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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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Seconds passed and sharp thunder swept over the car, followed by the fast-dying scream of the bombers climbing back into the sky.
“So much for the loudmouth channels,” said Kiki. “I’m for keeping quiet till we get underground.”
Jim was driving faster now. He hadn’t seen the display, but the sounds of the explosions were enough to make all but the least imaginative run like hell. The road had been bumpy, but now seemed like washboard. Wil gripped the seat ahead of him. If the enemy connected them with the broadcasts …
“How far, Al?”
“Nearest entrance is about four kilometers as the crow flies, but we gotta go all around the Schwartz farm to get to it.” He waved at the high, barbed-wire fence along the right side of the road. Cornfields stretched away north of it. In the distance, Wil saw something—a harvester? —amidst the green. “It’ll take us fifteen minutes—”
“Ten!” claimed Jim emphatically, and the ride became still wilder.
“—to make it around the farm.”
They crested a low hill. Not more than 300 meters distant, Wil could see a side road going directly north. “But we could take that.”
“Not a chance. That’s on Schwartz land.” Big Al glanced at the state trooper. “And I ain’t just being law-abiding, Lieutenant. We’d be as good
as dead to do that. Jake Schwartz went armadillo about three years ago. See that hulk out there in the field?” He tried to point, but his arm waved wildly.
“The harvester?”
“That’s no harvester. It’s armor. Robot, I think. If you look careful you may see the gun tracking us.” Wil looked again. What he had thought was a chaff exhaust now looked more like a high-velocity catapult.
Their car zipped past the T-intersection with the Schwartz road; Wil had a glimpse of a gate and keep-out signs surmounted by what looked like human skulls. The farm west of the side road seemed undeveloped. A copse at the top of a near hill might have hid farm buildings.
“The expense. Even if it’s mostly bluff—”
“It’s no bluff. Poor Jake. He always was self-righteous and a bit of a bully. His police contract was with Justice, Inc., and he claimed even they were too bleedin’ heart for him. Then one night his kid—who’s even stupider than Jake—got pig drunk and killed another idiot. Unfortunately for Jake’s boy, the victim was one of my customers. There are no amelioration clauses in the Midwest/Justice, Inc. agreements. Reparations aside, the kid will be locked up for a long time. Jake swore he’d never contract his rights to a court again. He has a rich farm, and since then he’s spent every gAu from it on more guns, more traps, more detectors. I hate to think how they live in there. There are rumors he’s brought in deathdust from the Hanford ruins, just in case anybody succeeds in getting past everything else.”
Oh boy.
Even the armadillos up north rarely went that far.
The last few minutes Kiki had ignored them, all her attention on the strategy flat on her lap. She wore a tiny headset and was mumbling constantly into her command mike. Suddenly she spoke up. “Oops. We’re not going to make it, Big Al.” She began folding the displays, stuffing them back into her equipment boxes. “I monitored. They just told their chopper crews to pick us up. They got us spotted easy. Two, three minutes is all we have.”
Jim slowed, shouted over his shoulder. “How about if I drop you and keep going? I might be kilometers gone before they stop me.” Brierson had never noticed any lack of guts among the unarmed police services.
“Good idea! Bye!” Kiki flung open her door and rolled off into the deep and apparently soft vegetation that edged the road.
“Kiki!” screamed Big Al, turning to look back down the road. They had a brief glimpse of comm and processor boxes bouncing wildly through the brush. Then Kiki’s blond form appeared for an instant as she dragged the equipment deeper into the green.
From the trees behind them they could hear the
thup thupthup
of
rotors. Two minutes had been an overstatement. Wil leaned forward. “No, Jim. Drive like hell. And remember: There were only three of us.”
The other nodded. The car squealed out toward the center of the road, and accelerated up past 80. The roar and thump of their progress momentarily drowned out the sound of pursuit. Thirty seconds passed, and three helicopters appeared over the tree line behind them.
Do we get what they gave the stationhouse?
