The 97th Step (36 page)

"It may come to killing," he said. "But a good general picks his targets very carefully. Wipe out a few quads of draftees and you get bad publicity all around. You don't want that—you have to get the media and the public on your side." He was smooth in his argument. He'd done it before. Maybe you couldn't start a revolution without soldiers dying. Maybe it had to come to that. But not yet.

Well, they conceded, maybe he had something there.

"Of course," he continued. "Kill a few wet-faced troops and the Confed might come rolling in here with a Military Interdict, Army law, you don't want that. We are strong, but not ready to slug it out with even a ten-kay just now."

They grumbled, but agreed. But they wanted to do something dramatic. They wanted to
show
the bastards!

"All right. I have an idea…"

It was a variation on the first target he'd hit, one of a hundred such similar themes he had played over the years. There was a Confed storage depot on the edge of town, no weapons, just uniforms, dried foodstuffs, computers, like that. Pen convinced his cell leaders that the best way to sting the military was to hit them in the credit cube. After all, they could always replace men, but some of the supplies came from half a galaxy away. Better to have 'em running round naked, eh?

The cell leaders all laughed, save for a stone-faced boy of eighteen who used the war-name Blade. Blade wanted to blood himself, and Pen had seen enough of his like to know he'd better keep an eye on him.

Still, the plan was simple. There were guards, a quad assigned to cover the warehouse, but those four stayed near the building's entrances, mostly, and the idea was not to get inside and steal, but to destroy.

A fast shuffle to the darkest wall and back, and the job would be done. He already had the necessary explosives, and all they needed was a rainy night, something easily gotten in the local semitropical region.

A good electrical storm would be effective cover, and
blam
the depot would be history.

Pen chose three leaders to accompany him. The first was pseudonymed Fire, a small, dark and intense young woman who was a college gymnast. The second, Snake, was a rotund young man of twenty who wore a full beard. The last was Blade, whippet thin and edgy. Pen wanted Blade where he could be watched, and the closer the better. He'd be leaving this world soon, and after that, Blade could get into all the trouble he wanted. Not before. Pen had not survived more than twenty years on the underside of the Confed by being careless.

The weathercast called for the needed storm the next night. In a rented room two klicks from the target.

Pen went over the plan for the fourth and final time.

He dialed the holoprojic image to full brightness and gestured at the three-dimensional overhead image of the warehouse.

"All right, here we go again. Snake, where is your watch position?"

The fat man pointed to a clump of bushes a hundred meters away from the south wall of the building.

"Right. You have your transceiver?"

"Here." He waved the coin-sized earpiece.

"Fire, you and Blade are where?"

The woman stuck her finger into the image next to the east wall.

"Fine. And I'll lay the charge here." Pen pointed. "We retreat, and wait for the bang, half an hour later.

Any questions?"

There were none.

"Good. The rain is supposed to start in about twenty minutes. Get dressed."

The four of them slipped one-way osmotic coveralls over their clothes. The dead-black cloth made no sound as they dressed. Each of them blackened his or her face with waterproof makeup. Around his waist, Pen strapped the pouch containing the blasting putty. He felt a little nervous, but not much. The guards would huddle under the porch roof away from the rain on the opposite end of the building from the blast. The explosion itself would wreck half the building and the rain would ruin a good part of the contents. Nobody would get hurt, and the local group would feel the sense of power that came from an active strike against the Confederation. Grist for the revolutionary mill.

Another gnat bite, another pinprick. For a second, Pen considered calling it off. The stabs of the last twenty years had all healed before leaking enough blood to cause any real damage. But this group couldn't appreciate that. They were the first to discover the wheel, the first to feel the heat of homemade fire. At least that's what they thought. They wanted their chance.

"All right. Soon as the storm starts, we move out."

The warm rain was punctuated by occasional flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder.

Pen counted seconds. The main force of the storm's pod was several kilometers away, but it was coming down hard enough here. He lay prone under what looked like an azalea bush, feeling the water run down his neck between his cap and coverall.

