by S A Shaffer
“David! You get your ass back here right now!”
David turned and strolled back to the cell with an ear-to-ear grin.
“What do you mean by negotiated my release? And why aren’t you locked up yourself? Instead, you stand there grinning, smelling like a recent bath, and wearing your nicest suit. Why!”
“Because I’m on my way to the orbital.” David continued to grin to Francisco’s obvious frustration. “And, you’re being released by special request of the speaker, so you can come with me.”
“Why?” Francisco asked. “I don’t want anything to do with that desert turd. I won’t go to an assembly full of monkeys so they can mock me. If he lets me out of here, I’ll shoot him where he stands like I should have done seasons ago.”
“That’s not very kind of you, repaying a good deed with a bullet. And the speaker was so very keen that you were there to hear him swear in.”
“What do you mean? Swear in for what? Wipe that grin off your face man!”
David laughed and tossed Francisco the copy of the Voxil he had folded under his arm. Francisco caught it and held the front page up to the dim light. His voice mumbled within the stone cell as he read aloud. His voice started out drab, but quickly turned to curious and then excited.
“A star falls. Four days ago, in a strange and stunning turn of events, Speaker Blythe was broadcasted on Alönia’s emergency frequency during his inquiry. The inquirer, the long-lost heir of the Ike legend, produced convincing evidence and testimony against Blythe regarding two murders. The assembly ignored the inquiry and acquitted Blythe with an overwhelming majority. However, the citizens of the Third District voiced their disapproval of Blythe after he called them ignorant, drug-abusing dependents by voting him out of office the morning after the inquiry. With only two seasons as speaker, Blythe is replaced by his one-time friend Don Hezekiah Johnson!”
Francisco looked up in shock. David produced a key from his pocket.
“So… do you want to leave now?” David asked.
“You are a dirty, no good, pile of Voxil…”
Francisco continued to call David every foul thing he could think of as David unlocked the cell door with his wide grin. Once the door swung open, the two looked at each other through the space. Francisco lunged forward and punched David in the gut. David doubled over with a half-moan, half-laugh.
“Get me out of here, you bastard!” Francisco said. “Before I kill you on principle.”
They walked out of the police station and toward the commerce sector, each explaining their recent exploits to the other. David led Francisco to a clothing vendor where they purchased a new suit. They didn’t have time for a shave and a wash, but they did find a black velvet patch to cover up Francisco’s ruined mechanical eye. In an hour’s time they sat in an air-taxi, rising above Capital City and soaring toward the orbital.
After a ten-minute flight, they strode through the security checkpoint and down the gold and blue halls. It felt like a ghost town. Very few people walked the corridors, and the people they did see spoke in hushed tones in groups of two or three. Some glared at David as he passed, but he only smiled back. When they reached the assembly room, only a handful of people sat in its many chairs. David smiled when his eyes met Mercy’s. She blushed and looked down as she stood at the base of the auditorium speaking with Bethany. Bethany rolled her eyes when she looked back and saw who Mercy was blushing at, but she smiled in the end. Walker, York, Pellión, and Hobs spoke and laughed in a group by themselves, While Johnson and Winston shook hands with the assembly’s few remaining Pragmatic representatives. For the obvious reasons, Blythe was nowhere to be seen. David and Francisco descended the few steps from the hall toward the assembly dais where large pieces of wood covered the once glass floor. A splotch of blood smeared the side of the dais and there was a dent in one of the lower booths.
“It looks like a bar fight broke out in here.” Francisco said.
David tossed his head back and forth and considered the statement. Then he nodded. “More or less.”
He stepped onto the wood floor and felt it creak beneath his weight. A breeze whistled between two of the boards and gave him a chill. He walked with light steps and a frown, but when he looked up, he saw someone he did not expect. Representative Herald sat a few rows up in his usual place, his hands resting on a cane. David smiled as the man seemed to be looking directly at him. After a moment’s hesitation he decided to approach Herald.
“Representative Herald,” David said and put out his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Herald didn’t shake the hand, but rather, he looked at David’s face for a long moment, a moment that felt awkward as the silence drew out.
“I never met your father,” Herald said. “But I did know your grandfather a bit.” He looked down and twisted his cane. “I was a new representative back then, about a decade after the Protectorate War. Your grandfather came before the assembly urging us not to cut the Armada’s funding. You have his bearing. I swear, when I saw you there last four days ago, I thought I was watching your grandfather.”
David smiled and looked down.
“I didn’t agree with your grandfather then,” the older man said, “and I’m not sure how much I agree with you now, but I can’t deny that my party has progressed beyond propriety. We’ve forgotten our principles.”
“I don’t think there are two Alönians in all the Houselands that agree completely on everything.” David said. “But there is always common ground with footing for both if they look hard enough. War is coming. My grandfather foresaw it, as did my father. I didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence is undeniable. I think that is common ground enough for a Pragmatic and an Equalist to share.” David put his hand out again, and Herald took it and nodded. “We are going to need Pragmatics and Equalists when the war finally comes.” David said after they’d shaken hands.
“Aye, lad, that we will.” Herald said.
