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Repeth fell silent as they approached the end of the drainpipe. I guess a Master Sergeant isn’t good enough to know the top secrets. Then she laughed silently at herself. I turned down the commission. I’m already having it both ways, keeping my three-up, three-down and commanding a platoon both. Stop whining, Jill.
They moved slowly and carefully into the dark old town area. The moon had gone down and the shadows were deep, pitch-black in places. Off in the distance she could hear engine noise and see artificial light, and they made sure to keep obstacles between themselves and the source.
A few buildings seemed lit by primitive sources, lanterns or candles, but most were dark. Once a dog rushed out of the blackness barking and Repeth’s weapon coughed. She hoped the Needleshock had spared it but she could hardly let a dog’s life weigh in the balance against all of their people.
From the edge of the lighted zone she could see a cluster of buildings illuminated by large industrial lights. One section was surrounded by a ragged cyclone and barbed wire fence, with concertina wire crudely fastened to the top. They could see a couple of bored-looking guards with rifles, obviously there to keep prisoners in, not rescuers out.
The other section had no fence around it, but lights blazed from every window. One building sported garish neon signs. It appeared to be a bar or club. Other buildings seemed to house governmental functions. The Confederate battle flag flew above or adorned the walls of these buildings. People filled the club, spilled outside. Celebrating their victory, it seemed.
Repeth put her mouth close to Muzik’s ear. “We need to take out the lights. Or the generators. Then you can pop them with your night scope while I move in close.”
“That’s it? That’s your plan?”
If his tone hadn’t been light she would have taken it for incredulity. “I’m going to try to find the women. They might be in that club building.”
“No. I sympathize, but that’s bad tactics. You take out the generators, then I’ll tap the guards in my night scope. While I do, you steal a truck and crash through that fencing. We have to rely on Grusky to have the prisoners ready to overpower the guards, and we have to help them. Then instead of two people we’ll have hundreds. Someone will know where the rest of our people are – the women, Rick, whoever. If we have a little luck we’ll clean out this nest in one fell swoop.”
Repeth’s protest died in her throat, because he was right. “Okay. One fell swoop it is. What does that mean, anyway? Never mind, tell me later mister college smarty-pants officer. Here, take the radio.” She clipped it onto his shoulder strap.
Muzik choked a chuckle. “Okay. I’ll call in the diversion in one minute. Get moving, Little Miss Reaper.” He set himself in position with a clear view of the whole south side of the prisoner barracks, cover from the sides, and a fallback route to his rear. Then he made the radio call and waited for the lights to go out.
Repeth circled around to the west, keeping to the zone outside the artificial lighting, not looking at the bright lights. She navigated by the sound of the big diesel engines running, eventually finding the generators in a fenced-in yard to the north. Unfortunately they were accompanied by two light armored vehicles just like the ones that had assaulted them earlier. In fact, they could be the same ones, though there was no way to tell.
Absent explosives – something she did not have – she would have to sneak into the yard and shut the generators down by hand. Gonna be hard – everything is lit up. There’s a catch-22 for ya – generator power to the lights that illuminate the generators. Then she thought of another possibility as she noticed the open rear door on one of the LAVs.
Sloppy.
Working her way around, eventually she was able to see directly into the cramped interior compartment of the vehicle. There were several uniformed troops in it, but they weren’t moving.
In fact, they were asleep.
Really sloppy, and just what I need.
Without waiting to think it through or talk herself out of it, she silently charged the open hatch, PW10 tight to her shoulder as she made her rapid approach under the bright lights. No one responded until her boots hit the ramp. Then she fired short bursts on full automatic until everyone inside was incapacitated.
She was fairly sure that the confines of the vehicle and the noisy generators would cover the faint sounds of the suppressed shots. She tossed the infantrymen out of the back with several convulsive heaves, but kept their weapons inside.
Dragging the unconscious turret gunner out of his position and down the ramp to join his buddies, then the driver, she started up the LAV’s engine. She frantically tried to recall everything she’d learned about how to operate one of these things. She managed to get the ramp closed, its electric whine filling the inside, then she spent a precious two minutes working out how to drive it. Once she was sure how, she crawled back into the turret space.
One more minute and she was ready to try out the 25mm electric chain gun. “Here goes nothing,” she said out loud and rotated the turret to aim at the other LAV. She lined up the gun very precisely, using its optics to place the crosshairs on the lower outer edge of the enemy turret, where it met the body of the vehicle. Then she depressed the trigger.
Vibration rattled her bones as the electric motor screamed, driving the mechanism that rotated shells through the gun breech. Explosive sound pummeled her as the 25-millimeter rounds fired and then impacted her target at less than fifty yards, point-blank for such a weapon.
