TNE 02 To Dream of Chaos Page 19

  Tom nodded, gratified to hear that. Technically, Coeur had no obligation to Can and Katzel, but apparently Coeur didn't look at things that way.

  "Perhaps," Anthony said, "it Is time you met the rebels."

  "Could you arrange that?"

  "I could try. But It's a gooddistance to Die nearest Camp, In the wasteland on the far side of Albegar, We could not walk that far before dawn,"

  "You're forgetting the broomsticks," Tom said. "With V's, we have three—enough for six people."

  "Can they fly that far?" Anthony asked. 'They seem rather...."

  "Fragile?" Coeur asked.

  "Yes."

  'They are, Brother Anthony, but they've got long legs. You could fly one all the way Out to the ocean and back if you had to."

  "Goodness," Anthony said, boggled by the prospect of such a 200-kilometer flight. So Impressed was he, in fact, that he removed the vial of holy water from his vestments and sprinkled a generous portion on Coeur, Tom, V-Max's broomstick In the hold and himself. Tom, for her part, was amused by the blessing, but Coeur took It with respectful equanimity.

  What the hell, she thought. It's not like I don't pray every time I turn on the jump drive. ..

  Back in the grav APC with the rest of her crew, when Coeur learned the extent of Drop Kick's bravado—trailing the APC all the way to the bunker—her first impulse was to give him a good stiff kick in the butt. A moment's reflection put her off that lack, though, as she realized she would have done the same thing in his place.

  We don't leore people behind, Coeur thought, remembering the Arse's motto, but it we do, we get them bock.

  "Really, Drop Kick," Tom said, back In the G-carrier with V-Max, Brother Anthony, Coeurand the remainderof the personnel Coeur had brought down to the surface, "you don't have to take those kinds of risks for my people."

  "N3h, it's all right," Drop Kick said, having flipped up his visor to access the straw of a box of high carbohydrate punch. "We got good secondary intelligence, like the layout of the city, and the fact that they're not real sharp with their sensors."

  "Fond of Russian roulette, are you, Drop Kick?" Physic asked.

  "Please clarify your meaning," Newton jumped In, baffled by the expression.

  "I think what she means," Gaffer said, "Is that we'd die if they had good sensors, and wouldn't if they didn't. Actually, though, those odds are a lot worse than Russian roulette.. ."

  "Which Is?"

  "Spinning the cylinder of a revolver with one round In it, pointing it at your head and pulling the trigger.

  "I am confused," Newton announced. "What purpose would that serve?"

  "Well," Gaiter said, "it's a sort of a game—you know, a game of chance—except with higher stakes."

  "Higher stakes, sergeant?"

  "Well, yeah, you could die."

  "Oh, I comprehend. When you say you point the gun at your 'head,' you actually mean you point It at your brain."

  Gaffer didn't knew quite what to make of this-

  "Well, yeah. What else?"

  "As it happens," Newton explained, "out brains are not located in our 'head,' but in our torso. But about the revolver— how many chambers must It have to present a statistically acceptable risk to the players?"

  Before he could give an answer, Gaffer caught himself, recognizing that no matter what he said, the bizarre human motivation to play suicidal games of chance would doubtless remain Inscrutable to the Hiver.

  "Forget about it," Gaffer said. "It's Just another way of saying that the flight into Soledad was dangerous."

  "You can say that again," Physic admonished, staring at the Marines with her amis crossed.

  "Anyway," Coeur said, directing her people's attention back to herself, "it's time we sortied. Tom, you're with me Brother Anthony, you'll ride with V-Max, Drop Kick, you and Gaffer will cover us from a discreet distance."

  "How discreet?" Drop Kick asked.

  "As discreet as possible. You work It out. Layoif the radio unless It's life or death."

  "Understood."

  "What about guns?" Tom asked.

  "Well, Drop Kick and Gaffer will cehainlycarry their weapons," Coeur said, "but I don't think the rest of us should. It probably wouldn't give a good first impression."

  "If I may interject," Brother Anthony said. "I think that would be an error. Provocative as guns are, they may be your only defense against the nightjacks if we meet them,"

  "What do you mean 'your'?" Tom asked.

