“Maybe blowing up the mountain would slow their digging,” General Hill said. Hill always seemed so much more reasonable than the other generals.
“I’m not convinced it would have any effect,” Breeze said. “It won’t stop the spheres from excreting more of that gas catalyst into the mountain.”
“Unless you gentlemen can figure out a way to destroy their spheres,” Sweetwater added, “they’ll just keep on dumping gas.”
“Damn it!” yelled Newcastle, and he slammed his pudgy fist down on a nearby desk. The sound echoed through the room. “Damn it!” he repeated. “Stop telling us what we can’t do. Give us something we can use. How do we fight these bastards?”
Breeze started to say something, then looked over at Sweetwater as if seeking permission. The dwarf nodded. Having been given permission, Breeze spoke. “We might have just what you need. At least we believe we are on the edge of a breakthrough.”
“What kind of a breakthrough,” Newcastle asked.
“One of our teams is on the verge of decoding their technology,” Breeze said. “We may soon understand how they manipulate tachyons.”
“Well, what goddamned good is that going to do us?” snarled Newcastle. “I don’t want to understand these bastards. I want to shove my foot up their asses!”
None of the other generals joined Newcastle in his tirade, though they seemed curious about the discoveries.
“Are you telling us that we might be able to use the tachyons to attack them?” General Haight asked.
“We think we may be able to block them from using tachyons,” Sweetwater said.
“What goddamned good is that?” Haight demanded.
“If they cannot use the tachyons, they can’t hurt us,” Sweetwater said. “They would come out of their spheres as energy, but without the tachyon shell forming around them, their energy bodies will simply evaporate.” It was like a ray of hope had found its way into this dungeonlike Science Lab. Men who one minute earlier had stood around smoldering and staring at the ground suddenly looked up in surprise.
“Damn,” General Haight said, sounding impressed.
“How soon? How soon will you know?” asked General Newcastle. He whispered the question as if almost afraid to hear the answer.
“It’s still a week out, at the soonest,” Sweetwater said, sounding swept up in the excitement.
The generals’ spirits dropped so hard I could almost hear the thud. “A week? A week?” Haight complained. “We’re down to fewer than six hundred thousand troops. We don’t have any working rocket launchers. The wall around our outer perimeter is down.
“Do you have any idea what you are saying? Those Avatari bastards attack every three days. We’re almost out of soldiers, and you want us to hold off two more attacks?”
“General, ev-ev-every man we have is w-working around the clock,” Breeze said. “W-we need to run tests. It t-takes time to an-analyze the data and build off the results.”
“Whatever you think you can do, you get it done in forty-eight hours! You got that, Sweetwater?” Newcastle demanded. Perhaps he wanted to show everyone that he was back in charge. If so, it backfired.
“Then make it yourself,” William Sweetwater said in an unnaturally calm voice.
“What?” barked Newcastle. “What did you say?”
“If you think you and your soldiers can decode an alien technology in forty-eight hours, by all means, do it,” Sweetwater said. General Newcastle stormed over to the stool on which Sweetwater sat, but the dwarf did not budge.
Staring down at the misshapen little scientist, Newcastle growled like a dog. “Work faster,” he said.
“General, we started with nothing. We didn’t even have the technology to prove the existence of tachyons two weeks ago, and now we are developing a primitive method for controlling them. One of our teams is about to hijack an alien technology that is far more advanced than our own. It’s a miracle we have gotten this far this fast,” Sweetwater said. He was in control, and he knew it. General Newcastle glared down at him, and Sweetwater flatly returned that gaze.
“And you expect us to protect your facility that entire time?” he asked.
“No, sir, not the entire week,” Sweetwater said. “Only when we are under attack.” I saw the twinkle in Sweetwater’s dark eyes.
Newcastle mulled his options over, then said, “Gentlemen, we have our orders. We need to hold out for another week.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Harris, we’re moving camp.”
Moffat met me as I entered the hotel. The work of moving had already begun. A line of trucks waited along the access road that led to the hotel loading dock. The Hotel Valhalla had taken on the aspect of a theatrical stage during a change of settings. Men in fatigues stripped down booths, carried racks, and pushed carts filled with supplies.
As Moffat spoke, I saw something that left me deeply disturbed—graffiti. Somebody had spray painted a stick- figure mural on one of the walls. The portrait showed five large figures gathered around a smaller figure. The Avatari were big and bulky, each of them holding one of those four-foot-long rifles. The human looked pathetic beside them, a man on his hands and knees. He wore what appeared to be combat armor. At least, he had armor covering his head and chest. From the waist down, the figure was naked with a little sliver of a penis dangling below his stomach.
The caption on the bottom of the drawing, written in the same red paint, was “MUDDERS GANG BANG!” Under the guy on his knees was one word—“Glade.”
If the name under the guy on his knees had been Moffat instead of Glade, I would have had Philips arrested. Hell, I might have killed him myself.
Giving the mural a second glance, I realized that what I had taken as Avatari rifles had been intended to represent a portion of their anatomy. Aside from the disproportionate generosity that the artist had shown the enemy, this painting bothered me because military clones were supposedly incapable of doing something like this. In theory the capacity for vandalism and lawbreaking had been weeded out of them through neural programming; but as I looked around the lobby, I saw shattered mirrors, broken windows, wallpaper stripped from walls, and more graffiti. If clones had done this, what other parts of their programming had also become undone?
“Yeah, we have a specking Michelangelo on our hands,” Moffat said, when he saw my gaze return to the graffiti. “The company is stripping down the Valkyrie Ballroom. I need you to make sure the move goes smoothly.”
I wanted to tell Moffat that I saw him take a shot at Philips, but I decided to play it safe. Instead, I asked, “Where are we headed?”
“The University of Valhalla,” Moffat said. “They want us settled in by 1900.”
I checked my watch. It was 1130. That seemed generous. “Seven and a half hours just to move racks?” I asked.
“We should be so lucky,” Moffat said. “Command wants this side of town FOCPIG-ready by 0000 hours. We’ve got mines to plant and traps to wire.”
“What about the armory?” I asked. It would take days to move all of the weapons out of the underground garage. Finding and stocking another location would not go quickly either.
“We’re leaving it.”
“Everything?” I asked. “We’ve got nuclear bombs down there.”
“Yeah, I know,” Moffat said. “I asked Burton about that. He says our best bet is to stop the Mudders before they get here.”
“So, am I helping with the move or FOCing the PIG?” I asked.
“You’re supervising the move, then you’re FOCing the PIG,” Moffat said. “Once we get everything loaded on to
