The January Dancer (16 page)

While Greystroke simultaneously sought one trail while trying to lose another, Little Hugh O’Carroll tried to grasp the Rieving of New Eireann. The physical damage was simple to inventory; the psychic damage, more difficult.

There is a subtle difference between a world that has been ravaged and a world that has been ruined. There are no physical parameters for it; there is nothing that can be measured or tested. It can be seen not in the manner and extent of the devastation, but in the faces of those devastated. The Eireannaughta had gazed once before on a burnt and gutted Council House; but before it had been with grim determination. Now it was with slumped shoulders, and something seemed to have receded from behind their eyes.

Unlike the Rebels and the Loyalists, the Cynthian rievers had come neither to change the world nor to preserve its hallowed institutions nor even to suck the teats of its commerce. Even the ICC owned that much interest in the worlds they managed. One of their corporate maxims was:
If the people get rich, you can steal more from them
. The Cynthians had come only for “pleasure and treasure.” They took as much of both as they could, and not all the ruins they left behind were buildings.

A surprise attack across Newtonian space has a paradoxical feature: The defenders receive plenty of warning and yet can do little but wait. Once off Electric Avenue, the attackers must brake to co-orbital speeds, and even with the outsized alfvens all warships carry, this requires several days. But the same cruel dictates of Shree Newton limit the defenders’ ability to intercept the incoming fleet. Long before the Cynthians reached New Eireann, Colonel-Manager Jumdar knew there was nothing she could do to stop them.

Not that she contemplated surrender. Her database assured her that among the pleasures the Cynthians sought was the pleasure of combat. They were a folk for whom adjectives like “brutal” and “ruthless” were accounted compliments; and nothing so outraged them as a foe who would not fight. Those who surrendered were treated more harshly than those who were defeated—which is not to say that either was treated very well.

Jumdar’s two ships—troop transports for her rump-regiment—were only lightly armed; and no help could be expected from their home base at the Gladiola Depot, or from Hawthorn Rose, where the remainder of the regiment had gone to complete the original contract. Long before help could arrive from either system, the pirates would be done and gone.

So it would be the Eireannaughta police boats and Jumdar’s two battalions, presently scattered in peacekeeping posts the length of the Vale of Eireann. At her urgent broadcast plea, veteran Loyalists and Rebels stepped forward to defend the Vale and were issued arms from the ICC armory. Handsome Jack was brevetted Major, First Battalion of Volunteers, and given charge of this ragtag group. He immediately advised the colonel to strip the Mid-Vale of troops and to concentrate them in Fermoy and New Down Town. There was little to attract loot-hungry rievers outside the two large cities. They hadn’t come to milk the cows in the Ardow.

“And put your troops under cover,” he added. “These Cynthians will put their own surveillance in orbit and will drop steel rain if they see anything needing it.”

“We must be,” added Voldemar O’Rahilly, who was senior-most of the Loyalist contingent, “as hard to spot from orbit as was the Ghost of Ardow.”

To Jumdar’s surprise, Handsome Jack Garrity had nodded and said, “If only he were with us today.” But he and the O’Rahilly were still thinking in the old tropes, in the old fashion of a wild and wonderful donnybrook. They were still thinking of fighting
for a cause
. They were not prepared for the utter carelessness of the Cynthians.

After they had left, Jumdar sat at her desk, stroking the Dancer and calling orders to her two battalions—one to gather in Fermoy, the other in New Down Town. Her staff identified map coordinates where each company could take cover, parking garages and groves of trees under which armored cars could hide. (The heavies had gone to Hawthorn Rose.) Units were placed close enough together for mutual support, but not so close that their mobilization would be evident to overhead surveillance. Compliance was swift and unquestioned.

Then, all there was to do was to wait for their doom.

“And so it went,” Tomaltaigh O’Mulloy explained to Little Hugh as they stood before the smoldering skeleton of Council House. Around them clustered the leaders of the Loyalist underground, the remaining Rebel leaders, and Major Chaurasia of the 2nd Battalion, 33rd ICC. The fires had cooled, though there was still a residuum of heat from somewhere deep within the ruined structure that revealed itself in streamers of dull gray smoke. An evil smell shrouded the place, a heavy body of bad air composed in equal parts of metal, wood, plastic, and human flesh.

