Almost…
Neither he nor the other trooper could find the missing front end of the Ford.
Alan Lister, the commissioner of Crisium, the de facto capitol of Luna, sat in his home tunnel, watching the evening news beamed up from Earth. The tunnel’s computer projected scenes of carnage into the air in front of him. The war on Earth continued. The United States, following numerous precedents, was involved in a bloody “act of support” for their Mexican neighbors… without the formality of declaring war. And, lacking a firm sense of direction, they were making a horrible mess of it.
Brazil, the aggressor, had chewed its way northwards out of South America. Facing drought, crop failures and famine, the Brazilians had begun a desperate war, decimating the poorly equipped and inexperienced armies of the other South American countries. Central America had come next. The Mexicans had given them their first serious resistance, but it had not been enough. The Yucatan peninsula had fallen and virtually everything south of Mexico City was in Brazilian hands. The battered and demoralized troops on the outskirts of the Mexican capitol were not expected to hold out for much longer. Stories told by refugees filtering north out of Puebla and Tlaxcala were enough to suggest that it was not too soon, to start inquiries into war crimes.
Anne, Alan’s wife, came up behind him and slid her hands down across his chest, encircling his neck. “There’s nothing you can do, babe. Quit torturing yourself.”
“We may have declared independence, but I can’t forget that I was born an American. It hurts to see this happening.”
“Then why watch?” she asked reasonably.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I… it just seems as though there ought to be something we could do to help.”
“Alan, our entire population up here on Luna is less than that of one decent-sized city down on Earth. It’s not as though we could send them enough troops to count for anything.”
“I know, I know. Logically, I tell myself that we’re safe up here, and that we have no obligation to do anything whatsoever about what’s happening on Earth, but emotionally, I feel that I should be doing something.”
“Does the ability to look down upon all the mere mortals of Earth make you a god?” she asked.
He gestured at the news projection. “I’m virtually omniscient, but not omnipotent. I’m a pretty poor excuse for a god.”
“You’re going to worry yourself sick over this.”
He reached up and took her hands in his, then kissed the palm of each in turn. “Not with you to look after me.”
She bit him gently on the ear. “Come with me. I’ve got an idea… something that will take your mind off the war for a while.”
He rose and followed her towards their bedroom, but as he rounded the corner, he cast one last worried glance over his shoulder at the news.
Private Lawrence Enceas lay on his back in the dirt near the edge of a small clearing, wondering if he would live.
The Brazilians had some kind of variation on a Gatling gun that spewed flat, jagged pieces of metal. Kind of controlled shrapnel; something you could aim. Hell on infantry. Hell on Earth.
Enceas never wanted to hear a sound like that again. A ringing whine that set your teeth on edge. Undertones of metallic buzzing. They said that the magnetic field the thing threw off was powerful enough to stop your watch.
Well, his watch had stopped all right, but it wasn’t the magnetic field that did it. His watch had been on his left arm—the one which was now shredded into something resembling hamburger. He’d also taken hits in his side. At that, he had come off better than Chuck Ripley. Ripley had been point.
The Brazilians had moved in more quickly than anyone had anticipated. With brutal efficiency, they had swept the area clear of all human habitation. Mexican, American, civilian, military… it didn’t matter.
Enceas and his companions had made it easy for them. They had blundered into a Brazilian trap.
Four men had survived the ambush. Three of them were severely wounded. The survivors huddled at the edge of a small clearing and watched. Two hours had passed since they had called for evacuation. They had been told to look for the “Kicker,” the KK-103, in twenty minutes. It had never arrived.
Brewster, who was unhurt, stood a one in a million chance of walking out. None of the three wounded would live long enough to see the next sunrise without medical intervention.
Except for the flies and the heat, Enceas was about as comfortable as he could hope to be. The batteries in the nerve blocks would outlast him, and the supercoagulants had all but stopped the blood loss. He had his gun by his right hand, but had doubts as to whether he would be able to fight effectively when the Brazilians finally got around to checking on their missing men.
That was the Brazilian way. Three man teams went out, armed to the teeth. If one didn’t report back, the Brazilians sent a hundred after them. Overwhelming, crushing force was the response to every provocation, no matter how slight.
Far away to the north, he heard a faint buzzing sound. Muted by distance, it could have been the Brazilians. Then again, it could have been a fly, coming to join the cloud tormenting him.
As things stood, Enceas expected to die during the night. Intellectually, the thought displeased him, but the drugs had blunted his emotional reaction. He was alert, but once-removed. They had been lavish in using the contents of the medkit. Either they would get picked up in time… or they would not. In either case going sparingly on the drugs would count for nothing.
The unspoken plan was for Brewster to watch over them until they died, then head north, trying to find, and penetrate, the line from behind. Whether he would make it was anybody’s guess. Enceas doubted that he would, but kept his opinions to himself.
With surprising speed, a sibilant whisper approached from the south. It flew slightly east of the clearing, then looped and came back, slowing as it approached. Warily, the nose of a Brazilian Jaguar poked over the edge of the trees surrounding the clearing as it hovered in VTOL mode.
In one smooth motion, Brewster swung his gun up, braced his shoulder against the bole of a tree, and sighted on the Jaguar. Three quick reports followed.
Muzzle flash provides an accurate assessment as to the position of the enemy. The automatic weaponry in the nose of the plane backtracked the flares and fired. Brewster tucked his arms in, his back pressed against the trunk. He grimaced as bark shredded from the far side of the tree. As the burst ended, he squeezed off two more shots.
This time, the Jaguar came over the edge of the trees. With sinister grace, it slowly lowered itself into the clearing. The nose remained oriented on Brewster’s tree.
Brewster peered carefully around the trunk, but only far enough to see the very tip of the wing. When the Jaguar’s wing was just three meters above the ground, Brewster calmly stepped from behind the tree, lined up his sights, and fired directly into the face of the pilot, who was staring down at him. The first two shots ricocheted from the clear canopy. The third starred the plastic. The fourth and fifth penetrated, even as the forward cannon let loose, spitting explosive shells into the forest above and behind him.
The Jaguar executed a flat spin, slewing into the trees only a few meters away from the Americans. The left wing buckled as it hit the trees, tilting the opposite side until it hit the ground and bent. The groaning of the metal was clearly audible above the sound of the engines. Then the fuselage simply sat down. The heat from the exhaust started fires in the tree debris and underbrush.
Brewster looked down at Enceas, “I think it’s time to go.”
Enceas looked at him as though he was crazy. “Why in hell did you go and shoot at it? Now they know we’re here.”