by A. D. Bloom
"Houston was luckier than Detroit maybe," said Samhain as he measured with the pencil and checked the angles of the shadows he saw again. "Houston got hit early in the war, when the Brazilians still had plenty of heavy metal inertia sabot available for intercontinental salvos. They hadn't sunk to using cheap fusion shells yet. After the Texican and Mexican Campaigns were over, people began to pick through the rubble, but it was mostly looters. It wasn't until the Barnaby Homesteading Reclamation Act passed that anybody tried to live there again. They didn't have radiation problems like you did. By the time I was born, ten years later, what began as a few homesteaders had become an interdependent community with shared farming and equipment."
"They shared food too."
"That came later. That was part of the disaster relief program after the storms in '52."
"They said when the relief continued too long after the disaster, you crossed the line into socialism. What did you think?"
"I was ten. I thought feeding hungry people was a good idea. I still do."
"And your father was the Preacher."
"He wasn't a minister. He just talked a lot. And he did talk about god, but he wasn't a Baptist or a Southern Baptist or anything. I never saw him read or even own a bible. But yeah, he was the Preacher." Samhain hatched in the shape of the shadow under Devlin's nose and the way it drew the shape of his mouth. "My father wasn't in charge."
"What?"
"The official version of what happened says my father was in charge. It says he made all the decisions that determined what happened. That's a lie. He didn't...he couldn't control any of it..." Samhain pretended to interrogate the space between Ram Devlin's eyes, but he tried to look behind them then to glimpse his thoughts landing in the man's mind. "The trouble began when the disaster relief continued to surrounding townships. We were ordered to stop when the government aid ran out because rebuilding was Staas Company's job and they said we interfered. We didn't stop. That part was my father's choice. We smuggled truckloads of food where it was needed. They lied and said we smuggled people and guns and fed people to spread our crazy ideas. I was ten, but I watched the news vids then. We were popular until they called us terrorists. After that, it didn't matter what my father said."
"What happened on the day the shooting started?"
Samhain heard a particular sort of need in Devlin's voice as if the Governor wanted to know for personal reasons. Before he spoke again, he drew the shape of the shadows under Ram Devlin's neck, the ones that defined the space between his jaw and collarbone. "First they closed off all the roads in and out. They used drones to patrol the rest until the Staas Company Contractors arrived."
"They said you fired first. Is that a lie?"
Samhain nodded as he tried to find the shape of Devlin's hands resting in his lap with the glass of scotch, now down to only a finger. "Yes. And no."
"Which is it?"
"They were all 'our people' as far as my father was concerned so, yes. But nobody gave an order to shoot, least of all the Preacher. We're talking about a population living without a lot of support from authorities. They were all armed. Some of them...some of us were idiots and hotheads. They fired on the roadblocks and the police fired back with bigger guns. It was over in seconds, but it triggered more hotheads. My father tried to calm them down, but it didn't work for long. The vid of those first idiots to fire being blown to smithereens by a walking tank was one of the last things I remember seeing on the vid before it all went to fuzz. They jammed our whole area. They cut the hard wires and filled the frequencies with random radio noise up and down the spectrum."
"There were more attacks after that."
He nodded. "More idiots. They painted us as religious nutjobs, but it wasn't about religion and there were only a few nutjobs. Take any large group of people and you're going to have them. That's just people, but it doesn't take much more than a few to do a lot of damage. They gave Staas the excuse they were looking for...the excuse they were all looking for."
"You can't be suggesting the NAU government and Staas wanted what came next."
"Samhain looked from the knuckles he'd been drawing to the space behind Ram Devlin's eyes. "They didn't want to talk. My father tried. Everyone tried. They didn't even want us to surrender. They just..."
"They said you attacked in force. There was a declaration of secession. Your father signed it." It surprised him how Devlin said it with a kind of desperation as if he'd always thought the version history recorded was what actually occurred. Him, of all people.
"It was lies. All lies," Samhain said.
