Six Bits

by Laurence Dahners

  Nigel lay under the APC waiting for them to decide to look under the truck. He pulled on his low lights so he could see where they were. The flames of Steb's unexploded Molotov cocktail nearly blinded him, but before he could lift the goggles he heard the kalsaw lase and saw the flashes by the bottle. When he got the goggles off he saw that the whole truck was going up in flames! He scooted back out from under the APC. His foot struck something.

  It was the guard's boot!

  Yasso looked down from the burning truck when something struck his ankle. To his amazement, in the light of the burning vehicle he saw that he had been kicked by someone backing out from under the APC! Saboteurs! He noted with amazement that his kalsaw had lased as he swung it at the man, finger still crushing the trigger. The saboteur began to thrash wildly about on the ground! The damn kalsaw lased another burst and he absently took his finger off the trigger. The saboteur only quivered now.

  With some pride, and also some dismay, Yasso thought, I’ve killed someone! He flipped on his helmet mike and shouted, "Saboteurs, saboteurs in the compound!"

  Yasso ran around the APC to Moman who was dazedly watching the truck burn. Suddenly a flash of heat behind them signaled the explosion of another truck into flames. They spun towards the new fire and their kalsaws lased again, firing at the hot truck. Shit! Together they thumbed the kalsaws to manual. Suddenly two neighboring trucks burst into flames! What the hell was going on? Trucks didn't burn that easily!

  Did they?

  Steb ran behind the APC to where Nigel lay motionless. There was a smoking hole in the back of Nigel’s head! A great dread gripped Steb, but gritted his teeth and turned Nigel over. He stared into lifeless eyes. Damn! Damn, damndamndamn....

  The guards were coming back! Steb turned and ran. Fear ripped through him. His gut turned to ice and his rubbery legs seemed to be moving in slow motion. A distant part of him was embarrassed as he felt his bladder convulse and piss run down his leg, scalding hot in contrast to the recent freezing driblets of alcohol. He twisted around the corner of the APC and turned toward the fence. His vision tunneled down to the area just ahead of him, but he vaguely noted a laser burst to his right and then to his left. They must be shooting on manual, he thought, either that or I just haven't felt the killing shots… yet.

  Yasso missed the second saboteur as he rounded the corner of the APC. He himself rounded the corner a second later and waved his kalsaw at the running figure outlined so well in the light from the burning trucks. Both laser bursts missed! Damn! It’s still on manual! There weren't any fires that direction to distract the kalsaw! He flipped back to infrared and pulled the trigger, but in that moment a truck just to the left of the running figure burst into flames and the kalsaw burst went directly into it. He pulled the kalsaw to the right to get the burning truck out of its field, but the figure turned a corner and disappeared. Shit!

  Jos scrabbled at the base of their "mortar.” He pulled the useless "spark wire” out of the hole at the bottom and held his lighter to it. A thunderous "whump" ensued. A belch of flame shot out over the compound but, to Jos’ disappointment, it seemed that only about half of the small fuel filled vials that were supposed to act like little Molotov cocktails had caught on fire. Nonetheless, as those landed, extensive fires started in the fuel they’d spilled.

  A drifting spark fell into the still open compartment full of charged superconductors on one of the APCs. Yasso saw the flash of flame beside him as the fuel in the compartment caught, but then the insulating plastic, already weakened by the solvent action of the fuel, broke down. In a microsecond this released a sudden coruscating hellfire of electrical discharge, powerful enough to run a small city for several hours. It melted down half of the APC and flash cooked the luckless guard.

  Steb reached the fence. Gasping for breath he looked for the hole he’d cut earlier.

  Gripping the chain link he shook it in panic. Where was the damn hole? The skin on his back began to crawl as he imagined a kalsaw sighting in on him. He bolted to the right. Still no sign of the hole! He looked at the top of the fence with thoughts of trying to climb, but then he heard Jos' shout to his left. He ran to the hole and dove through while Jos held it open.

  "Where the hell’s Nigel?!"

  "Dead…"

  "Ohhh..."

