“That is very true. However, you have among your extended clan those who plot and intrigue in secret. One specific relative is engaged in an intrigue against the Epetar Group that is likely to fail on its own, but that you might assist without being noticed. There is risk. We trust your judgment. Look to the dealings of your sister’s mate.”
“Mate?” Michelle’s two rapid eyeblinks were all that showed her surprise, but they were enough.
“Correct. Shall we play?” A Tchpth would naturally treat her like an Indowy, shying away from a potentially sensitive clan matter.
“Excuse me, but I am not sure I heard you correctly. Are you referring to Cally’s lover, who fathered her children? James Stewart is dead.”
“Has he died recently, then?” he asked.
“If you are counting seven years as recent,” the mentat said.
“Oh. I am sorry if I am interfering in a closely held clan matter, but as of Earth’s last lunar cycle, he is very much alive. Forgive my discourtesy.” He paused, raising a forelimb over his mouth in the equivalent of a grimace. “For the sake of timing, you might encourage the Indowy crew on Dulain base to cooperate with the local humans before you pursue the matter with your clan. If you choose to do so, it would be best if you were highly expeditious and discreet.”
“Um… thank you. Thank you very much. I am indebted to you,” she agreed again.
“Pilot’s apprentice to Clan Head’s four-b, using the rest of my move to institute a third level alliance to uncommitted family Tinne,” he bounced left and right, rapidly, resembling an overcharged metronome.
“That’s an unconventional opening. Hrmm. What could you be up to?”
Rictis Clarty’s medium-dark skin could have come from his indeterminate ancestry, or perhaps it was all the time he spent in the tropical regions of the East Africa Rift Zone. Clarty had been born with two talents and one dominating attribute. A natural marksman and linguist, his driving ambition, developed in the crowded underbelly of the Sub-Urb that produced him, was open space and power over other men.
He had started out as a Posleen hunter for one of the re-release African preserves, a joint project of government and environmental organizations established out of American and Canadian zoos after the war. At the end of the war, when they first inaugurated the preserves, ecologists had faced a devastated continent in which anything larger than a beach ball had become extinct. Humans were an exception, surviving in small, isolated groups on mountains like Ras Dashan and Kilimanjaro, or on little islands off the coast or in large lakes. It had been a toss-up for years whether the ecology would crash completely or not. Now the question was firmly settled. While she would never be as she was, Africa was definitely winning. The key for the small fauna and the flora had been the original biodiversity. The key for the reintroduced species was that human settlements were tiny and the Posleen were mostly gone. Fleet and ACS efforts at Posleen elimination had greatly reduced habitat competition and the number of other predators at the top of the food chain.
Another key, oddly enough, had been the elephants. Those terrestrial mammals were apparently considerably smarter than Posleen normals. Elephants recognized and carefully trampled Posleen eggs. Bull elephants would respond to the presence of feral Posleen by actively tracking them. A God King crest would trigger a berserker charge of an entire herd. Without advanced weaponry or overwhelming numbers on their side, Posleen facing elephants died. Since elephant family groups roamed widely in the ongoing mission of stoking their bodies with hundreds of kilograms of forage a day, and the other reintroduced animals had a sure safe zone in any elephant group’s range, reintroduction had gone faster than anyone had hoped. The animals followed the elephants. Used to the eternal footrace between the big cats and the herd beasts, most of the critters could outrun an isolated Posleen, anyway.
The ultimate result had been that after ten years of more or less steady work as a paid Posleen hunter, Rictis had found himself out of work. Africa was by no means clear of feral Posleen or repopulated with native wildlife, but neither was the issue in enough doubt for a government crippled with debt to keep men like Rictis on its payroll.
He had had to seek other employment. He had found it in the needs of the human survivors for things out of song and memory. They had never had many of the benefits of modern civilization — not compared to first worlders. Those they had grew in story and song until the young men were eager to earn any hard currency they could to buy these fabled luxuries.
Across Africa and all the depopulated continents, the Darhel had extorted mining concessions in partial payment of Earth’s debts. Preferring Indowy employees to human ones, the Darhel facilities offered few employment opportunities to survivors. With an eye to extorting future mining rights, the Darhel looked with extreme disfavor on human city states springing up to exploit even the mineral resources they themselves did not own. Wary of the clauses in the colony transport contracts that had caused Earth so much trouble, Earth’s government — which at this time amounted to what was left of the United States government, in consultation with the Asian-Latin Coalition, Indonesia and the Phillipines — had explicitly refused any responsibility to secure Darhel mining facilities against rogue humans. The result had been a thriving market in human mercenaries, mostly comprised of local survivors.
With satellite phones an expensive luxury, traveling middlemen, known to the local bands, recruited and employed local mercenaries. The middlemen, like Clarty, stayed in areas of the world with phone or radio contact until they drummed up a new contract and it was time to go back out in the field. The satellite phone in his pack was a short-term rental he would expense in his bill. An ugly piece of shit, he coveted it nonetheless, remembering the once-upon-a-time convenience, in another life, of walking around with a cell phone glued to his ear, yacking to his friends.
In the morning, a Darhel mining facility would be on the receiving end of their destructive power. A columbite-tantalite mine in the northward portion of the East Africa Rift System was the unlucky target of his attentions today. His combined band of Cushitic warriors from the Simien Mountains to the northwest and the Dahlak Archipelago in the Red Sea aimed to form up behind some of the terrain blocking this part of the rift from the view of the mining complex. The complex had human security, if you could call it that. Upper level Darhel managers were brilliant. Lower level Darhel supervisors were also brilliant, but less cosmopolitan and prone to jumping to conclusions about humans based on Galactic stereotypes. Unless they observed substantial contrary data themselves, they were unlikely to ever get beyond that attitude. Lord, but it made Rictis’s job easy.
Low level Darhel, like the rest of the mainstream Galactics, viewed all humans as bloodthirsty carnivores, good only for killing or being killed. A human who presented himself as a security guard and knew one end of a gun from the other was automatically accepted at face value as a security guard. Why would any sane being falsely claim to be a bloodthirsty killer? Security guards hired to protect such facilities typically walked or stood around with dirty, poorly maintained rifles slung across their backs. The poor maintenance would have mattered less if they had been carrying AK-47s instead of old, prewar M-16s. They used to say you could bury an AK in the mud for ten years, dig it up, and take it right into an engagement. You sure couldn’t do that with an M-16. Like as not, half the rented uniforms down there would find their rifles jamming on them, if they lived long enough to shoot back. All guys like them were good for was presenting a visible presence, wearing token uniforms, and drinking their pay.