By Blood Alone

by William C. Dietz

  Though reluctant to act till all the cards had been dealt face up, Nankool was a master orator who knew each being present, including their cultures, personalities, and political agendas. That being the case, he better than nearly anyone else was able to find the words that would build consensus, avoid offense, and encourage the assemblage to act. “So,” the President concluded, “while I cannot condone the means by which Ambassador Doma-Sa obtained some of his information, his actions were somewhat understandable.

  “The question of censure is of course up to you, but I would remind the senate that like his peers, Ambassador Doma-Sa is protected by diplomatic immunity.”

  Nankool paused to scan the audience. “In spite of some evidence to the contrary, I choose to believe that with the likely exception of Governor Pardo, this conspiracy is the work of a few misguided individuals and in no way represents the official policy of their respective governments.

  “Immediate steps will be taken to confirm that impression, which, if incorrect, will lead to serious consequences.”

  Chien-Chu glanced at Doma-Sa as the senators stirred in their seats and whispered back and forth. Was the Hudathan’s face expressionless? Or was that anger in his eyes?

  Yes, the cyborg decided, Doma-Sa was disappointed. But both of them understood the problem. Many members of the Confederacy had no military forces or their own, and, that being the case, the entire organization was dependent on the more warlike races, one of which was in total disarray, while a second was part of the problem.

  All Nankool could do was to buy time, gather what forces he could, and hope the governments in question would disavow the actions taken by their representatives. His frown filled the holo tank. “Given credible evidence that Governor Pardo not only conspired to illegally extend her powers, but urged charter forces to mutiny, I hereby suspend her powers until such time as the senate can review my decision and name the honorable Sergi Chien-Chu to serve in her place.

  “I think you’ll agree that as a past President of the Confederacy, and a member of the Naval Reserve, Citizen Chien-Chu is highly qualified for this interim post.”

  Nankool looked for and found the being in question. Other eyes followed. “Governor Chien-Chu, I hereby authorize you to restore Earth’s legally constituted government.”

  The President motioned toward the floor. “Others of you, including senators representing the Dwellers, Araballazanies, and Turr will be asked to advise my staff and I as we make contact with the Thraki. Please remember that this race destroyed one of our outposts without provocation, has taken possession of Zynig-47, and may have other territorial ambitions.

  “I would ask that all member states suspend contact and withhold recognition of the Thraki until such time as our investigations are complete. Thank you.”

  A tone sounded, a light board flashed, and the majority leader struggled to reassert his authority.

  “So,” Doma-Sa hissed, “one battle is won ... but another remains to be fought.”

  Chien-Chu looked at the Hudathan and nodded soberly. “Yes. Do you think we can win?”

  “My people have a saying,” the Hudathan replied. “ ‘Victory comes by blood alone.’ How much are you willing to shed?”

  26

  Payback is a bitch.

  North American folk saying

  Standard year circa 2000

  Planet Earth, Independent World Government

  A front moved in off the Pacific, and rain fell on the city of Los Angeles. Not just a sprinkle or two, but a torrential downpour that flooded dry riverbeds, triggered mudslides, and boiled toward the sea.

  Water thundered along the top of the bus, streamed down the windows, and turned the streets to black glass. Brakes screeched as the autobus came to a halt.

  The other passengers didn’t even look as Marcie stood and headed for the door. It hissed open. She descended the steps, tucked the purse under her coat, and dashed for home. It was half a block to her apartment, a ground-level unit with a door on the street. The palm plate felt cold. The eternally vigilant household computer unlocked the door, activated the lights, and waited for her to ask the question. “Messages?”

  “You have two messages,” the computer intoned. “One from your mother, and one from an anonymous caller.”

  “Caller ID?”

  “Blocked.”

  “Play number two,” Marcie said, as she draped her coat on a chair. She was tired, and anything beat talking to her mother.

