Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  Dania Huascaro has seen Rosetta. She needs no greater proof than that. But no human who has not been there would understand. Many of them are still compelled by the older model of the universe—a pre-Rosetta model that they don’t even know is outdated. Especially academics, who have spent their entire careers studying a reality that Dania and others who’ve received the revelation know for an illusion. She gets down from the tiny window, smoothing her white and gold robe of office as she settles back into one of the cabin’s padded seats. As her cruiser glides on a cushion of air on final approach to the Arrow, Dania thinks back on her meeting with the xenologist Amy Redfern.

  They’d held the small council deep within the Arrow, in a white room with sloping walls like the inside of a pyramid.

  There had been five of them in all: from the Church, Dania herself, George Hammond, and Tor Berkyavik, a special envoy who’d detached himself from the Father’s entourage the last time Robert had visited, near the beginning of all this trouble. Dispatched by Robert to watch over her, Dania suspected.

  Redfern had picked up a friend after Dania invited her to the meeting as a consultant, and the two xenologists arrived at the Arrow together. Their cards and their registry in the spire’s appointment log would have been enough to let them in, but Dania had paged them into the meeting room personally as well.

  Redfern did not waste any time making her point. “ I’m sorry to tell you this, but your understanding of the Osk species is flawed.”

  “How so?” Dania asked.

  “Well—what you call terrorism . . . on Oskaran it just might be part of the tenor of political life. Of course, I can’t paint with a very broad brush—everything we know about their society is based off this one enclave and secondary sources from Za.”

  “You mean that on their home planet, this kind of violence is . . . normal?” Hammond sounded alarmed.

  “Not normal so much as expected, mostly in times of political strife,” put in Stern, the second xenologist. “If you have a faction that feels threatened, or as though its needs are being ignored by the larger system, it’s acceptable for it to protest in a violent manner. According to the Osk we’ve talked to.”

  Her security chief chewed that over, looking anything but pleased. “So you’re saying we’re up against a group that sees violent insurrection as an inevitable part of vigorous politics? That equates murder, abduction, and blowing innocent people to smithereens with filling in another name on the ballot?”

  “George, please. Let them speak,” said Berkyavik, raising a hand. He looked at the two xenologists mildly.

  Yes, for God’s sake, Dania thought. Let them do what they came here for. To Redfern and Stern she said, “I’m happy you agreed to weigh in as our xenological consultants. Everyone in the Universal Church’s administration is well acquainted with the reputation of SHARDS.”

  She tapped the cards they’d laid on the table. The logo was a cloud of spheres resembling a Bohrian atom, connected to each other and to the large central sphere by thin lines. Arching above the mock atom were the words Sentient-Human Active Reconciliation and Deliberation Society, with a slogan written below the logo: Humanity’s reputation lies in SHARDS.

  There were other groups out there promoting alien amnesty and the fostering of peaceful relations, but SHARDS was the largest and oldest, formed by an offshoot of the Gnosis expedition after the debacle on Charel.

  “Before we go any farther,” said Stern, “what makes you think these attacks are being carried out by Osk?”

  Hammond scowled. “I’m not about to share details of an ongoing investigation—”

  Berkyavik cut him off. “Come, George, these young people are only trying to help,” he said, his voice honey. “ They’re on our side, offering us their expertise.” He answered Stern: “Intuition. That and the few scraps of evidence we have seem to point to the Osk.”

  Hammond said, “The Siblings’ terrorist acts fall into two categories: single abductions and murders, and public assassinations with a high degree of visibility. And in both these categories the methods they’ve used are, without exception, nearly identical to the combat techniques used by the Osk battalions who fought for the Teluk Coalition on Rreluush-Tren.” Hammond sounded as though the words were being pulled out of him with pliers, but he still talked, with the occasional glance at his two superiors.

  “All the murder victims we’ve recovered were executed with edged weapons. They left a calcium residue rather than a metallic one. Many of the ministers assassinated have been sniped from a low angle—from the cover of a tunnel. We know the Osk dig tunnels to hide themselves in combat zones. And the detonated bombs we’ve reconstructed have a design identical to the mines Osk platoons would leave to guard their trail through the jungle.”

  Redfern exhaled. “You think you might be dealing with soldiers.”

  “But all the Osk in D2 are civilians . . .” Stern began to protest, but Redfern rode over him as though he wasn’t there.

  “You know SHARDS takes no part,” she said, speaking directly to Dania. “Our mission is to encourage peace between our species and those we’ve encountered in three hundred years of being an interstellar power. We’re neutral, officially. We offer consultations on the cultural and psychological set of other species, but that’s as far as it goes. What I’m about to say goes beyond a neutral consultation.”

  “Are you going to give me some advice, Ms. Redfern?” Dania asked, amused as ever at the intensity of the young.

  “Yeah,” the younger woman croaked, her throat sounding dry. “Keep your head down. Cancel all your public appearances. Don’t go outside this building unless you have to, and then take an armed escort. Even better, avoid the streets and take an air cruiser.” She abruptly changed tack. “Ms. Huascaro—Grand Minister—do you know why there are no wars on Oskaran?”

