Chapter 444

Dambree moved into the house quietly, walking slowly and carefully. She'd learned how to be silent walking through snow covered woods in heavy boots, wearing soft daytreaders made it even easier.

"I covered the bodies. Nobody but the baby lived," Dambree said softly.

"What are..." Uncle Inkee started to whisper.

Dambree turned and looked at him. "Don't whisper. It carries. Speak softly."

"Why?" Uncle Inkee asked, keeping his voice soft instead of whispering. "I thought you saw nobody's here."

"Listen for clicking. Like claws on wood or tile," Dambree said. "They have scouts, small ones, about as big as your head, with four or six legs. They click as they move."

Uncle Inkee and Ellie looked around worriedly. Elu just lifted his ears and turned them slightly, listening carefully.

"Follow," Dambree said.

She led them to each bedroom, picking up the piles of blankets. Uncle Inkee stared at the first two sheet covered bodies, the lump where the head was surrounded by red blood, swallowing thickly. It took Elu poking him to get him moving.

Dambree kept watch.

Once the blankets were in the car so everyone had their own little nests, Dambree led them back in one at a time to change clothing. Out of the nice leisure clothing of the city and into heavier country clothing.

Aunt Fenn stared at the floor while she dressed. Finally she turned and looked at Dambree's back. The younger girl was staring out the window, the heavy Terran pistol in her hand with a green light on the side glowing softly. She could see the words "LO-V API" scrolling by on the blue LED display.

"Why?" Fenn asked softly.

"Because the screams broke his brain," Dambree answered, staring at the grain. Robotic harvesters were out, moving in the fields, as if the Slorpies hadn't returned.

"Why?" she asked again, starting to cry silently.

"Because they can," Dambree said. "The Slorpies and the Bad People do it because they can."

"Oh," Fenn stayed silent, buttoning up the plaid shirt made of thick fuzzy cloth that banished the chill of the early autumn night. She sniffled, the began to sob.

"Don't cry. Hold it back," Dambree said softly. Her voice was hard, cold. " Let it turn to something else. Just let it turn. Let it turn to something else."

"I can't," Fenn sobbed.

"Then you'll die," Dambree answered. "The Slorpies will suck out your brain and you'll watch yourself kill as many of us as you can from inside a glass globe while you scream," she tapped the pistol against her leg. "I learned from the Terran that you're still alive, still you, inside of there."

Fenn went silent, staring at her niece, horror slowly rising inside of her as she realized that she was seeing the real Dambree now. Not the Dambree who had left the hospital after weeks of treatment. Not the Dambree who meekly went to school. Not even the Dambree who had run from the school when the drill had scared her.

This was the real Dambree.

"Don't worry, Aunt Fenn," Dambree's voice was quiet, soft, and Fenn had almost strain to hear. "I love you enough that I won't let them take you alive, not like they took my mom and dad."

Fenn watched as she patted a round object the size of an apple in the pocket of the heavy jacket she was wearing.

"Are you dressed yet?" Dambree asked after a moment.

"Yes," Fenn answered.

"Let's clear their pantry and cupboards," she said. "If we get the time, we'll clear the cold box and freezer."

Fenn was quiet as she followed her niece, watching her. Her ears never stopped turning, angling slightly. She constantly looked around her, she moved around corners after pausing and listening.

Where did you learn these things? Fenn wondered. The way her niece moved reminded her of humans or the Telkan soldiers she had seen.

When they got out to the house, Dambree ordered everyone around like she was in charge of the family. Uncle Inkee started to object once, but Fenn just told him to do as Dambree said in a tired voice.

Fenn used a bottle to feed the child and was staring at the little baby's face when she realized.

She didn't know the baby's name.

She started snuffling, staring at the child.

The car rocked slightly and there was the skittering of metal on metal.

Fenn looked up and saw a weird effect on the hood. Like trying to look through broken glass, or looking at a reflection in a broken mirror. It was small, maybe the size of a small microwave, and moved forward slowly.

tick tick tick

The sound seemed loud in the sudden silence.

Fenn stared, frowning, trying to figure out what it was.

A sudden screech sounded out as the windshield had sparks shoot from it and a long line was ripped into the cryplas. The sparks showered out and the kaleidoscope effect vanished.

It has six articulated metal legs, skeletal structural members with just pistons and tension cables, connected to an oval base. On the front of it was an articulated arm with a circular saw and another one with pinchers. A tentacle moved from the base, as thick as Fenn's forearm. On the base were weird tubes, crystals, blocky pieces of metal, all arranged around a clear crystal rounded top tube that was lit with a white light. Inside the tube were needles, syringes, wires attached to probes, all pulled back from an empty center.

