Counterweight

by A. G. Claymore

  “Hey!” Rick roared, stepping to Cal’s right and pointing into the crowd. “HEY! Red coveralls – the RED COVERALLS! Don’t try it! You in the green hat – take that weapon from him.”

  A young male in red coveralls meekly surrendered a magister’s disintegrator. “H… how did you…” he trailed off, shaking his head in mixed fear and amazement.

  “Never mind how,” Rick replied, pitching his voice to carry to the rear of the crowd. “This is not the time for rash stupidity. If it was, I’d probably be given a lot more responsibility than I currently have.”

  Chuckles and outright laughter peppered the low buzz of the crowd.

  “We just came down here because Cal promised us the chance to join your fight against the company magisters,” he explained, having already tested several comments to find the best fit, and his efforts didn’t go to waste.

  The chuckles were replaced by cheers.

  “You see what I mean about making his own luck?” Cal whispered to Freya.

  “Remind me to explain when we have the time,” she replied. “Where do you need us?”

  The wind peaked and died abruptly as the second pod slid into the carrousel.

  “The magisters have pulled in their patrols,” he explained. “Their stationhouse network was designed to let them restrict any traffic in the atrium in the event of martial law. They’ve concentrated force at the atrial stations and they’ll shoot down any vehicles that try to fly in the open.”

  “You’d like us to crack open the stations?”

  “Yes, they’re spread through the atrium, one every five levels,” Cal replied. “They alternate; the top station is in the middle of the atrium, then the next is five levels down, at the south end, a thousand meters from the middle. The next one is at the north end, also a thousand meters from the middle.”

  “How many personnel in each?”

  “Roughly four hundred per station.”

  A short pause. “So you have roughly thirty thousand security personnel who need to be removed?”

  “Yes,” Cal admitted. “So fighting them all is probably not a viable alternative.”

  “Not with a century and a half of warriors.” she agreed, waving her hand at the imposing but small group of Midgaard. She could scrape up more troops from her ships but time was running out.

  “How much air do you have left?”

  “Maybe eight centidays. We have a man working on that but we have no contact with him. If he fell to his death, we’re doomed.”

  “If we get inside one of these stations, can all the other stations see what we’re doing?”

  “Yes,” Cal hesitated for a moment. “We might be able to get at the cables and cut their signal but…” He narrowed his gaze, looking at her eyes for a few heartbeats. “You want the other stations to see what’s happening, don’t you?”

  She nodded grimly. “I have to balance the lives of four hundred magisters against twenty million citizens. If I force the surrender of forty stations one at a time, we’d end up taking one station before everyone in the city dies from asphyxiation. If we take the first station with blades only…”

  She frowned. “Do the stations have separate air supply?”

  “No,” Cal sighed. “By keeping us trapped up here, they’re killing themselves but they trust the company to look after them, all the same.”

  “All right, what’s the best way into the top station?”

  “They build the main patrol stations on the bridges across the atrium and they cover the approaches from both sides with clear fields of fire.” Cal grinned. “But they don’t seem to give much thought to what happens under their floors.”

  For the Encouragement of Others

  Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

  “An awful lot of fiddling around just to blow a hole in the ceiling, isn’t it?” Rick stood well back from the charges Cal had placed. “Wouldn’t a bigger hole let us provide cover fire to the initial insertion team?”

  “It would,” Cal admitted, “but it would also mean blasting through those carbon fibre beams.” He sketched his finger in imitation of the network of dark grey supports.

  “Breathe that stuff into your lungs and you’ll be dead by seventy. I plan to hit a thousand years old at least, so no thanks.” Cal pointed at the carefully placed steel channels intended to direct the explosive force upwards. “That’s why we’re just cutting through the concrete pad.”

  He raised an eyebrow at Rick. “Any other questions, Milord?”

  Rick sighed. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

  Cal grinned. “Anything you say, Sire. Thing is, I’m staying down here and you two are going to be the Warlords of this planet, so…”

  “Just make the damn hole,” Rick growled then jumped as Cal pressed the detonator immediately. His ability had failed to show him the detonation because his own interference had changed the sequence. Cal’s immediate reaction to his demand had caught him completely off guard.

  A cloud of dust and debris shot downward, concealing the fall of a large section of concrete floor. Two Midgaard raced forward with a grey ladder, shoving it up through the hole as two others aimed their G-23’s up through the opening.

  Freya leaped onto the ladder, landing her right foot on the third rung and scrambling up like a monkey. The sight shook Rick into action and he managed to get to the ladder just in time to pull another warrior out of the way.

  As with Freya, it was his duty to lead from the front. The Midgaard invading this magisters’ station should see their leaders taking the greatest risks.

  A head tumbled through the opening, bouncing off his shoulder – he’d already felt a moment of relief at realizing its hair was short. He climbed into a dust-hazed chamber that appeared to be a washroom. He could hear heavy breathing to his right. “Freya?”

  “Here,” she answered. “Watch the…”

  Rick stepped neatly over a headless form, having already seen his own stumble.

  “…body.”

