In Her Name

by Michael R. Hicks

  Thirty-Five

  “What the devil do you mean, ‘No one’s showed up to work?’” Belisle shouted into the comms terminal.

  The man at the other end shrank back. “Just what I said, Mr. President,” he stammered. “There was no one at the gates except the supervisors, and the miners working the night shift practically ran home. We tried to find them, even sent in TA patrols, but there wasn’t anyone there. Anywhere. The whole township’s empty.”

  “That’s impossible! People can’t just vanish into thin air! Where did they go? Surely you idiots can find a few thousand people wandering about!” He stabbed at a button on the comm link, and the man’s image disappeared.

  “I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Mr. President,” Wittmann, the mayor, said quietly behind him, as if afraid he would be beaten for bringing more bad news.

  “How can it?” Belisle snapped angrily, his mind unconsciously figuring the monetary losses for every hour that even a single mine lay idle.

  “I just got a report from the chief at Promontory Mine,” Wittmann said uneasily. “He reports the same thing. The Mallorys are all gone. They just vanished into thin air. Food still on the tables, fires burned cold in the kitchens with pots still hanging over them. That sort of thing.”

  Belisle just stared at him. Promontory Mine. That was Erlang’s most productive source of income. Even the time that they had spent standing here talking had cost them over a million credits. “Find them!” he yelled. “Find them and get them back to work, or you and your family will be down there breaking rock!”

  He turned to Thorella, who sat casually in one of the office’s chaise lounges, a look of contemplation on his face. “They’ve finally gone and done it,” Belisle said, spittle flying from his mouth. “They’re openly rebelling. What are you going to do about it, colonel?”

  “Well,” he said casually, scrutinizing the nails of one hand, “there’s not much we can do with your miners until they’ve been found.” He smiled in spite of himself. The planning it must have taken to allow hundreds of thousands of people to disappear overnight under the nose of the Territorial Army was indeed impressive, even to Thorella. Hunting them down would be a real challenge, he suspected, which was something he always enjoyed. “But we can certainly inquire among your friends in the basement about the matter, as I’m sure they have something to do with it.”

  “That’s impossible,” Belisle spat. “The cell they’re in is impossible to breach. They couldn’t get out a whisper.”

  Thorella frowned. This man could sometimes be so ignorant. “You underestimate your opponents, my friend. I’m sure your staff has its share of sympathizers. I reviewed some of the recordings of the goings on in the cell not too long ago, and discovered that certain portions had been… edited. And whoever did that could just as easily get a message out to warn the Mallorys.” His frown grew deeper. “The question is, warn them of what?”

  “Retaliation by the Army and police, of course,” Belisle said impatiently, thinking Thorella an imbecile for not coming to that conclusion right away, and also wondering who on his staff could possibly have betrayed him. It was unthinkable. “And rightly they should be afraid. There will be reprisals.”

  “But would that be cause for evacuating the whole Mallory population?” Thorella thought aloud. “And if they were openly rebelling, wouldn’t they have tried to destroy the mines? Why did the miners just disappear?” He was not concerned about Belisle’s threatened reprisals. That was a job for which the Territorial Army was well suited, and did not concern him or his Marines. But was there some other threat, of which he and the Raniers were unaware?

  There was one way to find out. “I think, Mr. President,” he said, “that we need to ask your Mallory friends some questions.” He turned to the guard who stood nearby, a Territorial Army sergeant. “Have Ian Mallory and Enya Terragion brought up here immediately.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied, saluting before he left the office to carry out his mission. Thorella had no way of knowing that the man was a Mallory sympathizer.

  “Sir,” Thorella’s adjutant called from where he had installed himself in one of the anterooms, “Major Simpson’s on the line. He has an emergency – the recon of the crater.”

  Now what? Thorella wondered, annoyed, as he went to take the call and learn about the disastrous reconnaissance mission over the glowing crater. Could nothing go right today?

