“Look at that, they’re corralling the protesters.” Elwood let his jaw hang slack, before biting back down on one of the catering sandwiches they’d brought into their newly rented offices, the middle floor of a Midtown skyscraper given over to short term furnished leases. The wallscreen had been left displaying stock market graphs by the previous tenants, the prices rising and falling in real time, but they’d switched it to the news.
The news wasn’t good.
Not everybody was protesting for the same reasons. According to some independent journalist named Stone Sparrow on the news feed, even though they were all Muslims, that didn’t make them the same. There were different kinds, like Protestants and Catholics and Reformists and more. Most people, just like in San Iadras which was technically Catholic, either ignored religion or called themselves Muslim because that’s what their country was. Some protestors campaigned for the rights of the church — the mosque, whatever — some complained because women wore the veil, others complained because they didn’t.
The Muslims being rounded up and pushed in ragged lines after being pulled through burning protest barriers, these were the religious ones — the ones who wanted the state to recognize a religious marriage, the ones who had ideas about stopping five times a day for prayer, the ones who said the government-backed Imams and preachers and holy-men were scaremongering liars who exploited people’s fears about other sects and the West. They didn’t want to be attacked because they chose to wear a beard, or chose not to. They wanted a woman to decide if she wore a veil, not the mosques and not the government, not the unwritten law that said women dressed in religious clothes were oppressed fanatics and said the ones dressed like westerners were ‘whores’.
The religious people were stacked up next to the other religious people who said some historical figure married another one, so someone inherited something else — Ereli didn’t understand the differences between the Sunni and the Shi’a, but he knew it was one worth killing for. Some of the religious people thought women shouldn’t be educated, and some of them believed education for everyone — men and women both — wasn’t just a right, but a holy duty passed down from the Prophet himself.
They were all different, the only thing they had in common was that they called themselves Muslim, and in the face of government oppression they begged for whatever they thought was sanity under the name of their God. That let the government brand them extremist no matter what they really believed, and that’s why Stone Sparrow was able to hide and watch as the protesting Muslims were pulled from the protest barricades and pushed into vans even if they hated each other, pushed in elbow to elbow, man and woman, equal under the law.
Except there wasn’t enough space for all of them, and the three or four Muslims left behind were pushed down and left to wait in the gutters for the next van.
Then there were those who weren’t playing the religion card at all, the young and the alienated, screaming for justice. The families whose loved ones had been killed or disappeared or branded hooligans or arrested on made up drug charges, only to disappear into prisons for years on end — or forever. Journalists and human rights activists, all branded traitors or spies. Refugees who’d fled the contaminants of the Eurasian war, all accused of being there only to leech off the state’s meagre hospitality.
And when the activists and refugees didn’t fit in the trucks, when the zip-tie handcuffs ran out, they were pushed into the ground and held at gunpoint with the Muslims.
Then the neo-fascists came, the angry rebels, those who wanted to fight and were emboldened by the protesting crowds who’d come out to try and shout their government’s violence down, throwing bricks and paving stones, Molotov cocktails, bringing out weapons to shoot at the police.
That’s when instead of guarding the Muslims and activists waiting for a van to take them away, so the secret police could vanish them into some inner city prison, the riot police shot their prisoners. Blood ran in the gutters, and they stacked up more bodies of captured protestors and rioters — neo-fascists, activists, and Muslims alike — slaughtering them in the crowd’s crush like battery farmed hens.
Blood oozed along the gutters, both on Stone Sparrow’s feed, and on the satellite imagery of the riot.
And the money?
The money kept flowing in. Twelve million, now fifteen million, twenty, thirty… The same Swiss bankers who’d helped the oligarchy hide its money, the ones who’d taken over when the local banks failed for being too corrupt, were now helping Azerbaijan’s citizens anonymously send their money to these foreign dogs who promised so much, but had so far done nothing.
The more money that came in, the more blood the government was willing to spill, putting on public news conferences that listed the names of those brought in for questioning with dark hints that the names mentioned wouldn’t be coming home again. The more terrible the oppression, the more desperate the people became, the more money that fell into the Liberation Fund’s lap.
Ereli needed to stop it. He had a duty to stop it, one signed into the incorporation documents with his name. And he had a plan to stop it.
But he was only one dog. He needed the other five hundred and eighty-two.
*
“You’re distracted,” Eversen said, squinting out into the noonday sun.
Ereli clasped the jeep’s wheel, even though he wasn’t driving on manual. Just needed something in his hands to squeeze. “No shit.”
Eversen leaned forward, squinting out of the windshield. “That dirt path there. Second left.”
Ereli waited, then tilted the wheel fractionally — the route planner pinged its assent, and he sat back, waiting for the jeep to take the left turn. They were out in the open country, San Iadras a silver blot behind them. Green everywhere, and so many trees. Ereli hadn’t even known this was out here, barely twenty minutes away on the freeway.
“You okay?” Eversen asked, glancing across the cabin.
“Every minute I dick around, wasting time, somebody’s dying.” He released the wheel, and picked up his pad, scrolling through the discussions on the planning board. “It’s not a good feeling.”
