by David Weber
At first, Dvorak and Wilson hadn’t even realized that was happening. In fact, if they had realized they might well have tried to stop it, since the whole object of building the cabin had been to provide a bolthole for their family, not to set up some sort of guerrilla resistance organization! By the time they did realize, though, it was really too late to do anything about it. Besides, they’d been careful to keep the more . . . active aspects of the local resistance’s operations as far away from home as possible.
Even without the involvement of their wives and children, that would have made sense from an operational perspective. Dvorak had never served in the military, and while Wilson had been a designated marksman, he’d never done any kind of special operations work. Nonetheless, it seemed obvious to both of them that the very first order of business had to be protecting your own side’s communications nodes. And if that was an added reason to keep their kids as far away as possible from anything that might bite them, so much the better!
They’d both ventured considerably farther from home than Rosman as they became more actively involved, and Wilson had damned nearly gotten himself killed on one of those little escapades all the way over near the town of Clemmons, ten miles outside Winston-Salem and a hundred and sixty miles from the cabin. Dvorak was still convinced the raid on a Shongair convoy—which had destroyed fifteen of the limited number of APCs in North Carolina, not to mention two more GEVs—had been worthwhile, but they were lucky as hell they’d gotten Wilson back alive afterward. In fact, three of the eight other men from the upstate with him had been killed before the survivors managed to disengage and elude their pursuers. And that time they’d been careful to make sure they were outside the retaliation radius which the Shongairi had established for human towns too close to attacks. But this time, they were both painfully aware that they were barely eleven miles from the cabin. If the Shongairi got really pissed, if they decided to lob in a few KEWs just to teach the locals a lesson. . . .
“Come on,” Wilson muttered now. “It’s only three more frigging miles, Sam. Come on!”
Dvorak turned his own head to glance at his brother-in-law, but he didn’t say anything. He understood exactly what Wilson was thinking at that particular moment.
“Front Door” was an Avery County deputy by the name of Paul Scanlon. Scanlon’s brief, five-word transmission had been confirmation that the refugees they were out here to meet had finally reached his position three miles to the east, where Connestee Road met US-276. At the moment, those refugees were somewhere between them and Scanlon, hopefully headed their way through a network of backcountry roads between US-276 and US-64 without anyone else the wiser. The land between the two highways was primarily farming country, cut by belts of woodland, so it wasn’t like any of the back roads in question were anything like remotely straight, but west of Highway 64, the farms ended and the Pisgah National Forest began. The trick was to get the refugees the rest of the way into the national forest without anyone suffering a mischief, and the two of them were only one picket post established to watch the planned route ahead of Mitchell and his charges to be sure the coast was clear.
“Wish I knew why the puppies wanted these guys in the first place,” Dvorak muttered now.
“You think I’ve suddenly figured that out? Or are you just talking to pass the time?” Wilson inquired sardonically, and he chuckled.
“Talking to keep my teeth from chattering, really. And, no, not because I’m cold.”
“What I thought.” Wilson snorted. “Don’t think you’re the only one feels that way, either.”
Dvorak turned his head again to give his brother-in-law an affectionate smile, but he really did wish he knew what the Shongairi were up to. The only things he did know were that the Shongair base commander had ordered Howell to have his police round up a minimum of four hundred humans and deliver them to his base, and that Howell had declined. Which had been pretty ballsy of him, all things considered, although according to Vardry and Mitchell, the way he’d phrased it was basically that while he himself, of course, was completely willing to do whatever the Shongairi desired, it was likely to have less than desirable repercussions. Without any explanation of why the humans were wanted and at least some assurance of their ultimate safety, after all, it was bound to create uncertainty and anxiety among the humans who had submitted to the Shongairi. The consequences could be that some of those humans would renounce their submission, with the sort of results the Shongairi had seen elsewhere.
Given that guerrillas from outside had recently begun operating inside the state, the Shongair commander had apparently decided it would be just as well not to add any fuel to that particular fire by encouraging local participation. Instead, he’d informed Governor Howell that his own troops would secure the necessary humans from outside North Carolina. The governor had agreed that that was a much better idea, and suggested that if he knew the route by which the humans in question would be transported to Greensboro, his own police officials would be in a much better position to help provide for the transport convoy’s security once it reached North Carolina.
The Shongair had decided that was a good idea, too, given his own increasing acute shortages of both troops and vehicles, and Howell had clamped down iron security all along the roadways between the South Carolina border and Greensboro. Any Shongair convoy that got into his state would by God get to Greensboro intact!
Of course, that hadn’t said anything about any citizens of North Carolina—or raiders from outside the state who’d somehow come into contact with any citizens of North Carolina—who might somehow inadvertently find themselves south of the border on the day the transport convoy was due to arrive. Which was how somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred Shongairi had been killed in a most unfortunate ambush on Interstate 26, three and a half miles southeast of Landrum, South Carolina . . . and three miles south of the state line. The guerrillas who’d actually hit the convoy had then headed down I-26 South, towards the ruins of Columbia, obviously fleeing deeper into the area of South Carolina the Shongairi hadn’t occupied. They’d even abandoned a few “broken down” vehicles (with weapons still aboard) along their route to be sure any Shongair pursuers would know which direction they’d gone. But the humans the convoy had been transporting had headed southwest, down South Carolina 14 to Highway 11, instead, then across to pick up US-276 above Slater and turn north again, towards Brevard by way of Caesar’s Head. Hopefully, the Shongairi would be busy chasing after the guerrillas—once they realized the convoy had been attacked, at any rate—while the liberated prisoners were herded towards relative safety as quickly as possible along those narrow, twisty, tree-covered secondary highways.
