The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III

by David Drake

  “My body armor,” Spencer said frantically, his voice a bit muffled as he peeled off the tunic. “The first cop, the one who tailed you to the park and then fired its stunner at me. One of the stun needles must have been a low-power transmitter.” He reached behind himself and struggled with the body armor’s buckles.

  A rather determined looking matron stared at them in shock for a moment before she decided to take matters into her own hands. “Now see here, you, you deviant!” she shrieked. “We can’t have that here. Stop that at once or I shall summon the police.”

  Spencer wrestled his body armor off his chest and tossed it back in the direction of the storeroom door. It landed by a thick cement pillar. “Don’t bother, lady,” he said, “they’re already here.”

  Just then the cops got tired of looking for the door. The rear wall of the store burst inward, sending toys and games flying everywhere as a whole squad of autocops smashed their way in, repulsors at the ready. Their targeting systems finally got close enough to the tracer in the armor. Every one of them aimed and fired its repulsor at the same time, blasting away in an orgy of fire.

  The torso armor, and the floor around it, the ceiling of the room below, vanished in a hail of repulsor beads. The repulsor fire started chewing away the support column next to where the armor had been—had been, because the armor was shredded down to shards in the first half-second of fire. Ricochets and impact fragments bounced everywhere, slamming into bystanders, ripping into shelves and toys, even toppling two of the cops.

  The stalwart matron got caught by a flying hunk of concrete that broke her head open. She fell in a bloody pulp. And still the damn things kept firing. Needlessly, endlessly, blasting away, determinedly trying to destroy what no longer existed.

  Spencer watched in horror. The sort of mistake a computer would make, he thought.

  The three of them came to themselves at the same moment. They turned and ran for the exit, heard but did not see the toy store ceiling give way, burying the cops and the trapped civilians, living and dead, under tons of rubble.

  They ran flat out, with no thought to proper escape doctrine or seeking cover anymore. Behind them, they could hear the toy store continue to collapse in on itself.

  Why, Spencer wondered, thinking of all the dead and wounded. Why would anyone want to kill us so much?

  Sisley Mannerling stumbled closer to the mall’s main exit, fighting to hang onto Captain Spencer as they battled the stream of panicky shoppers pouring out the doors. Everything around her was chaos, a sea of screaming faces, crying children, sirens blaring. Terror and panic had appeared with blinding speed, flat on the heels of the berserking autocops. Spencer forced his way toward the exit, and urged Sisley and Suss to come through after him. They found themselves moving through the doors and out into the clean air outside.

  They had been inside the mall for less than fifteen minutes, and now the place was a gutted wreck. Sisley wanted to sit down on the curb, curl up and collapse—but this woman Suss would not let her. She dragged Sisley along behind her, Captain Spencer coming up behind.

  Suss stopped in front of a sleek-looking aircar parked by the side of the road. She did something with a gadget she took from her pocket, and the car doors swung open. It dawned on Sisley that they were stealing the car. Suss got into the driver’s seat. Captain Spencer half-guided, half-lifted Sisley into the car. She wanted to protest, to run away and be done with these people. But then came another thudding roar behind them as another part of the arcade collapsed.

  This was no place to be, Sisley decided. She allowed herself to be strapped into the back seat.

  And then Suss hit the power, and the car grabbed for sky.

  Chapter Nine

  Data

  Suss brought the aircar in for a landing in the middle of Undertown, on the far side of København from the ruined shopping arcade. But she wanted some distance from the excitement before she dumped the vehicle.

  And you couldn’t get much further from an upper-crust human shopping zone than Undertown, at least in spirit. Spencer looked around nervously as they stepped from the car. It was a crumbling street, lined on either side with tired old four- and five-story buildings that looked as if they were sagging into each other. Everything was muddy or grey. Trash scuffled across the road, blown by a wan little breeze that seemed to have no enthusiasm for its work. The road, the sidewalk, every flight of stairs and every bit of stonework seemed to be crumbling with age and neglect.

