Island Worlds (25 page)

"Ta-Daaa!" said Fu, arms spread wide. "Pretty good trick, huh? By now, you've met Linde. Thor, I hope that's you I'm talking to. I'd hate to think you were dead. I've sent Linde out there because I think you're going to need her talents. She invented this holographic process. She's also the reason I've been operating un-caught all these years. Take care of her. She's the Ugo Ciano of this generation. I've got to run, now. Literally. They're closing in on me. 'Bye.'' The holo winked out and became a pearl again.

Hjalmar reholstered his pistol, grumbling. "Where are you from?" he asked.

"Mars. Tarkovskygrad. Don't bother checking, you won't find any record of me there or anywhere else. Family was from Leipzig, in old East Germany, before the reunification. I've been on my own since I was twelve."

"What is it you do?" Caterina asked. "Fu wasn't very specific. Are you a holographic engineer?"

"I'm a genius," she said.

"That's not very specific either," Thor pointed out.

She shrugged. "When you're a genius, you can do pretty much what you want. Society works with people, systems and computers. When you can outsmart all of them, there's really no limit to what you can accomplish. I make my own credit crystals and all record of my purchases is automatically purged after an interval." She looked at Hjalmar. "You just took a quick scan of my i.d. characteristics. Now try to find the record." As Hjalmar worked over his belt-comm, she sipped at her drink.

"If you're the greatest genius of the age," Caterina said, "why didn't you come out here sooner? We could have used a genius or two."

"I was too busy winning the war for you back on Luna," she said. "Fu and I gave the antiwar movement on Earth the only real fuel it had. Between us, we kept that movement not only alive, but strong and growing. I set up the holo broadcast apparatus and the network of comm lines that the activist cells used to communicate. The government was never able to tap in."

"Damn it!" Hjalmar said, punching his belt unit frantically. "It's got to be there! I just keyed it in!"

"Relax, Hjalmar," Moore said. "You're out of your league. We all are. Young lady," he said to Linde, "how would you like a Sálamid commission? Would full colonel do for starters?"

She shook her head. "I like to operate on my own. I don't need official standing. I came out here to offer my services, but it's on my own terms and on projects of my choosing. Would you like to know why Jameson is making his offer now?"

She could no longer surprise them. "The security council should hear it," Thor said, "but everyone's busy just now. Give it to us briefly."

"Things have gone from bad to worse for Earth First," she said. "They whipped up war frenzy with great efficiency, but they weren't able to follow it up with a successful war. Lack of imagination, mostly. Even the more experienced and educated just couldn't visualize the vastness of the asteroid belt. They thought it would be like taking and pacifying some penny-ante Third World republic back on Earth.

"Most Earthies have imaginations conditioned by the simplified images they see in the holos. They see the Belt as a little chain of spheres out there somewhere, maybe a little past the Moon. They can't conceive that Avalon is closer to Earth than it is to some of the other Island Worlds. Also, they went into it with the same delusion most people have; if they just opened fire and killed a few people, the rest would be terrified and would capitulate. Nobody envisioned a long, drawn-out, costly war."

"Home by Christmas," Moore commented.

"What's that?" Hjalmar asked.

"An old expression," Moore explained, "used by civilians going to war for the first time."

"At first the war was popular," Linde went on. "It was a shot in the arm for sick economies. Full employment for a while, that made people happy in the industrialized nations. But it was false prosperity. You can't sustain an economy by selling yourself weapons and then throwing them away. Pretty soon people saw that they were paying for the most expensive war in history and nothing was coming back except a mounting body count.

"Not that the casualty figures were all that great. After all, even if every uniformed Earthie who shipped out was killed, it wouldn't put a dent in Earth's population. If the whole economy were geared to building ships and sending people offworld, it wouldn't amount to a tenth of the yearly birth rate.

"No, it's year after dragging year of no results that wears down people's enthusiasm. That, and our endless holographic barrage. This war's been fought more with propaganda than with weapons. When you have complete control of the information that reaches people, you can do just about anything you want with them. That's what Earth First thought they had when they started the war. They were wrong. We were able to counter their propaganda with our own. They could never jam us for long. We demonstrated that nearly everything they said was a lie.

