by J. S. Bailey
She got no response. It occurred to her that he might have lost his own comm when he was kidnapped by the Haa’la miners.
Errin stood nearby, remaining alert as they kept an eye on the humans armed with flamethrowers. “Dalton went to see where the Haa’la landed,” they said to Carolyn without taking their gaze from the armed citizens who probably wanted to torch the Greens.
“And where is that?”
“West of town. Near the quad dealer, someone said.”
“I thought he was going to help arm everyone!”
“Maybe he went there next.”
Carolyn had already started dialing in Cadu’s number before Errin finished their sentence. “Cadu! Is Dalton with you?”
“Yes ma’am,” Cadu said.
“I need to speak with him.”
“Just a sec—here.”
“What?” Dalton growled. “I’m busy.”
“We need to discuss how we’re going to conduct this battle.”
“I thought I was supposed to distribute weapons.”
Carolyn breathed in deeply. “Yes, but I need your help.”
There came a long pause. “And you’re asking me.”
“I don’t know what to do, Dalton.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Well, maybe if you and I meet and put our heads together, we’ll think of something.”
Dalton’s laugh sounded hollow. “Right. Where should we meet?”
Chapter 23
A subtle shift seemed to be occurring among the gathered citizens, Dalton noted as he steered the quad back to the street behind the police station. Those already armed were arranging themselves into ranks without anyone telling them to, and they had a tense, expectant air that made him worry they’d start lobbing their boomstones at the slightest provocation.
Carolyn waited for him in the main office area, sitting at Cadu’s desk and tapping one foot nervously on the floor.
She was still in her pajamas.
“Where’s Chumley?” she asked.
“Disabling a Haa’la ship.” His gaze went to Cadu’s desk, on which the emergency operator had posed action figures from one of his several dozen favorite films. “Maybe you should have asked Cadu to come back here instead of me. He might have picked up something useful in a movie.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t think that movie battles and actual battles might have anything in common,” Carolyn said. “For one, people in movie battles tend not to die for real. How are we going to organize them?” She jerked her head in the direction of the main entrance to the station.
Dalton sank onto an empty chair and put his head in his hands. “We can split them into groups.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“There can be a distraction. Make the Haa’la think all the humans and Greens are in one place, while we send smaller groups around the back to catch them by surprise.”
Carolyn perked up. “That’s actually a good idea.”
“It is?”
“Hell if I know. I’m running on no sleep.” She looked down at herself and seemed just now to realize she was wearing a paper-thin top and flannel pajama shorts that barely reached a quarter of the way down to her knees. “Oh, dear God.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Dalton said, “half the folks outside are still in their pajamas, too.”
“Just what we need.” Carolyn rubbed her eyes. “A sleep-deprived army. Do you still have any of that garbage coffee around here?”
Dalton pointed at the door to the meeting room. “Help yourself.”
“Gladly.” She rose and disappeared through the meeting room doorway.
Dalton felt briefly lost, then said, “I’m, er, going to go out and talk to the people.” He thought about the best way to go about doing that, then remembered how Old Man Sondhi, the previous sheriff, would go to the roof anytime he needed to make important announcements, which usually involved letting the citizens know about the upcoming town potluck.
He dug an ancient bullhorn out of a closet in the back hallway, ascended the dusty stairwell to the roof, and strode across it until he stood above the street where the Greens and humans had gathered.
He cleared his throat and held the bullhorn in front of his face. “Ahem. Excuse me. This is Sheriff Dalton Kane speaking.”
They know who you are, you dolt, he thought. Just get on with it.
“We, um, want to take the Haa’la by surprise. So we need to split everyone into groups. If your last name begins with A through M, stay here, in front of the station. If your last name begins with N through S, meet in the street behind the station. If your last name begins with T through Z, meet in the town square.”
Several hundred citizens and plants stared up at him. Then the humans got moving, like a tide separating from itself.
The Greens remained in place, the gazes from their eyestalks locked onto him. He tried not to feel dizzy; these Greens hadn’t killed anyone yet. Did they know the difference between a human and a Haa’la? It might be hard to tell, for a plant.
Once his citizens had gone to their respective meeting places, Dalton strode toward the back of the station and eyed the two hundred or so people comprising the N through S group. About half of them were armed already, either with flamethrowers or boomstones.
He spoke into the bullhorn again. “Those of you without weapons, go to the weapons cache, arm yourselves, and come straight back here to await your orders.”
He went to the front of the building and repeated that command to the larger group gathered there. Then he hurried back down the stairs and out to the street, ignoring the walking plants as best as he could, and made it to the town square.
Pleased to see that nobody had yet taken down the stage they’d assembled for Frontier Care United, he hopped up onto it and repeated his command yet again to the T through Z group.
Back at the station again, Dalton found two comm units and put them into his pockets. Carolyn sipped at a mug of steaming coffee and grimaced.
“I’ve divided everyone into three groups,” he said to her.