  The air was ripe with the smells of what might be Cernian cooking, or rotting corpses, or perhaps both.

  Every city on every planet of the Pact had an Undertown. Sometimes it was almost small enough to be dismissed as a minor blemish on civic pride. More often, as with København, Undertown was the biggest section of town, an open festering wound, a hideous indictment of everything that was wrong with the Pact.

  Spencer, struggling to keep his repulsor out of sight under his jacket, watched the surrounding buildings, not sure who or what he was watching for.

  He spotted a child, a Cernian, peering down from a fourth-story window at him. Perhaps Captain Allison Spencer was the first human that baby had ever seen—while living in a city ruled by humans. A city where the Cernians alone would outnumber the humans in twenty years, if the demographic projections were right. Add in all the “alien” races together, and the humans had been a minority here for a generation.

  Change would have to come, and come fast, if the Pact was to survive. Sooner or later, change would come, inevitably. But would the Pact still be there at the end of it? Spencer decided not to worry about it just now. They had more immediate problems.

  “We’ve got to get off the street,” Suss announced. “Santu, where are we?”

  “This is Drucker Lane,” it said. “The cross street up ahead is Fourth. There’s a flophouse about ten blocks down Fourth if you turn right.”

  “Clean?” Suss asked, asking not about its sanitation, but safety from cops and surveillance.

  “Last time the KT did a check of approved safehouses, it was. But that was ten years ago. No KT operative has been in the place since.”

  “Well, then, it’s about time we paid a call,” Suss replied, trying to sound safer and more confident than she was. “Let’s go.”

  They set off down the street, trying not to be noticed.

  It was instantly obvious that that was a forlorn hope. Eyes watched their progress from every shop window. Every passerby stared at them. Suss fumed silently, outwardly ignoring the attention they were getting. Every set of eyes was a potential informer. Maybe human cops didn’t come down here, but every law of nature said the police would have to have a good network of stool pigeons. Some bright Capuchin—and there was no other kind—was going figure out that a human cop downtown might pay a little something to know where in Undertown three humans had got to.

  But, dammit, no other part of town was likely to get them where they needed to go.

  They reached Fourth Street and made the turn, Spencer leading the way and visibly twitchy, his hand tending to stray toward his hidden repulsor.

  “Take it easy, Al,” Suss said to him gently. “We’ll live longer if they don’t think we’re trigger-happy. Sisley—what are race relations like at the moment around here?”

  “No worse than usual, but that’s not very good. No riots recently, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s not very reassuring,” Suss said. “Oh, hell,” she added suddenly.

  The others weren’t as quick to spot it as she was, but they recognized the trouble when they saw it. A gang of Capuchins was ambling out of one the buildings up the block. No doubt they had been alerted by some sort of lookout.

  Spencer felt the sweat on his hands. The repulsor was tucked inside his jacket, out of sight. Guns weren’t going to solve this. He knew it would be suicide to reach for the repulsor, but his hands longed to hold a weapon.

  Twelve of them, Spencer thought. Strange. They were supposed
to be so solitary. The humans came up to the Capuchins and stopped a few meters from them. A short, slender individual, a female as best Spencer could tell, stepped forward from the others.

  “Humans don’t come here much,” she observed, speaking with a smooth, precise, upper-class accent.

  Spencer was about to reply when Suss stepped forward. “No, we don’t,” she agreed.

  Suss and the Capuchin stared at each other without speaking for at least a minute, while the rest of the Capuchins, who seemed to be serving as some sort of a bodyguard, watched not only the other humans, but the streets as well. The silence went on and on, and Spencer felt himself getting nervous. He stared at the female Capuchin himself.

  She seemed young, vigorous, as best he could judge such things. Her body was small, slender, graceful. Her arms were longer than a human’s, her legs shorter, and she carried herself with knees bent slightly—all evidence that Capuchins were still in large part arboreal. Her body fur was rust-colored, short, soft-looking and clean. The skin on her face was hairless. Her pinkish, thin-lipped muzzle was framed with a cowl of black fur. Her flattened nose and dark, piercing eyes made her look to Spencer like one of the scribes or theologians of ancient Earth.

