War World X: Takeover Read online

  “You’re the one,” the guy said, spitting blood. He stuck out a hand. “I’m Forbs. Strippers.”

  “Make bigger holes,” Cole said, completing the contact code. “Why didn’t you assholes say something?”

  “Gotta have some kind of fun,” Forbs said. He walked over to the dock’s edge and glanced down. “Hey Jenks, it ain’t new-Eye yet, how come you’re taking a bath?”

  Cole let the two laugh, then punched Forbs in the kidney and grabbed the back of his collar. “Your friend’s going to have a bathing partner in about half a second if you don’t start telling me things I want to know.”

  “What, what?” The miner waved his arms as the tips of his toes danced on the edge of the dock.

  “Guy could freeze to death,” Cole said. “How come you missed the rendezvous?”

  “Couldn’t help it. Aw, come on, please?”

  Cole backed the man away from the edge, mostly to give his own arm a rest. He trained his taser at the man’s neck and said, “How much help can I get on short notice?”

  “Depends on for what,” the miner Forbs said. He stood sullen, shoulders hunched.

  Cole explained as much of his plan as Forbs needed to know, then said, “Get him out of the water and into a bar, let him dry off. I’ll expect you at the next rendezvous on time, and if you’re not, you’d better be dead. That’s the only excuse I can tolerate right now.”

  “We’ll be there,” Forbs said, grunting as his sopping companion used his arm as a ladder rung.

  Cole, meanwhile, walked on. He passed along a dock, then gave a password and was permitted onto the deck of a small houseboat. He walked across it, over the gunwale, onto the deck of the next boat, and so on, until he stood far offshore. A floating village of houseboats housed many of Cambiston’s and Docktown’s dregs, not to mention refugees and refuse from Castell City proper. Living catch-as-catch-can lives, most of the floating folks crouched ever-ready to snatch, to grab. All Cole had to do was offer them profit of one kind or another, and this he did.

  Using promises, he talked a rat’s nest of tide-born scum into becoming rag-tag pirates, at least for a time. “And remember,” Cole kept saying. “Miners aren’t to be harmed unless absolutely necessary.”

  The boat-people started the hours-long task of unlashing each boat from adjacent vessels. Slowly, from the outer edges, the boat-village dispersed, some drifting down the Xanadu and Alf Rivers, others pulling or motoring up the Jordan.

  Cole stepped boat-to-boat ashore. He then went on to his next task, pausing only to grab a quick bowl of heartfruit chili, washed down with foamy, yeasty beer.

  “He speaks with spirits,” Wilgar said, gazing up at Kev’s face as Bren placed another blanket over the boy.

  Kev neither nodded nor shook his head. His face showed only exhaustion. “Sleep now, and we’ll seek harmony in such matters later.” The boy smiled and closed his eyes, and soon Bren and Kev retired to their room. As he lay down, Kev sighed. Bren reached over and touched him, but he rolled away. She sighed.

  A clamor at their door snapped Kev to his feet. He raced through the house, which was illuminated by only a few lamps, well-trimmed wicks turned low. The fire pit smoldered, coals glowing beneath a layer of ash.

  On his knees, Kev moved into the tunnel and knocked down the thigh-thick chunk of wood which braced the door, itself several fingers thick and reinforced with costly black iron.

  The Reverend Castell thrust his face at Kev and said, “We must consult at once.”

  Kev nodded, then followed the Reverend Castell from his house. He shivered at once. He walked barefoot through a thin layer of snow to the Castell house. Crawling back to warmth soothed Kev, and he stretched out on a pallet of muskylope hides. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  The Reverend Castell, his white robes glowing almost as brightly as the white streaks in his long hair in the fire pits crackling light, said, “So soon my song unravels.”

  “But we sing harmony in more numbers than ev—”

  “We are few,” Castell, spat. “We huddle, oppressed as never on Earth. We cower as CoDo Marines march by like strutting conquerors, we quail from strip-miners who rape this planet worse than ever they raped old Earth. Peace is ours to offer, but no one wants peace, and yes, yes, we seek harmony in all things, but must we seek to join a song of utter discord? And now I learn that secret plans are afoot, conspiracies perhaps in the midst of our own communal symphony. Shall this Haven, our home, be lost to us, even before my son can take my place? Will my son have a place to take? Is Harmony at an end?”

