“Hah! Should have asked your buggy friend. Itterim have this race memory of being eaten by spiders. Deep-seated, really. Humans are afraid of them, too.”
The corlist was mortified. “But they call me Spidey! Is it an insult to name me for something that repulses them?”
“No. They like you. It’s a nom de guerre, isn’t it? Supposed to sound fearsome? That’s why I keep the arachnids in the Chamber of Horrors. A real pants-wetting experience. You should try it.”
“Maybe later, sir,” the corlist replied, left with a cultural conundrum to mull over. “Out.”
O O O
“Colonel Ayala gave his orders,” Zebediah shouted, trying to get through to the stupid mantises, who were panting in fear, tongues darting between mandibles. “We have to get to the Carrot Palace!”
“They have us surrounded,” chittered her lieutenant. “We must blow through their lines.”
“Fine,” Zebediah said, her patience exhausted. It was the only thing she missed about belonging to an organized militia: giving an order and having it obeyed without question. She could shoot them herself, or wait for them to settle their problem. “Bring up the shoulder-mounted cannon. We’ll knock through that refreshment stand and have a clear run to the major avenue. Fire one!”
***
Chapter 21
Wolfe stood inside the arch with his arms crossed as his troops began to pour into the Meadow Pavilion from a dozen different pathways. Bullets zinged over their heads, or slapped into the back or limbs of the fleeing figures. He winced when a barrage took out all the lights on the top of the Undersea Adventure ride, as the Insurgents tearing along behind Boland the Lion King tried to kill the animals that stuck out their tongues and rolled their eyes at their pursuers.
He knew they wouldn’t see him at first. Most of the soldiers racing toward him were in motley collections of uniform pieces eked out with sections of armor. Not all of them had helmets with infrared scopes. They were lucky if the plastic compound was laser-resistant. Most of them weren’t expected to live to see the Great Society. Sitting ducks, but that was the Insurgency way.
With sitting ducks in mind, he glanced back at his ersatz army. The characters nudged each other and chuckled, as though they were getting ready for a really special party.
“Is everyone on the way?” he asked Borden.
“Spidey and Scratch are keeping station,” the junior lieutenant replied tersely. “They’re busy, but all is well so far. The rest are on the way. Thielind reports at least 80% of the Insurgents are in pursuit of our auxiliaries or coming here on their commander’s orders.”
“Good,” Daivid said. “That’ll do for now.”
Borden was hardly speaking to him. She had broken concealment and climbed out of the rubble to confront him in person, such as they were as moving outlines, about the abandonment of the two dead troopers. He’d explained his reasoning again and again, but it sounded worse every time he rehashed it. He had finally ordered her back to her place, refusing to say another word about it. He would probably pay for both the refusal and the dishonorment later, but that was later. They had to live through this battle first. Nothing was certain. They had no extraction, as Boland had broadcast on the helmet channel for the benefit of the enemy he knew would be listening. He had prepared as best he could. Lin, Jones and Ambering were hidden around the perimeter of the square, Ambering on her belly on the roof of the carousel with their big gun, and the other two standing by aboard the dragons.
His belly gnawed at him. He had been too excited to eat more than a few bites of a MERD for breakfast. He could see the rest of the meal in his mind as though it was there before him: hot flapjacks, grilled protein strips, reconstituted fruit compote that wasn’t half-bad, but all kilometers away out of reach. Even the last of the coffee had gone hours ago. He had water and soft nutrient paste to suck in an emergency, but he’d already discovered it still tasted of Boland’s moonshine. Next time he would see personally to steaming out his suit’s tanks.
As the enemy began to fill the winding garden paths leading toward the Carrot Palace, the characters took over the job of leading them on. The remaining Cockroaches and uniformed puppets peeled off and vanished unobtrusively into kiosks and doorways. Wolfe could see it in his mind as if he was watching it on a scope as they dropped into the hidden maze of tunnels and made their way into the building behind him. The Cockroaches were stripping off their costumes, Boland and Meyers probably protesting, and emerging in gleaming invisibility up among the plascrete boulders. Very soon the Carrot Palace would be surrounded.
