- Chapter 14






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Chapter Fourteen
 
The Shootout
The Dealer permitted himself a small smile. The Angels had set all kinds of new records. This was the first team ever to get everyone alive to the center level, even if two of them had died pretty much immediately upon arrival. And this was the first team to still have a wheeled vehicle operational at the bottom of the slidechute. That was a pretty big achievement. It meant they would use less of their limited compressed-air packs to get to the ship center. They'd be stronger in the last, most terrible battles.
The smile reflected his belief that he was, in large measure, responsible for their success. The monster gun—his gun—had made the difference. It was very cool.
* * *
Jessica closed her eyes, but the hideous images stayed with her. The Angels had set all kinds of new records. This assault was going extremely well. How horrible.
Ghastly as the sight of the Angel One deaths had been a month earlier, at least she had not known them personally. In contrast, Akira and Roni had always had friendly smiles for her as they passed her in the hall, and she had been an intimate observer of their lives for almost four weeks.
And soon Jessica herself would be the one giving the orders.
* * *
Paolo frowned once again at the results Crockett II had generated. At least this time the results were not wildly out of line with everything that had ever gone before. But the result was certainly speculative.
Looking at the patterns of corridors and rooms they had passed so far, extrapolating those patterns to a layout around the core of the ship, there was an anomaly. If the team went clockwise around the corridor one ring out from the old Gate location, and if they then turned right at the second opportunity, there should be something there that was . . . different.
Could it be the Hallelujah Gate?
Paolo feared that the only way to find out would be to go there, a very expensive proposition if he were wrong. He shrugged, and proceeded to post the forecast. He did not put a lot of money on it. Let someone else figure out what to do with the idea.
* * *
It had been a long time since Morgan had had a team this close to the goal with so little idea of what to do next. Should they just go to the old location, on the off chance that the Gate still stood there but had been sealed over, despite the doubts that this was the case? The 'cast gave them a dismal twenty-six percent chance of finding the entrance there.
Of course, there was a perfectly robust, sixty-three percent probability Shiva had set a trap at that location in the absence of a Gate.
Morgan sagged in his wheelchair. There really wasn't anything else to do, except wander around the corridors hoping for a break. Wandering down the corridors had been exactly his strategy when he had gotten to the heart of the center level on Shiva I. But there hadn't been any Destroyers looking for him that time, either. A rambling stroll would not suffice anymore.
A new forecast for a new Gate location showed up on the 'castpoint. Clockwise, two radial corridors away, someone predicted an "anomaly," possibly the Gate. Morgan watched almost idly as the odds in favor of this forecast improved slowly, then leveled off at twenty-one percent.
So the old location was still the better guess. But it was not much better, and still dismal. He clucked his tongue. Perhaps he should talk with CJ about this. She was, after all, at least as smart as he was.
* * *
CJ turned away from the scene of carnage, to look down the corridor she would soon start to run. Nothing remained here for her. She had no place to bury the dead. Their bodies would be consecrated in the nuclear fires of Shiva's destruction. There were no dog tags to remove, or even any notices to send out; everyone who cared had watched the ending live.
Her most important task was to remember how to smile. Her team, after all, had set all kinds of records getting here. For the sake of the morale she must share with Axel and Lars, she had to remember how to smile.
She turned to her surviving teammates. She managed to bring forth an expression that wouldn't have looked out of place on the Mona Lisa. "Everybody ready?"
Lars and Axel nodded.
"Let's go."
CJ walked down the hall, back straight, head high. Axel limped beside her, using Roni's spike as a cane. Lars rode the bike a few feet behind them. The chest wound Lars had taken in the last battle was not quite as crippling as Axel's broken leg. But Lars, with the special harnesses on his oversized frame, was carrying their supplies. They saved more compressed air letting him ride and making Axel walk. As they rounded the gentle curve of the corridor, leaving the site of the battle behind, CJ began to feel her energy return. Her energy had changed, though. Now she could feel an edge to her strength, an edge born of hate.
Morgan came online. "CJ, it's time for a strategy session."
CJ's eyes opened wide. "Strategy! Why Morgan, I never thought you'd ask. Of course the answer is yes."
She listened as a long pause ended with a burst of laughter. The laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun. Morgan explained the situation, and the question: Should they go to the old Gate location, or the possible new one?
CJ trudged patiently along till Morgan had finished, then explained, "The answer is obvious, isn't it? I mean, even if they do put a trap at the old location, Shiva would surely put its biggest force in front of the real entrance, right?"
