Chapter 51

Scenes various across George Bernard Shaw City,
and inside the Korozhet ship.

"Give us another half an hour," said the pimply programmer. "That's a craphouse full of code. We got rid of the command-phrases that will extract instant obedience. But there may be other things. I think we're there but we're just checking."

"We'll do our best," said M'Batha. "But we've had missile strikes on fifteen of the jamming transmission points. We've only got another three. Pretty soon we'll have to switch off or we'll have nowhere to broadcast the virus from."

The programmer shook his head. "I think we're not going to get there."

"If we don't, we can try the chipwipe one, even if that leaves us with stripped to near useless defense against the Magh'," said Liepsich. "But I reckon there isn't a plan C."

Ginny had headed back to the university animal holding compound after they'd flushed out Talbot Cartup. Fortunately, with the stop at the police station to make her statement, and moving at golf cart speed, they'd still been en route when the Korozhet struck the slowship. Even with its new V8 engine roaring behind them, the armor panels around the cart and the weight of chrome gadgetry that Nym delighted in slowed them down. That was probably just as well, as the rat insisted on driving. Nym's grasp of—not to mention, respect for—the rules of the road approached zero from the wrong side.

That was also the side of the road he liked to drive on. A candy-striped super-powered armored golf cart, accompanied by two Humvees full of paratroopers, was enough to disrupt traffic somewhat. So far no traffic authority had tried to pull them over which, Ginny thought, just proved that you could get away with a lot if you had enough audacity and candy-stripes.

When the missiles struck the slowship, the explosions nearly had Nym drive them into a ditch in his screeching halt. The shockwave swept over them, not quite fast enough to harden slowshields. The paratroopers took up defensive positions around them, spilling out of their vehicles. Since the assassination attempt at the stadium, the paratroopers had been hyper-edgy. One of them tried the radio. All it gave him was a burst of static. All that gave Ginny was hope. Liepsich's jammers must still be working.

"We're going to have to take you back to our base," said Sergeant Jacobovitz. "That's what Colonel Van Klomp said we were to do if there was any serious trouble, ma'am. I think you'd better get into the jeep with us."

"Methinks not," said Nym firmly. "But I will let Ginny drive and use this 'overdrive.' I hath promised I would not use it, but it will engage the full and awesome power of my engine. This noble vehicle is armored. Yours are not."

Ginny had driven the golf cart many times before. She'd never had to do so at sixty miles an hour before. Fortunately, the road was a broad one. Nym's golf-cart battlewagon got to the paratrooper base with no further disasters.

Van Klomp was there, giving orders. The camp itself was cleared. The paratroopers were digging in, out in the assault course area.

"I need you to lock me up," said Ginny calmly.

Van Klomp looked like a man who had had enough surprises for today. This was one too many. "I haven't time for that legal crap, Ms. Shaw. I'll lock you up when it is all over."

"Don't be a fool, Van Klomp!" she snapped. "The Crotchets are trying to take control of our soft-cybers. If you don't lock us up, we'll kill you if the radio-jamming stops."

"Oh. Hell's teeth. Does that mean all the bats and rats on the front will be coming here?"

"If the radio-jamming stops, yes. Unless the rebellion seeds we've planted have grown. But I doubt if that'll be enough to fight such a direct order. It's also possible that Liepsich might have a counter-program, a sort of virus that will either wipe our memories or, if we're very lucky, wipe the pro-Crotchet bias. They were still working on it."

"Not much hope there," said Van Klomp grimly. "The university copped a direct hit."

"But their jammers are still on. And what else can I do?"

"Nothing. Abbas. Take them and lock them in the cells down at the police station. Steel doors should even hold the rats for a while. And it'll give some protection against incoming. It's a solid building."

So, three minutes later, Virginia was left in a cell full of rats and bats.

And her fears. Was Chip still alive? Regretfully she had to admit to herself that there wasn't much hope. A tear found its way down her cheek. Soon she might not even have those precious memories. If only the jamming could hold.

