War World X Takeover

“So, where did you leave him?” Van Damm asked quietly, as he and Makhno paced up the path to Traitors’ Cave.

“Back at the company guest house, trying to find anybody with a radio.” Makhno automatically glanced around him. “As soon as I’ve got a cargo, he wants to go back to Castell City.”


“Good. How long will that take you?”

“Heading upstream?” Makhno smiled. “I can take a good slow three T-weeks getting there.”

“Time enough for the story to spread off-world, at least,” Van Damm grinned back, “With nothing he can do to stop it.”

“By the way…” Makhno paused again to make sure nobody was within hearing range. “How did your guys get the explosives to look like company issue?”

“Much of it was company issue,” Van Damm whispered. “‘Liberated’ by the Hibernians, and replaced in the work-orders by the homemade product. That, or bought outright by supposedly independent prospectors, but gathered in tiny amounts over the course of the past half-year. Kennicott, of course, swears they had nothing to do with the bombing of Reynolds’ Camp, and Reynolds likewise swears it had nothing to do with the bombing here, but nobody believes either of them—and they certainly don’t believe each other. Dover and Anaconda are likewise looking fish-eyed at each other, wondering if either of them set this off.”

“Now we just have to keep the pot boiling a little longer.” Makhno glanced up the path to the lighted doorway ahead. “I don’t know about this, Vanny. I’m not a very good actor.”

“Just respond to me, then. I am very good at keeping, as they say, a straight face.”

Makhno nodded, and they walked on up the path and into the Golden Parrot.

One of DeCastro’s former thugs, now dressed in a downright civilized looking suit, offered to guide them to a table. Van Damm insisted on one in a quiet corner, knowing that was enough to attract attention.

They ordered the red clam appetizer with amber ale, followed by the roast muskylope entrée with green corn and spice-root sauce and began their planned conversation while waiting for the food to arrive.

“I tell you, this is just the beginning,” Van Damm was saying, loud enough for the waitress to hear him as she delivered the appetizers. “Kennicott won’t sit still for this. Not just the buildings wrecked, or the ore they had to dig out of the ruins, but the personnel losses. A lot of the indentured miners got killed, you know.”

Makhno, knowing where a lot of those missing miners had actually gone, managed not to smile.

“I heard from—well, never mind who: a secretary who works for the company,” Van Damm went on. “Kennicott’s going to try to call in the CoDo Marines for a strike on Reynolds.”

The waitress, barely batting an eye, moved out of sight but not out of hearing.

“The Marines?! They’d never do it,” Makhno replied, right on cue. “Shooting up strikers is one thing, but deliberately going after Reynolds—No, they won’t hit a big company like that.”

“If they can’t get the Marines, they’ve got a contingency plan.” Van Damm leaned closer, but didn’t actually lower his voice. “Those shuttles of theirs: they can use those to fly over Reynolds’ Camp and drop, hmm, interesting things on it.”

“Bombs?” Makhno did his best to sound shocked. “That’s what they did last time. They’ve got to know Reynolds will be watching for it. They’ll have their gear under shelter.”

“There are other things that can be dropped from a shuttle,” said Van Damm. “Everything from plague-spores to… well, interesting wildlife. They’ll try to make it look like a natural accident, if they can. I tell you, my friend, nobody will be safe anywhere near Reynolds’ Camp—and, who knows, they may try to steal laborers from Dover or Anaconda, just to make up for their losses? Tell your merchant friends not to make any more runs to Reynolds’ Camp for a good while; it’s going to be attacked—within five Turns, at most—and it won’t be safe. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I’ll pass the word on,” Makhno agreed, digging into his red clams.

Van Damm likewise addressed himself to his food and said nothing further. He knew how DeCastro’s place worked; a word to the waitress’ ears was sufficient.

Before his guests had finished their meal DeCastro was up on the ridge with his CB radio, calling Reynolds’ Camp, selling the details of Kennicott’s planned revenge for 1000 creds per item.





Brodski watched with his binoculars from the shelter of Harp’s Sergeant while Makhno dutifully took his passengers out to the waiting shuttle. Yes, Vince Sanchez was definitely one of them. Once the man was safely on the ship Brodski heaved a profound sigh of relief, strolled into the back room and turned on his radio.