  Kev sat with gaze lowered. He waited, and when the silence grew past the rhetorical, said, “Harmony is more than a legacy, and Haven more than a refuge for us. There are many new forces on Haven, some of them less evident than others. Some of them cannot be met by your son, no matter his natural state of grace.”

  Glancing up at the older man, he rubbed his hands. “Your new role is protector of the Harmonies, you said to me. It seems ages ago. Two Beads for every acolyte, and even that wasn’t enough. We cut poles, built the palisade. We strive to remain self-sufficient.” Here Kev frowned, his hands moving against volition to the secular, city-minted coins in his pocket; money, too, was coming to Haven.

  After swallowing hard, Kev continued, still not looking at the Reverend Castell. “You said, ‘Our church needs a buffer, and the Deaks and Beads shall provide it.’ You told me, ‘Deaks decide strategy, making sure they harmonize, while Beads deploy tactics, to guarantee compliance among Chosen and Pledged both.’ And so I’ve done, but Reverend, we must change, or—”

  “Change what? Our song? Our search for Universal Harmony?”

  “Never those,” Kev said, voice constricted. He took a breath, and for the first time dared look the older man in the eye. “It’s exactly that search which dictates compromise. What you’ve characterized as conspiracy is, in fact, simple negotiation. Even as your father did, back on Earth, I’m seeking to render under Caesar that which is his, so that we may retain what is ours.” Kev opened his mouth to say more, then closed his eyes and sighed and shut his mouth. He slumped, bone tired.

  The Reverend Castell walked to the altar, hidden now by the man-sized tangle of knots suspended between the walls on single ropes. He touched the thing, and his prophet’s scorn softened to an expression of indulgence. “You’ve always carried the taint of a warrior,” he said. “You do, rather than simply be.”

  Kev hissed, impatient. “Simply being doesn’t help. We’re not trees. And remember what happens to every forest man encounters.”

  The Reverend Castell ran his hands all over the clot of knots. He leaned down and pressed a cheek to it. He muttered something, then hummed one of the many tunes recorded in the Writings. His movements became slow, languorous.

  Kev blushed and looked away. He said, “What have you heard? And from whom?”

  “My own son, for one,” the Reverend Castell said, rising to stand straight and glaring. He took on much of his old charisma in such moments of lucidity. “Secret agents,” he said. “Plans.”

  “We might be of service to—”

  “Of service?” Scorn twisted the words like over-heated metal. Charles Castell openly mocked the idea by repeating, “Service?” He slapped his hands together so hard that Kev winced. “Are we mercenaries, then? Do we seek Harmony through the slavery of service?”

  Kev’s wince tightened. His fists clenched. He scrunched down, as if resisting a physical force. “I’d hoped you’d lead us,” he said. “I’d hoped you’d visit those Chosen living beyond our walls. I’d wanted you to walk with me on my next rounds.”

  “Do you see?” Charles Castell wailed, gazing upward.

  Kev’s flesh rippled, and he stood as the Reverend Castell continued staring upward, through the smoke-hole, as if he saw something up there, or someone.

  “Father,” Kev muttered, backing away. He dropped to his knees as the older man began howling semi-coherent laments and curses upward, as
if shrieking his betrayal to heaven and beyond, to the very heart of Universal Harmony itself. He shouted as if he wished to shatter the silence at the heart of the note that swells to fill each song; Kev fled, scrambling on hands and knees through the zigzag tunnel, out into the cold.

  Only when Bren complained, as he snuggled against her in their warm pallet-bed, did he realize how near-frozen his feet had become.

  “No rules,” Alwyn Meany said, swiping beer froth from his scraggly mustache and belching with immense satisfaction, proud as a boy. “Shit, Cole, Haven ain’t got no whatcha-call Ecology. No damn tree-hugging leaf-lovers. Hell, on Haven a man can just plain dig. Dig right down a pit fit for the devil himself.”

  “Hence Hell’s-A-Comin’, I suppose,” Cole said, lifting the cloudy yellow wine to his lips, sniffing, then placing the stuff untasted back on the table. He looked at the bartender and snapped his fingers, then held an actual Earth-note aloft. Several sets of feral eyes gazed at the cash, but only the barkeep moved for it. “Take this away and bring me the best whiskey in the house,” he said.

