Ash: Rise of the Republic (9 page)

****

The rangers were greeted with grim news at the gates
of the Refinery. Two more shipments of fuel had been ambushed and
destroyed, all hands brutally gunned down. The hardened colonists
were in a fury. The families of the murdered crews pressed around
the troop, hoping for news of vengeance against the outlaws who had
torn their lives apart. The young rangers told of their ordeal, how
they had found an army of bandits and burned their lair. Tears
threatened as they described their fallen comrades and their hungry
flight through the suburbs. When their tale was told, some of the
women took pity on them and whisked them away to the bunkhouses for
hot food and hot showers.

The Captain and his wife set off on their
own, heading to the large building in the center of the complex. As
they approached, a tall, familiar figure rushed out, flanked by
hulking armed men. A toothy, dimpled smile stretched across a
handsome face framed by close cropped brown hair.

"Mom, Dad!” He hugged his mother tightly.
"It's good to see you! It's been too long."

The Captain shook his hand. "It's good to
see you too Brian. Any word from the Governor? I hear two more
trucks were attacked."

"Yes, I'll fill you in, but first let's get
you fed, you both look like you could use it."

"A hot shower first," replied Deb with a
smile, "and a kiss from my grandbaby!"

"She and Lucy are down at the bunkhouse,
I'll take you over right now!"

The two old rangers followed their only son
to a sprawling collection of mobile homes. As Colony Director,
Brian McLelland was afforded a larger house than most. It wasn't
much by pre-pillar standards, but was comfortable. His security
detail stopped on the porch as they entered, settling in to stand
guard.

An hour later, freshly showered and groaning
with full bellies, the Captain and his wife relaxed around a small
kitchen table with their son and his young wife. A rosy cheeked
three year old girl, all curls and dimples, sat giggling on her
grandmother's lap. Deb cooed and tickled, reveling in the small
child's delight. Brian took a sip of whiskey and cleared his
throat, glancing at his father.

"We got instructions from the Governor
yesterday," he began, "He’ll be wanting a report from you I’m sure.
He's going to call up the militia. He thinks this is more than you
and the rangers can handle. We're already gearing up a company to
support them. We put the word out to the commune downtown and we've
sent riders to all the farms in the region. I think we can raise
around two hundred or so, although we're pretty short on
ammunition."

"That'll be a good start.” The Captain
stared into his glass for a moment. "He's right about it being more
than we can handle, I'm not ashamed to admit it. The band we ran
into was the strongest I've seen in years. They were well armed,
and they weren't being stingy with the ammo. We need to make a
strong move here, throw everything we've got at them. I think the
University can outfit five hundred without much trouble, plus a
couple of Bradleys if we can keep the diesel flowing. The new ammo
plant was running strong when we left, bullets shouldn't be a
problem."

"Where is all this sudden aggression coming
from? It's been years since we've had more than an occasional raid
on the farms. I had thought all the trade we've opened up with the
towns and settlements had convinced all but the worst of the
outlaws to settle down. There aren't many people starving
anymore."

"It's more than food they're after. I think
they see us as a threat to their way of life. There are plenty of
bad men who like life to be raw and unpredictable. Hard work and
safety don't appeal to some. This is more than just outlaws raiding
for food and liquor, they're raising an army, they want to tear us
down."

"But why now, what's changed?"

"They have a leader. I caught a good glimpse
of him as he ripped the throat out of one of my rangers. Big, bald,
scars on his scalp, half an ear."

"Werner? He's still alive?"

"Still alive and leading a small army of
some of the hardest outlaws around. We killed a few of them burned
their den but they didn't even bother to give chase. The one we
questioned told us that the warehouse was a muster point. They’ve
been sending out recruiters to track down all the roaming bands.
They're filtering in from all over the state. Soon we'll have a big
problem. They're in prime real estate, it’s an easy spot to cut our
supply lines."

"Well," Brian set his half finished drink
down, "We'd better go fill in the Governor before it gets any
later.”

The pair headed back over to the control
center where the radio was kept. Radio communication had not been
possible until a few years before. The atmospheric scientists at
the University said it had something to do with charged particles
in the atmosphere playing hell with reception. The radio in the
Refinery was one of only a handful in the region. They were
connected by a network of cobbled together relay towers. Most
communication within the Republic and its closest settlements was
done over hardwired telephone lines, but they had yet to run the
cables this far south.

Oddly enough there were still some
functioning com-satellites in orbit. Occasionally the engineers
picked up some random telemetry with the big dishes on campus, but
they hadn't been able to make any use of the signals yet. The
general consensus was that they were military. There had always
been rumors of functioning military installations scattered
throughout the country, but the Republic hadn't been able to make
contact with any of them over the years.

Radio reception was usually poor, but when
the operator made contact with the Governor's office, the response
came back mostly free of static. The Captain made his report on the
patrol quickly, sticking to the facts.

The Governor repeated what Brian had already
told him, the militia was to gather on campus and be ready for
action by the end of the week. Brian detailed the preparations of
the colony and the Houston area allies and requested a supply of
ammunition and medical supplies for his force of volunteers. After
a few minutes of logistics and planning, the Governor ordered the
rangers back to base. He told them to expect air transport in the
morning.

The Captain was surprised. The Republic had
only two helicopters. The aging machines were difficult to maintain
and irreplaceable, so they were used only in emergencies. That one
was coming to lift his troop back to base showed how serious the
Governor was taking the outlaw threat.

After signing off, father and son walked
back to the bunkhouse together. Brian sent one of his bodyguards to
inform the rangers of their orders and then the family turned in
for the night, each of them thinking of their parts in the war to
come.

****

They had wanted to give chase, but the Chief had held
them back. Let them go, he had said, let them run scared for once.
So they let them go, and they waited.

