F. Wilson - An Enemy of the State

As soon as it was evident that there would be no resistance, the Merry Men divided up into prearranged work groups. Some began hauling the unconscious crewmen out of Ships One and Three, dragging them to Ship Two and stretching them out on the deck there. Others carried sacks of small leaflets from the “rock” to the cargo holds of the two operable ships. Still others went to the control areas and began blasting the monitoring equipment. LaNague had assigned Broohnin to the last group, realizing that the man must be allowed to destroy something or else he would go berserk. One of the Merry Men passed, carrying a blaster rifle. LaNague recognized Broohnin's gait and followed him into Ship Three.

Broohnin went to the main communications console and waved into the receiver. Then he lifted his blaster and melted the panel with a tight proton beam. The last thing seen by the communications hand on the other end of that monitor was an oddly dressed man raising a blaster toward his face. The alarm would go out immediately and flitterfuls of Imperial Guardsmen would be mobilized and sent careening in their direction. Although no expression could be read through the holomask, LaNague could see that Broohnin was thoroughly enjoying himself as he stalked the length of the ship destroying the monitor eyes. LaNague was content to let him vent his fury as he wished until one of the crewmen rolled over at Broohnin's feet and started to rise to his hands and knees.

“Don't!” LaNague shouted as he saw Broohnin lower the blaster muzzle toward the man's head. He leaped over and pushed his arm aside.

No words passed between the two men as they stood locked in position over the wavering form of the crewman. Broohnin could not see the face of the man who had interfered with him, but there could be no doubt in his mind as to who it was. Further conflict was made moot by the crewman's abrupt collapse into unconsciousness again. LaNague did not release Broohnin's wrist until the inert form had been dragged from the ship.

“If I ever see anything like that again,” he said, “you'll spend the rest of the revolution locked in a back room of the warehouse. I will not tolerate murder!”

Broohnin's voice trembled with rage as he replied in kind. “If you ever touch me again, I'll kill you!”

Peter LaNague did what he then considered the bravest act of his life. He turned his back on Broohnin and walked away.

After all the unconscious crewmen had been stretched out in Ship Two, the hatches were closed and locked, but not before a steel-tipped longbow arrow, with “Greetings from Robin Hood” emblazoned on the shaft, had been driven into the cushion on the pilot's seat. The Merry Men then hurriedly boarded the two functional transports and took to the air. After entering a preprogrammed flight code into the control console, the new pilot of each ship sat back and watched the instruments.

The two Treasury Transports took separate courses, one to the northeast, another to the southeast. The flight routes, which had been carefully programmed meter by meter the previous week, would keep the ships moving as low and as fast as possible, each taking a divergent path to Primus. They could be traced and located, but not with any great ease or accuracy. And no one would be expecting them to head for Primus, the very seat of the planet's major police and militia garrisons.

“All right,” LaNague said, now that Ship One was underway, “let's get to work.”

Most of the men had turned their holosuits off by now; all leaped to the task of tearing open the crates of orange currency slips and dumping the contents onto the floor of the cargo hold. The flattened, empty crates were passed to a man at the boarding hatch who threw them out toward the darkened grasslands not far below. To the north on Ship Three, Broohnin, Kanya, and Josef were directing a similar task.

When all the currency had been dumped into a huge pile in the center of the hold, the men stood back and surveyed the mass of wealth.

“How much do you think?” someone said in an awed voice to anyone who was listening.

“About thirty million marks,” LaNague replied. “And about the same amount in the other ship.” He bent and lifted one of the sacks that had been loaded earlier. “Time to add the calling cards.”

The men each grabbed a sack and emptied the thousands of tiny white slips of paper within onto the pile of marks, creating a mound of orange cake with white icing. Then they began kicking at the mount and throwing handfuls of it into the air until currency and calling cards were evenly mixed.

LaNague looked at the time. “Sayers ought to have his remote crew just about ready to move out now.” The first dump was designated for the neighborhood outside the vid studio. He hoped Sayers had been able to stall long enough.

Eternities passed before the ship began to rise and the control panel buzzed warning that the flight was coming to its end. They were at Primus City limits, and the pilot took manual control.

“Open the loading hatch,” LaNague said.

Slowly, the rear wall of the cargo bay began to rise. When the opening was a meter high, LaNague called a stop and it held that aperture. A cool wind began to whirl through the hold as the men awaited word from the pilot.

Then it came:

“First target below!”

Reluctantly at first, and then with mounting enthusiasm, they began kicking piles of mark notes mixed with their own private calling cards out the opening.

It began to rain orange and white.

HIS FIRST THOUGHT was that he had finally cracked…the boredom had finally worn away his sanity until he was now beginning to hallucinate.

Well, why not? Vincen Stafford thought uneasily. After all, here I am in the dead of night, standing in the middle of my vegetable patch .

The little garden had become an important part of Stafford's life lately. He had been getting fewer and fewer assignments on the grain runs, and had actually been bumped off the last one. Two small orders had been consolidated into one and he had been left hanging due to lack of seniority. The runs seemed to be coming fewer and farther between…hard to believe, but that was the way it was.

At least he had the house. After navigating six consecutive runs, he had applied to a bank for a mortgage and had been approved. The single-level cottage on a synthestone slab behind him was the result. Not much, but it was a place to start, and it was home.

Then the runs had slowed up. Good thing his wife had that part-time night job, or things really would have been tight. He hadn't wanted Salli to take it at first, but she'd said she needed something to do while he was shuttling between the stars. She didn't want to sit home alone. But look who was staying home alone now! Very alone, since he had yet to make any fast friends in the neighborhood. That was why the garden had become so important. The loneliness and the boredom of waiting for an assignment had driven him to try his hand at growing a few vegetables, especially with produce prices being what they were. He had planted a few legumes and tubers last week and they had just started to sprout.

So here he was, out in the dark, standing over his newborn vegetable plants like an overprotective parent. But the garden gave him peace, eased that empty gnawing feeling that followed him around like a shadow. It sounded crazy, so he kept it to himself. Just as he would have to keep this hallucination to himself…he could swear it was raining mark notes.

He turned around. By the light pouring from the rear windows of his house he could see that there was money all over the back yard. He bent over to see if it just might be real…if it could be touched. It could. It was real-old bills, new bills, ones, fives, ten-mark notes were spilling from the sky. And something else.