  "Oh, well, I don't need a weapon, Nightjacks—being evil creations—seldom attack priests."

  Coeur was dublousof that, but accepted the wisdom of taking along some marginal protection. She strapped on a gauss pistol while Tom and V-Max settled for personal defense lasers.

  "All right," Vink said. "Now what about us?"

  "Oh, don't worry," Tom said "Red's got a special Job for you."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes," Coeur said, "We have to assume that—strong or weak as they might be—Cari and Katzel could reveal this location under torture. It's your mission, therefore, to move the vehicles to another spot about 20 kilometers north and reestablish the camp."

  "Oh great," burly Whiz Bang complained. "Now we have to set the camouflage up all over again."

  "And like it, trooper," Drop Kick said.

  "Yes, sergeant major,"

  "May we assume that this posiUon has been previously surveyed. Captain?" Newton asked.

  "Affirmative. It was mapped from orbit, so I'll show you the position. I'll want you to get there and set up quickly, though, so you can continue monitoring Soledad's radio traffic for messages about the prisoners,"

  "Messages?" Newton asked.

  "Ransom demands, requests for parley, that kind of thing. If we're lucky, the kids were taken as bargaining chips to get to their captain. If we're unlucky,..,"

  But Coeur didn't have to spell it out. The Arses might always try to get their people out, but often as not, those people were dead well before a rescue party could arrive to help them.

  Although they knew their hours of nighttime were limited (the sun would rise around 0600, in five hours), the three broomstick teams followed to make sure the C-carrier and ship's boat relocated safely before moving on. HEPLAR thrusters were fairly noisy, so Coeur was concerned at first that the peasants and tractor bosses below might hear them and alert the Soledad armed forces to Investigate, but a moment of reflection reminded her that the prevailing southerly winds would carry the keening of the engines away from the people below. Anyway, the relocation went without incident.

  As Coeur intended, the new site had all the advantages of the old one—namely, that It was well-concealed at the base of a ravine and close to a slope overlooking farmland below and the River Loro and Albegar beyond. Once settled into this new niche farther north in the same Lomarica hills, the spacers In the C-earner and ship's boat promptly spilled out to replace their IR shrouds and camouflage nets, and Coeur was satisfied that they were now as safe as they could be

  "Okay, "she signaled by Anslan to V-Max on the lead broomstick, "move out."

  Thecholceof V-Max as point was based on simple reasoning— he'd been on the planet the longest and was carrying Brother Anthony, their guide. Under Anthony's direction, the line of three broomsticks—with Coeur and Tom second and the sergeants far to the rear—swung out over Albegar and headed toward the wasteland beyond.

  Since they were now flying Into a southerly head wind, the very light broomsticks could not reach their top speed, and Drop Kick and Caffer were given a slower, more detailed view of Albegar than they'd had earlier that night. Now they saw what they had not seen before—gangs of peasant laborers marching through the streets to the fields, watched over by armed tractor bosses and the odd Soledad track-iaying APC. In the middle of the broomstick flight, Coeur and Tom saw this, too.

  "You know what It probably 1s7" Tom said to Coeur, through the broomstick's hard-wired intercom link between their headsets. "A feudal society. Like
Oriflamme, only more primitive."

  "Somehow, I don't think Oriflamme would like the comparison," Coeur replied, noting the application of nightsticks to work gang stragglers. 'Those people don't look like they have any choice of occupation."

  'True, but neither do some Oriflammen."

  Given the sorry state of the population—tattered, shuffling men, women and children—Coeur suspected that their condition was far from a new thing. That and the relatively light force available to keep them In line—a handful of TL6 troops and vehicles watching over countless thousands of peasants—suggested a TED, a technologically elevated dictatorship, long passed into the status of an institution.

  I've only been here a few hours, Coeur thought, and already I hate this Brak. But I'll have to watch thot emotion and keep It in check. Killing Brok is not our mission objective.

  Despite herself, though, Coeur found herself thinking about Carl and Kauel even as the lead brooms tick of V-Max and Brother Anthony sailed over a crumbling monorail abutment and Into the darkness beyond the city- Her eyes continued to scan for movement all around them. In the low-light panorama perceived through her goggles, but at the same time she remembered two singular young spacers from her time on 2orn's patrol cruiser....

