Chen growled. “Don’t these things impair children’s hearing?”
The scouts gestured them forward. Chen’s readings were that the life signs were deep inside the Palace. He could take them by surprise. He ordered his small force to creep forward.
The most enormous carousel he had ever seen stood between Company D and their target. Every kind of creature that had ever been discovered was represented as riding steeds on the multitiered creation.
“Sir!” Naal hissed. “Dragons!”
“Yes, yes, I can see them,” Chen said, flicking a hand at the ride. “Dragons.”
“No, sir!” the itterim chittered, pointing upwards. “Dragons!”
O O O
“Dragons, just chase them around for a while,” Wolfe ordered, watching the whole scene on his scopes. “Pay no attention to the following announcement.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Lin acknowledged, with pleasure. She kicked the control that sent the dragon rocketing to the east.
It felt good not to be earthbound for a while. The one- or two-rider scout tanks slightly resembled their namesakes in that they were flown upright, with the pilot standing on two long footrests in between the twin missile launchers, which would be where the dragon had wings. It breathed fire, too, from a plasma gun set in the frame high over her head, above a protective duroplas shield that extended like a mummy case all the way around the front and much of the rear of the pilot’s perch. She looked out through what would be its neck, with heads-up display on all four sides of the scope, and the controls were finger studs in the handrail. Lin played the buttons like a virtuoso as she and Adri’Leta swooped down on the dozen wavering shapes. The Insurgents instantly broke ranks and ran off in all directions. Lin picked out the one with the most intact camo—best gear usually meant it was an officer. She rattled off a few rounds of ammunition, not bothering with a missile or a plasma blast. That would come later. Adri’Leta decided to pursue the forward patrol, who tried to lose themselves under the Bounding Main attraction.
Daivid turned to frequency 268.07.
“Dragon squadron A, prepare to follow the scouts. Dragon squadron B, await my orders. That is all.” He scrolled back to the channels his people were following. “Bluff has been offered. Let’s see if it makes them nervous.”
Judging from the chatter that Borden was monitoring, the Insurgents reacted with shock to the news that there were armed scout vehicles in the air. D-45 and Boland reported that their prey started watching the skies within moments of the announcement. It made the Insurgents so careless that the Cockroaches had to start missing to keep them on the move.
In a few moments Boland, in his persona as King Tullamore, emerged from a tunnel, and attracted the Insurgents’ attention by peppering the Bounding Main with bullets. As the inflatable ships sank in the inflatable sea, it was every human or bug for itself, trying to escape from beneath before they suffocated. Boland’s team waited patiently until they emerged, sprayed them with fireworks, and got them running again in the direction of their eventual target.
O O O
“Dragons!” Ayala snarled, as they pressed forward through Pioneer Town to aid Company D. This was no ‘amusement’ to Ayala. The rides and shops were designed to resemble early generation ships and modular domes, made of reclaimed plastic and fuel tanks from the earliest colonization efforts. He knew dispossessed spacers who were still living in those pathetic conditions. He had lived in one for a short time himself. His next domicile, he vowed, would be a beautiful country estate built by hand by Confederation Senators who would never again impose illicit laws upon innocent people. “Grenadiers and shoulder-mounted missiles to the fore! It is the TWC! Were they waiting for us? Was this an elaborate set-up to catch us? No, it couldn’t be. The intelligence on Wingle’s invention goes back more than eight months! I’ve been hearing rumors for two years!”
“Don’t forget,” Oostern put in, “the trap our ships fell into trying to secure the Tachytalk units. That had to have been carefully laid out for our spy.”
“So there is no chip?” Ayala shook his head. “There has to be a chip. We need that chip, or those TWC bastards will keep us down forever!”
“There must be a chip,” Oostern agreed, “or why would they have led us on such a chase?”
“They want it for themselves,” Ayala reasoned.
