The Accidental War

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Perhaps we should return this assembly to its proper topic,” he said, “and consider once more the matter of funding for cultural services.”

  Sula sat, having nothing to say on the budget discussion. She was thinking about Lady Tu-hon and the Steadfast League, which was beginning to look something like a private army.

  Well, she thought, Lady Tu-hon wasn’t the only person in the room with a private army, and maybe it was time for Sula to talk to her own.

  Chapter 12

  Martinez came down the stairs at the Corona Club, looked through the glass panes at the front of the building, and saw the street packed with marchers plodding along through the evening, probably on their way to the Grandview Arena for a rally of the Steadfast League. There was no way his car would get through the mob: he’d have to call Alikhan to pick him up behind the building, on Gearing Street.

  “I’ll join you,” Kelly said, “if you can drop me off at the Petty Mount.”

  “Can I offer anyone else a ride?” he asked.

  “I have a car waiting,” said Lady Kosch Altasz. “And Sodak lives near me.”

  “You’ll have to tell your driver to pick you up on Gearing, behind us.”

  Martinez had followed the news of the financial collapse, and once he’d realized the authorities and the banks were hopeless he’d amused himself by betting against them, but whatever excitement lay in speculation had long since faded. Boredom hovered in the air around him, but fortunately the yachting season would begin in a month, and the pilots and administrators had met to plan their strategy for the upcoming races. Only three pilots could fly in each race, and veterans had to be balanced against newcomers. Support teams and alternates had to be chosen, and strategies contemplated. The meeting had gone on all afternoon in the study, and then several of the pilots had adjourned to the bar for drinks and snacks sent up from the kitchen. Now only four remained.

  Lady Kosch, the feuding cousin of Lord Altasz, was a burly Torminel with powerful arms and shoulders and blue-gray fur. Lieutenant Sodak, the newcomer recommended by Lord Altasz, was another female Torminel, short and sharp-faced, with fur of mixed black and gray. Over several seasons Lady Kosch had proved a reliable racer, and Sodak had settled into the team very well, and only needed seasoning to become one of Corona’s stars.

  Martinez looked up at Ti-car, the Lai-own maître d’, who stood by the front door in a splendid dark green uniform distinguished from that of the Fleet by its gold buttons and braid, and by the badge of the club: an eclipsed sun and glowing corona with stylized loops and prominences. Ti-car’s pale feathery hair, floating about his head, was itself reminiscent of a corona.

  “Are we the last?” Martinez asked.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And no one’s staying in the apartments?”

  “We have no guests at present.”

  Martinez looked at his sleeve display and called up a chronometer. It was later than he’d thought. “You might as well close the kitchen, lock up, and go home,” he said.

  Ti-car bowed. “Thank you, my lord.”

  Wine curled up in Martinez’s skull like a warm, sleepy, contented cat. It was a night, he thought, for stretching out before the fire with a comic novel by Hoi-tun and maybe—no, definitely—another glass of wine.

  He used the sleeve display to call Alikhan, who had been meeting nearby in a coffee shop, or perhaps a bar, with some retired petty officer friends. He told Alikhan to bring the car to Gearing Street.

  “Right away, my lord.”

  Ti-car took Martinez’s overcoat from the rack and held it open for him. Martinez looked through the window at the crowd marching past, and they seemed warm enough in the autumn night, so he reached out a hand for the coat.

  “I’ll just carry it, thanks.”

  He put the coat over his arm, and Ti-car opened the front door, with its glass panels featuring the club badge. They passed outside into the crisp autumn air and began their stroll up the sidewalk. The marchers, walking in the other direction, passed in a long column to their left. Somewhere ahead a Daimong chorus was vocalizing on “May Your Thoughts Be Ever Guided by the Praxis.”

  “Say,” said Lady Kosch, “did you hear that Cosgrove’s to be executed tomorrow?” Her breath frosted before her face, and her night-adapted eyes reflected the yellow tint of the streetlights.

  “No,” Martinez said. “I thought they were keeping him alive so he’d give up his hidden bank accounts, or something.”

