Absolution

by Peter Smith

  He rolled his eyes, “They are a little dry, you know.”

  She glared at him, “My great grandmother’s recipe is perfect.”

  He snickered, “It’s not your grandmother’s recipe that’s the problem.”

  She gripped her napkin off the tabletop and his hands went up, “Hey, I helped to make them, I’m being critical of myself too.” His hands rising to shield himself from the impending attack.

  Her eyes stayed narrowed at him as she released a controlled sigh through her nose. She was about to suggest that he might be the problem when her virtual vision came to life. A message notification hovered before her from Toby.

  “What is it?” Sean asked, noticing that her focus had shifted.

  She shook her head, slightly annoyed as she opened the message. Tobor knew not to interrupt dinner time. If he was, then it was important. She read the message and sighed, “Nathan is here.”

  Sean stared at her for a second and then nodded his head once, “Huh.” Was all that he managed as his attention went back to his own plate.

  Her glare returned, “Get over it.” He nodded his head, his lips pursing as he most definitely was not ‘getting over it’.

  She patted Alex on the shoulder, “Hey spaceman, I’m going to go see your uncle Nathan, then I’ll come use the telescope with you.”

  Alex’s face deflated, “But I wanted to look at the stars with you.”

  She nodded, sadness pulling at her shoulders. She hated that the empire was constantly taking her time with Alex, eating away at it second by second. But if she didn’t see to it’s greater needs, then even worst would befall her little boy, “Daddy will take you.”

  The frown on Alex’s face intensified, “But daddy doesn’t know how to use the telescope” He pouted, his arms crossing over his chest.

  Maria leaned in and whispered into his ear, “You can show daddy how smart you are by teaching him how to use it.”

  Alex huffed, his frown relaxing some. He realized that she wasn’t going to be change her mind. A year earlier he would have thrown a fit, fighting against the inevitable. Now he appeared to understand the need for compromise and reluctantly accepted her plan, “Okay.”

  She smiled and tussled his hair, she was just standing when he spoke again, “Can we use the big telescope?” He asked, a smile tugging at his cheeks as he noticed that he had an opportunity to negotiate for more.

  She paused, thinking about the request. The Arroway Array, located behind the moon at Lagrange Point 2, was the big telescope he was referring too. Powerful enough to image the continents of planets in other solar systems, her son had been hinting at using it to find other civilizations throughout this corner of the galaxy. She didn’t know if that was possible, because of technical constraints or if extra terrestrial life existed or not, but she saw no reason to extinguish his spark of curiosity. She smiled, “Course buddy, go find yourself some aliens.”

  Alex squealed, a high-pitched noise that she hadn’t heard him make in months, and flew from his chair and toward the door. Sean sighed, also looking at his plate of food before standing up and placing his napkin upon it. He walked toward her, kissed her on the cheek and followed their son, “Try not to enjoy yourself too much.”

  She closed her eyes as annoyance flared, her back to her husband as he left the room. The man was a great soldier, a fantastic husband and an amazing father, but he was terrible at hiding his emotions. When it came to her and Nathaniel Chen, he didn’t even try.

  Her office was simple enough, a panoramic view of the forest that grew over what had once been the great City of New York. In the distance the ocean lapped against the coastline, and a storm was brewing over the horizon. Nathaniel Chen stood behind her desk, staring out through the window.

  “Your dad had a much better view.” He said.

  She laughed, sitting on the corner of her desk, her back to him as she looked out the window along an opposite wall from him, “The less I have in common with him the better, for humanity’s sake.”

  He grunted, “Don’t know if the world could handle a second Jacob Patterson.”

  She nodded and turned her torso slightly to look over her shoulder at him, “How are you holding up.”

  He sagged some, and then turned around, stepping up to the desk and resting his knuckles against the surface. He looked up at her, his eyes heavy, “Only have the nightmares a couple times a week now, you?”

  “Sleep is a luxury for the boring and the innocent.” She said. It was meant as a joke, but it pulled at her all the same.

  She stretched her hand out and rested it on top of his. His eyes closed as he took the contact in and then pulled his hand away. She understood, if he hadn’t done it, she would have after another second. Their relationship had been tumultuous at every point, especially in those early days after the war. Their relationship had been so established before the end of the global order that their parents had created. When it was all over, the only people they could relate to were each other.

  She didn’t want the brief flare of intimacy they had shared to come back; she was more than happy with her marriage to Sean and would do nothing to jeopardize their family, but she still empathized with Nathan and he her. She needed to show him compassion because a part of her needed it as well.

  He looked at her chair and motioned toward it questioningly, she nodded her head to his silent request. He pulled it out and sat in it, letting a sigh escape that was far less from physical fatigue than emotional, “You know, it sucks being surrounded by the other Spire families.”

  She spun and pulled her legs up, crossing them over one another. Now in a seated position upon the desktop she faced Nathan comfortably, “I imagine it’s the smell that would bother you most.”

  “Huh?” Was all that he managed as he stared at her, confused.

