The Tejano Conflict (22 page)

Gramps was waiting when the last of them filtered in. He said, “Our C-AI has been crunching everything that links ‘Bax' and ‘water.' It took a while because it's a big secret and traditionally has been worth-your-life guarded, restricted to the priesthood.

“And surprise, surprise, it
is
about the water. It's holy.”

“Holy water?” That from Gunny.

“Apparently. It turns out this ancient Terran water has some kind of mineral combination that's passing rare. Something in Bax biochemistry gets activated when they drink it. For humans, you could drink ten liters, bathe in it, wash your underwear in it, and nothing would happen except you'd have to pee and you'd get wrinkled and have clean crotch cover. For Bax, it's a euphoric chem that somehow puts them in touch, they believe, with their god. Their priests have been using the homegrown version for centuries.”

“Direct com to God? I can understand how that might be valuable.” That from Wink.

“It gets iffy here, but this is what the AI speculates: The natural stuff on the Bax homeworld started to run dry, and the artificial solution they came up with didn't have quite the same kick. So they started searching for a new source and somehow stumbled across it here.

“It's Stradivari's crawfish.”

Gunny looked at Gramps. “Say what? Crawfish?”

He smiled at her.

“Oh, sheeit, Ah know that look! Forget Ah said that. Don't tell me. Let's just move on.”

“Stradivari was a master violin maker on Earth in the late 1600s. His instruments that survive are highly valued, prized for their unique tones. All of them are worth millions, some
tens
of millions.”

“Ten million for a
fiddle
? Wait, Ah don't care. Don't say it, just shut up. Get to the point!”

He kept on as if she hadn't spoken: “There was, for years, some question as to why his in particular were so esteemed, and the assumption was that it wasn't the wood, nor the construction, but the varnish he used.

“Varnish is—”

“Ah know what fuckin' varnish is!”

“You young people have no patience.

“One of the more interesting theories speculated that in the varnish were ground-up bits of a crawfish native to the rivers where the maker worked.

“The local crawfish went extinct, and so subsequent makers didn't have it available, thus they didn't have the same dulcet tones when played.”

“Why is it every time Ah ask a simple question, you babble like a stoned sociology professor giving a lecture? You could talk the leg off a cast-iron statue.”

And then, because she couldn't help herself, she asked, “It is true? About the crawfish?”

“Great story, but, no. Scientists have done analyses on several of the Strads, and there's no evidence of animal proteins in his finishes. The difference was that he was a better craftsman than his contemporaries. He picked better woods and put them together better. “

“So why are you tellin' us all this crap?”

“I'm getting there. Stradavari's instruments were good, they held up well, and people came to believe they were superior, so that's what they heard when one was played. The Bax scientists' concoction of god juice is probably chemically identical to the natural waters on their world, but they don't really believe it, so . . .”

“Psychology,” Jo said. “Got to love it.”

“Says the woman who came from PsyOps,” Rags said.

“What about Junior?” Gramps said.

“Junior seems to be in bed with both sides.”

“Why?”

“That's the part we don't know.”

“So what good is knowing this stuff about the water?”

Kay said, “Both sides want it enough to sponsor an expensive war and to offer large bribes. General Allen has found a way to benefit. There must be a link.”

Rags said, “And if what Dhama said is so, if we are in possession of the wells, come the final whistle, it looks like Junior walks away rich. And somehow, I don't think that's the worst of it. This thing reeks of intrigue, there's something else going on.”

“What?”

“I don't know.”

“How are we going to find out?”

“I'm working on it,” Gramps said.

– – – – – –

It wasn't more than an hour after that when Gramps showed up in Cutter's office. This time, it was just the two of them.

“Something?”

“Oh, hell, yeah. The rest of the story about the Bax versus the Bax and the thrilling adventure of the Holy Water of Tejas.”

Cutter nodded.

“You aren't going to like it.”

“I already don't like it a whole bunch, I don't see how it could be worse. Tell me.”

So Gramps did.

When he was done, Cutter said, “Well,
shit
. It
is
worse.”

“Yeah.”

