Barry Longyear - Enemy Papers

There is silence for a moment, the only sound the dull roar of the ship’s engines. Reaper turns to Janice and she nods. "It’s the Tean Sindie. Flower and the Blade are on it. No warning at all, very high security. I told them to target the two who handed out the orders, the missile site is about to take care of itself."

As we authorize the hits on the battery commander and the Tean Sindie area Jetah, an image appears on the screen. We see six tracked vehicles mounted with launchers. Each launcher has tubes for sixteen missiles, but none of them has the full sixteen. As the launchers fire, soldiers of the Tean Sindie cheer the missiles on their way to Obsidian and Black October. I look at Davidge. He is doing the same as I am: counting the dead before they fall.

We do not see the missiles from the Aeolus come in. One moment there are a hundred or more cheering Drac soldiers of the Tean Sindie, the next the screens go white, the white fades, and there is nothing. No tracked vehicles, no missiles, no soldiers, no cheers. Smoke, a few small fires, a terrible silence. When we had killed nothing but humans, I felt terribly guilty, evil. Now that we have thrown a hundred Drac corpses onto the scales, I feel no better.

I know why they were cheering. They were beaten, life, friends, and lovers taken from them, and at last, in the form of a gleaming blue winged tube full of explosives, they could strike back against all of those who had tortured and oppressed them throughout their lives. I know why they cheered. They cheered from their pain. They cheered because all of them cheered. They cheered because they did not know that the ones they killed were human copies of themselves. There are insignificant differences of color, the genetic orders concerning the number of fingers and toes, accent, language, belief. Trivialities.

But there is the tribe. That is something.

Amadeen is cut up into tribes as primitive as anything on ancient Sindie, as obsessed as any on Timan, as vicious as anything on Earth. The tribe has only one commandment: the tribe comes first. Before right, before justice, before honor, before sanity, before survival, before self-interest, before love. Hissied 'do Timan did not create the war on Amadeen that became a war of three hundred worlds. The old Timan simply pulled the trigger on a gun that was loaded on the plains of the Madah, the mountains of the Irrvedan, the Irnuz Steppe, the streets of Belfast and Sarajevo, and the deserts of the Middle East before either Timans, humans, or Dracs even knew there were stars to touch.

"Does Black October have this yet?" asks Kita.

Reaper nods. "So does the Front, the Mavedah, and all the little sons of bitches." He glances at Davidge. "Raymond Sica ordered the retaliation. Before it could be carried out, Sally Redfeather took him on the dance. Sica’s guards took her down."

Janice reaches out a hand to place it on Reaper’s shoulder, but he shakes his head and continues. "Message from October: Paul Ruche is running October now. He wants to meet with us face to face."

"A setup?" asks Kita.

Reaper rubs his eyes and shrugs. When his hand comes down, his face looks very old. "Hell, I don’t know. The feeling I get is that he wants to know if we’re for real."

"For real?" I ask. "What does that mean: for real?"

"Sincere," answers Davidge. "Perhaps the new leader of Black October wants to know if we’re sincere." He lowers his gaze to the center of the table. "Perhaps not." He looks at Janice. "What about the Green Fire attack on Gitoh?"

"They’ve been looking at the numbers written on the wall and I think they’ve reconsidered."

He nods, puts his hands on the table, and pushes himself up. Once he is standing he says, "Well, that’s something. That’s something." He frowns for a moment and looks up at the screen. Several of the fires have gone out. "Whose hand-portable is that?"

"Fireball. It just got there from training."

"Fireball," Davidge repeats. "Tell Fireball we’ve had enough pictures. Tell it to put down its twenty-nine and get out of there." He removes his headset and places it on the table as he looks back at Reaper. "Arrange a meeting with Ruche. Maybe we can show him we’re for real. See what we can do about getting Ali Enayat’s and Sally’s bodies returned to us."

"Got it."

"For the meeting, I want us all wired for pictures and sound with feeds to all the broadcasting stations who will take them."

Reaper nods. "I’ll take care of it."

Davidge looks down at the center of the table and speaks, it seems, to himself. "Bodies. There is doubt out there; doubt about us. After what we’ve done, after what they’ve paid, after what we’ve paid, there is still doubt." He glances at me and asks, "How many bodies more will it take before we are considered for real?"

It is not a question with an answer. He puts his hands on the edge of the table and pushes himself to his feet. For the first time he looks terribly old to me. He reaches out a hand and places it on my shoulder. "I’m very proud of you, Ro." One by one his gaze picks out all those in the comm center, "I’m proud of all of you, everyone in The Peace."

He turns and walks from the comm center to his quarters, his steps slow and almost feeble, his back bent beneath the weight of his cares. Kita places her hand on mine. "If we’re needed I’ll have my headset with me." She rises and follows Davidge out of the center.

Reaper, Janice, and Roger work with the screens, spreading the word, making arrangements, passing on graphics to the broadcasting stations. A meeting place and time is arranged with Black October and I feel the Aeolus swinging about.

I think of Ali Enayat’s two children, one human and one Drac, neither of them biologically related to him. They must be told. I think of Sally Redfeather in her dress at that terrible bar. Reaper will tell Cudak.

I especially think of that old Drac, Toack, the one who guarded her things, the one who never left its history behind and brought the war with it into the future, the one who kept repeating its mantra: "All my children. All my children." I see Will Davidge doing the same.

It is quiet on the Dorado for the rest of the night. I go to sleep and dream that I am a child in Willis Davidge’s cave. There I learn to love, to be loved, to become love. I am a part of this wonder that is the universe, only to find that it is a trap set for me by Falna. I reach for Uncle Willy’s hand and find death. I awaken screaming and cry myself back to sleep.

Soon after sunrise, in the hills north of Obsidian, Davidge, Kita, and I go to meet with the new leader of Black October, Paul Ruche. From the right front corner, Reaper pilots the power platform because he refuses to let us go without him. He has enough weapons concealed about his person to make it possible to sink him to the bottom of a lake of quicksilver. The Aeolus is in its usual position over the Shorda Sea, our backup authorization team―Yora, Janice, and Cudak―in place. Reaper, Kita, and I carry hand-portables and our cameras are sending, the ship relaying the feeds to the Front, the Mavedah, and to all of the splinter groups.

Hanging onto the cargo braces, we stand silently watching Ruche and his two bodyguards standing in the clearing. At their feet are two litters, a shroud-wrapped body upon each. The ship’s sensors show that Ruche has at least a company of Octoberists hidden in the woods. A trap for us? Perhaps it is only Ruche’s precaution in case the trap is ours.

As we land I look away from the Octoberists and watch Davidge. His expression is strangely calm. Last night I heard he and Kita arguing. He insisted that she remain behind. She insisted that he remain behind. The meeting though is with all of us, the ones who "run things," as Paul Ruche had put it. They at last accepted that they both would go and I hear them making love as though for the last time.