Gammalaw: Smoke on the Water Read online

  Vukmirovic turned to Burning and said, "Damocles is due to launch for Periapt in five days. We delayed departure so that you'd be onboard." He quirked a smile. "Renquald didn't get to be a commissioner by being a fool."

  The AlphaLAW expedition had remained on station since its arrival three years earlier. Concordance's first starship, Dhul-Faqar, was being built in orbit under close LAW scrutiny. Damocles would be taking back the tangible and intangible wealth of the Concordance system to enrich Periapt in general, the Hierarchate in particular, and Renquald's dynastic group especially. When completed, Dhul-Faqar would depart for the planet Resurrection, 5.2 light-years farther out from Periapt, to annex a world of vast natural resources whose inhabitants had regressed to preatomic technology in the wake of the Cyber-plagues. First Lands moguls were already competing with one another to be dealt in on the next tier of LAW hegemony and plunder.

  "Your troops won't have much time for prep," Vukmirovic continued. "Feasibility studies view the Exts as a self-sufficient, rapid-deployment peacekeeper battalion. You'll draw organizational equipment on Periapt. But if there's anything special you want—"

  "Our own TO&E replacement equipment," Burning interrupted. "Weapons, ammo, spare parts. That sort of thing."

  Vukmirovic laughed harshly. "Why limit yourselves to Ext junk when you can have your pick of the First Land stuff—mountains of it? We're disarming your whole world!"

  Burning glanced at him. "We're used to what we've got. Or maybe you didn't notice that it works for us."

  Vukmirovic blew his lips out in derision. "After a fashion, Allgrave."

  "I'll have to go before the bastion electors and surrender the Allgraveship," Burning said, mostly to himself.

  "You can't," Vukmirovic contradicted him.

  "I only inherited it as a field expedient, anyway."

  "But you killed your pro tern rival, Burning. Which means you either retain the title until it's rescinded by referendum of all the Exts or you take the knife."

  Technically, the field marshal was right. No second pro tem Allgrave could be selected until Tonne-Head's death was investigated and Burning's fate decided, because both would determine the balloting formulas. With Burning alive but unreachable in Damocles, there would simply be no Allgrave or any legal way of choosing a new one. All higher accords and fealties would theoretically be dissolved. The wrangling and angling over renewals and a replacement could go on for years, which would suit Renquald just fine as he helped his sympathizers in the Broken Country accrue power.

  "So here," Vukmirovic said, putting something into Burning's hand. "I suppose this belongs to you." It was the gold and platinum torque Tonne-Head had worn.

  "Congratulations," Burning said ruefully. "Even the counterfeit torque will be seen leaving Concordance." He stared at the rain beading the windshield and at Anvil Tor, which was ringed by the lights of LAW and turncoat armies.

  "I'm willing to help you with key personnel problems as well," Vukmirovic added leadingly. "Powers of conscription and so forth. I can draft anybody you think might be useful on Periapt or wherever your unit's posted. That is, any Ext within reason…"

  The staff car was already angling for the foot of the mountain and the Ext lines. Burning gazed at the besieging forces and contemplated the Byzantine nature of Periapt politics and LAW dynamics.

  "There's one," he said.

  Chapter

  Nine

  On Anvil Tor suspicion was at an even higher pitch than before, and now that Burning was back out in the raw cold and mud, he started to think that way himself. He therefore kept people at the LPs and outer perimeter, the lower heavy-weapons pozzes and fighting holes from which they could listen over the command push. That left a few hundred gathered in the darkness near the C&C bunker as the rain began to taper off.

  He stood helmetless on the low dirt roof and spoke through a headset mike to amplifiers as well as those on the freq. He violated light discipline by standing illuminated by hand spots. First he told them about Tonne-Head. No one decried him, not even the few Gileads among the Exts. One of the first to roll over for LAW, Tonne-Head had condemned the Exts often and loudly. For the most part the Exts heard him out with a moribund silence.

  Then Burning described Renquald's offer of amnesty and what would happen to the hostages if the Exts refused. Vuk-mirovic's parting word had been that if the holdouts wanted to watch via A/V links as friends and family members urged them to surrender while being measured for implants, it could be arranged. When they raged, he didn't try to rein them in.

