Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  “Is it any different in the end? What are you truly prepared to do to win this war, prime minister? Will you kill another hundred million of our own and three times as many enemy? Will you kill another billion? Or is it five billion? How many dead can you fit inside that pipe and your too precious morality?”

  “I remember: this is how you always spoke to me, as a child. I shall answer as I always have, honestly. If I must, as part of the war, yes, I’ll see as many as that killed, or more. I said as much the day I took this job. They clapped in the Lok Sabra. But I’ll not kill any with malice or ill intent.” Puff puff, puff puff.

  “That may comfort your conscience, but it will please the dead not at all.”

  “It will comfort survivors, knowing that we shall win this awful war, that the lost did not die in vain, and that all our enemies will be dead instead!”

  “All? Will you bombard Imperium and Dauran worlds with tokamaks? Will you order our navy to throw nukes and nudgers into their gravity wells? Will you kill all those our memex calls ‘enemy civilians,’ and say that righteous war and the cries of our glorious dead makes you do it? Will you enjoy it? Say it!”

  “Godsdamn you, niece!”

  “Fuck you too, uncle.”

  Briand looks like a cornered mouse. If the War Cabinet could see how this lone woman reduces him to outrage and to self pity, it would shake them to their core. If a vid is rolling and someone on Golly leaks it to the memex, it will shake the confidence of the people in their government and the Alliance.

  “You labor the point, Agent. I already said ‘yes.’ Yes, I am prepared to do whatever must be done to prevail over the vile Imperium and viler Jahandar.”

  “Very good.”

  “What? But you…”

  “My apologies, prime minister. I needed to hear you say it before we move to the other thing of which we spoke, in code and metaphors. The ‘Mistletoe Project’ that your friends at Argos Labs have worked on for years”

  “They’re not my friends.” It’s a petulant rejoinder. She has that effect on the ‘great man.’ Always did, even as a little girl bouncing on his knee in her mother’s garden back on Helena. She’d look up with a twinkle and say something to puncture an up-and-coming young man’s moral and political pretense. He loved her for it.

  “Fine. Forgive me. Leave that aside and answer me this. Do you authorize me to proceed as we have discussed, and if so, along one track or both?”

  “I’ve made no decision yet. It’s why I asked to meet face-to-face, to hear you argue the case.” Puff puff, puff puff.

  “But you’re considering it? You are considering using that! So don’t tell me that you balk at doing business with mass murderers on the other side. It’s how the game must be played from now until the end of this awful war, by when you’ll command the greatest military ever seen.”

  “I see why you’re so valued in the Hornet’s Nest. The only other person who speaks so frankly to me since I became prime minister is Gaspard Leclerc. And even he does it rarely.” Puff puff.

  “I met him once.”

  “Really? He never said.” Puff puff.

  “He didn’t know. And if he did, he wouldn’t tell. He’s more discrete than you. Though I dare say, if I read him correctly, and I read all men correctly, he’ll remember me well if you ask.” Neaira gives a wicked little grin.

  “I see. Well, he’s more settled now.” Puff puff.

  “So I heard you imply. And with no less a beauty than the infamous and extremely talented Dr. Chan Wèi herself, the Director of Argos Weapons Labs and soon-to-be mortician to the stars. I have seen her vids. Quite a stunner!”

  “You are very well informed. I thought only a small circle of his friends knew about that.” Puff puff.

  “It’s how I stay alive. I have many friends, inside the Alliance and in the Imperium. Only the brown stars of Daura remain dark to me, as they do to all farfolk. It’s why you ask me to inform you and to opine on policy, despite my youth.”

  “Dr. Wèi is a remarkable beauty, yes. She also has a brain the size of… Anyway, she has always reminded me of you. There isn’t another woman in Orion who competes with you two in guile, intelligence and utter ruthlessness.”

  “You’re quite ruthless yourself, if it comes to that. And so cunning that you haven’t answered my question yet, the one I came here to ask, and already did.”

  “Yes, I admit it. We’re all in the mass murder business these days.” Oddly, he always bounces a little higher after she deflates him.

