sat down, tears streaming down his face.
"Is that our latest foundling?" Amy asked Anthony.
He nodded. "He was with Joel when he got hurt."
She went to Renzo, as tenderly as she had approached her own children. "What happened?"
"He was protecting me, and got shot," Renzo said, too overcome to embellish or buffer.
Amy looked at Anthony.
"I can verify that. Harvey and I were taking the new helicopter for a test flight, and got there just in time to see an enemy copter chasing them down. When bullets started flying, Joel shoved Renzo down, and got on top of him. He took a hit for both of them. It's in the leg. It was one of those nasty expanding bullets, and it did a lot of damage. Harvey got the copter shot down, and we got a tourniquet on Joel's leg right away, and got him straight home. But he lost a lot of blood, and the leg is pretty mangled."
Amy nodded, and drew in a deep breath to steady herself. She turned back to Renzo. "It's all right. I married Joel because he was that sort of man. It's not always easy, but I wouldn't want to be married to a man who thinks of himself first. I need to get over to him, but you take care of yourself. We love you, you know." She gave him a quick hug. She turned to Scott. "Will you go tell Lyle?" she asked. After a quick look for approval from the pastor, Scott took off one way, to track down Joel's father, while Amy took off the other, to jog to the base.
"He doesn't even like me, and he got between me and the helicopter," Renzo whimpered, to no one in particular.
The ladies swept over to mother him.
Anthony went to help himself to tea and cookies, and to play with kids while Renzo got dosed up with maternal affection.
Renzo accepted the motherly caressing and hugs and platitudes for a while, but suddenly batted the women away. "No, you don't know who I am. I'm dark, and evil. Get away from me. I'm not like you. I'm not like you at all. Get away from me!" he cried out.
"I think I'll take all the kids down to my place," Mrs. Carter said, as she did a masterful job of herding them out the door, with only a tiny assist from Anthony.
Anthony closed the door and started over to Renzo, but Isabella Charbonneau gave him signals to stay back. Anthony complied, because (once alerted to it) he saw what she did, that Renzo was paying more attention to her than to Mrs. Harrison or himself, and seemed more concerned about what she thought. Bella, age 19, was solid in the faith, and bolder than most. She needed a little work on winsomeness yet, but even that had been coming along.
Anthony discreetly moved to where he had a better shot at tackling Renzo should he attack anybody. Bella, no babe in the woods, smiled at him, conveying both thanks and reassurance.
She knelt in front of Renzo's chair. He avoided looking her in the eye. "Now, Renzo, let's talk," she said.
"No! I'm nothing like you! I'm dark inside, and full of evil."
"Well, duh," Bella said.
It wasn't how Anthony would have handled it, but it got Renzo's attention.
Bella smiled gently. "Of course you're crawling with evil and don't have Holy Spirit light yet, if you haven't converted. You have a little light, because God's showing you the way forward with it, but you'll necessarily be mostly dark inside until you're a Christian. Do you want to come over into more light?"
"I can't."
"Uh, uh. You've got two options, and 'I can't' isn't one of them. Do you want to break free of the evil and get rid of the worst darkness? Yes or no?"
"It's too dark. I can't get out."
Anthony joined them. "What's in the way, Renzo?" he asked.
"I don't belong here. I don't belong with good people. I've done terrible things. Lots of terrible things," Renzo said.
"Tell me the worst thing, Renzo," Anthony said.
"I killed somebody. While he was sleeping."
"Who?"
Renzo froze.
"The man who was sent to replace you?" Bella guessed.
Renzo stared at her in amazement.
"Uncle Stanley and some of the other guys wondered if you did. It was funny how he disappeared and you came back. But Renzo, although that was very wrong, and you ought to feel bad about that, and you shouldn't do anything like that again, God can still adopt you, and bring you into more light, and make you a new person, if you'll ask Him, by repenting of your sins, and asking to be born again through Christ, who loves us so much that He even went to die on a cross for us, and who intercedes for us now, even though we don't deserve it. Don't you go thinking you have to fix things up first. He won't help you fix things up first, and this isn't something you can do on your own. The help, and the changes that matter, come after you join the body of believers. It really is like being born a second time, and growing up into something different."
