by J. N. Chaney
“Do you need me here?” Lima asked as he passed her.
A young man in his late twenties was standing protectively just off her shoulder.
I don’t think she needs protecting, son.
“No. You help the proctors push the people along. Find Corporal Reiser and see if she needs any help.”
“Don’t stay around too long. The Cents are going to respond,” Lima said before she joined the crowd, her son keeping close.
About half of the workforce was already outside, but without the panic overwhelming everyone, that was rapidly diminished. Another group of people had broken open a side exit, and that helped as well.
“What are they doing?” Rev asked McCough as he approached the former Marine.
“Two of the bastards keep working on the junk. They might figure it out, though.”
The two undamaged mini-Centaurs were using their loading arms to work on a mostly intact cannon. Another mini-Centaur, all four of its starboard legs collapsed, was helping.
“Why aren’t they reacting to the people?” Rev wondered aloud.
“They’re dumb asses,” McCough said at the same time, thinking the rhetorical question was aimed at him.
I wasn’t asking either one of them.
But Punch’s answer intrigued him.
“And if they repair one of those cannons?” This time, he made sure to subvocalize.
“What are you basing that on?”
“Human-made AIs, not tin-ass-made.”
Is he trying to be funny? And not ha-ha-tell-a-joke funny?
This wasn’t the time to get to the bottom of it. He agreed with Punch, though. It looked like they were safe from the mini-Centaurs up until the time they managed to fix that cannon and get it mounted.
About a quarter of the people were still left inside. He thought they might be in the clear . . . from these Centaurs, at least.
“Keep watching them. If it looks like they’re about to switch out to the cannon, give me a shout.”
“Now maybe you might want to light them up?” McCough said, pointing at Rev’s last Moray.
“No. Not now, at least. With them dispersed like that, I can’t get both of those guys with one shot. And I’ve got a feeling that I really might need it.”
“Your call.”
With fewer people, the panic had eased, the shoving less. Rev wanted to get outside himself to see how it was going, but he couldn’t leave McCough and the mini-Centaurs. Instead, he went to the entrance and stood to the side.
“Thank you, Marine!” and “Thank you, sir,” were called out to him with several people raising clenched fists of gratitude. Rev nodded and gave a half-raised fist in acknowledgment. The problem was that he knew this was just the first step, and there were a lot more to go before the people would be safe. Until the last person either was evacuated or the planet was declared secure, he couldn’t let his guard down.
“Time until the assault?”
That was a long time to keep the people safe. Up in orbit, the Navy would be getting the Marines in position to descend onto the planet—that is, if they even made it that far. While the Centaur Navy avoided in-system battles if they could, they ruled deep space. It was a real possibility that the invasion fleet, even widely dispersed and coming in on different axes, could have been intercepted.
Hopefully, the small Centaur footprint on Tenerife meant that the Centaur Navy had a small presence as well.
“Do you think we can hold on until then?”
This was the first time Rev had asked his battle buddy something like that, but without Tomiko or other Marines, he was feeling isolated.
Rev’s eyes widened in surprise. That little vote of confidence was something totally new. Was that just programming designed to bolster him in a moment of uncertainty, or was that real?
“Thanks,” he said automatically.
But now wasn’t the time to ponder the sapience of his AI. Maybe it was never the time, and he should just accept things as they were. He clamped down on that train of thought and turned a hundred percent of his attention back to the task at hand.
As the numbers of people inside the station dwindled, five bodies were revealed, each wearing a white armband: not only the two Rev had turned over to Teddy, but three more. Evidently, the people had exacted more revenge.
Not that Rev cared much—just desserts. But he turned to where the last of the people were filing out the door. There was another kapo out there, the one he’d killed.
Rev was a Marine, trained to dish out violence. And he’d killed before . . . just not another human. A Centaur was an alien, and killing one had filled him with joy. But a human? Even an evil one? That was different, and there wasn’t that same sense of joy. It was more along the lines of sadness.
Buck up, Reverent. He was the enemy.
“Staff Sergeant, that’s the last of them. Let’s go,” he shouted with his amplified voice.
McCough waved and started toward him. Against the far wall, the mini-Centaurs were still busy. This was so surreal. The mini-Centaurs could have caused mayhem with their construction arms, flailing the packed humans, but they seemed totally focused on changing out to a weapons attachment to the exclusion of what would serve them better.
Not that Rev was complaining. But once again, it just went to prove that Centaurs and humans were just so different, even the Centaur AI equivalent, if that was what they really were.
Rev just shook his head. It grated at him to leave an enemy still functioning, but he really didn’t have the means to do anything about that, and at the moment, they were not a threat.
