Six Bits (14 page)

Steb was stunned!
How long have those damned things been there?
he wondered.

His dad took the two kalsaws down, wiping the oil off them with a rag. He pulled out extra magazines for each one and closed the panel. He held a kalsaw up into the dim light of the window. "Three tubes, kid. The middle one is the sight; really a fancy visual/infrared camera that takes in the view for a 20 degree arc around your point of aim, looking for heat or motion. It also looks for a digital infrared message to tell it 'friend or foe;' that's what the Stossa helmets and harnesses do. Not their uniforms. But, it has to be programmed with a new 'friend' message daily. These two haven’t been programmed in years, so they’ll shoot Stossa too. Upper tube is the laser; lower tube is an electric rail gun for the kinetic slugs. The laser delivers enough energy in each pulse to boil a liter of water and people are mostly water. 'Cause they're so small you've got seventy kinetic slugs. They have a velocity of 1500 meters per second and shatter on impact. They’ll rip a human body in half."

"Cut the damn sermon… just show me the trigger and let's go."

There was a pause, "Kid, it’s called a ‘smart weapon’ ‘cause you
shouldn’t
let morons use ‘em
. You've
got
to understand a weapon like this… hell if you don't, you're just as likely to rip your own mother to shreds."

Another pause. Lante eyed his son balefully.

Steb finally nodded.

Lante went on, "Index trigger, laser. Middle finger, kinetic. That much is pretty simple. Feel this lever on your thumb?"

"Yeah."

"Down is safe. First click up and it fires at any hot images on the infrared, whenever the trigger is pulled. The laser will fire a burst of three, one at the left edge, one in the center, and one at the right edge. It’ll fire at
any
hot object in its 20 degree cone. At the speed of light it
will
hit the object."

"The rail gun can turn its projectiles about 5 degrees from center bead and will do so in an attempt to strike the target, it is, however, possible to miss with the rail gun. When firing in this mode, wave the gun past the target and let it pick its shot. The kalsaw’s 'puter will compensate for motion of the kalsaw and the motion of the object and it’ll hit the object
almost every time
."

"Click up a second time and it fires at any
moving
object. You don't usually want to do that, so the detent’s weak there; makes it hard to screw up and set it on 'motion.’

“Third click up and it fires on manual every time you pull the trigger, right down the center bead; no auto aiming. It fires a burst of three if your thumb’s still on the lever. If you take your thumb off of the lever, it fires single shots."

"A fourth click up and it fires on full automatic. Real waste of ammo and energy ... the kalsaw’ll melt down after 30 seconds full auto. That's why it's so hard to make the final click."

Steb shook his head in amazement.
Where had the old man learned all this stuff?
"So
do
you have a plan, Dad?"

"Yeah. Here's the deal. You get in the car. As soon as I hear the starter, I break the window and take the bastards out with the kalsaw. You pull around front and we'll load the girls. If I get in trouble, you’re my backup."

"What the hell? You put the kalsaw on auto and it'll take out Mom and Lisa!"

"I'll fire on manual."

"And take out a whole roomful of experienced soldiers, each with his kalsaw
on
auto. You've gotta be kidding! We go in together."

"
You
firing on manual is
not
going to improve the odds."

"I'll stand off to the side where my kalsaw can't 'see' Mom or Lisa and
I'll
use auto."

A long pause, "Not a bad idea, kid."

"I’m not a kid anymore... And I'm
not
an idiot!"

"You're right, kii... You're right, Steb. OK I'll take out the interrogator on manual, laser
and
kinetic. When the window breaks you wave down the rest of them on auto laser."

Suddenly the light coming in the window increased. The back porch light had come on. Through the window they could see three soldiers come out the door and down the stairs. Damn, they were coming out to search the garage! Steb flipped his kalsaw off safe.

When his father heard the kalsaw charging, he grabbed it out of Steb’s hands and shut it off. “They'd hear that right away. And, if you’d fired it, they'd hear it in the house."

"What the hell
are
we going to do?" Steb whispered fiercely.

