by Rachel Ford
“They’re terrorists anyway,” one of the pilots offered. “I hope they do order us to take ‘em out.”
He frowned at the young man. “I’m sure command is well aware of the rules of engagement, Dagir, and that deliberately firing on civilians constitutes a breach of conduct punishable by death. Even if you, apparently, are not.”
He was certain of nothing of the kind, of course. Still, it wasn’t a sentiment he wanted to encourage. Dagir scowled. “Alright,” he said. “If there’s nothing else, we’ll suit up. I do want to leave you with one final thought, ladies and gentlemen. I am going to be leading this mission personally.”
He scrutinized those officers in his briefing room. “I know this is a sensitive mission. You won’t be flying it alone, and I won’t ask any of you to do anything I’m not willing to do first.” Then, he nodded with a brisk finality. “Dismissed.”
Nikia sat weeping at her kitchen table. She’d barely begun to pack when she found Grel’s speech, the one he’d been planning to deliver in the park. The one he’d never have the chance to give now.
She’d heard him practice it so many times she could practically recite it from memory, but she read it again. She poured over the words, written in his hand, in his tight script. She could almost hear it in his voice. It was good, so good. He’d put the entire struggle into a handful of words, and those words pulled at the heart and fired up the mind.
He’d been so brilliant, her Grel.
And now he was dead. Dead, for daring to raise his voice; dead, for daring to try to change things.
Grel is dead.
She sat there weeping for some time, until a distant siren reached her ears. Adrenaline shot through her veins, and her eyes darted to the window. What now? But then, she glanced at the hour keeper. It was nearly three o’ clock.
Protector Ridi’s funeral.
Her tears dried, and fury, white hot fury, took their place. Her parents had done their best to shield her from news of the outside world, but not even safe behind the walls of the Aldir estate, lost to numb grief, had she completely avoided talk of Ridi’s funeral. The entire city had gone into mourning. The Grand Leader was expected to make a statement from the imperial palace later today. The Office of Protection had shuttered, its officers pouring out to pay their respects to the slain protector.
The protector who had tortured Grel; the protector who hadn’t been content to torture him once, but had come back to harm him a second time. He’d died with murder on his mind, and now the City was making a hero of him.
She thought of what her father had said, of how Sergeant Dru had brushed off Ridi’s attack on her, his abuse of Grel. The City might not know better, but Dru did. Dru had empowered Ridi, encouraged him; and unleashed him on an unsuspecting populace.
She glanced down at Grel’s speech again, at the words printed there in a hand that would write no more. She remembered how often her husband had counseled against violence, how even in his most cynical moments he’d believed that ultimately justice and the rights of Tribari would prevail.
Grel is dead. The City, the city he believed in, had killed him. The justice system he trusted had killed him.
She folded the paper and tucked it into a breast pocket, near her heart. Then she stood, eyes cold and bright, and headed for the bedroom. There, tucked into the lower drawer of their dresser, was a pistol. It had been Grel’s, given to him by his grandfather. It was old-fashioned, relying on cartridges instead of charge packs.
But they had cartridges. She took them out and counted. Fifteen. She only needed one, but she loaded them all.
“Nik?”
A voice cut through her thoughts, and she started, almost dropping the gun in sheer fright. She slipped it into her pocket quickly, thumbing the safety on as she did so. “Hello?”
“Nik, it’s Franz and Giya.”
“And Deb,” a second voice put in.
“Franz.” The word brought her a measure of joy she didn’t expect. Franz had never been particularly close to her, but he’d been a good friend to Grel. She left the bedroom and found them standing in the living room. Deb’s face was half wrapped in bandages. Giya and Franz each sported bruises. It was the latter who spoke first.
“Nik. Oh gods, Nik.” He crossed the distance between them and wrapped her in a hug. “I’m so sorry, so, so sorry.”
One by one, the trio wrapped her in embraces. She felt her eyes watering again, and she swallowed back the lump in her throat. She was done crying. She couldn’t be weak now. “They murdered him,” she said, stepping back. Her voice wavered, but it grew steadier as she spoke. “They murdered him, and now they’re honoring his murderer.”
Franz nodded. “There’s no justice in this city. I didn’t realize that before. I thought, after the Carter’s Guild, people had had enough. I thought they’d learned.”
“They learned alright. They learned that the easiest way to silence the opposition is permanently.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying for years,” Giya declared. “They’ll never listen. They’ll kill us first.”
Franz nodded bleakly. “Nothing’s ever going to change.”
“Probably not,” she said. “But Franz?”
“What?”
“It’s time they start fearing too.”
Worry crept into his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Grel always said violence wasn’t the answer, you remember?”
“Of course.”
“He said ideas and words, not fists, would win.”
Franz nodded. “I remember.”
“He was wrong,” Giya offered. “I told him then, I’ll say it now.”
“They’ve stolen our words. They use violence to silence our speech, to repress our ideas.” She shook her head. “Grel was fighting a battle against men of honor, because he was a man of honor. But these aren’t men of honor. These are cowards and murderers.”
“What are you saying, Nik?”