  He reached her side and, seeing she was holding her short axe, he holstered his side arm and reached over his shoulder to draw his own axe.

  He placed a hand on her shoulder. “In-bound,” he whispered. “I’ve got it.” He moved away into the haze, drawing his weapon back, ready to strike.

  A magister burst in through the door. “What the hells…”

  Rick’s swing severed the magister’s head cleanly, the body stumbling on for several steps before falling. There were ten warriors in the settling haze now.

  “Let’s move,” Freya called out. She sheathed her axe and drew her Colt-Caseless.

  Rick was about to switch weapons and rush through the door but he stopped and laughed, turning back to face the assault party. “Watch this,” he said simply, then opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

  Several blasts struck his EVA suit with no effect. “They’re useless against our suits!” He hefted his axe and charged the three magisters at the end of the hall.

  The three simply fled, one down a connecting hall to the right and the other two broke to the left. Rick went left, his adrenaline wanting more targets than his common sense could agree on.

  The Human height advantage came into play, his longer strides bringing him within striking distance of the slowest magister and he brought his axe down in a one-handed swing. The Dactari went down with a vicious wound to the back and his comrade swung around to fire wildly at his pursuer.

  Rick hadn’t recovered from the swing and so he slammed his axe up and forward, driving the eye of the handle into the magister’s throat. The Dactari was done for, his windpipe too restricted to allow breath, but Rick drew his weapon back and gave him peace. Thorstein had been training him during their voyage to 3428 and also on the way to Chaco Benthic and he’d steadfastly insisted that you didn’t leave a live enemy at your back in combat.

  He paused to catch his breath and a rush of warriors flowed past him. He looked down at the two bodies. He wasn’t
sure what he was looking for; remorse perhaps? He’d just taken three lives and, yet, he felt curiously neutral.

  He had no illusions about the magisters. He knew they were killers, oppressors, thugs with authority. He also knew he was rationalizing their deaths but it still didn’t make him feel any sympathy for his victims.

  Did that make him a sociopath? He felt a brief moment of alarm until he realized he’d been concerned about Ted’s chances of survival, even after he’d managed to escape from 3428. He’d managed to evade any chance of consequences for his role in the stabbing but he still hoped Ted would recover, even though the poor fool had planned to castrate him.

  The magisters were swaggering, murderous thugs – Ted was just an idiot. Rick sighed. Rationalization or not, he had work to do.

  He looked up to the ceiling and, seeing one of the camera domes, grinned at it before trotting off after his warriors.

  He caught up with them as they entered the main bullpen where the company lawmen logged their data at the end of a shift. The room was roughly twenty meters square and it was a charnel house.

  All of the magisters carried knives and the word had gotten out that their disintegrators were ineffective. A vicious battle was raging and Rick waded into it, swinging his axe without even having to look for threats. Whether attacking or defending, his ability allowed him to flow with the knowledge, putting his blade where it needed to be.

  He brought his axe down, severing the hand that was about to stab one of his warriors in the neck. He kept the blade going in an underhanded swing, pivoting to the left to avoid a knife thrust from his right and knocking away a third attacker’s arm with the upswing of his blade.

  The third attacker dropped his knife, grabbing the deep gash in his forearm, and Rick pulled the axe straight back, hammering the handle into the mouth of the magister whose thrust he had sidestepped.

  Roughly half the weight of steel, the titanium nitride blade actually weighed less than his bow and it felt almost too light in his hand. The cutting power was coming from his massive archer’s muscles but they were accustomed to drawing his bow and the sustained effort of combat was beginning to tell. Each swing required a slightly firmer force of will to complete the stroke.

  And then there were no further attacks on his pre-cognitive horizon. He looked around the huge room, breathing heavily.

  Not a single magister was standing. Some still moved but they were bleeding out. The message had been sent to the remaining magisters – if you want a fight, it’s going to be ugly. He looked down at a headless Dactari body and still felt strangely unmoved. This had been even less difficult for him than the first three.

  And he knew he was good at it. He was new to combat and he’d only ever been in one fight before that involved a blade – the one that ended with Ted’s near death – but his abilities gave him a distinct edge.

  After a lifetime of avoiding fights, of knuckling under to hateful idiots, he was free of restriction and, yet, he hadn’t given it any thought while fighting. He’d felt no displaced rage in the heat of battle, only a calm dispassionate evaluation of the continuing risk.

  A warrior thumped him on the shoulder, his blood-spattered face grinning as he heaved for breath. “You certainly took more than your fair share!” He croaked from a dry throat. “Ymir’s windy crevice! I might just have to ask Thorstein for a few sparring sessions!”

  Before he could answer, an expected hand grabbed his shoulder. Cal looked troubled and Rick wasn’t in the mood to drag it out. “Our men in the shunt were killed?” he prompted Cal.

  Cal looked at him for a moment. “Yeah. Caught at the second diverter. We’d sent a man down to call to them but he found the bodies after the first floor.” He shook his head. “Crushed in half when the diverters activated.”

  “Sure didn’t get very far.”