A kick-line of tigers interrupted his musing. The striped beasts, in a multiplicity of colors nature never foresaw, began to dance through the prefab shacks. The gunners opened fire on them. A blue one and a green one were cut in half by the barrage of bullets, and numbers of red, orange, silver, and purple tigers fled from the range of fire. Two, white and red, seemed to be resistant to the attack. As Ayala’s people concentrated on them, they sprang over the domes and disappeared, bullets nipping their tails. A mix of Space Service troopers and more animals poured out of the buildings around them, shooting sprays of glittering light into their midst.
“More fireworks?” Ayala asked, until an itterim two meters away fell, ichor pumping from his thorax. The soldier twitched feebly, but Ayala knew it was done for. He gave the order to draw and evade. “Those are real troopers!” he shouted, as he elbow-crawled under the swinging doors of the ‘Saloon.’ “Frag them!”
The whumph! of exploding grenades sent troopers flying into the air in pieces—but none of them bled.
“More robots!” he screamed. “They are killing us with robots!”
He ordered full fire, until nothing remained but a few twitching wires. He stood panting in the ruins of the building. Chairs lay splintered on their backs. The metal mirror over the bar was dented and holed. The old-time music maker on the wall had stopped playing its honky-tonk piano tunes. All was silent except for moaning and cursing. A quarter of his company was wounded, some dead.
“I am still reading live bodies underground,” Oostern hissed. He stepped forward cautiously, reading his scopes, and scrabbled among the wreckage. He came up with a small black box. “It’s hot.” He dropped it on the ground and crushed it with his boot.
“So that’s how they are doing it,” Ayala said, with admiration for a worthy foe. “So we cannot tell the real ones from the sham troopers. It doesn’t matter. We will destroy them all, and kill Oscar Wingle—as soon as the chip is in my hands.”
Humming rose over the noise from distant attractions. Ayala went on guard, checking his scope. “Scout! I only read one.”
“It’s a dragon,” Oostern confirmed. “That’ll be one of the pair that Chen saw.”
Ayala’s eyes narrowed. “That won’t be a puppet flying it,” he said greedily. “Bring it down!”
“Missiles lock on!” Oostern ordered. “On my command … fire!”
O O O
“Ammo!” Adri’Leta squawked, seeing columns of white smoke rising at a sharp angle from the ground. “Missile launchers! Two coming my way!”
“Evade, Mimeo!” Lin commanded. “Can you distract them into another target?”
The clone rode her tank like a windsurfer, leaning and angling sharply, in hopes of dislodging the projectiles from her tail. She did some fancy flying, looping through the angles of roller coasters and parachute drops until the G-force made her cheeks flatten inside her armor, even flying down in between a pair of burning-hot spotlights over a concert arena, but the missiles matched her moves, twin blips on her nav screen.
“No way! They must have brain chips!” Once they’d acquired her, nothing but destroying the missiles themselves would keep them from chasing her to the Crab Nebula and back. Desperately, she set the plasma cannon to follow the first missile. If she blew that one, it might take its partner with it. She rode out over the nearest mountain range, the noonday sun beaming brightly off the snow-covered ridge. No one would get hurt out there.
The missiles, having less bulk to move and depleting propellant with every kilometer, were gaining on her. She fired once, but the target dodged to the side. The streak of white-hot energy carved a trenc
h in the snowpack. Smart brain chips! Where had the Insurgency picked up those? She fired again, framing the missile with shots to top and bottom, not giving the projectile room to escape. As she had planned, her third shot seared the point-nosed cylinder. She was three kilometers ahead of it when it burst in a blaze of blinding blue light. To her dismay, the other missile streaked forward out of the holocaust. One to go.
By now Lin had freed herself and was coming to the rescue of her shooting buddy. The other dragon spiraled up from the shadow of the Carrot Palace. Adri’Leta traced her streams of fire, angled upward so Lin wouldn’t hit her by accident. Sweat rolled down her back. Her body suit changed temperature to cool her, but it couldn’t do anything to slow her pounding heart. She didn’t want to die!
O O O
“Here it comes again,” Ayala crowed, as the dragon dove down toward them with death in its wake. “Only one missile left! A very skilled pilot. It should be rewarded with a swift death. Fire when it comes in range. Armor piercing. Aim for where the cockpit is open. That will be its back.”
