Conquistador

by S. M. Stirling

John Rolfe sighed. “It seems definite, then, that there is a conspiracy.” He shook his head. “A pity that Salvo died so young. He would have known better than this…. Ah, well, forgive an old man’s tendency to dwell upon the past. What we must know now is, first, who is involved in this conspiracy, second, what are their goals, and third, what do they hope to accomplish.”

  Tom cleared his throat; John Rolfe raised one snowy eyebrow. The younger man went on: “Sir, I don’t think that there’s much doubt as to the aim. The aim is to seize power here, and I’d give any odds that the means is through seizure of the Gate itself. It’s the point failure source…”

  “I’m familiar with the term,” the Commonwealth’s ruler said.

  “…of your whole setup here.”

  Adrienne nodded. “It’s the Collettas, too, sir,” she said. “Almost certainly with the help of the Batyushkovs. And as Operative Botha has made plain, with at least some elements among the affiliates of the Versfelds.”

  John Rolfe nodded, blew another plume of smoke and thought in silence for a long moment.

  “I should have anticipated this,” he mused at last. “The first generation of Primes were mostly personally loyal to me—even Salvo, in his way. Those who weren’t were mostly too grateful to be here to cause much trouble. That isn’t quite the case with the Batyushkovs, obviously; and many of the second generation of Family heads know me only as the irritating elder statesman who keeps them in a permanent political minority…. I suspect Karl von Traupitz is numbered among those.”

  “I don’t think Oom Versfeld would support such madness, sir,” Piet Botha said, with an edge of diffidence to his tone. “But some of our people… well, they dream of a new South Africa, in this world’s South Africa. I can understand it. I do not think it would be a wise thing; nor does Oom Versfeld. But I understand.”

  “Which leaves the question of how they plan to take the Gate,” Tom said.

  Adrienne nodded. “They’ve obviously done something nasty and clandestine to Nostradamus,” she said. “Still, they can’t really control the system, not overtly. And they couldn’t have subverted anything like enough of the Gate Security Force to take over the gate complex… and how could they hold it against the forces of the Commission and the loyal Families? Not even all the Imperialist faction would all go along with something as raw as a coup d’état.”

  “Coup de main,” her grandfather murmured. “If I were organizing such a thing…”

  “Yes, sir,” Tom said. “A sudden blow in overwhelming force to take the Gate.”

  “On both sides,” the ruler said. “You’d have to take the FirstSide facility. It’s that—my old shortwave set—which really gives the holder control. Anyone who smashes it smashes the Gate; and the power to destroy a thing, combined with the will to do so, gives you the power to control it absolutely.”

  Listening to that voice, and those words, gave Tom a slight cold prickle down the spine. Tully exchanged an imperceptible flicker of eye contact with his partner. Tom could hear the thought: One seriously scary dude.

  Adrienne leaned forward. “That’s probably what the contact with the Batyushkovs’ Russian friends on FirstSide was about,” she said. “But there’s also the possibility that they’re planning something… outside the box. The fake nephew who’s actually a physicist.”

  John Rolfe chuckled and stroked his jaw. “I knew that keeping Ralph around would be useful someday,” he said with satisfaction. “It’s surprising how often mercy has practical utility. Hmmm… that would be a backup plan, unless I miss my guess—and one quite secret from the Collettas, as well. That’s the problem with organizing a treasonous conspiracy: The other parties aren’t likely to be the most honorable of men either.”

  “Unless they’re secessionists, of course,” Tully said, exaggerating his Arkansas accent a little. “Sir.”

  John Rolfe shot him a sharp glance, then smiled wryly. “That isn’t the most tactful possible remark in this house, Mr. Tully,” he said dryly. “Still testing, eh? No, I won’t send for the headsman. Let me rephrase my remark: a treasonous conspiracy in the sort of society we’ve established here. Aristocratic polities are prone to faction, but the factions tend to be personal, rather than dividing on matters of principle. That… simplifies things, shall we say. Unless the system has broken down completely, it also makes bloodbaths like the War of Southern Independence unlikely; there isn’t enough at stake for ordinary folk to make mass mobilization possible.”

