March of War
Page 28
The ministers all sat down in the first few rows, and the senior members of the other parties did likewise, in order to have easy access to the speaking floor. Most members of Parliament never got the chance to make a formal speech, and were restricted to hooting their support and cat-calling their opponents from above. No outside observers were allowed into this room, but every word and action was captured as part of the official record.
How much of that record was released to the people, Breeze knew, was decided mainly by a consensus of the party leaders, although occasionally one party would break ranks and leak damaging facts to the media. Such actions invariably yielded repercussions, though, and Breeze watched with interest the high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse played out between the parties.
Her party, the Progressives, was part of the coalition of five political groups that together controlled enough votes to effectively be the government. President Peterson was elected independently, and did not sit in the Chamber of Parliament, but his political alignment was very similar to that of the government, and Vijay had told her that relations between these two arms of the State were very good.
Across the chamber sat the representatives from the parties who were not part of the ruling coalition. The largest of these, the Federalists, was run by Christopher Sheridan and therefore held the honorary title of Official Opposition. Anyone among the three hundred members of Parliament was theoretically allowed to question the government, but in practice it was usually the party leaders, led by the leader of the Opposition. For someone who wasn’t actually a part of the functioning government, Sheridan had secured himself about as high-profile a position as possible. His protests against government policy were largely ineffective, however, since the ruling coalition held a majority of seats, and could out-vote any dissenters.
The coalition itself was where the real machinations occurred, as members of the five parties jockeyed among themselves for the plum positions. Minister of Defense Taal was also a Progressive, and Breeze’s promotion most likely was an effort to consolidate his position. Whoever controlled the military, she knew, had a real advantage over any rivals—arguably as much as the Minister of Police and even the Minister of Internal Security.
The amount of power in this chamber sent a thrill through her, and she looked down the rows to try to guess where, as deputy minister, she would be seated for the next session.
The day’s business began with a series of questions from Sheridan, who stepped out onto the central speaking floor and challenged the government on different topics of rule. The first was on the matter of a series of riots that had been tarnishing the otherwise productive mining camps in southern Mercury. After a scathing series of responses by the Minister of Police, Sheridan switched targets and addressed Minister Taal. Breeze leaned forward with new interest.
“Mr. Minister,” Sheridan said with a dramatic sigh, “when is this government going to admit that its current military policy of over-extension across the colonies is costly, not only to the State’s finances, but also to the lives of our troops?” The far side of the Chamber echoed with applause and desk thumps from the Opposition members.
Taal rose to his feet, straightened his suit and stepped out onto the floor.
“Mr. Sheridan,” he said with a great show of weariness, “this government is well aware that the war against the rebels has been costly, but our actions have been entirely contained within pure necessity. If you don’t like the extent of the battle front, I urge you to pose your complaint to the rebel leaders in all ten colonies.”
Laughter and applause erupted from the government members.
“Mr. Minister, as my party has been saying for some time, there are more effective ways to defeat the rebels than meeting them face-to-face in battle, wherever they appear.” Sheridan stood his ground. “You stretch our forces too thin, sir, and in so doing you unnecessarily endanger our military men and women.”
“I assure you, sir, that as a veteran myself I am pained by the loss of every soldier, trooper or crewman. However, I understand perfectly the realities and sacrifices of war, and I know that our military men and women understand them, as well.”
“I’m not questioning the reality of sacrifice, but rather the methods employed by this government to wage the war.”
“Stop beating this dead horse!” one of the government backbenchers cried out.
“I would far rather,” Sheridan declared over the growing hubbub, “beat this dead horse into a pulp than see a single unnecessary dead soldier.” An appreciative roar washed over the Chamber from the opposition members. Sheridan basked in it for a long moment, then turned expectant eyes across the central floor to Taal.
“I await your answer, Mr. Minister.”
Taal signaled for quiet, and the chamber slowly calmed.
“Security requirements forbid me from speaking openly about military strategies in this honorable venue, but I invite the leader of the Opposition to join me for a private discussion on this matter.”
Applause broke out on all sides. Breeze joined in, nodding her appreciation. It was an excellent end to the drama—the government had conceded nothing, but the Opposition could claim to have been heard. Both sides could count the exchange as a victory.
Several other opposition party leaders had a chance to fire questions at a minister, and Breeze watched the show with an amused respect. Every politician here was a master orator, and the chorus of supportive members made for quite a spectacle. In the end, the people would feel as if their representatives were working hard to serve them, and that all opinions were welcome within Parliament.
When the show was over, of course, the government would go right back to doing whatever it wanted.