“Yes, sir. On my mark,” Oostern readied the gunners. “Fire!”
O O O
Lin had the measure of the missile now. If she hit it just right, it would tumble out of control and detonate over Wingle Lake, about a kilometer north of the Carrot Palace. She leaned into her scopes, accelerating after Adri’Leta, who was going into a dive preparatory to zooming high over the park and out again. Her hands closed on the controls, and gently squeezed.
Telescoped grenade charges shot out of all four barrels, over and under her launchers. They lanced out struck the missile broadside. Just as it passed over the lake, Lin sent the command, and the cylinder blew, loudly and more colorfully than any of the fireworks the puppets had been using for ammo. She enjoyed the spectacle for a second, then swooped around in a circle.
“Mimeo?” she asked.
The other dragon was flying at an angle. The shape at the controls was black, indicating that the suit’s power was off line. As Lin watched in horror, the scout vehicle turned upside down in mid-air. The body fell bonelessly, and the dragon sped off alone. Lin swooped down, seeking the dark shape among the innumerable buildings. The lights blinded her.
“Mimeo just got dropped,” Lin reported. “I’m going down.”
“We’ve lost one pilot,” Wolfe replied. “We can’t lose both. Retreat.”
“But I’m not leaving her the way you let them leave Mustache,” she said fiercely. “No way.”
“Yes, you are,” the voice said sharply. “That is an order. Retreat. Get whoever shot her to follow you.”
“She trusted you. You’re letting her down.”
“She knew and understood what we are doing here. The mission is bigger than a single individual. It’s for an entire population, a whole world! Remember the Space Service motto? There’s no “I” in “corps”?”
“And there’s no ‘u’ in “asshole,” but you’re acting as if there is!”
“Chief! Return to base, now.”
Lin felt tears starting down her face and cursed that she couldn’t wipe them off. Was this the wet-eared kid they’d been trying to bring along for a month? He was acting like an officer. And was she the same multiply-decorated and much-demoted lifelong trooper who’d been so amused by him before? She was trying to do too much, to the detriment of their mission, and he had caught her at it. Their roles were reversed, and she didn’t like the feeling. But how could she leave the body of her friend and sister in arms? “I hate you.”
The voice was sorrowful but resolute. “I can live with that. Take it out on Ayala later. Get back here. Cuddles will retrieve the other dragon. Poet, how close are you and your company to Pioneer Village?”
“A hop, skip and jump,” Mose’s voice said.
“Good. Get whoever’s there and bring them. I want their asses here when the boom falls. Tullamore, I need your help.”
“Aye, sir,” Boland’s voice said.
“I’m opening all the communication links. Repeat after me …”
Lin bit her lip and kicked the scout vehicle into high.
O O O
“Retreating!” Ayala crowed, watching the second dragon fly away in the direction of the Carrot Palace. “I suspect that the air cover we all heard about is just a bluff! Otherwise, would you not expect a full retaliatory strike? We killed one of their tanks, and that leaves only one!”
A party of itterim had rushed out on his command, and came back with the black hulk. Up close it was smaller than it had seemed. Ayala ignored the huge hole the explosive armor-piercing projectile had carved out of the back, and flicked off the helmet. “A human woman,” he confirmed, “a real one.” Blood poured out from between the paling lips, and the eyes stared half-lidded at nothing. He noted the rank markings on the breast of the suit, visible now that it was powered down to black ceramic. “There are troopers here, but how many?”
“… Fall back!” a tiny voice erupted from the body. The itterim nearest it jumped back, startled. The woman was dead! But the voice was male. She was not speaking. It was coming from inside the helmet. He held it up to listen. “The lieutenant has the chip, repeat, he’s got the chip. Everybody fall back to the Carrot Palace on the double. We’ve got to cover him for our extraction.”
Another voice, also male, screamed, “Tullamore, cut circuits at once! The enemy has Mimeo’s body—this channel is no longer secure! Everyone cut links.”
“Sorry, sir,” the first voice said contritely. The communication link shut down, but too late, for the TWC. Ayala smirked. He dropped the helmet beside the limp corpse.