On their own and in small groups, more
desperate ragged men trickled in. The Chief sent out raiding
parties every few days. The countryside was ripe with prosperous
homesteaders. Mountains of food and liquor and finery piled up, but
always the Chief sent them out for more.

They ran an old hermit to ground one day. He
dressed in ancient army fatigues, his shack was well hidden and
surrounded by booby-traps. A dozen men were horribly wounded in the
assault. When they had smoked him out and tied him up they tortured
him for two days. They spitted him over a smoky fire and turned him
slowly. Before he died he gave up his stash.

The bunker was hidden well. It was probably
an old shipping container, buried at great expense by the old
survivalist long before the pillar. When they had finally cut
through the steel door and climbed down into the darkness they had
whooped and slapped each other’s backs. Racks and racks of rifles
and machine guns lined the walls, boxes and belts of ammunition
were piled all around. The Chief was summoned. He was pleased.

****

The helicopter ride was a thrill for the young
rangers. None of them had even seen the creaking, sputtering
machines fly before. The elite troop usually tried to portray an
aura of mystery and savagery when they were around other soldiers,
but the novelty of flight had pulled smiles across their faces. The
aircrew, only a few years older themselves, noticed their delight
and sprouted smiles as well. A few minutes into the flight the
business-like transport helicopter was suddenly filled with
laughing and joking young men and women. They pushed aside the fact
that they would soon be embroiled in a savage war and enjoyed
themselves.

The Captain and his wife seemed unimpressed
with the transportation. They were members of a generation which
once considered convenient air travel a fundamental right. They sat
to the side and left the youngsters to their fun.

Despite their apparent indifference, the two
old rangers knew that air transport was now a rare thing. Volcanic
ash is extremely intrusive and abrasive. It plays hell with any
engine, but it can choke up and rip apart a jet turbine in minutes.
In the panic after the pillar, civil and military authorities alike
foolishly took to the skies as if it were any other natural
disaster. There were dozens of crashes that first week. Airliners,
news helicopters, and fighter jets were falling out of the sky all
over the country. It was rumored that the President and a number of
other top government and military leaders lost their lives in the
fiery crashes.

Now, after years of poor maintenance and
exposure to ash, there were very few working aircraft left. The two
transport helicopters in the RNT Air force had been cobbled
together from a dozen rusting hulks. The two veterans glanced at
each other nervously each time the aging machine shuddered or
coughed, knowing it could drop out of the sky any minute.

Miraculously, the hour long flight passed
without any serious injury. Legs gave a triumphant shout when,
peering out through the front windscreen, he caught the first
glimpse of the stadium on the horizon. His comrades, still in a
playful mood, clapped him on the back and broke out into the school
fight song. The Captain and Deb, both graduates of the University,
had taught them the old song one night. The troop had adopted it
immediately. They clung to anything that set them apart from the
regular guard troops. They were elite, and the strange words and
references in the song added to their mystery.

As they approached, the Captain gazed down
at what he had helped to build. The University was the greatest
collection of new and surviving technology in a thousand miles or
more. Visitors from the rest of the country were few, but he had
yet to meet one who had not been awed by the impressive collection
of industry and research facilities. Nowhere else had so much
success been scraped out of the ash.

In the early days they had literally scraped
the campus clean. It took three years, but when they were done,
there was not a spot of ash on more than five thousand acres. The
tons of material they removed were mixed with water and molded into
a perimeter wall twenty feet high on which patrol vehicles circled
at all times. Most of the old buildings still stood, but the acres
of open park land and pasture had since been covered in new
factories, greenhouses, and dwellings. Steam still billowed from
the cooling tower at the small power plant on the north side like
it had for decades, but now it mixed with the plumes pouring from a
dozen new smokestacks scattered throughout Campus.

The Captain expected to be taken to the
small airport where the helicopters and bush planes of the RNTA
were kept in sealed hangers, but instead of swinging west the pilot
aimed straight for the center of Campus. Below them, soldiers
drilled on a vast lawn of smooth green grass. Figures rushed from
building to building, bicycles and small electric cars flitted in
all directions. The campus was bustling with the preparations for
the upcoming campaign.

With a groan from his rusty machine, the
pilot flared above the lawn of the administration building and
quickly touched down. The crew waved the rangers out of the side
doors, slapping backs and trading winks. Words of farewell were
lost in the hurricane from the rotors. With a roar, the helicopter
was quickly airborne again and limped off to the west.

The Captain released his troop, leaving them
with orders to muster at the barracks by noon the following day. As
the young killers strode off to relax, the Captain and his wife
climbed the steps of the long stately building. The commander of
the Campus Guard, Andrew Beal, stood waiting for them, dwarfed by
the vast pillars that lined the front of the building. He was
ancient, nearly eighty years old. He had been a formidable
campaigner in his time, but his age was beginning to show. He
greeted them with an arthritic salute.

“Aren’t you a General, Andy? Why are you
saluting me?” The Captain shook his hand warmly.

“Habit I suppose.” The old man looked
sheepish in his elaborate uniform. “I’d love to catch up, but the
Governor’s in a mood. We’d better not keep him waiting.” He
gestured at the open doors. The repellors crackled the ash from
their uniforms as they passed into the lobby.

Ten minutes later, the pair sat in front of
a wide cherry wood desk and watched the Governor of the Republic of
New Texas, Ruben Garza, pace back and forth across the thick blue
carpet. The sweat stains on his white shirt and the lines on his
fleshy face bore witness to the sleepless nights and frantic days
he had passed since the ranger’s departure nearly two weeks
before.

He stopped suddenly and turned to the
rangers. “So this Werner has managed to gather an army from scratch
and camp it astride our main supply route without us even
noticing?”