  “Political pressure,” Kosch said. “The government’s decided on a splashy execution. I’m not sure when the broadcast will get here from Hy-Oso, but I may just tune in the Punishment Channel and watch. The bastard cost me thirty grand at least—and they said those bonds were rock-solid!”

  “The only punishment channel I need is to look at my investments,” Martinez said. Kosch made a throaty cough of amusement.

  Wine purred in Martinez’s blood. The Daimong chorus approached. Martinez saw they were marching beneath a sign that read down with the terran criminals. A cold warning finger touched his spine, and his warm contentment vanished like the misty breath before his face. He walked on, but turned his head away from the crowd, toward the dark storefronts on his right.

  “It’s Martinez!” A threadbare Lai-own pointed from out of the crowd. “It’s the criminal Martinez!”

  Great, Martinez thought. For the first time in his life, he regretted being so easily recognized. And he regretted what had doubtless contributed to the recognition, his undress uniform, which he’d worn because the convenience of the sleeve display meant he didn’t have to carry a hand comm when accessing the yachting simulations in the Corona Club study.

  “It’s Martinez!” The Lai-own was insistent. “It’s Martinez the Terran! Martinez the thief!”

  The Daimong harmonies stumbled and fell into discord. Lady Kosch snarled at the Lai-own marcher. “Be silent, you imbecile!”

  “It’s Martinez and his accomplices!”

  Martinez heard Kelly’s urgent whisper. “Maybe we’d better get back to the club.”

  Part of the crowd surged onto the sidewalk. One of the Daimong singers reeled up in front of Martinez, bringing with him the scent of grain alcohol and rotting flesh. He seized Martinez’s arm and pulled him around to face him. Lady Kosch growled and tore the Daimong’s hand away. “It’s Martinez!” the Daimong called in a voice like a siren, at the same instant that Lady Kosch said, “Get away, you layabout!”

  “I’m being attacked!” the Daimong cried. “They’re attacking me!”

  Martinez felt the situation begin a horrid, vertiginous slide out of control, as if he were sliding down a hill made entirely out of pebbles. More Daimong filled up the walk ahead of him, and he saw that the marching column had come to a halt. A host of eyes stared at him from beneath the banner condemning the Terran criminals. He took a breath and stepped forward, the cold autumn air rasping in his throat. He drew himself up to his considerable height and squared his broad shoulders.

  “What do you want of me?” he said, in the voice with which he might address a compartment full of recruits.

  The Daimong rubbed his arm. “You’re a thief!” he said.

  “And you’re a drunk!” Martinez said. “And you’re embarrassing your friends, so just quiet down.”

  There was silence. The drunken Daimong hesitated, as if he were considering for the first time whether he might in fact be an embarrassment. His friends also seemed willing to consider this same possibility.

  Martinez turned to one of the other Daimong. “Take your friend away,” he said quietly. “It’s time he left.”

  It was impossible to read their immobile expressions, but for a moment he thought they might obey, and then a bottle came sailing out of the crowd. Martinez felt the breeze of its passage on the back of his neck, and then it hit the glass window of a shop. No mere bottle was going to break a shop window, so the bottle rebounded and hit Martinez on the ankle. He turned in the direction of t
he bottle thrower and saw the Lai-own who had first recognized him, and who stood pointing with his muzzle agape and triumph in his golden eyes.

  Fur bristling, Sodak charged with her head down, hurtled into the Lai-own’s narrow frame, and knocked him sprawling, then delivered a serious of savage kicks to the prone body. Hollow Lai-own bones cracked, and the Lai-own shrieked.

  “They’re attacking us!” cried the drunken Daimong in a voice of tortured metal. “Stop them!” He charged in, fists swinging.

  Martinez’s overcoat was hampering his arm, so he threw it over the Daimong’s head, then seized the Daimong’s arm and shoulder and, using the upper-body strength he’d honed as a racer, hurled him headfirst into the nearest building. Kelly, eyes wide, leaped out of the way as the Daimong hit the window. Using his fist like a hammer, Martinez clouted the Daimong on the head as the drunk rebounded, then snatched the overcoat as he collapsed at the feet of his friends. His dead-flesh reek clung to the back of Martinez’s throat.