  * * *

  Thorella and Belisle had been counting on the explosive device set in the holding pen to be a deterrent to any unwanted actions by Reza or the others. It was a sophisticated device, and might even have worked, had Sergeant “Pippi” Hermutz not disabled it earlier, leaving the arming light glowing threateningly to reassure anyone who took an interest that the device was still viable. He was also responsible for destroying the recordings of their vote to evacuate the Mallorys, as well as sabotaging the surveillance gear for the rest of the short time it would matter to anyone.

  “Wait here,” he told the other guards as he keyed open the outer lock to the cell. “I’ll bring them out.”

  He went inside, waiting for the outer door to close before he opened the inner one. He immediately picked out Ian and Enya, sitting close to Reza in the group of thirty or so, all of whom got to their feet as he entered. Until he had carried out the message Ian had drafted, none of the others had realized he was one of them, even though his heritage was Ranier. He was simply one of a growing number of people who had grown tired of Belisle’s kind of leadership and oppression of others. He noted the tension in their faces. They wanted to know if their families were safe.

  “Everything seems to have gone according to plan,” he whispered to Ian. “I don’t know about the rest, but at least Promontory and Sheila townships were evacuated all right. And Charlotte” – a woman he only knew by her code name – “told me that the volunteers you asked for are in place and with the equipment you said to bring.” Charlotte had not bothered to tell him that it had been inordinately difficult to send only seven hundred to the plain: nearly every man and most of the women who heard of the chance to stand and fight had wanted to go.

  “Thank you for your help, Pippi,” Ian breathed. “We all owe you a debt we probably will never be able to repay.”

  “It’s just nice to feel like I’m doing something right, for once,” Hermutz sighed. “Belisle and his kind are no friends to anyone but themselves. But that’s for another time.” He looked at Enya, then back to Ian. “That Marine colonel, Thorella, wants you and Enya for interrogation. Belisle thinks the Mallorys are gone because they’re afraid of reprisals, but Thorella suspects something more. What should we–”

  Reza visibly stiffened, his eyes widening slightly.

  “What is it?” Enya said, putting a hand on his armored shoulder, feeling him quiver beneath it.

  “They have come,” he told her. He could not sense those of the Blood, ever since the Seventh Braid, his link to the spirit of his people, had been severed the instant before the Empress exiled him from the Empire. But he had cast his mind’s eye upward, into the human ships that orbited overhead, and had heard their cries of surprise as the first of the Kreelan battle groups converging on Erlang had arrived in-system. Those cries soon turned to screams of panic and pain as the great Kreelan warships began the devastation above that would soon begin here, on the surface. He focused on Ian. “We have no more time,” he told him. “We must leave at once, or we will be caught in the coming holocaust.”

  “I might be able to get a few of you out,” Pippi said, glancing over his shoulder to see if the other guards were becoming suspicious. They were looking through the viewport. Pippi waved. “But there’s no way I can get everyone out. The parliamentary guard force would cut you all down before you got a foot past the cell block doors.”

  Reza thought for a moment. No matter what powers he had, he would not be able to kill every guard before the shooting began. Some, or many, of those with him now would be
gunned down. “Then take Enya and Ian with you,” he said. “I will see to the rest.”

  “But–” Enya began.

  “Go now,” Reza said. “I will meet you on the knoll that overlooks the plain. Go.”

  Reluctantly, Enya and Ian let themselves be prodded out of the cell. As the door closed behind them, Markham, the man who could have been Hawthorne’s twin, said, “So, Gard, what are we supposed to do? Just sit here until the Kreelans start shelling Mallory City?”

  Reza looked at him, a grim smile on his face. “Yes,” he said.

  Markham did not think it was funny.

  * * *

  Pippi Hermutz could not get away with escorting the two prisoners by himself, he knew, and there were no other sympathizers here who could help him. So, out of necessity, he chose a man he knew to be a strong supporter of Belisle to help him. It would make killing him a little easier on his conscience.

