Officially, it's a free press. In actuality, any media that doesn't suck up to the main source of info, the ruling bureaucrats, doesn't get any stories. They're mouthpieces, plain and simple. Every election there's a struggle among bureaucrats to control the news and among the media to control the source—the politicians. Yes, they're all part of the same power struggle. Madness.
It was tense, and we didn't sleep, rested only fitfully, and ate little. We had to maintain our business cover, not daring to pay undue attention to events. But inside, we were all wondering, was this how it began? Was Earth seizing our home? How would it play out for us? Was this assault force big enough and organized enough to defeat our defenses? What of our friends?
This could be the start of the mission that would kill us, and a large chunk of Earth's government and infrastructure, and we weren't really in place to do anything yet. What was happening?
We didn't know. No one knew. The day was a waste, and I wasn't even able to break loose long enough to send a "Don't worry, we're the best" pep message to the other cells.
The next day, footage and reports started coming in. With about ten hours of light speed lag at each end and relay time through the jump point, no one actually knew anything until then.
Then we got our revenge. We spent the next day laughing in hysterics.
They dropped ten assault shuttles, 1000 troops, with the intent being to seize commo and the Citizens' Council Building. Rather pointless; they are only there on formal occasions. Earth still meets in person to discuss matters. None of the colonies or star nations bother. That's what comms are for. That was Wrong Assumption Number One.
WAN Two was that they'd have the element of surprise. Orbital Defense Command and Grainne Defense Command conduct regular training missions, and we do get occasional criminals trying to sneak by to set up facilities in the Hinterlands. Our people are used to practicing, and occasionally actually burning targets out of space. The UNPF ships were detected, challenged and slagged. Only six made it down. Those six were pinned down by Starport security, the flight line crew on the military side of the port (Capital District Reserve 4th Aviation Regiment and their support), and a few City Safety Patrol and some Resident volunteers. People keep assuming that these hedonistic, colorful Freeholders are unarmed, helpless peasants. It keeps getting them killed.
WAN Three was that we wouldn't respond. Two of their ships were caught as they jumped through with follow-up forces for Westport and Marrou. They dropped out of JP 3 and JP 1 and were at once surrounded by massive firepower. Gunboat commanders used them as a live-fire training exercise, disabling star drives and pinning them in place. Then they were swarmed and seized. The Johnson was deep insystem, but a gunboat chased them down and intimidated them into surrender. Yes, an assault carrier surrendered to a lone gunboat. What cowardice and incompetence was that?
I really felt sorry for the 800 dead grunts. Those poor bastards had followed orders that sounded good, boarded in high morale and with good intentions (from their point of view) and had been scorched into ash or shot down like dogs. Of course, Earth blamed us for "unreasonable use of deadly weapons." What, they expected us to use stun batons and giggle gas? Apparently so.
It actually took me days to draw out that info. There was so little real intel on the news. Heck, I'd been tasked with finding such threats and I'd had no inkling. They actually were very good at keeping secrets. From their own people. I even had to get a few blanks filled in from our intel people, in a message I received a week later. Why? After the dog was fucked, the UN knew what had gone wrong, every commercial Freehold station had the reports, most of the star nations knew. The only people still in the dark were the peasants sucking mud on Earth.
It was two days later that I got a message for the DC area team, meaning my immediate HQ, to conduct "Doolittle." They wanted me to attack the UN base at Langley, wreck it but minimize casualties, and report back. It seemed rather foolhardy politically, but the real intent was to plant some of our programmed weapons and loot what intel we could get. It might blow our covers, of course. I sighed and got people to work. At least I could acquire more assets while I did so.
* * *
I'll skip most of the details of the raid. You've read what we did to the Caledonians when they expected us. Twenty of us unannounced at Langley was a brick through the crystal cabinet. We tore the base apart.
The high point for me was bypassing the guard and the alarm at the Installation Commander's house and squatting on his bed with two of my kids. We watched his wife and him snore and drool blissfully, until we got the signal. I prodded him in the chest with the Merrill.
