by Pam Uphoff
"Look at it! Look! Where does it go?"
She shrugged off the irritating grip, ick, Jack Kelso. She kept a part of her mind compartmentalized, attending to the snake, and stood up to look. The double rings weren't erupting with light any more. Instead they formed the lip of a whirlpool. She couldn't see anything but spinning white chaos down it, but a brave tech was holding a camm aimed down it, and the screen on the wall showed green rolling hills, a few bushes, sand dunes, and far out on the horizon, the ocean.
Someone tossed something through the rings.
The swirling slowed, the screen showed an iris of white closing down on the grassy scene, then it was gone. Pain stabbed through her head. Rebeccah sat down. The snake inflated with a backwash of power, and she held it firmly until the power slowly reversed directions again. The rings spat colors, the snake quivered, settled. She released the snake-loop carefully and let the power drain slowly away. She took her time removing the electrodes, and finally found the energy to stagger back to the cafeteria and take a soda from the fridge. The sugar helped, and she made a note to either sugar up before tests, or have something on hand for after.
At dinner, Rebeccah kept her ears tuned to the manager's table.
AK followed her lead, and poked Jason and glared at the other boys when they got too loud.
". . . search couldn't locate my phone anywhere." Harry sounded disgusted.
"That'll teach you to throw things around. Civilian terrain matching isn't good enough, we're going to ask the military to help us identify that particular patch of ground." Ted McNiff was all bright eyed and excited.
"Unless Chou knows what he's talking about and it really was a parallel world, not our world."
"The Chous are not very forthcoming about the prior experimentation with those rings. They must have been working on them in China, and he had information on Russian experiments as well."
"I don't understand why it had an effect on the fusion bottle prototype at all, let alone why the current picked up. I suppose it could just be a coincidence that it happened while the rings were powered up. It was just in standby mode." Doctor Vang shifted nervously in his chair, shot a glance over at some of the telies.
"And instead of current being pulled from the outside circuit, it was reversed, with the outside circuit picking up the electricity. Very odd. And unexpected, but the over revved rings opened up to somewhere else, so we may have had a fortuitous phasing of two experiments. The meters show that the whole complex drew less power than usual from the grid during the experiment, once the fusion bottle lit off. And there wasn't any fusion going on, we were just running a test on how long we could hold the magnetic bottle." Dr. Brent shoveled his dinner in. "We'll do it again tomorrow, with and without the magnetic bottle."
Rebeccah lean over to AK. "I was fooling with their bottle, supporting it and squeezing it a bit."
"Ooo, was it good for you too?"
She shot a glare over her shoulder at Barry. Turned her back on him. Nasty creep.
"Why, thank you."
"Get out of my head."
The joke was all over the school the next day. Any chance of keeping the connection between a telie manipulating the mag bottle and the energy surge a secret was gone.
Chapter Eight
East of Delhi
India
15 April 2113
"We must drive our allies to drink, every four years, eight if they're lucky, with a new economic policy that's sure to impact theirs and a new foreign policy that's just plain stupid." Wolfgang put down the binocs and pulled the infrared goggles down over his eyes again. Night missions were a pain. His eyes didn't quite work they way everyone else's did. He purely hated the goggles, but with the team within arms reach, he had to have them on.
India and Pakistan had been in what amounted to a state of war for decades. A century. But it been mostly raids, posturing, screaming in the UN, terrorism. The situation wasn't helped by his own country's continual flip flops. But the Russian's decision to assist the Pakis had turned up the heat, disastrously.
"Cut the politics and tell me what's down there." Hays growled. He was two miles west, his voice clear in the electronics.
"Nothing moving, I think they've abandoned it. If there was anyone alive on the train there should be some warm spots. Warmer." Wolfgang couldn't feel anyone down there, but it was at the limit of his range. "Want me to slide down and check?"
"No. If they've gone, it'll be trapped. We need to catch up with them."
