The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  He smiled. “Our luck was in, when we started hunting for another freighter. The Star of Mali dropped out of hyper-light a couple of hours before my group boarded the Merovitch. The Star was listed in the portmaster’s schedules as the next ship due to make the Vishnu run. As it happens, my brother Stefano’s crew aboard the Star. So I called him while they were transiting the system and asked how many of us they could bring. His captain agreed to bring them all. They ought to be here in a couple of days.”

  Yalena blinked. “The Star? Good God. Captain Aditi smuggled me out of Jefferson aboard the Star.”

  Estevao’s eyebrows stole a march toward his hairline. “Really? Then you’ve met Stefano?”

  She nodded. Then lowered her gaze to the droplets still clinging to the sides of her empty wine glass. “Yes. I’m afraid I don’t remember much about that trip. I was in a pretty deep state of shock.”

  “I can well imagine. All right,” he mused, toying with his empty beer mug, “tell me about your group. How many people do you have?

  “Seventy, all together. Students, I mean. I’m counting the ones determined to go back and do something. There are a lot more Granger students who are too scared to try.”

  “I think,” her cousin said, meeting her gaze, “it’s high time I met your father again.” When she bit her lip, he added, “I presume you have more, ah, suitable clothes stashed somewhere around here?”

  She grinned. “There’s a locker room in back, behind the kitchen.”

  “When’s your shift over?”

  “A couple of hours. It’s a school night. I was very careful,” she added with a wry smile, “not to sign up for early morning classes.”

  “Wise tactic,” he nodded in approval.

  “I am enrolled in C.O.R.P.—” she began. Her wrist-comm beeped, slicing through her intended comment with an emergency code that meant trouble. In the same instant, she heard sirens wailing in the street outside the bar.

  “Oh, hell,” she swore viciously. “Something’s gone wrong…”

  Jiri burst into the bar, shouting for her. “Yalena! Trouble at the gate!”

  “I’m coming! I’ve got to get my clothes—”

  “No time!” He was striding across a bar full of surprised patrons. “Just kick those damned shoes off and run.”

  She was peeling off the spike heels.

  Estevao Soteris was already on his feet, looking dangerous and competent. Jiri glared at him, ready to argue with what he thought was a disgruntled patron.

  “He’s my mother’s cousin,” Yalena said hastily, “just into port. He’s an Infantry veteran.” She finally had the shoes off. Yalena dropped them on the table and came out of the booth like a gunshot. They ran for the door. “Sorry, Jack,” she shouted to the manager on the way past.

  “I’ll dock your wages, dammit!”

  “Suit yourself!” She hurled herself through the door and out onto the street. The gantries and loading docks were a blaze of lights, jeweled towers rising skyward in the darkness, far above the roofs of port-side warehouses, passenger terminals, shopping arcades, and “water trade” establishments that provided space-weary crews everything from liquid amnesia to horizontal recreation. The freighters, themselves, never touched atmosphere, remaining instead in parking orbit, mated to one of Vishnu’s five major space stations. But the cargo shuttles were immense ships in their own right, with heavy-thrust engines capable of lifting the shuttles and several tons of cargo from port to orbit.

  The pavement was cold under Yalena’s bare feet. Her cousin growled, “Put these back on. You’ll cut your feet to shreds, out here.”

  He was holding her shoes, which no longer boasted spike heels. He’d cut them off — or maybe just snapped them with battle-hardened hands. She thrust her feet back into them and took off. The mutilated heels clacked against the concrete walkway. At least her dress was short enough not to hamper her stride. They ran toward the terminal. Police cars streaked past, sirens and horns shrieking a warning to pedestrians and ground cars. An air-lift ambulance shot past at window-top level, rattling wires and street signs with its passage.