I just hope they don’t fix one of the cannons and come up our backside.
McCough reached him, his face beaming.
“Well, Corporal, mission accomplished. Damn, that feels good to say again after all these years.”
Rev started to say that this was only the first step, but looking at the staff sergeant, he didn’t want to rain on his parade. Let him have his moment.
“We need to shepherd the stragglers,” Rev told him. “In two hours, everyone needs to be at the market.”
“No fire zone?”
“Yeah. The rest of the place,” Rev said, sweeping an arm to encompass the area, “could be leveled.”
“And anybody trying to hide out in their basement,” McCough said, his voice a notch more serious.
“We’ve got people assigned to get the word to everyone not working here this shift.”
“If they listen. We Tenerifians can be stubborn.”
Rev didn’t have an answer for that. He knew civilians would be among the casualties, and all he could do was to minimize those numbers in his AO.
The two followed the last of the workers out of the building. Rev made a conscious effort not to look to where the body of the kapo he killed lay.
“Teddy,” he called, spotting the proctor.
“Yes, sir?” the young man asked, jogging over.
“Any issues?” he asked, ignoring the matter of the two kapos Rev had given into the young man’s care.
“Everyone’s on their way to the market. We’ve got some people banged up in the crush, though.”
At least a couple-dozen people were either limping along or being helped by others. It could have been worse.
“You go ahead. Staff Sergeant McCough and I’ll bring up the rear. We need to keep everyone moving.”
Teddy nodded and ran off. A couple of blocks over, Rev
could hear someone on a loudspeaker telling everyone to get out of their homes and head to the market.
“Let’s keep them moving,” Rev told McCough. “But keep your head on a swivel.”
“Always.”
Rev took a position behind the last two people: a young man with an injured leg, and the matronly woman helping him. He could pick up the slight man and easily carry him, and for a moment, he moved to help before his rational mind took back over. It wasn’t his job to help individuals. He had to think of the whole.
If a single paladin or courser attacked the column of people, Rev and his Moray were the only things standing in the way. If two attacked . . . well, Rev didn’t want to think of that.
But he could still ask.
“You doing OK?” he asked the pair.
The young man’s face was white, his eyes unfocused. His medi-nanos, although not as advanced as Rev’s, should be kicking in to fight the shock.
The woman grunted, shifting the man’s arm farther around her shoulders, then said, “I’ve got him. You worry about keeping us safe.”
Even she understands.
“OK, ma’am. I’ll do that.”
“Vivian.”
“What?”
“Vivian. My name’s Vivian. I ain’t no ma’am. And this here’s Craig.”
Rev suppressed a smile. If all of the people were like this woman, then they stood a chance.
“OK, Vivian. I’ve got you two covered,” he said as he took a position directly behind them.
He had to pick his way through the debris of the two mini-Centaurs. Whatever was left of the five people had been trampled into smears on the cerrocrete road surface.
“How long to reach the market?”
That still left almost an hour before the invasion kicked off in earnest. He’d have to get together with Tomiko to best determine what would be their best course of action on how to use that time.
They turned onto Geltrain Street, which would lead them over the Silver Bridge, spanning the Muddy River and within four blocks of the market. Stretched out in front of them were more than the three hundred workers from the emitter station. Other people were making their way down side streets and joining the march.
At least that’s working.
But was it too many people on a constrained street? Rev moved to the side and onto a set of steps leading into a residence to get a better look.
“Are you kidding me, Punch? Now?” Rev tried to subvocalize, but it came out as more of a snarl.
Rev was about to shut his battle buddy down, but Punch was right. He’d just told McCough to keep his head on a swivel, and here he was, worrying about the wrong thing. He had to trust Fydor’s proctors to do their thing and leave him to security of the movement.
“OK,” Rev said, meaning that he’d refocus his attention.
And, of course, his battle buddy took that as assent to his original question.
He was going to tell him not now, but it was easier just to say, “What?”
It took a moment for Rev to understand, and when he did, he rolled his own “i”s, but he managed not to laugh. It was bad, but there was some juvenile humor to it—not that he’d admit that.
And, surprisingly, it worked. He was still amped, he was still concerned, but the stress had been taken down a notch. Once again, he wondered how much he was being manipulated by the Navy and civilian psychologists who had a hand—even still—in the augmented Rev.
“OK, Punch. You’ve done your duty.”
He turned his attention back to the surrounding area. The Centaurs had to know of the approaching Marines. Like the Japanese back in the Twentieth Century’s World War II, if the Centaurs’ Navy didn’t destroy the humans’ assault force in space, they would lay back and hit them during the final descent, even letting some forces establish a beachhead before cutting the forces in two.
