Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “It’s a free market. Alistair is… a remarkable man. But he has no head for business. I don’t even think his first concern is his business anymore. I think he yearns for the day when a factory turns out an HD Engine. He wants to leave. You and I could put together a better firm, a more profitable one. I’m tired of the sloppy way this one is run. Why don’t we…”

  He trailed off when he saw the answer in her eyes.

  “I’m not leaving Alistair.”

  “I’m not asking you to leave him, just to join me on our own business venture.”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t want to leave AS&A, Santi. I’m flattered you came to me, but I’m not going.” She smiled a humorless smile. “Alistair just gave me an ultimatum: either stop holding rallies or leave AS&A. I told him I’d have to think about it but I’ve already made my decision.”

  He accepted this with good grace, giving her a somber nod and turning to gaze at the horizon.

  “Alistair is a good man. I can work for a good man, even if he makes me crazy.” He stared in silence for a moment before adding, “He’s not the only man who sees a way off this planet.”

  Chapter 80

  Bedrock, The Shield and Ashley Security combined their fleets, and the scores of workers attending to the last minute preparations took to calling it the Armada. This lasted until Alistair told them the famous Spanish Armada had been obliterated. After that, the name The Second Thousand took hold, a reference to The Thousand, the great space fleet of the defunct Solar Empire. Alistair pointed out that fleet was used to enslave colonies and maintain power, not to free men as theirs was meant to do, but either the men were tired of looking for names or that particular point did not impress them because The Second Thousand remained its moniker.

  The mechanics and loaders and other workers of the fleet bounced as they walked, almost giddy with the excitement of those who live in interesting times but feel sheltered from the forces that make them interesting. After Alistair issued to them every order he could think might be useful and spent some time directing traffic, he made his way to the center of the makeshift launching pad, nothing more than the flat ground of a nearby prairie, and turned in a slow circle to survey the entirety of the project. Overhead a noon sun shone down on a ring of guards surrounding the fleet, holding their rifles and allowing none to pass who did not have proper clearance. Beyond them several separate throngs gathered to gawk. Inside the ring of guards was the chaos of an ant colony, with workers doing everything but crawling over one another as they moved about.

  While Alistair was in the center of the maelstrom, Duke’s short form strode across the turf to meet him. His expression was as serious as it always was, his brow as furrowed.

  “If I could have a moment of your time, Alistair,” he said and did not hesitate before taking that moment. “When our operation is complete I thought we might have a sit-down with Mordecai to discuss some items of importance.”

  “Is this your idea or his?”

  “His. Giuseppe’s, actually. Though I quite agree with him and might have proposed it myself.”

  “Proposed what?”

  “Mordecai has come to me with an idea for a treaty.”

  “We can’t do it.”

  “You haven’t heard the details yet.”

  “A treaty is something governments sign. We’ll have to make it a contract.”

  Duke deeply inhaled and his brow furrowed more. “Technicalities aside, Giuseppe has proposed a contract for us to sign.”

  “I can imagine how enthusiastic I am going to be about this.”

  “Just listen for a minute. We are going to form a network in which we standardize procedures and policies and punishments. It will facilitate cooperation between our firms, smooth over some rough spots. No security firm not part of the treaty and admitted by our three firms will be recognized as a legitimate security agency.”

  “No.”

  “Hold on a second! Now the slaves and the warriors are already splintering apart, segregating themselves and many are forming their own little security firms. Who knows what sort of nonsensical laws they’ll enforce? We’ve got an established reputation and method, and no firm that does not meet our standards should be permitted to practice. It’s not safe.”

  “Duke…” Alistair began, ready to start his rebuttal but instead broke down in a sigh. “Duke, what the hell would give us the right to do it? We offer security services already; if someone is being abused by one of these firms they can hire us and we’ll help them out. Negotiation is what should develop a system of law, not force. Is this a preemptive measure against something Mordecai dreamed one night? It sounds like a solution in search of a problem.”

  Duke folded his arms and said nothing more than a low, “Hmmm.”

  “This network you describe is not very different from a government.”

  “I’m not opposed to having a government,” Duke replied. He hastily added, “That’s not to say this isn’t working. In fact I’ve been pleasantly surprised by it. But we’re seeing the danger of people running amok—”

  “No one is running amok.”

  “Maybe not running amok, but everyone’s unsettled. There is no end to the former slaves who want to blame all their past troubles on people like us.”

  “But that is true whether we form this network or not.”

  “True, perhaps, but… there’s no sense in risking it.”

  “Risking what?”

  “Well, what if fighting breaks out?” Duke demanded, furrowing his brow. “I mean fighting on a larger scale?”

  “If fighting breaks out Ashley Security & Arbitration will do everything in its power to protect the lives and property of its clients.”

  “That’s not what I’m… Damn it, Alistair! Stop being difficult. If fighting breaks out, it’s something our network might have prevented.”

  “You’re talking about forcibly putting down any security firm we deem to be a rogue firm. That’s not preventing violence, that’s initiating it.”