“CoDo-Boy’s gone,” he announced into the microphone. “How’re things going at your end?”

To his surprise, it wasn’t Van Damm who answered first but Himself. “All’s well here, me lad. We’ve got all the refugees well settled, and the factory’s doin’ just foine, thank ye.”

Van Damm cut in over him. “Kenny-Camp is almost deserted, save for the shopkeepers and the company white-collars. The mayor was seen wandering around in a daze, until one of the Red-Scarves gently led him home.…”

There was explosive laughter from Himself, quickly smothered.

“…and our scouts are leading the Reynolds serfs away, one by one. Reynolds and Kennicott are no doubt screaming through the radio-relays to their friends back at CoDo HQ, each blaming the other and wanting the Marines sent for protection. This, I daresay, the Grand Senate will be unlikely to do.”

“So it has no excuse to yank control away from the Harmonies,” Brodski chuckled, “At least not until it’s settled the squabble between Kennicott and Reynolds and their shifty allies. How long do you think that’ll take?”

“We have bought ourselves safety for perhaps a year, my friends,” Van Damm gloomed. “What we have to worry about now is the floating beggars and any refugees from Reynolds who go to work for Kennicott instead, and the next load of transportees that CoDo dumps on us. If there are too many, Castell City will be overloaded no matter what we do. And there’s always the possibility that Old Castell will back out of his bargain….”

“Let’s put that year to good use, then,” said a woman’s voice over the radio—recognizable as Jane. “More farms, more factories….”

“Organized as co-operatives,” warned a new voice, male. “Let’s not preserve the sins of the old society while creating the new one.”

“O’ course,” said Himself, sounding almost offended.

“Who’s that?” Brodski asked, worried.

“Ah, just one of me lads,” Himself hastened to explain. “An old friend, really. Aye, an’ his advice is good.”

“That it is,” Jane added. “By the way, Jeff’s found a local mold that makes a remarkable antibiotic. We’ll breed it here and see how it works out before sending packets down to Castell.”

“You know,” Brodski considered, “We’ll be needing a good technical school before long….”

“I don’t think you can talk Old Castell into it,” Van Damm warned.

“Aye, an’ tell me, now that the CoDo boy is gone, can we bring the Queen and the Princess back upriver? We’ve a mort o’ cargo for the lot of yahs.”

As the hopeful voices chattered and planned through the airwaves, in a cave above Hell’s-A-Comin’ an old miner set down his microphone and leaned back to listen. No one could see him smiling from ear to ear, nor hear him singing quietly to himself:


“…We can bring to birth a new world,

From the ashes of the old,

For the union   makes us strong.”




2056 A.D., Luna Base


Marshall Wainwright, Assistant to the Director of the CoDominium Bureau of Intelligence, felt like a schoolboy with cap in hand as he entered the palatial office of Grand Senator Adrian Bronson. The Senator’s office was four times the size of his own bosses’ office and, unlike most of the underground offices on Luna Base, there were no Tri-V projections of Earth’s seas, prairies, meadows, deserts or other calming sites to cover up the fact that they were living in a cavern deep underground on a barren moon with a surface that was as completely devoid of life as deep space. Most of Luna’s fulltime government employees used the Tri-V projectors to fight off claustrophobia and fears of entombment.

It appeared that Senator Bronson had no such human frailties. Instead his office was paneled with real teak and mahogany wood and filled with bookcases full of legal volumes and lots of hand carved wooden pillars and sconces. He couldn’t imagine what it had cost to drag all this wood out of Earth’s gravity well.

What Marshall did know was that he was about to be called on the carpet about something, but as far as what—he had no idea. BuIntel had irons in so many hot spots throughout CoDominium occupied space that he wasn’t even going to try and guess which particular one this might be. The only thing he was sure of was that it would in someway be related to one of Dover Mineral and Developments off-world holdings, Tabletop, Comstock, Haven, Friedland, Tanith, Markham, New Washington or any of a dozen other planets.

