Come the Revolution (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”

Billy Conklin took one last look around to make sure everyone was clear and then closed the circuit on the detonator. I felt the explosion in the ground under me as much as heard it, saw the force of it blow the narrow shaft Conklin’s crew had dug wider, throw earth and pieces of rubble high in the air and then rain it down on the surrounding street and buildings—rain a little farther than we’d anticipated. At least there was no fireball this time. We’d figured out that the best way to use the stuff was to just pour it into the hole and make sure it had lots of air to breathe.

After the chunks had all hit ground but as the dust cloud still drifted over the crater, a dozen of us trotted forward to look at the results of our handiwork.

“Who’s got a hand torch?” I said. I couldn’t see down the hole but I could hear running water. Someone produced a torch and shined it down the hole, which was now a couple meters across. It took a few seconds for the dust to settle enough to see, but then we made out the surface of flowing water in the storm sewer, sparkling in the light of the overhead noon sun. The work gang cheered and I smiled.

“Nice job, guys,” I said. “Drinks are on me, next bar we find.”

“Kalabratov, let’s get that pump set up,” Conklin called to one of the workers, the one I remembered as the loudmouth from the stretcher detail the night before.

“Billy, you might want to let the water flow carry away as much of the dirt and small rubble as you can before you actually start pumping,” I said. “We knocked a lot of shit down into there.”

“Sure,” he said. “don’t want to burn out our pump motor. Might have to pry Greenwald off that Bulgarian heifer to get it fixed.”

I let it pass. No law against talking behind people’s backs, especially since Zdravkova was a member of the Executive Troika. Came with the territory, even if the talk wasn’t true, and I didn’t figure it was. Most of us were too busy to find the time or surplus energy for the horizontal bop lately.

But I had a feeling the crack was aimed at me, not them, Conklin thinking he’d find a nerve in me and jab it. I didn’t like that, which was all the more reason to let it pass. When I didn’t say anything for a while, Conklin stole a look at me out of the corner of his eye and crossed his arms.

“You know, Kalabratov’s a hell of a metalworker. Kind of a waste having him on work details up close to the fighting.”

“He scared?” I said.

“Hell, no! He’s a veteran himself, did a hitch with the Bulgarian Brigade in the WEU Army back before he emigrated.”

I wasn’t aware that the Bulgarian Brigade, or any of the Westeuro military, had seen a lot of heavy action in the last decade or so, but I kept that to myself as well.

“He’s tough enough,” Billy continued. “I just meant, what if he gets shot? Skilled worker and all.”

“Bending metal is more important than saving lives?” I asked.

“Hey, that’s not what I said. My guys don’t mind humping stretchers for our own kind, but they aren’t going to risk their necks for some leatherheads already trying to kill us.”

“If this Kalabratov guy of yours ever saw any real action with the regulars, he knows all wounded get taken care of, no matter which side they’re on.”

“Oh, we’ll take care of them,” Billy said, and he nodded a couple times for emphasis. “This is war, Naradnyo, not some rumble between two rival gangs. You fight a war to win, and you don’t get any points for playing by the rules. You ask most of my guys, they’d say line those prisoners up and kill every fuckin’ one of them. Show those bastards who’s got more sand in their guts.”

His voice had risen while he said all that and I heard muttered agreements from the three men standing nearest us. I looked at them, didn’t recognize any of them, but saw Kalabratov put down the portable pump and walk over to the group. A few other men and women from the construction team standing around the crater were listening, watching what would happen, but not part of anything one way or another. So here was my first mini-mutiny.

“This isn’t the regular army,” I said, “where any NCO worth his stripes would just tell you to shut up and get back to work, and he’d kick your ass from here to Sunday if you didn’t.”

“Even with one arm in a sling?” one of the men said with a sneer.

“Yup,” I answered and looked him in the eye. His expression got hard for a moment, then he blinked and looked away.

“But like I said, this isn’t the regular army. It’s a real army, just sort of unconventional. So I’ll explain why we do what we do, but understand up front, we’re not going to have a debate here. You want to know why, and I’ll tell you, and then you can agree or not. But all our survival depends on everyone working together, so like it or not, you
will
do what we tell you to, or you’ll stop breathing.

