It was picking up speed.
It’ll go around her, Roseland thought. He was reluctant to give up the cover of the car.
It kept going, gaining on her—but looking for him.
It wasn’t going to go around her.
The guards will stop it, he thought.
It kept coming, she was in its shadow now, and her mewling had become yowling. Screaming.
“Goddamn it to fucking hell!” Roseland yelled, jumping up and firing at the tank turret. He sprinted to the left, trying to draw it away from her. Too late.
Without hesitation, it rolled right over her.
It broke her back, and broke her head, and churned her up, and spat bits of her out the back. This wasn’t some programmed-in cruelty, it wasn’t punishing her; she was simply in the way, and the device was not going to be diverted even for an instant from its objective.
Roseland stopped moving, froze, staring at it. One of the SA soldiers fired at him, the bullet kicking up the dirt close beside his left foot, but he didn’t move.
He stared at the autotank.
The autotank was the Second Alliance International Security Corporation. It was all fascists. It was all intolerance, all inflexibility, all racism, all xenophobia, all absolutism, all of it. In one machine. Programmed by the Fascists. Told to hunt down these guerrillas and don’t slow up for the civilians in the way. Simply move in and eradicate the little pocket of resistance.
It was a thing of hard angles and unforgiving edges. It was implacable. It was murderous, it was efficient; it was murderously efficient. It was the mechanical embodiment of his enemy.
He saw again the processing center. The electronic fences. The gray, septic hours packed in the misery of Processing Center 12’s little rooms. The breakout, the escapees mowed down as they ran. And her, Gabrielle, his friend: her head exploding.
He saw Hitler; he saw the Nazis. He saw the Holocaust.
All of it somehow compressed into this one machine.
Suddenly he was running at the thing, shrieking obscenities, firing past an oil barrel. The thing returned fire, the oil barrel catching its burst, spang-spang-spang-spang, bullets pocking the rusty metal. Roseland throwing his only explosive, a magnetized metal disk that stuck to the front of the autotank—whump as its cannon fired and crack-thud as his explosive went off. Its shells struck a shack just in front of him. Something picked him up and threw him down. Shrapnel raked his thigh and right arm.
Blank.
And then Roseland found himself on the ground in front of the autotank. Looking up through the smoke and dust as the autonomous weapon bore down on him.
The explosive hadn’t stopped it—maybe confused only its sensors a little and dented its hull. But it kept coming.
He got to his knees. That hurt. Getting up was like climbing a ladder made of broken glass. He raised his gun to fire, trying to shout, to let the pressure out, but his mouth was gummed with blood.
He felt the pulse of its aiming device; knew its crosshairs were centered on him.
He spat blood and yelled, “Fuck you! I’ll meet you in Gehenna, you brainless pigs!” And he fired. And it kept coming, aiming at him, and, he fired and—
It stopped.
Clank: stopped. Humming indecisively to itself.
He blinked and coughed in the smoke, staring at it. Had he hit something electronically vital with a lucky round from his pathetic little machine pistol?
Through the smoke he saw the silhouettes of enemy soldiers, coming at him. Half a dozen of them.
Suddenly, the autotank’s turret whirred into an about-face, like an owl turning its head all the way around, looking behind itself. It fired its cannon three times in quick succession. SA soldiers were snatched clumsily into the air by fingers of chaos.
She did it.
Bibisch had interfaced with the Plateau. Found sympathetic wolves. Using the microchip unit in the sod hut. Got the access codes, the back door into the autotank’s computer. Transmitted new programming.
The guardsmen were running. The tank was firing on its partner. Wham. Hit the other autotank dead center, kicked it onto its side so its treads dug uselessly at the air.
Torrence, grinning, was trotting up to him, coughing through the smoke. A fire was spreading through this section of the camp. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Bibisch do that?”
“She fuckin’ did it!” Torrence crowed. “That’s my girl!”
“How’d she get control of it so fast?” Roseland asked as they hurried back to the sod hut. The autotank was opening fire on more SA. Driving them back. Killing half of them. It was a beautiful thing to see.
“She’s been working on it for a while, for days really—working with our people on the chips. Alouette—Smoke’s little whiz kid—she worked it out, along with some others. So Bibisch sent an inquiry just now, like, did they have the dirt on the thing yet, and, yeah, they had it. We just lucked out.”
“Hand probably pissed his pants.”
Torrence laughed. “Yeah, probably.” He’d needed this, to get his mind off the reprisals. Needed to “Dance with Mr. D.”
The autotank met them at the hut, a different critter now. Like a big, friendly, domesticated rhino, waiting for another command. Its engine heat feeling like body heat. They heard the yawing whoop of approaching sirens, coming from the North.
Bibisch came out of the hut carrying the little computer unit. Norman Hand, pale and hugging himself, came out just behind her. He was talking into a little hand-held voice recorder. Something about, “The sirens of SA police approaching—”
“They’re on the far side of the camp,” Torrence said. “We’re near the old refining plant on this side—it’s about a quarter mile south of here. I think we can hide the tank in there, but we’ll make ’em think we headed west.” He was already putting on his headset, calling for a decoy hit off to the west of camp.
Roseland listened to the sirens. Sounded like Torrence was right. They had time. Just enough. It would take the SA commanders a while to figure out what had happened. They’d figure it out, though: much of war now revolved around strategies of signal transmission, signal interference, and electronic co-optation.
They climbed onto the back of the autotank, clinging behind the turret as Bibisch gave the autotank new commands and Hand babbled into his recorder. The tank whined and moved off, rumbling to the south, full speed.
Roseland smiled. They were going to keep this autotank, hide it till it was needed. And, oh yes, it was going to be needed.
In fact, they used it again as they fled the camp. On the way out, they told it to blow up the giant TV screen.
It did. And that was a beautiful sight, too.
Jebediah dropped the videodisc into the player and turned to the small audience in the conference room. Watson, Giessen, Klaus, and a dozen lesser functionaries were seated around the table, facing the big screen. The room was white, windowless, lit brightly; it could have been any time of the day or night. It was ten p.m.
Our Jebediah, Watson thought, ought to be in bed, and not up here running the show.
He was beginning to fear the boy.
The screen flickered alive, making Watson remember the pirate transmission that had gone out to most of the functioning televisions in Paris via the unit in the refugee camp; and he remembered the stolen autotank that had shattered the giant TV screen. A lot of money down the drain.
Worse, the propaganda that had gone out on the pirate transmissions. The cheering when the resistance vermin had escaped…