After leading them upstairs, their unwilling guide paused at a set of enormous and outrageously ornate doors that looked entirely out of place in the building’s modern architectural style of whites, grays, and blacks, of classic geometric shapes. Two nervous Territorial Army soldiers stood guard outside.
“The president is through these doors,” their guide said curtly. “You will, of course, excuse me if I don’t accompany you.” As if afraid that he was going to be physically beaten for some unnamed transgression, the man quickly disappeared down the hall, leaving Alfonso and Reza looking at each other.
“Sir,” Zevon announced quietly, “these people give me the creeps.”
Reza’s only comment was an arched eyebrow. “Let us meet the President of Erlang, then, shall we?”
Ignoring the two soldiers, Reza opened the massive door and entered the room beyond.
“Captain Gard, I presume,” Belisle’s voice boomed from behind his desk, situated in the middle of a room as large as some flight decks Reza had been on. Directly overhead was a crystal chandelier that must have weighed at least five hundred kilos and cost more than some colonies had in their vaults. The walls were adorned with shelves of books that climbed to the ceiling, which itself was glorified with a painting that appeared to depict the taming of Erlang’s forests. “So nice of you to join us.”
“Mr. President,” Reza said formally, as he and Zevon crossed the two dozen paces to Belisle’s desk. “I offer my apologies for spoiling your plans, but–”
“But?” Belisle interjected hotly. “But what? I should have you charged with reckless navigation and wanton destruction of government property, your Navy ships and Marine vehicles tearing up Helder Ridge. You were sent here to do what I want, what my government wants, and so far you aren’t measuring up very well. You’re supposed to keep the mines open, and keep those damned Mallorys at work!” The older man rose from his desk, his face redder than ever, his eyes narrowed into dark slits.
Wittmann, who had come over from the balcony with the intent of shaking Reza’s hand in welcome, shrank back behind the one individual on Erlang who wielded very close to absolute power.
“I ask for a regiment and men to do the job,” Belisle spat, “and what do I get? A stinking company of misfits!” He walked around the desk, coming face to face with Reza. The two men were about the same height, but Belisle was much paler from never having worked in the sun. His hair, gray from age, was full and perfect, perhaps too much so. His body was in good shape, although a far cry from Reza’s near-perfect form. When Belisle opened his mouth again, Reza was assaulted by the strong smell of cognac. “Who the devil do you think you are, mister? Captain Gard, I have half a mind to strip you of your rank and take your men and equipment for the Territorial Army.”
Reza’s eyes narrowed. Beside him, Zevon could feel the sudden heat from Reza’s body, and his hand lowered just enough that his palm touched the butt of the blaster that hung at his hip, his trusty rifle’s temporary replacement. Without moving his head, his eyes scoured the room for any trace of treachery.
“To attempt such a thing would be most unwise, President Belisle,” Reza said, his voice masking the sudden flames that had erupted in his blood. “As you well know, you have no direct authority over me or my Marines, and any attempt to do what you are suggesting would be met with the stiffest resistance. Further,” he took a step closer to Belisle, until their noses almost touched, “you do not seem to understand my orders, sir. They are to ensure that the flow of material from Erlang is disturbed as little as possible. They do not say to oppress the Mallorys or support the Raniers. I have been given complete authority in how to proceed.” One minor and ironic advantage of being in the Red Legion, Reza thought: unless at least an entire battalion was participating in an operation, subordinate commanders detailed to missions like this one were given a free hand in determining its outcome. It was only natural, since many officers and units did not survive the tasks assigned to them, anyway.
“Is that a threat, captain?” Belisle hissed.
“No, sir, it is a statement of fact. I wish to cooperate with you, but I will not be coerced or browbeaten. I am a Marine, my people are Marines, and we will not be used as a political tool by either you or the Mallorys.”
