Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

Buzzing, whining noises to either side made Laks aware that he was being filmed in high-resolution video from two different camera angles. But Pippa wasn’t even out of the bus yet. Their abrupt arrival had caught them all flat-footed. These were drones that had been sent out by the Bonking Heads to capture B-roll of their opponents. They seemed to have two streamers, flanked way out to the sides and a little behind the line, as if to emphasize their non-combatant status.

And what were these streamers seeing in the feeds in their goggles? Laks, in a motley collection of observant Sikh and granola-munching backpacker togs. Sam and Jay, looking a bit more pulled together in their football supporters’ regalia—the closest that anyone in the Fellowship had to a snazzy uniform, yet sadly down-market compared to the Bonking Heads’. Ravi came sleepily and clumsily out of the bus unlimbering his cricket bat, wearing a hideous purple sweater that his mother had knitted for him.

Still transfixed by that, Laks heard shouting, and turned to see Sam and Jay sprinting directly toward the Bonking Heads, sticks held high.

While not a good idea tactically, the frontal assault of the Englishmen did have the good effect of causing the remainder of the Fellowship to pile out of the bus as if it were on fire. The usually even-tempered Pippa was spitting nails over having been caught unprepared. She was already filming with her phone as she rattled down the bus’s stair. Once she got clear and established her bearings, she reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a video drone, and tossed it straight up into the air. It turned itself on, unfolded its rotors, and hovered in place. Bella came out of the bus pulling what looked like ski goggles down over her eyes, then stuffed her bare hands into warm pockets where it could be guessed control devices were to be found. The drone, reacting to her touch, began to dart this way and that. She got a vacant look on the portion of her face that was still visible and began to turn her head to focus on things no one else could see. Either she was having a schizophrenic break or the goggles had established a three-dimensional video link to the drone.

Laks turned around to see how Sam and Jay were getting on. They weren’t. They were just kneeling on the ground, hunched forward, rib cages heaving. They’d made it perhaps two-thirds of the distance to the Bonking Heads’ position before it had occurred to them that they had no oxygen. Stopped in the open, gasping for breath, they had become target practice for the rockers, and pretty easy targets at that.

“We must go help them!” Gopinder exclaimed, and took a step forward, but Laks reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm. “We’ll end up just like them.” He looked around and picked out his bag and Gopinder’s, lying on the ground where the bus driver had just flung them. The bus’s rear wheels spat rocks as it pulled forward and veered off. “Get your dhal . Move slow and breathe fast, bhai .”

The dhal was a traditional shield, basically identical to what in Europe would be called a buckler, about the size and shape of a dinner plate. It was a staple of gatka and so both Gopinder and Laks had cheap but rugged injection-molded ones that they used in training. They kept them carabinered to the outsides of their bags. Both men now unsnapped their dhals and gripped them in their left hands. A knuckle pad on the back, under the handle, cushioned the grip. The fingers were still free to grab a short stick as well. In his right hand each man was holding his full-length staff.

During all this fumbling around with gear Laks was painfully aware that Sam and Jay were exposed and under fire. But at some point he began to hear a strangely familiar voice shouting in Mandarin. He looked up to see Ilham walking alone and unarmed directly toward the Bonking Heads, but angling in on a different vector. A stream of verbiage was coming from the lad’s mouth, directed at the opponents, who had all turned to look at him. His voice was thready but perfectly clear in the cold thin air. As far as could be discerned from body language at this distance, the Bonking Heads were shocked at first, then indignant.

“What’s he saying?” Pippa asked Sue.

Sue could only shake her head. “Most terrible things,” she answered, “I cannot even explain.”

“Well, if his objective is to have rocks thrown at him, it is quite successful!” Ravi said.

To this point in his life Laks had never struck anyone in anger, aside from a few playground scuffles in primary school. Though the Sikhs were perceived by outsiders as a martial race, their religion laid down clear boundaries as to when it was acceptable to resort to the use of violence. Those boundaries were actually quite restrictive. You could fight back when attacked, basically, or when you needed to intervene in a situation where someone else was being victimized. All of which was a good fit with Laks’s personality. One of the only concerns he’d had during his long journey to the front was that when he finally arrived he might not have it in him to just walk right up to a Chinese counterpart and hit him with a stick. That might speak well of his basically peaceful nature, but it would render the entire journey somewhat pointless.

The hasty, and so far disastrous, attack mounted by Sam and Jay, and Ilham’s verbal assaults, were all completely useless from one point of view. But they did serve the unintended purpose of forcing Laks to take action. All his misgivings on that front had been swept away.

“Keep breathing,” Laks said to Gopinder, and he began to trudge across the flat but treacherously rock-strewn battlefield. He heard another drone get into the act and guessed that Sue was piloting this one. Pippa was bringing up the rear, filming handheld. She had lugged a motorcycle helmet all the way from Wellington and now had finally put it on. A few hundred meters behind her, the bus had pulled up to a safer remove and was awaiting the outcome. In the center, Laks was taking point, flanked on his right by Gopinder and on his left by Ravi. Ravi didn’t have a dhal, but he was having some early success using his cricket bat to smack away incoming rocks. For, having chucked a few at Ilham, the rockers were now zeroing in on what they perceived as the real threat. Ilham, having succeeded in giving Sam and Jay a few minutes’ respite, was now backing away from the front. “Earbuds!” he shouted as they came abreast of him. Then he ducked around behind them.

Keeping his dhal aloft, Laks stopped, leaned his big stick against his shoulder, and rummaged in his pocket until he’d found those. He used his thumbs—tingling from a combination of cold, adrenaline, and hyperventilation—to stuff those into his ears. Gopinder and Ravi were doing likewise.

“We will draw fire from the rockers,” Laks explained, “so that Sam and Jay can get up.” During the interlude provided by Ilham’s stream of profanity, the two Englishmen had flattened themselves against the ground to present smaller targets, but as soon as they tried to get up they’d be sitting ducks. “We’ll swing wide right around them,” Laks continued. “Ravi, get right of Gopinder.” Ravi, who had been on the left, cut behind Laks and Gopinder as instructed. “Stay wide, so you don’t accidentally hit Gopinder with your follow-through.”

They were definitely succeeding in drawing fire. Laks took a direct hit to the top of his head, but that was where the dhamala’s fabric was piled thickest, and so it bounced off harmlessly. No wonder his forefathers had used this style in combat! But it was a lesson to keep his dhal at the ready. Rocks, it turned out, were small, fast, and hard to see coming.

“Watch the throwers,” Ravi advised, batting away an incoming missile. “Not the rocks.”