Engineman - Eric Brown [46]
"Why did you want to come here in the first place?" Max asked.
Ella had hoped they might have forgotten that question. "I lived on the Reach for a few years when I was younger. When Eddie died... it just seemed the right thing to do." She stared from one Disciple to the next, defying them to disbelieve her. Rodriguez was bent low over a second helping of rice, watching Max. Jerassi, the quiet, shy one, stared at his plate without meeting her gaze.
"I take it you were with your parents when you lived here?" Max asked.
"My father. My mother died when I was two. Father worked for a Terran engineering company," she went on, staring at Max, challenging him to call her a liar. "We moved around a lot when I was young. I liked the Reach. I always wanted to come back."
Max stared at her, as if considering his next line of interrogation. "For the past few months," he began, "every E-man and -woman, every Disciple, trying to enter Danzig territory, has either been turned back or arrested. Those suspected of supporting insurrection in the past have been 'arrested and placed in military custody' - a euphemism, I assure you, for executed. For two months, Hennessy's Reach has been, effectively, a closed planet. Only Danzig Officials can come and go as they wish. Then yesterday you suddenly turn up. You sail through all the checks and enter the Reach as if it were a fun park... You must admit that it does look more than a little suspicious."
Ella thought back to Carey's Sanctuary, and the interest the official had taken on finding out the name of her father.
She shrugged. "They put someone on my trail when I left the 'port," she reminded them. "Perhaps they assumed I was meeting fellow Disciples and they wanted to round them up?" She spread her hands in a frustrated gesture. "I don't know. Shit, I have no idea what's going on here. I came for a quiet holiday, and the next thing I know I'm followed, rescued, drugged, then given the fifth degree."
She stared at Max. "Can you tell me what the hell's going on here, Mr Klien?"
Before he could answer, Conchita entered the room and hurriedly swept the used plates and utensils into a bowl on her hip. The little girl padded up to Rodriguez. "Dada-"
"Not now, Maria. Okay?" He patted her bottom and sent her running off into the kitchen.
Max brought his chair forward to rest on all four legs, clasped his hands together and regarded Ella. "Eleven, twelve years ago we - the Enginemen and Disciples of the Reach - formed ourselves into underground cells and began a campaign of armed resistance to the rule of the Danzig Organisation. We hit strategic command structures across the Reach, military depots, ports and airports. We singled out influential members of the Danzig hierarchy to be assassinated, and in a number of cases we were successful. In the past year we have become such a threat that the Organisation have taken retaliatory action."
As Max spoke, Ella glanced at Rodriguez and Jerassi, seeing them no longer as representatives of a harassed and victimised religious minority, but as ruthless guerrilla fighters.
She recalled the convoy she'd seen leave Carey's Sanctuary for the Reach, the tanks and the nuclear rocket launchers.
"But the military build-up I saw...? Against a guerrilla network?"
Max said, "The Organisation's offensive is not directed at us, Ella."
She looked from Max to Rodriguez and Jerassi. They remained impassive, staring at the table-top.
"I don't understand."
"Why do you think suddenly, twelve years ago, we took up arms and declared war on the Danzig Organisation?"
Ella shrugged. "Because they were - still are - a totalitarian regime that keeps the people of the Reach oppressed and economically disabled."
Max smiled. "Oh, we have far more than the mere liberation of the planet in mind."
Ella had to laugh. "But what can be more important