by John Barnes
Whooshes and booms resounded from the sea side of the big house; flashes of light flickered behind the low rise. “Squads Nine and Eleven, back to the rally point and we’ll probably keep running when we get there.”
It was not a long run—back before, a high school runner would have called it “middle distance”—and they were warmed up and well into second wind, so it seemed to Highbotham that she and her little force almost flew up the hill and onto the patio. Abby had just signaled, and squads Twelve and Thirteen were running down to the beach ahead of them.
They put on a burst of speed and caught up, racing into well-rehearsed positions on the first rise above the water, between the rocket squads and the incoming boats. “Everyone down! Prone firing position!”
The force lay down instantly, wriggling forward, weapons pointed down the beach, checking mechanisms and laying out ammunition within easy reach without being ordered to.
Highbotham stayed on her feet to look the situation over. Rockets had set the lead boat on fire, but most of its crew had made it to shore; the other two were just landing, and already there were almost as many raiders as defenders. Three more boats had already rounded the point.
The voice of a long-ago instructor echoed in her head: The first rule of repelling invasions is act now, because it won’t get better. If you screw that one up, there is no second rule.
Highbotham turned and shouted to Abby and Richard behind her. “Three-rocket volley into their landing! Then concentrate on the ones further out!”
Abby and Richard were yelling to their squads as Highbotham spoke quietly. “Squads Nine, Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, form up. Make sure you’re reloaded. Stay down till the rockets go over, then we’re going to rush them. Be ready.” She stretched out prone. Her hands busied themselves reloading her revolver. She had just pushed the last paper cartridge in, topped it with a percussion cap, and swung the cylinder back into place when three roars of thunder overlapped scant yards above them, the white glare lighting the beach like an old-time flashbulb.
“Now!”
She felt more than saw two dozen CAM kids jump up and race forward with her. The tail flames of the three rockets shot out beyond them, wobbling and spiraling like footballs through the 200 yards.
In less than two seconds, one rocket augured into the sand about 20 feet short, exploding in a big burst that sprayed the raiders with grit and gravel but hurt them very little. The second bent upward, tumbled, and sailed out over the water.
The third hit a jackpot. Before the Daybreakers had recovered from the blinding explosion and spray of gravel, the lucky rocket’s short fuse set off its 15 pounds of crude dynamite less than 10 feet off the ground, directly above the main body of Daybreakers. The rocket had flown only a fifth of its normal range, so the dynamite set off most of the fuel—a saltpeter/tallow/powdered-aluminum slurry—in a fireball 50 feet across, which flared and went black in the time of one gasp. The reeling, groping figures emerged from it with clothes and hair on fire where blazing tallow clung to them.
“Follow me!” Highbotham and her reserve squads raced down the beach. Some of the Daybreakers dove into the water, extinguishing the flames, but exposing themselves to bullets and bolts when they stood. Others ran screaming, to be run down and chopped, stabbed, or clubbed, as the islanders drove all the way to the water’s edge in that first charge.
It was victory for the moment, but the additional three longboats were now close enough for a bowman in the lead one to launch inaccurate, wobbly arrows onto the shore. Abby’s voice carried on the wind behind them. “Everybody down!”
“Down!” Highbotham echoed, and dove onto the sand. All around her she could hear the kids doing the same. Three more rockets roared over them. The beach and sea were briefly brighter than day.
One splashed to extinction without detonating. One burst early, scattering blobs of burning tallow onto the water. The last lost a fin, looped once, and fizzled into brief pathetic fire as it fell harmlessly into the sea. The Daybreakers cheered, rowing as hard as they could, much closer, now, because the rockets had taken up time when snipers might have been working.
“Crossbowmen and riflemen,” Highbotham said, “pick one target—a helmsman or a bowman—and on my count of three, take one real good shot. Squads Nine and Eleven, as soon as those shots are fired, move back into a line fifty yards back. Twelve and Thirteen, fifty yards behind the first line. Backwards leapfrog, like in drills; we’ve got to give the rocketeers time to reload. All right, on—”
A boom! shockingly loud and close.