“You’re not dicking around, you’re gathering manpower.”
“If that bitch would’ve just let me plead the case over the damn phone…”
“Don’t call them bitch.” Eversen ducked his head, and pointed out to a red-furred shape waiting by a van ahead, beside a rocky field. “They don’t think it’s remotely funny.”
Marianna, the team leader, was waiting for them. Standing annoyed, ears erect, teeth bared — when the jeep stopped she was at the window in an instant, knocking at it.
Ereli clicked open the door, but before he could get outside, she was snarling at him. “Our team is this close to going pro, you understand? We’re not your recruitment resource because you knuckleheads kicked a hornet’s nest!”
“I need to talk to them — Eissen told me he was interested yesterday.”
“I am not handing you my fireteam on a silver platter,” Marianna said, ears flat back against her skull. “We do not ship out because you said so, you get me?”
He was taller than her. Six inches taller, easy, but even forcing her to look up at him once he’d stood, she didn’t back down. Didn’t stop jabbing her finger into his chest, either.
“This is war.” Ereli clenched his fists — he sure as hell wasn’t going to back down to her, even if he wanted to. “I’m not going to drag anyone, but I would’ve thought this is what you wanted.”
“What we want is pro level sponsorship and a spot on the league tables. This is a sport we’re playing, it’s the goddamn final quarter of the season. We’re not just fucking cooling our heels daydreaming about some asshole coming along to push a real gun into our hands.” Marianna jabbed her forefinger and middle finger, braced together, into Ereli’s ribs. Hard — like fucking stabbing him. “You don’t dial me up and tell me to bring my players to your office. Understand? You’re lucky I’m lettin
g you talk to them, they’re supposed to be training.”
With that she stalked off, leaving him to follow her. He glanced back at Eversen — Eversen just shrugged, leaning against the Jeep’s roof — and set off after her.
Her team was what he needed. Exactly what he needed. Seven of his brothers, sat around a red hot cooker pad, waiting for the labels to burn off a stacked pile of food cans. They had a fluidity to their motions, a kind of grace — comfortable with their own physicality.
Ereli envied them, he hadn’t had an excuse to get back into that kind of shape since Tajikistan.
“Listen to him. Don’t agree to shit — if you don’t take at least an hour to think about what you’d be throwing away I will tear you bastards to pieces, so help me God.”
“Yes ma’am,” one of his brothers replied.
She wound up, as if to backhand him — “Ellis you little—” —but he ducked away, laughing.
“Just pulling your chain, Marianna. Jeez.”
“I’ll kick your ass,” she muttered, turning around to face Ereli. She shrugged, gesturing at the group. “You can talk to them now.”
Ereli glanced back, making sure Eversen was still with him — trailing behind by about twenty feet, letting Ereli take all the fire — and looked around the group. “Eissen?”
A hand went up, on the right.
“Okay. For the rest of you, I’m Ereli — I’m part of that Azerbaijan thing you’ve probably heard about.”
“Hey Ereli. I’m Eberstetten.”
“No shit? This is Eversen.” Ereli bobbed his head at his brother. “We haven’t seen you in years.”
“Not since Tajikistan.”
“Not since then,” Ereli agreed.
“This Azerbaijan thing, it’s crazy,” a brother replied — Ellis. “It’s not actually going to fucking work, is it? I mean you guys had a couple of million this morning, but…”
Ereli lifted his wristwatch and thumbed it, checking his tickers. “We’re at thirty-eight million, now. We’ve got an operation planned, equipment and armor’s already available, but we need manpower.”
“Dogpower.”
Despite himself, he choked back laughter. “Which one of you was that?”
“Edane.” The one next to Eissen, the bulk of a LAMW against his shoulder, lifted his hand.
“Right, well, we need dogpower…”
*
By the end of the song and dance, half of them were interested, half of them weren’t. Eberstetten was wavering either way, Ellis kept bringing up how their team was clinging to ninth on some kind of ranking table.
As if a ranking table mattered.
Ereli thought about it, staring out of the window as the jeep took him and Eversen to the next address on their list.
“What do you think?”
“Hm?” Eversen looked up from his pad.
“What do you think our chances are with the MilSim teams?”
“Lousy.” Eversen ran through the list of other active MilSim players, more of which they were going to try and meet in ones and twos and threes — there weren’t any teams with as many brothers on it as Marianna’s, and all of these teams were out running exercises in the boonies. “They’re happy with what they’re doing here, no reason to pull up stakes for us.”
“Maybe we should turn around and beg,” Ereli muttered. “I figured the money would sway it for us. We need teams ready to move out by tonight.”
“Money isn’t what matters to them. Doing something that makes them happy does — you happy?”
“No. But I’ve got a duty.”
Eversen smiled slowly. “I don’t know about you, but duty makes me happy.”
“In a way, it makes me happy too,” Ereli mused. “I just wish people weren’t dying because of it.”
10. Heading Out.
::/ San Iadras, Middle American Corporate Preserve.
::/ April, 2106.
::/ Edane Estian.
