War World X: Takeover

by John F. Carr

  Cole squinted at Ibansk in the dark; the Russian’s face showed impassive boredom. “Come on, let’s hike.”

  They left the muskylope riders to return to their bivouac. Cole followed Ibansk, who knew the land. Both wore low-light goggles with IR overlay, in case something warm-blooded entered the scene.

  The First Deacon and Castell’s son moved with surprising stealth, and left little spoor, especially in the dark. It helped to know their eventual goal. As Kev and Wilgar examined and investigated the burned-out farm, Cole and Ibansk lay at the crest of a hillock, shivering but placid.

  Cole had his IR overlay turned low, to eliminate interference from the ruins’ residual heat. “Look at that,” he said, indicating Wilgar. “Kid’s shoving a chunk of ore into his robes.”

  “They have no pockets, Harmonies,” Ibansk said.

  Cole smiled. “One does, apparently. Or else he’s got remarkable muscle control somewhere.” After a few more moments’ watching, Cole said, “I’ll be vented. Kid never mentioned the ore to the First Deacon.”

  Ibansk caught the possible significance and said, “This place has an agenda for every soul, it seems.”

  “We’re each of us alone,” Cole agreed, sardonic tone lost on a keening wind which brought sleet for a few seconds before whooshing upward again. Haven weather defined surprise. When the wind had passed, he said, “It’s better, anyway. I couldn’t quite figure out how to plant ore inside the Harmony Compound, if I ended up needing to. As a contingency, I was planning to carry it in on our raid, so we could ‘find’ it on them even in their sanctum sanctorum. This way, though, maybe I won’t have to cheat so flagrantly.”

  Ibansk snorted. “A snatched sample of ore hardly constitutes criminal possession of stolen—”

  “A trace of drugs suffices, when necessary.”

  With another, louder snort, the Russian said, “Da,” and turned away for a moment, perhaps nursing an exposed nerve. “Laws of letters and laws of spirits. We used to say, ‘In the evil spirit of the law.’”

  They moved along, the pace difficult on Haven.

  As Kev and Wilgar entered the Harmony Compound’s northernmost gate, the portal nearest the Reverend Castell’s lodge, Cole and Ibansk crouched on flat ground, in sawgrass. Stillness, shadow, the night, and the Harmonies’ lack of low-light or IR scanning kept them unobserved from the ground, even though a fist-sized satellite probably noted their positions to the micrometer, for CD convenience.

  “Look at the old man,” Cole said. He had his goggles off entirely now, as fires from the town back-lit the Harmony Compound.

  Atop the watchtower, the Reverend Charles Castell waved his arms, flapped his white robes and howled his bare head and face to the stars as if conjuring heaven’s mighty host of spirit warriors. Despite distance and cross-breezes, Cole and Ibansk caught snatches of Castell’s voice, although they could make out no words.

  “Directing defenses,” Ibansk said, lowering his own binoculars after taking a few digital pictures for later inclusion in a report. “He’s very dynamic and forceful.”

  “Must’ve come out of his fog for a while,” Cole said, voice low. He lay prone, then began moving forward by walking his elbows. Ibansk followed, Cole stopped, however, and said, “This is no good, we’re leaving a trail of pressed grass. Better if we stand up and run.” And he suited action to his own advice, dodging closer to the Harmony Compound.

  Cole veered west and unknowingly ran past Wilgar’s tunnel. His easy stride soon stuttered, staggered, and then he fell flat, gasping for breath, curing Haven’s thin air. “This,” he snarled, “is,” his fists pounding in frustration, “ridiculous.”

  Ibansk, not winded, leaned down and applied a pen-sized bottle of compressed oxygen to Cole’s lips. He squeezed off a couple hits, and the muscles in the spy’s body un-kinked even as his lungs gained the upper hand over breathing. “Thanks,” Cole said.

  “Standard issue, I’ll make sure you have some.” And he handed over five small cylinders, which Cole placed in five different pockets of his parka before rising. They made their way a bit slower into the edge of Castell City, taking refuge behind a garden wall. They settled back into shadow cast by flames. Explosions, ranging from dull thumps to sharp reports, sounded behind them, as some of the fun Cole had arranged came to festive fruition.