An instant later white flashed from their belly guns. The road ahead erupted in a geyser of dirt and rock. Jim stepped on the brakes and the car swerved to a halt, dipping and bobbing among the craters left by the shells. The car’s engine died and the thumping of rotors was a loud, almost physical pressure around them. The largest craft settled to earth amidst its own dust devil. The other two circled, their autocannons locked on Big Al’s Lincoln.
The passenger hatch on the grounded chopper slid back and two men in body armor hopped out. One waved his submachine gun at them, motioning them out of the car. Brierson and the others were hustled across the road, while the second soldier went to pick up the equipment they had in the car. Wil looked back at the scene, feeling the dust in his mouth and on his sweating face—the ashes of humiliation.
His pistol was pulled from its holster. “All aboard, gentlemen.” The words were spoken with a clipped, Down West accent.
Wil was turning when it happened. A flash of fire and a muffled thud came from one of the hovering choppers. Its tail rotor disappeared in a shower of debris. The craft spun uncontrollably on its main rotor and fell onto the roadway behind them. Pale flame spread along fuel lines, sputtering in small explosions. Wil could see injured crew trying to crawl out.
“I said
get aboard.”
The gunman had stepped back from them, his attention and the muzzle of his gun still on his captives. Wil guessed the man was a veteran of the Water Wars—that institutionalized gangsterism that New Mexico and Aztlán called “warfare between nations.” Once given a mission, he would not be distracted by incidental catastrophes.
The three “prisoners of war” stumbled into the relative darkness of the helicopter’s interior. Wil saw the soldier—still standing outside—look back toward the wreck, and speak emphatically into his helmet mike. Then he hopped on and pulled the hatch to. The helicopter slid into the air, hanging close to the ground as it gradually picked up speed. They were moving westward from the wreck, and there was no way they could look back through the tiny windows.
An accident?
Who could have been equipped to shoot down an armored warcraft in the middle of Kansas fields? Then Wil remembered: Just before it lost its tail, the chopper had drifted north of the roadway,
past the high fence that marked Armadillo Schwartz’s land. He looked at Big Al, who nodded slightly. Brierson sat back in the canvas webbing and suppressed a smile. It was a small thing on the scale of the invasion, but he thanked God for armadillos. Now it was up to organizations like the Michigan State Police to convince the enemy that this was just the beginning, that every kilometer into the ungoverned lands would cost them similarly.
ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY KILOMETERS IN SIX HOURS. REPUBLICAN CASUALTIES: one motorcycle/truck collision, and one helicopter crash—that probably a mechanical failure. Edward Strong, Special Advisor to the President, felt a satisfied smile come to his lips every time he glanced at the situation board. He had seen more casualties on a Freedom Day parade through downtown Albuquerque. His own analysis for the President—as well as the larger, less imaginative analysis from JCS—had predicted that extending the Republic through Kansas to the Mississippi would be almost trivial. Nevertheless, after having fought meter by bloody meter with the fanatics of Aztlán, it was a strange feeling to be advancing hundreds of kilometers each day.
Strong paced down the narrow aisle of the Command and Control van, past the analysts and clerks. He stood for a moment by the rear door, feeling the air-conditioning billow chill around his head. Camouflage netting had been laid over the van, but he could see through it without difficulty: Green leaves played tag with shadows across pale yellow limestone. They were parked in a wooded creek bed on the land Intelligence had bought several years earlier. Somewhere to the north were the barracks that now confined the people Intelligence had imported allegedly to work the farms. Those laborers had provided whatever legal justification was needed for this move into the ungoverned lands. Strong wondered if any of them realized their role—and realized that in a few months they would be free of poverty, realized that they would own farms in a land that could be made infinitely more hospitable than the deserts of the Southwest.