Fenn screamed as the circular saw ground against the windshield again and the tube, which had four graspers on it, slapped against the windshield.

you belong to me whispered in Fenn's head and she cried out again, wincing with pain.

Nee started screeching, whether becuase of Fenn's scream or the screech of the sawblade trying to get through the smart-glass crystalline windshield, Fenn didn't know. The screech set off the baby, which added its own screech, both of their eyes amber and furious.

The thing on the hood lowered a tube and it made a chuffing noise, creating four stars in the windshield.

Fenn felt a twinge on pain on her left ear, like someone had pierced her ear suddenly.

THWACK

The noise was loud, harsh, and echoed even above the sound of the robotic harvesters. A bright silver line connected the thing on the hood of the car with a point just in front of the house, out of Fenn's vision.

The thing shattered, the crystal globe shattering, the force of whatever hit it throwing it off the hood.

Another TWHACK and another.

Tru yanked open the door, throwing an armfull of food into the back of the car. She was waving her arm, but completely silent. Elu dove in, followed by Fenn's children, finally her husband. Tru pulled the door shut after her.

Dambree had ran around the front of the car, stopping and posing weirdly. She had the ugly Terran gun in her hand, the green light burning angrily. She fired twice more, the pistol making a loud THWACK noise each time. She ran around, pulled open the door, and dove in.

"I TOLD YOU TO HONK IF YOU SAW SOMETHING!" Dambree yelled, pushing the start button. The car whirred to life and she stomped on the gas, turning rapidly, and heading toward the grain field.

"Aren't you going to take the road?" Fenn asked.

Dambree said nothing, just glared at her aunt, digging in her pocket for her ripperchip. She found it and slapped the waver on the dash, the self-adhesive sticking it to the plastic of the dash right before the car plunged into the waving stalks of grain. The car's radar started beeping, along with the visual sensors, warning her the autodrive function wasn't working.

"Why weren't you watching?" Tru said, leaning over the back of the front seat. "Two honks for trash cans, three for big Slorpy machines."

"I was taking care of the baby," Fenn protested.

"The baby will live if it misses a meal," Dambree snarled. She swerved, cutting a new angle through the grain, then swerved again when she sound the path of one of the combines. The car was shuddering, but not as bad as the old one.

"Windshield's out," she snapped. She waved the barrel of the pistol over the ripperchip and the holographic keyboard popped up. It was low-rez, 8-color, and fuzzy, but she'd made sure all the blocks were big. First thing, she poked the muzzle of the pistol at the blocks, activating the functions of the ripperchip. It turned off lojack, then autodrive, then stunned the car's low level VI before hitting the governor.

The car sped up slightly, still shuddering over the furrows, and Dambree let off the pedal, holding the pistol up and blowing on it. She touched it to her cheek twice, then, satisfied it had cooled off, set it on her lap.

"You almost got everyone killed," Dambree snarled, not looking away from the moonlight tractor path outside. "Not just you, but the babies and all of us."

Fenn reached up and felt her ear, where it stung and burned. She was surprised to feel a notch in her ear and when she brought her hand back she saw that her fingers were smeared with clotted blood.

She almost threw up.

Dambree slammed on the brakes, turned off the headlights, and killed the engine. She knew she'd get warning of any tractor by the big headlights they used and the tractor's VI would stop it from hitting the car.

She turned in the seat and looked at everyone.

"We have a long trip. A dangerous trip. The only reason I haven't left most of you by the side of the road before you get me killed is that you're family," Dambree said. She pointed at the windshield with the pistol. "That thing was ten seconds from ripping through the windshield and sucking out your brain or the brain of one of the babies."

"No baby!" Nee shrieked. "No no no!"

The other baby started shrieking.

"Nee!" Dambree snapped.

Nee went silent, the baby went back to sucking on its sucky.

"This is not a game. This is not some kind of vacation," Dambree said. She closed her eyes and rubbed between her ears, rubbing the scar. "Please, just listen to me. You'll live longer."

She looked at each person in the car. Elu crossed his eyes and stuck the tip of his tongue out of his mouth, bending the tops of his ears. Dambree snorted and smiled. Tru nodded, looking kind of silly in the floppy fabric hat too big for her. Meglee gave her a wan smile, trying to be brave, the same with her two younger brothers.

Uncle Inkee only held her gaze for a moment before staring at his knees.

