They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 34

Ray flipped on his poncho and began to cross between hospital and HQ. Up north, his orders were being carried Out. A mountain was being reduced to dust, maybe even the right one. "Mountain's gone, sir. Tomorrow I'll start at target number one and work down the list unless I hear different from you. Maybe I can get one more off tonight, but I doubt it."

"Thanks, Kat. I strongly suspect we needed that."

Kat signed off. Ray asked Lek to check with Dancer about the effect of the latest a.s.sault as he trudged to the HQ. It was near dinnertime, but Ray wasn't hungry. He went past his office to his quarters and stretched out on the bed. Maybe he'd sleep. Maybe he'd have a second chance to talk with the President and/or Provost. Maybe he could yet negotiate his way out of this.

The mule died halfway to the last rockbed. "Harry," Jeff suggested, "why don't you and Zed stay here. Maybe, once we've taken out the Proctor, whatever killed our mule will let it go."

"That sounds like a plan," Lil agreed.

"You're both lying b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Zed snapped. "The mule is hosed, and it's gonna stay hosed no matter who wins." But he was grimacing through the pain even as he grouched.

Zed and Harry stayed in the mule while Jeff and Lil selected the best-working of the two drills; they'd lug only one. The horses would carry as much explosives as possible. Lil pulled the battery out of the chosen drill, replaced it with a fresh one. "That'll do us."

"Travel light," Jeff said. "I'll do the drilling."

"Kid, don't tell an old miner how to do her business," the woman snapped, rummaging through the first-aid kit. "This is the spray we put on your hands last night. Puts a layer of plastic over 'em. I'll use this before I drill." She glanced back at the mule. "That rash on Zed don't look more than skin deep. This ought to hold them nanos long enough for me to get the job done."

Annie joined them, lost under a spare poncho. "What you doing?" Jeff demanded.

"Someone has to lead the third horse."

"Ned can do it."

"He's taking care of Harry and Zed."

"Then I'll lead both of them. You stay here."

"Listen, Mr. Bossy Sterling, I can walk with you, or I can follow a half mile behind you. Which you want?"

"d.a.m.n headstrong woman," Jeff snapped.

"Thank G.o.d you got one, mister. You want your kids to be half jellyfish?" Lil asked.

Jeff didn't know what a jellyfish was, but the words painted a pretty good image. Outgunned two females to one him, he led off with the first horse. Lil and Annie followed.

They left Jeff in the lead long enough for him to stomp out his huff; then Lil took point. Her reader showed a small trail that would take them most of the way, farther if they didn't mind walking a longer route. A few minutes on the trail's better footing showed the shortest route wasn't the fastest.

Before long, Jeff found himself walking beside Annie, holding her free hand. Lil pulled a bit ahead of them, leaving them a s.p.a.ce to talk. "Why, Annie? Why did you have to come? I can take care of this."

"Why are you here? Couldn't Lil do it all by herself?"

"Two can work faster. If something happens to her, I can take over," Jeff shot back without a moment's thought.

"If two is good, three is better," Annie said flatly.

"But I want you safe."

"And you don't think I want the same for you?"

That had Jeff. He walked along for a while, mulling that over. "Thank you for coming," he finally said.

"Keep that one, honey," Lil called over her shoulder. "He's dumb, but he's educatable."

Annie squeezed his hand. He felt like a million pounds of copper. An hour later, his legs seemed to weigh a million pounds. Slogging through the mud, up hills flowing like streams with runoff, downhill where the water and mud wanted him and his horse to slide like a wind skier, he and Annie struggled.

Twilight was a muddy memory before they cut cross-country for the ridge they wanted to bust up. Without the goggles, Jeff was pretty sure he'd have drowned crossing the field. The map showed a small creek flowing down the middle of the valley. Now it was wide and dangerous. It was Annie who suggested they go upstream to a marshy spot. It was still bad, but there was no deep creek. Horses and humans floundered, hunting for footing, finding a little here, enough there.

Across, they collapsed on the only dry ground around. Lil studied the ridge as they caught their breath. "I got an idea about that puppy. We don't have to blast that rock, just thump it enough to crack their connections."

"What are you getting at?" Jeff gulped.

"There's a lot of dirt and crud around the base of that hill. Solid rock inside it and along the top of the ridge. What if we drilled in through the dirt? No nanos there."

"But wouldn't the mud just slide down?" Annie asked.

"Not if we did it high enough up. Close to where the rock outcropping begins, but not actually on it. Game?"

"You're the one with thirty years of drilling," Jeff said.

