The Battle for Terra Two bw-2 Read online

  "No one knows what he looks like, do they?"

  "No. He's the man without a face. The last photo of him was taken in the forties. The day afterWolfsschanze, he somehow got past a brigade of Waffen SS and calmly put a bullet through Himmler's head."

  "Thus ending effective resistance to the Putsch," he nodded. "He must be in his sixties."

  "Easily. God!" She jumped up. "I almost forgot, and it sounds like you'll need it." Going to the big Governor Winthrop, she pulled open a drawer. Extracting an oblong black plastic case, she handed it to John. "Nixdorf-IBM 7000 series authenticator. Insert it into the authorizer port of UC's computer, and the machine will answer its own challenge."

  "You're sure?" he asked dubiously, turning the small device over in his hands.

  "No." She smiled for the first time. Thin, but still a smile. "Don't worry, though. They'll give the next poor bastard something better."

  "Comforting." He pocketed the device. "OK, if you'll have someone lead me back to St. Mark's from here… Where, by the way, is here?"

  "Can't do any harm now. This is the Barcroft Estate in Brookline, abandoned in '68, carefully unbooby-trapped and restored by the Vipers. You arrived via the old Green Line subway tunnel, which in turn accesses part of the Underground Railroad, circa 1855. We built the entrances and connectors."

  "One more thing." He related the story of Cinzano Bay. "One of yours?"

  She nodded, grim-faced. "Lotte. She was to meet someone with information on Maximus. Maybe she was set up, maybe she was just unlucky. We'll probably never know."

  "But why the grenade?" John asked. "A lot of innocent people died." Neither saw the bookcase swing wide.

  "Innocent?" she snapped, eyes blazing. "The technos get tax-free income, hazard pay, cheap servants and subsidized housing to live here as colonialists. They know the risks. The grenade's our answer to Aldridge's summary justice." Their eyes locked. "We don't go gentle into that good night, Major Harrison."

  "But go you shall," came a low voice from behind. "Don't even think of it, Major," zur Linde said as Harrison's eyes went to the distant sofa and his weapon. Stepping into the library, minimac leveled, the German spoke into his starhelm. "Septime to Crispin.

  "I couldn't, Colonel," he said to the voice complaining in his ear. "I was in a tunnel. Please respond the alert company on this vector, sir. I'm in a nest of Vipers."

  Not for the first time, it struck Harrison how dehumanizing UC battledress was: black uniform, black gloves, black boots, black starhelm. Even the machinepistol was black. Hard to believe anything human existed within that darkness-certainly not a man with a weakness for Oriental women who'd invited him sailing. "May we put our hands down, Herr Hauptmann?" he asked.

  "Red scum. Keep them up."

  "Is that what you think we are, Erich?" John lowered his hands. "How can I convince you…"

  "Hands back up, Major," said the German coldly, "or you lose a kneecap." John complied.

  "Don't be a silly bitch," said zur Linde, centering the muzzle on Heather. Her hands went back up, away from the magnum.

  "Put the cannon on the sofa, please. Thumb and forefinger." The big pistol bounced onto a cushion. "Thank you."

  He turned his back to John. "We're of an age, Harrison, you and I. Your biography says your father died at Second Stalingrad. True?"

  Captain Tristram Malory Harrison had been killed at Chosen Reservoir. "Not Stalingrad," said John. "A different battle."

  "My father died at Second Stalingrad," said zur Linde, "when Das Reich's Division saved your Third Armored. How could you betray what both died for?" It bothered him, you could tell from his voice.

  "I'm here to save, not to betray, Erich. You're counterintelligence, aren't you? Abwehr?"

  Zur Linde nodded curtly. "The best."

  The great unabridged dictionary, largest made by the Merriam poeple, dropped like a stone from the balcony, its binding cracking as it struck zur Linde's starhelm, toppling him. Rolling to his feet in a blur of motion, his hand streaked for his pistol, only to freeze when he saw the minimac's unwavering muzzle.

  "You know the drill, Erich," said Harrison. "Toss the PPK." Heather scooped up both weapons. "Now sit." Zur Linde sat.

  "Well done, Jorge," Heather called, looking up at the small brown face bearing over the bannister. He bounded down the stairs to a warm hug from Heather.