"Yes, Renzo, even you. Jesus can rescue, reconcile, and renew even you," Anthony said, anticipating the next objection.
Renzo stared at them, hope battling with despair.
When Harvey got to Lt. Ott's office, he was redirected to a large conference room. Ott was there, as were Trevin and Robert and the men who had rolled Trevin's cart down. Leo was there, too. Apparently the men who had rolled Joel down had gotten out of the net, but otherwise the catch was complete. In addition, several top aides were there, and a man Harvey didn't recognize, who had the air of a visiting general, plus a small entourage with the 'general.'
"If I'm crashing this party, I can come back later," Harvey quipped.
"Cute, Davis. Real cute. Come on in, and… come on in," Ott said.
A few men twittered nervously as it hit them that Ott had nearly invited a man in a wheelchair to come in and sit down. That 'Pilot Harvey' almost certainly wouldn't have been bothered by it didn't matter. The room was full of jitters, and this was enough to unleash some of it.
Harvey went where Ott pointed, which was uncomfortably close to the man who had the air of a visiting general. Harvey had been working on how he'd word his report to Ott, but what had seemed adequate to that task didn't seem up to the situation now.
"I understand there was some shooting?" Ott said.
"Yes, sir," Harvey said.
"The other craft went down?"
"Yes, sir."
"Survivors?"
"Not a chance of it."
"All right, then. We'll come back to that later. Colonel Chesterton, this is Harvey Davis, our helicopter pilot. Davis, this is Colonel Keith Chesterton. I'm turning this meeting over to him."
Chesterton strode front and center. "Gentlemen, I have news for you. A little over two weeks ago, Subterran Alliance forces, with help from the Soil Improvement League, hijacked topside billboards around the world. Don't ask me how. I couldn't tell you even if I understood it, which I don't. At any rate, what they tossed up on those billboards was this." He stepped to one side to get out of the way, and clicked a remote control device. A picture filled a screen at the front of the room. It featured a drop dead gorgeous young woman, with a medium dark complexion, and wavy hair that split the difference between brown and black. She radiated joy. Her smile was dazzling. Chesterton gave the men a few seconds to absorb the sight. "All right, gentlemen. Tear your eyes off of the young lady and read the text, if you would," he said.
The text read: "My name is Oleevaba Charlesville, and I've discovered life beyond government."
Men who had lived topside gasped. Some of the men cheered, before forcing themselves to be dignified and solemn again, as befitted grown men getting serious news.
Chesterton smiled. "I can see that some of you understand why this has thrown much of the topside world into a state of agitation. Thanks in part to decades of preparation by the SIL, some areas were particularly ripe. Already, there have been riots, revolts, heart attacks, and purges, as we pretty much expected."
Robert leaned over to ask Trevin, "What's the SIL?"
Chesterton caught him at it. "For those of you who don't know," he said, politely addressing the room in general, "the Soil Improvement League, aka the SIL, is a loose association of p
eople who have been quietly overseeing most of the work of getting people up top accustomed to the ideas of thinking for themselves, of freedom, of compassion; whatever they could do to open them up to the possibility of the government being returned to sane operations, in nation states instead of global rule, with the focus on protecting inalienable rights, instead of trampling them. They've followed this billboard attack with several other operations, most of which you'll never hear about. Key buildings have been blown up. College professors who educate the bureaucratic elite are rapidly being replaced with doubles, who will feed the fad-hungry students with some real history and solid ethics for a change. And, yes, that assignment falls under the heading of suicide mission, if you were wondering. Also, and this is where you come in, for a long time we've been putting together an air force of both new and used craft, which has been in deep hiding, but is coming out in waves, all around the world. As far as Greenley is concerned, today's battle here is just the latest loss in a blistering string of losses. Your focus for now will be on training helicopter pilots, with perhaps the occasional battle assignment. It's a developing situation, so don't get married to where you are, or what you're doing. Expect pilot trainees, and another couple or three copters, to show up within the week, and also perhaps enough parts to build more copters from the ground up. That's all for now." He and Ott exchanged salutes, and the colonel and his little entourage left, so he could personally inform another outpost.
Ott