  When it came, he sniffed it, then shoved it across to Mister Meany, whose facial tattoos stood out much better when flushed with drink.

  Slamming down the double shot of rot-gut maize-bourbon, Meany said, “Look,” then paused to squeeze water from his eyes and let a shudder shake, rattle and roll through his flab. “Jesus with mayonnaise,” he said, “Hold the fucking onions.”

  Finally able to relate to a wider reality than that found inside a glass, Meany said, “Call me Wyn, everyone does. Call me Al, I’ll bust your chops and split your ass, and y’wanna know why? ’Cause my daddy’s name was Al, and I killed him when I was fifteen and got just plumb sick of being a whippin’ boy, know what I’m saying?”

  “Sure do, Wyn,” Cole said. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “So how about it? Can you fix me up with some fireworks?”

  “Y’gotta understand,” Wyn Meany said. “They keep closer watch on their bangers than a British poufter, but there are times when not every charge in the blasting pattern goes off. Det caps shake loose, wires break, who can tell? Dangerous as jumpin’ a puddy-tat, but I know guys who’ll grab anything for a buck.”

  “Money’s no problem,” Cole said. His back rested against the tavern’s wall, just under a crude portrait of sex Haven miner style. The artist had used blue chalk as a medium, and had incorporated several holes and gashes from various fights. Collectors the worlds over might have bid small fortunes to own such genuine, heart-felt folk art, but not if they had to come to the source to get it. Cole flexed his shoulders and kept one hand near a weapon at all times. “In fact, money’s the whole point,” he added.

  Wyn Meany slobbered, wiped most of it off on the back of a hand still dirty from his work unloading Kennicott barges, and said, “So when you want the big kaboom?”

  “Any time you can arrange it. Take out the tipple or something, tear up some tracks, that kind of thing. It’s got to do damage, though.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry. Doing damage is second nature.” He slurped from his empty glass, then slammed it down and bellowed. When a jumpy waiter scampered over to fill the glass, Meany laughed. “What I don’t get is how you’re going to hang all this on them pussy Harmonies. I mean, hell, everyone knows those folks don’t do nothin’ to nobody.”

  “That’s the beauty,” Cole said. “It’s not them doing it, it’s the explosives. Just a harmonious chemical reaction.”

  “I’ll be scrogged sideways on a hand-car,” Meany said, draining his glass again. “Them philosopher types can explain anything.”

  “Can’t we, though,” Cole muttered, grinning on the inside as he tossed down a few more bills and strode from the tavern.

  Wilgar’s eyes glittered. “But why do we even want trade? Won’t valuables bring exploitation?”

  Kev slowed his gait and glanced down at his leader’s son. In a hushed voice, he said, “Speak gently of such things.”

  Dashing around Kev, Wilgar jostled a pair of CoDo Marines. The streets saw such pairs often, but never in force. Only a token company or so were stationed at Castell City, and rumors had it there might be camps or bivouacs in the countryside, but in a city of ten to twelve thousand no one added them up to any kind of official CoDominium presence. If anything, the two-hundred-odd soldiers acted like supervisors, looking after CoDo interests and often sloughing off rougher military disciplines. At least, that’s what Haveners had observed; it could all be subterfuge, considering the source.

  Glaring, the older Marine walked on, but his younger companion snarled and said, “Kid, come here.”

  Kev tried to herd Wilgar forward, but the child’s curiosity had been piqued: Also, he feared exactly nothing, that Kev had ever seen. “What’s up, general?”

  “He’s a Sergeant,” Kev said, adding, “An aspect of respect is the ability to know another’s lot in life.”

  The young Sergeant caught only the word respect, and said, “you’d do well to listen to your father, insolent whelp.”

  “Insolent whelp?” Wilgar mocked, laughing in a high contralto and bounding back and forth, toward and away from the Marine. “What kind of language is that?” Several street kids gathered, and other, surlier rag-folk, too, at the sound of mockery coming from so small a Harmony.

