The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  “This way,” she said in a low murmur. “There are maintenance locker rooms back here.”

  They limped their way through the back corridors, finding the lockers rooms and laundry facilities used by the maintenance and cleaning crews, cargo handlers, and shuttle pilots. They dropped their filthy, reeking clothes in a refuse bin, then hit the shower stalls. The feel of hot water and soap was glorious, working wonders for their spirits. Clean maintenance uniforms, socks, and shoes pilfered from lockers Kafari jimmied open made them feel almost human again.

  Yalena held Kafari’s now-clean belly-band holster under an electric hand dryer, while Kafari busied herself cleaning her pistol at a sink, rinsing out the worst of the muck. She reassembled the gun, then wrapped the now-dry belly-band holster around her midsection and slid the gun into it. She didn’t even bother to conceal it under her shirt. Not tonight.

  “What next?” her daughter asked quietly.

  “We find ourselves some real supper and we board our transportation.”

  “Our transportation?” Yalena asked, frowning. “What transportation? I mean, where are we going?”

  “The Star of Mali docked at Ziva Two this afternoon.”

  Yalena’s brows, knit in puzzlement, shot abruptly upward. “Off-world?” she gasped. “But—” She closed her mouth, stunned. “You want us to go to Vishnu? To be with Daddy?”

  Kafari nodded, not voicing her real plans aloud. After what she’d seen tonight, Kafari wasn’t going anywhere. There was too much at stake. Too many innocent lives had already been lost. But Yalena was going out, whether she liked it or not. Even if Kafari had to knock the girl senseless to do it.

  “How do we get off-world?” Yalena asked. “We don’t have a shuttle pass. And I don’t think the P-Squads would let anybody board any kind of orbit-capable shuttle, now.” She gulped, seeing ramifications for the first time in her life. “They won’t want anyone to know what’s happening here, will they?”

  “No, they won’t,” Kafari agreed. “But we’re not going by shuttle. Not exactly. For right now, however, we find food,” Kafari insisted. She tossed everything they’d carried with them into the nearest refuse bin, found a duffle in another pilfered locker, then led the way through empty, echoing corridors. They headed for the spaceport’s food hub, where they raided a restaurant kitchen. Wolfing down supper took only ten minutes. Then Kafari started dumping food into the duffle.

  “Why are we taking so much?” Yalena asked.

  “Because I don’t know how long it will take to get ourselves into orbit. Freighters operate on tight schedules and the Star of Mali is due to break orbit from Ziva Two about noontime tomorrow. If she leaves on schedule, we won’t have to wait longer than a few hours. But if there are delays over the mess in Madison — especially if the president’s been killed and I’m betting he has — we could be stuck for hours. Maybe days. And once we’re in our hiding place, I don’t want to come out, again. I won’t risk getting caught trying to sneak out and grab more food.”

  Yalena, showing definite signs of wear and tear from their ghastly struggle, just nodded, accepting the explanation at face value. Kafari’s heart constricted. Her daughter hadn’t learned to be devious, yet. She zipped the duffle closed, then led the way through the spaceport along a different route, heading toward the cargo-handling side of the port. They found rows of big cargo-transfer bins, neatly labeled so the stevedores could tell at a glance which bins were consigned to which hold on the orbiting freighters or the occasional passenger craft. Kafari chose a big cargo box whose manifest tag said it contained processed fish meal, the biggest food export Jefferson produced. The idea of shipping any food had caused riots, particularly amongst the explosive urban poor, so POPPA propagandists had been very careful in assuring the public that the only food being shipped out was the treaty-mandated native fish, processed for Terran consumption.

  “We’ll open the top, scoop out enough fish meal to bed down, and pour the stuff we remove into a refuse bin somewhere.”

  Yalena nodded and scrambled up to try prying open the hinged top. “It won’t open, Mom. I don’t see any sign of a lock, but it won’t budge. It’s like the whole thing’s been welded shut.” She leaned down, peering over the sides. When she reached the back of the bin, she said, “Hey, that’s weird. Look at this, Mom. Why would somebody put a door into the side of a cargo bin full of fish meal? It would flood out the minute you tried to open it.”