  There was a click as the computer switched to voice mail. A series of beeps preceded the message. Three short, two long, and three short. The gender-neutral voice made the words seem more ominous: “Let loose the dogs of war.”

  Marcie said, “Replay,” and listened again. Both the beeps and the message were correct.

  Her mouth felt dry. Here it was ... the day so many had waited for. She swallowed, ordered the computer to forward the message to list six, and retrieved her coat. It was damp, but she hardly noticed. The cigarettes in her left-hand pocket were sealed in cellophane. She fingered the pack as she headed for the door.

  Monolo felt his pager vibrate and checked the readout. “Let loose the dogs of war.”

  The Jack Head grinned approvingly, cloned the message, and sent it out. Other pagers, six to be exact, vibrated in sympathy.

  A police cruiser appeared a block away, hovered over a low-rise apartment building, and dropped a recon bot onto the roof. It sniffed, caught a whiff of the DNA it was programmed to seek, and forced its way down an air duct. There were “incentives” for finding resistance fighters, and the cops were getting rich.

  Monolo raised his hand, pointed his index finger at the cop car, and said, “Bang.”

  Marcie paused under an overhang and felt for the cigarettes, reassured herself that they were there, and remembered the instructions. Press the logo three times, leave the pack next to some paper products, and take a walk. Simple. Marcie remembered Deke and how they had murdered him. The memory brought tears to her eyes. She straightened her shoulders and headed for the comer.

  Noam Inc. owned all sorts of business enterprises—not the least of which was a chain of convenience stores such as the one across the way.

  Marcie looked both ways, crossed with the light, and entered the store. She felt a sudden urge to pee. The lights were bright, the air smelled of plastic, and a holo blossomed next to an interactive display. The elf smiled beguilingly and motioned for her to approach. “Hey, lady! Over here!”

  Marcie ignored the pitch, made her way to the back of the store, and left the device next to some toilet tissue. She felt guilty as she hurried down the aisle, exited through the front, and hurried away. That’s when she remembered the security cameras, damned herself for a fool, and prayed the free forces would win.

  The would-be saboteur was a half-block away by the time the cigarettes exploded into flame. A clerk noticed, and put the fire out. But other businesses weren’t so lucky. Calls poured in, equipment was dispatched, and sirens wailed.

  Lisbon was hot, damned hot, and there was no shade on the roof. Dom paused in the middle of his play pretend work, peered over the edge, and checked the police station. As with all such facilities, it was busy twenty-four hours a day.

  Dom wasn’t thrilled about the fact that it was daytime in Europe, but knew it had to be daytime somewhere, and was proud to be part of the Euro Maquis. He and his teammates had balls, magnificent balls, as the authorities were about to learn.

  The freedom fighter looked at his watch, watched the seconds vanish, and checked his team. One of them really was a carpenter and made a show out of sawing some wood.

  Dom looked back, saw two cruisers lift in quick succession, and heard the wail of sirens. Thousands of fire reports had started to stream in from Lisbon, Sintra, and the surrounding suburbs. Their opportunity would come very, very soon.

  Monolo and his fellow Jack Heads had been watching L.A.’s 26th precinct for three weeks now. They knew how many cops worked there,
plus the number of cruisers housed in the garage. They waited till every last one of the cruisers had been dispatched and then fired their shoulder-launched missiles. The first hit an exterior wall and exploded. There was a loud boom, and a flock of pigeons took to the air, but the damage was minimal.

  Monolo swore, shoved another missile into Jorge’s launcher, and yelled, “Ahora!”

  It sailed through a window, struck the floor, and made a hole. The debris landed on the first-floor control center, killed the watch commander, and destroyed the com console.

  The computer known as L.A. Central sensed the problem, routed the 26th precinct’s voice, data, and video to the next station on the grid, and waited for an acknowledgment. None came.

  Police, half of whom worked for a subsidiary of Noam Inc., and most of whom were data pushers, administrators, and ex-security guards, boiled out of the 26th and into the street. That was a mistake. The Jack Heads opened fire.

