Come the Revolution (29 page)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Aurora seemed to get stronger as soon as I told her the news, and I think the fact I came to tell her personally helped.

She’d lost a fair amount of blood and then had driven herself to exhaustion, as we all had, getting here. They were giving her plasma, and would have done whole blood but there was a shortage of A negative. I offered to give some of mine—no question of compatibility there—but the tech took a look at my veins, gums, and eyes and told me to spend a day getting hydrated and some sleep and decent food first. I didn’t know about the sleep, but the food and liquids I could manage. The big question was whether any of us would still be around tomorrow.

Concerning that subject, I had another meeting to get to so I left her to rest.

I remembered the Black Docks district as being a lot cleaner than Sookagrad back before the trouble started, and if it was getting cluttered now due to all these people, it still didn’t look like a trash pile. A lot of commercial activity went on here before, and that meant real money flowing in. I didn’t see any rich folks, but I saw a lot of working class people who looked as if they ate regularly, had medical and dental care, and bought clothes instead of scrounging for cast-off rags.

I sensed energy as I walked from the med center to the headquarters bunker back by the river bank. People moved like they had somewhere to go and something to do when they got there. I saw no complacency, and plenty of anxiety, but faces with hope and determination instead of resignation or despair. I also saw a lot of Varoki, many of them with Humans. We’d taken a step toward that a few hours before the end at Sookagrad, but these folks had been doing it all along here, and it probably had kept them alive this long. They certainly hadn’t had to do as much fighting.

The headquarters was another bunker built into the riverbank, but bigger and with the northern face slightly above ground, showing some firing slits to landward. They’d piled dirt over the roof to partially conceal it, and unless you looked close it looked like any of a dozen other excavations along there. A guard made me wait until Cézar came and vouched for me, and then I got in to see the “big boss.”

He rose to greet me and offered his hand to shake. “Mr. Naradnyo, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. You will appreciate that I have already heard a great deal about you. My name is Ita Maganaan, and I am the executive secretary of our citizens’ counsel.”

Son of a bitch! He was
Varoki
.

I shook Maganaan’s hand and looked at Cézar, who grinned back at me, enjoying his joke.

“Secretary Maganaan, I’m sorry if I look surprised, but our friend Cézar did not tell me you were Varoki. In fact—”

“I understand completely. Cézar was my most outspoken opponent when we had to select a secretary, one might even say my most virulent one. But I think to both of our surprise he has become my closest associate on the counsel. Unfortunately, that means I am required to endure his dreadful sense of humor.

“As you can see, the Black Docks is not a Human enclave; it is a Loyalist enclave. Perhaps seventy percent of our pre-coup population was Varoki. Now the populations are probably about even, as a number of our Varoki residents have left the enclave, out of fear of attack or in support of the Provisional Government, while many Humans have come here for sanctuary. You and the other refugees from Sookagrad are the most recent.

“I would like to tell you more about what we have done here, how we have organized ourselves for everyday sustenance and for defense, but I am afraid time is short. All afternoon Army units have been redeploying south from the Sookagrad area to back up the militia units holding the perimeter around the enclave. They have issued an ultimatum similar to the one Sookagrad received, and I think it almost certain they will launch an attack sometime before its dawn expiration.”

“Yeah,” I said, and then stopped myself from a comment about how Varoki were not generally very imaginative. “I’m also willing to bet a preemptive attack by your troops will not do as well as ours did. We caught them completely by surprise, and I think they’ll be on their toes this time.”

“I agree,” he said. “In any event, our defense forces are not as numerous, as well-equipped, or as organized as were yours, so far as we can determine. They are enthusiastic, but you seem to have had a number of very experienced fighters and leaders. As I understand, Commander Zdravkova was a former officer in the ground forces.”

I nodded, because that was technically true. Better for him to think she learned the fighter’s trade in the military than in the anti-Varoki resistance.

