Firewall

by R. M. Olson

  Lev gave a self-deprecating nod. “Thank you. But the invitees—the ones I asked for specifically?”

  “Yes, of course.” Grigory pulled up the holoscreen over his com and flipped through the screens, then held it up for Lev to see. On it, there was an invitation for Yulia, Minister of Innovation and Development, with Yefim and Mikhail to come along.

  All three sections of the invitation were confirmed.

  Lev nodded. “Thank you. I’m glad you were able to arrange this.” He paused a moment. “I see you invited their families as well?”

  Grigory nodded. “Yes. It is customary for families to come along to this type of event. If I hadn’t, it would have looked suspicious, and we would never have gotten them.”

  Lev nodded, but there was the beginnings of a twinge of unease in his stomach.

  The fact was, he would do this, whatever it took. He’d decided that long ago.

  But—

  “Don’t worry, Lev. I have every capability of keeping people alive who I wish to keep alive. The family is only a minor inconvenience, and the deaths of the minister and her assistants will look like an accident—nothing suspicious at all, and nothing except to send condolences home with the grieving families.”

  Lev nodded again, but Grigory’s words did nothing to calm the unease in his stomach.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Ivan was right—Grigory was making plans that he wasn’t talking about to Lev, but it certainly had something to do with the ‘symposium’ that was coming up. And Lev was very, very certain that there would be no grieving families sent back with Grigory’s condolences after the minister was killed.

  Still—

  Still, three families against the lives of every person in Prasvishoni—it could hardly be a contest.

  And if he was being honest with himself, three families he didn’t know and had never met, against the lives of Jez and the rest of the crew—it was still, unfortunately, no contest. He’d learned from the best, after all. Evka had been his mentor. He could be as coldly self-interested as necessary.

  “Anyways,” said Grigory, turning back to face the front of the room. “I brought you in here because I thought you might enjoy seeing this. Considering you were here when it all started.”

  Again, that twist of unease in his stomach.

  The door opened, and three bodyguards came in, dragging a figure with a hood pulled over his eyes.

  Whoever it was had apparently been badly beaten, because Lev could see dark stains soaking through the tattered clothing, and dark wetness spreading slowly across the hood the obscured the figure’s face.

  Again, something twisted in Lev’s stomach, and again, he pushed it down.

  “The man who tried to assassinate us at dinner the first time we spoke,” said Grigory in a friendly voice. He turned to Lev, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “You remember, Lev, how I told you the story about the time I had to kill a chef.”

  Lev nodded wordlessly.

  “This isn’t all that much different, really,” Grigory continued. “I could have just had him killed, you know, would have been easy. Such an easy, clean death. My people would have made him talk first, of course, but besides that, the death would have been easy. But you see, that’s the problem. People would talk, you know. They’d start talking about me, about how Grigory is going soft, about how if you try to kill him and one of his guests at dinner, well, the worst you have to face is a little questioning, and then—” he made a gesture with his hands. “Poof. That’s not all that frightening, is it? You think if people talk, well, I’m so big and powerful, it wouldn’t matter. But that’s where everything starts, Lev. That’s where it all begins. I’m powerful because people are afraid of me, and they’re afraid of me because people talk about what I do.” He shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not a cruel man. I wouldn’t do this from choice, but, you know—my hands are tied.”

  The tone of his voice, the satisfied anticipation in it, belied his words.

  In front of them, one of the bodyguards jerked the hood from the figure’s face.

  The bound man was middle-aged, his face bloodless and terrified. He had a long gash along his forehead that looked like it had been made by a ring on a fist that had hit him, and one side of his face was bruised and swollen almost beyond recognition. When he saw Grigory, his expression turned sick. He tried, clumsily, to drop to his knees, but the bodyguards jerked him up.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Please. Krestnaya. Boss. Papa. I’ll join you, I’ll tell you whatever you want me to tell you. I can be useful. Please.”

  For some reason, even though this man had tried to kill him, it took everything Lev had not to look away from his frantic, pleading face.

  “Vlad,” said Grigory pleasantly. “I know all about what you can tell me. And I know all about what you can do for me. I do need you, Vlad.”

  For half a moment, the man’s terrified face twisted with an almost painful hope. “I—You do? I’ll do anything you need, anything you ask me.”

  Grigory leaned forward, the pleasant expression never leaving his face. “I need you, Vlad, to be an example to whoever else might think that I’m growing weak in my old age. I need you to show them exactly what they’re facing if they decide they want to try to come after me. And don’t worry, my friend. You’re already doing it, exactly what I need you to do.”

  Realization spread over the man’s expression, and his body sagged, legs giving out beneath him. “Please,” he whimpered. “Please, Grigory, Yana, Zhenya.”

  Grigory sat back and gestured to the bodyguards. “Proceed. Please.”

  It was almost an hour later when Lev finally left the room.

