Ghost War

1

Wise men think twice before they act once.

Leary’s Eyrie

Joppa, Helen

Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

13 November 3132

I once heard someone complain that the two most abundant things in the universe were hydrogen and stupidity, but she declined to say which led the way. I figure that in the random distribution of things throughout the universe, hydrogen probably has the edge, but in Leary’s Eyrie stupidity was being stockpiled at an alarming rate. This wasn’t unusual or even rare, but the pressure of it seemed to dull even smart folks and fray nerves.

I’d come to the Eyrie hoping for a Tri-Vid beer ad. Not for a specific advert, mind you, but the sort of situation they depict: warm night, hot woman, cold beer, sweat—on the beer bottle and otherwise. I wanted the full-on fantasy that had inspired generations of men to swill the liquid that gave them the bellies they sucked in when such a woman appeared in their midst. I knew it was a fantasy, but that was all we had out here in the hinterland of Helen.

Of course, I wasn’t looking much like a fantasy. Or an ad, unless it was one of those late-night ads for a product that is guaranteed to make you feel younger, look younger and turbo-charge the parts you’d need working if the beer-ad fantasy came through. The crew and I had just come off the line after eighteen hours straight, and I’d not been near a bed for about double that time and a razor triple it. I did have a clean shirt on, but the jeans and work boots could have starred in their own ads for miracle cleaning products.

Or public service spots about toxic waste and hazmat dumping.

We’d been up in the forest, harvesting old growth, and having to pour on the diesel to clear a swath before noon. The local courts had issued a restraining order pending the review of some endangered species protection action filed by the People and Divergent Species Union. PADSU was the political arm of the militant Gaia Guerrilla Front, which viewed the use of any tool against the earth or anything on it as an assault that needed avenging. While they preached a sort of Luddite, return-to-nature-and-embrace-peace philosophy, they were pretty good at wielding high explosives and other weapons in attacking the forestry and mining industries on Helen.

Rusty, over by the pool table, sucked beer from a bottle. “What do you mean you don’t believe PADSU and the GGF are behind the collapse of the communications grid? Good Lord, Pep, it’s obvious. They hate technology, and that was huge technology. It goes down, they crawl out of the woodwork and begin really going to town on us. One and one is two.”

Pep, who earned her nickname by being small and quick, pointed her pool cue at him as if it were a rapier. “Problem is, you ain’t got one to add to one. The grid goes down, The Republic gets divided into its various worlds. No news flows, so The Republic can’t react. Folks get fearful, opportunists take over and groups like the GGF pop up. PADSU’s been around forever, always protesting and things, but peacefully. Now that the Knights of The Republic can’t figure out where to tromp with big BattleMech feet, the GGF forms up and starts getting nasty.”

“Not like the old days. They’d never have done that in the old days.” Keira-san glanced over from the table where he sat watching a Tri-Vid program. It was a rerun of some ’Mech battle on Solaris. Looked like turn-of-the-century stuff to me, with some kid who was supposed to be the next Kai Allard-Liao—which every fighter there wanted to be, of course, and every fighter there got billed as until the next Kai-wa

Pep brought her cue around in a slash that passed bare centimeters over Keira-san’s brush-cut scalp. “What do you know of the old days? Ain’t a one of us here wasn’t born in The Republic era. Devlin Stone helped put down the Word of Blake attacks, then disarmed folks and established peace. In the old days, as you put it, the local lordlings would have been out in their own personal BattleMechs, shooting up the peasants, then claiming they were putting down a rebellion. Check any history of the time before and after Stone, and you’ll see how good The Republic Peace has been for everyone. And will continue to be once ComStar gets planets talking to each other again.”

Keira-san slumped down in his chair and focused his attention on a fight he’d seen dozens of times before. The biggest tragedy of his life had been the lack of new Solaris fights since the grid’s collapse. The finer points of how a lack of communication between planets was creating pressures that were allowing society to melt down were lost on him.

That wasn’t really his fault, though, since Keira-san had been born on Helen and raised here as a part of a minority community from the Combine. He’d never played well with others, whereas elsewhere on Helen, old and new communities had really banded together under the leadership of The Republic. All the old tensions that used to pit the successor states one against the other had vanished. Everyone was living happily ever after.

The Republic had used a carrot-and-stick approach to make that union work. People who worked to bring divergent communities together were rewarded with land grants and community investments. People who worked against that sort of thing were punished, either through neglect or being forcibly relocated to other worlds within The Republic, and never got the incentives that made others happy to move. Those who liked The Republic’s way of doing things found it to be “progressive” and “inspiring,” whereas the victims found it to be “repressive” and “conspiratorial.” Regardless, it worked.

Then two things happened. Nearly three years ago Devlin Stone stepped down as Exarch of The Republic. This shook the confidence of the people who had grown up equating peace and prosperity with his rule. While Damien Redburn, his hand-picked successor as Exarch, had been doing a good job and confidence had begun to rise, the collapse of the Hyperpulse Generator grid really knifed The Republic in the gut.

“I’m telling you, it was PADSU who did it!” Rusty punctuated his remark by plunking his empty bottle on the bar. “They didn’t want anyone seeing what was going on here, so no one could react to it. It makes perfect sense.”

Hector sent the nine ball crashing into the corner pocket. “Game, Pep, you owe me twenty Rep credits.”

“Double or nothing.”

Hector gave her a broad smile. “Going for forty stones? You’re on. Brave girl.”

Boris, who in physical bulk makes up for what he lacks in wit, raised a hand large enough to palm a rack of balls. “I had next game.”

“You have next set. Rack ’em, Pep.” Hector glanced at Rusty. “The filings in your lubricant there, Rusty, is that PADSU is local. You’ve heard the rumors coming in from JumpShip traffic. The grid is down everywhere.”

Rusty sniffed. “Not everywhere.”

“Yeah, okay, so your mama did send you birthday greetings, but the last leg was made on a JumpShip coming in from Towne.” Hector shook his head, then looked up at me with dark brown eyes. “Sam, explain it to him, will you?”

“Uh huh, like I understand it.” I sipped more beer, and abruptly decided that talking was better than swilling that crap. “Okay, here’s the deal the way I heard it. Someone coordinated a lot of strikes on a lot of worlds, taking out the HPGs. No one talks to anyone. No one knows who is doing what to whom, or who did the attack. It wasn’t PADSU’s doing, but Rusty could be half right.”