Belisle laughed, a coarse bark belonging to a heartless predator. “Big talk for a man who only has a couple hundred people behind him,” he sneered. His voice turned cold. “Let me tell you something, little man. I make the rules on this world, and people either play by them or they get hurt. Badly. The Mallorys would love to get their hooks into a bleeding heart do-gooder like you, but I’ll warn you now against it. You were sent here to help me to keep the mines open, and that’s what you’re going to do.”
“I believe we are agreed that keeping the mines open is the objective,” Reza said, “but what if I do not ‘play’ by your rules to do that, Mr. President?”
Belisle smiled like a hyena. “Captain, at the snap of my fingers I could have ten-thousand troops on that mountain where your beloved Marines are, and they wouldn’t be up there just to pick mushrooms. Your people wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Wittmann watched in wonder as a smile crept upon Reza’s lips.
“The view from your office is truly magnificent, Mr. President,” Reza said admiringly as he moved past Belisle and out onto the open balcony, a structure that extended a dozen meters to his left and right around the curved face of the building. His eyes scanned the view for a moment until he had found what he was looking for. “I see that your people have a fondness for history and remembrance,” he said, gesturing toward a tall mountain directly to the east of the capital that bore the inscription in enormous numbers of the dates on which the Mallorys and Raniers arrived. Below the dates, carved into the mountain face years ago, was the first scar of what was to be a giant likeness of Belisle. Today, fortunately, no workers were there. “Perhaps you also have a fondness for the future.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Belisle growled. He did not hear Zevon whispering something into his helmet microphone, but Wittmann did. “Karl,” he stuttered, using Belisle’s first name, “they’re going to–”
Whatever the mayor had intended to say was to go unsaid forever as the mountain face suddenly erupted into a boiling mass of exploding rock and burning dust, the result of a single bolt fired from one of the tanks in the Marine encampment. It took ten seconds for the sound of the detonation to reach the capital, and it was still so loud that it shook the building like rolling thunder in a gale wind.
By the time the sound had died away, the mountain lay shrouded in a black cloud of dust and smoke.
“A great pity,” Reza said, genuinely sad at having to destroy part of what had been a magnificently beautiful mountain, even after human hands had immortalized their own conceit with hammer and chisel. When the smoke cleared, there was only a smoldering crater where Belisle’s likeness was to have been.
He turned back to Belisle, who was now as pale as the inside of his mistress’s thighs. “Do not threaten me or my people again, Mr. President,” Reza said quietly, his deep voice cutting through the city’s sudden silence like the fin of a shark in dark water. “You will think on these things this night, on how you wish to solve your problems here, with or without my assistance. We will speak again tomorrow.”
He and Zevon departed, leaving Belisle and Wittmann to contemplate the ramifications of what they had just witnessed.
***
“I tell you, Ian, our time has come,” the man said passionately. “Surely it was a sign we saw today, that the days of the Raniers are numbered!”
There were nods of assent from people around the crowded room, visible in the low lamplight through air choked with pipe smoke and the salty smell of sweat clinging to bodies that had been laboring hard only hours before. Numbering one hundred and thirty-eight souls, they were the elected cell leaders of the Mallory Party, each of whom represented the interests of thousands of peop
le.
But this meeting was not a normal one, by any means. It was the first time in over five years since representatives of all the groups had gathered to discuss the future of their people. The last time they had met, they had been betrayed by a young fool with a loose tongue, and many of their number, including the speaker’s father, had been arrested, tortured, and then executed as traitors by the prefecture police and Territorial Army. No event since then had warranted the risk of another such meeting. Until now.
“Perhaps the mountain was not a warning to us,” the man went on, “but to the Raniers. Perhaps the Marines–”
“They are here to help the Raniers!” a woman with a face of angry leather shouted from the other side of the gathering. They were men and women of all ages, tall and short, but all with the callused palms of those who labored for a living, and the hollowed eyes of those who lived in despair but who dreamed with hope. “Our first plan was best, to kill the Confederation dogs before they set foot on our soil. Now they’ll turn their weapons on us, on our children, to keep us in the mines, digging like rats! I say we walk away from these damned pits. Blow them up. Collapse them for good. If they want the lode, let them dig it out themselves, and their Marines be damned!”
