On My Way to Paradise (53 page)

We were still burning houses, flames roaring and
licking the sky, when the sun rose. I was on a hillside with the
south end of town spread below me and the ocean to the west. We’d
come to a house and begun shooting when a young man, perhaps
fourteen, long in the legs but still a child in the face, came
running out. I fired into him with my little laser, painting a line
of fire across his groin, and he staggered forward with a cry and
was sprawling in the grass when an explosion rocked my feet.

A kilometer away, down in Old Town, a whole wing of
the industrial complex collapsed, the roof caving-in as if the
building had imploded. The great crystal dome over Old Town broke.
Huge sheets of blue-tinted crystal dropped like cascades of
rainwater, followed almost immediately by an explosion that tore
the top three stories off Motoki’s proud corporate headquarters.
Though the explosion occurred half a kilometer away, I had to duck
to avoid falling debris.

At first I thought it was our work, perhaps part of
some plot to further demoralize the Japanese, extinguish their
corporate spirit.

But almost immediately someone pointed toward the
industrial complex and shouted, "That’s where they housed the
company AI! All our external defenses are down!"

I looked back at the corporate headquarters,
remembering that only a few hours before Tamara had been on the top
floor. Down in the valley below people began to shout and gunfire
erupted: from a dozen places in town, several hundred samurai in
green bugsuits came boiling out of concealed tunnels—from beneath a
large moveable stone in the park, from behind a fake wall on the
back of a garment shop, from an abandoned warehouse.

Our mercenaries shot them with their lasers, forcing
the samurai to slow and spin while flechettes cut through their
armor. There were screams and flashes of silver as laser fire
superheated the air.

Someone fired a flechette nearby and I searched
frantically to see the target—an old woman armed with a club
rushing from a house.

Everywhere, everywhere, the Japanese were rushing
from their houses. Amid all the commotion, I saw several men
pointing, to the south. Five huge yellow Mercer superfast zeppelins
were zipping in low over the hills, coming in at 400 kph from the
settlements in Shukaku and Tsumetai Oka. Roughly half of Motoki’s
population lived in the southern settlements—those zeppelins would
be loaded with samurai.

With the company artificial intelligence down,
there’d be no response from our neutron cannons or cybertanks. All
other automatic defenses would only hit targets near ground.

The whole world seemed to shrink down to one point. I
was transfixed by the view of those zeppelins. I’d been trained in
Guatemala to run a cybertank by remote, and I thought,
My God,
if I knew the code so I could just jack into one of those tanks, I
could fry those zeppelins.

The sight of the zeppelins filled me with a sense of
peril, and I stood motionless, waiting for Garzón’s voice to ring
through my helmet, waiting for him to issue orders for us to form a
defensive front.

He didn’t speak, and I wondered if he’d been killed
in the explosions. I saw that all we’d done by taking over Kimai no
Ji was to build a castle of cards, and with the invasion to the
south and revolt in the town the cards were folding in upon each
other. It was as if the ground was slipping from beneath me, and I
felt myself dropping.

The zeppelins flew over a low hill near the south
edge of town and one lone cybertank suddenly flickered to life. A
beam of pure energy split the sky and touched on each zeppelin in
turn, and one by one the zeppelins burst into fireballs.

Multiple concussions rocked the ground seconds
afterward, and houses shook with deep roaring booms that hit the
hills, then echoed and echoed.

Portions of each zeppelin continued to hang in the
air even after the explosions, and huge pieces of flaming material
flaked off the burning struts. I tried to see if I could recognize
any of the smaller cinders that fell from the zeppelins as humans,
but they were only shapeless charred forms.

I looked around and saw that everyone, Japanese and
mercenary alike, had stopped to watch the explosions.

At the doorstep of every Japanese home the people
stood and stared in the sky with horror, mouths agape and
teary-eyed, gazing at portions of zeppelin still clinging to the
air.

The Japanese seemed to wither. They didn’t scream.
They didn’t cry. They didn’t throw themselves on our warriors. Guns
were still booming, sounding like the pop of firecrackers after the
deep explosions of the zeppelins. The mercenaries cleaned up the
last of the armored samurai. As quickly as the revolt had begun it
was over.

