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Chapter 6: Meeting the Neighbors

  Fewer people were in the market square. I spent a little time finding a position for over watch that wouldn’t involve bumping into civilians or looking out of place. Sitting at a food counter and pounding down some noodles and greens seemed appropriate. Sliding one bowl of noodles to the seat next to me kept anyone from getting too close.

  When the convoy rolled up, just to the left of the church, Father Luke and Doctor Torelli were on the steps to greet them. Civilians in the area quickly moved away from the show of force. A heavy squad of soldiers with chemical suits deployed from the backs of the three trucks. They formed a loose ring facing the trucks. When I looked at the way the armored cars had stopped and this disposition of troops, it was obvious they were carrying some kind of threat with them.

  An officer exited the back of an armored car with three more troopers. The officer had foregone the chemical suit snorkel for a paper filter mask. They approached to speak to our representatives. Feeds from Father Luke let us eavesdrop. His name was Major Shawa. He was courteous and spoke English very well. He had brought prisoners from a zone detention facility. These were men like our ambushing farmers on the way in, who had been apprehended by zone security and held within the quarantine zone until they could be safely prosecuted. He had orders to bring them to one of our screening events and get them evaluated. Written orders from Zone Security directed us to cooperate with the Major.

  Doctor Torelli questioned the state of medical care at the detention center. To this, Major Shawa intimated that obtaining medical staff in penal facilities was always problematic, especially within quarantine zones. The solution of bringing the prisoners to the doctors had been his idea. Our equipment was much better and the evaluation techniques had been developed by our team. We agreed, of course. They could have just shanghaied us to the prison and ruined our schedules.

  They had two dozen prisoners, male and female, wearing hobble cuffs and orange jumpers. Their protocol was to bring them in three at a time, accompanied by soldiers. Saint Peter sorted threat plans and revised our duties to an outer perimeter. Etienne would stay on the roof for immediate over watch. Rafe and I would work further out to the approaches. Our response could turn either in or out, and it kept us away from the soldiers.

  I noticed two trucks coming into town from my vantage point, up in a large oak with a view of the road. My clothes were piled at the base, the mimetic leotard blending me into the foliage. The trucks had about ten people between them. All were fit looking and I could see rifles in the truck beds. I asked Saint Peter to time lapse them a couple hours. He reported that they came from a large ranch outside the Christian lands but inside the quarantine zone. There was also a delivery van already in town that came from the same location.

  The alert spread on our Battlenet. Rafe had a truckload roll past him from a farm road headed into town. He saw no guns and just thought they were in for the screening. Time lapse showed they came from another ranch outside of Christian lands. They might still be here to get checked, but we were seeing a pattern of large groups entering from outside farms, where the prisoners were from.

  Saint Peter located the delivery truck. It was parked at a loading dock behind the market hardware store. The driver had walked around to the store front and disappeared under the various shop awnings. The truck was about one hundred meters from the security convoy but line of sight was blocked by a charity clothing store.

  I climbed out of the tree and got dressed. Rafe pulled up in his truck a moment later. We needed to get back to market square. Priority was ensuring the team’s safety, in spite of whatever stupidity the locals might start up. We received an update from Father Luke on the way in. The doctors had found something unusual in one of the prisoners. There was military nano in his blood.

  Military nano came in several flavors. Medical type repaired damage and flushed out when the job was done. Special Forces nano would replicate to remain in the body, fighting all injury as long as the soldier was on active duty. It was de-activated at mustering. Intelligence types got the interrogation resistant additives. Heavy duty spooks got a self destruct switch. Those two types were left with the soldier until classified knowledge was declassified. Templars had the Intelligence type as standard.

  We had either a deserter or an intelligence agent. Cornucopia security forces were not known to use military nano. Our prisoner might be from offworld. Father Luke had him held for more tests. He would also do an interview once the prisoner was attached to the diagnostic equipment, a sort of poor man’s lie detector.

  Rafe dropped me off at the market. I would make my way around to the back of the church. Rafe would park near the delivery van and take a look. Our overhead EEG/MEG scanner gave us a clear view of everyone within a block of the market, but cars and buildings would cause shadows. The soldiers had a unique signature from all the metal hung on them. Saint Peter was tuning the filters to allow us to identify anyone with a weapon.

