Undercurrents (27 page)

The moon began to set over Tressel, and the three of us walked back toward our billets.

Celline gazed up at the vanishing moon and smiled. “Only the Yavi know. And they aren’t about to tell us.”

I looked at Kit and raised my eyebrows.

She nodded, then said to Celline, “Actually, they might.”

Sixty-nine

The Tressen sentry snapped to as Gill, Polian, and the Tressen Regular Army major approached him across the tarmac of the spaceport runway. Gill returned the rifle salute, looked the sentry up and down, smiled and nodded. He turned to the Tressen major, and said, within the sentry’s earshot, “Your men look sharp, Major Vendl.”

Gill still had the Chancellery fiat letter, so the compliment was no more necessary here than it had been to silence the ferrents yet again, after the funeral. Gill effectively commanded here, whether these Tressens liked it or not. But Gill was what the Trueborns called a GI’s general. He knew how to make them like it, rather than not. He had now made a friend of one soldier, of every soldier that one told, and of the major who commanded this Tressen infantry battalion. That battalion was now erecting a defensive perimeter around the landing strip.

Vendl, the Tressen major, jowly and gruff, paused as the three of them walked along a double row of concertina wire strung between sandbag guard emplacements. Major Vendl crossed his arms. “General, may I speak frankly?”

“It’s the only way I want my soldiers to speak.”

“Sir, the Iridian rebels haven’t mounted an assault of any magnitude inside Tressen proper since I was a boy. All this”—he waved his hand at the ring of emplacements and wire that his battalion was building around the landing strip—“is probably for nothing.”

Gill nodded. “Actually, I agree with you, Major. I’m preparing for the worst case. What I need to know from you and from Major Polian here is what the worst case may be.”

Vendl, the Tressen major, pushed back his steel helmet and scratched his forehead. “The latest intelligence I’ve seen about rebel order of battle is that they can’t field more than one company-sized light-infantry unit.”

Polian stepped in before the other major stole his thunder entirely. “The Iridian rebellion’s been reduced to irrelevance. For the last ten years they haven’t attempted more than assassinations and occasional hit-and-runs on Tressen positions down in occupied Iridia. The best estimate is that once Celline dies—if she hasn’t already—without an heir, the old guard will fold completely.”

Gill pursed his lips. “Take it from an old guardsman—they may want to go down swinging. Tell me more about their capabilities.”

The Tressen major shrugged. “Extrapolating from what they were, we should expect basic, leg infantry. Well-trained, minimally equipped. Highly motivated.”

Polian said, “No body armor like contemporary infantry. Needlers will cut them to ribbons. Typical partisans. But typical partisans are more likely to try to hit us elsewhere, while the”—he glanced at Major Vendl—“the material is in transit. An ambush.”

The Tressen major said, “They’re pretty good at ambushes. The best defense against an ambush is to not walk into it in the first place.”

Polian said, “We won’t pick the route until the last minute. Use decoys. Ambush won’t be a problem. For that matter, nothing the Iridians might throw at us should be a problem.”

Seventy

About Kit’s and my freight-hopping return trip to Tressia, the less said the better. We anticipated that the Tressens might be watching the trains more closely since the Great Big Clinic Shoot-out, so we stood watches back-to-back, one asleep, one awake. Therefore, we had minimal time to get reacquainted. We also anticipated that the rail yards would be watched more closely, so we bailed out of our boxcar on the outskirts of Tressia, split up so that we didn’t fit the two-person profile the Tressens were looking for, then legged it in to town separately.

It was past moonset when I rounded the corner and reentered the street where we had raided the church poor box. I climbed the steep cobbles toward the church, the street deserted except for a single drunk passed out in a doorway. I was so jumpy that for a moment I thought it was Kit.

The church looked to be as cold and empty as it had been during our last visit, but I noticed a gray scuff on the left side of the entry door jamb, six inches above my eye level. That mark signaled me that Kit was already inside.

I took the stairs two at a time and smacked my head on the bell again at the top of the stairs.

I rubbed my head. “That’s gonna leave a mark.”

“That’s what
he
said.” Kit sat on the belfry floor with her head bent below the waist-high wall that enclosed the open space within which the bell hung. The single bell, which was both as tall and wide as I, was capped by a wood frame that suspended it between timber beams that supported the belfry’s pyramidal roof.

