The Future War t2-3

by S. M. Stirling

  "How would Ron know the codes?" Ninel shouted. "How would he know anything about a place like this? He hates the automated factories. No way would he know them well enough to run one!"

  Dog laughed. "She's got you there, Bale."

  "Oh, for cryin' out loud," Balewitch said in disgust. "Labane is dead."

  "No!" Ninel shouted.

  "Yes, he is," Dog said, coming another step closer. "I know because we killed him. I was there."

  Ninel's breath froze in her throat, choking her. Dog launched himself forward to grasp the keyboard and she swung it like a bat, hitting him in the face. He backed off and Balewitch laughed at him.

  "Jesus Christ." She sneered. "You don't believe in doing anything the easy way, do you?" She pulled a pistol from her pocket, a silencer disfiguring its barrel.

  Ninel gasped and backed away, holding the keyboard in front of her like a shield.

  Balewitch snapped the fingers of her other hand. "Gimme,"

  she said. "And you'd better hope you didn't break it."

  Holding the keyboard more tightly, Ninel blinked at her. Did the woman think she was just going to hand it over? "No," she said, her voice small but steady. "I'm not going to help the people who killed Ron Labane."

  With a snarl Dog started forward again, but Balewitch put her arm up like a bar. "I don't want that keyboard damaged," she said to him. Then she glared at Ninel. "If this Skynet wants to kill the human race, well, three cheers for Skynet. The human race is nothing but vermin for the most part, and the rest are too stupid to know they're even alive.

  "Look what's been done to this planet! It was beautiful once; now it's shit! Just shit! Everywhere you look. Humanity has to go, or nothing will survive." She spread her hands. "So. Are you gonna help, or do we kill you?"

  Her eyes wide, Ninel just stared at her, mouth open. "Y-you're going to kill me anyway, aren't you?"

  Dog's grin spread. "Yeah."

  Balewitch shot him a look, then raised her gun. She tipped her head to the side like a shrug. "Well, we weren't going to right away. But…"

  Ninel's eyes widened as John slowly rose behind her and she took a breath to scream. Something in her chest felt icy cold.

  Then hot, and then there was nothing, nothing at all.

  "Oh, good job, Bale. Right through the keyboard." Dog started forward.

  "Couldn't let her scream," Balewitch muttered.

  ***

  John felt the double vision vanish as he saw Ninel fall limp.

  Again, he thought. Wendy, now her. Again.

  The scream that bubbled out of his lips wasn't a giant no: that was in there, but most of it was raw rage and inconsolable grief, grief for an entire lifetime past and the one he saw stretching out ahead of him.

  The knife tucked into his boot had a seven-inch blade; nothing fancy, just a sharp tapering steel wedge. His hand moved in a blurring arc; the woman who'd shot Ninel seemed to be turning in slow motion—unable to move more than a quarter of the way around before the blade bisected her kidney with a violence that punched the inside of his fist against the cloth of her jacket as it rammed home.

  He moved with her, like a dancer—his left hand grasping her gun hand, turning her in a pirouette and throwing her forward at her companion. That one's eyes and mouth gaped in Os of surprise as he caught at the sprattling weight; the same motion pulled John's blade free. He flipped it to a reverse grip and punched it forward over the dying woman's shoulder, right into her friend's eye. Faster than the flicker of a frog's striking tongue, deep enough that the narrow shoulders at the hilt of the blade stuck on the bone of the socket.

  "You're terminated, fucker," John wheezed, then ignored the falling mass. Neither of them were going to bother anyone, ever again.

  Kneeling beside Ninel, he slowly reached toward her neck with two bloodstained fingers. No pulse. He hadn't expected there would be. He wiped his hand on his pants so he wouldn't stain her face and closed her eyes so that the whites no longer showed.

  Then John took her in his arms—something in him sickening at the limpness of her body—and lifted her as he stood. He pushed his grief aside, putting himself outside the emotion.