There were angry murmurs and more nods. Some were from different people than before, and some from those who had earlier agreed with the man’s words. They were afraid, angry, and confused by the events of the day. They had known the Marines were coming, and had done their best to lay an ambush for them, believing that they were here to act as a whip for Belisle. But after the Marine ships suddenly diverted to the ridge, and then destroyed the site of Belisle’s effigy in stone, the Mallorys’ original determination to openly rebel had wavered. The seniors had called a meeting, and every group from every province had managed to get a representative here by nightfall. It had been a terribly dangerous gamble, but was considered worth the risk. But until the meeting ended and they were all safely away, more than one wary eye would be fixed on the approaches to the hideout, and local Mallory agents were in contact with spotters outside the nearby mines, watching for trouble.
“No.”
In unison, all eyes turned to the owner of that voice. Enya Terragion, all of twenty-three years old, had not been with the Committee very long, but had early on won its respect.
“We must fight the wrongs we have suffered with right, with justice, not with spite,” Enya told them. “Yes, we could destroy the mines, but where would that leave us? The Raniers would take their fortunes and themselves and leave us behind to rot in poverty worse than we know now.”
“Fine, then!” someone shouted. “Good riddance to them!”
“We don’t need their damned money to live!” added another.
“No, we don’t,” Enya said, her voice rising above the shouting. “But consider this, all of you: we remember stories of what it was like when the first Mallorys came here, how Erlang provided for them, how they carved their lives from the soil and the forest. But we can’t go back.” Her words hung like rifle shots in the suddenly silent room. “We can’t go back. Look at yourselves: to right and left, and across from you. Who do you see? Do you see someone who can hunt in the forest, till soil and plant grain, spin wool into yarn and weave, someone who can provide for so many of us?” Many eyes dropped to the floor, many fists clenched in frustrated realization of the truth. The years had taken away their skills and given them a population that could not be sustained by a simple economy. “When was the last time any of you had something to eat or wear that did not come from the company store? How many of you have a plow, or know how to make one?” Her challenge was met with a resentful but contemplative silence. “And even if we could go back to the old ways, do we want to go back, when we could go forward? My father could not read, but he saw to it that I could, and I vow that any child of mine shall also. Gerry’s boy,” she nodded to a woman who sat a few seats down, “was born blind, but the doctors at Kielly’s Hospital gave him his sight. Are these, and so many more, things we want to give up?” She paused again, her deep brown eyes touching each face in the crowd. “You all think that the lives of our first blood on this world were grand and full of joy, and for them they were. But that was their world, their time. This is our time, and we must make Erlang our own world, with our own vision, and not that of our forebears.”
“So what do you suggest, girl?” a man who wore a patch over one eye and had a mass of scar tissue over the right side of his skull said sarcastically. “That we just say ‘pretty please’ to President-By-God’s-Holy-Right Belisle and ask him to give us our lives and freedom back? We’ve tried that approach, many times, but it doesn’t work. These people only understand what comes out the end of a gun, and we’ve got enough now to give it to ‘em.”
“What about the mountain?” Enya said over the chorus of agreeing voices. “Do you think our tiny, outlawed hunting rifles are a match for their pulse guns? Will our gasoline bombs stop their tanks or thwart their artillery?”
Silence.
“Good people,” she said, “even should the Kreelans never show their terrible faces on this side of the Grange, we have many an enemy in our own kin, in the Raniers who oppress us, in the Confederation Council members who rob our world of its riches for their own gain. We are a remote world, far from the center of human consideration. It is time we sought out some friends, if we can, and show them that we are not the mindless brutes the Rainiers claim we are.”
“Regardless of the cost?” the leather-faced woman asked.
Enya shook her head slowly. “No. But at least we can find out the price before we pay in blood, perhaps needlessly.”
