Stephen Berry - The Battle for Terra Two

"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."

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 sat 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."

"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.