by Adam Quinn
Taylor stopped.
Was she?
It couldn’t be—she was nothing like those reporters. She had chosen to leave Cryzdeklith, to join the IES’s quest to find the real culprit behind the Anniversary Attacks. Yet when it came down to it, she didn’t take the final step. She was willing to jump into a rocket-bombarded building from a hovercar to fight heat-energy-wielding terrorists, but she couldn’t even convince Marissa to steal a few files from Harrison, because that might upset the status quo, which had to be maintained above all, lest its disruption somehow lead to a new galactic conflict with herself to blame.
Taylor looked around the plaza at the still-smoldering headquarters building; the IES fleet restrained from doing its noble duty; the cracked fountain spraying water in every direction; Harrison and his thugs; the media he controlled; his tow ships lifting away the gunboats; Marissa loading up their truck with Alliance bodies. This was Harrison’s status quo.
And she was done protecting it.
Taylor ran across the plaza toward Marissa. The MRSIS agent looked up, wide-eyed. Taylor grabbed her shoulders and pulled her around to the other side of the hovertruck, hidden from the others’ view.
“Are any of the terrorists you have still alive?” Taylor asked.
Marissa nodded. “Sedated.”
Good.
Taylor wanted to help the victims of this attack, but if she could get her hands on a live terrorist, she could find the Alliance, and end all future attacks before they started.
Marissa looked frightened—maybe justifiably so.
Taylor smiled. “Last night you asked if my goal was worth fighting for, and if I was willing to accept the consequences. I didn’t give you a very good answer, so let me tell you now that it is, and I am. I don’t know what my plan’s going to bring, but I know Harrison’s is going to bring a lot more of that.” She thrust a finger at TKG Headquarters. “So, my question is: are you with me or are you with Harrison?”
Marissa’s eyes flicked to the side once—twice—then focused back on Taylor. “Get in the back.”
Marissa sprinted to the cabin, threw open the door, and slid into the driver’s seat. Taylor telekinetically lifted the remaining terrorists into the back of the truck, then jumped in after them and slammed the door shut behind her. After half a second of darkness, internal lights sprung on.
She heard shouting, but it quickly grew indistinct as the hovertruck rose higher into the air. A fresh burst of adrenaline surged through Taylor’s body, but there was nothing she could do, save for surveying the truck’s contents. Most of the terrorists were in the black body bags she had seen the MRSIS clean-up crew using, but a few were lying on deactivated hoverstretchers, with purple patches stuck to their arms—probably the sedation to which Marissa had referred. Just like the Anniversary Attack terrorists, they had small metal bars above their eyebrows. The bars reminded Taylor of the uplink implants some Meltians got in order to link themselves constantly to the interplanetary network, but judging by the character of the Alliance, she figured these ones had a more sinister usage.
Taylor heard the truck’s hoverlifters shut off, and a few seconds later, Marissa opened the truck’s back door. They were in an underground hovervehicle parking area.
Taylor selected the terrorist who looked the least injured and activated his hoverstretcher, bringing him out into the parking area. “Where are we?”
“James Resal Hospital.” Marissa closed the truck door and pulled out a transceiver. “I know someone who can fix this guy up and hold him discreetly until we are ready to interrogate him.”
Taylor noted that Marissa said “we,” not “you,” implying that she was going to stick with Taylor’s team, at least for a while. She could not complain—they needed all the help they could get.
“Is your friend going to be able to keep him secret from Harrison?” Taylor asked.
“With any luck, Harrison won’t be looking for him,” Marissa said. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t take an official count before we left, so I’ll have to explain my rapid departure, but he should not know that one is missing.”
“Good.” Taylor nodded. She was glad Marissa was going to be able to stay in Harrison’s good graces after this—for Marissa’s sake, but also selfishly, as an ally within the MRSIS could be a very useful asset.
“If it comes down to it, though, my friend’s got experience dodging the law. She does black market body mods.”
“Ah.”
“She doesn’t traffic, though—all her mods are cybernetic or lab-grown.”
“Uh, good?” At least they did not have to worry about Marissa’s friend pilfering their terrorist’s organs—though that didn’t make her trade any more legal. For an MRSIS agent, Marissa clearly did not have a lot of respect for the law.
Marissa’s friend—still wearing hospital scrubs—met them in an elevator room adjoining the parking area. She took the hoverstretcher, and the exchange would have occurred wordlessly if Taylor had not spoken. “Wait.”
Marissa’s friend paused.
Taylor tapped the unconscious terrorist’s forehead device. “Can you take a look at this thing—figure out what it does? It seems important.”
The woman gave a curt nod.
Taylor added, “You’ll be well compensated for your efforts and your, ah, discretion.”
The woman nodded again. For a former resistance fighter, Taylor had no idea how the black market worked. She assumed they would have to pay this woman at some point—maybe Marissa already had. She was sure Brook would be happy to bankroll this operation with IES funds, though JP would be livid. Hezekiah… she would explain it to Hezekiah, and then he would agree it was a good idea.
“Thanks for your help,” Taylor said as they walked back to the truck.
“Don’t mention it,” Marissa said. “As in literally, do not mention this to anyone whom you would not trust with your life. And also don’t come back on the truck with me. I’ve had my suspicions about this Alliance case for a while, and I’m no friend of Harrison’s, so it feels right to do this, but it’s all going to be over very quickly if you underestimate that man.”
“Understood.” Taylor slowed to a stop, letting Marissa walk ahead of her toward the hovertruck. “When should we meet to question that terrorist?”
