Chapter Six

     James Holiday is a computer expert.  His rank of Warlock 4 is mostly honorary for his long years of service to The Republic.  He had arrived at Base Star, Mozambique Colony 1, because they were having trouble integrating some of their new systems into their old ones.  Housing had been short so he had been given a room in one of the deep bunkers.  He had grumbled about it yesterday, but he would not grumble about it again!
      He woke with someone shaking his shoulder.  "Warlock Holiday, sir!"  a voice was saying.  "You've got to wake up, sir!  We've been attacked, sir!  We need your help.  The systems won't come back up.  We're all too foggy to figure out what's wrong.  Please wake up, sir!"
     James groggily sat up and looked at the young officer speaking to him. The man held a blood soaked pad to his nose.  "My God, Victor!" James cried, "What's wrong?"
     "I'm dying, sir," the young man answered. "Everybody that was up top who isn't already dead is dying.  We've been attacked, sir, with a nuclear weapon.  The systems are down.  They won't come back up.  We need you, sir!
     James reached for his clothes and quickly began to dress.  "Sit down, man!"  he snapped.
     "If I sit down, sir," the young officer answered, "I'll never get up again.  If I don't make it back to the center with you, keep going, sir.  There's nothing you can do for me."  He touched his radiation tag with his free hand.  "It's bright red, sir, lethal dose.  It's only a matter of time.  Yours is still blue.  You received no exposure.  Come on, sir!"
     They hurried to the surface and along the path there were dead bodies everywhere!  People had simply fallen where the burst had hit them.  Some had managed to head for the hospital, but had collapsed on the way.  Piles of bodies lined the walkway in that direction.           "Lords!"  James muttered, "Merciful Lords!"  He got into the operations room.  Bodies had been piled in one corner.  He saw one man walk over, lay down on them, and stop breathing.  He shook himself and went over to the computer consoles.  "What to hell?"  he remarked.  "These are all battle hardened!  They should be working!  They would've automatically shut down and then come back on."
     He took some equipment one man was holding and began to check through one of the computers they had already opened.  "Son of a bitch!"  he cursed.  "These chips are all dead!  They're just commercial chips, they're not military hardened ones!  They're all dead!  Victor!"  he cried, "I need new chips from stores.  I'm going to have to replace all of these and reboot from the stored memory.  Victor?"
     He turned around to see the officer that had fetched him lying on the pile of bodies.  "I'll call it in," another man answered.  "Somebody will bring them up.  Stay here, sir.  Do what you can until they get here."
     James nodded, and began to pull chips.  "Get the other computers open!"  he screamed, "And pray we have enough replacements!  Some son of a bitch is going to lose his head for this!  Whoever built these computers and saved a few thousand dollars by putting in commercial chips, they're gonna lose they're god damn heads!"
     They frantically opened all the other computers.  Two men arrived carrying the boxes of chips, and they started replacing them.  One of the men keeled over and died after he had snapped one chip into place.   His companions added him to the pile then continued to work.       James took a break for a minute, ran outside and got sick, not because he had radiation poisoning, simply because he had to be sick.  Nobody said anything as he returned to work. 
      They put in all the chips they had and one computer was still open.  "We need four more!"  James cried.

 Page 14

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