“Takes balls,” Angel agreed. “I wouldn’t care to do it.”
“Almost made me wish the walker was self-powered.”
Lyle hooted. “Yeah, right. Carry a honking fuel cell around.”
“Said ‘almost’,” Jimmy told him. “The climb was the sort of work-around any good suit louie could pull off. Maybe a little closer to the edge, is all. Took me maybe half an hour to reach the top. I looked down over the edge to maybe wave Natalie my thanks, but all I seen was her riding off a-horseback without so much as a glance back.”
“Not very grateful for your help, was she?” Angel said.
“Found out later she went ’round the long way to hook up with her dad. Can’t fault her—her place was with him. Got there too late for the action, but then old Badger might’ve had that in mind when he assigned her to guide me.”
“That must have been some climb,” I said, “teep shadow, and all.” I tried to keep my voice professional; but some of the envy must have come through, because Jimmy winced and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Yeah, some climb,” he said, and gave no more details.
Lyle leaned forward. “But once you were out of the cleft, you could bounce…”
“Yeah. Got my bearings from the GPS, shook hands again with the aerostat, checked in with Serena and Stoltz. Gauged the distance and told Stoltz I’d call him when it was time to open the dance. Serena said there was no movement on the up-and-down; but hell, those bandits know how to get around without smiling for the sat’-cams. Anything worth noticing would have been under trees or camo overhangs or down in the bunkers. You know how it is.”
Lyle and Angel said they knew how it was. I chimed in, too; but for me it was a theoretical knowledge, cadged from recon photos, official briefings, or picking the brains of Insiders. I’d written about it in “The Ambush.” People tell me how my stories make everything come alive for them—a funny expression to use about stories of combat—but only I knew how dead the words felt under my fingertips.
“There was this one building, though, seemed to have a lot of in-and-out. The Artificial Stupid thought it was either a headquarters, an entrance to the bunker system, a whorehouse, or a public library.”
Angel shook his head. “Jesus. No wonder they call ’em Stupids–”
“You put up any bumblebees?” asked Lyle.
“About two hives, all slaved into the aerostat relay. Gave me a good, close-in aerial of the town, so I knew right where the action was. I figured folks’d come pouring out of that building when the Badger opened the dance, and I wanted to know if they came out waving Kalashnikovs or library cards.”
“Shoot ’em if they have the cards,” said Lyle. “It’s the shit they read drives ’em to it.”
“You don’t believe that, Lyle,” I said.
He stuck his chin out. “You’re the writer,” he said. “Either you move people or you don’t. And if you don’t, why bother writing? Maybe there’d be fewer murdering rebel scumbags if we’d put some of those books and websites off-limits.”
“No,” said Jimmy. “I’d rather shoot a man dead because he’s a murdering rebel scumbag than treat him and everyone else like children who’re told what they can read or listen to.”
Lyle was unconvinced. “Yeah? What do you owe Joey Sixpack?”
Jimmy said, “I’m coming to that part.” He leaned forward and rubbed his palms against his lap. We had run out of beer already—not unusual when the four of us gathered in those days—but no one volunteered to make a run, which was unusual.
“I walked my machine to a low ridge overlooking the town and scanned the target with my high-rezz ’nocs. It was just like the Badger figured. No one was watching the north. Just to be on the safe side, though, I turned on my pixelflage.”
“Me,” said Angel, “I just boogie right on up.”
I didn’t think there was any imputation of cowardice in what Angel said, but I pointed out that pixelflage could help the suit louie round up more Joeys because the bandits wouldn’t know how close he actually was. “Yeah, I read that story,” Angel said. “‘Invisible Avenger.’ Pretty good, ’cept it’s not like you’re really invisible.”
And there it was again. That curtain. “I know that,” I growled. “I juice it a little for the civilians, is all.”
“All it does is duplicate the landscape on your pixel array, so–”
My right arm twitched and knocked over an empty bottle. “I said, I know that. I went through the training with you. Got higher scores, too. If it hadn’t been for the accident–”
Lyle looked at me. “An’ we know that. Sure, you woulda been good. You woulda been hell on wheels. You woulda been the next Lieutenant Bellcampo, with medals down to your crotch, if you hadn’t spilled on Jimmy’s bike that night. But you did; so you’re not; and it’s over. We love you, man. You know that. We’re the ‘Fantastic Four,’ right? But you can’t change what happened. You just got to go on from where you are.”
