War World X: Takeover Page 19

  They walked through streets in which children and women scurried like rats flushed from sewers. Pain and panic kept sounds loud and harsh. Fires flared where wooden structures stood and while some tried throwing water on the fires, other people simply looted or ran.

  Stone and semi-underground structures offered shelter for some, but the portals into such places were guarded by armed people with desperate faces: They would not lose easily the small hoard of life they’d scraped from exile and Haven’s hardscrabble environment.

  Now and then Cole raised a hand or brow in recognition. Informants, contacts, and low-level agents dashed to and fro, stirring havoc and tossing in confusion like mad chefs.

  “Some people are made for this kind of work,” Cole said, as they stood watching a group of men and boys demolish a building made of green, warped oak-like planks. “And I’ve never found it much of a challenge to rile people to riot, either. It’s controlling things afterwards, that’s where skill enters into things.”

  “You’re certainly an education,” Ibansk said. “Even to me, a rabble-roused Russian.”

  A man dashed up to Cole, his arm raised. His hand gripped a board with several nails through it. Cole smiled, then hit the man with a blur of elbow. Cole side-stepped as the man fell and walked on, ignoring him.

  A woman lurched toward Ibansk and threw her arms around his neck. She wore only a torn brown dress. She kept yelling about rape and doctors and then she began clawing at Ibansk, who rolled her off him by ducking at the waist. He kicked her smartly in the face, then danced away as she tried to grab his feet. “Am I so irresistibly handsome?”

  Cole hurried them along, leaping from stone roof to stone roof when able, ducking past flaming, spark-tossing wrecks when necessary. At the heart of Castell City, they came to a low mound of dirt surrounded by sandbags. A Waltimire sand-tank stood at the center of the mound, its flank-sacks empty just then. Several military types stood around it, some smoking, some spitting, all jabbering. None paid any attention to the arrival of Cole and Ibansk, who proceeded to the sunken door.

  “Wood?” Ibansk asked, knocking on the door. “Not armored?”

  “Metal’s costly around here,” Cole said. “Besides, it’s probably filled with compacted dirt. Stop shells better than Nemourlon, I’m told.”

  “Outposts are always told such optimistic things,” Ibansk said. He sounded quite sure of himself, and considering his background, probably knew about such things in personal detail.

  The door opened and three armed guards in body armor trained three different types of weapons on Cole and Ibansk, each of whom raised his hands. ID’s were checked and cross-referenced by blip and portable computer and finally by eyeball. “Okay, sorry gents,” the guard carrying the flame-thrower said.

  The other guards parted, and Cole led the way into the bunker. He walked down a slope for twenty meters, then veered left. “You’ve been here before?” Ibansk asked, his face showing how impressed he was by what he was seeing.

  “Good briefing, is all,” Cole said. “This is new, we call it The Egg. Rebels don’t know about it, yet.”

  “Rebels?”

  Cole ignored the other man’s sardonic tone. He turned into yet another corridor, then stopped at an unmarked door, this one metal, probably Dover Mineral Development’s best steel. Before either man could even think of knocking, the door slid back, revealing a carpeted office complete with a huge desk standing before what appeared to be a window. The scene apparently outside the window, however, belied the fakery, for it showed Washington, D.C. on a snowy evening, cars and pedestrians moving amidst the remaining stately architecture, the remaining pre-CoDominium monuments.

  Beside the Washington Monument, a second obelisk, this one neither tapered nor pointed at the top, rose to half again the older structure’s height. In contrast to the white marble of the Washington Monument, the CoDominium Block was made of black marble. Its corners were embraced by polished brass. An airplane beacon flashed on its top, where it was said the CoDo presidents met to discuss mutual benefits.

  “That beacon’s no longer operating,” Cole said. “With all the airspace restrictions, it wasn’t necessary. Birds can’t even get to it.”

  “It’s an old holo,” said the man behind the desk. Only when he stood and leaned into a recessed spotlight’s cone of illumination did his craggy features become clear.

  Ibansk snapped to attention. “General, sir,” he said, saluting and remaining ramrod stiff. Cole, on the other hand, merely gestured to the leather swivel chairs and said, “May we?”

