by B. V. Larson
Not having a vehicle they wanted to abuse, I targeted a ruined building. It was an old fashioned stone and mortar animal shelter that was no longer in use.
Firing a round, I showed how the gun could punch right through solid granite. They walked with me to see the finger-hole that had appeared. I assured them it could have penetrated two meters of stone just as easily.
“Now, for the impressive demonstration,” I said, leading them a hundred paces away. “A Sardez rifle wasn’t just designed for accuracy and penetrating power. It also has options. By shaping the bolt that’s fired, you can cause it to do explosive damage rather than just penetrating a hard surface.”
Demonstrating, I fired another round with the dispersion impact knob twisted up to full. The rifle made a different sound that was more hollow and deep. Instead of a snap and whine, it was more of a pop and bang. The side of the stone structure exploded into dust.
The group whistled and cheered. They hadn’t been too impressed by punching holes in walls. After all, the enemy wasn’t going to be driving armored vehicles. But this… this was more like it.
A ragged hole, about two meters wide, had appeared in the stone wall. The roof was sagging above that. They walked around, talking excitedly.
“How do we make bullets?” one of them demanded suddenly. I recognized him, he was Major Hendricks, the dick who’d met me when I first landed. He’d tried to rob me right away—but I put away my hard feelings about that and smiled.
“Is ammo difficult to manufacture?” he demanded. “Are they—”
“Nah,” I said. “The weapon is made to work in low-tech circumstances. There are a dozen forging plans out on the grid. Just do a search. You can make several different kinds of rounds—but they all amount to bullets without any cartridge or gunpowder. As long as they are even in shape and have at least an eighty-percent iron content to make the magnetic barrel happy, you’re good to go.”
This seemed to please the crowd further. They could manufacture such items easily. Any colony could as long as they hadn’t been bombed back into a primitive state.
Handing over the rifle, I let them take turns blowing things up. Colonel Fletcher then called me aside.
“These guns are excellent. Each of them is like a small artillery piece.”
“That’s right. Are you happy now, Colonel?”
“Yes. You’ve done your part in the training. After we destroy the ducks, we will pay you handsomely.”
“Still after, huh?”
“Unfortunately… Our best goods are up there on that mountain. You can see it, can’t you? There’s a campfire among the trees already. Night is falling. You can see the enemy camping up there. They mock us now, but not for much longer.”
I nodded, looking things over. “When do you march?”
“We’re all going up that hill three mornings from now. That should be enough time to familiarize the men with the weapons and manufacture a few million rounds for them.”
“If you say so, Colonel.”
He eyed me again. It was a calculating glance.
“I could use a man like you, Gorman. This campaign might not go perfectly. The ducks… they outnumber us a hundred to one.”
That alarmed me, but I kept my smile pasted in place. “One more infantryman’s not going to make any difference. You need me to go get another three thousand rifles—or something even more rare.”
When in doubt, I always appealed to a man’s greed. With most people, it was very effective.
“You can do that later. I need you on this mountain walk. What do you say?”
I laughed. “I’m a gun runner, not a soldier! Get someone else.”
“I’ll add ten percent to your payout. You can pay off Kersen then pocket the rest.”
That stopped me. Now he was appealing to my greed. Unfortunately, that tactic almost always worked.
“Uh…” I said, rubbing at my neck and sweating. I was thinking hard.
“Just take it. I need you. A man who knows these weapons, I mean. I need you to help make the slugs. I need you to—”
“All right, all right, you’ve got my heart strings in your hands and you’re twanging away. I’ll do it—for twenty percent extra.”
He squinted at me for a moment then stuck out his hand.
We shook hands cementing our new deal.
Chapter Twenty
Two days passed. I spent the time in the downtown saloons. I chased a few skirts, but I didn’t catch any. The local girls didn’t trust off-world types, and I couldn’t blame them.
Sosa stayed on the ship, but Jort disappeared. He went straight to the red-light district, as far as I could tell. His approach to just about everything was more direct than mine.
On the third night, the night before we were destined to march our ragtag bunch of heavily armed deputies up the hill, I was playing cards with three citizens and a robot. The robot was winning, and I was getting ideas about giving him an electromagnetic tummy-ache.
Suddenly, an alarm sounded. It was long and low, more of a steam-whistle than a bell clanging. Everyone stood up from the card table except me.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the ducks—they’re hitting town again.”
I stuck out my lower lip. “Can we at least finish the hand?”
“Hell no.”
The humans fled, but the robot stayed.
“Aren’t you going to go to the walls like the rest?” I asked him.
“I calculate with a seventy nine percent confidence rating that I’ve won this hand. Please place your bet—or fold.”
I considered his words, still fondling my chips. I’d entertained the idea that if they all ran off, well, it could be construed legally as forfeiting their hands. There was quite a pile of chips in the middle of the green felt table, and I had hungry eyes.
“Please accelerate your response, human,” the bot said. “I’m needed elsewhere.”
“Is that right? I’ll tell you what, if we split this pot right down the middle, right now, we can call it even.”