  “Back to the club,” he said, as another bottle came blindly out of the crowd and smashed on the sidewalk. Martinez saw Lady Kosch about to launch herself at the Daimong chorus and put a hand on her arm to hold her back. “To the club,” he repeated. He and Kosch and Kelly backed away.

  Snarling in triumph, Sodak returned to the sidewalk and began to lead the party toward the club. Marchers surrounded the wounded Lai-own. Martinez saw grim expressions as the marchers recovered from the shock of Sodak’s violence. Bottles and debris sailed through the air. Martinez batted away a bottle aimed at his head and heard it smash on the pavement.

  The Daimong chorus hesitated behind the sprawled drunk, but then a group of young Daimong burst through them and charged. Two of them tripped over the drunk, and they came in more strung out than they intended. Martinez threw his overcoat over the first one, punched him in the body, then laid him out with a forearm to the face. The Daimong dead-flesh smell filled the air. Lady Kosch met her attacker head-on, her powerful arms hooking one body punch after another. Kelly fought a third, but any combat courses at the academy were long ago, and her lanky body was not built for street fights. She staggered back reeling from a blow to the face, and her assailant followed, shrugging off her wild punches. Martinez came in from his blind side with his shoulder low and hurled him into the plate-glass window of the shop to the right. Martinez then seized the Daimong’s head in his two big fists and smashed it repeatedly into the glass until the Daimong went limp. He bent to snatch up his overcoat from the half-conscious form of his original opponent and looked for the next attacker, only to find that Lady Kosch had pushed her own attacker in the way of the next assailant. They collided, flailed, rebounded. Martinez kicked the nearest one in the hip and knocked him into his friend. They both fell sprawling.

  Martinez and Kosch continued their retreat. Bottles smashed and bounded off the wall near them. Martinez turned to Kelly and saw her wiping blood off her face. She was pale, but she doubled her fists at the ends of her skinny arms, game for the next encounter but looking about as threatening as a child.

  “Call the club,” he told her. “Make sure the door is open for us. And then call the police.”

  Because where were they? A huge column of marchers like this, blocking cross-traffic for the better part of an hour, should have police shepherding them along their route.

  At least they weren’t being attacked by Torminel, all fangs, aggression, and thick protective fur.

  He fended off a bottle, and he kept scanning the crowd for signs of another attack. Some of the Daimong picked themselves off the sidewalk, but they didn’t seem eager to renew their assault. And then he heard someone rapping out orders in a tone of command.

  “You three, get behind them. You lot, get ready. And the rest of you, keep up the aerial barrage.”

  Aerial barrage. A term unlikely to be employed by a civilian. He scanned the crowd and saw an elderly Torminel with thin, patchy brown fur, and a single fang overhanging her lower lip. Fleet medals hung on her vest, and there was a feral, cunning look in her glowing night-adapted eyes. A retired petty officer, he assumed.

  The Torminel saw him looking at her, and her lips drew back in something that might have been either a snarl or a smile, but which Martinez read as a challenge. She knew just who he was, and how she planned to hurt him.

  A bottle sailed over his head and smashed against the wall. He thought that perhaps he might want to convert that broken bottle into a weapon, but he didn’t want the crowd to see him and be reminded that they’d be that much more dangerous if they stopped throwing bottles, and instead used them as clubs, or broke them and used them as knives.

  Then he saw people rushing through the crowd carrying long staves they’d got from somewhere, and he realized the question of disarmament had already been settled. Covering his movement with his overcoat, he bent to pick up the broken bottle by the neck.

  Four Fleet officers, he thought, and nobody has a sidearm.

  “Better arm yourselves,” he said. “I see big sticks out there.”

  The Torminel petty officer called for an increased barrage. There were few bottles left, but garbage filled the air, along with a trash receptacle that whooshed overhead and clanged against a storefront. The bobbing staves were coming closer, and Martinez realized that they were the poles the crowd had been using to carry signs.

  “Now!” the Torminel cried. “Attack, attack!”