  After the four of them crowded into the elevator that would take them upstairs to the president’s office, Pippi turned to his Territorial Army colleague and subordinate, Hans Miflin, and shot him between the eyes with a low-power pencil beam from his blaster. Just strong enough to penetrate the man’s skull, it turned his forebrain into bloody steam. Twitching like a pithed frog, he collapsed to the floor of the elevator.

  Enya jammed the STOP button. Ian and Pippi propped up Miflin’s body beside the door in a sitting position so it would be harder for someone outside the elevator to see him.

  “My God, Pippi,” the elder Mallory breathed. “How can we kill one another like this?”

  Pippi looked at him as if he were a child. “Too easily, Ian. But at least he was armed. Most of the people he’s killed in his lifetime weren’t. Keep that in mind the next time you feel like shedding a tear for the likes of him.” Checking that none of them had any blood on their clothes, he said, “Take this.” He handed Ian his blaster, and then picked up Miflin’s gun, handing it to Enya. “Keep them hidden unless you need them. Go straight out the back door, through the kitchens on the first level. You can’t miss them. Someone should be waiting for you there with transportation.”

  “What about the others?” Enya asked.

  “Reza will have to deal with that,” he said impatiently. “I’ve done all I can.”

  “What about you, Pippi?” Ian said.

  He nodded at the blaster in Ian’s hand. “You have to shoot me, to make it look like an escape. Injure me enough to make it convincing.”

  “But aren’t you coming with us?” Enya asked, incredulous. “Pippi, the Kreelans are coming!”

  “I have to think of my family,” he said. “I can’t leave the building before my shift is up without drawing notice to myself. And if Belisle or his people ever find out that I’ve helped you, my wife and children…” He shook his head. Sympathizers were treated far more harshly than Mallorys. His entire family would probably be imprisoned, and he would be executed. “You owe me this, Ian.”

  Clenching his jaws, Ian raised the pistol, aimed as carefully as his trembling hand allowed, and shot Pippi in the head, through his helmet. Their rescuer collapsed, and Enya quickly knelt and put a hand to his neck.

  “He’s still alive,” she whispered as the stench of smoking flesh turned her stomach. She had to get out of here or she would vomit.

  Ian carefully placed Pippi’s body on the other side of the door in a position similar to Miflin’s. “Thank you, my friend,” he whispered, a hand on the man’s shoulder. He knew there was no way either he or his family would make it out of the city alive when the Kreelans came. He should have saved him the pain and simply killed him, he thought sadly. Standing again, he turned to Enya. “It’s time.”

  Nodding, she pushed the RUN button, and the elevator lurched upward toward the first floor.

  It stopped and the doors swished open. Ian had been praying fervently that there would be no one standing there when it did. Thankfully, no one was.

  “This way,” Enya said, leading him to the left, behind the twin staircases that were the centerpiece of the foyer. This early in the morning, few of the Parliament’s bureaucrats and other functionaries were about. They saw two guards, but they were half asleep, inattentive.

  Turning down a long corridor, Enya saw the silvery doors that led to the main kitchens. In the job she had once held as a runner for one of the more moderate Ranier representatives, she had often come down here to get him food to satisfy his compulsive eating habits, his only vice.

  There were three cooks getting ready for the morning meal service in the main dining room, but they did not see the two refugees as they stole past a row of gleaming copper and stainless steel cookware along the far side, away from the steaming urns.

  The back door loomed ahead. Enya opened it, only to find a Territorial Army uniform blocking her way.

  “Hey!” the man said, raising his rifle.

  Enya shot him in the chest.

  But that was not the end of their troubles. Ten meters away stood a big Marine transport skimmer and a group of camouflaged, armored figures with their weapons pointed directly at them.

  “Don’t,” Ian said as she raised her pistol. “It’s useless,” he said, defeated.

  Tears of frustration in her eyes, Enya threw down her weapon and raised her hands. Ian did the same.

  Suddenly, a familiar face peered out through the skimmer’s personnel door. “Don’t just stand there,” Eustus shouted. “Get in!”

