Torchship Captain

by Karl K Gallagher

  “That kid isn’t afraid of the cops,” said Guo.

  “No.” Mitchie looked for other videos from the crowd. Was it a protest? They weren’t waving signs. Not enough damage done to be a mob yet.

  Though there was damage. Mitchie put a video on the wall. A subway car with its doors jammed open by chairs and park benches.

  “Which station is that?” asked Guo.

  “One of the ones just outside the Acropolis.” She flicked through similar scenes. “It looks like they have all sixteen lines serving the Acropolis shut down.”

  “I wonder how many of the Stakeholders are still inside.”

  “Good question,” she said. Though she only cared about one.

  Guen answered the call promptly. “God, no. I wasn’t invited to that disaster. Oh, are they still censoring it? Go read Sausage Casings, they have most of the facts. The Minister of Social Control made a quorum call, but he left out the faction leaders and committee chairs. He had a bare quorum, just backbenchers. His speech panicked the hell out of them and they passed his law. You can see the results.”

  “From our window,” Mitchie agreed.

  “You’re still there? Better be packed. I’m, uh, can’t say anything.”

  “I understand. Stay safe, Guen.”

  “You too!” The connection dropped.

  Guo was packing. He produced two backpacks from one of his suitcases. He tossed the smaller one at Mitchie. The other he loaded with underwear, socks, and drab civilian clothes. His precious book went in a side pocket.

  “I don’t think I can fit my dress uniform into this.”

  Guo added some water bottles to his backpack. “In the course of a long life a wise man will be prepared to abandon his baggage many times.”

  “I don’t think Confucius actually said that.”

  “No, but it’s still good advice.”

  She started going through her own luggage. Civvies, underwear, and a spare jumpsuit went into the pack. A sharper-looking jumpsuit went on the coffee table along with three knives and a pistol. Guo was still sneaking glances at her as he sorted gear, so she put a bra and panties on the table instead of on her person.

  The chaos on the display wall grew an island—a few related video feeds were gaining enough popularity to stand out. Guo expanded one to the whole wall. A double rank of riot-geared police marched down a street. The watching securitybot paced them. Their batons waved in threat. No one lingered to be hit, most fleeing into the cross streets to watch the marchers pass.

  Mitchie studied the metadata along the edges of the image. “That’s Golden Leaf Street.” She moved to the window and checked a map on her datasheet. “I can see it. Not the whole thing, lots of buildings in the way. But it’s obvious where the cops have cleared the road.” After a minute she added, “There they go. I see them between two skyscrapers.”

  The action in the video feed matched what she could see of the distant specks. Convinced it was valid, Mitchie turned to the wall to watch the action.

  The police formation was almost to the end of the street. Ahead of them it split into paved pathways spreading through a grassy portion of the ring park. Grass and pavement were hidden under the crowd. Thousands of people awaited the police.

  The formation didn’t slow as it marched into the open. A gazebo to the left disintegrated as young men pulled apart its balusters to make clubs. People shifted aside to avoid the batons, then moved behind as they passed.

  “Refuse your flanks,” muttered Mitchie. “Refuse your flanks.”

  Guo looked at her. “Are you rooting for the cops?”

  “No. But I hate incompetence.” She checked her map. “They’re heading for the subway station. Guess they want to reopen it to evacuate the Acropolis.”

  “That explains the formations on the other radial roads. This one’s made the most progress.”

  The overhead view disappeared as the securitybot died. Guo looked at the other feeds from the site. One was a hatcam labeled “Jozzy.” He put it on the wall.

  ***

  Jozzy had the best arm. His buds brought him stones and he threw them. A good throw would make a cop stumble. Most hits just bounced off their armor. A bounce still made the crowd clap and cheer. Girls were blowing Jozzy kisses.

  He had to keep moving forward to keep up with the cops. His boys grabbed the rocks he’d already thrown and brought them back to him. Some strangers in the crowd were gathering rocks too.

  The cops had two ranks of twenty-five men and three more behind them. The middle rear guy had a gold stripe circling his helmet. Jozzy aimed most of his throws at him.

