Thirst No. 3 (39 page)

“Delay detonating any mines as long as possible,” he says. “I don’t want them to know that’s part of our defense. I have a feeling they’re going to come in waves. Haru doesn’t mind sacrificing his people. He won’t stop until we crack.”

“So we’ll end up using the helicopter.”

“Maybe not. Haru can’t let the fight last forever. No matter how much privacy his bribes have bought, all the shooting is going to attract attention. At some point the police and National Guard will show up.”

“How do you think the Telar found us?”

“I told you they would,” Matt says.

“But so fast. I thought we’d have more time.”

“They’re here. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“I hate leaving you in this house,” I say. “One well-aimed mortar and you’ll be history.”

“They won’t start with the big guns. They make too much noise. I’ll know when to withdraw. How’s your headpiece working?”

We have miniature walkie-talkies implanted in our ears so we can stay in contact over the noise of battle, which can get so loud it can block even our subtle hearing. We do a quick check—they are working perfectly. It’s a pity the rock surrounding the mine blocks the signal, or we could stay in touch with the others.

Yet I have faith in Seymour. He’s never been in battle before, but he’s not scared. He’s not afraid to die, and I wish I could say the same about myself. I feel confident—I’m actually looking forward to the fight—but a part of me senses that Haru has a surprise in store for us.

Matt must feel the same. His next remark worries me.

“I stowed gas masks in the mine and at the sniper hole,” he says. “Put one on and keep it on.”

“I can see them gassing the mine. But how are they going to gas the entire side of a mountain?”

“You’re talking about a man who started the plague.”

“Point taken.”

Matt is all business. He hurries me out of the house. He wants me on the ridge because he needs my eyes as well as my cover fire. Now that the fight has come, I’m glad to let him take command. What I told him when he rescued me was insightful—he is his father’s son. Haru will have his tricks, sure, but I suspect Matt has aces up his sleeve that none of us know about.

The twilight has deepened by the time I reach the ridge. Venus shines bright in the west, and Vega is visible overhead. A mile in the distance, from the direction of Goldsmith, I see twenty vehicles heading our way. Like Seymour, I’m surprised they’re not using a surprise attack, but it could be a sign of Haru’s arrogance. I can tell from the powerful heartbeats of everyone in the vehicles that we’re facing strictly Telar soldiers.

Three of the trucks are massive.

I wonder what goodies they have stored inside.

I finish arming the Gatling gun. I have a ton of ammunition. I could spray them at this distance. But I obey Matt’s instructions and let them get closer. I have two laser rifles and two sniper rifles. I plan to alternate. The weakness of the lasers is they quickly lose their charge. It’s not an issue as long as I remain in the sniper hole—Matt’s wired the rifles to heavy Telar batteries. But when we retreat to the mine, I’ll have to leave the power supply behind. Then I’ll have to count every shot I take with the lasers.

Matt speaks on my headpiece. “Do you see them?”

“Roger. They’re almost to our driveway. They’re showing no sign of slowing.”

“Chances are they’ll pass us by and hide their vehicles behind the bluff north of us.”

“Sure you don’t want me to hit them as they drive by?”

“Let them make the first move. And Sita?”

“What?”

“Put your gas mask on.”

“It’s stuffy.”

“It could save your life.”

“I can put it on fast if they gas us.”

“What if they use something besides gas?”

He knows them better than I do. I put on the mask.

Matt’s prediction proves accurate. The Telar convoy passes by and doesn’t park until all their vehicles are hidden from view. I listen as their people climb out and scatter into the hills. Haru isn’t a sexist. Half are males, half females. They chat with each other with their own headphones, but use a code I don’t recognize.

“I wish I knew what they’re saying,” I say.

“I doubt it would change our plans.”

“Matt, you have six Telar approaching from the east. Plus another six coming from the south, to the side of the driveway.”

“Roger that. I see them.”

“Cameras?”

“I’ve got the area wired. You have a dozen Telar on the west side, beneath you. Plus a half dozen climbing the peak at your back. They’re probably hoping to shoot down on you.”

“Roger that. Can I start shooting?”

“Hold. Do you have a clear view of the mine entrance?”

