‘No offense intended, Mr Hamilton.’
‘None taken, my boy. You’re a student of history, I can see,’ Hamilton replied in good humour.
‘I agree. It makes sense, Reggie,’ Balsom added. ‘You know how politicians are forced to compromise. Your family has had plenty of experience in that area over the years.’
Reggie nodded, frowning, reflecting. In his own life-time, he had seen politicians compromise on virtually all their closely-held principles, especially if it suited the reality of the here and now, or guaranteed their political survival, so how could he argue against Scat and still sound credible? He couldn’t. He let it rest. Yet, it was disappointing to hear that Scat advocated a more authoritarian regime. He had wanted this to be a popular rebellion, as democratically managed as possible, an uprising that would inspire generations of Trevons for years to come. But, Reggie was nothing if not a pragmatic man. In truth, if given the option between a gallant failure and a professionally led success, he would take the latter. Yes, best to let it go.
Instead, as the discussion moved away from how hard everything might get for them all, he reflected again, on what Scat had said about their fortunes. Fortunes were terribly hard things to give up. In any case, the wealthier secessionist families were looking beyond independence, to the business opportunities that would arise once they had brought the corporations to heel. To take advantage of that, they would need to keep their money safe and, although a selfish act, it would be in Trevon’s best interest if they could retain their working capital.
But fortunes needed protecting and were vulnerable to threats.
He made a mental note: to keep the richest and oldest members at arm’s length, unless, that is, they were committed and prepared to give it all up for the cause.
That would narrow the field somewhat.
73
Simon and Farrin tried to anchor themselves to the alcove of a shop doorway. Still, they were constantly jostled, and were often knocked sideways when the crowd surged or backed up. It was getting a little scary. Simon spoke of calling his dad on his graf, but realised his old man would have the same problem as they had: there was nowhere to go.
Suddenly, from up front, there was an extremely loud explosion, followed by a much larger cheer. Farrin stood on tiptoes but couldn’t see anything.
‘Give me a leg up, Sime,’ he said, leaning against the shop window.
Simon joined his hands together and let Farrin step into them. He then hoisted him up as far as he was able, sliding him up the window.
‘Jeeze! It’s a police cruiser,’ Farrin shouted. ‘It’s on fire. There’re people in it. Jeeze …’
‘Fark! What else?’ Simon asked, struggling to keep Farrin steady.
‘Bloody great big carriers and some soft-tracks. They’re coming out of the side street—’
All around them there were ear-splitting cracks and shockwaves that knocked Farrin to the floor. Loud thumps echoed back and forth between the buildings. The window shattered. Farrin stumbled, and Simon dropped to the ground. Women in the crowd screamed. Men yelled. The front of the crowd tried pushing against the flow, to flee back up Second Avenue, leaving behind them what seemed to be bodies lying in the road. A rolling crackle from high above. Individuals started dropping to the floor as they ran away from the barricades.
‘I’ve been cut,’ Simon said, quietly, almost inaudibly.
Farrin didn’t hear him. He was dusting himself off, watching the chaos.
‘Help me.’
Simon fell against Farrin and then to the floor. Farrin looked down. Blood was pouring out onto the pavement. Simon was deadly still.
‘Simon! Simon!’
Farrin got on his knees and turned Simon over, then looked away. There was a large shard of glass in the side of his friends neck. His eyes were wide open, but they weren’t moving.
‘Oh, my God! Simon!’
He slapped him gently, but there was no response. He checked for a pulse but couldn’t find it. Farrin felt himself on the verge of panic.
When he looked out onto the avenue, he could see more people falling over and laying still. Some were shuddering. The circles of bodies began to stir again, some of them getting up onto their knees, disorientated. A few went down for a second time.
Farrin didn’t know what to do. He needed to get Simon some help. Simon was dying.
Without thinking, he ran out onto the rapidly emptying sidewalk and headed towards the police lines, waving his arms, shouting for help.
74
Khan sighed as another aide entered the room. It was yet another interruption. This one looked briefly at him, and then whispered into Cohen’s ear.
Khan saw Cohen’s expression change. The old man looked at him, briefly, before looking back down at the table. It was obvious that he was receiving some distressing news.
When the aide left the room, Cohen stood and walked around to Khan’s side of the desk. He placed a thin, slender hand on Khan’s shoulder and then told him what he had just learned.
Khan registered some of it:
His son was dead.
A c-pod would take him down to the morgue.
Forget everything else; take as long as he needed.
Attend to the family.
It was a poorly lit morgue, but Khan could see the body belonged to his son, that the skin was paler than normal and that it was cold to touch. Still, he could not quite believe his son was gone.
‘Take your time, Khoffi. I’ll be down the corridor.’
Khan looked up. He couldn’t recall the name of the man who had shown him into the room. The man wore a white coat. A doctor? A coroner?
‘Thank you,’ Khan replied, hardly making a sound. ‘How …?’
‘How? Blunt force trauma to the head. Fractured skull, broken neck. He wouldn’t have felt anything. It would have been quick. Almost instant.’
Khan remembered his name. It was Mike Patterson. Dr Patterson.
‘How?’ Khan asked again.