"It didn't take long for the peace movement to get started. Of course, not many people were incensed about the government killing outerworlders. What enraged them was all that money being spent on the war instead of on them. The demonstrations were noisy at first. Then they got bloody. There was one in New Delhi a few months ago in which more than six thousand demonstrators were killed by government troops. It's getting to be like that all over Earth. The war in space is bankrupting the member governments of the U.N. They have to build up their military forces to keep the population in line and that costs too."

Thor smiled thinly. "Back when I left Earth, I deposited a big chunk of my inheritance with a man named Swenson. He wanted to save rare birds from extinction. Last I heard from him was just after Bob Ciano's death. He was going underground and putting the foundation to work combating the anti-spacer movement. I may have been bankrolling a lot of that anti-war agitation."

"Any idea how their stockpiles are holding out?" Moore asked. This was a question that deeply concerned the Confederacy; Earth's "stockpiles," stores of strategic materials, mostly minerals, for which the motherworld had depended upon the outerworlds. It was widely believed that the war effort could not long survive the exhaustion of those stockpiles.

"There's a tight lid on that information," she said. "And that says a lot. When the war started, Earth First touted the advantages of reducing Earth's dependency on space resources. They said they were becoming 'space junkies,' and that it would be a good thing to return to self-sufficiency. It was like telling people to go back to doing their laundry by hand, or digging ditches with a pick and shovel, after machines have been doing the work for generations. Even in the poorer parts of the world the development and labor costs were too high, and resources are played out everywhere."

"That concurs with what we've been able to learn," Moore said.

"So they're feeling the pinch," Thor said, "but how bad?"

"Bad enough for Jameson to be making peace overtures," Linde said. "It's not capitulation, but it's close. You're now at the point of maximum opportunity and maximum danger. How you handle the peace talks will determine whether the outerworlds have won or lost."

"It sounds to me as if we have them beaten," Caterina said. "How can we lose at this point?"

"Easily," Moore said. "We're ahead on the military end of the war. You could even say we've won, as nearly as anyone can win a war like this one. But many wars have been won on the battlefield and lost at the peace talks. Winning a war used to mean conquering. You defeated your enemy, then you looted his territory, enslaved his population, divided up the land and went looking for somebody else to conquer. Things have changed since those simple times. Now you talk around conference tables. Each side tries to bully the other into seeing things its own way. When they just can't agree, they fight for a while, then they go back to the table. The ones who negotiate usually have nothing to do with the fighting and sometimes they don't mind conceding an advantage that a lot of people died winning for them."

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" Linde mused. "Why do people bother fighting when it doesn't get them what they wanted, even if they win?"

"In our case," Thor said, "because it was fight or be enslaved. Earth First fought for a different reason. They hoped that they could forge unity by creating an external enemy. That's been tried before, too. Never very successfully." He glanced at a holo display, saw that the debate was still going full blast. "With them arguing like that, there won't be many voices for capitulation. I want to be on the negotiation team. I started out in this government in the diplomatic branch, such as it was. Since Jameson's demanded that no Taggarts, Kurodas, Cianos and such are to be on the team, we have to include a few. I'll resign my commission as soon as I can twist some arms to get in on the negotiations."

"Don't resign just yet," Moore cautioned. "There's still the matter of breaking Shaw out of durance vile. You've become a bit of a specialist in that sort of operation."

"I was hoping somebody else would get the job," Thor admitted. "I know it was me in there demanding that we get Shaw out, but I have to confess that I have no idea how to do it. You can bet that they'll have him under the tightest security possible."

"I'll get you in," Linde said. She sipped her drink and made a face, as if it disagreed with her.

"How?" Thor asked.

She shrugged. "Don't know. Haven't studied the problem yet. But I'm good at solving things. Get me the available data, I'll supply the plan." She seemed bored. Probably has her mind on bigger things, Thor thought.

Figuring a way to circumvent entropy and the heat-death of the universe, more than likely.

"I think this kid's crazy as a solo rock miner," Hjalmar said. "Might as well go along with her, though. If she can get around my security system, she may be able to do what she says."

