Gettysburg: A Tale of the Second War for Pennsylvanian Independence (6 page)

The TRACE cargo ship farthest from the battle was the
primary target. The magnetic servos of its anti-gravity engines squealed and
sputtered, the nose of the craft pointed toward escape. But now enemy lasers
were finding their marks. The cargo ship, bloated with okcillium, began a slow
arc downward.

The QB stood and stared as the ship plummeted with its
precious cargo. It hit the ground with more force than a bomb exploding,
shaking them all through the building’s superstructure. A great plume of earth
and okcillium dust burst upward as the ship broke apart. The captain’s mouth
opened in simple disbelief. Not only had they lost the okcillium, but four
TRACE soldiers had also just perished in the crash.

Despite her earlier sarcasm, she’d almost allowed herself to
believe they could get away with it. That TRACE could pull this off, steal a
vital resource right out from under the noses of Transport in the City. A deed
worthy of the kind of David and Goliath tale historians loved using to capture a
child’s imagination. But now those hopes were going up in smoke. Transport had
shifted its attention away from the warehouses and was now concentrating fire
on the four remaining cargo ships.

Hatch was shouting in her ear, but she couldn’t hear him.
Her ears seemed closed off, filled up with some kind of resin that stopped all
sound save for the thud of her racing heart.

He slapped her hard across the face.

“We have to get out of here! Now, while their focus is
elsewhere!”

She swung her head around sharply, saying half-dreamily,
“But the okcy—”

“That battle’s done!” replied Hatch. “Either those ships
make it or they don’t. We can’t help them anymore.” Seeing the look in her eyes—a
look as close to hopelessness as he’d ever seen there—made him stop and take a
breath. More softly, he said, “We have to preserve as much of TRACE as we can.
For the next battle. B Company needs its captain now, Mary.” He directed her
attention below, where Neville and his staff were fleeing the warehouse on
foot. If they followed the plan, they’d be regrouping deep in the woods
southeast of town. “
You
have to get us out of here,” he said.

She stared at him in shock a moment longer. Then the
iron-willed focus that made her the QB filled her eyes, as if the spirit of a
warrior long dead had repossessed her body to do what needed doing.

“All squads, retire in good order!” she shouted. “Get to the
rendezvous point in the woods as best you can! Go!”

The remaining members of Delta Squad helped pack up the
others’ deployed machine guns in record time. In less than a minute, they were
preparing to dash across the open space to the first warehouse. Charlie and Delta
squads hoofed it first, covered by Alpha. They met little resistance, since
Transport was targeting the remaining cargo vessels.

The captain, however, turned away from her retreating
squads, heading west along the wall of the long warehouse.

“Where the hell . . .” But then Hatch knew. She still had
two squads deployed to the west, assuming they still survived at all. He hadn’t
heard the chain guns in a while now. With their BICEs jammed, the only way to
get them out was to tell them to leave—in person. Maybe they would’ve recognized
the chaos for the defeat it was and bugged out already, but maybe they’d stand
and fight and cover the retreat for everyone else. Knowing Smoker and Trick
like he did, Hatch bet on the latter.

“Come on, boys, we’re not done yet,” he growled. “Hawkeye,
take point. Stug and I will follow. Bracer, try and keep up.”

The sounds of battle were mostly behind them now, beyond the
warehouses and pursuing the bulk of the retreating TRACE fighters. Intermittent
heat sig reports from Hawkeye suggested Transport soldiers were occupying the
town in force but were going door to door, slowly checking the homes for
rebels.

Making their way to the guard post was remarkably
uneventful. Transport appeared to be simply ignoring the mosquitoes nipping at
them from the west, instead concentrating all their energy on spoiling TRACE’s
plans for stealing the okcillium.

Remarkably strategic thinking for Transport
, thought
Hatch.

When Alpha Squad arrived at the guard post, they discovered
why the chain guns had gone silent. One was destroyed, the other out of
ammunition. The two squads had each lost half their number. Everyone left was
injured but mobile.

“Leave them,” Hatch heard the QB order as he approached.

“But, ma’am, we can’t afford to abandon these guns,” Smoker
said, wiping her brow, but only smearing the grease and dirt covering her face.

