On stage, a Tassini girl, maybe eighteen, held a baby. Her dress was coarse cloth that hung on her down to her ankles, and her feet were bare but for wooden sandals. Her hair had been gathered with a carved blue comb. The baby squalled, and she flexed her knees rhythmically, bouncing the child to calm it. Her lip quivered.
The Tassini Auctioneer stood alongside her, his face dyed indigo from the nose up. He pointed his polished wood mallet at the biggest Casuni I had seen yet, a broken-nosed mountain who sat in a raised chair, wearing jeweled armor.
“I have one hundred from My Lord, there. Who will say two?”
The enormous Casuni held a bid fan, but didn’t move it.
The Auctioneer looked out across the crowd. “A fine lady’s maid here to be trained. See the intelligence in those eyes!”
Someone shouted, “And who feeds the child? Split the Lot. I’ll give two hundred for just the girl.”
The girl clutched her baby, and tears rolled down her cheeks. They couldn’t sell her without her hair comb, because it was her personal property. But they could sell her without her child, because he wouldn’t become personal property until he was sold for the first time.
Jude sat alongside me, his eyes wide, shaking his head.
Howard’s hands shook. “They call themselves human?”
Ord didn’t speak, but his fists were clenched white-knuckle tight.
The Auctioneer turned again to the jewel-armored bidder, whose shoulders were so broad they obscured the chair back. Every Casuni I had seen looked like he could toss a cow through a closed barn door.
The Auctioneer bent on one knee, and stretched his palm toward the bidder. “Come, Sir! Say two hundred! Give the lie to those who say your people are stubborn!”
A woman hooted, “You can always tell a Casuni. But you can’t tell him much!”
The crowd roared, and even the big, bearded man smiled. But he didn’t twitch his bid fan.
In the end, “The Lot,” mother and child, went together to the outsized Casuni, because nobody raised his bid. The girl ran off the stage, the baby clutched to her, knelt and kissed the Apprentice’s feet. He toed her aside, then refastened her chains to The Block, on the side opposite from us, where sold merchandise awaited collection.
Then the Apprentice scuttled into the crowd, where a man alongside the seated Casuni counted out coins, and traded them to the Apprentice for a parchment sheet.
I swallowed, and my heart sank. Two human souls had just been sold like beer at a ball game.
Jude said, “I wish we took our chances with the monsters.”
I hung my head. Another crap decision by me. Likely the last decision I would have free will to make. We should have gone down swinging against one set of animals or the other when we had the chance.
I looked around. Besides us, twenty “Lots” were on offer, Marini, Tassini, and Casuni. The Bren were equal-opportunity slavers.
I saw one familiar face.
Bassin the Assassin sat cross-legged in the dirt. He was the next Lot behind us. A small hide bag, presumably the Stones that were captured with him, lay alongside him. He wore a Tassini robe, obviously borrowed because it barely covered his knees, and he had been fitted with a hideous glass eye, all presumably to boost his marketability. He nodded to me, but didn’t smile.
Blip. Jeeb’s low level alert yipped in my earpiece.
I whispered, “Hold.” Jeeb knew something was wrong. But unless it had a bomb stuffed in a pocket, a TOT had no capability that would be useful to extract us from this circus. Jeeb had no pocket, much less a bomb.
Six armed and armored Casuni stood between us and our stuff. Whether the stuff was our property or not, I doubted that those bouncers would allow us to decrypt our Tamperproofs, unpack our rifles, load them, and shoot our way out of this.
I looked out in the audience. Alongside Blackbeard stood the Lieutenant whose men had actually captured Bassin. That made the Lieutenant Bassin’s seller, just as Blackbeard was ours.
After an hour, the four of us Earthlings got herded from the on-deck circle up onto The Block.
Jude whispered, “This sucks sewage.”
I asked Howard, “Can’t you predict a solar eclipse or something, and awe the crowd?”
The Auctioneer looked out across the upturned faces. “Four strong Marini, offered as a Lot. Who’ll start the bid at the ridiculously low price of four hundred?”
Somebody yelled, “For half-breeds? It’s ridiculous all right!”