"There, hide behind the end of the bench."

"They'll see me!"

"Of course they will. When they do, stand up with your hands in the air and look scared. It'll keep them from noticing me."

Steb’s father disappeared into the darkness and Steb crouched behind the bench, unable to believe that his father was so much of a coward that he would use his son as a distraction so
he
could hide. After what Lante’d allowed to happen to his own wife and daughter, Steb supposed it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Steb didn’t want to hide… but maybe he owed it to his family to try to save them by giving himself up. He crouched behind the end of the bench.

The door banged open and the lights came on. The first two soldiers came in talking to one another. They were having some kind of an argument in Stossa. They stopped just inside the doorway and now Steb saw his father's heavyset form, standing in the shadow behind the door. Lante’s dark clothing and the clutter of tools had obscured him at first, but he wasn't really hidden at all. Without even looking around, the two soldiers walked into the middle of the small room, still arguing vehemently. One's kalsaw was still slung, but the other soldier’s kalsaw was gripped in his arm and the high pitched whine emanating from it indicated it was already charged! The third soldier stopped and leaned back in the door frame, gazing up into the sky. They stopped arguing and glanced cursorily around the room. Steb thought with amazement, "They're going to miss me completely!" They turned on their heels to go back out.

They stopped abruptly. Why? Then Steb saw the kalsaw coming up to bear on his father.

The guard's eyes opened wide in amazement as his peripheral vision registered the shadowy figure behind the door. It was the fat old man, father of the kid they'd been looking for! How long had the chickenshit bastard been hiding out here while they beat up his wife and daughter? Well, it looked like he was going to get what was coming to him after all. Ala brought his kalsaw to bear with a sneer on his face and stopped Sotan with one hand. "Eh, Sotan, Wanob, what have we here?" He could see the old man turning to jelly before his eyes. The fat bastard dropped to his knees, hands raised in supplication, tears running down his quivering cheeks, the stench of urine filling the room from the large stain at his crotch. Wanob stepped around the door to look at the pitiful slob. The miserable bastard now had his face on the floor and was sobbing piteously. "Get up you worthless sack of shit!" Ala began to dread having to carry the fat bastard into the house—the ones who got this hysterical could rarely walk—Ala really preferred the sullen ones.

Steb looked on in shock. For a little while, when Lante’d dragged him out here, he’d begun to think that the old man had developed some backbone. Then he’d asked Steb to give himself up to help Lante hide. Now to see his father crumple like this filled Steb with disgust.

Shit!
Steb couldn't use the kalsaw; it’d kill Lante too. He picked up a half meter piece of two centimeter steel pipe that was lying on the lower shelf of the bench. He rose from his crouch and stepped toward the group at the door. At least the guards were all focused on his groveling father. One kicked Lante in the side, knocking him over. He began shouting at "the old fart" to get to his feet. The old man fell against the door, slamming it shut and knocking over a stack of concrete rebar that had been behind the door. Lante pulled a leg up under himself and promptly stumbled in the rebar scattering it all over the floor. Suddenly Steb saw his father's eyes flick to look at Steb's feet. Steb hefted the pipe, wondering where to strike? The helmet was good protection. He swung mightily at bottom of the guard's ear where it protruded beneath the helmet.

He thought distantly that the feel of the impact was similar to striking a watermelon. The guard dropped convulsing to the floor. Steb jerked the bloody pipe back to strike at the next guard, but that one was already twisting, falling, convulsively grasping. At a piece of rebar that protruded from beneath his breastbone!

Oh my God!
Steb thought. So was the third guard as well! Steb realized that the flash of motion in his peripheral vision when Steb struck the first guard, had been his father exploding off the floor with a chunk of rebar in each hand. The rebar Lante had just plunged up under the guards’ ribcages! Steb had always wondered why the rebar in the garage was cut off to points at 45 degree angles.

Now he knew.

Lante efficiently knocked the guards’ helmets off so that, even while dying, they couldn’t call on their radios. Even before they’d finished their death throes his father was working on their harnesses. 

