Operation Grendel

by Daniel Schwabauer

  Inside her apartment she stopped in the bathroom on the way to bed and fell asleep almost instantly. No wonder: I found her pills on the bathroom sink. The bottle was half empty. She’d been taking them the past couple of weeks while I was gone but still looked like something dragged from the basement of a Kanzin halfway house.

  My fault. And this time I had no excuse. No curtain of happiness to drape across it. No distance to justify it. No ignorance of the situation or pretense that everything could be fine in a month or two.

  My comms had the basic military snoop detector built in. Not perfect, but certainly capable of finding any physical tech that might have been planted in her apartment. I ran the diagnostic twice; the place was clean. If she was being watched, it was through a hack in her comms or via someone’s physical eyes.

  That made me even angrier. It meant the forces tearing Ivy down were unseen and unknowable. I couldn’t put my hands on them, couldn’t take a combat knife to their wiring or their throat. For that matter, couldn’t put a face on them.

  Were they even real? Was there a Fleet or Bureau agent standing out there even now, gazing through the walls via some high-tech gadget? Or was she being watched by a more remote enemy, with even more sophisticated gadgetry?

  Maybe neither. Maybe all of this was in her head, brought on by the stress of knowing both too much and too little. Maybe the real enemy was one I had brought into her life myself, with no help from an outside source.

  I sat on her couch as promised. Paced for an hour or so. Sat again. Paced some more.

  The evening crawled along towards darkness. I left the lights off in case someone really was out there looking in. A Colonial agent would have thermal optics, of course, but I wasn’t going to make their job any easier. I pulled a meal from Ivy’s freezer, heated it, and wolfed it down seated on the couch, my datapad balanced on my knees, the recordings from my comms spinning in flickers of dull color above the surface.

  Did our story matter that much to someone? I wondered. To anyone? Was it worth the price Ivy was paying? The price she would pay later when our story ran?

  No.

  The stories of the dead, of the defectors, of the lost worlds—they had no claim on the rest of us. If I was right, they’d gotten what they asked for. What they wanted. The reason they didn’t come back was that they didn’t want to come back. It was that simple.

  I wasn’t going to lose Ivy over any of them.

  Yes, I would tell her what I had been holding back. She deserved to know. But I wouldn’t let her pay for my mistake. For my story.

  One by one I flicked the recordings off my comms and into the shredder. And one by one my AI asked me the same question: [Permanent deletion? Are you sure?]

  [Positive.]

  [File deleted.]

  When the last recording disappeared from my lockbox I went to the window and cranked it open to the early morning air. Birds chirped nearby, though dawn still lingered in the darkness beyond the horizon.

  I felt as if I’d been holding my breath for hours, and now, somehow, I could breathe again.

  “No breakfast?” Ivy said behind me. “What kind of two-bit service is this?”

  She was leaning against the wall in blue silk pajamas, a wide smile on her face that didn’t quite touch her eyes.

  “Feel better?” I asked.

  She yawned, scratching her head with both hands through a curtain of unkempt hair. “Just needed a little thirteen-hour nap.”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “Go ahead. I’m in a good mood.”

  “I scanned your apartment,” I said. “There’s no tech.”

  “Oh-kay?” Her smile faded and was replaced slowly by a look of puzzlement, as if she thought I didn’t believe her.

  “I mean, unless it’s extremely advanced. But I think it would make more sense for there to be a hack on your comms.” I wasn’t about to admit the possibility that a person might be watching us right now. Not after she’d finally gotten a good night’s sleep.

  “Alliance?”

  “Maybe. I can take it in and have it scanned.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s something else.”

  She nodded. “I can tell.”

  “I can’t do this, Ivy.”

  Her face paled. “What do you mean?”

  “Not that. I don’t mean us. I mean the story. I can’t do it. I can’t watch what it’s doing to you.”

  “What it’s doing to me? What does that mean? You don’t believe me? That someone has been watching me?”

  “No, I do. I do believe you. And that’s the point. I can’t use you anymore, Ivy. Not for this.”