  Walking to the door she called, "Chin Lee! We have a prisoner!"

  A squad of Vipers came at the run, led by a big, tough-looking Chinese with an old knife scar puckering the length of his right cheek.

  "Starhelm, Erich," demanded Harrison, hand outstretched. When the Abwehr officer didn't move, Heather said, "Chin Lee."

  Drawing a long-bladed ranger knife, the platoon leader stepped purposefully toward zur Linde. Fingers flying, the German unfastened the helmet and handed it to Harrison, scowling.

  "Nice to see your pretty face again," said John. Chin Lee sighed and put the knife away.

  Touching the starhelm's bottom rim, Harrison flipped the commswitch off.

  "Think they had time to vector in?" asked Heather.

  Harrison nodded.

  "Chin, get everyone together," ordered Heather. "There's a strike force on the way." He ran from the room, shouting orders.

  Walking to a bookcase, Heather removed a leather-bound copy of Robert Louis Stevenson'sInfernal Machine, then threw a small, red switch behind it. She carefully returned the book to its niche. "In forty minutes, the house will blow up," she said. Pulling a big backpack from under the desk, she shrugged her way into it. "Five minutes later, land mines in the lawn will detonate-take out their second wave."

  In a few minutes, Vipers laden with packs and weapons were filing through the library and into the tunnel.

  "I'll show you to the cathedral, John." Heather picked up zur Linde's starhelm as Chin Lee took the German away.

  "You're not going to…" Harrison said, staring after the Abwehr officer.

  "No." She strapped on the starhelm. "Not that he doesn't deserve it. We'll give him a dose of memscrub- this day will vanish from his life.

  "The trick," she added, voice muffled by the helmet, "is to defeat the enemy without becoming him."

  "You can believe that, yet hit that reaction force?"

  "It's not excessive," she said as he fastened on his own starhelm. "There's too much here we haven't had time to destroy. Also, the carnage will slow them, buy us time. We're going to be exposed for about two hours, relatively defenseless. This'H pull in every chopper UC has."

  "Where are you going?" he asked as they stepped into the passageway.

  "Warren's Island, in the inner harbor. There's an old fort there." She swung the bookcase shut. "Not quite what we've become used to, but habitable."

  They looked up at the roar of choppers coming in low and fast. "UC's about to find out just how hot a hot LZ can be," said Heather coldly. "Let's go."

  5

  Most international opinion was won, and any support for a countercoup dissipated, by the General Staff s calculated ' 'discovery'' of the death camps four days after the Putsch. The footage of Guderian's panzers smashing through the gates of Dachau, the horrified reactions of the soldiers to the grisly scene inside, sold the world on "the return of the Germany of Goethe, Schiller and Beethoven." Only the Russians didn't buy it. The war in the East ground on.

  – Harrison, ibid., p. 74

  Operations was quiet when John arrived-a paunchy, graying warrant officer, four young techs and a few guards. Up on the big board, Boston was a green island, surrounded by a line of red. Inside the green, another line of red divided three-quarters of the city from the remainder- turf. The yellow blip of an occasional plane or ship was the only movement.

  John waved the warrant officer back to his chair. "It's ok, Mr. Blackstone, just familiarizing myself with Operations.

  "The red is what?" he asked, pointing up at the board. "Perimeter sensors, Major."

  A solid crimson ribbon sa
t alone above the warrant officer's right pocket: the First Day Ribbon. John wondered what irony had let Blackstone survive the Japan Invasion only to end up in UC.

  "We monitor all activity along that perimeter, sir. We respond on anything BOSCO flags suspicious."

  "BOSCO?"

  "Boston Base Operations Command and Control." His hand swept the wall and its color graphics. "BOSCO- actually, the whole 7117 series-was designed for UC by Nixdorf-IBM."

  "And you watch for…?"

  "Gangers raiding, gangersymps bringing in supplies and weapons. Anything out of the ordinary. We weigh the threat and react intelligently-a strategy of selective response."

