The Last President d-3

by John Barnes

  But no one had told Highbotham’s team to stop, and they needed something to do besides feeding and educating the Academy kids, so for now, they carried on.

  But that was what was normal, now. The new normal, they’d have called it when she was a young commander on an old destroyer. The tech of 1850 or 1900 is the new normal.

  But normal was the wrong place to look for an answer.

  This particular moon gun shot was utterly abnormal.

  Since May, the moon gun had fired only when it was in bright sunlight; yet tonight, the moon was waning gibbous, so Fecunditatis was in full darkness, and all the observers had a good fix on the flash. And why fire at all? Till now the moon gun had always targeted large, fixed radio stations, but there were none of those left.

  Yet something was wrong. She was sure of it. Was the clue on Earth, or on the moon?

  Shit.

  The moon was slightly south of bang overhead. High tide here comes about three hours after lunar transit, so the tide’s about half run in. Highbotham’s last few commands before retirement had been in the perpetual overseas wars of the 20-teens, in small surface warships. She had planned dozens of raids, invasions, and landings, both in staff college and for real, and sea raids come in with the tide and go out with it. And that gigantic tribal raid that destroyed the West Texas Research Center used the moon gun as a diversion.

  “Raiders,” she said. Her observer team turned and stared at her. “Raiders have probably already landed somewhere on the island.”

  Not questioning, not panicking, they moved faster than Highbotham could rattle off reminders. “Henry, Peggy, blinker to the regular watchtowers and Christiansted militia. Signal Cuppa Joe too—Fanchion’s ships travel well-armed and they’ll give us a hand. Richard, Abby—”

  “Kids,” Abby said.

  “Right. Keep them quiet. Little ones to shelters along with the books—”

  “Big ones to battle stations. On our way, Captain.” Richard bolted like a bull with bees on its butt; Abby ran after him, hair and long skirts streaming.

  “Gilead—”

  “—charts and plots into the safe,” he said, not looking up from his quick folding and stacking.

  Henry yanked up and slammed down with the whole force of his scrawny body on the long lever linked to a line of modified tire pumps, making a deafening clatter. Air and methane flowed; Peggy lit the torch and adjusted it to play on the stick of calcite, then closed the door on the steel drum. The limelight blazed to life. Peggy chopped the light on and off with the slatted wooden blind covering the open end. The wooden pieces rattled and thumped despite all the lard lubricating them, adding to the din of Henry’s gasping and pumping and the fierce deep hiss of gas on calcite. Peggy swung the blinker to signal Christiansted, then the watchtower chains east and south of them, and—

  “Cuppa Joe is already signaling,” Peggy said. “They must have read our blinker to Christiansted. They’re weighing anchor and moving out for sea room, requesting any info we have on the raiders’ position. Answering with—”

  A blinker flashed far down the eastern shore. Henry said, “Chenay Bay reports all quiet, they’ve relayed to Prune Bay and are waiting for—”

  The flashing dot went out; a huge orange flame leapt up. Chenay Bay watchtower must have had just time to throw a signaling lantern against the pre-laid warning fire.

  Highbotham held her voice low and even. “Peggy, is Murcheson on line now?”

  “They just said so.”

  “Good. Message: RAIDERS AT CHENAY BAY, TOWER DOWN, EXPECTING ATTACK HERE. Same to the south tower chain. Same to Cuppa Joe but add: RAIDERS PROBABLY LANDED COAKLEY BAY. Make sure you include ‘probably.’”

  “Sure.” She began flashing, not pausing as she asked, “Why Coakley?”

  “That’s all low ground, the road’s close to the sea, and if they surprised the Coakley watchtower, they would have had good cover to surprise every station before Chenay. It’s what I’d’ve done. We were just lucky that Chenay is higher up and better defended.” Was, she thought.

  Cuppa Joe’s mainsail was unfurling; lights flickered all over Christiansted and blinkers flashed from the towers on the hills to the south. Highbotham could see motion in the streets—militia running to their posts, everyone else to cover.