Laughter rippled.
In the audience, Blackbeard scowled at the Auctioneer.
Blip. Blip.
I covered my mouth with my hand, and whispered into my throat mike, to Jeeb. “I said ‘hold’!”
The Auctioneer arched his eyebrows, as he pointed at our sealed Plasteels. “Who knows what treasures await in those chests?”
Our armor was too small for any male Casuni, and we owned no other property except the Tamperproofs, and the folded-down ’Bots, which looked like iron lumps. Our Seller evidently thought the chests’ mystery would romance bidders. Besides, he didn’t know how to open them.
“Maybe there’s more skinny half-breeds in there!”
More laughter.
So much for romance.
The Casuni who bought the girl and the baby flicked his bid fan.
The Auctioneer laid the back of his hand across his purple forehead, and swayed like he was about to faint. “One hundred? Only one hundred for these marvelous specimens? Even if they survive but one year, they’re still cheap at two hundred.”
“The play’s not till tonight, you purple-faced ham!”
After the laughs came silence, and no bids.
The Auctioneer sighed. “Going once.”
The Casuni with the fan smiled.
“Going twice.”
Jude muttered, “Slaves. Forever. I don’t pugging believe this.”
“Two Stones.”
The Auctioneer turned toward the voice. “Two Stones? That’s more than—”
“Three Stones.” It was the same voice.
The crowd buzzed.
The Auctioneer craned his neck.
Alongside The Block, Bassin the Assassin stood, his ankles chained. “Four Stones for the Lot. And two more for the next Lot.”
The buzz became a rumble.
The Auctioneer pointed his gavel at Bassin and snorted. “You are the next Lot! Sit down!”
Bassin bent, drew a handful of Stones from the bag he held, then raised them above his head. The jewels glowed so red in the sunlight that he looked like he held a flaming torch.
The crowd gasped collectively.
Someone shouted, “They’re his Stones. Why can’t he bid?”
A heckler hooted.
The Auctioneer spun back to the crowd. “It’s ridiculous!”
“It’s the law!”
The crowd picked up the phrase and chanted. “It’s the law! It’s the law!”
Howard nudged me. “Look at the Captain. Whatever a Stone’s worth, it’s a hundred times more than he ever figured to get for us.”
Blackbeard was smiling. The Lieutenant who had actually captured Bassin stood alongside Blackbeard, purple and trembling, with his teeth clenched. He must have figured the bidding for Bassin alone would go up to six or eight Stones, once bidders found out what surprising bonus they would get from Bassin’s bag. If Bassin’s ploy worked, the Lieutenant would only net two Stones. But the Lieutenant couldn’t afford to cross his boss, Blackbeard.
The Auctioneer raised his eyebrows at his Apprentice. The younger man turned his palms skyward and shrugged.
Ord said, “Slaves buying themselves! Case of first impression, apparently.”
The Auctioneer furrowed his brow.
Bassin reached into his bag a last time, and held another Stone aloft, in his other hand. “And another Stone to My Lord Auctioneer, in appreciation for his services.”
The Honorable Dickie Rosewood March told me, when I was y
oung, “If the truth won’t set you free, try bribery.”
A heckler shouted, “That’s more than the old gasbag makes in a year!”
The crowd roared.
The Auctioneer glared at the crowd. Then he glanced first at the bidding Casuni, who folded his fan, and nodded. The Auctioneer shot one more glance at Blackbeard, who beamed.
The Auctioneer swung his mallet. “Sold!”
The crowd cheered.
The Apprentice, shaking his head, unlocked our leg irons, then Bassin’s, then prodded the next Lot toward the stage.
Blip. Blip. Blip.
I growled into my throat mike. “It’s okay, now. We’re fine. Shut up!”
Somebody slapped me on the back, and thrust a full horn flagon into my hand. “I’ll buy you a drink on that!”
“Never seen nothing like it!” A man slapped his knee.
People surged around us, shouting. “There’s one in the eye for the Slavers!”
“And for the Casuni!”
Someone said to us, “You’ll celebrate tonight, hey, boys?”
