Spirit went to the rear of the diner to guard the access from the back of the train; she would retreat to the home chamber when she had to. Coral went to the front, guarding the entrances to both diner and passenger car—a difficult position but one for which she was most competent. Ebony was ready to go to the engine, but Casey protested. “Can’t send a little gal into that,” he said. “That’s a man’s job. I’ll do it.”
“This isn’t your quarrel,” I reminded him. “You just come with the train.”
“And it’s my train they’re raiding,” he said. “And my pal Jones up there in the cab. Gimme that laser.”
I had to acquiesce; he surely would be more effective than Ebony. I gave him two lasers and let him go. “But when I call you in, you and Mrs. Burton and Jones come in here fast,” I told him. “You know what we’re planning.”
“Sure do,” he said, and headed grimly out.
The enemy train closed the moment we stopped maneuvering. We tried to confuse it by jogging up and down, but they flung magnetic grapples, normally used for moving individual cars about, and captured us. Now we could see that the enemy cars were packed with armed men; there must have been fifty of them. This was going to be rough indeed.
Still, a single person with a laser could hold off an army at a narrow aperture, and all the locks were narrow. As long as the laser charges held out we could hold on, and we hoped that would be long enough for Mrs. Burton to complete her job.
We closed off the restaurant chamber, but the com kept us in touch with the rest of the train. We could see Spirit’s post, overlooking the entrance to the sleeping car; she had good coverage of the locks there. Coral had similar coverage of the passenger car, but her job was more difficult because she could not risk firing toward the engine unless she was sure that Jones and Mrs. Burton were clear. Casey had the easiest post, backed by our own people, but it was also farthest from the security of the diner. When we contracted, Coral would have to protect the retreat from the engine; then she and Spirit would follow, leaving the rest of the train to the raiders.
The enemy connected with a series of clanks as each car lock mated with its opposite. These things were largely automatic; with five bars pressure outside, or more, it was foolish to risk the unreliability of human beings for the multiple couplings. It made sense, but I was struck by the similarity of this situation to the one we had faced as refugees in a bubble-ship in space, unable to prevent the entry of pirates. Surely these were pirates here!
They did not come cautiously; they came with the abandon of grossly superior numbers, seeking to overwhelm us in an instant. Every lock opened simultaneously, and men came through each, holding their lasers ready.
They were met by the fire of our own lasers. One beam from Spirit, one from Coral, and two men fell, each holed efficiently in the throat. Casey, untrained in this, hesitated, but when a beam coruscated into the frame of the lock beside him, he fired back, winging an enemy. The man fell but fired again, and a second man appeared behind him.
“Shoot for the face,” I told Casey. “One beam per man, no more; they outnumber us.” Of course, the enemy could hear the com speaking, but that couldn’t be helped.
Casey gulped and did it, taking out the second man and then the first. Casey was no killer, but it was his train he was defending, and he knew he was in a desperate situation.
After that initial round the enemy paused; no man came into our range. But they were boarding all along the rear of the train, and now they knew exactly where we were.
“Progress, Mrs. Burton?” I asked, still keeping my voice calm. I knew that our time was running short—very short.
“Close enough,” she said. “I’m rigging a line; I can pull the cork from the diner; I think it’ll work.”
“Then unroll your line, Mrs. Burton,” I said. “Get back here quickly—you and the engineers.”
She strung her line, and the three of them retreated from the engine, entering the passenger car. But, as they reached the center, more men burst in at the now-unguarded engine lock, threw themselves into the crannies of the cab, and began firing into the passenger car. Casey whirled to face them but too slowly; a beam seared into his leg, and he cried out and fell, dropping his own weapon. Coral aimed her laser but could not fire at the enemy without striking our own people.
“Get under cover!” Coral screamed at them. “Behind the seats!”
Belatedly they obeyed. But now the enemy men had a direct line of fire down the center aisle of the car, making further retreat hazardous.
“Cover your heads,” Coral called. Then she hurled something. It skidded along the floor, then rolled, fetched up at the far end, and exploded. A small grenade. “Now get into the diner—fast!” Coral ordered.
Jones and Mrs. Burton scrambled up, but Casey could not regain his feet. Jones grabbed him by the shoulders and started hauling him along.
Mrs. Burton lifted her spool of line. “It’s been severed!” she exclaimed, horrified. “I’ve got to reconnect it!”
But already more men were piling into the cab and into the front of the diner. I saw that Coral could not hold off both groups simultaneously. “I’m going out there!” I cried. “Otherwise we’re lost! Shelia, take over coordination.” Then I wrenched open the lock and dived out. I had no laser, but I was combat-trained, and the old reflexes guided me.
Now I could not see what the others were doing, for the com was a spot-address system, but I knew Shelia would be advising Coral of my approach. Accordingly I did not concern myself about her; I assumed she would cover the far side of the passenger car and leave the near side to me.
I was right. I burst into the lock area between cars and plowed into two men. I clubbed one on the side of the neck hard enough to send him reeling into the wall and dived low at the other. I caught him by the knees and lifted, sending him to the floor. Thank God for gee; that maneuver would not have worked in free-fall.
