by John F. Carr
“And let us remember those brave, unfortunate soldiers killed earlier by rebel terrorist activities on Havenhold Lake. Expecting an orderly implementation of legal orders, they found only watery graves. They shall be missed, but more, many more shall follow. Perhaps living well shall be, for the survivors, the best revenge.”
Here Ibansk leaned over to Cole and said, “On Haven?”
Cole nodded, staring past the stage at a group of robed figures just barely visible in reflected light to one side of the crowd. He was biting his lower lip and did not grin at Ibansk’s typically cynical jest.
“First,” General Lassitre said, drawing his ceremonial sword and flourishing it once more, perhaps to alarm the dozen representatives now seated around the VIPs, “we must have done with an unpleasant but necessary task.” He gestured toward the gallows, his sword catching a golden spotlight’s beam perfectly. “Having been duly found guilty by omission when not in deed of the deaths of eight-hundred and four of our benevolent CoDominium’s finest fighting troops, and further, having been sentenced by military tribunal to death for said rebellious, treacherous acts, the prisoners shall now, in full witness of Haven’s citizenry, be hanged by the neck until dead. Their graves shall be unmarked, while their nefarious deeds shall be long kept in mind.” He waved the sword again, and again caught, expertly, the light.
In thousands of eyes, a golden mote glinted for an instant, even as their attention turned toward the instruments of death.
A last few blows from a hammer sounded as the microphones flickered off; the eleventh gibbet now stood complete, ready. A generator somewhere received a kick, and found its rhythm again.
But this was just a tease, to add the drama of anticipation, which would sit like guilt on the shoulders of the crowd later, in their hovels. They’d berate themselves, having actually wanted the hangings to hurry up and happen, and that would make them prone to obedience, thinking themselves inwardly tainted. Or so read the manual on stage-managing public executions for conquered populaces.
The microphones came back to life, and General Lassitre said, “Your planet, having been accepted for full CoDominium membership, qualifies for consulate status, and a consul-general is even now being sent. In the interim, a colonial governor has been appointed by due process, and it is he who shall dispense with our unfinished business, for it is he who shall lead you those first few steps into a grand, profitable, and respectful future. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present a renowned businessman and politician from one of Earth’s most illustrious families, your interim governor, Taxpayer Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson.”
The claques must have passed around some pelf this time, for the applause was actually audible at the back of the stage. As Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson hefted his bulk to the podium in a slow gait, the condemned prisoners were taken up their final flight of stairs.
Nooses were snugged at the back and to one side of their necks, to ensure a clean snap, a quick and painless break. All the condemned except Naha and Castell wore black hoods of coarse cloth. All had their hands bound behind them, and their ankles, and their knees. As they stood accepting these indignities, Bronson gained the podium. “Justice be done,” he said, in a low growl, unceremoniously as ever. He did not look at the podium, but instead glanced back at Cole, to whom he smiled.
That’s when the guards knocked Ibansk over in their haste and grabbed Maxwell Cole, lifting him, pinioning his arms in grips strengthened by years of practice. The look on Cole’s face was one of fury, fear and finality. As he was dragged past the podium, he yelled, so that the microphones caught and passed it on, “See Haven, then die.”
The eleventh gibbet was Cole’s. He clambered up beside the Reverend Charles Castell, who gazed over at him and said, “Peace is ours to offer.”
As Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson made a short, sweet speech full of phrases guaranteed by researchers to affect the hearts and minds of the locals, Cole gasped as if he’d run a marathon, then felt his knees go weak. “I don’t want to die,” he said, almost crying.
The Reverend Castell said, “Seek Harmony,” and was kidney-punched by a guard who strutted up and down behind the condemned as if he were the master of ceremonies.
The hangman, in black military hood, stood by the pole tied to the mechanisms holding the trapdoors shut. When he pulled the pole free, the doors would drop open simultaneously.
“A CoDominium Naval Base,” Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson announced, to genuine cheers, and into those cheers he said, “and power sats, and food factories and all the earthly amenities by which a civilized world is known.”
