The Halls of Montezuma

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  The alarms rang. Rachel made a show of jerking awake as Commander Archer sat up, confused. Rachel knew the drug should have worked its way out of his bloodstream by now, but it was impossible to be sure. He looked like a dragon with a headache, too sore to pay attention to her naked body. She smiled shyly at him - he really had to be in a terrible state - and hastily grabbed for her clothes. He slapped her ass as she got out of bed. Rachel silently promised him, once again, a painful death.

  “Attention,” a voice thundered. “All off-duty personnel report to Hall A. I say again, all off-duty personnel report to Hall A.”

  Rachel scrambled into her clothes, then hurried for the door. She didn’t want to be seen walking into the hall with Commander Archer, not when there was a reasonable chance the commander would be blamed for the bombing. She’d done everything in her power to cover her tracks, short of actually destroying the datacores themselves, but she knew a careful investigation would turn up all kinds of hints that would lead the investigators to Commander Archer. She wondered, idly, what he’d say when they arrested him. Would he realise what had happened? Or would he try to blame everything on his political enemies?

  She made a show of adjusting her clothing as she walked into the hall. It was heaving with people, from staffers she knew to complete strangers who’d probably been recalled for duty after the shit hit the fan. She told herself to be grateful for the confusion. The more strangers running about, the harder it would be for the enemy counterintelligence personnel to locate an infiltrator. She made a mental note to check on her cover ID, just to make sure it was still solid. If someone did some vetting, they might spot gaps that would lead them to the truth. The real Hannah Gresham might already be dead.

  An officer she didn’t recognise took the stand. “There has been a terrorist attack within the city,” he said. “Until further notice, all staff are required to remain inside the building and ...”

  Rachel listened as the officer outlined a series of precautions. None of them would be particularly hard to evade, for the moment. She knew there would come a time when she’d have to cut and run, doing as much damage as she could before the end came, but ... so far, her cover was intact. She hoped that wouldn’t change in a hurry. There were just too many things she needed to do before she left.

  “Do not attempt to leave without permission,” the officer finished. “Dismissed.”

  The hall slowly emptied. Rachel joined the crowds of tired-looking people as they headed back to the barracks. The alarms had gone off in the middle of their sleep cycle, ensuring they wouldn’t be properly rested before they resumed their duties. Rachel hoped that meant they’d make a lot of mistakes, mistakes that would help to cover her genuine malice. She doubted Commander Archer would cover for her if she was accused of making mistakes, even if he thought she was his lover. There were plenty of other vulnerable young women where she came from.

  The thought made her smile as she returned to the barracks, checking on the progress of her email as she walked. It was still spreading through the network, staying one step ahead of the censors as it flowed out to literally millions of terminals. The enemy would be going mad with rage. They couldn’t hope to put the entire planet in jail ...

  A message popped up in front of her. She blinked. Who would be emailing Gresham’s personnel account? Her family? If her family tried to contact her, Rachel knew she would have to run before she was exposed. If ...

  She smiled as she saw the name. Andrew Vanderveken would mean nothing to the censors, but it meant something to her. Phelps. It was the name Phelps had used, on their first undercover deployment. Phelps was alive! Rachel felt her smile grow wider. She hadn’t let herself worry - too much - about the rest of the team, but she’d feared the worst. If they’d died in orbit ... she wondered, briefly, if it could be a trick ... no, it was impossible. No one outside the team knew about the Vanderveken ID.

  He’s alive, she thought. She hastily started sketching out a reply. I’m not alone any more.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  But this is often not understood by political leaders. Promising bread and circuses has been a sure vote-getter for years. It is easy to promise free food, drink, education and everything else. Putting it into practice is much harder.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

  Julia had thought herself inured to horror.

  She stood at the edge of the smouldering crater and watched, grimly, as the rescue and recovery crews dragged what they could from the wreckage. The entire city block had been burnt, the buildings on the outskirts badly scorched by plasma fires. It was sheer luck, from what she’d heard, that the flames hadn’t spread much further. The emergency crews had been planning to knock down a dozen buildings in hopes of keeping the fires under control before the flames had finally abated. Julia shuddered as a twisted shape - it didn’t look like a body, not really - was carried out of the wreckage. Male? Female? Human? Animal? She had no idea.

  The wind shifted, blowing the stench of human flesh into her face. Her stomach twisted painfully. The director had sent her out to get her impressions of the disaster, but ... she stared towards the crater, wondering if she’d made the wrong decision when she’d decided to return home. It was difficult to believe the marines had been able to carry out a bombing inside the city, the heavily-guarded city. It was far more likely some faction within the government had chosen to blow the population monitoring system to hell.