Senator Adrian Bronson Sr. had swept-back wavy silver hair and the smiling visage of a Tri-V pitchman, but his eyes were pure arctic chill. Wainwright knew that Bronson had been a Senator for over twenty years. Grand Senators served for thirty years; new Senators were appointed by both co-option and election from Earth. They could not be recalled only expelled: “The Senate shall be the sole judge of members and qualifications.” Answerable only to the CoDominium Council, the Senators were a law unto themselves. No CD bureaucrat, not even his boss, the Director of Bureau of Intelligence was immune to their power.

“Have a seat,” Bronson said, using a tone of voice one might use to correct a misbehaving cur.

“Yes, Your Excellency,” he replied, trying to keep from tugging his forelock as he sat down.

“I understand you were the man in charge of the Haven Takeover Operation?” His tone brooked no nonsense.

So that’s what this is about, he thought. Max Cole, I’d like to wring your neck for this! “Yes, sir,” he replied, hiding his anger. “We had one of our senior agents, Maxwell Cole, running the operation. How does the Senator know what happened on Haven when we haven’t gotten word one from there yet? he wondered. Aha! Their intel must have come from one of the DMD ore ships. Unfortunately, BuIntel doesn’t have enough agents to cover every ship because the Grand Senate won’t give us the funding we need. However, we will get the blame when something goes wrong that could have been fixed with more credits.

“Well, if this is the work we can expect from one of your top agents, then BuIntel can expect some funding cuts when the next appropriation bill comes up.”

This is not going well. If the Senator cuts our funding—and he has the connections and power to do just that—Director Harrison will have my head. “Your Excellency, we had a well-situated group of malcontents, which we supplied with arms, thoroughly capable of undermining Harmony hegemony—”

“Well, your gang did a terrible job,” Bronson said, cutting him off. “According to our people on the ground, they were slaughtered by a bunch of farmers and a gang of women comprised of former convicts and prostitutes.” He shook his head in apparent disbelief. “The Harmonies are non-violent and yet your people couldn’t even hold Castell City!”

“I don’t know exactly what happened there because we haven’t received our agent’s report, but I’m sure there were extenuating circumstances—”

“Enough of your excuses. It seriously worries me that my information is more up-to-date than that of the CD Intelligence Bureau’s. It also troubles me that BuIntel can’t even run a successful revolt on a world run by pacifists. It might even be amusing, if it weren’t so pathetic. We have vital interests on that world. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” he replied, knowing full well that those “vital interests” were not CoDominium related, but Dover interests.

The Senator lowered his voice as if he were taking Wainwright into his confidence. “Thanks to the loss of our shimmer stone monopoly we’ve taken a multi-trillion dollar hit over the last five years. The man responsible for this loss, my nephew Thomas Ehrenfeld, is going to be sent to Haven to clean up this mess. As CEO of DMD, Ehrenfeld was so busy taking credit for the shimmer stone profits, he forgot to establish effective controls on Haven to see that our monopoly remained uncontested.”

Wainwright nodded, understanding full well that the nephew was being sacrificed for his failure to protect Dover’s bottom line. If Ehrenfeld had been smart, he would have hired a mercenary battalion to protect the shimmer stone secret. There weren’t that many ports of entry on Haven and it could have easily been sewn up tight. After all, dead men tell no tales.

“This blow to the company has meant that I’m going to have to either take a leave of absence from the Senate to run the company again or have my son take the CEO spot.”

Taking a leave of absence wouldn’t shorten Bronson’s term of office, but it would remove him from the hub of power. And very likely make a powerful enemy for BuIntel.

“I’m sure your son would acquit himself well as CEO,” he said, trying to placate the older Bronson. By reputation, young Adrian was even more rapacious than the old man.

Bronson nodded. “It’ll be good training for him. I don’t have that many more eligible years as Senator anyway and I expect him to take my position one day. Still, that’s not going to solve the Haven problem.”

“Tell me what I can do to rectify this situation, Your Excellency.” He would give the Senator all the help he could; otherwise, his career was over and he’d be marooned back on Earth where no one trusted ex-CD officials—especially ex-spooks. His pension would see to his physical needs, but he needed to be at the center of power: changing fortunes, building new worlds, moving people and toppling governments were his passions.

“Okay, Wainwright, here’s what I want you to do,” the Grand Senator said, as he began to tick off points on his left hand with the fingers of his right hand.