As the cheers rose, Bronson lifted one arm. He glanced at the gallows. Everyone fell silent. “But first, we must make room for such things.”
His arm fell.
They’d been hearing the echoes from the loudspeakers and seeing the glow from the lights for some time, so Wilgar sent an irregular known for speed to see what was going on.
“Quickly,” the ragged girl said, struggling to get her breath as she returned. “They’re going to hang people.”
Wilgar and Kev and the others ran the three or four blocks from lake to square, where they spotted a group of Harmonies huddled to one side. Someone at the podium spoke in a low, sulky voice. Sure enough, there were gallows, and a man was being carried up to the last of them.
Kev said, “That’s Colin Maxwell, the spy from the miners.”
Wilgar shook his head. “His name’s Maxwell Cole, from CoDo Intelligence. Agent provocateur.”
They found a distraught Saral slumped on the ground at the middle of the Harmonies. Acolytes and Deacons kept her grief safe from prying eyes, even as Beads patrolled the crowd nearby as extra security of a more physical nature. “They took him from me,” she wailed, but as she saw Wilgar she reached up, joy and disbelief mingling in her feature.
Wilgar leaned down and hugged his mother, then extracted himself from her grip and backed off. “Be strong,” he told her.
“They took the Reverend,” a Deacon told Kev. “Said he was a rebel leader. What does it mean?”
Kev looked up. The sky, beyond the glare of the kliegs, was lightening. “It means we’re on our own now,” he said softly. With more urgency and an angry grimace, he added, “It should’ve been me.”
The crowd cheered about something the speaker said, and then came the phrase, “…room for such things,” and the speaker’s arm fell.
The entire square fell silent, and even as the clatter of the trapdoors letting go echoed, a glint of dawn flickered in the sky. The stars went away, to be replaced by a rosy glow.
The condemned men fell as if in slow motion, and each pulled up short. Kev made out the Reverend Castell, recognizing the robes. “He collected bits of rope the way old people sometimes hoard ends of soap or bits of twine,” he said, softly, apropos of nothing.
The ropes halted the falls, and necks cracked like distant gunfire, stirring the crowd to low murmurs. More dawn spilled over the planet’s ecliptic rim. More darkness fled, and the klieg lights became, in an unexpected instant, redundant, then superfluous.
As the Reverend Castell’s rope snapped taut, stopping his drop toward Haven’s center of gravity, a flare of light flickered to life from within. The crowd gasped, and even as those nearby cringed back in amazement or fright, as the Reverend Charles Castell burst into bright white flame.
The Harmonies around Saral dropped to their knees, except Wilgar, but even he stood gaping, nonplussed. The few cads in the crowd who’d cheered the hangings fell silent now, too.
“He refused to curse the darkness,” one of the Deacons muttered, crying openly and smiling through pain.
The Reverend Charles Castell’s flames caused consternation, if not panic, among the VIPs on the stage, and for a few seconds pandemonium ensued as Marines scurried to douse the flames. The fire burned itself out long before anyone got to extinguish Castell, and then he, too, swung on creaking new hemp ropes, the same as the others, except for the fine coating of
ash.
“I want his body,” Saral said, and Kev gestured to a Deacon, who took some acolytes to try to claim it despite the threat of unmarked graves.
A man in Russian uniform eased up to Wilgar, then said, “Excuse me, but—”
“Ibansk,” Wilgar said, surprise allowing him to stifle sobs.
The Russian said, “Don’t call me that ever again.” He glanced back at the stage, then all around himself, then lowered his voice and said, “When they grabbed Cole, I bailed out.”
“But if you were up on stage,” Kev objected. “then you’re one of them.”
Ibansk glared for an instant at Kev, who was crying along with all the other Harmonies and many of the crowd. He shrugged, then shook his head in disgust. “No, I was never one of them. But whatever I was, I think I’d like to become a Harmony now.”
