I return to my maintenance depot covered once again in misery, broken power cables, and dangling traffic signals. My mechanic is glued to a datascreen, watching the spectacle of Madison burn. When he hears me approaching, Phil runs out and greets me with an exhuberance I find puzzling, given the sudden death of Jefferson's president.
"Hooeee! You really kicked some ass, big guy! Wow, how many a'them land hogs didja run over and shoot? About a thousand of 'em, at least! I'm so freakin' jealous, man, I can't even stand it, 'cause I hadda watch on the screen, stead'a bein' there, while you was right in the middle of it."
I come to a complete halt outside my maintentance bay, at a total loss for words. I have come to expect ruthless disregard for human life from the enemy, since species like the Quern, Deng, and Melconians operate under a belief system that does not include coexistence with another sentient, let alone space-faring, species. But not even fifteen years of monitoring POPPA leaders and their inflammatory rhetoric has prepared me for such an outburst from an individual who, so far as I have been able to determine, has never met—much less suffered abuse at the hands of—a Granger. I literally do not know how to respond to his glee.
He grins up at my nearest external sensor array. "So, how'd it feel, finally gettin' to show them land hogs what they got comin' to 'em? Betch'a ain't seen anythin' like that, ever, have you?"
Phil's questions give me the referents I need to frame a response.
"I am a Bolo Mark XX. Clearly, you do not understand what it means to be a Bolo. I am part of an unbroken lineage of humanity's defenders, a lineage that stretches back nine-hundred sixty-one years. I am programmed to defend humanity's inhabited worlds from harm. I have seen active service for one hundred fifteen point three-six years. During that time I have fought in three major wars, beginning with the Deng War of one-hundred fifteen years ago. I fought a new threat during the Quern Wars and was seriously damaged in the battle for Herdon III, where my Commander was killed. I have fought three campaigns in the current Deng War, which now engulfs thirty-seven human star systems.
"During those one hundred fifteen years of active service, I have received seventeen campaign medals, three rhodium stars, and four galaxy-level clusters, including a gold cluster for heroism on the killing fields of Etaine. During the battle for Etaine, I was part of a Brigade battle group of seventeen Bolos with a mission to halt the Deng incursion at any cost, since possession of Etaine would have opened the way into the heart of humanity's home space.
"We faced fifty Yavac Heavy-class fighting machines, eighty-seven Yavac medium-class, and two-hundred and ten Scout-class Yavacs. The deep gouge melted across my prow was inflicted by the concentrated fire of fourteen Yavac Heavies using a synchronized-fire tactic which punched through my defensive energy screens. Yavac fire melted ninety-eight percent of my armor and blew all of my treads to rubble. They then concentrated their plasma lances across my prow in an attempt to melt through my flintsteel warhull to inflict a fatal hull breach.
"I destroyed all fourteen Yavac Heavies and ground my way across the field of battle on bare drive wheels, killing every Yavac I could bring into range of my Hellbores. I destroyed seven troop transports attempting to land and took down a Deng heavy cruiser entering low orbit. By the end of the battle, all sixteen other Bolos in my battle group had been destroyed. Seventeen million human civilians had been killed, but the Deng advance was halted and turned into a retreat. The Deng High Command rightly concluded it would be far too expensive to continue mounting full-scale assaults at humanity's heartland. They therefore turned their attention to the border worlds just beyond the Silurian Void in an effort to gain a toe-hold for their own refugees. They had been forced to do this, as the Melconians have destroyed a third of the Deng's colony worlds in this sector and have threatened the Deng homeworlds.
"Given the extent of the war along the Deng/Melconian border, I was deemed essential to the continued defense of human worlds. Rather than being scrapped, I was fitted with new armor and treads and my damaged gun systems were repaired or replaced. I came to Jefferson, where I defeated a Deng battle group consisting of two armored cruisers, six Deng troop transports, eight Yavac Heavies, ten Medium-class Yavacs, twenty-eight Scout-class Yavacs, and large numbers of infantry I did not bother to count, but which ran to the thousands, at a minimum.
"Today, I was ordered to drive through city streets jammed with civilians who had been exercising their lawful right to free speech and assembly and did so in a peaceful manner until federal police forces began lobbing retch gas and breaking their bones with heavy truncheons. When they attempted to run for safety, they were met by a mob of urban vigilantes who hammered them into the pavement with a clear intent to kill. Their sole escape route was through the grounds of the Presidential Residence. This caused Gifre Zeloc to order me to crush anything in my path in order to prevent the panic-stricken crowd from climbing his fence. Despite my protests, he repeated the order to drive over everyone in my path, including the urban rioters entangled with the crowd of Grangers.
"I do not know how many people I crushed on Darconi Street tonight. I do not want to know. My purpose is defending humanity's worlds, not running over protestors. When Grangers stormed the Presidential Residence, I fired through the walls. I did so to protect a man who ordered the slaughter of his own supporters in the interests of saving his own neck. He then stupidly jumped through a window and landed in the middle of a group of people with intense cause to hate him. He died messily. Unfortunately, so did nearly a thousand innocents."