Snake's voice erupted in his ear. "Okay, I'm set."

Pen adjusted the transceiver's volume downward—it wouldn't do to go deaf—and said, "Right. We're going."

A yellow cone of light pooled under the porch overhang thirty meters away, on the end of the building.

Four troopers, wearing issue raingear, stood under the shelter laughing and talking. He didn't need to worry about them venturing out into the weather.

Pen waved, and Fire scrambled across the dark and muddy ground, reaching her position in a few seconds. After a beat Blade followed.

So far, so good.

Pen crawled toward his target. It was slushy going, but relatively flat ground. Whenever lightning strobed, he froze, until he was around the corner and out of the line-of-sight of the guard quad. Then he rose into a half crouch and hurried to the prefab plastic wall. He pulled the putty from his pouch and pressed it against the line of rivets that indicated a bracing beam on the other side of the wall. The water didn't affect its adhesion. Quickly, he found the timer, clicked it on, and stuck it into the putty. Thirty minutes, and… mark.

He grinned. There was enough adrenaline circulating so he felt a little wired. Things were moving along like a fine electronic atom separator—

The blast of a .177 Parker on full auto killed that thought. Right behind it came Snake's scream, audible without the ear transceiver Pen wore: "Oh,
shit!"

Pen shoved away from the wall, ran to the corner, and dived, coming up in a roll, slinging mud.

Lightning flashed, and in the second of brightness, Pen took in the scene. Two of the troopers lay sprawled in the mud, half out of the light; the third and fourth members of the quad were firing into the rainy night. Facing the soldiers, his back to Pen, stood Blade. He held some kind of handgun—the weapon coughed, and Pen knew it to be a steel pellet high-pop air pistol, deadly at close range.

The lightning blinked out, and Pen ran toward Blade, who in turn was running toward the troopers. Was he fucking crazy?

Those were explosive slugs they were shooting! A single hit would turn half the boy into mush!

Another strobe flashed. Pen saw that the third trooper was down, and the fourth was still waving his carbine back and forth. Blade continued sprinting straight at the last trooper. And Fire? She was down, fallen in that rubbery boneless posture that means no muscle tone remains. Dead.

Pen ran faster as the light died. He slipped and skidded in the mire, but kept his footing, calling on his years of movement training. He was very nearly skiing over the mud.

The next lightning flash happened just in time to show Blade taking the impact of several explosive bullets.

The boy spun, the air pistol flying toward Pen, not three meters back. Without thinking, Pen caught the weapon, shifted his grip, and raised it. His weapon instinct took him and the gun centered on the last soldier, just as the man's carbine ran dry. The action whined against the empty magazine.

Pen hurdled Blade's body—no doubt that he was dead, too—and slid to a halt two meters away from the trooper. The man crouched in the gleam of the porch light, scrabbling at his belt for another magazine.

He looked up and saw Pen within the cone of light, the air pistol aimed at his heart.

As in a dream. Pen saw the man's face. No. Not a man. No more than a boy, like Blade had been. Fear held the young soldier in an icy grip, his eyes were wide, his mouth open in a wordless scream.

Shoot him
! yelled Pen's inner voice.
Kill him
!

"Please, sir!" the soldier said. He dropped the carbine and spread his arms.

He killed Blade and Fire! Shoot! You can't miss! Kill him! He's the enemy! He's the fucking Confed!

Pen's finger tightened on the trigger. Another two grams of pressure was all it would take, a hair more—

"Oh, God, sir, please, please don't!"

It's a war, isn't it? Revolutions demand sacrifices. There were already three like him down and dead.

What would one more matter?

Do it! Do it! Shoot! Shoot! Hurry! Help will be coming! Kill him kill him. killkillkillkillkill-!

The soldier dropped to his knees, hands clasped as if in prayer. A boy, knowing he was about to die.

Yes!

No.

Pen snapped his hand to one side, the action enough to fire the pistol. The pellet flew half a meter wide.

The soldier looked up.

"No, son. Not today. Not by my hand."

