“I thought they didn’t worry about governments anymore.”
“Sure they do, but it’s mostly a PR thing. If they really had no use for governments, do you think we’d still have any?”
Andy wasn’t sure. It wasn’t something he’d thought about while still safe in Telestrian’s womb. He put the thought away for the moment. “Kit said you’d have an idea how we could get the information out.”
“I know some people.”
“Cheese?” Cinqueda asked, but she wasn’t offering any. Andy thought that a little strange, but shadowrunning lore said that street samurai were all a little strange. Hoping to be polite, he said, “No, thanks.”
Kit giggled.
“Cheese is a pirate.” Cinqueda said.
“What good is a software thief for this?” Andy asked.
“A pirate newsman!" Markowitz said. “He runs ITRU Independent News. He’s got satellite uplink to the broadcast birds and pretty good cut-ins on the cable nets. He’s our best bet for getting the word out. Cheese likes blasting the government and has a thing for dissing the Confeds; claims it’s in his blood. He’ll like this one.”
Kit looked unsure. “Do you think he still remembers the last time you asked him to put something on the nets?”
“I’m sure he’s forgotten all about that.” Markowitz said unconvincingly.
“Bring money.” Cinqueda advised. “Just in case.”
The ITRU station was a GM-Nissan Metrohauler extended panel van. It wasn’t a new one. Small patches of different colors were so overwhelmed by large swaths of rust red anticorrosion paint that it was impossible to tell what the original color scheme might have been. Twin parabolic antennae on the roof and the crude, hand-painted ITRU logo on the sides were all that showed the truck to be more than a derelict waiting to be scrapped. The blood-shot-eyed youth who answered Markowitz’s pounding on the rear door was dressed as if whoever had painted the van was his fashion coordinator. The kid—he didn’t look like he could be older than thirteen—had an ITRU logo on his ball cap above the legend “tech eng.”
“Whatchu want?”
“We need to talk to Cheese.” Markowitz said.
“Hey, I knows you, man. Cheese no wanna see you.”
“I don’t care.” Markowitz caught the door, keeping the kid from slamming it. “You tell him I’m here.”
“You leggo de door, man.”
“You go tell Cheese.”
The kid left the door in Markowitz’s possession and disappeared into the red-lit interior. Markowitz followed him, saying, “Come on.”
Andy looked to Kit for confirmation, but she was already on her way up the truck’s short ladder. By the time Andy boarded, Markowitz had threaded his way through the machinery crammed into the truck and was confronting a short, overweight black man whom Andy might have mistaken for a dwarf if his shoulders had been wider and his beard fuller. The man was nearly snarling at Markowitz and showing strong-looking, amber teeth nearly the color of cheddar cheese. His ITRU cap had the legend “The Big.” He had to be Cheese. Kid Tech Eng had disappeared into the darkened depths of the van.
Cheese’s voice was a hoarse grating, more appropriate for an urban brawl casualty than for an independent newsman, but that voice had volume. Whatever had gone down before still bothered him, and the shouting match between him and Markowitz was spectacular, if short on details. Kit intervened, flattering both men and calming them down some. She gave most of her attention to Cheese, who did chill some, but it was the credstick that Markowitz finally produced that finally did the trick.
Cheese slotted the stick into a Commercial model desktop reader whose case had obviously been tampered with. He seemed satisfied with the reading. “Dis scam, she is real, hey? Really real?”
“Everything we dug up looks good.” Markowitz said.
“Dat what you says de last time.” Cheese said, squinting at him.
Andy was tired of the continuing suspicion. “Yeah? Well, I don’t know what happened before, but this time it is real. This is important and we’ve got to let people know about it.”
Cheese’s bright eyes turned to Andy. They ran him up and down, then lingered on his datajack. The newsman absently caressed his own jack as he evaluated Andy. His lips split into a broad grin, gleaming with his yellowed teeth. “Hey, man, like you really real pos-ee-teeve! Like dey says, dis she eez conviction. Maybe I do goes wit dis story after all.”