“Anybody not understand that?”

I looked around the small circle of faces. They didn’t look happy, but I don’t think they knew quite what to say.

“Okay, here’s the deal. There are over six million Varoki living in Sakkatto City. The Army has moved units into the city as well. We don’t know how many soldiers, but several thousand at least. We have about three hundred fighters here with no artillery, heavy support weapons, or armored vehicles. If the Army commits its mech infantry, those guys will at least have ballistic body armor and will be backed up by light armored vehicles and maybe some gunsleds.” I plucked at one of their shirts. “That’s about as good a body armor as any of us have.

“In other words, we cannot win a protracted stand-up fight. Do you understand that? We. Can. Not. The only hope we have of survival is convincing people outside Sakkatto that not only do we
need
rescuing, but we
deserve
it.

“Execute a bunch of Varoki who have surrendered to us, you not only convince the ones still alive to fight harder, you convince everyone out there that we’re just a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs, and if we all get killed, good riddance.

“Conklin here says you fight a war to win. Of course you do. But you don’t fight it to win bragging rights, show how tough you are. You fight it to win a good peace for your people, and if that means saving wounded Varoki soldiers, then by God you will hump your asses and risk your lives to do so.

“And that is the
end
of the discussion. Now I think enough of the dirt we dumped into the storm sewer has washed away, so let’s drop that hose down there and see how the pump works. Then we can start blowing holes in the ground for shelters.”

* * *

For the next two days there were no more massed assaults. I guess we cured them of that. We did start getting sniping against our perimeter posts, and we took some casualties before our people got serious about staying under cover. That damned Army recon hoverplat kept hanging around e-Kruaan-Arc, making those slow ovals and looking us over, but there wasn’t much we could do about that.

Aurora kept sending out daily bulletins, mostly interviews with folks in the district, trying to put as unique and individual a face on the Humans as possible. She was good at her job, I gave her that. I wasn’t sure what the other part of her agenda was, the one which involved a bio-recorder, but my money was on an exclusive long-form feed special when this was all over, assuming we survived. I didn’t see anything of my father for a while after that first meeting. I was okay with that.

I still felt as if Billy Conklin and his construction crew were a source of simmering dissatisfaction, but you have to put up with a certain amount of bitching when you’re in charge of something. Katranjiev even noticed the bad looks Conklin and Kalabratov gave me behind my back and told me, which surprised me, seeing as how I wasn’t exactly his number one boy. Maybe he just wanted to lecture me about his management style, which was to come down hard on anyone who’s attitude “wasn’t right.” I thanked him and went about my business.

Katranjiev seemed to think people’s attitude was really important and maybe he was right but I didn’t think so. I want people to do their jobs. If they have a shitty attitude about me but do a good job, I can live with that. Besides, if you keep people busy and they do good work, sooner or later their attitude usually comes around.

I sure kept Conklin and his crew busy, mostly digging shelters. He got a laser torch working and used it to cut up a couple metal cargo containers, used the steel and composite components as the braces for the overhead cover, shored them up with lengths of scavenged steel pipe about fifteen centimeters in diameter, and even got some lights and ventilation blowers installed. The “Big Attack,” which is what we called it for lack of a better term, had come in during the predawn hours of the fifth day after the coup, Seventeen of Eight-Month Waning. By nightfall on Nineteen of Eight-Month Waning, Conklin had enough shelters to hold five hundred people, with more under construction. If we were lucky, all that effort would end up wasted. I didn’t think we were that lucky, though.

Sookagrad mostly shut down at night those days, since electricity was in short supply and not much got diverted to lighting except at the clinic and other work areas. Most folks not working stayed indoors and turned in early, so I didn’t see much foot traffic on my way from the building site back to the metal storage unit we’d rigged up as my office and headquarters—another job executed quickly and efficiently by Conklin and his crew. Maybe his plan for getting even with me was to never give me something to complain about.