“That’s a stupid place to hang a bell. That’s what
who
said?”

Kit peered down at the data panel of the remote-activated telemetry recorder that I had placed during our last visit. It now rested in her lap like a black plastic rodent with a wire tail.

“The bad-cop Yavi at the clinic. After I broke the good cop’s nose.”

“No wonder you don’t get dates.”

She looked up. “You’re late to this one. Trouble?”

I shook my head. “You’re early.” I pointed at the recorder. “We got anything on the RAT?”

“Couple hours.”

I raised my eyebrows. The bug that the recorder was set to listen for was voice activated. It was common to revisit a RAT and find nothing, if the bugged subject was quiet. A normal office day often yielded only a half hour of audibles, farts included.

She smiled. “The bad cop seemed attached to his jacket. He must wear it all day.”

A micropowered flexibug, like the one Kit had slipped into the hem of the Tressen jacket that had hung in her interrogation room, transmitted a signal deliberately weak in order to be virtually undetectable. Therefore, we had to set the RAT high, such as in this tower on top of a hill, so the bug’s transmissions would reach it no matter where the subject took the bug, as long as it stayed within a city-sized radius.

And RATs didn’t retransmit, because the signal could reveal
their
location. They had to be serviced by a live asset who exchanged drained batteries and full chips for fresh ones. It was clumsy, dangerous, and all very last-century. But the outworlds were last-century places. They lacked contemporary infrastructures within which to eavesdrop. You can’t hack a Net that hasn’t been invented yet.

That wasn’t the only reason I didn’t like this situation. We were cornered up here. I slipped on my snoops and peered out over the waist-high wall of the open bell tower into darkness that the snoops turned bright, ghostly green. The street below remained deserted. I asked Kit, “Pull the chip and listen someplace safer?”

She shook her head. “We’re already here. Once we leave, we won’t be back for a while. We could miss something that gets said in real time.”

We could also get trapped up here like rats, lower case. I sighed and plugged my phones into the RAT’s second jack. But I remained standing, with eyes on the street below. Actually, the view wasn’t bad. I could see all the way out to the spaceport.

After a half hour of breakfast orders and routine chatter, another voice joined the subject, who turned out to an intelligence major named Polian.

We couldn’t see the holo the two of them were watching, but we got the gist. Kit paused the recording and said, “I know that guy. Nice for a baby-killer.” A minute later Kit spoke again. “Propulsion-grade cavorite! No wonder the Yavi sent a general to take charge of this! Rat-bastard Howard could have told us both about this.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think he knows. He misfigured that Tressel cavorite was all weapons grade.” Over the years, Howard Hibble, like most spooks, was more infamous for what he got wrong than he was famous for what he got right. Despite the periodic public outcries, it wasn’t so much that intelligence services were dishonest, and it wasn’t so much that they were stupid. They just absolutely, positively knew a lot of stuff that wasn’t true.

Kit looked up at me. “Then the most important thing we can do right now is get the word back about this, Parker. The Yavi without starships are pains in the ass. The Yavi with them, and allied with the Tressens? That’s an interplanetary war waiting to happen.”

“Neither of us has an uplink. There’s no commercial transmission off Tressel. We have to get out of here aboard the next shuttle.”

“That may not be easy.”

We resumed listening. Then we got to a three-way conversation among Polian, his boss, General Gill, and what appeared to be a Tressen infantry major. They were talking about the shuttle landing strip. I leaned out of the bell tower, maxed my snoops, and studied the spaceport. “Crap.”

Kit looked up at me. “Why crap?”

I tugged off the snoops and handed them down to her. “Stand up here and take a look. It’s really not going to be easy to get on to the next shuttle.”

Kit studied the distant perimeter, then whistled. “That’s a battalion-sized unit. And the strongpoints are manned by Yavi with crew-served needlers.”

“We could send out a physical message with a clean courier.”

“Pass a note in study hall?” Kit shook her head. “No Earth diplomats, no Earth diplomatic pouch. The only people who upshuttle from Tressel are Yavi, and Tressen diplomats.”

“Maybe—”

“The shuttle crews?” She shook her head. “They’re all Rand.”