  Kafari crawled around to the back and frowned at the door that had been fitted into the narrow end of the bin. “You’re right. That is weird.”

  “I’m going to check the other bins, Mom.” She moved at a brisk pace through the stacked cargo boxes. “This one’s got one, too. So does this one. And that one. The ones down here don’t, but this whole row does.” She was pointing at the bins nearest the warehouse doors.

  Kafari’s frown deepened as the implications of that placement sank in. “These would be loaded first, at the back of the freighter’s cargo bay. Spot-check inspections wouldn’t be as likely to uncover these, stacked in the back.” That suggested all sorts of interesting things. She came to an abrupt decision and yanked the handle up. The metal door creaked open, but no fish meal poured out. The air that did flood out carried a butcher-shop smell with it. Kafari peered into the bin, using the hand light, and stared, struck literally speechless.

  The whole, immense cargo box was full of meat. Not just any meat, either, and certainly not the noxious fish-meal they’d been shipping for years to the miners on Mali. She could see whole sides of beef. Thick, center-cut hams. Ropes of spiced sausage, a Klameth Canyon specialty that was confiscated by the government as fast as ranchers could produce and pack it. This food was supposed to be sent to the hard-working crews on the fishing trawlers and the high-latitude iron mines. If each of the modified cargo bins held this many dressed carcasses and processed meats, at least a quarter of the annual output of Jefferson’s ranches was sitting right here, awaiting shipment disguised as something else.

  Who had authorized the clandestine shipments? Gifre Zeloc? Or one of the POPPA king-makers? Maybe even Vittori, himself? Whoever it was, they were lining their pockets with what had to be immense profits, doubtless selling to Malinese miners who could afford to pay for meats the average Jeffersonian Subbie hadn’t tasted in years. Kafari wanted to beam pictures of this to every datascreen on Jefferson. If enough people saw this, there would be food riots in the streets.

  Until Sonny crushed them.

  Choked by helpless rage, Kafari gripped the edge of the open door frame until her fingers turned white. Then she strode down the line, trying to judge what the loading order would be when these bins were hauled into the shuttle and boosted up to the cargo bay aboard the Star of Mali. “We go in this one,” she decided. “It’s less likely to get buried in the stack, which will give us time to get out and into the ship.”

  “Won’t all the air escape?”

  Kafari shook her head. “No, the shuttles will off-load into a two-tier cargo-handling system. When you’ve got perishables, you ferry them up in a pressurized shuttle and offload them through an airlock in Ziva Two. Stevedores there transfer the bins to the freighters’ cargo bays, which are snugged into the side of the station. This bin will be under pressure the whole time. Let’s close up the other one.”

  Kafari opened the one she had chosen, then scrounged until she came up with a rain tarp from one of the storage rooms adjacent to the warehouse’s main floor. She pulled out a dozen full-sized hams, chilled for transport but not frozen, creating a space for the duffle and Yalena, then hauled the meat to a refuse bin and dumped it in, hiding the evidence of their tampering.

  “You’ve got your wrist-comm on?” she asked Yalena.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. That meat’s not frozen, but we’ll wait a bit before crawling in. No sense in getting chilled right away. Here,” she sat down between the wall and the cargo bin, “snuggle up. We’ll get some sleep.”
r />   Yalena curled up against her, leaning her head against Kafari’s shoulder. Within minutes the exhausted girl was sound asleep. Kafari’s throat closed. She hadn’t held her child like this since Yalena had turned five. She wanted more of it, much more, and knew it was impossible. To keep Yalena safe, she had to smuggle her off-world, get her to safety with her father. Her eyes burned with hot, salty tears. The need for Simon’s arms around her was a physical agony. All she had to do was climb into that bin full of meat…

  She swallowed down the longing. During the last war, she had reached down into herself and found the courage, the strength to put aside her own terror and need for safety to save the life of a man her world had needed to survive. Tonight, on eve of a very different war — one that POPPA did not yet know had just been declared — she found herself having to reach down yet again for that courage, that strength. She had other lives to save, this time, perhaps thousands of others.

  Kafari’s new war was just beginning.