“Roger. No one’s near the mine. But I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“Interesting,” he mutters.

“What is it?”

“They’re trying to cut my power.”

“You have backup?”

“Roger that.” His voice takes on a more urgent note. “Sita, change of plans. They’re setting up several odd-looking projectors. They’re probably powered by whatever they have stowed in their vehicles.”

“They can project energy over a distance?”

“Yes.” He’s puzzled. “These might be disruptors.”

“Dakor and his guards spoke of them. What are they?”

Matt sounds tense. “Nasty buggers. Let’s switch gears. Kill as many soldiers as you can in the next sixty seconds. Force the rest to take cover. Then throw a dozen Telar grenades over the bluff.”

“Roger that.”

“Can your arm reach that far?”

“Hell, yeah. Bloody Sita is armed and dangerous.”

The laser rifles come equipped with excellent scopes. They are infrared and motion sensitive. They even send out a sonic
pulse that relays back the exact distance of a target. Because I’m worried about the projectors the Telar are setting up near the house, I try to defend Matt’s back first.

The Telar due east of the house are embedded in the trees, but I catch quick glimpses of a head here, an arm there, a leg sticking out. I fire three blasts in succession, and hear three shrieks. I see one of the projectors Matt mentioned. It looks like a wide-angle lens on a tripod. I blow it away.

The Telar climbing above me are a threat to my position. I blast three, but the others manage to take cover.

The impact of the laser on my targets is fascinating, in a sick sort of way. If the beam hits a limb, it severs it. But if I hit a torso, the result’s much more intense. The body is mostly made up of water. Even a brief laser blast will boil several quarts of water. As a result, several of my targets explode as they fall, the steam causing their guts to spew out. Not a pretty way to die. At least it’s quick, I tell myself.

I kill two Telar who are hiking up the driveway, and an even dozen who are spread across the bluff that hides their vehicles and the bulk of their attack force. My sixty seconds is up, and I’m reaching for the grenades when my opponents start firing back. To my surprise, they’re using conventional sniper rifles. They may not want the police to later find evidence of laser fire. Their choice of weapons is less lethal. Unfortunately, they’re all superb shots, and their bullets echo around my hole. I quickly reposition dozens of sandbags to protect my head.

The most irritating soldiers are the ones I failed to kill above me. There are only three, but they’re aggressive. To get them off my back, I turn my Gatling gun in their direction and set it on auto control. It starts firing sixty rounds a second while swinging back and forth through a twenty-degree arc.

The noise of the weapon is deafening. For one of the first times in my life, I use earplugs. Of course that means I take off my gas mask, and I’m in too much of a hurry to put it back on. The plugs also crush my ear implants. I hope Matt and I will still be able to hear each other.

The Telar above me scamper for cover. They stop shooting.

The special grenades are dense. As big as a softball, they each weigh over twenty pounds. Stacking them in a row on a rocky ledge, so I can throw one after another without pause, I study the controls. There’s a tiny digital clock on the side of each one and an arming button. It seems pretty self-explanatory.

The question is, how long will they be in the air before they explode? Do I want half to land in the ravine and the other half to explode above the Telar camp? I like the idea. The grenades that explode in the air will send out a larger shock wave, although it won’t be as concentrated as those that hit the ground.

I set half the grenades for four seconds, the other half for three. As I pick each one up, I plan to automatically push the arm button. I’m just about to throw them when Matt signals me. I barely hear him with my earplugs.

“Sita. You need to hit their trucks now.”

“Roger. Have they turned on their disruptors?”

“I have a few seconds left. No more.”

“Roger that.”

I throw the grenades, one after the other, an even dozen. My delivery is so fast and smooth, all twelve are aloft before the first one explodes. I’m treated to a glorious sight—glorious for those who are closet pyromaniacs, which I believe a high percent of the population is. The grenades detonate in blinding blue-green balls of light. Their fire and concussive force batter the vehicles and the Telar beneath them, and a much larger wave of fire erupts. It is as if the valley beside us is suddenly swamped with lava. Orange flames two hundred feet tall whip the air.

I jump in the air, cheering. “Yeah!”

Then our house explodes in a red mushroom cloud.