"Exactly right, CJ."
"So first we sneak up on the old location, recon to see how big the trap is. Then we trot on over to the new location to see how big a pile of guys Shiva has planted there. Whichever force is larger, that is the one we fight our way through."
She heard heavy, unhappy breathing at the far end of the commlink. At last Morgan replied, "I was hoping for something more elegant."
CJ laughed. "This is elegant, Morgan. It's just dangerous."
Morgan grunted. "Okay, that's the plan, then."
They came to the intersection where their current ring corridor met the radial corridor that led inward. CJ pointed down the hallway, into the center of the ship. "All right, everybody, let's go walk into the trap."
"Excellent," Lars proclaimed.
"Cool," Axel agreed. He waved the Destroyer gun he now carried. "Uh, before we continue, could I try this thing, just once before we get into a firefight? See how it feels when it hammers me into the wall?"
CJ nodded. "By all means, Axel."
Axel snapped the spike to his frame, aimed the weapon carefully down the hall they had just come up, and pressed the firing stud. Nothing happened. "Good thing we checked," he muttered. He automatically started a clearing cycle on the gun, the kind of cycle you'd perform as a matter of course on a jammed human weapon.
* * *
Jessica jerked back in her chair as the 'castpoint lit up like Vegas on New Year's. As Axel started to clear the breech, thousands of forecasts poured into the 'castpoint, all predicting that the gun would blow up in his hands. Mechanical engineers, retired soldiers, hopeful future Angels, and firearm specialists from around the world spoke as one. It was the Web equivalent of a scream of panic.
It would take less than fifteen seconds for a million trades to take place on the prediction. It would take much less time for Axel to die.
* * *
CJ idly watched Axel operate the gun.
"Freeze," Morgan said calmly.
CJ froze, and saw Axel do the same, in midoperation.
"Axel, do not clear the gun. Unfreeze."
CJ started to breathe again.
Morgan explained. "Repairing that thing is a little more complicated than fixing a Ruger, Axel. I'm getting instructions now."
Morgan relayed the plan, and Axel set to work. In a minute the weapon was ready for another try.
CJ heard Axel take a deep breath. "Here goes," he said as he pressed the stud once again.
This time a shot rang out. Axel staggered under the recoil.
"Wow," Axel exclaimed, "I see why you wanted the gun all for yourself, CJ."
CJ smiled cheerily. "That's right, Axel. You're the lucky one." CJ didn't have one of her own; magnificent as the monster guns were, the team needed one agile, able-bodied person who could move fast. Since she was the only able-bodied person left (the ache from her fractured arm didn't count), she was it. And the gun was just too big and clumsy for her role. It was a great shame. They'd left plenty of Destroyer weapons back by the slidechute. So many guns, so few people to carry them.
They walked slowly down the corridor toward the expected trap, staring at the blank wall with tense expectation. They came to the last intersection, where they would turn left to go clockwise to reach the anomaly. They stopped. CJ muttered, "Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." The corridor was empty of all save a deathly quiet.
Lars chimed in. "Well, at least it means old St. Nick has a chance to lay out some presents." He turned down the ring corridor, took five steps, and stopped. "Up you go, CJ." He held his hands out for her.
CJ accepted his help as she jumped lightly onto his shoulders. She started planting duodec charges on the ceiling. Axel knelt in the center of the intersection and carefully laid out a set of recon pyramids so that they could see the center of the trap from around the corner.
At last they were ready. Lars said, "I'm the strongest one, I get to throw it."
Axel stood on tip-toes and looked up balefully into Lars' eyes. "I was a baseball pitcher in high school. I get to throw it."
They both looked over at CJ. She threw up her hands. "It's the big decisions like this that leave me completely unable to make up my mind."
Morgan grunted. "Axel, you've got the pyramid in your hand. Throw it."
Axel grinned. He stepped to the center of the intersection, studied the far wall, brushed off a couple of signals from a hypothetical catcher, wound up, and threw the pyramid down the hall.
A massive clattering sound of mechanical movement came up the hall as the pyramid landed. Destroyers stepped out from around both the left and the right corners of the Shiva's innermost intersection. Axel leaped to the cover of the ring corridor as gouts of fire washed the hallway.
CJ, already around the corner into the ring, smiled sweetly down at Axel as he lay where he landed. Her eyes were wide and fluttering. "Was that a strike, or a home run?" she asked.
