Warlord of New York City

by Leo Champion

  “A hundred and eighty-five grand,” said Hammer, holding up a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills. It was all in those and five-hundreds, and didn’t quite fill even half a layer of the small briefcase, but it was still more cash than Hammer had ever seen in one place by a factor of ten.

  “Yeah. Of which we’ve got the following necessary expenses, some of which need to be authorized today for running costs,” said the clerk, and from his back pocket pulled a folded printout. It accounted for about ninety-five thousand dollars.

  “OK. They’re authorized, deposit the rest, and what do I do about this?” Hammer gestured to the spreadsheets.

  “Half the acting management of the precinct’s queued up outside your door,” Lock agreed.

  They spoke for a few minutes, Hammer reviewing the options the former clerk had given him. Then he buzzed Ali.

  “Send them in. Send them all in, please.”

  The acting management of the precinct, now most of the well-born managers and executives had gone, were officially classed as clerks. But these were the people who seemed to do the real work of running the plants and shops. They were ranged from their twenties through their fifties, more of them toward the older end of that range, and were dressed better than raff in clean clothes, for the most part, although a lot of them had rolled up their sleeves. They filed uneasily into Hammer’s large office, for most of them their first meeting with the new for-now precinct boss.

  “Lock tells me you guys have proposed solutions to the resource requests you want me to approve,” said Hammer. “Right?”

  There was a chorus of mumbled affirmatives.

  “Approved,” said Hammer. “En masse. Going forwards, don’t bother me with that stuff unless there’s a dispute. We’re doing without upper management for now – some of you are going to get promotions if we need to fill those slots. For now, run your plants, shops, and workshops as best you can. Oh yeah, and you guys personally now get five percent, cash, of any efficiency increase you can achieve relative to the past management.”

  The gathered clerks and managers burst into excited noises as people looked at one another.

  “Now those who need money for Exchange orders, talk with Lock in his office.”

  That was just across the corridor, the former workplace of John Moncreve.

  “Is that all? Then get back to your plants. That you are now responsible for…”

  * * *

  “Kim Karstein to see you, boss,” said Ali. “Says it’s important.”

  “Send her in,” said Hammer.

  “Nice working space,” the precinct’s former intelligence officer remarked, looking around as she came in. Hammer gestured to one of the guest chairs in front of his desk, and sat down himself.

  “Working on keeping it,” he replied. “How’s drill and training going?”

  “In hand,” she said. “I’m here about something else. Yesterday when you broke open the armory – that’s a lot of guns on the streets. But I’ve spoken to my people” – the old snitch network, Hammer realized; the intelligence officer hadn’t taken off her former hat – “and we’ve got locations on a goodly number. I have Second Company ready to go pick them up, just need your word. The Colonel kicked it up to you, told me you’d said something during the coup.”

  “I did,” Hammer said, looking the woman in the eye. “Did he tell you what?”

  Karstein was silent for a moment.

  “I said the people have a right to be armed,” Hammer said. “I don’t want you taking weapons out of the hands of the population – I want the population trained in their safe and effective use.”

  “Boss, some real firepower got out there last night. Not just clubs and shields, but revolvers and shotguns, and any number of muskets.”

  “I know,” said Hammer. “I was the one handing those guns out. They keep their weapons, Karstein.” Because as a ganger, he could never have imagined being disarmed like tennies were. His ones would have the rights he’d always assumed they did have, before joining the tenement and seeing for himself how badly the raff lived.

  “So you’re not worried that someone’s going to take a potshot at you? Boss, a source at Times Square reports that there’s ten grand on your head. Not a big bounty as they go, but multiple lifetimes’ earnings to any raff.”

  “Take away their guns, they’ll just use knives,” said Hammer. “You want to take their knives away? People will find rocks. You want to ban rubble? No, I trust my people.” Which wasn’t quite true, but quite aside from any moral considerations he needed the armed mob as a counter to the military. And to the Reverend.