One by one the Japanese at the doorsteps bowed their
heads in apparent defeat and returned to their houses. We went back
to our bunker.

The rest of the morning was quiet. Garzón declared
martial law and ordered all Japanese to remain inside. The Japanese
obeyed as if it were a decree from their corporate deities.

A dozen tunnels were destroyed under the city. One
end of the theater collapsed after an explosion in a tunnel caused
its foundation to crumble. In the early morning Tamara wheeled up
the street in her chair, heading toward the Buddhist temple, and I
was elated to see her still alive.

I waved and shouted but she just passed me by.

Perfecto and several other men went downtown and
returned with enough food and drink to make a fine lunch, and we
cooked a small pig in a fire pit in the street, then took turns
sleeping in the afternoon.

I couldn’t sleep. All the things I’d seen replayed
over and over in my mind—every person we’d killed, over and
over.

In the late afternoon, a large mechanical silver
spider with six legs walked up the street and stopped at the bunker
below us and squatted near several men, who soon filed off, one by
one. The spider had a tiny laser turret on its back, and it took me
several moments to recognize it as an ancient message carrier, the
kind used by military personnel when they didn’t want to risk
interception of radio or laser transmissions.

When the spider reached our bunker it went over to a
compadre, and a computer jack extended from a cable. The man
plugged the jack into the socket at the back of his helmet. A few
seconds later he unplugged from the terminal, got up, and trudged
down the road.

A moment later comlink tones sounded in my head. I
engaged the comlink and a mechanical voice said, "Prepare to
receive recorded instructions from the messenger, please." The
spider approached and I jacked in. An image formed in my mind of
Garzón standing in an empty room, back lights shining on his silver
hair.

"Muchacho," Garzón said, "As you know, our external
defenses are down. We’ve confirmed that it will be impossible to
build a replacement artificial intelligence.

"The inhabitants of Motoki’s southern settlements
took a great risk this morning, and their invasion attempt failed
miserably. We remain prepared for all contingencies.

"We now estimate Motoki has suffered some 12,000
casualties. These losses have not gone unnoticed by the Yabajin.
Our vulnerability has not gone unnoticed." Garzón’s image faded,
replaced by an aerial photograph of Hotoke no Za. "Two hours ago
some 40,000 troops left Hotoke no Za."

The picture expanded by degrees until one could make
out the tiny images of hovercrafts flying low over a river, leaving
an intricate weave of V-shaped wakes behind. "We can expect them
reach us in about six days. It will require all our energies to
meet their challenge successfully. It will also require a moderate
amount of cooperation by the inhabitants of Motoki.

"In the past hour I’ve negotiated with members of the
Motoki family for a gradual withdrawal of troops from residential
areas of the city so that we might prepare to fight the Yabajin. If
you’ve been selected to receive this message, report immediately to
Captain García at the East Wing of the industrial complex for
reassignment. Speak to no one."

I got up and looked around warily, then headed into
Old Town to the industrial complex. Spires of broken crystal still
jutted up around the sides of Old Town like giant sections of
broken egg shell.

By the time I reached my destination, 300 mercenaries
had gathered. García escorted us into a huge machine shop filled
with drills, grinders, welding lasers, universal tooling robots, a
hundred tables sparsely lighted by high windows. About twenty men
were hard at work at one end of the shop, frantically constructing
a small computer to drive some of the tooling robots, since the AI
was down.

General Garzón was standing on a table, his helmet
off, the sunlight shining on his hair. His eyes were glazed and
bloodshot from lack of sleep and he hung his head as if in
contemplation. He waited twenty minutes for everyone to arrive
before speaking.

"Compadres," he said with a sound of resignation,
"Did you ever see such a sunrise as the one we saw this morning? A
lavender sunrise? I do not think I ever saw any such thing on
Earth. I was down near the beach when the bombs exploded, looking
at some rocks that thrust out of the water. There was a great flock
of cormorants nesting on the rocks, and when the bombs exploded
they jumped into the air and flew as if scattered by a shout. It
was very grand. I do not think I have seen its like on Earth."

