Kafari had spent a nasty half hour bent over a basin, losing every scrap of the meal she’d just eaten when the news arrived. Dinny had held her head while she heaved and wept uncontrollably, had wiped her face with a cold, wet cloth while she leaned against him, trembling with the emotional reaction, then sat down with her afterward, focusing her attention on what they could do: plan their own retaliation. Tonight’s strike at the less well-defended Lakoska Holding Facility, had freed the latest batch of victims before they could be transported to Hanatos.
“How many did we get out, tonight?” she asked.
“Five hundred seventeen. We split ’em up as ordered and scattered them as best we could. I’m told it went smoothly. The transport buses were already in the parking lot, conveniently assembled for the next morning. We’ve set up shelters in several abandoned mine shafts, carefully distributed throughout the Damisi network. We managed to keep families together, at least.”
“Good.” Kafari had ordered old mine shafts to be converted into emergency shelters. She’d also instructed people in Granger country to dig bomb shelters under their houses and barns, with air filtration systems capable of handling biochemical attacks. She would never forget the riot she’d been caught in, with the gas that had very nearly caught her — gas that Simon had been convinced came from POPPA, itself, in a staged attack on its own people. Vittori Santorini had plenty of money to buy ingredients to make whatever nasty biochemicals he wanted to disperse. Since farm folk didn’t have publicly funded underground shelters, Kafari had strongly suggested they provide shelters, themselves. The residents of Klameth Canyon, Cimmero Canyon, and hundreds of other canyons scattered throughout Granger country had dug into the topsoil and bedrock with a vengeance.
But Kafari couldn’t ask the farmers and ranchers to hide five hundred seventeen escaped convicts. POPPA would be hunting for any trace of those people and Grangers would be under extra surveillance — electronic and personal — as prime suspects for sheltering them. Kafari couldn’t risk innocent lives, and her own resources were stretched to the limit. She’d known that when she’d given the order to hit the camp.
“The Ranee came in yesterday from Mali,” she said, glancing at Dinny. “You’ve talked to our friend, Girishanda. I want to send our five hundred seventeen friends out on the Ranee when she breaks orbit.”
“He won’t want to run the risk.”
“Oh, really?” she asked softly, hearing the dangerous tone in her own voice. “If he wants our money for his merchandise, he will by God take them out. As many as we can jam into his cargo holds.”
“I took the precaution,” Dinny said with a grim smile, “of having a few people brought out here, tonight. To participate, unofficially, in our negotiations. I brought in some of the people we airlifted out of Lakoska. I also brought in Attia.”
Kafari hissed. “Yes-s-s-s. Oh, yes. A fine idea, Dinny. That may just do the trick.” Attia ben Ruben was the sole survivor from Hanatos death camp. “Very good. Our rescue team did a fine night’s work. Be sure the team members know I said that.”
Dinny nodded, then gave her a large pouch, just delivered via special courier. Kafari shuffled through the material and whistled softly. “My friend,” she said, “this is some kind of good haul.”
“Yes, sir,” he said quietly. “It is.”
It held documents recovered from the home of a P-Squad regional director, who had been involved in all sorts of nastiness. Letters, official reports, directives from planetary HQ spelling out measures to be implemented, along with a timetable, drew another soft reaction from her. “We need to get this off-world,” she said in a hushed tone. “There are people on Vishnu who need to see these.” If they could just persuade Vishnu’s government to help them…
“That can be managed. Even if Girishanda won’t take our refugees from Lakoska, we still have someone ready to ship out. They can deliver them. I’ve already made our copies.”
“Very good. Handle it, please. Is there anything else?”
“Other than shifting headquarters and interviewing our visitor? No, sir. It’s time to move out. The first transports are ready to go. The moons are down and the sentinels are in place. Our friend is here, waiting in the truck, as ordered.”
“All right, let’s move things along.” She had already finished packing up her computer and personal effects, meager as they were, so she donned her command helmet, which covered her face very effectively while giving her an IR view of the cavern. She also wore breast-bands and extra padding to disguise her female shape. She strode out into the main cavern.
“Commodore!” Her people snapped to attention, giving her a smart salute. She returned it, nodding briefly to soldiers who were busy loading equipment and supplies onto horses, mules, and small skimmers. They never made major shifts in larger vehicles, not even at night. Sonny had access to Jefferson’s satellites, whose military spy eyes had nothing to watch for in deep space, these days, but plenty to track on Jefferson’s surface. So Kafari gave them as little to track as possible, and what little there was, she did her best to make innocuous.
The shifting of Kafari’s headquarters would involve only one truck, three personal skimmers, and no more than a dozen pack animals, which would move in groups of two or three over the course of the next three nights. Some of them would amble more or less straight to the new headquarters cavern in a canyon several kilometers to the south, but only after looping through many other stops and layovers. Others would join them tomorrow night and still others the night after that, playing a slow-motion, deadly game of hopscotch under cover of darkness.
Kafari nodded to her people as she crossed the cavern, then climbed into the back of her command truck, which looked like a rickety, rusted-out produce truck with holes in the sides. It was crammed with the most sophisticated technology they’d liberated from Berran Bluff Armory. At the moment, it also held their “guest” — a supply agent from Vishnu who claimed to have good news that he would deliver to Commodore Oroton and no one else. He’d been stripped down to bare skin and had endured the most thorough body search Dinny Ghamal could conduct, a humiliating and painful process involving a fairly sophisticated arsenal of medical equipment, among other things. He’d come out clean. There hadn’t even been a nanotech squeak anywhere.
They’d drugged him unconscious and brought him out here. Kafari would speak with him from the back of the truck, which he would not leave at any time, and then they would drug him again and take him back to town so he could return to Vishnu. Or they’d kill him, if the situation warranted it, and drop the body on some well-used game trail frequented by hungry jaglitch.
Kafari climbed into the back of the truck. Dinny Ghamal climbed up behind her and swung the doors shut. Red Wolf, who was already there, nodded to her as she took her seat opposite a small table from their guest. He wore a blindfold and his hands were cuffed to the chair he sat in, leaving him no room to attempt anything untoward. He couldn’t even reach her with his feet. All his clothing and his shoes were missing. Kafari had replaced them from her own stores. He had to be feeling mighty vulnerable, which was exactly what she wanted.