They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 29

"Understood, sir. But we'll get 'em first."

Yes, Jeff whispered to himself, now we get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who have Annie. Dear G.o.d, let her be safe.

"Up, s.l.u.t!" the voice shouted as a foot took Annie in the ribs. "All of you, to the horses. We've got work to do." Annie shook Nikki awake; sleeping was all they could do in this stinking barn. It seemed forever that they'd been here.

"About time," "What took you so long?," and "Where are those d.a.m.n greens?" were the greetings Pretty Boy's words brought from his thugs. Annie stood, waited patiently for someone to tell her what they wanted her and Nikki to do.

"Some old b.i.t.c.h in that stinking mudhole finally decided to take Vicky's copper," Pretty Boy bragged. "Told on her own son. He doesn't know he'll be leading us in tonight." That brought laughs that held no humor.

"b.i.t.c.h must have believed the weather report" drew more derisive laughter. Annie wondered; she'd heard the talk of four monster hurricanes headed at them out of season. Everyone here scorned the story. Annie trusted what Jeff had told her about the super computers the Colonel was fighting.

"Maybe the b.i.t.c.h wasn't so dumb. I talked to Miss Vicky while I was in town. She believes that story enough to evacuate Richland. She definitely wants the box. Wants to be there when the starbase disappears."

"Can we get more money?" the woman asked. Annie tried to shrink into the shadows. The men talked bad; the woman was bad.

"She doubled her offer if we get the box to her in the next three days." That brought joy all around.

"She'll triple that when we have the box," the woman said with a soft smile. Annie tried to suppress a shiver, to hold perfectly still and stay unnoticed. The look in the woman's eyes...Annie didn't want that focused on her or Nikki.

The men saddled horses, checked air rifles, got supplies. The woman came over to Annie, a knife in her hand. "When we find them, you'll do what I tell you or die worse than the woman at the house. You understand me, you two mud s.l.u.ts?"

"Yes," Annie stammered, keeping her hands folded, covering her wallet. For all this time, she'd seen no chance to escape. She'd held Dumont's pistol and not used it. Today she'd find a way. Today she'd use it.

But not now. Not here, where there was no way out. She might kill the woman, but the men would get her. That was the counsel of despair, the old priest said in his sermons. No child of grace need taste despair, no matter what happened. Annie wondered if any child of grace had ever been in as big a mess as this. Somehow she doubted it.

Ray dropped by Lek's shop. The old man was shaking his head. "That was one h.e.l.l of an experience, Colonel."

"Tell me about it later. Lek, you remember that rock in the cave I had you look at the day after Mary ran her first ore tap?"

"Yep."

"I read your report on it. No activity of any sort, you said then. What do you think now?"

"d.a.m.n, sir, it could be pudding pie, for all I know."

"Bring it in here. Then you and Net Dancer go over it, see if you can make it active again."

"Sir, that AI is gonna be a busy little routine for the next couple of hours, working what we loaded on the blimp."

"Can't be too much of it there. How much bandwidth can our radio carry?" Ray frowned.

"Seems so, boss, but I don't think those things are as big as we think they are. I mean, they're big, but not like we think of as big. I don't know." Lek took his hat off, wiped his forehead. "I tried to get it to explain what it was doing. It laughed. I've never had a computer laugh at me. Said it would be easier for me to explain my network to some naked savage just hacking the first spear point out of flint than it would be for it to explain what it was doing. And you know, boss?" Ray nodded into Lek's pregnant pause. "I believe it. d.a.m.ned if I don't. I don't know about bringing that thing home. Before I talked to it, I thought it would be great, what it could do, what schooling our kids could get. Now, I don't mind saying I'm spooked. That puppy is spooky s.h.i.t."

Ray didn't blink. "Take part of Net Dancer out there when you get the stone. Can't risk damaging it accidently. Maybe he can tell you how to cut it loose." Ray finished what he intended to say. He'd heard Lek's worry. Someday he'd think it through, but not now. Right now, he had four megahurricanes headed his way and needed every trick he could get his hands on to stop them. After that, he'd think this through. a.s.suming there was anything after, after that.

Ray had been in some weird staff meetings in his time. Today set a record he hoped never to break. Kat and Doc represented normal; Lek sat like a stone statue, just back with the rock. The padre represented the locals. Blimp pilot Rhynia Loramor had a pile of weather maps in front of her; Harry flipped through papers. Mary was late; Ray would start without her. The humans congregated around the right side of Ray's battle board, casting uncomfortable glances at what stood on the left side.

There was the Dean and his twelve; Net Dancer had arranged it so all of them could access the local net. That might be another reason why Lek was so quiet; his net was totally compromised. Ray considered his options and decided to be glad Net Dancer had changed sides. Each of the dozen images that sporadically haunted Ray's dreams now was a holograph, thirty centimeters tall, standing along the edge of the battle board, staring at the map Ray projected on it of South and North Continent. Most were in tweed jackets, their attempt at battle dress past. Net Dancer-or at least as much of him as wasn't tied up on the blimp-wore a white lab coat complete with the ancient and required pocket protector of the technonerd.

