Shavash's close friend Oshin had announced that the payments on this loan's
interest would possibly be postponed; this announcement dropped the bonds'
prices by forty percent. Oshin was fired in a week, the bonds' value grew
back to the same level and Terence Bemish made sixteen millions. In a week,
Bemish hired Oshin as a manager of one of his funds.
"These actions resemble insider trading too much; they would cause
legal proceedings to happen anywhere else in the world," Ashinik claimed.
"Clearly, Terence Bemish has bought securities knowing that their value
would increase sharply. Persecution of these criminal activities doesn't
threaten the market. On the opposite, it would guarantee equal opportunity
for everyone. As for Assalah Company," Ashinik explained, "it hasn't only
provided ships with landing opportunities; it also has allowed the ship
owners to avoid paying import tariffs. A conveyor belt of export-import
companies was created at the spaceport with every company's life time being
two months. Accordingly to Weian regulations, a company should issue tax
reports every two months and, if it exists less than that, it just doesn't
pay any taxes. Of course, the local officials knew everything about it but
they were browbeaten or bought off. The companies were used for two
purposes. Mostly a successor company would fulfill its predecessor's
obligations in full but sometimes, if Bemish or Shavash needed to punish
somebody, the successor would not pay for the goods or, inversely, wouldn't
deliver prepaid merchandise. It was not difficult since most freight didn't
have accompanying documentation issued. That's why Assalah imports were
thirty percent cheaper than imports via any other spaceport."
"Does it mean," a journalist inquired, "that having gained power you
will collect all the tariffs in full?"
"No," the clever Havishem graduate answered, "quite the opposite, we
will lower tariffs. We are against protectionism and limiting foreign trade.
But I would like to stress that Yanik's government charged some companies
and didn't charge the others. This is not protectionism of domestic
industry. They favor some importers at the price paid by the others and this
is even worse than protectionism."
The journalist inquired how conscientiously Assalah paid its taxes and
Ashinik said that the year before last, Bemish had paid the taxes with the
bonds of bankrupted Weian National Bank. The trick was that Bemish had
bought the securities on Exchange at 7% of their face value while the state
budget accepted them at 100% of their face value.
The last year they started experimenting issuing tax promissory notes
on Weia. These promissory notes were securities based a company's debts to
the treasury. Everybody knew that Bemish wouldn't pay anything on these
promissory notes and they cost 3-4% of their face value. Bemish bought them
at this price via dummy fronts and he didn't have to pay the taxes this year
anymore. Bemish also acquired a lot of promissory notes of the companies
that he had some designs for and the state helped him to exchange the notes
into the stocks of these companies.
The Assalah securities didn't take this interview well - their price
plummeted by thirty points.
Bemish ordered his employees to compile and send to Earth a small
ethnographic report about the activities of Following the Way, so that the
TV audience could clearly understand that the political goals of the sect
were not limited to the removal of protectionism and insider trading in
stock market.
The next day, Ashinik made an official announcement that nuclear
weapons were stored in Assalah spaceport including Cassiopeia nuclear
missiles equipped with S-field that had been delivered there accordingly to
a secret treaty between the Empire and the Federation governments. The
proliferation of these missiles had been banned accordingly to the
S-armament non-proliferation treaty signed by the UN countries.
Bemish called this statement a horrible lie.
Ashinik demanded the spaceport to be inspected by the people.
Bemish announced that he would not allow a people's inspection because
a Weian peasant would not see any difference between a nuclear missile and a
landing stabilizer support and he, Bemish, didn't want somebody to throw an
explosive device in a landing chute during such an "inspection." All this
"people's inspection" was demagoguery anyway, why didn't experts just come
in and inspect whatever they want to?
Ashinik claimed that Earth experts would be bought by Bemish and the
Federation counter-intelligence.
Bemish announced that he didn't understand what a people's inspection
was.
Ashinik promised to explain to Bemish what a people's inspection was.
Two days later, the spaceport security service informed Bemish that a
crowd was moving towards the spaceport. Almost synchronously, two dozen
zealots, that had infiltrated the lounge before, descended to the storage
area to reclaim their luggage containing rocket launchers and other assorted
killing utensils.
The luggage had been X-rayed earlier and the zealots were arrested in
flagrant delicti. Bemish announced that it was an organized terrorist
activity and, if the people's inspection was going to happen along the same
lines, he wouldn't allow it. The zealots were taken to the capital and all
the confessions were beaten out of them quite quickly.
Bemish issued to order to guard the whole spaceport's perimeter closely
and to allow only ticket holders inside the port due to the emergency
situation. The next day, he showed to the journalists two bombs extracted
from an unknown man's luggage; the man arrived at the spaceport with a
ticket to the planet of Gera and left the spaceport in an unknown direction.
Ashinik claimed that Bemish had engineered the whole thing himself just
as he had with the zealots and rocket launchers. As for their "confession"
to the Weian police, Ashinik noted that Mr. Shavash could make an elephant
confess that it was a mouse in disguise. Ashinik claimed that the protests
were perfectly peaceful.
A huge crowd of zealots blocked the spaceport. The journalists from all
over the Galaxy flew to Assalah in search of prize news.
New people arrived at the roadblocks every day. They introduced
themselves to the journalists as "simple peasants that didn't like their
motherland being traded away for a jar of sour cream." Bemish, on the other
hand, claimed that they were not peasants but staunch zealots.
The traffic on the highway connecting Assalah to the capital was
completely paralyzed. Two monorails, Assalah - Sky City and Assalah -
I-Chakhar, were used for cargo transport. The blocked-off area in the
vicinity of the monorails was controlled by the satellites launched
specifically for this purpose; the satellites called alarm three times a day
and the trains had to be stopped; the cargo transportation schedule went to
hell.
Trucks traveled in groups accompanied by sharpshooters. Bemish
announced that the spaceport's administration would not take any
responsibility for the people's safety if they used passenger cars to get to
the capital. The car rental agencies went hysterical. The helicopter drivers
lived in the state of bliss. Three hundred taxi drivers that had been
temporarily hired by the spaceport security were ready to tear the zealots
apart.
The media approach shocked Bemish somewhat. They would interview an
ardent zealot - a professional agitator who had been bumming around fairs
since the age of five and who was lost in his own lies to such an extant
that he no longer knew whether or not Earthmen were demons. They would call
him a "Weian peasant who came to Assalah to fight for the freedom of the
elections and his country's freedom." On the other hand, a Weian taxi driver
whose car had been burned out two days ago by a zealot crowd was called "a
secret agent of security service bought by Bemish."
The spaceport sustained huge losses due to cargo being delayed and
frightened passengers hurriedly picking other travel routes. Twenty thousand
tons of gourmet Iniss peaches turned into peach chowder after spending five
hours in crazy summer heat in a monorail train with a disabled cooling
system. Ashinik called a bomb found on the monorail "a spaceport special
services' instigation."
Continuous magnetrone inspection of cargo damaged a Crudge-14A with
superconductive circuits traveling to the Iniss branch of Mountain TDL and
the corporation raised a horrible fuss about it.
The security service employees had all of their vacations cancelled.
They worked fourteen hours a day without holidays and slept right there,
crowding in the spaceport hotel rooms. Three hundred enraged taxi drivers
and long distance truck drivers joined the security service. Three hundred
highly professional colleagues of Giles' arrived quietly at the spaceport
and the journalists learned about their incognito arrival five minutes after
the space liner had landed.
Assalah stocks dropped five points a day on the average. Assalah
high-margin bonds were being sold twenty cents a dinar by the end of this
week.
However, Bemish's personal finances were in much better state than that
of the company. Bemish had realized that the zealots were sure to win before
the election's results were declared invalid and he ordered to sell quickly
practically everything that they traded with on Weian Exchange. Going short
brought at least forty million dinars to Weian Special and Second Investment
Fund but it was the first time in Terence Bemish's life when he was not
particularly happy to short.
Bemish requested governmental assistance with the protesters. The
government dallied and wavered and finally told him that while it was
sympathetic towards the Assalah issues but it was not willing to utilize
Weian police against Weian peasants to protect a foreign company that,
additionally, employed a right of "tax and trial" inside its territory.
Confidentially the government hinted that it was afraid to be kicked out of
power if tried to do anything along these lines.
Ronald Trevis arrived at Assalah on the third day. Three hours after
his arrival, a twenty person Ajax landed in the spaceport and suntanned
Kissur climbed out of it. Kissur hurried to Bemish's office where a
management meeting was taking place and he started shouting right at the
doorstep.
"What's this mess? Why don't you just shoot this muck? What are all
these rubber sticks doing here instead of rocket launchers?"
"If I shoot all this muck," Bemish said, "I will do what Ashinik dreams
about. It will bury the relationship between Weia and the Federation.
Ashinik will start screaming that foreigners at his planet shoot at
absolutely peaceful protestors. He will be somewhat correct about that. The
foreigners should not have a right to make such decisions."
"Why the hell did you ask for the right of "trial and taxes?"
"It was my mistake."
"I swear by the god's balls!" Kissur cursed. "Why don't you ask the
police minister for assistance?"