“Now, I have viewed the feed clip which shows you destroying a gunsled with an improvised launcher of some sort, the recording made by your sister I understand. We have no time to build additional weapons, but I would like you to tell me every detail you can remember about how the uBakai Army fought and what your soldiers found to work and to fail against them.”

I sat for a moment thinking, organizing my thoughts and memories, and finally I shook my head.

“No, there’s no time for that. I don’t know any silver bullets which can turn the tide here, and the sort of nuts-and-bolts procedures I do know—there’s no time to collect, organize, and disseminate them in time to make any difference. If you don’t mind some advice, why don’t you just have Cézar or someone else take me on a tour of your troop positions? Just talking to the troops, answering a question or two, giving them a piece or advice here or there—that might do a lot more good. If any of our fighters came in, especially squad leaders or higher, maybe they could do the same.”

Maganaan exchanged a look with Cézar and then nodded.

“Very well. That may be better. I am afraid our time is very short.”

* * *

Cézar took me off to the far eastern end of the perimeter, where it butted up against the river and I started talking with fighters. The first strongpoint covering the River Road approach had about twenty men and women with an assortment of small arms, mostly civilian sporting stuff, and one of those electrocoil harpoon spigot cannons. It turns out most of them had seen the clip of the destruction of the gunsled and wanted to know how to bring one down themselves.

“I’ll be honest, luck played a big role. But you can’t get lucky unless you give yourself the chance. Their main vulnerable points are the four lifting fans. The blades are superhard composites, so even milspec smart-head flechettes won’t make much of an impression. But that spigot harpoon thing of yours might.”

“What about their electrostatic armor?” one of them asked.

“It’s designed to detonate an explosive round and vaporize the tip of a solid penetrator, destabilize it. I think we got through by getting a bunch of simultaneous hits, that and the fact that even a destabilized, tumbling penetrator of that size will still mess up the fan blades. The ESA field is in pretty tight. That harpoon thing’s got a big enough warhead, if you get it next to the fan assembly and the ESA field detonates it, you’ll probably still get pretty good results.”

I took a closer look at their harpoon gun, asked them about its effective range, and found out they couldn’t hit much of anything beyond about a hundred meters. Fortunately, this one was on a wheeled carriage.

“Here’s something you have to do right now,” I said. “You’ve got your gun out here where it’s got a field of fire a kilometer long out into the river and nearly as far down the road. Fields of fire work both ways. Once they know it’s here, they can just stand back out of range and kill you.”

I looked around the nearby buildings.

“Try moving it over by that little building there, right behind that loading dock. You want a field of fire that, as soon as something shows up in it, you can kill it.”

I still wasn’t sure how much effect the harpoon explosive would have on a gunsled, but giving them something constructive to do, something which made sense and at least increased their chances, seemed to pump their morale.

We continued moving along the perimeter and I said something to every group of fighters, try to give them some sort of little advice that would help their confidence. After about twenty minutes I saw a familiar figure approach us.

“Corporal Chernagorov?”

He smiled. “So, you remember Chernagorov? Very glad see you, Mr. Naradnyo. Was worried when not catch up. Too many soldiers behind for to go back and find.”

“Yeah, same guys that kept us from following you. How many did you get through?”

His smile faded. “Not so many as started. Seventy-one I brought here is all, out of maybe two hundred. There was fighting, some got shot, but lost more I think from tired and discouraged.”

“I know. Over half the people I started to bring through the storm sewers turned back. I don’t think any of them made it out. You did what you could.”

I paused before asking the next question. Until I did, Moshe was just missing, but this might make it final. “I don’t suppose many of the stretcher cases made it through with you.”

“Most, yes. People who carried, maybe they felt not just walking for self, also for someone else to live, so kept on.”

I took a breath. “Moshe Greenwald?”

“Yes, your friend! Thought knew, is in med center. I hear be okay.”

I felt a wave of relief wash over me, a more powerful emotion than I was prepared for and I couldn’t speak for a few seconds, so I nodded my understanding.

