“Good. Do you need me tonight?”

“Why, you have a hot date?”

I winced as I shifted in my chair, then tapped a finger to the slight bruising on my cheek. “Niemeyer’s boys wanted to convince me to leave Basalt. I could use a lot of sleep.”

“We’ve got it covered. Sleep well.” Gypsy smiled, then jerked a thumb at the shop. “Me, I’m going back for two more, large and hot. It’s going to be a long night.”

Manville boasted eight Javapulse Generators scattered about. We hit three outside downtown, then hit the largest in the heart of the city. As seen on some surveillance holos, a hovercar cruised past the place, a thermal detector checked for inhabitants, then a satchel containing high explosives and a detonator sailed through the plate glass. It bounced once or twice as the hovercar sped away, then a vicious gout of fire vomited from the storefront. Debris spread everywhere and out at the Heights’ site the fire companies arrived too late to stop a Capellan-owned shoe store next door from burning. Luckily it was empty, too.

Almost immediately FfW made its appearance, claiming credit for our previous strikes. The media messages pointed out that the explosives used in these attacks were from the same lot as had been used previously. FfW denounced the BSU as a government operation, citing the extra strikes BSU had taken credit for. FfW went so far as to claim that the reason the attack against the Palace had gone awry is because Ff W, in its quest for freedom for all, had tipped off Emblyn Security. “While we decry the private possession of weapons of war, in a time when the government cannot be trusted, we must be free to make ourselves secure.”

The reasons given for attacking JPGs were the usual. They were part of a multiplanetary corporation that generated lots of profits and drew them off-world. While JPG did employ a large number of people, they only offered the Republic-mandated minimums for benefits, and their wages, while competitive within the service industry arena, were barely enough for someone to rise to middle-class status. “Until such capital enterprises realize they have a duty to the community—the whole community—their cost of doing business as a bad neighbor will be high and get higher.”

I don’t know who Gypsy used to speak to JPG officials locally, but by noon on the seventeenth, the remaining JPGs had initiated several schemes to help improve their images. They donated a lot of product to shelters, as well as put out boxes as collection points for all manner of things to be distributed to the less fortunate. By four in the afternoon they announced a strategic alliance with the Basalt Foundation to fund some daycare centers for parents with young children.

That part of the plan actually worked far better than I had expected, and I knew Bernard would begin to react. Alba was all that stood between him and being out of control. I had to debate as to whether or not I wanted to flick that safety switch off. Without her he’d lose a competent planner. While I expected he would begin to model his little attacks after the JPG strikes, that also assumed he wouldn’t think he could do things better his way.

It turned out this was a flawed assumption.

I decided that I might not want Alba out of the picture, but having her a bit uncomfortable with Bernard would be good. Using the dead-drop system, I sent her a note saying, “Talked with your boss. He was curious about what you heard from me and when. Be careful.” Once I left it and made the mark in the appropriate place, I returned to the park and saw it get picked up.

I smiled. At least she would be warned. Forewarned is forearmed, and in this game, if you weren’t forearmed, you would end up dead.

In retrospect, that was a lesson I should have thought a lot more about.

Manville, Capital District

Basalt

Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

18 February 3133

My warning to Alba Dolehide resulted in a harvest of unintended consequences, which took my plan, removed all calculation, and let things roll forward at the level of gang warfare. While there were resulting casualties, there were no fatalities, but I had no sense that this would always be the case. In fact, I had a disturbing certainty it would not be, and that things would deteriorate rather quickly.

Though I did not learn about it until later, the message to Alba was delivered, but the courier told Teyte about its content. Teyte immediately assumed that Alba was in league with me, and that both of us were in the employ of Emblyn. Teyte moved to grab her and have her interrogated as I had been, but Alba was one step ahead of him. She’d learned about my meeting with Bernard, looked far enough ahead to see what was going to be coming down, and had already slipped away. With her went a certain amount of knowledge about where a couple of ’Mechs and several vehicles had been stashed, so not only did Bernard lose competent leadership, he also lost a portion of his firepower.

That loss of firepower was a very good thing, because Bernard decided to hit Emblyn all over the place. It struck me that Bernard must have been getting tactical advice from somewhere, because as things progressed his attacks became more tightly focused and, while still doing more damage than was absolutely required, they were stinging Emblyn badly.

In the immediate aftermath of the JPG strikes, Bernard hit four Minute-Meal™ eateries. They were a Republic-wide chain of franchise quick-food restaurants and, here on Basalt, Emblyn owned them. Those attacks mirrored the FfW attacks and, for all intents and purposes, people assumed FfW had done them.

For his next trick, however, Bernard blew up an IceKing warehouse. IceKing was a grocery supply company owned by Emblyn that delivered product to Minute-Meal™ and JPG, as well as a large number of other restaurants. Quam did an article decrying this shadow war spilling over and affecting the culinary genius native to Basalt. In short, he wrote, the destruction of nonnative eateries was fine by him, but when such an attack destroyed a source of good food for all, things were getting out of hand. While the piece did seem to be praising the terrorists, Quam’s true point was that the strikes, while they had killed no one yet, were destroying lives. Those people who worked in the shops that had been put out of business were forced to take temporary jobs or go on the dole.

He centered his story around a small family restaurant that had been serving Asian food for three generations, and showed how their business had been destroyed by the attack. Quam used his skills as a writer to point out the absurdity of Bernard and others calling ethnic Kuritans and Capellans off-worlders, His outrage at their treatment was enough to get blood boiling in some sectors, and a number of private donations flowed to the family profiled.

Quam was unique in his writing because he actually took a stance on the issue. The rest of the newsies focused on rumor and innuendo, ignoring the microeconomic impact to cover instead their projected fears for the future. Articles whined about how unbridled warfare like this could make the Basalt economy grind to a halt. The fact that it had ground to a halt for the affected families was something relegated to the “soft ’n fluffy” parts of media reports.

Gypsy immediately stepped up the Ff W’s rhetoric, decrying some attacks, usurping others. He also picked a variety of targets for FfW operations. Gypsy was sharp enough to choose targets where he could minimize the sort of impact Quam had complained about. Toward this end he authorized a lot of transportation and vehicle hits. The approaches to a couple of bridges got blown and then repair vehicles were destroyed, maximizing inconvenience for all without putting anyone out of a job.