Jimmy reached out and touched me on the arm. “It’s over for me, too,” he said, but I jerked my arm away. Blame it on a spasm.
“I still don’t understand that,” I said.
Jimmy and I locked eyes for a moment. “I don’t know if I can explain,” he told me quietly, “if you never been Inside.” I looked away and he touched my arm again. This time, I did not pull back. “No diss, man,” he said. “Just word. I really don’t know if I can make you feel what I felt.” He looked at the others. “Don’t know if I can make them feel it, either.”
“Try us,” said Lyle. “But the beer’s gone; so–”
Jimmy shrugged. “Yeah. We’re just swapping Inside stories, right? No big deal.” He made a fist of his right hand and rubbed it with his left. “Okay, so it goes down like this.
“I get as far as the spruce on the north edge of town, just where it gives way to open meadow around the creek. That puts me three jumps from the center of town and one jump from a herd of cows. There’s a cowboy out with them. Don’t know if he was a bandit or one of the regular townfolk. Never did find out, and it didn’t matter in the end. You lie down with dogs; you wake up with fleas.
“I put the walker on stand-by, so nothing moves. The pixels is all green and brown and black, so I blend into the forest behind me. The cowboy looks my way once or twice, puzzled-like, like he ain’t sure he’s seen something or not. Me, I got my ’nocs locked in on the big building, waiting for Badger to call the dance.
“I didn’t have long to wait before I hear gunshots over my channel to Stoltz. Maybe they were loud enough to carry by air, because my cowboy, he frowns and peers south. Wild Bob’s pickets call in for help and my Artificial Stupid locks in on their freq. Can’t make heads or tails of the traffic, though, because it’s all black…”
“Shoulda kept that kind of encryption illegal,” Lyle said.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Illegal. That would have stopped the likes of Wild Bob. Codes don’t make conspiracies; conspirators do. Besides, PGE and other black codes were all over the Net. Might as well’ve made the wind illegal.”
“And besides,” Angel said, “the big corporations didn’t like the idea of the government holding keys to all their codes. And they’re the ones that call the shots.”
Jimmy looked at him. “Yeah? That’s what Wild Bob always said. Big corporations, Wall Street, the Jews. Besides, what do I care what Joey’s saying, coded or not? It wasn’t more’n fifteen seconds after Badger started the music that they come pouring out of that big building. They all have ’sault rifles and bags full of bananas. Two of ’em are lugging a mortar and some shells. I give Badger a heads-up over the aerostat relay and tell him what’s coming his way.
“The cowboy decides either to join the fun or to head for home. He spurs his horse and goes galloping across the meadow. I take that as my cue and go into leaper mode. Anyone hears a noise, they look over and see that cowboy easier than they can see me. That gives me maybe another jump or two before the balloon goes up. L
ast jump put me right in front of the main building. The bandits usually don’t post guards—they own the town’s soul—but all the shooting has got them nervous. So there’s a Joey standing around the front door with one thumb on his rifle’s safety and the other’n up his ass. When I come down on the street behind him, he jumps like Old Shaq’ in his glory days, and I chop him up before he even hits ground.”
“What’d you use,” Lyle asked. “Finger gun?”
Jimmy ignored him. “I bust through the front door and bounce from office to office, leaving little calling cards in each. The radio was in the third room. Some old bat was on the horn, hollering. When she sees me, she reaches in her desk drawer and pulls a .38. I don’t have time for that crap, so I give her a spray and then shred the radio set.”
“Think she got the warning out?”
“I know she did. But a suit louie never figures to go unnoticed when he’s Inside. I work my way through the building—and pop a few more Joeys who want to field-test their ammo. By the time I bust out the back wall, my little presents start going off and pretty soon the whole building’s in flames. So you see, what did I care about the radio? I was the one sending the message. If she hadn’t gone for the gun, she could’ve run with the others.”
“Generous,” said Lyle.
