Martinez hesitated. “The captain and Lieutenant Prasad…ended…their relationship yesterday. But if he was going to kill anyone over it, I don’t know why it would be Thuc.”
Maybe Thuc was handy,he thought.
Michi considered this a moment. “Thank you, Captain,” she said finally. “I appreciate your informing me.”
There was a clear tone of dismissal in her words, and Martinez wanted to protest. He wanted Michi to ask him to stay so they could work out some kind of theory about what had just happened and why, and then decide on a course of action. But Michi left him no choice but to stand, brace, and make his way out.
Martinez had to pass Fletcher’s quarters on his way to his own. The captain’s door was closed. As he walked past, he strained his senses to detect anything that might be happening inside.
Like what?he thought.A burst of maniacal laughter? A pool of blood creeping from under the door?
There was nothing.
He entered his own office and left the door open in the event that someone might want to talk to him.
No one did.
NINE
The fourth edition ofResistance flew into the world on wings of electrons, carrying with it the announcement that Laurajean and his two colleagues had been killed as a result of the sentence of a tribunal of the secret government. Sula identified Laurajean’s two friends as well, having gotten the names from the death certificates filed electronically in the Records Office.
The tribunal has passed other sentences, and execution is now pending,Sula wrote.
That should put a scare into them.
The previous three editions had been sent out with the forged security heading claiming they’d originated at the broadcast node of the Naxid-occupied Hotel Spartex. Sula decided that the Spartex had probably suffered as much as it was likely to from the Naxid security services, so she looked through some of Rashtag’s mail, found the code for the broadcast node at the Fleet Commandery, and used that instead.
Now the Naxid security services would have to investigate the Naxid Fleet. The Fleet, she thought, was just going tolove that.
Sula munched a pastry filled with sweet red bean paste as she sent out the usual fifty thousand copies ofResistance, then licked her fingers, closed her connection to the Records Office computer, and turned to where Spence and Macnamara waited, playing a puzzle that Spence had just bought from a street vendor. It was an intricate tangle of wire, with beads that moved from one intersection to the next, and could sometimes jump from one connection to another.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the puzzle, Sula looked at it with her chin propped on her fists. “What’s the point of it, exactly?” she said.
Spence gave a puzzled frown. “I’m not sure. When the vendor demonstrated the thing, it all seemed pretty clear. But now…”
Sula moved a bead along the wire to the next intersection, but it failed to move any farther. She moved it in the other direction, and with a sudden clang the entire puzzle fell apart into a jangling snarl of wires and beads.
She drew back her finger and looked at the others. “Was thatsupposed to happen?” she asked.
Spence blinked. “I don’t think so.”
Sula stood up. “Maybe we should try something a little less challenging.”
Spence looked up at her. “Yes?”
“Win the war.”
“Right.” Spence rose reluctantly to her feet.
“And in the meantime we need to deliver some cocoa.”
It was Macnamara who rented the truck this time, after which the three drove to one of the warehouses where Sula was keeping her cocoa, coffee, and tobacco, all in boxes labeled to discourage theft and markedUSED MACHINE PARTS, FOR RECYCLING .
“We can’t keep doing the fighting ourselves,” Sula said as she drove alongside one of the slow, greenish canals that cut the Lower Town near the acropolis. “We need an army. And the problem is, we haven’t got one.”
The plan that Sula and Martinez had originally developed involved raising an armed force to hold Zanshaa City against the Naxids, confident that while the enemy would murder any other population without compunction, they would never dare destroy the capital and all the legitimacy that it symbolized. But the government had decided against that part of the plan, and instead settled for training Sula and Eshruq’s action teams, most of whom were now ash drifting along the streets of the Lower Town.
The original plan would have worked much better, Sula thought.
“We can try recruiting,” Macnamara said. “Ardelion and I can each can put together another cell.”
Cells consisted of three people, like Sula’s action team. Each cell leader would know only the members of his own cell and a single member of the cell above, the better to preserve security. Everyone would be known by code names only, to reduce the chances for betrayal. Contact between cells would be through cutouts and letter drops, to prevent anyone from listening to electronic communication.
“Right,” Sula said, “we can recruit. And I can start by training PJ.”
Macnamara gave a snort of laughter. Sula shook her head. “No, it’s too slow. By the time we had the first lot trained, and they each trained a few others, and so on until we had an entire network, we’d all have gray hair and the Naxids will have—Oh, damn.”
They came to a halt behind a truck offloading produce from a canal boat. Sula craned her neck, but she couldn’t see whether there was enough clearance between the produce truck on one side and a Lai-own clothing emporium on the other.
“Stick your head out,” Sula told Macnamara. “See if we’ve got room here.”
Macnamara opened the window, and the rotting-flesh stench of the Daimong laborers floated into the vehicle along with the scent of green vegetables and the iodine smell of the canal. At the taste of the air, a shudder of memory trembled up Sula’s spine. “The hell with it,” she decided.
She shifted the truck to all-wheel-steering and crabbed into the gap. A metal rack of Lai-own clothing was run against a brick wall and slightly buckled, and Macnamara gave a wince as he drew in his head and closed the window to the sudden yelps of the Lai-own shopkeeper. Sula accelerated and kept on going.
“May need a little more practice in the driving department, boss,” Macnamara said.
“Too slow,” Sula said. “We can’t train them in time. They’ve got to train themselves.”
There was a moment, and then Spence nodded. “Resistance,” she said.
“Exactly.”
They delivered the cocoa to Seven Pages, and as the chef counted out the money, she asked, “You heard they shot more hostages?”
“Yes?” Sula asked.
“Thirty. And they were all relatives of the people who were shot yesterday.”
“Ten hostages shot for each Terran,” Sula said. “And nearly five hundred for a Naxid.” Her mind had already outlined another editorial on the subject forResistance.
The chef gave a sour nod. “Exactly. I’d say that’s a good advertisement for how things are going to be.”
“Do we get a free dessert?” Spence asked.
“Not this early, you don’t. Be off, I’ve got work to do.”
The door to the cargo compartment hummed shut on electric motors. Macnamara made certain the cargo door was locked and joined Sula and Spence in the cab.
“Lots of cocoa left,” he told Sula. “What’s it for?”
“Samples,” Sula said. “We’ll be spending the day visiting other restaurants. Some in the High City.”
A good place to gather information, she thought. And they’d contact coffee shops and tobacco clubs as well.
Spence, tucked in the cab between Sula and Macnamara, turned to Sula. “Lucy,” she said, “are you still ‘Lucy’ when we’re on these deliveries? If we use that name in front of people we don’t know, that’s a clue to your cover identity. Gavin and I can fall back on our code names and go by Starling and Ardelion, butyour code name is four-
