Urbis

Dolores Brophy greeted the central committee of the Underground, hastily summoned to receive the news of the message.

“According to this secret document which we took from a lone dispatch rider, a decoy train which we are expected to attack leaves the factory on Thursday evening at 20.30 hours, travelling on route 4. I trust you’re all familiar with the routes? The real train, so the message says, departs one hour later, presumably disguised in some manner, and moves along route 2.”

She paused, waiting for one of the sector leaders around the table to pass a comment. Lyall raised a hand.

“Lyall?”

“You have some doubts about this?” he queried.

Dolores smiled. “I would put it to you, friends, that the capture of this message and its final delivery to the factory was all carried out with remarkable ease. Remarkable ease. It is my contention that we were meant to get this message. The government seem to think they are dealing with a bunch of amateurs. I suggest that in fact, far from being the decoy, the 20.30 train is in fact the real munitions train, and that the 21.30 train is a trap. Brian, is Sector Five ready to hit the 20.30 when it comes through your territory?”

“All set up, Dolores,” Endsleigh called from the far end of the table.

“What about the distribution network?”

“Fine our end. The bikes are all equipped with trailers, pontoons are set up where necessary, we have generators and emergency lighting at all crucial intersections.”

Dolores scanned the remainder of the faces before her, examining each one in turn for expressions of doubt - or fear. “I trust,” she said slowly, that the same can be said for all of you?”

All sector leaders eagerly affirmed their readiness for the final conflict.

She focussed on the leader of Sector Two. “Annie, you are co-ordinating our friends, the Forgotten Ones.” It was a term of endearment commonly used by the Underground to refer to the city’s down-and-outs. “They are a pretty mixed bunch. Are there any problems there?”

“Not really,” said Annie Lavington. “They more or less organise themselves.”

“They know what to do?”

“Basically create havoc,” said Annie. “And act as front line cannon fodder on the bridge.”

“They are aware,” Dolores questioned her closely, “that that is what they are going to be?”

“We haven’t made too much of a point of the danger,” Annie answered. “But they know that there’s a pretty high risk that that’s what they are. They aren’t what you’d call enthusiastic, but they have some passionate souls among them who can inspire them to walk through fire, though. And after years of degradation, they seem to think this time there’s a chance it might achieve something. And even the ones who don’t want to be martyrs figure they have nothing left to lose.”

Dolores nodded sagely as she absorbed Annie’s evaluation of her army of the dispossessed. She got to her feet, pressed her hands down on the table and leant forward. “They are also heroes,” she said. “Let us not forget that.”

Cath opened the door of her apartment with surprise and pleasure, and ushered Tana inside. She had not long finished her shift at the Sector One clinic, and was making inroads into a pizza, watching television with the volume turned down low, while Frances slept peacefully on a rug in front of a heating duct.

Tana knelt on the floor and tenderly stroked the baby’s head. These moments with her child were the most precious in her life in Sector One. Tana looked down lovingly at her child, and gently picked her up, being careful not to wake her, and held her against her breast, smiling at the dimpled rosy cheeks and the softly puckered lips.

“Is she good?” Tana asked.

“She’s the quietest, best natured baby I’ve ever encountered,” Cath acknowledged. “It’s obvious from that alone,” she added, smiling, “that she’s not my baby.”

Tana detected a certain wistfulness in Cath’s voice. She suspected that this woman who had no truck with men still wished for a child of her own. She appeared quite happy, however, to be a mother to Frances, and Tana saw that she was being a very good mother.

“I wish we could be together,” said Cath. “The three of us. With no need for subterfuge, and no strife threatening us.”

Tana kissed her. “That time will come,” she murmured. “I know it will.” Gently she laid Frances back on her rug.

She stood up, put her arms round Cath and squeezed her tight. “Cath,” she sighed, “things are about to come to a head. There’s going to be a lot of fighting, and the worst of it is going to be here in Sector One.”

“I know,” said Cath.

“I’ll send someone to you,” said Tana, “with weapons. To defend yourselves. You know where the bunkers are?”

“Yes,” said Cath. “I’ve even been down to have a look at them.”

“You’ll be safe there,” said Tana. “I don’t know how this thing is going to turn out, but I’ll come and look for you as soon as it’s safe.”

“Yes,” said Cath. The tears welled in their eyes as they embraced again, huddled together, seeking with all their might to block out the fear that threatened to engulf them.

