The Night's Dawn Trilogy (89 page)

A dozen paltry fires spluttered and hissed on the broad road outside the Governor’s dumper, the flames devouring fence posts
and broken carts that had been snatched for fuel. Little knots of protesters clustered round them under the watchful eyes
of the sheriffs and deputies circling the carbotanium cone. An uneasy truce had broken out after the anger and violence of
the day. The earlier barrages of stones and bottles had been answered each time by cortical-jamming impulses from the sheriffs.
Thankfully the protesters had refrained from using any real weapons today. Now the chanting had stopped. The naked menace
in a thousand throats screaming in unison wasn’t something Colin Rexrew was accustomed to dealing with. He could never make
out what they had been chanting for these last few days; he thought they weren’t entirely sure themselves apart from wanting
the turmoil to end. Well, so did he. Very badly.

Each time Colin Rexrew looked out of his window he could see some new plume of smoke rising from the vista of dark rooftops.
Tonight the horizon was dotted with three or four fierce orange flares as buildings burned. If it wasn’t for the rain and
humidity Durringham would have been reduced to a single giant firestorm days ago.

And the deteriorating civic situation in the city wasn’t even his real problem.

When Candace Elford came into the office Colin Rexrew was behind his desk as always, gazing vacantly at the window strip and
the luckless city outside. Terrance Smith gave her a fast, expressive grimace, and they both sat down.

“I’m afraid I have now effectively lost control over a third of the city,” she started.

It was the nightly situation briefing. Or the nightly crisis meeting, depending on how cynical Colin felt. The intensifying
pressures seemed to make it hard to concentrate at the very times he needed his full mental resources. He would have given
a lot to be able to run a stimulant program through his neural nanonics, or even escape into a MF album for a few hours like
he used to in his adolescence. It would have made the strain a little easier to bear.

Not even his neural nanonics with their top of the rangemanagerial programs were much help. There were too many unaccountable—downright
weird—factors cropping up to apply standard responses. Had there ever been a stage one colony governor who had lost all control
of his planet? The memory cells held no record of any.

What a way to get into the history books.

“Is it the invaders?” he asked.

“No, as far as we can make out they are still some distance away. What we’re dealing with here is mainly opportunist looting,
and some organized grabs for power. Nothing political, but there are some strong criminal gangs who have been quick to take
advantage of the unrest. I’d point out that most of the districts my sheriffs have been excluded from are on the south-eastern
side of town. Those are the newest and poorest; in other words the most disaffected to begin with. The heart of the city,
and more importantly the merchant and industrial sectors, remain stable. If anything, the older residents resent the lawlessness.
I’m looking to recruit more deputies from them.”

“How long before you can start to regain control of the south-east districts?” Terrance Smith asked.

“At the moment I’m just looking to contain the trouble,” Candace Elford said.

“You mean you can’t?”

“I didn’t say that, but it isn’t going to be easy. The gangs have captured two dumpers, and their fusion generators. We can’t
afford to damage them, and they know that. I lost a lot of good people in Ozark and on the
Swithland
fiasco. Plus we have to deal with the transient colonists. They seem to be the biggest problem right now; they’re holed up
in the docks and I can’t shift them. There are barricades across every access route and there’s a lot of wanton destruction
and looting going on. So half the port is currently unusable, which has antagonized the boat captains; and I have to deploy
a lot of people to keep an eye on them.”

“Starve them out,” Colin said.

She nodded reluctantly. “That’s one option. About the least expensive at the moment. But it will take time, there was a lot
of food stored in those warehouses.”

“The merchants won’t like that,” Terrance Smith said.

“Screw the merchants,” Colin said. “I’m sorry about the transients’ gear being looted, but that doesn’t excuse this kind of
behaviour. We can help them eventually, but not if they’re going to hamper every effort with petty-minded belligerence.”

“Some families lost everything—”

“Tough shit!
We
are in danger of losing an entire planet of twenty million people. My priority is to the majority.”

“Yes, sir.”

There were times when Colin just felt like telling his aide: here’s my seat, you take over, you with your situation summaries
and cautiously formulated response suggestions. Instead, the Governor walked over to the drinks cabinet and searched through
the bottles for a decent chilled white wine, and to hell with the chief sheriff’s disapproval.