"I've asked him already. The government doesn't want to shoot its own
citizens for a foreign company's profit. If it does it, it will have to
shoot its own citizens to save its own ass tomorrow. Also, everybody knows
that an official, who gives such an order, will find a bomb in his first
Sunday soup even though Ashinik will assure that the bomb was planted by
provocateurs."
"All right," Kissur said and he slammed the door and took off.
Kissur returned in six hours, after dark. Eight skyers with large load
capacity landed at the spacefield and delivered about five hundred fighters
with blackened teeth wearing soft ox leather Alom boots. The fighters were
armed right up to their blackened teeth.
Two beetle-shaped amphibian tanks dropped out of the skyers' bellies;
the tanks were equipped with unusually short guns and they stuck upwards at
the rear resembling beetle's forewings folded at its back. The tanks were
covered with a non-metallic dully gleaming skin. Astonished, Giles whispered
into Bemish's ear that these were the latest generation BCC-29 tanks
designed to be dropped off a plane with a parachute onto any surface no less
than six minutes after a thermonuclear explosion.
Presenting his blackened teeth to flashing cameras, Kissur explained
that he came here to help his friend Bemish out and that his people couldn't
be taken for foreigners by any stretch of imagination and that only his
friend Bemish's squeals stopped him from burning this zealot muck one meter
deep into the ground.
He said that Bemish was a pansy, that the government was a flock of
horny dumb goats and that Ashinik was a dog that he, Kissur, would hang
right at that loading crane if they found one more bomb in the spaceport.
Kissur's people took over almost all spaceport security. A half of all
regular spaceport security employees went to sleep. Frankly, they were
mostly peaceful people who had never seen anything more dangerous than a
drug trafficker trying to hide hundred grams of barnithole or good old LSD
in his stomach; their familiarity with electric shockers was only
theoretical.
The passengers arriving at the spaceport glanced with frightened
admiration at the huge, almost two meter tall, wild looking men who
seemingly napped at the terminals having folded their hands on stubby
assault rifles. The ladies felt quite a specific curiosity towards these
lads, comparing them with their civilized husbands who contemplated morning
meetings even in bed.
The journalists waited breathlessly. It seemed absolutely certain that
any careless action of the crowd besieging the spaceport would lead to the
crowd's bloody demise.
It was five pm when Kissur entered Bemish's office; Ronald Trevis, the
head of LSV bank, had just arrived from Earth and he sat in the room
reclining in an armchair.
"Hello," Kissur said, "What are you doing here?"
"We are discussing the spaceport's future," Trevis replied.
"Oh, yes. These...eh stocks of yours plummeted."
"The spaceport's stocks," Trevis spoke, "belong to me, Bemish and Nan.
We are discussing the future of bonds."
"What's wrong with those?"
"They cost twenty cents a dinar."
"So what?"
"It would not be a problem if they were regular bonds. They are,
however, bonds with adjustable rate."
"What kind of beast is that?"
"It was my suggestion. The interest payments on the bonds are set up in
such a way that a bond's value is hundred cents for a dinar," Bemish entered
the conversation.
"I don't understand."
"The interest on the bonds is fourteen and a half percent," Bemish
said. "It's quite a bit. I hoped that I would be able to lower it. The
Assalah bonds cost hundred and three cents a dinar before the crisis. They
cost twenty cents now."
"It's crazy. I never knew about these clever securities."
"Unlike you, Ashinik knew it perfectly well," Bemish said, "I walked
him through our financial structure myself."
"Are you going to adjust yield?"
"No. There is not a single company that could handle it, even if it had
a large cash flow. Our cash flow dropped by thirty percent this month."
"What are you going to do?"
"I offered new securities to the investors instead of this crap."
"What did they do?"
"They sent me to hell. Ronald just delivered their responses."
"I see. Is this company bankrupt?"
Bemish didn't answer.
"If we flatten all this shit into the ground, will your bonds cost
more?"
"We should flatten this shit into the ground anyway," Trevis muttered,
"even if it doesn't save the company."
Later, they reconstructed the events the following way. At 18:00,
Kissur accompanied by Khanadar the Dried Date and by ten fighters walked
into the main office where all the upper company management had already
gathered; Trevis was also there with two aides. Bemish and Giles came in
slightly later. They were both armed. Bemish took a note that Kissur was
dressed very carefully - he wore a perfect white shirt, a proper black suit
and an unassuming tie of correct width - the clothing item that Kissur
loathed the most. On the other hand, a gun under Kissur's armpit was large
enough that even a perfectly designed suit failed to conceal it. Giles
slapped Kissur on the shoulder and said, "Damn it, Kissur! You are the man!
Without you we would be in shit up to our necks!"
"This way we will be in blood up to our necks," Bemish spoke quietly.
Giles spun.
"Be silent, Terence, when other people have to do your laundry." And he
turned back to Kissur.
"What are you going to do to the zealots?"
"What should I do to them to be accepted to the military academy?"
Giles was dumb-founded for a moment and then he answered, "Shoot them."
Bemish swallowed. He was certain that Kissur would agree to this
proposal. Doesn't he understand, however, that no public opinion would
tolerate him in the academy after such a bloodbath?
Kissur laughed out, slapped, in his turn, Giles on his shoulder and
declared, "Better late than never. You, Earthmen, get bold only when the
stocks of your companies plummet! Listen, Dick, let's exchange!"
And Kissur pulled his 9mm Star out of the gun holder and handed it over
to Giles handle first. The gun's barrel was in its original state while its
handle was covered by beautiful engraving over attached silver plates.
Giles hesitated for a moment, pulled his gun out and handled it over to
Kissur.
He took the gun, checked if it was loaded and declared loudly, "And
now, monkeys, stick your faces in the floor and your asses in the air! You
are under arrest!"
The fighters behind Kissur raised their assault rifles.
"Are you joking, Kissur?"
"It's not a joke, dog! Get down! Down!"
Giles was lost; he looked at the Star in his hands and pulled the
trigger. The gun only clicked - it was not loaded.
Several employees started slowly rising out of the table with the hands
up.
The next moment, Bemish whipped his gun out of the holder but, before
he was able to pull the trigger, fighter kicked the gun out of his hand with
his rifle's butt. Bemish turned and, with a dull thud, his fist collided
with the fighter's solar plexus. The latter moaned and sagged to the floor.
Two Alom fighters rushed at Giles. The security service head dropped
the useless gun and the guys started twisting his elbows back. Giles butted
one of them with his head in the stomach and threw the other one over. The
fighter dropped his rifle and Giles snatched the falling weapon. The next
moment a rifle burst sounded - Kissur was firing. One after another, heavy
bullets with zinc outer layer were making holes in the clothing and the body
of the security service chief. Giles swayed. His face showed astonishment.
He looked at his jacket stained with blood, muttered, "Why?" and crashed to
the floor letting the gun go.
Meanwhile, two more fighters rushed at Bemish. Having cried out, one of
them smashed into the table with his face. The papers prepared for the
meeting flittered and flew around the room like white geese. The other one
sailed ass forward into a flat, built in terminal, crashed to the floor and
stayed there. Bemish leaped over the table and charged at Kissur. A rifle
burst formed a series of holes in the floor in front of Bemish and he froze.
Kissur and the company director stood surrounded by the fighters.
"Don't be dumb, Terence," Kissur said, waving the gun, "Put your hands
behind your head or you will enter the other world together with Giles."
Bemish stood with his tie askew and his perfect shirt's collar torn.
The shirt had been absolutely fresh. Bemish took a shower half an hour ago
and changed it and he felt now how the cloth under his armpits and behind
his back was getting wet and sticky with his sweat.
"Raise your hands, Terence," Trevis muttered lying on the floor, "Don't
you see - they are nuts."
The next moment Bemish dove forward and his hand locked on Kissur's
wrist. In a moment the gun flew to the side and Kissur and Bemish rolled
over the floor in a tight embrace. The fighters didn't dare shoot - they
were afraid of hitting their master and they also believed that to kill one
of the enemies locked in personal combat was not cool.
Kissur's steel hands locked at his foe's neck. Bemish's ears rung, the
room's ceiling spun and started floating upwards. Bemish hit Kissur in the
groin with his knee. The latter hissed but didn't let go. Twisting, Bemish
rolled onto his side and drove his heel into Kissur's kneecap.
Kissur roared. A lock and a snatch followed and, having thrown the
barbarian over, Bemish leapt on his feet.
Time froze as a sentinel at a gate. Bemish was watching Kissur falling
vertically, head down to the floor and he could already hear the crunching
sound that vertebrae would make breaking over hard wood. For a moment he
wanted to rush to his friend and spot him but he realized that he would be
late. He also realized that he would die a second after this sound came.
At the last moment, Kissur threw his arms forward and his hands rustled
touching the hardwood floor. Kissur somersaulted over his head and having
pushed himself off the floor with his hands, kicked Bemish horribly with
both legs in his chest. Bemish flew away to the wall. Kissur's fist missed
his jaw by a millimeter. Bemish dove and landed a short jab in Kissur's
solar plexus. Kissur swayed. Bemish drove his heel into Kissur's groin. The
latter roared. The next moment, he jumped at his opponent and he jammed
Bemish in the ribs with his knee. The company director was thrown to the
floor. He barely had time to turn aside and then Kissur's heavy boot kicked
him in the chin once and again.