  Father Luke had an update on the prisoner. His name was Daimyo and his kidneys contained encapsulated waste. When nano was fighting an infection, it would surround the invading organism and carry it to the kidneys for disposal. Whatever was encapsulated had grown too large to pass. He had artificial kidney stones. The doctors had not seen the condition before. They wanted to see how it related to the prion disease, which he showed some signatures for.

  Major Shawa was told that prisoner Daimyo was showing symptoms of infection. We wanted him back at the clinic for full treatment. The Major informed Father Luke that the prisoner was a dangerous man; several soldiers had been injured apprehending him. He could not release him to us without a security detail. We should check all the prisoners and he would see what could be arranged.

  Rafe reported that the delivery van was wired as a drone. Civilian electronics were used to allow remote driving. Two barrels were suspended from the roof but he could not access the interior. The doors were trapped. It looked like a drive-by bomb. He would look for the driver and possibly the remote.

  Etienne reported armed people approaching the church. There were about a dozen, spread out with weapons concealed under coats or in bags. They were sticking near cars and buildings. One of the trucks we identified was also approaching with a tarp in the bed concealing more combatants. They seemed to be using cell phones for coordination. It looked like these were not simple ranchers. I remembered how airport security had faced outward for some organized threat.

  Saint Peter gamed the variables. We had a possible prisoner rescue going on in town. Daimyo showed signs of expanding our knowledge of the disease. If handled properly, we could foil the prisoner rescue and obtain Daimyo for research. We did not know who the assailants were. We needed to minimize casualties and damage to all involved until we knew more about the conflict. Staying covert would be a nice bonus.

  He gave us a rough plan after thirty seconds of thought. Father Luke signed off immediately and went to secure our medical team behind stout walls. Rafe grabbed twenty meters of cable from the hardware store and ducked out back to the delivery van. Etienne selected his pneumatic autocarbine and dialed back the velocity. Common eight millimeter ball bearings would confuse forensics.

  My part was more hands on. Father Luke didn’t get to hear about this part of the plan, in case something ethically charged happened. I made my way to the shops in the path of our would-be liberators. My old seat at the noodle shop was open. I slid on my imaging sunglasses and slid off my tasseled loafers.

  Etienne got a good angle on the front of the Trojan truck approaching. Rafe reported the delivery van was starting up. He would pass back through the hardware store to help my operation. The delivery van pulled straight out from the loading ramp. Our guess was that someone in the Trojan truck was doing the driving. They were the only visible combatants with line of sight. As the van approached the road behind the shops, Rafe’s cable pulled taut against the back doors. He had anchored the other end to a steel rail beside the loading ramp
. Both doors pulled off and then there was an explosion ballooning out the left side of the van. Some kind of focused thermal lance, obviously meant for the armored cars. The thunderous blast blew windows out from the market shops. The van flipped on its side and began burning furiously.

  It was a surprise to everyone but us. Etienne popped up over the tire shop roof and fired a burst of ball bearings into the Trojan truck. The sound of the windshield breaking was louder than his weapon. The driver stopped and started backing rapidly up the street. Etienne dropped back down behind the parapet.

  Rafe rolled baseball shaped grenades at the backs of approaching armed groups on his side of the street. When they had rolled just in front of the groups, Saint Peter triggered them. Clouds of obscuring riot gas sprang up. Rafe faded back into the shops. He would get his truck.

  I rolled my own grenades on my side of the street. The combatants were very close but looking toward the pillar of smoke from the burning van. It put their backs to me. Very quickly, there were clouds of riot gas among them. I took a deep breath and ran into the cloud. The imaging glasses showed me heat from bodies and heat from weapons. I picked a combatant bent over coughing. Two quick shocks from the Combat Skins robbed him of consciousness. I left the weapon and threw him over my shoulder. The chemicals were making me blink rapidly to flush my eyes. I got oriented from the balloon sensor feed and trotted back to the restroom, concealed in riot gas.