Highbotham looked and laughed, a little madly. “Belay all that! Pick targets and fire at will, we’re winning.”
Cuppa Joe, under full sail in the light land breeze, was sailing into Punnett Bay; a shot from her bow chaser had capsized the longboat nearest shore. The cannon boomed again, making a big splash in front of the next boat, which then veered when a crossbow bolt struck the steersman in the face, knocking him backwards into the sea. Another shot from Cuppa Joe holed the boat, sinking it in seconds.
The last boat was pulling south, either running away or trying for a flank attack. Cuppa Joe fired again, capsizing it.
As heads bobbed up in the bay, crossbowmen began picking them off. We really should talk about taking prisoners, soon.
Morse blinked from the stern of Cuppa Joe; it wasn’t encrypted, so Highbotham and everyone read it together. TOWN MILITIA ARRIVING. CJ PROCEEDING COAKLEY. GOOD HUNTING.
Highbotham walked slowly back up the beach. The sounds from the landward side were no longer of battle but of rout. The absence of chanting and drums, and the rhythm of volley fire, told her that the Daybreakers who had overstayed were trapped between the fence and the town militia.
As she arrived at Abby’s rocket station, she heard no more volleys, just wailing from the few Daybreakers left alive. A few of those could be rehabilitated in their seizure-recovery phases, according to the latest Jamesgram; the Christiansted town council had voted to try it the next time they had prisoners. Scattered distant shots meant pursuit continued.
Highbotham couldn’t hear waves hissing down the shore, and some people’s mouths were moving without her being able to understand them; ear protection for everyone, one more thing to think about soon. Right now she just needed to report to Murcheson, who commanded overall island defense, and “get everyone to bed, Abby, as soon as you can.”
Abby looked up from where they were swabbing out rocket tubes. “Right, Captain. Richard’s already taken a party to go bring the little kids back.”
“Good job on the rockets,” Highbotham said. “Good job on everything.”
Abby nodded; in the moonlight her hair was almost phosphorescent, and her face was streaked ghostly white and black from the soot of her rocket launching. “We can do everything here now. You’ll want to get the land side squared away, and then get down to C-sted for the commanders’ meeting.”
“Yeah. Tired.”
“Well, we were fighting for nearly four hours, Captain. That’s false dawn over east.” Abby took a deep drink from her water bottle.
That reminded Highbotham to drink from her own. “I’m kind of disturbed that none of our kids gives any of the enemy a chance to surrender.”
Abby shook her head. “You spent too many years hanging out with the boys, Captain. This is a woman kind of fight—if you’re going to kill each other, kill each other, no good-sport bullshit like it’s a football game or a deer hunt.” Among the smears of soot on her face, a toothy grin glinted in the dim light. “Besides, you haven’t seen yourself yet, but you’ve been wiping that cutlass on your pants, and your shirt’s got so much black-powder smoke and blood on it, you look like something straight out of hell. At least wash up before you try to teach the kids about the Geneva Conventions.”
As she walked back to the main house, Highbotham noticed Jebby Surdyke holding her hand
. “I waan learn dat Ge-ne-va Con-vic-tion,” she said, “if you waan me a learn.”
Highbotham smiled. “Later, honey, but you’ll learn it, I promise. It’s part of that civilization thing we’re working on bringing back. And speaking of civilization, we all need some breakfast and cleanup. Shouldn’t you be with Squad Nine?”
“They don gimme no squad so I go wid yah.” Jebby’s hand closed on hers a little tighter.
Highbotham thought, Well, I’m not going to scold a first-rate bodyguard for not following procedure. Some parts of civilization can wait.
3 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO. ABOUT 6:30 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2026.
When James Hendrix heard the knock at the door, he had just pulled two trays of muffins from the oven. Patrick and Ntale, of course. Lately Patrick had been teasing him every day with Don’t shoot, it’s me, oh wait, where’s your gun? so this time he carefully took his pistol from its rack by the door, pointed to the side to avoid accidents, and opened the door.