  She smirked, “From all the bullshit.”

  His eyes widened and he let out a laugh as he leaned back into the chair, letting it fully support his weight, “It’s nice not being on the receiving end of that wit of yours.”

  “You should hear what I say about you when you aren’t here.” She teased.

  “The only person here talking shit about me would be your husband.” His eyes left hers and he began to absentmindedly play with the edge of her desk.

  “He isn’t happy about our little meetings,” She added.

  Nathan nodded. A pregnant pause hung between them and then he looked at her, “Back to work?”

  She nodded, “Back to work.”

  “They’re all afraid.” He said, letting her figure out who he was referring to.

  “Of me or of Trotsky?”

  “Ninety percent you, five percent Trotsky, five percent Kellen.”

  She nodded and then looked over him and out toward the horizon, “I take it they already know about Trotsky’s assassination attempt against me?”

  “Their ass holes created a vacuum with how quickly they puckered up."

  “Are they worried I’ll retaliate against him and the other members of his alliance?”

  Nathan nodded, “Of course, they’re also worried about what happens if you don’t respond.”

  She arched an eyebrow, and he sighed, “Maria, you and your army are the only thing that’s kept this planet from devolving into constant warfare ever since our fathers died. They might have been megalomaniacs, but they created stability. Step out of line with our fathers and you ended up dead. But if you aren’t going to punish someone for trying to kill you, a lot of the other families won’t see a reason to continue to reign in their more aggressive natures with one another. The general concern is that the world will descend into hundreds of smaller conflicts and not just the big one we’re dealing with right now between Free Humanity and the Trotsky Alliance.”

  She groaned and placed her face in her hands. When she emerged from her temporary cover she looked him in the eye, “Do you want to switch places?”

  He shook his head, “Nah,” he said, drawing
out the sound, “Alex is cute and all but Sean isn’t really my type.”

  She let herself laugh, “What else?”

  “Chatter is that both Kellen and Trotsky are planning something big.”

  The desire to hide behind her hands returned, “Any idea what?”

  “Not entirely, but Warin seems to be pretty nervous.”

  Maria sat up straighter, “She’s been a part of the Free Humanity/Spire Alliance from the beginning, why would she just now be outwardly nervous?” She said more to herself than Nathaniel. Her eyes narrowed, and she focused above his head.

  “No idea, grand planning is more your area of expertise.”

  She waved him off as he threatened to distract her. She used her Virtual Vision to call up a map of the German Spire’s territory and overlaid the last known intelligence for all the military assets in the area. There was movement at Trotsky’s alliance staging bases throughout the western edge of his Russian holdings. Satellite reconnaissance was also showing that there was an absence of Marine activity at their usual facilities. She sighed, that meant that there was a good chance that both sides were preparing for a battle on the border of Germany.

  She shifted to her communications menu and contacted Tobor, “Toby, have you had any success cracking General Kellen’s encryption?”

  “Not yet, however we have detected a greater amount of digital traffic through their networks.” Toby stated. She sighed, knowing that was only the tip of the iceberg given that they were likely keeping their most sensitive communications on their Quantum Entangled Communicator systems.

  “What about Trotsky’s forces, I’m seeing logistics movement to support several divisions moving through Poland?”

  “Communications volume among their forces has dropped.”

  “How is that possible?” She said, noticing Nathan looking uncomfortable as she had a conversation with Tobor and wasn’t able to hear both sides of it. She transferred the audio to the speaker system of the office.

  “I have detected the launch of several dozen high altitude drone aircraft, I suspect that the Trotsky alliance has equipped these aircraft with laser line communication systems.” Tobor responded, it’s tone of voice always neutral and calm.

  Maria ground her teeth, “Well that was smarter than I gave them credit for.”

  Chen raised a hand and caught her attention. She placed Tobor on hold and blinked away the virtual vision, “What?” She said, somewhat snippily.

  “There was one more thing I needed to share with you.”

  “And that would be?”

  “The other families seem to think Trotsky is planning something big, an attempt to wipe out most of the Marine and Alliance forces in a single blow.”

  “Do you have more for me than that?”

  He shook his head and stood, “If I did I would have led with it.”

  She nodded, accessing the map again. Forces were coalescing in that region and given Nathan’s input, she had no reason to not believe that a major battle was about to occur. Trotsky had to know that the greatest weakness of the Marines were their limited numbers. And it would appear that both sides were streaming toward a confrontation on the German Spire border.

  If Trotsky could deliver a significant enough blow to the Marines in a single engagement, it would be enough to stop them entirely. They would be too depleted to maintain significant combat operations against the Trotsky Alliance and he likely didn’t think Maria would respond given she hadn’t after he had attempted to kill her.

  She closed the screen. It could wait a minute. She looked at Nathaniel, “You need to go now?” She asked, knowing what the answer was.

