Ambassador 11: The Forgotten War

by Patty Jansen

  By the headlights of the bus, we spotted a few small flocks of brown goats soaking up the lingering warmth from the rocks. Some animals had impressive curled horns.

  By the time we crested the saddle of the mountain range and the city spread out before us, the sky was deep black.

  Palls of smoke drifted low over the ground, lit from below by city lights in an eerie glow. Wafts of a burnt smell came in through the open window.

  One stricken area at the bottom of the slope was close enough that we could hear the wailing of emergency sirens.

  “There was a ground component involved in this attack?” I asked Clay.

  “I don’t think so, but few people are sharing information. Although I just heard that Celia Braddock is going to make an official announcement later tonight. We should be home in time to watch it.”

  Celia Braddock, of course, was the governor of Atlantia, and the leader most willing to speak to Nations of Earth.

  “What do you expect her to say?”

  “She’ll claim responsibility. I didn’t expect Atlantia to attack us, but there you go. I’m sure she’ll call it a retaliation for the attempt on her life earlier this year.”

  “Really? Would she order an attack across the borders?”

  “All the time, because the people who organised the attack on her were sympathisers with America Free State, and most of them lived in Los Angeles. This has been brewing for a while. They did this before, a few years ago.”

  Marisol said, “More than just a few years ago. It was at least ten, and it was nowhere near as extensive as this. I don’t understand it. Braddock has been very keen on joining all the states together once more. She says we are making a stronger country. Why would she order this?”

  Clay shrugged. “Retaliation.”

  The truck was rumbling down the hill, shrouded in its own cloud of dust.

  “Is it far, where we’re going?” I asked. I was getting really hungry now and worried about Thayu and Emi. I wasn’t interested in these petty tit-for-tat wars. I wanted some sort of normality back in my life.

  “Not that far, but we have to watch it. I suggest that you prepare to take defensive action, in case they question us at the perimeter fence.”

  My team didn’t need to be told that twice.

  Weapons came out, I was installed on the floor of the bus, with anyone else who was not in the first line of defence, like Nicha and Ynggi.

  Sheydu checked my weapon and judged it was safe for emergency use.

  I sat on the hard floor.

  While he steered the bus, Clay explained that he and his sister lived in a kind of safe enclave, and that people in surrounding streets had put tall fences and wire around the pieces of land they owned.

  “We want to make sure we can all stay safe,” he said. “Some of them are funny about aliens.”

  It was hard holding on, because the bus was going at a crazy speed, and the road was rough. I hoped that there would be showers where we were going, because I needed to rinse the itchy lake residue off my skin.

  We turned sharp corners, pushing us all into each other, and occasionally, I heard other vehicles.

  But we reached our destination without trouble, and slowed down at the end of a winding road, at a solid wall with a gate that opened at our approach.

  Once we were through, we could get off the floor and look out the windows.

  We were in the long curved driveway of a house that stood on top of a rise on the mountainside, overlooking the city.

  The yard must once have been an oasis, with a lawn and a pool and tennis court and a gazebo at the best vantage point. A railing ran along the cliff top from the house to the gazebo.

  The garden had seen better days.

  Several of the trees were dead, but some still clung on to life. The lawn resembled a crop of standing hay, and the pool was half empty, with a sad puddle of murky water at the bottom. A heap of sand had blown into one corner, forming a little beach. On this tiny sandy patch I spotted a welcome sight: two Pengali kids, fishing, tails in the air with excitement.

  Sure enough, Ayshada stood at the edge of the pool, at the top of a rusty ladder, contemplating whether he would climb down, break the ladder and fall down, making an idiot of himself, or stay where he was and then let the Pengali kids make an idiot of him on his behalf.

  He noticed us, abandoned his spot, and ran to the driveway.

  I could hear his voice through the open windows of the bus.

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

  The bus stopped in front of the house. Nicha was the first one off, scooping up Ayshada in his arms.

  By the time we had collected our bags and stumbled off the bus, my entire team had come to the front door of the house.

  I ran up the steps to Thayu and Emi, enclosing both of them in my arms.

  “Thank goodness you’re safe,” I said.

  “I could say the same.” Thayu smelled clean and bathed, while I probably still smelled of algae. “You really chose your time to go on an excursion.”

  It was an attempt to be lighthearted, but Thayu didn’t do lighthearted very well. I could hear the worry in her voice.

  “We were all right. We didn’t see any of the attacks and only had a slight run-in with some townsfolk.” A little more than that, but no need to elaborate.

  “You smell.”

  “I fell out of a boat in some dirty water.”

  “A boat? In the desert?”

  “You know I always manage to find boats and water wherever I go?” It had been a standing joke in my team that in order to work with us, one had to have a working knowledge of boats.

  “What’s that gear you’re wearing? It looks interesting.”

  “Is that interesting in the Thayu way? I suspect it’s Asto military gear.”

  “Yeah. But years old. It’s probably excess material from the military stores.”

  That made me wonder about Marisol’s and Clay’s affiliations.

  “We were worried about you, too. How did you end up here?”

