A Sudden Departure (April Book 9)

by Mackey Chandler

  "You're April Lewis, aren't you? Do you have any insight on what happened with North America?"

  "Yes," April said, as the doors were sliding shut. "The idiots fired at us the first time and then a second, and I declined to allow them a third free shot after warning them."

  If the reporter had any follow questions up the doors closing cut it off.

  * * *

  "Why are the Norte Americanos accusing me?" Jeff asked confused. "As I understand what you related, you spoke to them directly on com and identified yourself by name. Do they think I somehow passed orders to you in secret and you couldn't act on your own? They could release that recording and make it all clear."

  "It would also show they were haughty as hell, that they were given a chance to break it off even after they first fired on you, and they reaffirmed they are at war with us and feel free to ascribe belligerence to any of our vessels simply because they are known to be armed, whether they are acting aggressively or not. They may be rethinking the wisdom of all that, I hope. Worse it contained my accusation that it was an attempted assassination, and they failed in it. They weren't even able to defend themselves from the person they had just labeled an annoying 'child' with a pocket phone," April concluded. She seemed a little peeved.

  "Oh my. . . People at the bottom of the gravity gradient should control their mouths."

  "Yeah, Happy would say that, but he'd have expressed it a little saltier," April agreed.

  * * *

  "Did the commander at Vandenberg share his thinking on this, while alive?" General Kilpatrick inquired. He seemed rather subdued.

  "It appears somebody had to leak human intelligence on Home to him," his planner admitted. "But where that could happen is hard to pin down. A couple dozen people had legitimate access to it. Singh's movements weren't considered that high a level of intelligence.

  "Now it's true PAC traffic could have defused it. You've seen the video of the call from Houston civilian control. The girl is in your face offensive. I don't know many officers who would back down when being scolded by a thirteen, maybe fourteen year old girl."

  "She's eighteen, possibly nineteen by now," Kilpatrick said. "I haven't looked up her exact date of birth. The genetic changes they do, and the Life Extension, stop them from aging visibly. I can't say what it does to their thinking. If it keeps them from maturing. Of course she still gets the experience time affords, but emotionally? Can they mature emotionally without physical aging? I knew this young woman was dangerous before. I warned about that. If she is impulsive from lack of maturity or if it's just her basic personality, who is to say? What does it matter? She had a gun to his head and he lacked the imagination to realize it over ego and superficial appearances."

  "I remember the conversation and the video you shared. Orders were passed along to leave them alone. But there wasn't any reason given. Zealots are difficult to manage," Bellini sighed. That was a brave thing to admit.

  "So are Patriots, apparently," Kilpatrick groused. "The controller who got snarky with the girl wasn't our man backing up his brethren. It was a Patriot at a strongly Patriot facility."

  Bellini looked surprised, but appraising. "Well, no wonder they haven't been all over us about it."

  "Indeed, and it still gives us little room to lay the blame off on the Patriots. The Homies don't make a lot of public pronouncements from their Assembly, but I've seen quotes from private parties that they see little difference between us. I can't see any advantage to faulting the controller, even though it is tempting to have somebody alive to blame. If the Patriots stay silent and don't attack us over the whole mess I'd be happy to return the favor of ignoring it, and present a unified face to the Homies.

  "This is going to be expensive to fix. We're just starting to get reports about how bad it is. The disaster people I'm talking to keep saying how close it was to being much, much worse. The main thing is, we are going to have to send several small expeditionary forces into Southern California to extract certain vital facilities and people. We are already lifting irreplaceable skilled people out by air. It's just going to take too long to restore order around those key plants and facilities. The workers are spread all over amid chaos and hard to extract if they didn't stay or rally to their work place. We can also expect a hostile response to a military incursion once it becomes obvious they are offering no aid to the civilian population and word of that gets around."

  "That's too bad, but at least the internet and legacy phone systems are down hard and if we have to get rough with them to secure things nobody will know," Bellini said.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Pardey thought they might survive now, but it had been a close thing. He'd been knocked senseless for a moment when his helmet smacked the inside of the window on his armored up URV. Returning along the city street to the expressway the entire road had lifted in a line down the middle for a hundred meters when the sewer line beneath blew up. That had been the low point where he'd thought they might not make it. The bright orange flame suggested somebody had poured gasoline down the drain and lit it off as they approached. There couldn't be much gas or diesel to be found out here now, on the third day after the grid went down. Yet they were wasting it trying to kill him. He doubted he'd ever forget the sight of the pavement bulging and lifting.

  Fortunately for them, their driver had been hugging the left side of the road and it shoved the Urban Reconnaissance Vehicle hard to one side instead going off directly underneath. They'd bounced hard off the curb and side swiped an abandoned car, but not rolled. That explosion could have easily lofted them into the air, and these vehicles were pretty top heavy. The design had been improved somewhat, but it was unlikely they'd come back down upright and in control with the road destroyed under them.