  He walked slowly down the hallway towards their rooms. He felt dirty, something he wasn’t certain he’d ever be able to wash off, and there was a cold, hard sickness that sat in his stomach like a stone.

  He’d managed a polite smile at Grigory as he left, though, and had exchanged pleasantries with him as if the sights of the last hour wouldn’t be burned into his mind forever, as if he’d be able to sleep without hearing the screaming echoing through his dreams.

  This was what he’d decided to work with. This was what he was agreeing to.

  And still—still, he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to regret it.

  When he reached the door at the end of the hallway that led to their room, he stood in front of it for a long moment.

  It was early afternoon, and the others were probably out doing whatever it was they did to keep themselves entertained. At the very least, he hoped they were.

  He stared at the door handle for a few moments before it registered in his brain that he needed to do something to open it, if he wanted to go inside. He reached out, tapping his com against the handle, and the lock clicked.

  He noticed, vacantly, that there was a small splash of blood on the cuff of his shirt.

  Unsurprising, really, although they had managed to be uncommonly clean about the entire business.

  He pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it after him.

  As he’d suspected, the room was empty.

  He stood for a moment, directionless, then made his way over to the table and sat down, letting himself slump forward, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

  He sat there for a while, thinking of nothing, trying to keep his mind blank, because he knew that the moment he didn’t, the images would come oozing back in, and he wasn’t sure he could examine those images right now and not go mad.

  So. This was what he had turned into.

  No, this was what he’d have to turn into. This is what he’d have to become, if not by action, at least by complicity, if he wanted Grigory to give him a chance to save everyone else.

  And once he’d saved them, then what?

  But if he saved them, did it really matter?

  At last he raised his head, and stared sightlessly at the table.

  Then he frowned. There was a chip there, an
d a paper with his name scrawled on it in Tae’s hurried writing.

  He picked it up, turning it over in his hands, then slipped it into his com.

  His holoscreen popped up, and on it, columns of data, names and amounts and dates.

  He scrolled through them, frowning. Tae had said he and Ivan were going to be looking for the ledger of the event, and it looked like they’d found it.

  And it looked nothing at all like the ledger Grigory had shown him earlier.

  His frown deepened as he scrolled down.

  The names wouldn’t have meant anything to Tae. Possibly something to Ivan, but he’d been in prison so long that even if he knew who was who in the government, his information would be years out of date.

  But—

  Something cold clutched at his chest as he scrolled through the names.

  These weren’t the low-level diplomats that Grigory had told them he was bringing in to corrupt. In fact, he was relatively certain that at least half of the names he was reading wouldn’t be corruptible, at least not without much more money than Grigroy had allocated.

  But they were all placed in strategic positions in the government. No one too high up, no one so big they’d draw suspicion, or refuse to come to a conference like this, even if invited by Minister Nika. But exactly the right combination that—

  He sucked in a breath and slapped his hand over the com, shutting off the holoscreen.

  He sat for a moment, staring ahead sightlessly, his mind grappling with the magnitude of the realization.

  Finally, he tapped his com again. “Tae?” he whispered.

  “Lev?” Tae answered immediately. “Where are you? Is everything alright?”

  “I’m in our room on the ship. I got the chip you left for me.” He paused. “I—need to talk to you. Ivan. Everyone.”

  There was a pause from the other end of the com. “I’ll be there in a minute,” said Tae, worry clear in his voice.

  Whatever it was Tae did, it took him less than half an hour to gather everyone in the main room, around the table. When he’d come into the room and seen the look on Lev’s face, he hadn’t even asked questions, and Lev was honestly ridiculously grateful, because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold his voice steady for long enough to string together a sentence at this point.

  Jez sat across from him, and there was thick concern in her face, but he focused on Masha as he pulled up the holoscreen on his com.

  “Masha,” he said, in a voice that somehow came out steady. “This is a ledger that Ivan and Tae were able to find. It has the complete list of invitees.” He scrolled down to the list of names.

  “As you and I suspected, Grigory is not telling us everything. The names he gave us are indeed on the list. But,” he scrolled down farther “So are these.”

  She frowned at the names, glanced up at him, and looked at the names again.

  He waited for the realization to dawn on her face, and when it did, he saw, for just an instant, the shock that he’d felt when he’d finally put the pieces together.

  “He’s not trying to put things back to where they were,” he said softly, covering the com gently with his hand. The holoscreen flickered and disappeared, and they were all staring at him.

  “No,” said Masha quietly. “No, it appears he’s not.”

  “Well?” asked Ysbel irritably. “What is he doing then?”

  Masha turned to her with that bland, pleasant smile she always wore, but Lev could see the strain behind it.

  “It appears, Ysbel, that he is planning a coup. Those people on the list were chosen very carefully. One of them would hardly make a difference. But all of them, combined? The government would be paralyzed. It would cease to function entirely, and Grigory could take complete control. There would be nothing to stop him.”