The first man was not completely stunned. He started to bring his laser about. I grabbed his arm, straightened it against my body, and broke his elbow with a strike of the heel of my left hand. This isn’t sanitary fighting, but it is effective. I took the laser from him, set it at his ear, and fired a half-second beam.
Steam boiled out of his ear, and he fell. I beamed the other in the throat, and he ceased operation. The messy throat shot is the one that holes the jugular vein; the neat shot merely cooks the spinal nerve. I had done it neatly. Then I moved on to check the passenger car.
To my surprise our people weren’t moving; they were huddled in dialogue. “Get into the diner!” I yelled.
Without turning, Coral answered me. “Her line was severed by my grenade, but we can’t restring it. Enemy’s got the engine.”
I saw the problem. We had to have that line intact or our retreat was pointless. “Jones, get your friend to cover,” I snapped. “I’ll take care of this.”
Without a word Jones heaved Casey up on his shoulders and staggered toward the diner. It wasn’t the weight that gave him trouble, for gee was fractional, but the lack of it; he had been braced for a much heavier load.
A pirate face showed above a seat. Coral skated a metal star at it, and it disappeared.
I joined her. “I’ll cover you. Toss another grenade.”
She ran on to the cab while I watched, laser poised. When she was beside the lock, I moved up. There were two bodies there, but a laser beam speared out from the cab. I fired back, forcing the man to duck away, and fired again as Coral readied her grenade. Then she hurled it in.
We were shielded from the direct blast, but the concussion rocked me. We jumped into the lock, guarding it from approach from the other train, while Mrs. Burton stepped through.
“No good,” she said as soon as she saw the cab. “My attachment’s been broken off. Can’t use the line now.”
“Can’t set it off?” I asked, dismayed. The enemy force, numerous as it was, was spread throughout the train; four men dead had depleted this
region, but I heard more charging forward in the other train. We could close the lock, but they would just open it again. Without that device of hers, we would be finished.
“I’ll set it off,” she said. “You scoot back to the diner. I’ll give you thirty seconds.”
“But—”
“Better do it, boss,” Shelia said on the com. “They’re moving against Spirit; she’ll have to retreat in a moment. Another’s in the lock behind you; he doesn’t know where you are yet, but—”
I had a hard decision to make in a hurry. “You want it this way, Mrs. Burton?”
“I’m old, boss,” she said. “You gave me a good retirement. Now move!”
“Move,” I echoed, knowing it was the only way. We closed the lock to the other train, which I hoped would delay entry for thirty seconds. Coral preceded me down the length of the passenger car, running fleetly.
A beam speared out from the next lock. Coral returned the fire, but then she stumbled. I knew she had been hit. I vaulted over her body, landed beside the lock, started my beam, and poked my hand around the corner, spraying the entire chamber without looking. I heard the noise of someone falling. Then I jumped back to Coral, heaved her up, and careened on through, stepping over the bodies. Gummy blood adhered to my soles; one of those killings had been messy. Our thirty seconds was up, and we weren’t safe yet.
I heard a loud hissing from the cab. I knew what it meant. “Farewell, Mrs. Burton!” I gasped as I launched myself at the door to our chamber. It opened as I reached it; I stumbled in, and it closed behind me. I saw that Hopie was operating it; she had been alert and timed it perfectly.
Now we watched what happened beyond our sanctuary. The screen showed it clearly. A great rush of steam was pouring from the cab, billowing out, funneling through the locks from car to car in both trains, spreading throughout the length of both. We heard the screams of the men being burned. They could not escape; the steam quickly permeated every crevice of both trains, and it was super-hot. It was the steam that normally drove the propulsion propellers; Mrs. Burton had tapped into one of its lines, routing it into the passenger section. This was, of course, an abuse of valuable water, but a necessary device on this occasion.
I checked Coral. She had been burned through the abdomen. She was alive but unconscious. We gave her a sedative to keep her that way; she would live but would only be in pain while conscious, until we got her to a competent medical facility.
“She did her job,” Spirit murmured.
Indeed, she had. Coral had taken the shot that might otherwise have caught me.
After a few minutes the trains were quiet. We waited for the steam to cool; in due course it condensed to water. No more came from the engine; we had exhausted its limited supply.
Spirit and I emerged to find globules of water floating about the cars; naturally we had returned to null-gee when the drive power of the engine was sabotaged by the loss of steam pressure. Such was my distraction, I hadn’t even noticed. We could no longer use this engine, but fortunately we had another available, from the other train.
There were dead men everywhere; the steam had suffocated them all. I exchanged a glance with Spirit. Yes, we remembered the bubble in space! We had been attacked once too often by relentless pirates and had killed them all by depressurizing the ships. Had anything really changed?
Mrs. Burton was dead, too, of course—and that also echoed the past. “Helse,” I murmured. There was no similarity between the young, beautiful girl of my past and the old woman of the present, except this: each had knowingly sacrificed her life in horrible fashion to save mine.
I leaned against Spirit and cried.