As the bird flew, the ambush site was less than thirty-five miles from where Dvorak and Wilson squatted in the rain, but it was over fifty miles by road, and even in clear weather without any Shongair patrols or overflights to worry about, the drive would have taken an hour and a half. Under the conditions which actually obtained, it had taken one hell of a lot longer.
Without reliable, secure long-distance communications, it had been impossible to know whether or not the Shongairi had managed to keep to their intended schedule. If they had, however, then the attack should have occurred over five hours ago, and Mitchell and his little convoy of fugitives had been well overdue. Nobody’s nerves had gotten any less tense as the minutes and the hours had dragged past, either. But so far, at least—
“Backstop, Corner Post,” the radio said suddenly. “Puppies, headed south!”
“Oh, fuck,” Wilson whispered with soft, almost prayerful fervency.
“Get on the horn,” Dvorak said tersely, already gathering up his rifle and moving to his left, where the belt of trees in which he and Wilson were positioned made a sharp corner and angled back to the west along the southern edge of a small industrial building’s parking lot. “Tell them we’ve got company. They’d better either get a move on or turn the hell around!”
Wilson nodded
and picked up the radio.
“Nanny, Backstop,” he said. “Say time to Backstop.”
“Backstop, Nanny,” Sam Mitchell’s voice replied from the SUV in which he was leading the caravan of two buses, a pair of two-and-a-half-ton flatbed trucks, and half a dozen vans, all of them crammed full of refugees, towards safety. “I make it four minutes. Say again, four mikes.”
Wilson looked at Dvorak, who’d settled into his alternate firing position, facing up Highway 64 instead of across it, and raised his voice.
“What do I tell him, Dave?”
Dvorak thought hard, staring into the north. The rain wasn’t quite as heavy as it had been, and the wind was driving it from the southeast, so at least it was at his back and he wasn’t facing into it. Despite that, visibility was limited, to say the least. There was no sign yet of the Shongair patrol—and it almost had to be one of their routine patrols, he told himself, not someone specifically dispatched to intercept the refugees—“Corner Post” had just reported. Probably out of their satellite base in Old Fort, between Asheville and Hickory. They made fairly frequent sweeps in this direction, and they timed them randomly to keep the humans guessing. So. . . .
Four minutes, Mitchell estimated. That didn’t seem like very long. On the other hand, “Corner Post” (an Asheville city policeman named Grayson) was only seven miles north, on the far side of Brevard, watching the interchange where US-64 peeled off to the east towards Hendersonville and US-276 headed west towards Waynesville. Shongair patrols normally moved at about forty-five miles an hour. In this weather, they’d probably be a little slower . . . call it forty; that’d be about right, judging from other reports on their operations. So, seven miles at forty miles per hour came to . . . about five minutes.
Oh, crap.
“Tell him to fucking floor it,” Dave Dvorak said. “Then get your ass over here. I’m afraid things are going to get . . . busy.”
. XXXI .
Senior Squad Commander Laifayr sat in the commander’s seat of the APC with his feet propped on the heater and tried not to shiver in the raw, wet chill.
His vehicle wasn’t really an APC, of course. Losses in those—and even more in the GEVs—had been the next best thing to catastrophic. In fact, even though Laifayr wasn’t supposed to be thinking about things that far above his own rank, he had the distinct impression that “catastrophic” might actually be too anemic an adjective. At any rate, the real APCs had mostly been assigned to ground bases where the local population was more unruly than in Ground Base Two Alpha’s ZOR. And the handful which had been made available to Ground Base Commander Teraik were reserved for critical assignments.
Which, unfortunately, Laifayr’s routine patrol wasn’t.
That was why he was driving along through this miserable rain, watching it blur and splatter on the windshield, in what was basically a standard cargo vehicle to the sides of which Ground Base Two Alpha’s maintenance techs had tacked jury-rigged armor plate. Only, of course, it wasn’t real armor plate, either, just tripled layers of old-fashioned building composite. It was probably tougher than its human equivalent—he understood they used something called “plywood,” a natural cellulose product, for similar building purposes—and three layers of it would stop fire from the Shongairi’s own small arms handily. Laifayr was less confident about how well they would stop human small arms fire, however. And he was positive it wouldn’t stop those damned shoulder-fired disposable rockets of theirs.
Of course, no one had done anything about providing them with overhead cover, had they? The “armored” trucks’ cargo compartments still had only their fabric covers, so they remained completely vulnerable to overhead fire, although he supposed he should be grateful his troopers at least had firing ports cut through their “armor.” They could fire from cover against anyone who wasn’t in a position to shoot down at them from above. And there was a light auto-cannon mounted on the “APC’s” cab, as well. There was a downside to that, too, naturally, since nobody had provided a hatch to seal the access trunk to the gun position in bad weather. The best he’d been able to do was rig a tarp across the gun and snug it down, and even then icy rainwater kept dripping down onto the driver and the communications tech squeezed up against the right side door.
