“Don’t waste ammunition,” the corlist instructed them, ticking off the three-count with his extra limbs as he fired bursts of three laser-tag light rounds at his target, a cutout of an Insurgent soldier that had been set up in one of the empty gardens. The red light hit the neck or heart in rapid-fire, flashflashflash, over and over again. He turned his stalklike eyes toward the humanoid puppets, who stared at him impassively, though Daivid knew the operators in their soundproof bunkers deep below were absorbing the lesson. “These guns can fire 650 rounds per minute of caseless ammunition. The magazines only hold a hundred bullets, and we can’t spare you more than one each. Now, all of you try it.”
The semicat was demonstrating a guerilla maneuver. He led a squad of chickens, cats and the Bizarro Twins over the green lawn, pretending to shoot at a target coming up the path, then diving and rolling down behind the food stand on the other side.
“Welcome! We bid you welcome…!” the colorful flowers sang from their pots along the path and on the windowsills. Ewanowski stood up with his paws clapped over his furry ears.
“Can we please turn those damned things off?” Ewanowski roared over the tinny voices. “They’re gonna drive me insane.”
As though an invisible hand clicked off a switch, the voices ceased. “Thanks,” the semicat said to the air.
“Looking good,” Wolfe told Aaooorru, as the corlist left the target practice to join him. “The … uh, it was a great loss to the service when they transferred you to the Cockroaches.”
The corlist made a wry face. “I miss it sometimes, but not when I had to put lives on the line. With no real troopers in harm’s way this may almost be fun. Almost.”
O O O
“There you are, sir!” Meyers called, coming around the corner of the Slalom Slope Flume Ride early the next morning.
“Meyers!” Wolfe greeted her. “How’s your bear suit coming?”
“Sir!” the procurement officer exclaimed, shocked. “Sir, we’ve got a problem.”
“A problem!” a squeaky voice declared. It belonged to a long-legged stork, who stalked over to see if he could help.
“A problem,” declaimed a deep-voiced frog. “We have to help!” It hopped alongside, until Daivid and Meyers were surrounded by puppets.
“Do you mind?” he said, batting them away. “Go on, Meyers.”
“Well, sir, it came up when Boland just tried out a maneuver in his … er … disguise.”
“The lion suit,” Daivid said, indulgently. “I thought so.”
“Er, yes, sir. Well, sir, we’re not bulletproof, so while some of the puppets are wearing our blue armor, we’re wearing the hard suits under our costumes?”
“That’s right. Go on.”
“Well, some of the Insurgents have got the same kind of armor we do. We saw it in the video from the Wingle mansion. I mean, it’s an older version, looks more like ancient camouflage than invisibility?”
“I’ve seen it, Meyers. I’ve even worn it. What about it?”
“Well, it may be old armor, but it has the same kind of heads-up infrared displays as our new suits. Sir, they’re going to know that the puppets are not living beings!”
“Awww!” the puppets protested.
“We’re alive,” an owl insisted, “if you believe in us.”
Daivid shushed them again. No, they weren’t. His heart sank. In seconds the enemy would find the scarce real combatants among the hordes of dressed-up mannequins, and ignore all the others. They would concentrate all their firepower on the Cockroaches. The park would fall in minutes. His plan was about to fail before it was launched. He was devastated. “I do see the problem, Meyers. Any infrared sensor isn’t going to be fooled, no matter how realistic the uniforms are. I can’t believe I didn’t think about that. We have got to do something about it, immediately. Any ideas?”
“No, sir,” Meyers said, “but I’ve got a meeting with the engineers in about ten minutes. I’ll let you know what we come up with.”
Aaooorru caught the dismayed look on Daivid’s face. “Should we go on drilling anyhow, sir?” he asked.
Daivid snapped out of his funk and looked down at the corlist. “Yes, Aaooorru, carry on. We’ll solve this. We have to.”