"But you neve-"
"6,000 survivors of Houston know the truth and they never said anything either. They know the Preacher wasn't a cultist nutjob socialist that decided to rebel and get everyone killed. But...nobody's going to believe them. Half of them don't even believe the truth anymore. They know, but...that's not what the truth is now. They drummed it into us in the camps, your version of what happened. They made our mothers and fathers into villains in the stories they told us. They never stopped for nine months. They didn't let us out of the camps for longer than that, not until we'd condemned the Preacher and all the fools who'd rebelled and got good people killed. We all had to write brief essays before they'd call us reeducated and let us out."
For a few seconds, the only sound was the stroke of Samhain's pencil across the cold-pressed grain of the paper. Devlin said, "History records that the area was surrounded by Staas Company Contractors."
"That's right. What happened after that was the will of the NAU government, but it was Staas Company's hand that did it."
"Three weeks after it began...There were reports of what was going on in there while you were holding out...atrocities....mass suicides or mass executions and ethnic-religious cleansing."
"None of that happened. It was a lie, just like the Declaration and all the rest of it. There was no cleansing. Houston in 2152 was black and white, Vietnamese and Mexican, secular and religious. All that happened during those three weeks of siege was that the madmen who wanted power took it. My father preached non-violence, but when they organized into a militia, he couldn't stop them. He couldn't lead it either. With no news coming in or out and the drones shooting at any vehicle on the road, nobody would listen to the Preacher anymore. They made themselves into an army. A puny, stupid, futile, suicidal army of idiots with shotguns and war relics."
"They-"
"Staas Company's Contractors began the operation with a bombardment. When they were done, what remained resembled the field of blast craters left from the Brazilian bombardment ten years ago. The only reason anyone survived at all was because the contractors attacked from three sides and not four. Six-thousand exhausted women and children and seniors fled East and survived to be taken prisoner on the shores of the Gulf."
"But there was a battle..."
"The contractors blew up everything in their path....everything. That wasn't a battle. It was an example. Those that survived only survived because they ran and everyone who could stayed behind to fight the rear guard action that preserved them. That's the reality of the great Battle of Houston of 2152. We were murdered. Real talk of revolution and rebellion was everywhere across North America before that. There wasn't any in Houston, but that didn't matter. Houston served as their example. We gave an unpopular government the domestic threat they could actually do something about while appearing powerful. You'll remember how the dissent and revolutionary rhetoric dried up across the globe after that."
"You're telling me it was all lies? Your fa-"
"My father saw it coming. He tried to stop it and when he couldn't, he did the only thing he was really good at - he preached. He preached peace to the last while holding those people together as one. When the Staas Security troops overran the barricades and bulldozed berms and pressed on without accepting surrenders, he said his goodbyes and sent us East. He fought and died along with my mother so I could get away. They lied about that, too. They said she aba
ndoned me. Nobody wants to hear it, but I remember the truth."
"I didn't know any of this." Devlin's scotch was gone and Samhain could hear a tremble in his throat that said he'd need another now.
Maybe the truth of what Devlin was stumbling into was sinking in. Maybe it wasn't too late to turn him back from the edge. "Don't do this, Governor Devlin. Don't go through with whatever your planning and lead this world in any kind of open rebellion. I know what will happen." While his words hung unanswered, he found the highlights in Devlin's black eyes and rendered the tar pools around them with his pencil. Samhain felt his words and his will reach out beyond himself then, close as the sound of his voice in his skull and distant like an echo in impossible unison. "History repeats itself because the same circumstances are reestablished over and over and we are still Human. Where water flows once, it will flow again, Governor Devlin. The Secretary General's Office and Staas Company of 2187 aren't popular. There's dissent on Earth as well. The never-ending war with the Imperium keeps Staas fat, but it has taken its toll on the people of Earth, just as the War of the Americas and the lean decades to follow did back then. There's real talk of revolt as there was in 2152. And that talk of revolt will continue until someone is crushed for all to see. In 2152, it was Houston. It'll be you this time. Otherworld offers them now what we offered them then. You think they're profit driven, but you're only partly right. Profit derives from power. They need blood to refresh theirs...their power, I mean. And once you give them the chance to make you and the Otherworld rebels the example they need, they won't negotiate with you. They will murder you until you've bled enough to preserve them by proving what happens to those who rebel."
