“It is my judgment that there is no possible accommodation by which this situation can be resolved. Even if you put down your arms and leave here now, a perpetual siege of Sindara and a continued assault on Sagittarius Command seems inevitable. Such a situation is not acceptable. So,”—I gave a thin, bright eyed smile into the camera—“in one hour and fifteen minutes from this moment, Sagittarius Command shall cease to exist. Any living thing within three kilometers of this installation shall cease to exist as well. You have been warned.”
I reached forward and pushed the button. My face vanished from the screens. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Winston Smith rose from his seat, his face white, his hands trembling in rage. His staff ignored him as they piled out of their makeshift command center. He was tempted for a moment to order them to stop but then, what was the point? They would merely disobey him and what was he going to tell them to do, anyway? No. He slowly shook his head. This was a fiasco, but he was a professional. Some ventures succeed. Some fail. A professional knows when it becomes necessary to cut one’s losses.
Time to leave, but as he walked toward the door, it slid closed. Four men besides himself were left in the room. He stared at them then grasped the handle on the door and tried to turn it. Nothing happened. He stepped back. “Open it,” he said.
One of the men stepped forward and grasped the handle. “It won’t turn.”
A voice filled the room—my voice. “The amnesty that you have been offered does not apply to Winston Smith,” I said. “All the rest of you can leave. Not him.”
The men looked at each other, then one of them gave a sheepish grin and said, “Well, Winston, it’s been nice knowing you.”
A gun suddenly appeared in Winston Smith’s hand. “You’re not leaving without me. Open that door.”
“The door will not open so long as you are holding a gun,” I said.
A shot rang out then another, and Winston Smith’s body slumped to the ground. The two men holstered their weapons, shrugged and turned toward the door. “Sorry about that, Winston,” one of them muttered.
All-in-all, I thought, I liked the way that went.
The door opened. The men exited and the door closed. Winston Smith drew one final breath and lay still.
I was tempted to deal with Derek Landry the same way but in the end, Derek Landry was only a mercenary. He wasn’t in charge and I felt confident that after this debacle, he would return to his well-deserved obscurity. I let him go with all the rest.
And so the forces of the People’s Army had been warned and my conscience was now clear, which I almost regretted, just a little. I had seriously considered blowing the place up with all of them inside but this seemed…excessive. I shrugged to myself. They had an hour left to get out of Sagittarius Command and they were on their own.
Fuck ‘em.
I shut down the hologram, vanished from the screens and left the rampaging soldiers of the People’s Army to their own devices. When I turned around and faced Edward Lane and his fifteen surviving men, I found them staring dubiously at the mechanism of our hoped for deliverance. Three of them, actually. Three submarines moored by the railing, capable of carrying perhaps twenty men each, vessels that had floated here in these dark, cold waters for over two thousand years, waiting for just this moment.
I shared their concern but I needn’t have worried. Damian Oliveros and his successors had known what they were doing. The automatic maintenance still functioned. The subs were clean and shiny and looked almost new. We took all three of them. Edward Lane and five others entered the first sub together with me. The controls barely existed. A voice asked, “Identify yourselves.”
“I am Douglas Oliver,” I said, “the revenant of Lord Damian Oliveros.”
One by one, all the men stated their names and their reasons for being here. Once the last one spoke, the voice was silent for a few moments then said, “You are all approved transport. Where do you wish to go?”
“First, take us out to sea,” I said. “We need to be more than three kilometers from this base within,”—I glanced at my interface—“forty-five minutes.”
The voice said nothing. The engines started with a smooth hum. We descended beneath the surface, water swiftly rising to cover the portholes. All functions operated smoothly and we moved forward. Thirty-seven minutes later, we rose to the surface. A hatch opened, and we clambered out onto the deck.
It was dusk. The sun was beginning to set, a purple and orange ball just touching the horizon. Two of the first, brightest stars were already visible overhead and both moons glowed in the sky. There was no wind and the waters around our vessel were calm. Mount Sindara rose behind us, jagged and defiant. No hint of the recent destruction could be seen. I glanced again at my interface. “Six seconds,” I said.
The mountain shuddered. Small puffs of smoke rose from the base, then more of them, ascending steadily toward the summit. The sharp sound of distant explosions and boulders cracking and crashing down into the jungle came to our ears. Mount Sindara seemed to slump inward upon itself. A portion of the summit came loose and slid down, picking up speed as it went and plummeted into the surrounding sea. And then there was silence.
The men around me sighed. Some shook their heads. A few wiped their eyes. Sagittarius Command had been their home, for most of them, the only home they had ever known.
“And so, it ends,” Edward Lane whispered.
“One chapter ends; another chapter begins,” I said. “It’s a brave new world out there. You’ll find a place.”
He gave me a tired grin. “I suppose.”
“You will.” I smiled. “And besides, I’m rich. I can always use a few good men.”
Chapter 23
I activated the transponder and an hour later, we rendezvoused with the Meridien sub that had dropped me on the island. The other four men that had gone in with Curtis and I had left the Sindara yesterday. One team had scouted the coastline, the other had gathered intel on the Gath and Finlandia assets moored in the harbor. All four had escaped detection and successfully completed their missions.