“Wearing the guards’ harnesses and helmets will keep kalsaws from firing on us, at least if they’re in the smart mode," Lante said, attaching a wire across the back of the harness and using a bolt cutter to cut through a heavy steel cable embedded in the harness.

“Why don’t you just unbuckle it?”

“Deprograms the recognition codes.” Lante grinned up at Steb, “Be a mess if your enemy could easily take the harnesses off of bodies in the field, eh?”

Lante picked up the helmets and showed Steb how to adjust their size and set the ear piece so they would hear Stossa communications.

They picked up their own kalsaws and headed out the door. There was a sudden query on the helmet net and Steb realized that listening in was practically worthless since he only spoke a few words of Stossa. To his shock he heard the voice of the first guard answering the query. He whirled to his father and realized that it had been his father imitating the nasal voice of the guard. W
hen the hell did the old man learn to speak Stossa?!

With an even sicker feeling, he wondered if his father could be a secret collaborator.

Lante motioned Steb to crawl under the living room window to the other side. He rose up and saw that his father had been right, there were four more soldiers on the other side of the room. Shit! One of them had Lisa's blouse! Then she stepped into view. One hand over her breasts, other hand outstretched, Lisa was apparently asking for the blouse back. Damn! He clicked the kalsaw from infrared to manual, but he couldn't possibly take out five of them on manual before they killed Lisa on auto. He looked at his father. The older man simply held up his hand in the universal gesture, "Wait."

The soldier with the blouse made an obscene intimation with his fingers. How the hell could his father wait?! What was happening to Steb’s mother?!

The soldier pantomimed Lisa removing her skirt. Steb's head pounded with rage. She stood up straight and turned, walking resolutely away from the guards.

The window exploded into a billion small pieces of glass! Steb convulsively crushed both triggers and swept the kalsaw over the group of guards. Goddamn, it only fired once, was it empty? It didn't hit even one of the guards!

Shit! The damn thing was still on manual! The guards were swinging their kalsaws toward the window and Steb as he flipped the lever back. He pulled the trigger again. Nothing happened! It must be empty! The guards were firing out the window now, he was dead! No, their kalsaws had fired into the warm house next door, missing Steb because of his Stossa helmet and harness. In a second
they
would go to manual, he started to jerk back from the window when his father's shouts finally penetrated his brain.

".... on safe dammit!"

Yes! He’d pulled the lever back too far! He flipped it forward and waved it over the soldiers with both the triggers down. Red laser flashes and the blue coruscation of the rail gun rewarded him.

The soldiers in the room practically exploded.

Steb stood, gaping at the destruction. Suddenly Lante was there, forcing the kalsaw's barrel up in the air. "Get the car!"

Steb broke from his reverie and sprinted for the garage. In two minutes he pulled around to the front street. Shit! Lante stood weaponless in front of the two women. He had a kalsaw jammed into his back. It wouldn't see the signal from his helmet and harness there! That last soldier must have been somewhere else inside the house. Steb pulled up into the neighbor's driveway, opened the window and picked up the kalsaw that had been laying on the seat next to him. This time he checked carefully to be sure it was on manual. He looked carefully into the sight and centered on the guard's head.
Damn! What if the soldier convulses and shoots Lante in the back?
Steb increased the magnification and swung down to the guard's hand where he centered in on the man’s trigger finger. Carefully he squeezed the laser trigger. A flash on the screen and the guard was dancing back, the kalsaw falling from his destroyed hand. Lante whirled and dropped the guard with a
kick to the head!

How the hell had the old man gotten his foot
that
high?!

A moment later, Lante was hustling the women out the door. Suddenly Steb's mother whirled and went back in. She returned a moment later with something in her hand.

As they drove away, Lante spluttered at his wife. "What the
hell
was
so
important you risked our lives to go back in there for it?"

"If you’re going to organize the resistance, you're going to need your medals. The people will rally to them."

"They aren't 'his medals' mom." Steb ground out as he slammed the car out onto the street. "The people aren't going to 'rally' to Steban's milquetoast brother."