Pariah

by W. Michael Gear

  “Arrested?” Aguila asked.

  “Yeah.” Step motioned the marines back as they moved to block his way. “Gimme a break. Shit’s coming down, and I need to talk to Kalico.”

  Aguila gave her guards the desist signal. “Where you been?”

  “Hanging out in places Benteen’s goons wouldn’t think to look. Soon as the arrests started, people have been slipping into the hauler shop on the north end of town. So far there’s about thirty. More are coming. Everybody’s armed. Getting ready to take back PA.” Step unslung his rifle and laid it on the bar with a clunk. “Inga! Whiskey.”

  “Coming up, Step.”

  The big exobiologist turned, lips pressed thin. “Hmong, Oshanti, Dushku, Bernie Monson, Ruben Miranda, Mac Hanson, Pavel Tomashev, Lee Halston, those names ring any bells?”

  “Most of the critical businesses.” Dan frowned.

  “The most influential people in the community,” Kalico noted.

  “Yeah, and Sheyela Smith, Pamlico Jones, Lawson, and Montoya are on the list but can’t be found.”

  “They’re at Corporate Mine.” Aguila smiled wryly. “I’ve got them working on the aerial tram.”

  “When are they due back?” Dan asked.

  “Couple of days.” She lifted a brow. “So, Benteen has taken a collection of the community’s more prominent individuals. Where’d he take them? Admin dome?”

  “For the time being,” Step said. “But he had Muley Mitchman send for one of the buses that’s parked out at the mine. Now, what would he need with a bus? Where would he want to haul a bunch of people to?”

  “His new prison out at the clay pit.” Dan filled in the pieces.

  Aguila said, “So he’s rounding up the potential ringleaders, going to make his pitch. Anyone who doesn’t immediately toe the line is going out to the prison.”

  “That’s clap-trapping crazy,” Step growled. “That shuts down half the town’s business. What’s he think he’s doing?”

  “He doesn’t care,” Dan said softly. “He’s bet the house on a single roll of the dice. Win it, or lose it all.”

  “Let me check something.” Aguila squinted slightly, apparently concentrating on her implants, doing some kind of research. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not good.”

  “What?” Dan asked, wishing once again that he’d been able to afford implants back in the day.

  “I vaguely remembered that Benteen defused a revolt in Indonesia back before the turn of the century. Over the period of a week, he took a number of Min Tai See’s ministers. Abducted some of them right off the street. Boardmember Shayne requested Min Tai See’s support for a vote in the Board. Despite the abductions, he voted in opposition to her will. Made some sort of quip during the proceedings that while one could always find another minister, a person had only one sense of integrity.”

  “How’d that work out for him?”

  “The scorpion left the murdered ministers in various public locations around Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. New ministers were appointed, and within the week, Min Tai See’s eldest son, wife, and two grandchildren were blown up in their penthouse apartment high above Kuala Lumpur. Boardmember Shayne reportedly asked old man See if children were as easy to replace as Ministers. His response isn’t in the record, but he voted in her bloc thereafter.”

  Step lifted his glass of whiskey, slugged down a swallow, and said, “So, the lesson is, we move on Benteen, he might just go ahead and murder people rather than give up?”

  “That’s his profile,” Aguila agreed.

  “More than that, that’s his personality.” Dan fingered his glass of beer. “And he’s got Allison as well as the rest of the people he’s rounded up so far.”

  “Concern from the psychopath?” Aguila asked.

  “Just because I’m a conniving, self-serving weasel in your eyes doesn’t mean I’m stupid. It would really piss me off to lose her, bad enough that he’s threatening my town. The son of a bitch beat me at my own game.” Dan gave her his best winning smile. “As you know, Supervisor, I tend to obsess over grudges.”

  Dan saw Szong Sczui as the man came hurrying down the tavern’s central aisle. The second they fixed on Step, the farmer’s eyes showed immediate relief. Sczui lived in a fortified dome down on the southern edge of the fields and within spitting distance of the bush. Somehow he, his wife, and three kids managed to hang on out on the other side of the wire, thrive in fact, and produce some of the best harvests.

