Empire

but they weren’t untrained and their leader knew what he was doing.

Meanwhile, Cole was getting Willis and his men to move back farther, completely out of the way. They were useless now, an asset for later that needed to be protected. Cole obviously understood that even if everybody here at the tunnel mouth was killed, the New York cops still had to survive and tell what they’d seen. Cole had even given Willis the body-armor pieces he had scavenged.

Reuben needed to get rid of his own. “Can you spare a guy?” Reuben asked the captain. “These armor pieces need to get back to somebody who can study them and figure out who the hell made them and what we can do against them.”

In a moment he was handing the pieces to a young corporal. “Wait,” said Reuben. He dug the bloody thumb out of his pocket and handed it to the kid. “Don’t puke, just get this to the FBI for fingerprinting. Think of it as spent ammunition that needs ballistics done on it.”

The corporal gulped once, pocketed the thumb, and took off running, carrying the armor pieces.

The mechs were emerging from the tunnel now, still in shadow but clearly visible.

“Any time now,” Reuben said to the captain.

“Any points of vulnerability?”

“These ain’t death stars,” said Reuben. “Just hit square on the body. If you get lucky, they blow up real well. They’re full of ammunition.”

They got lucky.

The first two rockets hit. The two mechs blew up.

I have to tell Mingo what he needs to put in his next arsenal, thought Reuben.

The National Guardsmen were cheering. But the captain was yelling at them. “Keep firing, you boneheads, there could be a hundred of them!” There were already four more visible.

“How many MT-4s you got?” asked Reuben.

“We’re National Guard stationed in Jersey,” said the captain, “what do you think?”

“Does that mean less than ten?”

“That means two more.”

“Then fire them as if you had a hundred,” said Reuben.

The captain signaled again for them to shoot. Two more hits. Two more scores, though one of the mechs did not blow up completely, but fell over and did not try to get up.

The other mechs turned around and ran back down the tunnel.

This time the captain didn’t try to stop the cheering.

A couple of guardsmen started running down toward the blown-up mechs.

“Don’t go near them!” shouted Reuben. “They might be booby-trapped! You’ll get blown to hell!”

The guardsmen stopped. Again, good discipline.

Reuben and Cole made their way down to the one that hadn’t blown up. They played the same routine with the back panel. Only they didn’t pry the lid off after blowing the keypad and shooting the button.

The hatch came off by itself.

A man’s head emerged. He saw the situation—Cole and Reuben with their weapons pointed at him—and ducked back inside.

“Come out and surrender!” demanded Reuben.

He was answered by a single gunshot inside the mech.

“Shit,” said Cole.

Reuben ran for the hatch. The man inside had put a pistol in his mouth and fired. But there was less mess than Reuben would have expected. “I think he missed,” he said. “Help me get him out.”

It was awkward, but finally they each got an arm and pulled him through the hatch. He had shot into his mouth but the barrel had been pointing the wrong way. The bullet had apparently gone up through the roof of his mouth and through his left eye. There was a furrow in the forehead and the skull was open, showing brain. But the guy wasn’t dead, even though he was definitely unconscious and his left eye was destroyed, along with his palate and cheekbone.

They dragged him up toward the waiting guardsmen. “Medic?” Reuben asked.

“Ambulance on its way,” said the captain. “I called for it when we set out for the tunnel.”

“Good man,” said Reuben. “Major Reuben Malich,” he said. “The guy with me is—”

“Hell, I know who you are, I own a TV. My name is Charlie O’Brien. I’m honored to meet you.”

Two things happened while they waited for the tanks to arrive. First, a couple of jets approached Manhattan from the south, flying low. The guardsmen started cheering, but when the jets got close to the Statue of Liberty, the pilots lost control of their aircraft. The jets veered off. One of them hit the water flat on its cockpit; the other smashed through Liberty’s gown and then dropped like a rock into the water.

Tell them not to send any more jets,” Reuben said to the captain.

“What did that?” said the captain. “I didn’t see an explosion or thing.”

“A death ray,” said Reuben. “Or avian flu,” said Reuben impatiently. But the captain wanted a straight answer. “My guess is, a highly focused electromagnetic pulse. F-16s are shielded, but if you can get past it and screw up the electronics, they can’t fly. Get on your damn radio and tell them no more jets.”

The second thing was, Captain Charlie O’Brien heard something over the radio and turned to Reuben. “I’m supposed to put you guys under arrest.”

Reuben looked at him sternly. “That’s politics, Charlie. You saw me come out of that tunnel. You saw me and Cole bring along a bunch of New York City cops. We took down four mechs together and you saw me pop the hatch and pull out that poor bastard. I will debrief to you and you can pass that information along. But whoever wants me under arrest is part of the same group that killed the President and Vice President.”

“Who?” said Charlie. “Who’s doing this?”

“They’re Americans,” said Reuben. “And anybody could be on their side, working inside the government, against the Constitution.

“They aren’t terrorists?”

’’Definitely not,” said Cole, who was with them now. “They’re the opposite. They were killing all uniforms, but leaving civilians alone wherever possible. Warning them to stay off the streets. These guys mean to occupy and govern New York, not terrorize it and run away.”

“Are we under arrest?” asked Reuben.

“Hell no,” said Charlie. “But they said they were sending choppers to pick you up. So take my car—it’s a Ford Escort back up the road, just press the remote and see which lights come on.” He handed Reuben the keys.

“You’re going to be in deep shit about this,” said Reuben. “I can’t take your car.”

“Take it and I’ll make them eat their shit,” said Charlie. “We were down there with infantry before those cops started coming up the tunnel. I know which side you’re on.”

“I don’t even know what the sides are yet,” said Reuben. “This could be a right-wing militia group that picked New York to punish the capital of pansy left-wing weenies. Or it could be a left-wing militia that went for New York because they think they’ve already got the hearts and minds of the citizens.”

“Whoever they are,” said Cole, “they’ve got a really cool weapons designer and they’re willing to blow their own brains out rather than be captured.”

“Get to my car and go,” said Charlie. “I didn’t get the message till you were already gone.”

Passwords

How much responsibility do you bear for the ill uses others might make of your ideas? Almost as much as the responsibility you bear if you fail to speak your ideas, when they might have made a difference in the world.

Reuben stayed off the toll roads on the way back to Aunt Margaret’s house. Too easy to stop traffic for an ID