“That’s against the rules and illogical.”
“Why? The other players took off. That means they’ve forfeited the hand. You don’t have time to go through another dozen steps while we raise and call—”
“You would not do that. I’ve modeled your behavioral patterns. You’ll either fold now, or bet generously if you have either a jack or a nine—”
“Look,” I said, getting tired of his bullshit. “It’s just you and me playing now. If we come to an agreement as to how to handle this special circumstance, we can both come out winners. One hundred percent chance.”
He paused, doing some further calculations. I knew robots liked sure things. After all, even though his numbers were right, he could still lose everything. I was offering him certainty.
“This is irregular. I don’t have a protocol to follow.”
“I get it, I get it. You have to improvise. That’s why you’re a model-Q. Any Q I’ve ever met could reason his way out of this one.”
“I will agree to your terms, but under protest. A grievance will be filed with—”
I didn’t listen to the rest. I was too busy scooping up chips. Soon he did the same, and after he left, I scooped up the chips the other players had forgotten to take with them as well.
Cashing in with the frowning, elderly cashier, I hurried out the back door and wandered the streets, whistling.
That was when the first shell came down into town, causing nearby windows to rattle with the impact. A kilometer away, toward the mountain, an orange blossom of flame shot up into the sky.
“Mortars?” I asked no one. “Colonel Fletcher didn’t say anything about the ducks having mortars…”
Turning away from the walls and the mountains beyond, I raced off at a dead run toward the spaceport.
Sosa was waiting in the ship. She’d already warmed the engines and pulled up the ramp. I had to hammer on the belly of the craft, and I called
repeatedly over the intercom. Finally, she lowered the ramp again. It moved with reluctant slowness.
Thundering up into the lower deck, I met her with her arms crossed over her breasts and her eyes downcast.
“I should have left you,” she complained. “They’re shelling the spaceport and this ship could be taken out at any moment.”
“Colonel Fletcher would love that,” I told her. “He’d have a great excuse not to pay for the weapons.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’ll move the ship to the south side of the town, landing it in a ray-ball field or something.”
Jort came puffing up a few minutes later. He had one of the Sardez rifles in his hand. The power bar was glowing green—a full charge.
“Colonel wants you at the wall, Captain.”
“I’m moving my ship first.”
“He says you’re giving up your payment.”
I gave Sosa an “I told you so” glance, but she didn’t react.
Grunting… I ordered them to their stations. I lifted off the ship, spun it around to the north and glided forward.
“Wrong way, sir!” Jort called. “That’s where the—”
“I know where I’m going, Jort. Man the torpedoes.”
Confused, he rushed away to the guts of the ship.
Sosa approached my pilot’s chair and clamped two hands onto my headrest. She had big eyes, and they were wide open now.
“You’re going to get involved? Directly?”
“When a fight starts, you’ve got three moves—at best. You can run, you can talk, or you can fight. I’m seeing no one to talk to. Running will lose me my stake, so I’m going to fight.”
She slid into a seat and began watching the scanners. “I’ve got hot spots—in the forest up the mountain road.”
“What a surprise. Jort, paint the area with lasers. When you’ve got a good target, fire one torpedo.”
“That will be a big blast,” Jort admonished. “A square kilometer.”
“Yeah… okay. Sosa, light up a region farther up the slope. Make sure the mortars are in the zone.”
She worked some calculations with the battle computer. Her hands looked shaky. “Done,” she said quietly a moment later.
“Jort… fire one.”
The ship shuddered. A splash of red plasma rolled out from the belly of Royal Fortune. It arced down and blossomed a few kilometers away on the slopes. A region lit up and was engulfed in flame and explosive smoke.
“Holy shit!” Jort said. “You almost cooked the militia!”
“You almost cooked them!” I shouted back.
We spun my ship around and landed at the spaceport again. I considered taking off and leaving, I really did, but I didn’t want to give up my payment.
We didn’t have long to wait. A dozen ground vehicles revved and zoomed into the spaceport. Guns mounted on the roof of each of them trained on my ship. We sat quietly with all our gun ports closed.
The colonel himself climbed out of a vehicle and approached my ship. He had his hands balled into fists.
Lowering the ramp, we walked out with our rifles aimed into the air. Our weapons were charged and ready. The dozen vehicles surrounding us idled watchfully.
“Captain Gorman…” Fletcher said. “I can’t believe what you just did.”
“Rules of engagement, Colonel. The enemy fired on my ship. I returned fire. I hope none of your men were hurt.”
“A few with temporary blindness and radiation burns. But that’s not the real problem.” He marched toward me and stood tall. “I’m in charge of the defense of this planet. You aren’t to take any further independent action. I should arrest you for that crazy stunt, in fact. The governor is demanding it right now.”
“She is? Then why are you waiting?”
He smirked. “Because we’re under martial law, and I’m in charge. It’s my choice. You surprised me—but your attack was effective. You probably killed a hundred of the enemy and took out a lot of mortars. I just wish you’d told me what you were up to. When we saw you run for the airport, everyone assumed you were bugging out.”