Bemish tucked his knees in and, right at this moment, he saw in the
ceiling's light Kissur's contorted face far above him and his blackened fist
right next to his eyes. Then something exploded and flashed in Bemish's
head. The world sank and fell like a flower petal and Bemish lolled on the
floor like a man who had his skeleton extracted so that only the meat was
left. Two fighters locked handcuffs on his wrists and dragged him by his
legs out of the room. The Assalah director's head trailed down the office's
freshly waxed hardwood floor, blood seeped out of his light hair.
"If anybody moves," Kissur said, "he will get nine grams heavier."
And he pointed at dead Giles.
"What does it mean?" Ronald Trevis asked from the floor.
"The spaceport is taken over."
"Who took over it?"
"It is the party of people's freedom."
Then, dressed in Earth clothing, Kissur smiled and took a broad marine
knife from a warrior standing next to him. Slowly and enjoying himself, he
wrapped his dark red bordeaux colored tie around his left hand and, grinning
broadly, he cut it off at the top.
Afterwards, everybody admitted that, on the technical side, the
operation had been performed brilliantly.
At 18.05, an announcement sounded out of the Assalah spaceport
loudspeakers. A slightly hoarse voice with a trace of Alom accent said,
"Ladies and gentlemen! The Assalah spaceport is controlled by me, Kissur,
and the party of people's freedom. All the spaceport guards have been
disarmed. Nobody should move from where they are. Anybody resisting my
troops will be shot dead on the spot. Any panic will be considered a
resistance attempt.
The Earthmen will soon be allowed to leave the spaceport. Before that,
however, they are considered to be hostages and they will be killed if they
take any hostile actions towards us.
Ladies and gentlemen, have a good day. Goodbye."
Immediately after the announcement, Kissur's fighters, present in
practically every lounge, custom corridor, restaurant and shop jerked their
assault rifles up at the ready position and screamed, "Everybody down on the
floor! Ass up, hands behind your head! Go! The majority of people submitted
obediently, dropping in the process the souvenirs they just bought - Inis
lacquered figurines and flat wooden bottles with Chakhar vodka. This order
effectively stopped panic (that was to be treated as resistance). Occasional
gun bursts above the heads took place; five spaceport security service
employees attempted to escape - four were shot dead and the fifth died two
hours later at a surgery table.
In the air traffic control room, assault rifles were aimed at the
workers and the latter unquestioningly obeyed Khanadar's directions - to
announce Assalah, without getting into any extra details, to be a closed-off
zone. Therefore, the ships that were not on the landing trajectory yet,
should go land anywhere the hell they want but not in Assalah; the ships
that were already moving on the landing trajectory should continue landing.
The pilots are a well trained crowd and they were accustomed to landing
the way they were told to. The last two ships had time to figure out that
they were landing in a spaceport taken over by terrorists. Attesting to the
professional level of their crews, the ships didn't vacillate in the air -
that could've been very dangerous - and landed in the spaceport. After the
landing, they immediately required a permission to launch; the permission
was refused.
At least, not a single ship crashed missing the launching chutes; it
would've been very probable if the air traffic controllers had panicked.
The flight schedule board in the main lounge blinked and went dead.
Then, an announcement appeared on it, "Long live the party of people's
freedom!" The announcement was written in Weian and English. The English
variation contained a grammatical mistake.
There were total of eight thousand people in the spaceport, five
hundred volunteer and regular security service employees, twenty three
hundred of regular personnel and fifty two hundred passengers.
About four dozens passengers, mostly journalists, recognizable thanks
to their cameras, were pulled out of the crowd and brought to an office.
Kissur and his younger brother Ashidan sat there and young Ashinik with the
old man Yadan represented the zealots. Kissur offered the guests to take
part in the inspection of the spaceport and he added that he would rely
completely upon their honest reports. Afterwards, the whole Galaxy saw the
pictures made by these journalists.
The following is an excerpt from the testimony given by Francis F.
Carr, an employee of a large auditing firm Coupere, Lir and Gambacher; he
had been among the forty selected hostages. Mr. Carr gave this testimony to
a senate committee during an investigation concerning the spaceport's
takeover a month and a half later.
"Why did they pick you?"
"I don't know. Two fighters approached me, one of them stuck his finger
at me and they took me away. They didn't speak English. I thought that they
were going to shoot me."
"Did they beat you?"
"Frankly, I got a good kick in the butt and, when we were passing the
peasants, somebody threw a rotten tomato at me."
"What did they fighters do?"
"They screamed something at the crowd and they cleaned the tomato off
me."
"What happened next?"
"They took me to a large room, there were already about thirty people
there. A lot of journalists were there and nobody obstructed from taking
pictures. Kissur and his brother sat at a table together with the leaders of
the party of people's freedom. Kissur told the journalists to save their
film - he was going to take them on a trip through the spaceport and they
would get good shots there."
"What happened next?"
"Kissur said that he demanded that everything photographed was shown on
Galactic channels. He said that the films should be sent to a place that had
broadcasting equipment and that the broadcast should be shown on all
channels. He said that they had agents on different planets and that if the
broadcast started later than 9am of the next day, he would shoot five
hostages for every minute of delay. Somebody asked what would happen to the
hostages if his demands were complied with. Kissur said that he was not
enough of a scoundrel to make eight thousand Earthmen hostages in his future
fight with Gera. Then, they asked him why he had seized the spaceport and he
said that it was the only way to expose all its secret depositaries. He said
that it was impossible to pick a moment when no passengers were present in
the spaceport and that he didn't know any way to prevent panic spreading
among civilians but to make them drop on their bellies and to shoot a dozen
or two as an example. They asked him what he was going to do with the
passengers and he said that after the broadcast was shown, he would free the
hostages."
"What about the personnel?"
"He said that he had to detain the employees that were necessary for
the proper operation of the spaceport."
"Have you witnessed any abuse of the passengers?"
"Yes. I saw a terrorist hitting a man with his rifle's butt only
because the man rose without obtaining permission. Also a guy, sitting on
the floor, stretched his legs; a terrorist thought that the guy was trying
to trip him and the fighter hit him with his knee in the temple."
"What else has Kissur said?"
"He said that he had arrived at the spaceport to defend his friend
Bemish. Then, he obtained reliable information that the military had been
transporting toxic gas in a ship and that they were going to use it against
the protesters. He had tried to persuade Bemish's deputy, an Intelligence
Service employee Giles, not to utilize the gas. The latter said, "Shut up,
Weian monkey." Kissur shot Giles."
"Have you seen the gas?"
"Yes. In a ship that was one of the latest to arrive, neurotoxin
containers made up half the cargo. The containers were marked as a military
cargo accordingly to the standard rules of the Federation Space Force. We
were the first ones to enter the ship and the journalists photographed
everything."
"Are you aware of the fact that the Federation defense department
claims that it does not own these containers?"
"Yes, your honor."
"In your opinion, could Kissur load the containers before showing them
to you?"
"That would be impossible. When we stood at the loading dock, the after
landing warning lights were still lit on the board and they were just
dragging the crew outside."
"What happened next?"
"They took us down a lot of storage areas. Quite often, the goods that
were stored there had nothing to do with custom department's documentation
describing them. More precisely, it was practically never the case. Cars
were called medical equipment, computers were called canned food. I saw
boxes of Lamass lace that were exported as glass."
"Were you offered any explanation?"
"Yes. The goods that were not duty free were documented as goods that
were. Most export-import companies had a life expectation of less than two
months. I don't know how corruption in customs looks on other planets but I
was shocked by what I saw there. They didn't steal by containers, they stole
by whole cargo loads."
"What happened next?"
"Finally, they took us to an area of space field that was almost never
used for the civil flights. The chutes there looked slightly different from
the civil ones. They showed us papers demonstrating that these chutes were
intended for military ships. There were certain differences in construction
between military and civil chutes, for instance ceramics deposition on the
support columns allowed a ship to have a launching acceleration of five to
six times higher than a civilian spaceship would require. They also..."
"We are not discussing technical parameters of military chutes at this
hearing. Did you only see chutes?"
"No. There were several storage areas there - 17A, 17B and 17C - that
had walls and locks designed in a different way. In particular, the storages
had radiation shielding. Mr. Bemish was brought in and he opened the
storage."
"How was Bemish treated?"
"They dragged him on a leash."
"How did he look?"
"He looked horrible. His suit was torn, there was blood on his shirt
and he had a huge wale under his right eye. On the other hand, Kissur had
the same size wale under his left eye and, as far as I know, Bemish got it
all while fighting. Nobody beat him when his hands were tied."
"What was in the storage?"
"Some imported apparel was stored in 17A though, accordingly to the
documentation, it was supposed to be empty. 17B was also supposed to be
empty accordingly to the documentation. However, containers with medical
markings were stored there. Right in front of us, they extracted
constructions out of the containers that were later identified as partially
functional Cassiopeia missiles."
"Why was Bemish needed there?"
