The second feed gave a running analysis of the Lunar Exchange and the reviving fortunes of companies that had been maneuvering desperately to avoid bankruptcy until the incoming ships gave them a renewed lease on life.
The third monitored the internal economy, chiefly agriculture, clothing, and small appliance manufacturing. These industries did not do much trade in the interplanetary market, but people whose jobs were threatened bought no clothing or appliances and cut back on food. The whole market had been depressed since the Imperium had arrived and was almost delirious with hope.
When I cleared my glass wall, Rags was waiting outside, glowering. I invited him in and closed the door. I also turned off all the cameras and microphones, which brought Sa’id very quickly. I waved him away, darkening the glass again. Rags leaned over me and accused, “You suckered me.”
I looked up agreeably, “Yes. I apologize but I’m not the least bit sorry. I don’t want to know who you are or what you did on Mars. Believe me when I say you don’t want to know me. Regardless, I am deeply interested in what you know. I have spent the last decade working in CI, chasing illegal drugs and weapons. I want to understand the high-level financial transactions you mentioned, to discover what fuels the rising violence we have been experiencing. We could identify the worst arms traffickers, but they had political and financial support at levels we couldn’t even see. You understand aspects of the economy I have needed to know for the last ten years. What you know might have solved many of my cases, or exposed me to so much corruption that I would have been assassinated. Equal chances either way but clearly important.”
He glared straight into my face. “Why? And why now, after ten years of wasted effort? Drugs and guns are petty crimes. They have always been common amongst the dregs of society and always will be. That scourge cannot be cured by weak, ineffective half-measures. Why would you want to expose yourself to the great powers, forces that will crush you like a curd between their teeth?”
“Drugs and guns are just the pulse,” I replied. “Illegal financial transactions and influence peddling are the lifeblood of evil. I am interested mostly in the money that flowed between the Earth and Mars, plus the Belt if that is different.”
He was outraged. “SILENCE! I know nothing about illegal financial transactions. Everything I ever did was for the mutual benefit of the Martian people and the business leaders who bankrolled their development. There was no influence peddling, and to slander honest merchants as evil is despicable. AS ARE YOU!”
I faced him without flinching. “On Mars and on the Earth, I saw firsthand the results of those financial transactions: the lives poisoned with drugs; the innocent dead; the destitute families crammed into slums, driven to desperation by the continual outrages they had to endure; factories designed to spew toxins into the public water supply so that a few managers could receive one-time bonuses; businesses that paid profits only to a handful of Earth-bound investors, while their employees suffered. It was unquestionably evil.
“Influence peddling was normal practice in the Martian business community. Indeed, it was necessary to survive at all. The governors openly encouraged the corruption for their own benefit.
“Look again at the dead in this city over the last few days. Those people were not the dregs of society. Look at the warring fleets that have choked off trade to the Earth and Moon. Businesses that import minerals from the Belt are cancelling orders for fear the ships will be pirated or destroyed. The destruction here has consequences throughout human space, for the great and the small alike.
“And it can be traced directly back to those hidden financial transactions you seem so proud of. Someone paid to have all the ships in the Imperial fleets designed and built. I cannot believe that the effort was supported entirely on the internal economy of Mars, which is barely able to pay for itself in the best years. Somebody, somewhere on the Earth, was content that huge amounts of their money were being spent on an activity that threatens mass murder and economic collapse. I want to know who, and how they did it.”
He practically spat at me, “You know nothing of how the world works. The hundred families have guided two and a half centuries of steady improvement. The petty are responsible for their own criminal behaviour. There would be no crime if they learned obedience and restrained their ambitions to the rewards that they earned.
“Those fleets were built by people who were paid for their work and were happy to receive their paychecks. Honest trade is impossible without secure trade routes. The TDF has presided over a decade of growing piracy. Someone had to bring the system back to order. I’m proud to have been part of it. If I can expose your role in opposing the natural order, it will be my privilege to do so.”
I sat back and smiled. “You say I know nothing of how the world works? Then teach me and I will teach you how it works on the other side. I have been in Martian factories where I saw workers killed by unsafe machinery to save the cost of a pulley cover. I saw the routine refusal to pay contracted wages. Those workers’ highest ambitions were to get the rewards they had earned. Obedience to the criminals who were robbing them wouldn’t achieve that goal. I was forced to work beside tax cheats who obliged the government to use legalized piracy to pay for essential services.
“And look again at those fleets. They are wildly in excess of anything required to suppress piracy and restore order. Nor are they trying. There has been more piracy in the Earth-Moon system since they arrived than in the whole century before.
“As for my exposure, I am already on the list of people to be executed. Expose away, it really doesn’t matter anymore. In fact, I have been liberated in a way. I was deeply traumatized by my time on Mars. When I returned, I could no longer face the self-righteous, hypocritical bureaucrats and business leaders who ran the world. I could chase their minions but knew that more was needed. All along in my heart, in my gut, I knew another Incursion was possible. As I healed from the trauma, I watched the pulse of crime, hoping to hear a warning of renewed war. If possible, I wanted to find a way to prevent the war, but never imagined the scale of this invasion.