  Coeur learned their names soon after Vi Et Armis left Souler, alter the pirate went into jump just ahead of o flight of angry SDfis. The crew was still a full day into jump space, as they realized they had cheated death, blown up the Guild's offices and made off with a megacredlt in gold bullion (ironically, the Guild's payment for killing the fibers of Ra).

  However, no one was quite 05 happy as the crew of the ship's boat, whom Coeur and Drop Kick met when Tom led them down to the boat bay during their first tour of the ship. Quite young, Co ri and Katzel, female and male first cousins from Nike Nimbus, were both 2 ? and exhibited o youthful vigor that was distinctly at odds with the hard-edged gravity in the expressions of their older motes.

  "Hey there, skipper," Katzel said, lifting his wrench to solute Tom.

  "Hey," Cori seconded, "how's it going, sir?"

  "Quite well," Tom said, "thanks to Red Sun and Drop Kick here."

  "Wow. So you're the people who helped us blow up Souler Downport, " Katzel sold to the Arse and Marine. "Cool."

  "Well, not the whole port," Drop Kick said, "just the port authority."

  "Yeah," 2om sold, "and there I was, all set to nuke the whole city, but Red here talked me out of that."

  Katzel leaned back, impressed.

  "You must be pretty convincing," Katzel said to Coeur. "The skipper never listens to me,"

  "Yeah, me neither," Cod rejoined. "You'd think she'd be owed by our breadth of experience "

  "Don't worry," Tom said, smiling indulgently. "I'll let you two get some dirt-side duty one of these days."

  "That's what she always says," Katzel said in a stage whisper, leaning toward Coeur.

  "Be careful what you ask for," Coeur replied, conspiratoriolly. "You might get it."

  "We can handle it," Katzel shot back proudly.

  Walking away, Coeur and Tom smiled at the enthusiasm of the young crewmembers.

  "You've known them for a while?" Coeur osked-

  "Yeoh, friends of the family. I took 'em aboard as a favor to their parents."

  "Too be pirates? How thoughtful."

  "Hey, piracy is in the eye of the beholder, Star Viking."

  Coeur bristled. At least I don't spread plagues/ But under the circumstances, she thought better of Insulting her hosts.

  "Yeoh, some people think so," Coeur mused. "But kfds are always In such a hurry to grow up."

  "Yeah, that or get killed," Tom replied, her smile fading. "That's too easy to do out here. Their time will come soon enough. Sooner than it ought to."

  Presently, V-Max's broomstick began to drop toward the rubble, and Coeur concentrated all her attention on maintaining stability In the southerly wind as she lost speed following V-Max down toward the ground.

  Although the terrain below seemed nothing but unlnter-rupted rubble, Coeur's wide-spectrum goggles caught occasional spots of heat from the tracks and bodies of living organIsms—rats, dogs, cats and people. Clven the silence of the broomsticks, Coeur doubted the people on the ground would have an/ impulse to glance upward when the spacers passed Overhead, and besides, the broomsticks we re so small they would probably not be spotted against the starry sky. Even so, she was mindful of her pistol's weight as they came down out of the sky to land atop a weed-strewn hill.

  As per their Instructions, Drop Kick and Gaffer did not come down, but Coeur was still reassured they were up there, circling at 100 meters. The spot Brother Anthony had chosen was rather exposed, and very windy, with only a ruined rectangle of Stone to mark the perimeter of a long-extinct structure, "This was a church," Anthony explained, after the two lead broomsticks were on the ground together. "It is sometimes used as a meeting place by the rebels,"

  "I sure don't see any here," V-Max said, confinning the view of the women.

  "One cannot be certain," the priest replied. "Give them a few minutes."

  Anthony then wandered off a short distance, to the pedestal of what might once have been an altar, mumbling what sounded like an incantation.

  The spacers looked on, completely nonplussed. "Defender," Anthony pronounced, raising the prayer to an audible level, "son and daughterof Cod, protector of Heaven and Earth, "Hear my prayer, "Grant us:

  "The grace to forgive our transgressors. The strength to forebear our fortune, "The wisdom to accept your providence, "Until death, and the reunion of souls." Sounds pretty middle-of-the-road, as prayers go, Coeur thought, but where are the rebels?