  Guess I'm not meant to have relationships, he thought. He opened the door and took her down to where the other casualties lay. This one they'd be leaving behind.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  USS ROOSEVELT

  So you traveled all the way from Alaska to Argentina on your own?" Captain Chu asked.

  Sarah took a sip of her coffee, looking at him over the rim.

  He'd invited her to dinner in the officers' mess in a not very subtle attempt to interrogate her. She didn't mind; if she'd been in his position, the interrogation would have taken place on that Argentine beach, not en route to Alaska.

  "Yep," she said after a very long sip. "I have a Harley that we adapted to run on alcohol. It's not all that clean, but you get decent mileage."

  "What's it like?" he asked.

  "Meaning the world outside the Roosevelt?" she asked. He nodded.

  A totally honest question, Sarah thought. Deserves an honest answer. "It's hell," she said. "I can't overstate that. Death everywhere—from the bombs, from disease, from marauders, starvation."

  There'd been an old-folks home that would haunt her to her dying day.

  "That bad?" he asked, flinching almost imperceptibly at the expression on her face.

  "Worse. Rape, murder, you name it. Most people were completely unprepared to take care of themselves and there's always someone to take advantage of that. It's the ugliest thing you can imagine out there. And I didn't even go near the cities."

  He closed his mouth and sat back, looking a bit pale. "How did you manage? I mean, a woman alone."

  He didn't mean it as a put-down, she could tell. Sarah smiled, a curve of her lips that didn't reach her eyes, and he blinked. "I am prepared," she said. "I've been prepared for a long time. Most people, even the lowest, have some sense of self-preservation, and they can see that. Those that don't are better off dead."

  "Ah-huh…" He looked at her for a moment, and she met his eyes. Then he nodded and went back to his dinner.

  Sarah raised a brow. "No further questions?"

  "Not at this time." He dabbed his lips with his napkin, then set it aside. "When we reach our destination I'll undoubtedly have more. But for now there's no point. We do indeed owe you a debt, both for getting us out of that harbor and for the food." He tipped his head. "And so, providing you with transport to Alaska might be considered fair barter. It doesn't mean we're throwing in with you."

  She smiled, this time sincerely. "Understood." She knew they'd join the resistance. There was no other choice, really. And these were the kind of men who wanted to make a difference; they were a good match. Her smile turned to a grin. "You'll like my son."

  TATILEK, ALASKA

  Tatilek sprawled in weathered wooden buildings along one side of a narrow fiord, fir-clad mountains rising blue around it until they topped out in ragged snowpeaks. On the rare sunny days, those colors matched the waters; more commonly the sky was gray above, and gray green topped with foam, as it was today. The town was pretty much closed to outsiders unless they could somehow verify that they had legitimate business there.

  Apparently Vera's brief stay had been memorable because at the mention of Love's Thrust, her yacht, eyes rolled, grins appeared, and hands were thrust out in welcome.

  John and Ike sat on the pier eating smoked salmon and sipping some very bad home-brewed beer.

  "Jee-zus Christ," Ike said, looking into the bottle. "What the hell did they make this with? Yak piss?"

  "More likely moose," John said. "Not many yaks in Alaska."

  He took a sip and looked at the bottle with a grimace. "Or maybe grizzly."

  "It does have a bite," Ike said with a chuckle, and glanced nervously at the younger man. Since the raid on the automated factory there'd been something different about him. It was hard to pin down. But sometimes,
even times like now when they were just sitting and eating, he felt almost like he was talking to a stranger.

  He's preoccupied, Ike told himself, as he had a dozen times before. But deep down he found himself thinking: He's getting to be like his mother.

  Not a good thing; Sarah sure as hell hadn't handled it all that well. At least not at first. Of course Dieter had a lot to do with centering her; if ever there was a solid man it was the big Austrian. Ike chewed thoughtfully.

  Maybe it's for the best. If John was going to be the leader of the resistance, he was going to need some distance from the people around him. People he might have to knowingly send to their deaths. The old man's jaws froze. People like his father. He turned to study his young friend. Christ, what a world they were living in.

