I hadn’t had a lot of hope of getting ah-Quan out even before I found out his condition, because we didn’t have an elaborate travel cover, or spook gear to back it up, for him. Before this all blew up he was another security guy, one of a couple dozen. Now things were different, but not in a way that was going to do him much good, at least not right away. I wanted to see him, though, say something to him before I went. Med South was not that far below our executive offices so I took another elevator down and watched the crowds of people through the clear composite wall looking out on the wide South Tower atrium shaft. I’d been just a few levels lower in the atrium yesterday morning.
Was that all it was? Just a little over a day?
The meeting had been on Ten of Eight-Month Waning—the tenth day of the second (waning) half of the eighth month in the Varoki calendar. They named their days and months with even less imagination than most of their enterprises. It was no wonder Humans were starting to do well in the arts—the competition wasn’t all that tough. I blinked up my personal calendar to be sure I hadn’t lost a day somewhere. Nope. Today was Eleven of Eight-Month Waning.
I left the elevator and walked down the broad corridor toward the main entrance to Med South but slowed as I saw a half-dozen Varoki in military uniforms out front, arguing with a couple Munies. There was a time I would have viewed this as an opportunity to slip past all of them while they were distracted, but I have learned from experience that a more likely outcome is for both Varoki parties to find common ground in working their frustrations out on the Human.
I felt as much as heard the repetitive thudding bass of a mechnod band and altered course, following the sound to a narrower passage. I stopped and glanced at the soldiers and cops, still arguing, and I decided I should kill ten or twenty minutes to give them a chance to sort things out and go about their business.
I followed the passage, which led to a cul-de-sac surrounded by a half-dozen shop fronts. Two of them were shuttered and looked like they’d been closed for a while, and none of the others looked very prosperous, but the music escaped from an opened door leading to a dark room lit only by flickering colored lights. The sign above the door in both aGavoosh and aBakaa read “Koozaan’s Beverage Store.” Under it a sign in those languages as well as English read “Human’s Welcome!”
I resisted the effort to correct the punctuation, wrapped my left hand around the neuro-wand I carried folded up in my trouser pocket, and went in.
Varoki bars aren’t like Human bars. For one thing, there’s no actual bar, just tables and chairs and a doorway to the back room. Two Varoki in suits sat at one table, already drinking some pastel pink stuff and arguing. I grabbed a table close to the door and punched up the drink options on the smart surface. They had what claimed to be scotch, a label I’d never heard of: Klan MacKlacklahaan, which claimed to be “the finest blended single malt scotch on Hazz’Akatu.”
Despite some doubts about the existential possibility of a blended single malt scotch, I ordered one over ice. I paid with the fund card associated with my travel cover, just to establish my identity and head off questions. This was the sort of situation where cash would have attracted unwanted attention. I added a nice tip in advance and pretty soon a middle-aged Varoki male server brought the drink, set it down politely, and then returned to the rear of the shop. No small talk but no challenging looks either.
I took a sip and was surprised that it actually resembled scotch after all, and not even the worst I’d ever had. Of course, given what drink fabricators could turn out, there wasn’t a lot of percentage in selling rotgut, which would come out of the same fabricator and cost almost as much to make.
Although I preferred jazz, the repetitive pounding of the mechnod music was strangely relaxing. Instead of distracting me, it cleared my mind. I stirred my scotch with the plastic straw and wondered what the hell I was doing here. Talk to ah-Quan before I got out of town, sure. But why?
I couldn’t take ah-Quan with me to Kootrin, so what was the point? He wasn’t counting on a visit and it would just endanger both of us. I could send him flowers.
So why was I hanging around in a bar watching the ice in my scotch melt? Why wasn’t I already on a shuttle for Kootrin? I was stalling. I was killing time, coming up with excuses not to get on that shuttle. I couldn’t figure out why, but it had to stop, right now. Get up, book the shuttle, and get the hell out of this mess.