  “Whole city’ll burn,” Ibansk said. “They’ve no fire brigade, you know.”

  “Only the above-ground wood shacks’ll burn,” Cole said. “Fire won’t spread to the underground, stone neighborhoods. Got to give the Reverend credit on some points. Can’t burn or flood the Harmony structures out.”

  “What are we watching for?” Ibansk wanted to know after a while.

  Cole, with one eye on the Reverend Charles Castell as he conducted his orchestral defenses from the tower, and the other eye on the fires glowing in the sky to the south and east, said, “Rebellion.”

  “Come down,” Kev shouted, “please, please.” He gazed up at the Reverend Charles Castell, who stood not on the watchtower’s observation deck but on its roof.

  “Those, there,” the Reverend shouted, gesturing to barrels of water and slashing his finger toward a woodpile with a dramatic flourish. “Peace is ours to offer,” he screamed, and then, voice lowered but every bit as resonant, “In Harmony is strength.”

  Kev stepped toward the ladder, but a sow and three of her piglets knocked him down. Wilgar helped him up as three acolytes raced after the sow. Chickens fluttered everywhere, running as if pursued by foxes. Dogs barked, cows offered plaintive moos, and oxen kicked at stalls. People ran everywhere; the compound contained chaos but just barely.

  The Reverend Castell bellowed, “There, form a bucket-line,” and pointed to a flower of flame which had blossomed near the base of another watchtower. Splashing water onto it, volunteer Harmonies soon had the fire extinguished. The dewpond had been close enough, and they had responded quickly enough, that time.

  “They’re lobbing in torches and Molotov’s,” Wilgar said.

  Kev nodded, took a few steps, then paused. “How do you know about Molotov cocktails?”

  But Wilgar raced ahead, and scampered up to the platform which ran around the inside perimeter of the palisade. Already manned by worried Deaks and Beads armed with buckets and skins and pots and pans of water, the palisade swayed here and there. Ropes creaked, wood crackled.

  Kev paused between the north watchtower and the Reverend Castell’s lodge and waved wildly. He caught his leader’s attention and called, “Come down,” and gestured the same message. This time Castell nodded.

  “What’s going on?” Bren, Kev’s wife, asked, rushing to him and hugging him tight. Her long dark hair moved in the crosscurrents of flame-swirled air like tendrils in water.

  “It’s madness, I don’t know any more yet.” Kev kissed the top of his wife’s head and said, “See to Wilgar, he climbed up there.”

  As Bren moved away, Kev spotted Saral, the Reverend Castell’s wife. He rushed to her, and helped her move. “My tapestry,” she wailed, tears streaming: Her life’s work, at least, her Haven’s work, gone to flame’s mindless greed.

  “I was waiting,” Saral said, grunting under her breath as she hefted the wood walker one of the Beadles had crafted for her. “It had been on our lodge’s roof, so I could enjoy the sun, and when night fell, I wanted it moved inside, but no one came to help me, and Charles flew into one of his visions and I was waiting, Kev.”

  “I should have visited you before I left the compound,” Kev said, looking down so as to avoid stepping on her twisted feet.

  Someone cried out, and a wagon without a driver rattled by, its twin goats pulling as if in competition. Kev had time only to grasp Saral and lift her out of harm’s way. Her walker shattered, as did one wheel of the wagon, which lacked metal bands. Pine-like resin made the ride somewhat smoother, but added little to the structural integrity of the wheel.

  Kev lay on his back, Saral on his chest. He panted, she sobbed.
Struggling to his feet, Kev carried her back to her lodge, then discovered that her rolling sled had been left inside the lodge. That meant he had to either leave her to fetch it, or drag her in through the zigzag tunnel. He chose the former, and so entered the Reverend Castell’s lodge for the first time with the knowledge that it was empty.

  The huge knot hovered between its wall-anchors like a clot of nightmare. Fire from the hearth offered erratic light. The smells of cooking, incense, much-used bedding, muskylope hides and wood smoke permeated the place.

  A furtive movement in a corner drew Kev’s attention. “Who’s there?” he asked, voice sharp. Was it an intruder?

  Wilgar’s voice said, “First Deacon?”