  Julia turned away and stumbled towards her aircar. The early reports had stated the system had been smashed beyond all hope of repair. She saw no reason to doubt it. The entire building was gone. The senior staff, the people who made the system work, were dead. She shuddered as she realised the prisoners in the cells under the building were also dead. Perhaps that was why the bombing had been carried out, despite the risk. Someone had wanted to kill the prisoners to keep them from talking. It made sense, she thought as the aircar lifted up and carried her back to the government HQ. The prisoners had been earmarked for intensive interrogations. No one could keep their mouths shut forever.

  She frowned as she peered down at the streets, empty save for patrolling soldiers and their vehicles. The civilian population had been told to stay home, out of the way ... she dreaded to think how many work-hours would be lost even if the state of emergency was lifted in the next few hours. And if the civilians realised the government’s prying eyes had been blinded ... who knew what would happen? She had the nasty feeling she knew what would happen when word got out. Too many people hated and feared the government for the outcome to be peaceful. If Admiral Agate hadn’t deserted when he’d been offered the chance ...

  The aircar landed on the pad on top of the building. Julia raised her arms and allowed the guards to search her, wincing as their fingers poked and prodded everywhere before they escorted her down to the director’s suite. It felt as if they’d moved into a strange world, where nothing was entirely what it had been. She shivered helplessly, even though it was a warm sunny day. Someone had carried out a terrorist attack in the heart of the city, someone who might well hope to ride the chaos into power ... how could they be so selfish? She glanced at the far walls. The marines were steadily advancing on the city. It was no time for civil war.

  “Julia,” the director said. “What have you learnt?”

  Julia composed herself and gave her report. There was little new in it and she could tell the director was losing interest, even before she reached the final section. She might as well have been wasting her time. She scowled as he turned his back, his eyes tracking towards the latest reports from the front. He’d sent her out and he didn’t want to hear the report? And yet, she knew he’d already heard it. His people hadn’t been lying to him.

  “We don’t know who carried out the bombing,” she said, finally. The preliminary reports had been unclear. Reading between the lines, it was fairly clear the forensic teams didn’t know how the attack had been carried out.
“It may have been an internal faction.”

  “That is quite likely,” the director said. “They would have needed to manipulate the system to get a bomb within striking range of the complex.”

  Julia nodded. There weren’t many people who could have put the attack together without setting off alarms. Whoever it was would need a high level of clearance and a demonstrated need for the bomb-making equipment. It wouldn’t be some lowly clerk in the accounting office, but a high-ranking official. She doubted too many people would be in on the conspiracy. The more people involved, the greater the chance of a leak. And yet ... she frowned. Something about the bombing didn’t make sense. If the bombing had been carried out by someone inside the government, they’d destroyed a system they’d need to secure their positions after they launched a coup.

  She put her thoughts into words. “Why would they destroy a system they desperately need?”

  “They may assume they can rebuild the system.” Director Onge smiled, coldly. “And if they left the system in place, they might find their plans impossible.”

  He stood. “Join me,” he said. It was an order and there was no point in pretending otherwise. “I’ll want your thoughts afterwards.”

  Julia schooled her expression as she followed him through the door into a conference room. The director’s inner council were already gathering ... she wondered, idly, if one of them had carried out the bombing. There was no one keener to climb the ladder than someone who was already so high they could see the top. It was quite possible ... she allowed her eyes to wander the table, trying to decide which one of them it would be. They owed their positions to the director, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t betray him. No doubt they’d already been approached by the director’s rivals. It was what Julia would have done, if she’d been planning to unseat her patron.

  Not that I am, she thought, wryly. Right now, she was in no place to risk moving against the director. She just didn’t have a power base of her own. It’ll be years before that changes.

  “Twenty minutes ago, an email popped up almost everywhere,” McManus said, once the table had been called to order. “As far as we can tell, everyone got the message. It may already have crossed the front lines and rushed into enemy territory. The message informed the entire world that the monitoring system has been destroyed.”

  The director said nothing for a long moment. “Who sent the message?”

  “Again, we don’t know,” McManus said. “All we really know is that everyone got the message. Copies were dumped into every online email address on the planet, as well as corporate, military and personal terminals. It was coded urgent, so everyone who was online at the time will have seen it. We’re working to scrub it from the system now, sir, but it’s already too late.”

  Julia felt her heart sink. She’d been online for most of her adult life. She’d carried a terminal with her, just to make sure she was permanently in contact with her superiors. She’d even had to leave it on when she’d been in bed with her lovers. And ... she cursed under her breath as the implications sank into her head. The vast majority of the population carried terminals wherever they went. If the message had been coded urgent, they’d have looked the moment it appeared in their inboxes. There was no hope of keeping word from spreading, even if they successfully wiped the message from the datanet. And that meant ...

  Trouble, she thought. She’d seen people looting on Hameau. The moment the police and security forces vanished, the streets had turned to chaos. The marines hadn’t been able to restore order in a hurry. How many people will seize the chance to run wild?

  The director spoke quietly, but with cold determination. “We have to nip this in the bud,” he said, grimly. “And that means tracking down whoever inserted the messages into the datanet.”