"The storage areas were computer controlled and the computer had eye
retina recognition lock system. There were only two retina images loaded
into the computer memory, the spaceport director's and his deputy's -
Terence Bemish and Richard Giles."
"Therefore, the missiles could be stored there only if the above named
persons were involved. Is it correct?"
"Yes, your honor."
Bemish lay on a leather sofa in his own office and his hands were tied
tightly behind his back. If he moved his eyes to the side strenuously
enough, he could see out of an office's window a small section of the
landing field and an arching asphalt ramp. Peasants wandered around in the
landing field. A beetle shaped passenger bus crawled down the ramp.
The door squeaked and Kissur entered the office. Bemish turned
pointedly to the wall; the pain in his twisted hand made him hiss sharply.
"Hello to a TV star," Kissur said, "They will show you tomorrow on all
the channels - together with 17B storage area."
Bemish turned and hissed again.
"How did those damned missiles get here?" Bemish asked.
"My dear," Kissur said, "that's a question for you."
"Don't clown around! I sent them there on Shavash's request..."
"And Shavash thought that he was importing cute little cars," Kissur
finished for him.
"You know, Shavash can goof up sometimes too... I don't have my own
dummy fronts so I had to use one of vice minister's."
"What are you striving for, Kissur?" Bemish asked. "Have you forgotten
how you shouted with joy when they told you that they would build a military
base here? And I was almost killed when I refused to do it!"
Kissur was smiling and nursing an assault rifle on his knees.
"All right. You abased Shavash. You filmed him being a thief. You
filmed me being a thief. You buried our military in unforgettable shit
though, for my death's sake, I can't figure out how you got these damned
missiles. What do you want?"
"What do I want? I want this spaceport to be nationalized. I want all
this crap that the foreigners have built here to be nationalized. I want to
change the government that steals just like our little brother Shavash. The
foreigners station armaments, which are forbidden across the whole Galaxy,
on our land and without our knowledge. Do you think that it's enough of a
reason to expropriate the goods that the rich had stolen from us and return
them to the people?"
Bemish jerked.
"Idiot! You will fail completely!"
"Why?"
"Why?! Are you asking me, why? Just look at the people you allied
yourself with! You will ruin your country and lose your head! Can you name a
single official allied with you, can you name just one man who knows what a
budget is and what a balance is?! Your allies are idiots who think that
Earthmen are demons! Look, Ashinik can only discourse on the eradication of
protectionism and setting the same rules for everybody till the moment when
he gets to power. When he gets to power, however, either he will do what his
party wants or they will devour him whole. Do you think that with such
allies you will be able to produce anything but a circuit performance? Do
you think that anybody will talk to you? What about the hostages and the
victims?"
"I will release the hostages," Kissur said.
"You mean the passengers. What about the personnel? Damn it, if you let
the personnel go, the whole place will collapse. Are you going to stick a
Weian zealot behind a VIS operating terminal?"
"I will release all the Earthmen hostages," Kissur repeated, "The
personnel staying here are citizens of the Empire. I assure you that all
Earth journalists will say that I released the hostages since they consider
only Earthmen to be the hostages. The Empire's officials don't care -
hostages or no hostages - we have never considered it to be a crime to begin
with."
Bemish shut his eyes and groaned. It was correct. If Kissur was saying
the truth, it was the end of it. The party of people's freedom had in its
power five thousand foreigners and it immediately released them. The whole
thing would look pretty good compared to the thievery and missiles that had
been discovered after the party's desperate actions. And it was not just
that; all the rumors that the government had been spreading about the party
such as the zealots considering Earthmen to be demons... The party's
honorable actions would prove the rumors to be a bunch of lies. It was
smart. It was smart and... unlike Kissur.
At that point, another man showed up at the office's entrance.
"So, we've met again, master."
Bemish turned his head.
"Should I thank you, Ashinik," he asked, "for PR strategy and tactics?"
The young man smiled. His hands nursed an assault rifle nervously.
"You are probably cursing the day when you didn't allow Kissur to kill
me, aren't you, master?"
Bemish ground his teeth.
"Just a bit," he muttered, "At least, Inis would have been alive."
"Don't touch her name, murderer!" Ashinik leaped.
"What's this crap?"
"You would've killed me too if I hadn't escaped!"
"That's bullshit. She was killed on Yadan's command in order to cause a
quarrel between us! Yadan acted exactly the same way as he had done earlier
with his predecessor! Why would I've killed her?"
"You did it out of jealousy."
"What jealousy are you talking about, idiot? I had given her away to
you. And she asked me that day to take her back!"
"Gave her away, take her back," Ashinik paled and whispered, "Are Weian
women property to take and give away?"
"How long are you going to carp for?" Kissur inquired.
Ashinik regained his senses.
"Ashinik hasn't told us the most important thing yet," Bemish noted
sarcastically. "What tree is he going to use to hang the murderer of an
unfaithful concubine? This is not, by the way, a crime accordingly to the
ancient laws that he holds so dear."
"Mr. Bemish," Ashinik said, "the new Weian revolutionary government is
not going to detain you. We would like you to convey our demands, the
demands of the people. They are very simple and they are in the best
interest of both the Emperor and the people. Only corrupted officials and
gluttonous foreigners would resist them. We demand that the current
government resign and that the corrupted officials are persecuted by the
court. We demand that Kissur the White Falcon leads the Empire as he did ten
years ago. We demand that the foreign concept of elections is crossed out
from the government's edicts - this concept is not fitting for the Weian
people's spirit. Since our party won your stupid elections, we are clearly
acting in the majority's interests. We demand all the companies that belong
to the foreigners to be unconditionally nationalized. We demand all the
other private property holders submit themselves to an investigation. We are
not against businessmen, we are against the bad and the gluttonous
businessmen that suck on the people's marrow and don't think about the
people's interests! We will eradicate the bad businessmen and we will
support the good ones!"
"In your opinion, the bad businessmen," Bemish couldn't hold it back,
"are the ones that don't bribe you and the good businessmen are the ones
that do!"
"Shut up!" Ashinik screamed. "It's not for you to talk about bribery,
Mr. Bemish! Not after they took a walk down your storage areas with
cameras!"
The Fourteenth Chapter
Or the first minister as an international terrorist.
At 19.54 they crammed Bemish into his own Mercedes and an unsmiling
Khanadar drove him to the last post located in front of the old village. The
village seemed to be dead. Dust hovered above the field - a flock of
military skyers had just passed by.
About two hundred meters away from the post, a roadblock gate had been
installed in a hurry. Antennas, resembling overgrown burdocks, stuck out
behind the gate and a herd of military Jeeps hang out nearby. Another
kilometer further, Bemish's own villa stood out, a gift from the terrorists'
chief and the Empire's ex-first minister...
It was two hundred meters. Two hundred meters separated an ex-spaceport
taken over by the terrorists from the normal world populated with corrupted
officials and stupid Earthmen. It was two hundred meters for the ex-director
of Assalah Company, Mr. Bemish. On his neck, he carried a suitcase
containing the terrorists' demands to nationalize his company and a key from
the handcuffs - his hands were still locked behind his back. For two hundred
meters sun rays and the red lights of laser sights danced on his face.
Bemish stepped behind the gate. The red lights went out and people in
military uniforms rushed towards him. There were some civilians present;
Bemish recognized Michael Severin, the Federation envoy. There were
absolutely no journalists present.
They crammed Bemish into a car and the car rushed towards the villa.
"How did the missiles got there?" a man in a colonel's uniform screamed
at Bemish.
"You should ask Shavash about it," Bemish bit back, "He asked me to
take care of this cargo."
"We will ask him," the colonel uttered.
"We know how the missiles got there," the second guy said. "They got
there from NordWest base. It's a base located on Agaia's moon. An old
acquaintance of Kissur's -an anarchist - used to work in one of Agaia's
spaceports. He visited Weia six months ago and Kissur went Agaia last month.
A week after his arrival, an accident occurred. This anarchist Lore and his
five friends missed a sharp turn on a road and fell into a chasm. It was
just an accident. The same day, another accident occured a light year and a
half away from Agaia; a mechanic at the base, Denny Hill, simply drowned
next to a crowded beach - he was on a vacation. It's quite clear where
Kissur got the missiles. On the other hand, how did you get them, Mr.
Bemish?"
"Why don't you start with yourselves?" Bemish bit back. "They steal
your missiles like they would steal wheat out of a kitchen cabinet. Do you
know their demands?"
"We do. They have already reported them on SV. Do you think that he can
really kill the hostages if we don't transmit the news over TV?"
"Kill them?" Bemish got angry. "He is capable of eating them, marinated
or fried! Do you know that nine years ago he hanged three thousand city
dwellers that rebelled in the capital? During the civil war, he hanged three
hundred people on the Orch's left shore and three hundred people on the
right one! Have you forgotten about the Khanalai's camp?"
The car stopped in the villa's yard and Bemish was the first to jump
out of it on the sand.
"Where are the journalists, by the way?" he asked.
"That's just what we are missing," the colonel snorted.