  The next throw was perfect. Just under the helmet, right on the back of his neck. Gold-stripe went to one knee and had to push himself back up with his big transparent shield. The crowd screamed in triumph.

  A bare-breasted girl gave Jozzy a kiss on the lips. “Do it again!” she said.

  A few second rank men looked back at their commander in concern.

  “Eyes front!” yelled Goldstripe. “Keep your line straight!”

  The crowd kept melting away in front of the marching cops. Then a couple dozen men in the crowd stood fast, bunched up around their leader. They lined up facing the police formation. Jozzy recognized them. Thun’s Boys. Big, strong, nasty, and no sense of style.

  Thun waved the top half of a lamppost at the cops. His boys all had weapons. The back of a park bench, metal handrails, a sapling with dirt still falling off the roots. They waved their clubs in the air and accused the cops of complicity in the great deception.

  Even Goldstripe was silent as the formation marched up to the gang. Shields held overhead absorbed the long clubs’ impacts. A couple of cops were knocked down. The rest moved past swinging batons. Each time a baton struck home there was a crackle of electricity and a truncated scream.

  In a few breaths the formation was straightened out, marching on as twenty-some bodies lay in their wake.

  A few twitched and groaned. Most lay still. Thun was obviously dead. A boot had crushed the side of his skull. Blood welled up in the tread marks.

  Jozzy felt cold. Thun was an asshole, always had been, but he didn’t deserve that. He dropped a rock and picked up the broken lamppost. “Boys!” he called out. “Grab a weapon. No more playing with these bastards.”

  He raised his voice. “Everybody! If you have a weapon come forward. If you don’t get out of the way! Move!”

  The bare-breasted chick gave Jozzy a glowing look as she skipped back into the crowd.

  Men with sticks and other things were coming forward. Jozzy waved them forward as he trotted to catch up with the formation.

  More kept appearing. About forty men had matching white wood beams. Others pulled apart park benches. Jozzy kept trying to count them.

  When a few more pushed his estimate over two hundred he thrust the lamppost straight up. “Brothers! Now we fight! Punish their lies! Punish their murders! Charge!”

  Jozzy ran at Goldstripe.

  The commander snapped, “Squad halt! About face!”

  Goldstripe held his shield in front of him, sloped like a roof. Jozzy had used a polearm in the Struggle for Shaping virtual reality game. It wasn’t his favorite weapon, but he’d learned some tricks.

  Jozzy hooked the shattered lamp onto the edge of the shield and pulled.

  Goldstripe staggered several paces forward before he could twist the shield out of Jozzy’s grasp. Behind him three cops broke formation to rescue him.

  Repeating the same move almost let Goldstripe land his baton on Jozzy’s arm. Hammering on the shield didn’t do any damage but distracted the boss cop enough for another rioter to club his knee. Goldstripe went down on his back.

  Another cop leapt over his commander. His baton glanced off the lamppost and brushed Jozzy’s arm.

  An instant later Jozzy’s head and heels were digging into the grass. He tried to fill his lungs to replace air lost to screaming. Amazingly, he was awake. The baton hadn’t connected well
or was running low on charge.

  A boy in a lemon tunic scooped up the lamppost and yelled, “Liars!” as he charged the cops.

  Jozzy struggled to prop himself on his elbows. That gave him a view of the battle.

  Half the cops were still standing. They were back to back in two rough lines, proving their training was effective. Rioters pounded them with sticks or tried to pull their shields away. A few rioters wielded batons from fallen cops.

  Someone found a pistol on a downed cop. He couldn’t fire it well. Only half his shots hit cops. But every rioter who fell was replaced by two more. Wounded cops stayed down.

  In a couple more minutes it was over.

  ***

  Guo closed the hatcam feed. Looking at a few others he said, “The other police units have halted.”

  Mitchie said, “It’s officially a riot now.”