The soldier was hyperventilating, tears streaming down his face. He tried to speak, couldn't, then fainted.

Pen tossed the pistol away, into the rainy darkness. It hit a puddle, splashing. He turned away from the terrified soldier and walked into the night. He couldn't do it. This was no faceless enemy, it was a boy who didn't want to die. He had his answer then, about how ruthless he could be.

Pen's revolution was over.

Thirty-Six

ODD HOW A man's life changed.

In the dark and rain of last night, Pen had been a revolutionary. Tired but still playing the game, he had gone to destroy a building. Instead he had destroyed an illusion. Another piece of one, anyway.

Ahead, the line of people moved into the orbital shuttle. A pair of Confed troopers stood behind a quad leader, watching the passengers. Occasionally, they stopped a man or woman and had words with them.

The quad leader, a Sub-Lojt, kept nervously touching the butt of his bolstered sidearm as he scanned the incoming line. The trooper was afraid. Pen realized. The beast had felt the sting, only for Pen, at least, it was too late.

Pen glanced at the man's gun. Until last night, he had kept his feelings about guns suppressed. He had told himself he was not attracted to them, that he did not feel the call, but he had been fooling himself.

No more. Last night, the gun had sung to him again, a siren calling him to a doom no less certain than the boy Blade had brought upon himself. In the heat of the moment, he could have easily killed the soldier, it was no more than a single contraction of a finger. The gun had called, but its price was too high. He would have won the battle, but lost his soul.

The truth was, he
was
in control of himself, and that was the most important thing of all. He had a choice, and he had
chosen
to override the compulsion. What had Von told him, so long ago? He might not be able to control what he felt or thought, but he could control what he
did
. That was the important thing, that was the crux of free will. Last night, he had
done
the right thing, and it didn't matter what he
had felt—

"Your pardon, citizen."

Pen realized he was facing the quad leader. "Yes?"

"When did you book your flight offworld?"

"Early last month. Why?"

"Your name?"

"Pen."

The quad leader nodded at one of the men behind him, who punched something into a modem. After a few seconds, the soldier glanced up from the device's screen. "Three weeks ago, yesterday," the man said. "A religious discount. He's some kind of holy man."

The quad leader flashed a nervous, almost relieved smile. "Thank you for your time, citizen. You may move on."

He should be curious, Pen knew. "What's the problem, officer?"

The quad leader had already dismissed the robed figure from his attention, it seemed, and was busy scanning the next passengers. To Pen, he said, "Confederation business, reverend. Nothing to concern yourself over."

Pen moved on. Anyone who had booked a flight immediately before or after the shooting of three troopers last night would be answering harder questions, especially if they had somehow gotten past the prescreening in the main port complex. Fortunately, Pen always had a flight booked to somewhere a month in advance, just in case. It was easy to cancel or simply not show and pay the fare. Besides, the Confed had a witness—and the face the soldier would remember until his dying day was not the one Pen wore under the shroud. They weren't looking for a Sibling.

He boarded the shuttle, and found his way to his seat. The adjacent seats were empty, and Pen settled into his form-chair and looked at the seat's holoproj. The exterior pickups showed the three soldiers, watching the last of the passengers enter the craft.

Last night, seeing the soldier afraid, hearing him beg for his life, it had come to Pen with the force of a boot in the gut.

With the bodies of five humans dead in the rain and mud around him. Pen had known. This was not his path.

This was not his path.

He had been on it more than two decades, and it was an expensive lesson to find it out after that long, but it was undeniable. He was not the man to face the Confed and wage war. It was not in him to kill another man, ever again.

It had been a soul-thumping jolt. More than twenty years of his life had been spent moving in the wrong direction. The cause might be just, but he was not the man to preach it. He lacked the charisma to keep the fires burning. Yes, the Confed was intrinsically evil, but it was not so apparently so that people would risk imprisonment or death to topple it—at least not at Pen's urgings. It would take someone with more zeal than his, someone who could do whatever was necessary, no matter what the cost.