Her guts twisted as she saw the deadly effect of her gun on the other vehicle. She had tried to fire at a place that would disable and lock up the enemy turret without necessarily killing the people inside, but the LAV rocked and then exploded. One of the rounds must have ricocheted inside and set off ammo or fuel.
This is war, she reminded herself with gritted teeth, and they have Rick and the others. She rotated her turret, walking the heavy bullets across the generators. A moment later they caught fire and ground to scattered halts with horrible, tortured-machinery noises. Abruptly the compound plunged into darkness as much of Fredericksburg lost power.
Glowing dashboard lights were now the only illumination, but that was all she needed to drop into the driver’s seat and pilot the vehicle forward, her head out the small front hatch. She crushed a car and ran over some garbage cans before she got the hang of it. She could see people running frantically hither and thither but none of them fired at her vehicle. They had no reason to think it was hostile.
Thirty seconds was all it took until the makeshift prison compound was in sight. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of figures poured out of the barracks and rushed toward the fence. Shots rang out and she screamed in frustration as she could see the startled guards indiscriminately gunning people down. She swerved to hit and crush one, reminding herself of the lives she saved by doing so. “Get back from the fence!” she hollered over the noise of the engine and the shooting, and turned toward the barrier.
Some prisoners saw what she was doing and dragged others back, but there were too many to just bull through. She’d end up crushing them. Instead, at the last second she swerved to strike the fence at an oblique, tearing it loose from its steel poles and then driving down it lengthwise as she gunned the engine. The eight wheels and powerful power plant of the twenty-ton vehicle dragged post after post out of the earth, but eventually enough debris piled up in front that she ground to a halt. By that time she had ripped almost the entire west fence down. Prisoners escaped in a wave behind her.
Someone pounded on the hull, but she couldn’t see who. Then Butler materialized next to her driver’s vision hatch. “Hey, Sarge,” he greeted her, giddy with his release. “Great job! Need any help in there?”
“Yeah, I’ll drop the ramp, then I’ll pull it right up. We need fighters, not passengers,” she replied. “If you can get a few of our people in there we can use the 25-mike and the gun ports.” She reached for the ramp control.
Thirty seconds later she started backing up as the ramp was still rising. She had to gun the engine to get loose of the tangle of fence poles and wire fouling the front of the LAV, then she swung the vehicle in a tight circle and began hunting.
“Butler,” she yelled back into the turret, “can anyone else drive?”
“I can,” came a high young voice. Repeth switched places with a compact young female MP from a different platoon, and immediately climbed up to open the commander’s hatch in the turret. Butler took his place below her on the gun. He handed up headphones and she saw him put his on.
She said over the intercom, “The best thing we can do with this thing is keep the chaos going, break up any enemy counterattacks, especially if there are more armored vehicles around. All the prisoners should be running for the rendezvous point to the southeast. Driver, turn left along the prison perimeter and look for enemy. Butler, engage any enemy vehicles or heavy weapons you see. I don’t know how much ammo we have. I’ll try to pick off singles.” She snapped a shot with her PW10 at a Fredericksburger in uniform just as an example. She missed, but he dove for cover.
A Humvee rounded a corner ahead, top-mounted .50 caliber machinegun firing at fleeing prisoners. “Target front! Humvee, one hundred meters! Engage.”
“Target front, Humvee, one hundred meters, firing.” Butler replied calmly. The electric turret whined as it centered. Repeth crouched in the hatch as she saw the fifty line up on the LAV, and then the 25mm chain gun spoke. Five rounds punched through the armored jeeplike vehicle. The shockwave of the shells as they holed the compartment burst enemy eardrums and rendered them unconscious even when missing them entirely.
The enemy gunner, strapped into his seat behind the fifty, kept firing grimly. “Ram them!” Repeth yelled unnecessarily into the intercom, and the driver accelerated, steering for the now-immobile Humvee. Twenty tons met four, no contest; the gunner’s body whiplashed and the force threw him clear as his harness snapped.
“Halt!” she barked. When the LAV came to a stop Repeth stood up in the hatch and blinked, trying to sort out which patch of darkness was the fallen gunner. She carefully lined up her PW10, thumbing the selector switch to semi-auto, and fired at the man lying there unconscious. Far from executing a fallen enemy, she was trying to wound him with a Needleshock round, which would fill his bloodstream with Eden Plague and save his life. On the third try she saw his leg jerk. “Get going! Head west!” she snapped, and the LAV swung back the way they came.
As much as she wanted to try to find the women – and Rick – she knew her best tactic was to keep commanding the LAV, hunting the enemy. She spent the next twenty minutes racing back and forth, east and west, disabling or destroying several more Humvees and trucks, driving back the enemy where she found them. Old Town Fredericksburg, filled with wooden and brick buildings dating back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, was burning merrily in several places, giving her plenty of light to see by. Butler had gotten the thermal sights working and soon they were unopposed by anything that could hurt them.