  “This is a safe house. After unrest broke out, we got directions from the Exchange to seek out a safe place. We made our own way to a pickup point, and then they came to collect us. It was... interesting.”

  Yeah, I bet. I was sure I’d hear more about it later.

  For now, I was so happy to see them.

  “Any word from Amarru?”

  “None directly, but the owners of this house have told us that the Exchange is arranging flights to take us out.”

  “Great. Have you heard from anyone else?”

  “There have been some messages from Nations of Earth. You might want to look at them, but I don’t think they’re terribly important.”

  “Have you heard from my father?”

  “No.”

  “I was going to contact him if we still couldn’t get onto the Exchange, but I’ll probably contact him, anyway. We should still visit him.”

  “That would be nice.”

  Veyada had also met his family, while Clay and Marisol had taken all the bags off the bus and had shut the vehicle’s doors.

  The Pengali kids had come out of the garden.

  Pykka carried a kitchen bowl in which they had caught a small lizard. Amay carried the plastic bladder with the bubble device. She glanced at me, meeting my eyes for a moment before moving the contraption behind her back.

  I struggled not to laugh. No, I hadn’t seen that. Not at all.

  Smells from inside the house suggested that food was forthcoming.

  We followed the Pengali kids into the hall.

  The house stood on top of the hill, and most of the windows and the veranda overlooked the plain where the suburbs of Los Angeles sprawled endlessly into the hazy horizon. Strings of white lights represented major roads, leading to clusters of multi-hued lights that were population centres, shoppi
ng precincts and groups of office buildings.

  In the darkness, the smoke was not so obvious and at least eight hours had gone by since the last attacks. Fires had been put out.

  This house, with its large block of land, surrounding wall, pool, tennis court and guest quarters had once belonged to a famous actor, Marisol explained when she’d joined us admiring the view.

  “The name wouldn’t mean anything to you, but he lived here with his mistress while his wife lived in the guest quarters. He was well known for holding loud parties every night. When the Civil War came, a lot of the movie production business went to other places like Glasgow and Jakarta. He died in disgrace while owing a lot of people a lot of money. No one lived here for a long time while the ownership passed from law firm to law firm. We acquired the house a few years ago.”

  She said they had also bought up surrounding properties, many of them with ruined houses that had a similar history. One section of land, in a gully, they rented out to a community group who used it for growing vegetables and producing goat’s milk. But apparently that was Marisol’s sister’s line of business.

  We met the sister a bit later—her name was Vanessa—when she came to bring a tray of food.

  With her came a bunch of other people, all Coldi, many dressed in dark featureless clothing, some even wearing earrings with blue stones. Palayi clan.

  Asto military.

  Definitely not local residents.

  The smells of food also attracted a bunch of Coldi children, who mingled with ours. Other than Larrana, Nalya and Ayshada, I knew none of them. The unfamiliar kids wore local clothing. They spoke Coldi but used a lot of local words.

  Vanessa told them, sternly, that they needed to wash their hands and wait patiently until the adult guests had eaten. She peppered her comments with local words, mostly Spanish, I thought.

  I asked Marisol if they were Vanessa’s children, but only one of them was. The others were children of people who lived in other houses that the family owned. This hill, the surrounding houses and the farms were a Coldi sanctuary.

  Thayu had disappeared somewhere else in the house, and came back carrying Emi, now in a nightshirt, looking round-eyed at all those people around her.

  We all sat on the couches overlooking the magnificent view of the city while Vanessa put trays filled to the brim with wonderful food on the table.

  There was flatbread and cheese with olives and smoked vegetables, nuts, little quiches and many types of salads. It was all very proper, vegetarian and calibrated for the nutrient requirements for Coldi needs.

  Ynggi muttered about the lack of fish, but that was the only complaint we got. I suspected he didn’t even mean it, because the food was truly wonderful.

  “They’re Lingui clan, I’m guessing,” Thayu whispered, while she sat next to me, making sure Emi ate the bread she was ripping into many pieces. “Business people. The Exchange pays them handsomely for providing a safe haven, and using their craft to assist Coldi in need in this region. The Exchange also pays them for gathering information, and they sell home-made food to well-off locals.”

  Sheydu and Isharu sat on Thayu’s other side.

  They’d attended some sort of general security meeting earlier on, but I thought Sheydu looked tired.

  I told her that I was fine with them retiring early, but Sheydu said that she wanted to see the address by Celia Braddock that was scheduled to start soon.

  I’d finished eating and took Emi so that Thayu could get her dinner.

  The Coldi children had been set loose on the food, because the important adults—meaning the military—had finished, or because Vanessa had abandoned her surveillance of their actions in favour of setting up a screen in the living area so we could all watch the speech.

  I went to put Emi to bed.

  Thayu and I had been allocated two camp beds in the corner of what looked like an entertainment room. A fold-up cot for Emi stood between the two beds. I put her down and covered her with the blanket. Her eyelids were already drooping.

  Several team members had congregated in the opposite corner of the room. I’d seen Reida, Deyu, Anyu, Evi, Telaris and Veyada in the main living area earlier in the evening, but had assumed that they’d gone to clean up or had gone to sleep.