The question period ended, and it was announced that in twenty minutes a senior civil servant was being summoned before Parliament. This caused a rumble of interest, and Breeze noticed that her desk console lit up with a series of files that provided information relating to the summons. The recent famine in Scandinavia had been caused primarily by the mismanagement of food supplies. The civil servant being summoned, one Deputy Director Laura Robblee, had been responsible for the fiasco.
Vijay had sometimes told her about these “summons” to Parliament. They hadn’t been a common event, but had become prevalent this past year. If something truly catastrophic had occurred, for which Parliament risked criticism from the people, a summons ensured that the individual responsible was brought to the Chamber to answer for their actions. Breeze couldn’t help but notice the predatory excitement coming from the members around her.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, down on the central floor, a pair of armed guards emerged from a side entrance, escorting a middle-aged woman in a sensible pantsuit and leading her to a semicircular podium which had risen out of the floor. She was directed to stand at the podium, and one of the guards explained how the controls worked. Breeze assumed that the files displayed on her own desktop were the same as those Ms. Robblee would have access to.
The Minister of Health took the floor and addressed the entire chamber. He described the terrible tragedy that had befallen the citizens of Scandinavia, referencing hundreds who died from starvation in the frigid northern winter. Thousands more had fallen ill from malnutrition. He then took a moment to remind Parliament of the outstanding record of the Terran food distribution program, and how billions of people across the entire system were kept well-fed every day.
He highlighted a spreadsheet from the notes which showed regular food shipments to Scandinavia in the months leading up to the tragedy. Then finally, he showed the dramatic drop in food quantities that began just as the worst weather in a decade had slammed across northern Europe.
“As deputy director of food distribution for Europe,” he said, facing Robblee, “are you responsible for making certain the citizens of Scandinavia are supplied with enough food to maintain their health?”
“I am.” Her voice was very quiet, but amplifiers e
nsured that her words were heard throughout the chamber.
“Then how did you let this tragedy occur?”
She cleared her throat, then sipped at the provided water.
“I did everything I could to avoid it, but the winter storm grounded our skycraft, and our land transports had to fight their way through impassable conditions.”
“Yet surely winter storms are a common enough event in your area of responsibility, that you can plan in advance for them. Did you know that this storm was coming?”
“Yes, but the severity caught us by surprise.”
“Weather can still surprise us,” the minister replied, with a side nod to his colleague from Environment, “despite our best efforts.” The Minister of Environment nodded politely amid muffled chuckles around him.
“But that doesn’t excuse any lack of preparedness on our part,” Health continued. “Deputy Director, what steps did you take to prepare for this storm?”
“We followed the standing orders of my department,” she responded, then listed a series of steps that had been taken. Breeze had to admire Robblee. She was clearly frightened, but she kept her voice steady and answered the barrage of questions without hesitation. She knew her job, clearly, and wasn’t just some sacrificial suit thrown out by her department.
The Minister of Health finished his examination, and the picture that had been painted was one of a competent civil division overwhelmed by circumstances. A tragedy had occurred, yes, but only in spite of the best efforts of the State. As a member of the Sol party, he then ceded the floor to one of his government colleagues.
Breeze watched as a representative from her own Progressives rose and began questioning Robblee. A summons was unusual in that each party was free to take its own stance on the matter—there was no requirement to vote as a coalition. As a result, eleven different members rose in turn to have at the deputy director. Questions increasingly became an interrogation, and Robblee began to visibly quail under the assault. Details from her history as a civil servant were dragged up, and at one point the leader of the fringe People’s Party brought her nearly to tears.
Among the assembly, the members began to mutter, sometimes even jeering as Robblee struggled to find answers to the questions being hurled at her. Finally, the Minister of Health took the floor once again.
“Members of Parliament,” he called out, “you have heard the evidence and have taken the measure of this servant of the State. It is now time to vote on how we will conclude this summons.”
On her desk, Breeze saw the screen clear itself of all other files and present to her a list of choices. She was free to vote for execution, imprisonment, work service, warning or pardon. She considered. Robblee didn’t seem to be an incompetent, and she clearly wasn’t any sort of political threat. Breeze voted for work service.
Her vote was tallied with the rest of those in the Progressive party, and they would announce a unanimous decision based on the majority. It took less than a minute for all votes to be cast and then Minister Taal, as the senior Progressive, stood.
“The Progressive Party,” he announced, “votes for execution.”
Breeze was shocked.
The Minister of Health then rose to present his party’s vote.
“The Sol Party votes for execution.”
One after the other, representatives from the ruling coalition voted for execution. Sheridan’s Federalists and one other opposition party voted for imprisonment, but the majority in Parliament was clear.
Deputy Director Laura Robblee was led away to be killed.
