Myles Hazeldine's single quiet hope that the governor would be a shrewd political operator open to compromise vanished into the air before they even met. He stood outside the main doors of City Hall, watching the Skin-suited invaders march across the main square. The few locals who stubbornly stood their ground were shoved violently out of the way. Z-B's goons never bothered to modify their suits' strength, so the victims really did tumble backward to land awkwardly on the hard slabs.
The three leading the column trotted up the broad stone steps to the doors. At the last minute Myles realized they weren't going to stop. He hurriedly stepped aside as they barged in, nearly breaking the heavy glass-and-wood doors.
It wasn't their strength that made Myles's heart sink, but the deliberate arrogance. "Hey!" he began.
"You are the mayor?"
It was an unnecessarily loud voice booming from one of the Skins that had stopped in front of Myles and his people.
"I am the democratically elected leader of Memu Bay Council, yes."
"Come with us."
"Very well. I'd like to—"
"Now."
Myles shrugged to his aides and went back into City Hall. The Z-B goons were spreading out through the large entrance hall. Their tough heels made a clattering noise like hooves on the marble tile flooring. Nervous staff peering through open doorways moved aside briskly as the big, impassive suits started to check out all the offices. Several of them were jogging up the twin looped stairs to the first floor.
The main group made their way directly to the mayor's apartment. Myles had to take fast steps to keep up with them. Nobody asked him directions. The layout would be in their suit memories, of course.
I should have changed the architecture around inside, he thought. That would have pissed them off and spoiled the know-it-all effect.
The doors to his inner study were flung open. Seven of the Skins walked in. Myles saw Francine jump up from the bench out in the garden. She grabbed hold of Melanie and lifted the little girl up so she was cradling her. Melanie's face was sulky with resentment, but not fearful, Myles saw proudly. He made a brief calming gesture at his daughters.
One of the Z-B goons stood by the door and pointed at Myles's aides. "You," the voice reverberated. "Wait out here." A chubby finger beckoned Myles. "You, inside."
Myles found himself standing in front of his own desk as the doors were slammed shut behind him. One of the suited figures sat down in his own chair. Myles winced as the antique pine creaked under the immense weight.
"You should learn to control your suits more carefully," he said calmly. "There won't be a door left in Memu Bay by the time you leave."
There was silence for a moment; then the figure's suit split open down the chest. That was where the impressive routine of invincibility fell apart slightly. He had to struggle to pull his head out of the helmet, and when he did his face was covered in a sticky blue goo.
Myles grinned. "Did you sneeze in there?"
"I am Ebrey Zhang, commander of Z-B forces in Memu Bay and the surrounding settlement regions, which makes me governor of the civil population. I'm now going to give you the only piece of advice you'll get for the whole occupation: don't play the smartass with me. Understand?"
He was about what Myles had expected: somewhere in his forties with dark Asian skin and slightly narrowed eyes; black hair that was receding. His eyeballs were covered in an unusually thick optronic membrane, similar to lizard scales. It didn't make his scowl any more effective. Just a standard-issue military bureaucrat trying to appear uncompromising and totally in control.
"Straight talk, huh?" Myles asked.
"Yes. I don't like politicians. You twist words too much."
"I don't like occupying armies. You kill people."
"Good. Then we have a deal. You're the mayor, Myles Hazeldine, yes?"
"Yes."
"I want the access codes for your civil administration network."
They didn't need them, of course. With their software they could probably establish total control over the network in seconds. That wasn't the point. This was the defeated barbarian chief kneeling before Caesar, acknowledging Rome's authority and glory.
"Certainly," Myles said. He told his desktop pearl to display the codes.
Ebrey turned to one of the faceless suits. "I want us interfaced and supervising the local datapool in ninety minutes. Get me a full industrial capacity review and a police file interrogation. I want to know what they've got, and who's likely to resist."
"Sir," the suited figure replied.
"Mr. Mayor, I'm officially appointing you as my civil deputy. It's now your job to make sure that civil services in this town carry on working smoothly, so you'll be doing essentially the same thing as before but with some exceptions. We keep an eye on your work. The council is suspended for the duration—I'm not putting up with a herd of blabbermouths whining away to me night and day. Second, you can't resign. Third, in public you will give me your full and utmost cooperation as an example to everyone else. Fourth, my second in command will now assume control of your police force. Laws will remain the same, with one principal addition. Interfering with our activities is a capital crime. And we're going to start with the little shit who just went and shot one of my men."
"Shot?"
"Killed, actually. I take it you deny all knowledge."
Myles looked round the suited figures, wishing desperately that he could see their faces. "I didn't know that..."
"I'll accept your avowal for now. But believe me when I say we'll find whatever resistance movement you people have cobbled together and exterminate it. I will not tolerate interference with our operation, and certainly not at that level."
"Somebody shot one of you?"
"Yes. And the platoon leader seems to think it was a deliberate trap."
"But... wasn't your man in a Skin suit?"
"He was. That's what I really don't like about this."
"Jesus."
"Quite. Now, I take it you've heard about our good behavior collateral policy?"