  Now the man, rifle dangling from one hand, dressed in crest-scale-decorated quetzal hide, chamois, and heavy boots came thumping forward, only to be intercepted by the marines. Rain dripped from his outfit.

  “Hey,” he called. “We got a shitload of trouble.”

  “Step to the end of the line, old friend.” Step turned, his whiskey in hand.

  Sczui glanced nervously at the two marines, adding, “Where’s the guards?”

  “What guards?”

  “The ones on the gates. I just came through the south gate. Not a fricking person in sight. Not even locked, just latched. So I trot along the western perimeter, and I find the west gate by the aircar field is unmanned. Like, abandoned.”

  Step made a face. “Shit. Hazen’s dead. Tolland, Umunga, and Lang have skipped for the bush. That shithead Benteen’s got all of whatever security that’s left rounding up hostages. The stupid fool’s left us wide open.”

  “Worse than that,” Sczui said, making a face. “Mother and me.” He always called his wife “Mother.” “We got up this morning, figured to walk the kids in for school, and we don’t get fifty meters, and we got quetzal tracks. Three sets. One sniffed around my tool shed, a big one. So what do I do? I get on the radio. Try to raise Two Spot. Nothing.

  “So Mother and I go out with the rifles, trying to figure where they went. The tracks headed off up through Ruben Miranda’s pepper plants. Like I said. Three. Trotting along side by side. Who the hell ever heard of three of those bastards running in a pack? They’re supposed to be solitary. And now the damn gates are unguarded? And who the hell’s monitoring the damn motion sensors?”

  He paused, expression falling before adding, “Worse, it’s raining. And it’s gonna rain a whole lot harder tonight.”

  “Quetzal weather,” Step said, already tense, his hand on his pistol. “We’ve got to get people on the gates.”

  “How long do you think they’ve been unmanned?” Aguila wondered, her own right hand dropping to her pistol butt. She must have accessed her battle com—a communications Benteen couldn’t squelch, because she ordered, “Abu Sassi. Detail Miso to the south gate, Finnegan to the west. Put Paco on the east gate, and Wan Xi Gow on the north. Beat feet, people! We got a problem.”

  Step exhaled, grateful gaze going to Aguila. “Supervisor, anything I ever said about you, I take it all back.”

  “Good, because I still haven’t forgotten that once upon a time you were going to crawl right up over this bar and blow my brains out.”

  Allenovich grinned. “Yeah, well, Tal stopped me in time, didn’t she?”

  “Wonder what else our new Director has let slip through the cracks?” Dan glanced back and forth. “Fact is, we really have to deal with him. Now. Before some really disastrous shit lands on our heads.”

  “Szong,” Step told the farmer. “Get yourself and your family back to your place and button up tight. We’ll blow the all-clear as soon as we’ve got this dealt with.”

  “Yeah, Step.” The farmer fixed his gaze on Aguila. “Tell your people on the gates that they’re appreciated, Supervisor. Mother and me, we got some sweet corn coming up. That’s for you and your marines as soon as we can pick it. No charge.”

  No charge? Shit. Sczui’s sweet corn was one of the most prized delicacies in PA.

  The man gave a bow, whirled, and left no doubt of his haste as he headed for the steps.
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  “Three?” Step asked nervously.

  “Maybe he saw the same quetzal’s tracks in three places.” Dan took a swallow of his beer, that old premonition of brewing trouble rising down in the pit of his stomach.

  “Not Sczui. He’s been too long in the bush and knows his shit.” Step’s gaze had tightened. “He says three, he means three. Something’s up.” He made a face, concentrating. Then said, “Damn it, com’s still dead.”

  He started to walk away. Stopped. “Screw vacuum, if I go charging over there to sound the alert, Benteen’s gonna fucking arrest me on the spot.”

  As he said it, Aguila went tense, hearing something in her battle com. Then she asked, “What have you got, Wan?” A silence as she listened. Then the woman’s expression went firm. “Lock down the gate. Look frosty, people! Helmets on, weapons hot. Full tech.”

