Static friction is almost always much higher than sliding friction. Worried that once the sleds were loaded with seventy-five tons of people each, our fifty-ton tanks wouldn’t be able to get them moving, Quincy had the drones pour some oil under the sleds as they were pulling up to the doors. It worked.
We had room for everybody on the sleds, but it took us fifteen minutes to get them loaded. It took us the longest time to explain the simplest things to these civilians.
Finally, I just shouted, “We are leaving in two minutes. Anybody not on the sleds by then will be left behind!”
That worked, for the most part. As we were pulling out, one idiot wanted us to stop so he could go to the rest room.
I loudly told him to pee in his pants.
He looked up at me, or rather at the massive, two-meter-tall drone I was wearing, and did just that.
We accelerated slowly, since many of the people insisted on standing, but we eventually got up to twenty kilometers per hour, about five times faster than these people could have walked.
We didn’t see anyone at all on our way back to the high school, just more abandoned check points. It was spooky.
The school principal, Dr. Kapinski, that I had left in charge there had done a decent job. There were armed sentries out, and the people were quiet enough. They already had the cafeteria going, and people were being fed in shifts.
He was not at all happy about being left alone for nine hours in the middle of enemy-held territory.
I said, “Dr. Kapinski, we have not seen an enemy soldier since we left you, except for the guards with the other groups of hostages, and we killed all of those guys. You now have twice as many armed men to protect you as you did before, plus fourteen military drones for guard duty. We’ll set them up as an outer perimeter defense before we leave. Tell people to stay well inside of that ring. Without a tank around to control them, those things aren’t very smart, and I don’t want anybody hurt. We’re going back for another group of our people. There’ll be about thirty thousand of them here before we’re through. Keep up the good work.”
I tried to leave, but he stopped me.
“Thirty thousand people! Where will we put them?”
“You’ll figure something out. It will only be for a short while, but right now I’m in a hurry. Look, just act like you know what you’re doing, delegate specific responsibilities to specific people, tell them what you want accomplished, and they’ll get it done, somehow. Or, if they don’t, put somebody else in charge.”
“Yes, sir.”
Four hours later we had all of the ex-hostages at the school, crowded into every place from the wrecked auto shop to the principal’s office.
Dr. Kapinski told us about a food warehouse nearby. We took a hundred healthy volunteers, five tanks with their sleds, and the humanoid drones, and looted the place. We returned with almost four hundred tons of food, most of which didn’t need cooking. The school still had water and lights, so our people could stay alive for weeks, if it took that long for us to figure out what was going on.
I called my squad together for a conference in Dream World.
“So Quincy, what’s our defensive position?”
“We’re secure enough, especially since there doesn’t seem to be an enemy around to threaten us. We have two hundred and twenty-eight veterans who are armed and doing guard duty, under a guy named Kowalski, who seems pretty competent. Some of those men don’t have anything but a pistol or a grenade, but they’re ready to fight if they have to, and that’s the important thing. A bunch of guys are working in the school’s shops, cobbling up some more weapons. I don’t know what they’ll be able to come up with, but it seems to keep them happy. I’ve issued out our tanks’ survival kits, with their knives and assault rifles, incidentally.”
“Good thought, that,” I said. “So, the people here are safe enough, and we still don’t know what is happening, where our lines are, or what happened to the enemy. I propose that we go and find out. Quincy, I’m leaving you and Zuzanna here with the fourteen standard drones, and two of the humanoid ones to guard these people. After the rest of us leave, tell Dr. Kapinski and Kowalski what we are doing.”
Agnieshka put a map up, showing the immediate area around the school.
“Now, I think that if we extend our outer perimeter out to these four corridors, station a tank here and here, at opposite corners, and support the intersections in between with drones, we should be safe enough. Use the civilian guards under Kowalski’s command, and have him defend along these lines, here, here, here, and here, inside our outer perimeter. Maria, Kasia and I will take the mice and the other three humanoid drones, and do some exploring. If we are able to contact our side, and if we are not able to come back here with them, the password will be ‘Derdowski sent us.’ Comments?”
“No, that will work well enough,” Quincy said.
“And I like being able to guard my family,” Zuzanna said. “Thank you.”
“Good. Cast off the sleds. The civilians can finish unloading them without our help. Maria, I want the rail gun in front. Take the point. Kasia, you are rear guard. Let’s move!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Run Away! Run Awayyy!
Kasia said, “We know where the Earthworms had their hospital complex. With their headquarters gone, that would have been the hardest thing for them to move. If they are anywhere, that’s where they’ll be. Let’s go there and see what we can find. Cautiously, of course.”
“That sounds like a workable plan,” I said.
We passed fully a dozen abandoned check points, but saw not one single human being or functional military machine on the way.
We stopped at two automatic factories that we came across, and had our tanks talk to the computers who ran them, but we didn’t learn much. The factories hadn’t been able to contact anyone or anything for days, and they hadn’t seen anybody passing by for eight hours, but they had kept on working as best as they could, doing their jobs, having nothing better to do.
The hospital was right where it was supposed to be, but there wasn’t anybody there.
Most of it had been dedicated to treating the men they thought were down with cholera, and there really was shit all over the place. Fortunately, the sensory inputs on a tank can be selectively turned off, and after the first whiff of the stench, we all switched off our olfactory sensors.
Kasia said, “You know, once we destroyed their computer, their medical packaging machine would have stopped working as well. Without repeated doses of my ‘medicine,’ those ‘cholera’ victims would have gotten healthy enough to move in a few hours, if they were given enough water to drink. They might have been well enough to walk out of here.”
“That would explain most of the people who were hospitalized. I imagine that those who were actually wounded had to be carried out in ambulances or on stretchers,” I said.
Looking around in my drone, I found that there was a refrigerated section that was filled with thousands of corpses, stacked up like firewood, with only their boots showing. They had abandoned their dead when they’d left. I closed the door, and left them for someone else to worry about.
We Kashubians traditionally had our bodies cremated, and the ashes scattered in a special memorial flower garden, but the Earthers’ families might want theirs sent home for burial.
Well, it wasn’t my job.
Still, I wondered how many of them had died when their guns had exploded on them. Best to not think of such things.
“Any other ideas?” I asked what was left of my squad.
“If they are gone, they must have gone somewhere,” Maria said. “Let’s start checking the transporter transmitters.”
We went to the nearest one, and it obviously had seen a lot of use lately. There were huge piles of damaged and abandoned equipment around it, plus at least three more bodies on stretchers. Those guys had apparently died on their way from the hospital to here, and their bodies had simply been abandoned.
They had left most of their vehicles and heavy weapons behind, including over a dozen Mark XIX tanks. They were sitting there with their coffins open and empty, and with the survival kits missing. These tanks each had a half dozen computers on board, but only one was really intelligent. Being tankers, these Earthers had each pulled the computer rack that contained their tank’s personality, and had taken them with them, just as I would have done, to save Agnieshka. This also made those tanks completely safe to be around. They no longer had brains enough to be aggressive.