Echoes of Family Lost Read online

  Sighing, Orloff looked as Fausta brushed at her hair, then seemed to stretch. Great: two more in the office, and another in the building they’d been directed to.

  “I think,” he began, “that it’s best that we just move on.”

  “And I think, old man,” the shorter one said, “that yous be stayin’. Hey, Zed!”

  The door of the office opened again and the other two men came out, their pistols pointed. Fausta grinned.

  “What in the HELL is that?!” The taller called in fear.

  Orloff quickly drew his pistol and shot him in the head. Lily leapt behind Clyde for cover as Fausta charged the two that had just emerged. They’d only time for one shot each, both of which bounced off of her armor. The closer she punched with her left hard enough for Orloff to hear all the facial bones shatter; in another moment, the further man receiving her right.

  Blocked by the wagon, Orloff dropped and shot at the shorter’s legs; missed, but distracted him long enough for…

  …Fausta jumped over the wagon, firing her revolver has she dropped. Two shots into each shoulder.

  “Lily! Cover the door next to us!” Orloff called. She came up over Clyde’s back with her gun pointed. Fausta was already on her way, and smashed through the door with her shoulder. Orloff heard a short “I give u--!” before another crunch of bone.

  For a moment all was still, the only sound from the short thug screaming in pain. Fausta’s targets were all unconscious.

  “Fausta! Check the other building!” He called as he walked around the cart. He took aim….

  “What the hell are you doing!” Lily yelled. Orloff shot the wounded man in the head and looked up at her.

  “What?”

  Fausta trotted past him and kicked in the door of the last building.

  “Clear!” She called. Orloff turned and walked towards the first two Fausta hit.

  “Stop it! I forbid it!” Lily yelled as she stormed towards him.

  “I’m not a machine that takes your orders, little girl.” He raised his pistol.

  “No! NOOO!!! There’s already too much killing in my life! Stop it! PLEASE!” She collapsed into the gravel and dust, crying.

  There was a rush and Fausta was between him and the two on the ground.

  “Do not, Mister Orloff. Please.” She said. “For Lily.”

  “You want me to leave enemies behind us?” He asked. “At some point we’re likely to come back this way, and these thugs, their friends, their family, will all be gunning for the Chinese girl, old man, and fanged demoness. Better to eliminate the problem now!”

  “Please.”

  He frowned as he holstered his weapon. “On one condition! You break their legs so as to cripple them. That reduces their threat potential and serves as a warning to others.”

  “I agree,” she said simply. She went to Lily and picked her up.

  “Don’t do that, Fausta!” Lily cried. She shushed her.

  “It will be fine. And no more killing.”

  She leaned Lily against the wagon and retrieved the man from inside the building. Laying him next to the other two, she methodically stomped on their knees, crushing them. Lily was crying again. She looked at Orloff.

  “Acceptable?”

  “Yes. I’ll turn the wagon around. You get in there are see if there’s really a way to charge up.”

  Fausta first went to Lily and half-carried her into the building. Inside, Lily tried to bury her face in her chest as she cried. “I’m so sorry, friend Fausta! I never knew he was like this…!”

  “There, now,” Fausta said as she looked around. Ah. “Are you able to help me?”

  Lily took a shuddering breath and nodded. “Doing’s better than thinking, Dad always said. What can I do?”

  Fausta shed her jacket and pulled off her black tee shirt. Her scale mail glistened; Lily noted the two impact marks on her chest. She turned about.

  “Where a human’s right kidney would be, pull that section of my armor up.”

  A little unsure of herself, Lily grasped at the scales in that area and tugged.

  “Harder.”

  There was a tearing noise. Oh: it was merely velcroed in place. Just under it was a two-phase plug. Lily pulled it out. About four inches of clearance.

  “Thank you.” Fausta walked over to the wall socket she’d seen a moment ago. Reaching behind her back, she plugged herself in. She shuddered and made a moue.

  “What is it, friend?”

  “This electricity tastes awful!”

