Part 9: "Take up the white man's burden!"

Control Center 25, Section L-338, Magnanimous Hyacinth

March 14th, 2016

Renaril awoke with a start. She was still in her seat at the center of the room's row of consoles, with the shape of the keyboard's edge imprinted into the underside of each slender forearm. The realization that she'd fallen asleep on the job mortified her – what would Kang think?

Kang..?

The colonel wasn't there. Only her uniform jacket remained, draped over the Arume's shoulders. Renaril remembered sending her aides to bed, but realized with a pang of fresh guilt that she'd forgotten to arrange accommodations for the forime officer. "Hyacinth," she said aloud, flagging the huge vessel's mainframe AI, "have there been any updates in my jurisdiction since last check-in?"

"Two events," the computer replied softly. "In the first event, five military ocean craft of the Russian Federation have entered the zone designated 'Hong Kong operations area'. Their stated intent is to monitor the situation and contribute humanitarian assistance if requested. One of the vessels is presently docked in the port of Macau... In the second event, King Frederik of Denmark has transmitted a message addressed to you."

"I'll read it later," Renaril sighed, certain the item was a condemnation of yesterday's fiasco. At least no new crises seemed to have sprung up. "Where is Colonel Kang?"

"The colonel is – "

"Right behind you."

"Eep..!"

"Rise and shine," Kang continued dryly. When Renaril spun her chair around, she saw that the other woman's arms were laden with food canisters. "I procured these for you and the staff."

"Thank you," the Arume replied absently. "Have you slept at all?"

"No, but I'm used to – " Kang broke off to stifle a yawn. "...It," she finished weakly.

"Nice try." Renaril pushed herself out of her seat. "Let's go back to my cabin. You can rest while I watch the screens for a bit."

It was cloudy on the ground when Richardson woke up, a consequence of no obvious stimulus. She was right where she was supposed to be, stretched out on a mattress under a long awning. Looking to either side, she could see her sisters lined up in the same fashion. Sitting up, she also saw that a frail girl – dubbed 'Astra' by Schuhart – had secured company for the night in the form of Keiko. A twinge of envy ran through Richardson as she saw how the other girl was pressed up against the large woman's torso, before a noise from behind distracted her. Twisting around, she discovered Harrington rubbing her eyes. When their gazes met, Richardson motioned for silence and crept to the foot of her mattress.

Renaril had heard the expression 'out like a light' before, but she had never seen it so readily applicable: Kang had barely finished removing her shoes and laid back on the group commander's bed before her body relaxed, her chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm. Stretching out with her hands behind her head had the side effect of pulling out all the folds and creases in her shirt, causing the white fabric to hug the curves of her upper body. However much Renaril tried to focus on her duties, she couldn't stop sneaking guilty glances towards the bed.

At least she had that luxury to cheer her up. While all was quiet on her own front, other commanders were running into trouble – in large part, she suspected, because of yesterday. The already high tensions were beginning to reach critical mass: four countries had so far moved to a hostile stance against the Arume, and more looked set to follow them. At least nobody was actually fighting yet.

Padding along on bare feet in silence, Richardson and Harrington made their way between two warehouses. There was no real need for stealth, apart from consideration of those still sleeping... And perhaps a wish to be the first to achieve what they had set out to do, ahead of any competition. The gosta's sensitive ears picked up a sound from the left: someone was whistling snatches of a tune. Signaling the change of course with a wave of her hand, she swung towards it.

Pchht-pchht-pchht-pchht-pchht!

That sound was a strange one to the girls, somewhere between a snap and a hiss. Their confusion was interrupted by Schuhart's voice: "Oh, not again!" Intrigued, the pair hustled forwards until they came to an open space – a 'parking lot' according to Richardson's pre-programmed vocabulary. The man himself was standing beside a cluttered folding table, opposite a long concrete wall with a series of stubby wooden posts arranged before it.

Harrington announced the duo's arrival. "Uncle Roland?"

