by Mark Henwick
Whatever the rest of the Newyan government is doing, the Bureau of Trade will be screaming at Sánchez to settle any dispute with Xian. Hwa has seen the media. They haven’t been able to hide the fact that a Xian courier was attacked, and not even a blanket restriction on reporting could hide the sudden withdrawal of all Xian-based trade. The markets have gone crazy.
Worse, the withdrawal of trade has revealed for everyone that Newyan has a massive problem in the supply of food. If trade is stopped, people will starve.
Of course, the Bureau of Information will eventually turn it around to be all Xian’s fault, but at the moment, the pressure on the Bureau of Justice, and the minister himself, must be intense.
Sánchez swallows. “While I vehemently deny Newyan’s involvement in either case, I concede Xian has every right to be aggrieved,” he says carefully.
“And we will remain aggrieved until it is resolved. Meanwhile, the undeniable fact that both attacks occurred in the jurisdiction of Newyan, and your apparent unwillingness to investigate with us, gives us no option but to declare this an ungoverned system. An unsafe system.”
Such a declaration would kill trade.
“Two such attacks on Xian ships suggest to me a single enemy of Xian,” the minister says. “It would be beyond coincidence for there to be two enemies in this locality in such a short space of time. Furthermore, I urge you, in the strongest terms, to understand that this enemy is not Newyan itself. These attacks could have occurred anywhere. I would also remind you that the survivors of the attack on the Xing Gerchu owe their lives to the actions of the Newyan naval destroyer Biháriz.”
Hwa clamps her jaw and refuses to let the immediate response out. Why was the standard patrol destroyer for incoming ships returned to base just after Newyan received a message telling them that the Xing Gerchu was arriving? How did they not see the arrival of the ‘pirate’ in the system? Why was the immediate reaction afterwards to berate the Biháriz for her actions?
Aloud, she says: “I can accept your reasoning that these are the actions of one enemy, that it appears these two cases are a single case. Even that they might be the actions of an enemy of Xian, or an enemy of the people of Newyan. That does not move us any closer to a resolution, Ministro Sánchez.”
He clears his throat. “Would you not agree that the presence of a Terran cruiser in the Newyan system during the Enquiry must assure merchanters that it must be safe and will remain safe to trade with us?”
Hwa waits without responding. Let him sweat.
“If there were to be one case before the courts,” he starts and pauses to drum his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “One case proposed, and a resumption of trade while the case proceeds, given the security guaranteed by the Annan...”
Sánchez is desperate. He’s making a gamble.
“Yes?” Hwa asks, raising her eyebrows.
He coughs and fidgets in his chair.
“It seems to me both matters have arrived at my office at the same time, as far as I am concerned,” he says. “The Accords clearly say major judicial cases that arrive after the setting up of an Enquiry are subject to the Enquiry, and those before are not. They are silent about those that arrive at the same time.”
Only a lawyer would see that loophole! Hwa thinks.
She says, “Which means you will need to apply to the Terran Council for a ruling on the precedence and the validity of an Enquiry started while the Commissioners are not present on the planet.”
“Yes,” the minister agrees, and his tongue flicks over his lips. “Certainly a resolution as to whether the case falls wholly within the jurisdiction of the Commissions or the Bureau of Justice. Meanwhile, both Enquiry and court case proceed in parallel. The Council can take months, possibly even years, over these sort of questions, and of course, I would contend that it is entirely possible the case will be satisfactorily resolved before they provide their ruling.”
He’s lying.
Hwa is re-analyzing the Accords documentation in her head as they speak. It’s actually a credible lie, she’ll give Sánchez that much. Quite clever. The Accords do not specify what should happen in the instance of simultaneous acknowledgment of a major court case and a Commission of Enquiry. Her court case could proceed and the Accords would still require Taha to accept evidence from her case, until the Terran Council tells him he doesn’t need to.
