by Brian Smith
“Well, hell, on the technology front, too,” Ford added quietly. He glanced around surreptitiously before leaning in, in order to speak in a lower tone of voice. “You ever hear anything back on whatever that thing was that killed Danvers?”
It still wasn’t something comfortable for him to think about, much less verbalize. The fight had gotten personal in the corridors of the gunship, like a cut-and-thrust boarding action from yesteryear—men and women fighting hand to hand, smashing through faceplates with Ka-Bars, and spraying weapons fire at close range in enclosed spaces. It was the most intense experience of Ford’s life, the most desperate, and even two months later he still wasn’t sleeping very well.
“Not a word, either on that drone or those nice little particle beamers,” Hutton replied. “Not that I would hear anything, though—that stuff is above my pay grade, and not my usual circus. The Marines back on Marineris thought it was some form of illegally produced synth, programmed to fight autonomously like the drones they were making.” She sighed. “One more thing to add to the law-enforcement stack. Policing the solar system is a bigger job than anyone ever thought it would be. By itself Mars is damn near impossible—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how many little uncharted pressures and habs are scattered around this planet, and on Luna. . . . It’s just ridiculous. Not only that, what used to be small outposts under corporate control are growing into larger, independently governed cities like Schroeter. Even the big cities under national flags allow almost unfettered travel out here—it’s like borders don’t really exist on Mars, except on maps.” She gestured to the overcrowded table of Chinese spacers. “Case in point.”
“Hmm,” Ford grunted around a bite of chicken.
The two paused and eyed the synth server that approached their table. It asked how they were doing and if there was anything they needed. “Another beer?” it asked Hutton. She nodded, and Ford ordered another as well. As the synth strolled away, they both eyed it with a newfound sense of wariness.
***
Halfway across the room at another table, Mike Ashburn and Colin Harper were feasting on real barbecued chicken and chewing the conversational fat. They caught each other up on their recent lives, and then Ashburn spent some time venting his frustrations over the Crandall Foundation and Bill Campbell, for whom he was developing a truly genuine dislike. Harper nodded when his friend ran down the list.
“The problem with the boss is that he’s an engineer through and through, and not a people person at all,” he explained. “He can be personable enough if he tries, but he usually doesn’t. He tends to see people as tools rather than people. If you’ve got a skillset he finds useful, in his mind you’re just another tool to be used, and that’s why he asked you for this favor. Are you going to do it?”
“Probably,” Ashburn replied sourly. “I told him I would, so if I back out now, I’m probably off any sort of list of Daedalus candidates forever. I’m debating whether I should talk to Boss Forester about the whole thing myself before we ship out. Campbell said he’d clear it with him, but I’m not sure I trust him on that.”
“I’ve found him honest enough, but he’s jerking you around a bit,” Harper agreed. “Way of the world, eh, mate? If someone can twist your arm to get what they want, you can bloody well bet they’ll try.”
“Well, there’s only so much crap I’m going to take off this guy,” Ashburn groused. “Like grandma used to say: ‘You can shit on me, but you can’t rub it in.’”
Harper burst out laughing. “I’m going to steal that, mate!”
“Be my guest,” Ashburn replied. He leaned in slightly. “Say, I’ve probably spilled more beans than I should about Campbell and this Titan bullshit—what’s your opinion on the security side of the house? You’re the division chief, right?”
Harper shrugged. “I am, but I’m completely disconnected from whatever this other stuff is that he’s got going on. The only thing I can think of that’s even remotely related is that a few years ago he asked me for a list of independent corporate-security contractors I thought were trustworthy enough to handle some side jobs. I remember feeling a little insulted at the time. Aberdeen’s in-house security division is like a small private army—it’s like running a bloody regiment. There isn’t any security requirement Aberdeen has that I can’t manage in-house. Turns out he never used them for anything, though.”