FOURTEEN

Scenes From the War

Gunnery Sergeant Helen Jackson shifted uncomfortably inside her armored battle harness, trying to ease a maddening itch between her shoulder blades. She had been armored up for four hours and was dying to un-shell and hit the showers. She checked her chronometer, saw that it was almost time to let her platoon stand down. She gave the CP screens a last look, then went out to make a final check of her guard posts before their relief arrived.

Despite the bulk of her harness, she moved easily in the one-third, Mars standard gravity. Her broad, black face was sheened with sweat. The suit's heat-exchange system was malfunctioning again. She counted herself lucky that nothing else was wrong with it yet. Three of her platoon's marauder suits were deadlined for lack of replacement parts. As the Earth forces spread ever more thinly through the rebel worlds, the supply system was breaking down. They hadn't reached crisis status yet, but she knew it wouldn't be long.

The long stone corridor ended at a platform overlooking a vast mine gallery. Miners looked up sullenly as she entered, then set back to their work. Such work as they were willing to perform, in any case. They operated with insolent slowness, and they had long since learned how to keep down to a pace that was just active enough to avoid punishment. She kept a wary eye on them, as always. The shortbeam laser cutters could be used as weapons should the colonials ever try a rebellion. There had been incidents on other asteroid worlds. The authorities tried to keep it quiet, but the rumors were coming thick through the Marine grapevine.

Ramirez and Pettijohn were manning their post, standing too close together. Bullshitting as usual, she thought. The gray paint on their armor was scratched and dingy, the drab brown of the hardened ceramic showing through the scratches.

"I trust you two ain't engaging in any unnatural sexual practices," she said. "That's forbidden by Article Two, Section J."

The two whirled, the blue globe of the U.N. flashing on their bulky shoulders. "Jesus, Gunny," Pettijohn said, "why'nt you make some noise when you come this way?" His finger released the trigger of his M42.

"You think the Rebs gonna broadcast their presence before they unzip you with one of them lasers?" She looked out over the mining operation. "How they actin'?"

"Same as always," Ramirez said, shrugging. The movement was barely perceptible in his armor. "They just crummy rockeaters. I seen more spirit in a plate of day-old macaroni."

Pettijohn fished a pack of cigarettes from a belt pouch. "Okay if I light one up, Sarge?"

"Not on guard mount, you know better than that. Put 'em away. Damn things'll kill you, anyway."

"I ain't worrying about that," Pettijohn said. "Way I hear it, we don't got a whole big chance of living through this hitch as it is. It true what we heard, that there was two whole companies wiped out on Catalina?"

"Can't believe everything you hear. Rumors is unauthorized information. You only supposed to believe what you get in the daily briefing."

The two laughed cynically. "Tell us another one, Gunny," Ramirez said. "I 'specially like the one about the tooth fairy."

"Santa Claus was always my favorite," Pettijohn said.

"You two watch your mouths," she cautioned. "Ain't everyone in this corps as tolerant as me."

They heard shuffling feet coming down the corridor and their hands tightened around weapon butts. Two men in marauder suits stepped onto the platform. "First relief," one said.

Jackson studied the code numbers on their chests. "What company you two with?"

"Delta," said the one with lance corporal stripes.

"I thought Bravo was supposed to relieve us," she said, not releasing her grip on the pistol in her thigh-holster. "Who's the sergeant of your relief?"

"Sanders," said the taller of the two, holding his helmet by his side, dangling by its chin strap. Both had their weapons slung. "If I know him, he's in the CP soaking up coffee. Do we look like rebels?"

"Do you think they do?" she said. "Cover 'em."

Ramirez and Pettijohn held their weapons on the two while Jackson punched the communicator on her forearm. A battered face appeared in the set's miniature screen. "Sanders here." A tiny gold skull winked from his left earlobe.

"I'm Gunnery Sergeant Jackson, commander of the third relief. Who the hell're you and how come Bravo Company ain't relieving us?"

"I just told you who I am. Bravo's been pulled out along with Charlie and Golf. Just Alpha, Delta and Echo left on this rock, now."

A prickle replaced the itch between her shoulder-blades. Just three companies to guard the whole rock. The manpower situation was more desperate than she had thought. "Well next time, dipshit, you bring your grunts around to their guardposts and place 'em yourself."