She wondered where the other LAVs were. Eight of them had taken part in the attack on the battalion, and she accounted for two – theirs and the one she had destroyed. Assume one or two were down for maintenance after the combat action, and she was waiting for the other ones to show up. If the LAV unit commander had any smarts at all – questionable, given how they had been employed in the attack – he would keep what he had as a unit and gang up on her.
“Butler,” she called through the intercom, “do we have anything portable to handle armor?” She hadn’t had time to check herself.
“There’s an old AT-4 down here. The gun is the best thing we have.”
“Unfortunately the other LAVs will have guns too. We can’t win a four to one standup fight. We have to hit and run. Butler, if we spot another LAV, try for a mobility kill. Shred their tires. It’s more of a sure thing; penetrating their armor with the twenty-five is iffy, and immobilizing them is as good as out of action as far as we are concerned.”
She raised her head cautiously out of the hatch and directed, “Driver, back up into that old barn there.” The Old Town area was dotted with such anomalies, preserved from earlier times. “What’s your name anyway, soldier?”
“Lockerbie, Master Sergeant. And it’s Senior Airman.”
She skillfully backed the vehicle into the barn, tearing its wooden door off its hinges in the process but otherwise placing it perfectly.
“Touché.” Repeth wondered where an Air Force Security Police troop learned to drive armored vehicles. “Drop the ramp.” She took off the headphones, climbed out the hatch and jumped off the side of the vehicle. From outside the ramp she looked into the interior, where four troops she didn’t recognize sat clutching captured weapons. “Hand me that AT-4. The tube there. Anyone here know how to use it?” They all shook their heads. By their expressions and uniforms she thought they were all support troops, not MPs. Dammit, I told Butler to get fighters. “Anyone here ever crew a track or armored vehicle?”
More murmured denials.
“Well, that kills that idea.” Just then came the hammering sound of a 25mm gun. “Hear that? That’s an enemy vehicle. We have to find and engage them, keep them away from the escapees. You four, did they tell you where the escape rendezvous is? Yes? You need to go now. I know you don’t want to get out of this nice armored ride but we are going straight toward a fight where we’re the underdogs, so you’re actually safer on foot. Keep moving, shoot at anyone you have to, but keep moving, all right? If you get lost go east until you hit the river then work your way south. Swim if you must; the river flows southward and you can drift out of enemy territory. Keep those weapons. Go now. Go!” She grabbed the nearest one and shoved her down the ramp.
They went reluctantly and she cursed the timidity of support personnel in a combat zone. “Hurry!” She walked inside and yelled, “Raise the ramp! Let’s get going.” She climbed past Butler back into the command hatch, dragging the AT-4 with her. She wedged it down by her feet, with no fixed plan, just the germ of an inkling that it might be useful. In training, Spooky had said to always consider all your weapons and their possible application.
Lockerbie nosed the LAV out of the barn and onto the road as Repeth put the headphones back on, then lifted the earpieces at the front, allowing her to hear and hopefully triangulate on the direction of the 25mm noise. “Take the next right, then go up one block, then I think left.”
As they took the last left she could see an enemy LAV ahead, perhaps two hundred yards south along the road. Unfortunately it was between them and their escape route, and that meant merely immobilizing it wouldn’t help them very much, though it would keep the enemy from pursuing. No battle plan survives enemy contact, she thought, then a wry motto popped into her head: Semper Gumby. Always Flexible. DJ Markis had quoted it to them during one of the frequent times he came to train with the Free Communities Special Operations teams.
So flex, Jill. Think.
The obvious and safe thing to do was to hammer the thin back hatch of the enemy LAV with 25mm fire until the armor failed, but that would mean killing its whole crew. She cursed the ironic strictures of her Eden conscience. I’m like one of those stupid superheroes in comic books; I can’t kill anyone unless it’s very nearly an accident. The Eden giveth and the Eden taketh away.
She stood up in the hatch and made a full three-sixty sweep as her LAV rolled forward. Only the one enemy armored vehicle in sight.
Normally that would mean it was the rearmost of a platoon of four, but it wasn’t behaving like the rearmost of anything. It was sitting there on the right side of the Parkway firing southeast, presumably at escaping friendlies, or possibly just at phantoms. She could barely see the enemy commander in the hatch silhouetted against the slight sky-glow, his back to her.
Abruptly a plan clicked in her head.
“Lockerbie, creep up on them at a steady twenty miles per hour or so and hug the right side of the road. Be careful, there’s a four-foot drainage ditch just off the shoulder. Butler, when I give the word, open up on their right side wheels. I want all those tires shredded to make them sag to the right. Keep firing as long as you can hit that side. Lockerbie, when I say so, swing to the far left of the road then turn right and ram them hard enough to knock them into the ditch. Don’t immobilize us. Got it?”
