“What’s that supposed to mean?” Belisle growled. He did not hear Zevon whispering something into his helmet microphone, but Wittmann did. “Karl,” he stuttered, using Belisle’s first name, “they’re going to–”
Whatever the mayor had intended to say was to go unsaid forever as the mountain face suddenly erupted into a boiling mass of exploding rock and burning dust, the result of a single bolt fired from one of the tanks in the Marine encampment. It took ten seconds for the sound of the detonation to reach the capital, and it was still so loud that it shook the building like rolling thunder in a gale wind.
By the time the sound had died away, the mountain lay shrouded in a black cloud of dust and smoke.
“A great pity,” Reza said, genuinely sad at having to destroy part of what had been a magnificently beautiful mountain, even after human hands had immortalized their own conceit with hammer and chisel. When the smoke cleared, there was only a smoldering crater where Belisle’s likeness was to have been.
He turned back to Belisle, who was now as pale as the inside of his mistress’s thighs. “Do not threaten me or my people again, Mr. President,” Reza said quietly, his deep voice cutting through the city’s sudden silence like the fin of a shark in dark water. “You will think on these things this night, on how you wish to solve your problems here, with or without my assistance. We will speak again tomorrow.”
He and Zevon departed, leaving Belisle and Wittmann to contemplate the ramifications of what they had just witnessed.
“I tell you, Ian, our time has come,” the man said passionately. “Surely it was a sign we saw today, that the days of the Raniers are numbered!”
There were nods of assent from people around the crowded room, visible in the low lamplight through air choked with pipe smoke and the salty smell of sweat clinging to bodies that had been laboring hard only hours before. Numbering one hundred and thirty-eight souls, they were the elected cell leaders of the Mallory Party, each of whom represented the interests of thousands of people.
But this meeting was not a normal one, by any means. It was the first time in over five years since representatives of all the groups had gathered to discuss the future of their people. The last time they had met, they had been betrayed by a young fool with a loose tongue, and many of their number, including the speaker’s father, had been arrested, tortured, and then executed as traitors by the prefecture police and Territorial Army. No event since then had warranted the risk of another such meeting. Until now.
“Perhaps the mountain was not a warning to us,” the man went on, “but to the Raniers. Perhaps the Marines–”
“They are here to help the Raniers!” a woman with a face of angry leather shouted from the other side of the gathering. They were men and women of all ages, tall and short, but all with the callused palms of those who labored for a living, and the hollowed eyes of those who lived in despair but who dreamed with hope. “Our first plan was best, to kill the Confederation dogs before they set foot on our soil. Now they’ll turn their weapons on us, on our children, to keep us in the mines, digging like rats! I say we walk away from these damned pits. Blow them up. Collapse them for good. If they want the lode, let them dig it out themselves, and their Marines be damned!”
There were angry murmurs and more nods. Some were from different people than before, and some from those who had earlier agreed with the man’s words. They were afraid, angry, and confused by the events of the day. They had known the Marines were coming, and had done their best to lay an ambush for them, believing that they were here to act as a whip for Belisle. But after the Marine ships suddenly diverted to the ridge, and then destroyed the site of Belisle’s effigy in stone, the Mallorys’ original determination to openly rebel had wavered. The seniors had called a meeting, and every group from every province had managed to get a representative here by nightfall. It had been a terribly dangerous gamble, but was considered worth the risk. But until the meeting ended and they were all safely away, more than one wary eye would be fixed on the approaches to the hideout, and local Mallory agents were in contact with spotters outside the nearby mines, watching for trouble.
“No.”
In unison, all eyes turned to the owner of that voice. Enya Terragion, all of twenty-three years old, had not been with the Committee very long, but had early on won its respect.
“We must fight the wrongs we have suffered with right, with justice, not with spite,” Enya told them. “Yes, we could destroy the mines, but where would that leave us? The Raniers would take their fortunes and themselves and leave us behind to rot in poverty worse than we know now.”
“Fine, then!” someone shouted. “Good riddance to them!”
“We don’t need their damned money to live!” added another.
“No, we don’t,” Enya said, her voice rising above the shouting. “But consider this, all of you: we remember stories of what it was like when the first Mallorys came here, how Erlang provided for them, how they carved their lives from the soil and the forest. But we can’t go back.” Her words hung like rifle shots in the suddenly silent room. “We can’t go back. Look at yourselves: to right and left, and across from you. Who do you see? Do you see someone who can hunt in the forest, till soil and plant grain, spin wool into yarn and weave, someone who can provide for so many of us?” Many eyes dropped to the floor, many fists clenched in frustrated realization of the truth. The years had taken away their skills and given them a population that could not be sustained by a simple economy. “When was the last time any of you had something to eat or wear that did not come from the company store? How many of you have a plow, or know how to make one?” Her challenge was met with a resentful but contemplative silence. “And even if we could go back to the old ways, do we want to go back, when we could go forward? My father could not read, but he saw to it that I could, and I vow that any child of mine shall also. Gerry’s boy,” she nodded to a woman who sat a few seats down, “was born blind, but the doctors at Kielly’s Hospital gave him his sight. Are these, and so many more, things we want to give up?” She paused again, her deep brown eyes touching each face in the crowd. “You all think that the lives of our first blood on this world were grand and full of joy, and for them they were. But that was their world, their time. This is our time, and we must make Erlang our own world, with our own vision, and not that of our forebears.”
“So what do you suggest, girl?” a man who wore a patch over one eye and had a mass of scar tissue over the right side of his skull said sarcastically. “That we just say ‘pretty please’ to President-By-God’s-Holy-Right Belisle and ask him to give us our lives and freedom back? We’ve tried that approach, many times, but it doesn’t work. These people only understand what comes out the end of a gun, and we’ve got enough now to give it to ‘em.”
“What about the mountain?” Enya said over the chorus of agreeing voices. “Do you think our tiny, outlawed hunting rifles are a match for their pulse guns? Will our gasoline bombs stop their tanks or thwart their artillery?”
Silence.
“Good people,” she said, “even should the Kreelans never show their terrible faces on this side of the Grange, we have many an enemy in our own kin, in the Raniers who oppress us, in the Confederation Council members who rob our world of its riches for their own gain. We are a remote world, far from the center of human consideration. It is time we sought out some friends, if we can, and show them that we are not the mindless brutes the Rainiers claim we are.”