  ***

  As the two remaining young men trudged home through the night, the enormity of the events just past struck home.

  After the Stossa invasion, Nigel, Steb, and Jos, like everyone else, had waited for the Macos to swing into action. The Macos were the almost legendary elite of elite warriors. Formed by General Minguez in a war fifteen years earlier, the Macos had, by dint of special tactics and high tech weaponry, hamstrung their opponents. Cutting lines of supply and taking out leaders far behind enemy lines, the Macos had brought their adversary to a frustrated halt. Actually, Steb had been named Steban after an uncle who was the most highly decorated Maco of that war. His uncle had been killed in the last days of the war, but his medals hung proudly over Steb’s family fireplace. An uncle Steb had never known, but whom he worshipped like so many people.

  After this new invasion, everyone whispered eagerly of the time when the Macos would swing back into action. But, when they did, they were ineffectual and disorganized. It seemed that the wait had been in vain. Months and then years went by with no more than a few bitter failures and reactionary "roundups" of the resistance by the Stossa. Furtive conversations Steb picked up from the adults implied that the remaining Macos were old, tired, and, without General Minguez, leaderless.

  The three buddies began with small acts of vandalism.

  Soon they began scratching the fin of a shark in the paint of a Stossa vehicle after puncturing its tires. They began calling themselves "Macos".

  Nigel had generally been their leader, though Steb credited himself with their best ideas. The truck, chocked with a bag of ice, on the hill above one of the Stossa “not so secret” police offices had been one of his best.

  It was a Stossa truck, parked half a block up the street that made a "T" into the street right in front of a Stossa office. The one that they ran their not-so-secret police from. The truck was in front of a store that the "Macos" walked past on their way home from school almost every day. On this particular day, Steb had noticed that no one was parked below the truck.

  Nigel had gotten into the truck and straightened out the wheels while Steb was buying a bag of ice a couple of blocks away.

  Jos had been their lookout, although this was only after he’d repeatedly told them they were out of their minds.

  With the back curb wheel chocked with a half empty bag of ice Nigel had let off the brake and taken the truck out of gear. The three boys had walked down and around the corner. The wait was interminable. Just as Steb finally resolved to walk back and check to see that something else wasn't blocking the wheel the truck shuddered! Then it broke loose and began to roll.

  Steb tried to gape stupidly like the other onlookers. Someone on the other side of the street ran out as if to stop it, then saw where the truck was going and slowed to watch. A crowd of people watched it gather speed, roll swiftly across the intersection, jump the curb and plunge through the big plate glass window into the Stossa police office. It took out a column and the roof collapsed in that section. A few minutes later flames began to lick out around the truck.

  The huge crowd of gawkers that gathered hindered the arrival of fire trucks. The crowd continued to impede the halfhearted efforts of the firemen while the structure itself burned completely to the ground.

  Steb was bursting with enthusiasm when he got home. Yotel, his uncle on his mother's side, was there drinking beer with Steb’s father, Lante. Yotel was drunk on his ass as usual and Lante was trying to keep him from finishing his latest beer. They’d already heard of the events at the police building and were heatedly discussing them.

  Yotel taunted, "Almost like old Steban was back in town, eh Laaante?"

  "Sure Yote
l,” Lante said disgustedly, “Steban would have known how a little fire down at the secret police building would run the Stossa right out of this country."

  "Well it’s a hell of a lot better than sitting around on our asses doing nothing! Steban would have been out doing something about those bastards!"

  "Sober up Yotel!” Lante said disgustedly, “You—laying around drunk—you're providing almost as much resistance as the dear departed Steban."

  Steb couldn't listen to this anymore. "Come on Dad. Are you trying to say that uncle Steban couldn't have done anything about the Stossa invasion?"

  "Well kid, I guess I knew your uncle better than anyone else did.” Lante glared at Yotel, “I never saw Steban bash his head on walls and I don’t think he’d be setting fires down at the Stossa police station either."

  "I think he would!"

  "You tell him kid," slurred uncle Yotel.

