The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  Little wonder she hated rat-gangers.

  “My sister was pregnant when the P-Squads tried to finish what those filthy rat-gangers started, smashing their way into our family’s cooperative. They tortured us for fun. If they’d known my sister was pregnant…” A hard shudder caught muscles rigid with memory. “But they didn’t find out. And then the commodore attacked and got us out.” Rachel pointed to the house Yalena had spotted earlier, at the mouth of Dead-End Gorge. “That’s my grandfather’s house. We’re staying there, now, sleeping in shifts. And my sister’s little boy is three, now,” she added, with a softness in her voice that hadn’t been there, a moment previously. “He was born in one of our base camps, northeast of here.” She pointed back toward the desert side of the Damisi. “He came into this world free. That’s how he’s going to grow up. Free.”

  “Yes,” Yalena said softly. Tears burned her eyes.

  Rachel studied her sharply for a moment, but she didn’t ask what had prompted the tears. There were too many people, out here, who’d lost someone precious to them. The details — who had died, and how — didn’t matter. It was the aching loss that bonded them together. Shared grief became shared hatred. And shared resolve.

  “What about gas attacks?” Yalena asked. “Before we left Vishnu, Colonel Khrustinov told us POPPA’s been stockpiling the ingredients to produce war agents. Biologicals and chemicides.”

  Rachel jabbed a thumb toward a bundle of gear behind the gun emplacements. “We’ve got suits. So do the other gun crews.”

  “And the civilians?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Most of them would be helpless. Some of the farmhouses have ‘safe’ rooms, mostly in the cellars. My grandfather’s house has one. Others have put safe rooms under the barns, in case they can’t reach the house in time. We’ve had refugees digging shelters, too, trying to build more, but there isn’t enough construction equipment to dig shelters for half a million people. Even if we could, we don’t have enough filtration systems to protect them against air-disbursed war agents.”

  Yalena shivered. “If I were Vittori Santorini, that’s exactly what I’d do. He’s done it before, when he was coming to power. My mother got caught in one of those POPPA riots he used to stage. She was lucky enough to get upwind of the gas. She said POPPA blamed it on President Andrews, but she was certain it was Vittori’s people, who did it.”

  “I remember that riot,” one of the men growled. “One of these days, we’re going to shove a cannister of that crap down Vittori’s windpipe, open the stop-cock, and watch him drown in it.”

  Yalena’s fingers twitched, wanting to do the shoving.

  “C’mon, kid,” Rachel said, “let me show you the ropes, while things are still quiet. Once they start shelling us again, there won’t be time to do anything but shoot back.”

  She watched and listened closely as the soldiers showed her the ropes, taking her through the software interfaces of the battle computers that acquired incoming targets, made lightning decisions on which guns would best defeat the threat, and fired on autoresponse a hundred times faster than human reflexes.

  “Why do we need live gunners?” Yalena asked. “The computers are better and faster than any human could be.”

  The Hellbore gunner, a hulking giant with skin as dark as carved basalt, answered in a voice full of gravel. “Because battle computers can go down. Because somebody has to man the loading belts. Not just on the 30cm guns, but the missile launchers, too.” He pointed to a stockpile of artillery shells and missile racks behind them. “It takes two people to lift shells onto those belts fast enough to keep the guns firing steadily. We couldn’t get autoloaders, so we do it the old-fashioned way.” He patted the Hellbore’s mobile gun-mount, a self-propelled platform nearly seven meters long, with eight drive wheels. “This baby operates with its own psychotronic target-acquisition and guidance system, but somebody’s got to sit on the hot seat, ready to switch to manual if anything goes wrong. This is old equipment, almost as old as Vittori’s Bolo.” Hatred put a cutting edge into his voice. “We’ve lost several Hellbores and their gunners to that Bolo. And we’ve had two battlefield equipment failures with Hellbore psychotronics in the past year. The first one went down in the middle of a running firefight. The driver wasn’t trained as a backup artillery officer. He was killed, along with the Hellbore. The second one went down three months ago. The gunner switched to manual and killed the bastards shooting at her. The Hellbore up here,” he patted his again and pointed to the other Hellbores atop the dam, “are the best and newest ones we’ve got. And every gunner on this dam is cross-trained on every weapons system up here. Any of us can step in and take over, if something goes wrong. Or if somebody’s killed.”

