“Let’s put that year to good use, then,” said a woman’s voice over the radio—recognizable as Jane. “More farms, more factories….”
“Organized as co-operatives,” warned a new voice, male. “Let’s not preserve the sins of the old society while creating the new one.”
“O’ course,” said Himself, sounding almost offended.
“Who’s that?” Brodski asked, worried.
“Ah, just one of me lads,” Himself hastened to explain. “An old friend, really. Aye, an’ his advice is good.”
“That it is,” Jane added. “By the way, Jeff’s found a local mold that makes a remarkable antibiotic. We’ll breed it here and see how it works out before sending packets down to Castell.”
“You know,” Brodski considered, “We’ll be needing a good technical school before long….”
“I don’t think you can talk Old Castell into it,” Van Damm warned.
“Aye, an’ tell me, now that the CoDo boy is gone, can we bring the
Queen
and the
Princess
back upriver? We’ve a mort o’ cargo for the lot of yahs.”
As the hopeful voices chattered and planned through the airwaves, in a cave above Hell’s-A-Comin’ an old miner set down his microphone and leaned back to listen. No one could see him smiling from ear to ear, nor hear him singing quietly to himself:
“…We can bring to birth a new world,
From the ashes of the old,
For the union makes us strong.”
2056 A.D., Luna Base
Marshall Wainwright, Assistant to the Director of the CoDominium Bureau of Intelligence, felt like a schoolboy with cap in hand as he entered the palatial office of Grand Senator Adrian Bronson. The Senator’s office was four times the size of his own bosses’ office and, unlike most of the underground offices on Luna Base, there were no Tri-V projections of Earth’s seas, prairies, meadows, deserts or other calming sites to cover up the fact that they were living in a cavern deep underground on a barren moon with a surface that was as completely devoid of life as deep space. Most of Luna’s fulltime government employees used the Tri-V projectors to fight off claustrophobia and fears of entombment.
It appeared that Senator Bronson had no such human frailties. Instead his office was paneled with real teak and mahogany wood and filled with bookcases full of legal volumes and lots of hand carved wooden pillars and sconces. He couldn’t imagine what it had cost to drag all this wood out of Earth’s gravity well.
What Marshall did know was that he was about to be called on the carpet about something, but as far as what—he had no idea. BuIntel had irons in so many hot spots throughout CoDominium occupied space that he wasn’t even going to try and guess which particular one this might be. The only thing he was sure of was that it would in someway be related to one of Dover Mineral and Developments off-world holdings, Tabletop, Comstock, Haven, Friedland, Tanith, Markham, New Washington or any of a dozen other planets.
Senator Adrian Bronson Sr. had swept-back wavy silver hair and the smiling visage of a Tri-V pitchman, but his eyes were pure arctic chill. Wainwright knew that Bronson had been a Senator for over twenty years. Grand Senators served for thirty years; new Senators were appointed by both co-option and election from Earth. They could not be recalled only expelled: “The Senate shall be the sole judge of members and qualifications.” Answerable only to the CoDominium Council, the Senators were a law unto themselves. No CD bureaucrat, not even his boss, the Director of Bureau of Intelligence was immune to their power.
“Have a seat,” Bronson said, using a tone of voice one might use to correct a misbehaving cur.
“Yes, Your Excellency,” he replied, trying to keep from tugging his forelock as he sat down.
“I understand you were the man in charge of the Haven Takeover Operation?” His tone brooked no nonsense.
So that’s what this is about
, he thought.
Max Cole, I’d like to wring your neck for this!
“Yes, sir,” he replied, hiding his anger. “We had one of our senior agents, Maxwell Cole, running the operation.
How does the Senator know what happened on Haven when we haven’t gotten word one from there yet?
he wondered.
Aha! Their intel must have come from one of the DMD ore ships. Unfortunately, BuIntel doesn’t have enough agents to cover every ship because the Grand Senate won’t give us the funding we need. However, we will get the blame when something goes wrong that could have been fixed with more credits.
“Well, if this is the work we can expect from one of your top agents, then BuIntel can expect some funding cuts when the next appropriation bill comes up.”
