Orson Card - Empire

A couple of guardsmen started running down toward the blown-up mechs.

“Don’t go near them!” shouted Reuben. “They might be booby-trapped! You’ll get blown to hell!”

The guardsmen stopped. Again, good discipline.

Reuben and Cole made their way down to the one that hadn’t blown up. They played the same routine with the back panel. Only they didn’t pry the lid off after blowing the keypad and shooting the button.

The hatch came off by itself.

A man’s head emerged. He saw the situation—Cole and Reuben with their weapons pointed at him—and ducked back inside.

“Come out and surrender!” demanded Reuben.

He was answered by a single gunshot inside the mech.

“Shit,” said Cole.

Reuben ran for the hatch. The man inside had put a pistol in his mouth and fired. But there was less mess than Reuben would have expected. “I think he missed,” he said. “Help me get him out.”

It was awkward, but finally they each got an arm and pulled him through the hatch. He had shot into his mouth but the barrel had been pointing the wrong way. The bullet had apparently gone up through the roof of his mouth and through his left eye. There was a furrow in the forehead and the skull was open, showing brain. But the guy wasn’t dead, even though he was definitely unconscious and his left eye was destroyed, along with his palate and cheekbone.

They dragged him up toward the waiting guardsmen. “Medic?” Reuben asked.

“Ambulance on its way,” said the captain. “I called for it when we set out for the tunnel.”

“Good man,” said Reuben. “Major Reuben Malich,” he said. “The guy with me is—”

“Hell, I know who you are, I own a TV. My name is Charlie O’Brien. I’m honored to meet you.”

Two things happened while they waited for the tanks to arrive. First, a couple of jets approached Manhattan from the south, flying low. The guardsmen started cheering, but when the jets got close to the Statue of Liberty, the pilots lost control of their aircraft. The jets veered off. One of them hit the water flat on its cockpit; the other smashed through Liberty’s gown and then dropped like a rock into the water.

Tell them not to send any more jets,” Reuben said to the captain.

“What did that?” said the captain. “I didn’t see an explosion or thing.”

“A death ray,” said Reuben. “Or avian flu,” said Reuben impatiently. But the captain wanted a straight answer. “My guess is, a highly focused electromagnetic pulse. F-16s are shielded, but if you can get past it and screw up the electronics, they can’t fly. Get on your damn radio and tell them no more jets.”

The second thing was, Captain Charlie O’Brien heard something over the radio and turned to Reuben. “I’m supposed to put you guys under arrest.”

Reuben looked at him sternly. “That’s politics, Charlie. You saw me come out of that tunnel. You saw me and Cole bring along a bunch of New York City cops. We took down four mechs together and you saw me pop the hatch and pull out that poor bastard. I will debrief to you and you can pass that information along. But whoever wants me under arrest is part of the same group that killed the President and Vice President.”

“Who?” said Charlie. “Who’s doing this?”

“They’re Americans,” said Reuben. “And anybody could be on their side, working inside the government, against the Constitution.

“They aren’t terrorists?”

’’Definitely not,” said Cole, who was with them now. “They’re the opposite. They were killing all uniforms, but leaving civilians alone wherever possible. Warning them to stay off the streets. These guys mean to occupy and govern New York, not terrorize it and run away.”

“Are we under arrest?” asked Reuben.

“Hell no,” said Charlie. “But they said they were sending choppers to pick you up. So take my car—it’s a Ford Escort back up the road, just press the remote and see which lights come on.” He handed Reuben the keys.

“You’re going to be in deep shit about this,” said Reuben. “I can’t take your car.”

“Take it and I’ll make them eat their shit,” said Charlie. “We were down there with infantry before those cops started coming up the tunnel. I know which side you’re on.”

“I don’t even know what the sides are yet,” said Reuben. “This could be a right-wing militia group that picked New York to punish the capital of pansy left-wing weenies. Or it could be a left-wing militia that went for New York because they think they’ve already got the hearts and minds of the citizens.”

“Whoever they are,” said Cole, “they’ve got a really cool weapons designer and they’re willing to blow their own brains out rather than be captured.”

“Get to my car and go,” said Charlie. “I didn’t get the message till you were already gone.”

Reuben stayed off the toll roads on the way back to Aunt Margaret’s house. Too easy to stop traffic for an ID check. Besides, they’d be transporting troops northward. The toll road would be blocked up for miles.

“It probably isn’t right to take Charlie O’Brien’s car all the way to West Windsor,” said Cole. “But I don’t see us riding a bus back, either.”

“It’s wartime,” said Reuben. “We’ll mail him the keys and tell him where to pick up his car.”

“I keep running my head into a brick wall here,” said Cole. “How could weapons like this be developed without any intelligence service knowing about it?”

“Easier than you think,” said Reuben. “Defense Intelligence is mostly looking abroad for weapons development and manufacture. If they have a key guy in the FBI who knows what not to pass upward to his superiors, or who can steer agents away from the right direction, you could probably do it in some out of the way place in this country.”

“They had to transport those mechs to New York.”

“On trucks painted with the ABF logo so nobody looks twice at them.”

“There are inspection stations.”

“It’s all about money and true believers,” said Reuben. “Most of the people in the know are true believers in the cause. They don’t talk. And those who aren’t true believers are paid a lot of money, and they don’t know much anyway.”

Cole pushed seek on the radio to find a broadcast station running news.

They were all running the news. But it was still scattered. Some kind of disturbance in New York. Two downed jets. Firing reported. All landlines and cellphones silent. Rumors of aliens, of military convoys heading north through New Jersey, warships sailing toward New York, Marines getting ready to land, National Guard troops called out in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

And, oh yes, preparations for the funerals of those who died on Friday the Thirteenth.

“Great. That’s how they’re going to refer to the assassination of those good men,” said Reuben. “Friday the Thirteenth. As if their deaths were simply a stroke of bad luck.”

“This is what you were doing, isn’t it,” said Cole. “Working with weapons sales and development. You know how weapons systems are hidden and how they’re found.”

“I think I was their patsy all along,” said Reuben. “I’ve been going over shipments and contracts. I was tracking some, I was carrying out others. Bidding, buying, selling, passing money to third parties to pass along to fourth parties. They told me I was fighting terrorism, helping penetrate organizations. But I think I may have shipped some of this stuff to the staging areas.”