  Yalena nodded. It was a good system. And they all knew the risks. She was deeply impressed and said so. “I spotted some of the other crews,” she said, pointing in their general direction. “Are all the batteries like these?”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. We don’t have enough equipment for that. Klameth Canyon is a huge territory to defend, let alone the branch canyons and gorges. But we’ve laid down a fair coverage. Enough to knock down most of what they throw at us.”

  “How often do attacks come?”

  “Every few hours. It’s not predictable enough to set your watch by, but they get bored, with nothing to do out here but bitch about their officers and shoot at us. So they’ll sit around for a while, then fire a volley or two, then it’ll be quiet again.” Rachel shrugged. “So there’s no telling when to expect the next round. But it will come. That much, you can count on. Vittori doesn’t dare back down. Hatred of us is the only thing keeping POPPA glued together, right now. If he walks away from this fight, he’ll lose a lot of the loyalty he still commands, especially among the rank-and-file party members.”

  That made sense.

  Twilight had begun to fall by the time Yalena’s impromptu artillery lesson came to an end. She thanked her teachers for their time and trouble, then moved to the railing, peering down into the deep gorge, again. She could see someone hiking in from the house just outside the mouth of the gorge. A lone figure moved swiftly through the gun crews bivouacked along the edge of the Klameth River as it poured away from the deep basin at the base of the dam. Whoever it was, they were making very good time.

  Within moments, they’d climbed into the lift installed by the rebellion’s high command, which consisted of a broad platform raised and lowered by electric pulleys that ferried cargo and passengers to the upper reaches of the dam. Yalena moved closer to the pulley system, peering down over the edge. The drop was longer and dizzier than she’d first realized. Even so, the lift platform arrived with swift efficiency, depositing the sole passenger at the railing.

  Yalena started forward, a greeting on her lips, and abruptly checked her stride. Dinny Ghamal, reflexes honed by four years of guerilla warfare, swung abruptly toward her. She saw him clamp down on the reflex to snatch his sidearm out of its holster. She forced herself to move forward and gave him a wan smile.

  “I wouldn’t much blame you, if you did.”

  When he didn’t respond, she added in a low voice, “I was a repulsive little brat.”

  Dark eyes flickered and a dark, unreadable gaze swept across her. “Yes, you were.” Then, reluctantly, “But you never turned in anybody to the P-Squads, the way some of your friends did.”

  She winced. “No.” Coming from a man whose mother had been murdered by the P-Squads, who’d died in his arms, it was a concession that caused her eyes to sting. “Daddy—” she began, then had to swallow. “My father told me what happened. To your mother, I mean, when we were on the ship coming back from Vishnu. I never knew your mother and that was my own stupid fault. I didn’t know, back then, that I wouldn’t exist, without her. Or you. I didn’t know you’d both saved my mother’s life. There’s no way I can ever repay that debt. But at least now I know I owe it. And I’ll try my best to repay at least some of it.”

  A m
uscle jumped in his jaw. He tore his gaze away, stared down into Klameth Canyon, which twisted away at their feet, a deep, twilight slash through the rose-pink stone. Yalena could see camp fires, now, at the refugee camp, where weary people with bruised souls were gathering around the cookfires to share what little was available to eat, sharing it with loved ones and new-found friends. Comrades in peril…

  Despite the fear, the threat of destruction by people who hated mindlessly, the refugees in that camp were stronger, braver, and far better men and women than any fool who’d ever dreamed up or chanted a POPPA slogan.

  They could be driven out of their homes. They could be tortured and killed.

  But they could not be broken or demeaned into less than what they were.

  Vittori Santorini had nothing like it.

  And never would.

  “What are you thinking?” Dinny asked softly.

  She tried to tell him, but it came out all garbled, making no sense. Not to her, at least. But when she looked up, meeting his gaze, she found him staring at her as though staring at a total stranger.

  “I never realized…” he said softly.

  “What?”

  “How much you’re like your mother.”