Garzón looked up, held our eyes. He spoke softly, "I
will not lie to you," he sighed. "We are in a bad time. As things
stand, we cannot continue to hold an advantage over the inhabitants
of Motoki for long. Our satellites show that many thousand Motoki
samurai in the south are preparing to launch an attack to dislodge
us. They are shuttling men into a camp some forty kilometers to the
south. We estimate that they will attack within three to four days,
and we don’t have the power to stop them. Even if we could stop
them, the Yabajin troops outnumber us ten to one. We cannot defeat
them all and hope to quell rebellions in the city at the same
time.

"We have considered our options: capitulation;
retreat; unification with Motoki to fight a common enemy; genocide
of the inhabitants of Kimai no Ji. For one reason or another all
these roads lead to annihilation. If we follow any of these
courses, we won’t live more than a few weeks. I have a plan that
gives us some hope, but I must tell you this: We’ll never be able
to return to Earth. We’ll never be able to return. You must not
hope to see your families or friends or homelands ever again. We
can never return!"

The crowd groaned and everyone cast desperate glances
around the room. I felt panic rising in my throat, and I felt
something else—there is an umbilical cord, so to speak, that ties
each of us to home and family. It isn’t a physical thing, it’s an
emotional thing. Yet it’s real none the less. I felt that imaginary
umbilical sever as if my emotional ties to Earth were being
physically slashed.

"I can think of only one solution to our problem—"
Garzón added, raising his fists in the air, and all eyes looked
upon him. "And it is a plan born of desperation. We may sit here
and fight the Yabajin, fight the samurai of Motoki. If we do that,
we will surely win shallow graves!" he opened his left hand, and in
a melodramatic display dust sifted out to the floor, glittering in
the sunlight.

"But if we follow my plan and succeed, we will win a
world, a world where the sun rises lavender!" He opened his right
palm, and his glazed eyes glittered like gems. He held in his palm
a only a tiny red ball, a child’s globe of Baker.

Garzón’s plan was audacious. He would let the Yabajin
cross the continent, so their hovercrafts would not have enough
fuel to return home, and then we would attack their capital at
Hotoke no Za and claim the planet for ourselves.

It was a desperate plan. The grandiose scheme of a
madman, and I wondered: Could this have been Garzón’s idea from the
beginning. Did he see himself as a conquistadore? Did he so
desperately want to steal this planet?

That afternoon, Garzón took Motoki’s only space
shuttle and placed ten squadrons aboard with three cybertanks
stripped of armor and sent them north of the city.

Then, while Motoki’s southern samurai approached, I
spent three sleepless days with several hundred others tearing the
plasma guns off 400 hovercrafts and replacing them with a quickly
thrown-together version of Houser 50 caliber machine gun. We used
molds made from the YCB flechettes to create 2000 copies of that
rifle, then filled the rest of our days loading bullets.

Since we were no longer officially headed by Motoki
corporation, we were no longer subject to the weapons limitations
imposed against the corporation. We replaced most of our energy
weapons with simple projectiles. Dirty and deadly.

Neither the Yabajin nor the southern samurai had had
time to prepare for such a contingency. They couldn’t have upgraded
their armor before leaving. They’d been fighting with energy
weapons for so long they were locked into tradition.

I’d have slept if I could, but I knew that to sleep
was to die. A strong wind blew from the sea, and the rain beat
heavy on the roof. At times I found myself asleep in spite of my
desire to stay awake. Standing, in a line, loading bullets into
clips still hot from the forges, lulled by fingers of rain drumming
on the roof, I’d find my head snapping up only to realize I’d been
loading clips in my sleep.

Sometimes I heard voices—mocking, derogatory snarls
from imaginary throats, my mother shrieking at me like a demon when
I was a child: "What’s the matter with you? Don’t hit your sister!
Pendejo! Little goat fucker! What’s the matter with you?" I felt
reality collapsing around me. I didn’t believe my sweet kindly
mother had said such things, but I wasn’t sure any more what she
may or may not have said. I’d listen to those nearby, and they’d
brag of those they’d killed in battle; their voices were no more
comforting than my hallucinations.