Kevin Anderson - Ill Wind

Spencer sat up, ignoring the satellite calculations. “Romero’s back! What’s the report?”

“Gilbert is badly injured—both his legs, I think. One tech is dead, and the railgun ist kaput . Arnie stayed behind to watch everything, but if Bayclock sent some point men up, he doesn’t have much chance to hold them off by himself.”

“Great,” Spencer said. He wanted to pound on something. “Now what do we do?”

Rita wiped her forehead. “Bobby’s going up in the balloon again at first light to get a good look. He thinks Bayclock will probably hold off attacking for another day. So far we’ve zapped him with one salvo from the railgun and tossed a bunch of grenades into his camp—he thought we were a bunch of unarmed wimps, but now he’s not going to take any chances. I say we keep giving the general a healthy respect for our abilities.” She glanced at Heather, then at Spencer, and raised an eyebrow. A grin slowly grew on her face.

Spencer stood, more to dismiss any comment from Rita than anything else. “Okay, let’s hit them with the catapult first thing in the morning. After that, we call in the townspeople.”

Exhausted, sore, and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, Juan Romero stood next to his gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight catapult operators. Morning light spilled over the gypsum plains in a whiter shade of pale; the shadows of the mountains retreated across the white sands.

Below, Bayclock’s army began forming up and making ready to relocate. Romero’s people took longer than expected to move to the highlands where the hidden catapult waited to hurl projectiles. From what they could tell, the single shot with Gilbert Hertoya’s railgun had dealt a shocking and devastating psychological blow—but Romero had little hope that his shorter-range medieval weapon would do the same.

Lieutenant Bobby Carron had built a fire in the metal gondola of his bright survey balloon and rose aloft on the tether cable, sending telegraphed messages back to another listener in the blockhouse at the antenna farm. Romero wished he could be down there instead of up here, watching his team make all the mistakes he expected of them.

The old retirees argued with each other about who would turn the crank, who would aim the shot, who would release the hook. Then they started arguing about which of the barrels of scrap metal would make the best first load.

Bayclock’s army began to spread out, breaking camp and marching in several prongs—one headed toward the burned-out railgun facility, another toward the microwave farm. A small group of riders mounted up, ready for a charge. A large part of the troops remained in camp, preparing a second-wave assault.

“Come on, people!” Romero shouted. “If we don’t use the catapult soon, we’ll lose the most concentrated target.”

“We’re just about ready!” one of the old men snapped.

“We won’t hit anything, so it doesn’t really matter,” someone else grumbled.

“Now there’s optimism!” an old woman scolded. “One more word like that and you’ll be in the bucket for the first shot! Now give me that range finder!”

Finally, they cranked down the arm and cocked the weapon. It took three people to work the pulley and hoist the barrel of rusty scrap iron into the cradle. Fully loaded, the catapult seemed to vibrate with tension, ready to spring.

Romero took the trigger cord himself. In his mind flashed a ridiculous scene from a Road Runner cartoon, when Wile E. Coyote had used a similar catapult against the brainless bird—no matter where he stood, the seige machine somehow managed to dump its boulder on top of him.

Romero held his breath and yanked the wire.

The catapult smashed forward with the sound of an explosion, slamming against the front barricade and hurling its payload in an arc toward the encampment.

Oblivious below, Bayclock’s assault team followed some sort of signal and trotted out on horseback, bringing rifles to bear. They rode toward the base installation where Bobby’s balloon was tethered. The bastards were going to shoot down the balloon!

On the far side of the camp, the great mass of loose metal crashed into the ground, splattering outward. Through a spyglass, Romero could see that the catapult shot had taken out two small tents and a supply wagon, belching a cloud of dust and sand into the air. People scrambled around like stirred-up hornets.

“Good shot!” Romero cried. “Let’s try to step up the ranging just a bit and hit them in the center of camp. We’ve got only a couple more shots. Once they figure out where we are, they’ll come after us, and we’ll have to abandon ship.”

As the gang that couldn’t shoot straight worked at cranking down the catapult again—this time with much more enthusiasm and cooperation—Romero heard a volley of sharp, distant rifle shots. The group of riders approached the observation balloon and fired repeatedly at the gondola, the balloon itself, and the tether cable. The tiny form of Bobby Carron ducked down to the protection of the flat aluminum gondola.

“Ready!” one of the old men shouted. “Look out, Mr. Romero!”

The catapult slammed forward again, sending another payload of iron pieces toward the scrambling expedition force, but this time the debris pummeled the desert a hundred feet short of camp.

Below, General Bayclock’s soldiers began to figure out where the catapult shots were originating.

Bobby’s balloon had obviously been hit by dozens of direct shots and began to drift wildly on its tether rope. The hand-sewn seams of the parachute material, never meant to take such stress, began to split apart. The colorful sack sagged as it deflated. After another round of rifle shots, one of the marksmen was either extremely skilled or extremely lucky. The tether rope snapped, and the balloon began to move.

The third catapult shot also missed. A group of Bayclock’s soldiers pointed toward Romero’s position and spread out into the foothills toward the location of the medieval weapon.

“Here they come. We’ve got to get to safety!” Romero shouted. “Time to retreat!”

As they fled into the tangled foothills, he looked down at the great basin to see Bobby Carron’s balloon drifting free and falling toward the ground as the general’s men each dropped to one knee and fired their rifles.

Spencer hunched over the tangled circuit board, breathing on it, fanning it with a sheaf of papers, and trying to use his own panic to speed the calculations. Some of the soldered connections had begun smoking, and the batteries were nearly drained. “Come on!” he muttered.

Heather stood behind him and rubbed his shoulders, but she said nothing. It had taken several hours longer than he had expected, and now morning light shone into the blockhouse. Bayclock’s troops were already on the move.

He and Heather had needed to recompile half an hour’s worth of work when Spencer discovered a sign error he had made with his pencil-and-paper calculations. The bandaged circuit board seemed to be struggling to hold on just long enough to complete the binary instructions before it overheated and dumped everything.

“It’ll work,” Heather whispered. “It will.”

As if to spite her, the home-made circuit board showered sparks in a massive breakdown. Smoke billowed from a dozen different connections.

Spencer tried to think of a way to douse the fire, but it made no difference. All the calculations were already lost into the ether. The cathode-ray tube displaying the trudging progress of the calculations went dark.

Spencer slumped in his chair and refused to scream. They had already uplinked the instructions to increase the transmitted microwave power by a factor of four; but without the targeting information, the extra radiation would fall uselessly on the microwave antenna farm again, not on Bayclock’s new position. Spencer could never get the circuit board up and running again in less than two days.