  John sat up straighter and put his bottle of beer aside. "Yup, here they are," he said.

  Out in the bay the water slid back from something huge and black, then curled into foam as the hull broke free. Then the rest of the submarine surged to the surface, water sloughing off its blunt sides. Ike grinned.

  "It's huge!" he said, and laughed.

  "Sixteen thousand tons," John said. "Eighteen thousand submerged; crew of a hundred and forty, and a hundred SEALs."

  He winked. "Think it'll do?"

  "You betcha, kid. We're in business!"

  "My mom always did get me the coolest toys," John said with a satisfied smile.

  * * *

  "You're the first military we've seen here in months," the mayor said to Chu. "The army and National Guard came by a coupla weeks after Judgment Day, but that was it."

  The captain and crew had been invited to a crab feast, and except for a skeleton crew on board the Roosevelt, all had accepted. The crew were cavorting around bonfires on the beach while the captain and his officers were at a slightly more formal indoor banquet. With, John noticed, better beer.

  "They haven't been back?" the captain asked, frowning. It seemed to him that if any military were patrolling the area, this solid community would make an ideal base, or at least a supply depot.

  "Naw. We made it plain we were gonna go it alone," the mayor said. "Didn't see no sense in runnin' off to Canada."

  " Canada?" Vaughan, the XO, said.

  "The word was that civilians were being rounded up for transport to relocation camps in Canada," John explained.

  "Supposedly they'd be parceled out to various provinces, since Canada had suffered less than the states."

  The officers around the table glanced at one another.

  "No, it doesn't sound right, does it?" John said. "But if you've got kids and no food, I guess it might sound like a great idea.

  Besides, with the army and National Guard involved, it was

  'official.' Your average law-abiding citizen will try to accommodate under those circumstances. As long as it's voluntary."

  "We haven't heard about any of this," Chu said.

  "Shoulda come to us right away, son," the mayor said. "We'da made ya welcome."

  "That wasn't possible at the time." Chu's mind flicked to memories of being pursued by friends' ships, which, when they failed to herd the Roosevelt to San Diego, opened fire; while speaking to him on their cell phones, former classmates shouted that they had no control over what was happening. "If things hadn't calmed down somewhat, we wouldn't be here now." He'd seen one of those ships in the distance as they'd sped toward Alaska. It was now a floating tomb; he and his men had seen the remains of bodies on the deck, and a hole where the crew had cut their way out, only to starve or die of thirst.

  "What kind of transmissions have you been getting?" Sarah asked. She'd been quiet for the most part, letting John do the talking for both of them, but this was something she'd been wondering about. Asking about it en route would have been too intrusive, but in this casual setting, she felt it was permissible.

  "Mostly demands to report to San Diego," Chu said grimly.

  "Actually we haven't been getting much of anything for a while.

  Amateur civilian stuff mostly. Some foreign military interaction.

  Our side seems to be playing its cards close to the chest."

  "I ain't heard a decent radio program for months," the mayor complained.

  Sarah smiled. Things had gotten wild and woolly out there in radio land. With a lot of the major stations off the air, a whole world of underground communication had opened up.

  Conspiracy theorists had more than come into their own, and alternative music stations were frying the eardrums of the uninitiated, but desperate, general public. The news was largely hearsay; occasionally, to ears as honed as hers, genuine information about Skynet's progress came through.

  The company around the table fell to talking about the strange things they'd been hearing on the airwaves of late and John leaned toward his mother for a private conversation.

  "Tom Preston finally got in touch with me yesterday," he said quietly.

  Sarah frowned slightly. "He was out of touch? Tom's old reliable; what happened?"

  "Terminators," John said. "Set fire to the houses and killed everyone but Tom, his wife, and daughter."

  "Shit!" Sarah said quietly.

  Shit is the kind of word that, even spoken quietly, can attract attention. She looked up to find the captain's eyes on her, smiled briefly, and looked away.

