The Price of Peace (34 page)

"Yes, yes, Carl." Big Al cut him off. "No one in uniform is ever content with his toys. You must make do with what management can afford. So long as you use what you have to the utmost, I am confident we will be left here unmolested until our lawyers can sort this out." "Sir." A young suit with the nose of a rat broke in. "Has security checked our asshole, as you named it?"

"Yes." Big Al fixed his gaze on the security boss.

Carl's face drained from gray to translucent white. "I will make sure of that as soon as I return to my command post."

"Darling Zylon, why don't you go along with Carl? Your team would be a fine addition to his people."

"Covering our asshole?" Zylon echoed.

"Water drainage system," Big Al tossed off. "Normally quite full, but Riddle does indeed have a dry season. May not be quite as underwater as we assumed. Right, Carl?"

"I shall see to it." He headed, stiff-legged, for the elevator.

"So shall I," Zylon answered, following the fellow. She wouldn't mind wearing a cute uniform like that. Colors would look good on her. She'd want a floor-length skirt, slit up the side. Yes. She had plenty of security experience on her resume". If Carl's job became vacant, she'd fill it.

Trouble had an antenna up at 0400, but he needn't have bothered. Fifty assault landing craft dropping out of orbit set off enough sonic booms to wake the dead and send people racing from their houses, putting on whatever they found handy.

"Okay, crew, the show is on," Trouble announced over the laser network maintained by tunnel gnats clinging to the roof of the sewer. "These civilians know this isn't their average Monday morning, so keep your heads up and your asses low. Fourth squad, fall back and spread out to maintain contact with our initial entry point. Taylor, you and a private return to the LZ and get ready to lead in our support teams."

"Should never have laughed at the
LT's
butt," Taylor muttered, but he headed back the way they'd come, leaving pairs of troopers at each major intersection.

"Lieutenant, gnat boss here. I think I've found our target." "Show me."

On Trouble's heads-up, a maze of lines appeared. Most were yellow. One ran off to the left of the rest before branching into four other lines. "There are bars at the mouth of that red one."

"Have the gnats mapped that branch?" "Yes. sir."

"Pull them back, then. I want to be real careful exploring that one." Beside Trouble, Steve nodded.

"Be real careful," he whispered. "Don't make so much as an extra drop of water fall before we got that puppy wired our way."

Izzy was having a much better day than she'd expected. Pirates had not shot up her troops. The landing was going down unopposed. Well, almost. Some irate fools felt that having their sleep disturbed gave them the authority to scream at armed men. The stupidity of civilians never ceased to amaze her. Faced with strong men, armed, her first goal would have been to be elsewhere, fast.

With the first companies of each brigade moving in rapidly, she assigned
LZs
closer to the center of town and moved the second wave into them. Things were going so smoothly, there had to be a rub. She checked the "city hall/bunker." None of her troops were near it. Why did she expect a rub there—big time?

"Has Trouble gotten his support units?"

"They're on the ground and moving up,"
Urimi
answered.

Good. Or rather, as good as it was going to get. If she isolated all her problems in the redoubt, and then couldn't get at them, what then? Could she really blow them up? That bridge she would wait to burn until she was on it.

Zylon liked the Security command post. It was full of tight butts going purposefully about their business. She could really enjoy this place. A few people would have to go, like Carl and the pasty-faced woman who brought him the bad news.

"We've lost the sensors in the tunnels," said pasty-face. "They're always full of water, and we couldn't keep cameras working. Last time the camera circuit went down, we let it go."

"Has anybody actually taken a look at them today?" "Not yet, sir."

"Have a repair team do it immediately."

"And a fire team," Zylon added coldly. "We move out in five minutes. I'll be back by then with my team. I'll need twenty full sets of automatic weapons and night visual gear."

"I'll see to that," the woman said and cringed away.

"This is going to be fun," Zylon crowed. She turned on her heel and went to find her men. Trouble left his platoon strung out behind him and waved
Tru
forward. For once, the three civilians did what he signaled them to do—stay put. That was the first time Steve, Tom, and Ruth had paid any attention to him. Nobody should have to go to war with civilians around who took his orders for suggestions.

Trouble and
Tru
rounded a corner. Down the eight-foot-diameter pipe he could just make out a branch off to the left.
Tru
signaled the marine to halt, then produced a gizmo from her satchel. It skittered forward like a spider, trailing a web out behind it. A window on Trouble's heads-up opened, showing a bug's-eye view of the tunnel. He saw nothing unexpected, which did not relieve the tension growing in his gut. Today, what he didn't know would be what killed him.

Tru's
heads-up dimly showed several windows. The lieutenant waited for the expert to send him one she considered important. He had a long wait. Even after the
multilegged
scout reached the side entry, all Trouble got was a picture of mesh, bars, and a dribbling* stream of one-centimeter-deep water. Ten years of high-tech mayhem gave him the patience to wait.

"Damn,"
Tru
finally whispered, and retreated to the last side tunnel. "They got that place covered. Video, motion, laser, the works, and probably the best available. This is going to be a challenge." The woman grinned.

"Let me know when you're done with your challenge. I'm not moving anyone in there until you're downright bored."

"Good move, marine."
Tru
aimed her
comm
unit down the tunnel. "Measures and counters, I need all you got. We got to sink our own tunnels, hack their cables, and set up our own feedback to them. Get a move on, folks."

"How long?" Trouble asked.

"Best guess two, maybe three hours. Could be four. In the meantime, sit tight, trooper. Catch a nap, relax."

Trouble passed the word to Gunny. Half his platoon probably would flake out. He headed back to the demolition team. He wanted them in and out fast, like a millionaire's spoiled brat at boot camp. He got no objections from the
swabbies
, and drafted third and fourth squads to support them.

