Come the Revolution (2 page)

“Cavalry’s here,” I told the others, trying to sound as nonchalant as I could. Then I sat down because my knees wouldn’t hold me up anymore.

Chapter Two

I knelt next to Tweezaa as the Varoki medtech finished applying the spray-on bandage to her right forearm. She still had that eyes-too-wide look that said she was in shock, but she was coming out of it. The medtech moved on to have a second look at Kamal. I put my hand on the smoothness of her head and she leaned into me, my arms around her.

“We’re okay, Princess,” I said. “We’re going to be fine.”

“Don’t call me that anymore,” she said softly. “I don’t want to be a princess.”

I looked over at Marr on the other side of her, saw her eyes fill with tears too. She still held her hands folded protectively over her belly. The medtech had done a couple scans, though, and everything looked good. We’d have our own doctor—a Human doctor—check her out as soon as we got back to our apartment in Praha-Riz, the arcology south of Katammu-Arc.

Hong stood guard over us, his RAG-19 pointed at the hangar bay’s ceiling but still ready. He turned to me. “Munie officer coming over. Iris sent him here so must be looking for a big shot.”

That would be me. I gently untangled myself from Tweezaa’s arms and stood up to face him. The Varoki police lieutenant didn’t look angry. He looked sheepish, although he probably had never heard of a sheep.

He started and ended with an apology. In between he told me what little they knew.

His detail had been pulled away by fake orders on the same communication band as sent us the wave-off, obviously part of an orchestrated assassination attempt aimed at Tweezaa and Marrissa. That cleared the way for the shooters, who were disguised as maintenance workers. They’d hidden the missile launcher in the very workstation we’d taken cover behind. The Munies knew all that from the surveillance video of the hangar and from what remains they’d recovered so far, and by recovered he meant scraped off the foamstone floor. It seems we’d landed on the missile team and then slid a ways.

How’s that for poetic justice?

He also filled me in on the ramped-up security plans for us and transportation arrangements to get us safely back to Praha-Riz Arcology.

“Nothing like this has
ever
happened in Sakkatto City, Mr. Naradnyo. Please be sure the heiress knows we will do
everything
in our power to find any other miscreants involved in this.” He shook his head, his expression a mixture of shame and astonishment, his large ears folded back defensively against his skull. “A missile fired at an aeroshuttle
in the city!
I would not believe it were the evidence not in front of me. What is the world coming to?”

He left to supervise the arrest and interrogation of the demonstrators. A cop’s instincts, when uncertain or confused, are usually to arrest everyone in sight. He figured they must have been part of the plan, but I couldn’t see how. Why stage a demonstration and maybe keep the Munies here when you wanted them to go someplace else? Not the way I’d have run the operation, but I couldn’t see a good reason to argue with him.

Iris Tenryu joined me as soon as the cop was gone. Iris was my number two guy, although she obviously wasn’t a guy. She was a couple years younger than me, early thirties, very fit, and cute in a lean and scratchy kind of way. She’d been an undercover detective for
Keishicho-koanbu,
the Tokyo Police Security Bureau, before getting into the VIP bodyguard field. I’d been lucky to find her. We’d mostly built the team together.

“How bad?” I asked.

She looked over at the crumpled shuttle where Varoki med techs worked on our injured team mates and two maintenance workers carried a body from the hatch to lay it in line with three others.

“Pretty bad, Boss,” she said. “Ramirez, Swanson, Mfengi, and that Varoki kid bought it.”

“Jutaant,” I said. “His name was Tita Jutaant.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Cartwright and Gladys Bonderovski got evacuated to a med center here, probably pull through but going to need serious surgery and rehab. Everyone else is banged up, one way or another, but they’ll live. You, me, and Hong are the only ones really a hundred percent operational. We got a ride home?”

“Yeah, the Munies set it up—not that I got a lot of faith in them right now, so gather up the RAG-19s and all the extra ammo. I want you and Hong armed to the teeth.”

Since we were bound for a lavish state reception, and would be going through banks of metal detectors, only the three members of the perimeter team had been armed and they were all down. The rest of us just carried neuro-wands—painful but nonlethal.

“You want the third RAG yourself?” she asked.

I looked around the hangar bay, choked with Varoki: emergency workers, Varoki Munies, and the Varoki demonstrators, their anger having given way to fear and sullen resentment. We were a human cork bobbing in a Varoki sea—a smaller cork than we had been an hour ago. In two years I’d never lost an agent. Now four of us gone, just like that!