  Still the Capuchin stared silently at Suss, and Suss stared right back without saying a word.

  It was giving Spencer the creeps. He wanted to say something, anything, just for the sake of having words to hear. Why wasn’t Suss saying anything more?

  Suss was resisting the urge herself, telling herself she knew what she was doing. But she had to trust in her xenopsychology training. The silence made humans nervous, but probably it was refreshing to the taciturn Capuchins, who expected humans to natter on endlessly.

  What, after all, could Suss say? “Please let us by?” “Can we go now?” As soon as she said anything further, she would be admitting the weakness of her position. To the Capuchin, it wasn’t a question of who would blink first—it was a test to see if this human had sense enough to keep her mouth shut when she had nothing to say, had the sense to keep quiet and thus save face. Suss was forcing the Capuchin to show her hand first.

  Finally, the Capuchin spoke. “I am Dostchem. And I don’t think we want humans here. That brings cops. That brings trouble. That’s bad for business.”

  She swung her prehensile tail around and scratched herself under her chin. “So why don’t you get the hell out of here?”

  Suss subvocalized into her implant mike. “Talk to me, Santu. Have you got anything on this one? Anything from the local files you downloaded?”

  “Hang on a second,” Santu answered back through the mastoid implant. “Checking the local phone listings. Hey, pay dirt! Dostchem Horchane, business address 199331 Fourth Street, instrument maker. Stand by—yep, she’s on the list of approved subcontractors supplied by harbor master for work on the Duncan. Of course, practically every tech in town is on that list, and practically every Capuchin is a tech. Hah!—also suspected connections to organized labor, maybe organized crime. Possibilities present themselves.”

  “Nice work, Santu. Any theories on what she’s scared of? Link with Spencer’s AID and see if it’s got anything.” She cleared her throat and spoke out loud. Switching back and forth from subvocalization always made her voice hurt.

  “You have more worries than that, Dostchem Horchane,” Suss said. She gestured to the big Capuchins that surrounded Dostchem. “Otherwise would you inflict so much company upon your prized solitude? You must be in danger to pay so many to shield you. And it must be danger from humans, or you would not trouble yourself to confront us. But I don’t know you, or have any interest in your business.”

  “Sorry, Boss,” Santu whispered to her. “Neither of us have any further data. You’re on your own.”

  Suss swallowed hard—and then, suddenly, she figured out which humans Dostchem had been expecting. The harbormaster’s heavies. It had to be.

  “You’re right,” Dostchem said. “Now that I’ve seen you myself, it’s obvious you’re not the humans I’m watching for. They are stupider than you, for one thing. And they talk too much. And please don’t pretend you knew my name before you came here. I assume your AID told you.”

  “I wasn’t going to pretend any such thing,” Suss lied smoothly. “This meeting is nonetheless fortuitous. Am I right in assuming that the harbormaster takes much of the repair fee that is meant to go to you?”

  “He’s always gouged us,” the Capuchin allowed cautiously.

  “But with our ship, the Duncan in port for repairs, all of a sudden the harbormaster got greedy, and he wanted a bigger cut. Right? Then you said no to the higher bribe, and so did your fellow Capuchin techs—that glee club behind you—and you were expecting us to be a delegation of thugs from the master, threatening you to come around if you know what’s good for you. I guessed wrong at first. The other Capuchins aren’t your guards; they’re the other union leaders.”

  Dostchem snorted uneasily and the other Capuchins furled their tails up around themselves. That was supposed to be a sign of nervousness, if the xenoentho crowd had got something right for a change.

  “Maybe you don’t talk too much, but you certainly say too much,” Dostchem said.

  “Then I will say more. Aid us now, cooperate with us—and the harbormaster need not take a cut at all.”