O O O
The Carrot Palace didn’t look at all the way it had only two days before. Daivid walked through the echoing vault admiring the changes. Lin and her squad, plus every able-bodied volunteer who had not been sewing costumes or making fake guns had been there to help her haul flitter-sized chunks of plascrete into the vast chamber. Bags of broken glass and shards of metal had been dumped all along the walls and inward to within two meters of the glass chunks. Such debris created an obstacle course carefully calculated to put the Insurgents where Daivid wanted them when he wanted them there. The glass and metal would present no danger whatsoever to enemy fighters wearing heavy-duty armor, but it would keep the less protected herded into the center of the big chamber. Deadfalls of more weighty debris had been tied up in green nets that were camouflaged against the ceiling bosses to delay the escape of the Insurgents once they were inside.
“We’re about out of charges,” Lin said. “I’ve had to substitute propellant from the fireworks in the storehouse—though we can make one hell of a big blast out of those, and we spent the last few hours making demolition charges out of fireworks and boxes of ammo. They’re nasty, but they work. Everything is set to go off from the control panel aboard my dragon, or from Adri’Leta’s if I get hit.”
Daivid toured the placements, admiring the neat work of the artillery squad and their conscripts. “If I didn’t know this place was full of high explosive, I would never be able to tell.”
“Oh, you’ll be able to tell, all right,” the petite woman grinned. “You’d better turn off your audio pickup when this place blows, because your ears are going to ring for a year.”
Daivid’s communication link sounded. He looked down at his wrist.
“Sir, it’s Meyers,” the procurement officer said. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. We found the perfect item. It’s a little generator that the park employees use to help keep warm during early spring and late fall. It’ll give each of the puppets an internal body temperature of about 38ºC—a little high, but if those helmet sensors read approximately correct body heat, the enemy won’t look any closer.”
“I concur, Meyers. What’s the problem?”
The brown-haired woman shrugged. “There’s only about thirty of them. We need about a thousand. The man who makes them is here in town, but he won’t donate any units. He wants to sell them to us for twenty credits each! I tried, sir. I’m good at negotiating, but this man was too much for me. Would you like to talk with him?”
Wolfe saw no point in chewing her ass. If she said she’d tried, she had. She wasn’t setting him up for a joke. The fraternity initiation he’d gone through was over, and every soldier in his troop was serious about the mission. Daivid got the information from her and borrowed Boland and Captain Harawe’s flitter to pay a visit to the workshop, which lay at the north end of town.
O O O
“Mr. Trewer, maybe you don’t understand what is at stake here,” Daivid said, trying again to explain.
Lachlan Trewer paid no attention to him. He lay back on his upholstered rocker-couch in front of his entertainment wall, and hiked up the volume again. Daivid nodded to Boland, who went over to the crystal threedeeo unit and pulled the power cell out of the core.
“Hey!” Trewer gestured, as the three-dimensional images of two naked women wrestling in hot-pink slime vanished. “Put that back.”
“Not until we’ve talked,” Daivid said, sitting down heavily on the end of the couch. His weight raised the other end enough so Trewer had to sit up to keep from rolling off. “Do you have the capacity to produce more of those little heating units?”
“Sure I do, but I won’t. The way I understand it, the only person who’s in any kind of danger is Oscar Wingle. He’s got all
the money in the world, and he’s got you guys to look after him. If I just sit tight, nothing’s going to happen to me.” Trewer reached for a silver thermal beaker and took a deep swig. “The man fired me six years ago from the engineering department. I worked my ass off for him. I’ve gotten my own business going since then, but it’s been hard. I can’t get a recommendation from him, nothing! Son of a bitch and his so-called standards. Like no one ever took a nap on the job. I get tired! Other people get tired!”
The accusations must have stung to feel so fresh after such a long time, but Daivid persisted. “Other people will be in danger if the Insurgents come here, not just Mr. Wingle. We need to safeguard them as well. I know you’re not really interested in my problems. What will it really take to get your factory line rolling again? What do you need?”
The salt-and-pepper eyebrows went up on the mostly bald, swarthy forehead. “To turn out a thousand units by tomorrow?”
“Tonight,” Wolfe said. “Immediately, if possible. There is no time to lose.”
