by Vernor Vinge
The President didn’t seem interested in the display. All his attention was on the northerner. “So we can avoid these stationary gunmen till we find it convenient to deal with them. You are a great puzzle, Mr. Brierson. You claim strengths and weaknesses for your people that are equally incredible. And I get the feeling you don’t really expect us to believe you, but that somehow you believe everything you’re saying.”
“You’re very perceptive. I’ve thought of trying to bluff you. In fact, I did try earlier today. From the looks of your equipment”—he waved his hand at the Command and Control consoles, a faintly mocking smile on his face—“we might even be able to bluff you back where you belong. This once. But when you saw what we had done, you’d be back again—next year, next decade—and we’d have to do it all over again without the bluffs. So, Mr. Martinez, I think it best you learn what you’re up against the first time out. People like Schwartz are just the beginning. Even if you can rub out them and services like MSP, you’ll end up with a guerrilla war like you’ve never fought—one that can actually turn your own people against you. You do practice conscription, don’t you?”
The President’s face hardened, and Strong knew that the northerner had gone too far. “We do, as has every free nation in history—or at least every nation that was determined to stay free. If you’re implying that our people would desert under fire or because of propaganda, you are contradicting my personal experience.” He turned away, dismissing Brierson from his attention.
“They’ve arrived, sir.” As the tanks rolled into position on the smoking hillsides, the personnel carriers began disgorging infantry. The tiny figures moved quickly, dragging gear toward the open tears in the earth. Strong could hear an occasional popping sound: Misfiring engines? Remnant ammo?
Tactical aircraft swept back and forth overhead, their rockets and guns ready to support the troopers on the ground. The techs’ reports trickled in.
“Three video hard points detected,” small arms fire chattered. “Two destroyed, one recovered. Sonoprobes show lots of tunnels. Electrical activity at—” The men in the picture looked up, at something out of view.
Nothing else changed on the picture, but the radars saw the intrusion, and the holomap showed the composite analysis: a mote of light rose leisurely out of the map—500 meters, 600. It moved straight up, slowed. The support aircraft swooped down upon it and—
A purple flash, bright yet soundless, seemed to go off inside Strong’s head. The holomap and the displays winked down to nothing, then came back. The President’s image reappeared, but there was no sound, and it was clear he was not receiving.
Along the length of the van, clerks and analysts came out of that stunned moment to work frantically with their equipment. Acrid smoke drifted into the conference area. The safe, crisp displays had been replaced by immediate, deadly reality.
“High flux nuke.” The voice was calm, almost mechanical.
High flux nuke. Radiation bomb. Strong came to his feet, rage and horror burning inside him. Except for bombs in lapsed bobbles, no nuclear weapon had exploded in North America in nearly a century. Even during the bitterest years of the Water Wars, both Aztlán and New Mexico had seen the suicide implicit in nuclear solutions. But here, in a rich land, without warning and for no real reason—
“You animals!” he spat down upon the seated northerners.
Swensen lunged forward. “God damn it! Schwartz isn’t one of my customers!”
Then the shock wave hit. Strong was thrown across the map, his face buried in the glowing terrain. Just as suddenly he was thrown back. The prisoners’ guard had been knocked into the far wall; now he stumbled forward through Martinez’s unseeing image, his stun gun flying from his hand.
From the moment of the detonation, Brierson had sat hunched, his arms extended under the table. Now he moved, lunging across the table to sweep up the gun between his manacled hands. The muzzle sparkled and Strong’s face went numb. He watched in horror as the other twisted and raked the length of the van with stunfire. The men back there had themselves been knocked about. Several were just coming up off their knees. Most didn’t know what hit them when they collapsed back to the floor. At the far end of the van, one man had kept his head. One man had been as ready as Brierson.
Bill Alvarez popped up from behind an array processor, a five millimeter slug-gun in his hand, flashing fire as he moved.
Then the numbness seemed to squeeze in on Strong’s mind, and everything went gray.
