How Dark the World Becomes (34 page)

She took the bladder with trembling hands and started drinking. I sat down at arm’s length and waved to Borro back in the truck cab and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Feeling any better?” I asked her. 

She shook her head. 

“Look, I wouldn’t have put you through that if I didn’t think it was necessary,” I said.

“You call that an apology?” she demanded, her voice weak and trembling, but angry.

“Nope.”

I think she almost hit me then, but she thought better of it—probably lacked the strength. Instead she just turned away and looked at the jungle, still taking regular sips of water. I stood up, waited for another spell of dizziness to pass, and walked back to the truck to give her some space. I told Lance Corporal Tuvaani to go hang out with her until she felt better—and keep his sidearm handy. I didn’t think the insurgents would give us any trouble, but this was untamed wilderness either side of the narrow ribbon of the road, and the jungle started about five meters from where Marfoglia was sitting. No telling how hungry the big toothy things lurking in there might be, and if they weren’t any smarter than the little bugs, they might eat her first and get sick later.

But if some giant crab-thing didn’t eat her, she’d be okay. She’d almost packed it in, but not during the crisis, only afterwards. That was important. She might be a spoiled, rich pain in the ass, but she wasn’t worthless.

They kept us waiting on the road for a couple hours in the mid-afternoon heat—either so they wouldn’t look too anxious, or to give them time to clean up their HQ compound. After all, they probably didn’t get a lot of guests way out here in the mountains. 

On the surface, I figured this insurgency was about what they were all about—gross government mismanagement, crooked elections, corrupt judges, and a growing sense that whoever the hell was running things didn’t give a damn about the common folks anymore—didn’t even think that giving a damn ought to be part of their job descriptions. Underneath it all, it was about the arrogance of power, and how after a while that really pisses people off, on a very basic gut level. Once that ember starts smoldering, it doesn’t take much to fan it into a roaring blaze. 

And I figured that somewhere in all that mess, there was probably an uBakai spoon stirring the pot. The whole Union thing meant uniting the two colonies under a single government, and I bet uBakaa figured to come out ahead in that, since their people weren’t in open revolt. 

That’s who I really wanted to talk to, the uBakai. I’m not crazy about governments, but there are times when there’s just no substitute for them. Or so I thought. 

*   *   *

Once things started moving, they moved fairly quickly. An hour driving behind a hard-gun car got us to the cliff base that was the staging area to their base. Was it their main base? An alternate base? A satellite base? I had no way of knowing. It was just a base.

The entrance to the compound was a nearly sheer cliff side, and it opened into some very impressive underground chambers. Some of them looked natural, but there had been a lot of additional work done—some excavation, some reinforcement, and in places it was hard to tell what was original and what was new. The artificial lighting was good, and it was cooler than outside—probably naturally cool. Ventilation was just okay—the air wasn’t heavy with CO
₂
, but it didn’t smell very good, either: mold, rotten garbage, feces, and body odor all mixed up together. Of course Varoki shit, urine, and BO smell different than ours, because of the different protein groups, but they are still unmistakable odors.

I carried Tweezaa, who was sleeping, and Marfoglia held Barraki’s hand. A fair number of Varoki watched us—all of them in fatigues except for one guy in a suit who stayed in the shadows. Groggy as I was from fatigue, I still noticed things like that, maybe on some subconscious level.

We got everyone settled in a storage area they had thrown some bedding into, and got our three injured folks to their infirmary. Then it was time to go meet the head guys. I wasn’t crazy about leaving Barraki and Tweezaa, but I also didn’t want to draw attention to them, so we left them with Corporal Tuvaani, along with the clear understanding that if he let anything happen to either of them, cohorts of heavily armed Sammie mercenary strikers intent on hunting him down and killing him would be the least of his troubles.

The mouthpiece and another guy led Marfoglia,
TheHon
, Borro and me down concrete-walled corridors damp with condensation. While we followed them, I reset the transmit gain on the dedicated link to Marfoglia to its lowest setting, and I subvocalized instead of speaking out loud.

