by David Drake
“Watch!” Pepe commanded triumphantly.
The sphere floated out of his hands. A corona of purple sparks bathed its lower surfaces. Coke’s commo helmet crackled minusculely in response to the discharge. The crowd of gunmen let out a collective wheeze of surprise.
“They won’t last long,” Coke muttered. “Who are you going to get to maintain fireflies on Cantilucca?”
“They’re six to a set,” Margulies said “Do you suppose he’d have brought more than one set?”
“I can direct them….” Pepe continued. He worked one of the tiny joysticks on his belly pack. The firefly danced and staggered nervously.
“He’s not very good at it,” Margulies said.
“Nobody can use those stock control sets,” Coke said. “Not even one bird at a time.”
“Bet Barbour could thread needles with it if he had to,” Margulies replied.
“Or I can let them act for themselves on programmed instructions!” Pepe said.
He took his hands away from the controls. The firefly sailed up the street at a smooth walking pace, two meters in the air. The sphere kept the same face forward at all times. It only appeared to rotate because of the spinning static discharge which supported it.
“I hate those bastards,” Coke murmured. “With a man, you can watch his eyes or his hands. I always refused to serve around the fireflies in the field.”
The device was now a hundred meters up the street. It stopped and began to turn very slowly on its axis.
Pepe’s belly pack projected a holographic view of what the firefly “saw.” “I can watch things with them,” he announced. He poised his finger on the control lever.
“And I can do more than watch!”
He pressed the lever in. The firefly lighted the facades around it with the rapid-fire flashes of five pistol-caliber powergun bolts. The bar adjacent to where the device hovered was The Blue Ox, an Astra hangout. The sign over its armored door disintegrated in flame and molten plastic.
The firefly turned another ninety degrees and drifted purposefully back. A man stuck his head out of The Blue Ox, gaped up at the blasted sign, and ducked inside again.
Pepe Luria stood arms akimbo, facing up the street toward the returning firefly. “Widow Guzman!” he cried. “I have six of them, Widow! And I can tell them to attack men wearing any color I choose, just the color! Do you hear me, Widow?”
Only the wind answered.
Pepe linked arms with his father and grandfather. He walked with them into the L’Escorial courtyard, laughing with bubbling promise. A red-clad subordinate jumped into the limousine to drive it and its cargo within.
The firefly’s ammunition was expended. It trailed along behind its master. The glow of its iridium barrel faded.
“Let’s get to the port,” Coke said, but he stepped off the driver’s saddle and motioned Margulies to take his place. “You drive. I’ve got to make some additions in the message I’m sending home.”
The first drops of the storm hit, cratering the dust. The temperature had dropped ten degrees, but Coke felt colder than the weather justified.
Cantilucca: Day Five
The telephone in the Hathaways’ private quarters rang. Coke, lying in a haze of almost-sleep directly above the sound, snapped awake.
Moments later someone hammered on the hotel’s front door. “Quick, open up!” a man called from the street. “I have to see the Frisian major at once! The Old Man needs him!”
It was three hours before dawn. Coke pulled on his commo helmet and switched it to the command channel. “Stand to,” he ordered, probably needlessly, as he slid his feet into his boots. “Out.”
He keyed channel five, the push Barbour chose as a patch to Cantilucca’s land-line communications. The transceiver Niko Daun had placed in the Hathaways’ handset was the size of a matchhead and far more reliable than the phone to which it was attached.
Coke already wore his trousers and tunic. The night before was the first time on Cantilucca he’d taken his boots off to sleep. He guessed he’d return to field SOP from here on out.
“Hello?” Georg Hathaway croaked into the phone receiver. The innkeeper sounded both nervous and disoriented.
“Quick, you old fool and don’t start arguing about it!” ordered the voice on the other end of the line. “Tell that hireling Coke that he’s to come at once to Astra headquarters. At once! This is Adolpho Peres. And I warn you, little man, if there’s any delay in Coke arriving, I’ll take it out of your hide!”
“But—” Hathaway gasped.