WIL LOOKED DOWN the dim corridor that ran the length of the command van. No one was moving, though a couple of men were snoring. The officer with the handgun had collapsed, his hands hanging limp, just a few centimeters from his pistol. Blue sky showing through the wall above Wil’s head was evidence of the fellow’s determination. If the other had been a hair faster…
Wil handed the stun gun to Big Al. “Let Jim go down and pick up the slug gun. Give an extra dose to anyone who looks suspicious.”
Al nodded, but there was still a dazed look in his eyes. In the last hour, his world had been turned upside down. How many of his customers—the people who paid for his protection—had been killed? Wil tried not to think about that; indirectly, those same people had been depending on MSP. Almost tripping on his fetters, he stepped over the fallen guard and sat down on the nearest technician’s saddle. For all New Mexico being a foreign land, the controls were familiar. It wasn’t too surprising. The New Mexicans used a lot of Tinker electronics, though they didn’t seem to trust it: much of the equipment’s performance was downgraded where they had replaced suspicious components with their own devices. Ah, the price of paranoia.
Brierson picked up a command mike, made a simple request, and watched the answer parade across the console. “Hey, Al, we stopped transmitting right at the detonation!” Brierson quickly entered commands that cleared Martinez’s image and blocked any future transmissions. Then he asked for status.
The air conditioning was down, but internal power could keep the gear going for a time. The van’s intelligence unit estimated the nuke had been a three kiloton equivalent with a 70 percent radiance. Brierson felt his stomach flip-flop. He knew about nukes—perhaps more than the New Mexicans. There was no legal service that allowed them and it was open season on armadillos who advertised having them, but every so often MSP got a case involving such weapons. Everyone within 2,000 meters of that blast would already be dead. Schwartz’s private war had wiped out a significant part of the invading forces.
The people in the van had received a sizable dose from the Schwartz nuke, though it wouldn’t be life-threatening if they got medical treatment soon. In the division command area immediately around the van, the exposure was somewhat higher. How long would it be before those troops came nosing around the silent command vehicle? If he could get a phone call out—
But then there was Fate’s personal vendetta against W. W. Brierson: Loud pounding sounded at the forward door. Wil waved Jim and Al to be quiet. Awkwardly, he got off the saddle and moved to look through the old-fashioned viewplate mounted next to the door. In the distance he could see men carrying stretchers from an ambulance; some of the burn cases would be really bad. Five troopers were standing right at the doorway, close enough that he could see blistered skin and burned clothing. But their weapons looked fine, and the wiry noncom pounding on the door was alert and energetic. “Hey, open up in there!”
Wil thought fast. What was the name of that VIP civilian? Then he shouted back (doing his best to imitate the clipped New Mexican accent), “Sorry, Mr. Strong doesn’t want to breach internal atmosphere.” Pray they don’t see the bullet holes just around the corner.
He saw the sergeant turn away from the door. Wil lip-read the word shit. He could almost read the noncom’s mind: The men outside had come near to being french-fried, and here some silkshirt supervisor was worried about so-far-nonexistent fallout.
The noncom turned back to the van and shouted, “How about casualties?”
“Yes, sir. Your node has been dropped from the network. We’ve patched backward to Oklahoma Leader and forward to div mobile. Oklahoma Leader wants to talk to Mr. Strong. Div mobile wants to talk to Colonel Alvarez. How long will it be till you’re back on the air?”
How long can I ask for? How long do I need “Give us fifteen minutes,” he shouted, after a moment.
“Yes, sir. We’ll get back to you.” Having innocently delivered this threat, the sergeant and his troopers moved off.
Brierson hopped back to the console. “Keep your eyes on the sleepers, Al. If I’m lucky, fifteen minutes should be enough time.”
“To do what? Call MSP?”
“Something better. Something I should have done this morning.” He searched through the command menus for satellite pickups. The New Mexican military was apparently leery of using subscription services, but there should be some facility for it. Ah, there it was. Brierson phased the transmitter for the synchronous satellite the Hainan commune had hung over Brazil. With narrow beam, he might be able to talk through it without the New Mexicans realizing he was transmitting. He tapped in a credit number, then a destination code.