  Cal released an explosive exhalation. “He died shortly after starting the descent and we don’t have time to try again, at this point.”

  Freya joined them. “Do we have anyone else who knows what to do?”

  Cal shook his head. “Not up here and we don’t have time anyway.”

  “Not up here,” Rick asked, sheathing his axe, “but we have some down below?”

  “There probably aren’t any atmo-techs on the mine level. And we don’t have a way to contact…”

  “Never mind the atmo-techs,” Rick cut him off. It was a lot easier to cut to the heart of the matter when you could see where the discussion was heading. “Who has explosives on the bottom level?” He pre-empted Cal’s answer, poking a finger at him. “Your prospector pals, that’s who.” He waved off Cal’s pending response.

  “We can contact them,” Rick insisted. “They’re on the one level that we can be sure of sending messages to.”

  He picked up a bloodied knife, held it out and dropped it. “Good old gravity. The magisters can interfere with the maglev engines but they can’t stop the progress of a standard Mark I rock with optional message attached. It’s an express ride – straight to the bottom level.”

  Cal’s eyes grew wide. “Son of a clone! All this time we’ve allowed ourselves to tunnel-vision on climbing down and blowing the dampers from the inside but we could blow the pivots.” He looked around the room. “Paper!” he yelled. “We need paper.”

  “And rocks,” Rick shouted, “or any fist-sized, reasonably heavy items.”

  It was almost a universal truth that paper refused to disappear from societies. Most Republic worlds still used some version of the fibrous, single-use medium. Seeing as the office was still connected to the power grid, Cal opted to use electronic paper.

  Using a charged stylus, he wrote out quick instructions, detailing where to find the shunts and where to place the charges. Tiny spheres embedded in the laminated paper rotated in response to the stylus, turning to present the charged, darkened side.

  When he finished, he lifted the paper from the writing pad, killing the charge in the sheet and fixing the information until the next time the sheet was placed on a pad. It was a simple matter of setting each successive sheet on the pad and synching it with the stored data from his first set of instructions.

  They tied the sheets to the weights and carried them out onto the central bridge. “Spread out,” Cal told the warriors as he handed out the messages. “We want to increase our chances of someone finding this in time.”

  “And wait till you hear me fire two bursts from my G-23 before you drop them,” Rick added. “We don’t want the magisters getting wise and trying to shoot at the messages. Chances of them hitting anything are slim but we’re not going to take chances.”

  It would take a while for the messengers to reach their positions, so Rick left his G-23 slung for the time being. He looked over at Cal, following his gaze up to what he had assumed to be a box-shaped beam, running along the underside of the central bridge. It went into the station on one side but not on the other.

  Could it be there were dedicated shunts for some of the stations?

  He laughed at the agent’s response but asked the question anyway. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I dunno,” Cal muttered. “Are you thinking Oh shit, those company executives are still locked inside the administrative block with no air supply. I bet they’re all dead?”

  “No,” Rick admitted. “You’d rather keep them alive?”

  A nod. “When I dropped that restaurant a few days ago, I made sure we’d still have enough of them left to manage payroll and material flow.” He looked over at Rick. “We’re gonna take this city but we still need to feed and pay twenty million people so, yeah, I’d like to find some of those guys alive.”

  Rick waited until Cal looked toward the office block before swinging his G-23 around and firing two short bursts into the open door of the emptied magisters’ station. He kept a straight face, though he’d enjoyed the Human agent’s startled twitch. Payback for the blast…

  “No sense waiting around here,” Rick declared.
“Let’s go see if we’re out of company men.”

  The Way Forward

  Tsekoh, Capital of Chaco Benthic

  Freya and Rick walked out to the middle of the uppermost bridge. There was still a large chunk missing where the bridge branching off to the fallen restaurant had been torn loose. They stood at the jagged edge, Freya to the east and Rick to the west. The city’s systems were targeting the spot for voice pick-up.

  It had been a busy week – putting the few surviving company staff to work at their administrative duties had been the easiest task. Placating the newly freed public had been far more difficult.

  Many were clamoring for an immediate reduction in the exit price. Some were even demanding free transport back to their home worlds. It didn’t take a genius to realize how quickly a trickle of emigrants would turn into a mass exodus.

  Still, that argument would have little impact on those who wanted out.

  Cal had given new marching orders to his followers. They’d spent most of the week travelling the city, talking to prominent citizens. Give us a year was one of the prominent catch phrases that had quickly spread through the crowded city.

  Everywhere they went, the victorious insurgents were asked about the steady flow of rock coming out of the city’s flanks. With the on-going effort to build new markets for the city’s mineral products, many mining staff had been asked to accept temporary cut-backs in their hours. The majority of those miners had been put back to work on the new excavations and many had agreed to trade their labor for a stake in the project.

  They were creating space for housing and the rumor had spread faster than any official proclamation ever could. Nobody would have to sleep on the street.

  After a week of working the grapevine, Cal had decided the time was right and he called a general assembly. The citizens crowded the atrial walkways, gathering around the various holoscreens, and the open atrium was filled with the white noise of millions of voices.