  I checked the feeds from my compadres and the balloon sensor. People were fleeing away from the square. The soldiers were in movement like a kicked wasp’s nest, spreading out and seeking cover. A few shots were fired between the opposing parties, but it was more suppression and covering fire than any kind of aimed targeting. The prisoner rescue dissolved into small groups heading out of town, many dropping their weapons on the way. They were reacting professionally to a Spoiled Raid in Hostile Lands. A basic trained unit, for sure.

  Etienne was coming down off the roof of the tire shop. He would stow his gear in the truck and go in the back of the church for close quarter’s security. Sometimes soldiers react badly to surprise, best to be on the scene to protect the team.

  Rafe brought his truck down a side street behind the restroom while I patted my prisoner down for possessions. He had ammunition in his coat and a cell phone with an earpiece. I smashed the earpiece, put the ammo in the trash and turned the cell phone off. Tendrils of riot gas were creeping under the restroom door. Time to go.

  I turned to the back wall of the restroom. There were high slit windows, too small to crawl out of. Opening a window, I got my hands and feet braced and pulled the cement blocks out from beneath. In a minute, there was a four foot hole and a lot of broken glass. Shouldering my prisoner, I slid out the new sally port and cut between a couple houses to get to Rafe’s truck.

  I jumped in the bed with my prisoner and then rolled him underneath me to keep him pinned. Powered Garda called the technique a "muscle cage." Good control of his breathing and the option to shock instantly. Rafe took off fast for his storage unit on the edge of town. The Seminary was only forty minutes away from there at speed. I had nothing to do but monitor feeds and hold on for the next twelve minutes.

  Rafe drove us through tree lined neighborhoods and altered our speed and vector for a while to confuse Cornucopia Security satellites. He passed a hunter’s tarp through the back window on a slow bit of road, "Put this on autumn leaf camouflage and cover yourself. You two look carnally involved from above." I did as told, keeping an eye on my prisoner. Now the truck appeared to be carrying yard clippings. I would have to tell Rafe that was a nice touch, he had filed that tarp for inventory with his truck from the beginning of the Akron deployment. Cancel a ding for Rafe.

  I watched Rafe’s feed, from under a tarp that was rapidly getting warm. Combat Skins don’t shed heat as well as real skin, no evaporation. I saw he was pulling into the storage gate and entering his code. The gate lifted and we entered rows of metal barns. Rafe stopped and hopped to get his unit door open, then backed carefully back into it. I flipped the tarp off and drew in air that tasted strongly of wintergreen air freshener and urine. Rafe saw my face and said, "I know, you should have smelled it before I hung the air fresheners. Someone was living here after the outbreak started. They ran him off."

  We got the prisoner out of the truck and laid him on the tarp. I searched him more thoroughly while Rafe rummaged in some boxes. There was a folding knife strapped to his ankle. I got a little adrenal rush and then calmed myself with the resolve to treat these guerrillas more seriously. They weren’t suicidal, but gave a lot of thought to individual tactics. If they were better armed and had a better Battlenet, I would not want to engage them directly.

  He wore black police sneakers, which looked battered with age. His coat had been lost, but the pants and shirt were new. In appearance, he was healthy and devoid of facial hair, just stubble on his head. He had an Asian cast of features, mixed with something. Rafe stepped over and slapped some epidermals on the prisoner’s neck. He ran a wand scanner over him and then caught the cell phone I tossed. Off he went to begin disassembling it while I put a hairnet monitor on my prisoner. I got some food and a box for a chair from storage inventory. Set those up near the prisoner and drank some water. It was going to be a long night. Rafe took off his Combat Skins and crated it up. He gave me a wave and drove the truck back out, "Better you than me, mon ami." I flicked my nose at him.

  The rest of the team was packing up the doctors for transport back to Seminary. Soldiers were combing the town, detaining suspects and fighting fires. More would be coming soon. Major Shawa made an appointment to deliver prisoner Daimyo to us, being too busy to argue with doctor Torelli. Arguing with Jesuits is a very tiring experience, I know. Arguing with a Jesuit doctor is like trying to push water up a hill. His arguments just flow around you. The major threw off a date four days away and left to direct his troops.