  But instead they were here holding their own security briefing. I joined the group, seated on two camp beds and the floor.

  Deyu sat on her knees in the middle of the group and had been showing my team something on her reader. She acknowledged me with a nod when I joined them.

  “Any news?” I asked. “Do make sure you don’t miss the governor’s announcement.”

  “We’re preparing for that,” she said.

  Apparently, they had been watching clips of other speeches Celia Braddock had given.

  She showed me how they had created three sub-channels to record comments and observations over the top of the recorded speech, about whether her mannerisms were any different from usual. They had divided the screen in four areas for one person per area to observe. They had attached two translation devices and would cross-check each, and again check with Nicha and Telaris, both of whom should be able to follow the speech without the necessity to translate it.

  There was even a special channel for making notes about the things that were in the background or immediately before and after the speech.

  I was impressed.

  I knew that Deyu had been taking classes at Asto’s spy academy but hadn’t seen any of it in action. Thayu assured me that the first year was so crammed full of theory about human behaviour that it could, in her words, put the universe’s biggest insomniac to sleep. She’d warned me about Deyu and Reida going through this stage. They might seem impatient and restless, she said. Reida, sure, but as usual, Deyu drank it all in, turned it over in her mind, and then used every scrap of information she got, no matter how mundane or boring.

  Spying was not about action and chases or gun fights.

  It was about watching, comparing endless bits of data and waiting for someone to make a mistake. Not a big mistake, but a very small, dumb but crucial mistake.

  They’d be watching Celia Braddock and judging her against all the other speeches she’d given in the last few years.

  Judging her sincerity. Did she mean what she said? Was she honest? Did she seem nervous, distracted? Did she refer to other agendas?

  Thank goodness for my team and Deyu.

  One of the faceless, dark-clad military people came to the door. He said, “She’s on.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  We followed him back to the living room.

  In a corner, Clay and Marisol had set up a large screen on a stand. It was paper thin and had been rolled out from a cabinet in the wall.

  Everyone at the house gathered at the couches that faced it, and others sat on the floor, stood behind the couches, or collected extra chairs from elsewhere in the house. The sheer number of people surprised me.

  Besides my not inconsiderable team and Clay, Marisol and Vanessa, there were seven military people—a complete association—and the family I’d seen before, as well as an elderly couple, two young men who seemed to be friends, a woman with a teenage daughter and a family of five, all adults.

  I hadn’t been aware that there were quite this many people in the house.

  It got very busy in the room.

  Deyu and Reida had positioned themselves as close to the screen as possible, on the floor in front of it, with all their recording and monitoring devices spread out on the carpet in front of them.

  The screen showed a presenter seated in front of a logo of a news service I hadn’t considered for a long time: Flash Newspoint, the obnoxious gutter press that Melissa Heyworth used to work for. Of course. Their head office was in Los Angeles.

  They were deeply political, anti-Nations of Earth, and forever tried to buy themselves credibility by appointing decent
journalists like Melissa. And those decent journalists often had no option but to work for them because jobs in journalism were scarce.

  The feed cut to a gathering of many people in front of a white-columned building, where an empty dais waited for a speaker to appear.

  Somewhere off-screen, music started playing a kind of oohm-pah march with lots of blaring trumpets.

  Then people in the audience started singing. They were not just singing along, but singing in rousing voices, with open mouths and balled fists.

  Was this some kind of national anthem? It felt weird.

  While the song finished up, a woman came out of the doorway behind the dais, flanked by two security guards.

  She was of squat and stout build, in her middle age, pepper and salt hair cut into a bob. Her face was round, her cheeks full, and she squinted out of her eyes over the heads of the gathered crowd.

  I recognised governor of Atlantia Celia Braddock from the pictures. A couple of people followed her out of the building and lined up behind her, including a man in a heavily decorated military uniform.

  Celia Braddock waited until they had taken their places on a couple of seats to the side of the dais. During this, she nodded at a few people in the audience, but very little emotion displayed on her face.

  Since I’d decided we were going to come this way, I had read a lot about her. She seemed like a shrewd operator, from a “proper” family, well-educated, well-spoken, a de facto spokesperson for this fractured, infuriatingly opaque and contradictory continent. There were a lot of people who hated her, and I had seen plenty of evidence for that, but most people here accepted her willingness to speak to Nations of Earth, because the other nations that used to be part of the United States, Prairie, Dixie Republic and America Free State, refused to speak with Nations of Earth, and Nations of Earth equally refused to speak with them. It all stemmed from a disagreement over international cooperation in the previous century. Since the United Nations used to have their headquarters in what was today Atlantia, they felt they should have been asked to play a part in the new organisation Nations of Earth, even if it seemed they only wanted this so that they could continue to argue with European members. Since that continual arguing had led to the downfall and eventual disbanding of the—by then utterly ineffective—United Nations, Nations of Earth had been reluctant to let any of the four nations join and had set conditions for joining that they knew the north American countries would not meet: proper separation of religion and state, rules on political funding and the legislated duty of care of the state towards individual citizens. These were precisely the issues that drove the United States to fall apart.