  There was a brief, stunned silence as the Capuchins digested that offer, a silence suddenly overtaken by an excited chatter that seemed to be taking place in three languages at once. Suss looked up to Spencer, seeking his approval. Spencer was tempted to protest, but stopped himself. After all, what business was it of his whether or not a corrupt harbormaster made a profit? And it occurred to Spencer that they were going to need some help surviving in this city—it might as well come from someone they could repay. Maybe. Repairs to the ship were going to be delayed, but it seemed the wrong moment to point out that Duncan was heading back into orbit for a while. He nodded once, very slightly.

  Finally, Dostchem turned and spoke for the Capuchins while the others in the group dispersed immediately, as if eager to get away from each other. “Agreed. Our strike was perhaps unwise anyway. We were inspired by Chairman Jameson. He promised to resolve such graft when he took over StarMetal, but nothing ever came of it. We will assist you where we can, and you will provide our guild with direct work contracts, without going through the harbormaster. What is it you want to do?”

  “First off,” Suss said, “I wonder if we couldn’t continue negotiations off the street.” She tried to speak without letting her relief show. “We were headed to a place we know—”

  Santu supplied smoothly, “The La Atsefni Arms.”

  “—the La Atsefni Arms.”

  Dostchem flicked her tail derisively. “Your information is out of date. That place burned to the ground two years ago. It was not by accident, and good riddance. I shall lead you to my own place. There is a spare room there you can use without disturbing me.”

  Without saying more, she turned and led them down the street. The humans followed—nervously.

  Dostchem turned in at a crumbling sancrete building. By the look of it, the place had been meant as affordable housing for low-income humans, then abandoned by humans when the “aliens” started moving into the area, perhaps a century before. It certainly didn’t look suited to aboreal beings. Dotschem scuttled up the outside stairs and through the exterior door without turning to see if the humans were still with her. Once inside, she led them up four rickety flights of plastic steps and into her apartment.

  Spencer and Suss hesitated on the threshold of the flat. This was not the sort of place they had expected. An apartment in such a building should have been as shabby and worn and dreary as everything else in Undertown—but these rooms, modest as they were, fairly gleamed with elegance and dignity.

  There was little in the rooms, just a few pieces of simple handsome furniture, a rug on the floor, and two or three unidentifiable but handsome wall decorations that were
not quite painting, not quite sculpture, but something in between. Everything perfectly, gleamingly clean. The effect was not one of barrenness, but of a deliberate and reserved sparseness and simplicity.

  This was not merely a place to stay out of the rain, but a quiet refuge, a retreat. The three humans stepped into it cautiously, almost shyly, knowing they were stepping into a most private place.

  Dostchem vanished into an inner room, closed the door behind her, and reappeared in moment or two, wearing a long flowing red gown of brightest color, decorated with the most delicate of abstract patterns picked out in a dozen colors of thread. It reminded Suss of the ancient kimonos she had seen in books about Japan. Dostchem now wore a cap also red, but of a more subdued color, almost a burgundy.

  Dostchem slipped a hand inside the sleeve of her robe and produced a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. She put them on, balancing them carefully on her flat, upturned nose, and took a seat by the window, looking even more like one of the wise old mystics or philosophers of Earth’s lost ages.

  She gestured impatiently toward the other chairs in the room. The humans sat down carefully. The chairs, intended for the lighter Capuchin frame, were small for humans and just a trifle on the flimsy side. Spencer’s chair creaked.

  Dostchem looked at each of them in turn, her solemn, spectacled face giving very little away. Suss wondered if the absurdly old-fashioned spectacles were merely there for effect, as unlike the Capuchin way of doing things as that seemed. Then she remembered reading somewhere that corrective surgery did not work on Capuchin eyes.

  “I see that you are interested in my garments,” Dotschem said. “These are the proper robes for a scholar of instrumentation, such as is worn by all of that rank on my planet. On this unpleasant world, I would be scorned in the street if I chose to wear them—most of all by the degenerate, illiterate Capuchins that seem to have settled here. But in my own home, I will not deny myself the honors of my station in life.