Up to this point I had made my presentation about as boring as humanly possible, which had Catford squirming. Once I saw I had him where I wanted him, all antsy and aching to do something, I shifted over into a much more enthusiastic mode of speech, and started things building.
"This operation will be one that requires extreme precision. It will be a commando operation, no doubt about it, undertaken under adverse circumstances. No two ways about it, the operation stinks, but once this first glorious blow is struck, the howls of anger and outrage will echo throughout the city.
This attack could tumble the government all by itself, as a flood of resentment courses through every household. Because of the nature of the operation, we will have to choose the best we have to carry it out. Their victory shall be our victory, and the government will be sucked down the tubes as a result."
I accented the military words, like "attack" and "victory." Precision got emphasis, too. Catford, hearing that this one attack might decide it all, was inclined to scoff-based on his initial expression-but then he got to thinking. He didn't want to be shut out. Even worse than not having a 'Mech to pilot was having one and finding out your efforts would not be required.
He raised a hand. "You're describing the attack as a far more military operation than your initial discussions led us to believe were going to be coming off. Is that a fair characterization?" I nodded. "Yes, this will require precision demolitions work. Some very good people are going to have to get their hands dirty."
He looked past me to Gypsy. "While I see the logic of this plan, and I agree that water is vital, I am wary of Mr. Donelly being able to carry off a military operation. I think it would be best if I were to lead the actual penetration of the facility and to oversee the tactical aspects of things. I have no fear of getting my hands dirty at all."
Gypsy frowned. "Are you certain, Major? This is Mr. Donelly's operation, and you would be usurping his power."
"No, no, not at all. He will be in command. I will just direct the military angle of things." He stood and looked around the room. "Siwek, Johnstone and Bridger, your companies have cross-trained personnel in them who can handle this. I would think a dozen to eighteen people would be right for what you have in mind, Mr. Donelly."
I nodded again, solemnly this time. "I'd thought of two dozen, but you would have a better idea about that than I would."
"Indeed, I would." The subordinates he'd mentioned by name nodded or raised hands to indicate they would go along with him. Catford moved to the front of the room and joined me beside the holodisplay. "Well, we have the people we need."
Gypsy shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sam, but he does have the experience that would give him an edge here."
"I know, and I just want this to work."
"It will." Catford grinned broadly and his lieutenants returned that smile with confidence. "So, which of these purification plants are we hitting?" "We're not."
"What?" Catford looked at me angrily. "But after all you said . . ."
"Oh, water is very important, Major, in two ways. It comesin to the house and it goesout .
Where it goes out, is where we go in."
Needless to say, Catford's face flushed-no pun intended-as the reality of what he'd volunteered for came to him. Others in the room were kind enough not to laugh, though smiles did occur when they recalled I said the job stunk. Catford, having claimed the glory of the assignment, and having avowed he didn't mind getting his hands dirty, was stuck.
He had to-no, I'll resist that pun-fish or cut bait and he decided to fish. This was good, because I really did need his people to carry the whole thing off.
Two days later, after a day and a half of torrential rains, we put the operation into effect. When Manville's downtown district had been created, the Broad River was channeled rather tightly within levees hidden by parks and walkways. Buried deep in the earth, paralleling the river, were massive storm sewers that handled all the runoff. According to the guidefiles I'd gotten at the store, and the wonderful tour of the storm sewers offered by Manville Public Service, during the storm season the sewers would actually carry more water than the river, and all of it had to flow to the water treatment plants before it could be allowed to run back into the river itself.
The water treatment plants had several holding basins to deal with this excess water. Massive pipes would channel it into these effluent lakes, where it would wait until it could be processed through the plants. Our operation demanded that the sluice gates that would pour the water back into the plant be blown open, and that the anti-reflux valves in the plant itself likewise be jammed open.
Catford and his commandos, working by the light of lightning, accomplished these goals at 2 A.M. on the sixth. What this resulted in was an incredible pressure wave where millions of metric tons of water flowed back into the city's sewer system. When you have ten-meter diameter pipes flowing at capacity, and their load is transferred to pipes running into homes-with their pipes being thirty centimeters in diameter-the result is rather spectacular.
Lucky homeowners on the west side of the city had old pipes that burst somewhere in their yards. Water boiled and bubbled, churning turf and mud into a stinking swamp that, a year later, would actually result in a pretty good lawn. Apartment dwellers were similarly fortunate if the pipes burst in their building's basement.
But the unfortunate-and there were many of them according to news stories-were those people who had good pipes and, for whatever reason, happened to be enjoying a bath or a moment of solitude when the wave hit. Raw sewage geysered into homes, staining ceilings in cases where the flow was unimpeded. It filled tubs to overflowing, backed into dishwashers, dripped from sinks into kitchens, basements and vanities.
In a couple of places the larger street pipes burst, creating instant sinkholes that sucked down parked hovercars and left fetid lakes slowly creeping along the streets. In some places a drenched and irate citizenry raised the alarm immediately, while others were left to awaken to peculiar smells and woefully soggy carpeting.