The train had been traveling east out of Delhi, loaded with refugees. The Paki air force had shut down all air traffic. Civilians, Indian and foreigners alike, had been fleeing by road and rail. The Russian troops had taken advantage of that. This train had been the last to leave, and it would not be arriving anywhere until the tracks ahead were cleared. The passengers had included the families of several American businessmen, now making frantic demands of the army. Guess it looks bad to panic and run at the first sign of danger. But they should have gone at the second, or even third. Waiting until the Paki's bombed the runways, and their army was across the border was not wise.
"Keep an eye open, I'll see if there's any satellite data."
Satellites in the lower orbits had a life span of hours. Better than UAS, unmanned airborne surveyors, which were lucky to make it off the ground. The team was prepared to drop all electronics and "Go Neanderthal" at the first sign that their own comm net was compromised.
After a long five minutes Hays came back on. "Intel thinks they've gone north to the road and are spread out, walking with the refugees. They're guessing that they'll cut north as soon as the latest satellites are down. And I really do mean guessing, they're getting further away from their support, which is pushing around the north side of Delhi. They ought to be going to other direction."
Lopez eyed the train. "You don't suppose the passengers killed them all, and are just walking out? God knows I see enough local bodies, but without checking, how do we know there aren't Russians down there, too? There were only about fifty of them."
Thorne shifted and looked toward the front of the train. "We could get an eyeful of the engines."
"From cover." Hays growled.
"Yes, sir."
Growl.
Wolfgang shifted backwards with the others and eased along the sparse cover of irrigation berms, feeling naked. Moradabad was perhaps a hundred miles east of Delhi, and the train had been boarded there by an advance party of the Russians. They'd slowed the train and the rest of the attackers had boarded a few miles out of town. The beauty of modern communications meant they had a dozen phone camm shots of the proceedings. Not that there'd been any beauty in the bloody murder and rape spree.
"Why did they keep going? They didn't stop until the Indi's bombed the tracks ahead of them." Thorne stuck his head up and frowned. "They didn't come this way, we'd have seen where they tromped the rice fields. Let's circle well forward and see how many people left the train."
"Keep in mind that there's a large Islamic population here. The Russians may not count this as enemy territory." Lopez visually eyed the rise of the tracks.
Wolf closed his eyes and looked at the details. No mines that he could detect. He walked across carefully, shield downward. The other followed, stepping in his footprints.
There were more bodies on this side. Lots. Layers. Some of the dripping sounds were blood still running from the open doors of the train.
"They were running. Shot in the back while they tried to run away." Lopez sounded sick.
"And the ones that didn't run were slaughtered too. Forty cars, packed full. Better get some people in fast to check for survivors. They can't have checked them all." Thorne turned away and looked north. "That's the road, just the other side of those trees. I see movement."
"People walking. Bicycles. Push carts. Carrying kids." Wolfgang shook his head. "They're not going to stop for the night until they drop. Sarge? Intel is sure the Ruskies went east?"
"Yes, they've got people on the ground in Moradabad, nobody is moving west."
"Should we cross the road and see if we can find any signs of anyone moving north?" Wolfgang eased up to a body. "Rigor mortis has set in. They're at least three hours ahead of us. More, the bodies are at close to ambient temps."
Hay's broke in. "Don't go all scientific on me, Intel says the train was stopped eight hours ago. All that mess happened in the daylight. If they're really moving east on foot, they'll be twenty to twenty-four miles ahead. Let's move, get some miles behind us. Cencom will have a team here to check for survivors at dawn. We'll have people specifically looking for the Western League Ex Pats we know were on the train. I doubt they've kept hostages, but we need to make sure, then find them and stop them anyway."
They crossed back over the tracks, circled the bomb damage and picked up the pace. If the Russians were trying to blend in, they'd be moving slowly.
"I'll bet they've got bicycles." Snake grumbled somewhere in the back.
Two miles to Mundha Pande. They spread out, asking questions and trying to buy bicycles themselves.