  “You want us to just ignore military-grade weapons in the hands of random raff, clerks and techies?” Kim Karstein demanded.

  “No,” Hammer decided. “Don’t ignore them. I want those random raff, clerks and techies trained in the use of whatever they might have scored. Assign soldiers to that. Ali, general notice I want propagated.”

  “Listening, boss,” said Ali Benzi over the intercom.

  “Open amnesty on all weapons for everyone. In fact, I want more of them on the streets. There will be penalties for misuse, especially misuse causing injury, but I want an armed population.”

  Kimberli Karstein didn’t look happy as she left.

  “Ali,” Hammer said. “Get me that woman’s second in command.”

  “That would be one of the Moncreve sons,” said Ali. “Left with the rest of the high-ups to the Independent.”

  “Third-highest.”

  “Killed in the fighting,” Ali said after a moment. “But there’s a records clerk named Orlov who stayed.”

  A records clerk would know things.

  “Get him in here…”

  Chapter Ten

  “So we’re soldiers now,” John Brasci said to his buddy Kimmy Giovetti as they trooped up a street through high-building country.

  “First Company soldiers,” Giovetti said. She was a small round-faced raff who, like Brasci, had worked scavenging duty. They were soldiers by virtue of having gotten muskets when they were being passed out at the start of the revolution, and then having volunteered for the new First Company. “Wonder if they’ll give us helmets.”

  “Silence in the ranks!” Sergeant Mangoletti turned and said. “Or I’ll kill you raff myself before the gangers even get to try!”

  “Ain’t raff no more,” someone muttered. “We’re First Company now.”

  “You’re raff with guns until I say otherwise,” Mangoletti said. “You want to prove yourselves? Get good, scrubs.”

  It had been a hard day of drills that Colonel Benzi had set up and instructed the new First Company’s sergeants and corporals to teach. They’d practiced reloading and hand-to-hand, under the eyes of leaders who two days earlier had mostly been grunts themselves. It was disturbing, Brasci thought, just how little he knew about real fighting, although like a lot of tenement raff he’d run part-time with gangers as a teen.

  And now, tonight in the semi-darkness – they were walking straight up toward the Washington Building, which cast light across the ruined high-rises around them – they were going to do something real. Too soon, thought Brasci nervously as President Hammer stopped them outside a particular building, directly facing the Washington’s trash dumps. Brasci had seen this one before but never given it much notice, except as a possible threat source. He’d never envisaged going inside one of these abandoned buildings.

  But until Friday he’d never envisaged himself as a soldier, let alone First Company. They’d given him this musket for a reason, right?

  “Okay,” President Hammer said as the company gathered around him. He’d taken personal charge of the operation. “You guys have had a good hard day of training and it’s time for your first exercise. My airbornes have said they want this building for their new base, or at least they want the roof and the top floor of it. This close to the Washington’s trash chutes, there are definitely going to be streetgangers in there we’ll have to evict.”<
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  Yeah, thought Brasci. Tough streetgangers who didn’t give a shit and would probably fight to defend their home. On the other hand, how many of them would have weapons like First Company’s guns?

  “With any luck,” Hammer went on, “they’ll have the sense to bug out ahead of us. We’re going to be going up the stairs and clearing out the building floor by floor, by squads. The streetgangers will be allowed to leave, alive, with whatever stuff they can carry. If they put up a fight, if they attack us, we kick their asses.”

  “It’s dark in there, boss,” someone pointed out.

  “That’s why you have the flashlights and diode lights,” said Hammer. “And we stick to the north side of the building when we can, for the arkscraper lights. Now, remember, these old buildings are structurally unsound, so be careful where you step and don’t take stupid chances.”

  That was another fear of Brasci’s. And booby traps.

  “What if they’ve rigged up traps or something?” someone else asked, raising his hand.

  “Unlikely,” said the President. “The ones in this building didn’t know we were coming until we got here now. Traps take time to rig. But yeah, keep an eye out anyway.”