  “Where are you?” Kev squinted around the room in the dark, one hand on Saral’s roller sled, the other on the fire-pit’s wall. “What are you doing in here?”

  The boy stepped out from behind the huge knot. He held a knife, and a small book. “It’s almost time,” he said, voice calm and assured and deeper than usual. “I’ve come for what I’ll need.”

  Kev’s face showed doubt and a slight cast of terror. Then he snarled, using anger to wash away uncertainty. “What have you done?”

  “I’ve discovered the heart of the matter, the core of the knot, and the silence in the note which swells to fill the song.”

  Kev inched back. He gazed at the boy’s eyes, the stiff motions. In a whisper he asked, “Who are you?”

  And Wilgar smiled. “I am my grandfather’s grandson,” he said, and slipped both book and knife under his robes, where obviously he’d fashioned pockets of some sort.

  “Pockets are against the Writings,” Kev said. “What you cannot carry you cannot use, and in use lies ownership.…”

  “But special needs arise,” Wilgar said. He pulled something from his pocket, held it out. It was a lump of ore. “There were several small mounds of this at the burned-out farm. And I saw tire-tracks, tread-marks, which means trucks, which can only mean Kennicott.”

  Wilgar hurled the ore into the fire-pit, where it burst in a shower of yellow, blue, and green sparks. “Harmony is the response,” he said then, voice a monotone brimming with intensity, “But melody is the start,” and with that he brushed past Kev and left the lodge.

  Grabbing the sled, Kev hurried after the boy. He bumped into the Reverend Charles Castell half-way down the tunnel, and at once Kev backed up to let his leader enter. “Wilgar,” Kev said, “I’ve got to find him again.”

  “Last I saw him he was on the palisade, helping drape the drenched quilts,” Castell said, his gaze steady.

  “But he just—” Kev began. “You didn’t just see him?”

  The Reverend gave his First Deacon a searching look and said, “I’ve just seen him, yes. On the palisade. Helping with fire prevention.” He reached out and clamped a paternal hand onto Kev’s shoulder. “What is it, Kev? Has the madness shaken you out of Harmony?”

  Kev shook his head. He closed his eyes for an instant of inner assessment, then opened his eyes and said, “I’m fine.” Holding up the sled, he added, “I’ll get Saral in here, then we can—”

  “She is gone. I have sent her for medical care. She’s been burned, a brand fell from the sky. Two of the Deacons offered to carry her.”

  Kev blanched. He’d left her sitting there, exposed to harm. “I’d better make sure they make it across the compound.”

  “As you wish, First Deacon Malcolm, but may I remind you that our compound must achieve Harmony once more and maintain it against the cacophony surrounding us.” The Reverend Castell heaved a sad sigh. “I’ve worked so hard, and so long, and now this crescendo of discord crashes upon us: And yet, everything takes longer and costs more, as one of our Writings teaches. But I’d thought of costs as money. It is not so. Cost can be counted in lives, too, and most often there is no fair rate of exchange.”

  He looked into Kev’s eyes. “Our work must go on,” he said, again placing a hand on Kev’s shoulder. “Our song must transcend the loss of single notes.”

  Nodding, Kev wriggled out from under the touch which once he would have craved. “What can be done?” he asked, sounding suddenly much younger, much less assured. His voice had gone weak.

  “Seek Harmony in all things,” the Reverend Castell said. “Harmony cannot be achieved in a lifetime. Certainly not in mine.”

  Kev closed his eyes and tears escaped, but he managed to nod and kneel as if he meant it. “We must sacrifice to the greater harmony,” he said, and when the Reverend Castell hummed a note, Kev hummed a chromatic tone which blended well, and created a third note heard only in the ear; streaming was an ancient musical anomaly which Harmonies had long since mastered: “Our Harmony is manifest once more,” Kev said, having heard the third yet unsung note. Taking it as confirmation of blessing, both men raised their gazes to the imagined heavens.

  Kev shuddered then. He grabbed the sled and crawled out of the lodge even as the Reverend Castell turned toward the knot, which was by now the size and weight of the notoriously-corpulent Kennicott VP forced to dwell in free-fall lest gravity of even the slightest intensity overstrain his bloated system; for a nauseating instant, Kev saw the knot as a tangle of intestines, and the stench of death radiated through him.