  “It gives me no pleasure to make you say it, prime minister. Though it needs to be said out loud from time to time among honest folk, especially given what you and I have discussed and must still decide.”

  “Well, speak then. What will we have to work with after Pyotr is dead, if the Old Families return to power and prop up a new puppet on the throne? What guarantee of peace is that?” Puff, puff.

  “They’ve little imagination. They seek no more than to try to turn back all the clocks on all their worlds, to reestablish an oligarchy of class and title. Only this time, they want to rule in fact, without the Brethren standing hidden behind the throne. They fear the cowls may creep into their bedrooms at night to cut their children’s throats, should they ever return to influence.”

  “Can we make a deal with the military and oligarchs? Will they come to terms? ”Puff puff.

  “They're not the kind of men with whom you should agree. No deal you will ever make with men like that can last. Or rather, it will last awhile, but it won’t solve our Imperium problem.”

  “Negotiated peace is not the solution? It’s what you said in your last dispatch. That’s why I’m here. I lean toward agreement with your dire conclusion, but I need to hear you say it, too.” Puff, puff.

  “You know my answer already. When we defeat them in the field and space lanes they’ll be forced to retreat for a generation, or maybe more. But they’ll retrench in the old ways, restore the strength of their empire in secret, then come at us yet again in fire and fury. It’s what they do.”

  “What about Purity and the mouse men of SAC? Surely there’s less hope for a longterm settlement there? Don’t we need to stop them?” Puff, puff.

  “They’re far worse. True fanatics who think this war they began is just the start. They think a war to ‘cleanse’ all Orion is justified and demanded by the handwritten word of the gods, which they’re certain they can read in detached strings of purified DNA. They’re true crusaders, sir.”

  “Their thinking is as crude as that?”

  “Instead of priests and ancient scripture they bow to geneticists and the double helix. They worship glass beakers and molecular bonds in the place of godhead. But the end will all be the same. A backward empire making universal claims that it says must be guaranteed by force against farfolk worlds.”

  “Maybe worse, then,” Briand concedes. “Brethren are already corrupted by too much power held for too long. But men of a rising new faith, pseudoscience or not, they’re always more dangerous.” Puff, puff.

  “I agree.”

  “Either they’re naked cynics whose agenda masquerades as revolutionary reform, which I would prefer,” he confesses, taking a gulp of scotch, “or they’re sincere, and an even greater threat to peace. No one commits mass murder like the self righteous who are genuinely sincere.” Puff puff.

  “Indeed. Purity is mainly a gaggle of young men in such a hurry to power they’ll not wait for the due time of their generation. They’ve a ravenous hunger for change, so great they’ll destroy everything their grandfathers and fathers built. They’ll stop at nothing to advance themselves.”

  “What must we do? Which way to turn when all forked roads lead back to the start, as seems to be the case in this bloodiest of wars they started?”

  “Win outright, prime minister. Make total war, then impose a hard peace on all Imperium factions. Speak of peace to our people only after our combat boots stand on the necks of our enemies, threatening to
break them.”

  “Fight until they agree to another damn treaty! Only first, billions must die? Orion is tired of ‘Golden Treaties’ that only pause this forever war that we fight against a permanent malignancy in the south. And we don’t even speak here of Jahandar and the dark terror that shrouds all Daura in death.” Puff, puff, puff.

  “I don’t mean by ‘peace’ that you should negotiate or sign another treaty. I agree with you, prime minister. No more grand illusions. No more pauses in the long fight. It’s time for us to seek much more radical solutions.”

  “What kind? Despite what I said, win or lose we’ll have to sign some new treaty in the end. It’s only the terms and timing that remain in doubt.” Puff, puff.

  “No, sir. We don’t need to make that mistake again. Not if we make the Imperium extinct.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We must counterinvade and occupy all their worlds.”

  “You can’t mean it! That could take decades!” Puff, puff, puff.