Trewer pursed his lips. “Huh. Tomorrow would have been ordinary rush fees. Tonight, double rush. To get me up off this couch, triple rush fees at least. Plus full price for parts plus time. This is my off season. Triple rush.”
“Mr. Trewer,” Daivid explained patiently, “I represent the Space Service. I work for the government. You know I can’t get authorization to pay you triple rush fees. Please, be reasonable. Your town could be besieged. Don’t you care about your neighbors? The Insurgents are pirates. They’ll steal anything of value that they can grab.”
“I make small electronic goods,” Trewer said, languidly. “I have nothing they want.” Daivid felt his temper rising. The man was bored and enjoying flaunting his little power, probably the only time in his life he would have a way to screw over Oscar Wingle.
Daivid explained all over again in greater detail how he intended to fight the Insurgents, and what it meant to have the generators in place in his makeshift army. He put every gram of passion and urgency he possessed into his plea. “I cannot stress how important this object is to the success of our mission,” he concluded.
“Well, I cannot stress,” Trewer said mockingly, “how little I care.” He heaved himself up out of his couch and held out his hands to Boland. Boland tossed the power supply to the owner, who put it back in the entertainment center. “There’s nothing you can say that will make me gear up again, especially since you can’t pay for my time, my materials or my involvement. Now, get out of my house. I’m missing the all-girl porn festival.”
Wolfe felt his heart sink. The item would have been absolutely perfect for their purposes. The engineers at Wingle World felt that anything they could jury rig in such a short time would be inferior, and might overheat, causing the puppets to malfunction or even catch fire. The greatest benefit of the Trewer unit was that it held perfectly steady on temperature. But if the man was obdurate, he couldn’t force him to cooperate. They would simply have to think of something else. He signalled Boland to follow him to the door.
“Thank you, Mr. Trewer,” Daivid said politely.
“Shove it, Mr. Wolfe.”
Wolfe pricked up his ears, his steps arrested. There was something in the scorning, resentful way Trewer snarled out his name that made him hope. He reached inside his tunic and brought out the little database, as Boland watched with avid interest. On a hunch he tapped in the name.
Dad, I never believed I’d say this, Daivid thought, but thanks.
He spun back on one heel to face the man in the rocking lounge. The man looked up from changing channels as Daivid cleared his throat.
“Lachlan Trewer,” he said, “you owe my father a Class 3 favor.”
O O O
“You know, sir,” Boland said, as they guided a hoverloader piled with boxes through the corridors to the engineering department, “you’ve got to learn to check that thing before you go into a situation.”
“I don’t intend to make constant use of it, chief,” Daivid said firmly. As they rolled into the department he put the loader’s controller box into Meyers’s surprised hands. “There are 250 generators in this batch. The rest of them will be here by tomorrow afternoon. Careful, they’re wrapped in individual padding.”
“How…?” she began, astonished.
“Don’t ask!” Wolfe shouted, as he stalked away.
“I can help install ’em,” Boland offered, as the engineers and puppets present descended on the crates. “You’re sure these things won’t cause a meltdown in the circuitry?”
“Heck, son,” Bigfoot Cowboy drawled, picking up one of the small boxes in his padded hands, “we done been through worse weather than that. Our summers get to 43o, 44o sometimes. We’re all good for at least 300o. Got to be fire retardant. That’s what the marshals tell us, and you always obey the marshal.”
“Of course, sir,” Boland said, grinning.
“Could be ma’am,” Meyers pointed out, playfully. “The voice synthesizers disguise the actual speaker pretty well. Why, he could be any gender, any age.”
Boland handed off crates from the loader’s bed to eager hands. “As long as the enemy thinks they’re someone, honey, then I don’t care if they’re a four-eyed goblin with the croup.”
“Got one of those,” an engineer said, after a moment’s thought.
O O O
The next morning Wolfe and Borden went on a review of the updated puppets, with Sparky and several of the more advanced marionettes tagging along behind. D-45’s troop, the ‘welcoming committee’ who would be stationed closest to the entrance of Wingle World, stood for inspection in the middle of Main Street. A crowd of huge furry cats, dogs, snakes, fish, goats and a few select ‘humans’ held their weapons at parade rest.