  Next Day

  Two hours before dawn the mob was still chanting “Liars” loud enough to hear from the hotel. Mitchie glanced out the window. The bonfires were still burning. She wondered what they’d found to fuel them. The government cut power to the park after the police strike force was killed. Fire had substituted for the electric lights. But there couldn’t be that much dead wood in the park.

  She went back to perusing Sausage Casings. Guen was right, these guys had a much better grasp of reality than the official news services (still censored). A couple of their contributors were trapped inside the Acropolis.

  They called it a siege. Video of dead rioters shot down by the security guards made Mitchie believe it. A rough census found over fifteen thousand bureaucrats and politicians in the structure, including a bare quorum of the Council of Stakeholders.

  No one had the presence of mind to impose rationing on the cafeterias. Sausage Casings had a page with the latest black-market prices for hamburgers (only triple pre-Siege prices), crackers (in demand among those expecting a long stay), and whiskey (not quite its weight in gold).

  Rumors said support staff defecting to the mob had equal chances of being accepted or beaten to death.

  Guo woke from his nap. He took a moment to appreciate Mitchie’s datascreen-lit figure before asking, “Any changes?”

  “No. I’m amazed it’s gone on this long. Back home we’d have orbital artillery taking out the mob followed by hardsuited infantry.”

  Guo stared at the bonfires. “If these people could make a decision they wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  The Acropolis glowed at every window. The light it shed probably lit more of the ring park than the fires. Then it went dark.

  Mitchie and Guo grabbed for their datasheets. He found a gloat, stipend kids posting video of themselves taking out the power and data feeds to the Acropolis one by one.

  Sausage Casings confirmed it. One of their inside men had expected this. A military-grade comm unit let him send out text. His only news was panic among the occupants.

  Mitchie thought she could have guessed that. She lay down for her nap.

  When she woke the sun was high. Plumes of smoke dotted the park. She guessed they were burning green wood.

  Guo extracted brunch from room service. Mitchie was amazed it still functioned. They tipped heavily. Leftovers went into the suite fridge for dinner.

  Around noon Mitchie noticed movement in the park. “There are people moving toward the Acropolis. Anything in the feeds?”

  “No,” said Guo from the display wall. “But with the shutdown only people on the outer edge of the park can link anything.”

  “Wish I’d grabbed the telescope from the ship.”

  Her naked eye was sharp enough to recognize people climbing up the 45-degree slope of the Acropolis’ outer rim. Their goal was the terraces providing leafy lunch spots for the office workers. Presumably they hoped to by-pass the armed guards at the official entrances.

  They looked like foraging ants at this distance. When a scout found an opening the swarm converged on it. Then a thick rope of reinforcements formed, drawing more rioters out of the mass in the park.

  Mitchie’s datasheet chimed. One of her alerts had triggered. Sausage Casings had a new report from their inside man. “Rioters in the Acropolis. Security counter-attacking. Can hear gunfire and grenades.”

  “Bad place to use grenades,” muttered Guo.

  “Friendly fire?” asked Mitchie.

  “No. The whole thing is built of carbon weave. If the fire suppression system is down any fire will spread.”

  Two hours later a video of the fighting appeared on the net. The uploader claimed he’d walked out of Ring Park after his arm was broken by Acropolis Security.

  The beginning showed rioters spreading ant-style into the building. Any staffers encountered were clubbed down, or taken aside for worse treatment. A trio of security guards emptied their guns at the rioters, then charged with batons.

  The video after that was chaotically cut. Running from Security. Assaulting a barricade defended by maintenance and cafeteria workers. Overwhelming a Security patrol by sheer numbers. Setting fires for smokescreens or to block a flank. Looting fancy offices. Another brawl with Security—the one where the cameraman was injured.

  Mitchie turned back to the window. Trickles of smoke were coming from a dozen terraces.

  “It’s started,” she said.

  By sunset smoke plumes rose from all around the Acropolis’ perimeter. They left the lights off in their suite so they could make out faint lights. There were fewer bonfires in the park tonight. Some of the tree-filled terraces were burning. Some of the windows had red flickers behind them.

  Rumbling stomachs reminded them to eat. Guo didn’t bother heating up his leftovers. He sat on the couch poking at an egg with his fork.

