Part 9
When I woke up in my human body, it was being forcibly yanked from the docking unit. It's very disorientating to be pulled from a link when not ready for it. It took me a moment to get my bearings and to be able to physically react to the goon hauling my ass out of the unit. By the time I had enough coordination to fight, I was in handcuffs.
The same thing must have happened to Jim, too. He was cuffed to the railing along with three other avatar drivers who happened to be out at the time, and Grace, who was mouthing off to the military thugs with words a sailor would be proud of. I didn't know how we were going to get out of this one. There were six of us and ten of them.
I was hoping that Jim would be able to make a move when they uncuffed him from the rail. After all, he wouldn't be disoriented now, and he was the only trained fighter among us. They must have thought of that, though, because there were three soldiers standing near him when he was uncuffed. He tried to attack with his free hand, but he was easily overpowered and in no time, our greatest hope had his hands securely cuffed behind his back. The soldiers didn't seem to have any trouble at all hustling the struggling scientists to the holding cell, even with three of them busy with Jim.
*/*/*/*/*
"So now what?" Norm was one of the avatar drivers who had been captured and had been asking that question since we were dumped here five minutes ago.
Jim was pacing the cell and stopped only long enough to glare at Norm. All the rest of us had had our hands released when we were shoved into the cell. They didn't uncuff Jim. They did shove him however, and by the time he got off the floor, they had closed the door. He was pissed, of course, but there was more. He felt like he failed his people. I hadn't been sure that the bond would work in our human form as well as it did in avatar form, but now that we'd initiated the full bond, it did. I could feel what Jim was feeling. I could tell that he was barely holding it together.
"Jim," I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke softly. "We'll figure this out. You'll figure this out. Come sit down." I hadn't noticed seeing the shimmer of the bond between us while in human form, but now, touching him, I did.
I hadn't really expected him to sit, but he did, and nearly whispered, "They're out there right now, killing my people, Chief."
"Mo'at got the kids out, Jim. She was on her way to do that when they yanked me out of the avatar." Jim nodded, but I didn't know if that meant that he could tell somehow that the kids were safe, or if he was just acknowledging that he heard me. I prayed it was the former.
The room was silent for a long while. Even Norm stayed quiet. I don't know how much time went by before Bryant showed up. Jim just gave him a defeated look that clearly said, 'You won; are you happy?'
Bryant returned the look defiantly and answered. "Damn it Jim. I told you I was on your side." With that, he tossed in the key to Jim's handcuffs and began opening the door. He continued speaking while I uncuffed Jim. "Quaritch took the first wave out not too long ago. He left me in charge of the second wave. Of the ten gunships we have, I sent two out already to help Quaritch. The rest are manned by my men…people who agree that Quaritch has crossed the line. Quaritch thinks the second wave will back him up…he couldn't be further from the truth."
"They'll fire on their own men?" Jim, now free, asked as he took quick steps out of the cell.
"I'm not sure. Some will. Some just won't join the fight. I've also got men in three of Quaritch's wave of gunships. If we could just get someone out there to lead an offensive, I think most will follow."
"Well, I can give them someone to follow. Get me to a gunship."
"Got one saved for you, Jim."
Jim followed Bryant and the rest of us started to follow the sentinel.
Jim turned. "No Chief. I'm going alone." I started to protest but he continued. "I need you in avatar form...all of you." He included the three avatar drivers and Grace, then turned to Max, who usually monitored us while in avatar form. "You monitor them and make sure no one bothers them." He looked at Bryant with a questioning look at his firearm. The commander nodded and Jim continued talking to Max, "Can you fire a weapon?"
Max nodded reluctantly but said, "I'm not accurate at all."
Jim responded, "If you need it, it'll be point-blank range. I think you'll be fine" But then Jim caught the expression on Max's face. "Will you fire a weapon?" Max was obviously thinking but didn't answer, so Jim continued. "Only as a last resort, if someone was going to pull the drivers out or injure them in some way."
Max finally nodded, but added, "If they come in here like last time...ten guns to one...whether I shoot or not won't make much difference."
Bryan put in his two cents, "They won't. As far as I know, all the men loyal to Quaritch are in the field. And if they're not, there's no reason for them to come in here again. As far as they know, you're all still in the brig."
Jim continued. "By the time they realize you're a danger again, they won't have time to get back here."
"What if there are still men loyal to Quaritch here and the ones in the field radio back?"
We were wasting too much time here, so I tried to move things along. "Max, we don't have time for 'what if's'!"