"You're up early," he remarked. "Something wrong?"

"No," Richardson supplied. As she approached the table, she saw that Schuhart's weapons from the previous day lay upon it. Their owner was currently struggling with one of the rifles taken off the Arume-allied soldiers: now squinting into a slot in its side, now thumping it with his fist.

"Just wanted to hang out, eh?" Schick... Tink-tink-tink! "Fine with me." Snick-chak! "Aha!"

"What..?"

"Sticky mag – happens all the time."

"Are you... training?"

"Nah, just trying out one of our new overlords' toys." Fitting the stock against his shoulder, he snapped off another five shots at the distant posts. "Can't say I'm impressed."

"No..?"

Schuhart nodded. "Boomslang Ordnance doesn't have an equivalent in local universe, but this XM-Eighteen of theirs is basically an LR-Three-Hundred with a piggybacked gas piston. I frankly doubt it can be competitive on the planetside market." Noticing the girls' blank expressions, he shrugged. "Anyway, I thought I'd snap a suppressor on it – " He indicated the fat tube at the end of the barrel. " – and see how quiet it runs."

"Oh." Richardson thought for a moment. "What do you mean by competitive?"

"I mean it wouldn't sell very well. Even if the sky eyes ignored the patent concerns, the market is saturated with cheaper variations on the same theme... But I don't think they're interested in selling them – more likely they'll just give 'em away to collaborators and proxies. We'll be seeing a lot more of these either way."

"What about us?" Harrington asked. "Do you think the Arume will come back here?"

"Yeah, about that..." Schuhart set the rifle aside and scratched his head. "They'll almost certainly be back – the questions are, how many of them and when? Having the Russian navy on our front porch might encourage them to cut back on the deadly force, but I wouldn't be surprised if the sky eyes decided to try making an example of us."

"An example," Richardson echoed. She didn't like the sound of that.

The big man nodded. "On the one hand, they're trying to cover their butts by claiming that the bombing was an accident. On the other hand, they're simeltaneously claiming that there are insurgents running around Hong Kong, and they're not making any distinction between we who try to keep the peace and those yahoos with the Egyptian hardware. On the third hand, nobody seems to know who's actually supposed to be in charge here – there's no police, no fire services... Even the PLA garrison got wiped out. Local primary infrastructure is pretty much gone, nearly the entire population of Kowloon and outlying districts have died or fled north, and now we arms dealers are the biggest business in town."

"Kow-what?"

"Here." Schuhart took out a paper map and unfolded it over the guns on the table. "We're here," he said, pointing to the lower edge of a large peninsula. "The landward side of old Kowloon. This was a pretty dense area before the rise in sea levels, not so much nowadays. The cargo you kids helped unload yesterday was coming up through the channel here, between Lantau and Hong Kong Islands... To the west we have another channel running past the old International Airport – only traffic that can land there now is seaplanes. Beyond that is the Pearl River and Macau, where the Russians are hanging out. Up the Pearl is Guangzhou: a lot of our civilian survivors will probably end up there... Over the hills to our north are the bulk of the New Territories and then North Hong Kong, what the old-timers still call Shenzhen. Past that is solid PRC territory... Right now Shenzhen and the upper New Territories are de facto Arume turf, and that means they can come at us from pretty much any direction. Land, air, sea, you name it."

"But why?" Harrington demanded. "Why would the Arume want to attack this city again?"

"It's not about the city," Schuhart answered sourly. "It's about their image. Who's going to take them seriously if they bomb a population center and can't pacify what's left? Odds are that they don't even care who we are as long as stomping on us makes them look tough."

Richardson shivered. "And... if they do attack?"