Rand was a major hub, like Mousetrap, but famous for tight-ass neutrality instead of sex, drugs, and vomit. The Trueborns called Rand the “Switzerland of Space,” and we were as likely to bribe a Rand contract pilot as we were to hack a Rand numbered account.

Kit sighed. “Besides, we can’t trust even an honest novice courier to deliver a message this important.”

Kit wasn’t just a nose breaker. She could fly a shuttle. I’d seen her do it. However. “We can’t fight our way in and hijack the flight. Not through what we just saw out there. This is lousy.”

Kit leaned forward as she stared into the darkness. Then she whispered, “No. It’s worse.”

I turned and peered out of the bell tower. Two Tressen canvas-backed troop trucks were now parked sideways, nose to nose, at the base of the hill, blocking the street that dead-ended in the square that fronted the church.

Kit said, “How the hell did they find us?”

I closed my eyes and swore. “When we were here last time, who put the clothes back in the poor box?”

“Alia. Why?”

“She left Weichselan diamonds in the poor box. To pay for the stuff we took.”

“She told you that?”

“Do women ever tell me anything? But it’s obvious now. If somebody told the ferrents, and here somebody tells the ferrents everything, diamonds would attract attention. Even if the Tressens didn’t recognize the diamonds as a Trueborn calling card, their new friends the Yavi sure did. They might not have guessed why we came here. But they probably staked the place out for days, just in case we came back.” The drunk asleep in the doorway. I swore.

Bam. Bam.

The two trucks’ back gates slammed against the trucks’ rear bumpers as they swung down. A helmeted Tressen infantry platoon piled out into the street at the base of the hill, then fell in alongside the trucks.

Seventy-one

Polian leaned forward and tapped the car’s driver on the shoulder. “Faster!”

The staff car rounded a bend, then squealed to a halt in front of two Tressen troop trucks parked nose to nose across a narrow street walled on both sides by stone row houses.

Polian leapt from the car, ran around the trucks and up the street as it climbed uphill. He was panting by the time he caught up with the Tressen major, Vendl, who walked behind an advancing phalanx of troops, his sidearm drawn.

Polian drew alongside the other officer and touched his arm.

Vendl smiled at him, panting too. “Such a nice night for a walk, I came myself. Glad you asked us out, Major.” His smile disappeared. “Major Polian, we staked this place out like you asked. And the stakeout saw two people enter the church, at different times, earlier tonight. But it’s just as likely to have been a couple tramps as a pair of spies. It’s gonna be a cold night.”

Polian shook his head. “It’s them.” Why they would have left coated diamonds mystified him. A dead-drop payment to a local asset, perhaps. But the undercurrent he felt was strong. “There’s no other way out of the building?”

The Tressen major shook his head. “Or in. We’re dealing with two people inside, tops. In the Old Quarter the buildings were built with one stone back against another stone back. Especially on hilltops with views and a summer breeze. Space was at a premium.”

Polian nodded. Yavi didn’t understand views or breezes. But every Yavi understood the concept of too little space. Ruberd Polian was on the verge of changing that for Yavet. And he wasn’t about to let two Trueborn spies stand in his way.

The advancing phalanx that had dismounted the trucks crested the hill and spread out as it moved into a small, open square in front of a church, which had to be the one where the diamonds had been found. It was a narrow, spartan stone building, and a short stone staircase rose from the street to the church’s arched wooden double doors. They were closed.

As he and the major strode across the square’s center, Polian frowned. “Major Vendl, don’t leave these men in the open. Don’t underestimate these people. They—”

Bam
.

The formation began taking fire from a gunpowder weapon.

Polian dove for the curb, rolled up against a building, drew his needler, and looked around. A Tressen writhed on his back in the square’s center. The man clutched his thigh with two hands, immobile and screaming. The rest of the troops had scattered into the shadows, as Polian had.

He peered up into the dimness. A bell tower rose from the church’s facade, perhaps sixty feet above the square. The belfry, open on four sides, made a perfect sniper’s perch. One round, one hit. The woman probably had night-vision equipment, and the Tressens didn’t. As long as they all cowered out here, she would pick them off one by one. But inside, in close quarters, sheer numbers would work to their advantage and against her marksmanship.