  “There’s a great deal at stake here, sir,” Adrienne said.

  “In the long run, my dear. In the long run. In the short run, which is where most human beings live most of the time, it would be only a change of personnel at the top—I doubt Giovanni would go in for a widespread purge, and he cannot afford to fatally alienate all the Families, even if his coup were to succeed. That’s why a civil war would be inadvisable, as well as disastrous—too few would stay willing to fight when the damage grew great enough.”

  A long silence fell; Tom began to wonder whether the elderly Rolfe had fallen asleep. Then the older man’s eyes snapped open again.

  “There are two ways to approach this. I can use the means at my disposal, and Charles’s, but we will have to be extremely cautious. If we alert the Collettas, they might try to strike at once out of desperation—possibly succeeding, possibly bringing on a real civil war here.”

  “If we’re too cautious, they may strike while we’re still dithering, sir,” Adrienne said.

  “Only too true, my dear. Although we are somewhat forewarned, which means they cannot achieve complete surprise.”

  He brooded for a moment. “The Collettas can’t possibly think to raise the necessary force from their affiliation. For one thing, it would be too conspicuous; for another, they’re not popular enough with their clients to be able to call on them to fight the Commission. Not all of them, and not quickly.”

  Adrienne nodded. “We’ve done some research, sir. Tom and his friend have identified a crucial factor, we think.”

  The pouched, faded green eyes turned on him. Military habit stiffened Tom’s spine. “It’s Colletta Air, sir,” he said. “They’re a wholly owned Family company; they use modified C-130s, mostly. The records on your computer system—Nostradamus—look clean, but I think that over the past decade they could have, ah, lost a number of them. That would be enough to bring in a battalion, and from a considerable distance. There’s a lot of wilderness out there.”

  Adrienne nodded. “And I think that the only way to get enough men would be to recruit locally. Well, locally as in this side of the Gate. From somewhere in Mexico or points south.”

  The elder Rolfe nodded. “Perhaps; it’s a solid line of reasoning, at least. In theory, with the ability to fiddle with Nostradamus, you could slip recruits in as ordinary nahua contract workers… use some outlying property of the Collettas as a base. I suppose the Batyushkovs could provide cadre and training, and some Versfeld dissidents; they’d have a lot more recent combat veterans than the clients of any other Families, and they could bring them across as Settlers… quietly divert arms from militia requirements over a number of years… hmmm.”

  “Is that enough for you to launch a question before the committee, sir?” she asked eagerly.

  Rolfe sighed. “No,” he said. “For the same reason—unless we know they’re not ready, it might provoke an immediate strike. Charles must have hard evidence, and then we can ram through a suspension of the guilty Families’ powers immediately, paralyze them… most of their affiliations would sit on their hands in that event, and we could be certain of a quick, relatively bloodless end to this monstrosity.”

  He stubbed out the cigarillo. “We have moral certainty. We need proof and details. As I said, Charles and I will have to move very cautiously, and also cautiously begin some other precautions in case things go badly wrong.”

  Adrienne wet her lips. “Sir… perhaps I could investigate as well. I’d certainly be less conspicuous than any
direct agents of the Rolfe Family’s security force or household troops, and since the GSF is compromised…”

  “Yes,” her grandfather said. “I’m afraid you’re right, my dear.”

  “I’d appreciate authorization,” she said frankly. “I may have to use… questionable… quasi-legal… methods.”

  “By all means,” he said. Then one corner of his mouth quirked up. “By all means.”

  He opened the drawer of the table and drew out a sheet of heavy cream paper and a circle of sealing wax. Then he took a fountain pen from the breast pocket of his jacket and spoke the words in a murmur as he wrote in an elegant copperplate: “June sixteenth, 2009: The bearer… has done what has been done… by my authority… and for the good of the State.”

  He signed it with a quick, powerful scrawl—John Rolfe, Chairman Emeritus—then peeled the protective paper disks off the sealing wax, attached it by the signature and stamped it with a signet ring he wore on the third finger of his right hand—a VMI class ring, Tom realized. He folded it, tucked it into an envelope, sealed that likewise and handed it to Adrienne. Tully and Adrienne were smiling; Tom exchanged a look of bafflement with Piet Botha, and then they both shrugged.