“I’m saying, you don’t fight murderers with words and ideas.” She drew the gun she’d slipped into her pocket. “This is what you fight them with, Franz. You fight them with weapons and steel. You kill them, before they kill you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You’re damned right,” Giya said.
Franz, meanwhile, stared at her. “You can’t be serious. They’ll kill you.”
“I don’t care. I’ve nothing left to live for anyway.”
“Grel wouldn’t want you to die like that, Nik. What about the baby?”
She glanced down now at her stomach. Soon, in the normal course of events, it would begin to bulge with the promise of a new life. “Grel said he didn’t want to raise a child in a world like this,” she said, and her tone was soft. “I thought we could do it. I didn’t realize how bad it was, Franz. I do now.”
“You’ll die, Nik.”
She nodded. “Yes. But I won’t bring a baby into a world like this either. I can’t. I can’t give her the choice to exploit or be exploited.” Her eyes grew steelier as she spoke. “And I can’t sit by and let them memorialize someone like Ridi. I can’t let Dru get up there and speak about what a great man he was, while my husband lies cold in a mausoleum for speaking truth. While my husband is branded a terrorist and a traitor and his killers are celebrated.”
“You’ll never get close to Dru.”
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I just need to get close enough to shoot him.”
“This is no way to do it, Nik.”
“Yes it is,” Giya said. “It’s the only way to do it.”
“It might work,” Deb added, “if there were more of us.”
“Then what is, Franz?”
“I don’t know. There’s got to be a better way.”
She held his gaze. “Don’t you see? The reason they killed Grel, the reason they hauled so many off to jail…they want us to live in terror. They want us too afraid to speak, much less act. And as long as we are, things will never change.”
>
“I know, Nik…I know. But I don’t want to see you die, either. Grel wouldn’t want that.”
“No,” she acknowledged. “He wouldn’t. But Grel wanted this world to change. Who knows? Maybe this is what needs to happen for there to be any chance of change. Maybe they need to realize that they’re not free to oppress us, not without consequences. Maybe the people need to realize that we can stand up and fight, that they’re not invincible after all.”
She smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe Grel’s death and mine will mean something in the end, Franz.”
“Like hell,” Giya snapped. “You’re not dying on your own, Nik. Not on some godsdamned maybes. We’re not going to stage an assassination.”
“We?” she repeated.
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you go on your own,” he returned, pulling his stout frame up tall. “I’ll die fighting for our freedom, Nik, if that’s what it takes. But we’re not going there to kill that son-of-a-bitch. We’re going there to arrest him.”
“Arrest him?”
Giya Enden nodded. “You’re damned right. A citizen’s arrest.”
Franz scoffed. “That’s even more ludicrous,” he said. “They’ll shoot us on sight.”
“Not if there’s enough of us.” Giya grinned. “And I didn’t say we wouldn’t shoot back. I said we wouldn’t shoot first.”
“It’s too dangerous,” she argued. “That will just wind up with a lot of dead, instead of one person.”
“Damn it, Nik,” Giya said, “what happened to Grel’s death meaning something? How could it possibly mean more than inspiring the people to take action against these corrupt sonsofbitches?”
Captain Elgin listened absently to the radio chatter. There wasn’t much being said. The crews were nervous. So was he.
He’d sworn the same oath they all had, to protect and serve, to die if necessary to defend the Tribari people. And yet here they were, guns primed over the City, its incongruous collection of gilded districts and dowdy ghettos thousands of feet below them.
He pulled up his portable terminal, and played the video he’d downloaded before takeoff. It was the CCTV footage of the market square during the riot. The little screen showed the scene in surprising detail. A few cafes at the outskirts of the square, and patrons enjoying the afternoon sun; cart merchants hawking their wares; shoppers milling to and fro: it began like any other day at market.
Then, though, the protesters showed up. There were a lot of them. That surprised him. Last time he’d been planet-side, the protests had been minor. This was a far cry from the person or two standing on a street corner, shouting about unjust mining practices or clean drinking water.
There was a distinct air of poverty to them, from their tattered shoes to their fraying frocks and patched trousers. But they were clean and otherwise well-presented.
They carried signs, mostly written by hand, and were calling catchphrases. Grel Idan paused to speak as the video progressed, first to a woman and then to a man. The woman wore the gems and braids of a Grand Contributor’s wife, and sat with a young boy who appeared to be her son. The man seemed some manner of laborer.
The woman took her son and headed away from the crowd. Idan continued to exchange words with the laborer. And then, almost without warning, chaos erupted. Something smashed the nose of one the protesters behind Idan, a middle-aged woman of dour appearance. Objects flew at them from every direction, but people came to their defense too. Fists flew, heads bobbed up and down as they escaped or were pulled back into the fray.
Elgin frowned and turned back the video to a moment before the violence began. He watched more carefully this time. He saw a mug fly from the far edge of the footage.
He turned it back again, zooming in on the patch of bodies from whence the projectile came. It had been flung by a stout child dressed in silver and gold – the same stout child who accompanied the Grand Contributor’s wife.