  The tears did come, then. “I’m sorry, Dinny,” she whispered. She couldn’t say the things trembling and tumbling through her heart, because there weren’t words big enough or strong enough or deep enough to say them. He didn’t speak again. Neither did she. There wasn’t any need. When she’d wiped her eyes dry with the backs of her hands, she moved to stand beside him, gratified when he stepped not away, but aside, allowing her to join him. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, in the place of honor, the lookout’s place, guarding all that was good on this world.

  For these few moments, at least, there was a strange peacefulness in Yalena’s heart. She understood, for the first time, why soldiers through the centuries had sung of the brotherhood that knew no bounds, neither race nor gender nor age, requiring only that its members had faced death together. They were still standing there, still silent, when the shelling began again. Gouts of flame twinkled like fireflies in the distance, where artillery shells were bursting far down the main canyon.

  “Get inside,” Dinny said roughly.

  She didn’t want to turn tail and run, meekly, without scoring a single return blow, but there really wasn’t much she could do, up here. So she turned to go—

  And the world erupted into flame.

  Every gun atop the dam thundered in unison. Dinny slammed Yalena to the concrete as something came whistling across the top of the dam. A massive explosion in the reservoir behind them sent water skyward in a geyser that drenched them to the skin. The guns snarled again. Yalena twisted her neck, trying to see what was happening. She stiffened in terror. The air was black with incoming artillery shells. The infinite repeaters blazed, shooting them down. Explosions rained debris into the gorge. Hyper-v missiles streaked past with a whine and a scream of hypersonics. More explosions scattered flame and smoke and shrapnel into the gorge. Some of it struck the dam or bounced across the top, narrowly missing them time and again. Gun crews higher on the slopes were firing back, as well, sending gouts and streaks of flame racing across the gorge. The air shook with the thunder of titanic explosions.

  “Get inside!” Dinny shouted.

  Yalena nodded, crawled to hands and knees, tried to find the access door through the smoke. She couldn’t see it—

  Something tore through the infinite repeaters. A fireball blew her flat. Heat seared her for just an instant, setting every nerve in her skin to screaming. Sound crushed her against the concrete, a solid wall of over-pressured air. When she could see again, half the infinite repeaters were gone, blown to pieces or maybe melted… The missile launchers were intact, but there was no sign of the loading crew. The Hellbore gunner, a dark, grim figure through the smoke and crushing sound of battle, was visible inside the Hellbore’s command and control cabin, hunched over his boards, waiting for something big enough to shoot at.

  Yalena twisted around to look into the gorge and realized the skies were still black with incoming rounds. She didn’t hesitate. She just scrambled toward the silent missile launchers and started hauling missiles out of the racks and onto the loading belts. Dinny was right behind her, lifting and loading. More rounds came whistling past them, missing their position by scant millimeters, at times, and detonated behind them, sending up more geysers of water. They weren’t trying to take out the dam, they were trying to kill the guns — and their crews. Rage gave Yalena the strength to keep heaving missiles into the launch tubes. Their own missiles were screaming out into the skies above the gorge, exploding against incoming warheads, taking down the most dangerous targets identified by the battle computers.

  When the shelling finally stopped, Yalena couldn’t quite believe it was silence that was ringing in her ears. She stood panting, drenched with sweat and trembling all over. She drew some comfort from the fact that General Ghamal was in no better shape than she was. He, too, stood gasping for breath.

  “Goddamned bastards hit us hard, that time,” he finally got out.

  Rachel appeared through the smoke, limping toward them. “Good job, kid,” she told Yalena.

  “Damned fine job,” Dinny added, wiping sweat with one sleeve.

  Yalena started to cry. She couldn’t control it. Couldn’t explain it. Rachel, at least, seemed to understand. She wrapped one arm around Yalena’s trembling shoulders and just held onto her for a long, comforting moment. Dinny touched her wet cheek, gently. “Don’t you be ashamed of those tears, girl. They prove you’ve got a heart in the right place. Your mama will be proud.”