“Now that they are here, I have nothing left but to take on the powerful forces you were talking about. They have already announced that I am to be crushed like a curd, although they phrased it in legal terms. What more can they do?”
His hostility deepened. “If you had ever been to Mars, you would know what more they can do. I think you are a liar and a spy.”
I whispered back, “A liar, a spy, a mass murderer, and a traitor to everyone on Mars. I know in exquisite detail what Martian Justice will do to me. All I can hope is that other people who also deserve justice will receive it.”
We stared at each other until his nerve broke. Perhaps he wondered about the wisdom of offending someone who admitted to being a murderer. “I cannot deny the size of the fleets, which must be a colossal waste of money, nor their distressing lack of discipline. And my own loyal service to the families has been rewarded with the monstrous injustice that I am also on that list. I still believe that the families know what they are doing. Sacrifices must always be made to achieve great results.”
I responded, “We are getting closer to a basis for discussion. I don’t deny two and a half centuries of progress but attribute it to factors other than the beneficence of the wealthy. I have met captains of industry who earned their positions and were genuinely worthy of their wealth. Most inherit their money. They maintain it with highly paid advisors more intelligent than themselves. Those advisors are often selfishly ambitious for their own wealth, indifferent to the harm they cause. Some of those advisors have made terrible mistakes and their unwary masters failed to stop them. They are gambling with our very existence for what they imagine is their own short-term profit. I want to find them and bring them to justice – Earth justice, not the Martian abomination. If I can’t do it myself, I would like to start a process that others can complete. Teach me, I beg you.”
His hostility wavered and ebbe
d. “If I help you, how do I know you won’t betray me?”
I replied with a deadly calm, “You can’t know that. Nor can I. How do you know you won’t betray yourself? Something you did has placed you on that list.
“I will be leaving soon. When I do, I recommend that you move as well, immediately, and be prepared to leave everything behind. Especially your investments, which can be tracked no matter how carefully you hide them. If you get a chance, start a new life from scratch and tell no one what you did before, not ever. If you need help, talk to my companion – do we have a nickname yet?”
He stared back fearfully, like he thought I might strike with poisoned fangs, or perhaps already had. I think the sense of what I said was beginning to sink in and the wound was swelling painfully. No one on the list to be executed could be indifferent to sensible advice honestly given.
“I call him Nuts for staying with us,” he said. “If what you say has any truth at all, the name seems even more appropriate.”
It might have been an attempt at a joke but neither of us smiled.
“Good,” I said, “Talk to Nuts. He may be able to help you arrange a new persona. I will do some exercise and maybe we can talk again later. Anything you can teach me might be helpful.”
2357-03-30 06:00
Hotstuff
Hotstuff joined us again at dinner, slightly less cranky and a lot more talkative. Unlike the rest of us, she was proud of her life and contemptuous of our reticence. She had been a senior officer in the Vallis Patriotic Force. When she had joined thirty years before, they had called themselves the Cordillera Guards, named after the Montes Cordillera, the mountain ramparts that surrounded Mare Orientale. I remembered them as a tiny volunteer force under the Public Office that provided crowd control and security when a large event required more oversight than the Public Office could supply.
Although there had been very little violence on the Moon during the Incursion, the Lunar people had felt terrifyingly vulnerable. After Legal Intelligence had been divided, Military Intelligence had taken control of the Guards and beefed them up into the Cordillera Defence Force, a kind of regional militia that the Moon had never needed or wanted before. MI added surveillance to their duties and authorized them to carry light sidearms while on duty. The CDF gave their soldiers basic military training as a precaution against severe emergencies. Never intended to match the TDF, they recruited less capable soldiers and trained them to lower standards. They continued to provide security during major events but were needed less often because the Public Office was also enlarged.
After I returned from Mars, I had been too broken to recognize that the reports from the Governors were still filled with self-congratulatory lies. The rest of MI was not. The CDF recruited vigorously, dividing into four small divisions named after the radial valleys around Mare Orientale: Vallis Baade, Vallis Bohr, Vallis Bouvard, and Vallis Inghirami.
Needing more space, they had constructed a new base along the train line to Orientale Gunawardena. Within three years of my return from Mars, the growing force had withdrawn from Orientale Tereshkova, no longer participated in civic life, and disappeared from public awareness. They were supplied through MI from military stores, using dedicated trains run with military crews, so even local companies that supplied the TDF base had no direct awareness of their continued existence.
Out of sight, the enlarged force was renamed the Vallis Patriotic Force. In the last year, it had expanded again. Hotstuff speculated that MI had received warning that the Imperium was preparing to attack. A new set of divisions was formed, named after other linear valleys on the Moon including Alpes and Snellius. Few soldiers in the new divisions had yet been properly trained. Their deployment had been a mistake that Hotstuff had argued against unsuccessfully.
By the end of dinner, she was cursing her fellow officers, who had excluded her from promotions she deserved, cut her out of important planning meetings, denied her even upgrades to her comm system. During the deployment, she had refused to pass on orders to shoot civilians who a decade before had been her neighbours. Her CO had convicted her of mutiny and ordered her execution, without bothering to arrange a formal trial.