  Technically Nathan was a survivor of the attack her father had perpetrated upon his family spire in Hong Kong. With his home vaporized by a nuclear detonation, he was now left to wander between the various Spires of the globe. He relied upon the goodwill of those willing to tolerate his presence or accept his offer to provide them with some type of service. This had led him to perform many odd tasks for the other Spire families. Overall, they saw him as a person with no allegiances and that was a useful commodity for those that were ingenious enough to devise up ways for him to operate.

  What no one knew was that he ultimately worked for Maria. It was a relationship that they had kept secret and allowed for Nathan to funnel her vital intelligence for years now. It had been a dramatic change for the two of them.

  Always so antagonistic toward one another, after the deaths of their fathers and both their worlds were destroyed, it made a perverse sort of sense that they could provide comfort for one another. For her it was intelligence on the other families, information they wouldn’t dare share with her or even in her presence.

  For him it was the opportunity for a new life, to make amends for the man he was before their worlds were reshaped. For the two of them, it was having the opportunity to share with another who understood the trauma and the regret that came from the loss of the men that they both desperately wanted approval from.

  Nathan nodded his head, the light of the setting sun reflecting from his shaved and smooth scalp, “Yeah, so long as I leave now I won’t have to push the transport too fast to make up for the lost time, can’t let the other families think I stopped in North America otherwise they might talk.”

  She stood and took his hands, “If you need to talk…”

  He interrupted her, “I know, and the same goes for you.”

  He held her hands for a moment longer than was necessary, his eyes looking up into hers and she knew that he wished things had gone differently with them. She understood the desire, but she also knew that while they needed one another to share the grief and emotional damage they had endured, it was important that they be able to achieve distance from that same trauma. That they not be constantly reminded of it and the very sight of each other pulled it from the dark spaces within where it was suppressed.

  She needed the moments in between, when she could forget about her father’s betrayal, of the part she had played in both his motivation, actual plans and the guilt she felt from ending his life. She couldn’t do that with Nathan around and he couldn’t get a reprieve with her in proximity all the time either. It was her father that had killed his, after all. It was her father that had denied Nathaniel the opportunity to heal the emotional rift between his father and him. While the likelihood of that ever happening was slim enough to be astronomical, so long as the man had lived it had existed but with his death it would never occur.

  And there was his mother, the only person in Nathan’s life other than Maria who had shown Nathan compassion and affection. She had been murdered by her father’s order as well. It was for the best that they hadn’t evolved beyond this point, that their moments of intimacy in those early days had been fleeting. They had gotten from one another what they had needed and now they still were, but in a different way.

  He pulled his hands free, “You aren’t responsible for any of this.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  His shoulders dropped, and he shook his head, “We can’t keep paying for their choices.”

  She sat down on the edge of the table, the energy being pulled from her by some invisible force, “If I don’t, others will.”

  “Then let them Maria, you don’t owe them anything.”

  Her shoulders fell and her head hung. She closed her eyes and let the exhaustion flow over her as her body contracted in on itself. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she lifted her head to look up into his eyes. Those eyes were so different from the ones she had looked into just five years ago, before they were in this position. They were warm and compassionate. She forced a smile, “Throughout all of history, children have always paid for the sins of their fathers, directly or indirectly. It ends with me though, Alex and all the other children of this new world will not have to live a life that has been destroyed by another Patterson. They’ll get the opportunity to make this world in their image.”

  “Good luck.” Was all th
at he could manage.

  “See if you can’t ferret out more of Trotsky’s plan and good luck to you too.” She said, thinking if what she was observing was correct, that both of the sides in this conflict had escalated to all out war. They would all need as much luck as they could get.

  The question was, what did Kellen think he could get from this and what did Trotsky? If she could anticipate it in advance, she might be able to intervene with enough finality that she could bring them back to the negotiating table, once and for all.

  As Nathaniel walked out the door and into the hall, on his way to his transport she called Tobor.

  “Yes.” its neutral tones filled her ears.

  “Toby, contact me the moment anything changes in Europe, no matter how small. And I want you to place our forces in that region on standby. When we need them off the ground and en route to a target, I don’t want any delay.”

  “Should I direct additional air assets to the region and begin a combat air patrol?”

  She sat there, mulling over the implications of such a decision. It was possible for them to up the readiness level of their forces in the region without drawing too much attention. They might be able to keep either Trotsky’s alliance or the Marine/Spire union from noticing anything. But it would be difficult for her to covertly move in additional attack and transport aircraft of sufficient numbers and still avoid detection. If that happened, then either of the two sides could launch a preemptive strike against the other and her goal of avoiding further bloodshed and ending this entire debacle peacefully would evaporate before her.

  “No,” She concluded, “But begin preparing our major facilities here in North America to provide reinforcements to our forward deployed assets.”

  “Understood.”

  She stopped, something nagging at her. Kellen had joined in on the attempt to repulse the Russian Spire commandos in London. He could have moved to a secure location, but he had armored up and joined his Marines in the thick of it.

  “Toby, what is General Kellen’s location?”

  “Satellite and signals surveillance last tracked him to the London Spire. James Dawson also recently returned there as well.” The robot replied.