Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [301]
"Good news first," he said. "The power plant's still running. We were attacked. This afternoon. We beat them, but it was close. Some of us are dead and some of us are wounded and more will die of the wounds. You already know that most of the Brotherhood wasn't even there—"
Applause and triumphant laughter erupted. Tim should have expected that, from the warriors who'd decimated the New Brotherhood's main force, but he hadn't. He was jolted. Where did these yahoos get off, drinking and dancing and bragging while the men and women Tim Hamner had left behind waited to die? When quiet came he spoke in anger.
"General Baker is dead. The New Brotherhood isn't," Tim said. He watched the reaction. Anger. Incredulity.
"They won't come here again," someone shouted. There were more cheers.
"Let him talk. What happened?" George Christopher demanded. The room was silent again.
"The Brotherhood came at us with boats, the first time," Tim said. "It wasn't hard to drive them off. Then we heard on the radio that you were fighting them, and we figured that would be the end of it, when you said you'd won." He gripped the lectern, remembering the shouting celebration they'd held in the San Joaquin plant after news of the Stronghold victory.
"But they did come back. Today. They had a big raft. Sandbags around it. Mortars. They stayed out of range of anything we had, and they were blowing us apart. One of the shells got a steam line, live steam, and Price's people had a hell of a time putting it back together. Another shell got Jack Ross."
Tim watched George Christopher lose his triumphant grin.
"Jack was alive when we took him off the boat and put him in the van. But he was dead when we got here," Tim said. "Another mortar went off just in front of me. It hit the sandbags we'd put on top of the cooling tower, where we had the radio. It killed the guy next to me and blew the radio apart, and it punched a piece of shrapnel into my hipbone. It's still there.
"They kept that up. Standing off where we couldn't shoot back. Price's people had made some cannon. Muzzle-loaders, made out of pipe, powered by compressed air. They weren't accurate enough. We couldn't hit the barge. And the damned mortar shells kept dropping on us. Baker took some troops out in boats. That didn't do any good either. The Brotherhood had machine guns and the boats couldn't get close enough—they had those sandbags anyway. Finally Baker brought the boats back. He put everybody off."
In the corner of his eye Tim saw Maureen in the doorway of the Mayor's office. She stood behind her father, her hand on his shoulder. Eileen was near her.
"We had a racing boat we used as a tug," Tim said. "Cindy Lu. Johnny told Barry Price, 'I used to be a fighter pilot. They always taught us there was one way not to miss.' Then he took Cindy Lu out at top speed and rammed her right into the barge. Covered the raft with burning gasoline. He'd carried some extra gasoline and thermit on the deck. After that the Brotherhood came on with their other boats, but they had to come in range of our stuff, and we did some damage. Finally they left."
"Ran away," George Christopher said. "They always run."
"They didn't run," Tim said. "They retreated. There was some crazy white-haired guy standing in plain sight on one of the boats. We kept shooting at him, but we never hit him. He was shouting at them to kill us. Last I heard, he still was. They'll be back."
Tim paused to see what effect he'd had. Not enough. He'd killed the gay mood of the party, but all he saw was resentment and sorrow. Nothing else.
"They killed fourteen of us, counting Jack. Hit maybe three times that many, and a lot of them will die. There's a nurse and some medicines, but no doctor. We need one. We need another radio." Their looks: anger, sorrow, resentment.