"We can fight them on the beaches, we can fight them on the streets. I'm not going sit quietly by and let my crew and my assets fall into their hands." Schuhart picked up the captured rifle, pulled out the magazine and pushed out a large pin, causing the top half to pivot open. "Realistically we'll need to be ready to fall back to Lantau if we can't hold them here. The island isn't heavily built up and the terrain favors the defender... The big weak point right now is supplies. We have motor barges running over to Macau and back, but I don't doubt the Arume would try starving us with a blockade if they thought it would spare them a stand-up fight."

"What would you do then?" Richardson hoped the answer wasn't cannibalism.

Schuhart winked. "Already taken care of... So," he went on, folding up the map and going back to the rifle, "that's where we stand. I'd rather not fight if it can be helped, but I suspect it can't be. We'll keep looking for survivors for another day or two, but the priority from here on is going to be defense." Pchht-pchht-pchht-pchht-pchht! "Any other questions?"

"Uncle Roland..."

"Yes, Harrington?"

"How do you feel about the Arume? You talk about fighting them, but you don't seem to hate them..."

"Hating 'em wouldn't do me much good," the arms dealer said philosophically. "They don't bring much to the table that we haven't seen before, you know? Imperialists from overseas, imperialists from another universe – what's the difference, really? They come and try to impress with their fancy technology and their superior culture while making lots of noise about bettering us, but in the end it's not about us. It's about what they can get from us. Labor, raw materials... I guess women would also be a resource for the sky eyes."

"Yes..." Richardson knew her own makers well enough to understand that. "By the way," she added, acting on a random thought, "what was that music?"

"Hm?"

"You were whistling something when we came," the gosta clarified. "What was it?"

"Oh, that... It's a song called Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner."

Harrington blinked. "Headless?"

"Yeah... See, in the song Roland is a Norwegian mercenary fighting in the Congo in the sixties – he's so good at his job that the Americans hire another merc to kill him, but he comes back to life and seeks revenge."

The girls exchanged a look: it seemed like a rather macabre subject for musical treatment. "Well," Harrington opined with a nervous giggle, "it's good that you haven't lost your head, Uncle Roland."

"True that," said Schuhart affably. "I do have a Thompson, though. Remind me to bring it out some time."

Only then did Richardson, distracted by one development after another, remember why she and Harrington had snuck out here in the first place. "Actually, Uncle Roland, we had a request..."

"Go ahead."

Richardson squared her shoulders and tried her best to look solemn. "Please teach us how to fight."

"Nnngh..."

Renaril quickly fixed her eyes on her console screen as Kang stirred. "You're awake?" she inquired softly.

"Mm..." Kang sat up. "Four hours. That should be enough for now."

Renaril didn't think it was, but chose not to press the point. "Nothing much has happened," she reported. "You could sleep longer."

"I'd rather not." Renaril felt the colonel's presence behind her. "Is that my service record?"

"Er..." Should have closed the file, the Arume thought frantically.

Kang didn't seem to have a problem with her reading material. "What are you looking so evasive for?"

"Nothing," Renaril said quickly, flailing about for a diversion. "Um... What does 'double comrade' mean?"

"It's a literal translation," the forime explained. "The word traditionally used for a communist comrade is now also applied to homosexuals."

"Oh, then... Wait." Renaril looked over her shoulder. "You're..?"

"It's an open secret." Kang shrugged. "I assumed someone would have told you by now."

Renaril felt strangely relieved by the revelation. "So we have something in common," she said optimistically.

"Perhaps." Kang sounded unenthused. "Group Commander, I need to go down to the surface."

"Eh..?"

"I'm a field officer, not a traffic controller. I can better help you when I'm able to see what's actually happening on the front."

"How's it going, Nereus?"

"It could be better," the older man grunted from his perch atop the green open-bed truck parked just inside the warehouse. "Losing half my tools didn't help... Almost done with this unit, though."

Schuhart nodded. "Keep at it."

"Before you go, want to pass that M-Two up here?"

"Sure." Motioning for Harrington and Richardson to stand back, the one-eyed man gingerly lifted a long rectangular assembly from a nearby bench and hauled it to the truck. "Whoo," he sighed, handing the item up and going back for the thick barrel. "These fifty-cals are heavy even in pieces. You sure that pintle is bolted down solid?"