  “I do mean it. Don’t stop at our recovered frontiers this time, like we stopped three times before and then called the truce our ancestors made ‘peace.’ It was a lie, all three times. Especially the last time, after the Third Orion War.”

  “We agree on that, at least.”

  “Well then, don’t stop. Keep going. Conquer all the Imperium, and Daura. Remake the whole thing from the ground up. Break everything, uproot tyranny, burn it out of the Thousand Worlds. Then rebuild. Force them to be free.”

  “That means many, many billions more will die, and in horrible new ways! It means at least a generation spent making total war, and maybe two or three.”

  “Prime minister, you play at outrage. I know you have had these thoughts. I watched your maiden speech in the Lok Sabra, as did billions more across the spur. What you said in righteous anger then you must do in cold blood now.”

  “Is there no other way, no shorter road that you can see from your unique perch? I have heard others say this, too. General Leclerc and Admiral Maçon, among them. But you have a special insight. So tell me, must we dedicate our youth, our treasure and moral energy, to make a slow battering of the Imperium? Must we break and burn so many worlds in order to save them?”

  ‘He wants a way out. He wants me to propose it. Now, is the moment.’ She turns conspiratorially toward him. “There may be another way, or rather…”

  “What?”

  “There may be a man.”

  “A man? One man? You just told me we’re up against the dead weight of a millennium of Imperium culture and history, and generations of war spreading into all our futures.” Puff, puff.

  “That’s why it will take a singular man. Not a radical new social order or a social movement, not a junta or priesthood. The hinges of history will turn on one man’s ability, if he stands at all the crossroads at the same moment with the right weapons. You know this is true, from personal experience.”

  “Who is it?” Puff, puff.

  “You know who, minister.”

  “No! Surely not him!” Puff, puff, puff.

  “You read my reports. He is the one who can change it all. Who can wreck it all. If you give me the thing I asked for, with our help he can do it. Did you bring it? Did you bring the Mistletoe Project?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well? Let’s have it. It’s the real reason you asked to see me in person. You know it is! You didn’t need to hear me confirm what you already know about where this war is headed. You called me here because what you do next you dare not do alone. And it’s too great a thing not to be agreed face-to-face.”

  “You’re a hard woman, especially for one so young.” Puff puff.

  “Walk in my too tight shoes in the streets of Novaya Uda before you judge me. Sleep in the beds I must make first. I don’t judge you, except to say that I’ll share the burden with you. But give it to me, now, while we’re alone.”

  Briand reaches into his breast pocket and removes two tiny vials, each no bigger than a half pinky. The granular powder in one is green, in the other one it’s black. He holds them in the air before him, hesitating. Before he can change his mind, Neaira reaches over and snatches them from his hand.

  “You are not to use these. Not yet. I can’t trust the future of all Orion to this one chance, to the idea that one man will save us from each other and ourselves, and do so by such terrible means as I just gave into your hands.” He guzzles the last dreg of scotch, and angrily restuffs his pipe.

  “Calmari still have vast navies and armies and are the rising power in this war. Daura and the Imperium fade. We have time yet, before it must be done.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “No, of course not. But this will give us leverage over him. After he comes into his own, if it’s because of the Mistletoe Project, he’ll owe you. That means the Alliance will be the secret power behind the Jade Throne.”

  “I doubt that. You should, too.” Puff puff.

  “Perhaps. What does it matter? It’s enough that he wants to destroy the Old Order of the Imperium and wreck all alternative powers: SAC, Sakura-Kai, the Broderbund, the High Castes. He has his own reasons, of course. But we can use him to move events toward our ends. You need and want him to do it. Let me give him the tools and then guide him in their proper use and timing.”

  “Careful, Agent. I hear hubris in what you say. It does not become you. Answer me this: how can so lowborn a man rise to displace Pyotr and the Oetkerts and expect to be accepted by such a hidebound, traditionalist society?”