“And you think these Marines may help us?” Ian Mallory, a direct descendent of the original Mallory, said. He held his position solely through due democratic process in his ward and through his own abilities, not by his name. Longest surviving member on the Committee, he served as its leader.
“All of you heard earlier what Milan told us of Wittmann’s horror at what happened to the mountain today, at what the Marines did to it,” she said. Milan was the Mayor’s servant and a Mallory spy. “Whoever these Marines are, whatever they came to Erlang for, it was not to be solely for Belisle’s pleasure. Will they help us? I do not know. But I am willing to wager my life that it is worth the risk to find out. And if my way does not succeed, no other alternatives are closed away from you.”
Ian Mallory nodded, his gray beard slowly bobbing against his barrel chest. He was a strong man, and proud, but held out little hope for a successful armed rebellion of his people against Belisle’s Territorial Army. It had been tried before, and failed. As then, many Mallorys would be slaughtered, and Erlang would still remain under Ranier control. More than that, his people would be driven inextricably from their roots, from their heritage of honest work for an honest wage, the helping hand of a neighbor, a government that said “yes” to its people, not “no.” He hoped beyond hope for a settlement that would restore his people to their rightful place in an environment of forgiveness and of looking to the future, where perhaps Raniers and Mallorys could someday simply call themselves Erlangers. But it was a difficult road. The past held so much bad blood, but his heart grew weary from the burden of hate that it bore. His wizened eyes sought out the gaze of his friends, his people.
“The time has come for talk to end,” he said. “Does anyone have anything else to say on this matter, over what has already been spoken?”
No one did. Unlike many committees convened over the ages, the Mallorys did not have the luxury of talking and not acting. Every meeting ended in a vote and action.
“Then it is time to have a show of hands. All in favor of letting Enya speak to the Marines on our behalf, raise your hand.” Roughly two-thirds of those present, some after a moment’s hesitation, raised their hand above their head. “All those against?” The remainder raised their hands. There were no abstentions in a Mallory Committee vote. The right was too precious to waste.
/>
“And what if she fails?”
Ian frowned. It was an unpalatable prospect, but an all-too realistic one. “If that happens, we’ll have no choice but to destroy the mines and fight the Raniers and the Marines face to face.” And die, he thought grimly.
Twenty-Nine
“Captain,” Zevon said from the dim red glow of the command post, “a personal message just came in for you from Tenth Fleet. I thought you might want to see it.”
“Thank you, Alfonso,” Reza said, instantly awakening from a restless sleep. He was not tired, particularly, except that dealing with the unfathomable intricacies of human politics drained him terribly. He would never become accustomed to a dark art that was unutterably alien to him and the ways of his people. His other people, he chided himself.
Reza took the proffered electronic notepad from Zevon, who immediately turned away and left him in privacy, closing the curtain of thick canvas between Reza’s personal area and the company HQ.
Keying in his personal code, Reza was rewarded with Tenth Fleet’s emblem and a video message. It was from Jodi.
“Hi, Reza,” she said warmly, her face as beautiful as ever. It had been over three years now since he had last seen her or Nicole in the flesh. “I know I only wrote you last week, and you probably get sick of me sending these things all the time.” Reza smiled. While the two of them had religiously exchanged letters every two weeks for years, only half of them ever got through. Looking at the date, he saw that this message had been posted three months ago. Electronic miracles, indeed, he thought sourly. “But I had some news for you, and I’m afraid it isn’t good.” Reza could see a veil of sadness fall over her face. “Father Hernandez died two days ago in Rome, here on Earth. I guess he was on another one of his trips between Rutan and the Vatican to tie things up with the Church again when his heart finally gave out. From what Monsignor Ryakin said – he called me this morning – Father Hernandez died in his sleep.” She paused as she brushed away a tear. “I know you won’t be able to come to the funeral or anything – it’ll probably be long since over by the time you even get this – so I ordered some flowers for the ceremony in your name. I hope that’s okay with you.”
In Her Name Page 60