  “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We would be stopping greater future violence.”

  “What we would be stopping is the negotiating process. We would begin a process where our network imposed its will. But what if we’re in the wrong? What if these rogue firms are representing clients with legitimate grievances? If the ex slaves are this worked up about things, there is probably a good reason for it. Why not try to reach an agreeable settlement rather than impose our will?”

  Duke tapped his chin while he considered Alistair’s arguments. “Something to think about,” he grudgingly said. Then, his demeanor changed and he vigorously shook Alistair’s hand. “Good luck today. Come back safe. We can talk more after we get back.”

  “Good luck and stay safe,” said Alistair, and then Duke left him for his airship.

  Alistair flew in the large craft he had been using as offices. With him went the pieces of a missile launcher, a computer station, a portable power source and a large team of men of barely adequate training whom he was counting on to pull the operation off. This team consisted of a gunner’s crew for the launcher, two communications men, four mechanics to set up the power station, a company of forty troops led by Taribo, and two pilots, one of whom was Ryan Wellesley.

  In the central conference room of the ship, he sat with Taribo and the two communications officers. Occasionally another would enter to confer with him, but the room never filled up and little was heard above the level of hushed mumblings. There were overhead lights available but these were left off, meaning the room was lit by the sunlight coming through the window in the ceiling and by the lights from the computers. Apart from the shaft of light from the window hitting the center of the conference table, the dusky light in the room was soft and encouraged whispers and more delicate movements, which Alistair preferred.

  They flew low over the surface and employed every means at their disposal to scramble and cloak
their signal. The sky streaking over the window above was devoid of features, a mere average of the colors they passed under and a testament to the great velocity of their craft. One of the 3D displays showed a section of the globe with four white dots representing Alistair’s ship and its convoy. Their continent roughly had the shape of a top heavy crescent, tilted a bit, whose lower portion dipped just below the equator. The section of the globe on display now showed only a portion of the west coast of the crescent, and the four white dots were well out over the sea.

  There were two smaller continents on the other side of the globe, one in the arbitrarily defined northern hemisphere and one in the southern. The southern continent, whose lowest extremity plunged into the polar region and whose broad northern coast fell well short of the equator, was their destination. A third of that continent was locked in ice without interruption. Not a single acre escaped snowfall in the winter, but there was a band running along that northern coast where farming and herding could be done, and along that strip of settled land there were four Gaian cities hundreds of miles apart. It was their intention to simultaneously attack them, plunder them, and leave behind smoke and rubble.

  At a certain speed, heading west as they were, they could have remained in eternal noon, but they were moving far too fast for that. Even when the 3D display was set at a scale of hundreds of miles the white dots made perceptible progress across it. Noon became morning, morning retreated to sunrise, and sunrise gave way to predawn gloom. Overhead the color of the sky streaking by lost vibrancy until it faded to black speckled with white stars blinking in and out of existence when clouds passed between them. Even the stars, at that startling speed, crawled across a black tabletop, moving from one edge of the window and arriving at the other some minutes later.

  An expansive ocean, the equal of Earth’s Pacific, separated the continents so that for a while the four white dots were surrounded by blue. Every so often an island appeared on the display and provided a sense of movement as it tracked from left to right. Passing deep into the night side of the moon, they eventually moved into a storm and the black clouds extinguished the stars. Apart from that, there was little sense of being in a tempest: the ship’s compensators cancelled out the effects of the wind so that even the strongest of gales felt like little more than a soft shudder, and the sounds of the storm were similarly muffled. There were frequent but fleeting flashes of light, little wills o’ the wisp that to the craft’s passengers were lost in the blink of an eye but outside must have been great streaks of lightning.

  The conference room was much darker now, lit only by the computer displays, and this with the constant hushed murmurs of the communications men nearly hypnotized Alistair. On the dark wood surface of the table he had a crude pencil, such as they had used on the island. It was thicker than a crayon, and its lead composite was dirty and given to leaving smudges and crumbling when it scratched the surface of a parchment. Next to it was a sleek modern pen, pilfered from Floralel, which used neither lead nor ink but whose tip would leave a precise, black mark on any paper it touched. The desired thickness of this line could be adjusted with a simple turn of the pen’s other end. It was smooth and light and it glided over paper like an ice skater in a rink. There was an inch of space between the two instruments, but as he stared at them he wondered how many years were in that inch.

  Presently, one of the communications men announced they would begin to decelerate, and a moment later Alistair felt it like an insistent tug drawing him out of his seat. The pen and the pencil slid across the table, out of his line of vision. It was the click of Taribo’s seatbelt that finally brought him out of his reverie, and when the deceleration increased and the tug of inertia became more insistent, the head of AS&A sat back in his chair, bracing himself against the floor, and secured his own seatbelt.

  After several minutes they slowed to a stop and the aircraft landed. His brooding lethargy dissipating, he was out of his seat and winding through the corridors, joined first by Taribo, and then by the men of his company as the exit ramp lowered to the ground. His booted feet were on the ramp even before it touched down, and the men were close behind him.

