dark surrounding Ray, a blinding light bore down upon him, compressed and pressured him. He could not run from it, hide from it, survive it. It ground him down, into dust, into atoms, into quarks. Then it would blow him away into the cosmic void.

"You can do this," Ray agreed, holding on to himself with his fingernails. "But it doesn't mean anything."

"It means everything!" the President bellowed.

"Even if you wipe me from existence, you still will not know who you are? What you could be? Why you've become like this? You won't know anything?"

"I know everything." The light flashed red, then white-hot. "I know everything there is to know."

"Then where are the Three? Why did they quit sending their young to you? What did you do to cause them to go away?" Ray jabbed at the light, hit it with all the force he could muster.

And the light flinched back from him.

"Why did you never ask the Three what was happening when fewer and fewer of their young came? Why did you say nothing as the numbers change? How could you miss that?"

From behind Ray, Jon, Rose, then David and the others joined in. "How could you have missed the change? How could you have seen nothing important?"

"I didn't need to ask. I know everything," the President insisted. "I know everything worth knowing."

"Then tell me why the Three quit coming."

"That is not important."

"Wasn't teaching the young of the Three important?" Ray shot back. The kids echoed him, "Wasn't it? Wasn't it?"

"Of course it was. It was the most important activity in the universe."

"But they quit sending their young to you. Why? Had their young become unimportant to the Three?"

"No, they loved their young."

"If they loved their young, and they quit sending them to you, what were you doing that hurt them, made the Three want to protect their young from you?"

"That's not why they quit coming!"

"Then why did they?"

"Why did they?" the kids echoed. "Why did they?"

"They just did."

"You don't know why." Ray hit him with all he had.

Behind him the kids and surviving computer personalities. .h.i.t just as hard. "You don't know. You don't know why."

"I don't need to know that. It isn't important," the President insisted.

"Then what you did wasn't important."

Jeff swung the laser drill off his shoulders and held it out to Lil. She had the spray can of plastic skin out. As she started to coat her hands with it, it sputtered. A dribble fell onto her palms, puddled, and did not grow.

"Lil, you can't drill with no protection."

"Looks like I got to," she said, spreading what she had, then reaching for the drill.

Jeff held on to it. "You can't."

"Son, I can d.a.m.n well do what I want to. You and your girl get the explosives ready."

Jeff let go of the laser. Beside him, Annie tugged at his elbow. "Let's get the charges. We've got to make this fast. I can hear more people coming."

Lil drilled, her hands turning red, her teeth grit against the pain. As soon as Lil headed for a new hole, Jeff and Annie poured, set the detonator, and moved on. They had only four holes drilled when Lil set the laser down.

"Hurry up, kid. I can see the poor zombies. Let's blow this one and get out of here." Jeff did the last one, shooing Annie off as soon as the hole was patted down. Detonator set, he started running.

Lil, Annie, and the horses were hardly far enough away when Lil shouted "Fire in the hole!" Jeff threw himself down on the muddy ground as she flipped the switch.

The short fire line blew track and rocks high and wide. Two of the zombies took a rail in the gut, cutting them in half. One of those left standing looked familiar...Vicky?

Jeff had no time to waste. He was up and running before the last rock fell. At the horses, he helped Lil up on the one unburdened horse; her hands were a bleeding pulp. "Ride wide of the road," she ordered. "There's bound to be a section of track that doesn't have too many zombies. We'll blow it."

"You can't drill," Jeff whispered.

"I know. You drill the next holes."

Jeff's stomach lurched, terror flooded him. But Lil had said the words so quietly, so evenly, it seemed only fair.

"I'll drill the one after that," Annie said.

Kat's wrist unit woke her to darkness and frost. A second night sleeping on the ground did little to help her exhaustion or aching body. The air was cold. "Crew, time to get up."

"It's dark. The box needs sunlight," Nikki whimpered.

"And it will get that light best and first from the top of a hill" Kat reminded everyone, including herself.

"Come on, crew," the copilot growled through a yawn, "Rhynia didn't die so we could sleep." That got the crew moving.

"The sun's going to catch the tip of that hill," Kat said, pointing at a gra.s.s-covered foothill rising a good thousand meters ahead of them. "We need to get to the top of it as fast as we can this morning."

"What about the nanos?" a crewman asked.

"As I said," Kat repeated slowly, "we need to get to the top as fast as we can." Folks were beyond tired, but the words sank in. They'd stayed to the river bottom yesterday, avoided land where the computer might have nanos lurking. If they waited for the sun to catch the river bottom and warm the box, the battle might be over before they struck another blow.

The copilot reached for the pole. "We'll be going uphill, so shortest people up front, taller in back. Kat, you're shorter than Nikki. You take the lead."

Mary knelt beside Du, surveying the mayhem. The rioters had found no food in the dining hall. From a hundred meters away, they listened to the sound of smas.h.i.+ng plates, overturning tables. Someone tried to batter a hole in the wall with a chair. "Stupid vandalism," Du growled. "Hope it makes them feel better."

"Looks like they're gonna make a go at the fabrication building." Mary pointed. The mob had thickened up there. Shoving, shouts drew more people, like bystanders to a fire.

"Chief Max here, Captain. Permission to use tear gas?"

"Granted, Chief. The wind is blowing toward the crowd."

"I know, ma'am" was punctuated by a pop as the first canister flew over the heads of the s.h.i.+eld wall to fall twenty meters beyond. The rioters began to choke, scream, run.

"They don't know about gas or they'd try to throw it back." Du spoke from experience.

"Let us be grateful for small favors," Mary said.

"You're using those three buildings and their guards to draw the rioters away from us," Du observed, not exactly accusing Mary.

"There was no way the police would leave their families. If I'd ordered them here, I'd have had a mutiny on my hands." Mary breathed the words, tasted them, balanced her guilt against the hard reality beneath her logic. "The rioters go where they see people trying to stop them. We're just a darkened, empty building. They tried the mess hall, found nothing. Now they're looking." Mary eyed the eastern sky; the clouds showed no hint of color. "Kat is farther east, up where she is on north continent. I hope she gets daylight good and early."

Doc Isaacs studied the kids. He'd stabilized their temperatures at a hundred, hundred and one. They could survive this for a while. It was their pulse that scared him. It had been over a hundred for a good hour. He'd rigged them all with IVs, was feeding them water and glucose to keep them going. Should he add a drug to the mix, something to slow the heart?

Would it help? Would it wipe them out when they needed their last reserve?

Jerry huddled over them, wanting to do more, scared spitless even to try.

"You don't matter" came at Ray hard and sharp. "You are nothing compared to me. For two million years I have run this planet. I make the weather, I make mountains vanish. You have discovered one of my tools. Do you think that makes you equal to me? I could turn you off like you do a light."

"Maybe yesterday," Ray shot back, "but we outthought you. You've existed for two million years but done nothing with it. Two million years ago we huddled in cold caves, not even able to make fire, unable to say a word to each other. Today we leap stars. It was we who came to you where you squatted on your haunches, not even keeping what you already had."

"That is not true."