by David Ryker
Loreto nodded and the captain turned, walking away toward his quarters. There wouldn’t be a chance to send a message until they reached Sparta.
“Hertz,” Loreto called out to stop his friend and he felt the hoarseness in his own voice. “Tell me.”
The man turned around. The admiral saw the weight of twenty worlds on his shoulders.
“What is it, Richard?”
“You were on Inca,” he breathed. “In that bar.”
“Yessir.”
“You saw it all? The fight.” Loreto waved a hand, searching for his question. “Was it worth saving?”
“Sir?”
“Inca is us at our worst, Hertz. It’s what happens when all hope is gone. But would you fight for it?”
Hertz blinked once and looked Loreto dead in the eye.
“To my last breath, sir.”
Loreto smiled and felt joy and pain.
“That’s why we’re taking the gamble, Hertz. That’s why.”
27
Hess
“How did you get away with that?”
Hess looked up at Alison. Her cheeks crinkled as she beamed down at him but he couldn’t share her joy. He had been sitting in the same room for hours, allowing the world to rotate around him. They were busy, the people; he couldn’t focus on them.
They listened, he assured himself. They actually listened. But he couldn’t believe it. The entire mess was a détente. A pause, a ceasefire. He didn’t trust it for a moment.
“They’re up to something,” he told her. “I just can’t figure out what. It’s just an excuse for them, a reason to put aside the situation and re-arm.”
“No.” A blunt and cheery word from Alison. “You were inspiring. I believed you. You did it, Acton. Be happy.”
The shake of his head dismissed any credit she wanted to give him. They were playing him, the Senate and the Spartans. Tricking him somehow. I’m not as clever as I think I am.
“Hess.” The cheeriness hardened. “Take the credit. You’ve done a good thing. A selfless thing, for once. Enjoy the win, please.”
“Sure.” Even agreeing made him feel bad. “I take the win now, ready for the Symbiot to blow us–”
“Shut up,” she told him, took his arm and dragged the two of them out of the busy room.
The outside was different. The quiet hallways and pensive squares of Agios-Nikon were crowded, as though someone had turned on a faucet and let the people swill around the cistern of the city. The Sparta we saw before, Hess thought as they pushed through the elbows of the busy masses, it was a lie. A trap. All the time they’d spent in the city before, these people had been hidden.
Now they were everywhere. So many of them, he realized. More than anyone had ever thought. If this was their city and they had many like it, the Spartans might have a population to worry Providence. So what else are they not telling us?
“Look,” Alison interrupted, pointing up to the walls which sat between the mountains, trapping the valleys together and pushing up against the outside world like a free-floating dam. All along the walls and the building tops, people were preparing defenses. Mounted guns, barricades, and other, spindly spider-like weapons.
“I was talking to people while you were moping,” she continued. “Apparently, they’ve been preparing for this for a while. There was always a war on the horizon; they just assumed they’d be fighting the Senate. They had all this ready to go, they’re so well-drilled.”
Hess grunted. And now we’re seeing the defenses first hand, his cynical side shouted. Seeing their weak points up close and personal. Above them, ships roared through the skies. A Fleet, practically, flanked by fighters and flying low.
“What the hell?” shouted Hess, holding an arm over his face to hide from the gust of wind.
“Yeah,” Alison shouted back, hiding behind her arm. “They’ve been here a while, too.”
“It’s Loreto?” Hess looked up hopefully. “He’s here already?”
“Not quite.” And she dragged him away from the crowds and toward a towering concrete building.
Hess looked back over his shoulder. The ships were Spartan, he realized. A giant Fleet of their own. My word, they were actually plotting a coup. Ghoulam wasn’t lying. Now he’s showing his hand. It’s better than anything Saito has, he must know that.
“Back from beyond the Pale this morning.” Alison dropped her voice as they entered the building. “The Senate’s ships passed through the trace gate a few hours ago, too. They were out there, apparently. Lurking. That was probably their plan.”
“Probably,” muttered Hess.
They passed the giant staircase which led to the shuttle landing pads and Alison led them through an archway, into the base of another black mountain. It was a command center, a throbbing heart housed inside a gigantic atrium. The roof was so far up, Hess hurt his neck trying to find it. The concrete walls were sliced open. Voids without glass, only glowing neon lights which bathed the slits in blue and green and red. One of the walls was devoted to a flat and silent waterfall.
The water tumbled down from up above in a flat and thin stream. It was too crowded to see the base, but Hess saw the vapor floating up from the pool of water. The entire room was quieter than expected; the empty space ate up all the sound.
The air was thick and muggy. A throttling humidity done no favors by the bodies and the heat. Alison lead them to the side of the room, down through a door and through a corridor into a tunnel. This was where she’d seen the Senate people go, she said. They should follow.
Hess agreed, and they walked deeper into the mountain. The hallway thinned as they moved deeper. The ground was laid with thick electric cables like worms crawling up through the dirt after a storm. Men dragged crates and had to be sidestepped. Welding and drilling, the sounds of work. Everyone seemed to know their purpose. Alison and Hess pressed themselves up against the wall of the tunnel again to let another Spartan past. He barely acknowledged them and hauled a cable upward to the surface.
