“Over by the homeless aid center on West Circular Four. Another car bomb. Anyway, the polis cordoned off the area afterward and arrested everyone. Thing is, the car that went bang was an unmarked polis car: one they used for disappearances until a resistance camera tagged it a week ago. The only people who got hurt were doalies queuing for their maintenance. I was on my way there to meet Ish — a source — and word is that before it went up, a couple of cops parked it, then walked away.”

“Uh-huh.” Frank passed her the mug of lukewarm fizzbeer. “Have you had any luck messaging off planet today?”

“Funny you should ask that.” It was Alice, arriving on deck without warning. “Someone’s been running all the outgoing imagery I sent via the post office through a steg-scrubber, fuzzing the voxels.” She cast Frank a sharp look. “What makes you ask?”

“Well, I haven’t had as much mail as usual…” he trailed off. “How do you know it’s being tampered with?” he asked, curiosity winning out.

“How the fuck do you think Eric gets his request messages to me without the Peace Enforcement bugging the call? It’s our little back channel.” (Eric was their desk editor back home.)

“That makes sense.” Frank was silent for a moment. “What’s he saying?”

“Time to check our return tickets.” Alice gave a tight little smile.

“Will you guys stop talking in code and tell me what you think’s going on?” demanded Thelma.

“The cops are getting ready to break skulls, wholesale,” said Alice, pointing at the far side of the square. “They’ve been piling on the pressure for weeks. Now they’re lifting off, to let the protesters think they’ve got a bit of slack. They’ll come out to complain, and the cops get to round them all up. If that’s the right way to describe what’s coming.”

The situation on Newpeace — or, more accurately, in the provincial capitals of Redstone and Samara and Old Venice Beach — had been deteriorating for about three years, ever since the last elections. Newpeace had been settled by (or, it was more accurate to say, the Eschaton had dumped on the planet) four different groups in dispersed areas — confused Brazilian urbanites from Rio; ferocious, insular, and ill-educated hill villagers from Borneo; yet more confused middle-class urban stay-at-homes from Hamburg, Germany; and the contents of a sleepy little seaside town in California. Each colony had been plonked down in a different corner of the planet’s one major continent — a long, narrow, skinny thing the shape of Cuba but nearly six thousand kilometers long — along with a bunch of self-replicating robot colony factories, manuals and design libraries sufficient to build and maintain a roughly late-twentieth-century tech level McCivilization, and a ten-meter-tall diamond slab with the Three Commandments of the Eschaton engraved on it in ruby letters that caught the light of the rising sun.

Leave a planet like that to mature and ferment for three centuries: the result was a vaguely federal system with six major provinces, three languages, a sizable Catholic community, and an equally sizable bunch of Eschaton-worshiping nutbars from the highlands who spent their surplus income building ten-meter-tall cargo cult diamond monoliths. It hadn’t been entirely tranquil, but they hadn’t fought a major war for nearly two hundred years — until now.

“But isn’t most of the resistance out in the hills?” asked Frank. “I mean, they’re not going to come down hard in the towns, are they?”

“They’ve got to do it, and do it soon,” Alice said irritably. “Running around the hills is hard work; at least in the city the protesters are easy to find. That’s why I say they’re going to do it here, and do it soon. You seen the latest on the general strike?”

“Is it going ahead?” Frank raised an eyebrow.

Thelma spat. “Not if the Peace Enforcement Organization scum get their way.”

“Wrong.” Alice looked grimly satisfied. “The latest I’ve got from the Transport Workers’ collective, last time I spoke to them — Emilio was clear on it being a negotiating gambit. They don’t expect actually to have to play that card: it would hurt them far more than it would hurt the federales. But the feds can act as if it’s a genuine threat. The collective are playing into their hands. Watch my lips: there’s going to be a crackdown. Ever since Friedrich Gotha bought the election after Wilhelm he’s been creaming himself looking for an excuse to fuck the rebels hard. Did you hear about Commandante Alpha being in the area? That’d be a bad sign, you ask me. I’ve been trying to arrange an interview but—”

“Commandante Alpha does not exist,” a woman’s voice called from the staircase. Frank turned and squinted against the rising sun. Whoever she was, she’d come up the service stairs: despite the sun in his eyes he had a vague impression of a slightly plump ice blonde, dressed for knocking around the outback like all the other journalists and war whores thronging the city and waiting for the storm to break. Something about her nagged at him for a moment before he realized what it was; her bush jacket and trousers looked as if they’d been laundered less than five minutes earlier. They were crisp, video anchor crisp, militarily precise. Whoever’s paying for the live video bandwidth better have deep pockets, he thought vaguely as she continued. “He’s a psywar fabrication. Doesn’t exist, you see. He’s just a totem designed to inspire support and loyalty to the resistance movement among confused villagers.”

“Does it make any difference?” asked Alice. She was busy unpacking another drone as she talked. “I mean, the thing about a mass movement is, once it gets going it’s hard to stop it. Even if you take down a charismatic leader, as long as the roots of the grievance remain, another fucking stupid hero will come along and pick up the flag. Leaders generate themselves. Once you get a cycle of revenge and retribution going…”

“Exactly.” The new arrival nodded approvingly. “That’s what’s so interesting about it. Commandante Alpha is an idea. To dispose of him the PEO will have to do more than simply point out that he does not exist.”

“Huh?” Frank heard a distant noise like the tide coming in; an impossibility, for they were more than three hundred kilometers from the sea, and besides, Newpeace had no moons large enough to raise tides. He pulled out his keyboard and tapped out a quick note to himself. “Who did you say you were?”

“I didn’t.” The woman stared at him. It was not a friendly expression. “You are Frank the Nose Johnson, correct?”

Something about her manner made him tense. “Who’s asking?”

She ignored the question. “And you are Alice Spencer, so you must be Thelma Couper. Three little piggies, warbloggers united. It’s your good luck that you’re all very lazy little piggies, up here on the roof this historic morning rather than down on the streets with the unsuspecting mob. If you’re smart little piggies, you’ll stay here and not try to leave the building. Relax, watch the fireworks, drink your beer, and don’t bother trying to get an outside line. I’ll come for you later.”

Alice grabbed hold of Frank’s arm, painfully hard. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d begun to move toward the stranger. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

The woman ignored him, instead turning back to the staircase. “See you around,” she called over her shoulder, a mocking smile on her face. Alice loosened her grip on Frank’s elbow. She took two steps toward the stairwell, then froze. She slowly spread her arms and stepped backwards, away from the steps.

“What—”

“Don’t,” Alice said tightly. “Just don’t. I think we’re under house arrest.”

Frank looked round the open doorway leading down to the penthouse.

“Hey, freak! Get back! Didn’t you hear the boss-woman?”

Frank got. “Shit!”

“My thoughts exactly.” Alice nodded. “Y’know what? I think they want witnesses. Just far away enough not to smell the tear gas.”