Alicia looked at him for a moment longer, then turned back towards the distant wall of smoke.
Somehow, at that instant, that rising breath of destruction was far less frightening than the questions Gregory Hilton had just posed.
"This is a frigging disaster," Бkos Salgado said bitterly as he strode into Governor Aubert's office. Aubert stood by the window, back to the door and hands clasped behind him, gazing out at the same smoke Alicia could see from her own position. "I warned Palacios that this knee-jerk, iron fist approach of hers can only make things worse, and the goddamned lunatic basically told me to go fuck myself! I swear to God, I'll see that bitch court-martialed if it's the last thing I -"
"Бkos," Aubert said levelly, "shut up."
Salgado's jaw dropped, and he stared at the Governor's back with the eyes of a beached fish. For at least three full seconds, that appeared to be all he was capable of doing. Then his mouth started to work again.
"But … but …" he began.
"I said," Aubert said, turning from the window to face him at last, "to shut up."
Salgado closed his mouth, and Aubert walked across to seat himself behind his desk. Then he leaned back in his chair, his expression grim.
"This isn't the result of any 'iron fist' on Major Palacios' part," he said flatly. "This is the result of our stupidity."
"But -"
"I'm not going to tell you again to keep your mouth shut." Aubert's voice was an icicle, and Salgado felt a sudden stab of very personal panic as he looked into his patron's eyes and suddenly read his own political future with perfect prescience.
"Palacios has been trying to tell us for months that something like this was coming," Aubert continued. "I thought she was wrong. I thought she was an alarmist. I thought Jongdomba's so-called intelligence analysts knew the local situation better than she did. And, God help me, I thought you knew your ass from your elbow. I wish-you'll never know how much I wish-that I could look in my mirror and tell myself this was all your fault. You're the one who's been manipulating my schedule to keep Palacios from bending my ear with her 'alarmism' and her 'paranoia.' You're the one who's been 'losing' messages from her to me. And you're the one who came up with this brilliant plan to arrest Pankarma. But the only problem with blaming it all on you, is that I knew exactly what you were doing when I let you do it. I even agreed with you, despite everything Palacios tried to tell me, which makes me just as big a fool as you. No, a bigger fool, one who kept his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears so I could go on ignoring all the warning signs. Kereku was completely correct in his reading of what's been happening here on Gyangtse, and he's twelve light-years from here. Which means, much as I hate to admit it, that he was also absolutely right to try and get my worthless ass fired."
"Governor-Jasper," Salgado began desperately, "of course this is all a terrible -"
"Get out," Aubert said almost calmly. Salgado goggled at him, and the Governor pointed at the office door. "I said, 'get out,' " he repeated. "As in get your stupid fucking face on the other side of that door, and out of my sight, and keep it there. Now."
Бkos Salgado looked at him for another heartbeat, recognizing the utter and irretrievable ruin of his career. Then his shoulders sagged and he turned and walked blindly from the office.
Chapter Eight
"Fall back! Fall back!"
Karsang Dawa Chiawa's throat felt raw as he shouted the command.
Even now, he could scarcely believe how explosively the mob had reacted, how quickly it had gathered and how violently it had grown. Nothing in any of the intelligence reports he'd seen had suggested that anyone in the planetary government or the militia had believed the GLF enjoyed any real support among the general population. Apparently, they'd been wrong.
And sending Salaka out to face it had been exactly the wrong move, he thought grimly. Although, to be fair to himself, even now, he couldn't think of anything which could have been considered the "right move." Especially not given Sharwa's demand that he "disperse" the mob immediately coupled with the colonel's refusal to allow Chiawa to take charge of it personally. After all, it had been so much more important for Sharwa to continue ripping a strip off Chiawa than to let the captain do anything constructive about the situation. Or for the colonel to call up more of the militia. Or even to inform President Shangup of what had happened.
But Chiawa knew that, however badly at fault Sharwa might have been, he would never forgive himself for not telling the colonel to shut the hell up while he handled the dispersal. Of course, he hadn't realized there were weapons in the crowd any more than Salaka had, but he should have allowed for the possibility.
Salaka's death had been the final straw. The brick-throwers had turned suddenly into a screaming tide of enraged humanity, and most of Salaka's men had been just as confused, just as shaken, as anyone else. They hadn't expected any of this, and when Salaka went down, they'd hesitated. Maybe that was Chiawa's fault, too. He was the one who'd specifically cautioned Salaka against the use of lethal force. He was sure he'd go on second-guessing himself for the rest of his life, but the truth was that he didn't know if it would have made any difference if they'd opened fire the instant the crowd-become-mob started forward. In any case, they hadn't. They'd tried to give ground, to avoid killing their fellow citizens, and those fellow citizens had swarmed over them.
As far as Chiawa knew, not a single member of Salaka's platoon had survived, and he didn't know, frankly, how he'd gotten anyone out of the hotel as the howling mob seemed to materialize out of the very pavement. They'd had to shoot their way out, and he knew at least some of his people hadn't even tried to. He didn't know how well they'd made out with their efforts to join the mob, but he knew some of them had at least made the attempt.
Those who'd stuck with him had tried to reach some sort of support, some haven from the typhon. It hadn't been easy, with the capital's streets infested with rioters-more and more of whom appeared to be armed-screaming their hatred for anyone in uniform. They'd managed to link up, briefly, with Echo Company, the only other militia unit Brigadier Jongdomba and Colonel Sharwa had mustered for the "routine" operation. But Captain Padorje, Echo Company's CO, had insisted on attempting to carry out Colonel Sharwa's order to retake the Annapurna Arms. Exactly what Sharwa had hoped that might accomplish escaped Chiawa, although the colonel had apparently believed even then that a sharp, successful show of force would "whip the street rabble back to its kennel."
Whatever Sharwa might have thought would happen, the orders had been a mistake-another mistake-but Padorje had refused to take Chiawa's word for that. And so they'd gone back against the tide … and disintegrated like a sand castle in the face of a rising sea. Chiawa had seen it coming, and he'd done his best to pull his own people out of the wreck, but they'd been hit from three sides as they entered Brahmaputra Square, three blocks short of the hotel. Padorje's lead platoon had simply disappeared, and the rest of Echo Company-and Able Company's survivors-had splintered into desperately fighting, frantically retreating knots with the mob baying savagely in pursuit.
And now, after what seemed an eternity but couldn't have been more than a few hours in reality, he was down to this. He'd been trying to work his way towards the spaceport, where the Marines were supposed to be holding a perimeter, but every time he headed east, he ran into a fresh surge of rioters who drove his remaining people back to the west. By now, they were almost half way across the city from the port, but he couldn't think of any other objective which might give his people a chance of survival.