And the toll on businesses, especially in the lowest areas of the city, was equally devastating.
Schools were closed on the west side and Count Germayne appeared on Tri-Vid to ask that anyone who did not need to leave their homes just stay there while the city cleaned up. While his reasoning was sound, no one wanted to linger in a cesspit of a house, especially when anything that went into one sink just bubbled back up into a tub or the basement. The citizens started burning from the start, especially when the richer folks located in the hills were reported to have escaped disaster.
Aldrington Emblyn swung into action immediately, which was great. One of his subsidiary firms was a housecleaning concern that had grown out of the staff he had for his hotels. The company, NextToGodliness LLC, offered an immediate Good Neighbor discount of ninety percent, and hired people to expand the workforce. He also brought folks who had been flooded out of their homes into empty rooms in his hotels, which likewise endeared him to the populace.
The Germayne government countered by opening a variety of municipal garages and hangars where folks could camp out in donated blankets, sleeping bags and cots. Emblyn raised that bid by donating more blankets, pillows and spare beds. The Germaynes suffered an additional setback when vehicles they parked on the street to open a garage got swallowed up in a sewage swamp.
The local Tri-Vid media compounded our victory with their profiles that showed Germayne officials being inept. At first the disaster was explained away as a catastrophic failure of the restraining dikes. The rush of water just tore the blown gates away and erased all signs of our blasting. It wasn't until two days after the event that they found the doors and then started to claim it was a deliberate act of sabotage. Once they made that claim, all manner of hoots and tweets floated to the surface declaring that there had been a cover-up and that evidence had been faked, which covered our trail better than I could have hoped.
On the domestic front, Catford was left in
a quandary. Everyone congratulated him for pulling the job off, and I gave him the lion's share of the credit. He knew he couldn't trust me, but I was quite sincere, so that confused him and, I'm sure, made him even more determined to get rid of me. He'd have to wait, though, until one of my plans failed.
Putting myself in Catford's shoes-soggy as they were-I figured out that if one of my plans did not fail on its own, he'd make sure to tank one. This meant I had to make sure he had enough to do that pleased him, that he stayed his hand. I also realized he'd now be trying to come up with operations that would continue doing what I was doing, so I'd have to be fighting him on that front. I was pretty sure I could stay out in front of him per se, but he had a brain trust to be bouncing things off and I didn't.
Could be one of them would come up with a good idea and I'd have to scramble.
The success of the attack did win a lot of converts to LIT. Some were thoughtful in their analysis and insights, clearly cadging for future work, whereas others simply said, "That was good."
Catford's attempts to paint me as someone stupid simply failed. I still didn't have the full confidence of those I had to work with, but they'd be willing to listen in the future, which was important. If I could offer them plans that would let them get paid without getting killed, they'd go along and I could minimize collateral damage.
Gypsy had been very generous in his praise for the effort, but on the seventh he surprised me by handing me a three-thousand-stone bonus in its C-bill equivalent. "Our master was pleased with your effort. He sent this money to you to express his pleasure."
I fanned the bills. "How much did you skim?" He blinked, then smiled. "Twenty percent. I did sell him on the plan, after all."
"More like forty, I'm sure. Mine is the bigger piece though, so that's okay."
Gypsy smiled. "Ah, but there is more. He wants you to use that money to buy yourself suitable evening clothes. Two nights from now you'll be in Contressa at a little gala. The Emblyn Palace Contressa is opening its main facility and Mr. Emblyn is throwing a party for a thousand of his closest friends."
"And I'm numbered among them?" "You are now."
"When do we leave?" Gypsy shook his head. "Notwe , just you."
I frowned. "You don't know me well enough to know I can deal with this sort of thing without causing trouble. I'm a wild card. You can't trust me that much."
"I know that during your exploration of the city you picked up a well-tailored suit."
"You were watching me?" "And you would not have watched me were our roles reversed?" "Point taken. Okay, so I can dress well."
"And you are very quick. The way you dealt with Catford was most politically astute. I might have found you a crude lumberjack on Helen, but that was a disguise." Gypsy smiled slowly. "But, it does not matter if I trust you or not. My master expresses his wishes and I carry them out. He wants you there, so you will be there."
"Anyone else I know?" "None of our little family, no. You'll be a guest of the resort for the weekend, then come back here Monday." He nodded slowly. "I'll be fascinated to hear your report on the whole thing. Keep your eyes and ears open."
"I shall."
"One thing, Sam."
"Yes?" "This access to my boss. It's a onetime thing." His eyes became cold. "If you try to cut me out of things, your plans will live on well after you, and we shall mourn your passing."
26
In war, as in love,
we must come into contact before we can triumph.
- Napoleon
Contressa, Garnet Coast District
Basalt
Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere
9 February 3133
I opted not to let Gypsy's threat color my plans to enjoy the weekend. I took the time to do a bit more research into Emblyn's hotel properties and learned he'd been sent to Basalt to run a string of hotels for an off-world concern. According to business journal articles, when he arrived he found things an absolute shambles. The hotels were making no money and this was because money was being skimmed all over the place.
