“Yes,” said Jacks. “We agreed. But we never thought it would go on this long. Never knew there’d be so much blood on our hands.”
“Better a few hundred die in a few villages than thousands in the city,” said Tallon. “That’s how you sold it to us. But Vidar still shows no sign of surrendering, and now they have the real Jack Random and Ruby Journey. They have monsters on their side.”
“Not to worry,” said Young Jack Random. “You have me.” And he smiled on them both, and turned and left.
Tallon and Jacks sank back into their seats again, not looking at each other. Tallon’s hands were clenched into fists on the tabletop. Jacks looked sick.
“Monsters,” said Tallon quietly. “Wherever I look, I see monsters.”
“What have we done, Matt?” said Jacks. “We’ve unleashed something we have no hope of controlling.”
“We have to go on,” said Tallon. “We have to go to Vidar and win this, or all the blood and all the deaths will have been for nothing.”
“ But . . . say we win. Say we take control of Vidar and then Loki? You think Shub is just going to pull its forces out and leave us to get on with running things? What’s to stop them just slaughtering us all and making Loki into another Shub planet?”
“We’re allies,” said Tallon.
“Are we? We’re sure as hell not equal partners. Whatever Shub decides, we’ll have no choice but to go along. We’re damned, Matt, whatever happens.”
“Then we’re damned!” said Tallon. “And I don’t care. Just as long as our enemies fall first. Just let me live long enough to see them all die, and I’ll be happy.”
Jack Random and Ruby Journey strode through the crowded corridors of the city Council building, and people hurried to get out of their way. There was bad news in the air. Everyone could smell it, but no one knew what it was yet, or where it might fall. So they kept their heads down and hoped not to be noticed.
It was barely morning when Random and Ruby received a call from the city Council, demanding their attendance at once. Normally Random would have told them what they could do with their demand, but the barely restrained panic filling the comm clerk’s voice convinced him this was something he and Ruby should see for themselves.
The chamber door was being guarded by four armed men, but they moved quickly aside as Random and Ruby approached. One even opened the door for them. Inside, de Lisle and his people were standing together, staring unhappily at two large wooden crates on the floor before them. The crates appeared perfectly ordinary, but the Councillors were looking at them as though they expected a Grendel to leap out at any moment. It was a measure of how upset they were that they looked at Random and Ruby with open relief. De Lisle patted his sweating forehead with a handkerchief, and gestured at the crates with a hand that wasn’t as steady as it might have been.
“These were waiting for us here in the chamber when we arrived for work this morning, along with a polite little note, saying A Present From Shub. Nothing else. We have no idea how they got here. I can only assume there are traitors among my people, rebel sympathizers. We haven’t dared open the crates. They make threatening noises if they’re touched. They make equally threatening noises if we try to leave. We’ve been trapped in here with them for almost an hour.”
“Typical Shub terror tactics,” said Ruby, studying the crates interestedly. “Have you tried scanning the contents?”
“Yes. The interiors appear to be lined with something our scanners can’t penetrate.”
“Could be a bomb,” said Ruby, crouching down before the nearest crate and studying the lid with a professional eye. “No lock, no clasps, no obvious electronic countermeasures. Maybe a warning of some kind. I say we open the crates and see what happens.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Random. “Ruby and I would probably survive a bomb anyway. But just in case, Councillors, I suggest you retire to the far end of this room.”
The Councillors did so hastily, not bothering to take their dignity with them. Random crouched down beside Ruby.
“I don’t think we’ll encounter any booby-traps,” he said thoughtfully. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered with two. One would have been enough for a bomb, or any other terror weapon.”
“Could contain some kind of Fury,” said Ruby, frowning. “The crates are big enough for a smallish one. But why bother with a killing machine when a bomb would be just as effective?” She looked at Random and grinned. “Want to toss over which one of us gets to open the first crate?”
“I’ll open the first,” said Random. “You always cheat.”