"You doubt my skill?" Nereus waved his socket wrench aggressively. "How about a mini-pintle for a Bren at the rear?"

"If it won't get in the way of the passengers, sure." Schuhart cocked his head. "Y'know, it seems like just yesterday that I was plowing straight through enemy fire in a crate like this."

"Don't kid yourself," the other man snorted. "Your Hilux wasn't anywhere near the weight of this thing until we welded all that scrap onto it."

"I could tell – driving the Kettenkrad is paradise compared to steering that road-cow," Schuhart opined. "Anyway, it's good that the trucks survived. You're putting the DShK aboard the other two-and-a-half?"

"That's what I assumed."

"Fine... Lemme get the girls back to KK and then I'll come over and look at the plans."

"Right." Nereus ducked out of view. "See you in a bit."

"You're sure about this?" Renaril fretted. "If anything happened to you – "

"Stop that," Kang muttered as the pair entered the Hyacinth's forward hangar. "It's undignified."

There were no shuttles docked, only a single cargo transport. It was considerably larger than the aforementioned craft: comparable to a pair of articulated trucks parked side by side in Kang's estimation.

"It doesn't matter," Renaril asserted. "There aren't any personnel transports available."

Too late: the colonel had already spotted the transport's unwary pilot going over her final checklists and started to close in.

"You really did it." Sauer looked impressed. "What did he say?"

"He looked surprised," Richardson replied in a loud mutter, the only practical way to carry on a private conversation in a crowded space while lukewarm water noisily cascaded over one's body. "Then he said he'd think about it."

"Well," the other gosta offered, "good luck."

Richardson nodded, moving so that the fullest part of the stream from the showerhead was over her back. On her other side, Harrington was doing the same. "Look," the latter called. "Astra is still clinging to the pack leader."

"The what?"

"Keiko," Sauer interjected, motioning towards the woman who towered over all the gosta. Just as described, little Astra was still at her side. "As I told Harrington, someone saw her with the others while you were outside and said she looked like a mother animal leading cubs."

"I see." Richardson turned around, lifting her face so that the water splashed over it for a few moments. "Our... pack leader is very pretty."

"Isn't she?" Sauer agreed. "Webley has already proposed to her."

"Wha – !?" Harrington spat out the water she'd nearly inhaled. "When did she do that?"

"As soon as she woke up," Sauer chortled. "Keiko just laughed and said she liked hers bigger."

"Pfft," Richardson snorted, eying Schuhart's shapely cousin. "She must be fearless, to not even cover herself in front of us."

"Mm." Harrington reached behind her back, trying to wipe away lingering soap residue without great success. "Um, Richardson..?"

"Here." The girl addressed placed her palm against the other's back and moved it in circles. "Is that – ah!" Suddenly her arm was numb almost up to the elbow. Harrington had gone rigid, her back arched. She wasn't breathing. "Keiko," Richardson cried, whipping her arm back, "something's wrong!"

The contact broken, Harrington went limp. She would have fallen smack on her face if Keiko hadn't stepped in to catch her. "Whoa," the one adult in the showers exclaimed. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I touched her and then – "

"I felt you," Harrington murmured, her voice almost inaudible over the spraying water. "I felt everything you felt, saw everything you saw." She turned her head towards Richardson. "I don't understand, but... I want to feel it again."

"Oh boy," Keiko sighed.

Whatever else she might think of them, Kang couldn't deny that the Arume at least knew how to fabricate a decent tent. Walking through the town of Yuen Long, both sides of the street lined with the blue-on-white assemblies, she felt a little relieved that the aliens appeared to be making a real effort to accommodate the devastated peninsula's displaced citizens. If only their conduct in other fields were up to such a standard!