“Testing One Two Three. Don’t respond verbally. Just nod if you hear this.”

She looked at me and then nodded.

“Crank your power on this channel all the way down. Unless their receiver is in the same room as us, odds are it will get us some privacy.”

*   *   *

The commander was a slender Varoki with a long, narrow face, darkly iridescent skin, and intelligent eyes. He wore hunting camies like the others, but his looked older, more worn, and they bore no rank insignia. His office was large but simply furnished. He rose from behind his desk to greet us, and there were two officers already standing beside him. They both wore sidearms—unlike the commander—but there were no sentries anywhere. No sidearm, no sentries—here was a guy who trusted his people. 

A fourth Varoki sat in the shadows, deeper in the commander’s office, and he looked like he was in a business suit rather than camies. Same guy I’d noticed earlier.

Bingo
, I said to myself.

We got introductions all around, although the three Varoki insurgents went by their titles, not their names—the commander, the security chief, the political officer. Then the guy in back stood up and emerged from the shadows, and the commander introduced him as Mr. Katchaan, their technical advisor.
 

“Katchaan is aGavoosh for ‘nobody,’”
Marfoglia transmitted to me. Her subvocalizing was getting a lot better.

“So probably not his real name, huh?”
I suggested.

“Ha ha,”
she answered without a trace of mirth.

He was the youngest of the four, and was short for a Varoki—maybe a whisker over two meters—and very slender, which just made him look younger than he was, and he was probably pretty young. He had a look of earnest commitment about him which I wouldn’t normally associate with a covert operative, but then again, maybe we Humans were just getting too jaded and cynical about this kind of stuff. There was probably a time when almost all spies had been young idealists. I just wondered what their survival rate had been.

The commander spoke English, and his security chief translated it to aZmataan for the political officer. I thought the choice of language was interesting. 

“Let me make it clear that I am here unofficially and against my expressed wishes,”
TheHon
began. 

“I understand, Excellency,” the commander replied. “You and your companions will be treated with consideration. Notice that we have allowed you to retain your weapons. Since we do not consider ourselves in a state of hostilities against the
Cottohazz
itself, you will be treated as neutral noncombatants until your status is . . . clarified. I hope that will be acceptable.”

TheHon
actually bowed his head a little as a sign of assent. So far this was going about as well as I could hope. Then the commander turned to Marfoglia and me.

“I apologize for the delay at the perimeter. My soldiers are alert to tricks by the colonial puppet forces, but they should have known to act with more dispatch. We have been monitoring the colonial military communications, as much as we could, to follow your progress. Once the fighters at the rendezvous point made it clear that two Human civilians were present, we ordered them to bring your party here at once. We have been hoping you would seek sanctuary with us.”

He looked sincere, but lots of people can look sincere when it suits their purpose. But what was so important about two Human civilians? Unless . . . 

“You knew our identities before we contacted you?”

“Naradnyo and Marfoglia, yes. Other than Marines, you were the only Humans with the group on the train. It was a simple deduction.”

“Yeah . . . but how did you know to begin with?”

“Mr. Katchaan has been tracking your movements, to the extent we have been able. Since the train accident, he has been particularly anxious concerning your safety,” the commander finished, glancing sideways at the technical advisor, and all of a sudden I believed him. There was just enough concealed irritation in his voice to tell me Mr. Katchaan—
Mr. Nobody
—had been a pain in the commander’s ass, and for more than just a couple hours. 

Katchaan blushed but nodded.

“It is true,” he said in very good English, and the security dude murmured a translation for the political boss. “We do not normally have the honor of guests of this stature and importance, so naturally we have been anxious. I wished the commander to contact you directly, but he . . . persuaded me that such an attempt would endanger you more than it would help.”

Stature? Importance?
I looked at Marfoglia, and she returned my look of mostly concealed surprise. He might be spreading it on thick to flatter us, but I could tell she didn’t think so, and I sure as hell didn’t. I also didn’t think he was talking about a few Marines and some refugees. I felt Marfoglia’s hand on my forearm, a warning gesture.

“Who is he talking about?”
I asked Marfoglia over our net.