"You are wrong," Bemish said. "Kissur is running a show for the
journalists while you kicked them out. They lack minds of their own and they
repeat whatever you tell them. You will see that they will praise Kissur and
interest would possibly be postponed; this announcement dropped the bonds'
prices by forty percent. Oshin was fired in a week, the bonds' value grew
back to the same level and Terence Bemish made sixteen millions. In a week,
Bemish hired Oshin as a manager of one of his funds.
"These actions resemble insider trading too much; they would cause
legal proceedings to happen anywhere else in the world," Ashinik claimed.
"Clearly, Terence Bemish has bought securities knowing that their value
would increase sharply. Persecution of these criminal activities doesn't
threaten the market. On the opposite, it would guarantee equal opportunity
for everyone. As for Assalah Company," Ashinik explained, "it hasn't only
provided ships with landing opportunities; it also has allowed the ship
owners to avoid paying import tariffs. A conveyor belt of export-import
companies was created at the spaceport with every company's life time being
two months. Accordingly to Weian regulations, a company should issue tax
reports every two months and, if it exists less than that, it just doesn't
pay any taxes. Of course, the local officials knew everything about it but
they were browbeaten or bought off. The companies were used for two
purposes. Mostly a successor company would fulfill its predecessor's
obligations in full but sometimes, if Bemish or Shavash needed to punish
somebody, the successor would not pay for the goods or, inversely, wouldn't
deliver prepaid merchandise. It was not difficult since most freight didn't
have accompanying documentation issued. That's why Assalah imports were
thirty percent cheaper than imports via any other spaceport."
"Does it mean," a journalist inquired, "that having gained power you
will collect all the tariffs in full?"
"No," the clever Havishem graduate answered, "quite the opposite, we
will lower tariffs. We are against protectionism and limiting foreign trade.
But I would like to stress that Yanik's government charged some companies
and didn't charge the others. This is not protectionism of domestic
industry. They favor some importers at the price paid by the others and this
is even worse than protectionism."
The journalist inquired how conscientiously Assalah paid its taxes and
Ashinik said that the year before last, Bemish had paid the taxes with the
bonds of bankrupted Weian National Bank. The trick was that Bemish had
bought the securities on Exchange at 7% of their face value while the state
budget accepted them at 100% of their face value.
The last year they started experimenting issuing tax promissory notes
on Weia. These promissory notes were securities based a company's debts to
the treasury. Everybody knew that Bemish wouldn't pay anything on these
promissory notes and they cost 3-4% of their face value. Bemish bought them
at this price via dummy fronts and he didn't have to pay the taxes this year
anymore. Bemish also acquired a lot of promissory notes of the companies
that he had some designs for and the state helped him to exchange the notes
into the stocks of these companies.
The Assalah securities didn't take this interview well - their price
plummeted by thirty points.
Bemish ordered his employees to compile and send to Earth a small
ethnographic report about the activities of Following the Way, so that the
TV audience could clearly understand that the political goals of the sect
were not limited to the removal of protectionism and insider trading in
stock market.
The next day, Ashinik made an official announcement that nuclear
weapons were stored in Assalah spaceport including Cassiopeia nuclear
missiles equipped with S-field that had been delivered there accordingly to
a secret treaty between the Empire and the Federation governments. The
proliferation of these missiles had been banned accordingly to the
S-armament non-proliferation treaty signed by the UN countries.
Bemish called this statement a horrible lie.
Ashinik demanded the spaceport to be inspected by the people.
Bemish announced that he would not allow a people's inspection because
a Weian peasant would not see any difference between a nuclear missile and a
landing stabilizer support and he, Bemish, didn't want somebody to throw an
explosive device in a landing chute during such an "inspection." All this
"people's inspection" was demagoguery anyway, why didn't experts just come
in and inspect whatever they want to?
Ashinik claimed that Earth experts would be bought by Bemish and the
Federation counter-intelligence.
Bemish announced that he didn't understand what a people's inspection
was.
Ashinik promised to explain to Bemish what a people's inspection was.
Two days later, the spaceport security service informed Bemish that a
crowd was moving towards the spaceport. Almost synchronously, two dozen
zealots, that had infiltrated the lounge before, descended to the storage
area to reclaim their luggage containing rocket launchers and other assorted
killing utensils.
The luggage had been X-rayed earlier and the zealots were arrested in
flagrant delicti. Bemish announced that it was an organized terrorist
activity and, if the people's inspection was going to happen along the same
lines, he wouldn't allow it. The zealots were taken to the capital and all
the confessions were beaten out of them quite quickly.
Bemish issued to order to guard the whole spaceport's perimeter closely
and to allow only ticket holders inside the port due to the emergency
situation. The next day, he showed to the journalists two bombs extracted
from an unknown man's luggage; the man arrived at the spaceport with a
ticket to the planet of Gera and left the spaceport in an unknown direction.
Ashinik claimed that Bemish had engineered the whole thing himself just
as he had with the zealots and rocket launchers. As for their "confession"
to the Weian police, Ashinik noted that Mr. Shavash could make an elephant
confess that it was a mouse in disguise. Ashinik claimed that the protests
were perfectly peaceful.
A huge crowd of zealots blocked the spaceport. The journalists from all
over the Galaxy flew to Assalah in search of prize news.
New people arrived at the roadblocks every day. They introduced
themselves to the journalists as "simple peasants that didn't like their
motherland being traded away for a jar of sour cream." Bemish, on the other
hand, claimed that they were not peasants but staunch zealots.
The traffic on the highway connecting Assalah to the capital was
completely paralyzed. Two monorails, Assalah - Sky City and Assalah -
I-Chakhar, were used for cargo transport. The blocked-off area in the
vicinity of the monorails was controlled by the satellites launched
specifically for this purpose; the satellites called alarm three times a day
and the trains had to be stopped; the cargo transportation schedule went to
hell.
Trucks traveled in groups accompanied by sharpshooters. Bemish
announced that the spaceport's administration would not take any
responsibility for the people's safety if they used passenger cars to get to
the capital. The car rental agencies went hysterical. The helicopter drivers
lived in the state of bliss. Three hundred taxi drivers that had been
temporarily hired by the spaceport security were ready to tear the zealots
apart.
The media approach shocked Bemish somewhat. They would interview an
ardent zealot - a professional agitator who had been bumming around fairs
since the age of five and who was lost in his own lies to such an extant
that he no longer knew whether or not Earthmen were demons. They would call
him a "Weian peasant who came to Assalah to fight for the freedom of the
elections and his country's freedom." On the other hand, a Weian taxi driver
whose car had been burned out two days ago by a zealot crowd was called "a
secret agent of security service bought by Bemish."
The spaceport sustained huge losses due to cargo being delayed and
frightened passengers hurriedly picking other travel routes. Twenty thousand
tons of gourmet Iniss peaches turned into peach chowder after spending five
hours in crazy summer heat in a monorail train with a disabled cooling
system. Ashinik called a bomb found on the monorail "a spaceport special
services' instigation."
Continuous magnetrone inspection of cargo damaged a Crudge-14A with
superconductive circuits traveling to the Iniss branch of Mountain TDL and
the corporation raised a horrible fuss about it.
The security service employees had all of their vacations cancelled.
They worked fourteen hours a day without holidays and slept right there,
crowding in the spaceport hotel rooms. Three hundred enraged taxi drivers
and long distance truck drivers joined the security service. Three hundred
highly professional colleagues of Giles' arrived quietly at the spaceport
and the journalists learned about their incognito arrival five minutes after
the space liner had landed.
Assalah stocks dropped five points a day on the average. Assalah
high-margin bonds were being sold twenty cents a dinar by the end of this
week.
However, Bemish's personal finances were in much better state than that
of the company. Bemish had realized that the zealots were sure to win before
the election's results were declared invalid and he ordered to sell quickly
practically everything that they traded with on Weian Exchange. Going short
brought at least forty million dinars to Weian Special and Second Investment
Fund but it was the first time in Terence Bemish's life when he was not
particularly happy to short.
Bemish requested governmental assistance with the protesters. The
government dallied and wavered and finally told him that while it was
sympathetic towards the Assalah issues but it was not willing to utilize
Weian police against Weian peasants to protect a foreign company that,
additionally, employed a right of "tax and trial" inside its territory.
Confidentially the government hinted that it was afraid to be kicked out of
power if tried to do anything along these lines.
Ronald Trevis arrived at Assalah on the third day. Three hours after
his arrival, a twenty person Ajax landed in the spaceport and suntanned
Kissur climbed out of it. Kissur hurried to Bemish's office where a
management meeting was taking place and he started shouting right at the
doorstep.
"What's this mess? Why don't you just shoot this muck? What are all
these rubber sticks doing here instead of rocket launchers?"
"If I shoot all this muck," Bemish said, "I will do what Ashinik dreams
about. It will bury the relationship between Weia and the Federation.
Ashinik will start screaming that foreigners at his planet shoot at
absolutely peaceful protestors. He will be somewhat correct about that. The
foreigners should not have a right to make such decisions."
"Why the hell did you ask for the right of "trial and taxes?"
"It was my mistake."
"I swear by the god's balls!" Kissur cursed. "Why don't you ask the
police minister for assistance?"