‘How? As in the circumstances?’
‘Yes, Mike. How?’
‘I don’t know all the details, but he was brought in from Second Avenue. It looks as though he was hit by a rubber bullet. We’ll know for sure after the autopsy.’
‘A rubber bullet?’
‘Yes,’ he said, pointing down at his own head with a finger. ‘From high up. It’s the same for a couple of the other deceased.’
Khan could not understand that, nor could he understand why his son would be involved in a riot, but now it was dawning on him that his son was dead; that the naked body on the table was not going to wake up again. It was just a body. Lifeless.
Khan was close to shedding his first tear; his chest was beginning to shudder and his jaw was trembling. Patterson offered him a tissue. Khan waved it away. Instead, he asked him another question.
‘Who?’
‘It’d be a guess, Khoffi.’
‘Then guess!’
‘It wouldn’t be the police. They bounce their rubber shot off the ground first. They go for the knees. Head shots are off limits.’
‘So it was private.’
‘That’s my guess.’
‘Petroff’s goons.’
‘Probably. Look why don’t you take a few minutes here, then come and see me before you leave? We can talk it through some more.’
Khan stifled a cry and turned back to the table.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, Khoffi.’
‘Thank you, Mike. I’ll be along in a minute.’
Patterson left Khan leaning over the table, looking down into his son’s face, thinking of how to break the news to Ara.
At least their daughter, Jasmine, would be asleep.
They could break the news to her in the morning: together.
75
In the hours before daybreak, they discussed the most likely candidates for recruitment. The staff kept the tea coming. They snacked on the odd sandwich. Reggie stuck to his brandy.
Thomas thought of Goosen, but much depended on whether the police was axing him, or not. From what Thomas had told him, he seemed a promising candidate. Paul volunteered an old school chum of his who worked in cargo out at the spaceport: he was a Trevon, born and bred.
Meanwhile, Balsom arranged a distribution from Thomas’ trust fund to a think-tank in the Asian Bloc, to free up some cash for the rebels to use. The think-tank was bogus of course; it was one of Balsom’s many inventions. Job done, Thomas explained how it worked and why they were using his trust funds:
‘… and once the money leaves the trust, they can’t hold father responsible for how it’s used. It’ll be down to me.’
‘So how tight is it?’ Scat asked. ‘Once it gets there, how will they know where to move it onto—without leaving a trail?’
‘That’s the easy bit,’ Thomas replied. ‘Balsom uses steganography to hide the transfer instructions inside a personal email or an image. When they get it at the other end, they use their half of the programme to work out where the markers are. When they’ve worked out what the key is, they then look at another message and pick out the bits they need.’
‘So it’s not encrypted, like our emails or graf comms?’
‘No. Encryption attracts attention. This never does. And each half of the steg programme is unique and synchronised, like a one time pad. We’ve used it for decades—it never fails.’
Scat puckered his brow. He was still unconvinced.
‘Chill, Scat. It works. UBS has been using Balsom to set up their off-world tax shelters for years—and he always uses steg. And the Chinese Communist Party big-wigs used it for decades before they backed themselves into the GCE.’
So, it was fool proof and approved by none other than paranoid Swiss bankers and Chinese politicians. Well, who was he to argue against that? And with the money sorted out, it was now just a matter of organising enough local supplies to tide them over.
To that end, Hammond and Paul gathered up backpacks, first aid packs, torches, fuel cells, pocket warmers, lightweight shelters, stoves, three hunting rifles and an antique shotgun that had belonged to one of the recently deceased hare shoot guests.
As they did that, Scat, Balsom, Reggie and Thomas discussed what propaganda they could squeeze out of a successful Nettles rescue. They then clarified the guiding principles of the rebel campaign—at least as best as they were able with Reggie drifting off into an old man’s doze. With Reggie’s head bobbing up and down, they also agreed Thomas’ proposed communication plan between the political and military wings—through the coordinating Council—whoever they might be. They left it to Balsom to explain it to Reggie, come morning.
By five am, Scat was spent.
It had been a frantic night with everyone, bar Reggie, speaking about different things at the same time. When Paul was finished loading the equipment into a spare soft-track, Scat called a halt to further talk. It was time.
‘Let's get this show on the road, eh?’ he said, standing alongside the front door of the soft-track, his hand on the door handle.
Balsom nudged Reggie and woke him up. The Irwin brothers went upstairs to say their goodbyes to their mother.
Scat shook Balsom’s hand, waved a goodbye to Reggie then climbed up into the soft-track’s rear compartment where he sat waiting for the boys. He felt somewhat relieved: he liked to keep his life simple, and he had just dumped the downright boring, consensus-driven, slow-moving and complicated parts of the insurgency off onto Reggie, Hammond and Balsom’s laps—hoping it would still make sense to them, come sun up.
That left him with a list of just three things to do:
Find Goosen.
Free Nettles.
Create havoc.
76
A plan was gelling, but slowly. As they drove down the valley, Scat told Thomas to stop off at the greenhouse and pick up a half-dozen arctic hares. He didn’t elaborate on why. While they were loading them up, Scat used the management office printer to run off a couple of labels that read “Bio-experiment: no scanning” and attached them to the cage.
