Barthes expected a slow fall, followed by sudden death. Instead, he felt a ca-clunk and slither, then heard the crunch of gravel, then started as his window was whipped by overhanging brush. They hurtled on, banging and bouncing. LaGrange grunted as she bumped about against various bits of floorboard. Finally, the ground leveled, and as Barthes’ eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized that they were heading west, circling north of the city on farm tracks that cut across the fields.
“Your call, Jeri, but I can’t do too much of this. I’m low on fuel.”
LaGrange untangled herself and rolled onto her back, speaking at the roof as she gazed upside down at Barthes.
“They can’t guard everything. There aren’t enough of them.”
Majlid said nothing, but turned left at the first crossroad. Barthes shuddered involuntarily as he saw the Temple spires looming over the city, illuminated by the fires below. As they drew nearer, distant gunfire and wailing sirens seeped like dreams through the deathly quiet. He started when LaGrange spoke again. “Sir, I may need your help to get in.”
“Excuse me?” Barthes tried to make sense of her upside-down lips and chin. It was bizarrely fascinating. They seemed to bear no relation to the spoken words.
“Your Imperial credentials. These guys are your formal escort, right? Assigned by TCM?”
Barthes nodded.
“Well, your credentials and escort pass will—probably—get you to wherever you need to go. If the MPs capture me, they’ll probably kill me. If they find me with you, they may kill us both. If you have a problem with that, I need to get out here and take my chances.”
Barthes thought this over, slowly. Then, with great deliberation, he straightened his heavy overcoat, lumped on the seat beside him. “It cannot be comfortable there,” he said. “You must be cold.” He draped it neatly over LaGrange, covering her head to toe, assessed the effect, tugged it into several casual folds, pulled his neck scarf through a sleeve, and half-draped them up onto the seat. He then slumped back, clasped his hands in his lap, and closed his eyes.
The effect was remarkable, and his timing was impeccable. As they coasted into the glaring lights of a desolate checkpoint hastily erected across the road, the peering sentry saw only an elderly, dozing gentleman who had not noticed that his coat had slid to the floor. The boy spoke briefly to Majlid, then rapped on the glass. Barthes started awake, looking groggily into his stern, expectant face as Majlid lowered the window.
“Credentials, sir?”
“Ah, yes.” Barthes bent down, his body blocking the sentry’s view of the floor, deftly twitched fabric, then righted himself, the brilliant flash of the Imperial Seal drawing the boy’s attention as Barthes flipped open the case and handed them over. The private proudly scanned the identity page, read the result, looked Barthes full in the eyes, then rendered a sharp salute as he handed them back.
“Travel safely, sir. It’s crazy in there!”
Barthes smiled, warmly. “I’m sure we shall, thanks to your efforts. Please, carry on!”
The lads bobbled and grinned. The sentry looked at them fiercely and barked “Move along!” as he saluted again and waved them through.
Barthes exhaled. He fumbled in his pockets, searching for the ‘fone that talked to his rooftop dish. He cursed under his breath as he realized that he’d turned it off for the reception and left it that way. He fumbled and muttered at it, unable to figure out how to stop the auto-download so that he could start to compose a message to Renner—and then stopped trying, when he realized that a FLASH from Asach had come in. Waiting for it to scroll, without looking up, he said “I need to find Ollie Azhad. Can you get me to him?”
LaGrange sat up. “Why do you need Ollie Azhad?”
Barthes stared fixedly at the tiny screen, flicking text past with his finger. “I have my own reasons. Among them, at the moment, I need to inform him that my colleague appears to have located his children.”
The Lads shouted in unison. “Deela?”
“Yes,” nodded Barthes, “and two small boys. They appear to be unharmed.”
After the adventures thus far, Barthes expected some dramatic response: a lurch of acceleration; careening around corners. Instead, Majlid meandered through the city with intense concentration and caution, pulling up in a shuttered alley lined with low warehouses that backed up to the stall fronts facing outward into the public street. It was heavily patrolled by grim-faced farm boys, who nodded at the lads in silent greeting.
Inside steamed with body heat. Men with weapons sprawled across their laps slouched in chairs lined up along the walls, silently, unquestioningly, waiting. Ollie was slumped over a battered desk, head in his hands, listening carefully to Linda Libiziewsky, but barely responding. A cluster of town luminaries, still wrapped in evening finery, gestured and pleaded with Ollie in low tones. At Barthes’ entry, the low tones died to a murmur, then died away completely as the plaintiffs stood and stared. LaGrange stood aside to let him speak.
“Mr. Azhad?”
Ollie looked up.
“I have some news which may not be relevant to the present difficulties, though I suspect that it may well be. If I might speak to you privately?”
Azhad’s eyes narrowed.
“I am a colleague of Asach Quinn.”
Azhad nodded curtly, and several chair occupants detached themselves from the wall. They politely but firmly escorted the luminaries to an adjacent room. LaGrange and Libiziewsky huddled to one side.
Barthes leaned forward, spoke to Ollie in low tones, then handed him the ‘fone, queued to Asach’s message. Ollie’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. One way or another, he currently had twelve thousand men and women under arms, patrolling every VIP residence, office block, parking lot, and hotel in the city. Until that moment, they’d been acting in fractured discord, each doing the best they could to guard their assigned bits of pavement and street.
Now, stripped of the threat to his remaining children, the broken man rose up from his chair suffused with righteous indignation, a general in command of an army. The transformation was terrible to see. Things moved very quickly. They pooled their knowledge.
There had been at least three explosions in and around the Temple. Two were superficial and external, and burned with low intensity, but very brightly. They were clearly meant to be seen. The third was caused by a vehicle exploding in the loading bays on the public side of the facility near the archives. It was burning fiercely. When it went off, so did numerous smaller fires, scattered throughout the city. Saint George Casualty Suppression was stretched beyond breaking.
The Zone Security Duty Officer that evening was from Maxroy’s Purchase. He’d rotated on just before the explosions. He declared Zone Emergency immediately, sealed the post, and announced a general curfew. Civil personnel were ordered to leave. Linda stayed. Then, an MP platoon made the rounds, replacing TCM Zone and Contract Security guards with their own. They simply shot anyone who objected. As word spread, some joined the MPs; some fled the post; the rest were locked up “pending investigation.” Finally, all non-MPs were ejected from the command post, to join their incarcerated brethren. They worked out the timeline: all of this had happened before Captain LaGrange was formally relieved. Which meant that Colonel Slam Dunk must have known about it. Then the comms tower went up. Linda hid until she could slip out a back gate into Moorstown.
The motive for the rampage in Moorstown was pretty clear to everybody as well. It was happening all over the city. It was supposed to look like spontaneous looting and rioting—but Spontaneous Looting and Rioting didn’t fit in very well with the local mentality, which was far more inclined toward Maintaining Peaceful and Orderly Communities. Saint George citizens were veterans of this particular tactic. On a low level, it had been going on for months. On this scale, it had been done before, around the time of the first Jackson Delegation visit in 3035. Back then, irate residents had taken to the streets, made citizen arrests, forced the perpetrators with funny offworld accents to clean up the mess, marched them sixty miles in the general direction of Bonneville, and released them without shoes, food or water.