“At once!” Peres shouted. He broke the connection with a bang.
Barbour had been sleeping beside his console in the lobby. Coke met the rest of the team, armed and ready, in the upstairs corridor. Below, Mistress Hathaway was talking to the L’Escorial messenger through the viewport in the door.
“I’ll take care of the Astras,” Johann Vierziger volunteered. Like Coke, he wore a cape over his weapons. “Peres feels we’re soulmates, after all.”
His smile was as thin as the corona of a collapsed star.
Evie Hathaway ran up the stairs. “Major Coke!” she called. “Major Coke!”
“Right,” said Coke. “I’ll take L’Escorial. Sten, you’re in charge here—”
He flicked a quick finger at Margulies, forestalling the comment poised between her open lips.
“—and no, I don’t want company, I want a reaction force. If both sides are calling us, there’s probably no immediate danger, but I want all of you ready to move as needed.”
The Hathaways had stopped at the head of the stairs as they saw the Frisians were up and alert.
“Please, Major—” Georg began.
Coke waved his hand. “It’ll be taken care of,” he said. “We’re on our way.” He slid between the locals with more haste than courtesy, though that would have been the Hathaways’ choice had they been asked.
“There’s an envoy from Delos,” Bob Barbour called as Coke and Vierziger passed him. “A Madame Yarnell from the gage cartel on Delos, and she is not amused. From the way the Astra leaders talk, she’s the cartel’s troubleshooter—with the emphasis on ‘shooter.’”
“Why can’t they do this stuff at a decent time of day?” Coke muttered as he helped the sergeant pull open the heavy door.
“Because they’re not decent people, Matthew,” Vierziger said. “Of course, neither are we.”
“You’re the major?” the L’Escorial messenger said as Vierziger pushed past him. Then to Coke, “You’re the major.”
“Right,” Coke agreed, striding across the street. Vierziger headed for Astra HQ at a gliding pace, not quite a jog.
“What’s he doing?” the L’Escorial bleated, running to catch up with Coke but glancing toward Vierziger.
“Minding his own business,” Coke said. “Pray to the Lord that you never find yourself his business.”
He’d expected to find the L’Escorial courtyard full of armed men. Instead, half-dressed L’Escorials were trying to back their armored trucks into the garage beneath the headquarters building. The second-floor barracks was lighted. Coke could hear Pepe Luria shouting for his gunmen to get out by the back way at once.
Ramon Luria stood in the building’s doorway, looking alternately inside and out toward the courtyard. The messenger scampered up to him.
Ramon raised his hand to strike. “You idiot, Pierro!” he shouted. “I told you to bring the Frisian major!”
“He’s—” Pierro shrieked.
“I’m here,” Coke said. The courtyard was indifferently lighted, primarily by the headlights of the armored vehicles. The Frisian in his gray cape was a moving shadow.
“Coke!” Luria cried. “Thank the Lord you’re here! Look, you have to stop your troops coming. At once! You have to hold them back until Madame Yarnell has left Cantilucca!”
“Nobody at Camp Able’s going to make a decision until they have your money in hand, Luria,” Coke said harshly. “According to your pay
master, Suterbilt, that’s still several days. You needn’t have kittens.”
Despite his aggressive tone, Coke felt cold inside. His daily message capsules were shipped by first available transport to Nieuw Friesland, but there was at least a week between sending and receipt. Coke wondered what the Lurias would do to him if they knew he had recommended against taking the proffered contract, whether or not Suterbilt came through with the earnest money.
The Old Man lurched along the hallway toward his son. Gunmen, groggy with drink and gage, were being hastened onto the back stairs by their more alert fellows. Pepe Luria fought his way down the stairwell through them. He wore the firefly controller, but none of the spheres were themselves in evidence.
“She’s coming!” a L’Escorial shouted from the courtyard gate. “She’s coming!”
“Everybody into the basement!” Ramon screamed. He gripped the Frisian’s arm, fiercely and apparently unaware of what he was doing. His hand bumped the muzzle of Coke’s sub-machine gun.
