“In other words?” Madison asked behind them.
“The Sentinel is trying to say we can’t afford to lose Monticello,” Owen said.
Owen stood up from the terminal. “I’m going now, Sentinel. Madison, please keep in contact.”
“Of course,” Madison said.
“I will go, too,” Benjamin said.
Madison was surprised, and even thought about objecting. What if she needed Benjamin’s help? But it was good to see Benjamin being his own man. She could get by on her own down here.
“Godspeed, Benjamin,” she said, and she put her hand on his shoulder, before he quickly turned away.
Benjamin and Owen grabbed their prepared bags and left. Virtually all the droids in the room came alive and followed them. She was alone save the chorus larks that hummed and tittered in the cage behind her, a box of communicators, and a few aerial drones.
That is, of course, besides the Sentinel.
Madison sat down in the chair where Owen had been sitting and stretched her knee out under the desk.
Things were taking a turn for the worse in the Barnyard. The spider bots had repaired one of the automated, high-caliber machine-guns in the crow’s nest of one of the towers. The machine-gun swiveled around and started firing at the most advanced of their squads. They weren’t prepared for an attack from behind, and they had virtually no cover to speak of. Rockets and gunfire were targeted at the revived crow’s nest from the high-rise condos, but nothing hit home.
It was a slaughter. There must have been forty of them killed in a few seconds. As the machine-gun stopped firing, enforcers ran around the corner of the big red warehouse building to mow down the rest. Then the enforcers established a position where they could fire on the other two Essentialist squads that had penetrated the Barnyard.
Getting to the southern artillery gun tower was looking like it could be impossible.
“Explain to me why we can’t activate the EMPRESS now, Sentinel?” Madison asked.
“If we activate it too soon, Gail would become aware of our capabilities and mobilize to defend it. The artillery guns, in particular, could disable the EMPRESS system. We need to activate it at exactly the right time to achieve a decisive strategic advantage.”
“That time may never come,” Madison said.
The Sentinel didn’t respond to her rhetorical statement. In truth, she was trying, in vain, to bait the Sentinel into revealing more about the EMPRESS system. All she knew was that it existed. Owen was the only one who had been made aware of how it worked. He had conferred with some of the others about it in secret as well, but not Madison.
“Can you zoom in around the second artillery gun?” Madison asked.
The screen zoomed in. The view was partially obscured by large warehouse buildings and the main red Barnyard building, but she could see a good portion of the radius around it. There were hundreds of enforcers stationed nearby. Guardians also lurked in the area. Spider bots scurried around, presumably repairing defense systems destroyed by the EMP blast.
Meanwhile the remaining artillery gun continued to fire into the west at regular intervals, rocking back with every pulse. She could only imagine the devastation it was causing among the Essentialist forces miles away.
But then something changed. The big gun stopped firing, and the turret began rotating. It was rotating to the right, turning to the north. The smoking barrels eventually turned to face directly into the camera.
“They wouldn’t…” Madison said. “Those are the homes of… Bartz’s own home is there.”
“There can be no other explanation,” The Sentinel said, this time answering her rhetorical question.
Madison fumbled with the mic Owen had left on the desk. “Flora, Cecile, whoever is in there get out! The artillery gun is about to fire on you!”
DIRTY BUSINESS
The first artillery gun blast hit two houses down from Mehta. It was deafening, and for a moment Mehta thought the house might collapse from the shock wave alone. Flora had fallen backward behind him, stunned and holding her ears.
Mehta wasted no time.
With one hand he grabbed the launcher bag and with the other he lifted Flora up and threw her over his shoulder. It was a lot to carry, and when he ran forward into the adjacent room he almost fell from the weight of it all. Flora’s side smashed into the wall, and she protested. “Ow! What are you doing?”
Better a bruise than a blast, he thought. Mehta carried her down one flight of stairs, and then another.
“Put me down, you big oaf!” she said.
He dropped her on her feet on a landing and then proceeded down another flight of stairs. Thankfully, she followed without much hesitation.
A moment later the upper floors of their house were hit. The house rocked so much that they couldn’t keep their footing. They toppled down the stairs, their bodies becoming ensnared at the bottom. The ceiling above them had held, for now.
They untangled themselves and made their way to the other side of the house. Here there were two Adherents watching the door that led to the mall.
“What’s happening?” The Adherents asked, clearly shaken.
“They’re using the big artillery gun against us,” Mehta said.
“Are we safe here?”
“Probably. They will first want to take out the upper levels,” Mehta said, “but if they keep firing, get out,” Mehta said.
Flora went to the door and peered out onto the mall.
Now was as good a time as any.
He jogged back through the house, then down two more flights of stairs. “Mehta?” He heard Flora’s voice in the distance. Then an artillery gun shell hit next door, shaking the house one more time.
He found two more fearful-looking men in the second sub-basement. These were mules, and they were each taking turns looking out a small porthole in a door that led to the railway tracks.
“Collect anyone from the other houses who is still alive,” Mehta announced. “We’re all going in.”
“But… what’s happening? Where…?”
“Or you can die here,” Mehta shrugged. Then he forcibly pushed one of them out of his way, opened the door and ran out onto the tracks, headed for the aperture in the Barnyard complex wall.
A few shots danced off the ground around him, but most of the railway forces were focused inward, on the squads that had already taken position. He easily scrambled over the wall rubble, found his bearings and veered right. He was heading for their largest defended position. It was Nobura’s group. They were clustered next to a bunker.
The artillery gun boomed. Machine-gun fire percussed on the ground nearby. The smell of gunpowder and accelerant tingled his noise. Delicate flecks of snow had begun falling around him, their beauty irreconcilable against the fog of war.
He ran, and he ran. Occasionally his leg would twinge from the injuries he had incurred in Grand Caverns. He would have to hop for a moment, but it was only transient.
He ran past the first line of Essentialist militia hunkered behind the twisted metal of an old truck. He ran well into the ranks of men until he found Nobura. The general was sitting down, holding his neck, talking on his communicator. He didn’t look happy to see Mehta.
Mehta leaned his hands on his knees and took great heaves of breath to replenish his oxygen.
When he was finished on the communicator, Nobura said to Mehta. “If you have any respect for order and command, you will join us in our next attack.”
Mehta was about to explain his idea to Nobura but then thought better of it. They didn’t have time for a lengthy debate, and this would work just as well. “Well, let’s go then,” he said.