Phil gets quiet. Very quiet. I have never seen him so quiet. Even the nano-tatt on his face has gone motionless. He swallows several times without speaking. He stares at the ground beside my treads for one point three-seven minutes. He glances up and sees something embedded in my track linkages that causes him to blanch. He looks down again. "I didn't know any a'that," he finally says in a low voice. "Nobody on the news said none a'that. Not at all."
"That does not surprise me."
He looks up again, puzzlement clearly visible in his tattooed face. "You ain't surprised? What'cha mean by that?"
"The broadcast and print news media routinely exercise skillful, extensive, and selective editing in what they report."
"Huh? What's that mean?"
"They don't tell the whole story and what they do tell, they lie about. Frequently."
Phil's eyes widen, then narrow. "How d'you know that? You ain't everywhere. You just sit in this here building and do nuthin' all day except sleep or whatever it is a machine does."
"I do not sleep. Due to the circumstances of my last commander's recall, I remain awake twenty-five hours a day, every day. I have now been conscious without interruption for five years. I monitor all broadcasts originating from commercial and government sources. I scan the planetary datanet on a daily basis. I am able to access security cameras in virtually every governmental or private office on Jefferson and frequently do. I can communicate directly with most computer systems on this world. Ninety-nine point two percent of the time I do so on a read-only status, which allows me to access information entered by virtually anyone using a computer hooked to the datanet. When the situation warrants it, I can instruct computers to perform specific tasks, in the interest of successfully completing my mission."
"You can do all a'that?" Phil asks faintly. "Peek at what's on guy's computer screen? Or tell it t'do somethin'? You are kiddin', ain't'cha?"
"A Bolo Mark XX is not noted for a sense of humor. I do not 'kid' on matters of planetary security. I have noted," I add, "your preference for datachat sites with well-endowed and scantily clad women."
Phil and his nano-tatt turn an interesting shade of crimson. "You—I—but—" He halts, clearly struggling with some concept new to him. Thinking of any kind would qualify as a new concept for him. Given the visual cues I perceive, it is apparent that Phil is thinking, or trying to. I consider this a step in the right direction. He finally finds something to say. "If you can listen and read alla that stuff, how come you ain't told nobody about nuthin'?"
Phil is evidently making a valiant attempt, but not even I can decipher that statement. "Which things am I not telling to whom?"
He screws his brow into an improbable contortion of skin and writhing purple tendrils as the nano-tatt responds to some strong emotion. "All the stuff the news ain't tellin' folks. Like they never mentioned the president got killed, tonight. How come they never told us the president got killed, tonight?"
"I do not know the answer to that."
"But how come you ain't tellin' anybody about it? Anybody but me, I mean."
"Whom should I tell?"
He blinks for a long moment. "You coulda told the reporters an' such. You coulda told 'em they oughta be tellin' folks important stuff like that."
"What good would it do to tell someone who is lying and knows they are lying that they ought to tell the truth?"
He scratches the tattooed side of his face, looking deeply uncomfortable. It is clear that Phil finds thinking for himself difficult. "I dunno, I guess it wouldn't a' done much good, would it? But . . . You shoulda' oughta' told somebody."
"Do you have a suggestion as to who might listen?"
This is not entirely a rhetorical question. I would welcome—gladly—any genuine insight into how I should resolve the situation I face. Phil, however, just shakes his head. "I dunno. I gotta think about that, a little." He peers up at me again. "You gotta mess a'crap needs to be pulled off, again, up there. And you got stuff . . ." he pauses, swallows convulsively again. "You got stuff I gotta wash out of them treads."
He makes a semifurtive gesture with the fingers of his right hand, sketching a rough cruciform shape in the air in front of his face and chest. I surmise that he is, as are many individuals of Italian descent, Catholic. I surmise, as well, that he had—until recently—forgotten that fact. There may still be a human soul hidden beneath the indoctrination he has been fed since beginning grammar school, judging by the age listed in his work dossier. Or perhaps it is his martyred urban brethren who have nudged his conscience out of its coma?
He peers uncertainly around the maintenance bay. "Got any idea how t'do that? Wash you off, I mean?"
I suggest use of the high-pressured hose system installed for this purpose and guide him through the procedure of powering up the system and using the equipment without injuring himself. It is a long afternoon. By the time my treads and warhull are clean again, Phil Fabrizio is reeling with exhaustion. He stumbles out of the maintenance bay and staggers toward the quarters Simon occupied for so many years. He does not, however, go to sleep. He opens a bottle of something alcoholic and sits down in the darkness, drinking and thinking alone.
He is, at least, thinking.
After the day I have endured, any hopeful thought at all is something to cling to, as an antidote to rising despair. I did not think it was possible to miss Simon Khrustinov as bitterly as I do tonight, with bloody water coursing down the drains in my maintenance bay's floor and a blood-red moon rising above the Damisi highlands fifty kilometers to the east.
My day's battle has ended, but judging from the reports I monitor over news feed, government emergency channels, and frantic radio calls for help originating from virtually all parts of Madison and the Adero floodplain farms near it, the night's battle is just beginning. What is happening there and in every major urban center on Jefferson qualifies as murder.
It will, I fear, be a long and exceedingly dark night.