  Encouraged, Steb blurted out, "Yeah, and I'm carrying on in his tradition. Nigel, Jos and I are the ones who ran that truck into the Police station."

  Lante's brown eyes flashed wide. Even his balding pate turned red with fury. He leapt to his feet, grabbed the front of Steb’s shirt and pulled him close. He leaned his squat body over his son's slender one. "Are you crazy? You stupid little shit! You could’ve been killed! You have not even the slightest goddamn idea what you're doing or how dangerous it is! Do you think three kids could take on an entire country? You’d better not ever, ever, even consider doing that kind of crap again."

  While the old man ranted on, Yotel stumbled out the back door without a word of support. Steb could neither think of a valid retort, nor work it in edgewise.

  ***

  At first taken aback and apologetic, Steb had slowly angered. After a few more meetings with Nigel and Jos, he’d begrudgingly admitted, if only to himself, that his father was a rank coward. Steb had always been embarrassed that the old fart was so out of shape, but Lante almost seemed proud of it, patting and rubbing his paunch for all the world to see. He couldn't even get a better job than warehouseman at the docks.

  Too chickenshit to apply for a better one no doubt.

  Lante never wanted to talk about his famous brother and Steb had always attributed it to the fact that Lante was the only member of his family to survive the earlier war. Now he realized the old man was jealous of Steban. Steb had never seen his father in this light before.

  Recognizing his father’s utter cowardice broke his heart.

  ***

  Despite Lante’s warning, the Macos had persisted in their vandalism, judging their success by the security measures that the Stossa were forced to undertake. Now Stossa vehicles were almost always guarded or kept in a compound. The three “Macos” took pride in the fact that the Stossa were forced to use valuable military manpower round the clock just to keep some kids from vandalizing their equipment.

  When the Stossa pulled in people from the neighborhood for questioning about "the sharks" the Macos became grateful that Lante's furious reaction had kept them from bragging about their exploits. They also started branching out to other areas of the city in order to diffuse the search.

  Steb, fearing that his two friends recognized his father's cowardice, became the most reckless of the three. Even though he felt terrified inside, he projected bravado to hide his family's terrible secret. Though Jos protested repeatedly of the danger, Nigel spurred them ever onward and always found Steb willing to take one more risk.

  In any case, Steb had always pictured them dying, if at all, in glory and as a group.

  Now Nigel alone was dead...

  No one knew how he’d died, except Steb and Jos.

  How would they tell Nigel’s mother?

  ***

  It was four in the morning when Jos and Steb split up at the edge of their own neighborhood—still unresolved about whether, or how, to tell Nigel's mom. To Steb’s great relief Jos had never said the dreaded words, “I told you so.”

  Steb turned the corner into his alley. Damn! Every light in his house must be on! What was going on?

  He crept from yard to yard and slowly up to his own front window. He saw his sister Lisa sprawled on the floor, her face bloody.

  My God, dead?

  No, she was breathing! Knocked out, with a bloody nose from the looks of it, but she moved a little.

  Suddenly a Stossa soldier moved into view. The soldier's back was to Steb. He gestured at the couch with his kalsaw. Steb's mother sat on the couch, weeping and also bleeding. Fury raged up in Steb and he stepped over to launch himself through the door. Having no other weapon, he pulled out his triflanged awl.

  Two iron arms clapped around him! One over his arms and one over his mouth! Lante's voice whispered sorrowfully in his ear, "Looks like they caught you this time, eh kid?"

  Steb tried to wrench himself loose, but the old man kept him in a steel hard grip. How could the pudgy old geezer be so strong? Where was that soft paunch the old man was always patting and shaking his head over? As he dragged his son toward the garage Lante said, "They had poor Nigel's body with them when they first got here. They were pretty pissed; sounds like you really screwed up their truck compound."

  At first, mortified over the disaster he had wrought upon his own family, Steb suddenly realized his father had just watched them beating his mother and sister without doing a goddamn thing! What's worse he wasn't planning to do a goddamn thing and didn't intend to let Steb do anything either! Rage flashed through him and he ripped his left arm loose and drove his elbow into the old man's gut. His arm rebounded off a rock hard abdomen and back into Lante’s grip; a grip now painfully tight!

