The Machiavelli Interface (11 page)

"Mayli and I took out three at the control room," Sleel said.

"No problems with the charges?"

"Planted and set for"— he glanced at his chrono—"just about—"

There came a muffled
boom
from behind them.

"... now," Sleel finished.

"Red?"

"I must be a couple of seconds slow—" he began. Then the lights in the hall blinked off. "Ah, there we go."

The emergency lights flicked on, allowing enough visibility to see, but not well. Just what the matadors wanted.

"Let's hit the door," Dirisha said.

They ran.

* * *

There were two hundred people milling around in the lobby— those who had sense enough to use the stairs when the power failed. Panic hovered over the crowd; fear was thick in the air, though most of the people could not know what it was they were afraid of.

The six matadors charged into the crowd suddenly and gave the frightened mob a focus. There was no need to clear a path—lanes appeared as if by design. Nobody wanted to stand in front of the mysterious gray figures.

The glass wall at the building's front allowed sunlight inside. The guards were easy to see. The air filled with the sounds of spetsdöds, no louder than handclaps among the yells of the mob.

The hovering panic descended like a net cast over a school of fish. People began screaming and shoving.

Guards dropped. There were six—no, eight—down. Two or three dodged into the crowd. Bork got one. Geneva shot another. Then the six matadors were at the door, hustling through.

Blam
! An explosion behind them, swallowed by screams. A hole the size of Dirisha's fist appeared in the thick glass door, half a meter from her head.

Dirisha spun, searching for the source of the explosive rocket. She couldn't see the shooter—

Wait! A flare and second blast, there—! Not a uniformed guard, it was a business-type!

Mayli and Geneva and Red were outside; only Bork and Sleel were still behind Dirisha. As she swung her right spetsdöd around and shot the civilian, Sleel leaped into the air, twisting in a half circle.

"Sleel!"

Where Sleel's left arm had joined his shoulder there was now only bloody flesh and raw bone: his arm had been blown off by the rocket.

"Bork!"

"I got him, I got him!" Bork bent and scooped Sleel from the floor as might a man lifting a small child. He held Sleel's wound pressed against his own massive chest, to check the bleeding. Sleel's face was dead-white. Shock.

Dirisha opened up on the crowd, both spetsdöds on full auto. People fell like puppets with severed strings.

Bork ran past and outside, clutching Sleel.

Methodically, Dirisha reloaded her weapons. She opened up again, fanning twenty people into unconsciousness.

"Dirisha!" Red was pulling on her arm. "Come on!"

"Sleel's arm—"

"We haven't got time to look for it! Come on!"

Dirisha stared at the remains of the cowering crowd. She wished in that moment that she had loaded something other than shock-tox darts. She wished her darts were poison. Fatal poison.

"We've got to get Sleel to the medicator!"

That got through. Dirisha turned away from the lobby. Bork was already at the hopper with the others and Sleel. Dirisha ran. Don't you die, Sleel.

Don't you fucking die
!

PART TWO

Become the general and the enemy becomes your troops.

—MIYAMOTO MUSASHI

The injury that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.

—MACHIAVELLI

Twelve

MASSEY STOOD STILL, outwardly impassive, but Wall could feel the man's nervousness. Just as well; he should be nervous. Everybody connected to Confederation power should feel skittish. Everybody with half a functional brain! Damn Khadaji and his home-grown rebels! That broadcast had gone out to tens of thousands of local stations all over the human and mue inhabited galaxy. Billions would have seen it live, more billions would have seen recordings of it. It was more than just a call to arms to the handful of bodyguards Khadaji had trained, it was an incitement to general war. Any half-baked dissident anywhere would take that short-but-deadly message to heart: Khadaji lives! There are more like him ready to lead you!

Most people wouldn't know, of course, just how much of a thorn Khadaji had been. A hundred such thorns might well poison the Confed beyond repair. Empires had fallen under less prodding; even if the Confed won, the cost would be tremendous. A pyrrhic victory, at best.

What could be done? At this stage, Wall wasn't sure. The only thing he could hope to do was cut off the head, and hope the body would wither.