Sixteen kilometers to the northeast lay Manhattan. It was a minor goal, but the Republic’s forces were cautious. It would be an important—though small—test of their analysis. There were Tinkers in that town and in the countryside beyond. The precision electronics and related weapons that came out of the Tinkers’ shops were worthy of respect and caution. Privately, Strong considered them to be the only real threat to the success of the invasion he had proposed to the President three years earlier. (Three years of planning, of cajoling resources from other departments, of trying to inject imagination into minds that had
been closed for decades. By far, the easiest part had been the operations here in Kansas.)
The results of the move on Manhattan would be relayed from here to General Crick at the head of the armor driving east along Old70. Later in the afternoon, Crick’s tank carriers should reach the outskirts of Topeka. The Old U.S. highway provided a mode of armored operations previously unknown to warfare. If the investiture of Manhattan went as planned, then Crick might have Topeka by nightfall and be moving the remainder of his forces on to the Mississippi.
Strong looked down the van at the time posted on the situation board. The President would be calling in 20 minutes to witness the move against Manhattan. Till then, a lull gapped in Strong’s schedule. Perhaps there was time for one last bit of caution. He turned to the bird colonel who was his military liaison. “Bill, those three locals you picked up—you know, the protection-racket people—I’d like to talk to them before the Chief calls in.”
“Here?”
“If possible.”
“Okay.” There was faint disapproval in the officer’s voice. Strong imagined that Bill Alvarez couldn’t quite see bringing enemy agents into the C&C van. But what the hell, they were clean—and there was no way that they could report what they saw here. Besides, he had to stay in the van in case the Old Man showed up early.
Minutes later, the three shuffled into the conference area at the front of the van. Restraints glinted at their hands and ankles. They stood in momentary blindness in the darkness of the van, and Strong had a chance to look them over; three rather ordinary human beings, dressed in relatively extraordinary ways. The big black wore a recognizable uniform, complete with badges, sidearm holster, and what appeared to be riding boots. He looked the model fascist. Strong recognized the Michigan State “Police” insignia on his sleeve. MSP was one of the most powerful gangster combines in the ungoverned lands. Intelligence reported they had some modern weapons—enough to keep their “clients” in line, anyway.
“Sit down, gentlemen.” Amidst a clanking of shackles, the three sat, sullen. Behind them an armed guard remained standing. Strong glanced at the intelligence summary he had punched up. “Mr., uh, Lieutenant Brierson, you may be interested to know that the troops and aircraft you asked your bosses for this morning have not materialized. Our intelligence people have not changed their estimate that you were making a rather weak bluff.”
The northerner just shrugged, but the blond fellow in the outrageously
striped shirt—Alvin Swensen, the report named him—leaned forward and almost hissed. “Maybe, maybe not, asshole! But it doesn’t matter. You’re going to kill a lot of people, but in the end you’ll be dragging your bloody tail back south.”
Figuratively speaking, Strong’s ears perked up. “How is that, Mr. Swensen?”
“Read your history. You’re stealing from a free people now—not a bunch of Aztlán serfs. Every single farm, every single family is against you, and these are educated people, many with weapons. It may take a while. It may destroy a lot of things we value. But every day you stay here, you’ll bleed. And when you’ve bled enough to see this, then you’ll go home.”
Strong glanced at the casualty report on the situation board, and felt laughter stealing up. “You poor fool. What free people? We get your video, your propaganda, but what does it amount to? There hasn’t been a government in this part of the continent for more than eighty years. You petty gangsters have the guns and have divided up the territory. Most of you don’t even allow your ‘clients’ firearms. I’ll wager that the majority of your victims will welcome a government where there is a franchise to be exercised, where ballots, and not MSP bullets, decide issues.
“No, Mr. Swensen, the little people in the ungoverned lands have no stake in your
status quo.
And as for the armed groups fighting some kind of guerrilla war against us—Well, you’ve had it easier than you know for a long time. You haven’t lived in a land as poor as old New Mexico. Since the Bobble War, we’ve had to fight for every liter of water, against an enemy far more determined and bloodthirsty than you may imagine. We have prevailed, we have revived and maintained democratic government, and we have remained free men.”

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