  Flashing her eyes at Dan and Step, she said, “Wan found the north gate open. Three sets of quetzal tracks. Fresh. Headed right through. Said there was blood in the road not twenty meters inside the gate. They’re already inside.”

  “Dear God,” Step cried through an exhale. “The whole town’s wide open! I’ve got to get to the school.”

  With that he grabbed his rifle off the bar and left at a run, yelling, “Quetzals in the compound!”

  Inga’s erupted into chaos as people dropped everything and charged for the stairs.

  69

  Eight people? That’s all that First Officer Hazen, and then Tallisvilli, had been able to round up? Tamarland studied them where they sat around the conference table, hands bound before them. Rather than worry, he saw various degrees of smoldering anger.

  The three women, Hmong, Oshanti, and Dushku, seemed the least cowed. That was surprising given that all three of them had families. It amazed him when people didn’t understand that he already held the keys to their defeat.

  Bernie Monson, who ran the clay mine north of town, looked the most nervous. Mac Hanson operated the foundry. He and Lee Halston, the logger, both seemed irritated more than anything else. When he met Pavel Tomashev’s gaze, or Ruben Miranda’s, it was to see a seething anger.

  “Too bad,” Tam said aloud, arms crossed.

  “What’s too bad?” Oshanti asked, her hard black eyes showing not a hint of give.

  “The number of you that I will have to kill.”

  “You’re not very smart, are you?” Ruben Miranda asked.

  “Smarter than you,” Tam told him. “I’m not the one sitting in chains, unarmed, and awaiting execution.”

  He paused. Smiled. Gave them a moment to consider, then said, “But take a moment. Think it through. It doesn’t have to end in death and mayhem. Actually, nothing much really has to change for any of you. We can come to an understanding here, and the choice isn’t so tough. Not really.”

  “How’s that?” Oshanti remained the prickly one.

  “It’s just a change of administration. Sure, Shig and Yvette were nice people, but they really didn’t have the backbone needed to make this place thrive. Now, hear me out. By making some tough choices, we can raise the colony’s chances for survival. You’re here because I think each of you is smart enough to understand the advantages of a focused, top-down administration.”

  “With you at the top.” Miranda snorted his derision.

  “Oh, come on. Port Authority is run as a half-assed, inefficient, stumbling, and catch-as-catch-can disaster. Half the streetlights in the town don’t work. The streets are paved with gravel. It’s a disorganized mess.”

  “We like it that way.” Halston lifted a shoulder in disdain.

  “You should just leave now,” Friga Dushku told him. “Save yourself while you’ve got the chance.”

  “Want to explain that?”

  “Yeah,” Tomashev told him insolently. “By now half the town is organizing down at the hauler shop. My bet is that people are headed home as we speak to get their rifles and stock up on ammo.”

  “They’ll be coming for us,” Hanson agreed. “My advice? You don’t want to be here when they arrive.”

  “Vixen’s up in orbit,” Monson said. “So, I guess there’s no escape in that direction. I’d say your best bet is the bush. Maybe one of the abandoned research bases. Sort of a poetic justice in that.”

  “You’re fucked,” Oshanti told him.

  In a lightning move, Tam drew his pistol. Oshanti was staring down the pistol’s bore before she could blink.

  “It would be a shame if your children had to grow up without their mother. But, you see, I don’t give a damn about the little shits. Your life is as meaningless to me as a fly in a window.”

  He paused. “Do they even have flies here?”

  The woman went pale, a faint sweat breaking out on her upper lip. She swallowed hard. “It’s a good trade.”

  “What?”

  “My life for the future of Port Authority.”

  “After you shoot Amal, you’ll have to shoot me,” Friga Dushku told him in an icy voice.

  “And me,” Ruben Miranda stated.

  “All of us,” Sian Hmong insisted, staring at him through stony eyes.