Catch Khadaji. Capture or kill these others, the one called Zuri, who had made the broadcast. He had her file; Massey knew her. He had said, "She's one of the best, Marcus. Maybe her girlfriend Geneva could outshoot her, but I wouldn't want to bet my life on the outcome, if it came to that. She was a Flex player, one of the best, even before Khadaji taught her."

"Could you defeat her?" Wall had asked.

Massey, like many men in his service, had great confidence in his ability to rise to any challenge. Wall had seen the doubt in his face, the knowledge before he had spoken. "I don't know. Maybe."

Wall turned away from his memory and faced Massey. "Go and find them for me, Massey. Take as many men as you need, spend as much as it takes, but find them. Destroy them."

Massey looked uncomfortable.

"Something?"

"My lord—Marcus, even if we do find Zuri and Echt and the others with them, that won't stop the rest of the matadors. I know them, I trained with them. Once they decide on a course of action, they'll go with it. There were almost a hundred graduates, and maybe thirty students not too far from leaving. We don't have any of them in custody."

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

Massey shook his head. "No. I just wonder how much good catching a few of them will do."

"Suppose you let me worry about the overall picture, Massey. You just do as you are told."

"Yes, Marcus."

Massey departed, and Wall walked back and forth, feeling the exquisite carpet under his bare feet. He could still win; still keep the perfect womb he had built for himself; still maintain the prestige he had earned. He controlled thousands of agents on the planets and wheel worlds, he could set them all to searching for these matadors. A rebel leader had to have followers; sooner or later they would expose themselves. Yes. It wouldn't be easy, naturally, but this was a high-stakes game, the highest. He could lose everything.

Wall smiled and rubbed his feet on the indigo and scarlet
tutch
wool. Well he would not lose everything. A man in his position had to be prepared for many possible futures. If it all fell apart tomorrow—it wouldn't, but if it somehow
did
—he would not wait around to be impaled on some barbarian's spear. He had his lines of retreat carefully laid. Money, places to hide, medics to change everything from his face to his brainwave patterns—he had all those things and more. The Confed could fall, but he did not have to fall with it. When the cosmic debris found gravity wells and settled, he would still command power. His hidden millions might be worthless or not, in the wake of galactic disaster, but there would always be value in certain items: weapons, precious stones, rare earths, and most of all, knowledge. Certain technologies would be worth kings' ransoms. He had all those things, waiting for him to command. When the new order rose, he would figure prominently in it. He was a survivor, he always had been. He always
would
be. It would only be a matter of time before he was back at apogee, where he belonged.

Only a matter of time....

Ah, but that was only a worst-case scenario. Certainly it was nothing to overly concern himself with at this point. The game was young, there were still major moves to be made. One did not resign when one's opponent pushed his first pawn. Not when one was the best. Never.

* * *

Khadaji wore a skinmask and an implanted confounder that altered his brainwave patterns. He carried identification that showed him to be a minor official from Jicha Mungo, the giant wheelworld orbiting Mtu, in the Bibi Arusi System. Such a man existed; his face was much like the face Khadaji now wore; he, too, had left for a vacation a T.S. week past. Anyone attempting to check on Khadaji's background would find it very much in order. Boring, but in order. It was unlikely anyone would bother to check.

The last place anyone would look for the Man Who Never Missed was on a Bender ship docking in high orbit over Earth.

Khadaji did not have the resources that Marcus Jefferson Wall had available; still, he was not without useful contacts. Wall was careful of those people who surrounded him, very careful, but Khadaji had started thinking about his moves years ago. He had two dependable spies only three or four people removed from the Factor who controlled the Confederation President.

These moles had gone about their business without arousing suspicion for years, doing nothing to reveal their second employer. In fact, they did not know for whom they worked. A paramedical assistant in Wall's personal medic's office thought she fed her small tidbits to an ambitious New Zealand minister; a sanitation worker in Wall's building believed his information went to a major newsfax service. There was nothing obviously damaging or dangerous to Wall in the reports Khadaji had read, especially when taken singly. Taken together, however, a different picture emerged. Synergistic flows sometimes happened, and those were what brought Khadaji to Earth.

