The Game Players of Meridien

by Robert I. Katz

The two remaining cars stopped behind us in a V formation, blocking our rear. Eight more men emerged. Two of them carried flamethrowers and two had large metal tubes over their shoulders: rocket launchers. Rockets were bad. Our armor was not prepared to deal with rockets.

  Curtis shook his head, sighed heavily and pushed a button on a small control panel. Black smoke poured from the vehicle, filling the tunnel. Curtis handed me a mask with a small, self-contained oxygen tank and I put it on. He pulled out infra-red goggles, donned one pair and gave the others to the two guys up front. He didn’t give me one. He knew I didn’t need it. “Good luck,” he said.

  We opened our doors at the same time and rolled to the ground. Our assailants pointed their weapons wildly around them in the dark. They were blind but we could see them through the haze, outlined in infra-red. One of the guys with a flamethrower hit the trigger and a stream of jellied gasoline erupted and engulfed our car. Frantically, I scrabbled to the side and crept forward. I always carried both a gun and at least one knife and now I had a shotgun as well. It was hard moving on my stomach while holding the shotgun but I managed.

  They wore body armor but even the best armor will not protect against a shotgun blast to the face. Arms and legs are also weak points, as the armor covering the joints has to be light and flexible enough to permit mobility. I braced myself against the ground, aimed and fired at the one closest to me. His head disintegrated, blood spraying out against the tunnel wall, and the rest of his body went down.

  Concealed by black smoke, they were sitting ducks. Curtis shot one of the two carrying tube launchers in the head and one of the guards did the same for the second. We concentrated on the flamethrowers. The smoke would dissipate soon and flamethrowers would make a quick end of us if they were able to use them.

  I reached into my holster, pulled out my pistol and together, we shot six more, all in the legs. It’s not too hard if you can see and they can’t. They dropped and tried to drag themselves along the ground but they were going nowhere fast. By now, the smoke was beginning to thin and we outnumbered the ones who were left. My men swarmed those still on their feet and suddenly it was silent except for the moans of the wounded and the distant sound of sirens.

  Curtis rose to his feet, looking haggard. “What a fuck-up,” he muttered. He rubbed one hand against the side of his face, leaving trails of dirt on his cheek. “Tie them up,” he ordered, “and let’s get back to headquarters.” He smiled fiercely. “We have some questions to ask.”

  Chapter 20

  We kept a tight formation and drove fast, with sirens blaring and lights flashing from the tops of our vehicles. The traffic got out of our way. Three blocks from headquarters, we came to a wooden barrier set up across the road. At least thirty men in rag tag uniforms, clutching an assortment of rifles, were lined up on the other side of the barrier. They seemed to recognize our cars and as we approached, they leveled their guns and began to fire.

  Curtis looked at me. “Go through them,” I said.

  Luckily, they had neither rockets nor flamethrowers, and their bullets bounced off the limousine’s armor.

  When man fights car, man loses. This has always been true and it is true today. Apparently, they expected us to stop, which only showed that they were either insane or very stupid. We plowed through the barrier and then through the crowd, bodies thwacking wetly off our vehicles. A couple scrabbled onto the hood of the car and tried to shoot down through the top. Another clawed at the windshield. We ignored them and sped up, zig-zagged the vehicles and made a few sharp turns around convenient corners. Our attackers couldn’t hold on. I watched as one of them tumbled off, screaming, and lay still in the street behind us.

  I drew a shaky breath. There is something about naked hatred and rage directed at yourself that sobers the mind, and yet I was bewildered. Who were these people? What did they think they were doing?

  We drove through streets, usually crowded with tourists and shoppers, that were in chaos. We passed three groups of armed men breaking windows and throwing rocks at random strollers in the center of the city. Flames licked the sky from a row of houses a few blocks over, and soon after, plumes of smoke swirled upward from multiple quarters of the city. Sirens began to sound, only a few at first, but soon dozens from every direction. I felt the ground shake, and then shake again and again: explosions, somewhere in the distance.