And did we get any RC drones? Laifayr asked himself sardonically. Of course we didn’t! They’re getting too thin on the ground, too, aren’t they? Cainharn! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a colonizing expedition a twelfth part as fucked up as this one!
He wasn’t supposed to know just how bad the equipment shortages had become, but he doubted any officer anywhere had ever managed to keep the regular troopers from knowing things they “weren’t supposed to know.” That was the nature of reality in the Emperor’s service. And, to be fair, he was pretty sure—well, maybe not quite that sure—that the shortages were worse in Ground Base Two Alpha’s zone than elsewhere. Things had been so much quieter around here, at least until recently, that the other ground bases had been assigned a higher priority for already scarce equipment.
Yeah, and the last damned thing you want, Laifayr, is for the situation to change enough that they suddenly decide they have to start transferring combat equipment back into your zone to deal with it!
That wasn’t the way a Shongair trooper, a Shongair hunter, was supposed to think, but Laifayr had become a sadder and a wiser Shongair. It was one thing to hunt aborigines armed with flint-tipped arrows or even iron swords and spearheads. It was quite another to hunt somebody who not only had firearms but personal weapons which were actually better than one’s own. And, frankly, the sooner he got far, far away from these lunatic humans, the better he’d like it!
He grimaced and leaned closer to the windshield, rubbing at the mist which had condensed on its inner surface, and peered through the water-streaming crystoplast.
They were rolling into one of the humans’ towns—the one called “Brevard” on the maps. There didn’t seem to be many of the aliens about at the moment, though. Not too surprisingly, probably, in this weather. He knew they were virtually out of fuel for their vehicles, and he damned well wouldn’t have been out walking in rain like this unless he absolutely had to!
He thought about ordering the communications tech up onto the auto-cannon, given the opportunities for ambushes the town’s buildings afforded. On the other hand, the one thing even humans weren’t stupid enough to do anymore was to actually ambush Shongairi inside one of their towns. They’d had ample evidence of what would happen to any town within two of their miles of where something like that happened!
No, if anything was likely to happen, it wouldn’t be inside one of their towns or cities. On the other hand. . . .
“Slow down a little,” he told the driver, scrubbing off more condensation—this time on the side window—and looking into the rain-blurred rearview mirror on his side for the headlights of the other two semiarmored cargo haulers of his outsized squad. He could see only one set of lights, and he grimaced. “Let the others catch up a bit before we head back out into the country.”
“Yes, Senior Squadron Commander,” the driver replied, and Laifayr returned his efforts to peering through the windshield once more as the vehicle slowed a little.
He couldn’t see much, and he glanced at his awkwardly mounted thermal viewer. It was a standard infantry model, fitted to the “APC” as best the techs could manage, and squeezing it in hadn’t been easy. He had to bend over and crane his neck uncomfortably to use it, which was probably one reason he didn’t spend more time looking through it. Besides, the infantry model wasn’t worth much compared to the ones normally mounted in the real APCs and GEVs. It was shorter ranged and less sensitive, and rain like this really hammered its range back. Under these conditions, he’d probably see anything worth seeing with his unaided eyes before he’d pick it up with that piece of junk!
Not that there is anything to see right this minute, he thought grumpily, and sat back once more, thinking longingly of the patrol�
��s end.
• • • • •
Sam Mitchell’s SUV came scooting out of Hannah Ford Road onto US-64. Its headlights were off, despite the bad weather and limited visibility, and Dave Dvorak and Rob Wilson felt a huge surge of relief as they saw it. Unfortunately, the game plan had been for the convoy to turn to the right and travel another mile to the point at which 64 intersected Island Ford Road and Cathey’s Creek Road. From there, it would head up Cathey’s Creek to the National Forest Road, a little over three miles northwest of Brevard. That twisting, circuitous, heavily overgrown road would take them deep into the Pisgah Forest, where concealment would be much more easily come by. Eventually, they would reconnect with US-276 around Waynesville, then head across into Tennessee by way of the back roads that ran up over Eaglenest Mountain.
Which would have been just fine . . . if it hadn’t required them to go north first—directly towards the oncoming Shongair patrol.
Wilson was waiting outside the tree line with a Maglite flashlight, and he speared the windshield of Mitchell’s SUV with the light’s diamond-bright beam the instant he saw it. Mitchell braked hard, then leaned out the driver’s window.
“What?” he shouted.
“Take ’em south!” Wilson shouted back. “Pick up 215, then take it up to the Parkway and cross into Tennessee that way!”
Mitchell didn’t hesitate, despite the abrupt change in plans. He only nodded back, then accelerated south along the divided highway in a splattering slipstream of rain. The buses, trucks, and vans of the rest of his little convoy came hurtling out of Hannah Ford Road right behind him, following his taillights, and Wilson ran sloshingly through the rain to join his brother-in-law.