He thought he spotted Ayala’s code tag on a pink shadow now entering the pavilion from the southeast. Closer, Daivid urged him silently. Closer.…
O O O
“Where did the troopers go?” the Insurgent colonel demanded, racing out with his plasma pistol in hand. Suddenly there was no one in the plaza except the soldiers and hundreds of costumed mountebanks. The Carrot Palace towered above them only a few hundred meters ahead. He saw red traces of body heat, and some mixed signals that might have been chameleonic armor. The lieutenant with the chip was somewhere in that foolish-looking building with the object of his desire.
His company pressed forward into the crowd of performers that swelled as he got closer to the building. Ayala began to lose sight of his men. He ordered them closer together, ignoring the furred, beaked, muzzled, and bewhiskered faces that pressed curiously around them.
“Are any of these real?” he demanded. “Are there any living creatures inside any of them?”
“I’ll find out, sir,” Oostern replied. He signalled to all of the captains, who barked out an order.
Machine gun fire rang out, riddling the shouting, laughing, dancing figures with holes. None of them bled, or screamed, or fell down.
“No, sir,” the itterim acknowledged calmly.
Ayala barked out orders to his captains. “Surround the Carrot Palace. No one is to get out alive. Advance! Kill the lieutenant and bring me the chip!”
O O O
Wolfe waited until all the Insurgents he could see on his scopes were out in the open.
“All right, let them have it! Puppeteers, abandon escort duty!”
In the four quarters of the pavilion, the puppets suddenly sprinted away from the tightly huddled groups of Insurgents. Even from a distance, Wolfe could see the astonished looks on the soldier’s faces. He grinned.
“Turn the music up loud!”
“Hi, children!” Bunny Hug’s prerecorded voice echoed deafeningly over the pavilion. “Welcome to my Carrot Palace! There’s room here for everyone! Come and share a happy day with me! Welcome to Wingle World!”
Wolfe found himself having to shout to hear himself. “Heavy duty firepower, now!”
“With pleasure,” Lin said, over her channel. She and Jones flew out from among the turrets of the Carrot Palace, and made a strafing run over the soldiers to north and south of the building. Ambering blasted off shells to the west, landing in the rear ranks of Insurgents. The alloy pavement erupted, sending gouts of molten green plastic in every direction. Soldiers caught in the blast howled in pain. Some fell, beating at the adhesive hot globs with their hands. The rest broke and ran.
“Advance!” Wolfe ordered, springing up. He shouldered his own machine gun. His muscles tensed. He was ready for action. He’d been ready for hours! “Let’s give them all a nice, warm Space Service reception! Fire at will! Try not to destroy more of the park than you have to! I’ve got to answer to Mr. Wingle when all this is over!”
From the north of the building marched Borden, with Okumede, Parviz, and Injaru fanned out behind her. From the west, Thielind led D-45, Meyers, and Somulska. From the east, Boland marched in step with Itterim Haalten, his shooting buddy, and his second in command, Mose, with Streb bringing up the rear. And from the south, Wolfe set forth, leading Nuu Myi, Software, and Sparky, who refused to stay in the Palace.
O O O
The enemy had to loo
k around to see where the bursts of fire were coming from. To the troops in nonpowered armor, the barrage erupted out of nowhere.
“Hey, stupids!” Naughty Emma shrieked, waving madly from the steps of the Carrot Palace, “they’re over here!”
Within a moment or two, the Insurgents realized there were faint outlines dashing back and forth across the archways. The officers, who had superior telemetry, reacted with alarm. Anyone and anything could be dressed up in blue suits and bubble helmets, but up-to-date full camouflage armored suits were not available from any mail-order catalog. To a force already disoriented by having gorillas groom them and flamingoes coat them with glue, the appearance of genuine Space Service troopers was demoralizing. They hesitated.
Ayala shrieked with frustration.
“There are only four of them!” he shouted. “Four! Count them! Four! Disarm and capture them!”
The truth dawned on them in a sudden rush, and they were angry for having been frightened by such a ridiculously small contingent. The Insurgents pressed forward, shooting and yelling.