But that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t react to something like this exodus. They would know how long they had before the Marines would start the actual descent, and it wouldn’t take much to divert a paladin to wipe out the column.
It didn’t mean they would, but Rev couldn’t take that chance. He pulled an overlay of the area, wishing he had any of his drones. As they moved slowly down Geltrain, he considered all the likely avenues of approach. A paladin was a pretty big hunk of Centaur, so he could ignore some of the narrower alleys, but that still left too many routes for one of them to use to hit the column.
Slowly, the column inched forward and spread out as the people marched. Rev couldn’t see beyond the arch of the bridge ahead, but people were hurrying over it while those with Rev and McCough were lagging.
“Hey, Staff Sergeant. See if you can goose everyone up a bit,” he called out.
“Don’t think many of them can go much faster, Corporal.”
Which was probably right. Vivian was starting to slow down as Craig’s limping became more pronounced.
Why the hell didn’t we arrange for some sort of transport?
The answer was that they didn’t want emissions from a vehicle to draw Centaur attention. That didn’t take into consideration that there could be injured people, however.
“How are we doing on time?”
We’ve slowed down.
He knew that, of course, but now he knew exactly where they stood. If nothing else happened, they’d be inside the market before the landing.
More and more people crossed the bridge, but a gap was forming between the rear of the main body and the laggards. Rev didn’t like that, but it was out of his control. Hopefully, it wouldn’t matter in the long run.
He started to pass a middle-aged man who was sitting on the step into a store. He stared at Rev with dull eyes.
“Come on, sir. You’ve got to keep moving.”
“I can’t.”
There was nothing obviously wrong with the man, but that didn’t mean much.
“Can you tell what’s wrong with him?”
Rev could see the pulse fluttering in the man’s neck, but he hadn’t put two and two together. He hesitated a moment, looking ahead to the bridge. They weren’t far now. Two hundred meters to cross the river, then another three or four hundred on the other side. He could cover that in less than a minute. This man, however, didn’t have his augments and was in cardiac distress to boot.
Screw it. Why did they give me extra strength if they didn’t want me to use it?
Forgetting all the reasons he hadn’t helped Vivian, he stooped to help the man to his feet, then took almost all of the man’s weight with his left arm, leaving his right to hold the Moray at the ready. It might not be the correct tactical decision, but he was not going to leave this man behind.
“What’s your name, sir.”
“Fint,” the man gasped out.
“Well, Fint, we’re going to make it to where a doctor can take a look at you.”
The man’s legs barely moved as he tried to walk, so Rev hitched him up to take the full weight of his body. He carried much more weight with a full combat load, so this was nothing.
McCough, up ahead and on the opposite side of the street, turned and caught his eyes. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing as he continued on, shepherding the people ahead.
Vivian stopped to catch her breath, and Rev stepped up alongside
her.
“Not very far, now.”
“We’ll make it. Don’t you worry none. Just need to let these old bones rest a moment.”
Rev pulled up the map overlay and measured the distance to the crown of the bridge.
“Look, only a hundred and fifteen meters to the bridge; then it’s all downhill from there.”
“We’ll make it.” She started walking again with Craig grimacing in pain.
The young man still looked to be in shock, and Rev wondered if his nanos were on the fritz. There’d have to be a doctor at the market who could check him out.
He looked back up at the bridge. “See that, Fint? Almost there.”
The man’s head lolled, and saliva dripped out of his open mouth. He was still breathing, though.
That wasn’t just blowing smoke. They really were getting close, and Rev started feeling more confident. Maybe they were going to get through this without a hiccup.
The Gods of War hated complacency, however. As if to punish his hubris, the last of the main group crossing the bridge started screaming and running, heading back to Rev and the rest.
“Take cover!” Rev screamed before he even knew what was happening.
He dropped Fint inside the recessed entrance to a clothing shop, then darted to the side to pull Vivian and Craig in as well. Up ahead, McCough had reacted immediately, pulling people into a side alley.
Rev stepped away, deploying his Moray, all senses on alert, when half a dozen people on the bridge exploded. That was the only way to describe it. One moment they were living, breathing people. The next moment, they were a red mist.
“SHIT!” Rev screamed at the top of his voice.
He didn’t need his battle buddy to tell him what had done that. He’d never seen the weapon deployed, but he’d see the holos during training. The weapon was an ultrasonic directed-energy projector, a beam weapon of sorts, but not like the more common meson cannon. The beam excited water molecules into intense vibration. Anything with water, such as a human body, exploded. Anything without water, such as a building, was untouched.
The Centaur up ahead wanted to scour away the humans while protecting the city’s infrastructure.
