I could hear on the comm channel a growing clamour from the marine commanders, telling them to hurry up, that the streets ahead were filling with people and would become impassible in minutes. Our two squads finally disappeared into one of the service corridors, leaving an excited crowd in the street. A small army of public safety officers gathered to blocked the entrance to the corridor. When the reporter finally got close to the entrance, the officers were claiming that the DG would issue an explanation soon, but it was clear that they had no idea who had disappeared into the corridor, nor why they had been called to close the entrance.
Leilani and I stared at the screens, dumbfounded. Even having seen it all from the start and having helped to plan much of it, I did not really understand what had just happened. I checked the time and realized that the whole episode from the moment they had left the elevator till they disappeared into the service corridor had lasted only twenty minutes.
I was going to have to have a long talk with Katerina about the importance of spooks staying in the shadows. She was a negotiator, not an agent, so the mistake might not have been obvious. Evgenia, too, might be forgiven, since her work had always been done in the quiet offices of accounting and law firms. Regardless, both women were intelligent and perceptive, at the cutting edge of their professions. They must have recognized that walking up main street in costume performing miracles was going to attract unwanted and uncontrollable attention. That kind of mistake must never be repeated if any of us was to work at a responsible job again.
I sent a brief message to that effect to Morris, Singh and Molongo. I got an equally brief reply from Molongo that when this was over we were going to have a very long, heart-to-heart debriefing, in a quiet place with padded walls. I was not sure whether they meant it, but I almost hoped it was true.
The earth stations were large, but twenty minutes was far more time than was needed for a fast-moving team of marines to reach the DG’s office from the Tokyo Drop. I hesitated for a few moments, then asked Sergei to report if he could. He replied after a few minutes that he was only halfway there. The service corridors were almost as congested as the main roads, with enraged business owners trying to drive their bewildered employees into battle against their enemies, rivals, neighbours and even customers. He had been forced time after time to heal the combatants and quell the fighting. He laughed that he felt like Lenin leading a band of Cossacks in the Communist Revolution and that he addressed everyone he met as comrade. I could feel the hair at the back of my head rising as he mused that many people on the Deng seemed to think he meant Comrade Mao, especially if they noticed the insignia on the marine’s armour.
“Sergei, you have not been up here long enough to recognize the hazard of that. You could probably get away with calling people comrade on the Khrushchev, but not here on the Deng. The Deng is filled with people from East Asia, and Han Chinese have been a minor part of the population since the Final War. They revere him as the leader who ended a long era of civil wars and re-unified China. His success terrified his neighbours, so the Manchurians, Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Thai, Burmese, Tibetans and Uighurs all remember ‘Comrade Mao’ as a kind of monster. That is acceptable when naming a warship, like calling it the Yamamoto or the Napoleon, but when addressing people on the street you may start as many fights as you stop. Think of a better salutation.”
He replied, “Hmmm, yes. I like everyone I have met on the Mao, so the name has good connotations to me. How about... sorry, have to go. We just reached the next battle zone.”
Katerina and Evgenia also reported confrontations in the service corridors. One by one they cleared them, working their way towards the LE and Admin offices. Secrecy was no longer an issue, so we started to get reports after each confrontation. There were often real economic issues involved in fights in the service corridors, making them more bitter and more violent than the madness in the streets. It was not just demented managers swinging at random passers-by, but whole companies settling grudges that were now perceived as intolerable insults.
Leilani and I recognized gang members amongst the combatants, exploiting the violence to carve out new territories. There were also perfectly sane managers trashing their competition. These fights would stop when the heavily armed marines arrived, and we took the opportunity to capture images of every participant with the clear implication of charges to be laid as order was restored.
The reputation of the Banshees bringing healing had spread like lightening through the station. The warning of justice spread equally quickly. The level of violence began to dissipate, but quieter groups brought out weeping, raging, twitching victims to be healed. Some of the worst were bound with tape, rope or just held tightly by their companions. Most distressing were the injured. Many of them were not demented and required medical care that we could not provide. The Public Safety officers were calling for help from anyone they could, far outside their legitimate authority and relying on favours and local friends when official help was unavailable.
We may have had issues with Station Security on the ESK, but on the ESDENG the low-ranking officers we met in the service corridors reported that they were arresting their demented superiors, holding them in their own brigs until our arrival. StaSec had been last on our original list of targets, but I asked Sergei to help them as soon as he was finished with the DG’s office. Perhaps the DG could live without diplomatic assistance for a while longer.
When Katerina and Evgenia reached the LE offices, I called for a damage report before we entered the first of our primary targets. Two of the marines had taken bullets from pistol-wielding combatants, which were bruising for someone wearing armour but not life threatening. The combatants had been subdued with nonlethal force, and were in far worse shape than their intended victims. Sergei boasted that the sleeve of his shirt had been cut, revealing his mighty biceps. He was clearly on an adrenaline high, and I tried to warn him that the medical facilities on the Deng were becoming overfilled, so he needed to take more care. He laughed and promised to fight more skillfully so that he would come home with the rest of his clothes intact. Katerina and Evgenia were more subdued, intimidated by the unexpected level of violence they had experienced. They had bruises on their arms and legs, but no cuts. I allowed that Sergei probably had a few unreported bruises as well, and maybe a cut or two if his shirt had been that badly damaged, but he refused to admit to any other injuries.
