“Kirsten,” she replies, unable to keep from returning the sweet grin. “What’s yours?”
“Lisa,” the child replies, shyly peering at Kirsten from beneath long, lush lashes. “Can Asi be my friend?”
“Oh sweetheart, of course he can! We come for walks out here almost every day. If it’s okay with your mom, you can walk with us when you see us, ok?”
Lisa’s mother’s expression is pained as her daughter looks to her for approval. “We’ll talk about it tonight, sweetie. Now, we have to go get lunch.”
After a moment, Lisa nods. “Okay,” she replies softly. Turning back, she takes a step forward and wraps small arms around Asi’s neck, squeezing with all her tiny strength. “Bye, bye, doggie,” she whispers into his warm fur. “Bye, bye.”
Tears prick at Kirsten’s eyes and another part of her soul she thought long desiccated comes back to life, and with it, a renewal of her determination to give this child, and all others like her, a better world to grow up in.
As she turns for home, her last vision is a replay of the first. Lisa is back in her mother’s arms, but this time she sees a spark of what she can only call hope shining in twin sets of eyes.
For now, it will have to be enough.
She makes it as far as the door to her temporary home when a note taped to the door brings her up short. Written in a fine hand, the words jump out at her, making her, by turns, determined, angry, then both at once.
“Not this time,” she vows, ripping the paper from the door and crumpling it in one tense fist. “Not this time. C’mon, Asi. We’ve got a party to crash.”
*
The room is grey as a November day. Grey walls, set off by a tasteful strip of white PVC running along the bottom in lieu of baseboard. Grey carpet, with tone-on-tone USAF logs imposed on diagonally offset laurel wreaths. Grey curtains, likewise. On the wall hang photographs of warplanes based at Ellsworth, the intensely turquoise skies behind and below the airborne Tomcats and SuperHornets virtually the only color in the room. On a table in one corner sits an unwatered Norfolk pine, its pot wrapped in peeling red-black foil and its wilting branches hung with miniature lights and iridescent glass globes, dull in the dim light that penetrates the heavily lined window coverings. The long conference table is grey steel. Its vinyl-upholstered chairs match. Koda has, she thinks wryly, seen cheerier coffins.
Maggie says it for her. “Somebody get me a happy pill. This place would depress goddam Shirley Temple.”
“Never mind goddam Shirley Temple. It depresses me.” Tacoma gives a half-suppressed snort, not unlike a big cat’s disdainful whuffle. “Droids get the psych-ops staff?”
Maggie shakes her head. “Hart got the decorators, years ago. Too touchy-feely.”
“It could be worse,” Koda offers. “It could be pecan laminate and stuffed deers’ heads.”
Tacoma winces visibly as he shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it across the back of a chair about halfway down the table. He has resumed his Army uniform, the brass of his greens newly shined, his campaign ribbons proud in their many colors over his left pocket. Koda knows them as well as he does: the Afghan Meritorious Service Ribbon, bright green with its silver crescent; the Kingdom of Jordan Honor Legion; the Medal for Humane Action; Combat Action Ribbon; Bronze and Silver Stars, both with oak leaf. And there is the one she hates, purple with white edges. Wounded in action, gone missing in the frozen mountains of Panjir for two weeks and more when no one, not his commander, not his family, knew whether he was alive or dead, and neither she nor her father, for all their special skills, had been able to find him in the spirit world. Her eyes meet Tacoma’s as she seats herself across from his place, numbering his honors. Their father, veteran of VietNam, calls the tunic with the array of medals her brother’s scalp shirt, boasting that it is even more lavish than his own.. “Hey,” Tacoma says softly, reaching over the space between to touch her arm, calling her back to the present.
“Hey yourself. You didn’t cut your hair.”
“Not going to.” He grins suddenly at Maggie, now seated beside him. “You able to live with that, Colonel?”
Maggie, in her own spruce blues and even more fruit salad, grins back at him. “We’ll average it. You’ve got enough for Manny, yourself and me put together. Hart’s not going to like it, though.”
“Somebody mention my name?” Manny appears in the doorway, accompanied by two other men. One is in Marine uniform, the other in flannel shirt and jeans. Manny pulls out the chair next to Koda and glances around the room. “No coffee?”
“It’s on its way,’ offers a newcomer, a blond youngster in fatigues whose sleeves carry Corporal’s stripes. “What’s up, Lieutenant?”
Manny shrugs and glances at Allen. “Colonel?”
“Something to do with recon, as I understand it.”
The Corporal is followed by another man in civilian clothes, then by two women with wind-weathered faces. Koda sweeps the company with her eyes, not recognizing individuals but acknowledging the indelible signs of a life lived between earth and open sky. She says, “Everyone here is local, right?”
Nods answer her, responding to more than the single question. Local, and familiar with the countryside.
“Scouts,” she says. “Ground reconnaissance.”
“You’ve stolen my thunder, Dr. Rivers.” Hart stands in the doorway, waving his officers back to their seats as they push their chairs back to stand and salute. “We do need people who know the area to become involved in recon. I’ll be briefing all of you, then asking for volunteers.” He moves to the head of the table, spine stiffly erect, allowing the carts bearing coffee and a projector-cum-laptop to follow him into the room. He motions toward the urn and stack of cups. “Please, help yourselves. We’ve even managed to requisition some doughnuts.”
Must be his own private stash of Krispy Kremes, Koda observes wryly to herself as she fills her cup. She catches Tacoma’s eye as he does the same and feels the thought pass easily between them. He winks at her, snagging a cinnamon cruller for himself and dropping another onto her plate. Wants us bad
When the table has settled, Hart begins. “As you know, we have been fortunate at Ellsworth in that we have been able to repel the initial attacks of the mutinous androids, both military and civilian. We have, of course, suffered extensive casualties, but many of our officer corps have survived and we are still operational. At a reduced level, of course.