  She waited until Yalena was deeply asleep. Once she was sure of it, she eased her way to her feet, lifted her exhausted daughter, and placed her — still sound asleep — in the space she’d created. Kafari tucked the tarp around her daughter and brushed back a lock of hair, bending to kiss her brow with the merest brush of lips. Then she eased the door closed and latched it. She closed her eyes for one long and dangerous, burning moment. Then straightened and strode through the empty spaceport to liberate transportation for herself.

  It was time to do battle.

  III

  Simon was at home, running through another set of calesthenics designed to strengthen his muscles, when his datascreen beeped with an incoming message signal. Even after two years of hard work, he was still winded by the rigorous therapy that was an on-going part of his new life. He wiped sweat with one sleeve and moved awkwardly to the desk, breathing heavily.

  “Khrustinov,” he said, activating visuals as well as sound.

  The first thing he saw was Kafari’s face. His breath faltered. She was so beautiful, just looking at her was an aching pain in his flesh.

  “Kafari?” he whispered, not quite believing his eyes.

  “Oh, Simon…” Her eyes were wet. On second appraisal, she looked terrible. Her eyes were haunted, with deep purple smudges of exhaustion and something else, something that made his stomach muscles clench with dread. She reached toward the transmitter, as though trying to touch his face. He reached out with an involuntary answering gesture, touching the tips of her extended fingers with his own. He could almost smell the warmth of her scent, like a rich summer’s meadow thick with wildflowers and honeybees.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, facing the dread with squared shoulders. “And why are you broadcasting on a SWIFT system? We can’t afford—”

  “We’re not paying for it. I broke into the spaceport’s communications center so I could call. I’ve set this thing to transmit on security scramble, with an auto-descramble at your end…” Her voice was shaking. “Simon, the Star of Mali will break orbit at dawn, heading for Vishnu. Yalena’s on it. I’m sending her to you.”

  “What? For God’s sake, what’s going on?”

  “Gifre Zeloc’s dead. So is Vice President Culver. They ordered Sonny to crush a Granger demonstration…” She halted as her voice went savagely unsteady. “Simon, he crushed people to death. A lot of people. I can’t even guess how many. Yalena was in the crowd. With Ami-Lynn and Charmaine. I got Yalena out, but I couldn’t reach her friends…”

  Simon stared across the light-years into his wife’s ravaged eyes, so shocked, he couldn’t even speak. The pain in her eyes ran to the bottom of her soul.

  “The survivors mobbed the Presidential Residence. Set fire to it. Yalena and I got out through the sewers. There’s a slaughter underway, out there. Lynch mobs dragging Grangers off the PSFs and hanging them from light poles. Arsonists torching whole buildings, thousands of people smashing and looting.” She drew a long, shuddering breath, trying to control the babbling narrative she was spilling out. “My cousin Stefano’s on the Star of Mali. And the Star’s captain owed me a favor. A big one. We smuggled Yalena aboard. Stefano’s bringing her to you. They should make orbit around Vishnu in three days.”

  Simon wanted to ask, Why didn’t you come with her?

  But before he could choke the words out, she answered him. “I can’t leave, Simon, not yet. I just can’t. There are friends I have to help. Some of them used to raise Asali bees.”

  “Oh, Christ…” He understood in a flash who was in trouble. The pain in her voice made him want to wrap her up in both arms and never let go.

  “There’s something else,” she whispered, hesitating.

  “What?” he asked softly.

  “You’re going to get a message. From my parents. And probably one from the government. They’re going to tell you that Yalena and I were killed in tonight’s riot. I’m a dead woman, Simon. And I have to stay that way. Not even my parents will know the truth. What’s going on here has to stop. That’s what I intend to do, one way or another. Tell Yalena…” She faltered for a moment. “When she gets there, tell her I was killed trying to leave the spaceport. It’ll be safer.”

  “Kafari…” It came out a groan of anguish. But he controlled the urge to plead with her, knowing it would do no good. “Be careful,” he whispered, instead.

  “I love you so much, Simon. So much it hurts, because it isn’t enough. I can’t love you enough, Simon, to go with Yalena, to be with you, again. I’m so sorry. Can you ever forgive me for that?” She was struggling to hold back the tears in her eyes.

