Sophia nodded, marveling at how the Collective managed to come up with yet one more euphemism for murder. “Yes, Madam Proctor.”
“Good.” The woman lowered her tablet. “Reports of your work today were satisfactory. It has been decided, then, that you shall be allowed to attend a lecture on the secret history of Litzau Enterprises’ enshrined perfidy and their complicity in the ruination of the Maldives economy. This is a great honor. Do not tarnish it.”
“No, Madam Proctor.”
“You have thirty minutes of water, beginning now. Do not squander it.” The woman’s expression clouded with hatred. “The days of your crimes are at an end.”
The assembly remained quiet as the proctor exited, and even then conversation never rose above a whisper.
Laurie grabbed Sophia’s arm. “You have to promise me something.”
“What?”
Laurie’s blue eyes became slits. “You get a chance to run, take it.”
Sophia frowned. “But what she said . . .”
“Disassociation, I know.” Laurie hugged her daughter to her side. “This is just one big disassociation camp, Phee. Getting out is going to be the only way any of us end up living.”
Lac du Vallee, Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives
11 November 3000
Clad in woodland camouflage, Walter squeezed his way between two rocks that covered the opening to an egress point. From the outside it appeared to be a naturally occurring rock formation tucked into the side of a hill. Beyond the choke point, it opened into small chamber that contained a trap door and, beneath it, a ladder leading down into the base.
Walter crouched by the rocks, glancing at his chronometer, and got his bearings. The oncoming dusk had sown the forest with shadows. He started off toward the southwest, moving from tree to tree, or around rocks, using all the cover he could manage. He kept his eyes peeled for any sign of searchers, and relied on the chronometer’s haptic feedback to alert him to one of the waypoints on his patrol.
Because Litzau Enterprises had declared Lac du Vallee a nature preserve, over the years wildlife had moved into the area and had organized itself around the lake environment. To study this, a series of holovid cameras had been hidden throughout the preserve. The devices took shots when they detected nearby movement and cached the data for later recovery.
Armed with one of the data recorders, Walter moved from point to point, harvesting the pictures. All he had to do was to get close enough to spot the device, train an IR laser on the camera, trigger the verification code, and the camera downloaded its cache. As he’d done on the prior runs, once he’d collected the images, he returned to the base and let Ivan begin analyzing them.
Walter had initially thought the Collective would begin immediately to intensively scour the area, primarily because they’d killed a field team. No evidence of searchers had appeared in the images for the past three days, and those who had showed up were less than diligent in their searches. A day and a half of torrential rain accounted for part of that—while hiding the footprints of passing ’Mechs wasn’t easy, the rain reduced them to muddy divots and revitalized the grasses that had been crushed underfoot. The rain also made the searchers miserable and encouraged haste.
Upon his return, Walter handed the data recorder over to the Chairman Presumptive. He watched Ivan work and realized that whoever had instigated the attacks had made a serious mistake in not ensuring the Chairman Presumptive’s death. They’d assumed that because he wasn’t much of a MechWarrior, he’d die easily or, if he survived, wouldn’t be a threat. And, Walter had to admit, Ivan wasn’t really the sort of charismatic individual that would inspire legions to follow him into hell, so his leading a counterrevolution wasn’t very likely.
But when it comes to analysis, he’s a holy terror. Walter smiled. “What have you got?”
Ivan idly ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. “I isolated the images of all the searchers and ran them through a facial recognition database. I matched on 60 percent of them, primarily from criminal databases. Others I matched are regular citizens—a few of them Holders, but mostly not. None of them are First Family Preferred—at least not as established by the normal databases.”
“The ones you can’t place?”
Ivan hit a few keys and a dozen images lined themselves up in three columns. “The shots are good enough that if we had them in the system, there should have been a match.”
Walter studied the pictures. “These are the guys who looked to be heading up the search teams. See how they are carrying their laser carbines? They’re professionals.”
“No one else has anything bigger than a needler.”
“Exactly.” The mercenary chewed his lower lip for a moment. “So, the leaders, they’re probably mercenaries.”
“You don’t know them?”
Walter chuckled. “I’ve been to Galatea twice, didn’t mingle much.”
“It would make sense, their being mercenaries. They were probably brought in under cover as contract labor for some project or another. There should be work permits, but the data might not have been processed yet if they came in as recently, say, as you did.”
“This is good information, Spurs. At least part of the revolution was bought and paid for. Someone has money, but these guys seem to have little interest in actually earning their pay.”
“The reason is probably some active, even robust resistance in Rivergaard.” Ivan wiped away the mercenaries and pulled up some side-by-side shots of the city. “While you were out farming pictures, the Collective made another couple of broadcasts. Two things are important about these images.”
Walter stepped forward and pointed. “The building in the background, there’s signs of a fire in that corner.”