  Her back straightened. “Use me?”

  This wasn’t coming out right. I was hurting her. Again.

  I hadn’t meant to, but that wasn’t an excuse, was it? Because the truth was, I had been using her. All along, that had been the plan. But I didn’t have to follow the plan. Didn’t have to let Fleet or OrbSyn or the Bureau or the Grand Alliance dictate everything that happened in life.

  We were two people who cared about each other. Two people with our own God-given, autonomous free will. Two people who loved each other. If the machinery of government couldn’t bow to that, what was government for?

  “I care about you too much,” I said. “More than the story. More than my career. More than anything. I couldn’t let them use you to get to me.”

  She was standing like a queen now, erect and proud and robed in quiet dignity. “What did you do?”

  “What I should have done months ago,” I said. “I deleted everything. The recordings, the notes, the lists of—”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “It’s done.”

  “That is not your decision.”

  “Actually it is.”

  Something hung in the air between us. Something I didn’t know how to fix.

  Slowly, softly, each word plucked as carefully as an overripe berry, she said, “Get out. Now. Please.”

  I went to the door. Opened it. By the time I looked back, she had already retreated to her room.

  I walked home. Filed for a personal day so no one would be expecting me to turn anything in. Rented a sled and drove around for hours, reliving the argument again and again.

  When I finally returned home to shower and collect the pieces of my broken life, rain poured from swollen clouds that lingered into the evening. I sat at my kitchen table staring out the back window at the glittering lights of the business district.

  —WEBER, I: ON MY WAY. WE NEED TO TALK. IT WON’T TAKE LONG.—

  I opened the front door to the rain-heavy air and listened to the rhythmic pattering of the downpour on the roof.

  Somehow I recognized Ivy’s footsteps on the staircase, and I went to the door to meet her.

  She was still wearing her blue pajamas, dark with splatters of rain on the shoulders, and in her hand an umbrella I didn’t recognize. She said, “I’m not coming in.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re Hansel and Gretel,” she said. “Caught between wicked stepparents and a gingerbread house. And you can’t change that. Not by yourself. You need me.”

  She was right, but I didn’t care. Not anymore. “They’ll kill you, Ivy. If they can. And I’m not going to let that happen.”

  She stepped closer, tipping the umbrella sideways. Behind her, rain overflowed the gutter and formed a bead curtain of dripping water. “That’s not your decision to make. You know it isn’t.” She held out her hand. Her own comms, still wrapped in the plastic bag.

  I had no doubt what was on it. She must have copied everything. Of course she had.

  “Say it,” I said. “I need you to say it.”

  She took the last step towards me and pressed the bag and the bracelet into my right hand. Closed my fingers around it. Her hand was wet, her hair sodden. “I’m ready to die for this.”

&n
bsp; “Don’t,” I said. “There has to be someone left worth fighting for.”

  She smiled at last, and this time it reached all the way to her eyes. “Don’t you remember? It’s Gretel who shoves the old woman into the oven.”

  She kissed me, turned, and walked down the steps and into the rain.

  I thought things would go back to normal for a while, but the next time we were supposed to meet, Ivy was kissing someone else, and I pawned our engagement ring for a bottle of Inawa bourbon and a set of Marine Corps shot glasses.

  Then, yesterday, when she kissed me again in that utility shed, I realized she was all I’d ever wanted out of life.

  I was a fool to let her back in.

  17

  Peace Talks

  Somehow I finished my third feature and started the fourth, and there were almost six minutes remaining of the original formalities period.

  I ticked away the seconds imagining what flesh-and-blood Ivy was doing right now. Had she returned to Seranik? Found some sleeper hole in the mountains to wait out the war? Negotiated a berth on a cargo shuttle waiting for the Strangler’s chokehold to release?

  I tried not to care, but loneliness was starting to make me jittery. I wasn’t used to feeling like no one was home, or ever would be.