The line of Devlin's mouth hardened and the shadows in the furrows of his brows deepened even as Samhain drew them. "It won't happen like that," Devlin said, and the sheer arrogance and stubborn idiocy that made him say it seemed to pour from him like rancid froth off rotten milk. "We won't let it happen like that."
He choked the pencil with his grip until his digits went white and bloodless around it as the first licks of anger lit under his skin from a fire that had hidden itself, but had never stopped smoldering. "Don't you understand what I'm telling you? Armed rebellion isn't possible anymore, not even out here. All you're doing is leading your people to their deaths and reinforcing the very thing you're fighting against."
"We don't want to secede. We just want to renegotiate terms and this is the only way Staas Company and the UN will listen. I don't plan for this to come to a fight. We'll show them we can and we will go to the brink, but they'll have to back down in the end."
Samhain heard Scilla's words then. "If you understood why Balthus Pavic sent you, then you'd know how to stop Ram Devlin." He hadn't understood what she'd meant then, but thought he understood now. "If you don't realize whom the enemy is we're all going to die."
"That's precisely what I'm saying to you, Samhain. We suffered a decade while the needs of the war with the Imperium were used to justify this planet's continued exploitation. And then, we waited another. It's been 21 years...do you think this war is going to end soon?" Devlin prattled on with his justifications and with each one, a new wave of fire rolled up Samhain's spine. Fear of what would come and all the deaths it would bring took seed as a softly swirling devil of mind, but it sped and waxed and grew in power until it swept all other thought aside until there was only one. I can't let this happen again.
At the center of him was the memory of all the senseless slaughter and a part of him where he'd smoldered with this rage. He remembered Scilla's words when he'd jokingly asked if she'd teach him to explode heads. "That kind of violence....you can't do it without reaching inside and leveraging a part of you that's...dangerous." What she'd said hadn't made any sense to him then but it did when he found that place in him where the memories of Houston burned. He gripped them like burning coal from the camps. It didn't matter whose fault it was then and it didn't matter whose fault it was now. He had to stop this war before it began.
He pretended to observe and mark the paper while he found the place behind Devlin's gaze where it felt like his thoughts fell into place. If it had a shape, it was like a slot. Samhain batted aside the repeating justifications that formed in that place in Devlin's mind before he filled it with the pain that burned at the core of him. Ram Devlin's left eye twitched as if he'd acquired a tick.
When Samhain had filled that slot of Devlin's mind, he let the memory of Houston's pain overflow until it spread and flooded with a volume of pain and loss equal to Samhain's rough estimate of that experienced by all 6,000 survivors.
Ram Devlin squeezed his eyes shut and dropped the glass as a mix of blood and tears stained his cheek. That's when the seizures began and Samhain realized he'd gone too far; he was killing him.
He threw the sketchbook aside and rose to catch Devlin as he fell, but once Samhain broke his concentration, Devlin's mind was his own again and the man thought Samhain was attacking. The impact to his skull was a blinding flash that he felt before his head spun around from the blow. He wondered why he was looking to the right before Devlin's second blow came and sent him endlessly spinning. He fell into the quiet darkness. He wasn't sure what had happened; he only only understood that he'd failed.
17
Auntie Kill's Hive
Hank Devlin kept the tour boat waiting on the Hive's launch pads. After he loaded the six Shediri torpedoes into the cargo bay launchers, he told Zi'vt to prep for departure and not answer questions.