  Yalena ran neck and neck with Jiri, while Estevao brought up rear guard. They had just reached the terminal when the trouble spilled out onto the street. It was a fight. A big one. Yalena actually recognized some of the faces in the embattled crowd. They were students. POPPA students. She understood in a flash what had happened. POPPA students had always been arrogant and vicious in their effort to keep Grangers in their place. The newest POPPA arrivals, who’d just come in for the start of the school year, sported worse attitudes than most. She’d heard talk on campus about POPPA students’ plans to meet freighters coming in from Jefferson, to be sure any “illegal, uppity stowaways” learned from the outset that they were still fourth-class citizens and had better toe POPPA’s line if they didn’t want relatives back home to suffer.

  Clearly, there had been “stowaways” on board this freighter. Lots of them. Hundreds, from the look of things. Their appearance stunned Yalena to the soles of her vandalized shoes. The people spilling into the street were so thin, their muscles so wasted, it was like watching an army of embattled skeletons. Shock held her rooted for long moments — long enough to be caught up in the swirling edge of battle.

  Police whistles tore the air as Yalena found herself grappling with a wild-eyed girl whose fingers had twisted into claws. She was snarling incoherently, eyes glazed with hatred and something even worse. She was writhing like a madwoman, trying to gouge Yalena’s eyes. Yalena sent her stumbling into the nearest wall. Then ducked under a blow from a stout boy wearing POPPA green and gold. Years of indolence and overindulgence at the supper table made him slow and ineffectual. She sent him spinning into traffic, which had skidded to a halt as the battle spilled across the road and engulfed everything it its path.

  The leading edge wavered, broke, and ran as abruptly terrified POPPA students took to their heels, literally running for their lives. The men and women chasing them pursued like blood-crazed hounds. A tall, whip-thin man with burnt holes in his face, where his eyes should have been, staggered and stumbled into her, having been dragged along with the crowd. His hands grabbed at her, clawing their way toward her throat.

  “I’m a Granger!” she screamed at him.

  He was snarling curses, trying to find the choke-hold on her throat. “You’re too goddamned fat to be a Granger, you lying little bitch!”

  “I’m a Granger student studying on Vishnu!”

  She didn’t want to hurt him. The ghastly, sunken holes in his face, scabbed over and not yet healed, were mute testimony to the ordeal he had already suffered. Her cousin waded in abruptly, dragged him off and put him on the ground in two seconds, flat. “Get out of here!” Estevao snarled at her. “Move, dammit!”

  She tried. Only to find the way blocked by Vishnu’s port police. They did not look amused. Oh, hell… What on earth could she tell her father? She suspected he would be a whole lot less amused than the police.

  V

  The sight of my battered warhull and tattered treads turns Phil’s nano-tatt grey with shock.

  “Holy pissing Jehosephat…”

  “I require repair. We do not have requisite spare parts on hand.”

  “No shit,” Phil mutters, scrubbing his face with both hands. They are unsteady. I detect no whiff of alcohol and Phil’s habits do not include recreational chemicals. I therefore attribute the tremors to stress, as he is faced with repairs far beyond his capability to conduct. “Ah, hell, lemme figure out where t’ start.”

  “I will transmit a detailed inventory of damage and parts needed to correct it.”

  “You do that,” he mutters. “I’m gonna get the fork-lift and start movin’ track plates. I dunno if that shipment we got last week will be enough.” He stares, expression forlorn, at my shredded central tread and bare port-side drive wheels. “What in hell did they hit you with?”

  “Six mobile 10cm Hellbores.”

&
nbsp; “Six? Where’d they get their hands on that kind’a firepower? I never saw any theft reports on the news.” His expression twists into a scowl. “Of course, POPPA don’t tell us peons the half of what goes on, most of the time, anyway, so why’s that a surprise?”

  “There have been no thefts since Barran Bluff.”

  “Where’d they get ’em, then?”

  “Clearly, the rebellion has obtained an off-world source of supply.”

  “That ain’t good.”

  “No, it is not.”

  Phil does not offer further comment. He fires up the heavy lift required to maneuver track plates and linkages and begins the arduous task of replacing my treads. The slam and clank of the lift and the plates banging into place echo inside the flimsy maintenance bay, with its thin metals walls and thinner roof. The hiss and groan of pneumatic cranes and pully assemblages prompts Phil to don hearing protection. Even with the equipment to manhandle the individual plates and linkages, it is grueling work that requires a great deal of sweat, cautious nudging with the controls, and a purpose-built jackhammer to fasten the linkages, which Tayari Trade Consortium had to manufacture to specs I provided.