“I appreciate your being so conscientious, Lieutenant Gray,
but preserving our
human
resources is my priority now,” answered the
captain. All hint of her earlier hesitation was gone, along with the sting in
her cheek from Hatch’s insubordinate slap. She was settled into herself again.
She was the QB.

“Yes, ma’am,” answered Smoker. “You heard her,” she said,
addressing both squads. Trick, nursing a left arm dangling loosely at his side,
didn’t object. “Grab what you can, we’re falling back.”

Hatch deployed Alpha Squad to watch the town as they
prepared to bug out, but Transport wasn’t pursuing. No doubt the Authority was feeling
flush with victory. Dusk was falling like a shroud around the mountains to the
east. He could still see smoke and hear occasional weapons discharge beyond the
warehouses, but nothing alive moved.

His captain moved up next to him and followed his gaze to
the smoking horizon. She was tempted to slip her fingers into his, to squeeze
his hand once just to feel the reassurance of human contact in the wake of what
had happened here today. How many TRACE soldiers had died? And for what? Had
even a single cargo ship escaped Transport’s grasp? Or was their sole
achievement the okcillium dust that now fertilized the fields around Gettysburg?
But Mary resisted the urge to touch him. Her soldiers couldn’t see her need for
solace. As their commander, she should stand beyond the touch of despair.

The QB surveyed them as they slung packs and loaded the last
of their ammunition. In the waning light of a day made hazy by tons of spilled
okcillium, the members of Bestimmung Company appeared tired, dirty, and
defeated. But their captain knew better. A shower and rest would remove the grime
and fatigue. And they had never been defeated as a unit. She rejected the
notion that they’d been defeated here today. B Company was hers. In fact, it
was
her
. Struck down to their knees, they would rise again. Regroup. As
long as she stayed strong, they too would survive.

“Time to move out, ma’am?” asked Smoker.

She simply nodded, her energy spent. Then in a determined
voice she added, “Time to move forward.”

To reduce the odds of running across Transport patrols, the
remnants of B Company marched a line directly away from Gettysburg and at a forty-five-degree
angle to their ultimate objective in the woods. It was possible that Neville’s
remaining troops had evaded their Transport pursuers and would rendezvous after
midnight as planned at the designated rally point, but the QB wasn’t taking any
chances. They’d approach from the southwest after walking two clicks in the
opposite direction.

At the point of the turn, Smoker’s sergeant, nicknamed Brick,
fell first to his knees, then onto his face. Exhaustion and blood loss. Stug
offered to carry him, but the captain refused. They’d stop here, camp off-trail
thirty meters into the woods, and rejoin the others at the rally point at dawn.
Everyone needed the rest.

The captain personally tended to Brick’s wounds while the
others set up camp. Unlike Stug, Echo Squad’s second was a modestly built man,
more agile than thick. His nickname was an ironic ode to his ability to hold
anyone at arm’s length, no matter how strong his opponent, through some
inner-strength discipline he called Zenkwondo. He’d even bested Stug that way.

“Prop up his legs,” suggested Hatch.

She nodded, glancing at the jagged hole in the ashen
sergeant’s right leg. A tourniquet wrapped just below the knee and a makeshift
bandage stanched the flow. Still, the bandage was pregnant with blood. Wiping
Brick’s sweating brow, the captain said, “We should’ve stopped sooner.”

Hatch almost bit her head off. He was tired too, and he
didn’t have the patience for being needed right now. But he stopped, reminding
himself that this was her command. One of her sergeants was dying, and there
was little she could do about it but comfort him. And the others—they’d been bright-faced
and eager, if the slightest bit frightened, when they’d gathered at dawn. Now,
a third of their original number was dead. And whether Charlie and Delta squads
had escaped was anyone’s guess.

Thinking it best to ignore her, Hatch said, “Hey, I just
noticed something.” He shook his head. Battle still banged his eardrums, but
his mind had lost that low-grade buzzing sound from earlier in the day. “We must’ve
cleared the range of their jammers.”

The QB nodded. “A while back. They’re all off chasing the
rabbits in the woods.”