  The debate surged back and forth through the night with the smoldering violence of a brewing riot. Burning had to invoke an absolute pax or there would have been Skillsfights, stab-bings, and worse. Some called for immediate surrender, others for a suicide charge directly into the LAW guns. Zone in particular was for that.

  With the argument taken out of his hands, Burning went to Ghost and attempted to read the expression behind her newly made death scar. Behind her the Discards edged into the light, cradling their assault pistols and gutting knives. Most had closed their helmet breathers, and since they favored the type shaped like demon half masks, their blank eyes were even more dehumanized than usual.

  "I thought you wanted to die here," Ghost said. "Death alleviates all pain and makes one so much stronger."

  "I thought I was stronger for being willing to die," Burning confessed, "but now I don't know if I'm strong enough to live. Either way, it will be unforgivable to die in battle if it means LAW implanting hostages with slave 'wares."

  "I've no use for anybody's forgiveness." She thought for a moment, tracing the angry zigzags of her facial markings. "What LAW does is LAW's responsibility, not yours. That's how people keep using you. But if you feel honor-bound to accept their bargain, I'll bind myself to it, too. Fiona would have, and you're my blood no less than you were hers."

  She backed away from him a few steps, raising her voice so that others nearby could hear. "I say we accept the amnesty, if only to keep implants out of the Broken Country. If LAW goes back on its word, there'll be time to find oblivion later—killing Periapts, if it comes to that." She pointed behind her without looking to where the Discards knelt or sat in an unapproachable huddle. "They stand with me on this."

  Burning already knew that the children would do virtually anything for her, as she would for them. Now the Discards took her at her literal word, rising to their feet silently to show that her decisions were their commandments. It didn't really conform to the time-honored Ext tradition of an independent voice for each fighter, but no one there, not even Zone, wanted to wring separate pronouncements out of the Discards.

  "She makes sense," a voice in the dark said.

  Others agreed; some disputed it. But Burning sensed that his sister had put momentum into the amnesty.

  Then Daddy D took over as moderator. Leaving the debate to veer on, Burning retrieved Tonne-Head's pretender

  Allgrave's torque, his to dispose of now by right of combat and Allgraveship. He handed the gleaming collar to Ghost.

  "In token of your brother's gratitude."

  Once Fiona would have been grateful beyond words to receive such a treasure. To Ghost, however, the torque brought only a faint smile to burgundy lips. "Largesse, Burning: another thing Tonne-Head lacked."

  She went to the stump of a shorn-off tree, where she drew the soot-black dagger that had been one of Ski Mahfouz Orman's few bequeathals. The Discards saw what she was doing and crowded in close, faint excitement lighting their eyes. Ghost held the torque to the stump and brought the carbon-vapor deposition blade to bear on the soft gold, cleaving it easily.

  Her scars bracketed with effort as she sliced up the collar like a length of sausage and tossed pieces to her little slayers. The youngest kids reached for the fragments eagerly, almost gleefully. Suddenly Ghost was their ring giver as well as their patroness, the bestower and withholder of favor.

  The debate over the LAW amnesty wore on, tho
ugh at a certain point it became clear that a consensus had been reached. Vote counts were passed up the chain of command. Burning suspected that Zone had altered some of the figures, but it didn't matter. It was still four hours to dawn when he stepped onto the bunker to declare aloud and over the freqs, "It's the amnesty."

  There was a sudden silence so profound that they could hear activity at the enemy HQ.

  Then, all at once, there were streams of orange-red tracers shooting high into the rainy blackness, slowing at the top of their arcs, drawing parabolas over the Scrims. Strung beads of fiery fully automatic bursts went lofting every which way; red star clusters and other signal flares went up; somebody started shooting illumination rounds out of a fireball mortar. People were throwing their helmets aside and starting to scream like lunatics.

  Burning never found out who had fired first; maybe no one Ext had. In any event, there was no joy in the fireworks. No soldier who had fought a night battle under live rounds could feel much good from them. But there was release.

  More and more Exts opened up, launching rockets and grenades, waving 'ballers around over their heads, and squeezing off .50-caliber rounds as fast as they could. Burning couldn't make out a single coherent word amid all the raving, shrieking, and howling. Caution had been flung to the winds.