"Damned if I know." Axel got up. "What next?"
CJ continued sweetly, "Why, Axel, don't you know? Now we run for our lives." Then she was moving. Then he was moving. Lars was already moving.
The sound of bad guys in hot pursuit surged up the hallway. CJ glanced back at the pyramids in the intersection, straining to see in the reflections the exact composition of the enemy force. "Mother Mary, I sure do hope we get to fight our way back through that mess."
Axel looked back. "Are you kidding? The armies of World War II were smaller than that."
"Yeah. But if we don't have to fight through those, it means we'll be fighting through something worse."
Axel grunted. "Hard to imagine."
They rounded the corner into the radial corridor that led to the anomaly. Axel half-screamed. "Okay, now I can imagine it." Halfway down the corridor, the place was packed wall to wall with mechanical creatures of every variety. A line of Destroyers opened fire as they jumped back around the corner from whence they'd come.
Lars just shook his head. "Extremely not good."
CJ's mind went almost blank. "Morgan, you have a plan?"
"No. But before we implement it, blow the roof."
Lars pressed the detonator. The charges in the ceiling let go, burying the first elements of the force following them from the trap.
* * *
Morgan was not surprised by the wall of destruction they'd found barring the way to the anomaly. His expectation was not based on prescience or wisdom. It was based on statistics. Shiva had not yet dropped a really spectacular surprise on this assault, and Shiva always came up with one good stick to poke in his eye. It was a personal affront, that Shiva always put an obstacle like this in front of him.
For a moment, he forgot everything else, even CJ's place on the battlefield, in his concentration on the problem. He had the most dismal idea of his life. But, in a world barren of ideas, his dismal idea was also the best.
Solomon whistled for him: "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you."
Morgan scratched Sol's head. "Just what I was thinking. So you think it will work?"
Solomon whistled again, a passage from "Fanfare for the Common Man." Morgan noted that it was the ELP version, and decided not to ask whether that meant agreement or not.
* * *
Jessica sat forward in her chair. She'd done pretty well predicting what Morgan would do up to now. But this was the critical moment, the part of Morgan's responsibility that she had to match. If she could not figure out how to win in an impossible situation like this, Earth Defense needed someone else.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right? Did that make any sense at all? Was there a clue here to some hope of victory? If so, Jessica would have to thank Solomon for the assist in figuring it out. But at first glance it didn't seem very relevant.
Were Shiva's robots really clowns? Of course not, they were lethal enough. But, Jessica realized, Shiva had never really had to control a close combat with firearms before—the Destroyers were the first firearm-capable machines to enter the field. Perhaps if you confused them . . . Jessica started scanning the Angels' equipment belts, to see if any smoke grenades had been salvaged. It was a slim chance, but it might work, against all odds.
* * *
CJ joined Axel and Lars in throwing a string of grenades behind them. Soon thick smoke blocked their view of the passage; the last thing they saw were Destroyers clambering over the rubble from the collapsed roof. As Morgan had told her, though the minitanks covered clean ground faster, the Destroyers were better at climbing obstacles.
CJ wheeled round and bounded across the intersecting passageway. A hail of Destroyer fire echoed down the hall at her passage, but CJ moved like the wind, and she had crossed the hall before the enemy could take aim. "They're just sitting there," she told her companions—her vidcam had already loaded that information down to Morgan and the Web, but Axel and Lars didn't share that feed.
Morgan spoke. "CJ. Personal damage assessment." Was there a thread of terror in his voice?
CJ spoke before even looking down at her armor. "I'm fine," she snapped, "I . . ." Her voice drifted off as she saw a line of blood from her right side. A bullet had just nicked her.
Seeing the gash, she could now feel it. She grunted. "Looks like I got scratched." She closed her eyes for a moment. "It still doesn't hurt as much as your blasted electroshocks."
The moments ticked by. As they'd hoped, the Destroyers approaching from behind did not fire blindly into the dense smoke. Eventually the Destroyers came close enough that the Angels could hear their heavy footfalls.
Morgan gave the order. "Go!"
CJ's arm whipped out and flung a smoke grenade as far as she could, while Lars did the same from the other side. CJ was right-handed, Lars was left-handed, so neither exposed more than their forearm in the endeavor. The twin grenades flew down the hall, arching over the first rows of minitanks. They threw another pair of grenades to join the first two. CJ yelled, "Charge!"
All three Angels rounded the corners into the hallway leading to the anomaly, into the arms of the waiting army.