  No tears, he had said to her, once. Never shed tears on the eve of battle…

  Kafari was every inch the colonel’s lady, standing in an empty spaceport in front of a hijacked SWIFT transmitter, in the middle of a riot that was burning down her homeworld’s capital city, ready to march into battle with POPPA and a Bolo, for God’s sake, and all she could say was a broken apology for not loving him enough.

  She would have made one hell of a fine Brigade officer.

  Simon hoped, prayed, knew she would make one hell of a fine guerilla.

  “Never say you’re sorry for doing your duty. Why do you think I love you so much?”

  Yet again, tears threatened — and yet again, they did not fall.

  “Be careful, out there,” Simon whispered.

  She nodded, touching the video pickup. “I’ll get word to you, when I can.”

  Then she gave him a salute, soldier to soldier. He returned it, feeling a tight constriction like a mailed fist that closed around his heart, capturing everything he had placed there for safekeeping, captured and held it — bruised and trembling — in a steel-hard grip.

  Then the transmission ended and Simon was alone in his little apartment. He stood staring at the dark screen for long moments, wishing he could squeeze himself into the message bursts of an intersteller SWIFT transmission and stand by her side. Since he could not, he turned his aching thoughts to what he could do.

  He contacted the Residency Bureau to arrange for Yalena’s immigration.

  IV

  Kafari landed the skimmer she’d stolen at the spaceport — having carefully disabled its ID transmitter beforehand — on the roof of her apartment building in Madison. After much soul-searching, she’d decided to brave the madness loose in the capital, to rescue equipment she would need from her apartment. She crept down from the roof unseen even by her closest neighbors, who were either outside participating in the slaughter or huddled behind locked doors and windows, too terrified even to peek out past closed curtains. The building was eerie, in its total silence.

  It didn’t take long to secure everything she needed. Her computer equipment was among the most powerful and sophisticated on Jefferson and she had kept Simon’s military-grade communications equipment, which he had bought with his own funds, which would give her a secure means of talking to the people she would recruit. As commander of a rebellion that woul
d be born tonight, she would need that gear. She stuffed personal items into a duffle. Clothing suitable for hiking in rough country, rugged boots, toiletry gear, a well-stocked medical kit. She added a few small mementos, things she could carry in one pocket while on the run: Simon’s Brigade medals, her own Presidential Medallion, Yalena’s pearl necklace, a few family photos she yanked ruthlessly out of their frames.

  Then she forced herself to let go of the rest and hauled her gear to the roof without anyone spotting her. She was still loading the skimmer when the mobs surging through the streets torched the building. As she lifted off, what she glimpsed below burned itself into the very synapses of her memory. She set her jaw against the sickness trying to rip loose. She shot northward over the rooftops, streaking back toward the spaceport before making an eastward turn toward the Damisi Mountains. Once safely away, again, she tuned into Anish Balin’s datacast, picking up the broadcast on her wrist-comm. His reaction to the massacres and rioting in Madison was blistering, combining acid demands for justice and cold, infuriated rage over the slaughter of unarmed, innocent civilians.

  The most useful bit of news, however, was about her. The discovery of Kafari’s wrecked aircar on the roof of that dance club had led Pol Jankovitch and the other mainstream news anchors to speculate darkly that she must have been involved in some nefarious conspiracy to kill the president and vice president. They were even suggesting that she had lain on that rooftop as a sniper, somehow contriving to force Gifre Zeloc to jump out the window, from the distance of half a kilometer from the Presidential Residence. She was, after all, a Granger and the wife of the Colonel Khrustinov, killer of worlds and the greatest enemy Jefferson had ever faced. Pol Jankovitch had waxed rhapsodic over her apparent demise under the Bolo’s courageous treads.

  Anish Balin’s response not only ripped POPPA up one side and down the other, it actually brought tears to her eyes. It wasn’t every day a woman heard her own canonization while still very much among the living. She couldn’t bear to think about the anguish her family was suffering, watching and listening to those broadcasts. Particularly since she needed to stay dead. So she shoved her grief down to the bottom of her soul and concentrated on reaching Anish Balin’s studio before the P-Squads got there.