I gave the captain a brief report on my activities and decided to remain with the men and ships of Sagittarius Command. Three days later, all four subs entered the sheltered harbor of Meridien. The water was green and clear. A gentle breeze stirred a scatter of foam on top of the waves. The sky was very blue. Pennants fluttered in the wind. Crowds waved, not at us exactly, but at all the ships in the harbor, and the ships’ crews waved back. It was a welcome, familiar sight and I felt my spirits lift. “Home,” I said.
Edward Lane stared all around, wide eyed. “It’s crowded.”
It was, wasn’t it? The greatest city in the world. “You’ll get used to it.”
Lane gave a half-hearted grin. “I suppose I will,” he said doubtfully.
“Before we leave, there’s one more thing I wanted to ask you,” I said.
Edward Lane looked at me, standing there on the deck in the sunlight.
“Why did you allow me to purchase the rights to Sindara? I assume that the family that owned them belonged to you?”
“Of course,” he said. “They did as we instructed.”
“So, why?”
Edward Lane sighed. “Do you know how the population of this world has grown, in the past hundred years?”
“A lot. I don’t know the exact amount.”
“The dark ages are long since over. We’ve had our Renaissance and our Enlightenment and our industrial revolution, and then the Second Empire came and things changed even more. Infant mortality has been largely abolished. Health care is almost universal. Nobody starves. The population is ten times larger than it was a hundred years ago and very few of them need to worry about basic survival, not anymore. People are concerned with status and money and having a good time.”
“So?” I asked.
“Sindara is a tropical island with beautiful beaches and a pleasant climate that varies little with the seasons
. Sooner or later, somebody was going to want to develop its resources. We realized that if we tried to keep it fallow, it would become apparent that somebody was manipulating the situation, that something was not right. We decided to pre-empt that eventuality. You would have developed the Southern portion of the island. A few years later, we would have developed, or allowed to be developed, the rest. People would live there. Towns and even cities would grow. Nobody would have found this suspicious, and Sagittarius Command could have continued as before, hiding in plain sight.”
“So, I was meant to be a front,” I said.
“Of course. You were convenient.” He smiled. “Your name amused us. It seemed somehow appropriate. We didn’t realize how appropriate it really was, and we didn’t count on Gath, or Finlandia or the Second Empire.”
I looked around at the harbor and the people waving and smelled the clean, fresh air, and I shook my head sadly. “It was a good plan,” I said. “It’s too bad it didn’t work out.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes they don’t.”
I gave my report to the council, an edited version, since there were a few facts that I felt it wiser to keep to myself. I saw both Leon Sebastian and Guild Master Anderson looking at me with narrowed eyes, but neither said anything at all while I spoke. The rest of the council hung on my words and when I finished, Ballister said, “The submarines that you returned with are more advanced than any known design. Their avionics and controls are far beyond our current technology. It’s a pity that all the rest was destroyed.”
After the destruction of Sagittarius Command, the three Gath destroyers had steamed away. They were now moored in the harbor of Finlandia’s nearest naval base. The government of Gath was negotiating for their return. The Finlandia patrol ships still remained around the island, some of them at least, but the advance base that the Second Empire had established on the opposite coast from Sagittarius Command was deserted.
Most of the soldiers who invaded the base had gotten out in time. Perhaps a hundred, those who were highest in the mountain and who had the furthest to go, were still too close and perished when the mountain exploded.
I shrugged. “Better to destroy it than let it fall into enemy hands and if it still existed, it would always be an incitement to open conflict. None of us need that.”
“But you knew that you couldn’t win,” Ballister said. “You didn’t have the resources. Why did you bother to fight? Why didn’t you simply evacuate the base and then destroy it. You lost thirty-five men, for nothing.”
I sighed. “Not for nothing. Believe me, I considered that option, but if we had done as you suggest, the Second Empire would have assumed—correctly—that the men and women of Sagittarius Command had escaped. They would have also assumed—incorrectly—that they had taken the data that the Empire wanted with them. No. We needed to make a stand. We needed to have the Empire believe, without any question, that we were fighting to the bitter end to protect whatever secrets were in that base.” I shrugged. “They would never have stopped searching. None of the survivors would have ever been safe.”
Ballister frowned and sank back into his seat. “I suppose so.” He did not sound entirely convinced. I didn’t blame him. Neither was I. I had made the best decision that I could make under the circumstances but I would always wonder.
After another hour of aimless questioning, they dismissed me.
I spent the rest of the afternoon going over the current state of my business with Benedict and the rest of my administrative team. As before, I had to force myself to pay attention. The minutiae of cash flow, accounts receivable and opportunities for profit maximization seemed somehow entirely irrelevant to my current existence, though I knew, intellectually, that they were not. The threat analysis, that listing of actual and potential attacks on either my business or my person, seemed particularly juvenile after my recent adventures. Finally, I sighed. “Okay, Gentlemen, I understand. Thank you very much. We’ll pick it up tomorrow, first thing.”