“Oh my Lord!” Ramon cried. “You’re carrying a gun! Are you mad? She said no weapons in sight, none! She’ll—”
Pepe joined them. Ramon turned to his son and said, “He’s carrying a gun, Pepe!”
The youngest Luria looked Coke up and down with the interest of a dog sniffing something dead. “So, you’d be the expensive Major Coke, would you?” he said. “I suppose I needed to meet you some time, since L’Escorial now employs you.”
To his father Pepe added, “It isn’t in sight. But”—Pepe’s eyes were as black as cannel coal. They focused again on Coke.—“hold it so that it’s less obvious nonetheless. I don’t care what the good madame does to you, but she might mistakenly think L’Escorial was involved in your bad manners.”
The last of the L’Escorial armored trucks collided with a wall. The vehicle stalled on the ramp into the garage. The driver tried to restart his engine.
Ramon scampered over to the vehicle. “Leave it!” he cried. “Shut it down! And get out, get out!”
A car with a slim, armored body and four metal-mesh wheels on wide-spread outriggers pulled up in front of the L’Escorial building. Coke had seen similar vehicles used for ground reconnaissance where for one reason or another hovercraft were contra-indicated.
Raul Luria reached the doorway. Pepe put an arm around the Old Man’s shoulders, more for solidarity than for physical support. Ramon skipped back to join his father and son.
Matthew Coke stepped aside, flattening himself in the shadows across the wall. He held the sub-machine gun vertically against his body, covered by the folds of the cape. He glanced at Pepe Luria, but only for an instant; and there was no expression on his face.
The door of the reconnaissance car folded down; the female passenger got out. Though the car’s interior was more luxuriously appointed than was normal for the type of vehicle, it was still cramped quarters for those within.
The woman wore a white jumpsuit trimmed with silver, and a short, lustrous cape of some natural fur. She was by no means young, but surgery and cosmetics prevented Coke from trying to guess her age within two decades. She halted in the gateway where the lights of the stalled truck lit her brilliantly.
Raul Luria began hobbling toward her with his descendants a half-pace behind to either side. “Madame Yarnell!” he wheezed. “You honor us with your presence.”
“Don’t bother, Luria,” the woman ordered sharply. “I’m going to say what I have to and then go back and repeat it to the Astras, those other childish idiots. This must stop! Do you understand?”
“Madame—” Ramon said, “we of course—”
“No, it’s not ‘of course,’” Madame Yarnell snarled. “If anything were obvious to you morons, you’d get on with business instead of ruining it. Can you imagine how much trouble you’ve caused with your fighting already?”
“It wasn’t us who—” Raul began.
“Shut up, old man!” the woman ordered. “I’m here to talk, not listen. The reason gage deliveries have dropped by thirty percent over the past two quarters, and the reason that the product my fellows and I need to fulfill contracts has burned to ash—the reason is that you and Astra are squabbling instead of doing business. That will stop, now! Do you understand?”
“Of course, we want nothing more than to do business ourselves, mistress,” Pepe said with his eyes lowered.
“That’s good,” the Delian representative said, “because if there’s any more trouble, our retailers will cancel contracts and find other sources of supply. Whereupon Cantilucca will become superfluous …and you gentlemen in particular will become superfluous. Do you understand me?”
Pepe’s face tightened.
Raul laid a hand heavily on the youth’s shoulder. “May we offer you the hospitality of L’Escorial during your stay on Cantilucca, madame?” the Old Man said.
“You may not,” Madame Yarnell snapped. “I’ll be staying in the cartel offices in the port reservation while I’m here. And if you’re wondering how long that will be—it will be until I’m absolutely sure that you and your imbecile compatriots have heard my message and are acting on it. I regret to say that it may be years that I’ll be stuck in this cesspool!”
She spun on her heel, whirling the cape out from her shoulders, and walked back to the recon car. As soon as the door latched, the driver slammed into a tight turn and headed back toward Astra HQ. Coke suspected that the cartel representative had bypassed the Astras initially because she feared that L’Escorial, as the more seriously aggrieved party, was likely to take the next escalating step.