Chernagorov had been sent to join us, so he walked with us and added comments to those of mine. His were a lot more specific about small unit tactics, which is exactly what these guys needed. At one stop he also commented on how little ammunition the front line troops had, and wondered what the arrangements were for getting more to them. There were none, because this was all the ammunition they had.

Until then I hadn’t appreciated what an enormous difference Nikolai Stal’s software pirating operation had given us in Sookagrad. They had almost no ability to fabricate anything here, since the jamming kept them from downloading any fabrication licenses, no matter how much they were willing to pay for them, and they couldn’t hack their fabricators’ storage memory to get at the programs already downloaded to memory.

The only fabricators which worked were the ones set up for on-demand fabrication of long-term licenses with automatic billing, like drug fabricators in med centers. The bills were building up inside the machines and once the jamming ended there’d be a lot of money sucked out of the district, but in the meantime they could get a few basic necessities made. That included some common types of flechettes, but didn’t include rifle and pistol magazines.

So the fighters on the perimeter were really short of ammunition, and there was nothing in reserve behind them. They also weren’t as well equipped as the Sookagrad forces had been. I suspected that Zdravkova had something to do with that: her resistance cell must have stockpiled a fair cache of milspec small arms, and that’s why I saw so many RAGs at first. Of course, after the Big Attack they were everywhere. Here I hardly saw any at all.

Within an hour the sun dropped below the horizon and we continued the tour in deepening twilight. We were almost to the far west side when a runner found us and told us to get back to the north side right away. Something was happening. The runner was little Divya Jayaraman.

“Why’d they send you?” I asked. “You don’t know the streets here yet, do you?”

She nodded. “We used to live here before we moved closer to e-Kruaan for my school. We lived lots of places. But you need to hurry, you too Mr. Ferraz. They say the Army may be getting ready to attack.”

We moved pretty fast through the gathering darkness back to a command post about fifty meters behind the positions blocking the main street from the north, the center of the defenses. A soldier directed us up the stairs to the building’s roof where Secretary Maganaan and several Humans and Varoki who looked like officers met us.

“Mr. Naradnyo, I am happy to see you,” Maganaan said. “Our rooftop observers have seen clear evidence that the militia and regular army units are pulling back from the perimeter all along its length, and are doing so with some dispatch. Did you encounter a similar act as prelude to their assaults on your defenses?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“What do you think it means?” one of Human officers asked.

I thought for a moment. “All I can think of is they are tired of taking heavy losses in frontal attacks without softening things up first. My guess is they plan to pound the perimeter with indirect fire and don’t want any friendly casualties.”

One of the rooftop lookouts turned and shook his head. “I think they’re running, is what. No more fight in them.” I started toward him but Divya grabbed my arm and pointed up.

“Look, Sasha,” she said, “fireworks in the sky. Does it mean we won?”

I looked up and saw the yellow-red streaks of reentry capsules, hundreds of them, no, a couple thousand, burning in across the night sky at a steep angle from the west. Some would be decoys, but among them…

A few ground interceptor missiles streaked up but remote escorting gun capsules took most of them out, their rocket booster exhausts terminating in bright yellow explosions, followed by soft thuds a couple seconds later. Just like fireworks.

Mike Troopers—Meteoric Insertion Capable—in at least reinforced cohort strength, maybe a full Mike brigade. The
Cottohazz
to the rescue: an opposed meteoric insertion from orbit here, on Hazz’Akatu, the Varoki home world. This was one for the history books. It took me a few seconds to find my voice.

“Yes, sweetheart. It means we won.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

This was the third opposed insertion by Mike troopers I’d seen in my life. The first one was twelve years earlier, on a nasty little world called Nishtaaka. I was a newly promoted (by virtue of my three predecessors all having become casualties) lance corporal in the 2nd Cohort, Peezgtaan Loyal Volunteers. We were strictly a second-string outfit of ground pounders whose job in the Second Battle of Sikander’s Mountain was to make a heroic frontal assault and get everyone’s attention while an
Azza-kaat
cohort dropped on the main objective.
Azza-kaat
is
what the Varoki call their Mike troopers.