This is not going well. If the Senator cuts our funding
—
and he has the connections and power to do just that
—
Director Harrison will have my head.
“Your Excellency, we had a well-situated group of malcontents, which we supplied with arms, thoroughly capable of undermining Harmony hegemony—”
“Well, your gang did a terrible job,” Bronson said, cutting him off. “According to our people on the ground, they were slaughtered by a bunch of farmers and a gang of women comprised of former convicts and prostitutes.” He shook his head in apparent disbelief. “The Harmonies are non-violent and yet your
people
couldn’t even hold Castell City!”
“I don’t know exactly what happened there because we haven’t received our agent’s report, but I’m sure there were extenuating circumstances—”
“Enough of your excuses. It seriously worries me that my information is more up-to-date than that of the CD Intelligence Bureau’s. It also troubles me that BuIntel can’t even run a successful revolt on a world run by pacifists. It might even be amusing, if it weren’t so pathetic. We have vital interests on that world. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” he replied, knowing full well that those “vital interests” were not CoDominium related, but Dover interests.
The Senator lowered his voice as if he were taking Wainwright into his confidence. “Thanks to the loss of our shimmer stone monopoly we’ve taken a multi-trillion dollar hit over the last five years. The man responsible for this loss, my nephew Thomas Ehrenfeld, is going to be sent to Haven to clean up this mess. As CEO of DMD, Ehrenfeld was so busy taking credit for the shimmer stone profits, he forgot to establish effective controls on Haven to see that our monopoly remained uncontested.”
Wainwright nodded, understanding full well that the nephew was being sacrificed for his failure to protect Dover’s bottom line. If Ehrenfeld had been smart, he would have hired a mercenary battalion to protect the shimmer stone secret. There weren’t that many ports of entry on Haven and it could have easily been sewn up tight. After all, dead men tell no tales.
“This blow to the company has meant that I’m going to have to either take a leave of absence from the Senate to run the company again or have my son take the CEO spot.”
Taking a leave of absence wouldn’t shorten Bronson’s term of office, but it would remove him from the hub of power. And very likely make a powerful enemy for BuIntel.
“I’m sure your son would acquit himself well as CEO,” he said, trying to placate the older Bronson. By reputation, young Adrian was even more rapacious than the old man.
Bronson nodded. “It’ll be good training for him. I don’t have that many more eligible years as Senator anyway and I expect him to take my position one day. Still, that’s not going to solve the Haven problem.”
“Tell me what I can do to rectify this situation, Your Excellency.” He would give the Senator all the help he could; otherwise, his career was over and he’d be marooned back on Earth where no one trusted ex-CD officials—especially ex-spooks. His pension would see to his physical needs, but he
needed
to be at the center of power: changing fortunes, building new worlds, moving people and toppling governments were his passions.
“Okay, Wainwright, here’s what I want you to do,” the Grand Senator said, as he began to tick off points on his left hand with the fingers of his right hand.
Haven, 2057 A.D.
C
huluun, Second Khan of the Free Tribe of the Steppes, laughed as he rode his mount at full gallop across the hard ground of the northern plains. The icy wind whipped his face, sending his beard and mustache flying like the mane of his sturdy horse. His tight leather hat and his del—the long, broadly cut traditional gown of his people—kept him warm. Up ahead, the yurts of the tribe were scattered near a rocky bluff on the edge of this grassy valley where they had made their home.
Captain Ganzorig of the First Troop, whose name meant Courage of Steel, rode hard by Chuluun’s side, grinning even though his mount was a nose behind Chuluun’s. Ganzorig was a young man two years older than Chuluun, who also had learned the traditional ways of their people in the historical re-enactment celebrations on Earth. He, too, had taken the ship to Haven to work in the mines. In the rebellion seven months earlier that had brought the miners to freedom far from the mines, he had been one of the many miners to follow Chuluun and fight for their freedom.
As the horses’ hooves thundered, Chuluun saw that he was nearing the narrow cleft in the soil they had chosen for a finish line. Eager to win this race with his friend and first officer, he leaned forward even lower and let his mount have his head. Braced against the stirrups, moving in the saddle as though one with his mount, Chuluun sailed over the break in the ground just ahead of Ganzorig.
