Davidge looks at me, his eyes steady but more sunken than I remember. "It’s starting, Ro."
I do not want it. I can think of nothing I want less than deciding who lives and who dies, risking everything on the judgment of Yazi Ro. I close my eyes and nod. The human claps a hand on my shoulder, squeezes it, and follows Kita into the ship. I look back at the mountains and the huge avian is skimming the tops of the mists, gliding back the way it had come.
FORTY
In the Aeolus, far over the Shordan Sea, we are between the Shorda and Dorado continents. Kita, Reaper, three monitors, and I are in the information center, processing data and messages from the agents and monitoring the broadcasting stations, assessing the reaction to the upcoming talks. There is activity in all the splinters―angry voices, nutballs making speeches, endless meetings, two spontaneous demonstrations but nothing actionable. A few minutes later, Eli Moss reports over the headsets that we are being scanned. "I’m not sure, but I think it’s the quarantine force orbiters."
"Trying to figure out who we are," adds Reaper. "We’ll let them know, soon enough."
"I’m putting up the shields."
Janice Butler, one of the monitors, turns from her console and holds up her hand. "Station October coming through." She flips a switch and the screens around the overhead illuminate with a jagged signal that settles to an image of Raymond Sica, head of Black October. Raymond likes to call himself The Vindicator. All we can see is Raymond in front of a blank wall hung with a black flag with a blood-red X in the center, for the numeral ten. We do not see others, but we can hear crowd noises.
"―can they have in mind to invite the Front to a truce? What can the Dracs put on the table? Are they going to give us back our lands?"
"No!" shouts the crowd.
"Our murdered loved ones?"
"No!"
"Is it to restore the Dorado, and the Shorda to us?"
"No!"
As Raymond rants, half the screens change to another view of Black October’s boss. The images are much clearer than the original, but jumpy. It is one of Ghazi’s modified computer cameras. The new images sweep to the left until we see a row of humans dressed in black. The images expand to fill the screen and linger a moment on each of the faces.
"Who’s feeding us this?" calls Reaper to the monitor.
"Alley Cat."
Ali Enayat. I try to imagine the courage of the man with the big black mustache and the two children, taking the opportunity of the demonstration to get up in front of the entire rabid membership to give us up-to-date pictures of Black October’s leaders.
"He’s not holding that in his hand, is he?"
I turn around and see Davidge behind me looking up at the screens. Reaper shakes his head. "Ghazi made it so those button cameras will transmit to the computer. Alley Cat probably has it in his burnoose."
"What about signal emissions?"
Reaper leans back in his chair and scratches the back of his neck. "We’re using frequencies that are way out of the park for the thirty-year-old stuff anyone on Amadeen has."
As Zenak Abi comes into the information center, I glance at Davidge, and say to Reaper, "That presupposes in the past three decades no other smugglers have brought in modern communication or signal detection equipment." I look back at the screen showing Alley Cat’s feed.
There is Paul Ruche, Sica’s second in command, a tall blond man without facial hair, his eyes a stormy blue. Next to him, her long black hair waving as she shouts and moves her arms, is Akilah Hareef, head of the ideological department. Akilah is very beautiful for a human, with a small nose, absolutely black eyes, and lips painted to look like a wound. Her weapons include an automatic pistol, a brace of throwing knives, a fighting knife, and whatever she has concealed beneath her clothing. The image moves to Vatusia, Brooks, Pemba, and the rest. After the leaders, Alley Cat sweeps the crowd of about five hundred. Every one of them brandishes a weapon of some kind.
"That’s the old Catholic church in Obsidian, South Central Dorado," says one of the monitors. "That means October has a repeater station. The broadcast signal we’re getting is coming from Mt. Jazirah, East Central Dorado."
"Look at that weapon," says Abi, pointing at one of the screens. Reaper freezes one of the crowd images.
"Which weapon, Jetah?"
"The man wearing the talit about his shoulders."
"Talit?"
Zenak points up at the screen. "The white and blue prayer shawl."
The image fills the screen, centered on the shoulder weapon. It looks like a beam disrupter, but I do not recognize it. "That’s a Valmet M6600," says Reaper.
Abi shakes its head as it says, "I’m not familiar with it."
"Latest thing from Earth." Reaper nods toward the screen. "Fully charged and at close range, that thing can cut right through the hull of this ship by turning the metal and ceramics into powder. They’ve only been out for a couple of years."
Zenak looks away and faces me. "The smugglers have been getting through to Black October, then."
More pieces of the puzzle are added to the data banks.
"Priority!" shouts Janice. The images continue as the sound is cut, the center screen shows the view through the front window of a moving vehicle, the lower part showing the top of a steering wheel and the hands of the narrator. Each hand has three fingers. In the distance, beyond some dunes, we can see the ocean. "Go ahead," says Janice into her headset.
"This is Runner with the Sitarmeda just north of Mandit, East Shorda. I just finished a meeting with my cell and we have been advised to prepare to assist the central command by providing volunteers for a special raid. No details yet, but I made my best guess and volunteered―I am driving." For some reason the fact that it is driving seems to strike Runner as funny, and it laughs. Kita mouths the word "stress" at me. When it calms, Runner continues. "I and nine others are on our way south to report to the cell commander at Port Refuge."
Runner signs off and the sound returns for Black October out of Obsidian. "Raymond hasn’t threatened anything yet," Janice fills in, "except to boycott the talks."
"Alley Cat," says Reaper, "we’ve got enough pictures. It’s time to fade into the landscape. They’ve been getting smuggled supplies from off planet, so they might have some sophisticated detectors. Got that?"
The images from Alley Cat nod up and down, then go blank while we continue to receive from the Mt. Jazirah station. Raymond’s tirade against the Amadeen Front’s betrayal of the struggle against the yellow menace continues. The volume drops and Reaper faces Davidge. "You know, if Runner is onto something, if Sitarmeda is planning a unit-sized outrage someplace, we’re not ready for that. Right now we’re geared up to handle one or two, maybe five, hits at a time, but that’s really stretching it. We can’t take on a platoon or company attack until our regional rapid strike forces are operational."
Davidge bites at his lower lip. "If it looks like it’s corning from Sitarmeda, we’ll send what we have at region in Cohilak. Until then, Runner will have to do the best it can. Do we know the proposed site for the talks yet?"
"We just got it in," answers Reaper. "Silver City. It’s a town of about eighteen thousand just north of Douglasville on the Dorado. Up until the truce there was fighting in the area, so both the Front and the Mavedah have lines there. The talks themselves are supposed to begin any time now."