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faces. The front-most bio-truck had pulled up outside the gate. Several Holy Order clergymen were hovering around the truck, others standing protectively around the station entrance. Lynn shied away when she saw this. She didn’t think they would recognize her but still she turned her face away, not wanting to risk it.
    “Come on,” she said to Squid, “let’s find out what’s happening.”
    Squid followed as Lynn walked over to the last of the trucks waiting in the line. The crew watched them approach, unmoving.
    “Hello there,” Lynn called to them in a voice she hoped made her sound older but was probably just louder than usual.
    The three bio-truck crew members looked at her, then two of them went back to their conversation, plainly ignoring her, while the other, the one who must have been the lead driver, pulled the long piece of dry grass he was chewing from his mouth.
    “G’day,” he replied, his voice gruff.
    “What’s going on?” Lynn asked, indicating the gate ahead. “What’s with the Holy Order everywhere?” She paused. “Are they looking for someone or something?”
    “They’re doing cargo inspections,” the driver said. “Doing it all over the city now, not letting hardly anyone or anything in or out without being checked.”
    Lynn’s brow dropped into a confused furrow. “Why are they doing that? Is there a quarantine or something? A disease outside the city?”
    That was the only reason Lynn could think of that the Holy Order would be getting so involved in what was going in and out of Alice. Apart from dragging citizens of the Territory into the Supreme Court for crimes against the Church, managing outbreaks of disease had always been the other major jurisdiction of the Holy Order – because of a belief that their faith would keep them safe from the disease – but she had never heard of them doing anything on the scale of locking down the entire city.
    “You ain’t heard?” the driver said.
    “Heard what?”
    “The Holy Order and the Sisters have taken over the city,” the driver said.
    Lynn stared at him for a long moment, not comprehending what he had said. She looked to Squid, who shrugged.
    “What do you mean?” Lynn asked.
    “I mean the Holy Order and the Sisters have taken over the city,” the driver repeated. “They’re claiming they run the government now. It’s a … what did they call it?” The driver addressed this question to the other two men who stood leaning against the truck.
    “A coup,” one of them said without looking toward him, barely breaking stride in his own conversation.
    “Yeah,” the driver said. “That’s right, a coup.”
    “What about the Administrator?” Lynn said.
    “Reckon he’s been arrested, least that’s what I heard.”
    Lynn didn’t know how to feel at hearing this. Of course she was glad the Administrator was probably imprisoned beneath the Supreme Court, but it was for her father that she wanted him punished. She wanted to go back into the city to find whatever evidence against him she could. There had to be something somewhere. But she knew that if returning had been dangerous before, it was impossible now. If the Holy Order was guarding every entrance then she stood no chance of getting into the city. She just had to hope they weren’t going to do anything rash like execute the Administrator before she could figure out how to prove he was involved in her father’s murder.
    “Once you’re done here are you going east?” Lynn asked the driver.
    He nodded, chewing on his dry grass again. “Matter of fact we are.”
    “Could we ride along?” Lynn indicated herself and Squid. “I’m Lynn and this is Squid. I’ve got money to pay our way.”
    The driver stared at her and Squid and then nodded. “I’m Bishop,” the man said. “This is Randal and Barra. Don’t know why you’d want to go east – we don’t much want to be going ourselves – but we’ve got a cargo trailer that will be mostly empty on the way