Second time was two years ago on K’Tok, when a platoon of USMC Mike Marines dropped to rescue us. That time I was right in the middle of their drop zone: very impressive.

This time the sky was full of them. Each trooper’s descent ended with a final glide under a parasail and a landing on their feet with weapons ready. Some of them came down right inside the perimeter, and by the time their boots touched ground, everyone in the Black Docks knew the cavalry was here. There was a lot of cheering.

All of the crew from the roof of the headquarters trooped downstairs to meet them in the street and by the time they landed it was clear they were Human, not Varoki. After my initial surge of relief, I started wondering if dropping Human Mike troopers into the middle of this was the best way to calm things down. Once Humans got a look at what had happened in Sookagrad—and there hadn’t been enough time for the uBakai to have sanitized the site—they might just start shooting uBakai soldiers on general principle. Not that that was such a bad idea, I just wasn’t sure if Humans doing the shooting would help things in the long run.

The first thing I noticed about the Mike troopers when they dropped their parasail harnesses was the big fistful of black feathers on the sides of their helmets. I’d never seen anything like it, not that my military experience was all that broad. I saw a conference between a handful of Mike troopers and the defenders at the main roadblock down the street and then a party of Mikes started trotting toward us, trotting in step and in formation, no less. We waited for them and when they reached us the guy in front stepped up and gave a really sharp salute.

“Lieutenant Arturo Lorioli, Tenth
Bersaglieri Inserimento Meteorico
, at your service. Who is in command?”

Maganaan stepped forward and offered his hand. “I am the Executive Secretary of the Citizens’ Counsel of Black Docks District. We are delighted to see you Lieutenant.”

“Secretary Maganaan, I see you in the vid bulletins you file. Good day. My cohort commander, Major Massignani, would like to colocate his command post with yours, for cooperation. Also, if you can give a list of your most urgent supply needs to our quartermaster sergeant, we can have them dropped in one or two orbital transits. Within a day, two at most, we should have air supply available from Old Tower Downstation, but until then…” he pointed upward, shrugged, and smiled.

“Has there been any opposition on the ground?” I asked.

“Not in our cohort’s area of operations,” he said. “Our task is to secure your perimeter and take over its defense, although we welcome the assistance of your fighters in any capacity they choose. But it is our responsibility now. The uBakai Army has withdrawn, but we will remain alert. There is fighting in the other two cohort zones, I am told.”

“You have a working tacnet?” I asked.

“
Sì.
We eliminated the hoverplats disrupting uplink communication, so our command net is functional and civilian service should return within an hour, maybe a little more.”

“Where is the fighting,” Maganaan asked, “if you are free to say.”

“Of course. One cohort dropped to secure the Sookagrad site, prevent destruction of evidence, search for possible survivors, and disarm all uBakai military units—by force if necessary. The other cohort dropped around Drak’zanaat Arcology. Many of the survivors of Sookagrad fought their way there and entrenched themselves in the interior lower levels, where uBakai heavy vehicles could not be used against them. Very resourceful. That cohort rescues them.”

“Are all three cohorts Human?” I asked.

He frowned. “No. That is why we are sent here, where there is less chance of fighting. Politics, you see. Major Massignani asked, no,
begged
, for one of the other drop zones, but instead we are here.”

He glanced around and looked suddenly sheepish. “I do not mean we do not think this is important. We follow your bulletins, we admire you very much, and are proud to secure your safety. But to hit back, that is what we wanted most.”

He might be disappointed, but I was relieved. Somebody up in orbit, or on the Executive Council, had used their head. Well, given the fact that this whole crisis had spooled out in about a week, they probably had to go with what they already had on station here, whatever that ended up being, but it had worked out fine. No Human-Varoki fighting, so less chance of a long-term festering wound. Of course, using troops from a different Varoki country might have its own repercussions.

“The other two cohorts are Varoki?” I asked.