“Should we try to establish contact with Neville? Find out
the final score?”

The captain shook her head. “LAN only. Stay off the Internet.
We’re in no shape to receive a Transport hunting party. We’re off grid for the
night.”

“Brick needs aid. If we don’t—”

“Brick’s dead,” she said, palming over his open, lifeless
eyes. “Have Stug strip him and distribute his equipment.” Her voice had taken
on that tinny, monotone, autopilot quality. She was stony, immovable. “Detail a
burial in the woods, but don’t bother digging too deep. Everyone needs their
rest tonight,” she said, rising and walking into the woods away from camp.

Hatch watched her go. Sometimes he hated her coldness more
than the war itself.

His tone stiff with boot camp formality, he said, “Yes,
ma’am
.”

Stug had earned his physicality by being raised on an
Amish farm. He was moving hay bales with his father before he could read. His
name had been Joseph Miller then, and his affinity for the animals they raised
and ultimately slaughtered remained one of the cruel ironies of his love-hate
relationship with his childhood. Like so many others of his generation, the
sergeant had abandoned his upbringing to fight Transport. His shunning by his
parents for that choice made his obsession with punching the enemy into
unconsciousness all the more personally satisfying.

On the farm, they had never had fewer than two dogs at a
time. He decided, one Sunday afternoon when he was a boy, that the reason he
loved the dogs so fiercely was because he was never required to kill them. All
the affection for animals he couldn’t afford to feel for the family’s livestock,
he invested in their dogs. And to this day, dogs held a special place in the
big man’s heart.

So when his sleeping self heard barking in the distance, his
family dogs returned from memory and entered his dreams. Sloppy and drooling,
Jonah’s goofy pant-grin made him smile as he lay on the hard ground of the
woods outside Gettysburg. Young Joseph and his dog were chasing away a raccoon
from Momma’s apple pie in the window. The overlapping, train-like echo of
Jonah’s braying spoiled his momentary joy with a longing homesickness. Until his
dream-self remembered he wasn’t twelve anymore. And he wasn’t just dreaming about
his old hound.

Stug’s eyes snapped open. He rolled to his side, cocking his
ear in the air. Blinking sleep and sore muscles away, he felt the sticks and
leaves drop off his body into the dirt. Two soldiers from Smoker’s squad had
stood up from their picket duty and were staring northeast.

Baaaaarooooooorrr. Baaaaarooooooorrr.

“Alert the camp!” Stug whispered. “Up, up, up!”

The others stirred, stiff from battle, but urgent and alert
nonetheless. Hatch sat up, wincing at his still-smarting injury from the first
day’s skirmish. He’d rested on his left leg again, and it tingled with
lingering sleep.

“Dogs,” said Stug, not waiting for the question.

Hatch massaged his leg briefly as the others began moving.
“Hawkeye, crack the sleep out of your eyes and give us a range,” he mumbled groggily.

Smoker and Trick were already gathering essentials, leaving behind
what few luxury items they’d had.

Baaaaarooooooorrr.

The captain snapped a clip into her automatic rifle, leaving
a captured Transport laser still slung across her back.

“Two hundred meters,” said Hawkeye calmly.

“Why the hell dogs?” asked Smoker.

“Brush party,” said the QB. “All the high-tech gear is
chasing down Neville. Hell, they probably didn’t even expect to find anything
in this direction.”

“Can we analyze the enemy’s application of low-tech resources
later?” Hatch and his tingling, aching legs were in no mood. “By now they’ll
have our heat sigs. It’s only a matter of time before they overrun us with
drones or dropships.”

Grabbing her rifle as the others gathered around, Smoker
said, “We’ll never outrun either one. We should set up a defensive perimeter
and—”

“—die,” finished Stug. “We’re in a clearing with trees and
poison ivy for defense.”

Hatch nodded severely. “It always comes down to the math.”

Baaaaarooooooorrr.

“One hundred fifty meters,” said Hawkeye, less calmly this
time.

“We don’t have time to debate,” insisted Bracer. “Dig in or
run?”

The captain turned and looked southwest, seeming to sniff
the wind as if she were a bloodhound herself. Then, with the same frostiness she’d
had the night before, she said, “We run. Follow me.”