  Lily found she could still laugh. Oh, Fausta!

  Happy to sit and hold hands, after about twenty minutes they began to hear the cries and screams of the men outside. When a sudden silence fell, Lily feared the worst. She stood.

  “I’d better go make sure he didn’t….” But Fausta reached out and took her hands back.

  “He’s a violent man, Lily.” She said. “But not a dishonorable one.”

  Lily relented and sat back down. After another twenty minutes, Fausta quickly reached around and unplugged.

  “Full up?” Lily asked with a smile. Fausta shook her head.

  “Eighty five percent. But I hear horses coming.” She stood. “We go.”

  Outside Orloff waited on the driver’s bench. Without looking at him, Lily sat as far from him as she could.

  “Horses coming.” Fausta called. “Give me thirty seconds.”

  She walked to the three men. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head and peeled her lips back. They recoiled in horror.

  “If ANY of you ever threatens my friend again,” she growled. “I will eat you!”

  She returned to the wagon and took her place. When they out of earshot, Orloff said, “Miss Fausta? That was hilarious.”

  “Thank you, Mister Orloff.”

  The sun was low in the west when they left the highway to seek cover in the trees around the Wolf River. “This puts us halfway to Corinth, and that’s halfway to Huntsville, which will be halfway to Knoxville.”

  Lily was tired and in no mood to listen to his rhetoric. He kept on anyway.

  “So long as we can avoid any unpleasantness like this morning, we should be fine. What was the report on power at Huntsville, Miss Fausta?”

  “Intermittent at best,” she said from the small fire she was starting. It would have to be out by nightfall, so as to not attract attention. “And there was no signal.”

  “Odd, that,” he said. “It has both Redstone Arsenal and the Space Flight Center. I’d have hoped that with talent like that, they might have better survived.

  “I’ve known plenty of otherwise smart people that I wouldn’t trust cut a dog’s hair, much less survive something like the Breakup,” Lily said. With a pot of water on the boil, she handed Fausta some foil pouches for dinner.

  “True,” Orloff agreed. “Still: hope for the best; expect the worst.”

  At least they were starting to talk again, Fausta thought to herself. It would be a shame for them to grow apart. She played back the entire scene from the morning. It not the first time she’d seen a human kill another, but it was the first time she was right there when it happened. Somewhere in her, the First Law pushed her to stop it all, but Lily was in such danger! Getting older was hard, sometimes. I want to talk to my family so badly!

  “Friend Lily, your food is ready.”

  Chapter 8

  Callie watched Gary as he splashed about in some of the artificial pools and streams outside the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. She’d been here with her family around when she was five, but really didn’t recall much. She’d been back while pregnant with Gary. She wasn’t sure why she enjoyed being here so much, but she did.

  Like any other city, they’d lost much of their population during the Breakup, but the reduction in people meant that those left still had power from the Chickamauga Dam. And when the remnant population took a stand at the Battle of Ringgold, when over ten thousand marauders came north from what was left of Atlanta, and were defe
ated, the Knoxville Council of Five reached out to the city in alliance. She almost smiled as she recalled how Leslie tried to explain to her that the new world they were making was starting to look like Pericles’ Greece: a loose federation of city-states.

  Her last visit had been one her first missions as a member of the Society: they were to get the Sequoyah nuclear plant back online. They preferred their own thorium pebble-bed or molten-salt reactors – they were so much safer! – but that one had only been mothballed two years ago. Callie thought it way to big and complicated; not at all cute like Pookie, but it was an interesting puzzle to solve.

  This trip, so far, had been uneventful. Well, she looked again at Gary; mostly. It was the first time they’d ever had a problem with him. Once their part of the convoy was about ten miles southwest of Knoxville, he started getting cranky. By their first stop outside of Sweetwater, he was angry and rebellious. ‘I can’t see Pavel! I want my friend!’ Only when Leslie called a dispatch rider to their cart, and threatened to send the boy back, did he finally subside. And then, on the outskirts of Chattanooga, he’d fallen asleep for almost two hours, and had been his usual self ever since.