  Kev scratched his forehead with one hand clenched in a fist, thus giving the signal for Beads to gather closer. Some of the ragged folk elbowed in, as if to get a better look at the beating which everyone knew was brewing; Beadles, as first-circle Harmony pledges, could still use violence when necessary, and be absolved. Most knew a pidgin martial art mix as individual, and effective, as each could make it.

  “Where are your Deacons?” the older Marine asked, from a distance of several strides. He showed no inclination to actually do anything more than ask questions. He shivered in the light fall of snow, his breath scudding from him in white wisps. His uniform looked new.

  Kev snatched Wilgar’s arm. “His discord was minor, and an accident. Peace is ours to offer, Sergeant. We mean no harm.” When Wilgar struggled, Kev gave him a gentle shake, and the boy settled.

  With a nod, the Sergeant walked on, joining his companion with a burst of complaint about scruffy poor-mouthing god-chasers. The crowd dispersed, with it the Beadles, who faded into the background to keep watch and do what they could to protect full-fledged Harmonies.

  “Would you have us killed?” Kev asked Wilgar, who shook his head but made no answer. They walked on, and entered a shop selling such delicacies as oranges, bananas, and coffee. Coming in from the cold, their noses gradually opened to the fragrances. Their mouths watered.

  Tropical products cost several times the going rate on Haven, and no one’s greenhouses had yet managed to produce adequate substitutes in the tough, thin local soil. Photovoltaic energy remained too erratic in Haven’s general dimness to allow proper, even heating and insulation had to be improvised, as nothing high-tech had yet been dropped or made available to the general population. On a backwater planet like Haven, making do usually meant doing without.

  Kev waited, hands folded across his chest and head bowed, until the shop’s proprietor, a Bosnian woman with every other tooth missing, finished serving a Kennicott miner’s apprentice all of eleven years old.

  “They’ll have him walking ledges and setting primers before long,” she said as she watched the boy leave the shop. Her battered face, although locked in sadness, somehow conveyed pity of a rough sort.

  Wilgar, thirteen, also watched the other boy. In his expression curiosity and empathy mingled with a touch of envy.

  “These,” Kev said, handing the woman a list prepared by the acolytes and approved by Bren. Pregnant women need nourishment, and growing children, too. Expense could not be counted against the costs of neglect, especially on an unforgiving world like Haven.

  As the woman gathered the meager provisions, Kev tugged the sack from his robes. It dangled on a thong around his neck and hel
d Kennicott scrip, CD military scrip, coins from several worlds, one Earth dollar, and even some Haven barter-chips, most made of odd metals or quartz found in trace amounts here and there by displaced engineers and geologists and such forced to become hardscrabble farmers.

  Miners bought at company stores; all that cash stayed in a closed loop. For anyone not a company employee, however, there was no such thing as discretionary or disposable income. In the ad hominem black market system prevailing then, Haven’s supply of money, limited at best, sufficed only to maintain a few high officers and other semi-legitimate officials in relative luxury. Kev sorted his purchasing power carefully.

  “Pre-CoDo Moskva, da,” several forced immigrants commented, remembering long lines, scarce goods, atrocious quality, and free-floating currencies of so many kinds no one ever actually mastered the totality of the city’s commerce. Now they had a whole world like that and it neither surprised nor depressed them too much; they’d bottomed out long ago. And the CoDominium linking Russian and American governments had proved to be one more pyramid scheme for enriching the snobbish few at the top. Kev’s bizarre, mixed bag of buying-power had no fixed value, no relative rate of exchange, and no fixed amount of work or man-hours behind it.

  Taking a breath, Kev gazed down on the bundle the woman made of his purchases, then held out his sack. She rummaged, chewing her upper, then her lower lip, as if they itched. Kev closed his eyes and murmured, “Seek harmony in all things,” as a prayer; buying on Haven was a matter of faith as much as a matter of free, unrestricted, unstructured trade.

  He accepted his sack, considerably lightened, without examining it. Replacing it, he took hold of Wilgar’s hand. The boy’s nose pressed up against a jar of peppermint sticks and when the woman noticed, she opened it and presented him with one.

  “All this place needs is a pickle jar and a pot-belly stove with old guys playing checkers,” Kev said as he walked out. “Frontiers must always echo each other.”