"High-spine, the radio jamming continues. We are attempting to neutralize it, but our missile-launch portals were heavily damaged by the initial laser-fire from the humans. And every time we have taken one transmitter off, another comes on. However we think we have pinpointed the central transmission source. We believe it is being coordinated from under the remains of their slowship."

"Which implies that it survived a direct hit."

"Yes, High-spine."

"Take a ground-force out, with heavy mining equipment. There must be a reinforced bunker underneath. Destroy it. In the meanwhile desist wasting munitions."

The High-spine turned her attention to another high-instar. "How goes the human slave capture at this 'Webb fields'?"

"Since the initial batch, few have come, High-spine. We think there is resistance happening. Intimidation." She clattered her spines in disapproval.

The High-spine turned her attention back to those she was sending out to destroy the bunker. "Gather information on this when you go in, Rettitit. Take captives if possible. And Territ. The humans we have: Begin the mindscrub so that we can use them against their species-mates. If they are mindscrubbed, they will not rebel. All of the slaves taken on this world are to be mindscrubbed before implanting now. Begin with the females. The humans' only desirable social trait is that they are supposed to treat females with awe. They will be reluctant to kill them."

Yetteth took his bucket and sidled away. He could do nothing about this war. But he still wanted to know. It was compulsive. And the human Chip would want to know, if he came back alive from the questioning.

George Bernard Shaw City, smoldering and in fear.

"There is a sort of lander type thing just off on the edge of Webb Fields. That isn't force-shielded. They've got several high-walled enclosures there. They've got some of those who obeyed the order to go to them for shelter there. We could attack that," suggested one of Fitz's impromptu "General Staff."

A soldier ran up. "Major, it's Lieutenant Capra on the field-telephone. He says there are two massive vehicles coming out of the Korozhet ship. Some kind of hovercraft. They're heading east, sir. Towards the old slowship."

"There's not much left there. All right, soldiers. If they want something from there, it's our job to stop them. I'll want Alpha company, Sergeant. See they're in the cars in two minutes. And I'll want those 'sappers' and their supply of explosives."

"Fitzhugh! You can't go," protested a colonel, who had been part of the trial panel. "We need you here, man."

Fitz shook his head. "This command center is up and running. This is stuff you can all do as well as I can. Most of you have more experience at it, in fact. With respect, fighting is something I can do better than all of you. Come on, Ariel. Let's roll."

Fifteen minutes later, they were surveying the two alien hovercraft that were slowly coming down the street. The aliens were plainly checking for resistance on their route. The second hovercraft had two captive children on the aft deck. On the foredeck, huge aliens with enormous horns were operating what was plainly some form of scanner. Inside the transparent dome, Fitz could see the prickly forms of their enemy.

He and Ariel crawled back, before they came into range.

"The Benmore building," said Fitz curtly, to the driver of his commandeered vehicle.

They raced along the back-streets. Two minutes later Fitz's "sappers"—a pair of demolition contractors—were setting charges. His troops were doing a hasty door-to-door check for any remaining occupants of the plush apartment block next to the canal.

By the time the two alien hovercraft came in sight, Fitz's makeshift troops were well back. Whatever sort of scanner the aliens were using would have to penetrate three buildings and an earth berm to detect them. One spotter remained on the roof. The rest were in the vehicles ready to race in . . . or away.

They were armed with a mixture of issue bangsticks for the few slowshield-wearing military personnel, and an assortment of firearms and knives and hammers for the rest. Fitz had heard that a hammer had killed the Korozhet in the scorpiary. He wished desperately that he had some more front-line troops, but those were seldom posted back to the capital. He had several maintenance units, two boot-camps' worth of raw recruits, a lot of supply clerks and JAG officers, the medical corps—who had taken over civilian evacuation—a signals unit, and a hundred or so men who had been on pass in the city. He'd used these as stiffening in the units they'd formed with the townspeople.

The new units were as often as not "officered" by Vats. Certainly all the NCOs were Vats. But the class distinction had gone by the board now that they were fighting for their lives.