  He backed out of the lodge tunnel and stood, finding himself at once obliged to duck as a chunk of flaming wood whooshed over his head.

  Running, he caught up with the Deaks who carried Saral, and with their help and the rolling sled they got her to the Birth and Medical Lodge where for the first time Kev saw, as a doctor performed triage, the ugly blistered burn on Saral’s left arm.

  “We’re under attack,” Kev said then, in a wondering voice. It wasn’t just mob churlishness, it wasn’t only a rampant fire, it was a concerted attack. “That farm, burned and ruined,” he muttered. “And now Castell City, and our compound.” He gazed over the palisade at the fiery glow.

  A Bead ran up, wearing only a rough tunic made of several sacks. Despite this and the cold, he glistened in the firelight with sweat. “Please, First Deacon. Our acolytes need guidance, and several of the Beads want to abandon the compound, and there’s a stampede brewing in the western corral, and—”

  For the next few hours, Kev stayed in constant motion, pausing only to catch his breath and gulp mouthfuls of water when possible. He asked many questions and offered few answers. He made decisions, but fulfilled his function mostly by rote as his mind stayed with other, larger problems than those currently creating such secular disharmony around him.

  “I’m going to recommend this planet as a vacation spot,” Cole said, getting to his feet and stamping to get the circulation going. He kept his gaze on the Harmony Compound’s city gate. A wagon, pulled by two weary men, trundled up to the gate on wobbly wheels. One of the men knocked, then quite distinctly sparked a cigarette lighter’s flint three times.

  “That’s the signal,” Sergeant Ibansk said, also getting to his feet. “Our quarter ton of cayenne pepper is in place.” The cold bothered him less. Between Siberia, his birthplace, and Blighty, his personal downfall, his blood had learned to take cold lightly.

  Cole was already snapping IR and low-light pictures of the wagon, which bore a mark that fluoresced when Ibansk shined a darklight on it; this provided continuity in the chain of evidence and demonstrated that the wagon had been delivered from Cambiston to the Harmony Compound intact. That much red pepper could only mean that the Harmonies were making ersatz mace, which was considered a defensive weapon only when deployed by CoDo authorities. Like most colony worlds, even those not officially protectorates of the CoDominium, the Haveners were forbidden advanced weapons and high technology. Obviously the CoDo prohibitions didn’t always work, but they kept the gun runners and interstellar weapons dealers somewhat in check.

  When anyone but Marines or cops used mace, it became highly offensive indeed. And those photographs would prove one more part of the mosaic which added up to rebellion. When added to stockpiles of
ammonia, derived from urine, for example, or the photographs showing pongee sticks in covered trenches smeared with feces, such evidence would be damning. It would demand a stern, decisive CoDominium response or, if evidence followed action, justify same.

  That, at least, was how such dubious evidence would be interpreted by the powers that be when it came time to justify taking Haven by force. Cole’s function was being fulfilled step-by-step and quite smoothly and the poor Harmonies wouldn’t know what hit them.

  “Not much happening yet,” Ibansk observed.

  With a shrug, Cole stashed the special camera and said, “I hope the satellites are getting this.” BuIntel had authorized the expenditures necessary to put several satellites into geo-synchronous orbit high over the Shangri-La Valley, including Castell City and Hell’s-A-Comin’.

  Ibansk scratched his left wrist, then held it up. A low-intensity blue light blinked there. “Satellites are a go,” he said, adding archaic American astronautisms to his patchwork speech-patterns. He scratched off the indicator light, then mused, “We’re slowly becoming cyborgs, you know.”

  “Speak for yourself.” Cole moved southwest, following the curve of the compound’s palisade as he moved deeper into Castell City. “It’s my idea that machines are becoming more human.”

  “Ah, an optimist.”

  “I’ve studied expert systems, is all,” Cole said.

  Ibansk laughed. “I’ve been studied by them. Look where it got me.”

  “Could be worse,” Cole told the Russian. “You could be on the receiving end of this party we’re arranging.”

  Ibansk, as Cole looked away, let his smile drop away, and nodded as if to himself as if hearing whispered warnings.