The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (14 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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“And they told me why: For a hundred kilometer stretch of their truck ride up here, they weren’t allowed to see the country they were going through. But they heard plenty. And one of them managed to work a peephole in the side of the truck. He saw armored vehicles and attack aircraft under heavy camouflage just south of the Arkansas. The damn New Mexicans have taken part of their Texas garrison force and holed it up less than ten minutes flying time from Manhattan. And they’re ready to move.”
It was possible. The Water Wars with Aztlán had been winding down these last few years. The New Mexicans should have equipment reserves, even counting what they needed to keep the Gulf Coast cities in line. Wil got up and walked to the window. Dawn was lighting the sky above the far cloud banks. There was green in the rolling land that stretched away from the police post. Suddenly he felt very exposed here: Death could come out of that sky with precious little warning. W. W. Brierson was no student of history, but he was an old-time movie freak, and he had seen plenty of war stories. Assuming the aggressor had to satisfy some kind of public or world opinion, there had to be a provocation, an excuse for the massive violence that would masquerade as self-defense. The New Mexicans had cleverly created a situation in which Wil Brierson—or someone like him—would be contractually obligated to use force against their settlements.
“So. If we hold off on enforcement, how long do you think the invasion would be postponed?” It hurt to suggest bending a contract like that, but there was precedent: In hostage cases, you often used time as a weapon.
“It wouldn’t slow ‘em up a second. One way or another they’re moving on us. I figure if we don’t do anything, they’ll use my ‘raid’ yesterday as their excuse. The only thing I can see is for MSP to put everything it can spare on the line when those bastards come across. That sort of massive resistance might be enough to scare ’em back.”
Brierson turned from the window to look at Big Al. He understood now the shaking fear in the other. It had taken guts for the other to wait here through the night. But now it was W. W. Brierson’s baby. “Okay, Big Al. With your permission, I’ll take charge.”
“You got it, Lieutenant!” Al was out of his chair, a smile splitting his face.
Wil was already starting for the door. “The first thing to do is get away from this particular ground zero. How many in the building?”
“Just two besides me.”
“Round ’em up and bring them to the front room. If you have any firearms, bring them, too.”
WIL WAS PULLING HIS COMM EQUIPMENT OUT OF THE GUNSHIP WHEN THE other three came out the front door of Al’s HQ and started toward him. He waved them back. “If they play as rough as you think, they’ll grab for air superiority first thing. What kind of ground vehicles do you have?”
“Couple of cars. A dozen motorbikes. Jim, open up the garage.” The zoot-suited trooper hustled off. Wil looked with some curiosity at the person remaining with Al. This individual couldn’t be more than fourteen years old. She (?) was weighted down with five boxes, some with makeshift carrying straps, others even less portable. Most looked like communications gear. The kid was grinning from ear to ear. Al said, “Kiki van Steen, Lieutenant. She’s a war-game fanatic—for once, it may be worth something.”
“Hi, Kiki.”
“Pleased to meetcha, Lieutenant.” She half-lifted one of the suitcase-size boxes, as though to wave. Even with all the gear, she seemed to vibrate with excitement.
“We have to decide where to go, and how to get there. The bikes might be best, Al. They’re small enough to—”
“Nah.” It was Kiki. “Really, Lieutenant, they’re almost as easy to spot as a farm wagon. And we don’t have to go far. I checked a couple minutes ago, and no enemy aircraft are up. We’ve got at least five minutes.”
He glanced at Al, who nodded. “Okay, the car it is.”
The girl’s grin widened and she waddled off at high speed toward the garage. “She’s really a good kid, Lieutenant. Divorced though. She spends most of what I pay her on that war-game equipment. Six months ago she started talking about strange things down south. When no one would listen, she shut up. Thank God she’s here now. All night she’s been watching the south. We’ll know the second they jump off.”
“You have some hidey-hole already set, Al?”