“We have also had the benefit of intelligence and reinforcements from the civilian population of the surrounding area.” Hart pauses to smile at Koda and to single out the other ranchers with a nod. When he comes to Tacoma, the smile freezes for a moment, then becomes deliberately brighter. Koda feels a light tap against her boot and looks up at Tacoma’s suspiciously expressionless face. Counting coup.
“Lights, please.”
When the room is dark, the general switches on the projector and fiddles briefly with the focus. The images that gradually form against the wall are night-sight green, but fairly clear for all that:
Troop transport trucks, moving along narrow roads, no more than three or four in a convoy.
Columns of the inhuman soldier-androids, churning along cleared highway surfaces on their caterpillar tracks, slowly but inexorably, never breaking rank, never tiring.
Armored vehicles, their guns at ready, crunching through the snow.
Small groups of men, platoon-size, no more than a dozen at a time, slipping along back roads and game trails, fully outfitted in helmet, backpack and weapons. Shepherded, invariably, by one or two of the military droids ahead, another pair behind.
Koda hears a small hiss of indrawn breath at the last sequence. Across the table from her, Maggie’s face is drawn into a tight mask of anger and disgust. Closer to, Manny’s fists clench against the table. The civilian woman two places down, her skin reddened from years of High Plains wind, her face hard as the bones of the land itself, looks nauseated in the flickering green light. Koda’s own stomach turns over.
“Indeed,” says General Hart as he switches off the projector, and the room lights come back up. “We have not only droids on the move, but we have human collaborators as well. This is something Colonel Allen and Dr. Rivers have encountered, but not quite in this capacity or in these numbers.” He flicks another switch and a map of South Dakota , with Wyoming and Colorado to the south, appears on the wall. “These videos were taken by Colonel Allen and her squadron over the last several days. They show a disturbingly large number of small companies moving toward our position. They seem to come from Warren Space Wing in Wyoming and Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. Presumably they will rendezvous at some point and position themselves for a second assault on the Base. This is not a favorable development.”
“General.”
Tacoma waits for recognition, and when Hart nods, continues. “We are assuming from these movements that there is no longer any resistance at Warren or Peterson?”
“Or in between?” Koda adds.
“Sergeant, Doctor—I have no reason to believe that is not correct.” For a moment, Hart’s normally ruddy face is as grey as the light filtering in through the windows. “We have no hope of reinforcement from either of those installations. Nor, I think, of further influx of civilians from the surrounding area. What we have now, is, barring the unexpected, what we will have to face the enemy.”
“We’re outnumbered,” Manny observes.
“And except for air cover, probably outgunned” adds Maggie.
“Correct.”
“But not,” Tacoma answers, grinning, “outthought.”
“Also correct, Sergeant.” Hart’s smile is a bit less stiff this time. “Every one of you in this room has immediate and intimate knowledge of the area surrounding Ellsworth. Some of you, like Mr. Marshak”—he indicates the gentleman in the flannel shirt—“or Mmes. Tilbury-Laduque”—the women ranchers—“have lived and worked in the region for decades. Some, like Marine Ensign Guell and Corporal Mainz, are local residents who have experience camping or hunting in the vicinity. We need you all, assuming you are willing, to act as scouts—to move out into the countryside and track these units, discover as much about their movements, and, if possible, their plans, as you can.”
“So why don’t you just bomb the hell out of them?” asks one Ms. Tilbury-Laduque. Her thin face is stark with determination under her graying red hair; the question clearly does not come from cowardice. “It seems to me that human resources are what’s scarcest here.”
“If I may—?” Maggie glances at Hart.
At the general’s nod, she proceeds. “We still have both adequate jet fuel and sufficient munitions to bomb these bastards back to atoms, Ma’am. And we’ll do that if we have to. But it’s the best judgment of this base’s senior officers that for the time being we would do best to conserve those resources for civilian defense. There are a surprising number of survivor enclaves still out there in the countryside who are not equipped to repel, say, an attack by the military-model androids. We need to hold the airborne defenses in reserve for them as long as we can.”
There is a pause, then the rancher nods. “I see. Okay, I’m with you.”
“Me, too,” adds the other Ms. Tilbury-Laduque. Koda feels a tug of memory, brief and poignant, as the woman’s work-roughened hand closes over her partner’s fingers. It is not so sharp as it would once have been, though, and she lowers her eyes to her own hands where a barely perceptible band of lighter skin remains on the third finger of her left hand.
It has become almost a phantom pain, like nerves still wired to the ghost of a missing limb. She has seen it in one or two of Tacoma’s friends who did not come home from battle with all they had left home with and who could or would not be fitted with cyberlimbs or old-fashioned prostheses. She has seen it, too, in her own surgical patients, cows whose hip muscles twitch, attempting to move a leg no longer there, a fox biting at a gangrenous tail she has been forced to amputate. She glances up at Maggie, intent now on the speaker across the table from her, her handsome features animated by an underlying lust for life so strong that Koda cannot begin imagine her dampened by injury or illness. And that, she tells herself, is a dangerous thing not to be able to imagine about a battle-companion, much less a battle-companion who is also a friend.
“I’ll do it,” says Manny, glancing up at Maggie.
“So will I,” adds the Colonel. “I’d like to have some of the same troops that have been with me from the mutiny, General. They may not be strictly local, but they’ve had experience in skirmish encounters and in liberating civilians. We may run into caches of prisoners along the way, too.”
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