Lord Banshee Lunatic (Nightmare Wars Book 3)
Page 5
MacFinn shook his head. “Oh, lad, I thought I was all scared out, but ye’re doin it again.”
I gave a small, weary laugh, “Surgeon MacFinn, you can honestly say that you never really knew me and were appalled every time I opened my mouth. That may be valuable in the coming months.”
Admiral Wang sent us all a request for a private discussion.
Wang/private, “Just before the first call, I distributed to the doctors the pair of documents from Surgeons MacFinn and Kaahurangi. I had intended for you to talk with them first, but the documents have put them into such a foment, they might have to wait until tomorrow.
“Minister Morris insists upon talking with you, even after this morning’s fiasco. I’ve tried to talk him out of it, but he insists and Singh is backing him up. I doubt you appreciate just how dangerous our position is right now. I minimize our peril in public, but we sit on the precipice of mass executions and rebellion. Please, don’t make things worse.”
Me/converse, “I’m aware of how bad that peril can be but lack the specifics. I know there is fighting around LUVN and that Viceroy Wolong is overly ambitious. Are there specific problems I need to be aware of?
“And I will apologize for my last outburst. It has been… stressful, preparing myself to say those words out loud. The Banshees needed to know that part of my Mission. I know that most of them are unstable right now and Doctor Toyami had a worse time in many ways than the others. They need your support right now. There is little more I can give them. Please take care of Cap Thieu and Agent San Diego. They were also badly affected by the Nightmares and will need help in a military context that is different from the other members of the team.”
Wang shook his head in disbelief.
Wang/private, “I will pass you to Morris and Singh as soon as we can clean the smell out of this place.
“After that, there is a delegation from Lunar Commerce that demands to speak with the Lord Banshee. I don’t know how they found that name, but I suspect you were responsible somehow.
“The last meeting for today is a delegation that also should not know of your existence. It is a contingent of people desperate to emigrate to the Belt, including the complete crew of the Fairy Dust, several executives of the company that owned that vessel and half the delegates from a conference on space pharmaceuticals.
“I’ve insisted that the last two groups join us only vocally, no visuals.
“I’ve tried to discourage all of them but to no avail. Even hidden, you are just too prominent to escape people’s notice. They ignore my warnings and insist they need your advice. If you had not provided such useful counsel to me, I would have rejected their requests and denied you were even alive. I still think that would be the best course of action, but they are so insistent that I will let each of them burden you with their troubles. I hope your so-called mission is elastic enough for more than just a chat with Mars.
“After that, you can try again to greet the Banshees. What a mess.”
Me/converse, “Whenever you are ready.”
People with nowhere else to go tended to collect on the Moon. But the crew of the Fairy Dust?! I had hoped the arrival of the Imperial fleet would blow away all our fairy dust, but it seemed we were still coated with the stuff. I thought I knew the answer to Sergei’s question about which fairy I had pissed off. I could not supply a name, but ze was the fairy of vengeance for justice too long delayed. A very angry fairy, indeed.
Kaahurangi commented, “We should not waste this time. I fear you will need to be mobile sooner than is good for you. Start right now on some gentle belly tightening exercises. We can stop whenever anyone wants to speak.”
They flattened my chair into a bed, then had me lift my head and scrunch my stomach without bending at the waist. In the low lunar gravity, it took hardly any effort, but just working the muscles was unfamiliar after lying still for so long. I was starting to distrust periods of quiet exercise, suspicious that beyond the walls everything was in violent motion.
I squeezed in several rounds of exercise before MacFinn set the chair upright again. I faced the monitor and watched as Wang appeared with a selection of former ministers including Morris and Singh. There were no smiles and no welcome speeches. Wang just said, “Let us get to it. Minister Morris?”
Morris picked up, “You have already reminded us that we have access to your services for a limited time. I doubt anyone has yet updated you about developments on the Earth. I will try to be brief.
“You gave us warning about problems in Soam and hidden armies. These warnings were very useful but would have been more helpful if the entire senior command of the TDF had not been under an emoji attack that paralyzed the army. There was a brief period when Admiral Wang found himself commanding local detachments of the TDF in Soam, Centam, and Africa. Fortunately, the attacks were not uniform or properly coordinated, so we were able to disseminate the LE token and restore ground-based command to experienced generals in a few days. Even so, we lost half the General Staff to madness and may not get back all of them.
“Unsuspected military units emerged all over the planet. The one you encountered in Noram Norwes is still active. In some places, including Noram Norwes, they merged with nearby regional militias. Combat started immediately in half a dozen regions and is still in progress. In most cases, the hidden armies are sitting silently by themselves, not expressing support for anyone or any organization, not even for the Imperium. We have no idea what this portends, except it is surely not good.
“As you know, we had been working on a peaceful transfer of authority on both the Earth and the Moon. Since we cannot defend ourselves in space, both councils surrendered as soon as the Viceregal Fleets arrived and have made no hostile moves. Notwithstanding, there is a terrible difference in the ways the transfer has proceeded on the two planets.