Aunt Fenn looked away and Dambree grabbed her chin, turning her aunt's head till they were face to face.

"You do what I say, do you understand?" she asked.

Fenn nodded.

"Good," Dambree sighed. She reached down onto the floorboards to the box she had slid half under the driver's seat. She pulled out a bottle of fizzybrew and handed one to Uncle Inkee, another to Aunt Fenn, then got one for herself.

"Drink that. It'll help with the headache," she said, popping it open and tossing the top out into the grain.

"I don't like," Uncle Inkee started to say. When Dambree looked at him Uncle Inkee drew back slightly, hissing in fear. His niece's eyes burned with a red glow deep inside, her expression was contorted with anger, her ears were flat against her head, and her teeth were bared.

"Drink. The fucking. Fizzybrew," Dambree growled.

Uncle Inklee nodded, opening it.

Dambree turned away, taking a drink off her drink, and starting the car.

"Tru, watch behind us. Elu, the sides," Dambree said as she kept the car moving through the field of grain.

----------------

The car was silent except for the whirring of the electric engine, the hum of the tires, the crunch of dirt and gravel, and the rushing sound of the wind. It was still dark, the moon high in the sky, but everyone was asleep. The screams of the Slorpies and the enraged bellowed reply of the Terrans had receded to everyone enough that they were able to go to sleep in the back.

The radio hissed, the auto-tune scanning through empty channels and empty bands, but Dambree didn't mind. She only had it on in case she got close enough to hear anything.

The nav-comp beeped quietly and Dambree glanced at it. Dambree let off the gas, lightly pressing the brake, as she looked at the nav-comp.

CIVIL DEFENSE UPDATE appeared.

"Why did we stop?" Elu asked quietly from where he was huddled up in two quilts taken from the beds of dead people.

"Nav update," Dambree said.

The map cleared and flashed, shifting, and Dambree swore, biting off the harsh Terran syllables.

"Chordo gamousa kumambichi," she snarled out, remembering a line from a movie.

"What?" Elu asked softly.

"Civil Defense is warning that a BOLO is on the move. We're going to have to cut north-east," Dambree said.

"Don't get close to it," Elu said.

"I know," Dambree said. She drained the fizzybrew, lowered the window, and threw the bottle into the bushes. She reached down and grabbed another one, cracking it open, and putting it between her legs after opening it.

The breeze smelled of growing things and was cool. For a moment Dambree closed her eyes and let the breeze fill her.

Off in the distance the faint tearing sound of gunfire reached her sensitive ears.

The moment broken, she raised the window.

She put the car in gear and started driving, keeping an eye on the nav-comp. It had taken her months to put together the ripperchip, mostly with stuff she'd downloaded off of SolNet and Gal-Net, it was the getting it to work together than had been tough.

Her teacher had thought it was cute that she was trying to 'reinvent the navcomp' as he pointed out where her problems were and where she could find resources.

Of course, he didn't know about the carjacking software she'd downloaded from a "Keep Your Ears Up Survival Site" she'd found in the darker parts of SolNet.

For a moment Dambree wondered what happened to the teacher when the sirens had gone off this time, but pushed it out of her mind.

She turned onto another dirt road that her nav-comp told her would allow her to skirt the BOLO's area, passing between two small agricorp towns. According to her nav-comp there was a charging station and a pumping station about ten kilometerss down the road.

The night moved by quietly as Dambree kept the vehicle cruising forward at nearly thirty kpm. The charge was down to 70%, after only a few hours, but Dambree had learned to keep the car topped off anytime she could.

How am I going to keep them alive? Dambree thought to herself, taking another swig of fizzybrew. I barely kept Tru, Elu, Nee, and Mister Mewmew alive last time. How am I going to keep them alive?

She glanced at her sleeping aunt, who was curled up on the floorboards with Nee and Baby.

How can I keep you alive when you're so stupid? she wondered.

She sighed, slowing down to go through the S-curve.

She saw the pumps and the charging station up ahead and slowed down, turning off the headlights. She crept the car forward, looking around. She could hear the big robot combines growling off in the distance, hear a battle off in the distance to the east where flashes were lighting up the horizon.

The pumps were silent when she stopped.

"Are we stopping, Bree?" Elu asked quietly.

"Yes," Dambree said, looking around. She rolled down the window and sniffed.

Just the smell of wufflegrain.

"Have to pee," Elu said.

"Wait till I signal," Dambree said, connecting her datalink to the ripperchip. The car's status appeared in her vision and she blinked through the menu. It was a copy (for educational use only) of remote owner usage for vehicles, and most of it worked on the car.