“Bring the extra RAG along,” I said. “Hopefully I won’t need it.”

“Look,” she said and nodded toward the crowd of demonstrators. “What’s that asshole doing here?”

I followed her gaze and saw a tall Varoki—tall even by their standards, which was saying something. He was expensively dressed, probably for the same reception we’d been heading for. He walked the police line, talking to the detainees on the other side, working the crowd as if he were a politician.

“Elaamu Gaant,” I said, “my least favorite Varoki after-dinner speaker. Simki-Traak Trans-Stellar loves to book him for their big conferences. Yeah, what the hell
is
he doing here?”

Gaant saw me, made eye contact, and walked across the hangar floor. Iris left before he got to me.

“Ah, Sasha Naradnyo,” he said by way of greeting. “Why am I not surprised to find you surrounded by death and destruction?”

“What do you want, Gaant?”

“When I heard what happened I came to offer advice and comfort to these people, whom the police are illegally detaining following your unfortunate accident.”

“
Accident?
Only accident was they missed taking all of us out.”

He tilted his head to one side, the Varoki equivalent of a shrug. “It is unfortunate the heiress will be unable to attend the reception. It is in honor of the three hundredth anniversary of the invention of the interstellar jump drive. The fortune you expect her to inherit is, after all, derived largely from that invention and its patents.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I bet it’ll be a swell party. Maybe we’ll catch the next one.”

“Three hundred years!” he said as if he hadn’t heard me. “Three hundred years of star-spanning exploration, commerce, and progress—although your people have only been part of it for, what? Seventy years? Do you know the most remarkable thing about those three hundred years?”

I thought for a moment.

“How little you’ve accomplished?”

His polite façade suddenly slipped and his face twisted in contempt.

“No! It is that we made the incredible mistake of sharing that discovery with five other races, especially with yours. The discovery which allows travel between the stars in the blink of an eye instead of the passage of a lifetime, the discovery which makes interstellar civilization
possible
, is Varoki. But now the Varoki heiress to that knowledge is being raised and corrupted by an unscrupulous cabal of Humans!”

The iridescent skin of his face flushed orange-pink with rage, his large ears flared wide to the side, and he took a threatening step forward, as if he might take a swing at me, which would have been interesting. But at the moment I had bigger things to attend to. I extended my right arm down and to the side and twisted it so the concealed neuro-wand dropped from my jacket sleeve and into my hand. It shot out to full extension with a hiss.

Gaant saw the movement and froze, ears tight back against his head.

“I got scruples coming out my ears, Gaant. I just don’t have many inhibitions.”

Gaant took a step back, eyes narrow and teeth showing. “I am not alone in this enterprise, Sasha Naradnyo. The entire e-Traak family, the governors of Simki-Traak Trans-Stellar, and many legislators in the uBakai
Wat
all stand with me. This absurd inheritance will
never
take place, and that is only the first step of many. I have set this thing in motion,
my
hands are upon it, and you will mourn the day you first saw my face or heard my name.”

“Oh, I’m already there, Gaant. You know, I liked you better when you were just a two-bit huckster, a motivational speaker peddling dreams of greatness to suckers and losers. But you’ve been listening to your own bullshit so long you started believing it. You don’t scare us, so take a hike.”

I lifted the wand a bit to encourage him and he turned and strode away. I’d done him a disservice calling him two-bit; the vidfeeds preaching his brand of Varoki supremacy in the
Cottohazz
sold in the millions. Marrissa stood up from behind the workbench and I turned to her.

“He doesn’t scare us?” she said.

“Well, maybe a little. You feel good enough to stand?”

“I don’t feel good enough not to. That floor is killing my butt and lower back. The way Gaant talked…could he have been behind the attack?”

I thought about it for a moment but then shook my head. “Anything’s possible, but it’s not his style. He’s all wrapped up in his own political schemes. He’s got too much invested in them to risk it all on an attack this messy and dangerous. Besides, if it actually worked he could never take credit for it, and that would drive him crazy.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“We got two people in critical condition and they stay here at the med center in Katammu-Arc. The rest of us head back to Praha-Riz Arcology and we’ll bunker up in our complex there until we know what’s going on. We’re going to be real shorthanded in the security detail.
The’On’s
still joining us tomorrow, right?”

