Conventions of War

by Walter Jon Williams

  After the Eshruq Wing came another group of Bogo Boys, followed at last by Julien. He required three assistants to haul him, pale and shivering, over the parapet. With trembling hands he lit a cigarette, then shook his head and said, “I’m never getting in one of those harnesses again. Never again.”

  “If this goes right,” Sula said, “you won’t have to.”

  She made a brief inspection of her army, most of whom were lying on the beds, tables, and carpets of the Ngeni Palace that hadn’t yet been taken to storage. Many were ritually cleaning and readying their weapons. Some were gambling. Sidney sat in an antique hooded armchair, the hood filled with a cloud of hashish smoke. Fer Tuga, the Axtattle sniper, limped from room to room, looking at the fighters in apparent surprise. He had fought all his battles alone till now, and the number of his allies on this mission was a revelation to him.

  Sula found PJ in his drawing room, looking far from the stylish Peer. He wore durable baggy trousers with a leather seat, as she’d sometimes see horsemen wear, and a ragged brown pullover. He had two weapons disassembled on the glossy Dwell-period table in front of him, a long hunting rifle with a butt inlaid with ivory and chased with silver, and a small pistol. He was cleaning the weapons with care and great fussiness, and he didn’t look up as she paused in the doorway.

  She wanted to tell PJ to leave the guns and get into bed and wait for the war to be over, so he could dress in one of his lovely tailored suits and drift down the road to one of his clubs. She wanted to tell him that he had proved his worth a thousand ways, that dying in a street fight wasn’t going to make Sempronia Martinez love him. She wanted to tell him to head down the funicular to some bar or restaurant in the Lower Town, find some pliable girl, and fuck Sempronia out of his mind.

  She wanted to say these things, but didn’t. She just looked at him for a moment and walked on without speaking.

  Nothing she said would have made any difference anyway.

  Sula lay for a few hours in Casimir’s arms, the both of them fully clothed and stretched on an old sofa in one of the cottage’s upstairs room. She supposed she might have slept. She was up before dawn, however, to make certain that the action groups received a meal, to conduct a last minute inspection of the vehicles, and to see that the group and team leaders understood what they were expected to do.

  She went onto the terrace as dawn broke over the capital, the sun rising into the green sky out of a pool of bloodred that mirrored the one it had fallen behind the night before. Her binoculars were turned on the Naxid installation. Nothing seemed to have changed since the previous evening.

  The Naxids shift changed at 0736, with most of the Fleet personnel coming up the funicular to join their officers who barracked in hotels in the High City. Sula wanted to keep any newcomers off the acropolis, and so had scheduled her attack to begin at 0701, half an hour before shift change and a little more than twenty minutes after sunrise.

  The High City was slowly coming to life, and she could hear the calls of morning birds and an occasional vehicle on the road outside. The Lower Town remained largely in darkness, though many lit vehicles moved on the streets, ghosting through the gaps between buildings. She passed among the waiting fighters and gave the command to move onto the vehicles.

  The action groups climbed in silence onto their transport. Sula watched Casimir march up the ramp of one of the trucks, awkward in the armor with which he’d never had a chance to familiarize himself, and he turned, a half-wistful, half-ironic smile rising onto his face as he saw her. He raised a hand and gave her a mocking salute, fingers flicking at his forehead, then stepped into the truck and sat with a group of Bogo Boys.

  Sula wanted to hurl herself onto the truck with the others, but she didn’t move. She was a general, not a soldier. As she watched the ramp rise, she felt a fist clamp on her throat.

  Fortune attend you, she thought uselessly. Ultimately, luck was all she had to count on.

  Electric motors provided traction to the big wheels, and the vehicles slid away on their various errands. She wondered what anyone on the road outside might think, seeing the Ngeni Palace service gate disgorging Fleet military transport, a few civilian sedans, and the two earth-moving machines on their trailers.

  The vehicle gate closed with a whir. Torminel guards armed with Sidneys stood behind the gate out of sight, while others quietly fortified the Ngeni Palace against any attack. His balding head bowed, PJ marched with his rifle at port arms in the shadow of the palace, awaiting his moment of glory.