“Yeah. The farms southwest of here are riddled with tunnels and caves. The old Fort Riley complex. Friend of mine owns a lot of it. I sent most of my men out there last night. It’s not much, but at least they won’t be picking us up for free.”
Around them insects were beginning to chitter, and in the trees west of the HQ there was a dove. Sunlight lined the cloud tops. The air was still cool, humid. And the darkness at the horizon remained. Twister weather.
Now who will benefit from that?
The relative silence was broken by the sharp coughing of a piston engine. Seconds later, an incredible antique nosed out of the garage onto the driveway. Wil saw the long black lines of a pre-1950 Lincoln. Brierson and Big Al dumped their guns and comm gear into the back seat and piled in.
This nostalgia thing can be carried too far
, Wil thought. A restored Lincoln would cost as much as all the rest of Al’s operation. The vehicle pulled smoothly out onto the ag road that paralleled the HQ property, and Wil realized he was in an inexpensive reproduction. He should have known Big Al would keep costs down.
Behind him the police station dwindled, was soon lost in the rolling Kansas landscape. “Kiki. Can you get a line-of-sight on the station’s mast?”
The girl nodded.
“Okay. I want a link to East Lansing that looks like it’s coming from your stationhouse.”
“Sure.” She phased an antenna ball on the mast, then gave Wil her command mike. In seconds he had spoken the destination codes and was talking first to the duty desk in East Lansing—and then to Colonel Potts and several of the directors.
When he had finished, Big Al looked at him in awe. “One hundred assault aircraft! Four thousand troopers! My God. I had no idea you could call in that sort of force.”
Brierson didn’t answer immediately. He pushed the mike into Kiki’s hands and said, “Get on the loudmouth channels, Kiki. Start screaming bloody murder to all North America.” Finally he looked back at Al, embarrassed. “We don’t, Al. MSP has maybe thirty assault aircraft, twenty of them helicopters. Most of the fixed-wing jobs are in the Yukon. We could put guns on our search-and-rescue ships—we do have hundreds of those—but it will take weeks.”
Al paled, but the anger he had shown earlier was gone. “So it was a bluff?”
Wil nodded. “But we’ll get everything MSP has, as fast as they can bring it in. If the New Mexican investment isn’t too big, this may be enough to scare ’em back.” Big Al seemed to shrink in on himself. He
gazed listlessly over Jim’s shoulder at the road ahead. In the front seat, Kiki was shrilly proclaiming the details of the enemy’s movements, the imminence of their attack. She was transmitting call letters and insignia that could leave no doubt that her broadcast came from a legitimate police service.
The wind whipped through the open windows, brought the lush smells of dew and things dark green. In the distance gleamed the silver dome of a farm’s fresh produce bobble. They passed a tiny Methodist church, sparkling white amidst flowers and lawn. In back, someone was working in the pastor’s garden.
The road was just good enough to support the big tires of farm vehicles. Jim couldn’t do much over 50 kph. Every so often, a wagon or tractor would pass them going the other way—going off to work in the fields. The drivers waved cheerfully at the Lincoln. It was a typical farm country morning in the ungoverned lands. How soon it would change. The news networks should have picked up on Kiki by now. They would have their own investigative people on the scene in hours with live holo coverage of whatever the enemy chose to do. Their programming, some of it directed into the Republic, might be enough to turn the enemy’s public opinion against its government.
Wishful thinking.
More likely the air above them would soon be filled with screaming metal—the end of a generation of peace.
Big Al gave a short laugh. When Wil looked at him questioningly, the small-town cop shrugged. “I was just thinking. This whole police business is something like a lending bank. Instead of gold, MSP backs its promises with force. This invasion is like a run on your ‘bank of violence.’ You got enough backing to handle normal demands, but when it all comes due at once …”
…
you wind up dead or enslaved.
Wil’s mind shied away from the analogy. “Maybe so, but like a lot of banks, we have agreements with others. I’ll bet Portland Security and the Mormons will loan us some aircraft. In any case, the Republic can never hold this land. You run a no-right-to-bear-arms service; but a lot of people around here are armed to the teeth.”