“Matt! Matt!” I yell in my headpiece.

There’s no answer. Of course there’s no answer. He was in the house, and the house is gone. Two shock waves strike me. The one from our home, which knocks me down, and the emotional one, which keeps me down. Despite the fury of the Gatling gun, the Telar above me have resumed fire. I don’t fire back. Tucking into a ball, I try to hide in the deepest part of my sniper hole.

“He can’t be dead,” I whisper to myself.

Matt leaps into the hole beside me and shakes his head.

“Ye of so little faith,” he says. “Put on your gas mask.”

I sit up and hug him. “How did you get out in time?”

“I saw it coming.”

“What was it?”

“A disruptor blast.”

“It looked like a nuclear bomb,” I say.

“I’m not surprised. It works by splitting atoms.”

“Then we’ll die if we stay here. We have to get in the mine.”

“Hold on.” The weapon’s fire from the Telar above us irritates Matt. He stands and, aiming faster than I could on my best day, fires his laser rifle three quick times. The shots stop. Matt turns off the Gatling gun and sits back down beside me. “Where was I?” he asks.

“We should get in the mine.”

“We will. But this is only the first wave. The next will be worse.”

In addition to his twin laser rifles, he has a laptop equipped with a joystick. He flips it open and scans the screen. I assume it’s linked to his cameras, but I’m confused when I see a rapidly changing shot of this part of the state—seen from an altitude of a thousand feet. He pushes a button, and the view shifts to a rear shot of a dozen cargo planes.

“Damn,” he says.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’re close.”

“The second wave?”

“Yes.”

“They’re going to drop in on us, so to speak?”

“Oh, yeah. Hundreds of them.”

I feel a wave of despair. “I should have joined the IIC.”

Matt talks as he hooks his laser rifles into my battery source.

“They’ll parachute in. Close enough to rush us on foot, but far enough away that we’ll have trouble shooting them out of the sky.”

“What’s the range of our lasers?”

“If they have on body armor, three miles.”

“I didn’t know the beams dissipated that fast.”

“This isn’t
Star Trek
. These aren’t phasers. But to kill us, they’ll have to get close. We have the higher ground, and we’re dug in. We can take out a lot of them before we retreat.”

“Who’s taking the picture of the planes?”

“It’s not a who, it’s a what. You’ll see in a few minutes.”

While we wait for the “second wave,” Matt makes quick work of the remainder of the first wave. He fires without pause, like a robot. Apparently, his father taught him to shoot this way.

He kills the last of the nearby Telar just as the cargo planes come into view. They’re at two thousand feet. They will have to pull their parachutes at six hundred feet or higher. Unfortunately, the planes are at least four miles away. They have anticipated us having laser rifles. A trail of dark figures pours out of a dozen planes. They’re dressed in special-ops black, and after a quick ten-second drop, they pull their cords. I’m not
surprised to see their parachutes are also black. Your average human wouldn’t even see them in the night sky.

When they hit the ground, the Telar quickly pack their chutes and head toward us. For the most part, they appear armed with laser rifles and normal sniper rifles. But a few could be carrying disruptors—it’s hard to tell from this distance.

“Haru’s making more noise than I expected,” Matt says. “You must have really pissed him off.”

“Me? You don’t see him calling me the Abomination.”

“My mother pissed him off when she had me.”

“I take it Haru wasn’t invited to Umara and Yaksha’s wedding?”

“Who says they got married?”

“You mean you’re a bastard? Can I call you that?”

“Why not?” He splits his screen in four and studies each square. The air shot appears to be losing contact with the planes. Now he’s more focused on the terrain the Telar are crossing as they advance toward us.

“How far out are the mines?” I ask.

“They start two miles out.”

“How many did you bury?”

“Thousands.”

“I’m surprised they’re not scanning the ground for them.”

“That would take time. Haru sees these soldiers as cannon fodder. He’s willing to accept a high level of casualties to bring us in.”

“The Gatling gun can hit them from this distance,” I say, as I swing the tip of the weapon toward the advancing army.

“Its heavy rounds might trigger my land mines. Let me detonate them first, and then we’ll turn it on.”