  In the cottage, Sula donned her cuirass and helmet, not because she expected to be shot at, but because it held her secure communications equipment and battery packs. She opened the visor, took her binoculars, and left the cottage for the shadow of one of the trees, where she could watch the Naxid guards without giving herself away.

  Eskatars, scaly four-legged birds from Naxas, rained down angry cries from above her head, as if warning their distant kin of mischief afoot. Dead leaves and twigs pattered down on her shoulders.

  The teams maintained radio silence on the approach. Then Sula heard a pair of signals.

  “Four-nine-one, Thunder ready.” Spence’s voice, a little loud, a little excited.

  “Four-nine-one, Rain ready.” Macnamara’s voice.

  “Four-nine-one, Wind ready.” Sula’s heart gave a lurch at the sound of Casimir’s grating tones.

  Her mouth was dry. She summoned saliva to moisten her sandpaper tongue and gave the orders.

  “Comm: to Rain. Launch Rain. Comm: send.

  “Comm: to Wind. Launch Wind. Comm: send.”

  Rain and Wind, the seizure of the two entrances to the High City. Sula’s words were coded, compressed into microsecond bursts, and fired into the city at the speed of light. Brief acknowledgments sang in her headphones.

  There was a moment of stillness, and she could swear that, in the morning stillness, even with the headphones and the helmet over her head, she could hear the distant sound of a pair of trucks pulling around a corner and heading toward the Naxids at the Gate of the Exalted.

  Her pulse sang in her veins. Her forehead ached where the padded rim of the binoculars were pressed against it.

  These were trucks painted in the viridian green of the Fleet, the same model of Sun Ray the Fleet used, and they would arrive just ahead of the time the Naxids would expect a pair of trucks bringing their relief. The Naxids moved casually toward the vehicles as they rolled onto the broad terrace, expecting to see their own emerge as the rear ramps began to come down and the side doors to roll up.

  What emerged were a swarm of Bogo Boys spitting bullets and hurling grenades. Though surprised, the Naxids managed to fight back, and they were well-armored and tenacious, but were badly placed and in the end simply mowed down. Any Naxids that come near the open doors of the antiproton gun turrets were killed by Fer Tuga, the Axtattle sniper, who had crept up on the Naxid position in a chameleon-weave cape capable of projecting active camouflage, rendering him nearly invisible against his background.

  The snap of rifles stunned the Eskatars into silence. It was as if they knew their side had just lost.

  “Rain has secured its objective,” Macnamara said. His voice was a little breathless.

  “Comm: to Rain. Can you use the antimatter guns? Comm: send.”

  “I’m checking that now.”

  The distant sound of fire reached Sula’s ears. The fight over the funicular terminal was still going on. Casimir was leading that fight, with Sidney as the group’s sniper.

  There was the far-off crack of a grenade, and then the fading echoes of the explosion reverberating off the buildings of the High City and the great sprawl below. Then silence. Then, finally, Casimir’s deep voice.

  “This is Wind. We’ve taken the funicular. We’re having the operator move the train to the High City terminus, and we’ll lock it here.”

  A flood of joy filled Sula’s heart. She wanted to send Casimir a torrent of love, but instead made a brief ackno
wledgment and ran to the parapet as she sent another message.

  “Launch Thunder. Repeat, launch Thunder.”

  Thunder was the attack on the Great Destiny and the Imperial hotels. At Sula’s command, Spence launched the two big plows off their trailers, to hurl themselves with lowered blades to knock away the barriers placed around the buildings.

  Sula turned her binoculars to the scene at the foot of the granite acropolis, where the Naxids stationed at the two blockhouses guarding the switchback road were reacting to the firefight overhead. It was clear they heard the shots, but it seemed they weren’t sure where the sound had come from. Some were crouching with raised weapons, others had stopped all traffic approaching the High City. Probably the rest were in their bunkers.

  While Sula gazed down at the Naxids, she heard a breathless commentary from Spence, little excited bursts of prose that she sent when she remembered to, and when she had nothing more important to do.