I exhorted them to take more care, reminding them how long it had taken to reach their current locations. They were now deep in the governmental wing, surrounded by offices, sprinkled with restaurants and trendy, expensive stores. None of the government offices were fully trustworthy from what we had seen. If anyone was seriously injured, we could not get them back to the Mao in time to save their lives.
I was becoming sufficiently concerned that I passed a request to the squad commanders to be even more careful to shield the Banshees from harm, given that they had no armour beyond their clothes and their moral persuasiveness. I got back three solemn pledges, more heartfelt than was normal in the military.
Leilani called my attention to another channel in the news feeds. One of the amateur reporters on the Deng flourished a copy of the Council proclamation that we had drafted. It was picked up within minutes by the regular news channels, so I called Morris, Singh and Molongo to alert them to the developing story. Morris replied that he had finally got a copy through to his office on the Earth, so they could vouch for its authenticity, but he still expected all hell to break loose in the next few minutes.
He was not disappointed. Over the next hour we watched another round of perplexed speculation amongst the talking heads on the ground, most of whom still had not realized that a crisis was unfolding in space. There were denials, charges of conspiracy, and claims that the whole event was a fraud, a piece of street theatre. Those claims in turn were contradicted by reporters on the earth stations who tried to interview demented officials, and were sometimes b
eaten for their efforts. There were numerous attempts to contact the Terrestrial Council to verify that the statement was genuine, but the few Council Ministers who could be contacted in their offices all denied having prepared it. Extraterrestrial Affairs finally verified that the statement had been issued by the office of Very Senior Minister Morris, but did not know where he could be reached for further comment. Officers at the TDF headquarters flatly refused to confirm or deny anything. Some of the tabloids started to worry loudly about another Martian Incursion with millions or billions of dead. To us, it was all noise in the background while our attention was focused on our Banshees.
Evgenia’s squad separated from Katerina’s, continuing along the corridor towards the admin offices. The crowds were thinner here and better disciplined. She only had to stop three more times when frightened office workers brought out struggling managers to be healed. Most of the doors remained closed, not disabled by tokens but shut, manually locked and often barricaded. It seemed like an ominous development.
It was, of course, impossible to enter the government offices directly from the service corridors, except through delivery bays that we verified were locked and barricaded. It was necessary to emerge from the service corridors and approach the office from the street. As with the doors along the service corridor they had passed, the main entrance to LE was locked. The guards and receptionists had been terrified by what they heard happening in the inner offices and saw in the streets outside. They had closed and barricaded the doors to both the street and to the inner offices, cowering between two raging mobs. However, they had also seen the reports of our progress through the station. When Katerina and the marines appeared, they were welcomed as saviours by the office staff.
Katerina turned on the audio feed as they approached the hallway leading to the inner offices for Law Enforcement. They cleared the barricading furniture and approached the door, but even through the comm we could hear a lot of incoherent shouting beyond it. Katerina stepped aside behind the shelter of two marines and unlocked it. The marines sprang through the door as it opened, weapons held at the ready. There were a few cries of, “They are here. The Martians are here. We are saved!” But there were others who recognized the marines and shouted, “We are being invaded by the Earth traitors! Kill them!” A shower of bullets flew out the door. The guards and receptionists fled out into the street, one of them leaving a trail of blood where a ricocheting bullet had sliced his leg. The marines replied with their own fire, then called Katerina to enter. She described four people writhing on the floor, battered by rubber bullets and electrical shocks, but not actually bleeding. Katerina addressed the people in the hall, “Beloved friends, be at peace. The Terrestrial Council sends you warning and healing. We welcome your input to the debate on how to respond to the Martian Imperium, but they are not yet here.” And then she turned off the audio feed while she dealt with each person individually in the hallway.
Evgenia arrived at the admin offices and turned on her own audio feed. No one in the reception room was demented, but they were as terrified as the receptionists in LE. They were too frightened by the violence in the streets to go home, too scared to open the door to the labyrinth of offices and work areas behind them. The door, however was neither disabled nor locked, just closed and barricaded with desks. The marines pushed the door open a crack and Evgenia called in, “Dear friends, may we come in? We come from the Terrestrial Council to bring warning and healing...”
An angry voice from inside demanded, “Did you bring guards? There have been mobs in the streets. We have seen them. And those weirdos in costumes. What the hell is happening?”
She continued, “We have a squad of marines from the TDF Mao to ensure your safety. I am one of those weirdoes. Our costumes were a deliberate choice to make us distinctive, and our masks are required for our own security. Please, may we enter? I can explain what is happening, but it is difficult through the door.”
I could hear her voice becoming tremulous as her tension increased, so I called “Evgenia, you are doing well.”
