Part 37 (1/2)
Ray stood on a hill, some kind of primitive slug-throwing weapon in his hand. Right. ”A flintlock, crew, slow to load, not accurate for very far.”
”Colonel, down the hill,” David pointed. A hundred-plus red-coated troops marched shoulder to shoulder, their weapons presented in front of them, showing a wall of long, gleaming knifes on the end. ”Bayonets,” Ray named them.
He looked around. The computer crew was missing a member. Apparently their losses each scenario were c.u.mulative. Ray shook his hand twice, calling mentally for an M-6. No effect. Apparently you only got what was available in each of these situations. ”Bunker Hill,” Ray muttered, eyeing the harbor to both sides of the peninsula, one of his father's favorite defenses. ”Or Breed's Hill,” he corrected himself. ”Hey, we're supposed to have a defensive position here,” he called. Behind him appeared a shallow ditch, dirt piled up on this side.
”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. d.a.m.n, this was a h.e.l.l 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. d.a.m.n, it took pull. Then the musket fired and d.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l.”
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?”
n.o.body 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 run.
”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 d.a.m.n 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d ever miss? Would make a good marine, Du thought. Too bad I'm gonna kill his a.s.s.
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. d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n popguns, they can look like just about anything.”
”Keep watching that b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but do not take the shot. You hear me. No shot until we're d.a.m.n sure.”
”Understood.” Tor spat the word as if it tasted bad. d.a.m.n 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.” Pus.h.i.+ng 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, blinked to adjust. The coat was open; the gun was out. The guy crouched down, hiding behind a woman holding a kid. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d! The coldhearted b.a.s.t.a.r.d!
”Don't take the shot.”
”Right,” Tor growled. ”Stand up, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 m.u.f.fled 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 G.o.d 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.
Ca.s.sie stood in the breach. ”Wait for Ca.s.sie's orders,” Du told Heave. ”No firing until she calls for it.”