Part 27 (1/2)
”It's like they vanished into thin air,” the reports came back.
”Not a hide nor a hair.”
”n.o.body admitted to knowing anything... which means they all know something.”
”Thirty six names, thirty six blank walls.”
Perfect.
Billem was behind the bar at Flossa's when the first warning came in. He handed the street kid a coin before reading it, and was still reading when he reached for the house phone and called up to Flossa's apartment. He hung up, called to the back for one of the pleasureboys to take over for him, and went straight upstairs, message in hand.
An hour later, the contents of the message had been confirmed with two BackGate spies working in the s.p.a.ceport. The house was ”temporarily closed for weekly medical exams,” and, in a large meeting room beneath the bas.e.m.e.nt, Flossa's ”city council,” other key citizens, and all of Billem's people met to discuss what to do next.
”We've been shaken down before,” one man said after reading the message, ”and, aside from the inconvenience and an arrest or two, it's been no big deal. What makes this any different?”
”Security Order Four isn't a shakedown,” Billem replied. ”It's Seek and Destroy.”
”Seek who?” a woman asked, ”Destroy what?”
Flossa caught Billem's eye, raising a questioning eyebrow, and saw him nod slightly. ”Officially, they're looking for Billem and his people. And since Spinacre thinks they're all dead and that we killed them, it's the excuse he'll use to level us.”
Agreement and disagreement rose in equal waves and clashed in a storm of noise. Flossa let it go for a while, then pitched her voice in such a fas.h.i.+on that it overrode the noise without sounding like a shout.
”Now,” pausing a couple of beats until the room was nearly quiet, ”the question is how we're going to respond to this. What can we do?”
It was very quiet for a long moment, as eyes darted toward the former soldiers. Finally a voice came from the back. ”We could give 'em what they're looking for.”
Flossa c.o.c.ked her head and smiled tightly. ”Yes,” she said slowly, ”we could do that, Basen. I'm sure your daughter won't mind losing her new husband, even with a baby on the way. Zeth, isn't your daughter handfasting one of Billem's corporals next week? Marem, didn't you just make that nice young Callie your apprentice in the gold shop? And Jamston, aren't you...”
”No need to ride your point into the ground, Flossa,” Basen interjected, face red with embarra.s.sment even as he laughed. ”We get it.”
”I thought you might,” Flossa replied, laughing herself. Then her face sobered. ”These soldiers are our people now. They've earned their places among us and they earn their keep. We'll find a way around this without turning them out or turning them over to Spinacre and his gorillas.”
”I don't see why not, if it'll keep us safe!”
Flossa's eyes went chill, boring into the woman who'd spoken last. ”Because it won't keep us safe. Not for any longer than it takes Spinacre to come up with another excuse to wipe us out.”
”So what can we do?”
Flossa let the silence establish itself before she said quietly, ”We can fight.”
The room erupted, a cacophony that made the outburst before it seem a slow brook's murmuring. Again, Flossa let it go, carefully noting who argued the loudest and on which side of the matter. At the same time, Billem was silently and one by one gathering his people by eye.
”Dammit, Flossa, we're not fighters!”
”But we are.” Billem had spoken quietly, but the tone cut through the shouting and chopped it off. He pulled himself up from his chair by the wall and leaned on one crutch, his eyes slowly sweeping the room.
”But you're...”
”Cripples.” The edge he put on the word made even Flossa flinch. ”Yeah, we know. So do they. So even if they figure out we're not dead, they won't consider us a threat because they've already thrown us away as useless. The biggest tactical advantage you can hand an opposing force is to underestimate it.”
The murmuring was a great deal quieter this time. A handless arm went up and Flossa gave its owner the floor. ”Sarge has it right. The average s.p.a.ceMil grunt... if he don't see two good legs and two good arms, he don't worry about it. The last thing he expects to go up against is somebody who ain't whole. It's gonna slow him down... and that just may be the edge we need to take him down.”
One of the townfolk caught Flossa's attention and she called for quiet. ”Flossa's told us why we should fight for you, and I don't disagree with it. But why would you and yours fight for us, Billem? Seems to me you've done all the fighting in your life that you need to.”
”Two reasons,” he replied. ”One: I promised Flossa we'd pay you back for everything you've done for us. But more than that,” and he drew himself up just a little straighter, ”s.p.a.ceMil threw us away, said we weren't worth anything anymore. This is our chance to prove them wrong.”
”That goes for me, too!”
”You tell'em, Sarge.''
