“You can have generators for your ships,” Nigel said. “I’ll be happy to sell them to you.”
“Thank you,” Heather said. “In the meantime, we’d better present a united front for the War Cabinet and the Senate.” She nodded down at the President. “She has to be given a big injection of confidence. People will turn to her; they always do in times of crisis. If they can see for certain that she’s firmly in charge, it’ll help keep the panic down.”
“Sure.” Nigel shrugged.
“What about Wilson?” Alan asked.
“What about him?” Nigel said.
“Oh, come on! Twenty-three worlds invaded, and Wessex targeted as well. That asshole let it happen. He’s responsible.”
“He’s the best one for the job,” Nigel said. “You can’t replace him.”
“For now,” Heather said. “But another screwup like this, and we will eject him.”
He gave her a hard look. “And replace him with Rafael?”
“He’s pro-genocide. That gets my vote.”
“We don’t need games right now, Heather.”
“Who’s playing? We’re facing extinction, Nigel. If the solution involves shifting the navy to my control, then that is what will happen.”
Nigel couldn’t remember the two of them going raw like this before. The trouble with Heather was that she could only think in terms of everything that had gone before. She had an astonishing determination and political ability. You couldn’t build a Dynasty without those qualities. Nigel always considered her flaw to be a lack of originality. Even now, she saw the Prime situation purely in terms of its effect on her Dynasty. “If that’s the only solution you can see, then go for it,” he told her. It drew him a suspicious look. He ignored it. If she couldn’t see her way around this problem, he certainly wasn’t going to tell her.
***
Despite all she’d triumphed through on Elan, Mellanie still felt a great deal of trepidation as she stepped up to the dark wooden door of Paula Myo’s Parisian apartment block. It said a lot about the Hive woman that just the idea of confronting her again could do that. Mellanie knew that she was the special one now, that the SI inserts gave her huge powers, that she actually had the courage to stand in front of MorningLightMountain’s soldier motiles and take them down—well, the SI had through her, but that didn’t alter the fact that she hadn’t turned tail and run. So why do I feel so nervous?
She checked the bulky centuries-old intercom box beside the door, and pressed the worn ceramic button for Paula Myo’s apartment. Somewhere inside a buzzer sounded. Her e-butler immediately told her Paula Myo was placing a call to her unisphere address. Mellanie resisted the instinct to look around for a camera. Even if the sensor was big enough to be visible, it was late evening, and the sunlight had almost faded, dropping the narrow street into deep shadow. Above her, the windows looking out from the high walls were all shuttered. The few intermittent streetlights above the uneven pavement did little to alleviate the gloom.
“Yes?” Paula Myo asked.
“I need to see you,” Mellanie said.
“I don’t need to see you.”
“But I did what you said. I talked to Dudley Bose.”
“And what has that got to do with me?”
Mellanie gave the door an aggravated stare. “You were right, I did find something interesting.”
“Which was?”
“The Starflyer.” There was such a long pause that Mellanie thought Myo had cut her off. She had to check her virtual vision to confirm the channel was still open.
The lock clicked loudly. Mellanie just had time to square her shoulders before the door opened. She’d toned down her clothes for this encounter, selecting some of the more sober items from her personal fashion line: a half-sleeve burgundy jacket and matching skirt longer than her usual, its hem nearly halfway to her knees. It was a compilation that should emphasize how serious and professional she was these days.
A single polyphoto circle was fixed to the top of the deep archway that led to the block’s central courtyard. Paula Myo was silhouetted in its yellow glow, dressed in her usual conservative-cut business suit. Mellanie hadn’t realized before, but she was taller than the Investigator.
“Come in,” Paula said.
Mellanie followed her to the middle of the ancient cobbled courtyard. She looked around at the whitewashed walls with their narrow windows. Over half of them had their shutters drawn back, revealing glimpses of rooms. Flickers of pale green light were coming from inside as holographic portals played out the evening’s unisphere news and entertainment. A sad reflection on the residents; this was the kind of block where single professionals would flock while they were taking a break between marriage contracts. Sanitized little apartments where they could rest in safety between the work and play that otherwise occupied their whole day.
“This will do,” Paula said. “We’re secure here if we don’t talk too loud.”
Mellanie wasn’t sure about that, but didn’t want to argue. “You know about it, don’t you?”
“Did Alessandra Baron send you in search of an exclusive? Is that why you’re here?”
“No.” Mellanie gave a short, edgy laugh. “I don’t work for her anymore. Check with the production company if you don’t believe me.”
“I will. Why did you leave? I imagine it was quite lucrative, and your report from Randtown helped secure your celebrity status.”
“She works for the Starflyer.”
Paula tilted her head to one side and gave Mellanie a searching look.
“That’s an interesting allegation.”
“But don’t you see it makes perfect sense? She’s always been tough on the navy. She’s just spinning the Starflyer’s propaganda, causing trouble for the one organization which can defend us.”
“You used her show to criticize me. Does that make you a Starflyer agent?”
“No! Look, I want to help. I know about the Cox. That’s how I found out about Baron. When I told her, she altered the records.”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me now. What is this Cox?”
