Unbeknownst to the good citizens of Saint George, shortly thereafter the Looters and Rioters had piled into cargo trucks headed toward an Undisclosed Location, and the now-peaceful city awoke the next morning to find Friedlander urban assault vehicles patrolling the streets, sent in by the True Church Militant to “restore order.” Citizen resistance was fierce for awhile, but collapsed when it realized that Maxroy’s Purchase fanatics were willing to destroy the city in order to save it. So, they went home quietly, and enrolled their sons as drivers for TC Contract Security. This time, when Spontaneous Looting and Rioting broke out, they were ready. They had become masters at playing the cat-and-mouse game of keeping their heads low while serving as eyes and ears for the civil police. Tonight, no Looter or Rioter made it more than a block or two down any street. They were all arrested, or killed while resisting same.
On their own initiative, TCM Contract Security were reporting in as best they could which regular TCM units remained loyal to the city. It was a patchwork out there. It looked like those who had received LaGrange’s whispered “local orders only” directive had slipped off to join their own and were holding fast; others were taking their orders from MPs. Ollie’s people were cautiously backing up Saint George Casualty.
There was no holding back any more.
Barthes now remembered his first flight in and all the subsequent nights of dread with crystal clarity: the burned-out junk, the threadbare corners of the city. He understood now: for the second time in as many decades, New Utah—or, at least, Saint George—veered on the brink of civil war. He looked around him; felt the depth of commitment, and community, and, overarching that, the feeling of anger fueled by the toxic allegation of illegitimacy. How could Maxroy’s Purchase make such outrageous claims? How could the True Church there declare New Utahans outsiders on their own planet? That much hubris was difficult to conceive. He sat awake, waiting for anything from Asach, while Ollie tried again and again to get through to Zia in Bonneville, and more experienced hands curled up in corners and nodded off around him.
North Badlands, Borrego (Swenson’s) Valley, New Utah
The Operations Officer snarled as another light winked out. “What the fuck is going on?”
The command post was filled with chatter. A left-chevron of position indicators swept forward, paused, flashed green to indicate battery fire—and then, one by one, went blank. He heard agitated communications chatter.
“Pull back! Pull back! Retrograde, Route Alpha!” This was ridiculous. It wasn’t in the mission plan. What were they doing out there: playing Outies and Imperials?
“Lieutenant, Report! Why aren’t you executing the training plan?”
The Fire Control officer stayed focused on the board as he shouted his response, watching lights change colors and wink out. “Sir! Star Dawg’s down. Phud Pucker’s down. Killjoy, Backscratcher, Harm’s Way—down, down down. Two total kills, two weapons kills, one mobility kill.”
“Well, tell ‘em to quit fucking around. We will blow our contract if we don’t finish Phase Three Weaponization Tests on schedule.”
“No! Sir! I mean they’re really down!” As the board went dark, the lieutenant frantically sifted comms chatter.
“What do you mean ‘really down’?!” This was ridiculous, and nonsensical. They were doing practice gunnery tests on a live-fire range. The ‘enemy’ were fixed targets. There wasn’t even anybody out their role-playing an opponent.
“The w-kills and m-kill were reflected fire. The other two—Sir, somebody dropped a rock on ‘em.”
“A what?’
“Rocks, sir. Great, big, fucking rocks.”
“How?”
“Flingers, I guess. We can’t acquire.”
“Well, duh, but how?”
The Fire Control Officer shook his head. “We’re just getting scattered intel now. It looks like—” the lieutenant stopped to listen for a second. “Sir, they’re opening sinkholes somehow.”
“Sinkholes?”
“More like sink trenches. The vanguard moved out max overland, and then—poof—the ground just dropped in front of ‘em. They fell into defilade, and before they could engineer out, a bunch of rocks just—dropped out of the sky. Along the whole trench. Like they’d pre-registered. We’re running ground-penetrating radar now. It’s like Swiss cheese under there.”
“Show me.”
The lieutenant pulled up the last-known positions for the killed amour, and pointed. “Here, here, reflected fire. BFR’s here. Sorry. Big Flung Rocks. Open trenches here. Swiss cheese rendering now.”
The image angled to its plane, showing a subsurface maze of threads transecting their line of travel.
“What were they firing at?”
“Nothing, really sir. Just dusting the path. They’d done their fixed targets, and were lasing lines to assess the scatter.”
“And what shot back?”
“Nothing, sir, apart from their own EeRWigs.”
The Major didn’t like this at all. Enhanced Eradiation Weapons did not just bounce off shiny rocks to return their own fire.
“S-TWO!”
The intelligence officer also had both hands flying, ‘teeth in both ears. “SIR!”
“What the HELL is going on! We are supposed to be shooting sunbeams into a sand pit a hundred clicks from the nearest farmer!”
“Nothing, Sir! I find nothing! No ground surveillance radar signatures, no infra-red trace, no counter-fire trace—nothing.”
“Show me!”
The lieutenant put the remote sensing array results on screen. Auto-classification showed nothing. No armor, no artillery, no weapons masses, no blurry red dots indicating infantry radiating heat.
“Look forward.”
The lieutenant changed scan range and repainted. The Commander pointed at an aquamarine splash, punctuated by grey-brown dots.
“What’s that?”
“River delta, sir. Marshes.”
“What about the dots?”
The lieutenant shrugged. “Doesn’t tag anthropogenic, sir. Geology of some sort.”
“Gimme a side scan.” The lieutenant drew a box to shift the sensors again. The commander stopped him. “No, opposite those trenches.”
The S-2 reoriented and punched. “On screen, sir.”
There was nothing. The commander squinted. “What’s that?” He pointed at aquamarine streaks arrayed along what might have been washes and gullies.
“More plant life, sir. The local stuff shows up this weird color. The invasives around Saint George show up pretty normal, but out here—”
The commander cut him off. “Plant life, you say?”
“Sir.”
“Then, why is it moving?!”
The lieutenant peered. It wasn’t fast. It was—walking pace. Not even. Low-crawl pace. But moving on line, inexorably forward. And the tank battalion, diverted by the collapsing trench system, was already turning directly toward it.
“Holy crap!”
They both started shouting orders.
The tank commander threw the hatch, muttering about what-the-fuck was wrong with his track, and what-the-fuck was wrong with his comms and—What the fuck?
He couldn’t see much.
And then he couldn’t see at all.
He fell back inside, screaming and clutching his eyes.