  "They aren't here," Anthony said, after a long moment "We must try another location."

  Minutes later, they relocated to another hill several kilometers to the north—also the locaUon of a demolished church—and invoked the presence of the rebels. But again, they did not show. "Maybe they Just don't want to be found,* Tom suggested, "We must by again," Anthony suggested. "We cannot try In the daytime."

  Coeur shrugged, and they moved on.

  Not untrl three stops later did they find their quarry.

  Brother Anthony was noticeably reticent about suggesting this last location, but that fact In and of itself prompted Coeur to want to see it. In a region called the Imponsero District, It was well outside the power grid but near a number of standing structures that roomed with exaggerated size in the darkness. Most were empty apartment buildings, rendered in a blocky style perhaps chic at one time, but the true giants were warehouses, some aglow with fires of huddled camps and all riddled with divots blown out of their ferroconcrete shells by the impact of energy artillery.

  In short, Coeur thought, o battleground.

  The chapel Anthony selected this time was among the warehouses, amazingly retaining Its overall structure though the roof and rafters had long since collapsed. Bits of debris and dangling metal, shifted by the wind, banged and skittered noisily in adjacent structures, confusing Coeur's ears as she St/alned to hear the motion of other feet in the rubble.

  As before, Anthony prayed alone for several minutes, eventu ally building toa volume that could be easily heard, then stopped.

  And silence fell on the chapel.

  Then the chilling sound of rifle bolls—dozens—clattered down on them from every direction. Tom, who reached to draw her gun, was stayed by a warding hand from Coeur.

  "All right, people," ordered a disembodied voice, "on your faces on the ground, hands behind your backsl You too, brother!"

  An armed force of squad strength then swarmed into the building, enforcing the voice's will by bayonet point. V-Max was the only spacerto be hurt, when he protested Tom's being forced to the ground and got a butt stock in the kidneys for his trouble.

  What luck, Coeur thought wryly, Seeling gravel pressed into her cheek as strange fingers tied her hands behind her back and relieved her of her gun. Our first night on Mexit, and alread
y we're making friends for the Coolitton.

  Chapter 12

  Having witnessed firsthand the cruelty of more than one TED, Coeur was understanding of hercaptors, even as they tied a rope around her hands, look her weapon and her communicator, replaced her night-vision goggles with a blindfold and hauled her upright for a thorough frisking. As a potential spy, she deserved no better.

  What she fervently hoped was not that she would be treated better, but that their captors would take better care of the broomsticks they were dragging along behind the prisoners, and that Drop Kick would have the restraint to refrain from a rescue attempt.

  Well, at least until they actually try to execute us.

  Brother Anthony was given better treatment, and Coeur heard him explain their objective even as they were lead away from the chapel, "We told you only to come here atone, Brother Anthony,"

  "I know that, commander, but the mission of my companions is important"

  "What? Killing us all?"

  "These aren't enemies, commander. They've come to help you."

  "How so?"

  They are from the Coalition, sir. Just as V-Max said they would, his comrades have come."

  Oh, good, Coeur thought. At least V-Max had the presence of mind to soy he was with us, nor a bond of interstellar pirates "I hope so, for your sake. I'd really hate to have to shoot a priest"

  "I doubt very much the Cardinal would appreciate that after the help we've given you."

  "Well, you're in luck," the commander said with acid Insincerity. "She's here, so you can explain it to her yourself."

  "What?" Anthony asked, shocked. "The cardinal is here?"

  "Yes."

  "How could I be so foolish? I had no Idea...) never would have come if I had known...."

  "I'm sure she'll be touched by your devotion."

  Well, Coeur thought, this could be the breakwe needed..., It's too bod we smell like an overflowing latrine lo these people.

  Coeur and her companions were led over a variety of terrain, around the comers of several buildings and finally deposited In an enclosed chamber without Brother Anthony. Shushed by Tom— and his aching kidneys—V-Max kept his grumbling at a low level, though It was some time before anyone came In to look after them. The people who eventually came were a man and woman who removed both the restraints and blindfolds of the party preparatory for movement elsewhere, "Where are we being taken?" Coeur asked.