  Satisfied that most of the real police had left the building, Dom keyed his radio. “Palo? You there?”

  Palo looked down through dirty plexiglass. The yellow exoskeleton stood 125 feet tall and resembled a giant stick figure. He used an enormous grasper to place a half-ton pallet of electroactive wallboard on the third floor of the quickly growing office complex, straighted his durasteel spine, and turned the machine’s torso toward the east. Tiled rooftops stretched into the distance.

  The police station was two blocks away. He could see Dom and the others on the roof across the way. “I’m here.... Are you ready?”

  “Ready and waiting,” Dom replied. “Come on over.”

  Once in place, the cranelike exoskeleton rarely moved its enormous podlike feet. That being the case, they were locked into position. Palo released the safeties, assured the machine’s onboard computer that he had done so intentionally, and stepped out onto the street. His right foot snagged the top of a steel fence, ripped fifty feet of it out of the ground, and sent workers running for cover. The machine operator grinned. Building stuff was fun ... but so was tearing it down.

  Palo stood in a web of sensors. They measured each movement his body made and furnished their findings to the onboard computer, which applied a series of algorithms. The results were delivered to servos that mimicked the operator’s movements and waited for feedback. The result was precise, if a little bit jerky.

  Palo moved cautiously at first. He didn’t want to harm innocent citizens or damage the surrounding buildings. Three steps were sufficient to clear the area. The operator didn’t even notice as a huge pod-shaped foot crushed an empty delivery van, a power cable snapped across his knees, and an aircar whizzed past his control module. The police station was ahead, and that was his goal.

  Dom watched in open-mouthed fascination as his friend raised an enormous six-ton foot, dropped it through the police station’s roof, and followed with the other.

  Walls collapsed, a dust cloud billowed into the sky, and the giant continued to march. Wires, wood, and other types of debris rattled and screeched as Palo towed them down the street. The primary objective had been destroyed. There was no need for the missiles. The secondary target was only six blocks away.

  It was nighttime in L.A., and much as Matthew Pardo wanted to turn off the lights and impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew, he had resisted the temptation to do so. And a good thing too, since to the extent that he still had any support, it was among corporations such as Noam Inc., which sold things and stood to lose money if people were confined to their homes.

  That’s why the lights were on, traffic flowed as usual, and Kenny continued to roam. The rain had let up by then, but the streets were wet and the air was unusually clean.

  The delivery truck still bore the previous owner’s sign, smelled of paint, and carried ladders racked to either side. Kenny, underground hero and founder of the RFE, rode in back while Mona, his newly acquired assistant, drove and kept an eye peeled for the police.

  Though not especially pretty, she was intelligent and had plans for Kenny. Big plans. First she would have to keep him alive, however—no small task, given his reckless disregard for his own safety, and the extent to which the authorities wanted to find him.

  Mona checked the speedometer and mirror prior to signaling the next random turn. The last thing they needed was a routine traffic stop. The truck leaned to the right as it rounded the comer. A red fire truck, lights flashing, arrived from the opposite direction. It slowed and blew through the light. There were a lot of fire trucks and police cars out and about, and Mona knew why.

  In the back of the truck, blissfully unaware of the exterior world, Kenny prepared for the upcoming broadcast. He touched a sequence of keys, watched Scoop Scully’s head rotate through a 360-degree turn, and decided that the effect pleased him. All he needed was a sound effect to create a surefire attention getter. Just the thing to open the next program with, and not just any program, but the most important segment he had produced. Time had run out for Pardo family ... and they were going down.

  Kenny chuckled happily, took the announcement the Free Forces had given him, and started to read. The sound of his voice was fed into a computer, altered, and rerecorded. Scoop Scully was about to speak, and when he did, everyone would listen.

  The rainfall ended by six A.M., but a pall of gray smoke hung over the city. The sun was little more than a dimly seen glow.