“Can we defend Durringham from the invaders?” he asked quietly as he flipped the neck seal and poured out a glass.

“If we had enough time to prepare, and you declared martial law, and if we had enough weapons.”

“Yes or no?”

Candace Elford watched the glass in the Governor’s hand. It was shaking quite badly, the wine nearly spilling. “I don’t think
so,” she said. “Whatever it is that’s out there, it’s strong, well armed, and well organized. The Confederation Navy office
thinks they are using some kind of sequestration technology to turn colonists into a slave army. Faced with that, I don’t
think we really stand much of a chance.”

“Sequestration nanonics,” Colin mumbled as he sank back into his chair. “Dear God, who are these invaders? Xenocs? Some exiled
group from another planet?”

“I’m not one hundred per cent certain,” she said. “But my satellite image analysis people found these this morning. I think
it may throw a little light on the situation.” She datavised an order into the office’s computer. The wall-screens lit up,
showing a blank section of jungle fifty kilometres west of Ozark.

The satellite had passed over in the middle of the afternoon, giving a clear bright image. Trees were compacted so tightly
the jungle looked like an unbroken emerald plain. Five perfectly straight black lines began to probe across the green expanse,
as if the talons of a huge invisible claw were being scored down the screen. The satellite cameras zoomed in on the head of
one line, and Colin Rexrew saw trees being bulldozed into the ground. A big ten-wheeled vehicle rolled into view, grey metal
glinting dully, a black bubble-cab protruding from a flat upper surface. It had a blunt wedge-shaped front that smashed through
trunks without the slightest resistance. Viscous sprays of red-brown mud were being flung up by its rear wheels, caking the
metal bodywork. There were another three identical vehicles following it along the track of shattered vegetation it was ripping
through the jungle.

“We positively identified them as Dhyaan DLA404 landcruisers; they are made on Varzquez. Or I should say, were made. The Dhyaan
company stopped producing that particular model over twenty years ago.”

Colin Rexrew datavised a search order into the office computer. “The LDC never brought any to Lalonde.”

“That’s right. The invaders brought them. What you’re seeing is the first definite proof that it is an external force behind
all this. And they’re heading straight towards Dur-ringham.”

“Dear God.” He put his empty wineglass down on the desk, and stared at the screens. The enemy had a physical form. After weeks
of helpless wrestling with an elusive, possibly imaginary, foe, it was finally real; but a reason for the invasion, logical
or otherwise, was impossible to devise.

Colin Rexrew gathered up what was left of his old determination and resolve. Something tangible gave his psyche a fragment
of very welcome confidence. He accessed the one neural nanonics program he had thought he would never have to use, strategic
military procedure, and put it into primary mode. “We have to stop deluding ourselves we can handle this on our own. I need
combat troops backed up with real fire-power. I’m going to blow these invaders right off my planet. We only need to locate
the headquarters. Kill the brain and the body is irrelevant. We can see about removing the sequestration nanonics from people
later.”

“The LDC board will need convincing,” Terrance Smith said. “It won’t be easy.”

“They will be told afterwards,” Colin said. “You’ve seen those landcruisers. They’ll be here in a week. We must move fast.
After all, it’s the board’s interest I’m ultimately protecting; without Lalonde there will be no LDC.”

“Where can you get troops from without going through the board?” Terrance asked.

“The same place they would ultimately get them from. We buy them on a short-term contract.”

“Mercenaries?” the aide asked in surprised alarm.

“Yes. Candace, where’s the nearest port we can get enough in reasonable numbers? I want armed ships, too; they can provide
the fire-power back-up from low orbit. It’s expensive, but cheaper than buying in strategic-defence platforms. They can also
prevent any more of the invader’s ships from landing.”

The chief sheriff gave him a long, testing stare. “Tranquillity,” she said eventually. “It’s a base for blackhawks and the
so-called independent traders. Where you find the ships, you find the people. Ione Saldana might be young, but she’s not stupid,
she won’t throw out the undesirables. The plutocrats who live in the habitat have too many uses for them.”