No answer. She was as puzzled as I was. Okay, time for Plan B.

“Forgive me for asking, but why is the uBakai government interested in two Human travelers?” I asked.

He and the officers exchanged a glance of surprise.

“No, there is a misunderstanding. I am not uBakai,” he said.

“Oh. My apologies. Okay . . . who
are
you with?” 

That was not a polite question, I know. The deal in a situation like this is that if someone wants you to know who they’re with, they’ll tell you. Normally I’d have been more circumspect about that question, but when you think you know what’s what, and then you get the rug pulled out from under you, you act instinctively and without subtlety.

“Why, AZ Crescent Technical Systems,” he answered, as if it were obvious.

“Okay,
consigliere
, this is why you’re here. Who is this guy and what is this all about?”
I demanded of Marfoglia over our net.

“AZ Crescent is a majority-owned subsidiary of the e-Traak holding group,”
she answered.
“Maybe they’re the ones behind the revolution.”

“Not uBakaa?”

“Apparently not.”

e-Traak holding, huh? Suddenly I had a pretty good idea why they were interested in us, but I wanted to hear him say it.

“Okay. Why is AZ Crescent interested in us?”

“Because you guard the children of Sarro e-Traak, of course! The twin diamonds, the heirs of our future.”

Twin diamonds? Heirs of our future?

“Uh . . . yeah, guess we do,” I answered cautiously. 

Interesting as this was getting, there was more pressing business.

“Commander, I need to cut a deal with you. There are a bunch of trucks wandering north out there in the jungle, full of Marines and Varoki civilians, trying to get away from the uZmataanki security forces.”

“Yes, the others from the maglev. We are aware of that.”

“Well, they can run north for a while, but pretty soon they’re going to run into the rear security detachments of the uZmataanki front-line combat troops engaged against the uBakai. Then they’re in real trouble. I can communicate with the cruiser in orbit, and the cruiser can direct those trucks here, or to whatever safe enclaves you have closer to them.”

He shifted uncomfortably and frowned, ears folding and unfolding.

“Yes, but then those enclaves will become somewhat less safe. You understand this?”

“Yup. But it’s worth the risk to you.”

“Oh? Why?”

“I think you know the answer to that. Helping us is a card—and a damned good one—to play at the peace negotiations. You had the
Cottohazz
and
the colonial government against you before. Now, with this war, the uZmataanki are on the
Cottohazz’s
shit list, and that moves you into the neutral-but-dangerous column. That’s an improvement, but you need something else to move you over into the neutral-but-useful-and-possibly-friendly column, and those trucks out there are it.”

“Helping you, and the Special Envoy, will not be sufficient?”

“No. We came to you, Commander. We made the overt act. Now it’s time for you to step up and make an overt act of your own.”

He looked at his two officers briefly, and I could pretty much tell how they stood on the subject. The security guy was against it, because it was terrible security. The political guy was for it, because it was great politics. I couldn’t tell where Katchaan stood, and the commander didn’t seem to care about his opinion on this one. After a moment, the commander nodded.

“There is no time to waste in arguments over this,” he said, as much to his security guy as to us. “Several of your trucks have already been disabled and their occupants captured and executed. My security deputy will give you the land grid rendezvous coordinates for the surviving parties. A number of them will be routed here. We already have an uplink communication antenna focused on your cruiser, but we have not yet activated the link. It is time.”

*   *   *

So I managed to broker a deal between Gasiri and the commander for the other trucks to come in under their protection. After that we were escorted back to the area they’d set up for us. They lined up a hot meal, showers, and some clean clothes, and then let us get some rest. 

I hadn’t realized how depleted my reserves were until I’d almost collapsed during the walk back from the commander’s office. I really hadn’t been eating or sleeping since we hit the jungle, and without the adrenaline pumping to keep me upright, I almost didn’t make it back. I skipped the shower for now, made myself eat a couple mouthfuls of something from a ration pack, and then crashed. I used my black carryall as a pillow, and I was out as soon as my head hit it. If I had any dreams, I don’t remember them.