At precisely 20.30 on the evening of the 22nd, as Urbis lay panting at the end of another sultry summer’s day when the temperature had been in the high thirties, a freight train left the compound of the munitions works and began to snake its way across the city. In Sector Five it would have to pass through a choke point, where a number of the city’s principal rail routes came together to cross the Shaw River, the same river on which Crispin had made his escape from the Security Commission on his first day in Urbis. The munitions train was scheduled to reach the crossing at 20.48.

At 20.48, Dolores Brophy depressed a button on a small device on the table in front of her. The button activated a battery of EMPGs - electromagnetic pulse generators - secreted in a number of key places around the city. They erased the programmes governing the public transportation system, the traffic signals, Security’s central command, the civilian emergency services, and, just for the hell of it, the stock exchange.

At precisely the same time, electricity transformers, whose locations were advertised by signs on them, were knocked out with hand held blasters, blacking out large parts of the city. Also struck were industrial gas pipeline compressors and other strategic targets.

As the munitions train ground to a halt just before the Shaw Bridge, the city plunged into darkness, and amid the first cries of confusion came the sound of metal impacting on metal as cars slewed into each other at uncontrolled intersections.

Brian Endsleigh’s forces, at platoon strength, closed in rapidly to surround the stalled train, emerging from culverts and from hiding places among the steel girders of the bridge. The train driver switched to an emergency generator, and spotlights on his cab and every freight car slashed through the darkness, picking out the shadowy figures darting towards the train.

Chaos, shouts, gunfire, screaming.

“Up the far side of the train!” Endsleigh yelled into his communicator. “Cut off the guards!”

Grapples snaked across the wagons, and furtive figures slipped onto the roof. Shielded by bodies on all sides, men and women with finger-mounted cutting torches sliced molten grooves into armour plate.

“Hurry it up!” Endsleigh barked over the din. He knew reinforcements would sweep in at any moment.

“This stuff is...” The woman on the wagon roof never finished her sentence. Her body was rolled aside, and someone else took her position.

There was a shout. At last they were through. In the moments that followed, similar cries of triumph indicated that other teams on the other wagons had also succeeded.

“Move it!” Endsleigh yelled, beside himself with the time it was taking. “Get that stuff out of here!”

In a swiftly executed operation, human chains formed up on both sides of the train to strip it of its cargo of cases of weapons, charger packs and ancillary equipment and to transfer them with maximum haste through the drains for distribution to Underground squads awaiting the call to advance.

In minutes the train had been gutted. Endsleigh climbed into the cab and engaged auxiliary power. Slowly the train began to move forward onto the bridge. Even as it did so, its lights still blazing, airborne Security forces arrived, strafing the guerrillas as they dashed for cover. Endsleigh jumped from the moving train, screaming as a blaster bolt grazed his arm, and he half jumped, half rolled into the culvert, the smell of his own scorched flesh acrid in his nose.

As the train reached the middle of the bridge, it triggered a mine, a carefully crafted mix of low order and high order explosives that ripped apart both locomotive and bridge.

New weapons fire, coming from behind them. “Kill them!” came a demented scream. “Death to the enemies of the city!”

Security forces appeared out of nowhere. They were shooting wildly, angrily, passionately.

They raced into the tunnels behind Endsleigh’s retreating forces. They were moving into territory which was unknown to them and very familiar to their quarry. Endsleigh made sure he remained just out of sight and out of blaster range, but made enough noise for it to be obvious which direction he and his men and women were taking, until the Security forces were in too deep to retreat. The ambush was complete when more of the Underground forces emerged from side tunnels behind the Security men.

“We’re trapped!” The voices previously full of triumph turned to fear and dismay.

The manoeuvre was a classic feint, and the ensuing fighting was brief and conclusive.

The same story was repeated all over the city, as Security forces were allowed to get close to Underground units engaged in acts of sabotage, and chased them into the man made warrens, there to be rounded upon and succinctly wiped out. In a few cases, one or two Security men were permitted to escape, and word spread rapidly through the Security echelons that the Underground was to be engaged only on the surface. All known exits from the drainage and sewage infrastructure were to be closely monitored, and it was discovered that a great many had already been sealed with barricades welded into position from the inside.