They had ninth spot. Ninth, and if the team held onto it for four more weeks, then Hallman would take them pro. They’d been working for this since Edane had first met with the team and asked Marianna if he could join, to keep him in shape, for his arm. It’d been a year and a half since then, nearly two since he’d been hurt. Edane couldn’t stand it, just couldn’t fucking stand it.
They got themselves ninth spot on the season’s leaderboard, and now this. He hadn’t set out to go professional, but the semi-pro contract gave him enough that he hadn’t been leeching off Janine, originally. Paid for his nightly stay in the capsule hotel, now, keeping him in a neat, no-nonsense pattern and routine of playing and eating and training and not thinking.
He hadn’t been made for thinking, for feeling. Been made for fighting, he knew that now, better than ever.
Eberstetten didn’t want to go, not when Ellis pointed out that him and Salzach had barely gotten into the most valuable players consideration list last Saturday, and semi-pro registered players got into the MVP lists once or twice a season. Erlnicht had a night job playing club doorman somewhere, friends. Didn’t want to lose either. Svarstad wasn’t sure whether he wanted to leave on almost no notice, but he thought he might take a week to think about it, if this mess lasted that long.
Eissen… Eissen had this haunted expression all through the rest of their exercises, plinking at pretend targets in AugR — kept looking at Edane, and Edane kept looking at him. As if Edane knew what Eissen was thinking, as if Eissen struggled with the same thought of what if I hadn’t gotten hit, the same nagging feeling that he hadn’t really been in Tajikistan because he’d gotten medevaced out of the country just before the revolution hit.
Except Eissen hadn’t been wounded — he’d been captured along with the human contractors he’d been working with, got taken down to a police basement cell and tortured until him and his friends broke out on the revolution’s first day, running over the border before the real shooting started.
Edane slumped back in the team’s van, palms over his face, as Marianna talked to the rest of the team about the upcoming Wednesday match, shooting the shit about all the possible scenarios that might come up, which way she’d bid for targets and ask for support, what she’d do if antagonistic off-field controllers denied them artillery.
One by one the team members got dropped off, first Ellis, then Salzach — Erlnicht changing into his night clothes, bathing himself in stinking cologne to fit in before hopping out of the van and walking down to play bouncer at his club before sunset.
Almost without noticing the time pass, Edane was alone in the van with Marianna, with nothing to distract them except the purr of the van’s tires on the way back to the freeway.
“You know you have to make up your mind before the end of the night, right?” she asked. “That knucklehead’s suicide mission needs you ready and at the airport by one fucking AM.”
“It’s not a suicide mission,” Edane mumbled. “It’s forward infiltration. Get on the ground, get in, secure infrastructure and delay the Azeri army’s operations until reinforcements arrive.”
“And if it doesn’t? If the money for reinforcements doesn’t get kindly donated by an appreciative population, and you wind up all fucking alone out there? You know what it’s like playing without support — do you really want to wind up stuck in hostile territory without even Louie to back you up?”
He laughed, weakly. “I miss Louie.”
“I do too.”
“An actual warzone’s no place for him, though.”
“It isn’t. But is it a place for you?” she asked, head cocked.
He pulled himself forward, edging around the van’s seats until he flopped down onto the bench across from hers.
Marianna stared at him silently.
“You’re not talking me out of this, exactly, are you?”
She smiled. Not a pleasant smile, not a friendly smile. Shark’s teeth and broken glass. “Oh, kid. I’d beat sense into you if I could, but that’d be pushing you just a little
far. What was it you said to me? I’m not your commanding officer?”
He scratched at an ear tiredly, looking away. “Well. You’re not.”
“If I could beat you into thinking I was, I’d tell you shut up and get in line like a good puppy.” She let her jaw hang slack, swinging it left and right until it clicked. Shook her head slowly. “But let’s face it, kid. You might be one of my knuckleheads, but your heart isn’t in this, is it?”
Edane didn’t answer her. Flicked his ears tiredly, head bowing lower and lower. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” he said, at last.
“Don’t force me into beating the shit out of you with that touchy feely shit, kid. Just don’t. Look at me like an equal, okay?”
He lifted his muzzle, warily met her eye.
No shark-tooth grin from Marianna this time. Just a tired expression, almost the same as his own.
“I did my time,” she said. “After the Emancipation, I signed on with Andercom and ran my little ass around the Ecuadorian jungle in a suit of assistive armor you would have died for, kid, and I shot people, and I hunted down and killed those idiot warlords who thought they were better than the corporations. I saw two of my sisters die, and hauled one out before our shitty metabolism could kill her after she got kidnapped without her pills. The friends I worked with died around me, and I killed people ‘cuz a little voice in my ear sitting in an office somewhere in Downtown told me to.
“I did my time, kid. I might not have gotten fucked up like you did, but by the time you were getting out of high school I’d done it all, and I’d had enough. I am older than you, definitely have more life experience than you, am probably smarter than you, and I have been there. Okay?”
Marianna blinked expectantly at him.
He blinked back. “Okay.”
“There will always be someone else stupid enough to go get themselves killed in a war somewhere, Edane. You don’t need to go. Trust me, even if the powers that be decided we have the need to do it printed into our fucking genes, that war will get fought without you.”
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