Conventions of War (42 page)

Her heart gave a sudden lurch, and she sat down heavily on the bed as her knees gave way.

The
false
Lady Sula? she thought. How could they possibly have found out about Caro?

“False?” came Casimir's deep voice. He laughed. “They can't admit they've made a mistake, can they?”

“A mistake?” Sula put a hand over her hammering heart, then felt a flash of anger as Casimir laughed again. She glared at him in rage.

“They think you're an imposter!” Casimir explained. “They've been saying all along that the real Lady Sula died in an explosion, right? So
you've
got to be a phony!”

Sula stared at him. Stars flashed in her vision, and she realized she'd forgotten to breathe. She filled her lungs and turned back to the screen, her mind whirling.

Caro could stay dead, she thought. She hadn't risen from the Sola River, sediment dripping from her golden hair, to strike her down. The deadly secret of her past would stay locked away.

Casimir leaned forward and put his arms around her. “Don't worry,” he said in her ear. “It's not so bad, living underground. I'll be able to keep you company.”

She managed an edgy laugh. “I've
been
living underground,” she said. “I've been dodging for months.”
If not years
…

She knew she would have to abandon her little apartment. Too many people there knew her. She would have to retrieve the
ju yao
pot and the various munitions she'd secreted in the furniture…in fact, it would be best to send one of her own trucks, with a false bill of lading, to pick up everything, in case her apartment was already staked out. And a heavily armed extraction team, in the event anyone tried to intervene.

The communal apartment would have to be abandoned as well, she realized, and she was about to message Macnamara and Spence to tell them they had to leave. Then an idea burst in her mind like a missile flaring in the void.

“We can't let them get away with this,” she said, thinking aloud. “We've got to respond.”

Casimir was amused. “What do you want to do? Bomb the broadcast station?”

“Not a bad idea,” she replied. “But no—I'm thinking of something more public even than that.”

 

S
he had to argue them into it. Macnamara was appalled, but he was her subordinate, someone to whom she could give orders. Casimir needed more work, but eventually Sula managed to appeal to the impish rebel in him, and he began to think her idea a vastly amusing one.

Thus, two days after the reward money had been put on her head—wearing her undress uniform, with the medals pinned over her heart—Sula walked into the Textile Market in Riverside to distribute the latest edition of
Resistance
to the startled vendors and their customers. She also brandished a printout of the previous morning's
Salvation,
an official government broadsheet that prominently featured her face.

It was all for the benefit of the video camera carried by Casimir, who walked backward ahead of her, grinning hugely as he captured her morning walk. Carrying the news sheet with her picture put a firm date on the video, showed that even with a price on her head, she could walk safely and openly through a crowded street.

Though she was unarmed, Casimir's squad of killers orbited her just outside camera range, walking in grim silence with guns displayed openly to prevent anyone from doing anything foolish to collect their three thousand zenith reward. Still, she had to force herself to walk slowly, to stop and smile at the vendors, to exchange a few words with the shoppers. She bought a vanilla drink from a beverage seller and refused to accept her change. She examined a bolt of silk, or something the vendor claimed was silk. She chucked a baby under the chin.

At the far end of the market, she turned, waved, and dived into a waiting sedan. She was eight minutes clear before the first of the Naxid squads arrived.

The next day's edition of
Resistance
came with brief video clips, plus a number of stills, that documented Sula's stroll. The faces of anyone she met or had spoken to were carefully blacked out.

We own the streets.
That was the message
Resistance
was sending.

Three days later the Naxids did their best to prove
Resistance
wrong.

 

T
he antimatter missile struck a little past noon, shortly after people had left work for their midday break. As she passed between buildings, riding behind Macnamara on his two-wheeler, Sula caught the flash, felt a touch of heat on her cheek even through the faceplate of her helmet.

The sky had turned in an instant to the color of milk. People on the street stood pale over stark black shadows. Sula gave Macnamara an urgent punch in the ribs.