"We ran, when we heard the train stopping. It should not stop there. Then we heard the guns firing on the train. And then the sound was no longer muffled, and we ran harder." The man was wearing rumpled, dirty clothing. Well made, good fabric. A businessman. Wolfgang hoped he had someplace to run to. "Then the running men. We got off the road, hid. They were carrying things, people, women, the wife said. And they still ran. I could smell the gun smoke, the blood. They ran in order, four across, soldiers." His brow furrowed as he took in Wolfgang's gear. "These days, all soldiers wear the camouflage. How do you tell them apart? They were silent, and terrifying. We hid for a long time, but finally we had to move."
"What time did the running men pass you?"
"I could not see my watch, but the moon was just setting. They threw long shadows down the road."
"The moon's not quite full, so that would have been just before midnight. Thank you."
Wolfgang returned to Hays. Thorne was reporting. "They stole cars. Not enough for all of them, but they offloaded their hostages. Women, some in western garb. And they may have stolen more cars later. It sounds like all of the fifty got away from the train."
"They ran from the train to here." Wolfgang reported. "They should be exhausted. I wonder if they will rest during the day? We might have a chance to catch up."
"They may ride and tie, too." Hays frowned. "I've got rides for us for a few miles. Let's get moving."
The local farmer dropped them off where he turned off, six miles on. He drove off and they started walking. Wolfgang heard the old truck's brakes being abused and looked back. The truck was in reverse and coming fast.
Hays sighed. "North does make more sense. Looks like it's time to take to the back roads, boys."
The farmer had recognized the bodies beside the road. Fellow farmers. He pushed the old truck to the limit, in a sweat of fear for his family. And cried in relief when they waved from the field. He drove on. Until they saw the two vehicles, stationary ahead. Hays thanked him in decent Hindi, and they dropped behind irrigation berms to move up on the two cars.
They were empty, gas caps left lying beside them.
"They siphoned the tanks, probably their other vehicles could carry more people." Hays sighed and led out at a trot. A brief shower cooled them, then turned the air into a steam bath. Near noon an APC caught up with them. They boarded gratefully and dug into the supplies for food. Yummy, pills and liquid roughage. Hays briefed the driver and presumably the eyes up top. Wolfgang was asleep well before Hays rejoined them. They found the first truck soon after, concealed from above by the windbreak trees it was jammed into.
The second was under brush cut from along the banks of a river. The Guala River, one of the tributaries of the Ganges, in this dry season a snake of muddy water winding through the silt and pebbles of the broad riverbed that attested to its power in the monsoon season. Silt that held footprints, headed upstream. Crisp footprints, in silt dampened before their passage. "Two hours, three at the most." Hays consulted his map.
They backtracked to the highway, and made fast time to the city of Haldwani. The APC took to a stream bed and cut down to the river before they reached town.
They surveyed the gravel beds and silt. "No one's passed since the rain."
"They're here, somewhere in this stretch of river. Fifteen kilometers. Corporal Thorne, your team is point. They won't be far, unless they stopped to rest."
They jogged down stream, jumping the thinnest of the runoff channels, sclurping through the mud of the wider streams.
Wolfgang closed his eyes to looked carefully, and spotted them immediately. Barely two kilometers away, twenty people. Some were radiating fear, pain and terror, but it was wrapped up and dulled by exhaustion. The others were asleep. Wolfgang slowed. Twenty? Even without hostages, there should have been more than twice that. He waved a caution to the team behind him and snugged up to the right bank of the river. He moved on slowly, looking for the missing people. The soldiers were gone. But where? Raiding homes for food perhaps? Wised up and ran for it, without encumbrances? Or were there fewer than they'd thought, and they were mixed in with the fearful? Maybe he just couldn't see past the fear, to the feared.
Movement at the edge of his peripheral vision. He threw himself flat, reaching for a mental shield. The impact rolled him, the hands struck for his neck, the knee for his privates, apparently the man didn't need to stand because the other foot was coming around toward his chest. The half seen man jerked and fell. Wolfgang barely registered the spit of the silenced pistol. Thorne shot two more men in reactive camo, then they were all firing, trying to keep it quiet, probably without cause, bodies were materializing out of the brush and now they were raising guns. The team dived as one for the low bank of the river. Wolfgang bent over and ran south. "I'll try to find the hostages." He could hear the APC coming somewhere behind and warped light around himself, held a kinetic barrier and still managed to run.