It was muddy work; Lil sprayed the plastic on her hands and peeled it off every fifteen minutes. The holes were fewer, and deeper into the mountain. It was a gamble, but if the computer was learning how to fight them, Jeff was d.a.m.ned if he wouldn't show it humans can think of new ways to hit it.

It was midnight when they mounted their horses and rode around the valley, keeping to the hills. At the top of the valley, they paused while Lil set off the blast. In the dark, the ground shook, but they could see nothing of what they'd done.

Ray made his usual midnight trip to the bathroom. The crazy planet had healed his broken back but missed his plumbing problem. Oh, well, he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

The gift horse was waiting for him as he dozed off again.

The President sat in a plush leather chair behind a vast wooden desk. What must be the Provost stood off to one side, purple robes flowing over his three-piece suit, a staff in his right hand, a large, multisided silver ball at its head.

"Glad to see you two again," Ray quipped. "You talking to each other?" In answer to his question, they both glowered at him...ignoring each other.

"You are trying to annoy me," the Provost snapped.

"You are trying to exterminate me," Ray snapped back.

"You threatened me."

"After you threatened me," Ray pointed out.

"This is getting us nowhere," the President grumbled.

"And you"-the Provost turned on him-"you coddle them. Side with them. They attack me, and you push me back. Don't you see what they are doing? We should eradicate them."

"Maybe we should have. But that is not an issue anymore."

"Not an issue. You could control them. You can take away their memories, turn them to jelly! Strike, you idiot!"

"I can't. I just lost a major node up North. I no longer have that capacity," the President admitted sourly.

"You fool. You slow-witted imbecile. You've let them...let them..." At a loss for words, the Provost swung his staff at the President's head. A sword appeared in the President's hand. He slashed the Provost's staff in two. The Provost threw the half of the staff he held at the President and produced a sword of his own. The two went at it.

Ray awoke with the feeling of being too close to a bad brawl. Negotiation was not an option with folks who wouldn't stop fighting long enough to talk; that option was closed. Well, at least now he knew that Dancer had given them good targeting data. The threat to every human cell on the planet was gone. Feeling good about the day, Ray rolled over and went back to sleep.

SIXTEEN.

KAT CAME AWAKE at first light to find Nikki curled up to her back. They'd walked far into the night before calling it quits. Sharing the one sleeping bag and several blankets, they'd gotten little rest between shivers. Kat kicked herself for her poor planning. She'd a.s.sumed they'd arrive after a comfortable blimp ride and fire off the box; she hadn't really planned on roughing it. Even if she had, she reminded herself during the storms, they had dumped about everything over the blimp's side. This whole thing was one desperate gamble, thrown together at a gallop. To think, she'd argued with Lek for the honor. But the old guy would never have survived a night on the cold ground; best this one was left to the young.

Leaving the box out in the sun to warm, they inventoried what food the mechs had crammed into their pockets before they jumped. Their flight suits had a lot of pockets. Still, they were going to be hungry if they didn't get resupplied soon.

While the crew breakfasted on about one-sixth of their chow, Kat called in. "Colonel, it's a bit colder up here than we planned and we're kind of shy on food. Any consideration you might give to running another blimp up here would be gratefully appreciated."

"I'd love to, Kat"-she could hear regret in the Colonel's voice and knew what would come next-"but the weather's not going to let us."

"Looked that way from here, sir," Kat said. "We're ready to start. I figured we might hit the guy ruining our weather. Any changes in priorities?"

"Based on a visit I had last night with the Pres and Prov, target twelve was the right one. The Pres has lost his capacity to mess with our DNA. No matter what happens now, the species lives." That drew a feeble cheer from Kat's crew.

"Lek says Dancer would rework your priorities. Hit target nine-repeat, nine-to put the Weather Proctor out of business. The Prov is priority one through five. Take them out next. The Pres is the rest of the targets. Cut him up as you can."

"I had a bad feeling about our priorities," Kat growled, "when the DNA thing was last on the list. We'll whale on the Provost today. The Pres tomorrow."

"Good. One more thing." The concern in the Colonel's voice sent a cold shiver down Kat's spine. "Our team blowing up rock outcroppings has developed rashes from nanos. We're still looking into that. You're not drilling holes, but you might want to stick to recently eroded areas. Streams and the like."

"Thanks for the warning, Colonel. Now if you'll excuse us, the box is warm. Let's not keep the Weather Proctor waiting."

Kat turned to her crew. "Shall we, folks?"

Jeff was exhausted, struggling to keep his head up as the sky lightened. They'd ridden or walked through the night. If Lil's reader was right, the mule was over the next ridge.