Jim added, holding out Bryant's gun. "Can you do this or not?"
After another moment's hesitation, Max took the gun and we all started toward our target positions. I hesitated long enough to throw a heartfelt "Be careful," to Jim.
He nodded but answered, "No one hurts my people, Chief!"
That didn't actually reassure me that he would be careful, but I didn't really have a choice in all this...neither did he really...so I accepted the answer and turned toward the docking station.
*/*/*/*/*
I woke up in 'spirit tree'. Mo'at must have had our avatar bodies moved there, out of harm's way. I gathered the gun that Jim had always brought with him...just because he was cleared to do so and he thought that would give us one good gun when the inevitable fight came. Then, after just a second to make sure my sentinel's avatar was safe, I ran to Home Tree as fast as I could.
The scene there was about what I had expected, but I had really hoped I was going to be proven wrong. The helicopters were still a little way out, but not nearly far enough. It was going to take too long for Jim's group to get there if we didn't slow this wave down somehow.
Mo'at was in front of the group when I got there, giving orders fast and furiously. There were more foot soldiers than I would have thought possible, but they were equipped only with bows and arrows and knives. They would mean nothing to soldiers suited up in the exoskeletons that were equipped with huge guns and monstrous knives, but we might have a chance against the unsuited ones. There weren't enough exo-suits for all of them. Jim had long ago wondered about the possibility of sneaking out a few guns at a time to arm the warriors, but we decided the risk was too great. If Quaritch tipped to our change of allegiance too soon, he'd just ship Jim, or possibly both of us, back to Earth. So, we were going to have to be creative if we had a prayer of defeating the foot soldiers.
We had an aerial defense too. Some of the warriors had bonded with the Ikron, a sort of flying dinosaur thing. That would get our men into the transports. They'd still be armed only with primitive weapons, but at least Quaritch's goons wouldn't necessarily be suited in the exoskeletons, yet. So, our aerial force might have a chance of killing off some of the potential ground reinforcements, or maybe even of disabling some of the gunships.
There were only two places helicopters could land anywhere near home tree, so I went with the ground force to the nearest LZ. We didn't dare cut our numbers in half trying to cover both of them. Two other avatars came with us. Grace and Norm assisted the evacuation of the last of the villagers. Most were already gone, but there hadn't been time yet to get everyone out, so the slowest were still left...the oldest, and the youngest. The last I saw, as I glanced back over my shoulder, was Grace with a little kid on each hip, following the rest out of the tree.
*/*/*/*
A group of us was positioned just out of sight at the landing zone. There were four exo-suited soldiers in this group. We stayed behind the trees and waited. If we gave away our position too fast the suited soldiers would just open fire and that would be that. If we waited too long, the most protected men would be past us and we'd have fire from two sides. I wasn't a soldier, but I knew that wouldn't be good.
The Na'vi warriors didn't really have a system of rank. When any one of the more experienced ones had an idea the others would follow, so leaders could change several times during a battle. That's probably a decent system when the battles are against warring tribes with comparable fire power, but it wouldn't work here. They were all looking to me though, and I was anything but completely confident in my own ability to lead in this situation. I knew enough basic game theory, and had caught enough of Jim's talk about strategy that I wasn't totally clueless, but I wasn't from it. All I knew for sure was that we had to mow down as many men here as possible. The more we let through was that many more that the soldiers positioned deeper in the jungle would have to deal with. And these men could not be allowed to reach home tree.
We did have a few advantages. These warriors knew this jungle like the back of their hand, and were masters at disappearing. I knew about how many men were out there and knew where I saw them last, but I couldn't see any of them now. I crouched behind one of the bigger trees and waited for the exo-suits. I knew I couldn't actually damage the suit, but If I could compromise the air of the soldier within it, we might have a chance. All of the warriors waited until I fired the first shot at the Plexiglas of the nearest exoskeleton, then all hell broke loose.
*/*/*/*/*
When the soldiers stopped going by, there were a lot lying on the ground, including two exoskeletons, but we probably let over half through. Also, the helicopters still airborne saw what was happening on the ground and broke off. I'm sure they went to the other LZ, which didn't get rid of them completely, but it was a lot farther away than this one, so that bought us more time.
There weren't nearly as many of us now, but we decided to split up after all. Some of the warriors went toward the other LZ to meet those soldiers. The rest of us tried to cut off the ones that had gotten through before they got to home tree. We managed to take out several more, but by now our ranks were dwindling to the point where we really weren't much of a threat anymore.
TBC