“I think you should.” Kit said softly.
“De lady, she knows, hey?” Cheese spun in his chair, fingers flying across buttons and dancing across the control keyboard. Without any apparent shift in rhythm, he tossed a datacord to Andy. “Watsay you makes de data dump? De Cheese, he tickles her up and sees if she sing. We gots us a good tune, we takes to de airs.” Louder. “Heyzee, Mouse, puts us a movin’ and finds us a line to de sats.”
“Wilco.” a feminine voice replied from somewhere up front.
Andy squinted in that direction and thought he made out a couch with a figure reclining on it. A rigger? The truck lurched into forward motion; the figure did not move. Definitely a rigger.
He was curious to see the interface she was using, but he had a job to do. He jacked and shifted the digest of the data they’d uncovered from his headware to Cheese’s board. Cheese split his attention between reading Andy’s dump and performing a host of technical manipulations to set up satellite-dish alignments, frequency matches, and cut-ins for slipping through encryption sheaths on the cable bounces.
“Cheese?” It was the rigger. “We got—”
“No times, no times. We is taking to the airs.” Music filled the interior, backing an angelic choir that sang about the coming of the ITRU Truthcast. Cheese spoke into his microphone, astounding Andy. The man’s voice changed utterly. His street dialect vanished, the wheeze disappeared, and from his throat came a cultured, deep, reverberating voice that might have come a Shakespearean actor’s.
If he could speak like that, why had he talked to them in such annoying tones? Kit noticed Andy’s perplexity.
“He has a voice modulator.” she said.
He’d guessed that. “Why doesn’t he talk that way all the time?”
“Bad hardware.” Cinqueda said. “Rasps the vocal cords after a while. Gonna shred them one day if he—”
Cinqueda’s head swiveled toward the door.
There was a bang outside. A loud pop. The truck canted and a squeal arose from beneath them. Everyone except Cinqueda went tumbling. Machinery, tools, power cells, and computers slid from their precarious perches in showers of sparks and splintering crashes. The truck’s red interior lights failed. The front of the truck hit something. The rear slued around, trying to bypass the nose, but it too slammed into something. The engine coughed and died. Save for a chorus of fading malfunction alerts, the truck was silent.
Andy tried to extricate himself from the pile of stuff that had landed bruisingly on him. Nearby, Cinqueda crouched low. In her left hand she held a big, wide-bladed knife Andy hadn’t known she was carrying. The ribbed blade lay along her forearm. Her head tilted minutely, as if she were trying to locate a sound.
“Four in contact with the vehicle.” she whispered.
“No magic active.” came Kit’s voice from out of the darkness.
“Helmet coms.” Cinqueda said. “They’re going to—”
The truck’s back blew away in a blinding flash.
When Andy could see again, there were four men in rubble-dot urban camouflage jumpsuits standing at the back of the truck. Visored helmets hid their faces. No insignia were visible on anything they wore. Each man held a dull black Steyr automatic weapon.
“Walker.” The speaker turned his head slightly toward one of the others. “You’re buying the beer, Joe.”
Andy felt a chill dance down his spine as the man looked back at him.
“Weedeater Osborne’ll be pleased to know he was right. He’ll be even more pleased to know that a disloyal little fragger like you is no long
er anyone to worry about.”
Cinqueda shifted. Muzzles came up. Andy tried to throw himself through the truck’s floor as the gunfire erupted.
* * *
Andy’s idea, to go public with the information concerning the conspiracy, was just about the only way Tom could see to pour some sanity on the fires of craziness that were consuming Washington. Having that chance had made it easy deciding to commandeer one of the trucks and take Andy and his friends out of the riot-control zone. Tom didn’t go with them to meet with Markowitz, though. That wasn’t his place. He still had orders to report to General Trahn. So what if he was a little late? What was the commander going to do, cashier him? He’d be doing that anyway.