“His shuttle docked at Old Tower Highstation two hours ago. He’ll be here.” She looked over at the wreck. “Is a shuttle safe? What if they have another missile?”

“We’re going by Maglev train. Munies have arranged a closed car with their people on the exits and our folks will be inside with us.”

She looked over at the four bodies on the foamstone landing pad, now covered with dark plastic sheets. “What about them?”

“They ride with us.”

She nodded wordlessly, her lower lip quivering.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Next time I have to sit through some Simki-Traak banquet with you, make sure that asshole Gaant doesn’t get hired as the keynote speaker, okay?”

She gave me a shaky smile. “I’m not on the program committee.”

Chapter Three

The first time I met
The Honorable Arigapaa e-Lotonaa, I was in something of a mood—what Marr calls my simmering iconoclasm, which I keep meaning to look up. I’d decided his name was too much of a mouthful, so I’d called him
The’On—
short for
The Honorable—
instead
,
and that’s all I’d called him ever since. Despite that, and the fact he was Varoki, we’d become pals.

The’On
was senior staff in the
Cottohazz
diplomatic service but he was between assignments right then, which was good for us. Five months earlier he’d finished his gig as the
Cottohazz
Executive Council’s Special Envoy Plenipotentiary for Emergency Abatement on K’Tok. That’s five Varoki months, over six months Earth time.

The’On
had been called back to K’Tok two months later by some sort of flare-up, and that had nearly ruined our plans, but he’d gotten back to us in the nick of time, just like the U.S. cavalry in those old John Ford flat vids.

I waited for him in the Praha-Riz VIP shuttle bay with one security guy. We were too short-handed and busted up to take a proper detail without leaving security at the family complex light, and the family complex was priority one. Since I only took one guy, I wanted to minimize the chances of someone trying something so I took Baka ah-Quan, one of the two Zacks on our security team. Anyone in their right mind found Zacks physically intimidating and sort of repulsive, too.

Zacks, or
Zaschaan
, the Fifth Race, were as tall as Varoki but a lot bulkier. They were known mostly for their sour dispositions, troll-like ugliness (at least by Human and Varoki aesthetic standards), and unpleasant personal habits, many of which had to do with their two mouths. They ate with the lower mouth and spoke mostly through the upper one, which was a highly adapted blowhole. You know how when you talk to someone and they get all excited, you sometimes end up with a little spittle on you? Same with a Zack, except that’s not spittle.

They were a rung higher on the economic ladder than Humans, but we were gaining fast. Like us, you saw a lot of Zacks in the military and security details. We Humans were also starting to do well in entertainment and the arts—the Zacks, not so much.

We turned away from the blast of air as the VIP shuttle flared for landing, its ducted fans rotated full down and turbines whining. Almost as soon as the hydraulic landing skids settled under the weight of the flier, the hatch opened and
The’On
climbed down the three folding steps to the pad, ears fanned wide and a broad smile of greeting illuminating his face. He was dressed casually, at least by his standards: a red silk tunic and baggy trousers trimmed in broad black embroidered lace, with two Chinese characters on the left breast. A lot of wealthy Varoki had taken to classical Chinese clothing styles in the last few years but had no idea what the decorative lettering meant. I was pretty sure
The’On
did. It was not something he would take for granted.

“Sasha, it is good to see you alive,” he said, shaking my hand. The Human form of greeting had gained popularity among Varoki until the traditionalists like Gaant started raising a stink about anything Human. You didn’t see as much of it anymore, but that never stopped
The’On
.

“I’m fine. It’s good to have you here. Do you know Mr. ah-Quan?”

“Yes, I believe we met last year. May you and your blood prosper.” He didn’t offer his hand. Zacks don’t like to be touched, at least not by non-Zacks. I’d never heard them say so, but I suspected they found us as physically repulsive as we found them. Maybe that’s why they always seemed so cranky.

“Am well,” he answered, the voice from his upper mouth strangely nasal and high-pitched. You always expected a rumbling bass to come out of that massive body.

My eyes flicked back to the hatch. Borro,
The’On’s
Varoki bodyguard, filled the opening. He turned his head, taking in the immediate area, memorizing everything just in case. Then his eyes found mine and he nodded, a very slight smile on his lips.

“Come on, let’s head to the family complex,” I said. “We’ll help carry your things.”