  I punched the code for Guild Master Anderson on my interface. “Hello?” His voice sounded harried, not much of a surprise. His face was drawn and haggard.

  “What is going on?”

  The Guild Master’s voice hesitated. “It appears that we have once again underestimated our opposition. The Bhukarins, and perhaps a few others are fomenting a rebellion. They’ve planned this very well. They have at least five hundred armed men in the city, perhaps many more. The Guild Council is under siege.”

  “Do you need help?” Not that I had much to offer. My entire complement of armed men and women numbered no more than forty, and less than half of that was with me at the moment.

  Again, his voice seemed to hesitate. “I don’t think so. Not now. Our own security is quite competent but I can’t say the same for some of the others. The Master of Gentian has been assassinated.” He grimaced over the link. “Tarentinus seems to be in league with the enemy. The city is under siege.”

  “Where is the military?”

  “Mobilizing, but our forces are scattered. There was an incident of piracy in the Southern Seas and another off the Leeward Islands. The navy sent ships, which found nothing, but those ships are not here, when we could use them. Another tactic that we had not foreseen.”

  I felt sick. Realistically, I knew that I was not a major player in this game but somehow, I could not help wondering how much of this was due to my own actions. None of it, I hoped. “What do you recommend?”

  “Sit tight. Look to your own defenses. This will not be over soon. We are concerned that the enemy, whoever that enemy might be, has reinforcements coming in from outside. The navy and the air force, what remains of them in the vicinity of Aphelion, has been instructed to blockade. For the duration of this conflict, nobody will be allowed in or out of the city.” He shook his head and sighed. “The tube stations have been destroyed. Our allies are sending us troops but without access to the hyperloops it will take at least a few days for those troops to arrive. We must hold out until then.”

  I called Jennifer. She answered immediately.

  “Where are you?” I asked. Jennifer had been having dinner with Theresa and Lois when the rioting began.

  “We’re on Theresa’s boat.”

  “She has a boat? What type of boat?”

  “A big one. It sleeps six.” She panned her interface around in a circle, giving me a shot of a ship’s bow plowing through the waves. “The restaurant we were at is near the mooring. When the fighting started, we decided that this was the quickest way to get out of town. We’re heading for the mainland.”

  “You run into any trouble?”

  “Nothing we couldn’t handle.” She grinned. “Daryl and Claudia are with me.”

  “Good. Don’t come back until it’s over,” I said. “Stay safe.”

  She nodded. “You, too.”

  We smiled at each other, suddenly awkward. The awful thought occurred to me then, for the very first time, that we might never see each other again. I opened my mouth to say something but the words seemed somehow to stick in my throat. Jennifer seemed to feel the same way. She looked at me, silent. “Yeah,” she finally said. “See you soon,” and switched off.

  Safe. She was safe. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  My headquarters was housed in a four-story building next to the Hutchinson Tower, that I had purchased at great expense two years prior. It had adequate defenses for a few assailants but would quickly fall to a mob. We decided to abandon it, at least for the duration, and retreat into the Tower. The Tower had thick, concrete walls and bulletproof, plexiglass windows.

  It
was an exclusive building, each floor owned individually by people who could afford to live anywhere they wished. All but two were Guild, and all had security of their own. Unfortunately, most of that security lived elsewhere, and by now, had their own problems in their own neighborhoods. More than a few trickled in over the next couple of hours, nearly fifty in all. Eight of these brought their families. In total, we had nearly a hundred men and women who could handle weapons and knew how to defend themselves.

  My men and I could fight, but aside from our mandatory service in the Guard at the age of seventeen, none of us had military experience except for Curtis, who had risen to the rank of Captain. We gathered together in the lobby and it was quickly decided that Joshua Cernan, a retired Colonel who now ran security for the Tower, would be in charge. Cernan was tall and fit, with close cropped hair going to gray, and sharp blue eyes. He quickly picked Curtis as his second.

  “Alright, listen up, all of you,” Cernan said. A couple of women tried to hush crying babies. The rest, even the children, quickly settled down. Fear does help wonderfully to concentrate the mind.

