Come the Revolution by Frank Chadwick Page B

could walk. It was only two kilometers, after all, but it was two kilometers through slums which yesterday had exploded with riots, a lot of them directed at Humans. Maybe the rage was temporarily reduced to a low simmer, but I figured the survival time down there of one lone unarmed Human with his right arm in a sling and his pockets bulging with cash could probably be measured in minutes, and that assumed nobody recognized me as that horrible Naradnyo guy everyone on the feed was talking about. I wouldn’t have minded having a good skin mask right about then, instead of just a big floppy black hat.
    The more I thought about it, the more turning myself in to the Munies seemed like my smartest move. After all, they didn’t have an arrest warrant out on me, just a material witness summons. According to the vid feed, the Munies were taking special care to protect the enclaves of the other five intelligent races, like us Humans. The fewer off-worlders that got hurt, the less likely the Cottohazz was to get involved in Bakaa’s internal troubles, provided all the financial machinery started ticking over again within a day or two. If things got much worse they would probably evacuate the aliens, which if I was included would get my job done for me.
    Things could go wrong with that move for sure, but there weren’t any perfect choices. I had to play the odds, and, unsettling as I found that fact, the Munies looked like the frontrunners. My only real reluctance was in surrendering my freedom of action. I was used to calling the shots on my own, but right now I didn’t see many shots to call.
    Someone rapped on the door. I checked the time and it was getting close to checkout. It might be management wondering if I’d cleared out yet, but you never knew. I crossed to the door as quietly as I could and heard a low conversation outside.
    “Who is it?” I asked, standing well to the side in case the answer was a burst of smarthead flechettes through the cheap composite door.
    “Are Municipal Police. Would like speak Sasha Naradnyo.”
    Son of a gun! Talk about coincidences. I took a quick look through the peep lens and saw a Munie badge held up by way of confirmation. The English was heavy with the Slavic accent, common to the Sakkatto northside Human slums, but it made sense they’d send some local Human Munies to collect me. I opened the door.
    “You know, I was just thinking—” I started, when two Humans in civilian clothes and packing gauss pistols pushed me back into the room.
    “Hands up,” one of them said.
    My stomach tightened in fear and I raised my left hand. I tried to move the right one a little, but nodded to the sling.
    One of them handed his pistol to the other and then patted me down, very thoroughly. He dumped the contents of my pockets—mostly cash—on the sleeping pallet then backed away.
    “Clean.”
    “Let me guess,” I said. “You guys aren’t really Munies, are you?”
    “Shut up, traitor,” the guy holding the guns said.

Chapter Twelve
    One on each side of me, they took me out through the hostel lobby and into the broad, open walkway beyond. We turned right.
    “Where are you taking me?”
    “Shut up,” the guy on my left said. I thought of him as Lefty . He was the one who had done all the talking so far, what little there had been, and he looked to be the brains of the outfit. He had one of the local English slum accents, this one kind of a mix between Hungarian and some Slavic languages, which meant he was second-generation and probably hung out somewhere near e-Kruaan-Arc, a couple kilometers north of Katammu-Arc.
    Lefty was the larger of the two, although neither one of them was all that big. He had a round face with sharp ratlike features, a scraggly black moustache, and I noticed he was missing the upper half of his right ear. The other guy had two scars on his face, one of which twisted his upper lip slightly. It made him look as if he were sneering all the time. I pegged their