”That's all well and good,” came the voice of a local merchant, ”but even with Billem's troops, I just don't see it. They've got more and better weapons than we do. They've got ablebodied, trained troops. We simply can't win in a fair fight.”
Billem and Flossa looked at each other and grinned in unison. ”Who said anything about fighting fair?”
”We're exterminating vermin, Lieutenant, not going to war.” Spinacre glared at his aide and wondered if the young man's a.s.signment here was yet another piece of the tribunal's punishment. Milhouser was earnest, by the book, and as complete a ninny as Spinacre had ever met.
”But...” Several shades of red crept up the pale face and into the paler hairline but, to Spinacre's surprise and irritation, the kid stood his ground. ”Begging the Commander's pardon, but there are women and children out there. Non-combatants. Innocents.”
”Wh.o.r.es and their by-blows,” Spinacre sneered, then had a thought that made him smile. He added another name to the list he'd been compiling, pressed a key that sent it to the terminal at his aide's desk, and then looked at the young man across his desk. ”If you believe that, Milhouser, you've obviously led a sheltered life, and you obviously need combat experience. I'm adding you to the strike force. Now get out of my sight and get those orders distributed!”
Milhouser all but ran out of the office, shutting the door behind him and quietly shaking for a full minute. Then he sat down at his desk, punched in a code, and began typing an encrypted message to his girlfriend.
A lot can be accomplished in fourteen hours when that's all the time available. With the planned attack coming an hour or so after dawn, that's what they had. ”Not bad planning on their part,” Billem had remarked. ”The night folk sound asleep for a couple of hours, and the rest just beginning their day.”
A lot can also be done and still show the casual observer what he or she expects to see. So the casual observer saw Billem behind the bar and Flossa circulating in the common room, flirting with patrons idling over a drink before or after trips to the back. And because they were doing what they were expected to be doing, their frequent absences, spent in the chambers below, went unnoticed.
That some of the people who came in had never so much as been inside Flossa's before went unnoticed, as did the fact that the particular drink or the particular wh.o.r.e they requested did not exist. One informant, taking note of the transportation of ale kegs from Flossa's to other establishments, was treated to a long and mostly obscene discourse on the ancestry and personal habits of those who used minor difficulties with import taxes and doc.u.mentation to bleed their colleagues out of business. His report, like the rest of those going into Spinacre's office, opined that it was business as usual in BackGate, with none of its residents the wiser.
An hour before sunrise local, word came down that the strike force was mustering. Within minutes, infants and young children were bundled up and transferred to an underground chamber and into the care of a cadre of grandparents and pregnant women, all armed. At the same time, those people identified as informants were quietly visited by one or two BackGate acquaintances and just as quietly dispatched to their just rewards.
The weapons transported in ale kegs from under Flossa's bordello to staging areas in similar establishments on other streets were broken out and distributed to small squads of defenders, each headed up by members of Billem's former company. Older children adept at being where they weren't supposed to be and hearing what they weren't supposed to hear were dispatched as look-outs and messengers. And a special group of ”operatives” a.s.sembled on the basis of a list received by one of Flossa's employees.
BackGate was as ready as it could be.
Spinacre sat at the antiquated command console, watching what few read-outs he had and cursing, yet again, the miserable task of trying to run an operation with such junk. All he had was armor telemetry and voicecomm; the onboard visual feeds hadn't lasted as long as it took to get two steps beyond the station perimeter. It would have to do, he supposed, until it was safe for him to ”take the field” in hands-on command.
”Command One, Scout One. I'm outside the gate,” reported the voice in his earpiece.
Spinacre smiled slightly. The calm of Milhouser's voice was contradicted by the rapid heartbeat and moisture output showing onscreen. The little twerp was scared. Watching Milhouser and four similarly green and ungifted officers fumbling with armor and weaponry with which they had little familiarity had convinced Spinacre that, barring phenomenally bad luck, at least five of his problems would be solved before the exercise was over. ”Scout One, Command One,” he replied into his mouthpiece. ”Proceed down Gate Street to The Rising Sun and report.” Spinacre set the back of his mind to composing the flowery phrases he'd include in his ”We regret to inform you” letters.
”Yessir,” Milhouser acknowledged, his eyes nervously scanning the alley in front of him. Not a soul in sight, and he couldn't decide whether to consider that a good thing or a bad thing. He finally decided he didn't know enough about urban warfare to decide, and began looking ahead and across the alley for the next niche into which he could duck.