Eventually, the tunnel opened out. It became a collection of rooms, joined up by doors and shafts and vents. A briarpatch of pockets and hiding places. There were holo-plates and video screens. You could run an entire war from down here, Hess thought. That’s the point, you idiot.
There were fewer Spartans down here and Alison looked in every doorway. The frown on her face told Hess she hadn’t found what she wanted. He heard shouting, familiar voices. Beckoning her, he moved toward the sound.
A room sat away from the others at the end of a twisting dark corridor. They reached it and found a familiar Senate guard standing outside. The shouting came from within. Hess recognized it. Van Liden. They stepped to go inside but the helmeted guard held out a hand.
“Can’t go in,” he told them in a flat and stupid voice.
“Do you know who I am?” Hess asked, putting on his practiced air of unfounded superiority.
The guard stepped from foot to foot and his nostrils flared. The voice worked wonders, Hess knew. Pompous and worrying. It was the mark of a politician. It was perfect for bullying.
“So,” Hess said. “You do.”
The guard nodded, halted, and began to shake his head.
“But you can’t go in.”
Leaning in close to the guard, Hess added a conspiratorial urgency to his voice.
“Listen, you were there, in that room with me. I recognize you.” He looked the man in the eye up close. “You nearly shot me in the head.”
As big a man as the guard was, his cheeks flushed. He stammered and Hess talked over him.
“If you were good at your job, we’d all be dead now. Let me in. You owe me.”
The guard looked up and down the corridor and at Hess and at Alison. The desperation was clear on his face. He needed someone to transport him away, to get him out of this place at once.
“I can quite easily go and find Sergeant Patterson,” Hess added.
The guard winced. “Fine,” he said, giving up. “
But don’t say nothing.”
“My lips”—Hess smiled—“are sealed.”
Together with Alison, he slipped into the dark room and stuck to the walls. Inside was large but not huge. The depths of the shadows and the shouting hid their entry and Hess guided them to the side, trying to listen as they crept. He saw Van Liden, standing and shouting at the other generals, as well as a few hundred-meter-high holograms which encircled the men sat at the table. The Senators, he knew. Beamed in from Earth and being advised from afar. This is the nerve center.
“A huge fleet.” The invective was raw and venomous. “Bigger than ours! Hidden! A slap across the face of the Senate.”
The old men mumbled accordance, echoed in the projections.
“And you!” Van Liden flourished with a quick turn and Hess’s blood ran cold and worried.
But he was pointing at someone in the center of the room, someone hidden through the cobalt light. Hess craned his neck and tried to see. It was Saito. The president looked terrible. His demeanor, usually so calm and aloof, had shattered. His face was pocked red and his eyes were bloodshot and black with tiredness. He could barely sit up straight in his chair and lolled as the old man swung an accusing finger toward him.
“You!” Van Liden continued. “You fell for it! Took that weasel’s offer of a truce. You threw it all away, man! We had them. We had them!”
Saito quivered. He was drinking before, Hess remembered, but it looked like he hadn’t stopped. He’s in the middle of a breakdown.
“W-we had to!” Saito didn’t sound confident in his own words. “It was the only thing. The right thing.”
Van Liden pushed up right in the president’s face until his teeth were almost tearing out the man’s eyeballs as he bit through each word with a snarl.
“It’s not what I told you to do. You do not act alone, Saito. Never. Need I remined you where our orders–”
Saito jumped up and knocked the old general backward. The president wasn’t strong but Van Liden hadn’t expected the movement and staggered back.
“If we don’t work with them now,” Saito pleaded, “there won’t be any more orders. There won’t be any more anything, you old fools. No Federation. No colonies. No money. No nothing.”
Saito slumped backward, drained. Van Liden rallied himself and straightened his clothes, looking down at the broken man in front of him. He said nothing but turned and walked out of the room, pushing through the flickering projections. He didn’t wait for the other generals and the guards to follow but they scuttled after him and the holograms extinguished, one by one.
“You’ve done it now,” hissed Neko at the president as he scampered after the others, cupping a weak, pitying slap across Saito’s face. “Dead in no time.”
“At least I won’t be alone!” Saito shouted after him and then slumped again, deeper into his chair and began to hide his eyes behind tender fingers.
Still in the shadows, Hess didn’t know whether he should step forward or stay still. They were alone in the room with Saito. Alison moved without him and he reached out a hand, holding her back. The man should be alone with his thoughts, he told himself. They were witnessing a person at his lowest point.
He rubbed the scab on the back of his neck and then lowered his hand to the pin on his chest. If that was me, I’d want to be alone. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me. If it’s my worst nightmare, it’s probably his, too. But her movement was enough. Saito looked up through red eyes.
“Hess?” He teetered through the word uncertainly.
Alison dug her hand into the small of Hess’s back and pushed him forward into the light.
“Yes,” he said because there was nothing else to say.
Saito stood up immediately, his back straight and the weight of the world dispensed with. Abject depression to campaign mode posture in the blink of an eye. Hess was impressed.
“I was just…” Saito’s words weren’t as sure. “Our meeting… a very tense situation, I’m sure you can imagine.”