The Apprentice took Bassin’s Stones from him, pocketed the one that was the Auctioneer’s tip, then shouldered me aside, as he carried the remaining Stones to Blackbeard and the Lieutenant, as their respective profits.
Jude asked me, “Can we go back to the tent with the girls?”
“No!”
Howard stood beside me, shaking his head. “I don’t understand. If a handful of Stones is valuable enough to make a man rich, what happens to those piles of them that we cleaned?”
I turned, stood on tiptoe, and scanned the crowd, searching for Bassin. “And who the hell is my caveman friend, really?” Technically, Bassin owned us now, but he had vanished, and somehow a former slave didn’t seem like the slave owner type.
Jude tugged my sleeve. “Can I get drunk?”
“No.”
“Just one?”
“Maybe.”
Blee-Blee-Blee-Blee-Blee.
I tore out my earpiece. “Goddammit!”
Ord stood beside me, head cocked. “What’s wrong, Sir?”
I scanned the clear sky. “Jeeb’s up there with a fried chip or something. He’s been blipping for a half hour. Just now he kicked up to Threat Level Four.” I nodded toward the quiet green slope across the river, and snorted. “You’d think a thousand Slugs were gonna charge over that hill any minute now.”
I shuddered. I had been to war against the Slugs twice, and even tossing off their name in jest still spooked me.
I rested my eyes on the graceful wooden Traders nodding their sails out on the river. Between us and the ships rolled a green and gold fall meadow. We four were free men, and whatever my missteps, we were suddenly as okay as we could be, so far from home.
The four of us walked back to our gear, the crowd turned its attention back to the show up on The Block, and in the soft, windless afternoon we could finally talk to one another without shouting.
Jude cocked his head. “What’s that?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you hear it? It’s like, boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom.”
Howard, Ord, and I looked at each other.
I said, “Uh-oh.”
Twenty-Eight
Boom-boom-boom.
I heard it, now. My blood coursed cold in my veins, and hair rose on my neck.
Jude was right. He was just a nanosecond ahead of us unmutated humans, as usual.
Boom-boom-boom. Louder still.
Howard’s Spooks guessed that Slug infantry could sustain eight miles per hour over obstacle-free terrain, at Earth gravity. Howard’s Spooks never guessed why Slugs on the march pounded their mag rifles against their body armor. Maybe to beat cadence, maybe to assist respiration, maybe to scare their enemies. Whatever the Slugs thought, I always thought it scared the crap out of me.
A few faces in the crowd turned up toward the clear sky, puzzled.
A woman near us asked her husband, “Did you furl the tent flaps?”
He told her, “It didn’t look like rain.”
Mostly, the crowd sunned themselves, or listened to the Auctioneer’s sing-song.
Slugs made war on humans the way humans made war on the common cold virus. Dispassionately and totally. No one who survived the experience forgot, and neither did their children, or their children’s children.
I turned to Howard with my jaw dropped. “The sledgehammer’s about to swat the fly, but these people have no idea what’s coming.”
Howard said, “The Pseudocephalopod’s contact with this planet must have happened very, very long ago. Or it’s current, but very restricted.”
Ord said, “Whatever it was, it’s changing.” He hopped on one leg as he pulled on his Eternad leggings. I realized that I had begun doing the same thing, reflexively. So had Howard.
“Jude!” I pointed at his crimsons. “Armor up!”
My godson’s eyes widened. “Is this gonna be cool?”
“No. Move it!”
Boom-boom-boom.
Now the thunder was so loud that people were turning to one another and scratching their heads. The Auctioneer paused in mid-rant. He looked over his shoulder, shrugged, and resumed.
I could have shouted a warning, but what? Anything I said would have been as meaningless as a stop sign to a walrus.
I twisted my earpiece back in my ear, then locked my helmet to the connecting ring. The ventilator clicked, and filtered air feathered my cheek for the first time in weeks.
More important, my visor visuals exploded to life like star shells. I was no longer limited to Jeeb’s basic audio feed.
I tasked Jeeb. “Show threat.”
As I said it, I chinned my optics to panoramic, and focused on the hilltops that bounded the river’s opposite side. “Oboy.” It suddenly became unnecessary for Jeeb to flash me aerial images of the threat.