  The air outside was cool but still, the storm they had gone through having passed by a short while before. They were in thickly forested territory, and a good number of the trees were pine and spruce and evergreen. Water still dripped from leaves and pine needles, and the softened earth held puddles hidden by weeds and tall grass. The smell of pine, the crispness of the cool air and the appearance of their breath in the form of white mist had a jolting impact on him. The smell was not exactly the same, but it was close enough to remind him of home, and he pictured his parents.

  “Let’s get moving,” he said, his voice hard, but the company of troops was already in action.

  Communications were established with adequate promptness, though it was another few minutes before the other teams were on line. They first confirmed the other three ships in their convoy were in position around the city before confirming the other convoys had surrounded their targets. While the teams erected the artillery, the communications officers passed scrambled messages back and forth.

  Alistair had little to do during the preparation. He erected himself a command center composed of a chair and a table next to the aircraft’s exit ramp and sat down to observe. There were several minor problems, and a few of those went unsolved, but for the most part the operation started smoothly. He spent minutes at a time regarding the trees which stared down at the outsiders trespassing on their land.

  Not until he was informed they were ready for action did he pop out of his chair. He ordered his men to their positions and told them to remain alert. He demanded confirmation from the other teams that they were prepared to launch the assault, and in a matter of moments it came through. Next he wanted to hear from the other convoys, and after a few minutes word came through that they were all prepared.

  Before the austerity of the dark forest there was little chatter beyond a whisper or two and only between men sitting close together, but the communications officers had kept up a steady rhythm of talk and this now ceased, and the eyes of every man turned to Alistair, little white orbs interrupting the night’s black and gray canvass.

  “Issue the countdown,” was his command.

  The missile launcher resembled a scorpion, with six legs piercing the turf, a central body resting on the ground and a pipe from which the missiles launched. The body was five feet high, the pipe reached eight feet beyond that and from one end to the other it measured twelve feet. When the countdown reached zero, they heard a hollow, metallic pop, but between extreme speed and lack of light no one saw anything other than a brief blur shoot out the end of the launch pipe. Powered by the same system as the aircraft, there was no trail of smoke, no fire at the back end, and therefore the missile was invisible to all but the detection system built into the body of the launcher.

  “All four missiles away,” confirmed the operations officer at the launcher, his face and chest lit by his computer terminal.

  “Time to arrival?”

  “Thirty seven seconds… thirty six… thirty five…”

  “Resume countdown when you reach ten; launch second missile.”

  The second missile popped out of the launch pipe, and twenty five seconds of breathless quiet followed. Someone shifted his weight and his boots slurped in the mud.

  “Ten seconds,” said the officer, and he counted down from there. When the countdown was complete he paused a second, then said, “Four confirmed missile hits, defensive barriers still up.”

  “Launch missile three.”

  A third pop sounded, followed almost immediately by, “Four more confirmed hits… barrier down!”

  This produced a cheer from the men. Alistair turned to his right, to a group of twelve troops seated on four Torpedoes. Three to a machine, they grasped them between their legs and grabbed at the handles. The forward most of the three held small handlebars and ducked his hea
d below a slanting windshield.

  “Raiders away!”

  The four raiders lifted a few feet off the ground, bobbing slightly like a hot air balloon whose tethers are lengthened, and then shot forward, rising over the tree tops and skimming over them towards the besieged city.

  One of the two communications officers said, “City number three has lost its defensive barrier. Still waiting to hear from the other two.”

  This was followed by the operations officer saying, “Four more confirmed hits. Power is out and city hall destroyed.

  “Last two barriers down!” said the other communications officer. “Targets one, three and four have lost power… Target two has lost power!”

  More cheering followed, but Alistair cut through it with a query.

  “Is there any indication of a response from the Gaians?”

  The team waited while the two officers of communication scanned the area.

  “Negative. We hit ‘em in their sleep, took out their power… they’re sitting ducks for the raiders.”

  “Time to raiders’ arrival?”

  “Forty seconds.”

  From there, a familiar story was repeated: the city fell, caught off guard and invaded by warriors with better equipment than the Gaians ever expected to find themselves up against. Each team sent a dozen raiders on four Torpedoes. Each team had good maps and established targets. The Gaians were blinded, crippled and not good soldiers. They came to tend a zoo, not to suppress rebellions when the monkeys escaped their cages. Having forgotten Floralel, they preferred to imagine themselves once again masters of the moon, unchallengeable, immune, quite out of danger.

  The air buzzed with incoming and outgoing transmissions filled with updates, progress reports, queries, answers and, increasingly as the rout became clearer, banter. The weapons centers were secured, though there was a firefight at one for the unlucky reason that they launched their attack during one of the infrequent inspections and thus a few Gaians were able to arm themselves. He listened to each report which added to the list of secured areas until, one by one, an ‘all clear’ was issued from every city.