  “The plow’s hit the barrier! Wa—Did you hear that? The first barrier just went down!…Nothing left but bits of concrete and twisted rebar…Backing up to start again…heard a crash from the second plow…guards reacting…Keep those guards pinned down!”

  Sula turned her binoculars on the Gate of the Exalted once more. Macnamara’s action group was taking up positions in the buildings behind the gate, ready to repel any counterattack aimed at retaking the position from behind. Spence’s one-sided comments continued, her voice a shout over the rattling sound of fire.

  “The second barrier’s down! The guards are running!…Send in the car now!…Go! Go!…She’s in! She’s got the car right in the lobby of the hotel!…I’m hearing shooting from the Imperial. It’s hard to see what’s happening there…Suppressive fire! Suppressive fire!…The driver’s away, she’s gotten out! She’s jumped up behind the plow blade and she’s using it for cover…Stand by, everybody! Fall back!…”

  Sula lowered her binoculars and wondered if she should take cover herself, if, as far as she was from the Great Destiny Hotel, she was in any danger, standing on the open terrace.

  The explosion came in three stages, a very fast one-two-three, first a massive bang that seemed to stun the world into brief silence, then a great percussion that Sula felt as a blast of wind against her face, then the great shivering roar that came up from the High City’s granite heart. A huge plume of debris and dust jetted high above the acropolis, glittering as it rose into the brilliant dawn.

  Well that should wake the Naxids up, she thought.

  “Success!” Spence’s excited voice was faint against the continuous noise that still dinned Sula’s ears. “We’ve taken out the Great Destiny Hotel!”

  And with it some six hundred mid-level Naxids, Sula knew. Naxid fleet officers, police officials, officers in the Legion of Diligence, bureaucratic functionaries in the government ministries…

  When planning the operation, she and Casimir had joked that the Naxid government might well run more efficiently once their mid-level bureaucrats were eliminated, but she knew that the middle layer were exactly those with the technical skills to keep the Naxid government running. Many of their superiors had been promoted on the basis of family or political connections, and the middle layers were the people who actually kept things functioning.

  “Comm: to Thunder. Good work! What’s happening at the Imperial Hotel?”

  “I’m not sure,” came the reply. “We’re in a huge dust cloud. So are they, probably. The reports I got were confusing, and I can’t seem to contact the plow operator.”

  Gradually reports came in. The other half of Thunder wasn’t going well. The plow had got hung up on a barrier, and while trying to maneuver clear, the operator had apparently been shot. At any rate, he wasn’t replying and had ceased to maneuver the plow. Spence sent the Great Destiny plow to provide backup, but the huge machine had to detour around the vast pile of rubble that was the wrecked hotel and got lost in the dust cloud. The explosive car following the plow had been badly shot up by the hotel’s guards, and when the dust cloud rolled up from the Great Destiny Hotel, the driver had taken the opportunity to abandon the vehicle and run for it.

  In the end Spence had her crews take cover and detonated the car anyway. The explosion itself was spectacular, but the damage to the Imperial was superficial. The building was scarred and all the windows were blown out, but there were presumed to be relatively few enemy casualties. The debris cloud paled before the magnificent pall of the Great Destiny Hotel.

  Sula ordered Spence to keep the hotel under fire. It might at least keep the Naxids pinned down and unable to take up their posts in the emergency.

  “Four-nine-one, this is Rain.” Macnamara’s voice came calmly into Sula’s stunned ears. “I found both antiproton guns already activated. The ammunition was locked, but I opened the boxes with the officers’ keys, and now antiproton bottles have been loaded into both guns. We’re ready to fire.”

  “Brilliant!” Sula told him. “Let’s open the floodgates.”

  She trained her binoculars downward again, at the blockhouses guarding the foot of the switchback road, and saw the guards all staring upward at the huge, brilliant dust cloud that had been their comrades. Then there was a loud bang, and part of the nearest blockhouse disintegrated in a sizzling flash, hurling the nearby guards to the ground.