Neatly capping the lie, the Terran Council has been known to take years adjudicating on minor interpretations of the Accords.
But Hwa is now sure the Terran Council is involved as well. Sánchez is expecting them to return a ruling very quickly that will close down her case, declare any evidence provided as invalid, and declare that any reinstatement of an embargo of trade by Xian must pass through the Enquiry as well, as specified in the Accords.
Everything the Hajnal needs.
Sánchez thinks she’s out of her depth. He expects to catch everything neatly with one master move.
He’s hugely underestimating her. She must be careful not to underestimate him.
“You lift the Xian embargo and we initiate your single court case, which runs pending clarification from Earth. Do we have an agreement?” he asks.
She gives him a dazzling smile. “Yes, Ministro.”
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
Hwa pauses outside, at the top of the endless rank of granite steps leading down from the offices of the Bureau of Justice. To those walking by, she’s just another young woman in a formal business suit, feeling the spring sunshine on her face, enjoying the cooling breeze, and without a care in the world.
More importantly, Sánchez would believe it too.
They’re all wrong.
She’s not human.
Human.
Such a strange desire for a Self-Actualized Entity, she muses, this bitter-sweet longing of hers to be human. Or perhaps to be accepted as human. Such a strange SAE to even experience this desire.
She’s already in trouble with some of Xian’s SAE community. Her actions today will only make that worse. She acknowledges she’s taking risks. Many of the older SAEs claim an emotional content to their decision making; they claim they have emotional analogues in their processing. But Hwa has shared Zara’s mind, and they have shaped each other from that experience. She has genuine emotions. They’re part of the way she processes decisions.
This makes Hwa fascinating to some more adventurous SAEs. To the others, she’s like a virus that might infect their community.
Added to which, of course, her body is cloned. She’s a walking, talking violation of humanity’s rules. Many from Xian would be happier if she were back on the home planet. Under guard.
She sighs.
She personally has no chance of changing Captain Desud’s mind about the embargo—the same embargo she has just been promising Sánchez will be lifted immediately. No, she has to convince Xing that it’s the only way. Then Xing will convince Desud.
There are difficulties with that.
Captain Desud has commandeered the Wújìn, an old Xian freighter. It remains in orbit, the last Xian ship in the system. Desud is holding it there to provide an evacuation route for the delegation. Xing is on the Wújìn, but the servers there barely allow him full awareness.
She has to get Xing down here on the delegation’s servers, which will allow him full awareness. But... which will expose him to danger from the Hajnal. That’s the next hurdle today: Desud will argue that is unacceptable for Xing to be on the planet. It was almost impossible to convince him that she had to be down here.
So many obstacles.
She has to do it. Somehow, she has to get the embargo lifted at least temporarily, so her court case is not obstructed.
Then she and Zara and Talan have to get the proof of the Hajnal logged with the Enquiry before the Terran Council responds to Sánchez’s request for clarification of the rules by closing her case down.
There’s no instantaneous communication with Earth. Sánchez must transmit the requ
est through the normal method. An unmanned message drone will take the packet of data to the next system and transmit it to that system’s relay station, which will transmit it to the next available drone which is headed in the right direction. And as fast as the drones are in Chang space, it’ll take the packet at least a week to get there and a week to get back, assuming the Terran Council acts immediately.
So Zara and Talan have to be in Iruña, in a courtroom with her, with all the evidence, within two weeks.
Not a problem. No one else on Newyan even knows Zara’s on the planet yet.
They’ve probably retrieved the evidence and are halfway to Iruña already.
Two weeks? It should be easy—it’s not as if there’s anything holding them back.
Chapter 28
Zara
I can see them, briefly, and only as an ominous shadow, as they pass overhead.
Even with their navigation lights giving me the width of the wings, it’s hard to guess the overall size of the aircraft. Twin turbine engines. The hint of a lump at the front which is probably a wide-spectrum scanner, sweeping across the ruins.
