Regenesis (94 page)

“Do you?” Justin asked soberly, turning to look at him.

Grant rudely shoved him into motion. “It’s a condition of life, lately. Move. I want to get upstairs and pack some necessities this time. Let’s be practical about this.”

Mark and Gerry showed up in the open doorway; word had spread.

“Ser,” Gerry said, “An alert’s in progress.”

“We know. Thanks. Get on the com.” Justin said, settling his coat on, “call everybody in the Wing and tell them this is a real alert, if they have any doubt of it. All staff to go to the tunnels, prepare for a stay’. When you’ve done that, supply yourselves out of your office for at least a three-day stay and report to the storm tunnel.”

“Yes, ser,” Mark said, and the two of them went off at fair speed—which left them time to get upstairs in good order and pack a bag between them.

Grant looked a little overwhelmed as they were leaving—again. He cast a look around the room, as if memorizing it, and then looked at Justin with a little sigh as if to say he was ready for most anything.

Grant was Justin’s overriding thought. Grant’s stability, he didn’t question. It was a sensible worry whether they could both get through the next few days alive. He didn’t know everything they were up against, but the thought of the station in orbit deciding just to flip the switch and shut down the towers until Reseune gave up, or Defense landing troops on their very close-in river shore, troops to break into the tunnels and force their way in—

That wasn’t a prospect he wanted to contemplate. They were Warricks, Grant no less than he was. No question they’d be targets along with Jordan. They always had been. And there wasn’t a damned thing he personally could do about it, but have a short mental list of one bolt hole after another if it got to that.

Planys wasn’t theirs this morning. That news had mixed with the news of the landing; and he wasn’t the only one who’d be upset with that news. He phoned Jordan on his way down from their apartment. “Dad,” he said, when only the message function answered his call, “take this one very seriously. Paul, take care. Both of you.”

They ended up with the lift all to themselves.

Back to the tunnel he’d gotten to know—all the comforts, as far as sieges went.

And settled in to wait.

The galley served modest sandwiches, which Ari’s staff said would be available at any time. They had coffee and fruit tea. Tommy and Mika Carnath arrived, exhausted and short of breath, from across the complex, and said they’d been held up a while, getting back, because they’d had to walk all the way around from the labs. They weren’t letting people traverse the open spaces, and they were too young to rate a seat on the trams. Yvgenia Wojkowski arrived, and said she’d been delayed by a phone call from a cousin in Novgorod asking what had happened, but she had just told her to watch the news. Maddy Strassen came in with her companion Samara, and settled in. The news services, broadcasting in Novgorod, and visible on the general monitor, showed, intermittent with rebroadcasts of the Council news conference and the general’s plane taking off, tranquil views of the city, a small amount of traffic moving on the roads, subways running, mostly empty, on a sunny day.

It was reassuring to know the city was functioning. It showed barges backed up for days on the river, and then showed one barge leaving, which was promising.

“We have news, ser,” Mark said, coming over to him. “Svetlansk Airport has had several aircraft disabled.”

“So something’s going on up there.” Grant commented, after. “The general was telling the truth in that much.”

“We can hope so,” Justin said. There were a handful of places of any size in the civilized world, and Svetlansk had always seemed as remote as another world. Since the missile event, it hadn’t seemed that remote. It didn’t at the moment.

An hour later there was an interruption on the vid to say that there was going to be a three-hour shutdown of the just-opened Port of Novgorod, due to security concerns. That
wasn’t
good news.

Then Ari called in, just on general address.
“This is Ariane Emory. We haven’t gotten much news, except there’s been a ground attack on Svetlansk Airport, damaging several Fleet aircraft. We’re getting two planes in fairly continual pattern between us and Novgorod, which we think is their origin. We have absolutely nothing reported off the coast in the direction of Planys and hope to keep it that way…”

S
EPT
8, 2424
1538
H

“…There’s a small situation at the port in Novgorod that seems to be a labor issue. Waiting is all we can do at this point. We’re limiting our own communications for security reasons. I’ll be back in touch when there’s news.”