The news about the death had made Myles's heart jump in panic. Z-B hadn't been in Memu Bay thirty minutes, and already their commander was being forced to consider reprisals. Now the mention of collateral made the muscles across his chest tighten up. "I've heard."
"Of course you have." Ebrey Zhang reached into one of the pouches on his belt, and produced a loop of what looked like white plastic string. "We are going to select a thousand or so honest and true citizens of Memu Bay and put these necklaces on them. Each necklace contains a small discharge mechanism filled with nerve toxin. It's quite painless—after all, we are not savages—but it will kill the recipient within five seconds, and needless to say, there is no cure or antidote. Every mechanism has a specific number, and for every act of violence committed against Zantiu-Braun one or more of those numbers will be selected at random. They will be transmitted by our satellite. The mechanism will discharge, and the wearer will die. If anyone attempts to tamper with or remove their necklace, the mechanism will discharge. The mechanism also has an inbuilt twenty-four-hour timer, which the satellites have to reset every day, again by broadcasting a code. So if anyone thinks he can escape by hiding away underground or in a shielded room, he will only be able to do so for twenty-four hours. Any questions?"
"I think you've made yourself clear."
"Very well. Let us hope that it works, and we don't have a repeat of today's murder." The plastic was rubbed absently in his thick Skin fingers.
Myles couldn't shift his gaze away from the awful thing. "Are you going to put that on me now?"
"Good heavens, no, Mr. Mayor. What would be the point in that? They are supposed to guarantee good behavior in others. If your political opponents saw you'd been fitted with one, I imagine they'd go straight outside and start hitting my people over the head with rocks. You see, I don't want to make you a martyr, Mr. Mayor, I simply want you to back up all those fine words of conciliation and submis
sion with some positive action. Let me show you how that's achieved." He twisted around in the chair and smiled at Francine, who was still standing in the middle of the little garden.
"No!" Myles shouted. He began to lunge forward, but a heavy Skin hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. It was impossible to shift. His vision blurred with tears as the hand gripped tighter; he was sure his collarbone was about to snap.
Ebrey Zhang beckoned. Francine gave him a sullen, rebellious look, then gently put her sister down and whispered a few words in her ear. Melanie ran away across the garden, disappearing through a door on the other side. Francine straightened her back and walked into the study.
"I have a gift for you, my dear," Ebrey Zhang said. The loop of plastic came open.
"For fuck's sake," Myles shouted. "She's only fifteen."
Francine gave her father a brave little smile. "It's all right, Daddy." She knelt in front of the governor, who put the length of plastic round her neck. The two ends melded together, and it contracted until it was tight against her skin.
"I know," Ebrey Zhang said sympathetically. "You want to kill me."
Francine ran across the room and threw her arms around Myles. He clung to her, stroking her chestnut hair. "If anything happens to her, you will die," he told the governor. "And it will be neither quick nor painless."
* * *
It was one of Memu Bay's attractive wide boulevards in the center of town, the pavements lined with tall sturdy trees whose canopy of leaves created a pleasant dappled shade for pedestrians. Karl Sheahan walked along the center of the tram lines, praying that some shithead civilian would try to trip him up or just look at him funny. Anything that would give him a legitimate excuse to smash some local bastard's skull open. He wanted revenge for Nic, no matter what the price.
They'd left Amersy and the kid standing guard over the body to continue their deployment pattern, Karl had argued against that. They should all stay: it was respect if nothing else. But the goddamn sarge had insisted they carry on. So they'd taken their assigned streets, and now he was supposed to be checking for signs of organized resistance.
At least the anger was helping to cover his nerves. Some of them. Goddamn, this bunch of fish fuckers had guns that could shoot through Skin as if it weren't there. That was bad, real bad. It meant they'd all be vulnerable right up until the moment the guys from intelligence tracked down the cache. They'd do that, though. They would find it. He had to believe that. Intelligence division was creepy, but effective. In the meantime, he had to walk about in the open with his ass hanging out ready for someone to kick. Bad. Bad. Bad.
He kept a keen lookout as he walked along, scanning anything that looked remotely like a rifle barrel. His punch pistol was held high and prominent; so far it looked like it was intimidating people like it was supposed to. They were all staying indoors, glancing out at him through windows. There'd been a few catcalls, but that was all. News about the shooting had flooded the local datapool. That and the mass darting had cleared people off the streets pretty fast.
Some old geezer shuffled out of a side road, a walking stick waving about aggressively in front of him. Acting like he owned the place. Karl kept walking.
"Hey, you, sonny," the old man called.
"What?"
The old man had stopped at the edge of the pavement. "Come here."
Karl swore inside his helmet and angled his walk so he'd pass close. "What do you want?"
"I'm looking for your mother."
Karl's sensors zoomed in for a closer look. The old man really was ancient Probably caught too much sun over the years. "My mother?"
"Yes. She pimps your sister, doesn't she? I want to know how much she charges. I'd like to give you people a good fucking."
Karl's fists clenched. The Skin AS had to modify his grip on the punch pistol to prevent him from crushing the casing. "Get back to the nuthouse, you old fart." He turned away and started walking. Goddamn parasite colony bastards. He never did understand why Z-B didn't just gamma soak the whole lot of them and send down its own people to run the factories.