“I know,” she said. “I have ears.”
“You should take charge of one of the smaller groups. We can be in contact with each other at all times.”
“There’s something you’re forgetting.” Carolyn chugged the rest of her coffee in one gulp and shivered. “You didn’t tell the Greens what to do.”
“I can’t exactly divvy them up by last name now, can I?”
“No, but you can let me talk to them before I take charge of a group. Do you have any spare flamethrowers around here?”
“Hall closet,” Dalton said.
“Good.” Carolyn disappeared a moment and came back with a weapon nearly as long as she was tall. “I’ll take charge of T through Z and see if Errin won’t take N through S.”
She strode out the door without another word. Dalton hurried back up to the roof. From his position above the town, he could catch the slightest glimpse of the Haa’la miners’ ship out by the quad dealership.
He couldn’t see the Verdant ships. Too many buildings stood in the way.
Directly below him, Carolyn was having a one-sided conversation with the Greens. Then, as if it had been choreographed beforehand, the plants broke into three separate groups, the two smaller ones migrating toward their human counterparts.
Dalton had to close his eyes to spare himself the sight, but all he could see behind his lids were a picnic shelter and playground area splattered with blood and dismembered limbs, so he opened them again and stared up at the sky.
His comm crackled, making him jump. He could see Carolyn down below, looking up at him. “Dalton, Ashi’ii just contacted me. Do not send anyone to attack the Haa’la miners. I repeat, do not.”
He breathed out the tiniest sigh of relief.
“They’re going to cooperate with us, then?”
“That’s what she says.”
Dalton paused. “I don’t believe it.”
“On second thought,” Carolyn said, “I’ll take my group around behind the miners and keep an eye on them. Just in case.”
“Pip-pip! You had no right to ally yourself with the humans! Do you have any idea what these people did?” Kedd screamed.
Ashi’ii stood with folded arms before more than a dozen dozen of the most able-bodied employees from Nydo Base. They’d gathered in a dusty street not far from where they’d parked their ship and had armed themselves with the weaponry they’d originally used to keep the Greens at bay before realizing the Greens were immune to the blasts.
She’d been told that the remaining forty-eight dozen members of her workforce had taken cover, hoping that the Verdants’ scanners wouldn’t find them.
“Pip-pip! The humans outnumber us,” Ashi’ii said. “We need to band together to stop the Verdants from killing everyone on this planet.”
“Pip-pip! Humans threw salt on Jakaaki, Mishnam, and Florvis. And you want them to live?”
Ashi’ii felt a stab of hatred toward the humans, having to remind herself that Dalton and Chumley had been with her and weren’t responsible for such an infraction.
“Pip-pip! I’ve been listening to their comm calls out in the desert day after day,” Kedd went on. “They are the most boring, vapid, and insipid beings I’ve ever had dealings with. They speak of nothing useful, but if left to rally together, they will murder us all with salt.”
Ashi’ii turned back toward the town. She couldn’t see any humans from her current position. She couldn’t see where the Verdants had landed, either, which made her more nervous by far. How many Verdants were there? Could her miners overpower them?
“Pip-pip! We absolutely must work with the humans,” Ashi’ii said.
“Pip-pip! Never! We attack the Verdants first, and then the humans. This is not negotiable.”
“Pip-pip! Don’t forget who is in charge here.”
Kedd moved his veil aside and glared at her. “Pip-pip! You are in charge at the base. Here, I can do what I please. I advise you not to get in my way.”
Dalton called Errin’s comm. “Errin, take your group out and around town and try to sneak up on the Verdants from behind.”
“I don’t know how much sneaking we’ll be able to do, when half of us are plants.”
He closed his eyes and counted to five. “Sometimes I think you have too much common sense for your own good.”
“Just trying to keep everyone alive.” They lowered their voice. “And just so you know, this isn’t easy for me, either. My sister is still in the hospital after the attack at the hotel.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“If we can keep the Verdants’ attention fixed on the town, they may not notice my group coming up behind them.”
“How do we do that?”
“We’ll have to consider the resources we have available.”
“We don’t have any resources!”
“We have to come up with something. A lot of lives depend on it.”
There was no arguing about that. Dalton looked back down at the A through M group below him and spotted Lennox McTavish and Gurmeet Singh standing among them, huddling close to each other and looking as if they’d rather be a few kiloparsecs away by now.
Dalton held the bullhorn in front of him. “Mr. Singh. Why didn’t you join the N through S group?”
Gurmeet jumped and peered up at him. “Because if I’m going to die today, it will be with Lennox.” He grabbed Lennox’s hand as if to prove it.
An absurd idea was beginning to take shape in Dalton’s mind. “Do you still have your musical instruments?”
Gurmeet’s face screwed up in confusion. “You mean my sarangi, and his bagpipes?”
“That would be them.”
“What do they have to do with anything?”
“Go get them. We need to distract the enemy, and I can’t think of a better way to do it.”