“Sure. My biggest competitor is Justice, Inc. They encourage their customers to invest in handguns and heavy home security. Sure. The Republic will get their asses kicked eventually. But we’ll be dead and bankrupt by then—and so will a few thousand other innocents.”
Al’s driver glanced back at them. “Hey, Lieutenant, why doesn’t MSP pay one of the big power companies to retaliate—bobble places way inside the Republic?”
Wil shook his head. “The New Mexico government is sure to have all its important sites protected by Wáchendon suppressors.”
Suddenly Kiki broke off her broadcast monologue and let out a whoop. “Bandits! Bandits!” She handed a display flat over the seat to Al. The format was familiar, but the bouncing, jostling ride made it hard to read. The picture was based on a sidelooking radar view from orbit, with a lot of data added. Green denoted vegetation and pastel overlays showed cloud cover. It was a jumble till he noticed that Manhattan and the Kansas River were labeled. Kiki zoomed up the magnification. Three red dots were visibly accelerating from a growing pockwork of red dots to the south. The three brightened, still accelerating. “They just broke cloud cover,” she explained. Beside each of the dots a moving legend gave what must be altitude and speed.
“Is this going out over your loudmouth channel?”
She grinned happily. “Sure is! But not for long.” She reached back to point at the display. “We got about two minutes before Al’s stationhouse goes boom. I don’t want to risk a direct satellite link from the car, and anything else would be even more dangerous.”
Point certain,
thought Wil.
“Geez, this is incredible, just incredible. For two years the Warmongers—that’s my club, you know—been watching the Water Wars. We got software, hardware, cryptics—everything to follow what’s going on. We could predict, and bet other clubs, but we could never actually participate. And now we have a real
war,
right
here
!
”
She lapsed into awed silence, and Wil wondered fleetingly if she might be psychopathic, and not merely young and naive.
“Do you have outside cameras at the police station?” He was asking Kiki as much as Al. “We should broadcast the actual attack.”
The girl nodded. “I grabbed two channels. I got the camera on the comm mast pointing southwest. We’ll have public opinion completely nailed on this.”
“Let’s see it.”
She made a moue. “Okay. Not much content to it, though.” she flopped back onto the front seat. Over her shoulder, Wil could see she had an out-sized display flat on her lap. It was another composite picture, but this one was overlaid with cryptic legends. They looked vaguely familiar. Then he recognized them from the movies: They were the old, old shorthand for describing military units and capabilities. The Warmongers Club must have software for translating multispec satellite observations into such displays. Hell, they might even be able to listen in on military communications. And what the girl had said about public opinion—the club seemed to play war in a very universal way. They
were
crazy, but they might also be damned useful.
Kiki mumbled something into her command mike, and the flat Al
was holding split down the middle: On the left they could follow the enemy’s approach with the map; on the right they saw blue sky and farmland and the parking lot by the stationhouse. Wil saw his gunship gleaming in the morning sunlight, just a few meters below the camera’s viewpoint.
“Fifteen seconds. They might be visible if you look south.”
The car swerved toward the shoulder as Jim pointed out the window. “I see ’em!”
Then Wil did, too. A triple of black insects, silent because of distance and speed. They drifted westward, disappeared behind trees. But to the camera on the comm mast, they did not drift: They seemed to hang in the sky above the parking lot, death seen straight on. Smoke puffed from just beneath them and things small and black detached from the bodies of the attack craft, which now pulled up. The planes were so close that Wil could see shape to them, could see sun glint from canopies. Then the bombs hit.
Strangely, the camera scarcely jolted, but started slowly to pan downward. Fire and debris roiled up around the viewpoint. A rotor section from his flier flashed past, and then the display went gray. He realized that the panning had not been deliberate: The high comm mast had been severed and was toppling.

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