“I’ve never seen the like,” the ICC major said. “I’ve never seen the like.” He had said this several times already, and Little Hugh wished he would shut up, say something useful, or at least something different. The wind shifted and the thin, foul smoke wound around them. Kerchiefs emerged to cover nose and mouth. Men and women coughed, backed away.

“If only ye’d come back sooner,” O’Mulloy said. He was an old Oriel supervisor who had taken Eireannaughta citizenship before the coup.

Little Hugh didn’t know what possible difference that would have made; but he did not rebuke the man. He did notice that Voldemar O’Rahilly stood a little to the side with his beefy arms crossed over his chest and his golden hair flowing past his shoulders. He had been remarkably cool to the sudden reappearance of the Ghost of Ardow, and Little Hugh remembered what the Fudir had said on Jehovah before their departure.

“Sure,” said Handsome Jack, who stood to Little Hugh’s left. “He waited until it was all over, and now he comes in to pick up the pieces.”

“Here, now,” said the ICC major. “We’ll have none of that.” But the threat was spiritless and he no longer had two hale battalions with which to enforce it. Eventually, that would occur to both Eireannaughta factions.

“The only thing,” Handsome Jack growled at the ICC major. “The only thing you were supposed to be good for was protecting my world—and look what you’ve let happen!” The injustice of the charge showed in the major’s basset-hound gaze, and Hugh quite suddenly desired to take him in his arms for comfort.

“Not quite the triumphal homecoming,” said Voldemar, as if speaking directly to the ruins, as if Hugh were not standing beside him. Hugh remembered how he and Voldemar and Sweeney the Red had spent a long, rainy night in a tumbledown ecologist’s station on the Crooken Moor, where basaltic granite thrust up through the terraforming bogs, and a Rebel death squad had combed the countryside for them. It hadn’t seemed possible then that three men could grow closer than they had that night. Sweeney moaned softly on a cot, his head wrapped in bandages where a sword cut had lopped off half his nose. Voldemar stood by the hut’s door, glaring out over the trackless black waste. They had not dared strike a fire.
We’ll make it,
Voldemar had said then with fierce conviction.
The Glen’s just past the end o’ these bogs.

And so they had. But now…What had happened?
Have ye grown too fond o’ the leadership, brother Voldemar?
Or had the Fudir’s cynicism wriggled like a worm into his own heart, so that he saw treachery now where there was only anger and despair.

“They split her chest open,” Major Chaurasia said, again speaking as if to ghosts. “Down the breastbone with a cutting laser, and then they pried the rib cage apart and spread the lungs out over them. They looked…I saw her later, after. They looked like wings…”

Two in the knot of people around Little Hugh covered their mouths and ducked quickly aside to retch.

“Called the Blood Eagle,” said the Fudir, who had not been present a moment ago. He had gone off to the field hospital on some purpose of his own. Now he was back.

The ICC major looked at him. “Blood Eagle,” he repeated witlessly. “It’s an art form among the Cynthians. They even have special instruments to perform it.”

“Art.” The idea was incomprehensible. The major shook his head. “Why punish her for defending the world as best she could?”

“It wasn’t punishment,” the Fudir explained. “It was tactical, to take the will out of their enemies.” Looking around at the Eireannaughta, he added, “I’d say it worked.” Then, in a lowered voice, he whispered to Hugh, “I found what she did with the Dancer.”

“They used it more than once,” Handsome Jack murmured. “That…Blood Eagle.” He was a one-eyed man, now, as well as a one-armed one. “Not only on Jumdar…”

Little Hugh turned away from Council House and looked down the slope of Council Hill to the smoldering ruins of New Down Town.

“They set fires,” said O’Mulloy. “Sometimes, they didn’t even loot a house first. They simply torched it. For no reason.”

“They had a reason,” the Fudir told him. “It was fun.”

“But,” said the major, “what profit was there? To come, what, fifty days’ travel from the Hadramoo? And for what?”

“They didn’t come for profit,” the Fudir told him. “They came for honor and glory.”