I left most of my drink on the table and walked down the arched passage to the main corridor. When I got there I saw more military types at the main entrance than before. The Munies were gone and a couple high-ranking Varoki officers in the dress grays of the uBakai astro-naval service walked into the hospital like they were in a hurry. Whatever was going on in there, it was more heat than I needed, so I reluctantly turned and headed back to the elevator.
Why reluctantly? That didn’t make any more sense than me being here in the first place. I’d already decided to skip a visit to ah-Quan, so why had all that extra security suddenly made going in more attractive? Was it the little kid in me, curious about what all the activity was about? Or the adolescent pushing back against all those authority figures telling me what I could and couldn’t do? Or the danger junkie, hungry for an adrenaline high? Maybe.
But just maybe it was the loner, looking for any excuse to put off going back to all the responsibilities I’d accumulated over the last two years. Responsibilities I’d never had before.
Chapter Fifteen
I got in the express elevator going up and requested Level 237. I shared the compartment with a Varoki couple who moved to one side to give me some space, maybe because I was Human, maybe because of my dark expression.
I loved Marr in a way I’d never loved anyone in my life, in a way that had caught me by surprise because I’d thought it was beyond my capacity. And Tweezaa…sometimes it was hard to believe she wasn’t my child, my own flesh. And soon there would be a son, one more person to cherish, one more to enrich my life beyond anything I had ever imagined.
One more to let down.
I closed my eyes and just stood there for a while as the floors raced past, faster and faster, and I wondered if these things ever had brake failures, if they ever just kept accelerating until they blew right through the roof and tossed their passengers a thousand meters into the sky, to reach the top of their trajectory, pause there for a moment, and then start that long fall back.
I opened my eyes when the elevator began to decelerate. No brake failure today. It stopped at 200 and the Varoki couple left, silent and avoiding eye contact with me. As the doors closed I blinked up a search for travel services in the city. Marr always booked our travel through the office but it occurred to me someone might be watching for that. I picked the first service that came up and put in a booking for a shuttle departure to Kootrin from the Praha-Riz rooftop terminal, as soon as available.
We Are Sorry But Due To A Defense Ministry Night Aerial Travel Quarantine Over Sakkatto City All Shuttle Departures Have Been Delayed Until Hour Seven, Twelve of Eight-Month Waning. Would You Like To Make A Morning Booking?
“Yes,” I answered, confirmed the booking through my travel cover, and closed the connection.
Night? It was only coming up on Hour Fifteen, and this time of year it stayed light at least until Seventeen. Somebody was nervous, not that I could blame them, but it was getting in the way of my efforts to be a responsible adult.
I left the elevator and made my way to the apartment, went in, and paused in the anteroom to check the security monitors inside. Bela and Pablo were still strapped into their chairs, so I opened the inner doors and joined them.
“Change of plans, boys,” I said as soon as I got inside. “My shuttle doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning, so I’ll have to keep you under wraps until then.”
“I need go bathroom,” Bela said.
“Yeah, not surprising. What I’m going to do is cut you loose and lock you both up in the guest suite until I’m ready to leave. T
here’s a bathroom in there, and smart walls if you get bored. There’s also a comm sensor, so if you pull those jammers off your necks and try to call for help, I’m going to have to do something drastic. Understand?”
They both nodded and I traded the folding neuro-wand for a neuro-pistol from the gun safe. I moved it into my right hand, cradled in the sling, and took my old Kizlyar desantnyk knife from its scabbard in the safe, holding it in my left hand.
“I’m going to cut your feet free with the knife. Then I want you to get up, carrying the chairs strapped to your backs, and walk to the guest suite, down that hallway. Sit down in there with your backs to the doorway and I’ll cut your hands free. Do not stand up until I am out the door or I will stun you.
“This blade is very sharp, so try not to move while I’m cutting the tape. I’m more of a gun guy than a knife guy, so if you try something really stupid, like jumping me, and I have to cut you, I can’t guarantee it won’t kill you.”
“Understood,” Bela said. “We do as ask, not cause more trouble. Most people would kill us. I would kill us. Is very good of you not to. I am sorry we try hurt you, Mr. Naradnyo.”