Only seconds after he got to Scilla's chamber and bluffed the Stripeys into letting him inside to interrogate her, the message came through on his matchbox computer from Dana Sellis. 'Samhain tried to kill Ram Devlin.' he read the words projected in the air as he walked around the curve of the passage and saw Scilla, slumped over the table with her arms spread as if she'd been struck unconscious from behind. Thin clouds of steam rose from the long-fingered lake of hot tea she'd spilled. Whatever happened to her, he thought. It only happened just now.
She came to just as he got her leaned back in the chair and then jumped up out of it. "Get your hands off me!"
"What's wrong with you?"
"I fell asleep."
"It's time to go. Walk quickly with me. Leave everything."
She grabbed the mailbag and followed him, staggering at first but then getting her balance. "That's all I have, thanks to you. Where are we going?"
"Don't you know? Your friend Mr. Samhain tried to kill Ram Devlin. He failed. The war has begun and I'm taking you with me."
"It hasn't started. It doesn't have to start. Don't do this, Hank."
"Too late."
The gaudy, golden hull of Zevo's Tour Boat rose fast riding her forward drive coils so hard that instabilities in the field shuddered the plates around the cockpit and blurred the hammerhead. She was barely 10 Ks off Auntie Kill's green coast when they broke through the atmo and lit up the faster rear engines. "Full acceleration, as much as you can manage." Acceleration outpaced the inertial negation system and pushed back with a few tenths of a gee, enough to make him stagger and lean into it to remain upright. The plume of pale blue plasma trailed too far, too bright in the low-orbit vacuum, evidencing just how much power and speed the highly modified boat actually had.
Zi'vt at the controls chatter-clacked with alarm. "Obvious hot-rod smuggler we," the Shediri said.
"That's the point. Maintain full power. Stay out of the lanes and cut a direct course towards the eighth planet."
"I can see a pair of Staas Company Cutters taking an interest in you already," said Scilla. "Nine o'clock. Don't do this, Hank. There's still time to stop this before it begins."
Her last words seemed to slow as she spoke and they lingered over his mind like a fog bank. There's still time to stop. Stop...Stop... The word swirled his thoughts and dizzied him. With all his will he fought what he took to be some last vestige of fear left in him and steadied his mind until that echoing command was gone. "It's already be
gun," he shouted back to her. "You people tried to kill Ram Devlin."
"We didn't! Samhain is no assassin! You know it's true. Don't do this."
"You might have convinced Hank Devlin of that, but Harry Cozen isn't so naive."
The voice from the cutter sounded eager, "Zevo's Tours, ICV reg #01555198, you will come to a complete stop and prepare for boardi-" Hank shut off the comms. He seated himself at the console behind the cockpit and brought up a tactical projection. He spotted the two ships Scilla meant. They were the closest. No less than seven company cutters currently orbited Otherworld. He drew with his finger in the tactical projections, marking out a series of vectors that would allow them to still elude the two cutters now turning to intercept them while buzzing close enough to the other five to get their attention as well. He sent the track to the OMNINAV for parse and then to the pilot's console. "New course for you."
Zi'vt's clacks of Shediri profanity didn't translate.
"I know it's some fancy flying. That's why you're doing it."
"I'm going to strap in," said Scilla, seating herself in the first row at the port side porthole just as Zi'vt executed a maneuver outside the inertial negation systems' compensation envelope and flattened her against the bulkhead.
"He's coming around the other way in about ten seconds," Hank shouted to the back without taking his eyes off the spinning transparent globe representing the planet and the out-of-scale LiDAR and radar contacts around it like swarming gnats. The seven Staas Company Cutters had been represented the size of horseflies and they all turned to intercept Zevo's Tour Boat after the close pass.
"See? We're picking up some speed skirting back around the gravity well. We'll get away clean. Nothing to clack about." The bug hissed this time, the wet kind that left spatter on the console. "Just finish the turn, break orbit, and get on a direct line for the eighth planet's Trojans. I want to make this easy for our ships."