Moments later, as they reined in together, Chuluun smiled at his companion. “Did you let your Khan win, my friend?”
“Never!” With good humor, Ganzorig grinned and loosened the embroidered hat that kept his head and ears warm. “Our Khan is a fearless rider on a fine horse.”
Chuluun knew better than to believe him, but he chuckled and gave Ganzorig a hearty clap on the back. Ganzorig laughed, too, as though they shared the joke.
On Earth, throughout the centuries, the word khan had come to have many meanings, often courteous but mundane. During the rebellion he had led, the title had taken on an exalted meaning among his people. He suspected that out of all them, only his wife Tuya would dare try to outride him, and she might succeed when she was not heavy with child, as she was now.
As Chuluun let his mount walk, cooling down, he looked out over the herd of horses and muskylopes grazing in the distance. His good mood dropped away.
The mining camp near the town of Last Chance from which they had escaped had held roughly a thousand miners in a compound built for only five hundred. They were a mix of ethnic Mongol, Manchu, Korean, and Hui people from the same region of Earth as Chuluun and Tuya. Because Mongols were in a dominant majority, their language was most common among them.
Seven hundred and sixty-one miners had followed him here, while some had fallen while fighting to escape and others had died on the trip of wounds or illness. Others had fled to Last Chance rather than risk the dangers of this life. Now the Free Tribe of the Steppes, as Chuluun had named them to universal agreement, held off starvation only by butchering their limited herd faster than a new generation of offspring was born.
“We must act soon,” said Ganzorig, as if being Chuluun’s best friend meant that he could read Chuluun’s mind. He ran a gloved hand over his narrow, black beard. “If the Americans will join us, we can strike the town of Purity and take their herds. We need their food, their firearms, their mining explosives, everything.”
“The people of Purity are much like our own,” said Chuluun. “They work hard, but they are mostly poor and desperate.” He hated the idea of raiding a town, even of CoDominium loyalists. The son of a miner in Dongbei Province of China, his soul was that of a working man, of many generations of miners, herders, hunters—and, of course, warriors.
“They belong to CoDo,” said Ganzorig, his eyes glittering with anger. “They toil in the mines. They tend the herds that feed Dover Mining. A company town! We owe them nothing, Chuluun Khan.”
Chuluun did not speak, as he considered the desperate needs of his people. His friend had always wanted to attack Purity. Ganzorig hated the CoDominium and had no love for tending herds. Chuluun had seen the ugly scars of whips on his friend’s back, where he had been punished by Reynolds guards for insolence.
The Free Tribe had escaped with mounts and wagons of supplies, from the Shangri-La Valley up through the Karakul Pass to the northern plains. In search of grazing land in the harsh climate, Chuluun had led them east to the Girdle of God Mountains, first through a valley where some Americans had settled, and farther to this valley, which he had named, with both ethnic pride and bitter irony, the Gobi Valley.
“We meet with the Americans soon,” said Ganzorig, reminding him. Ganzorig, who had learned Russian on Earth, had arranged the meeting through an American who also spoke Russian.
“I need a moment with Tuya. Then we shall go.”
Some of the children and old men were hurrying toward them, ready to tend the mount of the khan and his first officer. Chuluun swung down out of the saddle and handed over the reins to an eager little girl. He gave her a smile as she glanced up at him shyly.
“Chuluun Khan, may I have a moment?” Ganzorig dismounted.
“Yes?”
“I have a gift for the Khan.” Ganzorig drew a rifle from his saddle boot. It was not the one he usually carried. He held it out. “This is for you.”
Astonished, Chuluun accepted the gift. It was a lever-action deer rifle, the stock old but recently shellacked. The barrel action was in polished blue steel. He checked to see that it was unloaded, then worked the lever, raised it to his shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. It gave a good snap. “A fine weapon.”
“It’s an antique from America, called a Winchester Model 94. The mark shows it was made in 1961. I took it apart, cleaned and inspected it. They are much prized among Americans. The stock is black walnut from America, a hardwood they like.” Ganzorig held out a small pouch. “These are .30-30 shells. I gathered these Winchester cartridges from our people. Their share of the gift.”