I saw Benedict give a worried glower to Josh Cantor, his aide, a thin, well dressed young guy, newly out of collegium and eager to prove his worth. Something about this interaction amused me, but I couldn’t say exactly what.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. Two hours. In two more hours, I would see Jennifer. I wondered how it would go. Perhaps not quite the way she expected. I looked at the clock again and frowned.
Two hours later, I walked into Arcadia. She was already seated and she gave me a sly smile as I walked over and sat down. I returned the smile and just sat there for a few moments, breathing, feeling the sense of home, the serenity of being just exactly where I wanted to be, and with whom I wanted to be, wash over me.
She didn’t say anything, just smiled and then looked down at her menu, frowning in concentration.
A minute later, Selene Reynolds walked up to us. “Nice to see you again,” she said.
Jennifer examined her then glanced at me, suddenly no longer smiling, which made me smile more.
“Can I take your drinks order?” Selene was a very smart girl. She knew when to ignore the obvious.
“A bottle of wine,” I said. “This one—from Wittburg.” I pointed it out.
“Anything else? Ma’am?”
“No, thank you,” Jennifer said. “Just water.”
“Coming right up.” Selene smiled and walked over to the next table. Jennifer followed her with her eyes.
“That Selene, pretty girl, isn’t she?” I said.
Jennifer’s gaze snapped to my face. She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t push your luck,” she said.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
By the time our wine arrived, Jennifer had recovered her good mood. We started the meal with seafood bisque, then shared a duck with blackberry sauce and wild rice. By the time dessert arrived, we were both feeling sleepy. They had allowed the room to darken as the sun set outside and candles glowed on every table. Very elegant, I thought. Nurturing.
“So, Jennifer,” I said. “When did you decide to kill Graham Reid?”
She sputtered on the water she was drinking, coughed a few times and wiped her lips with a napkin. She blinked at me. “What did you say?”
I gave her a sleepy, satisfied smile. “It was obvious when I thought about it. His throat was slit. He had a knife wound in his side and another on his right arm. You like knives. You’re good with them.”
She frowned, clucked her tongue against her teeth. “The fact that I like knives is evidence of exactly nothing.”
“Not by itself, but when you were a junior in collegium, you spent a year at Stabler University: junior year abroad, enlarge your horizons by spending time in a foreign culture. Your record was excellent, by the way.” I lifted my glass of wine in salute then took a long sip. “Great wine,” I said. “How do you like it?”
“It’s not bad.” She frowned.
“Right. Where was I? Oh, yes…Stabler, it turns out, is a small school with a very large endowment. Most of their students are there on full scholarship.”
She looked at me warily, saying nothing.
“Shall I go on?”
She gave a tiny frown and sipped her wine.
“I wondered about it. Stabler’s funding comes from the Genesis Corporation. The Genesis Corporation, it turns out, was fully owned by Sagittarius Command. Since Sagittarius Command no longer exists, Genesis’ future is…uncertain, I guess you could say.” I frowned again. “I’m not sure what that means for Stabler, but then I don’t really care, now do I?
“I just couldn’t help wondering, though. When I was in Sindara, I had a few moments to access their databases. You’ve been on their payroll all along. Did you even know that?”
“No,” she said. She gave me a long look and wrinkled her brow then laughed softly. “No, so far as I knew, I was working for Genesis.” She was telling the truth and I felt something deep inside of me unclench at the realization. Jennifer sat back in her seat and grimaced at her glass of wine. “My family
didn’t have a lot of money. Genesis paid my way through school and gave me a job. It wasn’t much of a job and it didn’t take much of my time: report on events in Aphelion. What exactly is wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” I said, and I smiled. “Nothing at all.” Then I asked, “Was I a part of your mission?”
She reared back, offended. “No, you jackass,” she said.
She was telling the truth. I nodded, let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding, ate a bite of my duck and sipped my wine. It really was very good wine.
“They had a special class for us at Stabler. I wasn’t the only one. They taught us what to look for, what they were interested in: shifts in the political environment, new developments, things that might result in change. Genesis is an investment advisory firm, or at least that was their cover. They do quantitative analysis on social and political trends. Their reports to select clients are highly regarded and they charge quite a lot for their services. I think Genesis will do just fine on its own.” She shrugged. “I made friends with some of the other girls. We were from all over and after we graduated, most of us returned home. I stay in touch with a lot of them. We all have high IQ’s. We could see what was happening. The pattern was pretty clear.”
I winced at that. I thought I was good at spotting patterns and I hadn’t seen a thing. Then again, my perspective had been smaller. I didn’t have a network of smart young associates spread out over the continent, trained to observe and report on social trends, technological advancements and political unrest. I considered. That would have to change.
It occurred to me that Genesis might appreciate a new co-investor.
“Graham Reid was out of control,” Jennifer said. “I had him followed. He wanted you dead. At the time, Winston Smith was attempting a military takeover of Meridien. He had bigger concerns than Graham Reid. He told Reid to do whatever he wanted.” Jennifer gave me a thin smile. “I wasn’t going to allow that.”
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