Bolo Brigade (17 page)

"Where's Muir?" another man shouted. "Why the hell haven't they sent us help?"

"What's the army doing?"

"What's the
government
doing?"

"Please, all of you," Alexie said. "Why don't you all—"

"Now you listen here, young lady," one of the more persistent men went on. "Your father relied, yes,
relied
on my advice, and I don't think you're wise to simply—"

"Do you need a military escort, ma'am?" Donal said sharply, his voice projected loudly enough to carry above the mob noise.

"Eh?"

"I've just arrived here from Muir, Director," he added, brushing past the persistent man and letting him see the rank insignia on his tunic.

The man's eyes widened. "You're from Muir! Help has arrived, then?"

"It's about damned time!" another man observed. "Has the Navy taken out the Dino fleet yet?"

"Nobody's taken out anything," Donal replied. "And they can't unless you let these people do their jobs!"

"I saw for myself what those monsters can do, and—"

"Do you people have a skywatch set up?"

The persistent man blinked. "A . . . what?"

"A skywatch." Donal pointed at the man. "What's your name?"

"Uh . . . Sam Carver."

"Well, Mr. Carver. You need a civilian skywatch here on Fortrose, and my instincts tell me you're just the man to organize it."

Carver's eyes narrowed, as though he was expecting some trick. "Well, I am pretty good at running things, uh, Lieutenant. . . ."

"I knew it! Now, here's what the Strathan Central Command needs you to do, Mr. Carver. You get together as many good men and women as you can. People with good eyes. Talk to the Wide Sky MLC to see about getting electronic binoculars."

"Uh . . . wait. MLC?"

"Military Logistics Center." He shook his head, grinning wolfishly. "If you're going to join up, you'd better learn the language, don't you think?"

"Now wait, wait! I haven't joined anything!"

Donal folded his arms and gave Carver a severe look. "I thought you wanted to help, Mr. Carver. If you do, I've got a whole list of things civilian groups could do under military direction, things that need to be done for the common defense."

"Yeah, but—"

"You can organize a skywatch to keep track of aircraft and surface vessels approaching Fortrose. That will act as a backup for the city's radar net, and maybe free up some military personnel for other duties. You could start organizing guerrilla forces from among civilians who have some experience moving around in the woods. Having this many people on board this floating city is just begging the Malach to come drown you all at once, so the faster we can get most of you back ashore, the better.

"In other words, Mr. Carver, you can get off your tail and do something about your situation here, or you can sit on that fat behind and moan and complain until the Malach come and sink Fortrose out from under you. If you choose to help, you will do so under military jurisdiction, if for no other reason than that we can't have you getting in the way. That means you and your people will follow orders. If you choose to moan and complain, I hope you can swim, because the official military designation of this city is 'VLST.' " When Carver blinked confusion, he added, "That's milspeak for 'Very Large Stationary Target.' Do we understand one another, sir?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess we do."

"What about the evacuation?" another man demanded. "We got all these transports out here. I say we load 'em up and boost for someplace safe!"

"Oh? And where would that be, Mister, ah . . . ?"

"Halliwell. Jess Halliwell."

"Mr. Halliwell, how is your arithmetic?"

"Huh? Whatcha mean?"

"The population of Wide Sky is something on the order of one hundred million, is it not?"

"I, uh, guess it—"

"When I was coming in to land this morning, I saw three Conestoga-class transports out there. That's more than you usually see in port at once. When used as troops ships, which means maximum crowding and no room for the amenities, Conestogas can carry about five thousand people. It's a one-week flight to Muir, another week back for a second load. There may be other worlds closer, but none that aren't in imminent danger of attack by the Malach. You've got other ships out there as well, but all of them together probably couldn't carry as much as one Conestoga. Let's be generous, though, and say you can carry another five thousand there. So, that tells me you can haul twenty thousand people off this planet every two weeks, which is actually pretty decent when you're trying to organize an interstellar mass migration. At that rate, how long is it going to take to move one hundred million people, Mr. Halliwell?"