"I'm isolating us from the two main protagonists. Are the rest of you here?" Ray began, making a circle around the table.

Mary came in, worry dripping with the rain from her face. "Colonel, we've got a problem."

"Later, Captain; I've got an agenda, and we're sticking to it." Mary frowned, but settled into a chair.

Ray went on. "Are the twelve of you in here yet?"

"Yes." The board turned brown around the base as the Dean walked across it. "Though I don't know what good it will do. The P and P can follow us anytime they want."

"They can, but we can make it hard on them. Net Dancer, what's the main avenue of approach to the base?"

"The line left by the Gardener. It runs up this railroad bed, then follows this road." The mentioned line lit up in red. "Your farmers don't mess around with roads, so I guess the Gardener found them the safest routes to use."

"We'll cut it. Harry?"

"It's mainly farmland. This route looks the most likely to me, too. What do you want done?"

"Since you fellows are inside," Ray said, glancing at the Dean, "we blow it. In several places. Long, deep gashes that'll take some repairing. Harry, take out a team of marines as soon as we're done. Captain, can you spare Ca.s.sie?"

"Yes, sir." Mary came out of what was bothering her long enough to start calling orders into her commlink.

That settled, Ray moved to his second item. "Right now the Pres and Provost can draw on their northern a.s.sets. I propose we eliminate them, cut them off from the North as they cut you off."

Net Dancer shook his head. "There may be just one good path into this out-of-the-way mudhole, but there are hundreds to North Continent."

"We eliminate North," Ray said simply. That got everyone's attention. "These are the mountains that serve as their main power base." Ray circled the pink and blue areas of the map, elevated them into topo relief. The Dean nodded. "We make them go away as soon as we have our hands on the vanishing box."

"You can't do that" came from several of the tiny images...and Mary.

Ray waved Mary to silence and faced his allies. "This is war. We enforce our will upon the enemy or, failing that, destroy him. The President and Provost depend on these for their strength. To enforce our will, these have to go. If we have to kill the President and Provost, these go."

"But, but," the Dean sputtered, "those were our nodes, too. You destroy them and we'll be forever rebuilding ourselves."

"You don't have them now," Ray said.

"But we'll get them back."

"Not the way things are going. You were losing last time we talked. If things keep going the way they are, you will lose. There won't be any *you' left to reoccupy those nodes." These folks really didn't know war. You don't win one cheap.

"But if you destroy them, you'll destroy us?"

That stopped Ray in his tracks. "I don't understand."

Net Dancer was the one who stepped forward to look up at Ray with tiny, earnest eyes. "We are here. Our decision-making processes are here. So much of what we know, have done, recall, is there, stored in networks under those mountains. We brought what we needed to survive. But to do more, to really live, we need those rich memories."

"But I see what the Colonel is talking about," the Dean said, coming forward. "For us, those are memories. For P & P, those are sources of new nanos, planning, and power. They are reviewing what happens down here, learning what works and doesn't work. Up there, they are learning how to win this war. What we face here are only their long arms and fingers, so to speak. I know it will be hard if the Colonel wipes out those nodes, but we do have backups scattered around. We could rebuild ourselves."

"Not all of them," Net Dancer insisted.

"Enough." The Dean suddenly cut Dancer off. "Colonel, I agree, as soon as you can, make those mountains vanish."

Ray turned to Lek and Mary. "Lek, as soon as you've got the vanishing box, take the shuttle north."

"Yes, sir" and "No, sir" greeted that order. Ray said nothing to Mary's objection.

She leaned forward into his silence. "I was at the shuttle hangar just now. Somebody slashed every tire on it last night. We've only got two spares. The shuttle's going nowhere."

"Who did it?"

"Sir, we got ten, fifteen thousand strangers on this base. It could have been anyone."

"Our security patrols-" Ray started.

"Walked past it every thirty minutes last night, on schedule. None noticed it was a bit lower than usual."

Ray leaned back in his chair, trying to adjust. Were the Provost or President already controlling people on his base? So far they never actually made anyone do anything. Which of his human enemies had decided the shuttle gave him too much power and ordered someone inside his fence to take it out?

Ray'd been trained to take a lance in the chest and keep moving. A commander had to keep moving; if he didn't, the command didn't. Should he drop the northern sally or try to make it happen some other way? He'd browbeat his allies into it. Could he walk away from it?

Down the table, the blimp pilot shuffled her papers. "Sir, could you bring up the latest weather on that board of yours?" Ray did. "These things rotate counterclockwise," she said, half to herself. "If the blimp down South doesn't get back before the winds pick up, I've ordered him to loop around the mountains and cruise up the other side. We've never been there. He's kind of jazzed on the prospects. Me, I've always wanted to ride a hurricane. We can't go north against those winds, but if you ride them south, they turn westward, then north," she grinned.