  ‘My uncle is no fool, and he’s right to warn me. But I have made my choice.’ “He has the backing of several major factions. Pyotr trusts him as he trusts no other, though not wholly even so. SAC and Purity think he’s a believer, that he’s one of them. The Brethren truly believe in him. Maximilian Kahn and the High Council think Takeshi Watanabe is the foretold Divine, the Arahitogami.”

  “Are you saying that we should assist a man to ascend the Jade Throne, to replace a heartless, godless man who sits there now and does so much harm to us from the position, whom some Grünen believe is a god?” Puff, puff, puff.

  “I’m saying he’ll not want the throne, not for himself. That’s not his way. As for claims to godhead, he’s a secularist to the bone. A boyhood of abuse by Kahn and his god on Fates did that to him, showed him the truth of heresy.”

  “He’ll be a new political god in all but name, whatever his position or title or even his views. We have a would be god in Jahandar who’s destroying Daura, but also us. It’s not working out for anyone.”

  “It’s not at all the same, prime minister.”

  “Why not? Corruption by power is one of the oldest tales there is. What is to stop this incorruptible man you choose from proclaiming himself a god once he’s in power? Then acting absolutely and like a god, as if he is one?”

  “He doesn’t believe that he is. Only Maximilian Kahn and the Brethren believe it.”

  “I’ll have to think on this a great deal more. Do nothing to help this man, not yet. But don’t try to block Onur’s plans for a coup either. That could shake their military up, give us an advantage in the war.”

  “I couldn’t stop the Little General’s coup plans even if you wanted me to. It would be colossal hubris to think that you or I can pick the Imperium leader. I’m not sure even Rikugun and Kaigun can, the air on Kestino is so thick.”

  “You just advised me to do precisely that, and asked me to supply the most awful means to the most appalling man we know in the Imperium.” Puff, puff.

  “I advise a longer game than a mere coup d’état. Make no mistake, even if Watanabe wins through to power, that will take at least another year. Then it will be a year or more of continuing war with us while he consolidates his grip on the Imperium. So, two more years before he’s secure enough to negotiate. I want to elevate him to the summit so that he looks down and destroys the mountain.”

  “And then? What guarantee do we have that he’ll choose p
eace.”

  “None. I’m not proposing this vile man as a peacemaker to restore the Satya Yuga to Orion. I propose him to you as an anarchist, who will wreck the whole Imperium once he’s installed, making it easier for us to occupy the ruins.”

  “Trade a billion lives in the next two years for five or ten or twenty billion different lives over the next five or ten?” Puff puff puff.

  “It’s the basic equation of this war. Of any war. The only moral thing to do is reduce the number on one end of the equation and raise it on the other.”

  “Alright. I gave you the dread thing you asked for, but you are not to give it to him yet. You are not to use it. My policy remains the same, for now. We rely on armed buildup across the Alliance and on ourselves alone. I’ll not yet chance all futures on a roll of iron dice that says one man counts for so very much.”

  “Agreed, prime minister.”

  “Keep close tabs on Onur and his putschists. Perhaps they can hurry things along. Now, before they open the doors to this room, embrace me, my dearest niece.”

  ***

  Neaira turns on stealth mode as she pulls out and away from Goliath. She got everything she wanted from Briand. Insight into his thinking, support for her most daring covert mission, future influence over the direction of his policy. And two colored death vials that are now safely hidden inside her micro ship, in so intimate a place that if she’s caught no search will ever find them.

  What she left out of her report, what she didn’t tell Uncle Georges is that she has been sleeping with Takeshi for the better part of a year. It started as part of her job, the way to play courtesan and get insight into the Jade Court and into Pyotr himself via his closest confidant. But it didn’t stop there. Takeshi turned it around. He seduced her, in every way that it’s possible for a man to seduce a woman who’s a cardinal seductress herself. It has been months since Takeshi was only a mark for Neaira, the top Calmari agent on Kestino, secret adviser to Prime Minister Georges Briand, who rides with mass death and the destiny of the Imperium secreted intimately on her person in a stealth micro ship. She’s in love with Takeshi Watanabe. More, she’s in thrall to him. And now she has the last thing he needs to ascend to absolute power.