  Burning felt something hit his foot and saw that a spent slug had dropped there, grazing the boot shank's tough synthetic. An RPG swooshed by overhead, so low that it stirred his hair. Then he was tackled and realized that Daddy D had borne him over the side of the bunker.

  They lay together beside it, watching as Zone staggered around in the light of flares and muzzle flashes, swigging hard from a squeezebag of jangle. He had a flamethrower on his back, and with his other hand he was sending tongues of fire into the air.

  Burning spotted Ghost, wild-eyed, climbing up onto a boulder with a blazing magnesium flare in each hand. Her unbound hair and Hussar Plaits swung and snapped like black whips, while around the boulder capered and exulted the Discards, misshapen in their outsize boots, helmets, and battlesuits.

  In the moment when the rest were at their most abandoned, Burning felt the weight of responsibility come down even harder. He grabbed Daddy D's shoulder. "Renquald'll think we want to fight it out!"

  He fumbled out the little gray LAW commo unit, struggled with its unfamiliar controls, but ultimately got it working, all the while expecting an apocalyptic barrage from LAW.

  "LAW, this is Anvil Tor. Hold your fire!" he screamed. "I say again: Hold your fire! Renquald, do you hear me? This is Burning! This is not an attack. I say again, this is not an attack!"

  Shortly, the stylish little Periapt gadge carried the commissioner's amused voice. "Allgrave Orman, I quite understand. Welcome to the ranks of LAW and the cause of interstellar righteousness."

  Periapt

  Chapter

  Ten

  "Maripol—sweetie—I forbid you to go all snivelly on me at a time like this. I am not cross with you, though Sinnergy's going to wish she'd never showed her face here."

  The au pair nodded, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. "You sounded mad."

  Good instincts, child, Dextra Haven noted. After all, I've only got an interstellar war to resolve, and now you've gone and allowed my twit-wit ex-spouse to talk her way in here and make off with our baby.

  Still, pretending not to be angry with Maripol was the most benign kind of lie after the whoppers she'd been trading with the Preservationist delegates all afternoon. Getting those lounge chair conquistadors to see how mucking insane it was for humanity and the Roke to wipe each other out over a measly few dozen habitable planets…

  With little Honeysuckle suddenly at risk, even Hierarchate interparty mud wrestling would have to take a back seat. Dextra drew a deep breath, invoking an ersatz mantra she'd given herself for times of uncertainty and peril: How now, foul Tao?

  Maripol added on her own behalf, "You gave explicit orders that you were not to be interrupted while you were closeted with the other Hierarchs. And Sinnergy has an adjudicator's court order for visitation rights—"

  "Enough," Dextra warned the teenager. "Sinnergy isn't permitted on villa grounds or near Honey again unless I'm present, clear?"

  While Maripol was gulping out "V-very clear, Madame

  Hierarch," Dextra whirled to the small, well-knit man standing attentively a pace behind her. Since Dextra was sporting a semiformal peplos for the negotiating session with her Preservationist guests, Ben had chosen a businesslike beige livery and wore his long blue-dyed hair caught up in a clip carved from a single glitterwheel.

  "Ben, convey my profoundest apologies and respects to those warmongering pinheads. And beg to extend the recess another fifteen minutes. Spread the usual joyjam. Hint that I'm call caucusing."

  She gave her executive assistant's shoulder a quick offhanded pat. The all-competent Ben hastened for the solarium, where the three Preservationist Party Hierarchs were waiting.

  Dextra looked back to Maripol. "Where'd Sinn go?"

  "The lower garden gazebo, Madame Haven."

  Dextra set off that way, bringing her plugphone on-line. She avoided using one of the house terminals in case any member of her company was snooping around. "Tonii?"

  "Here, Dex," a throaty voice responded.

  "Sinnergy's on the grounds, and she's got Hon. Lower gazebo, I think. I'm en route; come back me up. And try to appear casual. We can't have the opposition getting a look at my dirty laundry." She paused to add, "Of course, it'd be just like those underhanded gremlins to have arranged this intrusion."

  "The perimeter's sealed," Tonii reported. "I'm on my way."