“Roger.” The driver eased the LAV over, and at one hundred yards, Repeth spoke quietly.
“Fire.”
Butler hammered a long burst into the bottom of the right rear wheel, each 25mm round bouncing off the pavement and continuing through all four right side tires, tearing enormous holes out of the run-flats, spewing chunks of rubber. The enemy LAV settled heavily to its right, and Lockerbie slewed left and accelerated without being told. Repeth dropped down into the interior and braced her back against a forward bulkhead, screaming to Butler, “Hang on!”
Repeth felt the LAV actually slow down and wondered what Lockerbie was doing. Dropping the nose? Of course, just like ramming a blockade with an armored SUV. Dip the nose with the brakes, hit the gas at the moment of impact.
Right before the crash Lockerbie jammed the accelerator forward and the front of the LAV lifted, catching the left underside of the enemy LAV with twenty tons of upward force multiplied by momentum. Since it was down by its right side already, the enemy vehicle flipped over into the ditch and onto its side like a child’s toy.
Lockerbie jammed on the brakes as her vehicle climbed up the enemy hull with its fat forward tires. She broke them loose by the simple expedient of flooring the LAV in reverse, shaking the crew like mice in a coffee can as they jounced free.
“Fine job, Lockerbie,” Repeth said. “If we live through this, you’ll all get medals if I have anything to say. One down, several more to go. Turn onto Tidewater south and keep a sharp lookout.” As the vehicle stabilized, she climbed back into the command hatch so she could survey the battlefield.
The road was empty in front of her as they raced southward. A mile away she could see the faint line of the outer defenses, the abatis and ditches and fences. Astride the roadway she could see the piled-up vehicles where she’d tried to parley less than two days ago. “Butler, put a couple single shots into the barricade.” She put on her headphones and rose up out of the commander’s hatch, bracing herself for the noise of the 25mm gun firing.
She thought she saw figures here and there running across the fields and sneaking near the treelines to her left – east toward the river. The gun spoke three times then was silent, and she realized Butler was awaiting orders. There were a few answering small-arms discharges but obviously they had nothing heavy there.
“Lockerbie, turn us around. We need to keep doing them damage.” The LAV swung around in a tight circle and drove back on the road, headed north toward old Fredericksburg, then west, retracing their route. They passed the wrecked enemy LAV. A man crawled away from the wreckage and Repeth put a shot into his leg and he lay still. One more Eden, one less Onesie.
To the west, now on their left, loomed higher ground, behind a few buildings. They raced northward toward the confusion and scattered fires of the remains of Old Town.
Suddenly her plan didn’t seem so sensible anymore. She saw Humvees racing around and it wouldn’t be long before the enemy figured out that her LAV wasn’t one of theirs. She had no intelligence about where the enemy headquarters might be, or where Rick might be, or where the rest of the missing women might be. In fact, for a rescue attempt she’d be better off on foot, just one figure in the dark. Her duty to command warred with her personal desires. Finally she made a decision.
Maybe the wrong one.
“Butler, I’ve changed my mind. You and Lockerbie here take this thing and haul ass back south. Shoot your way through the roadblock if you have to and link up with the Colonel. The Battalion can use the armored vehicle. I have to stay here and try to find the rest of our people.”
Butler’s protest died in his throat as he saw her determined expression. “All right, Master Sergeant. Good hunting.”
“Don’t worry, Butler. I’ve been in far tighter spots. Remind me to tell you about them sometime.”
“All right, but you’re buying,” the Midwesterner joked.
“No problem, on my generous paycheck.” She dropped the headphones through the hatch, grabbed the AT-4 and levered herself out the top and down the side. “Get moving!” she ordered. The vehicle, grown enormous now that she was outside it, roared off into the night.
Now what to do? She jogged northward, waving at vehicles and silently shooting the odd straggler. In the dark no one could see who was who and anyone heading deeper into Fredericksburg territory, alone and unafraid, they must think friendly.
She picked up a boonie hat from a fallen Fredericksburger and jammed it onto her head. Her braided and pinned hair stayed well hidden. There were apparently no female combatants among the Fredericksburgers so she had to masquerade as a man.
She spotted some lights on a hill off to the northwest. It was as likely a place as any to try to find the nerve center of this dysfunctional bandit kingdom, so she worked her way up the streets toward the heights. Eventually she came to the edge of the campus of the University of Mary Washington, proudly proclaimed by signs here and there. She could hear the hum of generators in the distance and could see some electric lights in the still-intact windows of campus buildings.