  Brasci didn’t have any light source himself, but Giovetti had found a diode light somewhere. He could tell he wasn’t the only one of the new recruits nervous.

  “Pay attention to what your squad leaders and team corporals say,” Hammer finished. “They’ve done this before. Lieutenant Hamill, over to you.”

  First Company had no captain; for whatever reason President Hammer had left that position vacant. The acting commander was Lieutenant Jimmy Hamill, who had been a corporal in Fourth Company. He was a tall, burly veteran in his late twenties who scared Brasci a bit.

  “First Squad!” the lieutenant shouted. He had a miner’s light on his forehead and a pistol in his hand. “Go in! Take left!”

  Warily, led by their sergeant, First Squad headed in through the building’s main entrance.

  “Second Squad, take right!”

  “Come on!” shouted Sergeant Tommy Mangoletti to Brasci, Giovetti and the rest of the squad.

  Uneasily, sticking close to his buddies, Brasci entered the gloomy building. Shadows were everywhere as the squad began to explore, teams and pairs sticking together. There was a small lobby with three gaping holes where elevators had been, the metal doors and the elevators themselves long since salvaged for scrap. Past that was a corridor, rooms that had been offices on either side.

  From somewhere to the left came a single shot. It made Brasci jump.

  “Chill, people,” said Sergeant Mangoletti, “and keep going. Follow me!”

  * * *

  “I maintain,” said Ali Benzi to Hammer, “that we’d have been better off using more experienced troops for this. First Company is nowhere near ready.”

  “Ali, if the streetgangers have any brains whatsoever, they’re going to bug out ahead of a full tenement company. They don’t know how clumsy and inexperienced these guys are.”

  “Streetgangers,” Mia DiIorio observed as she played with one of her knives, “are not known for long-term thinking. Or medium.”

  She and a half-dozen of the Marauders’ grounders were with the party, all armed and some of them carrying coils of long rope that would be used for hauling their stuff up to the top floor. Assuming this building turned out to be structurally sound and its top floor actually accessible, which wasn’t necessarily a given.

  “Fifth Squad!” Lieutenant Hamill shouted. “Go!”

  Hammer had originally wanted to lead the operation from the front, to demonstrate confidence in his new soldiers that he didn’t currently feel. Both Benzis had firmly blocked him from that;

  “You’re President now,” Jacopo had said an hour earlier in the Chapel. “You’re not going to risk yourself leading from the front. The raff already love you, for now.”

  Yeah, for now. Hammer was acutely conscious of the ticking clock on that honeymoon; it wouldn’t last forever. Which was partly why he needed these raff to become soldiers sooner rather than later, and was pushing them. It would have made more sense to send Hoshi’s Sixth Company into the building; they were streetgangers with far more experience in abandoned buildings. But First needed this confidence-building exercise.

  Hammer, Ali, DiIorio and the Marauder grounders followed Lieutenant Hamill into the shrouded lobby. A woman came running up:

  “Sergeant Mangoletti says we’ve found a stairwell, sir,” she reported.

  “Take us to it,” Hamill said.

  “You know there’s only about a fifty percent chance we’ll be able to safely make it all the way to the top,” Hammer said to DiIorio as the command group followed the messenger from the lobby through a gloomy corridor.

  The airborne two shrugged.

  “This one looked to be the best building. It’s not the only one. I suppose we don’t get to blow the stairwells after we move in… going to need full-time security.”

  “Yeah, I’ll put a squad there on constant rotation,” Hammer said.

  “Preferably ones who know what they’re doing, please.”

  “These ones will know what they’re doing soon enough,” Hammer said. “I hope.”

  * * *

  John Brasci cautiously advanced down a corridor on the fourth floor, ancient tiles under his new boots and the concrete on all sides stripped of siding and wire. This had been an office building a hundred years ago, part of New York University before that institution had moved into the towering arkscraper next door. But that had been a century ago, and it was an empty shell now.