"I've asked him already. The government doesn't want to shoot its own
citizens for a foreign company's profit. If it does it, it will have to
shoot its own citizens to save its own ass tomorrow. Also, everybody knows
that an official, who gives such an order, will find a bomb in his first
Sunday soup even though Ashinik will assure that the bomb was planted by
provocateurs."
"All right," Kissur said and he slammed the door and took off.
Kissur returned in six hours, after dark. Eight skyers with large load
capacity landed at the spacefield and delivered about five hundred fighters
with blackened teeth wearing soft ox leather Alom boots. The fighters were
armed right up to their blackened teeth.
Two beetle-shaped amphibian tanks dropped out of the skyers' bellies;
the tanks were equipped with unusually short guns and they stuck upwards at
the rear resembling beetle's forewings folded at its back. The tanks were
covered with a non-metallic dully gleaming skin. Astonished, Giles whispered
into Bemish's ear that these were the latest generation BCC-29 tanks
designed to be dropped off a plane with a parachute onto any surface no less
than six minutes after a thermonuclear explosion.
Presenting his blackened teeth to flashing cameras, Kissur explained
that he came here to help his friend Bemish out and that his people couldn't
be taken for foreigners by any stretch of imagination and that only his
friend Bemish's squeals stopped him from burning this zealot muck one meter
deep into the ground.
He said that Bemish was a pansy, that the government was a flock of
horny dumb goats and that Ashinik was a dog that he, Kissur, would hang
right at that loading crane if they found one more bomb in the spaceport.
Kissur's people took over almost all spaceport security. A half of all
regular spaceport security employees went to sleep. Frankly, they were
mostly peaceful people who had never seen anything more dangerous than a
drug trafficker trying to hide hundred grams of barnithole or good old LSD
in his stomach; their familiarity with electric shockers was only
theoretical.
The passengers arriving at the spaceport glanced with frightened
admiration at the huge, almost two meter tall, wild looking men who
seemingly napped at the terminals having folded their hands on stubby
assault rifles. The ladies felt quite a specific curiosity towards these
lads, comparing them with their civilized husbands who contemplated morning
meetings even in bed.
The journalists waited breathlessly. It seemed absolutely certain that
any careless action of the crowd besieging the spaceport would lead to the
crowd's bloody demise.
It was five pm when Kissur entered Bemish's office; Ronald Trevis, the
head of LSV bank, had just arrived from Earth and he sat in the room
reclining in an armchair.
"Hello," Kissur said, "What are you doing here?"
"We are discussing the spaceport's future," Trevis replied.
"Oh, yes. These...eh stocks of yours plummeted."
"The spaceport's stocks," Trevis spoke, "belong to me, Bemish and Nan.
We are discussing the future of bonds."
"What's wrong with those?"
"They cost twenty cents a dinar."
"So what?"
"It would not be a problem if they were regular bonds. They are,
however, bonds with adjustable rate."
"What kind of beast is that?"
"It was my suggestion. The interest payments on the bonds are set up in
such a way that a bond's value is hundred cents for a dinar," Bemish entered
the conversation.
"I don't understand."
"The interest on the bonds is fourteen and a half percent," Bemish
said. "It's quite a bit. I hoped that I would be able to lower it. The
Assalah bonds cost hundred and three cents a dinar before the crisis. They
cost twenty cents now."
"It's crazy. I never knew about these clever securities."
"Unlike you, Ashinik knew it perfectly well," Bemish said, "I walked
him through our financial structure myself."
"Are you going to adjust yield?"
"No. There is not a single company that could handle it, even if it had
a large cash flow. Our cash flow dropped by thirty percent this month."
"What are you going to do?"
"I offered new securities to the investors instead of this crap."
"What did they do?"
"They sent me to hell. Ronald just delivered their responses."
"I see. Is this company bankrupt?"
Bemish didn't answer.
"If we flatten all this shit into the ground, will your bonds cost
more?"
"We should flatten this shit into the ground anyway," Trevis muttered,
"even if it doesn't save the company."
Later, they reconstructed the events the following way. At 18:00,
Kissur accompanied by Khanadar the Dried Date and by ten fighters walked
into the main office where all the upper company management had already
gathered; Trevis was also there with two aides. Bemish and Giles came in
slightly later. They were both armed. Bemish took a note that Kissur was
dressed very carefully - he wore a perfect white shirt, a proper black suit
and an unassuming tie of correct width - the clothing item that Kissur
loathed the most. On the other hand, a gun under Kissur's armpit was large
enough that even a perfectly designed suit failed to conceal it. Giles
slapped Kissur on the shoulder and said, "Damn it, Kissur! You are the man!
Without you we would be in shit up to our necks!"
"This way we will be in blood up to our necks," Bemish spoke quietly.
Giles spun.
"Be silent, Terence, when other people have to do your laundry." And he
turned back to Kissur.
"What are you going to do to the zealots?"
"What should I do to them to be accepted to the military academy?"
Giles was dumb-founded for a moment and then he answered, "Shoot them."
Bemish swallowed. He was certain that Kissur would agree to this
proposal. Doesn't he understand, however, that no public opinion would
tolerate him in the academy after such a bloodbath?
Kissur laughed out, slapped, in his turn, Giles on his shoulder and
declared, "Better late than never. You, Earthmen, get bold only when the
stocks of your companies plummet! Listen, Dick, let's exchange!"
And Kissur pulled his 9mm Star out of the gun holder and handed it over
to Giles handle first. The gun's barrel was in its original state while its
handle was covered by beautiful engraving over attached silver plates.
Giles hesitated for a moment, pulled his gun out and handled it over to
Kissur.
He took the gun, checked if it was loaded and declared loudly, "And
now, monkeys, stick your faces in the floor and your asses in the air! You
are under arrest!"
The fighters behind Kissur raised their assault rifles.
"Are you joking, Kissur?"
"It's not a joke, dog! Get down! Down!"
Giles was lost; he looked at the Star in his hands and pulled the
trigger. The gun only clicked - it was not loaded.
Several employees started slowly rising out of the table with the hands
up.
The next moment, Bemish whipped his gun out of the holder but, before
he was able to pull the trigger, fighter kicked the gun out of his hand with
his rifle's butt. Bemish turned and, with a dull thud, his fist collided
with the fighter's solar plexus. The latter moaned and sagged to the floor.
Two Alom fighters rushed at Giles. The security service head dropped
the useless gun and the guys started twisting his elbows back. Giles butted
one of them with his head in the stomach and threw the other one over. The
fighter dropped his rifle and Giles snatched the falling weapon. The next
moment a rifle burst sounded - Kissur was firing. One after another, heavy
bullets with zinc outer layer were making holes in the clothing and the body
of the security service chief. Giles swayed. His face showed astonishment.
He looked at his jacket stained with blood, muttered, "Why?" and crashed to
the floor letting the gun go.
Meanwhile, two more fighters rushed at Bemish. Having cried out, one of
them smashed into the table with his face. The papers prepared for the
meeting flittered and flew around the room like white geese. The other one
sailed ass forward into a flat, built in terminal, crashed to the floor and
stayed there. Bemish leaped over the table and charged at Kissur. A rifle
burst formed a series of holes in the floor in front of Bemish and he froze.
Kissur and the company director stood surrounded by the fighters.
"Don't be dumb, Terence," Kissur said, waving the gun, "Put your hands
behind your head or you will enter the other world together with Giles."
Bemish stood with his tie askew and his perfect shirt's collar torn.
The shirt had been absolutely fresh. Bemish took a shower half an hour ago
and changed it and he felt now how the cloth under his armpits and behind
his back was getting wet and sticky with his sweat.
"Raise your hands, Terence," Trevis muttered lying on the floor, "Don't
you see - they are nuts."
The next moment Bemish dove forward and his hand locked on Kissur's
wrist. In a moment the gun flew to the side and Kissur and Bemish rolled
over the floor in a tight embrace. The fighters didn't dare shoot - they
were afraid of hitting their master and they also believed that to kill one
of the enemies locked in personal combat was not cool.
Kissur's steel hands locked at his foe's neck. Bemish's ears rung, the
room's ceiling spun and started floating upwards. Bemish hit Kissur in the
groin with his knee. The latter hissed but didn't let go. Twisting, Bemish
rolled onto his side and drove his heel into Kissur's kneecap.
Kissur roared. A lock and a snatch followed and, having thrown the
barbarian over, Bemish leapt on his feet.
Time froze as a sentinel at a gate. Bemish was watching Kissur falling
vertically, head down to the floor and he could already hear the crunching
sound that vertebrae would make breaking over hard wood. For a moment he
wanted to rush to his friend and spot him but he realized that he would be
late. He also realized that he would die a second after this sound came.
At the last moment, Kissur threw his arms forward and his hands rustled
touching the hardwood floor. Kissur somersaulted over his head and having
pushed himself off the floor with his hands, kicked Bemish horribly with
both legs in his chest. Bemish flew away to the wall. Kissur's fist missed
his jaw by a millimeter. Bemish dove and landed a short jab in Kissur's
solar plexus. Kissur swayed. Bemish drove his heel into Kissur's groin. The
latter roared. The next moment, he jumped at his opponent and he jammed
Bemish in the ribs with his knee. The company director was thrown to the
floor. He barely had time to turn aside and then Kissur's heavy boot kicked
him in the chin once and again.
