“Noble Yetch?”
“Are we to disabuse our work population so, cousin Anko? You like them well enough when they raise your quotas. Do you hate them now they choke your factories?”
Commotion, louder than before. Several nobles and many guilders thumped their assent sirens vigorously. Anko sat down, his expression vile.
“Noble Chass?”
Chass rose. “I fear my cousin Anko fails to read the larger story here. Ninety years have passed since we faced such a crisis. We face a Second Trade War. Reports are that the wave of enemy force is quite humbling to our own defences. We have all seen how the tumult today has wounded our hive. Why, my own dear daughter barely reached home alive.”
Sympathetic holograms flashed sycophantically from the tiers of some of the houses ordinary.
Chass continued. “If this attack inconveniences our houses, I say: Let us be inconvenienced! We have a duty to the hive population and cousin Anko should put that bald fact before his production quota. I wish to frame more important questions to this Legislature. One: Why did this attack come as a surprise? Two: Should we signal the Imperium for assistance? Three: Where is the High Master, what did he know of this and why was the Shield ignited so late?”
Now the roaring grew. Assent sigils lit up all around. The Legislator screamed for order.
“Noble Chass,” a voice said, lilting through the huge hall. “How would you wish me answer that?”
The place fell silent. Escorted by ten impassive, uniformed officers of the VPHC, High Master Salvador Sondar entered the Hall.
He was blind in one eye and limping badly. His flesh was blistered and charred, and his clothes were tattered. But he was still plant supervisor.
Using an axe-rake as a crutch, Agun Soric bellowed as best his crisped lungs could manage, as he brought over three hundred smeltery workers out through the northern processing ramps of Vervun Smeltery One. Most were as soot-black as he was, the only things showing against the grime being the glistening red of wounds or the white of fresh dressings.
That and the workers’ white, fear-filled eyes.
They carried their injured with them, some on makeshift stretchers, some in carriers made of tied sacking, some pushed in ore-barrows.
Soric stomped around and looked back with his one good eye. Vervun Smeltery One and parts of the surrounding ore plants were burning furiously. Chimney stacks collapsed in the heat, sending up white cinders against the yellow flames. The Veyveyr Rail Terminal, to the west, was also torching out.
He heard shouting and disputes from the concourse below him and he hobbled down, pushing his way through the rows of men and women from his plant.
A dozen Vervun Primary soldiers were stopping the survivors’ advance down transit channel 456/k into the inner habs. A VPHC officer was leading them.
“We need to get in there,” Soric said, stomping up to the commissariat officer. Even with one eye, Soric could see the twitchy, frantic light in the young VPHCer’s eyes.
“Orders from Main Spine, old man,” the Commissar told him. “Low hab is choked with refugees. No more may be admitted. You camp here. Supplies will come in time.”
“What’s your name?” Soric asked.
“Commissar Bownome.”
Soric paused, leaned awkwardly on his crutch, and wiped the ash from his supervisor’s badge with a hawk of spit.
He held it up so the uniformed man could see. “Soric, plant supervisor, Smeltery One. We’ve just been bombed to gak and my workers need access to cover and treatment. Now, not in time.”
“There is no way through. Access is denied. Make your people comfortable here.” The troopers behind Bownome raised their weapons as punctuation.
“Here? In a stinking street with the works burning behind us? I don’t think so. Boy, Smeltery One is the property of Noble House Gavunda. We are all Lord Gavunda’s souls. If he hears of this—”
“I answer only to House Sondar. As should you. Don’t threaten me.”
“Where’s the gakking threat, you idiot?” Soric asked, looking round at his massing workers and getting a spirited laugh in answer. “A one-eyed cripple like me? Let us through.”
“Aye, let us through!” bellowed a worker beside Soric. Ozmac, probably, but it was impossible to tell under the soot. Other workers jeered and agreed.
“Do you understand what a State of Emergency is, old man?” Bownome asked.
“Understand? I’m gakking living it!” Soric blurted. “Stand aside!” He tried to push past the VPHC officer, but Bownome pushed back and Soric fell off his crutch onto the debris-littered paving.
There were shouts of disbelief and anger. Workers surged forward. Bownome backed away, pulled out his autopistol and fired into the approaching mass.
Ozmac fell dead and another collapsed wounded.
“That’s it! Enough! Be warned!” yelled the commissar. “You will all stay where—”
Soric’s axe-rake crutch shattered Bownome’s skull and felled him to the ground. Before any of the troopers could react, the workers were on them like a tidal wave. All of the troopers were killed in a few seconds.
The smeltery workers gathered up their weapons. Worker Gannif handed the commissar’s pistol to Soric.
“I’ll see you right!” Soric barked. He waved for them to follow him down the transit channel. They cheered him and moved on, at his heels, into the city.
“Marshal Gnide is dead,” High Master Sondar told the Legislature. The hall had remained silent as the High Master’s floating throne ascended to the main dais with its stone-faced VPHC vanguard. Sondar’s throne had locked into place above the High Legislator’s dais and the master of Vervunhive had spent a long moment looking out at the assembly before speaking. He was dressed in regal robes, his face masked with a turquoise ceramic janus.
“Dead,” Sondar repeated. “Our hive faces a time of war—and you, noble houses, low houses, guilders, you decide it is time to usurp my position?”
Silence remained.
Sondar’s masked visage turned to look around at the vast swoop of the tiered hall.
“We are one, or we are nothing.”
Still the nervous silence.
“I believe you think me weak. I am not weak. I believe you think me stupid. I am not that either. I believe that certain high houses see this as an opportunity to further their own destinies.”
The High Master allowed Noble Anko to rise with a wave of his hand.
“We never doubted you, High Lord. The Trade War fell upon us so suddenly.”
You witless weakling, Chass thought. Sondar has led us to this blind and you reconcile sweetly. Where is the fervour that had us vote to take executive action this afternoon?
“Zoica will be denied,” Sondar said. Chass watched the High Lord’s movements and saw how jerky they were. It’s not him, he thought. The wretch has sent another servitor puppet to represent him.
“We have sent word to the Northern Foundry Collectives and to Vannick Magna. They will bolster us with garrison troops. Our counterattack will begin in two days.”
There was delighted commotion from the commons pit and the guild tiers.