  Tomashev said, “With us dead, you don’t have a chance. The rest will string you up by the thumbs, and when you’re half-crazy and screaming, they’ll haul you off to the south and throw your ass under a nightmare’s mundo tree.”

  “I don’t need to shoot all of you, just a few,” Tam told them. “Who’s first?”

  “Me.” “I am.” “Shoot me.” “Me first,” they all chimed in at once.

  Clever ploy. Tam chose, picked Sian Hmong as the woman most likely to break. She shivered as he pointed the pistol her way. The woman took a deep breath. Braced herself for it, and nodded that he should go ahead.

  Tam hesitated. The last thing he needed was a martyr.

  “Nice try. But I have a better idea. You’re all going to live. Wait. Amend that. You’ll be alive if you can call it that. I think you’ll spend the next year of your lives chained to a post in solitary confinement out at the mine. It’s going to be your families who pay the price for your disobedience. Most of you have children. Spouses. Good friends. People you care about. Let’s kill them first. One at a time, starting tomorrow.”

  “How’s that?” Lee Halston asked, the first sign of uncertainty in his eyes.

  “Tomorrow I will bring out one each of your children. You will watch them die. Be able to look them in the eyes, see that last moment of absolute fear as they plead with you to save them.”

  “Works for me,” Amal Oshanti said, a wry smile on her lips. “You shoot a kid, you won’t last out the day. Let alone get us to the mine and this new prison you think you’re building.”

  “Brave words,” Tamarland told them. What the hell? Even Halston was nodding, the resolve back.

  “You don’t get it,” Bernie Monson told him. “People were suspicious about your census shit. The fact that you had those Turalon flunkies start arresting people? The rest of the town’s alerted. Waiting to see what happens. You harm a single one of us, you’ll never set foot outside of this building again.”

  “We’re not Corporate,” Ruben Miranda told him. “Me? I work on the other side of the fence. Farming. I wake up each day knowing Donovan can kill me. You come here, think you can run us the way the Corporation runs those mindless drones back in Solar System? We don’t need you, amigo. We got each other.”

  “So shoot us,” Tomashev said. “Best way to be sure you’re dead by sundown.”

  “We have a saying,” Dushku added. “On Donovan, stupidity is a death sentence.”

  “It’s the prison,” Tamarland decided. Damn it, they might have a point. Disappeared was a lot better than dead. It created uncertainty in the community.

  He walked to the door, calling, “Chief Officer? I need that bus ready to transport prisoners.”
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  “Yes, sir,” Tallisvilli, standing by the door, called back. “Um, sir? Thought you might like to know. We’ve got people on the roofs across the way.”

  “Well? It’s starting to rain. Maybe they’re fixing leaks.”

  Allison had stepped out of his office, was listening, some deep knowledge smoldering behind her troubled blue eyes.

  “Nobody fixes roofs with optically scoped rifles, Director.” Tallisvilli slowly shook his head and turned back to the window.

  “Tam?” Allison said. “None of your hostages so much as budged, did they?”

  “It’s the first move in a long game. They’re still thinking they have a chance.”

  “So do you,” Allison said. “Go to the radio room, Tam. Call Torgussen to set the shuttle down close to the fence. Get out while you can.”

  “You taking their side?”

  “No.” She gave him a sober gaze. “I’m just trying to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you people?”

  “Try as you might, Tam, you can’t trap the wind in a can. If you can get Vixen to send a shuttle, at least you’ll have a chance.”

  “No one is going to attempt any sort of silly insurgency, let alone free my sulking future collaborators.” He stepped back, nodded at the guard, and opened the conference room door.

  Conversation stopped. All eyes went to him as he strode over, reached in a pocket, and laid a square lump of what looked like light gray clay in the center of the table.

  “Anyone know what that is?” he asked mildly.

  “Yeah,” Monson said warily. “Magtex. Enough to blow this side of the dome off.”

  “Very good.” Tamarland reached out again, using his thumb and forefinger to drive what looked like a small and decorative pin into the block’s center. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is a detonator. A clever device that’s keyed to my personal frequency. I need only send a command through my implants and you all go away.”