Once the live cargo was loaded, Scat quizzed the Irwin brothers on what they knew about the Earth press corps, where they were staying, which channels they represented.
Paul knew more: his friends in Go Down had been chatting online about the news personalities who had turned up on Trevon. The secessionist struggle was a big story back on Earth, and almost all the reporters were the well-known, high-profile types. Their fans were monitoring their activities on a celebrity-tracker site. Paul clicked on the site and passed his graf to Scat.
As he scrolled through the site, Scat moved on to Goosen. How sure was Thomas that Goosen would help out?
Thomas was fairly sure, not certain: it depended on whether Goosen was getting the axe. But if he got the axe then he would no longer have access to Police HQ.
Perhaps it would be better for them if the police kept Goosen on but that he remained resentful of the interference.
Where to free Nettles? From Police HQ? No, they would still need to get him out of Go Down.
On his way to the spaceport? No. Not if Earth used their new transports. There would be no way they could get at them. They could only stop a convoy if it travelled on the ground, not above it.
Now his team had narrowed down the options to almost none, Scat laid out his plan.
They would hijack the V4
‘You’re kidding?’ Thomas said.
‘No,’ Scat replied. ‘Think about it: Nettles and ftl capabilities. It’ll have in-system cargo shuttles and a lot of pissed-off ex-security types, all of them ripe for recruitment. We could even use the media to our advantage. Get some air time.’
That made Paul smile, the idea of being on TV appealed to him. Thomas looked quite worried; he was thinking how difficult it would be.
‘But to hijack the LM we’ll need to get on board. How do you propose to do that?’ he asked.
Scat ignored the question:
‘Paul, could you get us inside the spaceport? Would your friend be willing?’
‘Probably. We’ve talked about independence before. He’s a supporter.’
‘OK. When we get into Go Down call him up and go meet him. Don’t warn him off about us.’
‘And not use my graf, Scat,’ Paul replied, referring to the comms plan.
‘Exactly, Paul, you’re catching on,’ Scat said, giving him a wink. ‘What we need to do is get onto the loading team. I could trade places with him during his shift and then get lost on board somewhere. He might also give us a clue as to how we could also get Thomas on board.’
They went around in circles for a while, and then decided to let things fall as they may, once Paul had met with Mark Stafford.
But first, they needed to get inside Go Down, and meet with Goosen.
77
Getting back into Go Down wasn’t as nerve racking for Thomas as getting out the evening before. Scat had lain down with the shotguns and rifles in the fuel cell compartment. As before, he was covered in survival suits to reflect a mess back to the scanners. On top of that, they had placed all the arctic hare cages. Behind them was the equipment, all of it innocent enough, especially for an Outland family.
They need not have bothered. Goosen was back on duty. His uniform looked crumpled, a shirt panel was hanging out below his half-jacket, and, his head being hatless, his sandy hair was whipping about across his face. He was oblivious to it.
‘Damn it, Thomas. I got six hours off then they dragged me back out here again. Go Down’s bubbling over and they needed the extra hands.’
‘What’s this I hear about the police being replaced?’
‘That too. That’s why I’m here and not downtown, peppering the locals with teargas. The boss knows I’m not too enthusiastic.’
‘Do you fancy meeting for a coffee when you get off?’ Thomas asked.
‘Yes, sure—I’ll need one. I’m off at seven. Pick me up on the corner of Second
and 11th at eight.’
‘OK.’
Goosen peered inside the soft-track. He saw Paul and the arctic hares.
‘Oh, how cute are they?’ he said, then read the label and waved a hand. ‘You can bugger off now, Thomas. It’s cold. I need to go warm up.’
Goosen met them on the corner of Second and 11th, standing on a pavement strewn with empty tear gas canisters, rubber slugs and candy wrappers. As Thomas drove them down an empty Second Avenue to Mary’s, Goosen slid down his seat to give himself some headroom. Along the way, they passed several makeshift barriers made of fence railings and melted tires.
Goosen saw the look on Thomas’ face.
‘It’s getting messy, Thomas. Very messy,’ Goosen explained. ‘They don’t have an answer for it,’ he added, referring to the constant nighttime skirmishes with the Trevon permanent residents who were agitating for independence. ‘No one’s talking. They’re just busting each other’s skulls.’
‘Well, it’s going to get messier, Birdie,’ Thomas said. ‘We have a guest on board. Don’t freak out on me, and promise to listen.’
‘OK, sure,’ Goosen replied, looking back over his shoulder, pushing his sandy hair back over his bald spot. There was only Paul. He could hear the arctic hares, but other than that ...
‘Scat, you can come on out,’ Thomas said, half shouting.
Goosen’s face changed as he realised he was doing more than just meet a friend to bitch about a bad deal.
‘Hell, Thomas. You could have warned me!’
‘Sorry, Birdie. It had to be a surprise.’
‘But still… Good morning, Mr Scat.’
Scat scrambled up through the floor into the space that Paul had made for him.
‘It’s Scat—plain Scat. Sorry for dropping in on you like this, but it’s a difficult time. Can we talk?’
‘Sure,’ Goosen said.