He said, "Huwha?" and sat up. That let me press the muzzle against his lips. His eyes got wide as he started to track.
"Please consider yourself my hostage," I told him. "Wake up your wife and let's go." Yes, it was abrupt. I didn't have time for discourse.
We ran them outside and into a borrowed vehicle, then took them to the Security Force office which we'd commandeered. We shoved them into the cells in their underwear along with the growing number of terrified rabbits we'd acquired. I grabbed a handy young blonde contractor who was a beauty by Earth standards, too soft and pale for me, and frogmarched her down to the arms vault. The sergeant inside was refusing to open the door. I knocked, figured he could see us on the monitor, stuck the muzzle into her mouth as she whimpered most convincingly. I said, "We haven't killed anyone yet. Open the door and we won't start. Otherwise, I'll keep killing until you do."
Of course, it worked. The watch commander ordered him to open the vault, and he did. We took him down, added him to the tally and started loading weapons and ammo. We'd need some for our upcoming operation and we'd distribute the rest for money.
By the time we left the base in the early dawn, we had rifles, grenades and some hijacked explosives. We had reduced the facility to a shambles and uploaded all our software weapons. We'd copied as many files as we could and accessed as many more as practical, both to create a security risk and to give them more to search through. The base personnel were running screaming, the upper staff were locked up, the police were afraid to come through the gate lest we shoot at them again and the government was trying to sit on the press, unsuccessfully. No one noticed us slip away from the perimeter in twenty different directions, and none of us were followed. We had no casualties.
That left the minor problems of DNA traces, explosive sniffers, possible stray images on cameras, and a manhunt. We burned all those IDs, of course.
* * *
I wasn't sure why we had just done what we did. I knew the UN had conducted a botched raid against Jefferson, back home. This was obviously related, but I didn't know why it was necessary to give them a bloody nose like this. It seemed a terrible risk of our covers. I spent the following week not sleeping, not eating, and trying not to have a breakdown. Nothing ever did come of it. Our embassy was ejected right after that, and I suppose they assumed our embassy security had conducted the raid, or that we'd been smuggled in for that and then had departed. There hadn't been any real casualties, on purpose. That seemed to be the deciding factor. It's very hard to create a crusade against petty degradation. In fact, many people were laughing about it, and a news survey showed that most didn't consider it important.
Just over a month later, with fall descending and giving trees in the parks at least some taste of the passionate autumn colors we get back home, we got orders to deploy to our final positions. It was a sobering event. Frank and I said our goodbyes and split, him for the West Coast, me for the Midwest. The twenty of us split for four cities. The Atlanta squad split for four more. The European Platoon fragmented across the old cities of the Continent, and so on. In a matter of days, we were in twenty-six small towns, eleven of twelve medium cities and twenty-eight large ones of the thirty we'd planned for, allowing for the casualties we'd taken already.
Chapter 23
Our business was transferred to the team staying in Washington.
I was still "owner," along with an investment company. They'd been making noises about buying my share and controlling it themselves. It was a pretty standard deal. I led them on a bit at a time. We needed to keep it, but I didn't mind signing deals for advertising, etc, as long as the only people who could access the property were our people, the police, insurance investigators, federal, state and local representatives and anyone with a court order. The investors would have to ask.
After that, my team trickled in the direction of Minneapolis, using fresh IDs from our bare few. The embassy had funneled additional chips to us as it received them from outsystem Earthies who were suborned. We kept our command people stocked with those and knocked off a few punks, including several of Fart Cutter's old gang for their chips. This wasn't unusual, apparently. Identity theft is fairly common, so it went unquestioned. Any petty criminal found dead and stripped was assumed to have his ID in use elsewhere, and it was shortly deleted. People went to great lengths to hide bodies. We buried them in remote dumpsters, or drained the blood and stashed them in the roof hatches of abandoned buildings. Those bodies would never be found. And the way the system worked, out of sight was out of mind. It only registered presence, not absence.