The display showed the call had reached Whidbey Island. Seconds passed. Outside, he could hear choppers moving into the camp. More ambulances? Damn you, Rober. Be home.
The conference area filled with bluish haze, then became a sunlit porch overlooking a wooded bay. Sounds of laughter and splashing came faintly from the water. Old Roberto Richardson never used less than full holo. But the scene was pale, almost ghostly—the best the van’s internal power supply could do. A heavyset man with apparent age around thirty came up the steps onto the porch and sat down; it was Richardson. He peered out at them. “Wil? Is that you?”
If it weren’t for the stale air and the dimness of the vision, Wil could almost believe he’d been transported halfway across the continent. Richardson lived on an estate that covered the whole of Whidbey Island. In the Pacific time zone it was still morning, and shadows swept across lawn-like spaces that stretched away to his manicured forests. Not for the first time, Wil was reminded of the faerie landscapes of Maxfield Parrish. Roberto Richardson was one of the richest men in the world; he sold a line of products that many people cannot resist. He was rich enough to live in whatever fantasy world he chose.
Brierson turned on the pickup that watched the conference table.
“Dios. It is you, Wil! I thought you were dead or captured.”
“Neither, just yet. You’re following this ruckus?”
“Por cierto. And most news services are covering it. I wager they’re spending more money than your blessed Michigan State Police on this war. Unless that nuke was one of yours? Wili, my boy, that was spectacular. You took out twenty percent of their armor.”
“It wasn’t one of ours, Rober.”
“Ah. Just as well. Midwest Jurisprudence would withdraw service for something like that.”
Time was short, but Wil couldn’t resist asking, “What is MSP up to?”
Richardson sighed. “About what I’d expect. They’ve finally brought some aircraft in. They’re buzzing around the tip of Dave Crick’s salient. The Springfield Cyborg Club has gone after the New Mexican supply lines. They were causing some damage. A cyborg is a bit hard to kill, and Norcross Security is supplying them with transports and weapons. The New Mexicans have Wáchendon suppressors down to battalion level, so there’s no hobbling. The fighting looks quite twentieth century.
“You’ve got a lot of public opinion behind you—even in the Republic, I think—but not much firepower.
“You know, Wil, you fellows should have bought more from me. You saved a few million, maybe, passing up those aerial torpedoes and assault craft, and the tanks. But look where you are now. If—”
“Jesus, that’s Robber Richardson!” It was Big Al; he had been watching the holo with growing wonder.
Richardson squinted at his display. “I can hardly see anything on this, Wil. Where in perdition are you calling from? And to you, Unseen Sir, it’s Roberto Richardson.”
Big Al walked toward the sunlit porch. He got within an apparent two meters of Richardson before he banged into the conference table. “You’re the sort of scum who’s responsible for this! You sold the New Mexicans everything they couldn’t build themselves: the high-performance aircraft, the military electronics.” Al waved at the cabinets in the darkened van. What he claimed was largely true. Wil had noticed the equipment stenciled with Richardson’s logo, “USAF Inc—Sellers of Fine Weapon Systems for More than Twenty Years”; the New Mexicans hadn’t even bothered to paint it out. Roberto had started out as a minor Aztlán nobleman. He’d been in just the right place at the time of the Bobble War, and had ended up controlling the huge munition dumps left by the old Peace Authority, That had been the beginning of his fortune. Since then, he had moved into the ungoverned lands, and begun manufacturing much of his own equipment. The heavy industry he had brought to Bellevue was almost on the scale of the twentieth century—or of modern New Mexico.
Richardson came half out of his chair and chopped at the air in front of him. “See here. I have to take enough such insults from my niece and her grandchildren. I don’t have to take them from a stranger.” He stood, tossed his display flat on the chair, and walked to the steps that led down to his shaded river.