The drive gave him some time to think about what had happened. He’d done what he had to do, and all that was left was following through. If Gramps was right, and there was a cabal within the senior command, Tom was fragged. Maybe he was fragged even if there wasn’t; no one had successfully challenged an illegal order since the Vasquez incident, back before the breakup of the United States. He hadn’t thought much about that until now. It used to be that a soldier was expected to know the difference between right and wrong, and to stand up for the right. Now? Well, many people over the years had told Tom that a lot more than borders had changed when the old U.S. of A. went down. He hadn’t believed it. Now, Tom was probably about to learn just how hollow some of the Constitution’s words had become.
A convoy of a dozen McAuliffe air-transportable IFVs rumbled past him, headed toward the central districts. They’d be teaching some lessons soon. Tom wondered if his lesson was going to be any less harsh.
But he had his honor to consider.
He passed the horse farm and the entrance to the southbound bypass for through traffic on Route I. Not much further. He slowed as he approached the Fort Belvoir gate, pulling the truck to a stop in front of the guard post. The soldier who came out to meet him was a private, a young female ork looking too perky to have been in uniform long. She’d have her own lessons to learn.
“Major Rocquette to report to General Trahn.” Tom said, handing over his ID tag.
The squaddie slotted the tag into her pack. Her brow furrowed as the screen lit up. It would be whispering instructions into her helmet speaker. She looked confused. “What happened to your guard, Major?”
“He never showed up. I got tired of waiting. You going to let me in or not?”
The guard took a step back and shifted her weapon to a slightly more aggressive position. She didn’t point it at Tom, though, not quite. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to get out of the truck, Major.”
Tom didn’t switch off the truck. To do so would have meant dropping his hand from the guard’s line of sight. He didn’t want to push this kid, who was clearly nervous. Tom exited the cab, slowly. The kid was just doing her job.
She was scared; he could tell that by the wide, wide pupils. Not every day she was told to take an officer under guard, he expected. He tried to make it easier on her by not appearing to be threatening.
“What’s your name, squaddie?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you, sir.”
“Drek, squaddie, you can tell the enemy your name.”
She took time to think that over. Orks grew up early, but they didn’t often grow up smart. Hell, if she were smart, she wouldn’t be in uniform. As he knew, the Army was tough enough on male orks; he’d done his share of making it so. But now that he was facing the muscle of the behemoth, he felt an unfamiliar sympathy for her. Finally, she said, “Booker, sir. Harriet Booker.”
“Do yourself a favor, Harriet, and get out of the Army. Find yourself another job.”
The concept clearly disturbed her. “I’m not supposed to talk to you, sir.” she repeated.
He let it go.
They waited in silence. The MPs who showed up wore the shoulder Hashes of the 3412th Military Police Battalion. Jordan’s boys. They weren’t supposed to be part of base security. Having them come to take him into custody, instead of Belvoir’s regular white gloves, meant that Trahn was keeping the affair in the immediate family. Tom’s hopes of publicity for his personal problem dropped to nothing.
And it was too late to run.
Without formally placing him under arrest, they relieved him of his sidearm—so much for military courtesy—took him to the building where Jordan had held Andy and Markowitz. He didn’t think it a coincidence that they brought him to the same room where Furlann had been intending to violate Markowitz’s rights and person. The rats and the thaumaturgic equipment were gone—the latter being Furlann’s own and not to be parted from her—but the false dentist’s chair was still there. This time Tom saw that it was equipped with restraining straps. Jordan must have been busy elsewhere; the room was untenanted. The MPs closed the door on Tom, and he heard the lock snap home.
He waited, wondering how Andy and Markowitz and their crazy crew of shadow folks were doing. Now that he’d had time to sit and think, he could see just how quixotic a quest the kid and his friends had undertaken. He had to admire them a little. Whatever else they were, they were brave. But how much good would they do? How much good could they do?
Unfortunately, it was likely to be too little; for some, it was already certainly too late.
Time passed.
He heard footfalls in the hall. Jordan? No, just a sentry making rounds, stopping to chat with the door guard. By the familiarity of their exchanged greetings, they were old friends.
“You hear that Steele’s on base?” the sentry asked.
“No drek?” said the guard.