The’On
smiled at that. His profession took him to a lot of residences of the rich and powerful throughout the
Cottohazz
, but I was pretty sure ours was the only one where he got to carry his own bags. Keeping servants to a minimum was good for security. It wasn’t bad for the soul, either.

I’d reserved a private autopod which would get us to the main atrium facing the family complex up on level 237. It was more secure than the public elevators and let us talk in private on the way there.

“So how are things on K’Tok? Still the lush green paradise I remember?”

He looked at me, his ears cocked unevenly in a way that made me smile. “The autumn was lovely and no one shot at me this time, if that is what you mean. But there is growing unrest in the old colonies ever since last year, when Humans began illegally settling the western continent and the Utaan Archipelago. At least the Varoki settlers have put aside their animosities, united in their common hostility to their new Human neighbors.”

“You can always count on us Humans to bring people together,” I said.

Ah-Quan laughed and then belched. You’d never know the Zacks have a sense of humor just looking at them, but they do—a finely honed appreciation for irony. Borro, sitting in the seat across from him, nodded in agreement.

* * *

The main entrance to the family complex was off the northwest atrium on what was called the Executive Layer, which was basically everything above Level Two Hundred. From the complex’s outer foyer we had to go through an elaborate security routine to get into the inner foyer, and then another different one to get into the main apartment, routines which required not only passwords but also a retinal scan and DNA sample. Tweezaa’s late father, Sarro e-Traak, had built this complex six years earlier with security in mind. If he’d have stayed in it, he’d probably be alive today, Marr would still be a market consultant to the rich and powerful, and I’d be dead—or head of the rackets on Peezgtaan and wishing I was dead.

The inner foyer opened onto the suites for the live-in security teams and, past them, the family apartment. Our apartment was open design built around the living room in the middle with the kitchen and four bedroom suites radiating from it. The suites were Marr’s and mine, Tweezaa’s, and two for guests. Those were empty right now, but we gave The’On one and Borro, his bodyguard, the other. Normally bodyguards bunked with our security folks but Borro was nearly family.

Each suite had a bedroom, bath, office, and den. We’d decorated mostly with soft reddish-tan carpets and furniture, and a lot of bright accent colors. One smart wall in the central living room was set up with Tweezaa’s family pictures, school and sports awards, a prize-winning essay, and a bunch of her drawings. A year ago the drawings had been interesting scrawls. Lately they’d started getting pretty good—still very impressionistic, and with some surreal color choices, but I thought she had an eye for important detail. Of course, I was biased.

“So, did Gaant tell you anything useful about the edict?”
The’On
asked once the new round of greetings were done and he and I, Marr and Tweezaa settled in around the table in the family kitchen.

“He hinted but he didn’t mention the edict outright, so as far as they know we’re still in the dark,” I said. “We know it will retroactively invalidate any will or trust which transfers control—not ownership, but control—of select family assets to a non-family member.”

He nodded. “Yes. And since Marrissa is Tweezaa’s guardian, and clearly not a family member, the inheritance is forfeit. What a stupid edict! It will also break every charitable trust in Bakaa, don’t they realize that? Or don’t they care? The
Wat
will be inundated in lawsuits from foundations. Then they will realize their error and try to find a way to exempt everyone from the law but Tweezaa. Imbeciles!”

“No argument from me. Gaant gave us some possibly useful information. For one thing, it’s obvious they don’t know we’ve seen the draft. They think they’re blindsiding us, so whatever your source was, it’s still secure.”

“Good,” he said, “but after this insane attack against your shuttle, we have to assume Gaant and his political allies will move at once. The situation becomes unstable, hence unpredictable. Do you believe him—that he is behind the edict?”

Marrissa and I exchanged a glance and I shrugged.

“Sasha and I aren’t certain,” she answered. “He is more inclined to believe the claim than I am. Although I don’t know Gaant well, I have met him several times and seen him in meetings, both large ones and small working groups. He never impressed me as a particularly…
deep
thinker. He is the sort of glib spokesperson you expect to see on news feeds and giving keynote addresses, a person most comfortable in a holovid, but not actually working hard behind the scenes. You know exactly the sort I am talking about, Gapa.”

Marr had never gotten comfortable calling e-Lotonaa
The’On
, and so she used Gapa, the diminutive form of his first name, Arigapaa.