At the same time, gangs entirely uninterested in the battle for the city were taking advantage of the darkness and the pandemonium to loot and burn, rampaging through the most select boulevards in downtown Urbis, pillaging the stores and setting light to them as they departed. With the fire department totally lacking co-ordination, and with no electricity to pump water, the forces of law and order had no option but to let the buildings burn.

Crowds of ragged people began to gather on street corners, and the Security men arrived in squads to disperse them. Scuffling broke out, a blaster discharged, and a derelict fell dead. The Security men were surrounded, pushed to the ground and trampled to death while onlookers cheered.

The tramps began to move off, clambering over gridlocked cars, merging with other groups to become a menacing tide. When they encountered Security men, the latter fired. Some people fell, others, wearing the breastplates they had been given either over or under their clothes, remained unhurt. The tide continued to advance, and the Security men retreated before it or were engulfed by it. Abandoned Security vehicles were set alight with the ample fuel offered by burning buildings all around, pyres for the men trapped within them, beacons announcing rage that had reached its flashpoint.

Steadily, the city’s poor and rejected progressed through Sector Two, through parts of Urbis normally occupied by those with money and privilege, making their way towards the bridge and the illuminated Bastille of Sector One.

Armoured personnel carriers moved out from the island to greet them, but in smaller numbers than Donald Shah and others might have wished, as a sizeable number of them were found to have been mysteriously sabotaged. When the personnel carriers arrived in Sector Two, moreover, they found the jams of abandoned cars clogging all the main thoroughfares and many minor ones served as impenetrable barricades.

Meanwhile, in Sector One itself, with its own power supplies, lights continued to burn, water continued to flow. Donald Shah was quick to announce a state of emergency, and recorded a message to be broadcast across the city. He ordered citizens of Urbis to remain in their homes, announcing that anyone on the streets was likely to be shot on sight. The announcement was about to be put to air when it was realized that, with the exception of people listening in vehicles or with battery-powered receivers, no one in the blacked out city would be able to receive the broadcasts. Security officers were therefore instructed to issue a challenge before shooting.

High in the central pinnacle of the island, Elizabeth Grant and Tana watched. The ever-present background constellation of lights had silently vanished as they had been dining. The Leader of the Presidium had uttered a cry of horror and raced to the window, snatching up a communicator with which to call Dashwood.

With a stony face she had watched the evening darken into night over the extinguished skyline. Thin curls of smoke had become discernible, and as night had settled, an orange glow had become visible at several points along the bay. The sounds of distant conflict carried faintly across the water: the unmistakeable staccato rattle of guns, the hubbub of clamourous voices, the occasional explosion, and the sky abuzz with aircraft, Security helicopters and ultralights advancing where ground forces could not, and civilian craft plucking terrified people from burning buildings.

Tana watched with different emotions. She thought about Crispin. It was her most fervent wish that he should survive, and she cursed that she was powerless to ensure that he did.

Through the long hours of the night, as battle raged, Dashwood relayed bulletins from Shah, reporting on damage control, describing the nature of movements in the city, evaluating the enemy’s tactics. These Shah found indecipherable. After the initial raids, the Underground had literally gone to ground, leaving their army of derelicts rampaging on the surface. A diversionary move, without doubt, Shah told Dashwood, but diversionary to what?

Through Dashwood, the Leader relayed to Shah the question: were the Underground waiting for Security to go in and get them?

Shah replied that it was a possibility, but seemed unlikely. It would be easy to simply seal off all their exits and starve them out. Indeed, they had sealed a great many of the exits themselves.

Elizabeth turned to Tana. “What do you think, Tana?”

Tana felt her blood turn cold. Did this woman suspect that Tana herself was in league with the Underground? She could not tell. The question had been posed casually, as if Elizabeth were simply using her as a sounding board. She sought around for a diplomatic reply.

“I can’t tell,” said Tana, when she could delay her response no longer. “Perhaps they wish to be starved. As a demonstration of the strength of their feelings.”

“All of them?” Elizabeth laughed. “I hardly think so. No, they have something planned. We will have to just be patient, and we will see what it is.” She picked up the communicator again. “Dashwood?”

“Leader?”

“Tell Shah to call up all his reservists at dawn. We cannot afford to let this thing drag on any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

“Yes, Leader.” Dashwood hesitated. “Leader?”

“Yes, Dashwood?”

“Do you wish me to prepare for your personal evacuation?”

Elizabeth’s laughter verged on the hysterical. “Evacuation, Dashwood? Whatever for? And wherever to?”