Walter Williams - Conventions of War

“Stop! Pull over! Get into one of the buildings!”

People on the street were staring at the sky. The two-wheeler swerved through stunned, slowing traffic, raced between two parked vehicles, bounced hard over the curb, and weaved between pedestrians. Macnamara pulled to a stop before a pair of bright brass doors. Sula saw the reflection of her own startled face in the polished red marble of the building’s wall.

She slapped up her faceplate. “Take cover!” she shouted to anyone within earshot. “Take covernow!”

The two-wheeler’s gyroscopic stabilizers kept it upright as the two passengers sprang for the doors. They found themselves in a quiet haberdashery aimed at the Lai-own trade. Tall, well-dressed avians stared at them as the intruders barged into the showroom, eyes scanning for a place to hide free of flying glass.

“Take cover!” Sula kept shouting. “Take cover!”

So many bombs had exploded in the city that by now the Lai-own had the reflexes of veterans. Regardless of their fine clothing, they were down behind counters or under tables within seconds. Sula and Macnamara crouched on either side of the doors, their backs to the thick walls. Sula slapped her faceplate closed again.

People came running in from the street, looked wildly for cover, and ran into the store. There was a crash as someone stumbled over the two-wheeler; the two-wheeler remained upright, the pedestrian didn’t. The brilliant light outside had begun to fade.

Sula heard the shock wave coming, a rising rumble felt through the steel, concrete, and marble pressed against her back. She ducked her head between her knees and clasped her hands over the helmet.

The blast blew the brass doors open. The sound was a cosmic shout she could feel as a shiver in her bones and a slap of pressure against her ears, followed then by an absence of pressure that sent vertigo shimmering through her skull. Someone stumbled and fell across the doorway. There was a whirl of dust, and clothing on the racks swayed angrily. Objects tumbled from counters to the ground, the sound buried beneath the booming fury of the atmosphere.

Sula’s ears rang. She blinked up at the room. No glass had broken. There was a strange scent of heat and dust.

She thought it was over until she sensed something else rushing toward her and braced again. This time the shock came up through the floor, the wave moving through her viscera.

The slower moving ground wave, she thought.

The brass doors tried softly to close, but sprang back as they encountered the figure that had sprawled across the doorway. Sula reached for the fallen figure, a male Cree, took him by the arm and helped him crawl out of the doorway and get his back to the wall.

“Stay in cover!” she called. “There might be another one!”

The Cree’s big ears turned toward the sound of her voice. Odd little muscles trembled beneath his deep purple skin. But otherwise he remained in position, back against the wall, his breath coming fast.

Sula reached for her hand comm and turned it to a news channel.

“The Committee for the Salvation of the Praxis,” she heard, “has decreed that the city of Remba was to be destroyed for multiple acts of rebellion against the Peace of the Praxis. A single missile has been fired by the Fleet as it passed close to Zanshaa. No more attacks are contemplated. The population of surrounding areas are urged to return to work and to act normally.”

Remba…Sula’s head whirled. Remba was a smallish city on the outskirts of the greater Zanshaa area. There was no significant resistance to the Shaa there that she knew about. In fact, because she didn’t know if other cities on the planet shared Zanshaa City’s immunity, she had discouraged assassinations and bombings outside of the capital, and told recruits there to confine themselves to intelligence gathering and nonlethal forms of sabotage.

Sula put her hand comm away and rose to her feet. “It’s over,” she told Macnamara. “Let’s get out of here.”

The Cree began unsteadily to rise to his feet. Sula helped him. He turned to her, the big ears pricked forward. Sula felt a strange throbbing in her bones as the Cree gave out a subsonic sonar cry.

“You are she,” the Cree said, his voice intent.

“If you say so,” Sula said.

The Cree leaned closer. “You are the White Ghost,” he said. His voice was a fierce whisper.

Sula felt an eerie thrill run up her spine at the unfathomable words. Her thoughts seemed jumbled and she couldn’t manage a response.

She turned to Macnamara. “Let’s go.”

They brushed dust off the standing two-wheeler, rolled it off the sidewalk, and moved through the stunned and slow-moving traffic. The Cree stood in the doorway without speaking and sent sonar throbs after her.

White Ghost,she thought.

She met with Casimir and Julien that night, in a room off the kitchen of a restaurant in Riverside. With its cheap furniture and plastic tablecloths, it was a place set aside for employees to eat, and it smelled of garlic and rancid cooking oil. Despite the owner’s proven loyalty, Sula swore she’d never eat there again.

“It was a warning,” Julien said. He gave a wolfish smile. “They didn’t dare hit Zanshaa, but they hit a city close enough so that everyone here could see it and feel the fear.”

“They’re trying to terrorize us,” Casimir said. He looked at Sula. “Do we feel terrorized?”

Sula didn’t bother to answer. The Naxids had struck at the city’s population of six hundred thousand, and used a missile without the usual tungsten jacket so there was no fireball-the shock wave had caused some damage, but almost all the casualties were from the radiation attack. There were radiation treatments available, but the guards had been ordered to turn people away from the hospitals.

“They’re going to have a depopulated city they can give to their clients,” Julien said. “That’ll buy a lot of friends.”

“I want the ratfucks who did this,” Sula said.

Casimir laced his long pale fingers together. “We all do,” he said. “But they could all be in orbit for all we know.”

Sula’s eyes shifted to a picture on the wall. Behind decades of dirt and cooking grease was a heavily retouched shot of the High City, the sky too brilliant a green for reality, the buildings too bright.

“The Naxid Fleet wouldn’t do this on its own,” she said. “It was their damn committee that ordered this. Andthey’re where we can get them.”

“All of them?” Casimir raised an eyebrow. He reached for a glass of the cheap sorghum wine the landlord had poured for them. “We can get at a few, I suppose. Our contacts in the High City can provide their location. But they’re all well-guarded, and any escape route is going to be-”

“All of them,” Sula said. Her mind had been caught up in the whirlwind of the idea. “And I’m not talking about knocking them off one by one. Let’s make a clean sweep of them. Get some antimatter and blow them right off their rock.”

Julien was amused. “Where are we going to get antimatter?” he asked. Only the military and the power authorities had antimatter, and in each case it was heavily guarded.

“And how are we going to put together a delivery system?” Casimir asked. “This is outside Sidney’s area of expertise.”

So they discussed other possibilities. Truck bombs, if they could get one close enough. Catapults hurling bags of fertilizer explosive. “We could build a cannon,” Sula said at one point. “We won’t need the carriage or anything, just the barrel. We build it on the roof of a building, under a shed or something so it’s not obvious. Then we bore-sight it on the room where their committee meets, and blow them to bits with one shell.”