  Sula remembered that there were lots of very fast neutrons and gamma particles involved, and she faded back from the parapet and only heard the follow-up shots that Macnamara placed around the installation, turning it and the Naxid guards to subatomic particles and blazing hot slag. A wild triumph filled her heart as she realized the last barrier to the success of Project Daliang had just fallen.

  “Comm: to all units,” she called. “Launch Flood! Launch Flood! Repeat, launch Flood! Comm: send.”

  She stepped back to the parapet again, and had only a few minutes to wait before a convoy of trucks and automobiles rolled out of the Lower Town and toward the wrecked roadblock, bringing the first of the combat teams who had been briefed to prepare for storming prisons and were carefully assembled and guided during the night to locations beneath the High City. Now the guides told the drivers their true destination, and the convoys were heading up the long narrow trail toward the Gates of the Exalted.

  Sula watched the first few convoys climbing the acropolis, each marked by brilliant headlight beams, and then ran back to the cottage to send out a message to the world.

  Resistance

  This is a message from the White Ghost.

  Today is the day we retake our city!

  For months we have been waiting for the inevitable return of the Fleet to Zanshaa, to drive away the Naxid invaders and restore proper government to our world.

  Though that day will still come, there is no longer any need to wait. For months we have been building our strength, gathering weapons, and training in secret. We no longer need the Fleet. We can do the job ourselves.

  All action teams, all cells, and all groups are now called to the fight. Strike the rebels wherever you can find them! Attack their officials, strike down their guards, sabotage their equipment!

  If you have ever contemplated action against the rebels, the time for action is now. If you have a gun, use it! If you can wreck a piece of enemy equipment, wreck it! If you have a rock, throw it! The city of Zanshaa can be ours in only a few hours!

  If you are a member of the security services, we have this note of caution for you. Be careful how you behave this day. Note will be taken of which side you join. Make certain that it’s the right one.

  Maximum chaos, Sula thought. Not every enemy of the Naxids belonged to the secret army, or were under her control, or had quite dared to volunteer. She wanted them all to cut loose at once. The more emergencies buzzing around the Naxids’ ears, the better.

  And if anyone was actually unwise enough to follow her advice and throw rocks at Naxids, the bullets the Naxids fired in retaliation at least were bullets that weren’t being fired at her
and her comrades.

  They needed all the help they could get. She figured there were between six and seven thousand loyalists in the secret army, and there were slightly in excess of 800 million Naxids on the planet. Whatever extra forces she could bring were desperately needed, if only to prevent the odds from looking more absurd than necessary.

  Instead of her usual fifty thousand copies, she sent a million through the Records Office node. She suspected that anyone on duty in the Records Office now had many more urgent things to do than to keep a close watch on what the broadcast node was doing.

  And as usual she’d turned off the node’s logging, so there would be no record of her messages having been sent. And as usual she’d appended the address of a false node as the message’s point of origin.

  The false node was that of the Great Refuge, the massive domed structure at one end of the High City from which the Shaa had ruled their empire.

  It was as if the Shaa themselves had returned from the dead to denounce the Naxids.

  She had now added the Great Masters to the bewildering array of identities that she’d inhabited the last few months: Lady Sula, the White Ghost, Lucy Daubrac, Jill Durmanov, Gredel, and the team leader known only as 491. It was useless to ask which of these was the real personality.

  The point was that all of them killed Naxids.

  When it was time to stop killing, perhaps she’d ask herself who she really was.

  She waited as PJ’s desk console confirmed that Resistance had been sent, then logged out of the Records Office computer and returned to the terrace. The cloud of dust and debris was dispersing on the light morning breeze. A stream of vehicles was climbing up the switchback road, each filled with fighters preparing to seize the High City.

  She went to the dining room of the Ngeni Palace, where her maps had been set out on the table. The groups coming up the switchback road were arriving in no particular order. The first groups were ordered to help secure the two bridgeheads at the funicular and the Gates of the Exalted. The next groups went to reinforce Spence’s force, who were still laying a very precarious siege to the Imperial Hotel and the Naxid officials trapped inside, Naxids who outnumbered their attackers twenty to one.