The gray and black of the mountains flashed around Jan's feet. Her conscious mind was still there, but her concentration was on her mission. How close was she to the target? Where were the enemies? Where was the next path?
Though the Hive's residents kept their paths as small and secret as possible, she and her team had no trouble navigating towards the enemy. They kept just on their side of the mountain.
Just when she had told them to, three minutes after deployment, group two began their demonstration. Jan and her group had one more mountain to climb, but they could hear the clanking of the innumerable Swatbots down below. The sounds of blaster fire rang out clearly. Group two had no chance of even inflicting many casualties; they would have the first shot and then have to retreat. There were just too many bots. Intellectually, Jan knew this, knew what they were supposed to do. She also had no control over them, and no idea what they were doing.
But they didn't have to inflict many casualties. They just had to draw the enemy to them.
Group one rounded the mountain. Jan saw at least a hundred of the Swatbots trying to climb the slope group two now hid behind. They were having a hard time handling rubble and loose rocks, but they were steadily climbing.
Several squads of Swatbots noticed group one, and turned to fire on them. Group one fired first, downing half a dozen Swatbots. Thirty Swatbots fired in return, raking fire up the mountain. Jan turned her head.
"Kal!"
With Swatbot fire all around him, he lifted his long-range blaster. He fired and was hit in the same instant.
The blaster shot lanced out to the other side of the canyon—and ignited a fuel grenade.
It had taken several months to set up the microcharges that were linked to the grenade. Now all that work was discharged in the blink of an eye. Those charges were scattered over the face of the mountain; as one they went off, shattering stone all over the mountain. The entire face of the mountain the Swatbots were climbing transformed into an avalanche of loose rock.
This was the trump card.
The Hive had dropped a mountain on the Swatbots.
The whole contingent, tanks and all, was buried and crushed beneath a storm of stone. Nothing survived.
But Jan had stopped thinking about such things. She was already headed back up the mountain to where Kal had stopped to shoot.
"Kal!" she cried in anguish.
His vest had been blackened by a blaster shot, and he'd smashed his head on a rock, but he was alive for the moment. Forgetting mop-up, she tossed her blaster away and grabbed at his body. She carried him back towards the Hive, washing his wounds with her tears.
So very carefully, Tails turned his body sideways. Using his tails for balance, he edged his way between the ropes.
Another meter! he thought. So close!
In that lapse, he let his arm drift. It struck a rope. Instantly the maze collapsed, and Tails was buried in rope.
He knew by now that to struggle would only get him more ensnared, but he expressed his frustration in the form of a scream.
Sonic was already pulling the control to untangle the kit. Tails worked his way out and joined him.
"Good job, Tails, you almost got it that time."
"You're just saying that to try and get me to feel better."
"Did it work?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Tails had to admit.
"There's a way to get past it."
"How would you know? You haven't done it!"
"Sure I have! How do you suppose Sal an' Rote an' I built it?"
"Aunt Sally?"
Sonic tried to quickly change the subject. "Like I said, there's a way. Two ways actually, an' I want you to find them both." He finished resetting the mechanism. "C'mon, lil' bro, try it again."
"Okay, Sonic."
Tails went around to the start of the rope maze. As before, he looked through it, seeing where he could go and where he'd fit. He ran into the same problem: the maze was just too big. He couldn't plan for the whole way. The last time he'd tried to improvise, it'd almost worked, but then he'd failed at the end. But something Sonic said changed his thoughts. Two ways?
Tails stepped back and looked at the ropes with a distant eye. He only knew of one way through the ropes that he could fit… then he laughed. Of course! Why hadn't he thought of that before?
Because he thought that the only way to beat the ropes was to go through the maze. But Sonic or Sally or Rotor or whoever had made this didn't want to teach him just that.
Tails took a running start, launched into the air, and flew over the ropes, touching down on the other side.
When he turned around, Sonic was beaming. "Bingo, Tails. You got it."
"You wanna teach me to cheat?"
"How was that cheatin'?"
"I didn't go through the maze. I went over it."
"Lil' bro, Robuttnik doesn't fight fair. He draws up the rules so he can win. If we wanna beat him, we have to change the rules a little. Like this," he said, pointing to the maze. "Say we wanna hit a bot factory. The front door's guarded, so we can't get in, right? No. We cheat. We find an air vent. Or a tunnel. Or a skylight. Or we hide in a delivery meant for the factory."
"Why don't you just smash the bots at the front door?"
Sonic laughed. "It doesn't work that way, Tails."