  I surfed feeds for hours, watching progress being made while I grew bored and tired. If you blend interesting channels into pop screens and reprioritize transparency, it’s like being a media director. I go with layered feeds and play a background soundtrack. One feed was the prisoner’s activity. He had an EEG signal, respiration rate and heartbeat in a little graph at the bottom of my vision. If he started waking up, I’d shock him like a trout. Another feed was my Sergeants and Father Luke. They were driving the trucks to the Seminary. The doctors were excited and in a constant chatter of technical terms. Saint Peter would sort those for me. It looked, from glimpses of the rear view mirrors, that all the gear was packed and the balloon sensor was in a trailer behind Etienne.

  The feed from Akron was just our orbital scanning now. I could see colored dots tracking all movement. There were markers for more armored cars and a platoon of paratroops. From a response like that, you can extract conclusions. First, that paratroop unit deployed from outside the zone to Akron about an hour after the delivery van burned. Not very quick, considering their men were under fire. More cold caution than comradely fervor there. Next, their Battlenet was glacial. The lag delays and lack of coordination indicated many separate systems lashed together with a central command. They wasted time asking permission.

  So, they moved at human speeds. Their electronics were low bandwidth. They were tentative. If needed, we could jerk them like puppets.

  The possible progress of the guerrillas was marked by an orange band. They were slipping away into the night and trees. Armored cars cruised the roads, but I doubt this crew was anywhere near a road by now. We might see some punitive raids by Security tomorrow, but most would make it home before light. I looked at my prisoner for a while, wondering.

  The door opened a little after that, Rafe thoughtfully pinging me that he had arrived. The message was "Put it back in your pants and wash your hands, for God's sake. Your kit is here." He backed in the truck and sealed us up again. In the truck bed was one of our ranch quads. We inflated a foam bed and shifted the prisoner to it. I cat
heterized him and hung two IV’s. Rafe pulled the hairnet sensor off and hooked him to the Translator connections on the quad. Upload in progress. I got more medical supplies out of the truck. We were wiring him up for three or four days of storage. By then we would know what to do with him.

  Saint Peter received the prisoner, a Reizo Tanaka, before midnight. He sandboxed the original mind and made six copies to run at high speeds. These minds were assaulted in various ways to create intel. The assault approach could be very different in each case. Some were returned to remembered surroundings and observed. Some were questioned by trusted simulacrums. Some were just tortured. This technique allowed self-collaboration with five other copies of the subject. The lies may vary, but truth stays the same. As clones broke down, they were deleted and replaced with a fresh copy. By about dawn, we knew everything Tanaka had on his mind.

  They had come for prisoner Daimyo. He was some kind of spook advisor to the outer ranchers. Breaking the others out was a bonus. Tanaka had wanted his cousin out to be his bonus. We had dossiers on most of the people he had ever met. Twenty guerrillas trained by Daimyo were the most interesting. He seemed to have joined a month ago because of family and disaffection. When half the homes in your neighborhood are under foreclosure and you can’t leave, a certain militant desperation creeps in. Gangs form.

  Information on Daimyo was speculative. He professed to be a soldier, retired on Cornucopia but subjected to persecution by Security. He didn’t deny being from offworld, but was a little vague on where that was. Said he was protecting old friends from backlash. It was a story his subjects could gobble up readily. I just didn’t believe he was retired.

  His goals, before being captured, were not too extreme. He wanted to keep the foreclosures from becoming evictions. To do this, he confronted bankers and process servers wherever he could find them. Daimyo had arranged some crimes against bankers in town. It was thought he had a crack team of sleepers there. He knew of buried weapon caches. Daimyo was supposed to have connections with the Belters, funneling money into the cause. There were rumors of ways through the cordon. Little of it could be confirmed by Tanaka. He was just a foot soldier. I had grabbed a limited subject, with my usual luck.

  We sat and waited, in that disgusting storage unit, for Saint Peter to churn out analysis and suggestions. My own thoughts were I had no problem with these guerrillas, if they could be recruited. Getting our hands on Daimyo would tell if that were possible. Then again, Daimyo could be just a front for some dark shadows recruiting from fertile ground. Saint Peter thought along those lines too. We would hold Tanaka as a chip for play. When Daimyo could be Translated and put to the question, we would pick our moves.