Elu didn't answer. Dambree counted to ten and got out slowly, closing the door behind her. She prowled around the water pumps and the two battered old charging stations. After a minute she dug in her pocket and pulled out her widget. She pressed it against the old electronic lock and after a minute it beeped and disengaged.

She pulled the cable out and connected it to the car, then looked around again, counting to thirty.

Elu peeked up and she flicker her left ear twice like it was a nervous habit.

Elu opened the door quietly. Ullie and Ellie followed, both of the younger boys looking around nervously.

"I have to pee," Ellie said.

"Stand behind the car and pee in the dirt," Elu said as Dambree moved over to the charging station.

"What if someone sees me?" Ullie asked.

"Then we're in trouble," Elu said.

Dambree pressed the widget against the charging station. It flashed the wifi icon several times, then beeped and reset. The car's power level appeared and charging began to flash.

The boys laughed and Dambree glanced over, seeing that they were standing by the ditch, facing the back of the car, and peeing lines in the dirt lit up by the taillights of the car.

Dambree felt bad. She'd gotten the programs off of a SolNet site that talking about phreaking, hacking, slicing, and ripping. She was still startled how easy they were to use, like the entire system was unencrypted and unsecured by the standards of Terran software.

"Momma, I can see the boys things!" Meglee called out.

"Shh," Aunt Fenn said.

The boys laughed, ignoring Meglee.

Dambree's ears went up. She could hear a vehicle approaching. Not the whirring clattering of a combine or harvester. Something different. Not like the clacking stuttering of the Slorpies or the roar of the Terrans.

A car. Maybe a truck.

Elu grabbed his cousins, pulling them toward the car, not bothering to button or pull up his pants. His cousins squawked, stumbling, but followed. Elu paused long enough to pull the charging cable out and slap the panel shut before following his cousins inside.

"Get down," Tru ordered.

The car went silent as it shut off.

Dambree unhooked the pistol from the side of the belt and reached behind her, putting it at the small of her back.

"Unlock," she said softly.

She felt the pistol buzz slightly in her hand. She activated the vehicle remote HUD and blinked through the menu to turn on the headlights and put right left hand headlight on highbeam. The radio was still moving through the channel, silently scanning for anything that wasn't static or jamming.

The truck came around the corner and Dambree tensed.

The front fenders were damaged, the bumper was crumpled, one headlight was out.

She knew what she was seeing.

She reached in her pocket, lifting up what was inside and holding it behind her back. It took her a second to find what she needed and get her finger right.

The truck stopped. A Hesstlan male was on each side, a female with red streaks painted on her ears and cheeks was between them. Two males standing up in the back, looking over the hood, with a female between them, again, she had her ears painted in stripes.

The driver reached out, grabbing the spotlight, as the truck came to a full stop.

Dambree pulled.

"Well, hi there, little missy," the driver said.

"Hi," Dambree said.

"Looks like you're all alone," the female in the back called out. She gave a weird cackling high pitched laugh.

The passenger door opened and the male got out. The two males jumped out on either side.

The driver kept the spotlight on Dambree.

"'Fraid your going to have to give us what's in the car," the driver said.

"We might even let you live," the female that had slid out of the cab laughed.

Dambree jerked upright as it appeared in her vision at the same time as the truck and the car's radio started blaring a siren. The babies started shrieking, Aunt Fenn cried out in fear, as the atonal warbling siren kicked in.

Dambree saw it in her datalink vizlink.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC

Mister Mewmew gave a yowling warning from his kittykitty crate.

"What's..." one said.

"Who's..." another started.

Dambree stepped forward, pulling her finger sharply away, ignoring the pain. The heavy round metal ball in her hand bounced as she swung her hand low, down by her knee, and released what she was holding. one She turned and jumped, landing near the charger.

"STARE AT THE GROUND!" Dambree screamed. two

The ball bounced across the ground.

The female who had jumped out of the back of the truck watched it, frowning, as it bounced between her feet and under the truck.

ATOMIC ATOMIC ATOMIC flashed in Dambree's vision. three

Dambree laced her fingers together, folded her ears back over the back of her head, and put her hands over the back of her head.

The world lit up, bright white. The shadows vanished. The tractors clattered and went silent. four

The other screamed, the passenger and both women turning and looking at where the flash had come from, where a red bloody light was brightening as a hellhammer mushroom cloud clawed into the sky.

five Dambree thought.

The M67A3 64mm AM fragmentation grenade, one each, went off with a crack and a white flash.