The eight members of B Company tramped through the
undergrowth. No one bothered trying to hide their trail.

The fauna seemed to be on Transport’s side. Vines and
nettles grabbed at the company’s legs, slowing them down. The injured fighters
struggled the most, yanking and pulling through the undergrowth. One, then
another stumbled, and their comrades bent to help them up.

“BICEs still up,” noted Hatch.

“Keep the LAN online,” said the captain. “Everyone tie in to
Hawkeye’s omni-lens.” The hunting party following them was indeed likely an
afterthought by Transport command. No advanced transportation, no BICE jammer.
A party sent to flush out any birds that might be hiding in the bushes. The QB
switched on her Internet feed.

“Warning,”
Marlene said in their heads.
“Internet accessed.
This is a tactical situation. Recommend you—”

“Shut up, Marlene,” said the captain, using the official shorthand
that deactivated the warning system.

Baaaaarooooooorrr.

“One hundred twenty-five meters,” said Hawkeye.

Everyone quickened their pace.

Only half watching the terrain, the captain misstepped,
twisting her ankle. Hatch reached down without stopping and dragged her back to
her feet, and she stumbled forward. She was in pain but kept moving,
step-dragging until she could put some weight on her ankle again. She’d been
distracted momentarily by scanning the local map she’d projected in her head. Pulling
up the map was why she’d needed the Internet. She knew they were close, but how
close was the question.

Ah, there it is
, said her inner voice. Dragging Hatch
with her, the QB jagged suddenly left. The others followed.

“I take it you have an objective?” Hatch asked.

She ignored him. They were close.

The dogs barked savagely. They could smell the sweat and
fear of their quarry on the wind.

“One hundred ten meters,” Alpha’s spotter dutifully
reported.

The captain angled right and pushed her way through a last
wall of wild vines to find what she was looking for.

“What is this, a deer trail?” wondered Stug.

Baaaaarooooooorrr.

Much closer now.

“This way!”

Unobstructed, she led them in a loping run away from the
town along the wide, rutted road. Hard from lack of rain, the cuts in the dried
mud seemed determined to trip them up.

“What the—?”

Stug had merely voiced the question on everyone’s lips as
they came to a sudden halt. The road had dead-ended at a towering wall of
debris. It looked like a dozen high rises had come crashing down here, then been
shaped into a jagged superstructure jutting skyward. Made from the tons of
transported debris from Earth’s destroyed cities, the wall was piled high and
irregular, reaching hundreds of feet upward at schizophrenic angles.

“You’ve led us to the wall around the AZ?” asked Smoker. “Why?”

Hatch didn’t blame her for the desperation in her voice.
What
a perfect backdrop for a firing squad
, he thought to himself. He barely remembered
to keep it off the unit channel.

“All walls have holes,” said the QB, as if that answered Smoker’s
question. “Start finding this one’s.”

Smoker merely stared at Trick, then Hatch. Her eyes didn’t
need the LAN to speak her mind to her fellow lieutenants.
She’s gone mad
,
they said.
We’re all dead.

One hundred meters up the hard-packed mud road, the dogs
burst from the woods. Four of them, followed by their handlers. It was hard to
tell who was controlling whom.

Vines and ivy had crawled up and around the rubble of the
wall, trying to reclaim the space for Mother Nature.
Fitting
, thought
the captain,
for a wall surrounding the Amish Zone.
She stared at her
officers, who stared back at her.

“Get your goddamned hands in the ivy and find me a breach!” she
ordered.

Despite their doubts, Smoker and everyone else obeyed
instantly.

The bloodhounds strained at their leashes. Breaking out of
the thick woods, Transport soldiers appeared behind them. The handlers kneeled
down to their charges.

As he felt beneath the living camouflage along the wall,
Stug said, “They’re about to—”

“Don’t say it!” ordered Hatch.

“—release the hounds.”

“Here!” yelled Hawkeye. The spotter had found a man-sized
gap at the bottom of the wall. If they dropped their equipment first, they
could pass through, if slowly.

