View from Ararat (24 page)

26

Jericho

Baden

Western Fringes

Edison Sector (Southwest)

9/2/203

MAC

Wilson leans across the console as the text comes up on the screen.

‘I told you I'd find it.' Mac speaks the words as he operates the zoom. ‘The Old Testament. Judeo-Christian Bible. Joshua, chapter six, verse twenty.'

When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city.

‘Joshua was a great Israelite general' – Mac smiles as he continues – ‘but the trumpeters didn't destroy the walls of Jericho, and neither did a couple of thousand people shouting at them. It was the engineers, Gerry. Miners.

‘They tunnelled under a section of the walls and filled the tunnel with firewood, then, at Joshua's signal, they set fire to the lot. While the parade was going on around the walls of the city, the tunnel-supports burned through, and the ground beneath the walls collapsed. It was a stroke of military genius. The Israelites fought like tigers, because they knew they had God on their side, and the defenders were totally demoralised. It was a massacre.

‘And if Joshua could destroy a town in that way, maybe we can use the same techniques to save one. This one.'

‘Well, we're about to find out. They've finished the tunnels, and the explosives have been set. Now all we have to do is wait.'

McEwan Porter looks out at the barren landscape stretching north as far as the horizon, and then at the small outcrop of the Ranges that runs inland, about two kilometres away. When they come, they will come from the north, and cross the flatland on their approach.

And they will see nothing unusual. Because all the preparations are two metres beneath where their wheels will roll. Two metres of solid rock mask the network of precisely drilled tunnels that are the secret weapon the town of Baden is relying on.

We're about to find out . . .

Suddenly the confidence he felt a few days earlier has begun to disappear.

‘I wonder if this is how Joshua felt on the day before Jericho.'

He speaks the thought aloud, but Wilson is staring at the screen, scrolling through the rest of the text. He hears nothing.

10/2/203

CINDY'S STORY

At just after midday they came into view over the northern horizon, heralded by the column of dust that rose into the air as they drove cross-country towards us.

Since late on the evening before, we'd been tracking them on the weather satellite I'd realigned for the purpose. Infra-red sensors followed their progress during the hours of dark, so by the time they arrived we were as prepared as we could be.

They were moving quickly south, a couple of hundred vehicles. Some of them were half-track troop-movers that were used before the crisis to transport Security operatives to the sites of natural disasters inaccessible to flyers, like the earthquake of '97 that wiped out Gideon in the northern Ranges near Elton.

We'd done a pretty accurate long-distance headcount – the eyes on a weather-bird are incredibly sharp, if you know how to manipulate the focusing codes – and we estimated Eldritch had about two thousand troops in his army. And the firepower on the vehicles and in the hands of those fighters made the few pulse-lasers we'd been able to round up in Baden look pretty sick.

Wilson had made the observation a couple of hours earlier, as he watched their progress on the down-link.

‘Mac's plan had better work or we're in deep shit here,' he said.
‘
“ . . . and they destroyed with the sword, every living thing in it – men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys”. Joshua, chapter six, verse twenty-one. He forgot to read that far.'

‘It'll work, Gerry. He's been spot-on so far. Look.'

As we were speaking, Eldritch's army was splitting into two unequal parts. The major force was continuing directly south towards the town, the second force heading for the pass in the outcrop to the east.

Wilson watched the screen. ‘They want to draw the defenders towards the north, then hit with a flanking attack. The guy thinks he's fighting a bloody war, not massacring defenceless townships.'

‘Not so defenceless.' Mac had come in on the end of the conversation. ‘At least, I hope not.'

And now, in the small building near the drawbridge we had crossed only a few days before, Mac and Gerry Wilson were watching a relayed ‘birds-eye-view' of the advancing force, finetuning their strategy.