“I don’t like to run from a fight,” I lied with a smile.
“All right… We advance at dawn. You want to play air-support with this illegal ship of yours?”
“Nope. This ship isn’t built to fight in forests. She’s no good in this kind of operation—unless you want your mine to be blown apart.”
“No thanks,” he said.
“Then I’ll march up with you on foot. Jort will come with me, Sosa will watch the ship.”
Fletcher opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Agreed. Report to the north gate at dawn.”
He marched back to his vehicles, mounted up and roared off. Sosa, Jort and I retreated into the ship.
Chapter Twenty-One
In the morning, I stretched awake and was surprised to find Sosa standing near, peering out the front viewports. They weren’t real windows, but they looked like real windows, a trick of optics and high resolution screens.
“Dawn was half an hour ago,” she told me.
“And you didn’t wake me up? That’s very considerate of you.”
She scowled. “You’re going to be late on purpose?”
Sitting up and scratching, I sipped a drink and checked my rifle. I slammed the breach closed and it hummed.
“You ever been on an infantry march?”
“No.”
“Well, who do you think gets killed? The guys in front, or the guys in back?”
Sosa huffed and walked off the deck, shaking her head. “I thought you were brave, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Oh, I’m plenty brave, but this isn’t my fight. I’ve already done my part of this bargain and then some. I’m trying to get paid now. It’s not my job to die here for these people.”
Shrugging, she disappeared. I followed her to the lower deck, freshened up using my patented five-minute routine, then headed down the ramp. Jort was waiting outside.
“Damn,” he said. “I thought you would sleep through the whole thing.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for your life.”
The sun was just a pink disk on the horizon. I knew it would rise up quickly, so we trotted toward the northern gates of New Town.
A sergeant with a hover-car was waiting at the edge of the spaceport. He eyed us sourly. “You lost me a bet, runner. I was sure you wouldn’t show up.”
“Glad to disappoint.”
I climbed into the back of the hover-car and Jort took shotgun. The sergeant eyed our rifles with a mix of envy and resentment.
“You clowns know how to work one of those things?”
Snapping the bolt, I aimed out the open roof of the car and up the mountain. “You must have missed my demonstration.”
“I heard you blew up a brick shit-house. Let me tell you something, starman, these rebels aren’t like normal ducks. You can’t just scare them by firing in the air. They’re smarter, more organized and downright dangerous.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Don’t know. Something got into them—or into their water. I think someone has supplied them with training, weapons and maybe some kind of loco-juice as well. They aren’t right in the head. You’ll see.”
After that disturbing pronouncement, the sergeant shut up. Five minutes later we caught up with the column of troops. He kicked us out of his hover-car and pointed upslope when I asked where the colonel was.
“He leads from the front. Like he’s supposed to.”
Jort and I jogged uphill, passing a small army of trudging troops. The low-gravity made it easy to bounce along, but the men we passed were struggling. To them, the pull of their planet was normal.
In short order, we reached the front ranks. Sure enough, Colonel Fletcher and his irritating sidekick Major Hendricks were up there with the vanguard.
“Huh…” I said, falling into step with the officers. I spoke to Jort rather than the other two men,
and I did it loudly. “Some people are tough-guys, always looking for a way to die in a blaze of glory.”
Both of the officers craned their necks around, noticing us. The major sneered, but the colonel gave us a wintery smile. “I’d all but given up on you two.”
“We should have them flogged,” the major suggested.
“For being five minutes late?” I asked.
Major Hendricks waggled a finger in my direction. “Far more than that. You missed the briefing, the marching cheer—the whole thing.”
“A shame…” I said, losing interest. My eyes had already been roving over the ground ahead. “You’ve got scouts ahead of us, right Major?”
“Scouts and drones, too. The forest is empty for at least three kilometers.”
“Hmm… they might be drawing us in.”
“Into an ambush?” Hendricks asked. “Not likely. You burnt them out, and ducks are cowards anyway. They’ll probably run just at the sight of us.”
Colonel Fletcher kept quiet. I could tell he wasn’t so sure.
We marched for an hour. It was all uphill, and it grew steeper on the way. About four kilometers up-slope, we reached the burnt zone where my torpedo had flattened the trees. There were still plenty of trees standing, smoking and stinking—but there wasn’t much cover.
That’s when the enemy hit us. My respect for the ducks rose immediately. We were exposed and advancing in a narrow column, and it was a good time to attack.
Screaming bolts began showering our front ranks. The men all went to ground. They scattered and took cover as best they could.
“Rush them with the armor!” Colonel Fletcher ordered.
A roaring group of trucks zoomed up the road, each with a gun turret on the roof. I recognized these vehicles. They were the same machines that had come to encircle my ship yesterday. I guess on Baden they passed for tanks, but they were really nothing more than armored trucks with gun turrets on top. “Technicals,” that’s what they called them.
“Infantry, advance in their wake! Let’s take them out for good, boys!”