“Stop! Pull over! Get into one of the buildings!”

People on the street were staring at the sky. The two-wheeler swerved through stunned, slowing traffic, raced between two parked vehicles, bounced hard over the curb, and weaved between pedestrians. Macnamara pulled to a stop before a pair of bright brass doors. Sula saw the reflection of her own startled face in the polished red marble of the building's wall.

She slapped up her faceplate. “Take cover!” she shouted to anyone within earshot. “Take cover
now
!”

The two-wheeler's gyroscopic stabilizers kept it upright as the two passengers sprang for the doors. They found themselves in a quiet haberdashery aimed at the Lai-own trade. Tall, well-dressed avians stared at them as the intruders barged into the showroom, eyes scanning for a place to hide free of flying glass.

“Take cover!” Sula kept shouting. “Take cover!”

So many bombs had exploded in the city that by now the Lai-own had the reflexes of veterans. Regardless of their fine clothing, they were down behind counters or under tables within seconds. Sula and Macnamara crouched on either side of the doors, their backs to the thick walls. Sula slapped her faceplate closed again.

People came running in from the street, looked wildly for cover, and ran into the store. There was a crash as someone stumbled over the two-wheeler; the two-wheeler remained upright, the pedestrian didn't. The brilliant light outside had begun to fade.

Sula heard the shock wave coming, a rising rumble felt through the steel, concrete, and marble pressed against her back. She ducked her head between her knees and clasped her hands over the helmet.

The blast blew the brass doors open. The sound was a cosmic shout she could feel as a shiver in her bones and a slap of pressure against her ears, followed then by an absence of pressure that sent vertigo shimmering through her skull. Someone stumbled and fell across the doorway. There was a whirl of dust, and clothing on the racks swayed angrily. Objects tumbled from counters to the ground, the sound buried beneath the booming fury of the atmosphere.

Sula's ears rang. She blinked up at the room. No glass had broken. There was a strange scent of heat and dust.

She thought it was over until she sensed something else rushing toward her and braced again. This time the shock came up through the floor, the wave moving through her viscera.

The slower moving ground wave, she thought.

The brass doors tried softly to close, but sprang back as they encountered the figure that had sprawled across the doorway. Sula reached for the fallen figure, a male Cree, took him by the arm and helped him crawl out of the doorway and get his back to the wall.

“Stay in cover!” she called. “There might be another one!”

The Cree's big ears turned toward the sound of her voice. Odd little muscles trembled beneath his deep purple skin. But otherwise he remained in position, back against the wall, his breath coming fast.

Sula reached for her hand comm and turned it to a news channel.

“The Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis,” she heard, “has decreed that the city of Remba was to be destroyed for multiple acts of rebellion against the Peace of the Praxis. A single missile has been fired by the Fleet as it passed close to Zanshaa. No more attacks are contemplated. The population of surrounding areas are urged to return to work and to act normally.”

Remba
…Sula's head whirled. Remba was a smallish city on the outskirts of the greater Zanshaa area. There was no significant resistance to the Shaa there that she knew about. In fact, because she didn't know if other cities on the planet shared Zanshaa City's immunity, she had discouraged assassinations and bombings outside of the capital, and told recruits there to confine themselves to intelligence gathering and nonlethal forms of sabotage.

Sula put her hand comm away and rose to her feet. “It's over,” she told Macnamara. “Let's get out of here.”

The Cree began unsteadily to rise to his feet. Sula helped him. He turned to her, the big ears pricked forward. Sula felt a strange throbbing in her bones as the Cree gave out a subsonic sonar cry.

“You are she,” the Cree said, his voice intent.

“If you say so,” Sula said.

The Cree leaned closer. “You are the White Ghost,” he said. His voice was a fierce whisper.

Sula felt an eerie thrill run up her spine at the unfathomable words. Her thoughts seemed jumbled and she couldn't manage a response.

She turned to Macnamara. “Let's go.”