“He was one of Doxie’s best contacts, when he could sneak away from Splashdown Island,” Wilgar said, wiping tears and standing straighter. “Even gave us access codes so we could hack into CoDo computers.” He touched Kev’s arm. “He’s Russian, and he knows all too well the kind of thing we’re going through. He’s a friend, he’s helped us.”
“Us?” Kev asked.
But Wilgar had already begun leading the Harmonies back to the Compound.
More Precious Than Rubies
By A.L. Brown
2060 A.D., Earth
Abdullah Hassan lay on the hot deck, gasping for breath. The air was hot, too, and offered little comfort. It reeked of many things—unwashed bodies, urine, the tang of rusting metal, and over it all, the cloying smell of bunker fuel. He felt feverish, and retched from time to time, but nothing came up. Abdullah was completely dehydrated and his body had no moisture left to spare.
He knew when he bought his ticket that there was no air conditioning in steerage on this ancient ship, but thought he could handle it. He hadn’t realized that the ship would break down and that even the limited breath of fresh air from the vents on the deck would stop. Nor had he realized that the water would stop, too. He hadn’t understood that there were people in the world who would let others die or how much he could grow to hate this vessel: hate the light green paint that had been used on the bulkheads, hate the yellowed paint on the ceiling he lay under, which may have been white in past decades.
It had sounded so romantic when he started out. Leave Boston, quit M.I.T., go to Somalia, find his roots, the family his father had worked so hard to leave behind. On to other parts of Africa, India and finally Pakistan. Then from Karachi, travel to Saudi Arabia, make his pilgrimage, the Hajj, to see Mecca. But after a long trip, even after taking odd jobs here and there to support himself, money was short, and steerage in this weather-beaten ship, the Sidi Ferrous, was the best he could afford. And now he realized that price had been no bargain.
All around him, other pilgrims were sprawled among their sparse belongings. Some were silent, many cried, others prayed, some moaned wordlessly. Most were resigned to accepting the will of Allah, but some still held hope that Allah’s will would be to intercede and aid them. At first, as conditions in the below-decks area had worsened, Abdullah had tried to help the others, the youngest and the oldest that were first to fall. But soon he had no strength for anyone else, and eventually, no strength even for himself.
A scream cut through the still air, then shouting, thumps and crashes and the sound of metal on metal. When he heard shots, Abdullah struggled to his feet, and moved forward. The old man next to him tried to rise as well.
Abdullah put a hand on his shoulder. “Rest, pilgrim. I will find out what is going on.” The Arabic he had spent a lifetime learning had become fluent in these last few months.
The old man nodded and sank back down, his head on a small pack.
He climbed a rusting stairway, stepped out onto the long covered walkway that ran the length of the ship on this level, and started for a ladder. He squinted as the burning sun overwhelmed his eyes. A body came tumbling down. It was almost on top of him by the time he realized what it was. He reared back in horror. It was a crewman—the man’s throat was cut, and blood pooled around the body, the eyes already blank and vacant. A man leaned into the ladder well above him, and beckoned. “This way, boy.” he snarled. “If you want to be any help at all, you will follow me.”
So Abdullah followed him, up the ladder, then another and another, a mad corkscrew dash for the upper decks. When they reached the top deck the scene was pure chaos. The last few crewmen were on a ladder leading up to the bridge wing, holding rifles at the ready. At the foot of the ladder, pilgrims in their flowing robes gathered, armed with knives, axes and whatever makeshift weapons they could gather.
A burst of automatic weapon fire came from the crowd. The crewmen fell, and the pilgrims surged onto the bridge. Abdullah stared at the man, standing not too far from him, who had fired the shots. He was a large man with a thick red beard. His nose had been broken and there was a cruel scar across the right side of his face. He caught Abdullah’s eye and grinned. There was no joy in that smile, it was more a feral baring of teeth.
Another man, a tall man in indigo blue robes, swept past them. “Follow me,” he barked, and the scarred man immediately obeyed, as did other hard looking men in the crowd, all moving with a purpose. They swept up the ladder, into the bridge, and there were more shots, shouting, and after a hideous scream—silence. The tall man in blue stepped back out of the bridge and stopped at the head of the ladder. He was an impressive man, with a hooked nose, thick black hair and beard, and dark eyes.