  Just as I noticed my feet tapping against the rubbery flooring and willed myself to stop, a new sound would echo in the silence: my thumbs hammering out the rhythm of “Home Is a Heartbeat.” It had been one of Ivy’s favorites, a blend of pop-neutral and Holikotian blues.

  The door opened.

  Hayan stepped through with two rangers who positioned themselves behind my chair to either side, just out of my peripheral vision, but close enough I could hear them breathing.

  “Mr. Dahl, I trust you are ready to discuss the terms of a ceasefire between our peoples?”

  Ready? I was beyond ready and he knew it. What’s more, the cocky little maggot knew that I knew it. “Quite ready,” I agreed. “To be honest, it was starting to feel stuffy in here. I’m guessing your warships are built to dump heat in space, not planet-side.”

  I had no idea what a grendel frigate was built to do, other than launch wyrm arrays and serve as a fast gunship, but the suggestion something might be ever-so-slightly wrong with this new vessel was petty enough to appeal to me. In fact the room temperature couldn’t have been more perfect.

  A scowl flicked across his face and vanished, as if I’d just questioned his taste in music. “My apology, Mr. Dahl. I should have considered that you would have grown used to sweating out there with the natives. I will have the temperature adjusted.”

  “Thank you.” I forced a smile. Cooler would have been better, but I wasn’t about to admit that. Especially since I knew that he understood what I had meant, and that it had been a lie. “Can we get on with the agreement, then? I have an important date I’d like to keep.”

  Hayan smiled, and this time it seemed genuine. “In a world of shifting shadows, Mr. Dahl, you are a fixed star. Yes, the protocols have been met. And I for one would be delighted to hear what you colonials expect mutual peace to look like in the future.”

  I leaned forward. Looked into his eyes for a long moment. Drew a deep breath.

  Then reached across the table and grabbed his wrist.

  I expected him to draw back, but he didn’t move. Just sat there watching me as I felt the throbbing of his heartbeat under my fingertips.

  The guards didn’t react either, though I saw Hayan’s gaze flick up and to the right. Maybe he was telling them to back off.

  “My turn to apologize,” I said at last and released him. “Just needed to know I was talking to a real person this time.”

  “If I were easily offended, Mr. Dahl, I would not have been assigned to deal with colonials.”

  “In that case,” I said, leaning back, “we are prepared to offer you the Quelon system in exchange for a mutual ceasefire, with both the Alliance and the Colonial forces remaining in their current positions for a term of no less than fifty years, Terran.”

  He plucked another berry from the platter. “Actually, you are prepared to offer us all of your edge colonies in exchange for a ten-year ceasefire,” he said. “That is the plain truth of it.”

  “If I were prepared to offer that, I would have said so.”

  “Mr. Dahl, I thought you wanted to conclude these formalities quickly? I was under the impression that you were here under the authority of Captain Ansell Sterling and acting according to senatorial dictate.”

  “I am.”

  “That is a contradiction. I already know the terms your senate authorized Sterling to make.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why the bluff?”

  “I’m not bluffing,” I said. “Just looking for a good deal.”

  Hayan glanced up at the guards again. He leaned forward and straightened the lapel of his robe. “You are not buying a used sled, Mr. Dahl. You are speaking about the lives of what? Six hundred million colonials?”

  “Five hundred eighty million.”

  He seemed puzzled, so I helped him out, ticking off systems on the fingers of my left hand. “Quelon, Moadi, Inawa, and Holikot. Five hundred eighty million souls.”

  “Ah! So that is your opening offer? Four of your five edge colonies?”

  “It’s my closing offer,” I lied. “Since we’re not talking about a used sled. If you wanted to skip the back and forth, that’s it. Four of our five edge systems.”

  He steepled his hands together under his chin and smiled. “Four out of five?”

  “The four colonies anyone cares about. The four with the richest mineral deposits, highest populations—”

  “—and yet I know for a fact that your senate authorized Captain Sterling to concede all five systems in exchange for an extended ceasefire.”

  “Senate isn’t here,” I said. “And I am.”

