Read Online Guardian of Night by Tony Daniel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tony Daniel
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military was now the U.S. military.
Then, after four years of devastation, the sceeve had left. Suddenly. Mysteriously. Left with the Earth only partially “harvested,” as far as anybody could tell.
Oh, the sceeve were still out there. The war continued as humans were hemmed in, cordoned off from systems at a distance greater than twenty-five light-years from Sol, the so-called Fomalhaut Limit.
And now, just as suddenly, they had decided to return. All the signs were there in the heavens. Over the past year, the Fomalhaut Limit had shrunk as the sceeve began to move their blockade inexorably toward Sol system.
The armada had not arrived yet, but it was coming. And as for the Peepsie protestors Coalbridge was now confronted with, all most of them had experienced directly was the fact that they were the inheritors of a destroyed Earth. The ones responsible—the sceeve—had vanished from the planet surface itself eight years ago.
Maybe you couldn’t blame people for thinking it was all a ruse, or believing that the automated attacks that still got through were somehow the creation of the government. People could convince themselves of all manner of things to make some sort of sense of a senseless situation.
Yet I lost everybody I loved, too, but that didn’t turn me into a political idiot.
What the cordon of buses encircled was not physically the U.S. presidential residence and Capitol complex. The buses were at street level, after all, and merely cordoned off the old First National Bank building, now empty. The actual Capitol was many feet underground, ensconced in the intricate system of century-old tunnels that lay beneath downtown Dallas. The bus-fortress was there to screen off exterior access to the First National block, including the main Capitol entrance at Field and Pacific, which was where Coalbridge was headed.
Puffs of smoke suddenly wafted toward him, and Coalbridge’s eyes began to water. What was that smell ? Something was cooking. The air was thick with a meaty odor. Coalbridge had skipped breakfast for the first time in weeks and was hungry. Although it was plainly too early for anyone to be cooking lunch, in the back of his mind he idly assumed he might be smelling barbecue.
Coalbridge’s main hobby was cooking—and anybody who suggested that this made him somehow less of a warrior wasn’t worth the time to beat the shit out of. Despite the traumatized economy, there were still an amazing number of ingredients and spices still available in Dallas. The human instinct for trade had found a way. He’d spent whatever free time he’d been able to snag while on shore duty cooking up a storm, with usually only himself or a friend or two from work to feed. One thing he hadn’t had time for while planetside was an old-fashioned night-long grilling session. Barbecue was one of his main indulgences when eating out, however, and he’d been planning on at least hitting his favorite joint, Rudy’s, up in Denton—which he’d heard still existed and which was as close to Oklahoma-style barbecue as you could get in these parts. But so far there had been no time, and it didn’t look like he was going to make it now. Most of the past month he’d spent groundside had been underground in the New Pentagon’s Extry command.
Coalbridge turned the corner of Elm and Field and all thoughts of eating barbecue disappeared from his mind—perhaps for eternity.
A dozen Peepsies were burning to death in the middle of Elm Street.
“Aaaaaaaaiaaaaaaaaaah!”
The smell? Human barbecue, thought Coalbridge. Oh, God, that’s what it was.
The Peepsies were sitting in meditative fashion—or, as his sister, Gretchen, a kindergarten teacher dead in the first wave of the invasion, had called it: sitting crisscross-applesauce.
Something familiar . . .
Then it came to him: they were mimicking the Tovil Exorcism, the group of Buddhist monks and nuns who had set themselves alight in protest of the United States’s
Then, after four years of devastation, the sceeve had left. Suddenly. Mysteriously. Left with the Earth only partially “harvested,” as far as anybody could tell.
Oh, the sceeve were still out there. The war continued as humans were hemmed in, cordoned off from systems at a distance greater than twenty-five light-years from Sol, the so-called Fomalhaut Limit.
And now, just as suddenly, they had decided to return. All the signs were there in the heavens. Over the past year, the Fomalhaut Limit had shrunk as the sceeve began to move their blockade inexorably toward Sol system.
The armada had not arrived yet, but it was coming. And as for the Peepsie protestors Coalbridge was now confronted with, all most of them had experienced directly was the fact that they were the inheritors of a destroyed Earth. The ones responsible—the sceeve—had vanished from the planet surface itself eight years ago.
Maybe you couldn’t blame people for thinking it was all a ruse, or believing that the automated attacks that still got through were somehow the creation of the government. People could convince themselves of all manner of things to make some sort of sense of a senseless situation.
Yet I lost everybody I loved, too, but that didn’t turn me into a political idiot.
What the cordon of buses encircled was not physically the U.S. presidential residence and Capitol complex. The buses were at street level, after all, and merely cordoned off the old First National Bank building, now empty. The actual Capitol was many feet underground, ensconced in the intricate system of century-old tunnels that lay beneath downtown Dallas. The bus-fortress was there to screen off exterior access to the First National block, including the main Capitol entrance at Field and Pacific, which was where Coalbridge was headed.
Puffs of smoke suddenly wafted toward him, and Coalbridge’s eyes began to water. What was that smell ? Something was cooking. The air was thick with a meaty odor. Coalbridge had skipped breakfast for the first time in weeks and was hungry. Although it was plainly too early for anyone to be cooking lunch, in the back of his mind he idly assumed he might be smelling barbecue.
Coalbridge’s main hobby was cooking—and anybody who suggested that this made him somehow less of a warrior wasn’t worth the time to beat the shit out of. Despite the traumatized economy, there were still an amazing number of ingredients and spices still available in Dallas. The human instinct for trade had found a way. He’d spent whatever free time he’d been able to snag while on shore duty cooking up a storm, with usually only himself or a friend or two from work to feed. One thing he hadn’t had time for while planetside was an old-fashioned night-long grilling session. Barbecue was one of his main indulgences when eating out, however, and he’d been planning on at least hitting his favorite joint, Rudy’s, up in Denton—which he’d heard still existed and which was as close to Oklahoma-style barbecue as you could get in these parts. But so far there had been no time, and it didn’t look like he was going to make it now. Most of the past month he’d spent groundside had been underground in the New Pentagon’s Extry command.
Coalbridge turned the corner of Elm and Field and all thoughts of eating barbecue disappeared from his mind—perhaps for eternity.
A dozen Peepsies were burning to death in the middle of Elm Street.
“Aaaaaaaaiaaaaaaaaaah!”
The smell? Human barbecue, thought Coalbridge. Oh, God, that’s what it was.
The Peepsies were sitting in meditative fashion—or, as his sister, Gretchen, a kindergarten teacher dead in the first wave of the invasion, had called it: sitting crisscross-applesauce.
Something familiar . . .
Then it came to him: they were mimicking the Tovil Exorcism, the group of Buddhist monks and nuns who had set themselves alight in protest of the United States’s
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