Must be a separate system. This is where I’d put my headquarters if I was a warlord – the heights command the town and give a view to all sides, and they probably can fall back to the better defenses of the hill. And lots of nice well-built buildings, not these wooden things of Old Town. She vaguely recalled Colonel Muzik pointing to this hill on the map and telling her that the Confederates under Longstreet had held it against all comers in the eponymous battle, inflicting horrendous casualties on the assaulting Union troops.
Climbing over an old stone wall alongside a sunken road, she ghosted through the trees up the slope northwestward toward the buildings and lights. Ahead of her she saw a faint glow spring to life, then fade.
Cigarette. Stupid. Good for me. She watched the silhouette until it turned away, then slipped forward and shot the sentry in the buttocks. A shout came from her right and she whirled, stitching his partner across the abdomen with her silenced Needleshock. Then she bolted away in the direction of the buildings, sticking to the shadows.
Feet pounded behind her and she ducked into a low mass of decorative juniper. Guards, already jumpy from the night’s events in the town below, ran hither and thither, calling to one another in excited tones. They grouped up when they found their fallen comrades, and she took the opportunity to sneak into the nearest darkened building.
The women’s restroom beckoned her and she made a quick pit stop, sucking down as much water as she could hold from the sink tap. She had not realized how dehydrated she had become. Downing a ration bar, she reconnoitered through darkened hallways festooned with incongruous campus pride posters and announcements of student activities from before the Demon-Plaguefall. Soldiers looked in the outer doors but didn’t search deeper. She couldn’t blame them – given the quality of troops she had seen so far, these probably didn’t really want to risk finding her.
One interior office was lit. Sidling up, she put an eye to the window inset into the door. A woman with glasses, obese and in her sixties, sat tapping on a computer.
Perfect.
Repeth turned the handle and slid smoothly into the room. “Quiet,” she hissed at the surprised woman. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t cause trouble.”
The woman froze and her mouth worked silently, then she nodded.
Repeth turned off the light, leaving the office in darkness lit only by the glow of the old desktop computer screen. “Who are you and what do you do here?” she asked quietly.
“I’m Margie Finley. I’m...I was a professor here. English Literature. They have me keep track of salvage in the warehouses now.”
“All alone?”
“I refused to move out of my office, and I’m too old and ugly to be interesting to the Professor and his Associates.” She spat this last word and her hands trembled. “Who are you?”
“Not your enemy, that’s who. Master Sergeant Jill Repeth, United States Marine Corps.”
“Oh, thank God. Are you taking over?”
Jill’s mouth twisted. “Actually it’s just me right now, until my Colonel can rebuild the battalion and come back. They hit us pretty hard yesterday. I need to find our women. Will you help?”
Margie licked her lips and her eyes widened with fear. “Just you? Oh, they’ll catch you and put you in the Dormitory. With the others. And you don’t want to be in there.”
Jill sympathized with the terror Margie put into that word “Dormitory” but there was no time for sentiment. “Look, Margie, I need information. I need it from you. We already broke the men out of the work camp below; that’s what all the shooting was. Please tell me where the women are. Are they in this Dormitory place? There should be almost a hundred of them somewhere.”
The large woman quivered and began to cry. “If I tell you they’ll do things to me. They don’t use me in the Dormitory because I’m old and fat but that doesn’t mean they won’t hurt me...”
She’s broken, thought Jill. “I’m sorry, but there’s no time for this.” Repeth reached over and grabbed Margie's pudgy hand, drawing it to her mouth and biting it suddenly. She clapped her other hand over the woman’s inevitable howl until she quieted down.
“Listen,” Repeth hissed, “I am an Eden Plague carrier. Now you are too. I just passed you the virus. You will live to be a thousand, you will heal any wound, and you will slim down like magic over the next few weeks. Soon you’ll look like you’re twenty-five, better than you ever did. So now you owe me – and if you don’t help me, soon you will be young and pretty and they will want to take you for their Dormitory. So now you have no choice. Help me and I’ll help you get away.”
Margie sucked on her wounded hand, sobbing softly, but soon enough she took it out of her mouth. “Hey...it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“You’ll soon say that about everything else – your fallen arches, your sore back – but like I said, right now I need information.”
“All right.” Margie took a deep breath. “Most of the women are held in the Dormitory – one of the old residence halls. They have to rotate through the brothel downtown, but up here they are reserved for...services. It’s a benefit of being an Associate.” Loathing dripped from that word. “That’s what the Professor calls his bullies.”
“This Professor, he’s the boss? Did he teach here?”
“Yes. He has a doctorate in Phys Ed, if you can believe that. Physical fitness nut, martial artist, pro wrestler...the TV kind, not the real kind, but he’s big and dangerous all the same. He was some kind of local bigwig in the National Guard, too. His real name is Stone, Scott Stone.”