He turned to me and smiled broadly. “No, they are Zaschaan.”

The sun shone bright overhead, a cool breeze blew in from the south across the Wanu River, and for the first time in a very long time I laughed.

* * *

I found a spot away from all the noise and celebration and just sat quietly for a long time. I turned the power up on my embedded commlink for the first time in over a week and listened to the hum of the jammers. I listened to it for almost an hour before it suddenly went away, and I blinked to send the comm address I’d had waiting all that time. She answered almost immediately.

Sasha!

“Marr, I’m okay. I’m okay, honest, I’m okay and I’m so sorry, so sorry, and I love you so much.”

Oh, come home! Please just come home to us.

“I will, I promise. As soon as I can get transportation I’m coming home. And listen, this probably sounds stupid, but when I get there…do you want to learn how to samba?”

* * *

The next morning, after donating a unit of blood for Aurora, I sat in the heart of CSJ headquarters in Katammu-Arc, in a much larger office than before. Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan faced me across his desk and studied me for a while.

I was not out of the woods yet, not by any means. Everything up until now meant very little if it ended up with me in a CSJ interrogation cell facing some guy whose orders were, “Find out everything Naradnyo knows,” and who did not share my aversion to traumatic interrogations. If they did that, they would find everything out eventually. I knew a lot of pretty incriminating stuff, and not just incriminating to me. Too many people would go down, most of them much better people than I was, so I figured I needed to do some pretty smart talking in the next ten minutes.

As before, e-Loyolaan’s face didn’t give much away. Finally he spoke.

“I sent four CSJ agents into Sookagrad and three were murdered.”

“Murdered? They kidnapped a citizen without identifying themselves as CSJ. The legally constituted law enforcement authorities told them to surrender, and did not shoot them until they themselves opened fire. The locals did everything right and your men did everything wrong. If those men were murdered, the murderer is the one who ordered them to carry out that mission in that way.”

“To what extent your gang of criminals and revolutionaries was legally constituted law enforcement is a matter of dispute, but also beside the point. I want the people who killed my agents.”

If he felt any personal responsibility for that mess, he covered it well.

“Sift the ashes of Sookagrad. You’ll find their bones.”

He looked away for a while, his eyes on one of the identical blank walls, but unfocused, far away. Finally he looked back, his expression still unreadable.

“An interesting message sent with the survivor, Mr. Naradnyo: ‘I have him and I know what he knows.’ Were you disappointed when your sister transmitted the confession to the entire
Cottohazz
and stole your exclusive ownership of that knowledge?”

“Some things, it’s too dangerous to be the only one who knows,” I said.

“Ah, that is very true, Mr. Naradnyo. Very true. Of course, his confession implicating AZ Kagataan in his bioweapons research will have considerable repercussions, all of which will financially benefit your young ward, won’t they?”

“Tweezaa e-Traak is not my ward. She’s the adopted daughter of Arigapaa e-Lotonaa. My wife is her court-appointed fiduciary guardian until she reaches her majority, but my only formal relation to her is head of security. I keep her alive; I have no responsibility with respect to her inheritance.”

“No responsibility, but your fortunes are tied to hers, yes?”

“I’m not on commission, if that’s what you mean. I’m on straight salary, and she’d have to get a lot poorer for my paychecks not to clear.”

I could tell he didn’t believe me, but it was a lie he expected, one within his comfort zone. He stared at me and colored slightly, an ear twitched. I suddenly was certain he burned to ask whether my father’s confession was
all
I knew, and that told me he knew the other part.

That was the first thing he had ever given away to me. The biggest secret, the biggest lie in the
Cottohazz
, and the head of CSJ knew it and guarded it, which figured.
Knowledge
was one of their three precepts, not
Truth
.

No matter what else happened, they were going to end up putting my father through the wringer and figure out what he’d told me. If e-Loyolaan was going to know that eventually, the question was how and when I wanted him to find out.

“There’s something else you want to ask me,” I said.