Jeff paused there, to let his horse rest and Annie and Lil catch up. When he looked for the mule, it wasn't there. There was lumps where it should have been. "What's wrong?" Annie asked as Jeff's stomach went into free fall. He pointed.

"Sweet Mother of G.o.d," Annie breathed.

"Oh, s.h.i.t, not Zed, not the boy!" Lil shouted, racing down the hill Jeff ran after her, threw her to the ground.

"We don't know what's down there. We've got to go slow."

They did, once Annie brought the horses down. Halfway there, Jeff stopped. "One of us has to talk to the Colonel." He handed his commlink to Annie. "You punch that b.u.t.ton to talk."

"What do you mean?"

"You're staying a good quarter mile behind us," he told her. "We'll get close enough to see. We tell you, you tell him. No arguments now, Annie. You know I'm right."

"Why me?"

"Because I say so. Right, Lil?"

"Sometimes you listen to a guy, honey."

Lil and Jeff stepped off, leaving the horses with Annie. "What do you think happened?" Jeff whispered when they were far enough away from Annie.

"The nanos got 'em. That Provost b.a.s.t.a.r.d is a fast learner."

"You feeling any itching, any rash from last night?"

"No. I wish to h.e.l.l I'd thought about that idea sooner. I should have started thinking when Zed first said he itched," she said bitterly. As they got closer, they saw that the ceramic and cloth portions of the mule were untouched. Anything that had metal in it was gone.

"I don't see any bodies," Jeff called. "There's not enough metal in us that the nanos would have taken everything."

Lil pointed to a stream. A hank of hair covered a shrunken skull. "That's Zed. I guess he tried to wash them off."

They edged around the mule. The trailer looked unharmed. Harry and Ned must have pushed it away from the mule, away from themselves before the nanos could attack it. Where were they? Run off when the agony drove them crazy with the pain? Jeff searched the early twilight but saw nothing.

"Jeff, you wait here." Lil stepped gingerly to the back of the trailer, pulled the tarp up. "Yeah, gear's here." She tapped her commlink, told Annie to come in but keep her distance. "The nanos have tried us humans' metal. Let's see that they don't develop a taste for us. Me, I like being at the top of the food chain."

Jeff retrieved his commlink from Annie, keeping her from getting too close. Since Lil didn't seem to think it was a private's job to bring the Colonel bad news first thing in the morning, Jeff made the call.

"You sure it's nanos?" the Colonel asked.

"No, sir. None of us is qualified to made a professional a.s.sessment on something no one's ever seen. And I ain't got any special test gear, sir," Jeff snapped. Tired, he knew he was losing his temper. d.a.m.n, what did the man expect?

There was silence on the net. "I'm sorry," the Colonel gently said as he began again. "I know Ned and Harry were good friends of yours. Last night I thought I had the two computers fighting each other," the Colonel sighed. "Guess they were able to pull off a few other things as well. The box is working up North, but that's about all that went right with that task force. The blimp crashed, and they lost most of their supplies. Kat's doing what she can."

"Sorry, sir." Jeff felt chagrined fussing at a man who was carrying them all. He found himself trying to cheer the colonel up. "Harry and Ned shoved the trailer away from the mule before they died. We've got explosives and batteries to keep the drills going. If you've got more targets, we'll do 'em," Jeff offered without thinking and with immediate regret.

"None at the moment. Stay clear of the nanos."

Jeff heartily agreed with that sentiment. Then he remembered. "Sir, Lil came up with an idea last night that let us take out our last hill without getting bit." Jeff quickly explained. "Those computers aren't the only ones that can adjust."

"Outstanding. Lil's one tough trooper, tell her that for me. I'll get back when I've got a target for you."

Jeff pa.s.sed the word to Lil; she smiled weakly at the praise. They packed the horses with the remaining explosives and batteries. Jeff slung a laser drill over one shoulder, his rifle over the other. "Shall we head for the base?"

"Retreat, h.e.l.l," Lil spat. "I'm just getting started. If they need us, it ain't back there." She turned to face the east. "The enemy's that way. I got a score to settle for Zed. But you two, you can go on back."

Jeff shivered. Scared, really scared for the first time. The thought of Ned and Harry reduced to husks somewhere out there haunted him. All yesterday's excitement and courage was down the toilet. He eyed Annie without looking her in the face, wanting to take her home, ashamed to let Lil tackle the computer alone. Annie looked in both directions, then took one horse from Lil and headed east. With a shiver of fear, Jeff followed them.

Five minutes later, the morning break in the weather ended, slamming wind and rain in their faces.

Ray didn't bother with a staff meeting. Mary was living on the wall; he went there. They found a quiet place out of the way of the troops for their talk.