They Also Serve (42 page)

"Okay, crew, into the redoubt." Quickly he explained his idea. They at least liked the last part of it.

Pres was going for full psychological impact. Flags fluttering, his troops moved in perfect step, their uniforms impressive, hats making them seem ten feet tall. "Don't fire until you can see the whites of their eyes," Ray told his troops.

"You're kidding," Dancer said incredulously. "There's got to be a better way."

"There is. I think if I set my mind to it, I can call the next scenario," Ray snapped. "For now we play it his way." With measured steps, booted tread adding emphasis to the drumbeat, they came on. Damn, this was a hell of a way to fight. They were only fifty paces out. "On my count of three. Volley fire," Ray ordered.

Two paces closer. "One." Three paces this time. "Two." One of the computers fired. "Hold your fire. Hold your fire. Now. Three." Ray pulled on his own trigger. Damn, it took pull. Then the musket fired and damn near threw Ray backward out of the ditch. Before him was a cloud of black smoke. He wondered how many he'd hit. His plan didn't call for wasting any time looking. "Everyone. Up. Run like hell."

They needed no encouragement; his crew headed downhill as fast as their trembling legs could carry them. They were halfway down, a good hundred-plus yards from their ditch, when the redcoats marched over the hill. They were a lot fewer than they had been when Ray ordered the volley. At the top of the hill, the officer leading them ordered a halt. The front row knelt.

"They're going to take a shot at us. When the officer orders 'Fire,' everyone drop, roll. Got it?"

Nobody had breath to answer.

"Ready . . . aim . . ." the officer shouted. "Drop!" Ray yelled. "Fire" came a second later.

A scream came from one of the computer types. "You hit?" Ray called, rolling to his feet and getting ready to keep up the ran.

"No, hit a rock," the computer image answered.

"Run."

Ray pulled his head away from the stone. Doc was right next to him. "How's it going?"

"Not too bad. Depends on what's happening in the real world, where the computer is trying to hack into us." Ray paused. There was noise in the base compound. "What's going on?"

"We've got problems. Nothing for you to worry about. Why'd you come out?"

"Tell Jeff to blow every damn track he can. Every time we kill some of this thing, it comes at us with more. We got to cut his line of communications or he's going to wear us down."

"I'll call Jeff. So far, you and the kids are doing fine. Boys showing some interesting brain activity for their age. Nothing else."

"Talk later." Ray rested his head on the stone, concentrating on the battle he wanted next.

Du searched the crowd with his rifle on high zoom. His night goggles showed him person after person in crosshairs. They were not targets, just people where Du didn't want them. What he wanted was the one with the gun. That one was his.

"We took another shot here" came over the net. So far, another guard was dead, one wounded. Three helmets had done their job, though their owners had been sent for a medical check. Didn't that bastard ever miss? Would make a good marine, Du thought. Too bad I'm gonna kill his ass.

The teams on the wall were taking the need to be sitting ducks pretty well. Du knew they were counting on him and his crew to get the shooter. Damn it, he was trying.

Du followed the red arrow on his night goggles as Mary moved his fire plan to the left. The shooter had been edging to the left consistently. "Dumb," Du muttered.

"Yeah," Tor agreed. "Good shooter, dumb planning. Hold it." Tor's voice took on excitement. "I got a gun. Just went under a brown raincoat."

Du slaved his gunsight to Tor. With a dizzying click, Du's screen showed a guy in brown raingear. Something bulged under that coat. "Sure it's a gun?"

"It looked like one, but you know those damn popguns, they can look like just about anything."

"Keep watching that bastard, but do not take the shot. You hear me. No shot until we're damn sure."

"Understood." Tor spat the word as if it tasted bad. Damn right it did. Du ordered Tor's gunsight to save the last minute, then zoomed out; he had more area to cover. What if brown coat there wasn't the shooter? Wasn't the only shooter?