Lars and Axel each let off a short burst from their monster guns, turning large sections of the nearest rows of minitanks into dead shells. Axel dropped another line of smoke grenades behind them as Lars and CJ waded into the now-disorganized minitanks before them. They had a pattern: Lars would flip a tank, CJ would kill it. Axel wheeled his bike up to the edge of the battlefield and rolled off.
Morgan barked, "Shoot 'em now."
Lars dropped to his knees and fired blindly at the Destroyers behind the smokescreen in front of them.
Axel lay on the ground and let go at the Destroyers behind the smokescreen behind them.
CJ leaped into a small crevasse between the broken armored shells of two of the dead minitanks and curled in a ball.
As Axel and Lars fired, the Destroyers on all sides finally responded, firing blindly from both directions. Lars and Axel dived for cover near CJ. The floor shook with the reverberations of the massed fire. Even the minitanks seemed disoriented by the shaking and the noise; hand-to-hand combat took a time out.
As before, as quickly as the sound had risen, so quickly it faded out. As before, a handful of clicking sounds informed CJ that the Destroyers were out of ammo. The smoke began to dissipate, and through the haze they could measure the extent of their victory, or their defeat.
Only one Destroyer remained standing between them and the anomaly. The Destroyers at the opposite end of the hall had successfully wiped out all the others. The Angels were back in business.
Axel lifted his weapon and, as a pair of minitanks rushed him, he fired at the lone Destroyer down the hall. "You're clear," he gasped.
"Axel," CJ cried out. She scrambled to her feet to go help him, but Morgan interrupted. "CJ. Follow the plan."
Her feet responded to Morgan's orders, but her eyes did not move till she saw the consequences of following the plan. Axel fired a second burst, killing one of the minitanks before it got to him, but the second one swarmed over him, swinging its blade with lethal precision and ferocity. "Go," Axel panted. "Remember, we know why we're here, and they don't." Another minitank piled onto Axel.
CJ's head spun forward. Had even a full minute passed since she'd thrown the last smoke grenade? She thought not, though it seemed like centuries.
The massed minitanks had hardly started to move since being rocked by the blindfire of the Destroyers. Packed so tight that they were almost wedged in place, there was only one thing CJ could do with the enemy: she leaped to the top of the nearest minitank and started to hop. Skipping from one armored beetle-back to the next, dancing away from the swinging blades that reached up for her, she crossed the sea of enemy forces.
 
Reggie stood blinking at the oak frame of the entrance. "Come on, Mercedes," he muttered to the disinterested door that blocked his way, "Answer me."
The door flung open. Mercedes stood there, hands on hips, her eyebrows drawn together in a storm. "I ought to throw you out of the window," she growled.
Reggie held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Lead me to my doom, Mistress." He stood very straight and still.
Mercedes laughed and spread her arms. "But I'm off-shift now. And one way or the other, the fighting will be over before I'm on again. So please come in." The dark anger on her face evaporated, and the sun came out, with rainbows shining and birds singing.
Reggie stepped into her open arms, squeezed her, and half-carried, half-dragged her through her own apartment. "However it comes out, I wanted to be with you for the ending," he explained.
"Me too." Mercedes pointed into her workroom. "There's the best view in the house."
"You've been doing a great job, by the way. I've been watching your forecasts."
"Thank you," she said distractedly. She looked back over her shoulder, hearing a sharp sound of battle from the other room.
"You're right, no chitchat till we've seen this through."
Arm in arm, they entered the work room to watched the outcome.
* * *
CJ reached the end of the carpet of minitanks and leaped lightly to the ground. She spun as she landed, to flip and kill the minitank she had just used as a stepping stone. She looked up to see Lars trying to duplicate her performance, leaping across the backs of the minitanks, but his progress was slow and painful. She could see his legs bleeding from a dozen cuts where blades had nicked him. Nevertheless, he was an Angel. He was still coming.
Morgan interrupted her observations. "Fly, CJ, fly."
She turned again and ran, ran for her life, ran for all the lives of all the people of Earth.
She reached the innermost ring corridor. A blank wall faced her. She gulped in air and said, "There's nothing here. Nothing." She looked to the left: it was just a hall. She looked to the right: a slidechute sank away into the floor. This chute was narrower than the corridors and the main chute–the academics back on Earth thought of them as being Shiva's equivalent of maintenance alleys. CJ pointed at the chute. Between gasps, she spluttered in dismay, "That's the anomaly."
 
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