“We are screwed either way.”

“Well, one side, they use lubricant, but, yeah, I'd call it a no-win situation. I don't see a solution.”

Cutter thought about it for a few seconds. “I do.”

“Really?”

“Yep. But nobody is going to like it. Something I came up with a while back when I was lacking better ways to spend my time. Not how I would have used it, but the principle is the same.”

Gramps raised an eyebrow.

Cutter told him.

“Christus! You have a sick mind! You think you can get that by General Wood?”

“I don't know. The fem I used to know, back in the day? Maybe. But she was a lieutenant on the way up, not a general running a small war. She might not see it the same now as she did then. Only one way to find out.”

– – – – – –

Wood was not at all happy to hear what Cutter had to say. After a string of choice curses, she stared at him.

“You're sure about this?”

Cutter said, “Pretty much, yeah.”

Wood sighed. “Well,
shit
.”

“Yeah, that's what I said, too.”

She didn't say anything for a moment.

He knew what she was thinking, or at least what he'd be thinking in her boots. Balancing what she had and what she wanted against what she now knew.

“No other way?”

“I looked, I don't see it. It's all circumstantial. We couldn't step in front of a judge and make the case, especially not a military tribunal, we're not a parsec close to the standard of proof. He walks. At the least.”

“Shit.”

“It's your call, Zoree.”

“My call, yeah, right!”

“I'm sorry—”

“Fuck you. You know I can't pretend I didn't hear this.”

“Yeah, I couldn't, either.”

“Shit, shit,
shit
!”

“It's not just about Junior—”

“I know, it's the fucking Bax and their fucked-up business! Why is it people like us have to be the galaxy's conscience?”

“If you can see a problem, and you have the ability to fix it, it becomes your responsibility. It's always been that way.”

For a long time, she didn't say anything. Then, “Nobody can know but us. If heads roll, they should be ours.”

“Yeah.”

“That will make it a bitch.”

“It's a bitch no matter what.”

“You think you can pull it off?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Lot can go wrong, but if we don't, Junior walks away clean and almost certainly with his pockets full; the Bax could have a major sociological screwup, could work itself into a civil war. The cure will taste bad, but it probably won't kill us.”

“Probably.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I know it sucks.”

“You didn't create it, you just pointed it out. If I thought shooting the messenger would fix it, you'd already be bleeding out.”

“I'll make it up to you.”

“How?”

“I dunno. Maybe my rich uncle will die, and you can have a chunk. Go buy that star-fruit orchard.”

“You have a rich uncle?”

He chuckled.

“Yeah, that's what I thought. All right. Let's hear this plan of yours.” She shook her head. “You know, being a general isn't as much fun as I hoped it would be.”

– – – – – –

Cutter called his people in and laid it out. When he was done, nobody said anything for a few seconds. They looked stunned.

“If anybody else has a better suggestion, I'm open to it.”

Nobody spoke to that, either.

Then Jo said, “It's just this side of insane; maybe the other side, but if that's how it has to be, then that's how it has to be.

“If it were easy, anybody could do it.”

That got a quiet chorus of agreement from the others.

He wasn't really surprised. They were smart, they were loyal, and they were, as much as anybody he knew, honorable, whatever that meant these days. It was a bad situation, he had looked at it from every angle he could, and while there wasn't any path he liked, this one was the least harmful one he could see.

“We have four hours until the final horn blows,” he said, “and a shitload of stuff to get done. Let's get moving.”

One hundred and ninety-six minutes . . .

If they were going to bag it, the time was now.

“I'm still not sure about this,” Gramps said.

“You and me both. It's a terrible idea—except all the others I can come up with are worse. As I said before, I am open to better notions.”

Cutter looked at the others.

Jo shrugged.

Kay did her version of the same gesture.

Wink said, “I've been getting stale, I'm up for it.”

Gunny said, “Who wants to live forever?”

Formentara added hir shrug. “I'm good.”

Cutter nodded. “Okay. Understand, people are going to be pissed at us if we screw it up.”