  The repair job requires me to move forwards and backwards in tiny increments, to allow access to the entire circumference of my treads. Phil is silent during the entire process, an unusual state of affairs, as he normally swears his way through any ordinary job.

  After seven hours and twenty-three minutes of listening to the silence, I essay a question. “Is something troubling you, Phil?”

  My technician, busy with jackhammer and lynch pins, does not respond. I wait for a pause in the background noise. When he finishes using the jackhammer on the current linkage he is placing, I try again.

  “Phil, you appear to be distracted. Is something wrong?”

  He pauses, glances around to find my nearest visual sensor pod, and appears to weigh the risks of speaking whatever is on his mind. At length, he decides to answer.

  “Yeah, something’s wrong.”

  When he does not continue, I prompt him. “What?”

  “It’s Maria’s boy.”

  “The one addicted to snow-white, the one failing remedial basketweaving, or the one who needs glasses to read the computer screen at his school desk?”

  Phil scowls at my sensor pod. “How come you know all a’that?”

  “You are my technician. Your family is an important factor in your effectiveness as a technician charged with maintaining me in proper working order. A crisis in your family therefore affects my overall mission. I keep track of events in their lives as a routine safeguard.”

  “Oh.” He considers this, then accepts it. “Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, it’s Giulio, her oldest. He started doin’ snow-white and got fired and all, but he’s not a bad kid. Y’know? He’s got a good heart, anyway, and he felt so bad about losin’ the job, he went out and asked the med-station nurse on our street for help t’kick the stuff. He’s tryin’ hard, y’know, and he’s been helpin’ around the house, too, watchin’ the little ones so Maria can take a rest now and again.”

  “That does not sound like cause for distress.”

  Phil shakes his head. “No, it ain’t. Trouble is, he disappeared. Last night. He went out to pick up the family’s rations from the distribution center and he never came home. Maria was up all night, last night, frantic half to death. There was another food riot, y’see, and we can’t find out if he got caught in it, ’cause the P-Squads are the last people you want to get noticed by — for any reason — and the regular cops ain’t sayin’ who got busted and who didn’t. If he don’t come home, Maria’s just about gonna lose her mind.”

  I do a rapid scan through law enforcement databases and criminal court records, including the P-Squad master files, which they do not know I can read. The food riot which exploded at Distribution Center Fifteen broke out while I was engaged in combat. The riot resulted in twenty-three deaths, one hundred seventeen critically injured civilians currently in ICU, and four thousand three hundred twelve arrests by P-Squadrons.

  Phil’s nephew is not listed among the dead or injured. He is listed among those arrested. I explain matters to Phil. “Giulio was pulled in by a police dragnet of rioters. He was arrested, taken to the Eamon Processing Compound, found guilty of rebellion and conspiracy to attempt deprivation of life-critical resources, and was sentenced to Cathal Work Camp. He was transported in a prison convoy at zero three hundred hours today and will serve a life sentence at hard labor in the Hell-Flash District mines.”

  Phil has gone motionless. He does not even breathe for twenty-three pont nine seconds. His nano-tatt pales to the shade of cut bone, as does his skin.

  “But — but—” His whisper slithers to a halt. “But that ain’t right! It ain’t fair! Giulio’s no Granger terrorist. He’s just a kid. Fifteen last month. Oh, God, this is gonna kill Maria, it’s just gonna fuckin’ destroy her, how in hell am I gonna tell her somethin’ that awful?”

  He is opening and closing his fists, gulping air in an unsteady fashion. I do not know the answers to his questions.

  “I gotta go,” he says abruptly. He sets down the jackhammer and climbs down from my port-side tread.

  “Phil, where are you going?”

  He does not answer. This is not a good sign.

  “Phil, I still require massive repairs.”

  He pauses in the open doorway of my makeshift depot, a small and angry figure against the harsh daylight outside, where P-Squads rule the streets. He looks directly into my nearest visual sensor. “Good!”