  There was a rush of Daimong and a few Lai-own. Some swung staves. The dead-flesh smell was blended with the acid note of Lai-own. Martinez blinded an attacker with his overcoat and punched through it, reversing the bottle to use the end of the neck as a hammer. The attacker staggered back, but one of the staves hit Martinez on the neck, and for a second he felt every nerve in his body paralyzed as if by electric shock, his every brain cell flailing like a falling man pitching headfirst into a dark cellar—and then a wave of fury rose in him, and he dropped the bottle and the overcoat and seized the stave with both hands and kicked the Lai-own attacker away from his own weapon.

  He hadn’t done much brawling in his life, and so far he’d been depending on size and strength rather than skill; but he’d been a fencer at the academy and he had an idea how to use a polearm. He thrust it at the faces of the attackers around him, using his weight to bruise them and keep them from closing. They all drew back. He saw Kelly fighting with a Daimong on his right, and he swung the pole at the legs of the Daimong and knocked the attacker off his feet, then had his point back in the face of the next assailant before the attacker could react. He was able to keep a number of attackers at bay, because they weren’t professionals and they weren’t coordinated. Every time he saw one of them gather courage to attack, he’d thrust his staff at their eyes or chest and discourage them. People thrust their poles at him, but he was able to riposte, and he disarmed one startled Lai-own with a circular parry. When the stave fell to the ground, he kicked it behind him for Kelly or someone else to use.

  Lady Kosch hurled one bleeding Lai-own into the pack, and then Martinez heard the voice of the Torminel petty officer above the roars of the crowd.

  “You idiots! You’re supposed to attack all at once!”

  You didn’t have to point that out, Martinez thought. One of the Daimong on his right seemed to have summoned his resolution and was readying himself to make an attack, and Martinez shifted his staff and jabbed him in the face. He hit the Daimong in an eye, and the attacker clutched the eye and fell back. A siren yowl rose from his immobile lips.

  “All of you attack on my mark!” the petty officer shouted. “Three! Two! One! . . .”

  On each number, Martinez jabbed at a different target. He could feel sweat or blood dripping down his face.

  “Mark!”

  Oh fucking damn, Martinez thought.

  This time they actually did come more or less at once. Martinez shortened his grip on his stave so that he could fight with either end, and he slashed and stabbed right and left, the shock of
his strikes running up his arms, but still he was borne back by the sheer weight of numbers. A stave smashed him in the face and again he felt that paralyzing shock that left his brain cells flailing. The breath was driven from his lungs as he was driven into the storefront behind him, and after that he was just a target for fists and feet, pinned against the wall by his own stave, hardly able to defend himself. He could taste his own blood. He felt his knees give way and he sagged, his arms raised to guard his face as the blows came in.

  With luck, he thought, he’d be unconscious soon.

  Then he heard a squall, the cry of a Torminel carnivore as it pounced, a nerve-shredding shriek intended to paralyze its prey. The scream worked as intended, freezing Martinez in place, and it seemed to freeze his attackers, too. Then they were battered away from him as another of their number was hurled into them like a bowling ball into a stack of pins. Martinez straightened and took his first free breath of cool night air in what seemed to be a hundred years.

  Lady Kosch squalled again and pounced on one of the reeling Daimong, hugging him close. The Daimong gave a weirdly sonorous cry of pain and terror. Then there was a spray of red as Lady Kosch’s fangs tore her victim’s throat, and she spun him around to face his fellow attackers, showering them all with arterial blood.

  The attackers fell back in horror. “This is what awaits you, scum!” Lady Kosch screamed. She continued to brandish the dying Daimong before her as she forged a path back to the Corona Club, stalking down the sidewalk as the crowd fell back before her. Sodak limped after in silence. Martinez, panting for breath, turned to follow and found Kelly unconscious at his feet. He let his stave fall and swept Kelly up in his arms, then gasped as bruised ribs protested.

  Ti-car, dignified in his green uniform, opened the door of the club, and Sodak and Martinez entered. After the brawl in the street, the deep silence of the club and the lobby’s immaculate, gleaming fixtures both carried a sense of unreality.

  Lady Kosch alone remained outside, her eyes glowing with triumph. “This will teach you to threaten your betters, vermin!” she proclaimed, and kicked her bleeding victim toward his comrades. The Daimong fell to the pavement at their feet. Blood still pulsed from his torn throat. Then, snarling, Lady Kosch backed into the club. Ti-car closed and locked the door behind her.