“I’ll try to keep out of his way. Or maybe I’ll just shoot him.” Jill put on her best shark-smile, and then softened it. Not the right ploy to try to out-terrify Margie’s terrifier. “Then you’ll have to show me where the women are, and I have to try to bust them out. One more question – there’s a man named Rick Johnstone. He wasn’t with the men in the work camp. Do you have any idea of where he was taken?”
Margie shook her head. “No, but sometimes if a prisoner has a special skill, like a doctor, they put him to work somewhere else.”
“He’s a computer expert.”
“Then he might be in the Professor’s headquarters. They are always having trouble keeping their computers running.”
“Okay...do you have a campus map? Show me where the Dormitory is, and the headquarters. I’ll go break them out and then I’ll come back for you. If I don’t, you’ll have to try to sneak away southward to the golf course on Route Two. That’s where my people are. I know that seems beyond your ability right now but your body will start getting stronger right away. Pretty soon you’ll be able to run ten miles without stopping. You’re an Eden now.” Jill stepped back, put her hand on the doorknob. “Welcome back to the human race.”
Then she was gone.
—-
As soon as Margie was sure the scary soldier-woman had left, she picked up the landline on her desk and began to dial. Stopping midway through the number, she stared at her bitten hand, now healed. She rubbed thoughtfully at it in continuing amazement.
Maybe she’ll do it. Be brave, Margie. You can’t live in fear forever.
Slowly she put down the handset. It might have been the hardest thing she’d ever done.
—-
Repeth clutched the cheap paper campus map, orienting herself and identifying each building or hall as she went from bush to bush, tree to tree. It was slow going as her brush with the sentries had stirred up a hornets’ nest of activity. There was less than she expected, though. She figured some of these Associates must have been drawn away to the general confusion in the town below, or were chasing her escaping comrades.
Her first goal was the Dormitory. It was close, just the third large building away, but the grand scale of the university campus turned a two-minute walk into a half-hour ordeal of careful sneaking, punctuated by two more suppressed shots. She stashed the unconscious men – always men – under the bushes.
The Dormitory was better lit than other buildings, and garish with colored lights. Red predominated, apropos to its purpose. Except these aren’t Amsterdam prostitutes, carefully protected, regulated and taxed, free to leave at any time. These are sex slaves. She ground her teeth with revulsion and rage.
Eeling her way from bush to bench to dumpster corral, she got as close as she could before being stymied by a wall of concertina wire. Tripled tangled tubular coils circled the Dormitory, likely to keep the women in as well as discourage unauthorized liaisons. She knew from history that immoral license would always cloak itself in regulation, as if having rules and a system legitimized the abuse. The men would have a specific number of visits allowed, perhaps based on rank or status, and would have to sign in and sign out. Discipline among the troops would never be maintained otherwise.
Blasting in via the front door was a recipe for disaster. Her considerable skills depended on stealth and precise application of force, not on Rambo-like grand gestures. As she scanned the three-story brick building she decided her route in would be up the fire escape to the roof. Once there she would be out of sight and could force a door or access hatch.
There were welded bars over all the windows she could see, and she’d bet dollars to doughnuts they couldn’t be opened from the inside. Her brain started chewing furiously on the problem of escape. No ideas leaped to mind, but it didn’t matter yet. The first thing she had to do was get inside and make contact, gather information.
The building was heavily guarded. One man walked the perimeter on the inside of the wire on each side of the building – or at least, on the two sides she could see. Her best chance to make it across was to aim for a corner and time her entrance for when both guards were facing away from her, but there was still the problem of the tall, man-high tangles of wire.
Drawing a multi-tool from her belt holder, she rearranged it to form wire cutters. Not optimal; real snips would speed up the process immensely. Then she thought some more about how and where she was going to make it through, and how long it was going to take, and discarded the notion.
She racked her brain for techniques. She could try to crawl under the wire on her back, cutting as she went, trusting to the darkness and her camouflage to hide her as the guards came by. This was the way the Viet Cong had done, greasing their bodies up and accepting the inevitable bloody gouges.
Had she been assaulting the building with a team, one or two members could actually throw themselves onto the wire, cramming it down and the rest running across their legs and backs. She had no team, though. But maybe...
She examined the dumpster and the big plastic lids, each of which covered half of the stinking container. The multi-tool proved its usefulness after all as she worked the pins loose from their hinges. Within minutes she had a three-by-five-foot section of tough material that should easily protect her from the wire while remaining light enough to handle.
After stashing the AT-4 antitank weapon behind the dumpster, she hefted the awkward lid, testing her grip and maneuvering it while still hidden inside the pierced-brick dumpster corral. When she was fairly certain she knew how to handle it, she slung her PW10 and carried it around to the darkness on the side.