I had some things to think about on my walk. I’d talked to Doc Mahajan about my postdeath experience two years ago and how it had included contact with dead people, two of whom it turned out weren’t really dead. She didn’t say anything at first but then told me about the physiology of near-death experiences: oxygen starvation of the brain producing random firing in the optic nerves—the sensation of light and increasing movement along a narrowing tunnel as the peripheral nerves shut down, then a big shot of endorphins to send you on your way happy, along with a lot of other brain chemicals that produce hallucinations and false memories.

“So you’re saying it’s all bunk?” I asked.

“No,” she answered, “I am simply telling you what we know happens, chemically, inside the brain near the final moments of life. I have no insights to offer regarding transcendental truth.”

No, she didn’t, but I did. In my postdeath world there had been dead people I now knew weren’t really dead. Hard taking that as anything but a hallucination.

Low clouds killed any moonlight but numerous fires burned in the Inter-Arcology Park District—not within a kilometer of us but the glow from the fires reflected faintly from the cloud cover and provided enough ambient light for me to find my way through the twisting, cluttered alleys. Ahead of me I saw someone talking, I guess to the people in a lean-to. I crossed to the other side of the alley, such as it was, so as not in intrude on their conversation, but one of them called out softly to me.

“Excuse me, but could you help us? We’re looking for someone.”

“Sure,” I said, and joined them. I saw the lean-to was empty so they must have been just talking among themselves. There were four of them and the guy who called me over had a Standard accent, so he was educated.

“Who are you looking for?” I asked.

They exchanged a brief glance and one of them turned away, watching down the alleyway, and another did the same in the opposite direction, almost as if it was standard drill, and I felt my heart speed up, blood flow to my face. I took a slow breath to steady myself. Whoever these guys were, I didn’t want to let them know I was on to them, not that I was really on to anything about them except they weren’t quite right.

“We are looking for Dr. Naradnyo. He is here, isn’t he?”

Doctor
Naradnyo? They were looking for my father, not me. “Is he looking for you?” I asked.

“We have a message for him,” a second guy said, also in a flawless Standard accent English, “from his brother.”

“Wow!” I said. “You guys walked through the Militia lines? You got more guts than me, that’s for sure. Well, let’s see if we can find your friend for you. He’ll probably be happy to hear his brother’s okay. I know where to ask. Come on.”

Brother, huh? Well, unless I also had an uncle I’d never heard of, that was bullshit. I didn’t know what these guys were up to, but I had the feeling I wouldn’t like it if I knew. Otherwise why the lies and secrecy? I also wondered if my father would like seeing them.

The four of them fell in behind me, one to my right, one behind and to the left, and the other two farther back, all but disappearing into the shadows. I didn’t have a lot to go on so far, but something in my gut told me they were professionals. Professionals for whom, though?

I walked them toward the clinic and the main ammo station. Just as we emerged into the more open and better-lit logistics hub, I felt the barrel of a gauss pistol in my ribs.

“We don’t want to hurt anyone, but don’t try anything funny or we will kill you.”

Zaradavana, the guy I’d made my ammo distribution chief, was sorting magazines under a tarp stretched over his work station. He looked up as I got to him.

“Hello, Sasha, what is up?”

“Have you seen Mr. Greenwald?” I asked.

“Yes, in clinic. You want I get?”

“If you don’t mind,” I said. Zaradavana showed no interest in the four men accompanying me, which was just as well, and now he trotted over to the clinic entrance and disappeared.

“Very good,” the man to my right, who I pegged as the leader, said softly. “We only need to talk to Dr. Naradnyo, then we will go. No one will be hurt, I promise you.”

Yeah,
and since I know you so well, I’m sure that’s a promise I can take to the bank.

Moshe emerged after a few minutes, looked around, and then walked over to join us. Before he could say anything I called out to him. “Good evening, Mr. Greenwald. I hope you and your wife are well.”

I was taking a huge chance with that but I didn’t see any alternative. I had no idea how smart Moshe was when it came to stuff like this, but I hoped the odd greeting, especially including his ex-wife who lived about a hundred light years from here, would let him know something was up. He didn’t disappoint. His eyes flickered for a moment but he didn’t break his stride.