"Up yours, bitch," Sanders said as he switched off.

"Yeah, that's a Marine, all right," Jackson said. "I must be getting jittery in my old age. Come on, you two." The taller of the two relieving marines threw her a mocking salute as she passed. He, too, wore a gold skull in his earlobe.

She rounded up the rest of her platoon in the master corridor and had to endure their bitching and grousing as they headed back to the barracks. At least she could understand them all. In the early days of the war, the U.N. had tried to integrate all nationalities as a gesture of unity. The results had been catastrophic and the experiment had died a quick death. All of the Fifth Regiment, of which her platoon was a part, was made up of English-speaking North Americans. Predictably, their chatter was all about the new pullout.

"I'm telling you, man, we're being deserted!" The speaker was Delibes, a small, thin woman from Toronto who was as cool in action as she was excitable out of it.

"Can it," Jackson said tiredly. "A pullout ain't a bug-out. They'll be back. Just some little police action, most likely." She hoped her tone was as confident as her words.

"Then why didn't they tell us?" Delibes demanded.

"When do they tell you anything?" Jackson demanded. "You think it's important for you to know things? What's important is you keep your mouth shut and do as you're ordered." This kind of thing was happening more and more, lately. So many little colonies. You could take them by assault, but then you had to leave a garrison behind to keep the population peaceful. The manning of these outposts was stretching the manpower situation suicidally thin.

"Hey, Sarge," Ramirez said, "you know those two guys who relieved me'n Pettijohn?"

"Sure."

"Well, that taller one, he was wearing a little gold skull in his left ear."

"So was their platoon sergeant. Means they made ten combat assaults. I got one just like it. So what?"

"Well, I got to thinking. He was wearing it in his left ear. I heard that in Delta, they always wear 'em in their right ear, on account of their CO got his left ear shot off in—"

"Shit!" Jackson yanked out her pistol. "Lock and load, troops, we got company! Toler, take your squad and—" The first detonation cut her off. A heap of rubble dropped from the roof of the tunnel and sealed it off. Two side corridors went up simultaneously. Six of the marines went down, struck by hurtling chunks of rock.

"Pick up the wounded!" Jackson bawled. "Let's go!" Helmets on and visors down, they headed up the tunnel. She knew they were being herded, but there was nothing to do but go.

A dozen armored men swarmed out of the tunnel ahead. The marines opened fire. Ramirez went down with blood spraying from a long rent in his armor. Jackson got off six shots from her pistol before she saw what the men ahead were wheeling out.

"Cease fire!" Jackson yelled.

"Jesus," said somebody. "That's a heavy mining cutter. Chop us all down in a heartbeat." They stopped shooting, but nobody laid down any weapons.

A man in black armor came forward, pulling off his helmet. Jackson recognized the battered face. Next to him was a man she had seen not twenty minutes before, sullenly working a shortbeam cutter. He didn't look like a whipped dog now. She kept her pistol trained on "Sanders."

"Hey, man," she said. "You use that thing, you'll cut a hole clean through this rock. Let all the air out. You don't want that, do you?"

The man grinned. "These miners deal with wall breaches all the time. They'll patch it in a minute. Not soon enough to do you any good, though. Lay down your arms and you can sit out the war in a comfortable prison rock. You have ten seconds."

"Just one question," she said, not letting the pistol waver an inch. "You EOS, or Shaw's people?"

"EOS. You think Shaw's bunch would've given you a chance to surrender?"

Slowly, deliberately, she laid the pistol on the floor. "Drop 'em, people, they got us dead to rights." Muttering and cursing, the platoon laid down their arms and began stripping off their armor.

"I know you don't owe me any explanations," Jackson asked, "but how did you get in?"

Sanders jerked his head toward a group of miners who were gathering up weapons. "They cut us an airlock. You couldn't watch every bit of the surface all the time. We came in in little stealth ships, two or three at a time. We've been setting up this takeover for months."

"Hey, Reb," Pettijohn said, "how many of these have you guys pulled?"

"This makes twenty-six for my team," Sanders said. "It's getting easy now you're stretched so thin."