  It was more noise than Highbotham had heard in many nights. Peggy’s hands worked the clattering, banging wooden slats with crisp precision. Henry’s furious pumping added gasps, thuds, rattles, and slurps. Across the harbor, church bells rang and snare drums beat “To Quarters.”

  But above all the uproar, they heard the distant chant on the wind:

  All we are doing,

  Is to set Gaia free.

  Abby said, “The Academy’s Company is all present, armed, and ready, Captain.”

  Highbotham turned around and sternly ordered herself not to smile at the raggedness of the CAM kids’ fighting clothes; what mattered was the people inside them, after all. Months of drill had paid off; some kids looked afraid, but none looked panicked, and they held their spears, leaf-spring crossbows, and plumbing-pipe muskets with confident competence.

  “All right then,” she said. “You are going to shoot, or load and clean, or run and carry, whatever your job is, just like in drills. If the enemy penetrate the compound, use your knife, hatchet, or spear. Don’t hesitate, hit hard, and keep hitting till they stop moving. Let’s go.”

  That, she thought, has to be the lamest pre-battle speech ever.

  Henry, Gilead, and three of the older kids led their squads down the gentle slope of the promontory to their assigned firing pits, on a low rise overlooking the six-foot stone fence across the small peninsula. During countless hours building the fence over the summer, the children had covered its outer surface with broken-off bottles, steak knife blades whose plastic handles had dissolved, and scraps of old barbed wire, and systematically cleared everything out of the fifty yards between the pits and the fence. If it worked as intended, the fence would force the attackers to come over it slowly enough for the firing pits to butcher them.

  Of course if they ever learn to make decent bows or slings, or start using guns, that fence is cover for them, and we’ll be in deep shit. But you have to take your bet and play it.

  Abby spoke beside her. “Captain, rockets are—”

  “Boats! Coming around the point to the east!” a voice shouted from the tower.

  Abby whirled and ran toward the beach.

  Highbotham looked over the reserve force on the patio. Confidence comes from seeing confidence, she reminded herself, and took an extra moment to tuck her dreads under her kerchief and tie it tighter. “Reminders, people,” she said. “Hair where it can’t fall into your eyes. Shoes on tight. Check all weapons again. Stick close to your squad leader; if you get separated, regroup here. If it all turns to—uh, if it all goes into the soup, this is where we’ll make our stand.”

  They were all looking past her, down toward the landward fence. She turned to see a stream of tribals coming up the road, still too far away for the rifles or crossbows in the firing pits.

  When she turned back, she saw boats rowing in across Punnett Bay. “All right, our guests are arriving,” she said to her reserve squads. “Showtime soon, but nothing we can do till the range closes. Stay loose till we’re needed, breathe, relax, check your weapon.”

  Shit, how did Jebby Surdyke get into Squad Nine? She’s only twelve, she should have gone with the little ones.

  Most of the kids at the Caribbean Academy of Mathematics were orphaned or separated from their families in the chaos after Daybreak; some had been street kids, back before. CAM offered hot meals, a safe place to sleep, and as much instruction as they could manage to children with mathematical talent. Highbotham privately defined “mathematical talent” as “homelessness and hunger,” but she thought phrasing it as a scholarship helped the kids find the pride they needed to work at their studies.

  “One more order, everyone. No matter wh
at happens tonight, live. The world needs your brains.”

  “Br-r-rains,” an unidentifiable voice said, like a movie zombie.

  She saw many of them freeze, anticipating one of the Captain’s famous tirades. Not tonight, guys. “Right. Keep yours, don’t let anyone spill them. A famous general pointed out that you don’t win by dying for your country, you win by making the other son of a bitch die for his. He was right, despite his being Army and a West Pointer and a bigoted old asshole.” And I hope he was right that you use language like that to people going into battle.

  The landward mob of Daybreakers was fanning out from the road as they rushed the fence. As they came into range of the firing pits, Newberry Standard rifles flared and banged. A few leaders carrying spirit sticks fell.

  The Daybreaker swarm kept coming. Crossbow bolts flicked into the front ranks, now, and more fell, but still, losing leaders did nothing to slow the raiders. They all knew the plan: move toward the plaztatic enemies of Gaia and kill them where you find them.