“Those were the Rules of Engagement, Style. Remember, the area was officially ‘pacified.’ I could shoot whoever came at me armed; but anyone else, I had to tranq, smoke, strobe, or leave alone.”
“And decide which is which on a moment’s notice,” Angel commented bitterly. “All Joey has to do is not go for his gun and he’s a peaceable citizen.”
“So I guess I lucked out, because I don’t think there were more’n two dozen folks there who weren’t potting at me. Some heavy rounds. Armor piercing. One cholo had ramjet rounds. You know, with the discarding sabot and the jet core through its middle? They hit with a couple of Mach. My walker took some damage; and the blowback…”
“Oh, yeah,” said Lyle, rubbing his arm. “The blowback.”
“I had bruises for a week where the walker got knocked around. I mean, I know you gotta have feedback through your suit pads, otherwise you got no ‘touch,’ but I wish the dampers would react faster than the blowback from impacts.”
“Better’n being hit by a round direct,” I said.
Angel went, “Word up. Sprained my wrist one time when a mortar shell wrenched the manipulator arm on my floater.”
“It’s like having a spasm.” Lyle looked at me. “You remember what it was like during live-round training. Must be a lot like what you got now, right?”
I went “right” and didn’t try to fine-tune his opinion. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway. People have a need to reduce things to what they think they understand.
“I wiped that town’s butt good,” Jimmy went on. “Pretty soon, though, Wild Bob figures out that the possemen were just a decoy so’s I could yee-haw, and the ‘away team’ come streaming back from the south pass on their ATVs and dirt bikes. Well, I’d already gotten the range for a couple of landmarks along the county road, and my submunitions were already in place. I watch my heads-up until the column reaches the right point, then I trigger my subs and let loose. Ducks in a barrel. I couldn’t have done better if they’d all held still and said ‘cheese’.”
Angel pumped his fist and went yee-haw.
“Pretty,” said Lyle. Jimmy shook his head.
“It’s never pretty. I went in to break them; so of course that’s what I did. But it was a dirty business and I hate those sumbitches for making me do it. Wild Bob himself, he was still functional. He’d been bringing up the rear, in case Badger tried following him to town, and he hadn’t taken a hit. My sensors spotted his bald dome flashing in the afternoon sun and I high-leaped right over to him. I bet that was one day in his life when he wished he had all his hair back. He sees me land and his face twists into a sneer. He’s got a grenade launcher in his hands and the devil in his eyes.
“Now, he knows the Rules of Engagement like he wrote ’em his own self. And who knows? They way they tie us in knots, maybe he did have a hand in the drafting. So he knows if he drops the grenade launcher, I got to switch to non-lethal.”
Angel shrugged. “Me, I got slow reflexes.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t matter, ’cause he didn’t drop nothing except another grenade in the chamber. I opened a channel and give him his chance, saying, ‘Bob, I come to take you in.’ But he just curls his lip and goes how I ain’t come anywhere and lobs a grenade at my optics.”
“Hell,” said Lyle, “that ain’t nothing to swat away. Artificial Stupid can handle it on automatic.”
“Sure, but the arm swing puts you off balance for a second because it’s automatic; and that’s the second when Wild Bob melts into the rocks. That forces me to run the instant replay so I can see where he went and follow him.
“We played peek-a-boo all across those rocks. He’d pop up and try another round, always going for the optics or the ee-em arrays. Oh, he knew power suits and where the weak points were. Then he’d scurry off to some new position.” Jimmy shook his head and he looked at the wall, except he wasn’t seeing the wall. “I’ll give old Bob this much. He had sand. Not many folks’d buck a suit louie that way. Deep down, he believed in his cause. Had to, to do the things he did. He knew all along this day would come and he sort of looked forward to it, if you know what I mean. Maybe he even welcomed it. I thought about saving the county the expense of a trial—I had some HE in reserve and could have made some mighty fine rubble out of those rocks; but, strictly speaking, this was a police action, not military, and Badger hankered for a trial. He wanted the public to know how Bob wasn’t some damned Robin Hood, but a murdering, thieving traitor. Last thing he wanted was a martyr and a folk-song.