  “Please,” said General Lassitre, whose black-sheep nephew, a Marine major, had delivered the first cargo of transportees, along with a second wave of Harmonies, to Haven, following the Reverend Charles Castell’s Harmony settlement. “Oh, and at-ease, Lieutenant”

  “Sir,” Ibansk said, his Russian accent thickening, chasing away any signs of American or English influence, as if taking orders and maintaining military formalities came easier to him in native tones.

  And as Cole and Ibansk sat, a fourth man entered the room, moving on cat-like feet with a fleeting look of surprise on his face. And before the general could introduce anyone, Cole extended his hand to the fourth man and said, “Taxpayer Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson,” in an impressed tone.

  Everything about Bronson was cubical. His head, his massive torso, his double-breasted suit, his legs, his big hands. “So we meet,” Bronson said, taking Cole’s hand in his like a child accepting a bite-sized candy.

  Ibansk muttered, “I’m honored to meet you, sir.”

  Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson’s eyes, hooded by folds of flesh not quite fatty, not quite ethnic, flicked to the Russian, then blinked and came back to Cole. A smile twitched the big man’s face, but only for an instant. In repose, his features seemed sullen and calculating. “It’s going well?”

  “As planned,” Cole said. He and the others sat when the general made a show of arranging chairs. Brandy was produced, consumed, and commented upon, then Bronson asked, “So when can we take command?”

  Cole said, “It’s been ten hours since full night fell. That means we’ve got twelve hours of full darkness left. We ought to be able to have everything mopped up by dawn, if—” and he paused, looking first at Taxpayer Bronson, then at General Lassitre, the latter of whom nodded.

  “Good. Then let’s do the Hand Trick,” the General said.

  To Ibansk’s puzzled look Cole only winked as the four men rose and left the room through a door to the left of the holo-window. They entered a conference room: A long table big enough to seat fifty took up the center of the room. A briefing screen had been adhesed to the wall, but it showed only a mini-sat view of the Byers’ System, probably from the vantage of the Alderson Jump Point and magnified many times.

  Nine men and three women sat at the conference table. Each wore the grim look of people out of their depth, away from their support, yet each radiated power. “County commissioners meeting the federal congress for the first time,” Cole whispered to Ibansk, who reacted with a blank look but said, “Da, dead souls. Read your Gogol.” A tone of pity crept into his voice, but his eyes glittered with nothing but good old Russian ice.

  What they really were only they knew, but each represented a district of the Shangri-La Valley, a map of which now appeared on the screen. Twelve districts, and one rep per each. A neat planetary quorum was thus instituted, whether the general population knew it or not. Through this carefully-selected instrument the CoDominium would rule, following the put-down of the Revolt of course. Legal niceties were thus observed in adherence to detail and in breach of intent, which, as always, was convenient to all participants—if not to all concerned.

  “Gentlemen,” said General Lassitre, a slender man with gray hair combed straight back in classic British Empire manner, After an appreciable pause, he added, “And ladies.”

  One of the women snorted, as if to indicate there wasn’t any such animal, especially in places like this. />
  Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson sat at the head of the table, The General sat to his left, Cole to his right, and Ibansk beside Cole. A military man sat beside the General, and he kept one hand flat on the table between them, as if holding down his note-box.

  “We must never waver in our resolve,” Taxpayer Bronson said. “My family means to have dominion, and so we shall.”

  “Hear,” some of the men said, until cut off by a glare from Bronson. “Sycophants bore me,” Bronson said. “What I want is results.” Here he regarded Cole with a look of tenderness, like a glutton surveying the inside of a melon just before devouring it.

  That’s when General Lassitre stood. He pulled his short sword from its scabbard. The ceremonial blade, half its length covered with scrollwork engravings, flashed as he emphasized his words with it. “We are poised to take Haven back from the leaders of the revolt, and they will be rounded up and dealt with according to martial law. You, as district reps, will cooperate fully and completely in this process, and in any other processes we, the legal military authority, may ordain or decide.”