  “Eustus!” Enya cried as the Marines bundled her and Ian into the troop carrier, hiding the Territorial Army soldier’s body in a nearby trash bin and retrieving their weapons from the pavement before someone noticed something amiss, unlikely as that was in the darkness of this early hour.

  Inside the vehicle’s armored hull, Enya and Eustus kissed and embraced. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “One of your people came and tipped us off to your little breakout,” he told her. “But let’s save that for later. Where are Reza and the others?”

  “They’re still being held,” Ian told him.

  “We’ve got to get them out of there quickly. Belisle and Thorella are expecting us for interrogation, and they’ll be getting suspicious.”

  “Well,” Eustus said, “we should be able to do something about that. But I’m not sure what we’re going to do afterwards. We don’t really have anywhere to go, and we’ll have Thorella’s entire regiment on our ass.”

  Ian and Enya looked at each other. “What about the plain on the far side of the mountain?” she asked.

  Eustus looked at her blankly.

  “The messenger didn’t tell you?” Ian asked. “That the Kreelans are coming?”

  Eustus’s eyes widened. “They only told us that you guys were going to make a break and that you’d need help getting away. Nobody said anything about Kreelans.”

  That would figure, Ian thought. The courier had only told them what he had been ordered to; his cell leader would have given him only the information he absolutely needed for that specific task.

  “When, where, and how many?” Eustus asked.

  Quickly, Enya and Ian explained what was about to happen to their world.

  * * *

  When the door to the cell whined open, Reza and the others were ready and waiting.

  “It is good to see you again, my friend,” he said as Eustus came through the doorway.

  “You, too, sir,” Eustus said as he ushered some of his Marines forward to help with the people who could not move on their own. Some of the interrogations had taken more of a toll than others. “But I wish I’d known about the Blues being on the way.”

  “The squadron in orbit is already nearly finished,” Reza told him. He had drawn away his mind’s eye from the carnage above. He had seen more than enough. “Did you get a message to Hawthorne?”

  “Aye, sir. The company’s volunteered to stand on the plain. That should give the Kreelans a bit more–”

  “It cannot be so, Eustus,” Reza
told him as they led the group to the bank of elevators, past the limp bodies of the guards whose only sign of injury was the lack of a pulse. “Only Erlangers and myself may stand upon that field. You and the company must stand aside.”

  “And just what the hell are we supposed to do?” Eustus said angrily. He was not about to leave Reza to die with a bunch of miners who had never been in a battle bigger than a beer hall brawl. “We’ve got a boat, but if the squadron upstairs is catching it, where does that leave us? We may as well fight and do some good.” He thought of how Thorella had ordered them into that boat, and how amazed Eustus had been at the number of ways Hawthorne had found to stall him. While they would never know it for sure, he knew that Hawthorne’s tactics had saved all their lives. They figured Thorella was going to plant an explosive among their equipment for a convenient accident, but it had never come to pass. And never would.

  “More of our forces are on the way,” Reza told him. “Nicole is coming.” He could feel her, just barely. She was preparing to do battle, and her Bloodsong, faint though it was, rang clearly in his heart. “They will arrive soon. And when they do, you and Hawthorne must take the company to safety. Just remember: you must not fire on any Kreelan forces or you will be destroyed. If you offer no resistance, they will not attack you.” If all goes well, he thought.

  “I’m not leaving you,” Eustus said stubbornly as they filed through the kitchens to the back door, the cooks staring at them wide-eyed. The Parliament’s Territorial Army guards had been no match for Reza’s Marines, who now moved quickly to get everyone out before a more general alarm was called.

  Reza pulled him aside by the arm. “I leave you no choice, Eustus,” he said. “There are… rules to the engagement I am planning that forbid me to allow any but those who have lived in the shadow of the mountain to fight for their right to remain. If those rules are not obeyed to the letter, the battle is forfeit, and every soul on this planet shall perish.” Eustus turned away, unable to look him in the eye. “I shall not forget you, my friend,” he said gently.