“We have taken this vessel to prevent further suffering. Water, food and comforts will be distributed equally. Help us and you will live. Oppose us, and die. Allahu Akbar!”
His followers raised their voices in unison, “Allahu Akbar!”
The scarred man with the red beard came down the ladder. His weapon was held at waist level, but ready for immediate use. “You, you and you,” he said, pointing at Abdullah and two others. “Follow me, we will find containers and water to bring back to the lower decks.”
The next few hours passed in a blur. Abdullah saw great compassion, but also quick cruelty. Passengers who fought the mutineers were killed without mercy, while others were aided, given water, brought to cooler parts of the ship. The mutineers took everyone’s phones, data devices, cameras, anything that would make a record of what had happened. Abdullah did what he was told, too frightened to think.
A man came by, calling, “English, English, we need someone who can speak English.”
Abdullah raised his hand. “I can speak English.”
“Then come with me,” the man said, and they made their way to the bridge.
When they arrived, the man in blue turned to Abdullah and asked, “You speak English, African?”
“Yes,” Abdullah said, “I went to school in America.” He wasn’t any darker than many of the other passengers, but his ancestors were definitely from sub-Saharan Africa. Better, however, to leave out the fact that he was American, let their assumptions stand. His nationality was not one that brought you friends in this part of the world.
The man gestured at the radio. “Tell me what they are saying.”
Abdullah went to the radio, and translated as he listened. “They are talking about our ship, they have not heard from it. There is some sort of schedule for communications. There is talk of deploying forces, launching helicopters, sending a hovercraft.”
“Who are they sending?” asked the man in blue. “Egyptians? Saudis?”
“No,” answered Abdullah. “American Marines.”
“The Great Satan!” the man snapped, and turned to his followers. “Weapons and any evidence over the side, along with bodies and weigh them down so they sink. If anyone who opposed us is still alive, kill them now. Spread the word among the passengers that we were attacked by pirates who came from a submarine, and have escaped. All of us are victims, trying to help those the pirates have harmed.”
The man turned back to
Abdullah. “You, follow me, I will have need of your skills with the language of the infidels.”
Abdullah sat in the shadow of the white wooden barracks building, staring helplessly at the barbed wire that surrounded them. He was in Africa, but where, he had no idea. The Marines had turned them over to some sort of camp run by the CoDominium. The camp was near a spaceport, and day and night the huge lasers lanced up from the ground, igniting the fuel that launched ship after ship into orbit. The glare of the lasers pouring through the windows at night, and the roar of the ships, made sleep difficult.
He tried to take refuge in his faith. There were copies of the Qur’an available, he listened to sermons from imams who were among the prisoners, and he joined in the prayers five times a day. Because of his faith, he had often been the odd man out at home. But here among those of his own kind, he found he missed the diversity, the many viewpoints, the happy chaos of life back in Boston. He even missed baseball, and wondered how the Red Sox were doing. He tried to console himself that Allah would care for him, that he could trust that all was happening for a purpose, that his faithfulness would lead to fortune.
Abdullah knew more about the men he had been captured with. The man in blue was Tawfiq al Tabib, a noted Arab rebel, long wanted for violence against the Western forces that had meddled in the Middle East for over a century. The scarred man with red hair was called Barbarossa and was Tawfiq’s principal lieutenant.
The U.S. Marines that had swept aboard the Sidi Ferrous met no resistance as they dropped from helicopters or climbed accommodation ladders. Tawfiq was the spokesman, and used Abdullah as his translator. The Marines listened to their story with skeptical glances among themselves, then they culled out all of the men who looked healthy enough to fight shackling them together. Their lieutenant was a hard man paying no attention to the rough treatment his men gave the prisoners. Abdullah kept his identity secret, telling the men he was African. He was afraid that if his fellow prisoners knew the truth, they would tear him apart.