Stug pulled out a sonic grenade. “Go!” he ordered everyone,
regardless of rank.

“Sergeant—” began the QB.

The dogs were braying as they leapt forward. They spread out
as a pack does when approaching a trapped quarry.

“
Go!
” Hatch echoed, kneeling to a firing position.

“Everyone, through the breach! Help Bracer with that eighteen!”
ordered the captain.

The Authority soldiers, assuming they had the rebels boxed
in, were in no hurry. They fell far behind the bloodhounds. At a dead run, the
dogs would be on the TRACE fighters in seconds.

Hatch took aim.

“No, wait, chief,” said Stug.

There was a quality in the giant’s voice Hatch rarely heard.
Against his better judgment, he hesitated.

The hounds were already too close; the sergeant couldn’t get
them with the grenade without also being in the blast radius himself. He stood,
cocked his arm, flicked his thumb, and let the grenade fly, aiming for a spot
about twenty meters out.

“I’d plug your ears if I were you,” he growled to Hatch.

The grenade fell behind the charging hounds, but its silent
explosion caught them from behind. To avoid being flattened themselves, Hatch
and Stug covered their ears and fell backward, knocking their companions into
the concrete and steel and rebar of the wall.

Their balance blasted, the hounds went down hard, yelping
and bruised by the petrified ruts of the road. The Transport soldiers behind
them scattered left and right for cover, one firing uselessly over the heads of
the rebels that were trying to crawl through to the AZ.

Hatch righted himself to find that all but Bracer, the QB,
and Stug had made it through to the other side. The handlers, incensed that
their hounds might’ve been injured, took aim at the resistance fighters. Hatch flattened
himself among the rubble.

“Okay with you if I shoot the guys with the leashes?” he
asked Stug as he sighted down the barrel.

“By all—”

Hatch fired a brace of bullets, causing the enemy to return
fire, wild and shaky with fear. Having established the range and wind, Hatch
fired once, twice, and a third time with precision. With each shot, a Transport
soldier, leash in one hand and weapon in the other, fell to the ground.

Pulled from the other side, Bracer went through. The QB ordered
Hatch and Stug to follow, then dived through the rubble herself. The hounds
howled in their confusion and pain, contorting on the mud road.

“You’re fatter, you go,” said Hatch.

For once not arguing, the sergeant handed his rifle
carefully through the gap, mindful of sliding it through the dust and dirt.
Flipping on his back, he squeezed through the hole, with the help of a long,
cursing haul from the AZ side. His wide shoulders barely let him through.

The few veterans in the Transport ranks advanced more boldly
than before. Laser fire scorched the debris around him as Hatch turned and
crawled to the opening. First his rifle went through, then his body. With arms
extended, he was yanked out the other side.

“Get him out of the way,” the QB said. “Be quick about it.”

His men hauled Hatch away from the wall. The others tossed
rocks and refuse toward the gap, packing it quickly.

The QB nodded to Smoker, who like her captain held one of
the captured laser rifles. The two women positioned themselves at opposite
angles to the wall and took aim above the breach. From the Amish side, the wall
had been smoothed over with concrete, like an old rebar-skeletoned sidewalk
from the now-destroyed suburbs of old Earth.

“
Now
.”

Both fired their lasers in a long, continuous burst at the
packed debris over the hole. There was no effect at first. But slowly the
molecules of the concrete coating began to heat up, then disrupt. In less than thirty
seconds, the hole was plugged.

“That won’t last long,” said Stug.

“It won’t matter anyway,” observed Hawkeye. “They’ll have
dropships coming from the City soon enough.”

“Let’s go,” said the QB, slinging her laser across her back.
Favoring her ankle but unflagging, she led them into the interior of the AZ.

The rutted road was less overgrown and better cared for on
this side of the wall. As the soldiers slogged along, few had time to notice.
Being hunted like escaped prisoners had already sapped what meager reserves a fitful
night’s sleep had rebuilt.

“We need to get off the road,” said the captain. “Hawkeye’s
right. Those ships will be coming.”

“I didn’t think Transport could enter the AZ without
permission,” said Smoker.

“Like getting a form signed would stop ’em,” groused Stug.