"Why not?"
"Huh?"
"Why can't you just smash the bots? You do stuff like it all the time."
Sonic knew this wasn't going to end well, but it would be better to have this conversation now. The longer he waited, the more deluded Tails would get, and they could no longer afford to delude Tails. "Like it, Tails. There's lots of reasons why not. Some have to do with the mission. Some have to do with Robotnik's response. But the main reason is that I couldn't do it."
"Couldn't?"
"They'd shoot me."
Tails' expression showed he didn't understand such a thing was possible.
"Listen, Tails, 'cause this is important. Swatbutts aren't very accurate, but that doesn't mean we give them the chance. Not gettin' shot at it is better than tryin' to dodge. So we avoid 'em unless we have to."
"You're afraid of Swatbots?"
"'Course I am."
"I thought you weren't afraid of anything!"
I've gotta say it, Sonic said. Tails has to learn now. I just hope Sally knew what she was saying.
"Being a Freedom Fighter," he said slowly, quietly, "means being afraid."
Tails stared, wide-eyed, at Sonic. Sonic took a deep breath. This was going to be harder than he thought! And he wasn't Sally; he wasn't sure he had the words to explain to Tails what Tails had to learn.
Try something practical, the voice came. Odd, the voice sounded so much like Sally's. "Here," he said, parting some fur on his arm. "Whaddya see?"
Tails' face squished in disgust. "A scar."
"And here?"
"Another scar."
"And here?" Sonic was no longer parting his fur, just pointing to parts of his body. "And here, and here, real nasty one here…" he looked back at Tails. Despite the seriousness of the topic, Tails eyes looked like they were trying to pop out of his skull, which almost broke Sonic's concentration.
"Being a Freedom Fighter means being afraid. Afraid of your friends and family gettin' Roboticised. Of having your home destroyed. Afraid that, if you die, you won't be able to save them; and that if you're Roboticised, that you'll have to turn 'em in.
"But more than anything, it means being afraid of what Robotnik winning would be like. And being more afraid of that than dying."
Tails was nodding gravely. Sonic hoped that Tails was really absorbing this information. Otherwise he was scaring Tails for no reason, and he really didn't want to do that.
"Most of the animals in Knothole don't really know about Robotnik. I mean, okay, they may have had to run from him. Maybe they saw some Swatbots when they were escaping. But to them, Robotnik's just some bad guy in a far-off place. He doesn't matter to them everyday."
"That's what I thought," Tails admitted.
Yeah, thought Sonic, and now I've dragged you into the world of fear. Welcome, kid.
"Robotnik might not matter to us, but we matter to him. Every day, he looks for us. Every day he gets some new idea on how to squash us. And we have to stay ahead of him. We've got to move faster, think faster, and take more out. We've hurt him a bunch, but he's got a big head start. Kinda like if I was chasin' you to the Great Unknown, but you got to start halfway there."
Tails nodded.
"That's what we're so afraid of—Robotnik outrunnin' us and finding Knothole. Even Antoine is braver than most of Knothole, 'cause he knows Robotnik and all the bad things Robotnik does to the animals he catches. An' Antoine still wants to come with us, every time."
"So being a Freedom Fighter is being brave?"
Sonic shook his head. "Anyone can be brave. Ya just gotta be brave for the right reason. Being brave 'cause you don't know better, that's stupid, and you can't be a Freedom Fighter like that. Being brave 'cause it doesn't cost you anything, you can't be a Freedom Fighter that way, either. A Freedom Fighter is brave because he knows all the bad things that can happen to him, and then he says, "I'll do it anyway"."
Tails went to Sonic for comfort and a hug. "I don't know if I can be that brave," he said.
Sonic hugged him, stroking his head. "We weren't, when we started. We got brave, 'cause we had to. But Tails, you're better off than we were. We had to learn everything ourselves, but we can teach you. You'll be a Freedom Fighter in no time."
"I want to be a real one," Tails said with sudden determination. "I don't wanna be a fake Freedom Fighter, one that sits around the fire at night, an' listens to you brag, and thinks everything's cool. I wanna do this for real. If I'm gonna be a Freedom Fighter, I guess I'll need to be afraid, too."
You'll regret it, thought Sonic. There'll be days when you curse yourself for saying that. But we need you. And if you really want to do it, okay—I'll toss my lil' bro into the fire.
He smiled. "We'll get started right away," he said. And he hoped that the smile and the joke kept the pain off of his face.