"Twenty-six! Damn!" Pettijohn mopped at his forehead, where a chunk of rock had gouged the skin. "And they told us we was winning!"

"Yeah," Jackson said, wearily, "so they did. But you never believed all that stuff about Santa Claus either, did you?"

Thor jerked fully awake when the alarm beeped. He had drifted into a half-sleep as he studied the readouts for Elba. There wasn't much and most of it was out of date. The Earthies had been making extensive revisions in the interior layout.

"What is it?"

"Rendezvous, Commander," said the comm officer.

"I'm on my way." He released himself from the bunk harness and pulled himself out of his quarters and into the ship's main corridor. Caterina and Linde were already there. In the course of the voyage, the two had developed a relationship that was neither friendship nor hostility, but somewhere between. Thor was stumped for a name to fit it. But he knew that somehow, deep down, Caterina was afraid of Linde. It made no sense, but he was sure of it.

"They're here," Caterina said excitedly.

"Don't be too optimistic," Thor cautioned. "This may not work out. If it doesn't, you're free to rejoin them."

"I'd love to. But I'll stay with the mission."

"Thor," Linde said. "I've been going over the Ciano holos and printouts, and—"

"Later," he said peremptorily. "We're meeting with some hard people and I don't have any attention to spare."

"That's nothing unusual," Caterina said to Linde. "He doesn't have much at the best of times."

That's all I need, he thought. The two of them ganging up on me. His team leaders were already at the dock. "Ole, Huang, no shooting unless they display hostility."

"That mean one of 'em looks crosseyed, I can shoot em?" Ole asked.

"Use your own judgment, but don't waste any time on deep thought. I think they'll play this straight, but some of them are pretty crazy."

"They won't make any trouble," Caterina insisted. "You're being paranoid."

"If there's trouble," Thor said, "don't shoot her, but you can dent her a little."

"Lock cycling," said a disembodied voice. They dropped their banter and faced the lock. Ole and Huang kept their hands away from their weapons, but they were the fastest men in his team. That was why they had been chosen to back him at this meeting.

"Lock cycled," said the voice. The gate before them swung open.

The first man through had a familiar face below a shock of red hair. He grinned at Thor. "Hey, kid. Been a lot of years." He stuck out a hand. He had lost the other one somewhere and wore a prosthesis in its place.

"Good to see you, Mike," Thor said.

"Jesus, kid, your face is about as marked as mine now. You must've been keeping bad company." He caught sight of Caterina and his smile faded fractionally. "Hello, Cat. How come you're still alive?"

Her face flushed crimson. "Did you expect me to commit
hara-kiri
because I got captured? Where were you when we put that job together?"

"I was on a raid into Sector Six," he said, holding up the prosthesis. "Lost this."

"Mike, if you and your people would come with me, well—"

"What are you implying, you red-haired bastard?" Caterina demanded.

"Just that you were dumb and you cost us seven good people on your half-assed rescue mission."

Caterina used the nearest wall to launch herself at his throat. The impact carried them both well back into the lock, meshed in a tangle of real and artificial limbs.

Ole and Huang reached for their guns, but Thor waved them back. "Are they likely to do any damage?" he asked the knot of people still in the lock, now drawing back from the combatants.

An amazingly voluptuous woman drifted forward. "It's an even match, Mr. Taggart. They won't do anything that can't be repaired. I'm Natalie Tomalis, skipper of
Juarez
. There isn't much that would make us join forces with you Eos people, but if you say you can spring Martin, we're willing to listen."

"It's good to know you have so much trust in us," Thor said.

"We don't," Tomalis retorted. "But Martin told us that you were the one person in the Eos camp we could trust absolutely."

For a moment, Thor was too startled to speak. He had no idea that Martin had harbored so high an opinion of him. "I'm flattered. If those two will separate, we can have a conference on how this is to be carried out."

The two combatants were pried apart and towed along by escorts. Apparently, such impromptu settlings of grudges were no rarity among Shaw's hair-triggered followers. Mike had a few new slashes on his face, but that seemed to be the worst of it.

"Hey, Thor," Mike said, "I'd never know you for the college boy I picked up on Luna. You've aged well." The blood, unable to trickle down in zero-g, gathered into blobs on his face.