“Sure he did, but it didn’t have anything to do with Aberdeen Astronautics—at least directly. Does the name Tafuna Yaro ring any bells?”
Harper took a long swallow of beer. “It does, actually.”
“Good outfit? Aboveboard? They seemed okay, but you’d know better than me.”
“I wouldn’t have put them on the list if they weren’t. I almost ended up signing on with them right after I left the Royal Marines. They were willing to let this pass,” Harper added, pointing at his eye patch. “As it happened, Aberdeen made me a way better offer and there was no comparison. So here I am.” Harper shifted slightly, looking a little uncomfortable. “Maybe we ought to drop this line of conversation, at least here in public,” he added.
Ashburn nodded, shrugging slightly. “It’s nothing nefarious, in any case,” he remarked casually. “My guess is that your boss has some side business dealings he doesn’t want people to know he’s involved with. I was just curious what you knew, that’s all.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re privy to some things I’m not,” Harper replied. “Seems that‘s how the boss wants it, too, so best if we leave it alone. I’ll say this, though: I’ve been in the corporate-security and counterespionage game for a few years now, mate. It can be downright rough, especially in the outer system. If you’re going to play in that sandbox, be very careful where you stick your shovel.”
“Hell,” Ashburn groused, staring morosely into his beer. “All I want to do is go to Alpha Centauri.”
***
Across the room, while Ford was explaining to his date that he passed the time on long patrols by learning the blues guitar, someone on one of the flatscreens caught his eye. “Hey, look, there’s your guy,” he said suddenly, gesturing up at the monitors. Hutton turned and frowned slightly at the sight of Gabriel Rogan, the fugitive leader of the Mars Independence Movement, making another transmission from some undisclosed location.
Ford and Hutton weren’t the only ones who noticed, either. The general noise level dropped off to almost nothing as patrons wirelessly plugged into the commentary via their eardots and an uplink to the Marsnet.
“Want to listen in?” Ford asked. Hutton nodded, selecting the audio circuit wirelessly through her ocular interface. Rogan’s cultured voice suddenly sounded in her ears. It was another of his militant rants about Martian independence, advertised as a live broadcast although there was no way to know for certain that it was in fact live. She could imagine the current scramble as a small army of law-enforcement cyber analysts around the planet went into frenetic high-gear, working desperately to pull any information out of the cloud that would help authorities track this man down. The Chinese wanted him in the worst way in the aftermath of the drone-swarm attack on their city, and Hutton didn’t blame them. Because of the nature of the attack, he’d been labeled a terrorist, making him a fugitive across national boundaries. Like any marshal worth her pay, Hutton fairly salivated at the thought of being the one to bring him in.
In much the same manner as other MIM cell leaders, Rogan remained frustratingly elusive. People claimed to have seen him at different times and in different places all over Mars, both in and out of flagged territories, and even as far away as Callisto, Ganymede, and Luna. People who were seen with him either had no recollection of being in the same room with him or had verifiable alibis that placed them elsewhere. This lent weight to the suspicion that his broadcasts were digitally doctored, but apparently the experts on that subject were finding that oddly difficult to prove. Rumor had it that you didn’t want to be seen in a transmission with Rogan and that, if you were
, you’d best stay away from anything or anyone with CFR ties. The days of the People’s Republic were long gone, but the Chinese were still capable of taking a very hard line when they felt the circumstances warranted it. Their police and intelligence services had long since evolved beyond hot irons and the rack, but their modern techniques were bad enough. It was whispered that China’s Federal Ministry of Security could put subjects into a virtual-reality interrogation chamber and peel their minds like an onion. When it came to Rogan, they were willing to peel as many minds as it took.
Ford wondered aloud if maybe Rogan might not even be a real person at all, but a virtual avatar designed by the MIM to be their mouthpiece and lead the authorities on wild-goose chases. Hutton informed him that the possibility was being explored, but that various government agencies had enough physical evidence to confirm that Rogan was a real person.