CHAPTER 17
REBA
We limped on to Slake in the state of Beehive and made our report. This wasn’t on our planned route, but we knew we needed to stop in a city of sufficient size to handle our problems: two wounded, some fifty or so dead, and badly battered equipment. Hereafter we would carry a jamproof broadcast unit on the train, so as to be able to summon the police promptly.
Megan was in a state bordering on shock, and Hopie, despite her good performance under pressure, was not much better off. They had never been exposed to savagery of this intensity and personal nature before. I think a significant portion of their horror was from the fact that Spirit and I had actively participated in the killing. Had we not done so, all of us would have died, and our train might have disappeared without trace, scuttled in the atmosphere: the perfect crime. But the necessities of combat are seldom intelligible to civilians. Shelia and Ebony came through it fairly well, however; it seemed that they each had had prior exposure to savagery.
I had not scheduled a campaign speech in Slake, but my news conference there became very like one. I described what had happened, suitably edited, and concluded that one of my earliest priorities as president would be the restoration of true law and order in Jupiter society. “Especially along the railroad tracks,” I concluded with a smile. And do you know, the applause lasted several minutes. The general tide of violence had been rising throughout the nation, because of governmental policies that simply did not address the needs of the people and a rate of monetary inflation and unemployment that was accelerating. There was a deepening unrest, and now I had, almost inadvertently, tapped into it as a campaign issue.
Then some idiot began chanting “Hubris! Hubris!” and the conference dissolved into a rather delightful anarchy.
The police launched their investigation, of course, but I knew that our attackers would simply turn out to be hired thugs, paid anonymously. I knew that true professional assassins would have come prepared to do the job properly, and we would have had no chance to resist. A single missile to destroy our power source, which was the engine, and cause implosion; then a suited technician to board and deactivate the gee-shields and send the train to the deeps. No evidence of foul play; it would have been listed as an unfortunate accident.
However, it was now imperative for us to locate our specific enemy. I just did not believe it was the drug moguls, though they would certainly be amenable to my extinction. After the reversal of their bribe ploy in Sunshine they were disorganized, and the police everywhere were monitoring their activities closely; they simply couldn’t have arranged this sort of action. I had a very strong suspicion who it was but hesitated to voice it until Megan, emerging from her emotional stasis, voiced it for me.
“Tocsin,” she said. “He knows how dangerous you have become to him. You can martial the Hispanic vote, which would otherwise have gone to him, and the female vote, and a fair share of the general vote: enough to destroy him. He will stop at nothing to nullify you as an opponent.”
“But we can’t accuse him,” I said. “There is no proof.”
“He never provides proof,” she said. “How well I know!”
Yes, Tocsin was a cunning one. But with Megan’s confirmation of my suspicion I was ready to proceed to the offense. It was obvious that we could no longer afford to be strictly defensive or to live and let live; the political war had become a physical one.
However, with what irony only he knew, President Tocsin now officially deplored the violence and designated me as a candidate of stature, entitled to government protection. The Secret Service moved in to take over my bodyguarding, and this extended to my family. This was just as well, for Coral had been grievously wounded; she would recover but required surgery and a prolonged convalescence before she could return to duty. I made it a point to interview the key Secret Service men assigned to us and found them to be professionals who had no concern for party or personality; they were dedicated to the proposition that no body they protected would be damaged, and they had an excellent record. There was no deception here.
Still, there were occasions when it was not possible to safeguard me perfectly. One such occurred in Firebird, in the state of Canyon, well along on my campaign tour. I had played to increasing audiences; news of my train ordeal had generated an immense groundswell of symp
athy that was translating into support as folk thronged to hear me talk. Never would I have gone into that train attack voluntarily or brought my family and staff into such risk; but it had become a considerable asset to my campaign. Instead of being a long-shot candidate, I was now advancing into Serious Candidate status.
Curiosity brought many folk, but once they heard me speak, it became more than that. If there was one thing I could do well, it was move a crowd. It seemed to be an extension of my talent. I treated the crowd as an individual and responded to its signals, using the information to amplify the things that made it respond. It is often said that a man is learning nothing while he is talking, but that is not necessarily true; his speech can be like radar, bouncing off the audience and educating him by the response. There can be a very positive feedback. I suspect that this is the root of the success of every truly effective campaign. What I actually said hardly mattered, and pundits—notably Thorley—roundly panned my positions in print. But the people were becoming mine. Yet I needed more, so had an eye for the spectacular, for something that would tie more directly in to the malaise of the times and enable me to dramatize my position positively.
In this instance a desperate man had taken an employment office hostage; he demanded a job or he would blow up the place. They thought he was bluffing but weren’t sure. Police surrounded the region but did not dare enter. This event was typical of the times; there had been a number recently, as the notion spread about the planet, and some bombs had indeed been detonated. Terrorism was becoming more popular in the United States of Jupiter and bringing in its wake a deep disquiet among people who had never known such violence before. I had only to look at Megan to understand how they felt.
“Hubris!” the man exclaimed suddenly to the holo-news pickup. Evidently they had a remote-controlled unit there in the office with his permission. “He’s in town, isn’t he? Let me talk to him! He’s for the common man!”