  He paused, glared at each rep in turn. “This is not a negotiation,” he announced, slashing the blade down with a whoosh. He stopped it inches from the polished table, and its reflection hovered downward even as he lifted the blade again.

  One of the men winced as the sword swept and slashed. A few stared at it as if hypnotized. Others pointedly ignored it.

  “An under strength regiment of the 77th CD Marines are even now in orbit, twelve-hundred souls, and it can descend to restore order at a moment’s notice. They’ve been quietly assembled from Levant and Adyta, our two nearest Alderson neighbors.” Again the sword flashed, but this time the Sergeant sitting beside the General said, “But sir,” and made a move as if to rise to his feet.

  The sword came down hard, thunking into the table, and the Sergeant screamed. He raised his arm, now a blood-spurting stump. His hand lay on the table, twitching in a pool of blood.

  Lieutenant Ibansk half-rose, his face clenched harder than his fists. Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson showed no reaction at all, and Cole only smiled a little.

  “You see how we deal with nay-sayers,” General Lassitre bellowed, frightening the reps to their feet. “Now get out of here and get back in place and wait for your orders. Dismissed.”

  The reps filed out quickly, some gagging back vomit, others pale and shaky. None seemed unaffected and all would not only carry the image with them always, but all would spread tales of ruthlessness and unpredictable violence.

  When the last rep was gone Ibansk rushed around the table to help the stricken Sergeant, who howled a few more times in the direction of the fleeing reps before bursting out laughing. To an astonished Ibansk he held up his stump, then pulled it off. It was fake. A bulb-bladder was squeezed to effect the spurting, and the blood itself had come from a cow freshly slaughtered that morning for the evening’s steaks at the officer’s mess.

  Cole held up the hand, which proved to be rubber. From it he shook a couple fish, which continued to twitch. “Nice touch, the fish,” he said to the sergeant, who shrugged an Aw-Shucks and said, “Hand-jobs come easy to the average soldier,” which was the standard joke.

  “Just remember,” Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson said then, voice low and slow and as certain as stone. “Politics is theatre, and the best politics is Grand Guignol.”

  Ibansk looked puzzled again, but Cole explained the reference, particularly as it related to the French Revolution, as they walked back into the General’s office for the real meeting. “Short horror plays,” Cole said. “Theatrically macabre, meant to shock. By-passes the intellect, you see.”

  “Ah,” said Ibansk. “Surprising they’d bother by-passing what little intellect can be found around here. They’re taking things quite seriously, aren’t they? I mean, after all, it’s a Harmony planet.”

  “Do you know the definition of non-combatant? According to Ambrose Bierce: it’s a noun, means a dead Quaker—meaning pacifist. Change Quaker to Harmony and you’ve up-dated the Devil’s Dictionary nicely. And you’ve also pretty much defined the CoDo’s stance, I suspect.”

  They sat down and drew on other traditional Earthish parallels, from Entebbe and Murchison Falls to Dusa Marreb, from vertical insertions into Panama for Operation JUST CAUSE to the orchestrated ‘salvation’ of Grenada and even the stage-managed confrontations between the UN Forces and Iraq. Ibansk even knew about Central America.

  The plan Cole had ad-libbed, from dropping off arms with Jomo and other Docktown rubbish, to the Janesfort War and its taste of organized resistance in the form of the food boycott, to the later machinations with the purloined ore, pirated barges, social revolt in Castell City, and the frame-up of apparent Harmony complicity; the plan made sense in retrospect: That was all that counted. “And then I’ll retire,” Cole said several times during the meeting. It was his goal, his dream, his cherished hope.

  He might not have mentioned it had he glimpsed the cold glitter it caused in Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson’s hooded eyes.

  One watchtower burned where it stood, two toppled and burned where they fell. Two chicken coops on the Compound’s east side and the barn on its northwest side burned flat, but with minimal loss of stock. Crews of resourceful acolytes salvaged carcasses, and completed cooking the meat in huge pots hung over the Common Lodge fire-pit. Loose animals were gathered by children, some of whom had to wade into icy dewponds to fetch recalcitrant oxen and Long Angus cattle. The city gate had held, but a wagon of cayenne pepper had been dumped there, then set on fire. The stench drove everyone back, and it continued to smolder. “If we could’ve mixed the pepper with the meat we would’ve had a nice base for curry,” one of the Deacons observed.