Ari shut the mike down. There was a small firefight going on up in Svetlansk, as best they could figure, and since that had started, they weren’t getting any satellite images out of Cyteen Alpha Station—disturbing as it might be. Images continued uninterrupted from remote Beta, and she hoped it was Alpha making a declaration of neutrality in the immediate situation, and nothing worse, like Alpha taking sides, or Alpha engaged in its own struggle against elements of the Fleet up there.

Catlin and Florian, meanwhile, had joined several of ReseuneSec’s seniors in organizing a defense of Reseune, framed in several contingencies: an invasion from water, from the air, the very low probability of anyone moving in by land after an air landing—getting down of! the cliffs wouldn’t be easy. And an assault from air or space, in which case they tucked low and defense became
her
job as long as their communications held out, which meant, among other things, keeping a handful of unruly media people under cover.

Defense was not something on which the first Ari had an outstanding lot to say. A search after similar incidents turned up nothing but a few boatloads of Abolitionists bent on kidnapping azi to “free” them, lunatic-venture…nothing like having a missile threat to contend with. They hadn’t guarded the boat launch in those days, they hadn’t built the coffer-dam, the lock system, and the filtration until Giraud and Denys took over. It turned out being defensive, in plans her security was making, but it had been ecological in origin, pushed by the company working remediation in Swigert Bay.

Meanwhile they had planes patrolling the skies, but suddenly had very little information regarding air traffic—the station supplied most of that kind of information. And that provided a major screen for anybody doing anything.

She made a try at contacting Alpha Station, ordinarily a matter of picking up the phone. It took a considerable wait, on a line that should have gone straight through to Station Admin.

It still did, finally, at least as far as a live Assistant Stationmaster. “This is Ariane Emory, at Reseune. We’re not receiving air traffic information. For all we know nobody in the world is receiving information. We have a rogue Fleet officer in Planys, possibly with missiles under his direction, aimed at the population of Novgorod. Are you willing to take the responsibility when this situation goes to the national court with criminal charges, ser?”

“
Let me get the Stationmaster
,” the reply came back, and five minutes more of waiting and she had the Alpha Stationmaster. Emil Erikssen was his name, and she effectively repeated what she had just said to the Assistant Stationmaster, including the bit about personal responsibility and criminal charges. “We have no way of sounding an alarm if we get another missile fired at us. We
had
a missile land within 800 meters of our hospital and 15 meters off a public thoroughfare, ser. Whatever’s going on up there, the ordinary citizens of this planet and the Council rely on
you
for services that mean life and death. Don’t give us promises.”

“We are supporting the atmospherics systems and the power grid,”
the answer came back.
“Fleet assets have just been destroyed or compromised. We are not providing general positional information to enable counterattacks until we have contact with Council.”

“We appreciate your position, but if you want the Council, ser, you just stay connected.” She punched buttons on her pocket com, and rang Ludmilla deFranco. “Sera. I have the Alpha Stationmaster. He needs a Council resolution before he’ll provide the global net.”

“Let me talk to him,”
deFranco said, and she punched more buttons, and got four more Councillors.
“We are sitting in shelters here,”
deFranco said in some heat,
“having already had one missile fired at us by a fool, and if you want a directive, ser, you’ll have it.”

“This is Harad, of State,”
Councillor Harad broke in.
“The directive already exists, Alpha Station, in our recent instruction to General Awei to defend the Council. Facimile transmission follows. We direct you turn on current global positional and traffic data. We’ll get you a specific directive on both orders inside five minutes if you have any doubt.”

There was a lengthy delay on the other side.

Catlin came to her desk, leaned over, com pressed firmly into her ear, and said, “Geosats are transmitting again.”

They had eyes.

That had gone all right, hadn’t it? Pity they couldn’t have been selective—but the system wasn’t set up that way Alpha could shut down satellites from transmission. But once they did transmit—anybody could use the information.

And about forty seconds later, the airport called Reseune Admin, “
We have regained image
.” Likewise at the port.

