Marque and Reprisal

Everyone was watching the sky; he had to do something, start sorting things out.

“Water,” he heard old George say. “Gotta get some water first.”

“I’ll check the tanks,” said the gardener who’d been supporting him. “If you can stand, sir?”

He could stand; he had to stand; he still had people depending on him. “Go on,” he said. “Check the tanks. Thank you.”

Water. Shelter. Food. Protection from whoever had done this. Transportation. Medical care. He prodded his sluggish mind. Decisions to be made. Make them.

By the time the island’s town-based emergency evacuation system arrived, one of the survivors had already died. Gerard struggled to talk to the officials who arrived with the rescue squad. His ears still rang; he could barely stand, and they were asking him why the attack came, as if he knew. As if it were his fault. Why didn’t the fire/rescue service respond? Why were they housed in the office building anyway? Why had they put the reserve fuel storage underneath? Why, why, why?

His implant offered no answers, either. Who had done this? How had they done it? More aircraft arrived, full of law enforcement investigators, some he knew and some he’d never seen before. Someone brought a scorched chair, blown from the office, for him to sit in. Aircraft departed, taking away his injured employees. The afternoon passed; the hill’s shadow stretched across the airfield. Someone looked him over, advised hospitalization; he refused. His mind felt numb, smoke-blurred, but he could not leave, not yet.

Then the parrot-squawk of a voice he knew penetrated the blur. “Get him out of here, you idiots. He’s a target.” The voice came nearer. “Gerry—Gerry look at me. Focus.”

She looked no less dotty than she had looked for the past twenty—thirty—years, her graying hair unruly in the late-afternoon breeze, her print silk dress, her strings of beads and jangling bracelets, but her eyes were bright.

“Gracie,” he mumbled.

“You look horrible,” she said. “Gerry, get up.”

“I don’t know if I—” But he was on his feet, supported again by someone’s shoulder under his arm, following the quick clatter of Gracie’s incongruous high heels across the tarmac. Pain stabbed his side with every step. “I can’t leave,” he said to her back. “Myris—San—the others—”

“They’re dead,” she said over her shoulder. “You’re alive. You need to stay that way. We need you, Gerry.”

A cold chill ran down his spine that had nothing to do with his injuries. “Stavros?”

“Later.” And to his helpers: “Get him in, get that oxygen hooked up.”

He felt himself heaved up into the plane; pain so great he almost passed out turned his whole left side to white heat. He panted in his seat, let his eyes sag shut as he felt the cool flow of oxygen under his nose.

“Breathe,” he heard Gracie say. “And keep breathing, damn it.” He felt the craft vibrate under him, engines starting, the bumping of taxiing for takeoff sending knifelike flashes of pain through his side, his shoulder, and then the lurch as they took off.

“Where?” he asked, that one word exhausting him.

“Someplace safe, I hope,” Gracie said. He heard her sigh, a little grunt as she shifted in her own seat. “If there is such a place. We thought the headquarters bunker level…”

“Not?” he asked.

“Just lie still, Gerry. Nothing to do now but live till we land.”

“Don’t let them…,” he managed. Then some salty fluid filled his mouth; he choked, swallowed, and nearly heaved it up.

“Damn,” Gracie said again, more quietly. He felt the oxygen mask pulled aside, and something soft wiped the corner of his mouth.

“Get the implant,” he said. His mind cleared briefly. Oxygen would do that. His implant, Stavros’ implant. Whoever had done this must not get the master database. “Gracie… take implant. Command database.”

“I know, dear,” she said. Dear? Gracie had called him dear? The same Grace who had once told him, when they were both much younger, that he would be on his deathbed before she would praise him?

“’M hurt,” he said, loathing the weakness and confusion in his voice.

“You are,” Gracie said. “We’ll try to get a doctor to you, once we’re safe. Not a hospital, so don’t exhaust yourself explaining.” She sighed again. “Gerry, Stavros is dead. Headquarters was hit; the bunkers didn’t hold. Someone knew enough about them.” He heard a high-pitched noise, something like metal on metal. “Someone wants to destroy Vatta, Gerry. You have to hang on.”

No doubt in her voice. He could do what she said, until she doubted. He breathed in spite of the pain, in spite of the weakness that crept up from his legs, the dark cloud that tried to cover him.

Questions remained. Who? Why? How?

Gracie Lane Vatta forced herself to ignore the medical team working on Gerard, forced herself to concentrate instead on the attack, on the methods and the meanings. Unma

At corporate headquarters, the attack had been different, but equally devastating. Up from the utility tu

But not explosives applied directly to the bunkers, to the sides, to the floors. It would have taken, at shortest estimate, weeks to bore those holes, place those charges.

Until this, she’d thought the worst threats to Vatta were the growing menace of pirates on the tradeways and possibly an assassination attempt against Gerard’s daughter Ky in retaliation for her actions in the Sabine conflict. She had just completed a report on piracy, which she’d pla

The aircraft they were in, escorted by Slotter Key military aircraft that did not make her feel as safe as she would wish, flew not to the capital but to her private residence near Corleigh Town. She had balanced the greater protection the government already provided to the capital with the vulnerability of several hours over open water… with the ease of tracking aircraft from space… with Gerard’s condition.

Who had done this? Why? And why do it this way, an open declaration of war not only against Vatta, but also against Slotter Key? What was the message here? Would there be more attacks, and when, and where?

Her implant, customized for her work, laid out for her the information so far obtained, in the usual matrix. What resources were implied by the choice of weapons, the choice of launch site. What conditions were necessary for the attack to succeed, what were the pinch points in the execution where it might have been frustrated. Which known enemies of Vatta or Slotter Key had such resources.

Working through the usual routine of analysis held off, for the time being, the shock she knew was hovering just overhead. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. These things didn’t happen in real life, to ordinary people. She knew better. She had seen war before; she knew its terrible thirst for death, for the destruction of beauty.