  Lante shouldered the door to the garage open and dragged Steb inside without much apparent effort.

  "OK kid, I'm gonna turn you loose, but you've gotta promise not to act like an asshole again, huh?"

  After a moment, Steb nodded sullenly. His father's grip loosened, but slowly, ready to resume at the first false move. With disdain dripping from his words Steb said, "How could you just stand there and watch them beating Mom and Lisa? Are you completely spineless?"

  Through clenched teeth fury his father said, "I stood and watched because it was the only way I could think to save your ass, you worthless little shit! God dammit! I told you to cut that sabotage shit out! You are the proximate cause of what they’ve gone through! And you have the balls to sneer at me?! At least I can figure out they aren't going to seriously hurt Mom and Lisa until they know where you and I are."

  "Someone has to stand up to those assholes!"

  "Yeah, well,” Lante said disgustedly, “that someone needs to be old enough and smart enough to wipe his own ass, kid... Now, do you think that we might be able to work together long enough to get your mother and Lisa out of there? Diving through a door into a room full of soldiers with armed kalsaws was only going to get you dead."

  "There was only one!"

  "Shit kid, look before you leap, at least around the corner!"

  Embarrassed, hot tears coursed down Steb's cheeks. He sniffed, "What's your great idea then?"

  The old man seemed to slump back, "You ever used a kalsaw, kid?"

  "Hell no! They're useless to us; they won't fire at a Stossa in uniform. And the bastards never take their damned helmets off."

  "Not true kid, especially of these kalsaws here." The older man pulled out a false panel concealed by the pegboard his tools hung on. There, gleaming greasily in the faint light from the house, were two kalsaws.

  Steb was stunned! How long have those damned things been there? he wondered.

  His dad took the two kalsaws down, wiping the oil off them with a rag. He pulled out extra magazines for each one and closed the panel. He held a kalsaw up into the dim light of the window. "Three tubes, kid. The middle one is the sight; really a fancy visual/infrared camera that takes in the view for a 20 degree arc around your point of aim, looking for heat or motion. It also looks for a digital infrared message to tell it 'friend or foe;' that's what the St
ossa helmets and harnesses do. Not their uniforms. But, it has to be programmed with a new 'friend' message daily. These two haven’t been programmed in years, so they’ll shoot Stossa too. Upper tube is the laser; lower tube is an electric rail gun for the kinetic slugs. The laser delivers enough energy in each pulse to boil a liter of water and people are mostly water. 'Cause they're so small you've got seventy kinetic slugs. They have a velocity of 1500 meters per second and shatter on impact. They’ll rip a human body in half."

  "Cut the damn sermon… just show me the trigger and let's go."

  There was a pause, "Kid, it’s called a ‘smart weapon’ ‘cause you shouldn’t let morons use ‘em. You've got to understand a weapon like this… hell if you don't, you're just as likely to rip your own mother to shreds."

  Another pause. Lante eyed his son balefully.

  Steb finally nodded.

  Lante went on, "Index trigger, laser. Middle finger, kinetic. That much is pretty simple. Feel this lever on your thumb?"

  "Yeah."

  "Down is safe. First click up and it fires at any hot images on the infrared, whenever the trigger is pulled. The laser will fire a burst of three, one at the left edge, one in the center, and one at the right edge. It’ll fire at any hot object in its 20 degree cone. At the speed of light it will hit the object."

  "The rail gun can turn its projectiles about 5 degrees from center bead and will do so in an attempt to strike the target, it is, however, possible to miss with the rail gun. When firing in this mode, wave the gun past the target and let it pick its shot. The kalsaw’s 'puter will compensate for motion of the kalsaw and the motion of the object and it’ll hit the object almost every time."

  "Click up a second time and it fires at any moving object. You don't usually want to do that, so the detent’s weak there; makes it hard to screw up and set it on 'motion.’