A movement caught my eye. I saw the huge Tremont slowly reversing, and I realised that the final phase was beginning. Cables attached to the timbers of the drawbridge dragged the whole structure back away from the trench, so that there was no way across the last-line defence. Another huge earthmover began piling rocks and dirt in the small gap that remained in the protective wall.

In minutes we were cut off completely from the world beyond Baden, but for how long? If the plan worked, the isolation would be short. If it failed, no moat or wall would protect us for long.

MAC

The afternoon sun reflects from the metal of the approaching vehicles, and the still air carries the sound of their approach, but before he can raise the 'scope to his eyes for the hundredth time, the call he has been expecting rings out in the silence of the operations hut.

He watches as Gerry Wilson punches the reply button and the com-screen fades into life.

The face that appears is cold and characterless, but he cannot decide exactly why. As he is studying the image, Eldritch delivers his ultimatum.

‘To the people of Baden. My name is General Devol Eldritch, and I command the Red Brigade – the army of the new government of Deucalion—'

‘Eldritch?' Gerry Wilson interrupts. ‘
El
dritch . . . No, I don't believe we voted for anyone of that name. And as far as I remember, the constitution doesn't allow for armies of any colour. Oh, and by the way, you're not talking to the ‘people of Baden'. They were busy, so they asked me to answer if you called, and tell you thanks for your trouble, but they're really not interested at this time. If you'd like to call back next month—'

‘A com
ed
ian!' The face on the screen has darkened noticeably, and suddenly Mac realises what makes the ‘General' so lifeless. His eyes are dead. Cold and self-obsessed. ‘Well, here is an ultimatum, funnyman. You have ten minutes to prepare to accept our authority or we will be forced to demonstrate why we are the new power on Deucalion. The old constitution is dead. The old world is dead. The only hope for the future, is—'

‘That's an old song, old man. And no one sang along the last time around. The only hope for the future is what the people decide is the only hope. Not the hallucinations of some hyped-up egomaniac with a few guns and a band of morons in uniform who think they know all the answers because they've got the guns – when in reality they can't even work out the questions they should be asking.

‘You want an ultimatum?' Gerry Wilson pauses briefly and turns to Mac. His eyes betray a nervousness that his voice hides. ‘
You
have five minutes to take your sad-ass excuse for an army and turn around. If you do, we might allow you to live. But if you threaten me and mine, I guarantee you won't live to see tomorrow, let alone the future. When you've decided what you want to do, call back. But remember, if you continue, we won't be responsible for the casualties. The choice is yours. We've warned you. All we want is to be left alone.'

‘An orator, too. I'm going to enjoy ripping your heart out. And eating it.' Eldritch breaks the connection with a blow of his fist.

‘Do you think we made him mad?' Gerry asks, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

‘Oh, I hope so.' Mac raises the 'scope to his eyes. ‘Anything that throws him off-balance and affects his judgement is good for us.' He focuses the instrument on the lead vehicles of the approaching army. ‘Here we go.'

Pushing a button on the console, he speaks without lowering the 'scope. ‘Cindy, can you hear me?'

‘Yes, Boss.' The voice comes from a speaker near his ear.

‘Your call, kid. We go on your word.'

CINDY'S STORY

Cox was standing beside me, with his eyes glued to the screens. My back-up. Timing was everything, and he was as good a pair of eyes as any I'd ever worked with.

I'd tied the down-link in to a graphic on the town data frame, so that the vehicles carrying Eldritch's troops were represented by red dots, and the web of tunnels formed a black grid on the screen. The real-time video showed the scene as seen by the satellite, and the computer mock-up showed their position in relation to the trap.

As the first red dots entered the grid, I flicked the talk-switch.

‘Ready,' I said nervously, then waited.

The dots advanced and the grid became fuller. My fear was that the lead vehicles would pass out of the grid before the rear-guard entered it. That was why timing was crucial. Act too soon or wait too long and the whole strategy could fail. We had to get them all.

Then the last dots moved into the black.

‘Go,' I yelled. ‘Fry them!'

