Grace had a new intelligence source, thanks to a couple of Jobe’s boys. They had rigged a search on the Net—not the public side that was about as exciting as cold potatoes, but the personal side with its notes and letters. It painted an ugly picture.

The Black and Reds were spreading out from their five main towns, demanding that farmers sell them produce, crops and meat at a discount to cover the cost of taxes. That amounted to near confiscation, but since it was at gunpoint, objections were limited to notes and mail among farmers.

The Black and Reds were still buying homes, businesses, farms—anything they wanted. Those who resisted didn’t go to jail; now they just died right there in front of their families. Sales resistance dropped to nil even as the mail got hotter and hotter. At least the people who were bought out were allowed to live in their homes and run their businesses. The thugs had a big appetite but didn’t seem to know what to do with what they stole.

Unfortunately, they knew what to do with women.

Alkalurops had never made a cult of a girl’s virginity, but here girls decided. Grace could still hear Ma’s instructions. “When you make up your mind, I know I won’t be able to stop you, but don’t let a boy be making up your mind for you. You decide. You call the shots.”

Now Black and Reds were calling the shots.

In Lothran the new rules ended in a shoot-out between a family and the Black and Reds. The boys couldn’t stop the police squad that took their sister, but they knew the town and how to use their gopher rifles. From first reports, it looked as if the boys were winning, almost a dozen Black and Reds down and screaming for medics. Then the ’Mechs stomped in.

The boys were dead, their father and mother as well. The sister was found with her throat slit. To keep Lothran from thinking about doing this twice, the ’Mechs shot up and trampled the eight blocks where the shoot-out took place.

Not all of it, though. The Black and Reds had bought up a house here, a business there. They stood among the rubble.

Alkalurops was a powder keg, waiting for the spark.

Two days later the spark came.

A gun truck of Black and Reds was out making sure farmers got their produce to the now government-owned packing plants. They must have been getting plenty careless. They didn’t fire a shot when a farmer and his two sons nailed them with their AgroMechs. The farmer shredded the Black and Reds. Shredded them down to blood and scraps.

Now the farmer was running north with his sons, their wives and children, trying to make it to the Gleann Mor Valley. Grace hoped they would. She hoped and she feared.

If they made it, the war would surely start.

L. J. found a note on his ’puter that morning from Betty. He enjoyed her chatty rundown on life in the big city. The woman couldn’t seem to shake her small-town amazement at what went on. “But the B and R types have sure put a lid on the nightlife—not that a maid has much free time at night, but it’s gotten so a girl can’t walk the streets. Mr. Santorini gave me a pass that he says will make anybody who stops me let me go. Mr. Santorini is such a nice man.” Betty had to be the only person on the planet who thought so.

The cook had plenty of food, but Betty said the meats were the absolute worst she’d ever seen. Why was L. J. not surprised?

“I hear the B and R are recruiting at the local jails.” That confirmed L. J.’s own suspicion. “A B and R field marshal confiscated a gaggle of ’Mechs from all kinds of places and ordered a couple of the local ’Mech service and repair centers to come up with a plan to hang lasers on them. The repair guys tried telling him the dinky engines on a worker ’Mech can’t power a laser, but he just got mad, pulled out his knife, and shouted threats. They got real agreeable and said they’d have a plan for him in three months. He said six weeks and that was that.”

L. J. doubted those mechanics were half as good as the ones the redhead had up in her valley. He also wondered how many of them were heading there. Hang a laser on an internal-combustion-powered ’Mech?! Maybe a laser pointer for a really big briefing. So the Leader was increasing his troops and his ’Mechs. Well, he’d need all the help he could get, because in three months L. J. and his battalion were out of here. L. J. printed the note and took it down to Intelligence. Mallary was away, which gave L. J. an excuse to talk to the Chief Warrant Officer, who really ran Intelligence. A mustang, he’d risen through the ranks. It was said he could smell bad intel. L. J. needed that nose.

“You got another one of those letters for us,” Chief Mohamot said, smiling eagerly.

“The same. She still won’t take my job offer,” L. J. said, handing over the note.

The Chief read it quickly. “Can’t blame her for holding on to the job she has if it comes with perks like a get-out-of-rape-free card from our client,” he said, then his eyes got wide. “How’d she get privy to table talk about ’Mech MODs?”

“Good question. She knows the cook well. Maybe she pulled temp duty as a server.”

“Possible, sir, but I wonder if this isn’t too good to be true.”

“You don’t think Betty’s authentic?”

“Sir, I have to doubt everything I know about Betty because I know so little about her. I don’t know where she comes from. I don’t know who she likes, hates, has a bone to pick with. She’s a clean slate that gets written on, that I don’t know how to interpret. That’s what you pay me for, sir.”

The room suddenly got darker. L. J. glanced around, looking for the reason, when he realized that every monitor in the room had gone blank. “Net seems to be down,” Chief said. “I’ll give Network Disservices a holler.”

“Network Services,” someone shouted from down the hall, “is not responsible for what you are not seeing on your screens. The Net ain’t down, it’s gone. Gone on this whole stinking planet!”

The Chief stood. “I guess it starts now, sir.”

L. J. held his next staff meeting on the parade ground in front of his HQ. It was the best place to be until Network Services got a backup local Net online. It gave him a good view of his command as it went, like a kicked-over hornet’s nest, from ThreatCon Three to Four-plus. To an uninformed observer such as Santorini, it might look like frantic action going nowhere, but L. J. knew what every one of his men and women were doing, and provided the supervision that got them over the few rough spots.

For example, the Chief paraded his Intelligence staff in full combat gear in less than ten minutes. “You got any assignment for us? We got no data to mine, sir.”

“You have your backup databases on this pesthole?”

“Everything on Alkalurops is right here.” The Chief patted a small bulge in his battle gear. So did those behind him.

“Hold here. When we see how bad it is, I’ll let you know.”

“We got a cycle coming up the road,” someone bellowed from the front gate. “Appears unarmed. One man, no large packs.”

“Tell the guard to stop him, search him, and send him in here on foot,” L. J. told an Intelligence guy and sent him off in the ancient role of a runner. Two minutes later he returned with a small short-haired woman in shorts, sandals and a halter top.

“After the pat-down your guards gave me, I feel we ought to at least be engaged,” she growled. “I mean, where would I hide anything in this getup?”

“I apologize for their thoroughness. Our Net has been cut, and we are still trying to figure out what’s happening.”

“That’s why the mayor, my husband, sent me here,” the woman said, spreading her feet, resting hands on hips, and taking on the gravity of a formal representative. “Our Net’s down, too. We don’t know why, but we want you to know we didn’t do it. We suspect it had something to do with what happened down south.”