Stephen Baxter: Project Hades

Grady said, “But they aren’t trying to run or hide. Not one of them.”

Thelma said, “Stern stuff, Sergeant.”

“And—my God. They’re singing!”

Phillips said, “That’s ‘Abide with Me,’ if I’m not mistaken.”

Thelma grabbed Phillips’s arm. “Captain. These people are doing their part. Grasp the opportunity.”

Phillips hesitated. “Damn it! Give me that loudhailer, Grady.” He raised it to his lips. “This is Captain Phillips. Soldiers of Aldmoor. Look—you are a long way from home. I understand you are doing your duty. But your base commander is committing a horrific crime. Now is the time for a higher judgement. If you keep firing you will gun down civilians who have come to smother your bullets with their lives. I urge you to surrender.” He lowered the hailer and waited.

His reply came from a distant tannoy. “Cease fire! This is Captain Greengage, acting base commander. Cease fire!”

Thelma grinned. “Hope did it!”

“Yes,” Phillips said grimly. “But how many fell? Right. Grady, take a squad, get through the fence and cut the power to that control room. Move!”

“Yes, sir!”

Jones said, “Hear that singing, Godwin? I rather think things are starting to unravel, don’t you?”

The light died, and the hum of the air circulation system faded away.

“And there goes the power. It’s all over, Commodore.”

“Not if I can get my hands around your neck.” Jones heard him lumbering in the dark.

Jones ducked behind a console. “More rage, Godwin? Well, you’ll have to find me first—”

There was a small explosion and a metallic creak as the door was blown in. Torchlight probed into the room.

“Jones? Commodore? Are you in here?”

Jones yelled, “Keep out of the light, Captain Bob. He’s armed!”

Buck Grady called, “I’m on him.” There was a crash of bodies and a gunshot. “No, you don’t. That’s enough killing for one night—” Jones heard a struggle and a single meaty punch. “Situation secured, Captain.”

Jones stood up. “Phew! About time, if I may say so!”

Phillips shone a light in his face. “Sorry about that.”

Thelma clambered through the smashed door. “Jones?”

Jones ran to her. “Thelma! Oh, Thelma! Are you all right?”

“Dirty, scared, lacking sleep—”

“You managed to retrieve the data I asked for?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s get cracking. Come on—”

“Jones. Jones! Calm down. Just for a minute. Get your breath. And let me look at that hand. You’ve cut it somehow.”

“I—oh, all right.”

Buck said, “First aid kit here, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” She opened the kit and, by torchlight, began to cut a bandage strip. “It seems you intend to speak to the Magmoids.”

“Well, I can try. But the Magmoids may not listen.”

“Why not?”

“They aren’t our sort of life, Thelma. A hundred different disasters could play out on Earth’s surface, it could even be made lifeless, and the Magmoids wouldn’t even notice. They are immune to history.”

“All you can do is try.”

“You know, the madman in here kept quoting Shakespeare at me. Called me Caliban!”

“Caliban? Well, you’ve got the face for it.”

“Oh, thanks very much.”

“How does that lovely speech of poor Caliban’s go—after he dreams—‘And then, in dreaming, the clouds, methought, would open—’ ”

“ ‘And show riches ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.’ ”

“ ‘This will be a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music for nothing—’ ”

“ ‘When Prospero is destroyed.’ Come on, Thelma, we’ve got work to do.”

Phillips called the group to his command tent, outside the base gate. Jones, deeply weary, sat in a canvas chair, drinking tea and sucking in fresh air. Thelma was here, and Clare Baines with Hope Stubbins in her barrow.

“So,” Phillips began, “Sergeant Grady, we’ve got the base locked down at last.”

Buck said, “Yes, sir. But, Captain, we’ve now got a few hundred GIs expecting to be put into custody, and a few thousand civilians milling about the place—”

Clare Baines put in, “And some civilians down, Captain Phillips. Shot.”

Phillips said, “Yes, yes. Look here, Grady, you sort that lot out. Take Constable Baines. No doubt you’ll find a way. And take this old lady in the wheelbarrow with you.”

Hope said, “Old? Do you mind?”

Thelma stood up. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Stubbins, I’ll look after you.” She glanced back at Jones, who nodded. With Clare pushing Hope, they hurried out.

Tremayne bustled into the tent with Winston. “Captain Phillips! Where’s Doctor Jones? We’ve got the data analysis he wanted.”

Jones stood up. “I’m right here, gentlemen, fit and raring to go. These your results, are they?” Winston handed him a sheaf of paper, and he riffled through it. “You’ve done some jolly fine work here in the circumstances.”

“An awful lot of it was down to young Winston.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Winston said, “What are you going to do with all this, Doctor Jones?”

“Save the world. I hope! Captain Bob, have you any sappers handy?”

“We’ve a unit on detachment from the Royal Engineers. Why?”

“I’m going to want them to plant a network.”

“A network? Of what?”

“Of explosives, Captain Bob. Mines. Shells. Grenades will do if you can wire them up. Anything that can be set off remotely. A thousand should do it.”

“A thousand? We don’t have an infinite resource, Jones.”

Tremayne said, “Jones—what kind of network?”

“Now, that’s where you come in. Do you have a sketch pad? And, Tremayne—how’s your soldering?”

In an improvised medical centre, Clare and Thelma sat beside Hope in her barrow, which was now lined with army-issue pillows. They had worked for half an hour, trying to figure out the problems they had to deal with and the resources they could muster.

Buck marched in, competent and energetic as ever. “So what have we got?”

Clare looked down a list. “Well, we’ve got about thirty dead, fifty injured.”

Hope said, “The wounded need doctors. And everybody else needs to be took somewhere safe.”

“I’ve also got a division of GIs waiting to be clapped in irons.”

Thelma said, “Are there any medics among them?”

“Of course there are.”

Thelma said, “I think the solution’s staring us in the face, for the short term at least. Look, those soldiers were only doing their duty as they saw it. So let them atone. Have them help.”

Clare seized on that. “Yes. Buck, if you can point me to a senior medic—”

“All right. Makes sense. There’s plenty more work to do. We’re going to want stretcher parties. And to set up some kind of emergency field hospital. Then there’s water and food—”

Hope said, “And if you can pick out some hunky GI to push me wheelbarrow for me I’ll be forever in your debt.”

“So we’ve got a plan. Let’s get on with it.”

Jones selected a reasonably level, reasonably bare patch of land outside the base for his “signalling station.” He had Phillips assemble a hundred troops at the centre, each of them carrying rolls of wire and baskets of small ordinances and hastily copied sketch maps. Most of them looked bewildered, Jones thought, and well they might.

Tremayne stood with Jones, shivering a little in the dawn chill, and scratching his bare head.

Phillips came up to them. “Ready, Doctor Jones?”

Tremayne said, “I wish we could test this.”

Jones said, “No time for that. But it will all be over soon, one way or another. Go for it, Captain Bob!”