  “Do be careful, milady,” the head of the Rolfes said dryly. “I’ve just given you a blank check. I suggest you be extremely cautious in attracting the attention of the Collettas or Batyushkovs. The death of Anthony Bosco is going to raise enough of a fuss as it is. Move slowly, when you’re where they can see you.”

  “Phew,” Tom said when they were back in the Hummer.

  Adrienne chuckled as the tires crunched on the white rock of the roadway. “It can be a bit overwhelming, meeting the Old Man for the first time. I’m afraid we’re going to have to do as he suggested: move slowly, when every instinct I’ve got screams at me to hit them high and low right away. It’d be a dead giveaway I had emergency business if I ran off somewhere else in the middle of the harvest.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “Well, there’s one cure for the jitters, and it’s one we’ve got available, thank God.”

  “Which is?” Tom said.

  “Physical labor,” she said cheerfully.

  Tully groaned.

  Giovanni Colletta had visited the Owens Valley many times before, beginning as a young boy with his father; it was an outlier of the Family domain, and the hunting was excellent. Theoretically, that was why he and the Batyushkov were here now.

  “An excellent choice of location, Dimitri,” he said. “Not only of a convenient layout and size, but isolated—without a land-link connection to Nostradamus, for instance, and not on any regular flyway.”

  “Khorosho,” the Russian agreed. Excellent.

  He’d had several vodkas; he wasn’t drunk, but his cheeks were a little flushed. The Colletta wished he could drink; he’d never liked flying, but he maintained an iron self-control. And if you had to fly, a customized C-130 was about as comfortable as you could possibly want. His technicians simply loaded a giant container through the big rear ramp of the transport aircraft and into the square hold. He had a suite of rooms that could be transported anywhere in the Commonwealth he needed to go; when he didn’t need them, the whole mass could be extracted and the aircraft returned to regular service. Best of all, there were no windows unless you went forward and up a staircase to the control deck, and you could pretend you were on the ground.

  The vibration of the four big turboprop engines still came through the walls, paneled though they were in padded bison leather. This was a man’s room: dark furniture, racked guns, a bar, books on hunting and wildlife, large comfortable chairs, bear and tiger pelts on the floor.

  “We have seen no sign of the Rolfes or the Commission moving against us,” the Batyushkov said. “Hopefully that means that your unfortunate young collateral died without revealing anything of our plans. If the Rolfes knew how close those plans were to implementation, they would certainly attempt something.”

  “That’s the best-case analysis.” Giovanni Colletta nodded, suppressing a surge of fury. And that unnatural wolf-bitch of the Rolfe’s will pay, he thought. You will be avenged, Anthony.

  “Alternatively, they are preparing a trap for us,” the Russian said meditatively. “Yet unless they act soon, we will be able to kick open any trap from the inside. Our plan is robust and does not depend upon all things going as we hope.”

  “Adrienne Rolfe is being carefully watched,” the Colletta assured him. “So far she has done nothing out of the ordinary. If she does, we will be immediately informed.”

  The commander of his household troops came through and saluted, a slim man of medium height with a thin black mustache, a sallow complexion and a strong hooked nose. He was a Colletta collateral himself, sent through the American military academy at West Point and several years of active service in the Eighty-second Airborne. That had been done at vast trouble and expense—establishing the identity and faking his later “death” convincingly had been a nightmare, in these days when DNA tests were routinely done as part of a coroner’s examination. It was an investment that would pay off handsomely in times to come, when the Commonwealth came under the rule of the Collettas and went conquering worldwide.

  “Sir,” he said. “We are approaching the landing strip at Lake Salvatore.”

  “Thank you, Major Mattei,” Giovanni said.

  The note of the engines changed, a lower growl as they crossed the Sierra heights and began their drop toward the landing strip. Giovanni made conversation, nearly certain the Russian knew nothing of his nervousness—it would not do to lose face.