Rogan was starting to turn into a real problem—he was a charismatic speaker and obviously well read, and the issues he played on struck a nerve with large numbers of Marsmen. He routinely incited Marsmen to violence against Earth-based agencies, corporations, and natives, describing methods of asymmetrical-style warfare that could be waged against their “Terran oppressors” and promising that the MIM would inspire them to rally with larger-scale attacks against the “illegal occupiers” riding over Mars in Halsey Station, Yang Liwei Station, and other bastions of flagged territories throughout the solar system. Attempts to jam these broadcasts were outright unsuccessful—another problem that government-paid net engineers and cyber specialists were trying to solve. It wasn’t too hard to avoid being muzzled in a U.S.-flagged territory under the First Amendment, but when even the Pan-European Union couldn’t censor or jam Rogan on their own network feeds, it suggested that the MIM were the information-warfare varsity—right along with the intelligence and technology varsities, apparently. It was downright troubling.
“Y’know,” Ford remarked quietly at an opportune moment, “a lot of native Marsmen think of that murdering dirt bag as William Wallace, Pugachev, and Guy Fawkes all rolled into one.”
“Or George Washington,” Hutton added, glancing over at him.
He grimaced. “That would put us on the historical side of guys like Cornwallis or George Rodney. Jeez—am I the redcoat? That’s a helluva thought for a U.S. naval officer! I’m just trying to figure out how this guy went from being just another voice in the crowd to . . . this.”
“When he’s not trying to start riots, a lot of what he says makes sense—much of it is rooted in historical precedent,” Hutton replied. “He also touches on themes that Marsmen can relate to but people back on Earth have no conception of—things like paying an air tax whenever you step into a new hab, or cultural things like the inviolable nature of a person’s exosuit—you can leave one lying unattended right next to an airlock and nobody—I mean nobody—will touch it. What I’m not really getting is how Rogan manages to inspire so many to flock beneath his banner. I mean, I can almost understand why the Martian Coalition is popular, but not a bunch of terrorists like the MIM—things just aren’t that bad. There’s plenty of work for everyone, and nobody is putting boots on necks or anything like that. Anyone can sign with an independent or relocate to an unflagged city. When you boil it down to nuts and bolts, Mars is already the freest place in the solar system. You can generally do whatever you want here if you aren’t causing any grief. Historically speaking, revolutions have been preceded by mass civil unrest, usually provoked by the powers that be. That isn’t happening on Mars—at least I’m not seeing it. . . . ”
“Well, I don’t spend much time Mars-side, but I can’t disagree.”
“So, if we concede a lack of civil angst, how is Rogan creating so many malcontents?”
“Information-warfare practices. Voice modulation, background harmonics designed to either soothe or irritate. You know, that subliminal sonic crap the headshrinks have been playing with for years. Who knows what you can quietly pipe into someone’s head via their eardots when they’re tuned into the network feeds?”
“Maybe. So I guess guys like Marx and Hitler just had some sort of bizarre, evil, mojolike charisma. Maybe Rogan has it too.”
“Whatever it is, I think we’re seeing it right now,” Ford growled, looking toward a large group of native-born miners who were darkly eyeballing the table of Marines next door. He cut off his audio feed from the Marsnet and could hear the raised voices starting to go back and forth between the two factions.
Ford sighed and let out an expletive. “See?” he said. “This is exactly what I was talking about. Wait here a sec,” he added, getting up.
“One thing before you go over there?” Hutton asked. At his inquiring look, she added: “Deactivate your eardots.”
“Why?”
She batted her lashes at him as she switched off her own eardots. “Because I asked? Please?”
Ford mumbled something about “doing it in a minute” and then turned and headed toward the disturbance, waving for Hutton to stay seated. He saw Donelle Crawford out of the corner of his eye, heading for the back from behind the bar, probably to fetch her husband. He realized he was too late to cool things down when he reached the hubbub. Miners and Marines were coming to their feet, chairs flying backward in the lower gravity.