Patrick grinned at seeing the pistol. “Hey, Ms. O’Grainne was right, Mister Hendrix, we’re finally getting you trained.”
James racked the pistol again. “Enter, my young trainer.”
“Lock that door,” Ntale said, following her brother in. “If tribals barge in here and kill us all, no more muffins.”
“Excellent point,” James said. Back before I was always a little intimidated by how fast kids picked up new technology; now it’s the same thing with security. “Nothing new this time,” he said, apologetically, “just oat-and-corn muffins with some dried apple again, and some leftover elk stew.”
Patrick, tall for fifteen and seeming to be mostly head and feet, laughed. “Mister Hendrix, it’s hot breakfast.”
“And help on the homework,” Ntale added.
While the brother and sister ate, James scanned through the overnight dispatches; the excuse for Patrick and Ntale to come here every morning was to deliver the first package of received radio messages from Incoming Crypto. Besides, nothing is better for a cook’s ego than a teenage appetite, he thought, watching the food vanish into the kids.
First item on the top priority list: the moon gun had fired again. Word would already be going out everywhere to prepare for an EMP sometime Monday, and normally it would have been no more than a small nuisance to think about, but Captain Highbotham’s note made him stop and think; there weren’t any big stationary radio stations anymore. What the hell had they shot at?
Red Dog, in Athens, reported that Jenny Whilmire Grayson was clearly siding with her husband and against her father, and people had overheard her quarreling with Reverend Whilmire in public. James rated that a plus; if the Army won its struggle with the Church, Constitutional restoration became easier.
White Fang in Manbrookstat had details about the Commandant’s deal granting away everything from Cape Cod to Niagara to Halifax to the Irish. The Commandant’s handpicked judge had refused habeas corpus for a jailed opposition newspaper editor. Not good.
Bambi and Quattro wanted his thoughts about their scheme to hand over taxing authority to a legislature, not easy when you’re already a Duke and a Duchess and most Californians would be happy to make you the King and Queen.
Blue Heeler said he saw no prospect of avoiding the Provi government in Olympia declaring a deliberate policy of genocide against the tribes. Allie Sok Banh had left all idea of restraint behind after fighting off Daybreak’s assault on her mind just a few months ago, and since she was First Lady, Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, and almost any other job she wanted, only her opinion really mattered. President Weisbrod was too weak and tired, and General Norm McIntyre too afraid, to restrain her.
Five pieces moved, James thought. The Commandant moves for more power, the Duke and Duchess move for less, Allie Sok Banh moves for vengeance, Jenny Grayson moves for independence, and Daybreak moves, but I don’t know why. It’s a big, complicated board.
He looked up to see the last of breakfast disappearing into his brother-and-sister messengers. “So,” he said, “how’s that Hamlet thing doing, Patrick?”
“I just wish I could figure out why that guy does anything.”
“You have all the evidence anyone else does.”
“Anyone else doesn’t have to be graded by Mrs. Thrammer. And how can there be so much evidence and no conclusion, anyway?”
“Get used to that question,” James said. “Expect to be asking it forever.”
THREE:
NINETEEN RED CARDS
3 DAYS LATER. PUEBLO. 6:30 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 2026.
In Pueblo, the lockdown against the impending EMP had begun at 8:00 Sunday night and would continue until 2:00 this afternoon. For most people in the still-civilized parts of the Earth a lockdown was a chance to sleep in, with nothing to do but wait to hear that the EMP had fallen somewhere else before disconnecting all the protective grounds, taking the precious surviving gear out of its metal boxes, and resuming work. For a few people the lockdown meant a tense fire watch, but probably their concern was unnecessary: Pueblo went on and off the air briefly, at low power, much less than had ever been known to draw the moon gun’s fire before.
So this should have been sort of a nuclear-electronic snow day, Heather thought. Too bad Leo’s not verbal yet, so he missed the memo, and still expects his feeding on time.