  “But—wait,” said Jez. “Take a hell of a lot of money to corrupt that many of the bastards, even though it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re all for sale.”

  “It would,” said Lev softly. “It would take a great deal of money, probably more than Grigory can access at the moment. If you recall, I do have some insight on his current financial position.”

  “So—” Jez began, and then she stopped abruptly.

  A quick glance around the table told Lev that everyone had come to the same realization.

  “He never intended to corrupt all of them,” he said, his voice somehow light. “A few, certainly. But the rest?” He shrugged, and turned to Ivan. “You said that he’d paid the ship’s owner an obscene amount for the use of her ship, correct? Enough to buy it outright, I think is what you said.”

  Ivan nodded slowly, a horrified expression on his face. “It’s because he did buy it, isn’t it?” he asked softly. “But there’s no need to get supply chains going for a ship that’s he’s only going to own for a few weeks.”

  “And no point in temporary contracts for servers, when it’s the last job they’ll ever have,” said Tae, his voice sick. Ivan shot him a quick, sympathetic look.

  “He’s going to blow it up, isn’t he?” Tae said, turning back to Lev. “Kill everyone on board.”

  Lev nodded. “That’s what it seems. All of them dead, and the families too, I imagine.”

  “I—thought you said he was going to corrupt some of them,” said Jez, sounding slightly dazed. “Kinda hard to do that if they’re dead, I’m guessing.”

  “I imagine,” murmured Masha, “that he’ll have a way of separating off the ones he wants killed from the ones he wants to own.”

  Lev tapped his com and pulled up the holoscreen, scanning rapidly through the specs on the gambling ship. Then he expanded the screen and pulled it over to the centre of the table.

  The others peered at it.

  “There,” Ivan said. “There’s a partition between the two sections of the gambling hall. Blast doors?”

  Lev glanced at the diagram and nodded.

  “Well,” said Masha. “Then I imagine he will find a way to gather the individuals he’s marked for murder on one side of the blast doors. It would be a simple matter to seal them off, and the explosion would take care of the rest.”

  There was something odd in her voice, and Lev turned to look at her, frowning slightly.

  He could swear she’d been surprised by the news.

  But—not horrified. Not like Tae and Jez and Ivan and the others had been horrified.

  Almost—satisfied.

  That question, that had never quite stopped nagging in the back of his head—what game was Masha playing?

  And he still had no idea.

  “We’ll likely need more information,” Masha murmured. She glanced around the table. “We’ll have to discuss how to get it.”

  “And report it to you?” he asked quietly, turning to her. “Do you have information we should know, Masha?”

  She watched him for a moment, her expression inscrutable. “I am learning what I can,” she said at last. “And no, I suspect it would be best if everyone reported what they find to you. I have found myself extraordinarily busy these last few days, and I would hate for you to be waiting on me. If there is information I find I need, I will be certain to ask.” She stood, and gave them all that bland smile. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to your discussions.”

  She turned, and a moment later the door to her room closed firmly behind her.

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Lev?” asked Tae at last. There was something grim in his expression.

  “I—” he began. He felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach, and he hadn’t quite caught his breath.

  He should, he imagined, be horrified by what Grigory was planning. And if he were being honest, he was.

  But the thing that was tearing at him from the inside was the sickening calculation he had to make—deciding which was worse: stopping Grigory, and saving the government, and the minister surviving, and the time before Evka killed them all measured in weeks? Or letting Grigory
take over the Svodrani system government, but killing the people who held the crew’s life in their hands, first the minister, then Evka? And, of course, killing hundreds of innocent people with them.

  He’d decided he’d do anything to save the rest of the crew. He needed to be able to do anything.

  But—

  But right now, with Vlad’s bruised, terrified face painted fresh on his memory, he couldn’t seem to think clearly enough to make the decision.

  “Lev, we can’t,” said Tae quietly. “You know that. There will be hundreds of people there. Innocent people—families, children, servers. We’d be killing them. Even if you don’t think—” he broke off. “It wouldn’t be better, Lev,” he said, finally. “If Grigory took over the system, it wouldn’t be better. We have to find a way to save them.”

  Lev closed his eyes a moment.

  Maybe Tae was right. It had been a long day, and he couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the enormity of what was happening. Had happened.

  And until he could, until he could figure out how this new information factored in, perhaps this was for the best.

  “Well then,” he said at last, looking up and trying to smile. “I suppose we put a stop to it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JEZ GLANCED OVER at the table, where Lev, Tae, and Ivan were huddled around Lev’s holoscreen.

  “That’s not going to work,” said Lev, and there was annoyance in his voice.

  “Well, maybe you can come up with something better,” Tae snapped. Ivan glanced between them, then over at her with a wry look on his face.

  She grinned at him.

  “You two eggheads look like you’re having fun over there.”

  Tae and Lev both looked up, glaring at her.

  “Jez,” said Tae, and she could hear the familiar exasperation in his tone. “If you don’t have something helpful to add—”