A little flare of temper made Mellanie put her hands on her hips. This wasn’t going the way she’d imagined it. She’d thought the Investigator would welcome offers of help from anyone who knew about the Starflyer and the huge danger it represented. “The education charity,” she said acerbically, which should jog the Hive woman’s memory. “The one that funded Dudley’s observation.”
“The break-in,” Paula said, reading something in her virtual vision. “The Guardians suspected the whole Bose observation was a deliberate manipulation.”
“And they were right.”
Paula’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Really?”
“You know they were,” Mellanie hissed.
“I don’t.”
“But you must have. The Cox is a total fraud.”
“Not according to our investigations.”
“But…” Mellanie felt the skin down the back of her neck cooling rapidly. She didn’t understand the way Myo was reacting at all. Unless the Starflyer had got to her as well. “I’m sorry. I’m wasting your time. I…It was tough on Elan.” She turned and hurried back to the door. Backing off from people she used to trust was turning into a bad habit.
“Wait,” Paula said.
Mellanie froze, suddenly fearful. She reviewed the icons in her virtual vision, trying to work out if she could use any of the SI inserts to extricate herself if things turned nasty. Trouble was, she didn’t really understand half of them yet. She’d have to yell to the SI for help. The gold snakeskin of her virtual hand poised above the SI icon.
“You think I know something about the Cox,” Paula said. “Why?”
“You put me on to Dudley Bose. You must have known I would discover this.”
“I pushed you toward Bose because his wife once met Bradley Johansson. I was expecting you to go down that route to the Starflyer. Media allies would be useful to me. The only reports I r
ecall on the break-in were that the Cox charity was legitimate.”
“It’s not. Well, it wasn’t. Baron had the records altered.”
“Interesting. If you’re telling me the truth, then the actual state of the Cox was withheld from me.”
“I am telling the truth,” Mellanie protested. She almost said, Ask the SI. But that would have given away too much. She still didn’t trust Paula.
“All right,” Paula said. “I’ll look into it.”
“Then what?”
“What did you come here for?”
“To see what you were doing, and to help.”
“And coincidentally wind up with the ultimate story.”
“Were you going to keep it secret?”
“If it’s all true, then no. But I really don’t think having a media celebrity dogging everything I do is helpful, do you?”
She couldn’t even say “reporter,” Mellanie thought. Bitch. “Fine. Whatever.” She pushed at the big door, opening a way back out onto the relative safety of the street.
“If you do find anything concrete, then please come to me,” Paula said. “Not the navy.”
“Right.” Mellanie took a few paces out, then stopped to gather her thoughts. She knew she’d unsettled Paula, but pleasant though it was, that wasn’t what she’d wanted to achieve. Right now, Mellanie needed someone to turn to with the terrible knowledge of Baron and the Starflyer, someone in authority, someone who would do something about it. Just like some kid running to her parents.
Well, if the great Paula Myo was suspicious or undecided, she’d just have to damn well sort the problem out herself. With that thought, Mellanie nodded her head confidently and set off for the nearest Metro station.
***
Dawn found Hoshe Finn on his balcony, slumped in a cheap plastic patio chair looking out across the twinkling urban grid. Oaktier’s sun was sliding up over the eastern districts of Darklake City, cloaking the tips of the glass and marble towers with an energetic rose-gold glow. Colorful birds started chirping from inside the tall evergreen trees standing around the base of his apartment block, while gardenbots moved along the narrow moat of dewmoistened gardens, performing their daily tidy-up routine.
Sometime in the small hours, he’d woken up in the middle of the dream again, jolting up on the bed in a fever-sweat as the too-real images of collapsing buildings and quaking ground drained away into the darkness of the room. Every night since the Prime attack it had been the same. He refused to call it a nightmare. This was just his subconscious coming to terms with what had happened. All very healthy. Playing it back in sleeptime, letting all those nasty little details wind out from his mind where they’d been compressed like some secure file in a crystal lattice. Like the woman who’d been crushed in two by a broken bridge support—glanced at briefly as he’d carried Inima past. The children wailing outside the smoking rubble that had been their house, lost and dazed, filthy with dust, soot, and blood.
Yeah, a really healthy way of dealing with it all.
So he’d pulled on his old amber bathrobe and limped out onto the balcony to watch the sleeping city, thinking like some frightened kid that maybe dreams only came to people in bedrooms. He’d dozed fitfully for the rest of the night as his burns throbbed and the clammy ache down his back cycled from hot to cold over and over. Not even the rum and hot chocolate helped; it just made him feel sick.
What he wanted was Inima. The reassurance of having her lying beside him at night; the exasperated tolerance she turned on whenever he was ill and moping around the house instead of going in to work. But the doctors weren’t going to let her out of the hospital for another ten days at the earliest. He still tensed up every time he thought about her. Pulling her out from the broken four-by-four on Sligo, the way her legs were bent and blackened, fluid weeping from the tarlike encrustation that had been her jeans. Her low whimpers, the sounds that only the seriously injured make. A few vague memories of first aid flitting through his brain, utterly useless as he stared at his wife in disbelief that anything like this could possibly happen. Cursing himself the whole time for being so helpless.