  An important semiconductor plant, on the edge of the expanded Silicon Valley region, down between Coyote and Gilroy, had been their objective. It was reported to have a half dozen designers and engineers holed up waiting for rescue. Air rescue from Moffett had more sites to evacuate than assets, and this was in driving range. They'd tasked Pardey's military police unit to drive in with three URVs. The plan was to extract the techies after using their expertise to mark critical equipment to be removed later. Most of their force would be left behind with supplies and ammo for a week to guard it until they could get some big trucks in with a better armed and heavier armored escort.

  That had been the plan. Now they were just trying to get back to base alive. When they got there the plant had been in flames. Not shooting out the windows, because it didn't have any windows. But the complex ventilation and filtration plant on the roof was doing a great blowtorch imitation out all the vents. They had turned on the CBN filtration, not knowing what was burning in the plant. The smoke was silvery and opaque, potentially toxic.

  If there was anybody alive inside they hadn't come out, and they didn't have the equipment or training to do an entry into a burning building. Besides, they'd already encountered sniper fire on the way down. Nobody had suggested exiting the vehicles to investigate what looked like a lost cause, and he wouldn't order it. The area had far too much cover for shooters just waiting to ambush them. The cluster of private vehicles by the loading docks caused Pardey to suspect the workers were still inside. Whoever burnt the building hadn't spared the vehicles and he couldn't imagine the workers had ran away on foot during the attack. If they had, there was certainly no searching the area to find them with his small force.

  Pardey had been sternly ordered not to stop and render aid to civilians along the way or in the area of the plant. His command obviously had no idea what conditions were in the field. Nobody had politely approached and asked their help. It was obvious the natives blamed anyone attached to the government for the state of things, and were enraged. Indeed, his driver had cursed at one heavy fusillade, and said aloud that they hadn't riled the Spacers up. The irrational depth of their anger had hit him when they'd passed a few burnt out postal vehicles. If there was any gu
ilt to be assigned the Post Office had to be near the bottom of any list of agencies who might have provoked the Homies. But they had red white and blue vans that were a much easier target of public wrath than his convoy.

  The truth about all the lights in the sky and the huge explosion northwest of LA had obviously filtered through the civilian population almost as fast as it ran through the military grapevine. Efforts to label it a simple earthquake hadn't worked more than a few hours. But their many layers removed superiors who had tweaked the Homies weren't accessible, and they were. He had a dozen scars and smears of lead on his armored windshield from high powered rifles the Feds had supposedly outlawed and confiscated twenty five years ago. Somebody definitely forgot to turn theirs in.

  When Pardey reported the facility lost and that they'd been taking sniper fire, he'd stated his intent to try to regain the safety of the main highway. He'd held his breath while the radio was silent for a few heartbeats, but they didn't order him to a new objective. Any far ranging detour would have been problematic for lack of fuel. But after a slight hesitation he got back a terse "Roger".

  The hostile fire was worse along the return route, because people who saw or heard them pass earlier, anticipated they might return the same way. Not to mention the sewer bomb. Lieutenant Pardey was smart enough not to try finding a parallel route on narrower streets that could easily be blocked with cars or trees. At least out on the main highway he had the wide shoulders and room to maneuver.

  There were occasionally people and small groups visible in the distance, but they took cover or in one case what appeared to be a family just threw themselves flat as they went by. Their assumption seemed to be his patrol would fire on civilians. That bothered him to see. Pardey hadn't released any of his men to return fire, and wasn't going to as long as they were rolling. They hadn't clearly seen anyone firing on them, and he refused to fire on the one building he suspected harbored a sniper. He didn't even have his one turret on the command vehicle with a fifty caliber manned. To his mind it was too exposed. Better to just stay buttoned up against light arms.

  Right now, Pardey just hoped he was doing the right thing returning to base. It didn't feel smart to be driving back deeper into a more densely populated area. But as bad as things were, and he was sure they were far worse than the brass realized, he wasn't anywhere near deserting. But with transport and weapons. . . the idea had occurred to him.

  * * *

  Jon Davis stopped opposite the blond young man. It was lunch time in the old cafeteria, and Jon's entire reason for being here was to speak with him, but getting his own lunch and eating it might soften the meeting as if it possibly could be a coincidence of timing. Jon was pretty straight forward and confrontational, but he'd been trying to mix a little subtlety into his manner.

  "Mr. Weir," he said, with what he hoped was a friendly nod. "I'm Jon Davis, head of security for M3. Do you mind if I join you while you eat?"

  James Weir looked around at all the other empty seats. He wasn't a fool, quite the opposite. He made an open handed wave at the vacant seat to allow it. His eyes made a few flicks behind his spex, checking something. Not all Earthies were so visibly comfortable with high end spex, but he obviously wasn't new to them. On Earth people weren't as accepting of them. Some high end restaurants wouldn't seat you wearing them.

  "Have I done something to call myself to the attention of Security?" James asked.

  "Just being a North American on Home is sufficient. That may sound prejudiced and offend you. I realize it doesn't meet the technical standards for probable cause under USNA law, but I have much more discretion as Head of Security now that we have dropped USNA law." Jon also knew how loosely that theory in law was followed in North America.

  "We moved out to L2 for a reason. The North Americans seemed unable to resist taking the occasional random shot at us when it was too easy. And my unfortunate personal experience has been that an unreasonable percentage of our Norte Americano visitors have turned out to be assassins or saboteurs. So, while I have no specific complaint, and you are in no way detained or restricted, I'd like to be convinced you aren't here to cause trouble."