“So Bob and me, we play cat and banjo for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes; and the more Bob backs away from me, the closer he gets to Badger and his posse. I thought maybe he didn’t realize that because a firefight concentrates your attention, you know what I mean? But he knew exactly what he was doing. I call on him once more to surrender, and he goes, ‘not to the likes of you.’ And then, I swear, he hollered for Badger.
“‘What do you want, Bob?’ Badger asks him from behind the next rim; and he says, ‘I want it to be you, not him,’ and Badger goes, ‘You sure you want it that way?’ and Bob said he was sure. ‘If a man gotta go down, it oughta be to another man. And Badger, you may suck the gummint tit; but you are, by God, man enough to come for me your own self.’
“So Badger he tells Bob to step out where he can be seen and hold his hands up. Maybe ten, fifteen seconds go by; then Wild Bob steps out from behind a finger of rock—which surprised me, because I had him pegged a couple meters the other way. He’s still holding that grenade launcher. Badger—I can see him now, skylined on the rimrock twenty meters past Bob—he’s got the high ground and a ’sault rifle. He says, ‘Bob, throw down the launcher,’ and Bob says, ‘Now, Badger, you know I can’t do that,’ and the sheriff goes, ‘Throw it down now, Bob!’ and Bob doesn’t say anything except he works the pump to chamber another round. Badger goes, ‘I don’t want it to end this way,’ and Bob goes, ‘Only way it could. Tell Ma and Natalie good-bye.’ Then he raises the launcher to his shoulder and Badger sprays him with a cloud of fléchettes, which rip him up something bad, so I think he was dead before he knew it.”
Lyle the Style shook his head and said, “Jesus.” Angel crossed himself. Jimmy ground his fist into his palm, like a mortar and pestle, and didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, I spoke.
“They were brothers, Wild Bob and the Badger?” Oh, what a story that would make! If I could only find the right words to tell it. Duty versus fanaticism—with love ground to powder in the middle.
“I leaped on over,” Jimmy said, “and grounded next to Badger where he stooped over Wild Bob. Badger looks up at me and says, ‘It was empty.’”
“What was?” aske
d Angel.
“The grenade launcher,” I said. “That’s right, Jimmy, isn’t it? Bob’s weapon was empty.”
Jimmy nodded. “I told Badger I’d carry the body back to town if he wanted. You know those walkers; they can carry a lot in their cradles. A single body wouldn’t be much. But Badger just gives me a look and says if I want so bad to carry the body, I could damn well come up to Spruce Creek and pick it up my own self.”
“Oh, man,” said Angel. “Diss.”
“What did you say to him?” I asked.
Jimmy shook his head. “I didn’t say nothing. I yanked off my virtch hat and threw it to the floor. Lieutenant Serena asked me what I was doing, but I didn’t pay her no mind. I just stared at the walls of the teep room, thinking.”
“Thinking,” said Lyle. “That’s always a mistake.”
Jimmy gave him a look, as if he were a stranger. “I left the teep room and checked an ATV from the motor pool. I know I left the walker out there untended—and the colonel chewed me a new asshole over that later on—but I had to go to Spruce Creek. Not just be telepresent. You understand? I had to be there myself.”
“Dumb move,” said Angel. “It’s telepresent fighting waldoes helps keep down body-bag expenses.”
“Our body bags,” I pointed out.
Lyle shrugged. “Those are the only ones that matter to me.”
Jimmy shook his head. “You’re right, Angel. It was a dumb move. By the time I reached Spruce Creek, they were all gone. Badger and his posse. The bandits. Most of the townfolk. Shit, most of the town was gone. Even the walker. Lt. Serena had teeped it after I went Outside. So I got out of the ATV and retraced the path of the firefight, walking from rock to rim. I had cornered Wild Bob there. He fired his last grenade there. Badger shot him there. The rocks were all splashed red; there were shell casings and sabots all over. I don’t know how long I crouched where Badger had crouched. If any of Wild Bob’s friends had still been around, I would’ve been easy pickings. Finally, a squall blew up and I hiked back to my vehicle and pulled up the clamshell. I sat there for a while listening to the high country wind. After a while, I drove back down to the firebase.”
There Will Be War Volume X Page 12