Kafari watched Yalena crawl into the sewer from her perch on the rooftop. The moment her daughter was underground, she used the aircar's comm-unit to tap into the datachat site most frequently used by Grangers in this part of Jefferson. She posted warnings on the main Granger sites and set the aircar's comm-unit to record a verbal warning that would start broadcasting on every civilian frequency she could access. She put the recordings on a count-down clock that would start ten minutes after she left. Then she rushed down the rooftop access stairs, climbed through a window, and lowered herself by her hands. She kicked out slightly to drop into the alleyway, jarring her feet with the impact, but taking no injury. It took only seconds to slither through the manhole and pull the cover on top of them.
Yalena was waiting below, holding a flashlight.
"I found extra batteries," she said.
"Good. We may need them. We'll try to reach the apartment."
Yalena just nodded. They set out, slogging through thigh-deep water. It was hard work and the water was cold, but she kept them moving steadily. They rested once every half-hour, heading north. When they finally reached the area near their building, Kafari found a ladder that led up to another manhole cover. The sun had long-since set, so they should be able to scuttle across the street and into their building under cover of darkness. Someone might spot them, but she was hopeful that the crisis underway downtown would keep the P-Squads too busy elsewhere to take note of their emergence from the sewers.
She was nearly to the top of the ladder when she smelled smoke. Kafari hesitated, trying to hear through the slots in the grate. The night was far too noisy, but she couldn't tell what it was, making that noise. So she put her shoulder against the cover and pushed up one edge, lifting it no more than the width of her hand. A tidal wave of noise assaulted her ears and the smell of smoke touched the back of her throat with acrid fingers. She peered out cautiously. The instant she saw what was happening, Kafari dragged the cover back down again, careful not to let it drop with a bang. Then she slithered back down into the muck and stood huddled over for long moments, fighting the need to vomit and shivering so hard her bones clacked against one other.
"What's wrong, Mom? What's up there?"
She shook her head, unable to speak just yet, and gestured farther north. Wordlessly, Yalena took the flashlight and the lead. An hour later, reeling with exhaustion and the chill of the sewage sludge, Kafari called a halt. She didn't want to eat anything, but they couldn't keep moving all night without fuel. It was a long and hellish walk to the spaceport from here. They pulled supplies from their impromptu carry sacks, chewing and swallowing while leaning against the sewer-pipe's walls. When they were ready to set out again, Yalena broke the long silence.
"What was up there, Mom? The last time we stopped?" Her voice took one a vicious edge Kafari had never heard, before. "Was it the Bolo, again?"
Kafari shook her head. "No." She didn't want to remember that glimpse into the lower circles of Dante's hell.
"What, then?"
She met Yalena's gaze. The glow of her daughter's flashlight caught the fear in Yalena's eyes, touched her skin with an eerie, red-tinged glow.
"Mom? What was it?"
Kafari swallowed heavily. "Lynch mobs." She managed to hold down the nausea surging up with those two bitten-off words.
"Lynch mobs? But—" Yalena's eyelashes flickered in puzzlement. "Who was there to lynch? Everybody in Madison supports POPPA."
Kafari shook her head. "They went out to the collectives. My warning . . ." She stopped, swallowed the nausea back down. "Maybe my warning didn't go out in time. Or maybe some people just didn't believe it. Or they didn't get out fast enough." It hadn't been the people hanging from light poles that had shaken her so desperately. It was the pieces of people . . .
"Where are we going?" Yalena asked in a whisper.
Her question dragged Kafari's attention from the horrors in town to their immediate needs. "The spaceport."
Her eyes widened, but she didn't comment on it or ask another question. Yalena's silence both relieved and distressed Kafari. Relieved, because she didn't want to think too closely about the charnel house, back there, let alone what she intended to do about it, once Yalena was safe. Distressed, because it illustrated in painful terms Yalena's sudden shift from trusting child to determined adult.
The next two hours were brutal, but they kept going, spurred on by the twin desires to remain whole and not end up as decorations for a light pole. By the time the sewer pipe narrowed enough to block their way, out near the edge of town where there wasn't enough infrastructure to need a larger effluent pipe, Kafari was more than ready to give in, as well. Shaking with fatigue and chill, they stopped at the next manhole cover they reached. It was nearly midnight, by Kafari's chrono. She whispered, "I'm going up top, to look."
Yalena leaned against the sewer-pipe wall, gasping for breath while Kafari climbed slowly up to the cover. She listened hard, hearing nothing but silence. Deciding the risk was worthwhile, she pushed against the heavy metal cover, wincing as it scraped and shattered the silence. She held it up a few inches and peered out. The city behind them was an eerie sight. Great swaths of it were dark, where the power was off. A ruddy, baleful glow flickered in the heart of downtown, where multiple buildings were burning. There was no motor traffic anywhere.
She peered in every direction, finding only silence and darkness. They were, as she had hoped, near the edge of town, out past suburbia. Even navigating blind, she'd come within a few blocks of where she'd hoped to be. The slums of Port Town were off to their left, a disorderly sprawl of tenaments, bars, sleazy dance halls, nano-tatt parlors, brothels, and gambling dives, all of it ominously dark, tonight, but far from silent. Kafari didn't want to know what was causing that particular combination of sounds. What she'd glimpsed back toward their apartment had been enough to give her nightmares for the next year.