  “I want all of you who know how to handle a gun, to take one,” he said. “Do it now.”

  Security maintained a small armory in the basement. The weapons had all been removed and brought up to the lobby, rifles, mostly, a few handguns with limited accuracy beyond five meters. My men and I already had weapons, as did many of the residents and all of the private security that had managed to reach the building. One-by-one, all the rest inspected what was on the tables and selected a gun and a box of ammunition.

  “Any of you have sniper experience?”

  A few hesitantly raised their hands. One guy said, “I’ve never trained as a sniper, but I like to hunt and I’m a very good shot.”

  The Colonel frowned, then gave a tiny shrug. “Better than nothing,” he said. “Any other good shots?”

  I was pretty good with a gun but nothing exceptional A few more raised their hands. “Fine,” the Colonel said, and nodded at Curtis.

  “All of you, come with me.”

  Six of them with sniper experience, plus eight more ‘good shots,’ followed Curtis toward the elevators, clutching their rifles. Once they had gone, Cernan eyed our prisoners, huddled together in a corner of the room. “Who are they?”

  “Prisoners. They attacked us.”

  Cernan raised an eyebrow and we walked over to them. I hadn’t had the time to pay them much attention up until now but up close, I could see that all were young men, dressed alike in military fatigues. “Who are you?” Cernan asked.

  They looked at each other, frowning and shuffling their feet. Apparently, none of the survivors had been in charge of their little assassination attempt. Finally, one of them, blonde and blue-eyed, sneered at Cernan and said, “We’re the Revolution.”

  Cernan cocked his head to the side. “What’s your name?”

  The blonde guy hesitated, then shrugged. “David Baylor.”

  “Tell me about this revolution.”

  “The Guilds have kept the people in slavery for too long. It’s time for the people to take back their independence and be free.”

  “You’re Bukharins,” Cernan said.

  “Some of us are. The organization has grown.”

  Cernan smiled. “I’ll bet.”

  “And who is in charge of this revolution?” I asked.

  Baylor hesitated. “I don’t know who’s in charge. That’s beyond my pay grade.”

  Cernan rolled his eyes.

  “Who was in charge of you?” I asked.

  “Jeremy Coburn was my squad leader. You killed him.”

  Good, I thought. “And who was in charge of Jeremy Coburn?”

  “Brad Jenkins.”

  I had never heard of any of these men. “And Brad Jenkins? Who is in charge of him?”

  Baylor shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “But they’ve promised you freedom from the Guilds.”

  Baylor nodded.

  “Tell me, David, how exactly have you been harmed by the Guilds?”

  He looked at me with real hatred in his eyes. “I had a good job with a company. The company went bankrupt. I lost my job. My father owned a shop. A Guild sponsored shop opened just down the street. My father had to close. Everywhere we turn, opportunities are lost to the Guilds. We’re squeezed into lousy neighborhoods with lousy schools and no prospects.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “We’re taking back the future. We’re taking back what we deserve, what we’ve deserved all along, a chance at a decent life.”

  Can’t argue with a decent life, I thought. Still, I suspected that David was blaming the wrong people, and I doubted that his life was so terrible. It wasn’t the fault of the Guilds when its members sold better merchandise at a better price and it wasn’t the fault of the Guilds when one company hired better people and did a better job.

  Nobody in Meridien lived in poverty. The disabled and infirm were taken care of. The pension system was generous and well-funded. Health care was universal and none of the schools were lousy. There was plenty of work for everybody. Some of it didn’t pay very well but all of it paid well enough to live on. What drove David and the others like him wasn’t desperation or poverty. It was envy.

  “You’re a fool, David. You’ve been used. Every revolution eats its own and if you succeed in overthrowing the Guilds, I suspect that you’ll very soon be trading one set of masters for another.”

  “Fuck you,” he said again.