“Good,” Colin said decisively. “Terrance, cancel all work on Kenyon as of now. We’ll use the money earmarked for mining its
main chamber. It always was bloody premature.”

“Yes, sir.”

“After that, you can take one of the colonist-carrier ships to Tranquillity and supervise the recruitment.”

“Me?”

“You.” Colin watched the protest form and die unvoiced on the younger man’s lips. “I want at least four thousand general troops
to re-establish order in Durringham and the immediate counties. And I also want teams of combat scouts for the Quallheim Counties.
They are going to have to be the best, because they are going to be assigned the search and destroy mission in the deep jungle.
Once they locate the invader’s home base they can zero it for the star-ships’ weapons. We can pound it from orbit.”

“What sort of armaments are we looking for on these starships?” Terrance asked guardedly.

“Masers, X-ray lasers, particle beams, thermal inducers, kinetic harpoons, and atmospheric penetration nukes—straight fusion,
I don’t want any radioactives clogging the environment.” He caught the aide’s eye. “And no antimatter, not under any circumstances.”

Terrance gave a cautious grin. “Thank you.”

“What ships have we got available in orbit right now?”

“That was something I was going to mention,” Terrance said. “The
Yaku
left its parking orbit this evening. It jumped outsystem.”

“So?”

“Firstly, it was a cargo ship, and only fifty per cent of its cargo had been unloaded. And cargo is the one thing we are still
bringing down to the spaceport. It had no reason to leave. Secondly, it had no permission to leave. There was no prior contact
with our Civil Flight Control Office. The only reason I found out it had left was because Kelven Solanki got in touch with
me to query it. When I checked with flight control to ask why they hadn’t informed us about it, they didn’t even know
Yaku
had lifted from parking orbit. It turns out someone had erased the traffic-monitor satellite data from the spaceport computer.”

“Why?” Candace asked. “It’s not as if we have anything that could prevent them from leaving.”

“No,” Colin said slowly. “But we could have asked another ship to track it. Without the monitor satellite data we don’t know
its jump coordinate, we don’t know where it went.”

“Solanki will have a copy,” Terrance said. “Ralph Hiltch too, I suspect. If he was pressed.”

“That’s all we need, another bloody puzzle,” Colin said. “See what you can find out,” he told Candace.

“Yes, sir.”

“Back to the original question. What other ships are available?”

Terrance consulted his neural nanonics. “There are eight left in orbit; three cargo ships, the rest colonist-carriers. And
we’re due for another two colonist-carriers this week, as well as a Tyrathca merchant ship sometime before the end of the
month to check on their farmers.”

“Don’t remind me,” Colin said sorely.

“I think the
Gemal
would be the best bet. That only has forty Ivets left in zero-tau. They can be transferred to the
Tachad
or the
Martijn
, both of them have spare zero-tau pods. It wouldn’t take more than a few hours.”

“Get onto it tonight,” Colin said. “And, Candace, that means the spaceport has to be defended at all costs. We have to be
able get those troops down in the McBoeings. There’s nowhere else for them to land. The scouts can use VTOLs to take them
direct to the Quallheim Counties, but the rest will have to use the McBoeings.”

“Yes, sir, I am aware of that.”

“Good, start organizing for it, then. Terrance, I want you back here in ten days. Give me one month, and I’ll have these bastards
begging me for surrender terms.”

The gaussgun’s fragmentation round hit the man full in his chest, and penetrated to a depth of ten centimetres, already starting
to crater the flesh, impact shock pulverizing the entire mass of organs held within his rib cage to mucilaginous jelly. Then
it exploded, silicone shrapnel reducing the entire body to a spherical cascade of scarlet cells.

Will Danza grunted in acute satisfaction. “Try rebuilding yourself out of that, my xenoc friend,” he told the slippery red
leaves.

The hostiles were impervious to almost any major injury. The little ESA team had found that out long ago. Gaping lacerations,
severed limbs—they barely slowed the hostiles down as they emerged from the thick bushes to harass the party. Wounds closed
up, bones knitted in seconds. Lieutenant Jenny Harris might insist on calling the prisoner a sequestrated colonist, but Will
knew what it really was. Xenoc monster. And its friends wanted it back.