Lord Banshee Lunatic (Nightmare Wars Book 3)

by Russell Redman

  Sa’id/converse, “That is part of what worries me. The guards know the whole story through to the Viceroy’s address. They can tell it all if anyone asks them. They filed detailed reports; highly classified but somebody will have read them already. I wouldn’t want the whole operetta to be classified for saying too much about the Viceroy’s escape.

  “I’m probably just fussing, of course. The guards have good sense, as do the Imperial security officers. Even in the arts community, Lunatics recognize the value of discretion. Cindy’s story reaches a natural, if tragic, climax with the rescue of the few survivors from the airtight rooms. I doubt they have even asked to interview anyone after that.”

  Beyond those trite irrelevancies, it was hard to know what to say. I wanted to grieve for the dead and to console the survivors. I wanted to honour the courage of our workers and praise the contrition of our soldiers. But for now, I had to remain silent and hidden.

  2357-04-04 06:00

  One of Us

  After dinner, Mindy announced that Viceroy Fenghuang was holding an awards ceremony, so we gathered in the common room and popped up a news feed to watch. Fenghuang did not give the awards in person. There were dozens of incidents like the bombing of the maintenance room, not just in Orientale Tereshkova but scattered through five different Lunar cities. Given the security situation, the award recipients gathered in small, well-protected rooms connected to the Viceregal Palace by comm. This time, she did not dress in scattered bits of workers clothing, nor do a song and dance presentation. She dressed to represent the full dignity of the Imperial government.

  It was more of a commemorative service than a normal award ceremony. Each of the awards recognized heroism during an event that involved a serious loss of life and rescues made in the face of terrible danger.

  Most involved the hidden armies that had nominally been organized by MI. They had struck first at the Viceroy in Orientale Tereshkova, but the largest army had tried to occupy Copernicus City. It had split into two factions after the Viceroy’s address, one supporting the Viceroy and the other seeking her overthrow. Almost a thousand people had died in the subsequent fighting, mostly soldiers but over a hundred civilians had been killed in the crossfire. The TDF had only a small base beside Copernicus City. If the two factions had not fought each other, the city would still be under rebel control. It would take a decade to recover from the damage and trauma.

  There were no individual awards. Fenghuang explained with solemn courtesy and humility, “The people nominated for these awards all declined to accept them. They cannot celebrate while they are grieving their lost neighbours. Nor can they accept an award for doing nothing more than their duty as citizens.

  “No true Lunatic,” she declared, “can allow such sacrifice, such courage, such compassion, to pass without proper recognition. Their citizenship was wholehearted and impossible to ignore. Equally, no true Lunatic will violate their grief.

  “In their honour, the awards will be given to the district or districts in which the events occurred. His Imperial Majesty Shi Hongdi commits this Viceregal office to use the resources at our disposal to rebuild each location, not as it was before but better. We invite the people who work at the site, the people who use the services it provided, and the people who understand what it was intended to do to submit proposals for the improvements. The citizens of the district will be consulted through referenda on which proposal to accept.”

  She described each act of heroic sacrifice, each display of mercy, each instance of open-handed generosity to strangers, all without naming the individuals involved. In each case, a local civic leader accepted the award on behalf of the grieving citizens and pledged to use it as therapy for the whole district.

  I was shocked by her use of language. She had spoken freely and with the lightest of accents to the people she met during our escape through Orientale Tereshkova. None of the official party had spoken classical Mandarin. Instead, they had used the local pidgin, a mixture of modern Mandarin and English that I had mastered during the cases I had worked around the base.

  I had not thought about it at the time but there were dozens of different languages and pidgins in use on the Moon, with each city and district developing its own variations. In commerce, the big four business languages still prevailed, English, Russian, Hindi and Mandarin; every child learned at least two of them in school. At home, the Moon was as vigorous as the Earth in preserving its variety and colour. As I thought about it, Orientale Tereshkova had probably been selected as the site for the Imperial Palace before she embarked, giving her time to master the local dialect in transit.

  As she gave each award, she described the incident in classical Mandarin, the language of the Imperium, then repeated the message in the pidgin appropriate to the district. Her accent was often thick to the point that subtitles were needed. I had never heard of anyone trying such a linguistic feat, not even the best-loved Lunar Governors.

  During the Address, her clothes had been chosen to emphasize her bond with the ordinary people of the Moon. Her dress was now somber and conservative, but her speech was as down-home folksy as her clothing had been before. Viceroy Fenghuang wanted desperately to be a Lunatic, to be one of us.

  I spent the rest of the ceremony washing back and forth between fear and hope, despair and optimism. I had no doubt that the Lunar people would love her. Would they love her enough to abandon their nature and follow her standards into battle against Wolong? Would she lead the pacifists of the Moon to their destruction in the Succession War after the Emperor died? Would her father approve of an affection that might impair her willingness to obey his commands? Was this the Tree of Life blossoming with health, or the Tree of Death dropping poisonous fruit? I could not tell and would not live long enough to learn the answer.

  One of us.