Heather poked up the fire, and her little room underneath her office was cozy as she dragged her rocking chair over to the west window, perfect for watching the sunlight creep down the Wet Mountains.
She had been rocking for a few minutes, humming something silly to Leo, watching the stars fade and the sky creep from black to indigo, when the snow on the far-off mountains turned for an instant to burning silver, and the twilight-muted red, yellow, and brown bricks of Pueblo flashed in a second of full color.
Heather was already on her feet before she realized she’d heard crackling and smelled ozone. She set Leo down in his crib, grabbed the bucket, and poured sand over the glowing-red ground wire that connected her old metal filing cabinet to a water pipe. Watching to see that the wire didn’t smolder or flare, standing well back in case of a residual charge, she pulled her sweater down and picked up the wailing Leo. “Brekkers is interrupted, buddy, we gotta—”
A knock. “Ms. O’Grainne, sorry, but we’re evacuating—”
“On my way.”
She pulled on her boots, coat, and hat, put another blanket around Leo. In the stairwell, the ozone odor was strong, but without much smoke—yet, anyway.
Outside, the sun was still not quite above the horizon; the last upper edge of the crescent moon was a parenthesis enclosing the mountains. The first whispers of the east dawn wind were crisply chilly. She squeezed her tube of documents under her arm, freeing a hand to tuck Leo’s blanket.
“This is really bad news.” Ruth Odawa, her Chief of Cryptography, was standing beside her. “They’ve never targeted Pueblo before; they always just aimed at radio sources, and we were careful to stay fairly quiet. So now the moon gun knows we’re important.”
Lyndon Phat joined them. “Wow, it’s cold out here this—”
“People, listen up!” Kendall, the area’s Emergency Action Coordinator, was a stocky African-American woman who had been an MP at Fort Carson back before. “Mister Mendoza from the railroad says they’ve got a locomotive spot-welded into place on the main narrow gauge track, and they need a lot of hands on ropes and levers—”
Gunshot.
Phat said, “Down,” and guided Heather onto the hard-packed snow, her body sheltering Leo.
Two more shots. A man shouted, “Mother Earth! Mother Earth! Mother—”
Another shot.
Yells and shrieks. She clutched Leo close and stayed down, trying to look around, but seeing only hurrying feet and huddled backs.
An eternity later, Phat helped her to h
er feet. “Captain Kendall wants us to go to a safe house under guard,” General Phat said. “She is perturbed because I tackled the shooter.”
Heather smothered her exasperated scream into a croak. “Has it occurred to you that that was probably an assassin, and you are the most assassinatable person here, and you ran toward him?”
“I thought of that just after I took him down.”
“May I quote you on that?”
They turned and saw Cassie Cartland, the editor of the Pueblo Post-Times. Her brown hair had grown out from a practical pixie to an expedient shag in the last year, so that now she looked her actual age—seventeen—rather than several years younger. When Chris Manckiewicz had gone with Mensche on the long traverse of the Lost Quarter last fall, she’d taken over and run the Post-Times well enough so that on his return, he’d just left Cassie in charge. “Any tips for your fans about how to take down terrorists bare-handed, General Phat?”
“It was an act of complete irresponsible idiocy.”
She grinned. “Just let me get that down and read it back.”
Heather said, “Wow, the world has changed. Back before, nobody running for president would have dared to say anything like that.”
“Also,” Phat said, “an ugly runt, to quote my ex-wife, has a chance of winning a presidential election. You can quote that too, Cassie—on one condition. I want a news story that says ‘General urges common sense in walling city,’ and run it alongside a map I’ll lay out for you. It’s a disgrace we don’t have a city wall yet, and City Council is a bunch of whistleheads who need to get their job done. Quote me on that too, or the deal is off. Clear?”
“Clear.” She shook her head and brought her pencil back to her pad. “Now, what do you all see as the role of Pueblo under the Restored Republic, and do you think there will be more job opportunities locally?”
5 DAYS LATER. MOSCOW, IDAHO. 2:30 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 2026.