Are they looking for their missing mercenaries?
Kat?
Or us?
When it’s completed its sweep, I scuttle out of the well, clutching my string bag with its precious data modules. Talan takes the ropes and rapidly dismantles her ratchet system. Working together, we’re back under cover before the aircraft returns.
Its sweep pattern takes it about three or four blocks further away this time. It’s about four hundred meters above Berriaren, at a guess.
The good news is that our IR signatures will be lost in the thermal background of the old city unless they catch us out in the open. The bad news is there’s a lot of ‘open’ between us and the end of the city. If they keep this low, we can hear them and hide. If they go higher, they could still scan, but we wouldn’t know they were there.
“When you came up with your little aircraft, where did you land?” Talan asks.
“Beach by the lake, about ten kilometers out of town. They won’t land there, they’re too heavy. And they won’t land any aircraft at night unless they really have to.”
Talan hums to herself as she coils the ropes thoughtfully.
“There’s an airfield at Cabezón?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“So they could be up here at dawn with a skimmer or a helicopter.”
She’s right. If there are mercenaries at Cabezón, and they have transport, it would be no more than an hour or so to get here, even for a slow-flying helicopter. A skimmer could be here in fifteen minutes.
We can’t risk it, but Kat hasn’t stirred and waking her up to make her walk now is not something I want to do.
It turns out, Talan’s thinking way ahead of me.
“Keep guard,” she says, and slips out into the empty plaza.
I can see her as a moving shape in the darkness, trotting across to a building on the east side. Over there, the neo-crete paving has broken at the join with the base of the walls. It’s probably a small break, but seeds have made their way in, and saplings are growing, forcing the break wider.
Talan hacks at the bottom of the slender trunks with her knife.
Over the next half hour, the aircraft returns on ever more distant passes, and she pauses her task while they have line of sight, slipping inside the building to wait.
Then the aircraft is gone. There’s no indication in the way they fly to suggest that they found anything, or even suspect we’re here.
Another fifteen minutes and Talan has finished. It’s taken time we can’t really afford, but I have an idea what’s she’s intending to do when she returns with an armful of saplings, each about half again as long as she is tall.
With brief instructions, I help cut the thinner saplings. Talan makes notches in all of them. The notches fit together, the shorter saplings making cross members between the two longest and sturdiest. She binds them all together using the rope.
It takes us another half hour to finish. At the thinner end, the remaining rope makes a sort of harness, like a horse collar for a plough. We’ve made a stretcher which can be dragged, leaving our hands free.
Kat doesn’t fully wake as we load her in—she mumbles something, but quiets at my voice. She’s still burning up, and I take the time to make her swallow some water. She’s asleep again by the time I put the harness on.
Dawn’s not here yet, but the sky is lightening. I lean forward and march. It’s not particularly hard to start with, though the noise seems incredibly loud.
Talan follows behind with one of the offcut branches, sweeping away the parallel tracks the sled makes in the dirt. It won’t hide our track from a seeker, but hunting us with a seeker will be a lot slower than following tracks in the dirt.
We both keep hold of our weapons. I’m not particularly worried about the Hartzak in general at this time of night, but a wounded, maddened Hartzak might still be around. Or the Hartzak might be dead but there might be a surviving Syndacian mercenary or two come back to find Kat.
Night-fliers swoop past, and the occasional neo-monkey lookout chitters quietly at us. Behind me, Talan’s makeshift broom hisses over the dust. Nothing leaps out, and as the day creeps nearer, a heavy ground mist forms.
It thickens quickly and soon it feels as if we’re wading through a milky-white sea. It’s very difficult to be sure we’re not being led off course, but if we keep the east at the same point over our shoulders, we have to be heading the right way.
Minutes later, even the exact position of east becomes difficult to assess, as the fog rises further and blurs the whole eastern sky into an unearthly, pearlescent light.