  What a strange ambition for an Imperial princess. She had been born in the privilege of aristocratic power, trained to rule from infancy. Who would give that up to become one of us, living in a backwater like the Moon?

  I loved Lunatics and wanted to be one of them too, but I was nobody and nothing. My highest ambition was to retire to anonymous obscurity. Even that was too much to ask for. I was a void into which decency had fallen and died, a walking hellgate. I was a greater hazard to the Lunatics than anyone else in human space. Except maybe the Sultan Mustafa, who seemed to be the enemy of everyone.

  2357-04-05 16:00

  Escape from Peace

  Sa’id woke me up without warning, well before breakfast. He brought two motorized wheelchairs and a suit of plain armour for Mindy. I noted that he had already turned off the cameras and monitors in our cells and along the corridor. He helped the two of us into the armour, urging complete silence.

  Regardless, Mindy hissed, “What is happening? Where are we going?”

  He shushed us again, checked that Rags and Hotstuff were still asleep, and guided us out of the ward into a plain van with solid walls. Our driver may or may not have been Three.

  Nuts/local, “Private comm repeater in the ceiling, no records, and opaque walls. Comm only until we reach our destination. We need to leave the Moon today. Oldman, you know why.”

  I did? Oh, I did and it meant we were in immediate trouble.

  To Nuts/private, “Are we ready? This seems early.”

  Nuts/converse, “Yes, ready for a full day now. Admiral Wang has been more helpful than we anticipated. He wants to get us off the Moon and out of his hair. The two-week estimates allowed for contingencies in case our resources were limited. He kept the real estimates confidential in hopes of deceiving any watchers but gave us every resource that was not needed to recover from the VPF rebellion.

  “A raid is planned for later today, so we are moving now. Oldman, I think they may have traced your transmissions to the other Banshees. Everybody watches the feeds, but big messages emerging from a detention centre attract attention, especially when no one can read them or tell who sent them. We should talk about that.
>
  “You two are inward bound to the Earth. Are you still sure that is where you want to go?”

  Me/converse, “Of course. What about Rags and Hotstuff?”

  Nuts/converse, “Hotstuff is TDF through MI, which still exists in something like the form she originally knew. It has taken a while to reconstitute a senior command and the ones to whom we have access serve the Admiralty rather than the Earth-bound TDF, but she can probably integrate again into that structure.

  “She might even rejoin the VPF if they will have her. The force lost almost all their officers to the emoji attack that controlled the rebellion. The poor souls are either hopelessly compromised in their loyalties, or outright insane after their failure was punished with severe terror. There are thousands of privates, corporals and sergeants gathered into their old quarters out along the train line, awaiting decisions on how to reform the force.

  “The day after they dropped us here, our Guards were drafted to shepherd the soldiers we had gathered, along with about fifty others, out to the base. When they arrived, the soldiers were treated to Fenghuang’s Address to the Lunar People and got a sanitized outline of the events that motivated her choice of clothes.

  “You have to love Lunatics. They felt so guilty and were so desperate to be of real service, they swore a new oath following your model; they pledged allegiance to the People of the Orientale Tereshkova, to the TDF, to the Lunar Council, to the Principles of the Lunar Constitution, and to the Imperium through the person of the Viceroy. The soldiers insisted on adding ‘to the People of Orientale Tereshkova’ because they had betrayed them so badly and wanted the oath to guard against a repeat. When the rest of the VPF heard about it, they voted at the next breakfast assembly to take the oath formally. I expect the other hidden armies will follow their example, customized to their host cities.

  “I will give you one chance; can you guess who introduced the oath?”

  Me/converse, “Sergeant Mirza?”

  Nuts/converse, “I am astonished! No, it was Sergeant Nguyen, who commanded the poor, confused soldier to whom you first announced that chain of loyalties. She was paralyzed in her armour and her attention was riveted on what you were saying. In her introduction, she claimed it was burned into her soul by the shame she felt as you spoke. Fortunately, she only described you as an MI officer with unblemished integrity and a true Lunatic.

  “Our poor, overworked Psychological Officers are part of the rehabilitation effort. According to Baintree, Sergeant Nguyen still believes you were channelling her grandfather’s spirit and is desperately grateful for his guidance through the worst crisis of her troubled life. You and her grandfather were the only people she has ever known who were willing to forgive her mistakes. If the tales circulating in the VPF get any wilder, you might find ‘Grandfather Spiritguide’ added to your list of titles. It is, at least, better than ‘Ghost in White Armour’.”

  I thought for a minute.

  Me/converse, “Hotstuff will need a lot of therapy to rebuild her personality but would swear that oath. She might gag momentarily over the Viceroy, but if she had a chance to read your report of what inspired the oath and is given time to come to terms with the new political reality, even that might be tolerable.”

  Nuts/converse, “Classified beyond her reach, of course. Still, the retraining of the force might benefit from a sober warning about their worst day of service ever. If nothing else, both our reports belong in the permanent archives of the VPF. I wonder if anyone remaining here will do it? At the least, they need a sanitized version for public consumption.”