Those fearful spots were in full panic now. Wolfgang fired two more shots at moving patches of greenery. Why can't I see them? They should glow, damn it. Like their hostages. He could see the pattern now, they'd posted more people downstream than up, the soldiers were running past the hostages now, heading north for the fight. One man stopped, pointing his gun at one of the women crouched on the ground. She gabbled something, he grinned but the gun didn't waver. Wolfgang's bullet took him through the eye. The soldier jerked back, his finger tightened, and the woman fell. Wolfgang shot the three soldiers closest to the hostages in rapid succession, then started picking the rest off one by one. The women were moving now, away from the soldiers, over the low bank. Gaining the protection of that shallow lip, losing any concealment the brush might have offered.
"Hostages are mostly down on the river bed south of that slight bend, the hostiles are still in the brush. I'm trying to keep it that way."
Wolfgang concentrated on the soldiers who might be able to get an angle on the women. A round rolled him. He curled up around bruised ribs. God bless good armor. He put up a shield to one side. They're firing at the sound, or perhaps the muzzle flash or the distortion in the air. Or can they see me the way I ought to be seeing them?
The APC roared up over the bank to the north and the top gun started working. Computer controlled, it would respond to movement, was designed for just such situations. A lot of innocent brush died with the soldiers. Wolfgang was delighted to see that it was not tracking too far to its left. Running feet and he released the light warp before Lopez stepped on him.
"Damn it Wolf, how do you do that?"
"I'm shy, hate putting myself forward."
Thorne grounded to the other side and they picked off soldiers that headed their way. The APC's chain gun fell silent. Nothing moved.
He could hear weeping behind and to his left. He gave the huddling women a quick visual check, no hostiles among them. He gallo
ped over to the bodies on the ground. Two dead, two breathing. The woman he'd seen shot had a gash across her head, unconscious. He released a bit of guilt. "Jack, got your medic kit? Two hostages in need of care." Then he joined the rest of the team, locating the camo'd bodies mainly by the blood stains.
More vehicles arrived, women departed, mostly numb, still just the two in body bags. The soldiers were bagged too, and removed.
It was all very hush-hush, and they flew home in a C20 with freezers full of dead bodies.
For some definition of home. Fort Derrick had the facilities best suited for examining the Russian soldiers.
"They went in for the Ubermench look, didn’t they?" Thorne looked like he was trying to not lose his lunch.
"All blondes? Yeah, but about half have brown eyes." Wolf looked down the row of bodies and shivered. "Except for the really strange looking eyes."
"Animal genes." Doctor Nelson moved to the next body, and Thorne and Wolf moved with him, measuring where indicated. Lopez was able to stand back a bit and key in the results. "They used as many animal genes as the American companies."
Wolf nodded. "32.6 centimeters. The American companies were improving people’s children. Only their test subjects lacked parents to be their advocates. And since those improvements were the goal, there was no point in really strange test kids."
"Ha!" The doctor pointed and they shifted again. "That’s straight out of their advertising copy. No, from the genetic matches the lab found, I know the American companies got samples from the Russians. I know they used animal genes. Generally where the animal genes were nearly identical to the human. It was deliberate, so they weren't experimenting on either "humans" or protected species. They went from animals with a few human genes, for experimental purposes, to animals with the animal versions of genes in the same positions on the human style chromosomes. Then they put in human control genes. So the animals looked human. Those things are totally screwed up. Blue gene from a bird, for the weird hair? That’s just the only one they used in the, umm, commercial production kids. The things they call gods are stuffed with genes from animals and then there are the completely artificial genes. They added whole sections to six chromosomes; complete, multi-gene sections." He shook his head. "I don't think they got them close enough to human to be fertile with normal humans, and a damned good thing."