“Well, I’ll make a deal with you, Bela. If you don’t tell anyone I went soft and let you live, I won’t tell them about getting the drop on you.”
“Is deal. Thank you, Mr. Naradnyo,” he said.
All very nice, but I still made them go through every step of the transfer procedure.
Once they were securely locked in I made my way to the living room, poured myself a real scotch, and walked out onto the balcony to think things through. I considered taking along one of the cigars Marr got me as a birthday present but I wasn’t in a good enough mood. Cigars should always be celebratory, even if only in some small way, like smoking one with a friend.
I thought for a moment and then went back in and got one, came out, and settled into a lounger. I snipped the end, got it going, and commed Marr.
Sasha? Are you all right?
“I’m fine, Babe. I’m out on a balcony, enjoying a birthday cigar and thinking about you.”
Can you get to us?
“Yeah. They shut down transportation for the night, but I have a ride lined up for tomorrow. No details, understand?”
Yes. As long as you’re safe you can tell me later. I miss you.
I watched a military shuttle bank and flare for a landing at one of Katammu-Arc’s upper bays and I swallowed to relieve the tightness in my throat.
“God, I miss you, too.”
* * *
I finished my cigar and then showered and packed so I wouldn’t have to bother with it in the morning. I warmed up some frozen leftovers, and even made Bela and Pablo dinner, used the intercom to make them move into their bathroom while I opened the door and put the plates on the table, and then gave then the all-clear after I was out and the door locked again. All that took an hour or so and by then the light was fading. It was a beautiful autumn night, though, and I took another scotch out onto the balcony. Maybe things were settling down. I set the internal alarm on my commlink, stretched out on the lounge, sipped my scotch, and eventually drifted off to sleep.
I woke up about Two Hour on the Twelfth and at first I wasn’t sure why. I still had almost four hours before I had to leave for the shuttle. Something had changed in the background pattern of noise.
I stood up and stretched, then went to the railing and looked down. The city didn’t look much different than it had before except now it was dark, lit by street and building lights, scattered fires, and little patches of twinkling light here and there. It took me a minute to realize the faint sound of automatic weapons fire had woken me, and that’s what those little twinkling lights were. The sounds were muted and got to me after the light, so they didn’t really seem associated with each other.
The firing wasn’t continuous: a smattering here, then it would stop and there would be a cluster somewhere else, going on all over the slums of Sakkatto City. I had a set of long-range vision enhancement goggles somewhere in the apartment and I went in to find them. As soon as I did I heard Bela talking on the intercom.
“Mr. Naradnyo! Are you there? Mr. Naradnyo, better look this stuff on feed. Mr. Naradnyo, where you are?”
“I’m on it,” I said into the intercom and opened a vid feed on a smart wall. I didn’t have to search for more than five seconds before the images started coming up.
I was looking at a Munie checkpoint which had stopped a military vehicle, a wheeled APC—armored personnel carrier—in uBakai Army urban camo pattern. A dismounted Army officer argued with a Munie in full riot gear.
“This was live just five minutes ago from a municipal streetcam at the intersection of Deliverance Way and the eastern maintenance trunk line,” a female Human voice said in English. She sounded short of breath, as if from fear or excitement. I recognized her face in the corner of the picture, the same woman I’d noticed earlier, the one named Aurora.
The Munie in the feed became more heated, shouting at the officer, gesturing wildly. Just watching you could tell the Munies—worn down, jumped back up on stimulants, and scared—were taut as wires stretched right to the breaking point. And then the wire broke.
It was over almost instantly. The Munie pushed the officer back and went for his sidearm, probably a neuro-stunner, but before he even got it out of the holster the remote autogun on top of the ground forces APC punched him with a four-round burst, slammed him back against the police van parked to block the street. He crumpled to the pavement, clearly dead. The other four Munies opened fire with their assault rifles, hit the dismounted officer, and then the APC’s autogun went to continuous fire mode and just shredded them, opening up the side of the police van and setting it on fire in the process.