She took deep breaths, waiting long minutes in the shadows until the guards were both turned away from the corner and far enough – she hoped. She sprinted the short distance to the wire and, like a body-surfer flopping onto a wave, threw herself forward.
The plastic crushed the tangled wire downward and she let herself skim across it. She gripped the forward edge and somersaulted in a gymnast’s move, vaulting forward over the wire to roll onto the unmowed grass and weeds that surrounded the building. Barbs from the wire dug painfully into the backs of her hands but she was ready for that and she clamped her mouth shut against the pain. As she rolled she dragged the flat shield off the wire with her momentum and let it fall flat on the ground.
She froze in the tall vegetation and waited for any reaction from the guards. They might have heard the noise, or when they came back they might notice the piece of plastic, though there was enough debris and detritus scattered around that she hoped it might blend in, might be ignored as just another piece of junk.
Raising her head carefully she saw the nearer guard, the one along the shorter side of the building, returning without apparent haste. He walked past the plastic without seeming to notice it, then turned around at the corner.
As soon as his back was turned she leaped for the fire escape, an old painted steel ladder barely useful for its purpose. Swarming up the rungs, she ignored the urge to watch the guard so close below her and concentrated on climbing silently, but as fast as she could. Fortunately the rumble of the generator covered the noise. Rust and old paint scraped and cut her palms until she reached the top and stepped down onto the roof.
Her right foot came down inside some kind of hole, but her weight was already committed to the step so she just got her other foot down on the roof as quickly as she could and held onto the parapet. But when she tried to move, she found her right leg immobile and her right foot wedged fast. It was inside some kind of exhaust vent pipe, curled back upon itself and impossible to withdraw.
Grumbling quietly, she fought with it for several minutes until she gave up and carefully sliced the boot with her knife. Eventually she was able to draw her foot out and she caught the shredded footgear before it could fall down the shaft. Fishing a roll of ninety-mile-an-hour tape from her lumbar pouch – so called originally because the duct-tape-like material was “soooo high-speed” – she wrapped the damaged boot around her foot and swathed the whole thing in sticky OD-green tape.
Once she was mobile again she searched for a way in. She found a trap door. Locked, but the hinges were on the outside, where she could reach them, made for keeping people inside from coming up, not for keeping people out. Five minutes with her multitool had them off, and she levered the steel cover out of the way, bending the locking mechanism hopelessly out of true. It would be hard to seal again.
The ladder bolted to the wall beneath led into a darkened room, so black that the faint glow of her watch, deliberately freed of its cover for that purpose, showed her its contents. Sanitary and cleaning supplies – mops, buckets, toilet paper, paper towels, rags, bottles of bleach and cleaners – and boxes of women’s hygiene products in abundance. That confirms it. I wonder what they do about pregnancies. Not sure I want to know. Almost any answer seems horrible.
Readying her weapon, she tried the door handle slowly, very slowly. Easing it open a crack, she looked out into the corridor beyond. It was dimly lit, and she watched a ragged-robed woman walk by, her shoulders slumped with despair. Waiting several minutes, the floor remained quiet, with no movement. Of course, this is the third floor. Perhaps “visits” happen on the first floor in special rooms, or perhaps the men check the women out like library books. Well, here goes nothing.
She opened the door wide and looked quickly both ways. With no one in sight she had to just gamble that any slave here would welcome her. Or else a Needleshock round would put her out and convert her to Edenhood. So she went to the closest door, almost across the way, and opened it, stepping in suddenly.
“Who is it?” came a sleepy voice.
“A friend,” Jill replied. She felt her way to the single bed and sat down. “My name is Jill.”
“You don’t sound like Jill. Are you a new one? And why are you in my room?” The woman’s waking voice sounded dull and only slightly curious rather than outraged.
“Yes, I’m new, very new. Please talk with me. What’s your name?” Jill’s finger hovered over the trigger to her weapon.
“Zyra. What are you wearing?” The woman’s voice rose. “Oh, my God, do you have a gun?”
Jill reached up to put her hand over Zyra’s mouth. “Quiet. I’m from the outside. I’m here to rescue you, but you have to be calm. I need to know how this all works.”
Zyra breathed harshly around Jill’s hand, panicked. “Noooooo –” she whined, getting louder all the time.
Crap. Jill shoved her back, pointed the PW10 at the woman’s thigh and pulled the trigger. The weapon coughed and Zyra jerked hard from the electric shock, to slump back onto her bunk. Dammit, why couldn’t I have lucked onto one with a spine? All right, to be fair, one less beaten down anyway.