O O O
Wolfe pushed Emma into the building out of the way of the gunfire. He kept an eye on his suit integrity meter as he ran up and back, attracting the Insurgents’ attention. Each ricocheting hit chipped away a little at the suit’s efficacy. He needed to keep out in the open long enough to establish his psychological advantage, but he knew he was taking a risk. With his chin and his weapon up most of his chest and neck were protected, but his legs were vulnerable. The experienced Insurgents were aiming at his knees. The plating over his left knee was beginning to give way. It already hurt from the vigorous squeezes it was getting from the CBS,P. A direct hit with an armor-piercing round would cripple him. He couldn’t be taken prisoner. There were too few of the living soldiers to protect Wingle World. It was time to call in his special forces.
“Special auxiliaries!” Wolfe shouted. “Advance!”
O O O
Out of the building poured waves of blue-clad troopers, but these were not like any that the Insurgents had seen before. They were not human or itterim, but raccoons, rams, bears both cuddly and non, unicorns, otters, ducks, ostriches and penguins. They brandished weapons, which they handled with varying degrees of skill in their flippers, wings, claws, and hooves. Bullets and skyrockets pinged off in every direction.
“There’s Bunny Hug!” Oostern shouted, as a tall pink figure in blue microplate and a huge bubble helmet came dashing out of the Carrot Palace with a full-sized machine gun clutched in his huge paws. “They drafted Bunny Hug!”
“I see Nanny Goat,” another soldier exclaimed. “And Norgy Porgy,” he added, pointing at a rose-colored pig hauling a mortar in his stubby arms.
“Oops!” exclaimed the Bizarro Twins in unison, as they accidentally shot a couple of their own fellows. The purple foxes switched guns and went on firing, this time at the Insurgents.
“They’re shooting at us!” cried a female soldier in a voice full of hurt betrayal.
“They are puppets!” Ayala yelled. “The only real troopers are the ones in the middle! Get them! Get them!”
But the troopers in their camouflage armor with the blue glow disappeared into the midst of the scrimmage. Daivid and the others took advantage of the confusion to drop into tunnels and come up behind clusters of Insurgents fighting against characters whose memories they had treasured since childhood.
“Bunny Hug, don’t you remember me?” a burly, dark-skinned soldier asked, backing away from the giant pink rabbit with his hands in the air.
Bunny Hug’s usually benevolent face was creased with a deep frown. “You shot at my friends, Alfano! That’s not nice at all!”
The big man was nearly in tears. “I’ll never do it again, I swear, Bunny Hug!” He threw down his gun and ran away, disappearing between the carousel and the Noise Factory.
“Get one of the parking droids to pick him up,” Wolfe ordered, as he engaged a group of Insurgents running away from Nanny Goat and her sharpened knitting needles. Once again he marveled at Bunny Hug’s incredible memory for faces and names. A fighter jumped at him waving a molecular-foil-edged knife. Daivid jumped back, but the itterim had the advantage of reach. It gouged into the forearm of his power suit. Daivid shot him three times in the upper thorax, finally knocking its helmeted head off its skinny neck. Suddenly a very tall woman in microplate armor shoved her rifle butt in his face and swept Daivid’s legs out from under him with one kick. When he hit the ground she tried to use her weapon to knock his out of his arms, but he shot her under the chin. The body fell heavily onto his. A moment later, it lifted off him and was flung away. Sparky reached down a hand and yanked him effortlessly to his feet, suit and all. He was stunned by the puppet’s strength.
“How did you get along without me?” Sparky asked, grinning.
“Pretty well,” Wolfe said. He dropped to his hands and knees, and scuttled towards the nearest tunnel entrance, under cover of a squabble between two tigers over who was going to get to eat a very frightened and very young Insurgent corporal. Sparky followed in a series of somersaults.
“You know,” the puppet confided, as the two of them slid down into the cool darkness of the metal-lined tunnel and double-timed toward the Carrot Palace, “I’d take a bullet for you, Daive.”
“I wish you would, you old fart,” Wolfe snarled. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
“You’re taking this too seriously,” Sparky retorted. “It’s just life.”
Puzzled, but not willing to take the time to think about it, he activated the mastoid channel. “How many, Borden?”