They brushed dust off the standing two-wheeler, rolled it off the sidewalk, and moved through the stunned and slow-moving traffic. The Cree stood in the doorway without speaking and sent sonar throbs after her.

White Ghost,
she thought.

 

S
he met with Casimir and Julien that night, in a room off the kitchen of a restaurant in Riverside. With its cheap furniture and plastic tablecloths, it was a place set aside for employees to eat, and it smelled of garlic and rancid cooking oil. Despite the owner's proven loyalty, Sula swore she'd never eat there again.

“It was a warning,” Julien said. He gave a wolfish smile. “They didn't dare hit Zanshaa, but they hit a city close enough so that everyone here could see it and feel the fear.”

“They're trying to terrorize us,” Casimir said. He looked at Sula. “Do we feel terrorized?”

Sula didn't bother to answer. The Naxids had struck at the city's population of six hundred thousand, and used a missile without the usual tungsten jacket so there was no fireball—the shock wave had caused some damage, but almost all the casualties were from the radiation attack. There were radiation treatments available, but the guards had been ordered to turn people away from the hospitals.

“They're going to have a depopulated city they can give to their clients,” Julien said. “That'll buy a lot of friends.”

“I want the ratfucks who did this,” Sula said.

Casimir laced his long pale fingers together. “We all do,” he said. “But they could all be in orbit for all we know.”

Sula's eyes shifted to a picture on the wall. Behind decades of dirt and cooking grease was a heavily retouched shot of the High City, the sky too brilliant a green for reality, the buildings too bright.

“The Naxid Fleet wouldn't do this on its own,” she said. “It was their damn committee that ordered this. And
they're
where we can get them.”

“All of them?” Casimir raised an eyebrow. He reached for a glass of the cheap sorghum wine the landlord had poured for them. “We can get at a few, I suppose. Our contacts in the High City can provide their location. But they're all well-guarded, and any escape route is going to be—”

“All of them,” Sula said. Her mind had been caught up in the whirlwind of the idea. “And I'm not talking about knocking them off one by one. Let's make a clean sweep of them. Get some antimatter and blow them right off their rock.”

Julien was amused. “Where are we going to get antimatter?” he asked. Only the military and the power authorities had antimatter, and in each case it was heavily guarded.

“And how are we going to put together a delivery system?” Casimir asked. “This is outside Sidney's area of expertise.”

So they discussed other possibilities. Truck bombs, if they could get one close enough. Catapults hurling bags of fertilizer explosive. “We could build a cannon,” Sula said at one point. “We won't need the carriage or anything, just the barrel. We build it on the roof of a building, under a shed or something so it's not obvious. Then we bore-sight it on the room where their committee meets, and blow them to bits with one shell.”

By then the others had drunk enough sorghum wine to make this seem both plausible and hilarious. They discussed the idea for an hour before breaking up.

By the time Sula and Casimir reached their safe house, her mood had sobered. When he came into the room from the shower—she always made him shower before bed—he found her sitting on a chair holding the
ju yao
pot that she'd rescued from her old apartment. She looked at her dark, distorted reflection in the crackled surface, and her fingers slid blindly over its contours.

Casimir stepped up behind her and put his long hands on her shoulders. She put the pot on a scarred old table, took one of his hands in her own and brushed against the knuckles with her cheek.

“Do we really know what we're doing?” she said. “Those people in Remba—they died because of what
we
did. Tens of thousands of them. And tonight we met to plan more trouble, and for all we know, another city will be destroyed as a result.”

His fingers clasped hers. “The Fleet will come soon,” he said.

“In that case,” Sula said, “what's the point of what we're doing? The war will be decided off the planet.”

“We're killing Naxids. I thought that's what you wanted.” One long pale hand caressed her hair. “I never expected to live as long as Sergius,” he said. “I always thought it would be torture and the garotte before I was thirty. If you and I die together in this war, it doesn't change anything for me. It's better than dying alone.”