He took a firm hold of the lid on the nearest crate and yanked it open. A puff of refrigerated air rose, and Random and Ruby backed quickly away, but there was no other response from the crate. They moved cautiously forward and looked inside. A dead face with pure white skin flecked with frost looked up at them. The open eyes were frosted too. Random and Ruby looked at each other, and then looked back in the crate. A human body had been coiled inside the crate like a snake. He’d been cut open, from throat to groin, and his chest and abdomen were strangely . . . flat. Ruby raised an eyebrow.
“Whatever I was expecting, this isn’t it. Anyone you know?”
“I don’t think so. Why would Shub send us a dead man? And a carefully preserved one, at that?”
“And why arrange him like that? Why not just use a bigger crate?” She reached in and grabbed a handful of the dead man’s hair. She tried to pull him out, but the body barely budged, stuck with cold and frost to the interior walls. The frozen tissues gave up loud cracking sounds as they reluctantly stretched. The long abdominal cut opened slowly like a mouth, and it was only then that Random and Ruby realized the body had been completely gutted. Everything inside the chest and abdomen had been removed.
“The cut’s so precise it might have been made with a scalpel,” Random said thoughtfully, and Ruby released her handful of hair. The head fell back against the crate wall with a loud thud. Ruby examined her hand. It was already covered with frost. She sniffed, untouched by the cold, and looked back at the hollow man.
“They really emptied him out, Jack. They didn’t just take his guts; the bones are gone too. No rib cage, no sternum, even the collarbones are gone. But why send us an eviscerated dead man? Is this supposed to frighten us?”
“Maybe it’s a warning of what they mean to do to us all,” said Random doubtfully. “Kill us, empty us out, and make us into Ghost Warriors. Let’s look in the other crate. Perhaps the answer’s in there.”
Ruby opened the second crate, waving aside the cold air that steamed up from inside, impatient to see what the crate contained. And then she wrinkled her nose and looked at Random. “This is really disgusting.”
Random leaned over the second crate. A set of human organs had been arranged neatly on the floor of the crate, pale pink and gray and covered with shining frost. Carefully laid human bones kept them separate. The heart had been wrapped in a pretty pink ribbon, tied in a bow.
“The last time I saw anything like this, I was still a clonelegger,” said Ruby, staring in fascination at the human remains. “What the hell is the point of this?”
“There’s another note,” said Random. “Under the heart.” He reached in and carefully slid the paper out from under the solid organ. He studied the envelope carefully.
“Interesting. It’s addressed to us. Shub knows we’re here.”
“Open the damned thing,” said Ruby impatiently.
Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper with a set of printed instructions on it. Random unfolded it carefully, not wanting the brittle paper to crack apart in his hands. He studied the message in silence for some moments. Ruby pushed in beside him.
“Well? What is it? What does it say?”
“It appears to be a set of instructions, on how to put together a human in kit form. According to this, if you put the bones and organs back in the right order, close him up, and thaw him out, the human should start functioning again.”
“Now, that is just too sick,” said Ruby. “Even for me.”
“Strange too,” said Random. “I never knew Shub to show a sense of humor before.”
Ruby shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Did they think this would frighten us?”
Random shrugged. “Let’s see what the Councillors have to say.”
He beckoned them over, and they returned to the crates, somewhat emboldened now that the crates hadn’t exploded after all. Then they looked inside the crates. One just made it to the door before being sick. Two others retreated to the far end of the room again and refused to come back. Bentley and de Lisle stood their ground, though visibly upset.
“I know this man,” Bentley said finally. “He volunteered to go alone and unarmed to try to negotiate a settlement with the rebel leaders. He used to be a friend and colleague of Terrence Jacks, the ex-Mayor. He thought that friendship would guarantee his safety. He should have known better. I tried to warn him, but he believed some kind of deal was still possible with goodwill on both sides.”
“The rebels did this?” said Ruby. “What the hell for?”
“To send us a message,” said de Lisle. “That they’re not interested in negotiating. You can see now the nature of the foe we’re dealing with. Shub is bad enough, but the rebels here are animals. We have to keep this quiet. It mustn’t go beyond this room. Do you agree, sir Random?”