The Lurias bent their heads together, all talking at once. Coke looked at them, pursed his lips, and sauntered across the street to Hathaway House.
He supposed he should have been pleased that peace might come to Cantilucca. The trouble was, he kept thinking that with the syndicates in unbroken control, the best ordinary citizens could hope for was the peace of the grave.
Cantilucca: Day Six
“The beer isn’t any better than Hathaways,” Sten Moden said. The logistics officer watched the afternoon traffic over Coke’s shoulder, as Coke did over Moden’s. “But it’s good to get out anyway. With Madame Yarnell in town, you could almost imagine Potosi was a normal place, couldn’t you?”
Niko Daun returned from the bar, clanking three more mugs down on the sidewalk table. “They’ve got a dancer in the back room,” he said indignantly. “They let the johns poke at her with shock batons. I don’t care if she’s stoned, they shouldn’t do that!”
“There’s a lot of things on Cantilucca they shouldn’t do,” Coke said. He drained the last mouthful from his current mug and set the empty under his chair to get it out of the way. “Madame Yarnell stopped people who’d be better dead from killing each other. That’s about it.”
He didn’t see any guns on the street. Syndicate colors were muted as well. A red beret, a blue neckerchief—rarely anything more overt. Widow Guzman and the Lurias had sent most of their gunmen back into the farming districts for the time being.
“I wonder how Esteban’s father-in-law’s doing,” Sten Moden said. “I’m afraid that the thugs that were swaggering around Potosi’ll be looking for something to keep them occupied out in the sticks.”
A woman screamed in a broken voice from the cafe’s back room. Shouts and laughter greeted the outburst. A pair of men wearing red armbands got up from the table beside the Frisians and walked toward the back. They were fumbling in their pockets for the cover charge.
“Sir,” Niko blurted. “Are we really going to help these guys? I mean, both sides, they’re—they’re animals, sir! The least we ought to do is say ‘no sale’ and go on back to Friesland.”
“That still leaves the same people here,” Moden said. “It’s not an answer.”
He swizzled a sip of beer around his mouth. He didn’t appear so much to be savoring as analyzing the fluid.
“Oh, the beer’s not that bad,” Coke said. Without changing his tone, he went on, �
��I think if we wanted to …”
He paused, looked at his companions in turn, and resumed: “I don’t think it would require much pushing from behind the scenes to get Astra and L’Escorial to pretty well eliminate each other.”
In Matthew Coke’s mind, the response was:
Daun: “Sir, your proposal is clearly against the interests of Nieuw Friesland!”
Moden: “Major, I regret that, in accordance with the provisions of the Defense Justice Code, I’m going to have to relieve you of command for that treasonous suggestion.”
Niko Daun’s face split with a wide grin. “Lord, sir!” he said. “I was afraid you were going to burn me a new asshole for saying that.”
“Yeah,” agreed Sten Moden, setting his mug down hard enough in his enthusiasm to slosh. “We were all afraid to discuss it with you, Matthew. But I don’t care what color their money is—something has to be done about these bastards, and the six of us are the only folks around who might be able to do it.”
“We all?” Coke repeated. “You two talked to the others?”
Daun nodded. “Vierziger said that was what he was here for, he guessed.”
“Johann said he presumed.” Sten Moden corrected. He shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what he meant by that. But Johann’s willingness to shoot people isn’t in doubt, is it?”
“Bob, he’s not real comfortable with the business,” Niko resumed. “He’s not afraid of Camp Able, it’s not that, but …Well, anyway, he finally said he was in.”
The sensor tech shook his head. “He’s a good guy, Bob is. I don’t understand what’s going on under the surface, but he’s a good guy. And a fucking wizard with that console!”
“Yeah, he’s good all right,” Coke said. All five of his people were good, were about the best he’d ever seen. And he was talking about dropping them into the gears of a very powerful machine, in hopes that the machine would break before they did.
“Mary?” he added aloud.