The walking stick whistled through the air to crack across Karl's back. His carapace didn't even have to harden to protect him.
"Goddamn! Stop that. Crazy old bastard."
"They're going to bury him here, sonny."
The stick had a pointed end, which the old man was now using to try to gouge out one of the helmet sensors.
"Stop that!" Karl gave him a light shove. He nearly fell backward, but quickly regained his balance to make another stab with the stick.
"You can't take the bodies home, they weigh too much, and Z-B's too cheap. Your friend will have to be buried here. I'm going to dig him up again when you're gone."
"Fuck off." Karl swatted the walking stick away.
"We'll piss on him and use what's left of his skull as a trophy. And we'll laugh about how he died, with shit dribbling out of his ass and pain blowing his brain apart."
"Bastard!" Karl grabbed the insane old jerk, and drew his fist back. The old man started a cackling chuckle.
"Karl?" Lawrence asked. "Karl, what's going on?"
That goddamn suit telemetry circuit! Karl had lost count of the number of times he'd wanted to rip it out. He took a breath, his fist still cocked back. "Caught a ringleader, Sarge. He knows about the gun they used."
"Karl, he's about two thousand years old. Put him down."
"He knows!"
"Karl. Don't let them get to you like this. It's what they want."
"Yes, sir." Karl let go of the old man, then realized there was a form of revenge available to him. "Hey, fuckface, you're my trophy now. How do you like that, huh?" He opened the pouch on his belt and pulled out a collateral necklace. The deranged old fool just kept laughing at him the whole time he fitted the thing around his neck, as if it were the best thing that could ever happen.
Michelle Rake had spent the whole morning sitting on her bed hugging her legs. She was fully dressed, but couldn't bring herself to venture out from the little apartment. Some of the other students in the residence house had gone out to see the invaders march through Durrell. Michelle knew what that meant. They'd end up throwing stones at the terrifying Earth-army troops, who would shoot them with agonizing stun bullets and drag them away to have explosive collars fastened around their necks.
So she had kept indoors and accessed the datapool news services. That way she'd been given a close-up view of the drop gliders landing on the edge of town and disgorging thousands of the big Skin-clad troops, who had promptly swarmed along the streets. And she was right People had lobbed rocks, and bottles, and even some kind of firebomb. Barricades were thrown up across streets, then set on fire. The troops just walked through as if it were rain, not flame. Nothing affected them or slowed them down.
There had been other forms of resistance. The news reported that one of the spaceport's hydrogen storage tanks had exploded. A few civic buildings had been set on fire, sending up thick columns of smoke over the capital city. The datapool was slow, and sometimes her connection dropped out for minutes at a time as strange software battles were fought within the city's electronic shadow.
A quarter of an hour after the gliders arrived, small pods full of equipment fell out of the sky, dangling beneath big gaudy yellow parachutes. They were all drifting into the parks and meadows to the west of Durrell. Cameras followed several whose chutes had tangled, hurtling down to smash apart in a cascade of metal and plastic fragments.
To start with, she'd kept a line open to her parents over at Colmore, a settlement two thousand kilometers to the south. It might have been weak of her, but they understood how frightened she was by the invasion. This was her first year at the university, and she didn't make friends too well. All she wanted was to go home, but the commercial flights had all stopped within half a day of the starships being detected. She was stuck here for the duration.
Every time she thought about it, she told herself that she was an adult
and should be able to cope. Then she started crying. Durrell was the capital, there would be more of the invaders here than anywhere else. Everything was bigger in Durrell, including the potential for trouble.
An hour after the drop gliders landed, her link to Colmore was cut. Nothing she could do would bring it back; the data-pool management AS kept saying that the satellite links were down—nothing about how or why they were down.
She'd hugged herself tighter, flinching at every tiny sound in the building. Her imagination filled the stairs and corridors with Skin suits as the invaders dragged students out of their rooms and snapped the explosive collars around their necks. They'd do it because everyone knew students always caused trouble, and rioted and demonstrated, and campus was a perpetual hotbed of revolutionaries.
There was a knock at the door. Michelle squealed in shock. The knock came again. She stared across the room at the door. There was nowhere for her to hide, no way she could escape.
She uncurled and stood up. The knock came again. It didn't sound authoritative or impatient. Hating herself for being so fearful, she padded across the threadbare carpet and turned the lock. "It's open," she whispered. She was trembling as if the world were in winter while the door slowly swung back. Somebody was standing there, giving her a curious look. He was so totally out of context that she thought her feverish brain was producing hallucinations.
"Josep?" she muttered.
"Hi, babe."
"Ohmygod, it's you!" She jumped at him, clutching him so hard she would surely squeeze him to death. But... Josep!
They'd met that summer when she was on vacation, celebrating her entrance exams—the first vacation she'd ever had by herself. It had been the most incredible time. Before then she'd always laughed at the clichéd stupidity of a vacation romance. But this had been different, she really had fallen in love. And at night she'd almost been frightened by her body's passion, the things they did with each other in her hotel bed. Almost Leaving Memu Bay had torn her very soul in half.