  There was a jolt as the plane’s wheels touched down, and a juddering rumble as it slowed, then a jerk as the parachute brake deployed. The aircraft slowed to a halt, then taxied for a few minutes on the long dirt strip. There was a whine as the rear ramp descended; then hot, dry air cataracted in as the rear doors of the lounge were opened. Giovanni walked forward, squinting a little against the harsh bright desert sunlight; his cotton bush jacket stuck to his skin for an instant as the heat set sweat flowing, then sucked it up.

  A Hummer was waiting beside the ramp, and beside it a tall blond man in uniform. He saluted and kissed the hands of the Primes.

  Batyushkov embraced him. “Yuri Alexeievich!” he said. “It is good to see you once more.”

  “Colonel Garshin,” Giovanni said more coolly, nodding politely but maintaining a proper distance.

  They climbed into the hardtopped Hummer; two more of the open-topped model preceded and followed them, with machine guns at the ready. The lodge stood a few miles north of the shore of Lake Salvatore, a long, low ranch-style dwelling of adobe, with wooden galleries on both sides. North of that was something new: several hundred acres of tilled land, tall green corn and potato vines and wheat stubble, fed by furrows diverted from the river that ran down from the high sierras to the west. Those stood along the horizon like teeth reaching for heaven, towering fourteen thousand feet above the flat sagebrush-covered valley floor; scattered near the lake and the settlement were herds of cattle tended by mounted cowboys. From the buildings a new road drove south and east, into the Inyo range, more barren and bitter than the sierras, the outliers of deserts as stark as any on Earth.

  Dimitri Batyushkov waved his hand at the mountains on both sides as they drove past the lodge and turned southeast, along the lakeshore and toward the lower peaks that separated the Owens from Death Valley.

  “An excellent protective barrier, and an even better location for surveillance radar,” he said jovially.

  Giovanni nodded; that emphasized the primacy of the Colletta contribution to the enterprise.

  “How does the training progress?” he asked Colonel Garshin.

  “Fairly well, sir,” the man replied; his English was thickly accented but fluent enough. “The men are of fairly high quality for black-arsed savages; the main problem apart from teaching them a civilized language is that they are wholly illiterate and unfamiliar with the simplest
machines—with wheelbarrows, even. You will understand that this renders the most elementary training more difficult and time-consuming. Certainly they are ferocious enough. Their main complaint is the lack of liquor and women.”

  “I trust you can maintain discipline,” Giovanni said.

  The Russian officer smiled thinly; he had a broad, high-cheeked face with slightly slanted eyes of cool blue, below cropped hair the color of birch wood.

  “Oh, we maintain a fine discipline, you will find, sir,” he said. “Basic infantry training is complete, and we have moved on to the specialized segments. Within broad limits, the more time we have for those, the higher our chances of swift success when we strike.”

  It was only twenty miles to the site of the mine, but that meant climbing nearly eight thousand feet in the last eight miles; they began by bumping and jouncing up a wash, and then up a poor excuse for a road that wove drunkenly along the mountainside. The air felt chilly and thin by the time they reached their destination nearly three hours later. Dun wilderness stretched away to the west and north and south; they were nearly at the crestline, on a gently sloping plateau below a much steeper section of the mountainside. As they turned, the road seemed to disappear; the blue surface of Lake Salvatore glinted like a great turquoise jewel set amid the dun-green sage; the lodge was barely visible, the runway a brown thread drawn with a ruler, and the cultivation a postage stamp on a land that extended for infinite blue distance.

  Barracks built of fieldstone mortared with mud sprawled about the camp; the entrance to the false mine hid the main armory, and the crisp new lines of a great square building were supposed to contain crushing mills and smelters. Smoke did pour out of a stack; what the Russians called maskirovka—not just camouflage, but concealment that actively misled.

  And at the edge of the camp, on an X of great timbers, a naked brown man hung in chains spiked to the wood.

  “As you can see, we take energetic measures to maintain good order,” Garshin said. “This man attempted to desert.”

  “Well, that ought to teach them the consequences of failing to make a clean break,” Major Mattei said, his voice and face carefully neutral.