Below him, the two musicians looked at each other, nodded, and darted off. Dalton knew it wouldn’t take long for them to collect their instruments; Gurmeet only lived one street over and Dalton was pretty sure Lennox had moved in with him not that long ago.
He contacted Errin again. “I’ve got a distraction in progress. I’ll let you know when to start circling around.”
“What’s the distraction?”
“A concert.”
“A . . . concert, sir?”
“It’s going to be very loud.”
“And you think this will work?”
“No idea. But the Verdants won’t be expecting it.”
Dalton made his way down the stairwell into the station and stepped out the front door into the street. Gurmeet and Lennox soon came into view with their respective instruments. “We haven’t really perfected anything yet,” Gurmeet said.
“Doesn’t matter. I want you to be as loud and obnoxious as possible.”
Lennox’s cheeks flushed pink. “Obnoxious, sir?”
“Just get in here.”
Dalton ushered them inside the station and over to the wall-mounted manual control panel for the siren system.
The sirens switched on naturally when high winds activated the sensors outside of town. They could also be switched on manually from inside the station. There was some way to switch all the sirens over to loudspeakers, a trick that Old Man Sondhi had accidentally discovered during his tenure as sheriff and that Dalton only knew about because he’d been walking out of the bank one day and heard the man’s voice say, “—this switch do—Oh, shit!” broadcast out of the pole-mounted siren speakers at several hundred decibels.
He squinted at the control panel. Some of the switches were so worn, he could barely read their labels.
A dusty grille in the center of the switches was likely the microphone. A switch to the right of it read “MA UAL SI EN.”
Having nothing to lose at this point, Dalton flipped the leftmost switch and flicked the microphone grille with his middle finger.
A deafening THUD echoed through the town, causing several dozen citizens to scream.
Dalton cleared his throat. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said, glancing at Gurmeet and Lennox, both of whom gave him wary looks. “This is your sheriff speaking again. I’d like to introduce you to two fine musicians.” He turned from the microphone and whispered, “What do you call yourselves?”
“Sikh Highlander.” Lennox’s cheeks turned pink. “We’ve been trying to come up with something better.”
“Sikh Highlander!” Dalton said into the microphone, then stepped away from it. “Keep playing until I tell you to stop.”
The men gingerly stepped up to the microphone and moved their instruments into position.
“Which one should we do first?” Lennox whispered.
“What about ‘My Old Molorthia Home’?”
“I can never get the ending right.”
“Maybe ‘O Danny Boy’?”
“But we only just started that one!”
Dalton was aware that their whispers were being magnified and blasted over the town.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I know!” Gurmeet said, forgetting to whisper. “We can do ‘Just Dance’!”
“Oh, gods no,” Dalton said as Gurmeet strummed the opening notes of the ancient song.
Some of the people out in the street peered in through the glass door wearing concerned expressions.
Dalton’s comm crackled. “Dalton, what in God’s name are you doing?” Carolyn asked.
“Distracting our enemies. Now try to get a visual on the Nydo Base folk.”
He keyed in Errin’s number before Carolyn could object. “You�
�d better get your group moving.”
“I’m on it.”
Dalton resisted the urge to tap his foot in time with the beat of the music. Despite their claim that they weren’t very good, he thought Sikh Highlander might have a bright future in entertainment ahead of them, assuming they didn’t end up being massacred today.
He gave them the thumbs-up and returned to the roof. The music blared from the siren speakers so loudly, he had to scream into his bullhorn before anyone so much as noticed him.
“All of you need to stand by!” he shouted at the A through M group. “Errin and Carolyn are taking their groups around to—” A particularly loud succession of notes drowned out his words, even with the bullhorn amplifying them. “Oh, hell. Stay put and pay attention. If the Verdants come into view, don’t attack until I say so.”
Ashi’ii and Kedd went ahead of the rest of their group to scout out the precise location of the Verdants. The bastards had killed too many of her people already, and destroyed months’ worth of income during their other attacks over the years. She’d been lucky so far, she supposed, that they’d only ever managed to destroy her cargo ships.
Other companies had not been so fortunate. Oreega Incorporated, for example, had lost half its employees when the Verdants wiped out their silver mines on Gaspind Lora, and the entirety of Interspace Materials had been decimated when the Verdants found their bases on Korsha Two, Hulitzporgia, and Tomm.
Kedd flickered into view ahead of her, his veil fluttering in the wind.
“Pip-pip! Your shield is down,” Ashi’ii said.
Kedd clawed at the invisibility shield clipped to his waist. “Pip-pip! I thought I charged it this morning. Damned tech.”
“Pip-pip! At least you have one.” Since Ashi’ii’s job was largely administrative, she had never bothered to issue herself a shield, because the chances of her needing to hide herself from humans all the way up at the base were next to zero. Kedd and his ilk, who spent their days monitoring human communications channels and looting anything they thought they could sell, were another story.
Kedd clicked the button on the device a few times. “Pip-pip! Do you see me?”