  “Hey.” Mitchie leaned against him. “Don’t feel so bad. It’s not our problem.”

  He laid the fork on the plate and wrapped an arm around her. “Yes it is. We’re supposed to bring back a few hundred warships. That’s not going to happen if a civil war breaks out here.”

  She could feel him relaxing as she pressed her skin against his. “It’s not going to be a war. Any minute now the Marines will show up, evacuate the Stakeholders, and kill all the rioters.”

  “Yeah? Why didn’t they do that already?”

  “It’s the Fusion. They had to have all their committee meetings.”

  That brought a bitter chuckle from him.

  They cuddled on the couch. Mitchie prodded Guo to finish his meal. Sleep was reaching out for them when a yellow flash caught their eyes.

  From the couch only the upper third of the Acropolis was visible through the window. It had been dimly reflecting the lights of kilometer-distant skyscrapers. Now a brighter light brought out the decorative mosaic along the tower.

  Mitchie and Guo dashed to the window. Terraces high on the Acropolis’ steep slope vented gouts of yellow flames. Swarms of fleeing ants showed clearly in the light. Windows higher in the structure glowed.

  They could track the spread of the fire in the windows. The base was completely engulfed. The flames marched slowly up the tower.

  A stone panel separated from the tower as its connectors turned to ash. The perimeter flames illuminated it as it spun down. It smashed through the roof, releasing a burst of flame and smoke.

  Flames poured out of the hole it left behind. More panels followed.

  Two hours later the flames were at the top. The clear dome was dark in the night. Now a yellow glow illuminated the dome from within.

  “Oh, God,” moaned Guo. “They’re trapped there.”

  The flames silhouetted ant figures rushing along the edge of the dome.

  Mitchie laughed.

  “They’re dying,” said Guo.

  “Good,” she answered. “Stakeholders deserve to burn. I watched as we poured Derry’s urn into the grave. There was more of his spacesuit than of him. The Stakeholders voted for it. They can burn.”

  “What about everybody else in there?”

  “Accomplices.” Mitc
hie kept watching the fire. As a curtain of flame hid the dome she laughed again.

  Guo backed up to the edge of the window. He looked back and forth between the fire and his wife with equal horror on his face.

  Chapter Three: Ashes

  Capitol City, Planet Pintoy, gravity 9.4 m/s2

  The Acropolis’ skeleton was black in the noon sun. The Dome survived, dull black with soot. Sixty-four diamondoid beams descended from it, straight down as the tower had been, then curving toward horizontal as they reached the base’s perimeter.

  The layer of ash underneath looked paper-thin but was many meters thick with bits of bone and metal. Wisps of smoke still rose from the ash.

  The mob surrounding it was quiescent. Victory dancers had mostly fallen asleep. Some had left. Many were searching the crowd for friends who’d been caught in the fire.

  Mitchie’s datasheet played the Magic Princess Journey theme music. She leapt out of bed to grab it, but held it up to her face before answering. “Yes, Guen?”

  “Hi, have you—sorry, is this a bad time?” Guen’s face turned red.

  Mitchie about-faced. She’d just shown far too much of Guo to her friend. “No, we’re just sleeping in. What’s up?”

  “Have you heard from Ping?”

  “Not since this all started.”

  “We’re trying to organize a committee to restore order. Ping promised he’d be there. A bunch walked out when he didn’t show. His flunky just promises to have him call me. Can you go bang on his door?” An address popped up at the bottom of her image.

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks!” Guen ended the call.

  “Did I just flash a Stakeholder?” asked Guo.

  “You should be honored. Given Uncle John, her father, and the current security crew I bet that’s the first penis she’s seen in her entire life.”

  “I have enough problems without a Stakeholder imprinting on me.”

  “You have my permission to show it to Ping. Let’s get in the shower.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were washed, dressed, armed, and exiting their building. Ping’s Capitol apartment was in a skyscraper less than two klicks west of their hotel. The road between them had a mix of greenspace and shops, both nearly empty.