“Yeah. The people don’t need to know about this. We’ll just say the crates contained severed heads from the outer settlements. That’s nasty enough to motivate them, without sickening them too much. Dispose of all this secretly. Incinerate it.”
“I just had a thought,” said Ruby, smiling wickedly. “What if we followed the instructions and put the human together? Do you think he’d work? I mean, Shub know a lot of things. He just might get up and start functioning again.”
The Councillor at the door lost what was left of his breakfast. The other Councillors looked at her with open revulsion. Random shook his head.
“I don’t think that’s a road we should go down. Whatever we ended up with, you can be sure it wouldn’t be human. Burn it, de Lisle. Burn it all. And then scatter the ashes just in case.”
Things were relatively quiet after that. The rebels headed for Vidar in one great force, human and Shub, destroying all settlements in their path. The storm winds kept blowing, but everyone knew the lull was coming. Random and Ruby spent all their time struggling to turn Vidar’s volunteer force into something like an army. There was no shortage of volunteers, but most had never fired a gun in anger in their life. They were tough enough, and brave, but turning even the most willing volunteer into a trained soldier takes time, and everyone knew that time was running out.
So it came as somewhat of a surprise to everyone when Random excused himself from the training exercise on the second afternoon, left Ruby in charge, and disappeared on a mission of his own. Wrapped in a long cloak, with the hood pulled down to conceal his features, Jack Random made his way through increasingly narrow and dirty streets into the really scummy part of Vidar. Every city has a part of town where the mostly respectable can come in secret in search of the pleasures that may not have a name, but certainly have a price. A few locals thought to intercept Random on his way and relieve him of any valuables he might be burdened with, but a glimpse of energy gun was usually all it took to make them back down. Random had to kill one man, but he didn’t seem the sort that anyone would miss.
Random finally reached his destination in the late afternoon: a broken-down drinking establishment that had probably looked sleazy and disreputable from the moment it opened. Random stood in the shadows on the other side of the street for a while, making sure he hadn’t been followed. He didn’t think anyone could sneak up on him anymore, but old habits died hard. Nobody looked up when he finally walked into the gloomy bar. It was the kind of place where everyone was careful to mind their own business.
There were no windows, and the lights were kept low to encourage confidentiality. There was an atmosphere of illegal smoke, cheap perfume, and general paranoia. Customers sat at cheap tables in twos and threes, talking business in lowered voices, pushing anonymous packages back and forth, or just sitting and staring into drinks they didn’t touch while they waited for their contacts to show up. There was no sawdust on the floor. Probably someone had stolen it. Random had spent a lot of time in the past meeting people in places like this, searching for the kind of answers that could be found only in such company. He spotted his contact, sitting well back in the shadows, and moved over to join him.
“There had better be a damned good reason for bringing me here,” said Random as he polished the seat of his chair with a handkerchief before sitting down. “I’ve been in some dives in my time, and this is definitely one of them. God alone knows what the booze is like here.”
“Actually, it’s pretty good,” said Peter Savage. “For the price. And we’re meeting here to talk because it’s one of the few places where de Lisle’s informers wouldn’t dare follow me. I’ve been digging into those computer files.”
“All right, what have you found?”
“It’s worse than we thought. De Lisle and his cronies were sent here deliberately to wreck Loki’s economy. Once they’d done their job and left, their bosses on Golgotha would have moved in and bought everything up at rock-bottom prices. Including the colonists. To pay off their debts they’d have had to take lifetime indentures. Slaves in all but name.”
“Can they do that?” said Random. “I had Parliament pass a whole bunch of laws just to prevent things like that.”
“The law isn’t much good when presented with a fait accompli. No one suspected anything. They would have got away with it if the rebels hadn’t made their alliance with Shub and thrown everything into chaos.”
“Tallon must have found out about this. That’s what made him desperate enough to call in Shub forces.”