To their right stood warehouses and abandoned factories with weeds growing in cracks in the parking lots. More or less dead ahead lay the spaceport, half a kilometer away. The power was on, courtesy of the emergency generators, which left the port buildings shining like stars in the stygian darkness. Kafari saw no police or federal troops, but that didn't mean there weren't patrols out. Given the total lack of traffic, Kafari was betting a martial-law curfew had been imposed. They couldn't afford to be caught, now. But they had to get out of the sewer and into the spaceport. They had to risk it.
"We've got about half a kilometer to go." They crawled up, shivering hard, and pulled themselves out onto the road. Kafari levered the manhole cover back into place, then they trudged toward Port Abraham. They didn't go in by the road. Kafari took them across country, the long way around, in the opposite direction from Port Town, toward the engineering complex and her office. If there were guards anywhere, they'd be around the cargo warehouses near Port Town. As they approached the main terminal complex, Kafari's puzzlement grew. The whole place was deserted. Not a cop, not a guard, nothing.
An uneasy glance over her shoulder revealed the baleful glow from fires that still smouldered. They were upwind of the smoke, but the magnitude of the disaster gave Kafari the clue she needed to understand the complete lack of port security. Every guard, cop, and P-Squad officer was needed elsewhere. Urgently so. They reached the engineering hub without incident. Kafari fished her ID out of a dripping pocket and headed toward the door she'd used five days a week for years. The reader scanned the card and they slipped through. Once inside, with the door clicked safely shut behind them, Kafari breathed a little easier.
"This way," she said in a low murmur. "There are maintenance locker rooms back here."
They limped their way through the back corridors, finding the lockers rooms and laundry facilities used by the maintenance and cleaning crews, cargo handlers, and shuttle pilots. They dropped their filthy, reeking clothes in a refuse bin, then hit the shower stalls. The feel of hot water and soap was glorious, working wonders for their spirits. Clean maintenance uniforms, socks, and shoes pilfered from lockers Kafari jimmied open made them feel almost human again.
Yalena held Kafari's now-clean belly-band holster under an electric hand dryer, while Kafari busied herself cleaning her pistol at a sink, rinsing out the worst of the muck. She reassembled the gun, then wrapped the now-dry belly-band holster around her midsection and slid the gun into it. She didn't even bother to conceal it under her shirt. Not tonight.
"What next?" her daughter asked quietly.
"We find ourselves some real supper and we board our transportation."
"Our transportation?" Yalena asked, frowning. "What transportation? I mean, where are we going?"
"The Star of Mali docked at Ziva Two this afternoon."
Yalena's brows, knit in puzzlement, shot abruptly upward. "Off-world?" she gasped. "But—" She closed her mouth, stunned. "You want us to go to Vishnu? To be with Daddy?"
Kafari nodded, not voicing her real plans aloud. After what she'd seen tonight, Kafari wasn't going anywhere. There was too much at stake. Too many innocent lives had already been lost. But Yalena was going out, whether she liked it or not. Even if Kafari had to knock the girl senseless to do it.
"How do we get off-world?" Yalena asked. "We don't have a shuttle pass. And I don't think the P-Squads would let anybody board any kind of orbit-capable shuttle, now." She gulped, seeing ramifications for the first time in her life. "They won't want anyone to know what's happening here, will they?"
"No, they won't," Kafari agreed. "But we're not going by shuttle. Not exactly. For right now, however, we find food," Kafari insisted. She tossed everything they'd carried with them into the nearest refuse bin, found a duffle in another pilfered locker, then led the way through empty, echoing corridors. They headed for the spaceport's food hub, where they raided a restaurant kitchen. Wolfing down supper took only ten minutes. Then Kafari started dumping food into the duffle.
"Why are we taking so much?" Yalena asked.
"Because I don't know how long it will take to get ourselves into orbit. Freighters operate on tight schedules and the Star of Mali is due to break orbit from Ziva Two about noontime tomorrow. If she leaves on schedule, we won't have to wait longer than a few hours. But if there are delays over the mess in Madison—especially if the president's been killed and I'm betting he has—we could be stuck for hours. Maybe days. And once we're in our hiding place, I don't want to come out, again. I won't risk getting caught trying to sneak out and grab more food."
Yalena, showing definite signs of wear and tear from their ghastly struggle, just nodded, accepting the explanation at face value. Kafari's heart constricted. Her daughter hadn't learned to be devious, yet. She zipped the duffle closed, then led the way through the spaceport along a different route, heading toward the cargo-handling side of the port. They found rows of big cargo-transfer bins, neatly labeled so the stevedores could tell at a glance which bins were consigned to which hold on the orbiting freighters or the occasional passenger craft. Kafari chose a big cargo box whose manifest tag said it contained processed fish meal, the biggest food export Jefferson produced. The idea of shipping any food had caused riots, particularly amongst the explosive urban poor, so POPPA propagandists had been very careful in assuring the public that the only food being shipped out was the treaty-mandated native fish, processed for Terran consumption.
"We'll open the top, scoop out enough fish meal to bed down, and pour the stuff we remove into a refuse bin somewhere."