  Three days of cold meals and ammonia scented air later, I was ready to pull Daimyo out of the detention center myself. My only entertainment had been vicarious living through my compadres and the God’s eye view from orbit. At one time, reality shows had composed a third of media broadcasting. I’m sure suicide rates suffered a spike during those dark days. My captive had not been much company. He eventually got rid of everything solid before switching over to intravenous feeding. Good times. Sponge bath nursing wasn’t what I signed on for, but the doctors had given me the training. Saint Peter never forgets a qualified skill. So I rolled him around and did circulation massages and misted him with antibiotics. That kind of personal service is usually found only at casinos. It costs a lot of money. This guy owed me.

  Finally, Daimyo was brought in by one of the Paratroop Lifters. They made a big show of landing in the church parking lot. It was loaded out with rocket pods and a door gun. It would have been more impressive if we hadn’t been tracking the flight since liftoff. Major Shawa stepped off behind twelve soldiers with our prisoner. Half of the soldiers radiated out from the Lifter to form a perimeter. The Major and three men escorted Daimyo over to the doctors.

  "I will need to be present at all times with the prisoner," he said. His manner was stiff and angry, like he had spent four days getting his head handed to him by second guessing commanders. I could sympathize. His presence would not be much of a hindrance. That had been a ninety percent chance on analysis, so we planned for it.

  They stuck Daimyo straight into a Quantum Translator and we made our backup, just like every other infected we had treated. The doctors explained that the patient needed a kidney operation, which they would do pro bono, Saint Peter sent six Daimyo copies to their own private hell. We now knew he used Intelligence agent nano, he didn’t try to die on us. So he would talk outside his body, but be a hard target within it. A copy talking to Saint Peter would have no nano protections. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  The doctors soon got Daimyo under the beam for the kidney stone extraction. They were anxious to analyze the "medical waste." Father Luke began informing Major Shawa that we would need Daimyo overnight for treatment, just after the surgery started. The Major didn’t like that idea at all, but there was no way he could argue medical care with the doctors. Fait accompli was a leap Father Luke loved to make. The Major eventually went out to the Lifter, contemplating some more haranguing from above. He was walking stiffly again.

  They settled on trading the Lifter for two armored cars that showed up later, another nine soldiers deploying from them. Our Battlenet tagged every one and ran tactical games while Saint Peter filed intel from the prisoner. I took a nap, with my link to prisoner Tanaka set to alert. It might be getting busy in a few hours.

  I got a wake up chime about three in the morning. I was at low ebb, but the intel soon had me popping Cocktail number 6 and flipping through feeds. Daimyo didn’t immigrate to Cornicopia, he deserted to the Belt from a Garda unit outsystem. He was the Belter’s agent in a scheme involving using the output of the local farms to influence food prices. The Belter’s were funneling money to the cause in the form of a mutual fund. They even had Cornucopian investors. When foreclosure was imminent, they would sink capital into oppressive loans and be viewed as saviors. The idea was that the locals would drive prices down, once the markets opened back up, in return for more favorable refinancing. They were gambling that we could get the disease in check and that the locals would take a dive in gratitude. The ranchers wouldn’t be getting big trades at first anyway. It could work, if timed right. Their plan had a financial stake in our efforts. We could approach these people. I smiled at my unconscious prisoner. All this fervor and it came down to money.

  Saint Peter expanded research on the Belters and known guerrillas. He would try to chart connections and analyze traffic, to get some perspective. Find us a fulcrum from which to apply pressure.

  I went over the Daimyo interrogations, trying to get a feel for him. A trained operative, gone freelance. He had lost faith with the Garda, who were Utilitarians. "The greatest good for the greatest number of people." Daimyo was more of a Meritocracy kind of guy. "Reward your good performers." Of course he considered himself a top performer. The free market politics of the Belt gave him a risk/reward system more in line with his beliefs. I hoped he could see the differences before they broke him. There were very few old Belters. I looked at his game plans since getting into the zone. A bit of a pirate with an eye for loot. He refrained from killing more out of self-concern than ethics. His operations had a terrorist chic. If he didn’t get out of detention and offworld soon, he never would. And if we didn’t find a use for him, I would file it under not my problem. He was a little too narcissistic for my tastes.