  Yalena gulped, trying to get her emotions under control. She looked toward the gap that led from Dead-End Gorge out into the main canyon, trying to gauge how badly they’d been hit. The refugee camp had been devastated. At least half the tents were ablaze. People were still running, trying to reach the edges of the canyon, away from the open floor. Hundreds of people — maybe a thousand or more — lay unmoving in the center of the burning camp. She didn’t realize, at first, what she was seeing, as the people still running started to fall for no apparent reason. Then she stiffened.

  “Something’s wrong!” she cried, pointing urgently. “There aren’t any explosions, but people are falling down—”

  Dinny swore, savagely. Rachel and the other surviving gunners dove toward their equipment packs. More than half of those packs had been blown off the dam during the fighting. There weren’t enough left to go around. Dinny grabbed her wrist and hauled her toward the access door while shouting a warning into his wrist-comm. “They’re using gas! Sound the alarm! Get into biohazard gear!”

  Fear shoved an icepick through Yalena’s chest. It lodged in her heart.

  “Mother!” She clawed at her own wrist-comm, realized she didn’t know the command frequency. A siren began to scream, sounding the alarm in a weird, hooting pattern that shook the air. They jumped over scattered equipment and debris, tripping and stumbling forward. They reached the access door just as another artillery barrage struck. Explosions turned the air to flame and thunder again. Somebody opened the door ahead of them. Dinny picked Yalena up and literally threw her inside. The world cartwheeled as she sprawled through the air. She saw Dinny go down as she tumbled head over heels through the doorway. She landed in an awkward forward roll and skidded across the concrete floor into the wall just as the door slammed shut.

  Dinny was still outside.

  “Dinny!” The scream tore her throat.

  Someone grabbed her, stuffed her into a suit, jammed a helmet onto her head and zipped her up tight. When she focused her gaze, she found two people crouched over her. Phil Fabrizio she recognized through the faceplate of his biocontainment gear. Even his nano-tatt was ice white. Under the other faceplate was the blank stare of a command-grade battle helmet. Commodore Oroton’s deep voice said, “General Ghamal didn’t make it, child.”

 
She started to cry again, which was a serious mistake, because there wasn’t any way to dry her eyes or blow her nose inside a biosuit’s helmet. It wasn’t fair! He’d survived so much! Was so critical to the rebellion’s success. And he’d died for the worst, stupidest reason possible: saving her. She wasn’t worth it! Not even ten of her would’ve been worth it… Grief died in her throat. A cold, hard rage ignited in its place, rising up from her heart to shoot like molten flame through every molecule. It turned her resolve into fire-hardened diamond.

  She was going to kill them.

  All of them.

  Starting with Vittori the damned.

  II

  Simon had never been to this part of Madison, before. The neighborhood was seedy, full of refuse and wind-blown drifts of children, thin and hungry-looking, with suspicion and despair in their dull eyes. They weren’t playing games or even chattering in the way of ordinary children. They just sat on the dirty curbs with poorly shod or bare feet, kicking at trash in the gutters, or they hugged the concrete steps that led from cracked sidewalks up to the sagging doorways of tenements.

  Each time Simon and his guide passed one of those open doorways, the air that drifted down the steps to the sidewalk stank of open sewage and uncollected garbage and the smell of cooking that left him swallowing against nausea. He didn’t know what they were cooking, to produce a smell like that, but it was pitifully obvious that there wasn’t much nourishment in it.

  Simon had seen port-side slums, had witnessed the aftermath of war on shattered worlds where residents with bruised eyes had climbed, aching in their very souls, back to their feet to try starting over. But these children and the ghastly world in which they lived left him stiff-jointed with rage. Jefferson’s slide into collapse had become an avalanche, one that had torn down the standard of living from galactic normal to desperate in the blink of a cosmic eyelash.

  As the last of the late afternoon light faded toward dusk, lights flickered to life in the tenaments, but the street lights remained dark. Their glass globes had long since been broken out by vandals with nothing better to do than hurl stones at something that wouldn’t be likely to shoot back. Men without jobs moved in aimless eddies, like flotsam on the backwater of some stagnant, slow-moving river. A few, driven by currents of anger and hatred, dared the wrath of the P-Squads by gathering on street corners. They stood there, defiantly, to share bitter complaints and talk treason they weren’t entirely sure how to carry out.