"I got something going on in front of me," Mary announced. Du followed her red arrow back right. Yep, a lot of people were standing shoulder to shoulder in front of Mary's section of wall. Arms went up in unison. "We want food. We want food." Pushing and shoving went with the chant. They'd have to push awfully hard to get across the ditch, push down the wall.

"Gun's out," Tor snapped. Du switched pictures, bunked to adjust. The coat was open; the gun was out. The guy crouched down, hiding behind a woman holding a kid. The bastard! The coldhearted bastard!

"Don't take the shot."

"Right," Tor growled. "Stand up, you son of a bitch. Stand up!" Tor ordered.

The guy leaped to his feet, leveling the gun over the woman's shoulder. She saw it for the first time. In horror, she tried to duck. "Shoot," Du ordered.

The crack came even as he spoke the word. Tor was good. One needle took the brown coat in the head. As he collapsed, his airgun popped. The woman screamed.

"He shot her in the back," Tor snarled. "The bastard shot her." The crowd ran, most away. A man ran to the fallen woman. He pulled the limp body of a child from the woman's dying grasp. "They killed her!" he shouted. "They killed her and her baby! Those star bastards are killing us!"

"Mary," Du called over the net, "we got the bad guy. He popped the woman in front of him after we hit him. We got the bad guy," he repeated, helpless to change the words shooting like electricity through the crowd.

Mary leaned over the parapet, the network bullhorn making her words large. "We have shot the man who killed two of us. He shot a woman as he died. We did not shoot the woman." Her words blasted out over the crowd, growing muffled in the falling rain. The words hung there, fighting against the whispers, the desperation, the cold and hunger.

Mary's words came from a stranger to these people. Whispers came from others in the crowd. Others just as lost and hungry and cold. Misery gave trust to the words from the miserable, denied truth to the words from above. The crowd changed, roared. As one, the mob surged forward. The front row went down into the muddy trench, began clawing its way up. With a growing thunder, more were driven into the mud. Their screams as they went down were lost in the maniacal rumble from those shoving from behind.

Du choked on the sight. More were dying than if he'd fired. 'Mary, let me shoot over them. Do something to stop them."

"I'll handle this. Corporals, prepare for single shots over the crowd. Steady fire on my order. No auto. Single shots only. High. Prepare to fire. Fire." Two rifles began to shoot. Every second, another beat in their slow staccato. The crowd froze. In the silence you could hear the screams of those caught in the trench. Du prayed to every god he didn't believe in. "Stop them. Pull back."

"They're killing us!" someone in the mob shouted. More screams backed him up. "Get them! Get them! Get them!" came at Du. He wanted to cry. He and his were doing everything they could to save these people's lives. Didn't they know that? Couldn't they see it?

He selected for single shot, thumbed off the safety, and sighted his rifle on a man, one who seemed so sure of what he yelled. "Mary, permission to take out the leaders."

"Granted," she whispered.

Du pulled the trigger; the man crumpled. Beside him, Tor fired. Du roved his sights over the mob, looking for the sure ones, the raving mad ones. Three shots, five shots, he lost count. Each pull of the trigger put a man or woman down.

The crowd wavered. Now it hung suspended between hate and fear. Finally, fear won. They turned as a body, fled, leaving behind those Du had shot, those they trampled in their panic. It was impossible to tell who were his, who were theirs.

Guards peered over the wall, down into the trampled mud of the ditch. "Can we help them?" came on net. Mary looked over the parapet, shook her head. Du couldn't see the carnage in the trench. At least that much tonight was saved him.

"Sergeant, we got a problem on the southwest side of camp" came from Heave, the corporal in charge on the shuttle roof. Du trotted to the far corner of his roof, zoomed out his goggles. There were ropes over the wooden parapet at the far corner of the wall. Guards cut them, but more ropes came faster than they could cut. A length of wall fell into the ditch, making a kind of bridge.

Cassie stood in the breach. "Wait for Cassie's orders," Du told Heave. "No firing until she calls for it."

Cassie stood her ground, but all around her, members of the mob raced by. She shouted at them; they ignored her. More and more of the mob bled over the wall. Without orders, guards started falling back, trying to keep the mob to their front. In a moment, Cassie stood alone.

