Termination Shock

While not a good idea tactically, the frontal assault of the Englishmen did have the good effect of causing the remainder of the Fellowship to pile out of the bus as if it were on fire. The usually even-tempered Pippa was spitting nails over having been caught unprepared. She was already filming with her phone as she rattled down the bus’s stair. Once she got clear and established her bearings, she reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a video drone, and tossed it straight up into the air. It turned itself on, unfolded its rotors, and hovered in place. Bella came out of the bus pulling what looked like ski goggles down over her eyes, then stuffed her bare hands into warm pockets where it could be guessed control devices were to be found. The drone, reacting to her touch, began to dart this way and that. She got a vacant look on the portion of her face that was still visible and began to turn her head to focus on things no one else could see. Either she was having a schizophrenic break or the goggles had established a three-dimensional video link to the drone.

Laks turned around to see how Sam and Jay were getting on. They weren’t. They were just kneeling on the ground, hunched forward, rib cages heaving. They’d made it perhaps two-thirds of the distance to the Bonking Heads’ position before it had occurred to them that they had no oxygen. Stopped in the open, gasping for breath, they had become target practice for the rockers, and pretty easy targets at that.

“We must go help them!” Gopinder exclaimed, and took a step forward, but Laks reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm. “We’ll end up just like them.” He looked around and picked out his bag and Gopinder’s, lying on the ground where the bus driver had just flung them. The bus’s rear wheels spat rocks as it pulled forward and veered off. “Get your dhal. Move slow and breathe fast, bhai.”

The dhal was a traditional shield, basically identical to what in Europe would be called a buckler, about the size and shape of a dinner plate. It was a staple of gatka and so both Gopinder and Laks had cheap but rugged injection-molded ones that they used in training. They kept them carabinered to the outsides of their bags. Both men now unsnapped their dhals and gripped them in their left hands. A knuckle pad on the back, under the handle, cushioned the grip. The fingers were still free to grab a short stick as well. In his right hand each man was holding his full-length staff.

During all this fumbling around with gear Laks was painfully aware that Sam and Jay were exposed and under fire. But at some point he began to hear a strangely familiar voice shouting in Mandarin. He looked up to see Ilham walking alone and unarmed directly toward the Bonking Heads, but angling in on a different vector. A stream of verbiage was coming from the lad’s mouth, directed at the opponents, who had all turned to look at him. His voice was thready but perfectly clear in the cold thin air. As far as could be discerned from body language at this distance, the Bonking Heads were shocked at first, then indignant.

“What’s he saying?” Pippa asked Sue.

Sue could only shake her head. “Most terrible things,” she answered, “I cannot even explain.”

“Well, if his objective is to have rocks thrown at him, it is quite successful!” Ravi said.

To this point in his life Laks had never struck anyone in anger, aside from a few playground scuffles in primary school. Though the Sikhs were perceived by outsiders as a martial race, their religion laid down clear boundaries as to when it was acceptable to resort to the use of violence. Those boundaries were actually quite restrictive. You could fight back when attacked, basically, or when you needed to intervene in a situation where someone else was being victimized. All of which was a good fit with Laks’s personality. One of the only concerns he’d had during his long journey to the front was that when he finally arrived he might not have it in him to just walk right up to a Chinese counterpart and hit him with a stick. That might speak well of his basically peaceful nature, but it would render the entire journey somewhat pointless.

The hasty, and so far disastrous, attack mounted by Sam and Jay, and Ilham’s verbal assaults, were all completely useless from one point of view. But they did serve the unintended purpose of forcing Laks to take action. All his misgivings on that front had been swept away.