He was leaving as Corporal Taylor faced a leadership challenge. "Man, Corporal, how do I

get out of this squad? The LT
ain't
ever
gonna
forget you."

Back in front,
Tru
was a happy camper. "I heard from some ex-miners how fast these little beggars cut through, but you got to see it to believe it." She grinned at several

one-centimeter holes in the pipe's wall, fiber-optic lines flowing smoothly into them.
Tru's
handheld screen showed new lines reaching out toward the target one. "Got to isolate their sensor pods, cut into their network, record their reports, then randomize them and rerun them for public consumption while we close down their whole sensor suite. Neat, no?"

"Neat, yes. Just let me know when I can get that place rigged for booms." "Two, three hours."

Zylon bossed a crew of forty; she liked that. Each of her guys now had someone else working for them. She doubted the gray-suited security personnel saw it that way, but that didn't matter. What Zylon saw was real; the rest were fantasizing.

Down here, it was cold and damp. They'd found a break in the cabling, just as the fiber optics left the sensor ring. A quick patch, and she was watching a very boring hole in the ground. "No problem," she reported to Security with a voice mail to Big Al. "I have everything under control. Nothing will happen down here we can't handle."

Beside her,
Mordy
slung his automatic weapon and juggled three grenades. His grin showed that he agreed with Zylon; anybody came in here, they were dead before they got their head in the hole. "Tell me about your board," she said, caressing the neck of the tech concentrating on the readouts. Might as well learn something, as well as have fun,

"Marine, you there?" The skipper's voice startled Trouble.

"Yes, Captain, we're working on getting in." He eyed
Tru
; she held up a finger. "One hour, maybe less."

"Well, the bunker has stopped us in our tracks. They got machine guns, mortars, rockets dug in everywhere you look. All controlled from somewhere else. We move within a hundred meters of their perimeter, and we take fire. Tried everything, smoke, decoys. They got a sensor suite that won't quit. No heavy artillery until tomorrow to start plowing ground. Even then, I suspect they got backups for their backups."

"We wait them out," Trouble surmised.

"We got problems up here from the civilian population."

"They up in arms?"

"Quite the contrary. Except for a few shouters, they're very easy to get along with."

"So why isn't declaring martial law and locking them down for a day or two
gonna
work?" "Because nobody's got any food in their refrigerator. Would you believe that every meal around here is eaten out? Every block's got a restaurant, or a fast-food place. Nobody cooks." Trouble waited. You don't rush the skipper.

"And nobody's got any cash in their pocket. Everything is credit card."

"And the bastards closed down the credit network," Trouble and the skipper ended together. "Nobody up here can buy a sandwich or a plate of waffles or pay for a load of vegetables the farmer just brought to market. We got eighty thousand hungry people and no way to feed them."

Trouble had a mental image of an old Sunday-school story with Izzy trying to multiply loaves and fishes. He didn't dare laugh. "So we got to close these people down."

"Close them down, dig them out. Something. How does it look from our side?" "Give us another hour. We'll move the demolition charges in there fast, then weld all entrances from the bunker shut. You give them thirty minutes to call it quits, or else."

"Or else I blow them out. That will be an interesting order." The skipper's voice had a choke in it as she closed out.

Could she give such an order? Could Trouble legally and morally execute it? Interesting. He'd damn sure rather blow a big hole in the ground than see a lot of good troopers pay for that bit of real estate. But if the bad guys just sat quiet, neither giving in nor taking action. Like Izzy said, take things one step at a time.

"I got good recordings on all their sensors."
Tru
cut into his thoughts. "I'm ready to randomize, cut out the original signal, and begin replay."

"Demolition team, third and fourth squads, ready to move out?"

"
Yessir"s
echoed down the tunnel. "Do it,
Tru
. Let me know when it's safe to move." Zylon had learned that the tech was a very married man. In addition, she'd learned more about the sensors than she ever wanted to know. From a purely technical point of view, they were wonders. The video gave her a boring picture of empty sewers with only a trickle of water flowing through them. The motion detectors were good enough to note ripples in that flow—and the footfalls of rats in the adjoining tunnels. The metal mesh at the mouth of the tunnel at least kept those filthy things out of her line of vision. Just to make sure, lasers randomly laced the tunnels to check air or water density. Nothing got past these suckers. Now, if only the tech was more interesting.

"What was that?" Several of the sensors had tiny spikes rising minimally above the background squiggles.

"Probably nothing. Just another
lander's
sonic boom. You pick those up even down here. That's how good my babies are."

Right, tell me about it. No. Don't tell me about it. Zylon wondered what was happening upstairs. There'd been a few probes along the perimeter, but those had died away quickly. With emphasis on the died. She hoped someone tried her little hole in the ground. She wanted to have something to show for all her boring commitment to duty.

"Bad guy's sensors are down. That tunnel is yours,"
Tru
announced.

"Gunny, occupy those tunnels," "You heard the man. Move it, move it, move it." First squad moved out, rifles sweeping up, down, right, left. One fire team established itself at the next junction. Second team cut the wiring off the entrance to the target tunnel, then they and second squad disappeared down the hole with Gunny.

Trouble joined the demolition team. "Let's move that stuff up there quickly and gently," he said. The Navy types trotted out with loads of explosives on their backs. And damned if Steve and Tom didn't grab a load and follow them.

Trouble reached the mouth of the tunnel as Gunny reported back. "Four tunnels secured. There are eight entry ports. I've got Private Harz welding them down."

"Good." Trouble stood aside; the head of the demolition team, a grizzled chief, handed him a box. "Don't lose that, sir. I've timed the charges to drop this tunnel first, then blow up the other four. That way. we'll have a plug in place. Force won't have anyplace to go but up." The chief's grin was deadly. He'd done it right. Now it was up to the officers to decide if it was done at all.