“Okay, you saw that one. This one is a bit more esoteric.” Ivan punched a few keys on the console. The images melted into strings of green letters, numbers and symbols. “Broadcasts have computer coding embedded in them for diagnostic purposes. It allows technicians to determine which broadcast antennae is supplying how much of any image. Modern broadcasts actually gather signals from a variety of places and combine them in the viewing units. Well, here, the first few broadcasts came from a station designed 15A*QRX. That one supplied 90 percent of the images we were getting. But this new one, it’s from 71D#1RF, which only ever supplied 7 percent of the signal we got before. I don’t know where the stations are, but I believe the first one must have been destroyed.”
“Did the message say anything about crushing resistance or about crackdowns?”
“No. The opposite. They reported that the peaceful reordering of society was proceeding on pace. They said that people were flocking to ‘re-education’ centers willingly. They had images of happy people having their faces scanned at checkpoints or food distribution centers. They also showed some people being cheered by crowds for having turned in counterrevolutionaries and reactionaries.”
Walter nodded. “How tough would it be to take out a broadcast station?”
“A rat nibbling through a power cable could do it.”
“Spurs . . .”
“To your point, Walter, most are small buildings or a relay unit built onto a tower.”
“Couple guys with a satchel charge or petrol bomb.”
“Or several more with ’Mechs.” Ivan rubbed at his eyes. “How far are we above zero now?”
“Not far enough that we should even be thinking about leaving this hole.”
“But I have to, Walter.”
“Have to?”
Ivan exhaled heavily. “I have been able to do a lot of thinking—not feeling, but thinking. It occurred to me that because I always knew that I would fulfill my father’s dream and be the agent of change for Maldives, I never really looked at who I had to be to accomplish that end. My goal was
to get through the Final Vetting, then work on changing things. I even, secretly, believed I would be able to resign in favor of Abigail, once I had made it so she could run the company. I never took responsibility for being the Chairman Presumptive.”
“I’m not a priest, Spurs. You don’t need to confess for my benefit.”
“That’s not what this is, Walter. And I am saying this to you because you’re insisting on calling me Spurs. You said I’d earned that name.” Ivan screwed his eyes shut against tears, but they leaked out anyway. “Do you realize that’s the first time in my life I ever earned anything? I look back now and the games I used to play with people like the Capellan Consul, they just make me appear to be utterly detached and unthinking—out of touch with reality. And I told myself that was a role I was playing, but it was true. I can’t even remember a time when that role didn’t define me. And because I knew I was never going to be a great MechWarrior, I let it define me. I embraced it.”
Walter folded his arms over his chest. “Where’s this going? You know, just because you realize you may have sold yourself short, that doesn’t mean all that damage gets undone.”
“I am painfully aware of that.” Ivan wiped tears away. “What the broadcasts have showed me is that citizens are being forced to betray each other. They’re being forced into re-education camps. Neither you nor I believe there’s any education going on there. And we know there is some resistance. And, I feel . . . no, I think . . .”
The dark-haired MechWarrior shook his head. “You had it right the first time. You feel responsible. You know they are suffering and you want to take some of that suffering onto yourself. You want to punish yourself because, somehow, you believe that if you’d been different, or acted differently, none of this would have happened.”
“I have a duty, Walter.” Ivan’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t expect you to join me.”
Walter grabbed a handful of Ivan’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. “If you’re going to say that you understand that I’m a mercenary, and that I do things for money, and that chances are I won’t get paid, so I don’t have to do anything, I’m going to hit you so hard you’ll think a moon landed on you.”
Ivan shivered, but never broke his stare with Walter.
The mercenary released him.
The corporate heir missed the edge of his chair and landed abruptly on the floor.
Walter stared down at him. “What I need here, Spurs, is for you to do some more thinking. Sure, you feel responsible. Sure, you want to do something. Sure, you want to avenge your family. You’re not alone in that. But the two of us marching our ’Mechs out of here is suicidal and stupid. On the list of things I never want to be, those two are right at the top.”
“We have to do something, Walter.”
“Sure, but throwing our lives away doesn’t do anything good for anyone.” Walter wanted to punch something, but Ivan didn’t deserve it and the walls were meter-thick slabs of ferrocrete. “Much as I hate to say it, I need the old you back before we do anything. Just because we can’t march out of here in our ’Mechs and kill things doesn’t mean we can’t cause the Collective some serious problems. You’re going to have to figure out how to do that.”
Ivan looked up from the floor. “Don’t you think that if I had a better plan than getting myself killed in Destrier, I would have mentioned it?”
“The fact you don’t means we don’t have enough information to form a plan. We need to remedy that.” Walter cocked his head. “So, we do some thinking about what we can do to bug them, then it’s data harvesting. And that means, for you and me, we’re taking a field trip to find out for ourselves what the Collective never intends to show us.”
Chapter Eleven
Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives
15 November 3000
Walter’s breath steamed as he crouched at the wood’s edge. His vantage point overlooked a small farm which backed up to the Preserve. The owner ran a modest herd of dairy cattle, kept chickens and had twenty hectares under cultivation—though whatever he grew had been harvested at least a month prior. The family milked the cattle daily, made butter and cheese, and what looked like a smokehouse probably did most of its duty as a way to keep prying eyes off a still.