‘Fire in the hole!' Mac replied, and my job was over for the moment. I left Cox to track the second column on the down-link, and moved to the window just in time to watch the fireworks.

If there's one thing miners are good at, it's setting sequential explosions.

We'd planned the sequence on computer days before, while they were still drilling the tunnels, and we'd refined things twenty times since.

It was simply a matter of calculating the stresses on the underlying rock-formations, and exactly how much explosive force would be needed to shatter the two metres of rock above the five-metre tunnels and the wafer-thin walls that were all that remained between the parallel and intersecting cavities.

Fortunately, the yield of thermal-fusion devices is very accurately calculated.

Half a second after Mac said ‘Fire in the hole!', the first set of explosions blew the covering rock off the three tunnels in front of the first line of vehicles, instantly collapsing a 100-metre-long, 20-metre-wide section of open flatland. Travelling at 110 clicks, they had no chance of stopping. They plunged headfirst into the suddenly gaping maw of the seven-metre-deep trench.

Not that stopping would have saved them. As the following vehicles began screaming to a halt, the third and fourth waves smashing into the ones in front, a series of explosions erupted under them, and the land subsided in stages, crashing down into the fragile honeycomb of weakened rock beneath.

Fifteen seconds later it was over. A depression a hundred metres by maybe two was all that remained of the plain in front of the town. Not a single vehicle or soldier of ‘General' Eldritch's primary attack force remained above the surface, and the sound of secondary explosions erupted from within the huge hole as the fuel tanks and weapons ignited in the intense heat generated by the fusion devices.

Strangely, I didn't feel anything. No triumph, no sorrow, just an emptiness as deep as the depression in the plain outside.

Part of me wished Eldritch had taken Gerry Wilson's warning and turned around, but it was an unreasonable wish. The soldiers of the Red Brigade had made their choices weeks before, and those choices had led them into the inevitable destruction, as surely as it had condemned their victims to the cruelties they had inflicted.

But there was no time for such thoughts. From behind me, Elroy Cox's voice sounded urgently.

‘Round two, Cind. Better get them ready.'

I returned to the console. The second force had just emerged from the defile between the outcrop and the main Range, and it was wheeling around towards the town.

‘Mac,' I said into the pick-up, ‘round two coming up. On my mark . . .'

And the sequence began again.

The smaller second force stood even less chance than the first.

Caught in the middle of the controlled collapse, they disappeared among the explosions and falling rubble, buried under tonnes of rock, torn apart by their exploding vehicles, or burned alive by the underground heat of the fusion.

I asked Mac later if he felt any sorrow or guilt, but he just looked at me, and for the first time since I'd known him I couldn't read his eyes.

A couple of days afterwards he knocked on my door, and before I could answer he came in and sat on my bed.

‘Sorrow, yes,' he began, without any prelude. ‘I'm sorry it had to come to that. I'm sorry that some people are so tied up in themselves that they can't be reasoned with. I'm sorry that
people had to die because of the ch
oices they made. I'm sorry
we had to make the choices that were forced on us. But I don't feel guilty. Not about that. Remember once in the Ranges I said that people had trusted me before?'

I nodded, waiting for him to go on.

‘Well, they died. And I've been living with that guilt for too many years. Come here . . .'

I moved across the room and sat beside him on the bed. He took my face in both his hands, and kissed me gently on the forehead.

‘I've never had a family until the last few months. If I'd let you die, or Cox and the kids – in the camp, or on the Ranges, or here in Baden – that would have been something to feel guilty about. I couldn't have lived with that.'

I waited for him to continue, but he just smiled sadly and stood up.

‘I have to go,' he said. ‘Gerry's organising a celebration, and he wants help with the planning.'

I returned the smile. I was feeling too many conflicting emotions to say anything sensible.

As he reached the door, I managed to unlock my throat.

‘Tell him to go easy on the fireworks. He can be a bit heavy-handed.'