The articles put a positive spin on what happened next, making him into a white knight, but I was looking from a different perspective. The core of the problem he had to deal with was that while The Republic was prospering, people didn't need a world like Basalt as a resort. There were other, more famous places, like Terra, where they could spend their time. And a lot of their money went to things that improved their own homes and communities, so they had even less inducement to travel to a backwater world to get rained on.
Emblyn realized he couldn't possibly make the hotels make money without significant concessions from the local government. He went to them and basically represented himself as having been sent to Basalt to close the chain down since it was not profitable. He entered into a conspiracy with the government to give him significant tax breaks on the properties if he could put together a local consortium to buy the places and keep them open. He raised the capital he needed, then made the parent corporation an offer to buy the Basalt properties. The parent company sold them off to him, while keeping them affiliated, at the moment, with the chain. This gave him the benefit of some booking services thinking they were part of the chain, so his potential customer stream didn't suffer immediately.
Emblyn started upscaling things, and lobbied the local government to allow him to add casinos to his properties. Emblyn said it would bring a lot of money in from off-world, and it has, but has redistributed even more local wealth. A lot of it ended up in his pockets and three thousand of that was burning a hole in mine.
Emblyn was shrewd enough to know that if he could lower costs, he would boost profits, so he started buying into the various firms that serviced his hotels. Food wholesalers, liquor distributorships, breweries and the like sprang up or profited from his investments. With his direction, they expanded and suddenly became profit centers on their own. Most articles tried to put estimates on his total wealth, but I figured they were off considerably, no matter how generous they were.
Part of me wondered at how the man could want me at his party. Everything I'd said to Gypsy was true: I was a wild card and Emblyn had no way to judge me. For all he knew I could be there and when someone asked how I knew him I could say, "Remember the sewers backing up in Manville? I did that so he can take over the planet."
Clearly he wouldn't have asked for me to attend if he thought I was that stupid, so Gypsy must have given him a good impression of me. Likewise I imagined that he'd not have invited me if I were the sort who would be impressed with three thousand stones. Perhaps the invitation had been tentative, based on Gypsy's assessment of my reaction to the bonus.
I decided I would play things by the rules, but go in cautiously. There was only one place where I would press my luck. I doubted he would notice one way or another, but success would give me a bit more freedom to operate if I needed to do something quickly.
I packed my clothes and caught a hovershuttle up to Contressa. Taking a shuttle isn't very elegant, and the transport company had some really beat-up vehicles. I got put in one of the newer ones, however, while non-Anglos were directed to the older ones, and packed in tightly. While the shuttle didn't cost much, therewas a surcharge applied to those with almond eyes, and that disturbed me a great deal.
Even the newer shuttle wasn't all that comfortable, but it was half full and let me see more of the planet. Route One followed the eastern shore of the Broad River to the northern delta and Contressa. It skirted the edges of a major rain forest preserve and while I didn't see much more than some brightly colored birds and perhaps some apelike things, just seeing that much deep blue was very pleasant.
When I wasn't reading or staring out the window, I did check out the others on the shuttle.
Most were kids traveling home for the weekend from school. I suspected there had been a lot of communications traffic to and from Manville after the sewer backups, with worried parents demanding their children head home for a weekend. Some
older couples joined them, and far in the back I saw a young woman wearing a billed cap and big dark glasses-indicating she didn't want to be noticed, but attracting all the more notice for it. She wore very casual clothes, no makeup or jewelry, and was pretty enough that I could imagine her being some model or minor celeb traveling north for the resort opening. I'd probably see her later that night as someone's eye-candy arm-piece.
Whoever she was going to be adorning, he had to be pretty low-rent if he made her travel on the shuttle. I found it pretty easy to imagine her being a single mother who was working hard to support twin daughters. If that was the case, she'd clearly cashed in some first-class air transport ticket for this, so her kids could have new shoes.
Shoes that had been ruined because they'd been floating in sewage.
We arrived in Contressa in just over two hours. I only had one bag to get since I was just up for the weekend and I noticed she was traveling similarly light. She went for her bag, but a large man bodied her aside so he could grab a plasticene crate with some rat-dog-thing in it. As he waddled away cooing at Snookums-yes, the name was painted on the crate-I grabbed her bag and handed it to her.
The protest at my touching her stuff died quickly and she smiled. "Thank you."
"Not a problem. In the future don't get between a man and his snack."
She laughed and it was a pleasing sound. "More true than you know." She gave me a nod and turned to disappear into the crowd, taking advantage of the trough the fat man had plowed through it.
I wandered over to ground transportation and hired a hovertaxi to take me to the resort. The ride took a half hour and ran along the northern coast. It really was prime resort property, with beautiful white sandy beaches and patches of blue jungle matching the water in color. It was true that having wave after wave of clouds pass stripes of darkness over the earth was annoying, but between them I got a great view of the triangle of Basalt's moons. It was all pretty enough that I thought about trying to get Janella to join me here for a vacation.
BattleTech : Mechwarrior - Dark Age 01 - Ghost War (2002) Page 20