  "Might I not lie to you about that?" James asked, with an amused expression.

  "Not effectively. I will use veracity software on everything you say. There is no legal prohibition against using it on Home. More importantly I have forty years of law enforcement experience, and trust my internal bullshit meter implicitly. The two complement each other. If you make my needle so much as twitch," Jon said, illustrating it with an index finger. "I'm going to find out everything about you down to how well you played with others in kindergarten. I haven't bothered to do that yet, but I'm a very direct sort of person and wanted to interview you first rather than later."

  James looked interested.

  "I tend to believe you. My own social skills don't tend to be in that area so much, but I can see where working security for years would hone them. The first thing I did four days ago on entering Home was register my spex with the local net, and get a local ID," James said, tapping his temple piece. "Have you not been tracking me? I'm quite used to that and expected it. If I turned off my phone or spex back in North America that would be sufficient right there for the authorities to assume I was up to something nefarious."

  Jon shook his head sharply negative.

  "You don't grasp the local attitude yet. If I started tracking people or doing other data mining or audio recording in public places, this crew wouldn't put up with it. I'd either be challenged to a duel, or if it was notorious and excessive, they might just stuff me out the closest airlock in my boxer shorts as a concession to my dignity, but lacking a pressure suit."

  "But I'm an outsider, surely they expect you to collect intelligence on foreigners?"

  "Homies, as a group, are rather above average intelligence," Jon assured him. "Most are from Earth, and they've seen how it works there first hand. They are not only aware of history, but have demonstrated an unusual ability to apply its lessons to their own lives. They know outsider really means outside the power structure, to anybody in authority. Statists always are more comfortable with each other than their own plebes, and they'll conspire against the peasants together without shame. That's why you see their intelligence agencies withholding information from the public when it's obvious other governments already know. They'd never believe I'd do it to you, and not to them."

  "That's a cynical assessment you wouldn't dare espouse on Earth," James said.

  "Yeah, but if you'd wander out into the corridor now, and repeat it to the first person you see, chances are they will look at you like a dolt for stating the obvious, and just say, "Well duhh."

  "Alright," James decided, and gave Jon a long hard look. "This is your territory. I'll tentatively grant you the possibility things are really that different here and play it that way. I moved to Brazil a few years ago, and God only knows I'm still adjusting to how different things are there. When I checked your name against the local net it showed your face and listed you as Head of Security for Home, not M3, but I'll assume those things are congruent."

  "I serve a year at a time, at the pleasure of the Assembly," Jon explained. "All the registered voters approve my continuance and budget when other expenditures are approved. Mitsubishi grants me the same title as a convenience and endorsement, but without any budget, although they do donate my office cubic. I also happen to be the Head of the Militia, which doesn't pay anything either. I'd flash my badge on you but they never gave me one."

  "Three hats? I'm impressed," James admitted.

  "Yes, but only one paid."

  "Thrifty too, aren't they? But tell me. Why are you talking to me again?"

  "Think of me as a small town Sheriff," Jon invited. "You're the new face in town. Are you going to cause me trouble or do you have legitimate business here?"

  "First of all, I'm North American. I haven't renounced my citizenship. You understand it costs about a half million to proces
s that now? And just because they do the paperwork and allow you aren't holding any state secrets or legal obligations doesn't mean you can take any funds out of the country. If you own any significant real estate you will probably be required to liquidate it. So it's a catch 22. You have to liquidate but then can't take the funds abroad."

  "I wasn't aware of that in detail," Jon admitted. "I have an acquaintance who liquidated his home and was sent the proceeds, but he had an honorable military discharge by executive decree to guarantee it. They sent him his money on her direct orders."

  "That had to be Wiggen," James deduced. "You have some high powered friends."

  "He has some high powered friends. If there's some overlap it's hard to define," Jon said.

  That seemed overly modest, but James ignored it.

  "I have some family land in Nebraska I may inherit. I'm not ready to just write it off. If I renounce my citizenship I can kiss it goodbye. My dad is still living on it and working it, but between the inheritance taxes and fees to remove personal funds as an alien that's what would happen. I haven't been back to America since I was a graduate student in Brazil.

  "So I'm hardly a USNA agent in any sense. Indeed, my business partners would be worried if I went back right now. The USNA doesn't seem to differentiate between state secrets and commercial secrets too well. They'd be terrified I could be pressured to divulge what I'm working on if I returned home."

  "And what are you working on, in a very general way?" Jon asked."

  "I'm a partner in a Brazilian company exploring new tech to improve space drives. Brazil doesn't have a heavy space presence. But everything we need is here on Home. We're generating some business for your fabricators and ship builders. Dave's shop is building an unmanned space probe for us that will be used to test our systems. Does that satisfy your curiosity? I'm sure Dave would confirm it if you ask him."

  "Maybe," Jon said, openly skeptical. "He might admit you are a customer, but if I asked much more he'd put on his poker face, and want to know why I thought it was any of my business. Dave doesn't keep high end customers by blabbing their business to others."