Yalena nodded and scrambled up to try prying open the hinged top. "It won't open, Mom. I don't see any sign of a lock, but it won't budge. It's like the whole thing's been welded shut." She leaned down, peering over the sides. When she reached the back of the bin, she said, "Hey, that's weird. Look at this, Mom. Why would somebody put a door into the side of a cargo bin full of fish meal? It would flood out the minute you tried to open it."
Kafari crawled around to the back and frowned at the door that had been fitted into the narrow end of the bin. "You're right. That is weird."
"I'm going to check the other bins, Mom." She moved at a brisk pace through the stacked cargo boxes. "This one's got one, too. So does this one. And that one. The ones down here don't, but this whole row does." She was pointing at the bins nearest the warehouse doors.
Kafari's frown deepened as the implications of that placement sank in. "These would be loaded first, at the back of the freighter's cargo bay. Spot-check inspections wouldn't be as likely to uncover these, stacked in the back." That suggested all sorts of interesting things. She came to an abrupt decision and yanked the handle up. The metal door creaked open, but no fish meal poured out. The air that did flood out carried a butcher-shop smell with it. Kafari peered into the bin, using the hand light, and stared, struck literally speechless.
The whole, immense cargo box was full of meat. Not just any meat, either, and certainly not the noxious fish-meal they'd been shipping for years to the miners on Mali. She could see whole sides of beef. Thick, center-cut hams. Ropes of spiced sausage, a Klameth Canyon specialty that was confiscated by the government as fast as ranchers could produce and pack it. This food was supposed to be sent to the hard-working crews on the fishing trawlers and the high-latitude iron mines. If each of the modified cargo bins held this many dressed carcasses and processed meats, at least a quarter of the annual output of Jefferson's ranches was sitting right here, awaiting shipment disguised as something else.
Who had authorized the clandestine shipments? Gifre Zeloc? Or one of the POPPA king-makers? Maybe even Vittori, himself? Whoever it was, they were lining their pockets with what had to be immense profits, doubtless selling to Malinese miners who could afford to pay for meats the average Jeffersonian Subbie hadn't tasted in years. Kafari wanted to beam pictures of this to every datascreen on Jefferson. If enough people saw this, there would be food riots in the streets.
Until Sonny crushed them.
Choked by helpless rage, Kafari gripped the edge of the open door frame until her fingers turned white. Then she strode down the line, trying to judge what the loading order would be when these bins were hauled into the shuttle and boosted up to the cargo bay aboard the Star of Mali. "We go in this one," she decided. "It's less likely to get buried in the stack, which will give us time to get out and into the ship."
"Won't all the air escape?"
Kafari shook her head. "No, the shuttles will off-load into a two-tier cargo-handling system. When you've got perishables, you ferry them up in a pressurized shuttle and offload them through an airlock in Ziva Two. Stevedores there transfer the bins to the freighters' cargo bays, which are snugged into the side of the station. This bin will be under pressure the whole time. Let's close up the other one."
Kafari opened the one she had chosen, then scrounged until she came up with a rain tarp from one of the storage rooms adjacent to the warehouse's main floor. She pulled out a dozen full-sized hams, chilled for transport but not frozen, creating a space for the duffle and Yalena, then hauled the meat to a refuse bin and dumped it in, hiding the evidence of their tampering.
"You've got your wrist-comm on?" she asked Yalena.
"Yes."
"Good. That meat's not frozen, but we'll wait a bit before crawling in. No sense in getting chilled right away. Here," she sat down between the wall and the cargo bin, "snuggle up. We'll get some sleep."
Yalena curled up against her, leaning her head against Kafari's shoulder. Within minutes the exhausted girl was sound asleep. Kafari's throat closed. She hadn't held her child like this since Yalena had turned five. She wanted more of it, much more, and knew it was impossible. To keep Yalena safe, she had to smuggle her off-world, get her to safety with her father. Her eyes burned with hot, salty tears. The need for Simon's arms around her was a physical agony. All she had to do was climb into that bin full of meat . . .
She swallowed down the longing. During the last war, she had reached down into herself and found the courage, the strength to put aside her own terror and need for safety to save the life of a man her world had needed to survive. Tonight, on eve of a very different war—one that POPPA did not yet know had just been declared—she found herself having to reach down yet again for that courage, that strength. She had other lives to save, this time, perhaps thousands of others.
Kafari's new war was just beginning.
She waited until Yalena was deeply asleep. Once she was sure of it, she eased her way to her feet, lifted her exhausted daughter, and placed her—still sound asleep—in the space she'd created. Kafari tucked the tarp around her daughter and brushed back a lock of hair, bending to kiss her brow with the merest brush of lips. Then she eased the door closed and latched it. She closed her eyes for one long and dangerous, burning moment. Then straightened and strode through the empty spaceport to liberate transportation for herself.
It was time to do battle.
Simon was at home, running through another set of calesthenics designed to strengthen his muscles, when his datascreen beeped with an incoming message signal. Even after two years of hard work, he was still winded by the rigorous therapy that was an on-going part of his new life. He wiped sweat with one sleeve and moved awkwardly to the desk, breathing heavily.
"Khrustinov," he said, activating visuals as well as sound.
The first thing he saw was Kafari's face. His breath faltered. She was so beautiful, just looking at her was an aching pain in his flesh.
"Kafari?" he whispered, not quite believing his eyes.