More important right now were the reactions of the victims. Many of those who poked their heads out or passed Kang by as she walked looked as if they were still in a profound fugue. Perhaps that was for the better, if it kept them from panicking or stirring up trouble when she was so ill-equipped to handle it. The priority was for them to receive basic necessities and basic necessities they had. If life were kind enough to put the vicious surprises on hold for a while, the task of rebuilding their lives would come before long...

"Excuse me, excuse me..." A man was trying to get her attention. He was of average height and rather thin, his clothes rumpled as if he had slept in them. When she stopped to look at him, he approached carefully. "Excuse me," he said again, not so loud now. "The army sent you, right?"

"Technically, yes." Kang braced herself for an impossible request or a litany of complaints. "How can I help you, er..?"

"Lee, Metford Lee. I owned a restaurant in old Kowloon." Lee quickly looked around. "I wanted to ask you, what is the government going to do about Schuhart?"

"About who..?"

"You don't know?" The man looked worried. "That's not good – I'm certain the aliens will bomb him again if you don't stop them."

"Who is he?"

"I don't really know him in a personal way," Lee admitted. "I think he's an American. He was a regular customer at my place, a very good customer. He said he worked for a trading company... But yesterday, after the exploding girls stopped coming, I found him giving orders to a lot of Russian men with guns and military clothing. These men were rescuing injured people from the damaged buildings and driving them to safer places outside the city. Because I wasn't badly hurt, Schuhart asked me to help treat the wounded and accompany the next group being evacuated."

"You agreed?"

"It was all I could do... Everything was fine until after he dropped us at the safe point, when an alien ship appeared. It fired at something in the hills and caused an explosion, then flew over us and into the city itself. We heard shooting and another explosion, and then more men with guns came. There was a woman as well: she told me the ship attacked Schuhart and they blew it up." Lee's tone of narration had become quite excited. "She talked about it as if it were perfectly ordinary, can you believe that?"

"What happened to you afterward?"

"Eventually the armed people left and the aliens came and brought us to Yuen Long. That's all."

"Schuhart and these paramilitaries were evacuating civilians from the city," Kang repeated, "and they claimed to have engaged and destroyed an Arume craft. You haven't told anyone else about this?"

"I don't trust the aliens," Lee said bluntly. "I had to wait until someone from the army or the government came."

"And that's all you know? Nothing about their motives or intentions?"

"Nothing... But," the surviving proprietor added brightly, "Schuhart gave me these." He produced a satellite telephone handset and a scrap of paper from under his jacket. "I was supposed to call this number if the aliens gave us trouble."

"Thank you," Kang answered automatically, accepting the proffered items. Ignoring her growing feeling of surreality, she looked at the number scrawled on the paper. The calling code indicated that the intended recipient was another satphone: a smart choice, hard to trace or tap and able to function even in war zones. Standard procedure had routines for handling a find like this, but standard procedure was absent without leave. Doing her best to ignore Lee's anticipatory expression, she powered up the handset and keyed in the number with her thumb.

"A recipient telepath, you say?"

"Yes," Keiko confirmed as the gosta in question looked on in nervous silence. "It seems that Harrington is particularly... sensitive to Richardson's input. We have no idea how or why it happened, but the effect is undeniable."

"Huh." Schuhart went back to his clipboard. "Well, don't overdo it."

Keiko grit her teeth. "Roland, try to at least look a little surprised."

"KK, right now the only things that would surprise me are – " The cyclops was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. "Hello?"

Despite Lee's story, Kang found the American English voice on the other end incongruous. "I want to talk to the leader of the militia operating in the destroyed districts," she said plainly.

"Who's asking?"

"Colonel Kang of the People's Liberation Army, on behalf of Group Commander Renaril of the Sino-Arume liaison."

"Et tu, comrade?" Suddenly the man's tone was one of weary disappointment. "Well, what can the box-cannon man do for you today?"

Kang closed her eyes in defeat: there would be no convenient explanation for this problem. I have met the enemy, and he is my friend.