Bemish tucked his knees in and, right at this moment, he saw in the
ceiling's light Kissur's contorted face far above him and his blackened fist
right next to his eyes. Then something exploded and flashed in Bemish's
head. The world sank and fell like a flower petal and Bemish lolled on the
floor like a man who had his skeleton extracted so that only the meat was
left. Two fighters locked handcuffs on his wrists and dragged him by his
legs out of the room. The Assalah director's head trailed down the office's
freshly waxed hardwood floor, blood seeped out of his light hair.
"If anybody moves," Kissur said, "he will get nine grams heavier."
And he pointed at dead Giles.
"What does it mean?" Ronald Trevis asked from the floor.
"The spaceport is taken over."
"Who took over it?"
"It is the party of people's freedom."
Then, dressed in Earth clothing, Kissur smiled and took a broad marine
knife from a warrior standing next to him. Slowly and enjoying himself, he
wrapped his dark red bordeaux colored tie around his left hand and, grinning
broadly, he cut it off at the top.
Afterwards, everybody admitted that, on the technical side, the
operation had been performed brilliantly.
At 18.05, an announcement sounded out of the Assalah spaceport
loudspeakers. A slightly hoarse voice with a trace of Alom accent said,
"Ladies and gentlemen! The Assalah spaceport is controlled by me, Kissur,
and the party of people's freedom. All the spaceport guards have been
disarmed. Nobody should move from where they are. Anybody resisting my
troops will be shot dead on the spot. Any panic will be considered a
resistance attempt.
The Earthmen will soon be allowed to leave the spaceport. Before that,
however, they are considered to be hostages and they will be killed if they
take any hostile actions towards us.
Ladies and gentlemen, have a good day. Goodbye."
Immediately after the announcement, Kissur's fighters, present in
practically every lounge, custom corridor, restaurant and shop jerked their
assault rifles up at the ready position and screamed, "Everybody down on the
floor! Ass up, hands behind your head! Go! The majority of people submitted
obediently, dropping in the process the souvenirs they just bought - Inis
lacquered figurines and flat wooden bottles with Chakhar vodka. This order
effectively stopped panic (that was to be treated as resistance). Occasional
gun bursts above the heads took place; five spaceport security service
employees attempted to escape - four were shot dead and the fifth died two
hours later at a surgery table.
In the air traffic control room, assault rifles were aimed at the
workers and the latter unquestioningly obeyed Khanadar's directions - to
announce Assalah, without getting into any extra details, to be a closed-off
zone. Therefore, the ships that were not on the landing trajectory yet,
should go land anywhere the hell they want but not in Assalah; the ships
that were already moving on the landing trajectory should continue landing.
The pilots are a well trained crowd and they were accustomed to landing
the way they were told to. The last two ships had time to figure out that
they were landing in a spaceport taken over by terrorists. Attesting to the
professional level of their crews, the ships didn't vacillate in the air -
that could've been very dangerous - and landed in the spaceport. After the
landing, they immediately required a permission to launch; the permission
was refused.
At least, not a single ship crashed missing the launching chutes; it
would've been very probable if the air traffic controllers had panicked.
The flight schedule board in the main lounge blinked and went dead.
Then, an announcement appeared on it, "Long live the party of people's
freedom!" The announcement was written in Weian and English. The English
variation contained a grammatical mistake.
There were total of eight thousand people in the spaceport, five
hundred volunteer and regular security service employees, twenty three
hundred of regular personnel and fifty two hundred passengers.
About four dozens passengers, mostly journalists, recognizable thanks
to their cameras, were pulled out of the crowd and brought to an office.
Kissur and his younger brother Ashidan sat there and young Ashinik with the
old man Yadan represented the zealots. Kissur offered the guests to take
part in the inspection of the spaceport and he added that he would rely
completely upon their honest reports. Afterwards, the whole Galaxy saw the
pictures made by these journalists.
The following is an excerpt from the testimony given by Francis F.
Carr, an employee of a large auditing firm Coupere, Lir and Gambacher; he
had been among the forty selected hostages. Mr. Carr gave this testimony to
a senate committee during an investigation concerning the spaceport's
takeover a month and a half later.
"Why did they pick you?"
"I don't know. Two fighters approached me, one of them stuck his finger
at me and they took me away. They didn't speak English. I thought that they
were going to shoot me."
"Did they beat you?"
"Frankly, I got a good kick in the butt and, when we were passing the
peasants, somebody threw a rotten tomato at me."
"What did they fighters do?"
"They screamed something at the crowd and they cleaned the tomato off
me."
"What happened next?"
"They took me to a large room, there were already about thirty people
there. A lot of journalists were there and nobody obstructed from taking
pictures. Kissur and his brother sat at a table together with the leaders of
the party of people's freedom. Kissur told the journalists to save their
film - he was going to take them on a trip through the spaceport and they
would get good shots there."
"What happened next?"
"Kissur said that he demanded that everything photographed was shown on
Galactic channels. He said that the films should be sent to a place that had
broadcasting equipment and that the broadcast should be shown on all
channels. He said that they had agents on different planets and that if the
broadcast started later than 9am of the next day, he would shoot five
hostages for every minute of delay. Somebody asked what would happen to the
hostages if his demands were complied with. Kissur said that he was not
enough of a scoundrel to make eight thousand Earthmen hostages in his future
fight with Gera. Then, they asked him why he had seized the spaceport and he
said that it was the only way to expose all its secret depositaries. He said
that it was impossible to pick a moment when no passengers were present in
the spaceport and that he didn't know any way to prevent panic spreading
among civilians but to make them drop on their bellies and to shoot a dozen
or two as an example. They asked him what he was going to do with the
passengers and he said that after the broadcast was shown, he would free the
hostages."
"What about the personnel?"
"He said that he had to detain the employees that were necessary for
the proper operation of the spaceport."
"Have you witnessed any abuse of the passengers?"
"Yes. I saw a terrorist hitting a man with his rifle's butt only
because the man rose without obtaining permission. Also a guy, sitting on
the floor, stretched his legs; a terrorist thought that the guy was trying
to trip him and the fighter hit him with his knee in the temple."
"What else has Kissur said?"
"He said that he had arrived at the spaceport to defend his friend
Bemish. Then, he obtained reliable information that the military had been
transporting toxic gas in a ship and that they were going to use it against
the protesters. He had tried to persuade Bemish's deputy, an Intelligence
Service employee Giles, not to utilize the gas. The latter said, "Shut up,
Weian monkey." Kissur shot Giles."
"Have you seen the gas?"
"Yes. In a ship that was one of the latest to arrive, neurotoxin
containers made up half the cargo. The containers were marked as a military
cargo accordingly to the standard rules of the Federation Space Force. We
were the first ones to enter the ship and the journalists photographed
everything."
"Are you aware of the fact that the Federation defense department
claims that it does not own these containers?"
"Yes, your honor."
"In your opinion, could Kissur load the containers before showing them
to you?"
"That would be impossible. When we stood at the loading dock, the after
landing warning lights were still lit on the board and they were just
dragging the crew outside."
"What happened next?"
"They took us down a lot of storage areas. Quite often, the goods that
were stored there had nothing to do with custom department's documentation
describing them. More precisely, it was practically never the case. Cars
were called medical equipment, computers were called canned food. I saw
boxes of Lamass lace that were exported as glass."
"Were you offered any explanation?"
"Yes. The goods that were not duty free were documented as goods that
were. Most export-import companies had a life expectation of less than two
months. I don't know how corruption in customs looks on other planets but I
was shocked by what I saw there. They didn't steal by containers, they stole
by whole cargo loads."
"What happened next?"
"Finally, they took us to an area of space field that was almost never
used for the civil flights. The chutes there looked slightly different from
the civil ones. They showed us papers demonstrating that these chutes were
intended for military ships. There were certain differences in construction
between military and civil chutes, for instance ceramics deposition on the
support columns allowed a ship to have a launching acceleration of five to
six times higher than a civilian spaceship would require. They also..."
"We are not discussing technical parameters of military chutes at this
hearing. Did you only see chutes?"
"No. There were several storage areas there - 17A, 17B and 17C - that
had walls and locks designed in a different way. In particular, the storages
had radiation shielding. Mr. Bemish was brought in and he opened the
storage."
"How was Bemish treated?"
"They dragged him on a leash."
"How did he look?"
"He looked horrible. His suit was torn, there was blood on his shirt
and he had a huge wale under his right eye. On the other hand, Kissur had
the same size wale under his left eye and, as far as I know, Bemish got it
all while fighting. Nobody beat him when his hands were tied."
"What was in the storage?"
"Some imported apparel was stored in 17A though, accordingly to the
documentation, it was supposed to be empty. 17B was also supposed to be
empty accordingly to the documentation. However, containers with medical
markings were stored there. Right in front of us, they extracted
constructions out of the containers that were later identified as partially
functional Cassiopeia missiles."
"Why was Bemish needed there?"