"Oh, Simon . . ." Her eyes were wet. On second appraisal, she looked terrible. Her eyes were haunted, with deep purple smudges of exhaustion and something else, something that made his stomach muscles clench with dread. She reached toward the transmitter, as though trying to touch his face. He reached out with an involuntary answering gesture, touching the tips of her extended fingers with his own. He could almost smell the warmth of her scent, like a rich summer's meadow thick with wildflowers and honeybees.
"What's wrong?" he asked, facing the dread with squared shoulders. "And why are you broadcasting on a SWIFT system? We can't afford—"
"We're not paying for it. I broke into the spaceport's communications center so I could call. I've set this thing to transmit on security scramble, with an auto-descramble at your end . . ." Her voice was shaking. "Simon, the Star of Mali will break orbit at dawn, heading for Vishnu. Yalena's on it. I'm sending her to you."
"What? For God's sake, what's going on?"
"Gifre Zeloc's dead. So is Vice President Culver. They ordered Sonny to crush a Granger demonstration . . ." She halted as her voice went savagely unsteady. "Simon, he crushed people to death. A lot of people. I can't even guess how many. Yalena was in the crowd. With Ami-Lynn and Charmaine. I got Yalena out, but I couldn't reach her friends . . ."
Simon stared across the light-years into his wife's ravaged eyes, so shocked, he couldn't even speak. The pain in her eyes ran to the bottom of her soul.
"The survivors mobbed the Presidential Residence. Set fire to it. Yalena and I got out through the sewers. There's a slaughter underway, out there. Lynch mobs dragging Grangers off the PSFs and hanging them from light poles. Arsonists torching whole buildings, thousands of people smashing and looting." She drew a long, shuddering breath, trying to control the babbling narrative she was spilling out. "My cousin Stefano's on the Star of Mali. And the Star's captain owed me a favor. A big one. We smuggled Yalena aboard. Stefano's bringing her to you. They should make orbit around Vishnu in three days."
Simon wanted to ask, Why didn't you come with her?
But before he could choke the words out, she answered him. "I can't leave, Simon, not yet. I just can't. There are friends I have to help. Some of them used to raise Asali bees."
"Oh, Christ . . ." He understood in a flash who was in trouble. The pain in her voice made him want to wrap her up in both arms and never let go.
"There's something else," she whispered, hesitating.
"What?" he asked softly.
"You're going to get a message. From my parents. And probably one from the government. They're going to tell you that Yalena and I were killed in tonight's riot. I'm a dead woman, Simon. And I have to stay that way. Not even my parents will know the truth. What's going on here has to stop. That's what I intend to do, one way or another. Tell Yalena . . ." She faltered for a moment. "When she gets there, tell her I was killed trying to leave the spaceport. It'll be safer."
"Kafari . . ." It came out a groan of anguish. But he controlled the urge to plead with her, knowing it would do no good. "Be careful," he whispered, instead.
"I love you so much, Simon. So much it hurts, because it isn't enough. I can't love you enough, Simon, to go with Yalena, to be with you, again. I'm so sorry. Can you ever forgive me for that?" She was struggling to hold back the tears in her eyes.
No tears, he had said to her, once. Never shed tears on the eve of battle . . .
Kafari was every inch the colonel's lady, standing in an empty spaceport in front of a hijacked SWIFT transmitter, in the middle of a riot that was burning down her homeworld's capital city, ready to march into battle with POPPA and a Bolo, for God's sake, and all she could say was a broken apology for not loving him enough.
She would have made one hell of a fine Brigade officer.
Simon hoped, prayed, knew she would make one hell of a fine guerilla.
"Never say you're sorry for doing your duty. Why do you think I love you so much?"
Yet again, tears threatened—and yet again, they did not fall.
"Be careful, out there," Simon whispered.
She nodded, touching the video pickup. "I'll get word to you, when I can."
Then she gave him a salute, soldier to soldier. He returned it, feeling a tight constriction like a mailed fist that closed around his heart, capturing everything he had placed there for safekeeping, captured and held it—bruised and trembling—in a steel-hard grip.
Then the transmission ended and Simon was alone in his little apartment. He stood staring at the dark screen for long moments, wishing he could squeeze himself into the message bursts of an intersteller SWIFT transmission and stand by her side. Since he could not, he turned his aching thoughts to what he could do.
He contacted the Residency Bureau to arrange for Yalena's immigration.
Kafari landed the skimmer she'd stolen at the spaceport—having carefully disabled its ID transmitter beforehand—on the roof of her apartment building in Madison. After much soul-searching, she'd decided to brave the madness loose in the capital, to rescue equipment she would need from her apartment. She crept down from the roof unseen even by her closest neighbors, who were either outside participating in the slaughter or huddled behind locked doors and windows, too terrified even to peek out past closed curtains. The building was eerie, in its total silence.
It didn't take long to secure everything she needed. Her computer equipment was among the most powerful and sophisticated on Jefferson and she had kept Simon's military-grade communications equipment, which he had bought with his own funds, which would give her a secure means of talking to the people she would recruit. As commander of a rebellion that would be born tonight, she would need that gear. She stuffed personal items into a duffle. Clothing suitable for hiking in rough country, rugged boots, toiletry gear, a well-stocked medical kit. She added a few small mementos, things she could carry in one pocket while on the run: Simon's Brigade medals, her own Presidential Medallion, Yalena's pearl necklace, a few family photos she yanked ruthlessly out of their frames.