“Our Viceroy Fenghuang accepted the surrender of authority on the terms we offered. That transfer is proceeding smoothly.
“Before he even arrived at the Earth, Viceroy Wolong demanded that the entire Terrestrial Government resign and his own aristocracy be acknowledged as the only authority. The Terrestrial Council objected that such a sweeping change could not be implemented immediately. They sent a protest through Forward Command to the Emperor stating their previously unsuspected loyalty and requesting clarification. As you suspected, the lobby for Martian independence carried the day, in part because the senior ministers who might have opposed them were disabled by the emoji attack.
“The Viceroy was apparently offended that they had not only disobeyed his order but gone over his head. He reiterated the order and supplemented it with a decree that everyone who works, or ever has worked, for Extraterrestrial Affairs should be executed along with their immediate families. That too, the Council refused to implement. Another protest was sent to the Emperor, pointing out that the majority of the employees were performing useful and uncontroversial work that was of great benefit to the Imperium. There has been no response yet from the Emperor to any of these messages.
“The Viceregal fleet then occupied every earth station and began ferrying people to the ground. Most of these are not even the aristocrats who were supposed to be taking power. Instead, Wolong has been sending undercover agents, assassins, and the apparatus of the Martian Justice system. Wherever they land, death squads move out through the population, executing people without trial. There have been some arrests as well, but no one yet knows what the charges might be, nor where the prisoners are being held.”
Singh interrupted, “I’m sorry Mahatma, but Brian should know that my husband and daughter were both executed yesterday. The death squad broke into our home, dragged them into the street, stripped them naked, and beheaded them. They forced a local news crew to broadcast the whole atrocity. We have always supported Martian independence, but the assassins did not even ask about our sympathies. All that mattered was that I worked for ExA.
“My son was not home. I hope he has gone into hiding.
“The chaos that came with the Hai Ba Tru’ng and Quetzalcoatl makes it worse, if anything. There are Imperial agents searching the Lunar cities for an enemy called the Sultan Mustafa, who seems to be behind the troubles at both Valhalla and LUVN.
“With so many people searching for anything suspicious, there are too many of us to hide much longer. When they find us, we will all be executed as members and associates of ExA.
“Our Nightmare has already started. We don’t know what to do. Should we try to escape to the Earth and hide somewhere in the wilds? None of us knows how. Should we surrender to Viceroy Fenghuang and beg for mercy? Her obvious response would be to execute all of us to placate her brother. Should we kill ourselves so that others might survive? We are at our wit’s end.”
Morris rubbed her back and took up the lead again. “My wife died five years ago. We had no children, so a few years ago I passed my reproductive rights to the rest of my family. Now, I’m officially dead and my Earthly inheritance has passed to my survivors. I expect both legacies to be confiscated and destroyed in the next few weeks.
“I fear for the rest of my family, but for myself, I am content to be undead. In my afterlife, I will haunt the lower levels as a custodian under a new ID. There are about ten of us in similar positions who can live as consultants-in-hiding for the Lunar Council. We can probably remain here indefinitely if we keep a low profile.
“It is much worse for everyone else. There are another twenty who are not members of Extraterrestrial Affairs. They attended our meeting and have ended up here, but hope to go back to the Earth when things settle down. They are, of course, terrified by the executions. Wolong has been so erratic, attending our meeting may be sufficient to condemn them.
“A number of our junior delegates escaped from protective custody on the Khrushchev, with the assistance of your former agents after you warned of possible assassins. Ironically, the only escape route was to the Moon, on Belter ships desperate for a little extra cash to complete their refuelling. Combined with the people we rescued, we have an additional forty delegates and thirty staff members from the meeting. They are too closely tied to Extraterrestrial Affairs to return to the Earth, too numerous to stay here, and have nowhere else to go. We cannot condemn them to death but we cannot keep them either. No one has any idea what to do.”
As he wound down, the entire room looked sullen and fearful.
I asked, “How did Viceroy Fenghuang react to the decrees from her brother?”
Wang replied, “She was outraged, from the little we have heard. There is an effort being made to present the Imperium as a uniform body with a single will, but she has ordered us to speed up the process of creating a Lunar Constitution that acknowledges the Imperium as the overlord of the Lunar Council. We hope the first draft will be ready tomorrow. If she intended to dismiss the Lunar Council, she would surely have stopped that project on arrival.
I nodded, “What about the employees of Extraterrestrial Affairs here on the Moon?”
A different minister I did not recognize spoke up, “They were summarily fired as soon as she arrived, but simultaneously an Imperial Directorate of Commerce was proposed. We hope to hire most of those people into the new directorate after the new Lunar Constitution is approved. We think the purpose of the mass firing was so the new administration can claim to have destroyed ExA on the Moon. There are a few former ExA employees who provided liaison between the Lunar Council and the Governor’s office on Mars. They don’t fit into any proposed body and have been told to look for alternative employment. Our Viceroy has not threatened them with legal sanctions yet. In particular, she has not repeated Wolong’s mass damnation of all ExA employees, although we have been warned that a list of prohibited people will be issued shortly.