What he'd really wanted was Van Klomp and his paratroopers. But their camp was abandoned. Van Klomp would be around somewhere. But he hadn't stayed in a known possible target—showing more brains than most of the units, whose officers had kept them sitting on their hands. A sweep through Military HQ had gathered a further five officers—recent appointees, as well as a fairly large supply of clerks. Apparently the General Staff, having received assurances from the Korozhet, had left them behind as there wasn't sufficient transport.

"Count of three," said the observer from the rooftop. His orders were to try and drop it on the lead hovercraft and the nose of the second. The prisoners were probably going to be killed by the Korozhet. They might be killed by the debris, but Fitz still didn't want to risk dropping the building on them. Demolition is not that exact a science.

"NOW!"

Inside the landspeeder the explosions were muffled. The dust ahead was still rising when Fitz and his soldiers got there. Dust was going up, and bits of the luxury apartments were still coming down. They were out of their vehicles and running in, firing small-arms for some form of cover.

The second Korozhet craft was still moving. As they got to the deck, it lurched. One of the privates was cutting the two children loose, as Fitz took down his first Korozhet at close quarters.

Then his muscles spasmed terribly and he felt himself helplessly arc over backwards into the rubble.

He was conscious, able to hear and see, still breathing. And paralyzed. Fitz could see a orange-spined prickle-ball with what was unmistakably a hand-weapon.

It said something.

Ariel was standing on his chest. She started forward. Just a pace.

Then she bared her teeth.

"NO!" she hissed between those teeth. "Mine. Mine."

So the Korozhet shot her. A brief dart of red light.

Fitz, unable to move, felt her fall. And felt her lifeblood stream onto his chest. The little pawhands clung convulsively onto his shirt-pocket. And then released.

The Korozhet spined down, with one of its horned alien henchmen. The Korozhet spine-suckers plucked up Ariel. The horned alien began to lift Fitz in its clumsy forepaws. Suddenly the creature jerked, and dropped him face down on the rubble.

Fitz couldn't move. Face down, he couldn't even see. He could hear the shooting, though. It sounded like an entire barrage. He lay there, grieving. He had three last Cointreau-centered liqueur chocolates in that top pocket, that he'd been saving for Ariel.

He was not too sure how much later someone turned him over. He was not sure he cared. Not even when he realized that it was Van Klomp's big ugly face looking down on him.

It was almost two hours later that Fitz began to recover some movement. After that he had a couple of wild, almost epileptic muscle spasms, and found that he could at least begin to sit up. He was weak, and wretched.

Van Klomp came into the aid station.

"Boeta, I thought you were dead. I should have known it was too good to be true."

"Ariel's dead, Bobby. She tried to protect me. Stood over my body. And the bastards killed her. I even couldn't move to help her." Fitz knew there was heartbreak in his voice. But Bobby Van Klomp was more than a friend. He was more of a father than his own father had ever been.

"Oh, hell's teeth. I'm sorry, Fitzy. She loved you, that mad rat of yours."

"She loved me enough to stand and defend me, when her soft-cyber was programmed to make her obey the Korozhet. I think that's why they shot her. But I wish they'd at least left me her body."

"Fitzy . . . I don't know what to say, boykie. All I can say is your lot did a hell of a lot better ambush than we had prepared on the other side of the canal. You made them pay a very high price for her. You got two kids free. One's got a concussion and the other a broken leg, but they're alive and free. You killed twenty-seven and destroyed one of their hovercraft—and you only lost three of yours."

"Only thanks to your lot getting there. I wish I'd known where the hell you were."

"I moved my boys into the assault course grounds, except for the ones in that first chopper those bastards shot down. They're dug in there. Then we set up a sort of 'combined arms' group—the new recruits without slowshields and with as much firepower as we could manage to scavenge, the vets with bangsticks and explosives—and went and scouted Webb Fields. We dropped a few smoke-rounds on the crowd, in order to chase them out of that trap. But then we got our mortars taken out, and we've been scouting for an opportunity since."

Fitz's stood up. "Be ready for lots of opportunity. I plan to kill every single stinking Pricklepuss on this planet before I'm done. I'll give Ariel a funeral pyre worthy of a goddess."

Van Klomp smiled crookedly. "I don't think the rats have 'goddesses,' Fitzy."

"They do now."