Ray shook his head. What was it with stick and rudder people? You put a wing, s.p.a.ceship, balloon under someone and they started thinking they were indestructible G.o.ds. "You want to ride it all the way around?"

"The winds will tear you apart," Mary said.

Rhynia pursed her lips. "Not if I stay far enough out, where the winds are less than forty miles per hour, not shifting and ripping at a hundred twenty. h.e.l.l, I pull this off, every gas bag jockey that ever flies will know my name," she crowed.

The Dean shook his head. "There are some things that were never fully covered in my databases. Go ahead, make it vanish. I'll want to write a whole new one anyway after watching you."

"It's what happens when you go to war, Dean. You never know what the human heart is good for until you ask 'em for more than they ever thought they could give. Now, folks, let's get busy."

FOURTEEN.

JEFF SCOWLED; THEY d.a.m.n near lost the sky eye twice to stalls as they turned it around into the stiff headwind. After much cussing from Bo, Dumont's sensor boss, the mule's display came to life. Jeff and Du studied it, the sergeant's fingers flitting over the screen. "We got a group west of us, a big one coming up from the south east of us, and one squatting in the middle. Not to mention a few cl.u.s.ters of two or four. Bo, they players or just innocent bystanders?"

"My gear says they got a human heart, not what's in it."

"Any of them women?" Jeff asked, hoping.

"I can get you a pulse rate, son, but your guess is as good as mine as to whether it's a woman or an anxious man." For another hour they drove the winding trail, getting a feel for the people on the mountain this dreary day. The trail got rougher, narrower, the going slower.

Finally the driver halted. "Far as we go, boss."

"Let's mount up, marines. It's a good day for a ride."

"I'll stay here and relay for you," Bo offered.

"Pack it in, old man. The higher we get, the better line you'll have on your bird and the less likely we'll have a line on this mule. Everybody out. Everybody rides."

"Those things-can we really get up on them?" one marine asked, voice quivering. He looked more scared of a horse than of a fight. Probably been in more fights. Jeff helped him mount.

An hour later, they were over one ridge and climbing another. They rode slowly, watching for falling limbs, ready to dodge for their life. Their horses stepped carefully over downed branches. "Blimp's coming up," Bo called.

"Pa.s.s them our three targets. See if they can tell anything about 'em." A red "X" appeared on Du's map reader marking the disappearing box-in the middle of the unmoving group. "Thought so. Let's see the imagery." The reader zoomed the picture down. It got hazy before it showed much definition.

"Rocks," Jeff offered. "But we knew that."

"I told 'em you can't see a cave from orbit," Bo laughed.

Du enlarged the picture until it held all three groups and themselves. He frowned. "Southern group is moving in fast. Other group coming in from the North with us is moving kind of careful." Du worked the map through several lines of sight the stationary group would have on all of them as they closed on it.

"What are you up to?" Jeff asked.

"I'll show you in a little while" was Du's only answer.

A half hour got them up another ridge; Du called a halt. "Bo, set up a rocket to lob a charge against that rock slab in one hour." Du pointed out a rocky promontory that shot up solid and steep five miles across the valley from them. "Lay down a string of monitors along this trail."

"Whatever, boss," Bo answered. He dismounted and got to work. Du again studied the topography map on his reader. "We'll need to be on that ridge when the fun starts," he told Jeff.

"What fun?" Jeff asked.

"Wait and see, buddy, wait and see."

A hard hour's ride later, they were atop the next ridge, Right on schedule, the rocket arched across to slam into the foot of the giant rock. Jeff kept his eyes on Du's reader as echoes came in from the listening posts they'd left behind. Just as they had when Mary thumped the hill, the soundings quickly painted the inside of the mountains, showing cracks, crevices, caves. Then part of the picture went blank. Jeff looked up and swallowed a yelp. The rock ma.s.sif was gone!

"Kind of expected that," Du drawled. Jeff reached over Du's shoulder to tap several keys on his map reader. The heartbeats of the parties they'd been following appeared. The group coming up from the South was close to the missing mountain. Jeff counted hearts and came up shy by half.

"You knew!" Jeff accused.

"I thought it might," Du answered evenly.

"Annie, Nikki-"

"Are most likely with the other group," Du cut him off. "Now let's get moving, crew. I don't know when they can take their next shot, but I don't want to be here."

Sullenly, Jeff followed Du. The man had said he was tired of being the Colonel's killing dog, but he was playing fast and loose with Annie's life. Jeff ought to...ought to...There was nothing Jeff could do.

Ten minutes later, Dumont dropped back to ride beside Jeff. "Look, I'm sorry about back there, but I have to know what's up ahead, and all our s.h.i.t isn't telling me hear enough. I'm almost certain Annie's safe, but I got to do everything I can to keep my crew here safe. They've saved my a.s.s too many times. You understand."

"No, I don't," Jeff answered, then thought more on it. "Maybe I do, but I'm not sure I want to."