  Dextra hurried her pace. At times like these she wished she were more the beanpole type and promised herself she would have her legs lengthened as soon as she could budget the recupe time.

  Automatically she cut around a newly planted bed of Buddha's Crown. She was barely hanging on to her composure; while she looked young and curvy enough to pass for some other Hierarch's trophy spouse, she was old enough by decades to have known better man to permit Sinnergy to box her in.

  Dextra had agreed to parent the baby back when it had been so nice to be in love, or at least in lust, again. At the time she had just ended an experimental interlude of chemical asexu-ality, and with her libido switched on, Sinnergy's carnal radar had been quick to pick up on Dextra's vulnerability—and to exploit it unerringly.

  In retrospect she realized how foolish she had been to make a decision regarding childbirth during orgasm.

  I should be a great-granny by now, not a mother. But oh, it's hard to say no when your back's arched, your toes are curled down, and somebody's sending you on a tour of the stars.

  Dextra rounded her exquisite ochaya teahouse and forged downhill past a big white planter of gaff-grass, careful to keep the hem of her peplos from snagging on the wicked barbs. A timid little medusa from the villa's menagerie—all coiling, iridescent tentacles—slithered through the trees at her approach.

  I ought to ease off the geron treatments and let nature take its course, that's what. I'd be white-haired and short on teeth, but at least I'd be done with sexual schlemielhood.

  She let out her breath in relief when she spied Sinnergy in the gazebo, sitting in the wicker rocker with her back to the entrance. Dextra entered with bomb squad calm. Getting a better look at her ex-spouse, however, she almost guffawed out loud.

  Sinn's hostile-looking road flare haircut with its stinger extensions was gone in favor of a mass of banana curls; the transparent-skin body illusion had been replaced by a chastely high-collared Victorian gown and high-button shoes. The last time Dextra had seen Sinn's feet, they had been long and prehensile.

  She sat holding the bundled Honeysuckle, crooning some sort of lullaby. Dextra stepped around the rocker to stand facing her, relieved to find the baby unhurt.

  "Sinn, they should keep the historical disks and sob operas locked away from people like you," she barked, releasing
some of her cautious restraint. "You look ridiculous."

  Still humming, Sinnergy looked up with a beatific smile, held one forefinger to her lips, then whispered, "Our little gift from heaven is asleep."

  Dextra set her hands on her hips, thumbs forward. "I think I liked you better when you were the siren of the DepArtures movement. You may have been popping cortexalin hourly, but at least you were honest. Now, give me Hon and decamp your artificially pert posterior from these premises." When Sinnergy's wanton-vestal smile didn't slip, Dextra wondered if she was on something, after all.

  "Darling Dex, we care for each other and our daughter so much," Sinn said after a moment, "it's our duty to give her a loving, traditional two-parent family. You'd see that if you were thinking clearly."

  "That's not what you said when I carried her and delivered her solo because you were in the midst of your neo-Dadaist auto-da-fe phase, remember?"

  "Nonsense. You were elated to have a second child—and a daughter at that."

  With Sinnergy off on her neo-Dadaist gigs, Dextra had decided within days that full-time motherhood wasn't for her anymore. She had brought in a wet nurse, au pairs, and support 'wares before turning all available energies back to seeking tolerance for the populations of annexed worlds and some solution to the Roke Conflict.

  When Sinnergy was around HauteFlash—typically with her entourage—mere child-care arrangements weren't enough. She was already being eclipsed by the young sylphs of the AberRational craze, and her mood swings kept the villa in a constant state of upheaval. And since she was equally bored with parenthood, her demands had become more unrealistic: a share of the credit and royalties for Dextra's literary output, justified by Sinnergy's "key creative input and inspirational prajna"; a place on the Rationalist Party's steering committee; backing for a seat in the Hierarchate Lyceum…

  Refused on all counts, Sinnergy had threatened to take sole custody of Honeysuckle or drown her in HauteFlash's fishpond. She'd been rash enough to say as much at a gallery opening, and Dextra had forbidden her to set foot on the grounds again. Tonii and Ben had been directed to arm themselves with thumpguns loaded with nonlethal nettle shot, prod the remaining moochers off the property, and reprogram all the locks.