  "I take it they hadn't posted a guard," she murmured.

  John sighed. "They'd become a fairly large community." He shrugged. "Most of them were civilians and they didn't think it was necessary. After exhausting themselves night after night, the core group decided maybe they were right."

  Shaking her head, Sarah popped a bit of crab into her mouth.

  "It must be killing him," she said quietly. "He knew better."

  "I've advised him to get away from there," John said. "In fact, I've told a lot of people to get to the cities."

  Lifting her brows, his mother looked at him.

  "They'll be harder for the Terminators to find there. And the radiation's died down."

  "Still not the safest place in the world." When John looked at her with a pained expression, Sarah laughed.

  He said what was on his mind anyway. "Skynet's rising, Mom.

  Safety's gonna be hard to come by for the next few decades."

  "Yeah, but can we prove it?" Sarah looked over at the captain and his officers. They really, really needed men like these.

  "I've got a demonstration planned," John said. He rose and all eyes went to him. "Gentlemen and ladies, I'd like to ruin your meal."

  Those around the table looked both anxious, because such things happened for real too often these days, and amused, because they were hoping he was kidding.

  "If you'll all just join us on the beach in about ten minutes, we'll have something quite dramatic to show you." He pulled a bag out from under his chair and passed it to the person next to him. "Take a pair of these and pass it along," he said.

  The woman next to John took out a pair of sunglasses, then looked in the bag.

  "They're all the same size and style, I'm afraid," John said with a smile. Then he gave Ike a look and the two of them exited.

  "What's going on, ma'am?" the captain asked, taking a pair of sunglasses and passing the bag to his XO.

  "I'm not sure," Sarah said. "And I don't want to speculate."

  She smiled. "Wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."

  * * *

  The SEALs and other sailors at the beach party took the sunglasses with loud cries of delight, putting them on and striking Joe Cool poses, pleased with the souvenir. It didn't take much to make a hit these days. Then some of the resistance drove a pickup carrying a shrouded box onto the beach and the men and women grew quiet, some murmuring speculatively.

  Down from the pier area came the captain, his officers, and the town worthies, along with Sarah, and the excitement began to mount. Whatever was programmed to happen would start now.

  John jumped up onto the bed of the pickup and looked o
ut over the crowd. The captain stood with his arms crossed over his chest, most of his officers unconsciously imitating his posture.

  Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, John thought, I'll just have to get over it and get on with it.

  "We've had a devastating war," he began. "With, as far as most of us knew, no enemy. We've all assumed that this terrible devastation was the result of a tragic accident. Some flaw in the system, some diode burning out resulted in the death of billions and the end of life as we knew it. Our foreign friends had it a little easier; they just blamed the U.S., as usual."

  That got a rumbling laugh. John smiled, too, then winced.

  "Unfortunately, this time they kinda had a point. See, what happened was the government turned all control of nuclear devices, among other things, over to a super-computer. What they didn't know was that this computer had been sentient for some time. And in that time it not only decided that the human race had to go, it began preparing an army to kill those the bombs didn't get."

  "Is this, like, live-action sci-fi theater?" the captain asked, a skeptical brow raised.

  "Is this, like, post-Judgment Day, or did I imagine all that?"

  John answered. "Initially Skynet—the computer's name, by the way—relied on human allies. People who didn't realize that they were working for a machine. They thought they were working for an environmentalist radical, and that by reducing the human population to their own eco-conscious members, they were saving the earth. We have reason to believe that some of the most radical members of this group heavily infiltrated the armed forces."

  That earned him a growl from the SEALs present and some grumbling from the sailors; the officers just stood pat, but their eyes were hard.

  "Those camps the army and National Guard and Marines were taking people to are extermination camps. The civilian population and the unindoctrinated soldiers were eliminated largely by the use of biological weapons.

  "But that's not the only plan Skynet has. It's been using automated factories to produce weapons that will be under its complete control."