"Mary, something's wrong," Du called. "Cassie's not doing anything."

"Oh, shit! I'm on my way" was Mary's answer.

Du watched as more and more of the wall went down, more of the crowd poured through. The guards retreated farther, trying to form a shield wall behind the hole. The mob pushed against them, pushed them back. There were only five hundred meters between the wall there and the landing field, with its load of wagons, carts and people. Once the mob got in among them . .. Du didn't want to think about that.

"Cassie. what do you think you're doing?" Du whispered.

Jeff took the call. "Where's the Colonel?" he asked after getting his orders.

"Busy at the moment. He says the computer seems to have unlimited resources. He's counting on you to cut them off.'"

"You better believe we will."

The explosions started like distant thunder, line blowing track and bed in the next valley over. The second fire line was around the bend, only two miles away from where they worked now. Jeff had to hurry the tired horses along to get them clear of the third daisy chain. Once it started, the horses found enough energy to damn near run away from him. "Now let's plant some more!" Lil shouted before the dirt quit flying.

"Someone coming," Annie called from her place in the lead. Jeff hurried up to her. Thirty, forty people clomped toward them out of the rain. Some had kitchen knives, others axes. A few only sticks. They lumbered forward in silence.

"Stop where you are. That's close enough," Jeff ordered.

They kept coming.

Lil came up beside him. "Looks like the computer is making zombies," Jeff said, unslinging his rifle. Lil did the same. In unison they pulled the arming bolts. "One round over their heads," Jeff suggested.

"Not much over," Lil said, and nearly parted the hair of the lead guy. He didn't even flinch.

Jeff didn't think of them as people, at least not people who were people. They were something else, something a computer had made. He pitied their families. These, he was freeing.

Ray stood on a low ridge, ancient optical binoculars to his eyes. He had imposed his will on the President; this battle was the one he wanted. Before him, twelve behemoths chewed up the land, tearing up grass and dirt. Gray paint covered their blockish silhouette. Black crosses identified their country of origin. Tiger tanks.

Ray glanced up at the wide Russian sky; fighters contested for control of the blue. On the second day of the Kursk offensive, the air war was still in doubt Hell, the entire battle was anyone's bet. He looked back at the Tigers. "Dancer, you see what I'm looking at One shot from one of those will flame your tank. You hit it, it won't even slow down."

"So why am I here in this flimsy thing?"

Ray hardly considered a T-34/85 flimsy; still, compared to these monsters, a lot of even modem stuff was lightweight. "I need you to hold their attention. They've got to chase you. I want you zigzagging for all you're worth, backing up all the time. Keep your front armor to them and fire any chance you get. Don't stop, just shoot"

"I still don't see any use in this."

Ray turned. In a blink he was with the rest of the team, hidden under camouflage netting in a trench running the length of a small wood where their three 100mm antitank guns were dug in.

"We can't punch a hole in their front armor. We need them to chase you right past us. Then we hit their side armor. It's that easy."

"Yeah, but you're hiding over there, and I'm out here just inviting them to blow me to pieces."

"At least you've got something between you and them besides cloth," the Dean said, fingering the camouflage netting. "My shirt's thicker than this."

"We all make our sacrifices," Dancer answered. "Can I at least run up there and take a potshot at them?"

"Better if they think you're out in front of the rest of us and running like hell to get back over the far ridge," Ray said.

The Dean scowled at that "You're putting a lot of trust in your ability to outthink the Pres."

"So far he's always picked the heavyweight, used his strength to bludgeon us. I had the superior force in the battle at the pass; he took it and lost He went for the biggest animal man has ever faced; we outmaneuvered him into the wash. I don't know what he thought about Bunker Hill, but he sure outnumbered us. He outnumbers us here, outguns us, outweighs us. He's got us outclassed in everything. Except smarts. Let's use it." The first Tiger trundled over the hill and immediately fired a shot at Dancer. It went wide.