  Morning came and Daimyo went, airlifted back to his detention lockup. The soldiers went with him, thank God, so Rafe could come get me out of my own lockup. He arrived an hour later with an empty truck for the rest of our supplies. Tanaka would ride under those. I could drive the truck with the quad home. After days in my Combat Skins, I was really looking forward to a shower.

  Once at the Seminary, we backed the truck up to our "supplies" container and moved Tanaka into the simulator. I hung my Combat Skins on the recharger, the muscles flushing pink with a transfusion. Ou
r spy, Fumiko, was currently scanning cattle at Burkowski’s father in law’s ranch. Her quad kept an eye on her for us. If needed, it would break down to further delay her. Etienne enjoyed rigging pranks like that into the software.

  Saint Peter had a Sim ready to go for Tanaka. He would fall in battle on the Akron street, hit by flying debris and be rescued by me, Nurse Medina. His next four days would be spent in our urgent care, being worked on by high tech medical equipment. Just a sensory blur of semi-consciousness that would eat up days in hours. Later this evening, we would shift him to a secure recovery room and wake him up. I would pack him a plowman’s lunch and let him go tell the tale to the guerrilla network. Just being Good Samaritans, thanks.

  One thing guerrilla bands are always in need of is discrete medical care. We would shift some human supplies into the veterinary office trailer and game scenarios to keep us secure, just in case they came calling. I was thinking gas, but Etienne said microwaves were instant and more selective. What a wiseass. He ordered the parts through our doctor cut-outs to the Fabricator. We needed some kind of high energy sterilizer for the lab anyway. Hide in plain sight was one of Etienne’s little quirks, along with field improv.

  The next day, after a parts run to Akron, we received word that the doctors had discovered something from the kidney stones. They didn’t like it at all. Father Luke said they had all run off to their labs and were making Fabricator orders. Saint Peter was sorting through the orders to see what kind of information we were giving away.

  They had found small shells of Daimyo’s Nano encapsulated around even more Nano that had been attacking him. Those little bots were designed to seek brain proteins. What they did when they found one, the doctors didn’t know. Not knowing dropped the doctors into a little OCD behavior that made them forget things like security. They were ordering a lot of Nanotech.

  Saint Peter grabbed a scan of the bots and estimated manufacture to Cornucopia Product Research with a ninety three percent chance. That was a big division of the company covering food and goods. They indirectly approved clinic licenses. They sent inspectors to ranches and had to clear our livestock. It was their recommendation that started the quarantine. CPR had a genetics division with a capable lab. It patented modifications for people and animals every year. Advanced Nano like this would need their equipment. Saint Peter started backchaining the organization of the lab.

  The doctors managed to hack a few of the Prion bots. There was programming for a three day lifespan before flushing out of the system. Once entering the bloodstream, the bots would seek brain tissue to anchor and activate. When they found the right protein, they unfolded it like a towel and then folded it back reversed. Instant infectious disease. The prion would slowly starve to death and the process would spread exponentially to surrounding brain proteins even after the bot shut down. Perhaps that was the madness portion of the disease, that healthy proteins would mimic a starving neighbor so completely.

  Doctor Torelli saw it first. If they reversed the folding command and out produced the rate of infection, these little bots would repair prion damage. Treat someone three days and the infection would pass. It was the vector and the cure. Father Luke deflated him a little with the observation that the designers surely knew this too. That idea upset all the doctors quite a bit. They weren’t curing the disease so much as hijacking someone else’s design, someone who had violated their oath of ethics.

  To me, it was more straightforward. I recognize weaponized Nano when I saw it. The Christians had been subjected to a targeted attack for some purpose. We had a good suspect, now we needed the intel to bring the fight to them. I thought of Fumiko and her calls to a real estate office. I had a frag order passed through Saint Peter. All staff was to be backed up ASAP. Rafe walked Fumiko in himself. Etienne would work on her Personal Assistant while she was in the Translator. I wanted a kill switch on her messaging. We sent Fumiko copies to interrogation. The real Fumiko got to run medical supplies to Akron. We told her a big shipment was coming from the Fabricator, so she should go make her deliveries and wait for morning. I didn’t want her around our OCD doctors right now.