Amid the animated chatter around her as the session of Parliament closed, Breeze sat back in her chair and surveyed the room anew. This game she’d joined, she now realized, wasn’t just for high stakes. It was for the highest stakes. All power in Terra was focused into this Chamber and these three hundred citizens—many of whom had been playing the game already for years, if not decades.
In order to succeed, she was going to need all her skills.
Smiling suddenly, she welcomed the new resolve that settled over her. Every other member was now either her potential ally—for as long as they were useful to her—or her enemy.
30
He’d chosen an open-air market this time, given that it was a pleasant day. The air was so clean here in Starfall, Jack took every opportunity to just be outside. As expected there was a busy café for him to settle at, large coffee and news reader on the square, wooden table before him. Folks his age surrounded him, some in groups chatting and others sitting in quiet solitude.
Beyond the café, the market bustled with weekend activity as the local population got out to enjoy what promised to be one of the last good days of autumn. Out on the street it had been cool enough to make him fasten his coat, but here in the market a gentle warmth seemed to emanate from everywhere. It was still appropriately cool, but the edge was gone.
Staring blankly down at his news reader, he reached into the Cloud along the several dozen lines of investigation he’d been pursuing. Military networks had been on much higher alert ever since their theft of the micro-torpedo, but so far it seemed to be mostly an increased vigilance in guarding sensitive locations. There had been a flurry of encrypted activity a few days earlier, centered here in Starfall, but neither he nor Katja had been able to detect a coherent pattern.
They’d made one attempt to contact a known Terran asset in the city, but there’d been no response. With the extra activity by Centauri intelligence, they considered it best to stay silent whenever possible.
The mission had actually been scheduled for yesterday, but Katja had postponed it to allow the Cloud to settle. Jack would have preferred to wait even longer, but they were on a tight overarching timeline, and further delays were unacceptable.
There was no unusual activity on either the military or police networks as he tracked Katja’s car pulling into the parking lot beneath a government building. Called the Pierce Building after some civil servant of note, it housed the Centauri Department of Finance. The building itself was quiet, and except for the usual security personnel it gave the appearance of being unoccupied. Except for the very faint, highly encrypted pattern of signals they’d detected coming from the sub-basement.
Jack checked the view from the various security cameras. By taking control of the device watching the entry, he’d overwritten its live feed with a thirty-second clip devoid of activity while Katja drove in. Now he picked off the various viewers that were anywhere close to her and did the same thing, interrupting their real-time feed and replacing it with imagery from just a few minutes earlier.
Jack plugged into the sensors in the ventilation system, following Katja’s careful progress through the ducts and carefully masking the quantum-flux sensors for ten meters around her. He couldn’t actually deactivate the sensors—that would risk an alarm. Here again he had to replay previous, innocuous sensor readings which he’d recorded over the past half hour. It was the same game as with the cameras, just a lot harder to get right.
Katja paused, he noticed. Holding the sensors steady, he eased his perceptions back to better assess her position. She was at the first insertion point.
Moments later, she dropped out of the ventilation duct and drifted to the edge of the quantum-flux sensors. The room she entered showed no other security systems—nothing Jack could tap into directly to watch her progress—but just as she trusted him to keep her hidden, he had to trust her to get the job done.
ne of them and sent a summary of information back to him. The sub-basement of the Pierce Building was a major node in the planetary defense network.
A short time later she climbed back into the duct, and replaced the cover.
They repeated the drill three more times. He covered her movements as she skulked through the venting and planted preprogrammed devices intended to disrupt the Centauri network. After she left, he couldn’t detect the disruptor pods—they were completely inert until remotely activated. Hopefully this would keep them hidden from Centauri agents until the time came.
The mission continued smoothly, and Jack kept an eye on the faint signals which periodically flashed from a series of rooms even further down in the sub-basement. He assumed they were military transmissions and he began capturing what he could. The encryption was very sophisticated, but the more he studied them, the more a pattern emerged.
There was also a standalone signal that reminded him of the alert system on the milly they’d encountered in the ammunition depot. Was there a milly somewhere in that building? It was exactly the sort of environment for which the mechanical beasts had been designed.
“Excuse me!”
His head snapped up, eyes blinking in the sunlight. A woman was standing in front of his table, hands on the chair across from him, staring down at him with a puzzled expression.
“What,” he stammered, barely remembering to use an Abeonan accent. “What was that?”
“I asked, are you using this chair?” the woman said slowly.
“Oh, uh, no. It’s all yours.”
“Thanks.” She offered a strange smile as she moved it over to her own table of friends. Feeling his heart thump in his chest, Jack released his grip on the pistol nestled inside his coat. He didn’t even remember reaching for it. The efficiency of military training really frightened him sometimes.