Then she forced herself to let go of the rest and hauled her gear to the roof without anyone spotting her. She was still loading the skimmer when the mobs surging through the streets torched the building. As she lifted off, what she glimpsed below burned itself into the very synapses of her memory. She set her jaw against the sickness trying to rip loose. She shot northward over the rooftops, streaking back toward the spaceport before making an eastward turn toward the Damisi Mountains. Once safely away, again, she tuned into Anish Balin's datacast, picking up the broadcast on her wrist-comm. His reaction to the massacres and rioting in Madison was blistering, combining acid demands for justice and cold, infuriated rage over the slaughter of unarmed, innocent civilians.
The most useful bit of news, however, was about her. The discovery of Kafari's wrecked aircar on the roof of that dance club had led Pol Jankovitch and the other mainstream news anchors to speculate darkly that she must have been involved in some nefarious conspiracy to kill the president and vice president. They were even suggesting that she had lain on that rooftop as a sniper, somehow contriving to force Gifre Zeloc to jump out the window, from the distance of half a kilometer from the Presidential Residence. She was, after all, a Granger and the wife of the Colonel Khrustinov, killer of worlds and the greatest enemy Jefferson had ever faced. Pol Jankovitch had waxed rhapsodic over her apparent demise under the Bolo's courageous treads.
Anish Balin's response not only ripped POPPA up one side and down the other, it actually brought tears to her eyes. It wasn't every day a woman heard her own canonization while still very much among the living. She couldn't bear to think about the anguish her family was suffering, watching and listening to those broadcasts. Particularly since she needed to stay dead. So she shoved her grief down to the bottom of her soul and concentrated on reaching Anish Balin's studio before the P-Squads got there.
A number of reasons had prompted Kafari to risk contacting him. He just might be serious enough about the Granger cause to risk greater danger, far greater than the mere string of warnings he'd received from P-Squads so far, to find a healthier line of work. He was also the most popular Granger on the planet, an icon of Granger attitudes and culture, well respected and capable of marshaling the kind of followers Kafari needed. Her conviction that Anish Balin's expected life span could be calculated in hours prompted her to head straight for his studio. He deserved fair warning, if nothing else. There was a great deal he could do, if Kafari could keep him alive long enough to do it.
She reached Maze Gap unchallenged and focused her attention on the high rock walls, not wanting to end up as a grease stain on the canyon walls. She used the skimmer's on-board nav computer to display a map that led her straight to Anish Balin's homestead. When she was half a kilometer away from his front gate, she stashed the skimmer in a crevice weathered into the eroding canyon walls, then hiked the rest of the way.
Anish's studio proved to be a small workshop behind his house, tucked back into a corner of Klameth Canyon. His house was dark, but she could see light through the studio windows, out back. She lifted her wrist-comm to listen. He was talking about her again, in terms almost embarrassing, and was furiously demanding an investigation into her whereabouts, accusing the P-Squads of holding her incommunicado for any number of sinister purposes.
When he signed off the live datacast and set his equipment for auto-repeat, Kafari made her move. The studio door wasn't locked. She eased her way inside, finding him seated at his console, shutting down various control boards. She waited long enough for him to complete the ritual, not wanting to interrupt his routine. Any deviation from his normal pattern might show up on somebody's security net—and Kafari was absolutely convinced that somebody was, in fact, watching his databoard very closely tonight. When he swung around to leave the studio, she stepped into the light.
His lower jaw came adrift.
Before he could utter a sound, she held one cautionary finger to her lips, then pointed outside. A muscle jumped in his jaw and his eyes went abruptly hard. He gave her a curt nod and followed her out into the night. They walked, by mutual consent, past the house where he lived alone, out into the fields he and his family had once tilled, before the Deng had blown them to atoms.
"You're dead," he finally broke the silence, out in the middle of a field that had grown up into standing hay.
"Yes," she agreed. "That will be rather useful, don't you think?"
He snorted. "Damned useful. You're planning to do something about that unholy pack of mobsters?"
"Oh, yes."
He hesitated. "Your daughter?"
Yalena's political inclinations were widely known, in Granger circles. "She'll be aboard the Star of Mali by the time it breaks orbit for Vishnu."
"Good God, how'd you manage that?"
Words got caught in Kafari's throat for long moments. Even having told Simon, already, she still found it difficult to say without breaking down. When she told him, he halted, his face and shirt pale blurs in the starlight, and stood motionless in the waist-high hay for long moments. Kafari wished she could see the expression on his face more clearly, but the moons weren't up yet and the starlight was too faint to see more than shadows and the faint glint of his eyes.
"I see," he said at length. The emotion in his voice was full of nuances that made two simple words into a profoundly complex political commentary. "And you stayed." It wasn't a question, it was an awe-struck compliment that rivaled Abraham Lendan's words to her, so long ago. "What do you want me to do?"
"To start with? Get the Hancock family out of Nineveh Base."
A soft whistle reached her ears. "You don't do things in a small way, do you?"
"There is no way to start small. Not with what we're up against."