Halliwell looked confused, then doubtful, then belligerent. "Look, none a' that is my business, see? I want t' know what the government is gonna do about these damned, four-eyed lizards!"

"Why, Mr. Halliwell. Weren't you listening a moment ago? We're going to
draft
you into the army."

"Now wait just a damned minute!"

"That way, we can most efficiently make use of your skills and talents in fighting the Malach. I can't promise, of course, that those skills and talents will suit you to any task more glamorous than cannon fodder, but we all must do what we do best if we're to survive this crisis."

"I, uh, that is—"

"C'mon, Jess," Carver said, tugging at Halliwell's shoulder. "We'll go talk to Major Fitzsimmons about this."

"Shoot," someone else said. "Old Fitz isn't going to do anything. . . ."

"Yeah, but he's better than the damned Cluster Authority. Drafted! We'll just see about this. . . ."

The crowd in front of the table was breaking up, however, the most belligerent moving away more hastily than the others. Some threw Donal dark glances as they left, and he heard the name "Muir" repeated several times. In moments, Donal was alone with Alexie Turner. The auditorium was slowly clearing as the crowd kept moving up the aisles. Riot, for the moment, at any rate, had been averted.

"Well," Alexie said. She had a dazzling smile, though there were dark smudges beneath her eyes that suggested that it had been a while since she'd slept. "You must be Lieutenant Ragnor. I heard the Search and Rescue boys had found you and brought you in."

"For which I thank you, Director."

"Uh-uh. Thank
you
," she said, shaking Donal's hand. Her grip was cool and firm. "And it's still
Deputy
Director. At least until we hold an election that makes it official." She looked past Donal at the rapidly emptying auditorium. "Frankly, anyone who'd want to be Director General of this circus has probably just disqualified herself. Mental incompetence. In any case, I really appreciated your help just now."

"My pleasure, uh, Deputy Director. All part of our cheerful, friendly service."

"It's . . . a little terrifying how fast friends and neighbors can turn into a murderous riot. I've known Sam Carver for years. He used to work for my dad."

"Well, we haven't really solved anything yet, you know. After they get outside and talk things over, they're going to spot the sleight-of-hand in my arithmetic lesson just now."

"What do you mean? You got it just right. There's no way we can move a hundred million people off of Wide Sky. Even if we had the ships, which we certainly don't, we couldn't load anything like the supplies we'd need." She grinned ruefully. "And I doubt that any other world in the Cluster would want a hundred million refugees dropping into their back yards, even if we could manage it."

"No, the sleight-of-hand was in the basic assumption. A hundred million people. Pretty soon, now, Mr. Carver and his friends will figure out that, so far as they're concerned, there's no need to move the entire population, so long as
they
get away to safety."

"You mean . . . they'd just
take
a ship? Hijack it?"

"They might."

"I can't believe that of Sam."

"Well, if I were you, I'd post a heavy guard on all of the spacecraft you have parked out there, just to be sure. Effective immediately."

"Yes, you're right. We have security people guarding the ships now, but . . ." She stopped, unhooked a personal transceiver from her wrist, and spoke into it for several moments. When she replaced the unit, she met his eyes with a smile. "Thank you again, Lieutenant. I must say, you seem to be pretty much on the ball."

"We try, ma'am."

"That's been our biggest problem since the refugee crisis started," she told him. "Knowing that, once it sinks home that there is no escape, we're going to have a
real
panic on our hands."

"It's a possibility," Donal told her. "Your big problem will be the few who are smart enough to see the angles, and who are selfish enough not to care about their neighbors. Usually in situations like this, there are always a few troublemakers. The majority, though, usually manage to rally themselves in a crisis, somehow."

"I hope you're right, Lieutenant."

His eyes met those of Kathy as she approached the podium. "Ah! Here's my pilot. Deputy Director Alexie Turner? Commander Kathy Ross."

"Pleased to meet you, Commander. I gather you're the one who spread a KR-72 Lightning across half of West Continent." Her smile robbed the words of any sting.

"Mmm. Yeah, that was me. You know, I may be in violation of Wide Sky's littering laws."