“Wait, Rober!” shouted Brierson. He waved Big Al back to the depths of the van. “I didn’t call to pass on insults. You wondered where I’m calling from. Well, let me tell you—”
By the time he finished, the old gunrunner had returned to his seat. He started to laugh. “I should have guessed you’d end up talking right out of the lion’s mouth.” His laughter halted abruptly. “But you’re trapped, aren’t you? No last minute Brierson tricks to get out of this one? I’m sorry, Wil, I really am. If there were anything I could do, I would. I don’t forget my debts.”
Those were the words Wil had been hoping to hear. “There’s nothing you can do for me, Rober. Our bluff in this van is good for just a few minutes, but we could all use a little charity just now.”
The other looked nonplussed.
“Look, I’ll bet you have plenty of aircraft and armor going through final checkout at the Bellevue plant. And I know you have ammunition stocks. Between MSP and Justice, Inc. and a few other police services, we have enough war buffs to man them. At least we have enough to make these New Mexicans think twice.”
But Richardson was shaking his head. “I’m a charitable man, Wil. If I had such things to loan, MSP could have some for the asking. But you see, we’ve all been a bit outsmarted here. The New Mexicans—and people I now think are fronting for them—have options on the next four months of my production. You see what I mean? It’s one thing to help people I like and another to break a contract—especially when reliability has always been one of my most important selling points.”
Wil nodded. So much for that brilliant idea.
“And it may turn out for the best, Wil,” Richardson continued quietly. “I know your loudmouth friend won’t believe this, coming from me, but I think the Midwest might now be best off not to fight. We both know the invasion can’t stick, not in the long run. It’s just a question of how many lives and how much property is going to be destroyed in the meantime, and how much ill feeling is going to be stored up for the future. Those New Mexicans deserve to get nuked and all the rest, but that could steel them for a holy war, like they’ve been fighting along the Colorado for so long. On the other hand, if you let them come in and take a whack at ‘governing’—why, in twenty years, you’ll have them converted into happy anarchists.”
Wil smiled in spite of himself. Richardson was certainly the prime example of what he was talking about. Wil knew the old autocrat had originally been an agent of Aztlán, sent to prepare the Northwest for invasion. “Okay, R
ober. I’ll think about it. Thanks for talking.”
Richardson seemed to have guessed Wil’s phantom position on his porch. His dark eyes stared intensely into Wil’s. “Take care of yourself, Wili.”
The cool, northern playground wavered for a second, like a dream of paradise, then vanished, replaced by the hard reality of dark plastic, glimmering displays, and unconscious New Mexicans. What now, Lieutenant? Calling Rober had been his only real idea. He could call MSP, but he had nothing helpful to tell them. He leaned on the console, his hands sliding slickly across his sweating face. Why not just do as Rober suggested? Give up and let the force of history take care of things.
No.
First of all, there’s no such thing as “the force of history,” except as it existed in the determination and imagination of individuals. Government had been a human institution for thousands of years; there was no reason to believe the New Mexicans would fall apart without some application of physical force. Their actions had to be shown to be impractically expensive.
And there was another, more personal reason. Richardson talked as though this invasion were something special, something that transcended commerce and courts and contracts. That was wrong. Except for their power and their self-righteousness, the New Mexicans were no different from some chopper gang marauding MSP customers. And if he and MSP let them take over, it would be just as much a default. As with Rober, reliability was one of MSP’s strongest selling points.
So MSP had to keep fighting. The only question was, what could he and Al and Jim do now?
Wil twisted around to look at the exterior view mounted by the hatch. It was a typically crass design flaw that the view was independent of the van’s computers and couldn’t be displayed except at the doorway.
There wasn’t much to see. The division HQ was dispersed, and the van itself sat in the bottom of a ravine. The predominant impression was of smoking foliage and yellow limestone. He heard the keening of light turbines. Oh boy. Three overland cars were coming their way. He recognized the sergeant he had talked to a few minutes earlier. If there was anything left to do, he’d better do it now.