First was to set up our new business in Bloomington, which was coordinated by our investor, on the theory that we would be much more willing to start selling out as we developed more of them. This time, it was a commercial warehouse. Commercial warehousing was easier on the nerves than personal warehousing. We should have thought of it earlier. Of course, it took more startup and the potential clientele was smaller. And our old one in Washington was well-established now. The rough part was that it was much harder to sneak in funds from outside, with the Embassy gone.
We acquired four different safehouses, and arranged ways to tell if they were compromised. Deni and I set up the first one, acting as a disgustingly cute young couple who couldn't keep hands off each other. It wasn't much of an act. We chose an efficiency apartment (I call it a bach) in a suburb on the south edge of the metroplex. It had one window and a door, two outside walls, as it was at the end of a row, and would do as a bolthole during an escape. That was our first priority.
It was a nice little place. The apartment was on a side road off the entrance, and there were lots of speed bumps. An attack on the ground would be slow. The unit was on the back of the building, but that side was protected by, yes, an adjacent fenced-in personal warehouse facility. People on Earth have so much stuff they have to store it in locked boxes away from home. My thought is, if you don't need it enough to keep it at home, get rid of it. And for the price of the storage, one can lease or buy that much more dwelling space. At least on Grainne. Space was limited here, and I'm digressing. Any attack would have to be on foot, rather than drive up to the door and bust in. That was all to the good. We arranged payment to be by deduction from Deni's bank account, as she had one of our few legit IDs, and did a test at once. We left a few bank notes on the opened bed (it folded from the wall) and left the door unlocked.
Five days later, it was untouched. We'd hoped so. It was a clean, simple neighborhood of unassuming people, and no one hassled them much. They were too remote for the inner city thugs, not wealthy enough for the roving rural gangs to bother with. We stocked it with dry goods and cans and a few basics.
Kimbo and I found the second place, masquerading as a gay couple. We both wore a bit of makeup. He had trouble playing the role, and he swings now and then. I guess the act was just not him.
It was a small half unit not that far from downtown, attached to the back of a house, behind its garage. It had been built as an office for some forgotten business run from the garage. It was old and worn but not decrepit, and we put on The Act.
"So," I asked him as the landlord looked on. She was a sweet elderly lady, and smiled warmly as she reminisced as to her own youth. "Will it work, pal?" I brushed up against him and cupped his far hip.
He managed to turn his part into "not in front of others, you're embarrassing me!" and shied only slightly. "Well, it's small, but I won't need much when I'm in town," he said. "I won't have to go near the house."
"We can dress this up," I assured him. "Perhaps some of those purple whirls in the textured paint. That and some new furniture and some lighting."
The landlady said, "Please do. I'd love to have it taken care of. Good tenants are so hard to find these days. Not like when I was younger." She was so nice. She'd like this next part.
"Well," I said. "We'd prefer it if people didn't know Andry was here," I said. "If we could not sign a lease, I'd be happy to pay up front and add a little for your trouble. I know there's a hint of risk, but we'd rilly appreciate it," I threw the single slang word in there. A hint, not overkill, is all it takes.
"Oh, I'd be happy to, but the State has to have a copy for the property tax," she said. "It's so annoying, I know."
"Yes," I agreed. "Well, we'd really like, um, my family not to know he's here," I said, twisting the ring on my finger. "I mean, I care for them all, and I wouldn't want any friction. But I could cover some of it in cash." I acted embarrassed at the suggestion.
"I suppose we could work something out," she agreed. Cash was always good, even if illegal in quantity. The quantity I was going to give her would ensure her silence. It took only a few minutes to settle on a rent, pay her a month in bills now, and promise that "Andry" would meet her the first of each month with rent in cash, and we'd leave another three months with her in case he missed. She was either poor or greedy or rebellious or all three, because she jumped on it. I could see her buying a few luxuries here and there, and being glad of her secret tenants in the closet out back.