  “We’re looking at ways to trace them now,” McManus said. He sounded as if he expected to be fired on the spot. “Sir, right now, we cannot afford to take the datanet offline. Even tightening the security measures will cause problems. We can and we will limit mass mailings in the future, making life harder for them, but ... that might impede our ability to send orders to the entire population. Whatever we do, sir, they can manipulate to their own advantage.”

  “And we have the marines bearing down on us,” Maryanne said. “When the wind is coming from the east, people can hear the shooting. It’s only a matter of time until the truth gets out.”

  “It has already gotten out,” McManus snapped. “We lied to the population. We told them that nothing happened on Hameau. But the underground has told them that we lost the battle and countless lives and ... everyone who had a relative on the fleet is now wondering why they didn’t so much as send a message home. There’s no way we can keep them ignorant for much longer.”

  If we can keep them ignorant now, Julia thought. She was painfully aware the lower classes weren’t stupid. They might be deliberately kept ignorant, but ... they had eyes. They could tell when the government was lying. They know we’ve lied to them. Why should they believe us if we start telling the truth?

  The director tapped the table, calling everyone’s attention back to him. “Can an uprising unseat us?”

  “Not on the face of it,” McManus said. “The general population remains unarmed, for the moment. We must assume that’ll change as dissent seeps through the city. Soldiers will desert, for example, taking their weapons with them. The underground’s mystery backers will need to supply more weapons, if they want the dissidents to do more than annoy us. In the long term, however, there will be a whole string of problems. It is no longer possible to catch someone goofing off when they’re meant to be working and kick him in the backside.”

  “And the marines will move to take advantage of the chaos,” Julia said. She saw a handful of faces twist as they remembered the elephant in the room. They could beat the underground and coup-proof the government, only to be beaten by the invaders. “They provoked an insurgency in Haverford. They can do it again here.”

  “They had time to set up weapons dumps in Haverford,” McManus said. “They didn’t have time to do it here.”

  “They can ship weapons around the lines,” Julia said. The marines were cunning. They’d have no trouble flying troops and supplies around the city, if they thought they had an opening. The last reports from Haverford had suggested the marines had done just that before the insurgents retook the streets. “We have to win quickly.”

  “Correct.” The director looked at General Gilbert. “I understand you have a plan?”

  “Yes, sir.” Gilbert tapped a switch, displaying a holographic map. The marines were advancing across a broad front, but it was easy to see that the front was getting narrower as the marines moved further away from Roxon. “My intelligence staff has spent the last few days re-establishing contact with human agents within the megacity, as well as scattering observers on the far side of the front lines. The marines simply have not had the time or the resources to pull back and sweep the territory properly, to the point that they really only control the land under their guns.”

  “Which is quite a swathe of territory,” Maryanne said, dryly. “Just by occupying it, they have driven thousands of refugees into our territory and forced us to evacuate and destroy installations we desperately need. They are costing us dearly.”

  “Yes,” Gilbert agreed. “There is no point in trying to deny that they’ve done us a great deal of harm. They’ve advanced at breakneck speed, forcing us to throw untrained units into the lines. However, their success brings with it serious weaknesses.”

  He indicated the enemy icons. “We believe the marines are actually outrunning their logistics,” he said. “They cannot drive forward, let alone shoot, if they don’t have fuel and ammunition. We don’t know how much they managed to capture when they took the megacity, yet even if we assume everything fell into their hands, they still wouldn’t have anything like enough to maintain their offensive indefinitely. They’re trained to operate on a shoestring, sir, but
that shoestring is about to break.”

  The director frowned. “You are sure of this?”

  “Yes.” Gilbert sounded confident. “There are hard limits on how much the marines can bring down to the surface or steal from us. Even if we assume the absolute worst, their forward units have to be running short of all sorts of things. Their men probably aren’t in the best of shapes either. I believe we will have a window of opportunity, shortly, to give them a bloody nose.”

  “We don’t want to give them a bloody nose,” McManus said. The cold determination in his voice echoed in the air. “We want to smash them flat.”

  Gilbert smiled. “We’ve been ruthlessly concentrating forces here and here,” he said, tapping the map. “The marines are advancing into what looks and feels, to those on the front lines, a crumbling defence. They’ll keep moving, in hopes of completing their mission before their supply lines snap. At that point, we’ll hit them from both sides at once and either encircle or crush them. Even if they manage to break out, they’ll be short on supplies. We’ll have a chance to chase them back to Roxon and beat them for good.”

  Julia frowned. The plan looked good, but she knew from bitter experience that things always looked good on paper. Gilbert knew precisely how to present his concept - more likely, a concept dreamed up by one of his subordinates - to ensure his superiors didn’t ask too many awkward questions before authorising the plan. Implementing the plan was often a great deal harder. The real world rarely deigned to cooperate with the humans as they struggled for supremacy. And, somehow, she had to remind them of it.