John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

“Uh-huh.”

“Like the three hundred Spartans. Romantic.”

Rickenharp cawed at that. His voice trembled a bit, his eyes blinking too much, as he chortled, “Romantic. Yeah. Mostly it sucks.”

“Why—why take your stand around the arch? You mean the Arc de Triomphe, right?”

“Uh-huh.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s foolish. Corny political symbolism. Trying to rally the French behind us. The arch is one of the few places of old Paris left standing mostly intact. So it’s the symbol of the NR. It’s on the NR flag. We had a prisoner tell us the fashes are planning to use Jægernauts level the arch. ‘To try to crush what can’t be crushed,’ Steinfeld says. Meaning our spirit, I guess. Sometimes he talks that way. Makes speeches about dying meaningfully and… all that. We make fun of the way he talks but—” He broke off, embarrassed.

He never had to explain Jægernauts to her. Except to say, later, “They were built by a Second Alliance armor subsidiary, a German firm run by a guy named Jæger.” He didn’t have to explain because when they came up out of the metro station at Clichy, they heard the world-filling roar of a Jægernaut. Saw it a few minutes later when they were jogging along the sidewalk, a few blocks from the new safe-house.

Rickenharp and Hard-Eyes looked at one another. And started to run.

But it seemed to Claire that they ran the wrong way:

They ran into the cloud of dust that surrounded the Jægernaut, Hard-Eyes shouting for her and her companions to wait where they were.

The ground shook and the air itself shook, with the noise of the killing machine, the THUNK-rumble-THUNK-rumble. The crashes, the squeal of snapping metal, crystallized steel grinding stones into dust… They saw it up ahead, lit up along its axis; yellow and red lights that made the dust cloud glow…

The Jægernaut loomed above them, a five-story double swastika of plasteel, wearing the dust cloud like its cloak of power.

Hard-Eyes squinted up at it, his eyes burning, lungs wracked with the smoke billowing from the rubbled gap where the building had been: the building that had housed their headquarters.

The Jægernaut finished it work. It hadn’t spotted Hard-Eyes and his companions. Plowing through massive buildings as a tank would plow through a fiberboard house, it crashed away from them; bricks rained to either side of it like spray at the prow of a boat. It used tight microwave beams to soften up the stone and iron as it shouldered through…

The whole machine was a giant wheel without a rim. Like two rimless wagon wheels with eight-jointed spokes on each side. Hydroplas “muscles” kept it churning, digging, gouging, plowing through, looking to some like a Rototiller—but fifty yards high. At the axis, between the two sets of gouging spokes, was the nuclear power source, and you’d be sorry if you blew that part up. Each spoke was four yards thick. The power source remained stationary; the axis turned around it. The Jægernaut was terrifying to behold, even before it began to move. It was the ideal instrument of state terrorism. A half-dozen could level a city in under a month. And they were a bitch to bring down.

Rickenharp and Hard-Eyes forced themselves to clamber over the remaining crust of wall, coughing through the smoke and dust. They felt the thrum of the departing Jægernaut, heard its monumental clanking, the shudderings so heavy in the air it was like moving through another medium, a kind of shock-wave liquid…

Then they climbed down into the smoking socket where the New Resistance HQ had been.

A small fire burned in someone’s leather jacket, where a chemheater had been smashed. The fire-flutter was the only motion—the smoke rising in wisps like the departing wraiths of the dead. Here and there were hanks of skin, hair, shredded fatigues. A bloodied yet bloodless hand thrust like a claw from one of the mounds of rubble. Bloodied black bandannas now mingled indistinguishably with the flesh and brains of the wearer.

The Jægernaut had gone over the place more than once.

Hard-Eyes felt a jolt as he found what was left of Jenkins. His heart turned to slag inside him.

“They’re all dead,” Rickenharp said shakily, sounding like a lost child.

Hard-Eyes shook his head. “No—they… maybe some got away…” It was a dream. He tried to imagine how it had been real. “The sentries… the fashes send commandos to kill the sentries. Then they bring the Jægernaut in on quiet trucks. Auto-assemble the parts maybe a block away. Activate it, it unfolds itself—it’s pretty compact when it’s folded up… And it comes down on them before they know what’s happening…”

Rickenharp said, in a voice kept carefully flat, “It makes a lot of noise coming. Even if it was close—must have been some of them got out of the building. Must have been.”

They looked around a little more. Found nothing alive; found pieces of their friends.

The sound of the Jægernaut was receding now. It was like an iron foundry walking away.

Another sound came. A humming, grinding of gears. Jeeps. Trucks.

“Fashes coming to check it out, man, Harpie,” Hard-Eyes said.

Rickenharp just stared around him, mouth slack, eyes smoldering with growing rage—a hair-trigger rage. Very carefully, Hard-Eyes laid a hand on Rickenharp’s arm. Rickenharp whirled and pointed the shotgun at him, squeezed the trigger, snarling.

The safety was on. Hard-Eyes swallowed to force his heart down out of his throat and said, “It’s me, Harpie. Jesus fuck.”

“Sorry. I…”

“You gotta get off that blue mesc shit.”

“It’s not that…” Rickenharp’s eyes overflowed. Tears streaked the grime on his cheeks. “They’re…”

“I know. I’m telling you man, had to be some of ’em got away. Hey, the fashes are coming. We can kill some of ’em if we—if we get to high ground. Okay?” Rickenharp let Hard-Eyes take his arm and steer him out of the ruins. The noise of trucks got louder. Hard-Eyes saw a light stab through the smoke, seeking. “Shit, where’s—”

Then Claire and Bonham and Kurland ran up, coughing in the smoke. “There’s soldiers,” Bonham said, gasping. “Are they—”

“They’re SA,” Hard-Eyes said. “Come on.” He led them down the street, away from the sound of the approaching men. Out of the thick of the cloud, down one of the twisting, twenty-foot-wide side streets.

They paused here to catch their breath. “Shit, I’m exhausted.” Claire said.

Hard-Eyes looked down the alley, saw a man silhouetted at the other end. Carrying a gun. Hard-Eyes raised his assault rifle. But the man waved and spread his arms, gun out to the side, offering his chest as a target. Surrendering. Walking nearer.

Then Rickenharp said, “All ri-ight! ”

It was Yukio, in khakis and black bandanna. Over his shoulder was a rifle fitted with an M83.

He walked up, his face blank, lowering his arms. Hard-Eyes put a hand on Yukio’s shoulder. The Japanese was rigid with grief. “There are two others who made it,” he said hoarsely. “But the rest in the HQ are dead. This is the second family I’ve lost to them.”

“Who made it?” Rickenharp asked.

“Willow and Carmen. They went out to find… privacy. We were having a party. This is why—we drank too much. Or we would have heard it coming. Steinfeld gave us the last case of wine.” He smiled weakly. “You missed the party.”

“Party?” Rickenharp’s tone was pure incredulity. “What the fuck?”

“For Steinfeld. Ten minutes after you go out, a call comes through: the Israelis captured an SA jumpjet. Room for two passengers. They sent it through for Steinfeld and Dr. Levassier. Steinfeld goes to direct the assault to get us out. It will fail.” He shrugged. “Steinfeld is out, though. He is safe, for now. He can go on. It hurt him to go. I saw it. But he knows where his work is. He went.”