“If we screw this up, we probably are all going to be dead,” Jo said. “I don't expect that we'll worry a lot about how pissed off they are.”

“Point taken. All right, here's how I have the scenario running . . .”

He started talking, and they all listened intently.

This is really nuts,
his inner editor said.
Why don't you just jump off a bridge or pull the tab on a grenade and drop it at your feet? Be faster . . .

– – – – – –

CFI's advantage was that most troops in a war didn't have the full picture, and in this case, the commanding general who did could alter and tweak things to make them fuzzier to her own people. Without that, they'd play hell getting it done.

The commander of
this
unit knew where his people and equipment were, but not necessarily where the command of
that
unit had all her resources; nor was there the need to know. When your responsibilities were narrow, that's where you focused; unless you were given different orders, that was what you did.

The real trick here, at the end of it all, was to convince the Tejas commanders that they were doing the job they were supposed to do, so none of them would believe otherwise. Like a good close-up magician, if you could misdirect watchers at exactly the right moment, they wouldn't know what you had done; they would think they had seen something else.

“You think Vim will go for this?”

“I would. So would you.”

Jo nodded. “Yeah, but . . .”

“What we have to hope is that Vim is as good a soldier as we think he is.”

– – – – – –

Every soldier and piece of rolling or flying hardware on the field of battle could theoretically be observed via overflights, except those under the tree canopies, so that's where Gunny and Wink met to assemble the scooter. The parts had been trucked into the woods inside various transports, and the key element to the plan had been keeping it secret.

The scooter was small, computer-controlled, and had markings that would identify it as belonging to Dycon if anybody was able to examine it closely.

Which, Cutter hoped, wouldn't happen. It wouldn't be transmitting, but its receiver had Dycon bounce-back codes, and if some crackerjack communications op managed to get that far, The Line would certainly think it was the opposition's vehicle.

Vim's people had to do it; it couldn't be handed to them. In a war, you trusted your allies, but only so far. You depended on the people who had been with you the longest, who had demonstrated the ability to cover your ass. That's how Cutter did it.

He hoped that was how Vim thought, too.

– – – – – –

Gunny and Wink bolted and clicked the pieces together, and they wore thinskin gloves to do it. The thing wasn't supposed to survive, and when it went nova, it wasn't supposed to leave any big pieces, but you never knew, so no DNA left on it if they could help it.

It took about fifteen minutes, and when they were done, they had a heavily armored, squat, two-wheeled box just over a meter-and-a-half tall, not quite that wide, kept stable with rapidly twirling gyroscopes, and preprogrammed to approach-and-evade. It would resist small-arms fire, small rockets, and regular grenades; anything big enough to knock it out would theoretically need somebody calling it in.

Which, theoretically, wasn't going to happen. If . . .

If, if, if . . .

The target was the main wellhead where Vim's troops were ensconced.

They had to see it coming. They had to think they knew what it was, and the window of time and space where that needed to occur was small. If they didn't, the operation failed.

There was a list of suppositions that needed to be made, and if those didn't take place, the mission would fail.

Rags had told them if he were in Vim's boots, he would make certain assumptions, and if Vim didn't, it failed.

If somebody cranked off an antitank round they weren't supposed to use, it would fail.

If the sucker got stuck in a rut, the motor crapped out, it was going to be a failure.

If, if, if,
and
failure-failure-failure . . .

Nothing about any of this was going out on any communications medium. If anybody thought to backtrack the recordings six months down the line and look for connections, nobody in CFI wanted there to be any. Not even a hint.

The base recorders had been shut down whenever they talked about it there, and that had been in fugue and code anyhow.

“Okay, we're good,” Gunny said. “Let's crank it up.”

She triggered the starter, and the wheeled robot whirred to life. It ran a self-check, then started rolling.

“
Adiós
, little din,” she said. “Okay, I need to go places and shoot people.”

“And I guess I need to go back to medical and fix the ones you hit with friendly fire,” Wink said.

“Piss on you.”

“I didn't cheat, Gunny, you're just a bad gambler.”

They grinned at each other.

Seventy-seven minutes . . .