Alexie laughed. "I think we can let you off the hook this time. Extenuating circumstances."

"So," Donal said. "You're trying to lift your kids off in those ships parked out there."

"Yes. We want to evacuate as many children as we can, and enough young adults to ride herd on them all. We hope to get perhaps fifty thousand off of Wide Sky."

"Fifty thousand? I was figuring you'd be lucky to get twenty thousand. Or do you have more ships available?"

"No. Except for a few at the other floating cities, this is all we could scrape together, and at that we practically had to requisition the Conestogas at gun point. But children are small, and they don't mind crowding or lack of privacy. More can be squeezed into a cabin than adults."

"You'll send them to Muir, of course."

She looked up at him through long lashes. Her eyes, he only now realized, were a deep and lustrous blue. "You seem very sure of yourself, Lieutenant."

He shrugged. "You don't have a lot of choice. And, well, my bosses are going to need some convincing back there that this crisis is real. I can't think of a better way to convince them than dropping fifty thousand kids on their doorstep. And . . . you'll be with them, right?"

She shook her head. "My place is here. With my people."

"Mmm. Seems to me your place is wherever you could be the most help to your people. And that might be on Muir, convincing Governor Chard that the Malach are a threat to the entire Cluster."

"We'll give you the information you need, Lieutenant. Including downloads of everything the people from the university have put together."

"In my experience, Deputy Director, human beings have an innate capacity for ignoring information, in whatever form, that is nothing short of astonishing."

"Um, I know what you mean. Especially if they have administrative, bureaucratic, or career-related territories to defend."

"Exactly. Quite a few careers back on Muir appear to be founded on the principle that there's nothing dangerous in the Gulf. It would be too . . . inconvenient."

"I was thinking of sending Sam Carver as my representative, actually," Alexie said. "He's not a bad sort, despite the bluster. And he was head of a pretty fair-sized citizens' group back at Sea Cliffs."

"Maybe. But it would sound a hell of a lot more convincing coming from you."

"I'll take it under advisement." She sounded genuinely torn, but it was clear she was still sure her duty lay here on Wide Sky. "Our first priority is to organize the evacuation of the children, and that's not going to be easy. We'll decide who else gets to go when the kids are taken care of."

"Aren't you two forgetting something?" Kathy asked.

"What's that?" Donal asked.

She pointed one slim index finger toward the domed roof of the auditorium. "Our friends up there. The ones that shot us down, remember? You're gonna have a time of it trying to get three Conestogas past that blockade."

"We do have some space fighters left," Alexie said. "Major Fitzsimmons is still planning the operation with his staff, but the idea is that a sudden, surprise attack on the blockading fleet might open a hole long enough for the evacuation fleet to slip out. Once in hyper-L, of course, nothing could touch them."

"Could work," Kathy said. "I might have some ideas on the subject, too."

"I think," Donal said, "that you ought to have a talk with the major. He seemed reasonably receptive." He smiled. "Not as closed-minded as some I could think of."

"How soon are you planning on making your run for it?" Kathy asked.

"Wait," Donal said, holding up his hand. "What is that God-awful racket?"

A keening sound was wailing outside, the rise and fall stirring his hackles and goading the people still in the auditorium to push their way out even faster.

"Air raid siren," Alexie told him. "Fortrose is under attack." A moment later, a dull, heavy thump sounded from outside, followed by the redoubled screams and shouts from the crowd.

"C'mon," Donal said. "Let's have a look."

They hurried after the others as explosions rumbled and thumped from outside. Emerging through the auditorium's main doors, they found themselves on a broad and crowded plaza overlooking Fortrose's main lagoon. Most of the people in the crowd were scattering now in panicked flight, but a few clung to the safety railing, staring and pointing toward the western sky.

A pair of Gremlins shrieked low overhead, their shadows momentarily sweeping across the plaza as they passed between the floating city and the sun. Another explosion thundered as a plume of white water geysered into the sky just beyond the city's breakwater.

Eight tiny black specks strung across the sky just above the western horizon were rapidly growing, sweeping in toward the city with heartstopping speed.