The major drew himself up. “Honor…” But then he seemed to deflate. “There’s no profit here anymore. That’s a certain thing. The orbitals the Cynthians didn’t smash and loot are being abandoned. O’Carroll, would you take some of the factory personnel back to Jehovah on your ship? I’ve sent a swift-boat to Hawthorn Rose to call back the rest of the regiment, but…”

“It’s not my ship,” O’Carroll told him. “Ask January.” But that sounded too callous, so he added more kindly, “I’m sure he’ll take as many as he has room for.”

Later, Hugh met privately with Handsome Jack. No one was quite sure who held the management contract anymore. The ICC was going to break it—both men had read that in the major’s eyes.
There’s no profit here anymore.
But did that mean automatic reversion to House Oriel? Or was the contract, as some said, “up for grabs”?

They sat across from one another at a broad table in the old ICC factor’s residence. Cargo House had been looted along with most everything else in the capital. Pale outlines on the walls marked where paintings, watercolors, and digitals had once hung, and Hugh thought he remembered, from an earlier visit in another era, a chemical sculpture in which substances of changing hues and various densities had writhed snakelike in a tank in the corner. But the ICC building had not, withal, been burned, as so many others had. And there were even a few chairs that had not been reduced to splinters and scraps of fabric. The table had once been polished to mirror-finish—it was red gristwood from Nokham’s World—but too many boots had scuffed it in the looting and a twisted, puckered scar ran where a laser had burned a vulgar word in the chief language of the Hadramoo.

This had been the factor’s dining hall,
Hugh remembered.
Imported Gatmander salmon on plates of Abyalon crystal. Candlelight and sandalwood, and in
that
corner, a blind Terran pandit had played an evening rag on a santur.
There had been no factions then. Or at least the factions had not yet made themselves known.

Earlier that morning, a larger meeting had sat around this table. The United Front for the Restoration of the Vale—a grand name, but no one had wanted to defer to another, and so it had been less full of decisions than of discussions. Hugh had kept silent throughout most of the proceedings. On-planet only a few days, he did not know enough about the current state to say anything useful. That had not impressed the Loyalists at the table, who had expected that their legendary leader would sweep away all problems with a few wise words. And on those few occasions when he did speak up, the Rebel faction had expressed their utter lack of confidence. Major Chaurasia had tried to impose order, but lacked the will to do so effectively.

“One thing I’ll say for the old bitch, Jumdar,” Handsome Jack Garrity said, now that the others had left. “She could lead. People hopped to when she spoke, not from servility, but because she inspired.” He ran his hand through barley-brown hair. “Chaurasia knows how to carry out orders, but damn me if he knows how to give them.”

Little Hugh steepled his fingers. “It will take me a while to get ‘up to speed,’ but…”

“We don’t have the time for your fookin’ learning curve, lad. People are hurting
now
.”

“I know that! We need to get a clear picture of the As-Is state and a vision of the Should-Be state and imagine the change-path that will get us there. Jack, we heard a report today on milk and grain from County Meath—but how accurate was it? Will there be enough to feed New Down Town? How will we get it here? Has anyone worked out the logistics, mobilized lorries and floaters, set up an Action Plan?”

“Mebd’s teats!” Jack slapped the tabletop, earning a splinter for his pains from the broken wood. He sucked at his palm as he spoke. “This isn’t one of those fookin’ management exercises they taught you at boot camp. There were relief lorries on the High Road out of the Mid-Vale before the rievers had jumped down the Avenue. The rievers didn’t touch the farm counties. They hadn’t come to rape sheep. Or maybe they just didn’t have the time. Maybe the lorries hadn’t been fookin’
mobilized
and nose-counted by the fookin’ authorities,
but they were on the fookin’ road!
What would you do if there weren’t enough of them? Send them back? Pick volunteers to starve? My people will send all they can spare, and a little more—and they didn’t need the Planetary Manager to tell them how much and where.
Damn
this splinter!” He sucked again on his palm.

Hugh rose and crossed the room, coming to stand by Jack’s side, where he drew a knife. Jack regarded him with quickly suppressed alarm; but Hugh seized his hand and spread it flat, palm side up, and with the point of his knife worried out the splinter. He handed the slice of wood to Handsome Jack. “
Now,
can we focus on the subject?” He spun the knife one-handed and it slipped neatly into its scabbard.