Tom didn’t believe it either.
“Yeah, no drek.” the sentry said earnestly. “Half the freqs are full of chatter. You got your helmet swapped to music again?”
“Beats listening to nuthin’. You’d do it too, if’n you could figure how.” the guard said defensively.
“It’s a guard’s duty to be alert.”
“Save the drek for the sarge.” Bullshit was fine, but the guard remained interested in the rumor. “What’s Steele doing here? I thought he was hiding in the White House basement till it was all over.”
Tom imagined the sentry’s shrug. “Must have finally decided things were too hot in his back yard. I hear he’s scampering out to Camp David and leaving us behind to clean up his mess. That’s why he’s down at the TOC talking to Trahn. The man’s on his way to less troubled climes and wants to make sure the head garbage man gets the cleanup underway. The man doesn’t like bailing out of his fine, fancy home. Doesn’t look good, with nominating conventions less than a year away. This town’s got a memory. Well, jelly-spined Steele won't have all that long to wait, from what I hear.” the sentry said.
The guard was hooked. “Why’s that?”
Tom wanted to know too.
“Trahn’s got the push against the Metro stations set for midnight. Once we’ve got the entrances, the engineers are going to pump down gas. That’ll take the fight out the Compers.”
“Gas is illegal.”
“I expect Trahn’s clearing that little impediment out of the way with Steele even as we speak.”
They talked some more, but the sentry never said a word about a pirate broadcast exposing the Confed connection or implicating Trahn in anything. Clearly Markowitz hadn’t come through. Andy’s plan had been flawed, but it had seemed to have a chance. But that thought recalled Andy’s other earlier suggestion, one that Tom had put down as foolish. He’d said they ought to take their story to the President—and now here was Tom, less than a hundred meters from the President.
How could he just sit around and let things happen?
A locked door and a guard, was the answer.
It was a lousy answer and he wanted a better. He looked around the room, hoping for inspiration. He found it in the interrogation chair. A bit more searching and he found a sharp way, one that, with a bit of effort, put the necessary tool in his hand. Jordan’s boys should have been more careful abo
ut cleaning this place out. Tom swung the liberated restraining strap, gauging the weight of the buckle that swung at its end. It would do.
He went to the door.
“Guard.” he called out. “I need to talk to Colonel Jordan. I’ve got something important to tell him.”
It wasn’t a new trick; but some tricks couldn’t be ignored—simply because they might not be tricks.
“It can wait.” the guard said.
“No, it can’t.” He checked his watch. “It’s after 2300. The Colonel will have your balls on a platter if he doesn’t hear what I’ve got to say before the hour’s out. I won’t mind if he does, but you might.”
Jordan’s boys had people scared enough to not drop drek without permission. It followed that Jordan ought to have the same effect on the boys themselves. Paranoia begins at home.
“Step away from the door, Major.”
Tom smiled. He had pushed the right button. He stepped away as told, waiting tensely as the guard ran his key card through the slot.
“All right, Major. Now you open the door and keep backing away as you do.” The guard had both hands on his weapon and kept it leveled in a business-like fashion.
Tom started to follow the guard’s orders, but before the door was fully open, he whipped out the strap through the widening crack. The guard reacted, bringing his weapon up to block the sudden threat, as Tom had hoped. While the weight wrapped its trailing strap around the guard’s weapon, Tom flung the door the rest of the way open and launched a kick into the man’s unprotected belly. The guard went down, doubled over and whooshing air. That kind of strike had inevitable consequences and Tom was on the guard before he finished vomiting. Tom waited till the man had blown what he was blowing before putting pressure on the right points. He didn’t want him to choke to death.
An empty corridor would be less suspicious than one soldier looting the body of another. Tom dragged the guard into the room and shut the door, but only after making sure the lock wouldn’t reseal. He relieved the guard of his white helmet and Sam Browne belt, the MP brassard as well, and the sidearm. He left the gloves. He’d never liked the damned things. He didn’t take the rifle either; Military Police majors didn’t carry rifles.
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