Gaunt observed carefully as Jan returned to the Hive. He'd ordered the attack groups to do a quick salvage run, seeing if there was anything they could rescue from the mountain of rubble. Any still-functioning Swatbots would stand little chance against the torches at that range, so it was a safe move.
The communications problem had been embarrassingly simple. An errant footpaw or cart or something had unplugged the comm. unit at Observatory. To think that a tiny problem like that had nearly doomed the Hive, thought Gaunt. But he went back to contemplating Jan's condition.
She didn't come back to the command center, but went straight to the infirmary. Which is what needed to be done, thought Gaunt, to possibly save Kal. However, her command abilities had broken during the battle. In all probability, she would be useless the rest of the day.
Tosul coordinated the clean-up masterfully, with no supervision from Jan. But he was obviously fatigued, and Gaunt had the feeling he'd need Tosul's talents again later in the day.
"Tosul," he said. "You look really tired. I'll take over here."
"I can go another hour or two, Gaunt."
"No, you can't."
"Well, at least let me finish…"
"Tosul, go take a nap."
Without another word Tosul left his seat and exited the command center. I'd no choice, Gaunt reflected. This was the first incursion. But if my source inside Metronome is correct, it won't be the last.
Out of the Hives that had been built after the coup, this was the one closest to Metronome; for this reason it had the highest proportion of soldiers to refugees, and it had Jan herself as its leader.
This Hive normally had twelve combat teams of eight to ten animals each. But battle fatigue and inevitable casualties were catching them. Three combat teams were below half strength, and one had been destroyed altogether. Of the remainder, three had fought yesterday, and two this morning. While Kal had been the only casualty, everyone else was exhausted. That left three teams usable, with today's fighters in reserve. In a true disaster, of course, everyone was a combatant, but Gaunt would run his combat teams to the bone to prevent such a disaster.
Run them to the bone. He repeated the thought. Or, in the case of Jan, drive them mad.
Sally followed her agenda, going through the numbers of the dull but necessary routines needed to keep Knothole running. Bunnie accompanied her through most of it, which kept Sally in good humor.
"I guess you were right," Sally said. "Building that hut WAS fun."
Bunnie nodded. "Yeah. It's so neat to watch 'em just spring up like kudzu, straight outta the ground in no time."
The two headed towards the cellars. Another routine, breaking out stores of food for use in the kitchens. "Hey, have y'all seen sugar-hog an' Tails?"
"Yes. They went out this morning. Sonic called it a "training run", but he promised to be back before nightfall. Tails looked so happy, I couldn't really refuse."
What Sally failed to mention was that, like numerous other "training runs" Sonic proposed to Tails, Sally had been behind them before Tails knew about them. If you tell a lie enough, Sally thought, it's impossible to tell the truth.
"Ah think it's great for them to do that. They always have so much fun."
"Do they?" wondered Sally. She couldn't see how. Of course, she knew what Sonic was doing with Tails better than Bunnie did.
"Yeah! Like this one time Antoine walked through a bunch of fox-fire plants, an' Tails kept runnin' away from him that night, thinkin' he was some kinda ghost!"
What a relief—a story from a happier time. Sally laughed out loud. "Antoine was scary? How?"
"I 'eard zat."
It took no great effort to determine who had spoken. Sally and Bunnie were passing close by the main hall, and Antoine had taken up the hall's kitchen as his normal station. Although Antoine's initial attempts at cooking had failed horribly, he'd been incredibly persistent and plucky. Eventually he'd begun mastering techniques and recipes, and although he still produced an occasional inedibility, most of Knothole agreed that having him far surpassed their old do-it-yourself system.
"Antoine," Sally said, "you're… shall we say… not imposing."
"My Preencess, forgiving me please, but you are tinking in the stead of zat I am ze great fyu-el, no?"
"You're a great chef, Antoine," said Bunnie.
"Why, zank you, only ze greatest and delicadedest palettes know French cuisine for… do no change ze subject!"
"What were we talking about?" wondered Sally.
Antoine began to sputter but, remarkably, recovered his bearing. "I do not have to take zis 'or-i-ble abuseness. Pear-haps I am being no ze chef, and zat styupid hedgehog cook ze food instead?"
"No, Antoine!" exclaimed both Bunnie and Sally.
"Fine, zen. I will be turning again to my kitchen. Au revoir, my preencess."
Bunnie and Sally glanced at each other, then back to where Antoine had been. "I believe you, Bunnie," Sally said. "Antoine can definitely be scary."
To be continued…