He let the video play now. He saw Idan cut to the side with another man, ducking blows, until he was out of the frame. He watched the protectors arrive, deploying their submission prods with an indiscriminate glee.
He watched the market run blue with blood. But what he didn’t see was the protesters throwing the first blow. He didn’t see Idan start a fight. He didn’t see him fight at all. He saw him flee. He saw protectors fall upon the populace, beating them into submission.
His comm buzzed, and he nearly started. “Elgin here.”
“This is Lenksha.”
“Admiral?”
“We’ve got a situation on the ground, Elgin. Protesters, several hundred of them, descending on the cemetery.”
“Are we anticipating violence?”
Lenksha’s face was grim. “We intercepted a call that went wide, to all CWCT members. They’re calling it a ‘citizen’s arrest.’ Their target is Sergeant Dru.”
“On what charges are they arresting him?”
The admiral blinked. “What?”
Elgin shrugged. “By law, there are circumstances-”
“Is the oxygen malfunctioning on your bird, Elgin? What in the gods’ names are you talking about? These are terrorists.”
“Sir, I’m not sure these people are.”
“What?”
“I watched the CCTV footage of the protest. They were attacked, Admiral. Idan, the dead man, was-”
“My gods,” Lenksha declared. “We’ve got terrorists descending on our protectors, and you want to debate if incitement to riot qualifies as terrorism?”
“No sir. Only-”
“Good. Then shut up and listen. Here are your orders: you’re to stop the terrorists before they reach Hemsgate Park, using any means necessary. Up to and including deadly force.”
Elgin felt his mouth go dry. There it was: the order to fire on civilians.
“And no one gets past that line. If they do, you’re ordered to terminate with extreme prejudice.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Nikia was trembling as they marched down the streets. She could hear the roar of the crowd at her back. She’d never seen so many people freely assembled on the streets of the City before. “For Grel Idan,” Giya would shout now and again, and the assembly would echo the cry.
Every step seemed to swell their numbers. This is what they feared, Grel. They feared what you started. Under the façade of golds and silvers, behind the walls of fear, the City was at a breaking point. Grel had seen it. The ruling body saw it too.
They were nearing Hemsgate Park now. The cemetery would be on the other side. Sergeant Dru and the protectors would be on the other side.
Now and again a surveillance drone buzzed by. Some were marked with the colors of newscasts, others were black and unmarked.
“Will you say something, Nik?” Giya called. Those nearest cheered. “Say something in Grel’s memory, before we reach his murderers.”
She froze. “Me?”
He nodded, and though he was speaking loudly, it was still difficult to hear him over the cry of the crowd. “It doesn’t have to be much. Just a few words, Nik.”
Her tongue seemed to go dry in her mouth, but she nodded. Giya held up his hands, and the crowd went quiet.
She licked her lips. “My husband,” she said, and her voice sounded very soft.
“Louder,” Giya whispered.
“My husband,” she repeated, her voice rising, “was buried today. He was a young man, in the prime of his life. He had a child on the way.” A few gasps met this proclamation, and Giya and Franz nodded. “He was killed – murdered – because he dared to speak on behalf of Tribari. Today, the City honors his murderer.
“My husband believed in justice. He believed that the law protected us all, like it says it does. He believed that the right to assembly and speech were sacred for all of us, not just those who lived behind gilded walls.
“And that got him killed.” She shook her head. “Grel told me that he feared to raise a baby in a world like this, where power an
d wealth mattered more than lives.”
She glanced over the crowd, the swelling body that spilled into side ways and back alleys. “I can’t do it,” she said simply. “I can’t bring a baby into the kind of world that will kill a man for speaking the truth and celebrate a man for that murder. Either it will change, or I will be no more – but whatever happens today, I will not bring a child into this world.”
A cheer rose from the assembly, starting, she noted, with Giya. But it carried far and wide, from those around her all the way down the street and into those alleys and side roads.
As it fell away, Giya shouted, “Justice for Grel.”
“Justice for Grel,” she said, and the crowd repeated the cry.
“Justice for Grel.”
She turned now toward the park, calling again, “Justice for Grel!”
The call echoed out behind her.
She took a step, and then another, and another. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, the City would never be the same. All the guns in the Office of Protection couldn’t stop this crowd. The day of reckoning had come.
And then the roar of engines filled her ears. She glanced upward, in the direction of the sounds. The crowd seemed to look with her, for all at once the cry of “Justice for Grel” was replaced with a thousand different gasps and shrieks.
There were fighters, dozens of fighters, coming out of the clouds toward them.
Captain Elgin maneuvered his fighter so that it hovered a few hundred yards in front of the crowd. He flipped on the megaphone, projecting to the other ships and externally to those below, and spoke into his headset. “Tribari citizens,” he said, “I am under orders from Admiral Lenksha to fire on any man, woman or child who crosses into Hemsgate Park.”
He paused. He could see the great mass of Tribari hesitate. He spoke again. “This is in direct contravention of Article Fifteen of the Tribari Constitution. By my oath as an officer, I cannot follow this command. I cannot, and will not, open fire on civilians.
“And neither will any man or woman under my command, on pain of death. That’s an order.”