“As the Banshees may have mentioned, there is an ongoing effort to create an Imperial Court of Justice here on the Moon to handle criminal cases where unacceptable delays and risks would attend the transfer of people between planets. We are hopeful it will follow Lunar procedures, which are formally similar to the justice system of Mars, but with punishments appropriate for the jurisdiction in which the offences occurred. Some of the people who don’t fit elsewhere might be hired into the new court structure, but I doubt they would be interested since the cases are likely to be very controversial and the punishments savage for offences committed on Mars or in the Belt.”
Everything I needed to have in place was still under discussion. I was not sure how long I could wait for a resolution. I asked, “What about Mars itself? Do we have any idea what is happening?”
Wang, Morris, and Singh all shook their heads.
Singh said, “After the first batch of transmissions, Mars has gone almost silent, with just a dribble of commercial traffic. We fear that means the planet is convulsed in fighting, so no one has time to create reports. It is not obvious they would send them our way, even if things were peaceful. We would expect some chatter about how they are organizing the new government, but there has been nothing.
“We have nothing at all from the Belt. We expect our agents were rounded up as soon as the Imperium began to move. It is now obvious that they were never in the right places to give useful reports.
“Even the Earth is hidden behind a screen of lies and raving fanaticism. Official reports tell of bumper crops and burgeoning prosperity, as though everything had improved unbelievably in the last three days. The private feeds we still get tell of confiscations of people’s homes and property, mass firings, and arbitrary murders. Wolong has brought in one or two convoys from L1 under heavy escort, but we don’t know what was on them or who provided the escort. It was not part of the Terrestrial Viceregal fleet. They went directly to the Magellan. As far as we can tell, the other earth stations have only serviced military ships. It has been two weeks since the Earth received significant shipments of anything. It is not even clear whether the shuttles are running. Normal transport companies have stopped their operations because of the pirates.
“We are almost as badly off, trade-wise. There are whole armadas of freighters at L1 and L2, loaded and ready, but either impounded by the factional warships or too fearful to run the gauntlet of pirates.
“None of us can safely ask penetrating questions right now. Admiral Wang is preoccupied with the fate of the TDF under the Imperium, Mahatma advises the Council from hiding, and I am not supposed to exist at all.”
That was a puzzle. Mars and the Belt might be open to new immigrants with appropriate skills, despite their background in Extraterrestrial Affairs, but might currently be war zones. I knew far more about people in the Belt than I had a few weeks ago, but much of it was indirect, from the reports that MacFinn and Kaahurangi had prepared. I asked MacFinn by comm if I could mention the possibility of the Imperial hospital system, but got back a curt, “No.”
I had nothing to offer. This was a big problem with a short fuse. All I could say was, “This is very difficult, but I have several other groups to meet today and it sounds like a couple more tomorrow. May I think about how we might approach a solution?”
Morris grimaced but just said, “Big rabbit to pull out of a hat. We should give you time. I hope we have it.”
Wang shook his head. “Bad problem and getting worse. These are too many people to move on almost any ship we have available. That many people would fill a public liner at an expense none of us can afford. Besides, no liners are leaving for any destination while the war fleets are in motion. We have two liners due to arrive in the next three months, and there are several outbound to Mars. We have no idea whether their passengers will be allowed to disembark or even whether the ships will be treated as enemy warcraft. No one knows anything.
“Let us break for another half hour and resume with the delegation from Lunar Commerce.”
2357-03-21 23:00
Mappin
g the Outer Darkness
I did half an hour of leg lifts while we waited, puzzling how to move large numbers of people off the Moon to unknown destinations without alerting the viceroys of both the Earth and Moon, without even having a ship to move them.
Impossible, but I felt I had heard that answer before and it was false. Impossible. It was a challenge. I could not even imagine what a solution would look like. Damn, I hated that word ‘impossible’.
We would need a lot of shipboard living space and a truly major distraction. It would be like stealing the Mao and sending it to the Belt without anyone noticing. Except the Mao was surely undergoing major repairs and might even be scrapped. It may have looked scary, but as a fighting warship, it was currently a hulk.
They sat me up again when Wang called to say that the connection to Lunar Commerce was active. When the camera came on, Katerina and Evgenia sat looking very pale on one side of Wang while Singh sat glowering with three other people on the other side.
Singh gestured, “I would like to introduce three former employees of ExA who have extensive experience in Extraterrestrial Commerce, specializing in asteroidal mining. The Lunar Commerce people explicitly requested their participation. Wolong has condemned them all so they cannot return to the Earth. Nor are they willing to stay on the Moon, which is too close to the Earth. They are looking for alternatives. They will introduce themselves if an opportunity arises. We all intend to remain silent until then.”
Wang looked grim. He explained, “The participants from Lunar Commerce asked for an extremely secure connection. They don’t even want voice, insisting on text only, and feel a need for uncertainty about their own location. We have therefore created a text stream with large blocks, a single-use ACC encryption, and a random two- to four-second delay each way. This will be slow and painful.”