There was a light scraping sound of desks being pulled out of the way. The angry voice continued, “You can come in, but alone. Leave the marines out there to guard us. Can you really heal these people like the news feeds are claiming?”
Across the room, I could see Marin gesturing “NO”. I called across, “Doctor Marin, are you monitoring Evgenia?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I do not get the binary, but the bits that can be serialized are getting through. Evgenia is about to have a coronary. She is terrified.”
I sent, “Evgenia, do not enter alone. Take the marines with you. Be very firm. Insist upon it.”
She called through the door, “I can see some people on the floor. They appear to be in shock. I may be able to help them, but I must ask, are you alone? Is anyone armed? I will not enter if anyone is armed. The marines must come with me. There are no enemies in the streets right now.”
The angry voice allowed, “One. Bring one. I am alone and unarmed.”
One of the marines said, “Lady Liberty, may I help you through this door?”
Evgenia exclaimed, “Oh, there are so many.”
Then she turned off the audio feed so she could go to work. The squad commander picked up the commentary. The angry man was alone in a room of people paralyzed by the intensity of the attack. He was terrified and barely rational himself, but not demented. The commander describing with awe how she moved from one victim to the next, asked the no-longer angry man for the name of each person, then laid her hands on their head and called them by name, “Mailing, dear friend, be free. Turn your comm unit off and leave it off. You will not need it for work today.”
Marin commented, “For a woman who is one of our sharpest legal minds and a strict by-the-book accountant, she seems to brim with emotion. At least she is more stable now that she is in the room working.”
I nodded, “The powerful emotion is exactly why she went into law and accounting. She told me she found confrontation too stressful. I expect the ritual blessing helps keep the terror at bay as well.”
Katerina began to send brief updates as she moved down the hall into the LE offices. Each room was different, each victim showing different symptoms. Following Evgenia’s example, she gathered a small group of office workers who could tell her the name of each victim. The commander mentioned that she began each blessing with their name, “Leipeng, Beloved, be at peace...”.
Morris called once to demand she stop being so familiar with an official message from the Council, but I told him it was a medical and social issue, not a political or legal one, and besides it seemed to work at calming terrified and confused people. I was grateful when Marin backed my position.
Katerina finally found an office manager named Nguyen Troong amongst the paralyzed victims. Once healed, he had sufficient understanding of the comm unit and a sufficiently calm personality that she trusted him with the macros and filters. She drafted him as a fellow healer.
Evgenia finally left the outer office. Her formerly angry advisor, a man named Wei Vladimir, had not dared to continue to the deeper offices, having heard screaming earlier in the day. There were men and women lying in the hall with broken necks, knife wounds and smashed skulls. Evgenia demanded that the Marines precede her, which I backed up absolutely. She hardly needed to; they pushed past, surrounding her and Wei like a cocoon as they moved slowly forward.
I warned the commander of her team that real Martians often booby-trapped passageways with explosives, although it was not clear whether they would have been able to sneak such materials past the admin security. The commander replied that he would take every precaution. Neither of us mentioned the possibility to Evgenia.
There was a sudden burst of messages.
“[CMDR LIU] Officer down! Medic.”
“[TIPU] I’ve been shot!”
“[ASHURA] Beloved!”
“[CHOU] Kat, are you alright?”
“[TIPU] Flesh w
ound! I am fine.”
Then, just to me and his superiors on the Mao, Commander Liu sent, “Angel Love has been shot in the stomach and is bleeding profusely. I am taking her to the MI R&R, which is just a few doors down. The shooter has been stunned and is being put in restraints. Manager Troong has volunteered to continue to heal people in the LE offices. I have ordered Marines Thomas and Roald to guard him and the shooter, but to advance only with extreme care.”
I fired back, “MI has not been cleared yet. All the accompanying marines must stay with her, even into the surgical theatre. Use your MI and Council credentials. Demand emergency medical access, protocol ‘Critical Diplomatic’, override ‘Immediate, Medical’. General Molongo, can you authorize an immediate security override so they can get into MI R&R without stopping at security?”
Molongo took a moment to reply. “Done. Douglas, you had better get back here to the MI office. I had dozed off, even with all this excitement.”
Leilani yelled, “Tell Commander Liu that I am coming to replace Katerina. And warn him I will not address the traitors as ‘beloved’. Marin, are you coming?”
Then by comm, “Captain Wang, I need a transport and a squad of marines. Evgenia, Sergei, pause and evaluate your surroundings. Are people changing their behaviour? This may be a coordinated attack. Proceed only when you are confident of your security.”
Leilani and I were still in our white pajamas, but Leilani was jumping towards her banshee costume, Marin towards her armour. I cried out, “Doctor Marin, no. You must travel as a Banshee. We cannot lose you to a token attack.”
Then I called out to Evgenia and Sergei. “Katerina is being taken to MI R&R under guard. Leilani will take her place. Marin is coming to attend to her medical needs and to bring her home to the Mao. Take a few moments to collect yourselves if you can, then continue with extreme care. You have made great progress so far, but we must complete this mission successfully and return everyone safely home.”
Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust Page 40