Those rebels who heard the explosion should know that the tribunals are waiting. Those who murder loyal citizens will be noted, and their victims will be avenged.
Who Are We?
Resistanceis the official newsletter of the loyalist government-in-exile. A loyal friend has suggested that we send this to you…
At the end, Sula appended a copy of the first edition ofResistance, for any who hadn’t seen it.
Because most of the Records Office personnel had gone home at the close of the business day, Sula sent outResistance in smaller packets of a few thousand each so as not to tie up the broadcast node too conspicuously. As before, fifty thousand were sent. As before, they were sent randomly to inhabitants of Zanshaa who were not Naxids.
PJ’s comm chimed as these operations were under way. He answered, then reported. “My smoking club. They’re going to be closed for a few days, till the damage is repaired.”
“Anyone hurt?” Sula asked.
“Cuts from flying glass, a couple of sprained ankles, and one broken collarbone.”
Sula sent another two thousand copies ofResistance on their way. “Did you ask what was happening at the Makish Palace?”
PJ looked stricken. “I didn’t think to.” He turned to go back to the comm.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sula said quickly. “It’s not that important. When they reopen I’m sure you’ll get the story.”
The caterer arrived with a glorious meal for four, crisp duck served with a creamy eswod concoction and a tart sauce of taswa fruit. PJ offered the best of the Ngeni clan’s cellars to Spence and Macnamara, and afterward produced cigars.
“This reminds me,” Sula said. “What is your club doing for tobacco now that the ring’s gone?”
PJ gave an unhappy shrug. “Make do with the local variety, I suppose.”
The climate of Zanshaa, for some reason, did not produce first-rate tobacco. Or cocoa. Or coffee. Sula, as it happens, had used half her inheritance to purchase quantities of the best of each of these before the ring was destroyed, and had them shipped to the surface, where they waited now in warehouses.
“I might be able to help them out,” she said. “But no thank you, I don’t smoke.”
Afterward, Action Team 491 reluctantly left the Ngeni Palace for whatever lodgings they could find. They were supposed to be workers caught in the High City when the exits were closed, and it would be logical for them to look for a hostel to stay in—and Sula told her team to make certain they got receipts, in order that their stories be all the more convincing.
Lodgings were indeed hard to find—there were plenty of genuine workers wandering from one place to the next, with their IDs scanned by police patrols every few blocks. Sula finally found a place by paying more than she suspected a worker could afford. There, she enjoyed another bath, to wash away the odor of PJ’s cigars, then slept on the broad, faintly scented mattress.
In the middle of the night she heard the creak of a floorboard, then felt the pillow press down hard on her nose and mouth. She gasped for breath, but there was no air. She tried to claw the pillow off her face, but her hands were pinned.
She sat up with a cry half strangled in her throat, her hands clutching at her neck. Her pulse thundered in her ears like a series of gunshots. She stared blindly out into the dark, trying to see the shadow that was her attacker.
“Lights!” she called, and the lights flashed on.
She was alone in her room.
She spent the rest of the night with the lights on and the video wall showing a harmless romantic drama that Spence would probably have adored.
In the morning she rose and found that the road and the funicular had been reopened. Showing her identification and her receipt for a night’s lodging, she left the High City for the Lower Town. As she took a cab to Riverside, she saw a few copies ofResistance pasted to lampposts, each surrounded by clumps of readers.
Buying breakfast from a vendor near the communal apartment, she learned that the Naxids had ordered their remaining hostages shot, then sent the police out onto the streets to find more.
SEVEN
Chandra walked into Martinez’s office in the middle of the afternoon watch and slid the door closed behind her. She looked at the game of hypertourney he was playing on the desktop and said, “Well, I’m free of the bastard at last.”
Martinez looked up at her, his mind still filled with the game’s intricacies of velocities and spacial relationships. “Congratulations,” he said.
The color was high on Chandra’s cheeks and her eyes burned with fury. She paced back and forth in front of the desk like a tigress whose feeding had arrived half an hour late.
“I finally asked him!” she proclaimed. “I asked him if he’d get me promoted—and he said he wouldn’t!”
“I’m sorry,” Martinez said. The words came reluctantly. “Captains can’t promote lieutenants,” he added.
“This one can,” Chandra said savagely. “You know how those High City officers stick together. All he’d have to do is trade a favor with one of his cousin’s—Fletcher promotes the cousin’s cadet nephew in exchange for me getting my step.”
Martinez knew that was true enough—Fletcher could have traded a favor with someone. That was how the high-caste Peers kept everything in their small circle.
“Bastard wants me to stay in my place,” Chandra said fiercely as she paced. “Well, Iwon’t. I justwon’t. ”
“I didn’t understand how you got together with Fletcher in the first place.”
Chandra stopped pacing. Her eyes glared with contempt into time, gazing at her own past. “I’m the only officer on the ship who wasn’t Fletcher’s choice,” she said. “He had someone else picked for my place but he didn’t get to Harzapid before the war happened. When the squadron shipped out, I got sent aboard. I didn’t know anyone and—” She shrugged. “I tried to make myself agreeable to my captain.” Her mouth drew up in a sneer. “I’d never met anyone like him. I thought he had an interesting mind.” She barked out a laugh. “Interesting mind!He’s as dull as a rusty spoon.”
They looked at each other for a few brief seconds. Then Chandra took a half step closer to the desk, her fingertips drifting over the black surface, cutting through the holographic display of the hypertourney game.
“I could really use your help, Gare,” she said.
“I can’t promote you either. You know that.”
An intense fire burned in her eyes. “But your relatives can,” she said. “Your father-in-law is on the Fleet Control Board and Michi Chen is his sister. Between the two of them they should be able to work an overdue promotion for a lieutenant.”
“I’ve told you before,” Martinez said, “I can’t do anything out here.”
She looked at him levelly. “Someday,” she said, “you’re going to need a friend in the service, and I’m going tobe that friend. I’m going to be the best and most loyal friend an officer ever had.”
Martinez considered that Chandra’s friendship might come at a very high price.
Though, professionally speaking, he could think of no reason why she shouldn’t be promoted. Other than her erratic and impulsive behavior, of course, and her chaotic love life.
But how bad was that, really?he asked himself. Compared with some of the captains he’d known, Chandra was practically a paragon.
Misunderstanding his silence, she leaned forward and took his hand. Her fingers were warm in his palm. The hologram gleamed on her tunic. “Please, Gareth,” she said. “I really need you now.”
“I’ll speak to Lady Michi,” Martinez said. “I don’t know how much credit I’ve got with her, but I’ll try.”