  I was flipping through the Fumiko data around midnight, when the Battlenet went off. We had infiltrators in the woods. Orbital time lapse showed they had hiked in from a truck parked out on a farm road. The count was six. They would be at the church in maybe ten minutes.

  Rafe and Etienne got into Combat Skins, I lofted the EEG/MEG sensor balloon. When they were still a few minutes out, I could tell they were armed and that one was being carried on a litter. My sergeants slipped into the woods with their camouflage and toys. I clipped on my flashlight and went outside for a walk, best to sort this out away from the buildings. Father Luke was getting Doctor Shetty up for duty. That process should take more than enough time. I walked into them near the side of the rectory. The sensors showed me covered by rifles in the woods while two of them approached. I gave a convincing little start and began negotiations.

  The negotiator introduced himself as "Brian." He spoke good English and was apologetic. His partner, he called "Tashida." Tashida didn’t talk much, but was working on a good tough guy glare. I gave him back cool appraisal. He hadn’t expected that. My job was going to be the liaison. I didn’t want to be too much of a push-over at first meet with the guerrillas.

  Brian said he had a hunting accident. Could we help his girlfriend and keep our mouths shut about it? She had some kind of paperwork problem with zone security. I told him to bring her to the office trailer in the parking lot and we would see what we could do. He gave a whistle and two men came out of the woods carrying a woman on a litter. Guerrilla number six was staying in the woods. I hoped Etienne or Rafe didn’t have to hurt him.

  I walked them into the trailer and set the woman, who went by "Miko", on the table. The four men I directed to the attached office. They didn’t want to do that, so I negotiated Brian a seat with the patient and the other three would wait out of the way. Father Luke arrived with Doctor Shetty a little bit later. The guerrillas unnerved him at first, so he kept looking to me and Father Luke. We winked and encouraged him along. Father Luke served coffee to everybody just to make things feel more normal. Soon Shetty got involved with rebuilding Miko’s infected thigh wound.

  I slid myself near Brian and gave him a distracting teaser question, "Did Tanaka-san recommend our services?" That got his attention right away. Tensions ratcheted up among the guerrillas. I told Brian, "Did you know we treated Daimyo the day before Tanaka got out? Daimyo-san seemed to think we may have some common interests." I hooked my thumb at the trailer door and headed outside. Brian and Tashida were right behind.

  I fed them Daimyo quotes from my interrogation reading. All three guerrillas were soon gathered around and listening intently. I gave them a vague background of political resistance and living off the grid when hunted. Then I got down to quid pro quo. We would treat their sick or wounded at night. If security was around we would turn off the spotlight on the cross above the steeple. I asked if they were able to get messages to Daimyo. When they lied unconvincingly, I offered to move messages during treatments. That was a big hit with them, even Tashida smiled.

  Their part of the bargain was easy. If we sent medical teams to the outer ranches, I wanted them to make sure nothing bad happened. If they heard something going on in the zone that might affect us, we wanted to hear about it. Other than that, I wanted them to do nothing until I talked to Daimyo. I gave them a phone number and a sheet of simple substitution codes. We could leave messages for each other on an answering machine at the airport, using a hacked code to get past the automated messaging into an encrypted server. It wasn’t completely tight, but it showed them a level of security they could respect. I didn’t want them knowing about the AI and quantum devices we used. I was just Nurse Medina, a sympathizer with some underground experience. It was a good start to recruiting by proxy. When they left, before sunrise, we were on friendly terms. To them, they had just recru
ited us.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to pass any messages to Daimyo. It wasn’t necessary or desired. We had a copy of Daimyo’s mind. Whatever message we wanted to send would be carefully crafted and sound perfectly believable. As long as Daimyo stayed incommunicado, we could run his guerrillas. I set Saint Peter to flow charting their organization and went to sleep.

  ****