The junior lieutenant’s voice came back after a moment’s hesitation. “I estimate that our kills number thirty to thirty-five. Minor to incapacitating wounds, about double that.”
“That’s enough to demoralize them,” Wolfe said. “Time to let Ayala think he’s got the upper hand. Meet me on the steps in two minutes!”
O O O
One moment Ewanowski was creeping up on the Insurgent position. The next, he found himself flying through the air, landing in a car of the Cyberdrive Roller Coaster, billed as The Fastest Ride Without Drive Engines in the Galaxy. His neck snapped backwards, only saved from being broken by his web suit, which froze in place around his spine. Half a dozen puppets landed heavily on him and all over the moving train, mostly in pieces.
“Goddammit!” he snarled, brushing them away. He pulled a few of the still-functional ones upright. He hung on as the car swerved wildly and began to climb toward the heavens on a track that looked like a hairpin with rungs. “What just happened? My head’s ringing.”
“Shell,” his shooting buddy’s voice came over the implant. “It took out a kiosk and a chunk of pavement. Two of the spiders got blown up. The Insurgents are panicking. They are shooting at anything in sight.”
The semicat looked down. “You’re surrounded,” he said. “We ought to call for backup.”
“No need. Squad Two, move in!”
“Spidey, the Surgies are going to …” Ewanowski ducked down inside the car. It swooped down just as the second shell rocketed directly into the midst of the marching marionettes.
boom! More chunks of puppet shell, fluff and glitter rained down. Ewanowski waited until the car rocketed out of the center of the carnage, then swung himself out of the car and over the side of the tracks. All of Squad Two had been blown to bits. He let off five short bursts, persuading the Insurgents to give him room to land, then dropped in their midst and rolled, shooting every time he came up, until he was under cover of the sweet-drinks stand in the shadow of the coaster. His camouflage suit meant that most of the Surgies lost track of him, but it was a small mercy. They were heavily outnumbered now. The enemy was throwing everything it had at what remained of the defenders.
“Drop the spiders on ’em again, and scare them away,” Ewanowski shouted into his mike. “The lieutenant’ll be ready for them at the Carrot Palace!”
“No spiders left,�
�� Aaooorru choked. He leaped up on the building. “Mr. Wingle, prepare to evacuate! Go to deeper ground!”
“Can’t! I’m busy. I’m sending Security!”
“No, don’t…!”
But it was done. Just behind the Inventor’s Workshoppe the big double doors of a blue-painted building popped open. From it sped an old-fashioned black van with a red light on top filled with police waving billy clubs. All of them had mustaches, tall, rounded hats and brass buttons down their long blue coats. The vehicle zoomed around the cottage and came to a screeching halt. The police jumped out and began to belabor the Insurgents with their clubs.
The shock was too much for the itterim. Disregarding their screaming captain, they began to fire bazookas and grenades at the cottage, the roller coaster, the puppets, and anything else more than two millimeters high. Ewanowski rolled as far away as he could, shooting at Insurgents, trying to spot Aaooorru. They put anything they had into the big weapon barrels. Fragmentation grenades flew overhead and burst. Explosives landed on every surface and detonated. Gas cylinders burst against walls.
“Dammit,” Oscar Wingle said over the helmet channel. “They never had that kind of effect before.”
O O O
Zebediah was beside herself with fury. The morons under her command were wasting every charge in their arsenal. One missile went rocketing over the head of a multilegged trooper in camo armor, into the foolishly named “Inventor’s Workshoppe,” and detonated against a wall, exposing a shiny metal conduit, missing the trooper completely. The hole seemed to act as a target for all the bullets, gas grenades, and mortar shells that followed. When she got the itterim under control again, she was going to kill them all personally.
O O O
Ayala shoved his way through the ridiculous battle going on around him. Something was happening at the Carrot Palace. He counted ten, twelve, fifteen red-in-blue shadows converging on the west steps and heading inside. The lieutenant must still be inside with the rest of the force.
“Oostern, heavy weapons to the Carrot Palace! Companies A, B and C, with me now!” he ordered over his helmet audio.
Strong Arm Tactics Page 39
