Part 32 (2/2)
Jeff pulled Annie close. ”Why'd you do it?” he whispered.
”I've missed you for the last month. I don't know what's going to happen next.”
Jeff kissed her. Sometime later, Old Ned coughed. ”Son, I don't mind keeping an eye out your side of this rig, but the girl's got to breathe.” The others laughed. It was contagious. Annie and he ended up laughing, which made kissing rather difficult. He settled for holding Annie in his arms, her snuggled close to his left side, his rifle on his right. This had to be the craziest way any man had ever gone traveling.
So what? Annie was with him. No matter what happened, Annie was with him.
Nikki s.h.i.+vered as the blimp shook, playing mouse to a big cat of a wind. The gondola twisted, its skin showing long cracks that let in streams of water. Nikki was hungry but afraid to eat; her tummy had emptied itself violently yesterday. Today it dared her to put anything in it but water. She was miserable.
Beside Nikki, Kat unstrapped from her seat and came to kneel beside her, holding on tight to both chairs. ”You okay?”
”No, this was another dumb idea.” Nikki groaned.
”Yes, it was,” the young woman agreed, as she rearranged Nikki's blankets to make her more comfortable. ”You want something to drink?”
The blimp's engines revved, responding to the pilot's demands. They climbed higher. Kat glanced at the flight deck. ”Wonder what Rhynia's trying now.”
As if in reply, there was a shouted ”Yes” from up forward. The blimp settled down as much as it had in the last three days and seemed to steady on course. The engines slowed to idle. In a few minutes, Rhynia came back to talk to her pa.s.sengers and the off-duty mechanics. ”We had a bad time there, but I think it's over. I got a bit too far out on hurricane number one and ran into crosswinds where it and number two were thumping each other,” she grinned. ”No place for a self-respecting blimp.”
”Will it happen again?” Nikki ventured.
”Not if I can help it.” The blimp s.h.i.+vered. Everyone looked up at the gas bag. Nikki wondered if they were leaking hydrogen out like the gondola was leaking water in. ”We're picking up speed,” the pilot said, ”but we're behind schedule. May take us an extra day to get to that mountain range on North Continent.”
”I'll call that in,” Kat said.
Ray listened to Kat's report. Part of him wanted to recall that team; he snorted at the idea. He could no more recall them than change anything he'd done with his life thus far. They would succeed or crash into the ocean with no help from him. The same with Harry and Jeff. He'd launched them into this impossible battle more on hope than expectation of victory. Mary had broken his back the last time he'd charged in with hardly a shred of intel. At least then he'd been fighting humans. Now!
Now he waited, his paltry forces in play. He had one more card to try, but that would have to wait. Wait to see what developed from the other side. Wait to see if any of his a.s.saults were even noticed by the computers.
Wait. A familiar word in any commander's vocabulary.
Wait. Ray hated it, even as he hunkered down and did it.
Mary paused for a moment on the roof of the factory building to take a deep breath. It smelled of rain and chill and mud. A hundred feet up, she had the best view of the base. To the west lay the landing strip, filling rapidly with parked wagons and carts, canvas covers over them, tarps stretched between them to add some shelter from the rain for more and more people. Little kids chased each other, splas.h.i.+ng through puddles. Their elders stared up at the weeping sky and worried.
The factory beneath her and the shuttle hangar off in the far right distance beyond the hospital, barracks, and HQ, had the best vantage points to see what was going on around the base perimeter-and inside. She turned to Dumont. ”Sergeant, I want half your squad here, the other half on the shuttle hangar.”
Du measured the distance to the wall with a jaundiced eye. ”A thousand meters at best. No sleepy bullets from here.”
”Don't have that many left. I'm issuing what I got to the rifles leading the riot troops, and only fifty per. When they're gone, it's live ammo only.”
Du answered with a low whistle. ”Lots of people out there. What we gonna do with them all?”
”I sent the priest out to circulate a map of where the safe elevations are. Suggest they go elsewhere.”
”Do any good?”
”Padre came back with the Bishop of Refuge, asked me to let him and his chancellery officials in,” Mary sighed.
”And?”
”I let them in. I owe that little priest. If he hadn't suggested saving the turf and rolling it back over the wall, we wouldn't be patrolling it tomorrow, we'd be wading through it. Yeah, I let them in. Trying to find something for them to do, but they're about as willing to work as San Paulo and her cronies. Holy horror that they should take a turn in riot gear.”
”What did you want me and my crew to do up here?”
”If someone out there with an airgun starts popping our folks, I want you to take them down. Clean, exact.”
”We can do that.”
”And if everything comes apart and a mob charges the wall, I want you and your sharpshooters to take down the leaders. Single shots. One round, one leader.”
Dumont took that one in without a blink. ”That may be harder than it sounds. A lot of folks up front may just be pa.s.sing through. Real leader may be a few rows back.”
”I know. If you can spot a leader, put *im down. If not, start at the front and work your way back.”
Du knelt on the building's ledge to sight his rifle along the perimeter. ”They get too close, Captain, I can't get over the heads of the troops on the wall.”
”I know.”
”Who gives the order to start shooting?”
”I do,” Mary snapped. The look Du gave her said he could do the math as well as she. ”But there's a lot of wall, and it may get busy. A ruckus on the east wall, while I'm knocking heads on the west.”
”So I may have to make the call,” Du filled in.
”Afraid so.”
”Growl,” he said.
”I'm worried about Ca.s.sie. She may have lost her edge, gone gentle on us,” Mary said of her oldest friend.
”The war changed us all,” Du offered with the grin of an innocent kid the streets had never let him be.
”Not you and me, bucko.” Mary grinned back.
”Yes, you and me, sister. Remember, this isn't war. We're supposed to be keeping the peace here, not shattering heads.”
Mary looked out over the wall. Really looked from face to face, trying to see them as people, not one large milling crowd. ”They are people, now. But Du, crowds don't stay people. Let them become a mob and it won't be people you'll be shooting.”
Du joined her, studying the refugees. ”They're hungry, cold, tired, scared. A week ago they ran trains, sold stuff, went home to dinner, and tucked their kids into bed. Now the kids are clinging to them, hungry, cold, and whining. And because they may turn into an unthinking, killing mob tonight or tomorrow night, I'll put a needle between their eyes.” He turned to Mary. ”Can't you make it so I don't have to?”
”The Colonel's trying. You heard him this morning. He's trying everything he knows how to do.”
”Yes, I know. That's why I'll pull the trigger when I have to. We're trying for something better.”
Mary rested a hand on Du's shoulder. ”And we'll keep trying. I wish I could pray. I'd say every prayer I knew that the Colonel finds a way.”
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