“I’m sure,” Hess said quietly. “I’m sure.”
“Hess?” Saito spoke with a soft voice.
“Yes?” he mustered, dreading the next words.
“I just…” Saito turned and looked away and sat down again. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
It wasn’t even close to what Hess had expected.
“Thank you,” he repeated, “for stepping in, Acton. Thank you for your efforts, up in that room. We were in… we are in…. a tricky situation. Nothing a clear head can’t fix, eh?”
Saito forced himself through a fake laugh. A clear head, Hess thought. He’s drunk. Ruined on liquor.
“Really,” the president continued uninterrupted, “someone had to do something. We have to fight together.”
Saito tried the laugh again and managed to make it a little more credible. Then he looked past Hess into the shadows. Alison still stood there. Hess gave her a quick sign with his fingers, pointing her to the door.
“Don’t worry about her,” he told Saito. “She knows when to keep quiet.”
Through his red and drunken eyes, Saito watched Alison walk out.
“I’ll bet she does.” His eyes lingered hungrily on her as she left. “You sure know how to pick them, Hess.”
A flash of loathing passed through Hess’s mind, an instant of abhorrence out of nowhere. Suddenly, he remembered why he hated the man sitting in front of him. No matter what happened, there was no way he could ever truly like – or even trust – Dominic Saito.
“Anyway,” the president continued. “What were you saying?”
Nothing, Hess realized. He hadn’t been saying anything. The man’s mind was clearly in tatters.
“I was saying we need to pull together,” Hess ventured. “Or we’re all dead.”
“Sure.” And a real laugh followed this time. “All of us. Some of us are dead already, though.”
And he laughed louder and louder until it became a cough and bent him double and Hess had to slap him square on the back.
“What do you mean?” asked Hess as he knelt down beside the man.
He’d never seen Saito like this. The man was normally the very definition of composed. Something had hurt him deeply, Hess realized.
“Big battle,” Saito croaked after the cough, “and we lose? Then I’m the president that went down with humanity. A villain. As least there won’t be anyone left alive to mock me, I suppose, or to tell one another how terrible I was.”
“But if we win?”
A snort of laughter. No humor in it.
“Then I’ve gone against them.” Saito waved to the door.
“The generals?”
“And the rest.”
“Well, you’re president.” Hess tried a hand on the man’s shoulder. It felt uncomfortable. “President for life. Surely they serve at your pleasure…”
Saito looked up, staring at Hess as though he were a particularly stupid child toddling carelessly toward a cliff edge.
“I’ll be removed from office, Hess. With extreme prejudice, I might add.”
Saito sunk lower into his seat, shrugged off the hand, and lay his head in his palms. Instantly, Hess felt the depression radiating out from him. He’d been there himself, the times when it felt as though the entirely of the universe’s gravity was conspiring against him, weighing him down and pressing him into the ground and grinding him into nothing but miserable dust. For the briefest of moments, he forgot his hate and he could pity the president.
“Dominic,” he said softly. “I’m sure there’s something… something we can do. There must be… a way. Some kind of leverage.”
“Of course I’ve tried,” Saito mumbled into his palms, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve got dirt. On all of them. Been collecting it for years. But what can I do with it? Release it? Mutually assured destruction isn’t long-term thinking, Hess.”
Holy hell, Hess thought. Dirt on all the generals.
“You have it with you now? Here? And they kno
w?”
“With me? Don’t be a fool. It’s locked up. Somewhere secure. They’d kill me if they found out what I had on them.”
But he told me, Hess noticed. That either means he trusts me or he doesn’t see me as a threat at all.
“Then where is it?”
“I can’t tell you, Hess. I’d have to kill you.”
Hess laughed as best he could and tried to ease the tension.
“You know, Hess—” Saito looked up and almost smiled. “I’ve always liked you. A worthy, honorable opponent. Even when you were going to lose. You made it a good sport. You made it fun, Hess. It’s not fun anymore.”
The sentiment grated across Hess’s emotions. It had never been fun or honorable; only privileged people thought like that.
“I understand,” he lied. “You were a worthy opponent, too.”
What’s a lie worth now? Especially if it gets me closer to this treasure trove of information. Enough to bring down the Federation. If that ever matters.
“You have to promise me, Hess.”
Saito reached out for his arm and gripped it tight.
“What?”
Tears tumbled down the man’s face, the smell of liquor on his breath.
“Promise me you won’t get sucked in by their lies.”
“What lies, exactly?”
Saito shook his head again and lost himself to emotion.
“What lies?” Hess wept, grabbing at Saito’s shoulder and tugging it hard.
It was infuriating to try and wring blood from this stone, to be so close to the truth and not be able to take it. But Saito was lost. Hess had never seen him like this. It was almost sickening. Not even dead and he was as much a victim of the war as anyone else. It had broken him in barely two days. What would it do to other people? That’s why it needs to be me. Hess steeled his conviction. Only I can do it.
But a thought was needling away at his memory. Ghoulam, grinning, telling him that the election was fixed. Hess knew already but he had to know for sure. If he was going to save anyone, he had to save himself first.