Tyler and I got the third one. We were acting as an established young couple in graduate school, and got one near the UM campus. The building might have been three hundred years old. It was picturesque, or picture skew more accurately, but was adequate. It would be a waystop and diversion more than anything. It had once been multiple locking rooms, sort of a private dorm, and had been just a house before that. They did build them well, if on the ugly side of plain in the 22nd century.
* * *
It looked for a while as if we might not be needed. Things steadied down to nasty messages and veiled insults. The UN called us everything but a limited-franchise republic. We ignored them. The stuff Earth wanted from us economically they got, if more expensively due to circuitous routes to avoid the impression of being bought from us. It was okay to buy a sub-license of a program from Novaja Rossia or Ramadan, even if the royalties went back to the Freehold, as long as no direct transaction took place. It was all politics for appearance. What Earth demanded politically we told them to stuff. They didn't like that of course.
I even saw one ridiculous Person on the Street interview where a shopkeeper defended Earth's demands with the statement, "Well, this is where civilization began . . . so . . . y'know?" as if that debatable criterion were relevant. Besides, even if it had begun on Earth, the rest of us had moved beyond the flea-picking and grunting stage.
No, we were going to be needed. This would play out shortly. Meanwhile, we got back to the business of being obedient little peasants while clutching every penny we could get toward our needed resources.
We had some deliciously ironic sources of income. For example, in Arabia, Aaron Livne of Jewish ancestry was running the Mtali Relief and Development Fund, acquiring money from Muslims. Besides paying him and four other Operatives healthy salaries, due to the lenient local laws it was able to pay overhead for their lodging, food and travel, as well as "advertising," which included mass-market mail with encoded data for me. What was left of the donations was sent to Mtali, to a drop run by our Embassy (which we maintained for business reasons only), who funneled the money into purchases of equipment from our South American office in São Paolo, who pocketed the profit at that end, after paying taxes. And Noora Radosevic of Muslim ancestry, portraying an expatriate from the Iraq Province of the Republic of Isra
el, reduced her taxes by donating to MRDF. You might think it was risky linking the two like that, but it was so ridiculous that they'd never make the connection, just assume it was coincidence.
* * *
The news changed again shortly. The transit and shipping regulations started to be enforced to the letter of the law against Freehold Registry vessels, or more specifically, Freehold Registered vessels that were also owned by Freehold Residents, rather than foreign nationals using our system. Shipments were seized and a few crews detained. All that was annoying, but not critical by itself. It was a power game.
Six months later, it all went to hell. The idiots invaded.
At least this time it was competently done. They seized all three Jump Points then hit the major military installations with kinetic kills. We gathered around the vid and our blood ran cold.
Some bubblehead reporter was saying, "—and with that, the junta has been taken out of power. The UNPF plans to consolidate the planet and put down any insurrection, and the Colonial Commission will resume administration, the end goal being to bring this disadvantaged star nation up to speed in those areas it lacks so it can join the UN. I understand there's a lot of areas that need fixed. For that, over to Jack Raffi."
His fellow lackey took over. "That's right, Jewel. Let's start by reviewing recent history," he said as a chart and graphics came up. "After three hundred years of colonization and development, first as a possession and then as a member of the Colonial Alliance, Grainne declared itself a star nation. However, they took an unprecedented and outrageous turn by declaring independence from the UN and the rule of law. The courts still haven't reached a decision on whether or not it is legal for a nation to exist outside of UN law—" I tuned it out while reviewing our preparations so far. We likely had enough goods to handle a takedown at this point, but I always like extra hardware. Also, if the UN actually had control of communications, I might not get any signals from home. That left me the guy making those decisions. Also, it would be dangerous to be caught reading any messages that could be traced back to the Freehold. Though that was a risk I already faced. I snapped back alert as the mouthpiece said, "—will start by nationalizing the assets of the ruling class and imposing the basic infrastructure of government. Hard as it may be for many viewers to comprehend, the so-called 'Freehold' holds no elections, grants no rights to any basic human needs such as medical care or housing, and restricts rule to a tiny minority of incredibly wealthy despots—"
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