"And what do you suggest we use for weapons? POPPA didn't leave us with much to choose from." The anger in his voice was an echo of an entire world's wrath.
"There are plenty of weapons. You just have to summon the nerve to go and get them."
"You must know something the rest of us don't."
"Like how to cripple a Bolo?"
"Jeezus!" He breathed hard for a couple of seconds. "You don't beat around the bush, either, do you?"
She swept her arms in a wide gesture, encompassing the dark canyon and the people who lived there—and those beyond, who also needed their help. "We don't have time for niceties. Not if we hope to get the Hancock family out of Nineveh Base alive. Let me ask you a pointed question. You've got a wide audience. Are any of them reliable enough to form a guerilla fighting force? One we can assemble tonight? And are any of them willing to die, striking our first blow?"
Anish Balin didn't hurry his answer, which Kafari found encouraging. The last thing they needed was someone eager to jump in with both feet before considering the very real possibilities for disaster. "I think so, yes," he said at length. "I've talked to a few people—in person, mind you, not over the datanet—people who've lost everything. Not just their livelihoods, but their homes and their land, legacies they were holding for their kids and grandkids, ripped away in POPPA's environmental land snatches and tax forfeitures."
"Yes," Kafari bit out. "I know too many of those, myself."
"The lucky ones had relatives they could turn to, people they could pool resources with, sharing workloads, establishing cooperatives like the Hancocks did. But a lot of folks—too many by half—were simply shipped to government-run farms. They're working the collectives at gunpoint. Would they be willing to die, to stop POPPA? Oh, yes."
"Fair enough. How quickly can you assemble a strike force? I want twenty people, at most."
"How soon do you want to hit Nineveh?"
She smiled in the starlight. "Oh, it isn't Nineveh I had in mind to hit. Not first, anyway."
"What on earth have you got up your sleeve?"
"A few tricks I picked up over the years. But there's one more thing I want to say before we go any further with this. It concerns you. After tonight, Vittori Santorini is going to come after Grangers with a vengeance. You are the best-known—and most vocal—Granger advocate on Jefferson. You wield enough influence and popular support to cause a whole lot of trouble for the Santorinis. They have to take you out. What's worse, you've given them the perfect legal pretext for doing it. You hacked into federal security systems to download the Hancock family massacre footage and the distress call they sent out."
"I had to do that. And you damned well know why!"
"Yes, I do. And, yes, you were absolutely right. Getting that recording into the hands of the public was the most critical service anyone has provided Grangers in the last ten years. It woke up my own daughter and she'd supported POPPA—and I mean really believed in it—virtually her whole life. But they'll crucify you and use that illegal download as the excuse for destroying you."
"You seem awfully sure of that."
"I watched them destroy my husband!" He flinched from the serrated edge in her voice, shuddered visibly, even in the faint starlight. She said more gently, "They can't afford not to take you out. Especially now, with the president and vice president dead. The government's in chaos, Madison is burning, and the Santorinis need a scapegoat to blame it all on. You're the voice of Granger opposition. A rallying point people will flock to, a natural leader they'll follow. And the Santorinis know it. You want my best guess? You'll be in custody before dawn. And I seriously doubt you'll live long enough to come to trial. The only choice you have is the one I've already made for myself. Disappear into the darkness. Then make them fear the shadows."
He didn't say anything at all for long moments. Wind whispered past high overhead, moaning across the clifftops. "Lady," he finally said in a voice full of rust and respect, "you are one tough bitch. And scary as hell." He wiped his forehead with one sleeve despite the rising chill of the night wind. "All right. How light do we travel?"
"How much of that studio equipment can you rip out and transport in the next couple of hours?"
"My studio equipment?" He stared at her. "Why, for Chrissake?"
She pushed hair back from her brow. "Because this won't be a short war. We're going to need a command post—a mobile one—and good equipment. I've already salvaged my computer and some communications gear. You've got equipment we'll need, as well, if you can dismantle it in time. Bear in mind that we also need to assemble fire teams, tonight. I want to hit three targets before dawn. The first will give us the small arms we need to take Barran Bluff arsenal. The arsenal will give us the firepower we've got to have, to tackle Nineveh Base. Hyper-v missiles. Octocellulose mines. Mobile Hellbores."
He reached up to grab a handful of hair on either side of his head. "Jeezus Mother H . . . You don't ask for much, do you? You want I should throw in the keys to Vittori's palace?"
"Might save time," Kafari agreed equably.
He let out a strangled sound that defied interpretation. Then gave a sudden snort. "I can see already, things won't ever be boring with you around. All right. Lemme think, a minute."
Kafari waited.
"Okay, we might just pull it off. I've got some calls to make. We could probably recruit twenty, maybe thirty people right here in Klameth Canyon, in the next ten minutes. Could be as many as two or three hundred, if we have time to contact everybody on my nothing-left-to-lose list. We can put some of them to work dismantling the studio. That isn't as complicated as it looks. You can pack a lot of function into a setup as small and simple as mine. The rest of us can work on your battle plans."
"Good. Start calling. I'm going to borrow your computers while you start assembling the team. There are a few other illegal downloads we need to make and I've got to hack my way into some seriously tough systems, to do it."
He didn't ask why—or what.
Kafari took that as a good sign, as well.