  “And yet they have armies?” Dania prodded gently, smiling.

  “They have defense forces—sort of like the Church’s standing army—but no internal warfare. Political strife never leads to war on Oskaran . . . because they assassinate their leaders before it can get that far.”

  George Hammond stared. “They kill their own leaders?”

  “Well, it’s more complicated than that,” said Stern. “Usually a faction will send someone to assassinate the leader of the other side. If every faction is doing the same thing, it keeps the system in balance and the leaders on their toes. We were just starting to collect data on a whole class of warriors who specialize in this kind of peacekeeping.”

  “Sephs,” Redfern supplied. “They probably don’t have a seph, but that obviously doesn’t matter. The point is that your life is in danger, Dania.”

  “The last time I checked, our entire Church is in danger, Amy.”

  Redfern was shaking her head. She seemed to have a hard time meeting Dania’s eyes. “No, you don’t understand. Your life is in particular danger. Because you’re a leader.”

  At last she met the grand minister’s gaze. “ I hope to hell it’s not the Osk behind this. I’ve met some of them at Chii Ril. I like them. But if it is them, then you need to hear this: they go after leaders, Dania. People they see as the linchpin to another faction—civil government, Church, it’s all the same to them. It’s a structure of power. Osk society is highly individualistic: factions and even governments rise and fall based on the strength and merit of individuals. They don’t understand bureaucratic inertia. They don’t get The System.

  “They think if they kill you, all the Church’s influence will melt away. What you’re calling terrorism? To Osk it’s just the opening challenge of a political contest. And now they’re waiting to see how you respond.”

  “That’s barbaric!” Hammond raged.

  “No,” said Berkyavik with something like admiration. “It’s elegant. Politics must be so much more streamlined on their world. Not that I’m advocating importing the style to Aival, of course.”

  Dania sat back, tapping her temple with two
fingers. At last she spoke. “How do I win?”

  Stern chuckled humorlessly. “ Listen to Amy. Keep your head down and don’t accept any suspicious packages. Or are you thinking of trying to negotiate with them?”

  “We don’t negotiate with terrorists .” That was Hammond, of course.

  “That’s fine,” Stern said coolly. “They won’t negotiate with you either.”

  Redfern sighed. “You survive. That’s how you win. If you can keep them from killing you, that means you deserve to lead. You’re politically fit according to their playbook. If you’re weak, you die.”

  “Simple,” said Berkyavik.

  “I see .” Dania stood, grasping the hands of both xenologists in turn. “ Thank you both for your time and . . . advice. I’ll take it under consideration.”

  The jolt of the cruiser’s landing struts making contact with the amphitheater’s tiles brings her back to the present. With the whine of the cruiser’s engine off, Dania makes out another sound: a roar like surf hisses outside the cabin of her cruiser, the loud hush of fifty thousand people gathered in one place.

  She stands, adrenaline zinging down the backs of her legs. She’s about to step out of the security of her armored craft to greet the crowd, into broad vulnerable daylight with nothing visibly protecting her but a few human guards.

  Fear, fear, it all comes down to fear. Dania Huascaro is neither weak nor afraid, but running away and hiding in her ivory tower is not the way to convince the Siblings in Exile. She embarked on her tour of the districts shortly after her meeting with the SHARDS reps, advertising each stop a day or two beforehand. Each venue had been swept heavily, first by the Church defense force and then troops lent by D2 Civil Security, but there had still been that important element of danger. Every time Dania ascended the stage to give her address, she was exposing herself to the exiled terrorists’ wrath, inviting them to test her leadership in the most fundamental of ways.

  The door of the cruiser lifts away, disgorging her into whiteness. The square all around is paved with millions of ivory tiles, their self-cleaning surfaces brilliant even after a thousand rainfalls in this wet city. She strides to the podium at the center of the stage, nestled in the bowl formed by two of the Arrow’s gigantic supporting struts: an arched amphitheater with pillars as big around as buildings. The stage is sunken relative to the square, so that the teeming thousands who have gathered there gaze down at her from a slight angle. Dania is the people’s priestess; she will not look down on them, in this time of crisis, from a perch of safety. She needs to be in the thick of things.

  She sees movement out of the corner of her eye as white-uniformed soldiers take their places in silence. Her honor guard. Their presence a sign of her strength, their small number a testament to her bravery.

  The Siblings in Exile want strength? I’ll give them strength. The security goes many layers deep, of course, far beyond the small guard that is visible. The three districts closest to the citadel have been cordoned off, their empty streets patrolled by White Arrow troops. Defense forces in plainclothes jostle among the crowd, scouring the masses with nano-enhanced senses. Rings of drones surround the plaza, camoskins merging them with the pavement and the walls of buildings, ready to spring to life at the first detection of unauthorized motion or body heat outside the square. Secondary teams patrol the sewers, alert for the spoor of wires and switches that indicates a homebrewed bomb. They know from Rreluush-Tren that a skilled engineer can plant and arm a bomb in seven and a half minutes. The patrols loop every six and a half minutes.

  Dania beams at the crowd, smiling recklessly, as though her invisible cowl of protection were not there.

  Head held high, she begins her speech.