  The cities are lost, Guan-Sharick had said. Everyone knows it, but no one may speak of it. Policy is that they're not lost. Policy brings in the technos, to tax-free government R amp;D enclaves. Policy maintains a garrison to protect them. It's all a fragile artifice. The cities are lost. Those garrisons are penal brigades, badly understrength, living on tactical myths and Benzedrine. Let the gangs attack as one, Urban Command and the techno enclaves would vanish, a bloody bit of bad policy.

  "Selective response," said John. "Interesting."

  "Ah! A situation." Blackstone's eyes focused on the wall. "Excuse me."

  John saw it then, the flashing red cross moving across the red line, into the green.

  Who says there's no God? he thought as Operations came to life, technicians busy, guards turning to watch. Forgotten, John slipped around into the deserted computer area. Shielded by gray equipment banks, he inserted the authenticator into the slot below the big red arrow.

  The CRT came on, amber letters flashing across the screen, select voice or screen, it said.

  Typing screen, he homed the cursor. select modality preceded a menu of options.

  32, he responded, keying for restricted access. ? asked BOSCO, giving no clue. maximus, typed John. doppleganger, challenged the machine.

  Palms sweating, John waited for the alarm klaxon. If Heather's gift didn't work, BOSCO would scream for help. lilith, BOSCO said, duped into answering its own challenge. select project file.

  He had it all in five minutes, neatly transferred to a microfiche, pocketing it as a smiling Blackstone found him.

  "Major Harrison, you missed a neat intercept," he said happily. "We zapped a dozen gangers, maybe survivors of our raid on Viper HQ. We'll know more after a G2 workup."

  "We were the ones with survivors in that action," said John as the warrant officer saw him to the door. "Second battalion had sixty-two percent casualties and lost ten choppers. There were no ganger casualties. Jack Grady says the LZ smelled like a crematorium on a warm August night."

  "That rabble couldn't…"

  "They're very well organized rabble." John stepped past the guards and into the white corridor. "They fight for their lives, their homes, their families. What are we fighting for, Blackstone? Our pensions?"

  "We're fighting for America," said the warrant officer, puzzled.

  "Of course," said John. "Good night."

  Your hours here are numbered, boy, thought John. Shooting up the help, thinking out loud, stealing from the cookie jar. Aldridge's going to feed you to his larks.

  Microfiche still warm in his pocket, he went up to his quarters.

  Alone in the room, he switched the film to the hollow heel of his right boot, then searched his pockets for the authenticator.

  He'd been reaching for the authenticator. Blackstone's footfalls had alerted him. Tucking the fiche into his shirt pocket, he'd turned

  …

  The authenticator was still in BOSCO's port, bloody red arrow pointing to it like a finger of doom.

  How long till someone found it, saw that it wasn't standard?

  Grabbing minimac and starhelm, he ran from the room and up the stairs toward the heliport, fourteen levels above. Elevators could be stopped, riders gassed.

  "We have a situation, sir," said zur Linde, unknowingly parroting Blackstone's remark of a few minutes ago. "Let's have it."

  Despite the hour, the colonel was alert. He prided himself on his Napoleonic courage, that ability to respond agilely to a crisis at any hour.

  "Harrison bypassed BOSCO's authentication system." Phone to his ear, the German watched as two of his specials led a trembling Blackstone from Operations. The warrant officer's only familiarity with Napoleonic courage was a cognac of like name.

  "He outprinted the entire Site Y file onto microfiche, then cleverly left his authenticator in the computer." Zur Linde thoughtfully hefted the thin device. "It would help to know who made it."

  Yesterday was a hole in zur Linde's life. Found unconscious on the red line, his last memory was of a winking blue light in the Bell's cockpit as he'd kept a delicate distance between himself and Harrison's recon chopper. Then nothing till he'd opened his eyes in Dispensary.

  "Impotent, treasonous old men," said Aldridge. "Only with competent agents are they dangerous. From your condition yesterday, Erich, I suspect Major Harrison is such a prosthesis. Where is he now?"

  Something cold in Aldridge's voice made zur Linde hesitate.

  "Well?"

  "We don't know, sir," he said carefully. "He hasn't used his ID to access any level since returning to the BOQ from Operations. And he's no longer on the BOQ level."

  "Then he's using the stairs. Security condition red-full alert."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Take him alive if possible-I'd like him drained by Interrogation. But stop him. That file mustn't leave here."