Ivan rested a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure?”
“We have pictures of the farmer and two of his kids poaching in the preserve. They’re not going to do that, or keep the still, unless they’re not afraid of being caught. We come out, looking like we do, like poachers, and they’re not going to report us. We just have to get past their farm and to the road.”
“But . . .”
“You know we have to do this.”
Ivan’s shoulders slumped a little. “Yes, I know. It’s just, I’m . . .”
Walter gave him a wink. “Me, too.”
From the very beginning the two of them had acknowledged that they couldn’t act without sufficient information, and broadcasts from Rivergaard supplied very little. The broadcasts put forward a message of peace and unity, even though some of the images showed signs of continued fighting. Gangs of people worked to clean up debris, with the voice-over describing them as volunteers. The armed individuals surrounding them were described as “safety officers.” Facial recognition on both the workers and the safety officers did little to provide much information, save that the percentage of Preferred in those gangs was higher than their proportion in the general population.
Walter had been under no illusions that they could avoid venturing out from the hidden base, so he set about preparing for their journey. From a compartment in his Blackjack’s command couch he’d pulled civilian clothes and a handful of gold and platinum coins he’d saved from previous deployments. It didn’t matter that they had been minted in faraway places like the Draconis Combine and Lyran Commonwealth; precious metals always served well as barter currency—especially in times of instability. With more ease than made him comfortable, Walter had been able to transform himself into a nondescript everyman. And with the suitable application of dirt, along with a moratorium on attaining any personal hygiene goals, he became an everyman that no one would want to notice.
Ivan’s transformation required more work. Walter forbade him shaving or bathing, then raggedly trimmed his hair off at the top of his ears. Ivan’s denouncing the haircut as the worst in recorded human history made Walter proud. Walter decided that it would be best if they could color Ivan’s hair, and the Chairman Presumptive surrendered knowledge of local plants that could be used for that purpose. After coloring, and with some more selective trimming, Ivan looked as if he had simultaneous cases of consumption and the mange.
Finding him suitable clothing proved a bit tougher. Destrier did have a change of clothes for him, but they were befitting a top executive, and that wasn’t really going to work. Walter tore them up a bit, and applied various coolant and lubricating fluids to produce a color palette that had never appeared in any boardroom. Grass stains, grime and assorted tree resins left the clothes looking older than war debris.
That was all fine for fooling casual observers, but facial recognition software could still pierce the secret of their identities. Beards—even as wispy as Ivan’s—would help a little. Dirt, strategically smudged, helped layer on shadow-defined bone structure where none existed. While avoiding cameras would be the number-one strategy for escaping detection, the greater their proximity to civilization, the higher their risk of discovery.
There was only one way to lower the risks, hence the outing which brought them to the edge of the farm.
Walter stood. “Remember, you’re Carl Spurling, so I call you Spurs.”
“And you’re Wall-eye Wilson. We’ve been working the Preserve, hunting during the celebration while no one would notice.” Ivan scratched at his beard, then looked disgustedly at his fingernails and the black line of dir
t capping them. “I’ll never feel clean again.”
“Use less words.” Walter sucked at his teeth. “And not all the right ones.”
Ivan burped in response.
Walter led the way down the hillside, cutting along cattle tracks. He opened the pasture gate for Ivan, then closed it behind him. They walked across the pasture, and neither took great pains to avoid cow pies. The farmer and one of his sons appeared from the dairy barn, the younger man holding a shotgun.
Walter slowed, raising a hand. “Hello the farm.”
“What can we do for you?” The farmer eyed them closely, and the son moved to his right to keep his father out of the line of fire. “You don’t look like you were hiking the Preserve.”
“We weren’t. Don’t think anyone coming that direction there is hiking.” Walter jerked a thumb at Ivan. “Me and the nephew was thinking we might do some exploring during the doings down to Rivergaard. Ain’t got but wet and mud to show for it, of course. Did the brat get through his vettin’?”
The farmer, a chunky, middle-aged man with a bushy gray beard and a straggly halo of hair, toed the dirt. “You asking for true?”
“We had a bet, him and me. Thought we might seen some lights from it, what, two weeks back?”
Ivan nodded, pointing vaguely toward the west. “Heard thunder, maybe saw a fighter. Didn’t look too hard.”
The farmer shook his head. “He didn’t. Some folks appeared to have some hate for him and his kind. Been doings down to Rivergaard. Don’t know what, ain’t interested in trouble. I was you, I’d just turn around and go back where you came from.”
“I would, but I told his momma I’d have him back on the thirteenth, or thereabouts.”
The son rested the shotgun’s barrel back on his shoulder. “You missed it.”
“Won’t be the first time my sister took a cut out my hide.” Walter shrugged. “We got turned around in the Preserve, strikes me. How long a walk to Swindon, do you think?”
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