With inventive glee, they had shot her legs and arms to prevent her escape and partially buried her in a heap of murdered civilians. They intended to incinerate the bodies with liquid explosives, including her still-living body. Mixing in a few cases of mining explosives offered the fringe benefit of burying the atrocity under a collapsed ceiling. Before they could carry out the plan, the airtight doors closed. She was trapped for half a day in a pile of bleeding corpses, guarded by a bewildered private who refused to obey her commands but otherwise had no idea what to do.
It reminded her far too much of her current company.
I was perhaps the only one who could listen to this story with equanimity, maintaining a calm demeanour by remaining rigidly under control of the Ghost. Hotstuff knew how one of the hidden armies had been organized, not by Martians but by MI, not as an act of treason but as an effort to defend the helpless people of the Moon. When MI had been corrupted, so had the VPF. The rot mostly affected the officers, probably because it was implemented using emoji manipulation that required the latest comm units.
I wondered if this was typical of the hidden armies on the Earth. It did not match my experience of the hidden army in Noram Norwes. Perhaps each army had its own history and motivation, different in every region. That would be typically Martian, but also typical of the regional variety of the Earth.
Sa’id looked sick as she described her torments but recognized the symptoms of emoji-driven rage. He commented that the rebel authority’s refusal to update her comm unit might have saved her from insanity, actual treason, and ultimately death.
Hotstuff had no clue what he was talking about. He described briefly the security flaws in the recent models of the comm unit, of the treason and factional disputes within MI that had permitted the flawed comm units to be distributed, and very, very briefly, the chaos that had erupted as a result.
Mindy went pale. Quietly, she vouched for the chaos and allowed that she herself had nearly been killed by those flaws. She admitted that she had attacked a TDF facility in her madness but gave no details. Her current medical condition was thanks to the extremely quick reactions of a TDF doctor who had saved what was left of her life. She blamed the whole disaster on the Sultan Mustafa, who seemed to prefer such extreme treachery even in his own ranks.
Rags was silent through the discussion, squirming as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he left for his room when a swarm of doctors and therapists arrived to find out why Mindy and Hotstuff were so stressed.
After the therapists left, Hotstuff wondered aloud whether the friends she had developed in the Cordillera Guards and CDF were sane anymore. Then she wondered whether she was. It was hard to answer, except by holding her hands while she accused us of being unhelpful and annoying.
2357-04-02 02:00
Nest of Vermin
I spent the next days in recovery, planning, training, and talking with my wardmates. The door at the entrance to the ward was a steel plate with no windows, which we were told was to preserve our privacy. Just as well. Aside from Sa’id, we were a perfectly rotten collection of people who all had connections to Mars and the Imperium. As best Sa’id could tell, the main principle that had gathered us into this ward was that normal, decent people would be endangered if they were found near us. Only a few people on the Moon could inspire such fear. Regardless, we gradually got better at talking to each other without fighting or being driven away in distress.
Sa’id continued to drop hints of a big event that would enable us to leave. I finally asked by comm, “We will be travelling with the TDF directly to the earth stations and taking a shuttle down?”
He nodded. It was obvious; we would travel in disguise with one of the military convoys. Sa’id would know about TDF travel to and from the surface, so I should focus on my preparations for the
Earth. Rags knew about higher finance, Hotstuff knew about hidden armies, and Mindy knew about the Imperial intelligence services. I trusted Sa’id to make the travel plans. Not my job, and anything I contributed risked drawing attention to our hiding place.
I had sympathy for Hotstuff, who was innocent of criminal wrong-doing and had been accused of mutiny precisely because of her innocence. My sympathy was muted by the unrelenting verbal abuse she directed at everyone else. I suspected that her belligerence was the original reason she had been sidelined within the VPF. If so, it was ironic that her life and sanity had been preserved by being the worst example of humanity I had ever encountered on the Moon.
I helped Mindy train as best I could, dodging her attempts to get me to talk about myself. I taught her things that would have horrified her Lunar doctors. This did not trouble me since I knew that everything about Mindy’s life would have horrified them. She, however, recognized my lessons as useful. Things like how to brace her body to fire a gun without ripping apart her delicate stomach muscles, and how to conceal surprisingly large weapons in a loincloth. I doubted she would ever consent to wear a loincloth as her sole garment but the principles generalized easily. She already knew low-G martial arts, so I began to work on the differences she would need to use them on the Earth.
Mindy needed a modified exercise regime and med program to strengthen the muscles she would need on the Earth, muscles that she barely used on the Moon. Doctor Marin had not come by for a few days, so Sa’id called for an updated program. Marin disapproved but knew perfectly well why none of us could stay on the Moon. Sa’id passed the new regime to the regular doctors, who puzzled over the changes. He explained without details that Doctor Mercy had new duties that prevented her from visiting Mindy in person. I made the mistake of nodding, after which I suffered a day of pestering before Mindy accepted that neither of us would ever clarify the comment.
Lord Banshee Lunatic (Nightmare Wars Book 3) Page 37
