"I doubt we'll be able to use collateral for some weeks to come, not with this wretched TB outbreak," Simon said gloomily. "It's going to be tough enough keeping control with the locals blaming us for that. Put collateral executions on top of contagion, and we'd be in serious danger of losing overall control."
"We can hardly leave ourselves wide open to them," Adul protested. "They could pick off our asset factories one by one."
"Humm." Simon settled back in the deep settee and sipped his tea. "This is what's bothered me since I realized how well executed this attack was. Just exactly who is 'they'?"
"Government," Adul said. "Strauss put some clandestine group together and provided them with all the equipment and training they needed. It can't be anyone else: look at the level of expertise involved. Just enough to mess us up, and always short of invoking justifiable retaliation."
"I'm not so sure," Simon said. "It seems ... petty, especially if Edgar Strauss is involved. Which he would have to be to authorize the formation of some covert agency. He favors the more blunt approach."
"Good cover," Braddock said ruefully.
"No," Simon said. "He's not that good an actor."
"It's worse, he's a politician. One of the most slippery, conniving species of bastards the universe ever created."
"It still doesn't ring true," Simon said. "Whoever they are, they know exactly what they're doing. Yet they're not doing anything except letting us know that they exist. List all the anti-Z-B acts here in Durrell since we landed," he told the office AS. "Category two and above."
The three of them read the file headings as they scrolled down the holographic pane on the table. There were twenty-seven, starting with the destruction of the spaceport's hydrogen tank during the landing, moving on to include a couple of riots aimed at platoon patrols, squaddies targeted for fights when they visited bars and restaurants at night, a truck driven into the side of a Z-B jeep, industrial technicians beaten up while the accompanying squaddies were lured away, power cables to factories cut and reserve generators shorted out, production machinery wrecked by subversive software, raw material vanishing en route and finally the explosion at the pump station.
"Twenty-seven in three weeks," Adul said. "We've seen worse."
"Categorize them," Simon said to the AS. "Separate out the incidents that have affected production of assets." He examined the results. "Notice anything?"
"What are we looking for?" Braddock asked.
"Take out the two times our staff were hospitalized by thugs at the factories, and the road crash that wrecked the cargo of biochemicals on its way to the spaceport."
Braddock ran down the list again. "Ah, the rest is all sabotage, and nobody has been caught. There are never any leads."
"Last night's attack on the pump station has the same signature. Whoever it was went through the door alarms and sensors as if they weren't there. There is absolutely no record of anyone breaking in."
"Could have been an employee at the last inspection."
"Eight days ago," Simon said. "And there were three of them. That would mean they all had to be involved."
"How effective has this sabotage been?" Adul asked the office AS.
The holographic pane displayed several tables, which rearranged their figures.
"Jesus wept!" Braddock exclaimed at the total. "Twelve percent."
"That's very effective sabotage," Simon muttered. "Catalogue any slogans at the scene or radical groups claiming responsibility."
"None listed," the office AS replied.
"The other incidents," Simon said, "the riots and fights, catalogue slogans and claims of responsibility."
The list scrolled down the pane again. A complex fan of lines sprang out from each file, linking them to other files. Simon opened several of them at random. Some were visual, showing graffito symbols sprayed on the wall in the aftermath of riots and fights, most of them with daggers or hammers smashing Z-B's corporate logo, while the rest were crude messages telling them to go home in unimaginative obscenities signed by groups who were mostly initials, though someone calling himself KillBoy was quite common. Others were brief audio messages, digitally distorted to avoid identification, that had been loaded into the datapool for general distribution, declaring that various "acts" had been carried out in the name of the people against their interstellar oppressors.
Simon felt a brief glimmer of excitement at the results. The notion of the chase beginning. And most definitely a worthy adversary. "We have two groups at work here," he said, and indicated the list on the pane. "The usual ragbag rabble of amateurs keen to strike a blow for freedom and clobber a couple of squaddies into the bargain. And then someone else." The AS switched the display back to the sabotage incidents. "Someone who really knows what they're doing and doesn't seek to advertise it to the general public. They also know where we're the most vulnerable: financially. There's a small margin between viability and debt on these asset-realization missions. And if our losses and delays mount up, we might not break even."
"I have a problem with this," Adul said. "This sabotage group might keep their activities secret from the rest of Thallspring, but we were always going to know."
"We know, but we can't prove it," Braddock said. "Like the pump station, none of them are directly attributable as anti-Z-B acts. There are always other, more plausible, explanations. And they have covered their tracks well, especially electronically, which I find disturbing."
"We know," Simon said. "And we were always going to know at some stage. They must have realized that."
"That's why they keep their attacks nonattributable."
"There's something missing," Simon said "If they are this good, then why aren't they more effective?"
"You call twelve percent in three weeks ineffective?"
"Look at the abilities they've demonstrated. They could have made it fifty percent if they'd wanted."
"At fifty percent we would have used collateral, no matter what plague is killing the population."
"My God," Adul said. "You don't think they cooked up the tuberculosis as well, do you? That's going to have a huge effect on asset production."
"I won't discount it altogether," Simon said. "But I have to say I think it's unlikely. Suppose we didn't have templates for metabiotics and vaccines? They'd be exterminating their own people. That doesn't seem to be their style."