He shifted in his chair, the first time I think I’d ever seen any sign he was uncomfortable.

“I am always interested in the totality of one’s knowledge,” he said, “or at least what is relevant to the well-being of the
Cottohazz
. It is my responsibility.”

“Sure. As far as that goes, I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve
heard
other things, but that’s not the same as knowing.”

He became very still and looked at me closely. “What is the difference between hearing and knowing, in your opinion?”

“Proof.”

We sat there for a few seconds, studying each other, and I let him see as deep into me as he wanted. I wasn’t hiding anything, at least on this point.

“One man’s testimony can sometimes be considered an element of proof,” he said.

“Not if he’s already on record confessing to complicity in illegal bioweapons research, and that confession is everywhere on the float. Either he’s a criminal or he’s a liar. In either case, no one important’s ever going to listen to him again.”

“And is there a recording of this other conversation, the thing you
heard
?”

“Nope.”

“I imagine that if there is, it is almost certainly in your sister’s bio-recorder memory. I could simply bring her in and find out. She might not enjoy the experience.”

“Probably not, but I think you would enjoy it even less. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but she’s the voice of Sookagrad, a heroine to everyone in the
Cottohazz
who watched this disaster unfold. Right now, this morning, the two hottest-trending topics on the float are which studio is going to get the holovid rights to produce
Sookagrad Calling,
and who they’re going to cast as Aurora. And you’re going to snatch her off the street, pump her full of drugs, and do a surgical download of her recorder memory? If you do, you’re finished as head of CSJ.”

He actually frowned. Whatever else happened, I figured I could call this a win based just on making Field Marshal Lieutenant e-Loyolaan frown. He absently tapped his finger on the desk a few times and when its smart surface came to life he jumped a bit, looked annoyed, and immediately turned it off. I was careful not to react in any way.

“You will be leaving for Kootrin from here?” he asked finally.

“Yeah. Commissioner-designate Prayzaat, the acting commandant of the Sakkatto City Munies—he being a war buddy of mine and all—has lifted the material witness summons, so I’m free to travel. I have a couple things to do, but then I’m gone, as soon as I can arrange transport. Of course, things are still pretty snarled up.”

“I believe I can expedite that. Under the circumstances, I think the sooner you leave Bakaa, the better for all concerned. But there is one more matter. Your father has been taken into custody and will almost certainly be remaining with us for…quite some time. He is in this complex. If you like, I can arrange for you to visit him before you leave.”

I thought about it but shook my head.

“We’re not really that close.”

* * *

While e-Loyolaan worked on lining up my transportation, I checked in on Moshe in the Black Docks med center. The maglev was running again and I took it to Praha-Riz and then a local over to the Black Docks stop. A lot of the Varoki looked at me uncomfortably, some out of resentment, I guess for the humiliating invasion a Human enclave’s troubles had brought down on the city, some out of guilt for why it had been necessary. No one said anything to me, though, possibly because of the Zack Mike trooper who stood at one end of the maglev car, glaring at the passengers between belches.

When I got to the med center Moshe already had a visitor, Dezi Zdravkova.

“Hey, Killer. That was a good move, holing up in Drak’zanaat Arcology.”

She stood up and shook my hand, smiling. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. I thought both of you were dead when I found out no one got past those gunsleds. I was up at the front of the column and didn’t find out until later—too late.”

“Nothing you could have done but get yourself killed,” Moshe said from his bed. “Sasha, your sister told how you got out, through the storm sewers. That was good thinking.”

“Yeah, we’re all pretty smart,” I said, “smart and good-looking.”

And alive, unlike most of the others. The uBakai had not exempted the clinic from their no-surrender order so Doc Mahajan was dead along with all of her patients. Dolores Wu had been killed in the long running fight getting to Drak’zanaat Arcology. Billy Conklin had made it there but had died in the brutal room-to-room fighting on the lower levels along with Bogo Katranjiev. Bela Ripnick had disappeared somewhere in the chaos of Sookagrad’s fall.