“Watch it with that sword,” Wolfe instructed one frog, who had his saber slung haphazardly on his humped back. “You can slice your own leg off with the foil edge. Here, let me show you a better way to wear it.” He reached over the warty head, and the bulging eyes followed him as he turned the curved edge upward. “Grab for the hilt, and it’ll come out business end downward.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” the giant amphibian croaked. A few of the others rearranged their gear to match.
Wolfe stood back to have a good look. Like him, many of the Park Irregulars, as he was beginning to call them in his mind, wore the dark blue lightweight ‘armor’ with protective bubble helmets. Unlike his, few of theirs were real. Only Boland’s, Ewanowski’s, Okumede’s, and Ambering’s suits had been large enough to lend to the more colorful characters. The rest had been loaned to human or itterim puppets who would draw the most fire in the early stages of the battle Daivid had planned out. At least, when he examined them through his infrared scopes, the heat sensors picked up what it recognized as the red signature of a living being. While the creatures didn’t have heartbeats or respiration, the sound of their operator’s breath or heartbeat was frequently audible from the sensitive and sophisticated voice system.
“The enemy will assume any strange signal artifacts are just military gadgets that they don’t have,” Borden reassured him.
“I hope this works,” Wolfe said, dismissing the squads with a sharp salute of approval. “This is about all we can do. We’re as ready as we can be. We can’t put off the bad guys forever.”
“I concur, sir. The irregulars will start to lose their edge. I believe the psychological moment will come within 36 hours if nothing happens within that time.”
“I know I’m on edge,” Wolfe agreed, twining his fingers together and cracking them impatiently. “I’ve got to dump this tension, or I’m going to make too many mistakes.”
“You know,” Sparky piped up from behind them, “Cockroaches is an awful name for a combat unit. It’s ugly. Everyone says so.”
“I don’t care what everyone says,” Wolfe said impatiently, trying to think. What was he missing? He’d been over the checklists again and again. Heating elements had been placed in the Palace and other
locations where the Cockroaches would be concealed to mask their infrared outlines. He ought to get an hour’s sleep, but he didn’t think he could close his eyes—or if he did, he wouldn’t open them again for sixteen hours. “That’s the unit’s name.”
The blond puppet nudged them both. “You ought to call yourself something like the Wolfe Pack. Get it?”
“Yeah, I get it,” Wolfe snarled. “Go jump in a vat of acid, will you?”
“All right,” Sparky said, in a thick accent, “but I’ll be back. Get it? I’ll be back?”
“I’ve seen the vid. Now, will you shut up?” Daivid said peevishly, then paused. Wolfe Pack. He did like the idea, but it would be the utter end of hubris to name the group after himself until and unless he earned it. He glanced at Borden, who cocked an eyebrow at him.
“I like it, sir,” she said. “Anything’s better than Cockroach.”
“I haven’t earned that kind of right yet, lieutenant,” Daivid said sharply.
“You’re working on it, sir,” Borden said. “You’ve come a long way from making beds in the barracks.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Sparky looked Borden up and down, and grinned at her. “Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When the job was nicely done, she gave her father forty-one!” Borden raised her rifle and sighted down it at the puppet. “Don’t do it, gorgeous!” Sparky warned her. “You don’t want another one on your conscience!”
“Another what?” Wolfe asked, automatically.
“Sir, I haven’t got anything on my conscience,” Borden protested, then looked discomfited. That wasn’t true, and all of them knew it. Every living being had done things that s/he regretted. Wolfe doubted that like the subject of the five-thousand year old Terran rhyme that D.E. Borden, Lt. jg, was guilty of the brutal and gruesome murder of her parents. Just being transferred to the Cockroaches meant Borden had some skeleton in her personal closet that she didn’t like revealed, but Daivid knew Sparky was just fishing for trouble. He mustered an exasperated look and gave it to his junior officer. He aimed a thumb at Sparky.
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