  Although no longer formally a part of the Pioneer Corps, Leslie was off with the Colonel and his staff to review their departure tomorrow. Until the very last leg of this trip, they’d be next to the Tennessee River, crossing bridge after bridge. Or: ambush point after ambush point. She glanced at her watch.

  “Gary,” she called. “Let’s head back to we can meet your father for dinner.”

  Without a word, he walked over and let her towel him off. Somewhat clumsily tugging his clothes on, he suddenly asked, “Mother? Do you believe in demons?”

  What? She fleetingly recalled her twelve years in Catholic schools…. Of course, she’d not been to a church in almost six years, so much had faded.

  “Uh. I don’t know.” Turn it around. “What makes you ask that?”

  “Pavel’s worried about where we’re going. There might be demons there.”

  His invisible friend again. Leslie seemed fine with playing along, but sometimes she was completely creeped out how her boy talked about him.

  “Is that so?”

  “He says they control electrical things.” His expression never changed. “If we start up a reactor in Huntsville, they might do something bad.”

  “Bad. As in…?”

  “He didn’t say.” He looked up at the sky. “He also said a demoness attacked him just before we left.”

  He looked back to his mother.

  “I want to help my friend.”

  “Oh…kay. Since your father is a soldier, let’s see what he has to say!” Save me, Leslie!

  The little boy almost smiled. “Thank you, mother!”

  It was a walk of a bit over thirty minutes to their camp, just south of the town’s old center. Along the way were offices where Leslie’s meeting was being held. She and Gary sat waiting about five minutes before he came out. Molly Patterson was with him.

  “Hello, Molly!” Callie said, giving her friend a quick hug. “How’d it go?”

  “Looks good,” she replied. “The Pioneer teams are loitering at each bridge, not holding them, but just keeping an eye on things. As the convoy passes, each team will just fall in behind us.”

  “And they’re all still standing?” Callie was surprised at that.

  “That’s what our latest intel says,” Leslie said, indicating the maps in his hand. “Fortunate for us; makes a much shorter route.”

  In the slight pause in the conversation, Gary spoke up.

  “Father?” He asked. “It’s hard to cross the big rivers without bridges, right?”

  Leslie nodded, with a small smile for his son.

  “So if we wanted to keep our enemies away, we would knock them down?” Leslie’s smile faltered at ‘our enemies.’

  “Sure,” he said. “Denying an enemy a bridgehead has been a common military tactic for probably as long as there have been armies.”

  Gary continued. “What’s the best way to break a bridge?” Callie looked at Molly and shook her head.

  “Hmmm…” Leslie considered. “To do it right, you need a lot of explosives and some good engineers. But that’s to drop the whole span. To stop traffic like ours, blasting a big enough hole in it would work. Especially in bandit-country, where there are no repair teams.”

  “Would a missile work?”

  Leslie stared hard at his boy. “Yes… with a large enough warhead. Gary,” he knelt down, “is something wrong?”

  Their faces close, Leslie watched the little boy’s eyes completely dilate, then return to normal after a second. What was that?

  “No,” he said in his flat voice. “My friend wanted to know.”

  Leslie ruffled Gary’s hair as he stood.

  “Let’s hurry on to dinner, and after that, an early bed,” he said, taking the hands of his wife and child. “We’re going to make history tomorrow!”

  He knew it was past his bedtime, but this volume was the last one of the series, and Gary wanted to finish reading it. Since they again were leaving an area with power and signal, he was glad his friend let him come to his house. It would seem he’d not be back for some time. That made him sad.

  Gary looked up from his manga to Pavel’s front door. Several of the locks were broken, and one hinge was out. Some planks of wood had been hastily nailed across it.

  “Pavel?” Gary asked, pointing at the door. “Was it bad, when that demoness came?”

  He looked up from the book he was reading. “Bad enough. I thought she was going to batter then door down.” He shook slightly.

  “What did she look like?”