“Hey!” Ford barked in his best parade-ground voice. “That’s enou—”
“Chervyak pridurok!” one of the miners shouted, smashing a ceramic beer bottle against Ford’s temple. Beer, blood, and pieces of broken crockery flew as Ford was launched off his feet, knocked half senseless by the cheap shot he hadn’t seen coming. His health monitor flashed amber in his fading vision, and he was vaguely aware of his mil-grade endocrine implants automatically hitting him with a pain blocker and dumping some stim into his bloodstream to keep him in the fight. He rebounded mentally but couldn’t catch himself in low-g before he took out another table of Marsmen, their food, and their alcohol. Apparently, opinions on Martian independence (or at least simple human decency) were divided at this table. One of the Marsmen was trying to help Ford up, when another smashed her fist into his eye on the side where he’d just been hit, sending him momentarily reeling again. Whether that second punch was rooted in matters of politics or spilled beer would forever remain a mystery.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Harper groaned from his and Ashburn’s table. Ashburn was muttering a similar profanity.
Ford would never have expected what happened next. In hindsight, it was the most disturbing thing about the entire brawl. His original worry was over Trans-Oceanic personnel getting into a tangle with the CFSN group, but as soon as the Martian miners went after the Marines, the CFSN spacers plowed in—on the side of the Marines.
It rapidly came a battle of Earth-born versus native Marsmen. The former were generally stronger and faster, but the latter had the advantage of numbers and were fighting in their native gravity field, which made a real difference. A few bystanders of mixed birth or loyalties stood by helplessly, but most of the patrons lustily picked a side and joined in. Epithets like “Earthworm” and “fungus eater,” or “stumpy” and “lurch” flew back and forth along with feet and fists, laced with the sort of profanity to which only a frontier society could aspire.
Almost everyone on Mars carried weapons for personal protection—these were almost universally nonlethal, but there were always the few hard cases who liked to carry around old-fashioned slug throwers, flechette pistols, or overpowered shocksticks. The fight might have gotten bloody fast, except for the presence of a certain deputy U.S. marshal.
Hutton didn’t draw her sidearm or try to identify herself as a law officer; she knew it was pointless and would probably just make her a prime target. As soon as Ford went down, she was in motion, angling for a better position. She wound up next to a table at which there was a man with an eye patch—something you didn’t see every day. She knew someone was going to get killed within the next minute or so unless she intervened, so she did. She dug into a sma
ll pouch on her belt, pulling out a small black orb—a “screecher.” She slid back its protective cover, hit the firing stud, and tossed it into the air. It lofted nicely in low-g, and over the din of swearing, snarling brawlers one could hear a loud capacitor charging up over the space of about three seconds. Harper saw the orb fly and hollered at Ashburn to cover his ears, but the warning was missed in the din. When the weapon “detonated” after chargeup, a piercing, debilitating ultrasonic squeal erupted in the head of everyone wearing active eardots—everyone except Marshal Hutton. Those standing dropped like they’d been poleaxed, except for the Chinese. Hutton made a mental note of that for future reference, grinning slightly as a dozen sets of CFSN eyeballs locked onto her as a potential threat.
Now was the time to identify herself, she judged.
Hutton calmly held up her badge and placed her hand on the butt of her weapon, trusting in the ninety percent of human communication that was nonverbal to get her point across. The Chinese sailors hesitated, drawing up short. She drew a little circle around them with the forefinger of the hand holding up her badge, a sort of “rounding you up” gesture. She then pointed to the door, cocking one eyebrow high for emphasis.
One of the spacers, a tough-looking female, let out a low growl and started toward her. Hutton’s weapon started to clear the holster, but the Chinese rating was brought up short by a sharp, barked command from one of the others, who nodded to the marshal and issued another command in clipped Mandarin. The group stood down and vacated the premises forthwith.