  At the fence, the first wave didn’t even try to take cover, grabbing and climbing till they hung up on wire, blades, and bottles. The ones behind piled against them until the human wave stalled, and bolts and bullets stabbed into the accumulating crowd.

  If the Daybreakers had numbered in the thousands, as they had in the human waves that had swept away WTRC and threatened Pullman and Athens, they might have carried the fence and destroyed the observatory and CAM in a matter of minutes, but counting and guessing, Highbotham thought there were only four hundred at most. Still, that was enough sheer pressure to begin to crack the stone fence from its foundation, toppling stones set in the poorly cured, inadequate mortar.

  Henry and two of his team leapt from their pit and ran toward the fence, each carrying a bottle bomb. Those had been Henry’s idea: guncotton made and dried in the bottle. While the guncotton was still wet and therefore safe, the little ones had scratched the glass all over with a cutter. Then they had dipped the bottle in animal glue, and rolled it in shredded metal, gravel, and broken glass as if breading a deadly chicken leg. A paper-wrapped squib of black powder—really just a big firecracker—glued into the neck a couple of weeks later, after long drying in the sun, had completed the process.

  At about twenty yards from the wall, all three of them struck matches, touched the fuses, and threw the bottles into a high arc toward the screaming mob. One bottle bomb burst impressively, knocking down half a dozen people; in two seconds, the Daybreakers behind the dead and wounded stepped over and closed up the hole. Another bomb disappeared into the crowd without any effect. Henry threw so hard that his bomb sailed over the heads of the crowd, bounced, tumbled, ignited without bursting, and scooted around trailing hot white exhaust like a firework.

  As Henry and his two grenadiers ran back to their pit, one fell, clutching her leg; Henry, turning back, fell beside her.

  Instantly the other CAM students in Henry’s pit rushed forward. Shit, that’s a hole, gotta plug it. “Squads Nine, Ten, Eleven, follow me! Twelve and Thirteen, watch for Abby’s signal in case she needs you!”

  Highbotham ran down the grassy slope with three squads just behind her. The pits on either side were firing, but Henry’s pit had been the center of the line, and Henry had been commanding this whole side of the defense. I hope he’s still alive so I can chew him out about excessive personal initiative.

  A Daybreaker rose atop the stone fence, drawing his bow; he fell backward with a crossbow bolt in the eye. But the bowman that followed him leapt down into the cleared space and loosed an arrow into the press of Henry’s squad; someone screamed.

  Highbotham’s small force flung themselves prone in the firing pit and wriggled forward to the mounded dirt at the front. Several Daybreaker bowmen were over the fence and shooting, and more were climbing in over their dead.

  She drew her black-powder revolver, leveled it on crossed wrists, and brought down two bowmen on four shots. Homing missiles were a lot easier. Beside her, little Jebby was working her crossbow with grim efficiency. Okay, kid, from now on you can kill with the grown-ups.

  “Squad Ten, hold this pit and keep up firing,” Highbotham’s voice was as unnaturally clear and calm as a language lesson. “Squad Nine! Squad Eleven! We’re going down there to bring our people in. Stick together. Nobody leaves early and nobody gets left. On my call, three, two, one, now.” She jumped, and felt them jump beside her.

  With her revolver emptied and no time to reload, she pulled the cutlass from her scabbard. An old martial arts freak named Bobby had taught her the dhao, which was similar; she hoped—

  On her right.

  Raising an ax over his head.

  Her hands were already moving in the bamboo cut. The blade tip bit into his neck and broke through his collarbone; he fell over backward, almost dragging her cutlass out of her hand. She glanced back, saw a man behind her raising a poleax to strike Jebby, and her cutlass turned in her hand as it passed low across her front, flew back past her thigh, and struck upward into the man’s lower ribs faster than she could think any of those words, jarring against her hand as if she’d hit a sandbag with a mallet. He froze and stared. Her blade continued up and around, the tip parting shirt and skin all the way to his shoulder, rose past his head, and came back in a neck-high slash that cut his windpipe and carotids. It felt like parting a rope.