“David,” Johnson called from the dais, “get down here and swear me in. “You got me into this political debacle, time to pull your weight.”
With one last nod at Herald, David turned and descended the stairs. He joined Johnson on the dais and looked around at the empty room. It was so much different than the last time he’d observed the speaker’s oath. It wasn’t the same momentous event demanding front page space in all the tabloids, but for some reason that made it feel more real. When Johnson raised his hand for the oath, surrounded by his friends and colleagues, David knew he meant it.
“Repeat after me,” David said. “I, Don Hezekiah Johnson,
“I, Don Hezekiah Johnson,” Johnson said.
“…do so swear to faithfully fulfill the role of house speaker.”
“do so swear to faithfully fulfill the role of house speaker.”
“I pledge to guard the sanctity of the Houselands from acts both foreign and domestic”
“I pledge to guard the sanctity of the Houselands from acts both foreign and domestic” “and to provide for the needs of the people by moderating the will of the Assembly.”
“and to provide for the needs of the people by moderating the will of the Assembly.”
“I swear to uphold the House Rules in accordance with magistrate opinion,”
“I swear to uphold the House Rules in accordance with magistrate opinion,”
“I do so swear.”
“I do so swear.”
The applause that followed seemed trite in comparison to the roar that cheered Blythe, but everyone who congratulated Johnson did so with heart-felt joy, every one of them having a hand in the achievement. Johnson was not a man who sought the position; rather, he accepted it when it was thrust upon him. He had everything most men would want in life—money, power, comfort—but he now pledged all of that to protect the Houselands from certain doom.
Johnson’s acceptance speech was short and unemotional. He thanked each person by name and praised their remarkable achievements over the past few we
eks. He appointed David as his first aide and Mercy as his second. He placed Francisco in charge of intelligence and all sneak operations, and Bethany over the department of communications. He assigned York The Valor and promoted him to Chief Admiral of the Alönian Armada. In a much more solemn tone, he ordered York to prepare the armada for war. It wasn’t a flowery speech—David doubted he’d even prepared it ahead of time. It told of the long road ahead, and the storm they had yet to weather.
After a round of handshakes, most of the few attendees left, and David led Johnson, Walker, Francisco, Mercy, Bethany, and York out of the auditorium and toward the speaker’s private office. The closer they got to the entrance, the more they saw litter strewn along the halls. No guards stood at the entrance, and when David tried opening the door it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s locked,” David said after he’d lifted the latch several times without success.
“You just don’t have the right key,” Francisco said as he produced his lock pick. Ten seconds later the door swung open and everyone gaped at what they saw. The entire office looked trashed. The halls they’d just passed through seemed clean in comparison. They moved through the entrance and into the donut shaped second floor. David could hear a few panicked voices and the sound of ripping paper from where he stood beside the balcony railing.
“No, all of them!” A woman said. “He wants them all destroyed.”
“But,” a second girl said, “I can’t tell the difference between financial records and—
The first girl interrupted her. “It doesn’t matter, just get rid of them.”
David saw a girl in her late teens run across the bottom floor with an armload of papers.
“You there,” Francisco called. “What’s going on?”
The girl squeaked and dropped her armload of papers.
“They’re here!” she called, and then she ran back across the bottom floor toward the exit. Several other people ran from different portions of the office, all of them young and impressionable. They glanced around with concerned expressions. A young lad emerged from the office next to David and gulped. He looked at them with wide eyes and scooted by with his back to the wall edging toward the exit.
David looked at Francisco with a puzzled expression. Then his eyes widened, and he charged up the main stairway toward the Speaker’s office on the third floor.
“David, wait!” Francisco said, and David heard the sound of someone running after him.
David didn’t stop. If Blythe had ordered the office to shred documents, his minions could do unspeakable damage if their path of destruction included Alönia’s Documents Vault. He reached the office door in a few seconds and burst through without pausing. The first thing he saw were documents scattered across the entire office, whole reams of paper, though nothing looked damaged, yet. The sound of ruffling paper echoed across the room, and David looked up and saw shadows dancing within the light cast through the vaults open door. Someone was inside. Francisco joined him at the door, and together they ran across the office to the vault.
David looked inside at a man with wild graying hair and a disorderly blue suit. As David watched, the man overturned whole boxes of documents and spread the contents across the floor so he could see it. His face had a scraggly scruff of facial hair marring its features, and he trod upon several inches of documents crinkling their edges and mumbling to himself as he read their titles.
“What should we do with him?” David asked as he stood with Francisco next to the vault entrance.
Blythe looked up with a start and dropped an armload of documents. He stared at them with bloodshot eyes, and his untied cravat hung limp about his neck.
“Kill him.” Francisco said. “Less paperwork to deal with.”
“You!” Blythe said, pointing at David with his index finger. His other hand clutched a roll of papers. “You ruined everything!” Blythe took a few steps toward David, but stopped when David drew his triple-barreled revolver.
“Whatever ruin you feel you brought upon yourself.” David said. “I only shined a light on your vile ways. Now drop those documents and come on out. There’s no need for things to get any worse than they already are. For you anyway.”
