silence. All those howling boys and Beatles were suddenly silenced, and I could see them crumpled on the grass, slowly coming to their senses like me. Even the doctors had collapsed. Only the Moguls remained standing amid the groaning masses, looking smug and barely ruffled. Sandoval was unconscious, having been pithed by Reggie's blue-flecked Fender Stratocaster, but his fellow bigwigs were in tip-top form.
It was the implants. The goddamn implants. There had never been any chance that we could rebel-they could strike us down at any time with a jolt of electricity to the brain. Shock treatment.
'Stay calm!' Moguls were yelling to one another. 'Microwave pulse! Everything's under control! If any of them act up, nuke them again. Teach the little bastards a lesson.'
In the middle of this triumphant gloating, there came a strange, unholy grunt from the left side of the dome, and an awesome geyser of sod and ice erupted from the field. Debris shot high in the air, some of it getting sucked out a huge rip that mysteriously appeared in the canopy, frayed edges whipping outward into the Arctic void. A stiff breeze suddenly kicked up, and the whole dome billowed like an inverted sea.
As the Moguls all turned in bewilderment and alarm, a familiar armored vehicle barreled out of the debris plume.
'Utik!' I cried.
Hurtling toward us, the vehicle braked, going into a spin and piling up sod beneath its wheels the way a skidding dog bunches up a rug, revealing raw ice beneath. The Moguls scattered, but the tank stopped well short of hitting them. Its turret moved as if looking around, then spit lightning with an earsplitting GRONK!-the same goliath pig grunt as before. Fleeing VIPs dove for cover as a curtain of chipped ice rose between them and the exit. Disregarding the gunfire, the boys recovered their senses enough to break from their masters in the pandemonium and race for the sub, converging there with the liberated crew, who were crossing the pontoon bridge as Rudy restrained Don and waved them across. Cowper was out of my view behind the sail.
A couple of Moguls were returning fire. They crouched behind the ice wall, aiming their laser pointers like wizards with magic wands to summon down all the might of the COIL weapon. Its beam originated from a hidden point high up in the canopy, each shot a blinding strobe that left pinprick ghosts in my eyes and its sound that unnerving, familiar ZAPZAPZAP! Wherever the thing touched the truck, it flared up intensely, leaving scorched, glowing pits in the armor, though it wasn't as instantly devastating on steel as it was on flesh. The men inside seemed well aware of this, driving evasively to present a moving target and doing what they could to keep the Moguls pinned down in a curtain of stinging debris. But it was only a matter of time.
Sandoval was lying on the grass near me with a cut in his bald scalp. I crawled over to him. He was out cold, but I was careful as could be as I gingerly took his laser pen from its wrist clip. It was an elegantly simple thing with two buttons, one marked PROPOSE and the other, DISPOSE. The chain was only a few inches long, so I lifted his arm onto my lap to aim. It was trickier than I would have expected, the tiny red dot darting all over the place, but finally I got it settled on one of the Moguls who was directing fire and pressed the trigger.
Nothing.
In frustration I tried clicking on other Moguls. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing! Of course not-Sandoval had told me they were exempt from the thing! I hunted around for something to shoot, and as a last resort aimed it at the crane that was holding the Xombies.
This time it worked-a hydraulic piston exploded, toppling the crane's boom like a tree on the firing Moguls. Then I had to make sure no Xombies interfered with the guys boarding the boat. As I picked a few off, I felt the secret godlike glee of a kid zapping ants with a magnifying glass.
While I was so intent on this, a brutal hand closed on my wrist, and a furious, bloody face pressed into mine.
'What do you think you're doing?' Sandoval demanded. 'Just what the hell do you think you're doing?' He savagely swung me by the arm over the edge of the pool, so that my bare body slammed against the ice shelf, and my feet touched the water. He tried to let go, but I was still holding the laser pen, actually hanging from it, as he made every effort to pull away.
'Get off!' he bellowed.
'No!'
The bitterly cold ice quaked against my body, and something massive lumbered toward us. It was the armored truck. Sandoval tried frantically to withdraw his arm or haul me out, but before he could do either, the vehicle ran over his legs. He didn't scream so much as make an explosive moan, a sound like a maimed animal. But he wasn't dead yet, just pinned, and as the door on the tank was thrown open, he weakly gasped, 'Find… Miska.' Then a combat boot stepped on him, and wiry arms seized mine, lifting me into the vehicle.
'Well, well, what have we here?' crowed a high-pitched Munchkin voice. It was so freakish my heart skipped a beat, but the person speaking was altogether more mundane, if terrible to see.
It was Colonel Lowenthal.
'Look what I caught, Rusty,' Lowenthal quacked to a hel meted man sitting in the turret. I couldn't reconcile his bizarre new voice with everything else that was going on, and I didn't have the energy to try. It was the same truck I had been in before, but the men driving it were Lowenthal's people, not Inuits, and all the trappings of Mogul luxury had been crudely ripped out, revealing undisguised pure function: gray bench seating and a huge Gatling-type gun with an articulated ammunition feeder like a crocodile's tail. It smelled like hot iron inside. 'A mermaid! Does that mean I get a wish?'
In a voice just as squeaky, the driver replied, 'Strap yourself in before they get a bead on us!' The two of them sounded like Donald Duck's nephews.
'What are you waiting for?' Lowenthal screamed shrilly. 'Drive, drive, drive!' As the vehicle roared into motion he handed me a heavy flak jacket and a pair of headphones. 'Put these on,' he shouted. 'When he fires that cannon, it'll blow your ears out!' He patted the weapon affectionately. 'Thirty-millimeter Avenger! Forty-two hundred rounds a minute! Depleted uranium shells! You know who makes it?'
Dull with cold and shock, I didn't realize he was still talking to me.
He poked me. 'Guess!' When I shook my head, he said, 'General Electric!' The way he said it, I could tell he was expecting a reaction of some kind.
I shrugged.
'Depleted uranium? Come on!'
'I don't know.'
'Same company that made your submarine's reactor!'
'Oh.'
'Uranium goes in one and out the other-never mind.'
There was a loud, searing crackle, accompanied by flashes of light from outside. The COIL weapon was stabbing at us. I drew the jacket up around my head.
Lowenthal saw my dread, and said, 'Don't worry! That laser is designed to cut through the thin skin of a missile, not the armor of this APC.' Just as he said this, a brilliant green flare appeared in the ceiling, raining white-hot sparks on us and filling the cabin with smoke. A spot on the floor burst briefly into flame. The truck lurched evasively, and the glare disappeared, leaving a molten orange peephole to the outside. 'Whoops!' he laughed.
I suddenly noticed he had a bloody bandage where his implant had been. Had he gouged it out?
'What's wrong with your voice?' I asked.
'Helium! We drove through a bunch of helium on the way in! Sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks, doesn't it?'
'What do you want with me?'
'We're taking back the base, the whole shebang,' Lowenthal said. 'The Moguls are through! We've been waiting for a chance to catch them all together! Now it's our turn!'
I felt a thin stirring of hope. 'The Air Force?'
'There is no Air Force anymore. We know that. But we sure as hell aren't going to fetch and carry while they suck down pina coladas and hog all the women. Schneider, hose down those fuckers, we're getting out of here!'
There was a tremendous roar that buffeted the vehicle, deafening even with the headphones. What Schneider hit I don't know, but there were no more laser blasts. A few seconds later, I felt a big bump, and all at