  Engel set aside his lightpad. Dania’s old report was still open on the screen, with its unknowingly cruel postscript telling him to watch her address that evening. He had, of course, along with millions as it streamed live across the worlds of human space. He and millions of others would never forget that terrible white flash. Even a quarter century later, he still sometimes woke up with that flash painted on the insides of his eyelids.

  His right hip twinged as he rose from the chair and stepped onto the suite’s south-facing balcony. Towers rose up all around his vantage in the side of the Arrow, but through a keyhole between two shining buildings Engel could make out the red dividing line of the Thicket. Beyond it, little more than a haze on the horizon, was the slum district of Tarbreak. He couldn’t see the supposedly abandoned tenements at this distance, but they were there all the same. By tomorrow, they would be Church property.

  It wouldn’t be Dania’s style, not at all. But she wasn’t here. He was. It was his responsibility to clean up this mess before it got out of hand, just as it had been the first time. And God knew he took his responsibilities seriously.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Herask was quiet for several moments after Lorsk finished outlining the next phase of the campaign. Lorsk had retreated to the apartment’s north-facing balcony to give Herask space to think. Against the purpling sky, the faraway spike of the Arrow stood out, like a thread descending from orbit to pool into a gradually thickening spindle of gossamer. It was only closer up that the space tower’s true size and bulk became evident, and it had been years since Lorsk had ventured that close.

  Behind him, Herask spoke through the open balcony door.

  “When are you making the announcement?”

  “Tomorrow,” Lorsk said.

  “And you’re telling me ahead of time to get my . . . what? Approval?”

  Lorsk turned back into the room. “Your opinion.”

  Herask paced the room, his gaze searching out its corners.

  His scent was salty with agitation. “It will be a considerable increase in risk. We’ve gotten this far by using the shadows. Remaining anonymous—”

  “Will work, until it doesn’t,” Lorsk said. “We know this from before. We took a half measure then, and look at the result. It isn’t enough to kill the boreworms you can see on the bark, as they say.”

  Herask opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it. He bowed his head, his black mane hiding his expression, and finished the proverb. “You have to burn the tree.”

  “Just so.” Lorsk put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Root and branch.”

  The Djandjer-Pralsh had left the tree of the Church standing last time. He would not let them make that mistake again.

  The day comes. Lorsk has spent weeks planning for it, and so, apparently, has she. He watches the square from kilometers away through heavy lenses. The layers of security are as thick as he anticipated: the grand minister has covered every angle, every avenue which his faction has used to strike at her organization before. It’s almost too bad, he thinks, that no one told Dania Huascaro the first rule of warfare.

  Evolve your tactics.

  Lorsk Edrasshii sways on a slender crimson branch at the upper edge of the Thicket. It is the highest vantage point he could find outside the tall buildings of the Terran districts, and the White Arrows’ blockades have fenced those off. He would not risk entering the Terran districts even under cover of darkness these days. Lorsk knows the Church suspects his enclave.

  Best if no Osk are seen prowling around the citadels of power until this is over. After today, Lorsk will have the Civil Council eating out of his hand, begging his new Aival Surarchy for an alliance.

  He is strapped to the fungal branch with pitons and climbing ropes, clutching his new toy to his chest as he tries not to look down. Far below, Geks keeps watch, one half of this raiding party of two. Lorsk wanted to risk as few of his people as possible. Ideally, it would be someone other than Geks with him, but she insisted, and if he has one weakness it’s that he has difficulty saying no to her sometimes. Anyway, Lorsk’s role is the one that carries the most risk.

  Their plan is audacious; some would even say it is foolish. Perhaps its foolishness is its virtue. Never in their five million years have Osk been
arboreal creatures, but Lorsk needs this sightline. The Terrans will never expect an attack on their grand minister from the heart of the Thicket, districts away. An attack that comes like a whispered irony, sheeting toward her on soundless wings.

  Lorsk cradles the matte black sphere in his arms. Its surface is seamless, engineered to respond to a chemical signature of the user’s choice. The sphere blocks all light. Light will activate the thing inside.

  Terran tech. A prototype, if their friends in the shadow markets are to be believed. He acquired it through a long chain of negotiations and cajoling, of promising real power to their providers rather than the shadow authority they currently enjoy. Even so, Lorsk marveled when Pal explained the device to him.

  As in so much else, luck has lent its hand in their plans. When Lorsk heard of the grand minister’s tour of the city, he had rejoiced grimly. His soldiers could follow the trail she laid down, collecting the residue the Terran woman left without thinking about it. The oils of a handprint on brick, hairs left on a seatback. For weeks his teams have collected little pieces of Dania Huascaro, loyal to her down to the atomic level.

  In their bunker, Lorsk watched the black sphere in fascination, the hours ticking away as it primed itself. Ports extruded, accepting the hairs, the oils from her hands, bits of skin. He imagined the thing inside cooking, imbued with strange energies, shifting itself into the form he’d commanded for it.

  Pal said it could look like anything, but Lorsk would be wise to choose something innocuous. These things are designed to get in close. Or at least they will be. This one is only a prototype. The Baskar showed jagged yellow teeth in a grin.