The distant ridgeline slowly sprouted a line of black whiskers, like a holo for beard cream.
Boom-boom-boom. Now the sound rumbled, the way trains did in the years before ’levs.
People in the crowd pointed fingers at the hills, and visored their hands over their eyes as they stared in the direction of the rumble.
Someone shouted, “What sort of show is this?”
“A free one, I hope!”
The crowd laughed.
Zzzzeeee.
“Incoming!” I shoved Jude to the ground, and spread-eagled across him.
Slug weaponry is as simple, and as alien, as Slug physiology. Howard calls it the Pseudocephalopod equivalent of anthropomorphism. Whatever.
The Slugs use magnetic force to accelerate non- explosive projectiles of various sizes along rails to as high a speed as necessary to inflict the damage level they want. The big berthas mounted on a Firewitch look pretty much like the rifles Slug warriors tote, except for size. But size matters.
Ka-boom.
The Slugs hadn’t tossed many Heavys on Ganymede, but I recognized the impact thump. Heavys were long-range rounds, as big as a gallon milk jug and as heavy as a wall safe.
Silence. It had been just a single, ranging round.
I raised my head and looked around. “Jeez!” It had been a ranging round, but it had also been a Golden Beebe.
In the center of the field Blackbeard stood, the bag of stolen Stones that had bought our freedom clutched in his right hand.
He stared down at his armored breastplate, his eyes bulging. Where Blackbeard’s chest had been there now yawned a steaming hole, as large and round as a meat platter. The distant hills showed through the opening, bordered by the golden remains of his breastplate, as though a landscape painting hung around his neck.
Beneath me, Jude said, “What was—” and raised his head. I elbowed his helmet back into the dirt.
He squirmed. “I want to see!”
“You don’t.”
The bag slid from Blackbeard’s fingers, and the glowing red Stones bounced and rolled across the soil like solid fire.<
br />
Blackbeard wobbled on his boots, then toppled backward and lay staring at the sky. A severed artery pulsed a red arc a foot in the air above him. His blood glistened an instant in the sun, then rained back down on his face.
One woman screamed.
Then her voice got lost in a thousand others, and in the rumble of running feet.
The Auctioneer, his eyes wide, jumped from side to side on The Block, pumping his palms downward. “Stop! It’s some mistake! Peace of the Fair! Peace of the Fair!”
Boom-boom-boom.
The far ridge was black for a mile in each direction, as thousands of Slug warriors in body armor spilled across the crest and glided down the hillside toward The Fair.
I stood, and Jude scrambled up beside me. He peered through his helmet visor, jumping side to side, and pointing. “They’re real! They’re real!”
History-chip images taken from HelmetCams, and Holowood special effects, had shown every kid on Earth what Slugs looked like, but Jude Metzger was now the only member of his generation to share a planet with live ones.
Zzzzeeee. Zzzzeeee. Zzzzeeee.
I knelt and tugged Jude down alongside me.
He said, “We have armor on!”
“Armor’s good against mag rifle rounds, not Heavys.”
The first Slug Heavy volley slammed the meadow. The rounds just plowed dirt.
Slug rounds were as dumb as Napoleonic cannonballs, but the hole in Blackbeard demonstrated that, in war, smart isn’t everything.
I looked back at the Fair. At ten-second intervals, volleys crashed into the close-packed wood, hide, and canvas tents. Already, flames flickered where the red hot rounds had started fires.
Ord had voiced our Cargo’Bots to life and tasked them to carry our Plasteels. Now he held my M-40 out to me.
I grabbed my rifle from Ord, cocked, and loaded it, as I looked out to the river. A Heavy volley pounded like driven sleet against the Marini trading vessels. Torn sails erupted flames, then thrashed in the wind, as friction-heated rounds slashed them. Spray geysered as rounds bracketed ships. A mast, snapped like straw, toppled onto sailors rowing a small boat, and exploded it in a fountain of oars and bodies.
Ord, his visor up, held his targeting binoculars to his eyes. “Let’s see how they react to the river obstacle.”
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