They were vacationing on Sligo to see the flower festival. A fucking flower festival; and an alien army came dropping down out of the sky, blowing the whole world to shit.
Someone rang the apartment’s doorbell. Hoshe turned automatically, and grimaced at the number of twinges that triggered right across his body. Grumbling like an old man he limped his way to the door and opened it.
Paula Myo stood outside, neat and tidy as always, in some charcoal-gray business suit with a scarlet blouse. Her hair had been brushed to a gloss, hanging free behind her shoulders. She was studying him carefully, and he was abruptly self-conscious of the way he looked, the fact he hadn’t stood up to the attack the way he knew other people had.
Instead of some lecture or trite comment, Paula gave him a gentle hug.
Hoshe thought he covered up any surprise at the display of affection reasonably well given the circumstances.
“I’m really pleased you’re okay, Hoshe,” Paula said.
“Thanks. Uh…come on in.” He glanced across the living room as she walked past him. Maidbots had kept the apartment clean, but it was obvious he was spending a lot of time at home, indoors. The room had an almost bachelor feel to it, with memory crystals, mugs, plates, and a long paperscreen scattered over the table, blinds half-drawn, clothes piled up in one chair.
“I brought you this,” Paula said, and gave him a fancy-looking box of herbal teas. “Somehow, I thought flowers would be inappropriate.”
Hoshe examined the label on the side of the box, and grinned sheepishly. “Good choice.”
The sleeves of his robe were baggy, revealing long strips of healskin on his arms. Paula saw them and frowned slightly. “How’s Inima?”
“The doctors say she’ll be out of the hospital in another week or so. She’ll need a clone graft for her hip and thigh, but they didn’t have to amputate, thank God. They’re going to fit her in an electromuscle suit, so she’ll be mobile around the apartment at least.”
“That’s good.”
He dropped down into one of the chairs. “Medically, yeah. Our insurance is refusing to pay out for quote war injuries unquote. They say the government is responsible for covering its citizens in times of conflict. Bastards! The decades I’ve spent paying my premiums. I’m talking to a lawyer I know. He’s not optimistic.”
“What does the government say?”
“Ha! Which one? Oaktier says it isn’t responsible for something that happened to registered citizens offplanet, because that’s beyond their jurisdiction. The Intersolar Commonwealth: Well, we’re kind of busy right now, can I get back to you on that? We had to use the mortgage we raised for having a kid to pay the hospital.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Right now, it doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea to have a child anyway.” Hoshe growled it out, using anger to override the anguish. If he didn’t, he knew he’d do something ridiculous like start crying.
“I accessed the Prime attack on the unisphere,” Paula said. “But I don’t suppose that can ever substitute for being there.”
“It was mayhem on Sligo; absolute mayhem. We were lucky to get out. After what happened there, I’m never going to complain about a Halgarth ever again. That force field took about eight direct hits from Prime nuclear missiles when we were inside it, and it never even wavered. The ground shocks were bad, though. I was in California once when they had a quake; that was nothing compared to this. I mean, buildings were collapsing all around us. The roads buckled right away; you couldn’t use any kind of vehicle.”
“I heard you headed up one of the evacuation squads.”
“Yeah, well, they were appealing for anyone with any kind of government service connection. It’s an authority thing. The local council didn’t put a lot of police on duty for a flower festival.”
“Don’t be so modest, Hoshe.”
�
��It’s not like I ever expect a medal or anything. It was mainly self-preservation.”
She indicated his arm. “How bad were you hurt?”
“Burns, mostly. Nothing too serious. The worst bit was the wait for treatment afterward. It was ten hours before Inima even saw a nurse. And that was just for triage. It was actually easier for us to get back here and go to our local hospital than wait for the navy’s cobbled-together relief operation to finally catch up with us.”
“So now what?”
“Same as everyone else. Carry on as normally as possible, and hope that Admiral Kime does a better job next time around.”
“I see. I came here to offer you a job, Hoshe. I’m working at Senate Security now; I need an assistant, someone I know can do a good job, and someone I know I can trust.”
“That’s very flattering,” he said carefully. “But I’m not really that keen on the Commonwealth administration right now.”
“That’s not you talking, Hoshe, that’s a whole lot of confusion left over from Sligo.”
“Very psychologically astute, I’m sure.”
“You want me to go on and list medical benefits? How good the family health plan is?”
“No.” He clenched his teeth, trying to come up with a valid reason why he shouldn’t accept the offer. “What about your old office team? Why not approach them?”
“I still don’t know which of them I can trust. I received some disturbing information yesterday, which adds to the likelihood one or more of them is working for the Starflyer alien.”
It took a moment for Hoshe to place the name. “The one the Guardians keep banging on about? You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was.”
The dream flashed through his brain again, its blurred montage of misery and destruction falling from the sky in blinding purple contrails moving barely slower than lightspeed. And that was just what one alien species could do. If there was another, something deeper and more sinister…“I opened some of those Guardian shotguns. It all seemed pretty paranoid stuff to me. Something a freaked-out kid would babble about after his first bad trip.”
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