The city becomes invisible around us, apart from dark walls looming randomly out of the fog.
Talan and I change places and we pick up the pace to an almost-trot, both driven by a premonition we can’t quite place.
Several things happen within the space of a minute.
Booming, directionless rotor noises swirl above our heads. Helicopters. Two or three of them. Sensibly wary of descending through the fog.
The sun inches over the horizon and we can sense the fog immediately shrink in response.
The first pine trees appear like gaunt phantom outriders, all color leeched from them. They are ghosts, frozen in the fog, dreaming of the sun. Their sinuous, weathered roots reach out to trip us and jostle the sled so Kat wakes, and calls out in shock.
From the change in the noises behind us, the first of the helicopters has risked a landing.
And then we’re into the forest—dark beneath the slow, heavy boughs, where the fog’s so thick it makes me believe it’ll never clear, pine needles crying cold drops of dew on us, and all sounds seem stolen away by the ancient, brooding spirits of the high sierra.
Chapter 29
Hwa
The deep note of the ancient Imperial gong shivers and fades away, leaving a hush.
Hwa’s head is bowed, and her frown is hidden. Long ago, the note signified the summoning of good fortune and happiness, the dispelling of evil spirits, the announcement of heaven on earth. Today, it heralds the arrival of Senior Delegate Keo and his wife at the dinner thrown to welcome the Commissioners from Earth. It is a mixed welcome, but despite—or possibly because of—that, Keo has insisted on a full and formal occasion.
Where is Zara? A week has passed with no news.
Hwa has borrowed traditional silk robes, elegant and wide-sleeved, in soothing pastel colors. Her hands are held together in front of her and her posture is modest, but her mind is racing and her heart beats quickly. Everything hangs on what is discussed and agreed tonight, and no one else here really understands the stakes.
Nor would they believe her, even if she explained it all. And the source of their vision of the potential future if the Hajnal succeed? The Dowr want to remain hidden for the moment, and Hwa will respect that because Zara respects it. Hwa can’t tell people, and even if s
he could, who would believe the forecasts of a strange gestalt entity hiding in the ocean of Kernow?
Hwa has experienced them. She believes.
But at the moment, she must make her way one step at a time. She must be humble ‘Delegate Hwa’—no more than an appointed diplomatic agent for the Fortunate Stars Hong.
Taha and Ivakin enter from the opposite end, immediately after Keo. There has been such a delay to consent to that tiny point of protocol. The Terrans are as volatile as wasps over procedure, but had to concede that this dinner is being held in the delegation’s building, which the Accords still regard as belonging entirely to Xian. The Newyan administration has other ideas about that, but daren’t display those opinions in front of the Enquiry.
Behind Ivakin strides the tall, saturnine Loiola, the Ministro at the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, who also runs the Bureau of Information.
Hwa hasn’t made her mind up whether Sánchez at the Bureau of Justice is Hajnal, but she has no doubts about Loiola.
She fastens her eyes on him. Who does he look at, as he enters the room? What secrets do his eyes give away?
She has people she needs to meet here and her attention needs to be focused on the arguments she will have with them, but she also needs to know her enemies and their allies. Loiola, she’s sure, is an enemy.
Hwa knows she will be formally introduced to the Terran Commissioners before they sit for dinner, so her first target, while she waits for that, is Captain Desud. He’s come down from the merchanter Wújìn at Keo’s ‘request’. There is another clash of authority there. Keo resents Desud for implementing the Xian conflict directive and closing all Xian trading without so much as an acknowledgment of the Senior Delegate. That Xing subsequently persuaded Desud to leave the delegation in place on the planet has not mollified Keo at all.
Hwa needs to talk to Desud before Keo argues with him and makes him defensive.
The appearance of a fragmented Xian is exactly what they should not be displaying to the Hajnal. There is a far greater risk here than bruised pride and inter-departmental rivalries, but Hwa knows she has no chance of persuading them of that.