Profiteer

Somehow, the twisted process of his own mind had made him, a gentile lawyer on Paschal, metamorphose into an expatriate Jewish revolutionary on Bakunin. He had spent the last dozen years capitalizing on Levy’s reputation as a revolutionary.

 

He was a revolutionary who had done nothing when the guns had begun to fire. A revolutionary who might have had a platform to condemn what was going on, who instead packed his bags and left before he attracted attention.

 

He had built a string of contacts, learned the arcane lore of security and armor, bombs and surveillance—all without ever putting himself in any physical danger.

 

He had long ago admitted to himself that he was a coward.

 

If he weren’t a coward, he wouldn’t be in the position he was in now.

 

What had he been thinking when he allowed the colonel to contact him and contract for his expertise in the Bakunin underground? Did he really think that he could use “Webster” against Dacham? Was that it? Or was he just too terrified to say no?

 

He had dealt with the devil, and his own hands were as bloody as Colonel Dacham’s.

 

Levy wanted the colonel to pay for Paschal, but his own fear kept him from ever going through with it. He had built up “Webster’s” credibility to the point where he knew he could’ve gotten a personal meeting. With Colonel Dacham’s brother as bait, he could have had the colonel where he could have finished him off—

 

Why hadn’t he done that?

 

The elevator continued to rise as Levy slowly knelt to pick up the weapon.

 

He hadn’t wanted to do the dirty work. That was it. He was afraid to. He had been drowning in deception and manipulation for so long that it seemed easier to arrange for the colonel’s own brother to do it. It would have been a perfect setup, if Jonah Dacham had cooperated.

 

Ironic, Levy thought, how many deaths I am responsible for when I’ve never fired a shot.

 

Levy stood straight and checked the laser. It had a full charge.

 

It’s over, he thought, all the duplicity, the lies, the running. After dealing with the colonel, after this last betrayal, there was nothing left for him. Bakunin was the last place anyone could run. Bakunin was the end, and if you kept running from here, all that was left was an abyss.

 

Levy knew he was never going to leave this building alive.

 

He thought of the students cut down on Paschal. He thought of nearly fourteen hundred people cut down from orbit only minutes ago. He thought of the people on the Blood-Tide whom he’d betrayed. He thought of Klaus Dacham.

 

A dozen years of fear and anger gripped him like a tourniquet.

 

Then the elevator doors opened and he no longer had time to be afraid.

 

The elevator had stopped at the top of the air-traffic control tower for the GA&A complex. It was a massive room housed inside a ten-meter-high transparent dome. Control panels were everywhere, showing holo tracks of local aircraft. The view commanded the entire complex and the wooded hillside all the way down to Godwin.

 

There were five people in there.

 

Levy surprised himself by shooting first.

 

The guard Levy shot was standing next to the elevator. The man had a personal field, but it was a civilian model and it failed under the strength of the laser rifle Levy wielded. The guard was still turning to see what was happening when the power sink on his field exploded and the beam sliced through his abdomen.

 

As the guard collapsed, Levy felt something burn his right shoulder and he dove for the cover provided by one of the consoles.

 

The elevator was inside a pillar that rose into the center of the control room. There’d been another guard on the other side of it, and he was rounding it, aiming a handheld laser pistol at Levy.

 

Levy screamed as he swept his laser across that half of the room. Consoles exploded, a chair erupted into flames and burning smoke, and the attacking guard’s field proved as useless as his comrade’s. The guard got one more shot at Levy before his field collapsed and his face turned into a hollow blackened groove.

 

Levy scrambled behind another console and realized that he couldn’t feel his left leg any more.

 

There was moaning somewhere, and Levy looked for the four techs he’d seen when the elevator doors had opened. He kept close to the floor, pulling himself around the base of a console. Once he cleared the rank of consoles in front of the elevator, he saw two of the techs.

 

One was facedown on the floor with a hole burned in his back. The other looked as though his head had been too close to one of the exploding consoles. He was moaning and clutching his face with bloody hands.

 

The elevator doors dinged and Levy swung the rifle to bear on it. The doors closed on the third tech.