  Slipping his ID to open the stairtop door to the heliport, John knew he signaled his presence to BOSCO.

  The nearest sentries saluted him as he quick-trotted to the first chopper, a deadly Bushmaster-Fokker gunship. "Emergency!" he shouted. "Colonel's orders!"

  The alert klaxon only moved the guards out of his way faster, until its purpose sounded over their radios. They came for him as he slid into the chopper.

  Starting the engine was no problem, but it took him a long moment to puzzle out the ordnance control. The first sentries were less than ten yards away when he swiveled the port gatling guns, firing high.

  Scattering, the troopers fired back, slugs pinging off the duraplast armor as reinforcements charged off the elevators. Firing low and continuously, John revved the engine, pulling the Bushmaster up at a sharp right angle, then swept back, rocketing the heliport with a full rack of red-tipped incendiaries.

  "Impressive," said Aldridge, watching on an Operations monitor: choppers exploding, fuel from each triggering the next, their tracers and rockets tearing through the troopers trying to fight the flames.

  The floor rumbled as shock waves ripped through the building. The monitors flickered and died.

  "Can't we take that renegade's chopper out?" Zur Linde turned to the AirDef tech.

  "Negative." The sergeant nodded at a small screen, dancing with green fuzz. "Fire's knocked out all the radar. Arm those SAMs and they'll blow-they're heat seekers."

  "Jettison those Hauzahns, Erich," ordered Aldridge, "before they chew our top off."

  "Do it," said zur Linde. The great building shook as missile after unarmed missile tore away, roaring blindly into the sky.

  The watch officer turned to zur Linde. "Fire's out of control, sir. Captain Grady reports the napalm's about to go. He's ordered fireguard down two levels. And all radio communication's out."

  "Why is there napalm in the heliport, Erich?" Aldridge fixed the German with his iciest glare. More explosions shook the room.

  "We were going to use it this afternoon, sir. I wanted to try a technique perfected against the Bantu. It…"

  Aldridge turned to the watch officer. "Evacuation, Bravo Plan. Alert all sections. And phone Copley and Harbor substations-assuming the underground lines are intact. Advise our situation, order up choppers."

  "Erich, get…" The door slid open, admitting a begrimed Captain Grady, uniform singed. "Useless, Colonel," he coughed. "Top two levels are gone. It'll be here
in thirty, forty minutes."

  "Nothing you could do, Jack," said Aldridge, laying a hand on Grady's shoulder. "Get your men down to motorpool level. We'll deploy into the killzone and await the choppers."

  "Colonel." The watch officer set the securfone down. "Major Sardon reports a general assault across the red line. They started probing as soon as they saw our smoke. BOSCO's blind and the gangers know it.

  "The major's thrown a defense perimeter around the techno enclaves. He thinks he can hold until dark-if he keeps all his choppers."

  A pall settled over the room.

  Aldridge slowly polished his bifocals, then wrapped them back around his long ears. "Then we'll have to march out and face the enemy, just like real soldiers."

  "That's five miles through ganger turf, Colonel," said Grady.

  "Thank you, Jack. You may recall that zur Linde and I are the only ones who have ever taken a foot patrol through any part of ganger turf."

  A throat cleared.

  "We have armor, gentlemen. The gangers don't."

  "They've got good antitank weapons, Colonel. And the terrain favors them."

  Aldridge shrugged. "You can fight beside me, like men, or die here like cattle. Your choice." He walked to the door, then turned.

  "Erich, get everyone down to the motorpool. Full combat uniform. Get the armor ready to roll. Deactivate the minefields. I'll join you in fifteen minutes."

  Fort Todd's five granite bastions commanded Boston's inner harbor. Her rusting cannon had been silent over a century when John's chopper passed the weathered parapet, setting down on the island's weed-choked parade ground.

  Running from the durable stone headquarters, Heather reached the gunship as John cut the engine and jumped out, triumphantly waving the microfiche.

  "Idiot!" she shrieked, delicate high-boned cheeks red with fury. "Did you start that?" She stabbed a finger toward the distant city.

  Confused, John turned, looking to where a great column of thick, black smoke billowed out over the harbor. "Sure I did! If I hadn't hit their heliport, we wouldn't have this." He handed her the Maximus fiche.