  Staying with her blade, she faced forward again, and seeing the way clear, advanced to Henry in two big leaps. Her cutlass beat down an enemy spear tip on her flank; in a two-handed grip, she let the cutlass ride up beside her body, then whipped it full force down across the man’s skull. She wrenched her sword clear of his head and whirled toward something moving in the corner of her eye.

  The man raising a hatchet was being pushed over backwards by Jebby’s spear in his throat. Highbotham swept his foot, stepped forward, and chopped between his eyes. Her wrists ached; those had been some forceful shocks.

  Henry was at her feet, Jebby at her side, the rest of her squads and the survivors from Henry’s Squad Three in a cluster around her. Looking down the slope, she saw the last tribal bowmen fleeing toward the wall. As a space opened between friend and foe, crossbow bolts whizzed after the few surviving raiders, bringing several down.

  Henry better live. I owe him props on the crossbows. They were his idea, from that Nantucket book he was always talking about. Is always talking about.

  Highbotham ordered, “Crossbowmen, cover us, everyone else, carry the wounded, back to the center pit. Two runners!”

  Two survivors from Henry’s team stepped forward. “You, go to Squads One and Two. You, Four and Five. Let Gilead know he’s in command now, and Squad Ten will hold the center pit. Bartie commands Squad Ten and he’s Gilead’s second in command. Tell them this is an order: No one is to rush the fence or try to carry the attack beyond it. Hold this side of the fence till the town militia relieves us. Do not charge into the enemy like some crazy-ass hero. Repeat that.”

  They did, crazy-ass hero and all. She nodded, and the runners were off across the thick lawn.

  “My fault,” Henry said, as two boys lifted him from the ground at her feet. “Bombs didn’t—”

  “Rest,” she said. “And your crossbows are great.” A few more steps brought them back to the center firing pit. “Anyone left from Squad Three—”

  “Sorry—”

  “Shut up, Henry. I said rest. Squad Three survivors, you’re in Squad Ten, under Bartie’s orders, now. Bartie, hold the center pit for me, and you’re Gilead’s second in command for the whole force.”

  Whooshes and booms resounded from the sea side of the big house; flashes of light flickered behind the low rise. “Squads Nine and Eleven, back to the rally point and we’ll probably keep running when we get there.”

  It was not a long run—back before, a high school runner would have called it “middle distance”—and they were warmed up and well into second wind, so it seemed to Highbotham that she and her little force almost
flew up the hill and onto the patio. Abby had just signaled, and squads Twelve and Thirteen were running down to the beach ahead of them.

  They put on a burst of speed and caught up, racing into well-rehearsed positions on the first rise above the water, between the rocket squads and the incoming boats. “Everyone down! Prone firing position!”

  The force lay down instantly, wriggling forward, weapons pointed down the beach, checking mechanisms and laying out ammunition within easy reach without being ordered to.

  Highbotham stayed on her feet to look the situation over. Rockets had set the lead boat on fire, but most of its crew had made it to shore; the other two were just landing, and already there were almost as many raiders as defenders. Three more boats had already rounded the point.

  The voice of a long-ago instructor echoed in her head: The first rule of repelling invasions is act now, because it won’t get better. If you screw that one up, there is no second rule.

  Highbotham turned and shouted to Abby and Richard behind her. “Three-rocket volley into their landing! Then concentrate on the ones further out!”

  Abby and Richard were yelling to their squads as Highbotham spoke quietly. “Squads Nine, Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, form up. Make sure you’re reloaded. Stay down till the rockets go over, then we’re going to rush them. Be ready.” She stretched out prone. Her hands busied themselves reloading her revolver. She had just pushed the last paper cartridge in, topped it with a percussion cap, and swung the cylinder back into place when three roars of thunder overlapped scant yards above them, the white glare lighting the beach like an old-time flashbulb.

  “Now!”

  She felt more than saw two dozen CAM kids jump up and race forward with her. The tail flames of the three rockets shot out beyond them, wobbling and spiraling like footballs through the 200 yards.

  In less than two seconds, one rocket augured into the sand about 20 feet short, exploding in a big burst that sprayed the raiders with grit and gravel but hurt them very little. The second bent upward, tumbled, and sailed out over the water.