  An empty shell full of rustling streetgangers. They hadn’t seen any yet, but—

  A shot rang out.

  “Over here! Guys, we got some!” shouted someone.

  Brasci and Kimmy Giovetti ran over, with others, to find four streetgangers cornered in a room of semi-sorted trash from the feed immediately outside the building. They had blades raised but were looking down the wrong end of ten, now twelve as Brasci and Giovetti pushed their way through the doorway, muskets.

  “Get outta here,” Mangoletti said to them as he appeared. “People, let them go.”

  “This our home,” one of the streetgangers said plaintively. “Why you doin’ this for?”

  “Just get the fuck out of here,” Mangoletti repeated.

  Glaring, the streetgangers sidled out the doorway.

  “Streetgangers coming down the stairwell!” someone shouted. “Let ‘em pass!”

  That, thought Brasci, had not been so scary after all.

  * * *

  It was hours later that Hammer and DiIorio stood on the roof of what had turned out to be a sixteen-story building. Troops milled around looking satisfied with themselves while the Marauder grounders began to rig up a hoist.

  “You chose well,” Hammer remarked, looking down on the Washington’s outtakes. “Drop straight down onto those exhaust vents, circle… could use more room to land, but you can’t have everything.”

  “Gives you a base right above the trash chutes, too” DiIorio said. “Strategic.”

  Hammer grunted, noncommittal about that. By custom, tenements didn’t stake out territory in high-building country. They cleared out buildings if their streetgangers got troublesome, but they didn’t stay. But he was already headed for a fight, so – best to win it. And he was only staking a roof, not the whole building.

  “Some people might see it as unprovoked aggression if we claimed beyond the roof,” he said, although DiIorio did have a point about strategic significance. Something to think about.

  “What sort of a garrison do you think we’ll need?” he asked Ali Benzi.

  “At least a squad, full-time just to guard the top floor and rooftop,” she said. “More guys to escort the airbornes whenever they’re going up or down the stairwell. We can’t completely seal a sixteen-floor building.”

  There was more than one reason high buildings were rarely claimed.

/>   “No,” said Hammer, thinking of the strategic potential. “But I want… Mia, their stairwells are gone but do you think you and Charlie can ferry some guys up to the roofs of the high buildings overlooking us across East Houston?”

  “I guess. Why?”

  “The Garsons have fled, but they’ve got a stack of cash and every motivation to fuck with us. Soften us up, whittle us down. I know they’ve taken out a contract on me. Can you imagine a circumstance where they don’t have a man at the Airedale right now? That’s exactly what we do, harass and destroy.”

  “You want guys with crossbows up there.”

  “Mia, think of everything you hate. Think of your worst-case scenario on attack runs.”

  “Crossbows,” she said immediately. “Shotguns and crossbows from up high. Those buildings across Houston Street from you are… ten stories or so?”

  “Exactly. I want people up there twenty-four seven. Blow what’s left of the stairs, those guys can get up or down by air or rope.”

  Hammer turned to Ali Benzi.

  “Make a note, I also want to see about getting some hydrogen and plastic bags. Broken glass or diamond, too. Rope, netting, and superglue.”

  “What’s that for?” she asked. “The Exchange sells hydrogen, we can get that. Pretty sure we can get all of that. But why?”

  DiIorio and Hamill were looking on, too.

  “Balloons,” Hammer said slowly. “Saw these things in a movie once, about that big war in the twentieth century. They put up balloons on ropes to screw with low-flying aircraft.”

  “They do a lot of impractical things in movies,” said Benzi.

  “No,” said DiIorio, “I can see that working. I’m not going to fly through ropes, it’s impossible. Especially not ones covered in broken glass.”

  “Little bits of it, stuck to the ropes,” Hammer said. “We can start with kites. One rope holds the balloon in place, other loose ones dangle from it. It’d be an airborne’s nightmare.”