  That did not require an answer and I knew he was already thinking of how to ensure it happened.

  Nuts/converse, “That oath, spontaneously given, really touched Fenghuang. She has formally adopted the VPF as her personal Lunar guard. She wants to draw them back into service in the city and intends to rename them, something along the lines of the Vallis Home Guard. I expect they will detach the VPF from MI. Hotstuff knows enough about their earlier duties to give better advice on organizing the force than they ever got from MI. She has enough experience to take a senior position, after a few months of intense personal therapy.”

  “As for Rags, after your conversations, even he may understand why his name is on that list. I think I have arranged for his ID to be changed and have advised him to accept a menial position very deep in Orientale Gunawardena. Of course, I have no authority over his life and am exceeding what little I have in arranging a new ID. With luck, he and our former Minister Morris will never meet and they will both remain safely obscure.”

  Mindy/local, “You two have a lot to say to each other. Should I be more worried than I am?”

  I looked over almost fondly.

  Me/converse, “We have been discussing what to do for Hotstuff and Rags. Nuts has it all well in hand.”

  To Nuts/private, “How dangerous do you estimate it will be to move her all the way to the Earth? I don’t want her to be waylaid on the earth stations. I could ask for her to be made a Sprite.”

  Nuts/private, “Already done. Like Surgeons MacFinn and Kaahurangi, I suggested her original ID be left in the Genetic Database. Leilani has figured out how to remove her spritely presence when it is time to redeem her status with Syrtis.”

  Mindy/local, “Hotstuff and Rags were just inmates in a detention centre. Why do you need to do anything? Surely, they will stay there until their cases come to trial? Or were they like me, awaiting charges?”

  Nuts/converse, “Very much like you, in serious trouble but under protective custody. No charges will be laid against any of you by the TDF or the Lunar Government. We can’t speak for anyone else. Did no one discuss this with you?”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  Mindy/converse, “Liberty did, but I didn’t believe her and still don’t. Flower said so too. But I tried to kill you, all of you! How can you forgive me when I cannot forgive myself? Surely that needs punishment.”

  Then she fell silent. I waited for a moment but no one else spoke.

  Me/converse, “Mindy, you have had your stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, and aorta torn out of your body and were within seconds of death. I know recovery is painful and boring because I’m going through a similar process. Does that not constitute punishment? You have been held in detention for over a month by your avowed enemies, with more detention still in prospect. Does that not constitute punishment? And you were not guilty of anything, by reason of emoji-induced insanity, so no punishment was justified.”

  Even quieter, Mindy/converse, “No, I did this to myself. It is not a punishment. It was an insane attempt at murder-suicide. I was filled with hate long before I attacked the Mao. I did it willingly, eagerly. You saved me when I did not deserve it or want it. Even Doctor Mercy, who I tried to kill in person. I knew about the grenade and refused to warn her, yet she worked hard to save me and still does. I don’t understand at all why you pretend to like me. I am horrible.”

  Me/converse, “Mindy, you are wonderful, thoughtful, intelligent and repentant. You have many years of productive service ahead. I want you to live in hope again. If I can, I will redeem the promise I made, before anyone has a chance to harm your babies.”

  Mindy/converse, “I cannot hope. I must not. It hurts too much.”

  Sa’id/converse, “Missed a monitor. Not a problem for you, Oldman, but Mindy has just been recorded as passing this point along the road. Mindy, you should change to another ID. I’m passing a plausible alternative right now. Edit it if you want but change your ID before I miss another monitor.”

  We were quiet for a while. I could almost feel my gears grinding until I realized what was bothering me.

  Me/converse, “It might not hurt if Mindy is recorded as Mindy at a few places along the route, places that won’t immediately trigger alarms. It will suggest she is still an active agent, still on duty, hunting some prize.”

  The look she gave me was haunted, as though she had caught a glimpse of her former self throu
gh a broken window.

  Sa’id/converse, “An interesting point but not so close to the entrance of the TDF launch facility. Not wanting to be overly dramatic but if there is anything private you want to say to the Moon, now is the time.

  “Flatten your wheelchairs, darken your visors and lock your armour. As of now, you are two seriously injured workers being transported to a more appropriate hospital facility on the Earth. Don’t move until I tell you to and say absolutely nothing. We have one or two more security checkpoints to pass, imposed by the Imperium. I’m afraid Mindy that they won’t accept any excuse for your being here with a false TDF ID. I would knock you both out if I could. I won’t because it would interfere with your scheduled meds. You will need to take them as soon as we are aboard the ship.

  “Besides, it is possible that you might have to defend yourselves. You will find extensible blades in the forearms of your armour. I don’t need to tell you how long either of you would last in an open fight but they are there if you need them.”

  The van slowed to a stop. He climbed out and we heard fragments of a conversation that grew increasingly angry.

  “... people do not exist...”

  “... undercover because of Wolong’s assassins...”

  “Better documentation for such transfers...”

  “... not available until... will be dead... NOW!”