"The storage areas were computer controlled and the computer had eye
retina recognition lock system. There were only two retina images loaded
into the computer memory, the spaceport director's and his deputy's -
Terence Bemish and Richard Giles."
"Therefore, the missiles could be stored there only if the above named
persons were involved. Is it correct?"
"Yes, your honor."
Bemish lay on a leather sofa in his own office and his hands were tied
tightly behind his back. If he moved his eyes to the side strenuously
enough, he could see out of an office's window a small section of the
landing field and an arching asphalt ramp. Peasants wandered around in the
landing field. A beetle shaped passenger bus crawled down the ramp.
The door squeaked and Kissur entered the office. Bemish turned
pointedly to the wall; the pain in his twisted hand made him hiss sharply.
"Hello to a TV star," Kissur said, "They will show you tomorrow on all
the channels - together with 17B storage area."
Bemish turned and hissed again.
"How did those damned missiles get here?" Bemish asked.
"My dear," Kissur said, "that's a question for you."
"Don't clown around! I sent them there on Shavash's request..."
"And Shavash thought that he was importing cute little cars," Kissur
finished for him.
"You know, Shavash can goof up sometimes too... I don't have my own
dummy fronts so I had to use one of vice minister's."
"What are you striving for, Kissur?" Bemish asked. "Have you forgotten
how you shouted with joy when they told you that they would build a military
base here? And I was almost killed when I refused to do it!"
Kissur was smiling and nursing an assault rifle on his knees.
"All right. You abased Shavash. You filmed him being a thief. You
filmed me being a thief. You buried our military in unforgettable shit
though, for my death's sake, I can't figure out how you got these damned
missiles. What do you want?"
"What do I want? I want this spaceport to be nationalized. I want all
this crap that the foreigners have built here to be nationalized. I want to
change the government that steals just like our little brother Shavash. The
foreigners station armaments, which are forbidden across the whole Galaxy,
on our land and without our knowledge. Do you think that it's enough of a
reason to expropriate the goods that the rich had stolen from us and return
them to the people?"
Bemish jerked.
"Idiot! You will fail completely!"
"Why?"
"Why?! Are you asking me, why? Just look at the people you allied
yourself with! You will ruin your country and lose your head! Can you name a
single official allied with you, can you name just one man who knows what a
budget is and what a balance is?! Your allies are idiots who think that
Earthmen are demons! Look, Ashinik can only discourse on the eradication of
protectionism and setting the same rules for everybody till the moment when
he gets to power. When he gets to power, however, either he will do what his
party wants or they will devour him whole. Do you think that with such
allies you will be able to produce anything but a circuit performance? Do
you think that anybody will talk to you? What about the hostages and the
victims?"
"I will release the hostages," Kissur said.
"You mean the passengers. What about the personnel? Damn it, if you let
the personnel go, the whole place will collapse. Are you going to stick a
Weian zealot behind a VIS operating terminal?"
"I will release all the Earthmen hostages," Kissur repeated, "The
personnel staying here are citizens of the Empire. I assure you that all
Earth journalists will say that I released the hostages since they consider
only Earthmen to be the hostages. The Empire's officials don't care -
hostages or no hostages - we have never considered it to be a crime to begin
with."
Bemish shut his eyes and groaned. It was correct. If Kissur was saying
the truth, it was the end of it. The party of people's freedom had in its
power five thousand foreigners and it immediately released them. The whole
thing would look pretty good compared to the thievery and missiles that had
been discovered after the party's desperate actions. And it was not just
that; all the rumors that the government had been spreading about the party
such as the zealots considering Earthmen to be demons... The party's
honorable actions would prove the rumors to be a bunch of lies. It was
smart. It was smart and... unlike Kissur.
At that point, another man showed up at the office's entrance.
"So, we've met again, master."
Bemish turned his head.
"Should I thank you, Ashinik," he asked, "for PR strategy and tactics?"
The young man smiled. His hands nursed an assault rifle nervously.
"You are probably cursing the day when you didn't allow Kissur to kill
me, aren't you, master?"
Bemish ground his teeth.
"Just a bit," he muttered, "At least, Inis would have been alive."
"Don't touch her name, murderer!" Ashinik leaped.
"What's this crap?"
"You would've killed me too if I hadn't escaped!"
"That's bullshit. She was killed on Yadan's command in order to cause a
quarrel between us! Yadan acted exactly the same way as he had done earlier
with his predecessor! Why would I've killed her?"
"You did it out of jealousy."
"What jealousy are you talking about, idiot? I had given her away to
you. And she asked me that day to take her back!"
"Gave her away, take her back," Ashinik paled and whispered, "Are Weian
women property to take and give away?"
"How long are you going to carp for?" Kissur inquired.
Ashinik regained his senses.
"Ashinik hasn't told us the most important thing yet," Bemish noted
sarcastically. "What tree is he going to use to hang the murderer of an
unfaithful concubine? This is not, by the way, a crime accordingly to the
ancient laws that he holds so dear."
"Mr. Bemish," Ashinik said, "the new Weian revolutionary government is
not going to detain you. We would like you to convey our demands, the
demands of the people. They are very simple and they are in the best
interest of both the Emperor and the people. Only corrupted officials and
gluttonous foreigners would resist them. We demand that the current
government resign and that the corrupted officials are persecuted by the
court. We demand that Kissur the White Falcon leads the Empire as he did ten
years ago. We demand that the foreign concept of elections is crossed out
from the government's edicts - this concept is not fitting for the Weian
people's spirit. Since our party won your stupid elections, we are clearly
acting in the majority's interests. We demand all the companies that belong
to the foreigners to be unconditionally nationalized. We demand all the
other private property holders submit themselves to an investigation. We are
not against businessmen, we are against the bad and the gluttonous
businessmen that suck on the people's marrow and don't think about the
people's interests! We will eradicate the bad businessmen and we will
support the good ones!"
"In your opinion, the bad businessmen," Bemish couldn't hold it back,
"are the ones that don't bribe you and the good businessmen are the ones
that do!"
"Shut up!" Ashinik screamed. "It's not for you to talk about bribery,
Mr. Bemish! Not after they took a walk down your storage areas with
cameras!"
The Fourteenth Chapter
Or the first minister as an international terrorist.
At 19.54 they crammed Bemish into his own Mercedes and an unsmiling
Khanadar drove him to the last post located in front of the old village. The
village seemed to be dead. Dust hovered above the field - a flock of
military skyers had just passed by.
About two hundred meters away from the post, a roadblock gate had been
installed in a hurry. Antennas, resembling overgrown burdocks, stuck out
behind the gate and a herd of military Jeeps hang out nearby. Another
kilometer further, Bemish's own villa stood out, a gift from the terrorists'
chief and the Empire's ex-first minister...
It was two hundred meters. Two hundred meters separated an ex-spaceport
taken over by the terrorists from the normal world populated with corrupted
officials and stupid Earthmen. It was two hundred meters for the ex-director
of Assalah Company, Mr. Bemish. On his neck, he carried a suitcase
containing the terrorists' demands to nationalize his company and a key from
the handcuffs - his hands were still locked behind his back. For two hundred
meters sun rays and the red lights of laser sights danced on his face.
Bemish stepped behind the gate. The red lights went out and people in
military uniforms rushed towards him. There were some civilians present;
Bemish recognized Michael Severin, the Federation envoy. There were
absolutely no journalists present.
They crammed Bemish into a car and the car rushed towards the villa.
"How did the missiles got there?" a man in a colonel's uniform screamed
at Bemish.
"You should ask Shavash about it," Bemish bit back, "He asked me to
take care of this cargo."
"We will ask him," the colonel uttered.
"We know how the missiles got there," the second guy said. "They got
there from NordWest base. It's a base located on Agaia's moon. An old
acquaintance of Kissur's -an anarchist - used to work in one of Agaia's
spaceports. He visited Weia six months ago and Kissur went Agaia last month.
A week after his arrival, an accident occurred. This anarchist Lore and his
five friends missed a sharp turn on a road and fell into a chasm. It was
just an accident. The same day, another accident occured a light year and a
half away from Agaia; a mechanic at the base, Denny Hill, simply drowned
next to a crowded beach - he was on a vacation. It's quite clear where
Kissur got the missiles. On the other hand, how did you get them, Mr.
Bemish?"
"Why don't you start with yourselves?" Bemish bit back. "They steal
your missiles like they would steal wheat out of a kitchen cabinet. Do you
know their demands?"
"We do. They have already reported them on SV. Do you think that he can
really kill the hostages if we don't transmit the news over TV?"
"Kill them?" Bemish got angry. "He is capable of eating them, marinated
or fried! Do you know that nine years ago he hanged three thousand city
dwellers that rebelled in the capital? During the civil war, he hanged three
hundred people on the Orch's left shore and three hundred people on the
right one! Have you forgotten about the Khanalai's camp?"
The car stopped in the villa's yard and Bemish was the first to jump
out of it on the sand.
"Where are the journalists, by the way?" he asked.
"That's just what we are missing," the colonel snorted.
"You are wrong," Bemish said. "Kissur is running a show for the
journalists while you kicked them out. They lack minds of their own and they
repeat whatever you tell them. You will see that they will praise Kissur and