  Mud froze where water had sloshed. Scorched gaps along the top of the palisade resembled cavities in an otherwise healthy smile. Some lodge roofs had burned, one had collapsed. Survivors wandered dazed, helping as much as possible to restore harmony, the kind found in order. The injured lay in the Birth and Medical lodge and only one was expected to die, a young woman who’d braved the burning barn to set free oxen from their stalls. Her robes had caught fire just as she ran out and she’d burned until a Bead, unable to wait for someone to fetch water from the north side dewpond, dropped to his knees and rolled her, smothering the flames. His hands required salve, but others, who’d done nothing but gape, needed balm for their consciences.

  “It’s a mess,” Kev said, “but it’s still here.” He surveyed the Harmony Compound from atop the Reverend Castell’s lodge. Ice coated the stone where water had splashed. Kev watched his footing, uncertain in torchlight, as he climbed down.

  “All’s discord,” Castell said. He sat just inside his entranceway, hands on his ankles, face resting on his knees. “And my father’s journal’s been stolen,” he added, sobbing: “All the secrets, all the tricks.”

  Kev squatted down beside his leader. He reached out a hand, placed it on a scrawny shoulder. “Saral wants to see you,” he said.

  “Her place is here. With me. Where I can look after her, get her healthy again.” Castell looked up. “Maybe the echo of a miracle’s been planted by all this noise.” He gazed with desperation into Kev’s eyes. “Maybe I can cure her legs, have her walking straight and proud again.”

  Kev looked away. “Maybe,” he said. He dropped his hand. “Just remember that polio is a song of its own, as tuneful to some as a child’s happiness.”

  “You learn too well,” Castell said. He placed his forehead on his knees. He shuddered a few times.

  Kev stood, moved away, letting the man cry in privacy.

  To the first Beadle he encountered, Kev said, “Saral Castell must be bundled in blankets and carried with care to her own home. Can you get some help?”

  “Yes First Deacon.” The man made the sign of the staff and eight notes, then scampered off, eager to please. He wanted now more than ever to be accepted, to qualify as a full-fledged acolyte and thus have a chance at becom
ing a Harmony. In such people Kev had placed his darker faith, for Beadles were the outer edge of the Church of New Universal Harmony, the ones who could still use violence when necessary, the ones whose easy transgressions and sins would be just as easily forgiven, as long as what they did served the interests of the kirk.

  Kev’s eye saddened as he watched the man run off. “Enthusiasm is Harmony’s greatest danger to itself,” he said, quoting the Writings. Then he added, in his own tone and words, “And I’ve manipulated it shamelessly.”

  “First Deacon,” Wilgar said, running up, leading Bren by the hand. “We saw the fire, from the palisade.”

  “Much of Castell City is gone now,” Bren said. “The rickety places all fell down and burned.”

  Kev began to smile and nod, then gave a sober look and glanced at Wilgar who had taken it all in. “There will be people needing help,” the First Deacon said, in a First Deacon kind of voice. “We must go to them.”

  “Should we not administer to our own needs first?” Wilgar asked. “The better to be able to help others?”

  Bren grinned and glanced away, still viewing Wilgar’s precocity as cute and relatively harmless.

  Kev, however, knowing now what the boy had stolen from the core of the massive knot, but not knowing how cynical or manipulative or Machiavellian or useful the advice it contained might prove to be, said only, “Your heritage must serve others to be worth anything.”

  Wilgar’s eyes glinted. He grabbed a torch from a sconce and said to Kev, “Let’s go, there’s something you should know about,” and ran off.

  Kev kissed Bren, shrugged and smiled in ignorance and apology, and dashed off after Wilgar whose reserves of energy and lung capacity easily let him out-distance the older man.

  They went from the Reverend Castell’s lodge past the dewpond and a fallen, burned watchtower. There Wilgar paused to examine the damage, seeming to look for something in the smoldering planks. He poked with his feet, risking the muskylope-hide boots which Bren had crafted for him last Eye-cycle.