Khadaji arrived at the room he had booked, a small covered lanai buried among thousands just like it on the Big Island of Hawaii. He arrived in time for the morning eruption of the local volcano, Mauna Loa. From his lanai on the Kona Coast, he took a tourist hopper across the island. As they flew over the volcano, Khadaji watched the lava shoot high into the air. With his cheap holocamera, he took pictures. He was tourist among tourists, dressed in colorful local clothing, as invisible as it was possible to be. He looked like a man with absolutely nothing on his mind, save to enjoy his short but expensive vacation. The hopper turned back for Kona City, and the overcast on the east side of the island gave way to the tropical sun once again.

Perpetual summer in paradise, they said. Khadaji allowed himself a small smile. The expensive skinmask did not hinder the movement, but if anyone noticed, they did not speak of it.

* * *

"Sleel?"

Dirisha spoke to the injured matador. He lay naked within the hyperbolic chamber of a Healy medicator, his eyes closed, his left side hidden under the shell of a Zigg-Roth generator. The wound was staunched, and the viral-molecular electronics of the Zigg-Roth monitored and bathed the injury in complex proteins and enzymes under pressure. The arm was gone, but he was still alive.

Under the thick plastic dome, Steel's eyelids fluttered, and he opened them to look at Dirisha.

"Sleel?"

"Look, as long as I am dying, why don't you get in here with me? Might be your last chance. You wouldn't want to miss it."

Dirisha smiled and shook her head. "If I could open this thing without causing a problem, I would Sleel. Truly."

He grinned. "Shit. I ought to get my arm blown off more often."

Dirisha's face went grim. "It's not funny, Steel."

"It'll grow back, Dirisha." His tone matched hers. "And it's not your fault."

Geneva and Mayli came to stand next to Dirisha. Both the women touched her gently.

Sleel said, "Besides, while it's growing back, think of the reaction I'll get from women. I can be a war hero, for six months, at least."

Geneva grinned, but Dirisha's face remained solemn.

Bork strolled over and leaned against the machine. "You ruined a perfectly good uniform, you know," Bork said. "That much blood'll never come out."

"I'll buy you a new one. Uh, thanks, Bork."

"No problem. You're not supposed to litter in public places. I couldn't just leave you lying there."

The two men smiled at each other.

Dirisha turned away. "How can you two make jokes? A few centimeters to the right and Sleel's heart would have been punched out! It could have been any of you."

"Or you," Geneva said softly.

Dirisha turned back to look at her friends.

From the doorway, Red said, "You don't have a lock on living, Dirisha. That rocket could have found you just as well. That never dawned on you?"

Dirisha shook her head. "Sure, I know that—"

"Do you?" Mayli put in. "I don't think so. Or maybe it's just that you don't worry about yourself as much as you worry about us?"

"You aren't responsible for us," Geneva said. "We chose to be here."

"I know—"

Sleel rapped on the inside of the medicator. Dirisha moved closer.

"They're right, Dirisha." Sleel's amplified voice sounded sleepy. "We wanted to be someplace else, we'd be there. You lead, 'cause that's what you're good at. But you can't take any blame for what happens to us. We chose it."

Dirisha regarded Sleel. Yeah, he was right, they all were. Logically, rationally, she knew that. But emotionally it was different. She could admit that to herself, finally. They were her
family
. More than her own biological family had ever been. They were trusting her to do the right thing, to take care of them. At least that's the way she felt. Felt, rather than thought. Gut, not brain. What she wanted to do was take them to some far place, out of the Confed's deadly reach; there, they would all live happily ever after, like in the mytho stories she'd read as a child. That was impossible, of course. There wasn't any place the Confed couldn't reach, no truly safe haven. Sure, there were hidey-hotes, temporary sanctuaries. They could become monks and live in a religious complex. Change their names and faces and hope to stay out of trouble. But as they stood, they were doomed. Unless...

Unless the Confed was too busy worrying about its own safety to bother with them. Unless the Confed toppled like a clipped tree, shorn off and dead.