  Though not an active member of the resistance—he was too frightened for that—Hal Hamel was a sympathizer and watched the RFE on a frequent basis. He’d seen Scoop Scully’s report the night before, knew the fires were part of a larger effort, and felt a wonderful sense of elation as he drove to work. Finally something was happening.

  Hawthorne Elementary was a relatively new school, and Hamel, who had been principal for less than a month, had never tired of looking at it.

  Designed to match the nicely landscaped beauty of the newly trendy Rialto area, it looked more like a park than a school, with lots of trees, grass, and recreational equipment.

  There were no structures other than a bundle of what looked like steel-glass silos off to one comer of the property. That’s where the elevators, escalators, and emergency stairs were located, along with the fiber-optic pathways that funneled sunlight down to the underground classrooms.

  But this morning was different. Hamel turned the last corner and saw military vehicles, a cluster of black-clad bio bods, and two dozen robots. All dressed in the same pattern of camouflage green paint.

  Something, Hamel wasn’t sure what, was definitely wrong. But before he could turn the car around, a heavily visored military policeman waved the educator over and motioned him out of the car. That’s when the nightmare began.

  The militiaman, a human in this case, examined Hamel’s ID, checked his name off a list, and led him onto the school’s grounds. A group of smooth-faced robots stepped out of the way, and that’s when the principal saw the fifty-foot lengths of chain, the small ankle bracelets, and realized who they had been made for. The MP gestured to the shackles. The tone was casual, as if a matter of routine curiosity. “How many children can we actually expect? About five hundred or so?”

  Hamel started to answer, thought better of it, and closed his mouth.

  That’s when the military policeman stepped in close, grabbed the front of the educator’s shirt, and jerked the smaller man up onto his toes. “Listen, you little shit ... which would you prefer? To answer my question? Or have Ralphie shove a baton up your ass?”

  Hamel had read about courage, had admired it from a distance, but never been able to find much. Not till he saw the chains. The principal brought the stylus up, stabbed the soldier in the neck, and watched the blood spurt out. The academic had been good at anatomy, very good, and was proud of his aim.

  The MP released the civilian’s shirt, grabbed the wound, and backpedaled away. He tripped, fell, and quickly lost consciousness. That was Hamel’s cue to run, or should have been, except that he was so amazed by his accomplishment that h
e stood and stared.

  The militiamen killed Hamel a couple of seconds later. They fired one full mag apiece. Not for revenge, but because they were scared of the little man, and worried there might be more.

  The Gladiator’s wardroom had been turned into a de facto command center and was littered with odds and ends left over from a dozen meetings. The surface of the central table was nearly invisible under hastily rigged computer terminals, printouts, and a tray of partially eaten sandwiches. Admiral Angie Tyspin sat at the far end, face on arms, sound asleep.

  General Mortimer Kattabi rubbed his eyes, yawned, and took a sip of coffee. It was cold and tasted like the bottom of a Naa mulch pit. He made a face, ate a piece of pastry to rid himself of the taste, and looked across the table. “So, how are we doing?”

  Major Winters, who had been promoted to serve as Kattabi’s adjutant, looked up from a screen. “So far, so good, sir. The Euro Maquis and the Jack Heads report ninety-two percent of their targets destroyed.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  Winters grinned. “Hell, no. The satellite intel suggests that the actual mission completion rate is more like seventy-six percent.”

  Kattabi allowed his eyebrows to float upward. “That’s better than projected.”

  Winters nodded. “Yes, sir. The civvies are kicking some ass.”

  “And Booly?”

  The adjutant looked toward a tech sergeant, who provided the answer. “The colonel is ten from dirt, sir.”

  Kattabi stood. He had an assault to lead. “I hope this works.”

  Winters nodded. “So do I, sir. So do I.”

  Tyspin continued to sleep.

  It was snowing in the Rockies, an early storm that would dump a foot of snow on the higher elevations and dust the flatlands below.