  He stared at me like a burglar appraising an old and rusty safe. At last he said, “This fifth colony. It is the sticking point?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Rich in silver, I believe. Not to mention water. Both quite valuable.”

  “Both available elsewhere,” I countered. “And at a cheaper cost. They don’t call Kanzin the armpit of the UC for nothing.”

  Hayan grinned suddenly, a revelation. “Kanzin. Your homeworld.”

  I shrugged. “You wouldn’t like it there anyway. People of Kanzin are lying, murderous scum. Ask anyone. Other edgers say we’re clever as hell and twice as ugly. Our colony’s motto is the only one not phrased in Latin on the senatorial chambers. It reads, ‘poor, pigheaded, and proud.’”

  He seemed to think this delightful. “It doesn’t really?”

  I reached for the tray and tore a chunk out of a croissant. Tossed it into my mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.

  Sterling had dealt me a crappy hand. Worse, thanks to Ivy, Hayan knew exactly what that hand was. Somehow I needed to extract the authorized minimal terms from the Alliance without forfeiting my ability to publish my story at OrbSyn afterwards. And I couldn’t let Hayan guess that my story was all that mattered to me. Once he suspected that, the negotiations would end.

  “Kanzin is the one system our senate would probably give you for the asking,” I said. “They don’t even have a Fleet base there—a fact I’m sure you already know. Only defenses are the ones we’ve put up ourselves. You probably know that too. But I’m here, and even though it will be Sterling’s signature on the paperwork, well, let’s just say I’m poor and I’m pigheaded and I’m proud. I’m not going to see my world turned into a grendel freak show. I’m not going to end up wearing one of those collars like Biceps and Triceps here.” I motioned at the rangers behind me.

  “And if we decide to take Kanzin after signing this treaty?” he asked. “You have just told me the colonies will not lift a finger to help you.”

  “Maybe,” I shrugged. “But if that’s all you heard, you weren’t paying attention. It will be the worst fight you’ve ever
been in. Not because we’re better armed. We aren’t. But because you don’t have anything you can offer us that we wouldn’t rather get for ourselves.”

  “Ah. You think you understand us.”

  “I understand Kanzin,” I said. “And I know that no treaty will change the reception you’ll get if you try to land shock troops on the surface.”

  Hayan waved one hand over the table, and a document appeared. “I am impressed by your fortitude, Mr. Dahl.” He slid the document across to me. “You have not mentioned Ivy even once.”

  Ivy. It was like he could see straight through me. Annoyed at her as I was, her name was nonetheless an elixir.

  I fought back the temptation to shout for her, instead scanning the document in front of me.

  It called for the surrender of all five edge colonies—including Kanzin—in exchange for a seven-year ceasefire. All other holdings of the two empires would remain intact, with no further encroachment by either side.

  It wasn’t what I wanted. Probably wasn’t what Sterling had hoped for. But it was enough. Except for the time period being seven instead of ten years, it met the minimum requirements. Still, Fleet would have its respite. Time to rebuild its decimated numbers and buttress its core defenses. And I suspected that a shorter agreement was more likely to be honored than a longer one. Still—

  “This turns over Kanzin,” I protested.

  “As you say,” he replied, “it hardly matters if the people of Kanzin will not honor this agreement anyway.”

  Which was true enough. All the treaty would do is ensure that no well-meaning senator or Fleet admiral entertained any noble ideas about coming to the aid of an ally. It would make sure that if the grendels ever did go to Kanzin, the planet’s defenders would be well and truly on their own.

  I stared at the document for a long time.

  The question wasn’t, What would Ansell Sterling have done? The question was, What would Raymin Dahl do?

  And I decided that Raymin Dahl had done everything he could to protect his people. Planting the idea that Kanzin wasn’t worth the effort had been my best shot at a PSYOP. If nothing else, it would make the Alliance wyrms think. I’d told them the place was only defended by the KCRI. But would they believe it? Or would they wonder why I’d let the information slip? Suspect a trap? Waste precious weeks or even months sending drones through the system, looking for stealth gunships and missile batteries that might, or might not, even be there?