John Barnes - The Last President

As recently as last May, they had hoped to cobble together something out of existing nuclear gear and rocket engines at sea, and Christiansted and the other observatories had been working to locate the moon gun to within a kilometer, which they were estimating would be the necessary accuracy since they were only getting one shot.

But nanospawn and biotes had beaten them to the punch; the last, crumbling nuclear carrier had barely made it home to ground on a Georgia beach two months ago, its inventory of rocket and jet fuel already turning to slimy, stinking soap and its computers and communications gear turning to crumbly white powder. Nothing remained of the old Navy and Air Force; probably nothing on Earth now could get as high as 20,000 feet above the ground, let alone to the moon.

Highbotham drummed her fingers. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense for us to bother about them. Not the issue. The Temper government at Athens’s first exploration mission to Europe was going by sailing ship , for the love of god, barely a step up from Provi explorers and scientists who went out from Puget Sound as paying passengers on coffee clippers. Pueblo’s “aerial reconnaissance” was almost entirely mailplane pilots’ handwritten notes and maps.

Heather’s RRC in Pueblo just archived Highbotham’s reports; nothing they can do. Right now we’d have a hard time attacking the moon gun if it was in Vermont.

But no one had told Highbotham’s team to stop, and they needed something to do besides feeding and educating the Academy kids, so for now, they carried on.

But that was what was normal, now. The new normal , they’d have called it when she was a young commander on an old destroyer. The tech of 1850 or 1900 is the new normal.

But normal was the wrong place to look for an answer.

This particular moon gun shot was utterly abnormal .

Since May, the moon gun had fired only when it was in bright sunlight; yet tonight, the moon was waning gibbous, so Fecunditatis was in full darkness, and all the observers had a good fix on the flash. And why fire at all? Till now the moon gun had always targeted large, fixed radio stations, but there were none of those left.

Yet something was wrong. She was sure of it. Was the clue on Earth, or on the moon?

Shit.

The moon was slightly south of bang overhead. High tide here comes about three hours after lunar transit, so the tide’s about half run in. Highbotham’s last few commands before retirement had been in the perpetual overseas wars of the 20-teens, in small surface warships. She had planned dozens of raids, invasions, and landings, both in staff college and for real, and sea raids come in with the tide and go out with it. And that gigantic tribal raid that destroyed the West Texas Research Center used the moon gun as a diversion.

“Raiders,” she said. Her observer team turned and stared at her. “Raiders have probably already landed somewhere on the island.”

Not questioning, not panicking, they moved faster than Highbotham could rattle off reminders. “Henry, Peggy, blinker to the regular watchtowers and Christiansted militia. Signal Cuppa Joe too—Fanchion’s ships travel well-armed and they’ll give us a hand. Richard, Abby—”

“Kids,” Abby said.

“Right. Keep them quiet. Little ones to shelters along with the books—”

“Big ones to battle stations. On our way, Captain.” Richard bolted like a bull with bees on its butt; Abby ran after him, hair and long skirts streaming.

“Gilead—”

“—charts and plots into the safe,” he said, not looking up from his quick folding and stacking.

Henry yanked up and slammed down with the whole force of his scrawny body on the long lever linked to a line of modified tire pumps, making a deafening clatter. Air and methane flowed; Peggy lit the torch and adjusted it to play on the stick of calcite, then closed the door on the steel drum. The limelight blazed to life. Peggy chopped the light on and off with the slatted wooden blind covering the open end. The wooden pieces rattled and thumped despite all the lard lubricating them, adding to the din of Henry’s gasping and pumping and the fierce deep hiss of gas on calcite. Peggy swung the blinker to signal Christiansted, then the watchtower chains east and south of them, and—

“ Cuppa Joe is already signaling,” Peggy said. “They must have read our blinker to Christiansted. They’re weighing anchor and moving out for sea room, requesting any info we have on the raiders’ position. Answering with—”

A blinker flashed far down the eastern shore. Henry said, “Chenay Bay reports all quiet, they’ve relayed to Prune Bay and are waiting for—”

The flashing dot went out; a huge orange flame leapt up. Chenay Bay watchtower must have had just time to throw a signaling lantern against the pre-laid warning fire.

Highbotham held her voice low and even. “Peggy, is Murcheson on line now?”

“They just said so.”

“Good. Message: RAIDERS AT CHENAY BAY, TOWER DOWN, EXPECTING ATTACK HERE. Same to the south tower chain. Same to Cuppa Joe but add: RAIDERS PROBABLY LANDED COAKLEY BAY. Make sure you include ‘probably.’”

“Sure.” She began flashing, not pausing as she asked, “Why Coakley?”

“That’s all low ground, the road’s close to the sea, and if they surprised the Coakley watchtower, they would have had good cover to surprise every station before Chenay. It’s what I’d’ve done. We were just lucky that Chenay is higher up and better defended.” Was, she thought.

Cuppa Joe ’s mainsail was unfurling; lights flickered all over Christiansted and blinkers flashed from the towers on the hills to the south. Highbotham could see motion in the streets—militia running to their posts, everyone else to cover.

It was more noise than Highbotham had heard in many nights. Peggy’s hands worked the clattering, banging wooden slats with crisp precision. Henry’s furious pumping added gasps, thuds, rattles, and slurps. Across the harbor, church bells rang and snare drums beat “To Quarters.”

But above all the uproar, they heard the distant chant on the wind:

Abby said, “The Academy’s Company is all present, armed, and ready, Captain.”

Highbotham turned around and sternly ordered herself not to smile at the raggedness of the CAM kids’ fighting clothes; what mattered was the people inside them, after all. Months of drill had paid off; some kids looked afraid, but none looked panicked, and they held their spears, leaf-spring crossbows, and plumbing-pipe muskets with confident competence.

“All right then,” she said. “You are going to shoot, or load and clean, or run and carry, whatever your job is, just like in drills. If the enemy penetrate the compound, use your knife, hatchet, or spear. Don’t hesitate, hit hard, and keep hitting till they stop moving. Let’s go.”

That, she thought, has to be the lamest pre-battle speech ever.

Henry, Gilead, and three of the older kids led their squads down the gentle slope of the promontory to their assigned firing pits, on a low rise overlooking the six-foot stone fence across the small peninsula. During countless hours building the fence over the summer, the children had covered its outer surface with broken-off bottles, steak knife blades whose plastic handles had dissolved, and scraps of old barbed wire, and systematically cleared everything out of the fifty yards between the pits and the fence. If it worked as intended, the fence would force the attackers to come over it slowly enough for the firing pits to butcher them.