  He turns on his heel and leaves.

  I do not know what to make of this, beyond immediate dismay that my urgently needed repairs have just been tabled, for at least the remainder of today. I grow uneasy as Phil climbs into his car and roars into the sprawling urban blight that has engulfed the ruins of Nineveh Base. I do not know where he is going. I suspect it will be unpleasant for all concerned when he gets there. I sit alone, waiting in a state of near-infantile helplessness for somebody to fix me. I wait all afternoon. Night falls and still my technician does not return. The hours creep past and still there is no sign of Phil. I begin to worry.

  If Phil does not return to finish the bare minimum of repairs, I will have to call Sar Gremian, to attempt expediting the situation. This is not an attractive choice. I must, however, regain mobility and I cannot do that without a technician. I wait until dawn streaks the sky with a crimson stain that portends bad weather. Satellite images confirm this. A major storm is due to strike Madison and the Adero floodplain today. Storms are the least of my worries, at this juncture. I divide my time between worrying about repairs and worrying about additional rebel strikes.

  If the pattern of attacks holds true, there will be further bombings in Madison today, taking advantage of the foul weather to move people and munitions. P-Squad officers on the street have amply demonstrated their willingness to shirk the larger part of their surveillance duties during bad weather. The rebel commander is far too shrewd to allow such opportunities to pass without taking full advantage.

  I initiate a search for my mechanic. His wrist-comm is programmed to respond to my signal, overriding any other communication he might be making, but he does not respond. This is disconcerting. I theorize that Phil may have gotten himself blind drunk and is incapable of answering. I am about to initiate a trace to pinpoint the current location of his wrist-comm when a heavy cargo truck pulling a ten-meter-long trailer pulls up to the curb in front of my makeshift depot and the movable trailer that has become Phil’s residence. The truck brakes to a halt, situated so that I can see into the cab, but my view of the trailer is largely blocked by my technician’s quarters. The driver switches off the engine, rather than pulling into the maintenance yard, doubtless hoping to lessen the chance that I will open fire.

  I pause in my attempt to locate Phil and devote my full attention to this truck and its occupants. Two women and four men climb down from the cab and appro
ach my depot on foot. All six are in their early twenties, from the look of their unlined faces, neon hair, stylish clothing, nano-tatts and lip jewelry. The women wear expensive fire-glow nano-shoes with stilt heels, currently popular with female Jeffersonians. The shoes, which are as impractical as their skin-tight dresses for anything but social occasions, catch the early morning sunlight with a brilliant opalescent shimmer.

  Neither they nor the men with them are dressed as soldiers or police officers. They do not appear to be tradesmen and their personal adornment marks them as members of a social class several tiers lower than professionals or executives. I am left wondering who they are and why they have driven a large cargo truck up to my front door. As they approach the entrance to my maintentance depot, walking in a close-knit group, they stare up at my battered warhull. Their expressions waver between fear and amazement. As I do not know who they are and must guard against rebel attack, I shift to Battle Reflex Alert.

  “Do not move. You are trespassing on a restricted military site. Identify yourselves at once or I will open fire.”

  “Who said that?” one of the men demands, jumping around to search for the owner of the voice.

  One of the women snaps, “The machine, you idiot. Didn’t you pay no attention to that lecture they give us last night? It talks, even thinks. Better’n you can, y’lame-brained, slack-jawed dolt.”

  The recipient of this scathing reprimand scowls and puffs out his chest. “Now you just watch your mouth, y’hard-assed bitch! I ain’t near as stupid as I look.” When his companions break into derisive laughter, his nano-tatt flares red. “I ain’t stupid as you look,” he mutters, correcting a statement that appears to be painfully accurate.

  I interrupt their dispute. “Identify yourselves immediately.” I underscore the demand by swiveling my forward antipersonnel guns at them. This, at least, gains their attention. The self-styled stupid one’s nano-tatt fades from red to grey. “It’s gonna shoot us!” He bolts toward the truck, which would offer about as much protection from my guns as a sheet of tissue paper.