“Oh, certainly,” he said, nodding at her assessment of Gaant’s personality. “But that may be a look deliberately cultivated. He moves in the highest levels of society and among many of the
e-Varokiim
there is a stigma attached to having to work
too
hard. Whether Elaamu Gaant is a figurehead, or works on behalf of a political faction, or the other e-Traak heirs, or perhaps follows a personal motivation…”

He tilted his head to the side and didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need to. There was no shortage of possible motives for this guy, or for anyone else lining up against Tweezaa and us, up to and including bat-shit-crazy anti-Human. What did their motives really matter? The move itself was important, and what we were going to do about it, nothing else. I’d rather have gone on talking about this Gaant guy all day, but sooner or later we had be adults, had to swallow hard and do what came next.

“You’re sure this will work?” I asked him.

He sighed. “Who can really say? It will throw everything into the courts at first, and not simply the uBakai courts. It will almost certainly end up before the
Cottohazz
Wat
, unless I am mistaken.”

“And what are Tweezaa’s chances there?” I asked. Maybe there was an edge in my voice because Marr leaned over and put her hand on my arm.

“Whatever they are, Sasha,” she said, “they’re better than just taking the uBakai edict as written and giving up.” I knew she was right, but I still didn’t like it. “I’ll still be her fiduciary guardian until she reaches her majority,” Marr went on. “We’ll still be her
Boti-Marr
and
Boti-Sash
.”

All that was true, but it didn’t do much for the lump in my throat. I looked over at Tweezaa, the object of this whole exercise, and she looked as miserable as I felt. When she saw me looking at her she looked away, then got up and walked toward the rear of the apartment. After a few steps she began to run and I heard the balcony door slam.
The’On’s
expression suddenly changed to surprised, and then stricken, color flashing across his skin.

“Oh…” he said, and the word had the sound of despair in it.

“I should—” Marr started, but I shook my head and stood up.

“Nope. Better let me.”

* * *

I found Tweezaa on the balcony, Sakkatto City almost a kilometer below us, sprawling away to the north and east. On clear nights we sat out there and saw the glowing, impossibly thin structure of The Old Tower, the elevator to orbit rising from the southern horizon two hundred kilometers away, rising up and up until it faded into the blackness of the sky. Sometimes we saw the tiny bright light of a capsule climbing the needle to orbit. Now Tweezaa leaned on the railing. She wasn’t crying, but she wouldn’t look at me. Instead she stared out at the circling birds.

“This sucks, Kiddo,” I said in English as a preliminary.

“Why can’t I just change my citizenship on my own?”

“You know why. You aren’t of age, so Marr would have to do it for you, as your guardian. There’s no plausible reason for her to do so except to avoid the effects of the uBakai edict. There’s this thing—
deceptive transfer
I think they call it. They could void the change. But if
The’On
adopts you, you take his uKootrin citizenship as a matter of course.”

“They can’t say the same thing about that?” she asked, her gaze still on the sea birds way out there over the water. I turned to face her.

“They can try, but
The’On’s
a pretty big guy in the
Cottohazz
executive bureaucracy, and he’s been close to you ever since our time on K’Tok.” Close was hardly the right word. In truth,
The’On
loved her like a daughter. That devastated look on his face, that sense of heartbreak when he thought Tweezaa might not want to be his daughter after all, spoke volumes. Tweezaa hadn’t seen it, and I didn’t tell her now. I didn’t want to just beat her down with guilt or pity. This was her life we were rearranging.

“Besides,” I went on, “he’s been working on the adoption, quietly, for four months. There’s a document trail which predates when they think we learned of the edict.” All of a sudden I knew Gaant and his friends had outsmarted themselves keeping the edict secret. Anything we did after they could prove we knew about it would be deceptive transfer, in reaction to the news. They’d have been better off telling us right away.

“Tweezaa, look at me,” I said.

She hesitated but then turned to me, her eyes defiant and angry, but only in front. Back behind them I knew she was holding back the tears.

“This edict will invalidate your inheritance.”

“Is that all you care about?” she demanded, anger and grief struggling for control of her face.

“No. All we care about is you. Once you’re of age, you can do anything you want with your wealth. Give it all away to charity, buy a planet somewhere and turn it into a sex palace, give it to your worthless shit-head relatives who are trying to steal it from you now—I don’t care. But it’s
your
decision, and it’s Marr’s job to make sure
you
get to make it, not them.