instructions had been transmitted over the inter-city communications networks to every village on the planet.
The orders were viewed with incredulity by many, but there was no mistaking Ian Mallory’s coded signature, and they knew that he would die long before he revealed it to Belisle’s minions. While there were a few who refused to believe it, thinking either it was a trick or that the Council simply did not know any more what it was doing, the vast majority of Mallorys did as they had been instructed.
It was fortunate that the message had been sent late in the evening, for it gave the Mallorys the cover of darkness to carry out their instructions. Evacuation plans were on hand for every township, and in the darkness the Mallorys began their exodus, taking with them only a prescribed bundle of things essential for survival – a few tools, a good knife, some food – to avoid arousing too much suspicion from the periodic Territorial Army patrols. Since most of the townships were ringed by forests that the villagers had known since childhood, finding their way to the designated rendezvous points was not a problem. Moving in silence, carrying the very young and the old or infirm who could not walk or keep up, the Mallorys disappeared by the thousands from their homes.
By first light, when the horns blared at the mines signaling the start of another twelve-hour shift, only the Ranier shift supervisors had appeared, wondering what had happened to all their workers. In the meantime, the miners who were streaming from the mines headed quickly toward their ramshackle homes… and then vanished.
Thirty-Five
“What the devil do you mean, ‘No one’s showed up to work?’” Belisle shouted into the comms terminal.
The man at the other end shrank back. “Just what I said, Mr. President,” he stammered. “There was no one at the gates except the supervisors, and the miners working the night shift practically ran home. We tried to find them, even sent in TA patrols, but there wasn’t anyone there. Anywhere. The whole township’s empty.”
“That’s impossible! People can’t just vanish into thin air! Where did they go? Surely you idiots can find a few thousand people wandering about!” He stabbed at a button on the comm link, and the man’s image disappeared.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Mr. President,” Wittmann, the mayor, said quietly behind him, as if afraid he would be beaten for bringing more bad news.
“How can it?” Belisle snapped angrily, his mind unconsciously figuring the monetary losses for every hour that even a single mine lay idle.
“I just got a report from the chief at Promontory Mine,” Wittmann said uneasily. “He reports the same thing. The Mallorys are all gone. They just vanished into thin air. Food still on the tables, fires burned cold in the kitchens with pots still hanging over them. That sort of thing.”
Belisle just stared at him.
He turned to Thorella, who sat casually in one of the office’s chaise lounges, a look of contemplation on his face. “They’ve finally gone and done it,” Belisle said, spittle flying from his mouth. “They’re openly rebelling. What are you going to do about it, colonel?”
“Well,” he said casually, scrutinizing the nails of one hand, “there’s not much we can do with your miners until they’ve been found.” He smiled in spite of himself. The planning it must have taken to allow hundreds of thousands of people to disappear overnight under the nose of the Territorial Army was indeed impressive, even to Thorella. Hunting them down would be a real challenge, he suspected, which was something he always enjoyed. “But we can certainly inquire among your friends in the basement about the matter, as I’m sure they have something to do with it.”
“That’s impossible,” Belisle spat. “The cell they’re in is impossible to breach. They couldn’t get out a whisper.”
Thorella frowned. This man could sometimes be so ignorant. “You underestimate your opponents, my friend. I’m sure your staff has its share of sympathizers. I reviewed some of the recordings of the goings on in the cell not too long ago, and discovered that certain portions had been… edited. And whoever did that could just as easily get a message out to warn the Mallorys.” His frown grew deeper. “The question is, warn them of what?”
“Retaliation by the Army and police, of course,” Belisle said impatiently, thinking Thorella an imbecile for not coming to that conclusion right away, and also wondering who on his staff could possibly have betrayed him. It was unthinkable. “And rightly they should be afraid. There will be reprisals.”
“But would that be cause for evacuating the whole Mallory population?” Thorella thought aloud. “And if they were openly rebelling, wouldn’t they have tried to destroy the mines? Why did the miners just disappear?” He was not concerned about Belisle’s threatened reprisals. That was a job for which the Territorial Army was well suited, and did not concern him or his Marines. But was there some other threat, of which he and the Raniers were unaware?
There was one way to find out. “I think, Mr. President,” he said, “that we need to ask your Mallory friends some questions.” He turned to the guard who stood nearby, a Territorial Army sergeant. “Have Ian Mallory and Enya Terragion brought up here immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied, saluting before he left the office to carry out his mission. Thorella had no way of knowing that the man was a Mallory sympathizer.
“Sir,” Thorella’s adjutant called from where he had installed himself in one of the anterooms, “Major Simpson’s on the line. He has an emergency – the recon of the crater.”
Thorella and Belisle had been counting on the explosive device set in the holding pen to be a deterrent to any unwanted actions by Reza or the others. It was a sophisticated device, and might even have worked, had Sergeant “Pippi” Hermutz not disabled it earlier, leaving the arming light glowing threateningly to reassure anyone who took an interest that the device was still viable. He was also responsible for destroying the recordings of their vote to evacuate the Mallorys, as well as sabotaging the surveillance gear for the rest of the short time it would matter to anyone.
“Wait here,” he told the other guards as he keyed open the outer lock to the cell. “I’ll bring them out.”
He went inside, waiting for the outer door to close before he opened the inner one. He immediately picked out Ian and Enya, sitting close to Reza in the group of thirty or so, all of whom got to their feet as he entered. Until he had carried out the message Ian had drafted, none of the others had realized he was one of them, even though his heritage was Ranier. He was simply one of a growing number of people who had grown tired of Belisle’s kind of leadership and oppression of others. He noted the tension in their faces. They wanted to know if their families were safe.
“Everything seems to have gone according to plan,” he whispered to Ian. “I don’t know about the rest, but at least Promontory and Sheila townships were evacuated all right. And Charlotte” – a woman he only knew by her code name – “told me that the volunteers you asked for are in place and with the equipment you said to bring.” Charlotte had not bothered to tell him that it had been inordinately difficult to send only seven hundred to the plain: nearly every man and most of the women who heard of the chance to stand and fight had wanted to go.
“Thank you for your help, Pippi,” Ian breathed. “We all owe you a debt we probably will never be able to repay.”