  With a click, Pavel’s flatscreen came on. The image swam and resolved itself into some sort of medieval knight in armor. A broadsword in one hand and a great shield on the other.

  “Doesn’t look like a demon,” Gary observed.

  “If you saw what was really inside, it would sicken you,” Pavel countered. “And, in resisting it, I learned that they might be working with other people like you to get at me. That why I should thank you for asking your father that question about bridges.”

  “You’re welcome.” Gary considered the image on the screen.

  “What’s that on its shield?”

  “Hmmm?” Pavel said, looking. “Didn’t notice it at the time. Two Greek letters: lambda and beta. I wonder what they stand for?”

  Gary returned to his book.

  Chapter 9

  As they inched their way thorough the impromptu parade in Huntsville, Callie reflected on how fortunate they had been. Their only trouble was in taking some rifle fire as they passed through Scottsboro – which was quickly suppressed by the defense team’s counter-battery of 60mm mortars – sustaining six casualties, but no fatalities. Leslie called it good staff work; she called it good luck. She waved back at some of the crowd.

  “Nice to be appreciated,” Leslie said, next to her on their cart. Gary sat between. Behind them, under a tarp, stacks of black box controls were carefully packed and padded. He pointed at the cart to their front. “I just hope whosever at the front of the line knows where they’re going!”

  There was a clatter as a horse and his rider came aside them. “They do; and it’s already causing a problem.”

  “Hey, John!” Leslie said with a wave. “What do you mean by that?”

  “What I meant… oh, hello, Callie! How’re you?” John Carell asked. As part of the outriders, his attire was more martial: cammo pants and shirt, flak jacket with combat webbing, mud-spattered riding boots. His machine pistol was slung behind him and his rifle was holstered against his horse next to his right leg.

  “Fine. How are you…John.” Her brows knit, she managed to not say ‘pervert.’

  “I really thought your chest would have gotten bigger after Gary.” She opened her mouth to yell, but he kept on. “What I meant was that it seems the town council, or whatever runs this place, thought we’d
just come in, set up the reactor in the main square, and everyone would have their tablets back on, watching porn and playing Candycrunch.”

  “And I’m guessing that when the Colonel disabused them of that notion….” Leslie said. Carell nodded.

  “And learned we were instead setting up at Redstone. And that it would be weeks if not months until everything is complete…makes me glad that there isn’t power here now, as this would be a riot and not a parade.”

  Leslie glanced at his family and frowned. “Then we’d best get somewhere secure. Before these lovely people,” he smiled and waved, “tear us to pieces.”

  “I’m going on ahead. Right now, we stay on the highway, south at Patton, west onto Goss. That’s for tonight. After that….” He shrugged. “See ya’!”

  Leslie waved at his retreating back, but he heard his wife mutter.

  “Pervert!”

  It was close to four in the evening as they left the highway. There was no longer a crowd, but just a few by the roadside. Fortunately still friendly. Callie didn’t know whether to be surprised or not: even after surviving these past years, all anyone wanted was their toys back. She wondered for a moment if the pervert had just made up that story… no, even he wouldn’t have been that bad: lying to another Society member just wasn’t done. Gary was still looking at his book on spaceships, so she looked at her husband.

  “So, once we get settled…?” She asked. He smiled at her.

  “Assuming the locals don’t eat us,” he laughed, “I’ll be with Carell and the others training the local militia. Word about what we’re doing here will spread, and we don’t want some bandit chief or warlord to ride in and take over. It probably won’t be for six weeks or so before I’m on-call to help the techs. You, like always, will be our troubleshooter.”

  They’d both been surprised that Callie had some innate mechanical sense of what worked and what didn’t. She’d first manifested that with ‘Pookie,’ but had since shown in time and again at Oak Ridge. Seasoned scientists and engineers would give her a problem that had them at a loss. About half the time, she could either figure it out, or at least get them going in another direction. Zack, Molly’s husband, had guessed that she inherited it from her parents, both once engineers. When she told him she was adopted, that shot that down.