“Prepare to move out,” he commanded. “Wingle has turned over the device to a Space Service officer.”
“Ooga booga!” screeched a big, cream-colored ape, leaping down from a building top. “Ooga booga!” He beat his chest with both fists, and capered around the Insurgents.
“Coconut Gorilla!” Oostern exclaimed. The simian knuckled his way up to the itterim and began to pluck at his armor with flexible forefinger and thumb. Oostern was delighted. Coconut Gorilla was a friendly character in the children’s threedeeo programs who liked to groom his new friends.
“Don’t waste time with those,” Ayala snarled. “We must get to the Carrot Palace.” He whipped out his plasma gun and opened fire on the anthropoid. But Coconut Gorilla was faster than he was. The bolt lashed out, setting fire to a kiosk covered with crash-couch upholstery, but not the puppet. Ayala found the furry ape beside him. Coconut Gorilla grinned, showing rows of pointed white teeth, and backhanded him in the face with one huge arm.
The blow sent the colonel flying.
“Kill him!” Ayala shouted. He wasn’t hurt. The blow had taken him in the helmet. Only the shock of the attack made him angry. Coconut Gorilla shrieked with glee, clambered four-handed up the walls, and ran along the tops of the buildings. Either the bullets missed him, or they had no effect. Three soldiers ran after him, still shooting.
“Ooga booga!” voices chanted from behind the quonset huts. “Ooga booga!”
“That must be a trooper,” a lieutenant commented. “How could a puppet be so strong?”
“How could a trooper climb a wall like that?” Oostern retorted. “Beware of the characters. They are more dangerous than we know. I never dreamed they were so strong!”
“Ignore them!” Ayala ordered. “We know where our objective is, now.”
O O O
“Who cares if you’re afraid of spiders!” Captain Zebediah of company E shouted at her command. “You’re supposed to kill them!”
In answer, a huge barrage of shots rang out from behind her, blasting away at the dancing blue arachnids that seemed to taunt them, hanging from trees and buildings, rolling their multiple black eyes. “Control your fire, you six-legged nincompoops! We don’t have an infinity of ammunition!”
From the very first moment they had entered Futureland, the itterim soldiers had started getting nervous. Zebediah herself had
glimpsed shadows skittering by in the distance. She assumed that the defense forces were stalking them. Who knew that it was psychological warfare? Somewhere in the primitive hindbrain of the itterim lay a morbid fear of spiders, deeper and more paralyzing than even humans’ wariness of the hairy, eight-legged abominations.
Snipers had targeted the rear ranks, silently picking off soldiers until one of them died with his pincer wrapped around the trigger of his machine gun, spraying gunfire forward into his own colleagues’ unarmored backs. The company spun around, guns ready, to face the clicking, slavering mandibles of three blue spiders the size of tanks. The itterim soldiers had filled the air with bullets, but the spiders lifted upwards on invisible threads and dashed up and over the framework of the gigantic roller coaster next door. After that, only by using the threat of shooting them herself had Zebediah kept the entire company from deserting. A gleaming eye or a jointed, hairy leg appearing around the corner of a building was enough to cause the group to fire off an ammunition-wasting fusilade.
“Squad A, advance!” Aaooorru ordered, in his high, clear voice. “Squad B, flank attack!” Half the character army assigned to him marched in perfect ranks around to the side of the Inventor’s Workshoppe, and the other half sneaked off into the bushes. Now that the spiders had the Insurgents surrounded, it should have been no trouble to keep them busy until Lt. Wolfe wanted them at the Carrot Palace. Instead, he was finding himself fighting a pitched battle around the Inventor’s Workshoppe.
“Do you need some help, shrimpy?” Oscar Wingle’s voice asked, over his implanted receiver.
“No, sir,” Aaooorru replied.
“I can activate the security force. It’d be no trouble. Those idiots are making so much noise it’s going to start coming out of my characters’ mouths.”
“I … I’ll try to get them to be quiet, sir,” the corlist replied. “All we want to do is get them moving, but I’m afraid we freaked them out with the spiders, sir.”
Strong Arm Tactics Page 38