“Worse?” Blythe said with a chuckle. “You have no idea what’s coming. None of you can even comprehend the forces at work here! Go ahead; shoot me! I’m a dead man already.”
“Sounds reasonable enough to me,” Francisco said. “If I had my pistol on me, you’d already be dead.” For once, Francisco was unarmed, the capital guards having stripped him of his weapons when they took him into custody.
“We need him alive,” David said. “He knows things in detail that we can only guess at.”
The office door rattled, and the rest of their party entered.
“Aw, I see my replacement is here.” Blythe said, smiling. “You look like you’ve lost some weight in recent days, Johnson.”
“Good clean living,” Johnson said, and he looked around the ransacked office with a frown. “I think I’ll have a conversation with your housekeeper, though. This place is all a clutter.”
“She quit when I refused to marry her,” Blythe said with a smile. “She’s dead now. They killed her to make sure there weren’t any lose ends.”
“Just shoot him, David.” Francisco said. “It’s best for everyone.”
“Now, now, Francisco.” Johnson said as everyone crossed the office and stood beside David and Francisco. “We have a nice cell waiting for Mr. Blythe. You warmed it up for him the past few nights. Once he’s there, I’ll let you interrogate him for information. He might even have some tips for you on how to beat it out of him. Then he’ll hang.”
“I didn’t do any of those things.” Blythe said with gritted teeth. “It was all the Viörn.”
“But you allowed them to be done!” David said. “I’ll bet you even watched it. Every time you needed something dirty done you called up your butchers, and the next day we picked up the mangled bodies in a Capital City alley. There’s no difference between you and them.”
“You have no idea what they’re like.” Blythe said, his eyes wild with fear.
“Who.” David said. “Who were you working for? I want a name!”
But before Blythe could say anything, David saw the office door open again from the corner of his eye and Hans and Gerald entering. They immediately drew their weapons when they saw the scene inside the office.
“Sorry David,” Blythe said. “I’d love to chat, but it looks like my ride is here. Somebody stole all my airships, so Hans and Gerald had to acquire another.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” David said, pointing his pistol at Blythe’s forehead. “You move and I’ll put one between your eyes.”
“Do that and Han’s and Gerald will shoot your friends.” Blythe said. “Starting with the ladies.”
David gritted his teeth, but there really wasn’t anything he could do. Blythe shouldered his way past, his one hand still clutching some documents. David kept his pistol trained on the traitor’s head, but he had no choice but to let him pass. Hans and Gerald waited until Blythe was outside the office, and then they backed through themselves. As soon as they were out of sight, David and Francisco sprang forward and scrambled for the door. Papers rustled with their passing. Mercy tossed Francisco her compact gas pistol. They reached the door and threw it open, but several gunshots sent them diving for cover. The glass on the door shattered and crumbled to the floor. More shots rang out and echoed through the hall, punching holes in the wall directly above where David and Francisco crouched. Francisco leaned forward and picked up a piece of glass from the floor. He used it as a mirror and spied out the door and around the corner.
“They’re heading up to the roof.” He said, but more shots rang out and shattered the glass in his hand. He pulled his hand back and picked up another piece.
“Tell me when we’re clear.” David said.
Francisco watched the reflection in the glass for a few more mo
ments. Then he nodded.
“Go!”
David and Francisco sprang through the door and rushed around the third-floor balcony toward the roof. David opened the door leading to the promenade deck, and Francisco looked up the stairway in a quick motion, before he charged up the stairs and threw open the exterior door. Cold air chilled David as he and Francisco exited and took up positions behind a planter box. David saw Blythe, Hans, and Gerald climbing into a waiting skiff, which started rising from the deck the moment they were seated. David and Francisco both fired at the skiff, but the craft shot away before they could cause any serious damage. Francisco swore and continued to empty his magazine long after the skiff disappeared into the clouds.
“It’s fine,” David said. “That airship is too small to make it any great distance. Besides, he doesn’t have any power anymore. He can’t do any harm.”
“Men like that always cause harm. You should have let me shoot him in the office.” Francisco said. “What do you suppose those documents were that he had?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe incriminating evidence tying him to the Viörn. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to find out. There were thousands of documents in that vault, and not all of them were recorded.”
Francisco sighed. “Best go down and start cleaning the place up.” He said. But as he turned, David didn’t follow.
“You go ahead.” David said as he holstered his revolver. “I’ll be right down.” He’d forgotten just how beautiful the view from the Promenade Deck was, and the sun looked minutes away from setting.
“Suit yourself,” Francisco said.
David walked around the planter boxes and leaned against the railing. He realized with some humor that he was standing in the same spot he’d stood when he and Blythe smoked cigars. That seemed cycles ago, but it was in fact only a season and a half earlier.
He looked out over the railing and watched the sun as it sank behind the Alönian Mountains. Ever since his mother had died, the sunsets meant so much more to him, and he watched as many as he could. Each one gave him new hope, new purpose, and a new reminder that Jeshua was alive and working, and someday in the future David would join Him and his mother and father forever.