She heard a stealthy noise in the corridor and wondered if one of the other women had heard something. There had been no alarm so she didn’t think it was some kind of reaction force. Jill padded over to the door and listened. She heard what might have been a footstep, and a feminine whimper. Great, another lost soul. Have to take control of this one too.
She opened the door and light blazed into her eyes. “Freeze!” came a powerful voice, and several gun barrels shoved forward, covering her from all angles.
She froze.
“Weapon down! Now!”
Cursing herself inwardly for her overconfidence, she lifted her finger off the trigger. Unfortunately her weapon had been pointed off to the side, or she might have risked a full-auto blast into the enclosed hallway. Now even if she had wanted to go down in a blaze of gunfire, she couldn’t – her mission was too important. Grinding her teeth, she unslung and lowered the PW10 to the ground, immediately raising her hands to interlace behind her head.
Armed men poured into the room, pushing her back. They roughly stripped her of her gear and she did not resist. Best to let them underestimate me for now. Until I have a chance.
The men she saw were all rough-looking, fit and competent, though most were pockmarked and scarred. Some were missing teeth and hair or other non-vital pieces such as ears and a few fingers. They all had body armor, weapons, and were dressed more or less uniformly in something resembling black police field uniforms, such as SWAT wore.
“Sir, she shot Zyra,” one reported.
“Take her to the doctor,” an enormous voice rumbled from the corridor. “We can’t let such pretty flesh go to waste, right boys?” The body attached to the voice stepped in and Jill caught her breath. Perfectly proportioned, nearly seven feet tall, showing bodybuilder’s muscles and sporting long cornsilk hair, he looked like a cross between a blonde Rambo and the male lead on the cover of a bodice-ripping romance novel.
The Professor. Has to be.
The man stepped in as two henchmen held Jill’s arms clamped behind her. Again, she refrained from resisting. She did look up boldly at him though. She sorted through possibilities before deciding on a course of action.
He opened his mouth but she deliberately interrupted him. “So you’re the scary Professor, eh? I heard you’re a tough guy. I’d be tough too with a bunch of thugs to rape my women for me.”
Intelligence and cruelty gleamed in his eyes, and amusement, too. He replied, “So you like raping women? Most chicks don’t but I suppose there are always exceptions, and you military bitches are all dykes anyway.” He reached down to grope briefly at her crotch, jerking out of reach at her attempt to bite him. “Temper, temper. I don’t feel anything down there, so you’re out of luck, you stupid bull. We’re the pitchers now, and you’ll be a catcher for my Associates.” He rubbed his jaw. “Still, it was a brave thing to break in here. You lose a girlfriend?”
Playing along with his banter, she replied, “Naw, I just wanted to re-enact ‘Prison Women in Leather Heat.’ Or maybe I wanted to join your Associates.”
He snorted, reaching out to fondle her breast. His nails were perfectly manicured, and she realized the man was wearing cologne – and makeup. “I suppose you think they call me ‘The Professor’ because I’m stupid?” He reached up to rub her ear between thumb and forefinger, then squeezed and pulled with all the strength of his huge hand and arm.
Her lobe and half her ear came away with a sickening tear, horrible to hear since it was so close to her auditory nerves. She cried out despite herself, more in surprise and shock than serious pain. She’d been hurt far worse but this deliberate cruelty still rattled her for a moment.
But only a moment.
The huge man’s glittering gaze and flared nostrils showed her that he enjoyed inflicting pain. Still, her plan depended on getting some kind of control of the situation, some kind of freedom to maneuver.
“That the best you got? Scott?” she taunted. “I kind of liked that. I kind of like you too. You got a woman? This door swings both ways, and I don’t mind sleeping my way to the top.” She cocked her hips suggestively, licked her lips. “Come on, big man. Let’s take a ride.”
The warlord’s booming laugh filled the room, and his men cawed along with him, and not just following their leader. Their amusement was genuine. The Professor said in his cultured voice, “Oh, dear me miss, you’re barking up the wrong tree there. I might have responded to some rainbow solidarity, but you just made the wrong ploy and now I know you’ll say anything. So shut up.” His enormous fist lashed out and she felt her nose and cheekbone break, and her left eye went dark.
She’d tried to roll with the blow but, held fast as she was, the smartest thing she could do was fake complete unconsciousness. She almost blacked out anyway as they carried her roughly from Zyra’s room and tossed her into another. She heard the door slam and a lock click shut.
This room held nothing but a bunk, a wall locker and a student desk. She crawled up onto the mattress and lay there on her back, her head swimming and the ceiling spinning. She felt nauseated, concussed, and her vision tightened to a black-spotted tunnel. He’d hit her hard; the man was enormously strong.
She wondered how long it would be before one of the Associates decided to try out their new toy. Holding her hand to her shredded ear, she had no choice but to lie there, pray and wait for healing.
And try to make a plan.