The clip ended. I sat down on the couch and started watching more lines of feed.
At first all anyone had was that one clip, played over and over. Then other streetcam clips started showing up. An abandoned Munie checkpoint, police van still in place. A different checkpoint with a gutted van and dead Munies on the pavement. A clip of Army soldiers pushing disarmed Munies, all of them with their wrists restrained behind their backs, through the rear hatch into an APC. All across the city the Army was moving in and disarming the Munies, except where they resisted, in which case they just cut them down.
I noticed the Army wasn’t taking over the checkpoints when they were done with the Munies; they just took off with their prisoners or left the bodies where they fell and moved on. They were creating a vacuum.
I also saw a clip of Varoki troopers loading a dozen panicky Katami, their feathery cranial membranes flaring and swaying, streaked with fear color, their short arms cuffed behind their backs, into the open hatch of an armored carrier. Another feed showed forlorn-looking Buran being herded along by MPs, looking like so many shuffling tree stumps. The Army apparently wasn’t crazy about aliens. I didn’t see any feed of Human prisoners, but I saw some bodies in very bad shape. No way of telling who’d killed them, but whoever it was, they’d really gotten into it.
Within an hour the feed heads reported military units in most government complexes in Sakkatto City, and then the other cities in the Commonwealth of Bakaa. I saw some fighting in other cities between police and Army units, and even reports of fights between Army units—“rebel” and “loyalist” although I wasn’t sure which was which.
Reports started coming that elements of the military high command had taken control of the government to stem the rising disorder and had appointed a provisional government for the duration of the emergency. Back on Earth they called this sort of move a coup. The reports were garbled at first, and sometimes contradictory, but as the sun started coming up, the heads of the provisional government addressed the nation over just about every feed channel. The address coming at dawn must have been meant to be symbolic.
The new head of state, appointed by the military, spoke first. He wore the uBakai astro-naval gray uniform with the rank insignia o
f a rear admiral, which seemed fairly junior to be the guy in charge. Either he was a figurehead or this was a Young Turk coup.
The feed caption identified him as Provisional President Talv e-Kunin’gaatz. He talked about rampant corruption in the Wat and the civilian government, how they no longer reflected the will of the people, how that was why the police, as instruments of the Wat, had tried to crush the spirit of the people, had murdered well over a thousand of them.
“As do all members of the armed forces of Bakaa,” he said, “I swore an oath to defend the people of Bakaa in time of peril. Whatever we all may differ over, no person within the sound of my voice can dispute that the Cotto’uBakaa now face a graver peril than at any time since the dawn of the Stellar Age. If I and other senior officers did not feel that the leaders of the civilian government had dishonored and abandoned their similar oaths, we would never have acted. But they have. So we have taken control of the government in the name of all uBakai. Discipline and values will replace corruption. The Municipal Police, who have shown their brutality and corruption, have been replaced by the Ground Forces Military Police, whom you will find to be stern but principled.”
He didn’t go on much longer; he spoke briskly and to the point. His commanding presence and self-confidence made him sound like he knew what he was doing, but he was astro-navy, and everything looks easier from orbit. If this admiral thought a bunch of Army MPs could just step in and seamlessly take over the police functions of one of the largest cities on Hazz’Akatu, he was delusional. Whatever lid the Munies had clamped on the Sakkatto pressure cooker had just been removed.
The next guy to speak was the vice-president-designate, none other than Elaamu Gaant. So that’s what all that astro-navy brass was doing at Med South earlier: chatting up Gaant and cutting a deal.
Maybe Gaant was part of the government to give it the veneer of civilian participation, or maybe to let the rioters know whose side the military was on. His head was swathed in spray-on bandages and I thought he had sort of a wild look in his eyes I hadn’t seen before. His speech ran longer than the admiral’s and it was…something else—a rambling rant about the destiny of the Varokiim, and the corruption not only of the uBakai Wat, but of the whole Cottohazz.
Come the Revolution - eARC Page 11