  I shrugged. David didn’t know anything that would help us. We locked him and his fellows up in a couple of rooms in the basement, gave them enough supplies to last through the siege (we hoped) and put them out of our minds, for the moment, at least. Somebody would come and get them when it was all over.

  We barricaded the doors of the Tower and kept our heads down. A few of the security who had come in from outside had thought to bring food, canned stuff, mostly, some jars and cured meat and loaves of bread, stuff that wouldn’t spoil, and all the apartments upstairs had pantries and cooling units with at least a little food in storage. We had enough for about a week, longer if we rationed it. A week should do it, one way or another.

  Cernan was good at his job and he knew what he was doing. He had us set barricades in the lobby, mostly desks and tables turned on their side, with furniture stuffed behind them for padding. I wasn’t sure that any of it would stop a bullet but it would at least offer some protection. He set up a guard rotation and told those of us who lived in the building to go back upstairs until we were needed. Those who didn’t live here were assigned apartments to bunk in. A few of my fellow owners looked like they might object to that but Cernan gave them a cold eye and none of them actually did.

  Through the plexiglass windows, we could see sporadic fighting surge back and forth out on the street. Some of the fighters wore the colors of City Police. A few more belonged to the guard. Their opponents all wore military fatigues and red armbands. A few of these, obviously in charge, wore a red scarf around their necks and an armband on each arm.

  As long as they stayed away from the Tower, we were content to sit tight and let them fight it out. Twice, over the next few hours, small groups of ten or so got it into their heads to try and come inside. The first group retreated when they saw the opposition waiting for them through the glass. The second group tried harder. At first just a couple, but then all the rest raised rifles and fired at the doors. Thankfully, the doors were bullet resistant and locked shut. Three of the shooters suddenly dropped, red stains spreading across their chests. The rest looked upward. One more fell, his head suddenly gone, the stump of his neck pumping blood. The rest fled.

  It was good to have snipers on our side, I thought.

  Holoscreens in the lobby kept us informed of what was happening outside.

  A fleet of small patrol boats accosted five of our navy ships on patrol in waters far from our own shores. The patrol boats seemed to have no regard whatsoever for the
ir own safety. They were told to stop. Warning shots were fired across their bow and then, as they sped closer and closer, our ships began to sink them but it was already too late. Four destroyers and a corvette were surrounded by explosions as the remaining patrol boats blew themselves up. Two of our ships sustained heavy damage. One sank, with the loss of half the crew.

  An air base on the mainland was overrun by armed men in the middle of the night. They were repelled but three hangars containing a quarter of our air force were destroyed.

  Three airships on patrol over the city were buzzed by a fleet of small propeller planes manning machine guns. The airships had shields and the planes’ bullets could not get through. The airships had heat seeking missiles, which made short work of the planes. The few surviving planes fled to the South.

  In the city, reservoirs were poisoned, electrical lines were cut and power plants targeted and destroyed. The main ferry complex to our surrounding islands was bombed and three of the four ships were scuttled.

  The enemy, whoever they were, had planned well. They struck and then vanished and then struck again, but they were a rag-tag army, in the end. Or so we thought.

  A faint vibration could be felt through the floor. I might have been the first to detect it but within a few minutes, all of us were aware. The street outside the building was deserted, and had been so for nearly a day, just a few furtive, scurrying figures intent on getting to their destination as quickly as possible. They paid us no attention. The fighting had decreased, almost stopped. The enemy forces had inflicted damage but had not succeeded in destroying the city’s infrastructure or breaking the will of the population to resist. Their forces were slowly being degraded and our hoped-for reinforcements were no more than twelve hours away. We had begun to entertain hopes that the siege of Aphelion was almost over.

  And then, from around the corner in front of the Tower marched a troop of armed men, at least a hundred. They carried energy rifles and every one of them wore a bandolier of grenades across his chest. They lined up facing the building in an excellent imitation of military order. Behind them rumbled two armored vehicles, each equipped with a machine gun and a small rocket launcher. On top of one armored vehicle, wearing a red scarf around his neck and two red armbands, stood Graham Reid.