The outage had lasted about thirty minutes, from the initial action at Svetlansk to the restoration of geosat transmission.

Fleet property had gotten damaged at Svetlansk, no word about personnel. They’d howled in indignation, more than likely.

So had the planet immediately involved…howled, now, and there’d be some consideration of the measures Alpha Station had taken, if she had anything to say about it. There
hadn’t
been civilian planes in the air when ATC’s long vision went out, but there could have been. There
hadn’t
, however, been guidance for more missiles for a bit, either. So it was a toss-up. She couldn’t say the Alpha Stationmaster had been wrong; and he couldn’t be in a comfortable position, watching his government come apart, down on the planet, and two halves of Defense starting shooting at each other. They’d gotten into it step by step; for Alpha Station, there’d been a succession of small startling shocks, mostly in the last week.

So Alpha Station had wanted it stopped. She could understand that. Maybe Khalid would be beseiging his own sources up on station, urging Fleet authorities up then to shut the geosats down again to protect his operations at Planys. And maybe Fleet would start agitating on his behalf, or even issuing threats, but Alpha was a power, too, a de facto sovereign state like Reseune Territories, and Khalid couldn’t trump a Council directive.

Had
him, she did.

She shoved back from the console in the Admin storm tunnels, and spun about to find Florian in the doorway, Florian with a decided grin on his face.

“Yanni,” Florian said, “and Councillor Corain, Amy, and Frank, and Quentin AQ. They’re down at the port.”

Her heart leapt up. “In Novgorod?”

“No, sera. At
our
port, the riverside. Rafael’s sending a bus.”

“Are we sure?” she asked.

“Yes, sera!”

She spun the chair about again, and this time punched in every Councillor they had resident. They were immediate on the answer, Harad, deFranco, Chavez, Tien, and, last, Harogo. She said, “Yanni and Mikhael Corain have just arrived at the port. Would you like to meet them in Admin?”

“Finally!”
Harad said, and Chavez:
“About damned time.”

S
EPT
8, 2424
1621
H

Directive control stayed in Ari’s pocket—literally—via her com, which she kept on, with Admin connected, continually. Florian and Catlin were linked into Rafael’s operation, specifically to senior ReseuneSec officers; and to Wes and Marco, who were doing the same, out of Alpha Wing Ops; she was linked to Admin, namely Chloe, and the department heads, who’d gotten the heads-up from Chloe via Yanni’s office. “Call Councillor Corain’s family,” she told Chloe, afterthought, but one she didn’t want to omit. “Tell them Corain is coming in, but tell them stay to the tunnels.”

Immediately after, she headed upstairs and down the long lower hall in Admin, in close company with Florian and Catlin and two of the regular ReseuneSec personnel.

The Councillors, starting from storm tunnels in Wing One and Ed, reported themselves headed over via the cross tunnels, with their aides—they might come upstairs, if they insisted. Nobody was going to argue protocols with Harad or deFranco, or even Corain’s wife. All Ari’s attention was focused on having Yanni and Corain and Amy across that open space and down in the tunnels as fast as they could get them there, and she listened to the infrequent information from Admin, hoping not to hear warnings, hoping the moderate communications traffic hadn’t helped the opposition.

The bus at least was wasting no time…two buses, it became evident as she reached the locked doors—one bus veering off to Ed, one coming up toward them. “One is a decoy,” Florian said, and Catlin meanwhile called Rafael, signaling the physical lock to be taken off the Admin front doors and left off until she sent word they had the party inside.

Florian swung a door open. The bus came up under the portico, squealed to a hard stop, and its door flew open. Quentin exited instantly and held up his hands for Amy, who flung herself off the bus. Frank came next, with the briefcase, and held out a hand to steady Yanni coming down: and the third and last CIT was Mikhail Corain, looking to be on his last legs—all of them freshly scrubbed, wearing work blues, still damp from decon and reeking of potent disinfectant.

“Inside,” Florian said. “Inside, quickly, ser.”