“Noon tomorrow, right here,” Marissa said.
“Alright.” Taylor reached for her transceiver, but it was still somewhere on Main Street—she would have to borrow one from the hospital. “Good luck with Harrison.”
“Thanks.” Marissa entered the hovertruck and lifted off.
Cherran ultimately took his shuttle straight to the governmental complex. He was admittedly a little nervous to be going into a Cabinet meeting without Shuping and her uplink implant at his side, but the emergency session of the Cabinet was called immediately after the resolution of the Treaty Day attacks, and there was too much on the line for him to meander. By the time he left the hotel, the Meltian Guard support team had determined that there was no recoverable data on Gerald’s screen, so Cherran took the worthless chunk of metal to show the Cabinet.
Unfortunately, his own nerves were nothing compared to how twitchy—paranoid, even—TeSeComm was when Cherran’s pilot attempted to secure a landing platform. Eventually, they were obliged to land in Freedom Square, where one of the president’s aides met Cherran and rushed him to a nondescript conference room deep within the building. President Gunther, Economy, Resources, and Health were already seated, while Commander-in-Chief Altez and Director Harrison attended virtually.
“I must lodge my concern,” Altez said, “that in the wake of such a gruesome attack, it may be unwise for us to seat five members of this Cabinet in the same room.”
“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Altez,” Gunther said, “but this complex has more firepower and better shields than most destroyers, and there are no less than ten squadrons of Meltian Guard interceptors currently patrolling Telahmir’s airspace. The continuity of the M
eltian government is not at risk.”
“We may be relatively safe,” Harrison said, “but the Meltian Republic is not. Which is why, Mr. President, I would like you and the rest of this Cabinet to support my enhanced ship-tracking measure in the Subcommittee on Planetary Defenses.”
Cherran pursed his lips. This was not what he wanted to talk about, but he realized that the Treaty Day Attacks were a lot fresher in the minds of the other Cabinet members than the Trascion affair at the moment.
“I may be popular, but I am no magician,” Gunther said. “I could not foist a measure that sounds like something out of the old GG on this Republic even if I wanted to.”
“Mr. President,” Harrison said. “I understand there is opposition, but one of the main reasons this attack was so—in Mr. Altez’s words—gruesome was that we are unable to account for many of the military-grade ships that enter our borders. All I am proposing is that we mandate the installation of manufacturer-specific tracking chips in all new starships with flip drives, enabling—”
“Straight out of the GG handbook,” Economy said. “Not to mention that the burden of compliance would damage our interstellar shipping considerably.”
“Fine.” Harrison raised his arms in mock-surrender. “I recognize that planetary security is a topic poisoned by the legacy of the GG, but I hope that each of you recognize that if there are many more attacks like this one, the Meltian people will not continue to let ideological squeamishness hold them back from concrete action.”
“Threats are out of place here, Mr. Harrison,” Gunther said. “If you can accrue a sufficient number of votes, your measure may pass, though I do not think it likely. In the meantime, I believe this Cabinet would be much more interested in hearing if the MRSIS has made any progress in apprehending the people behind these attacks.”
“Unfortunately, the Jacobin organization is a far-flung and decentralized one,” Harrison said. “We were able to capture a number of their political leaders in our initial post-anniversary sweep, but finding the rest will take time—though the evidence we recovered from today’s attack may yield new leads. In the meantime, if the Cabinet is unwilling to consider my proposed legislative action, we should turn our focus back to the Trascion crisis.”
“I agree,” Cherran said. All eyes in the Cabinet turned to him. “That we should talk about Trascion.”
“Cherran, I understand that your rendezvous with the Kaleknarian ambassador ended tragically,” Gunther said.
“It did.” Cherran pulled out Gerald’s destroyed personal screen and dropped it on the table in front of him. “Ladies and gentlemen, if it was not certain before that there are pieces—important pieces—of the Trascion puzzle that we do not know, then it is now. It is also certain that there are elements of the Kaleknarian government which are viciously and desperately attempting to keep it that way. We know that at some point between two and four this morning, Ger—the Kaleknarian ambassador checked into a Telahmir hotel. We believe that, a few minutes later, a second Kaleknarian, almost certainly an agent of their government, forcefully entered his room via the window. The ambassador attempted to flee with—”
Cherran tapped the personal screen.
“—this device, but was fatally shot, after which his murderer took special care to ensure this device was rendered inoperable. All attempts to recover information from it have been unsuccessful, though we can only assume that it contained some information about the Kaleknarians’ war plans, which we could have used to prevent or quickly end the conflict.”
Cherran paused to allow that to sink in. To give the Cabinet a taste of the despair and uncertainty that had gripped him when he first examined the crime scene: but not anymore.
“Fortunately,” Cherran said “in their brutality, the Kaleknarians have exposed us to a fact that we did not previously know: that they are just as bitterly divided about fighting us as we are about fighting them. Which is why we need to send in the fleet and see if we can’t divide them a little bit more.”
He smiled to himself as he took a seat. Ironic that not even two days ago, he had viewed the deployment of the fleet as an abhorrent last resort, yet now he was advocating for it—not as a method of war, but as a method of diplomacy.
“A clear-sighted course.” Altez nodded. “To their divided system, we must apply pressure.”
“This is madness.” Health clenched her fists. “I thought our goal was to prevent a war, not to launch a pre-emptive strike!”
“On the contrary, I believe that Cherran wants to use our fleet as a tool to pressure the Kaleknarian leadership,” Gunther said. “In theory, sending in the fleet would weaken the case of Kaleknarian war hawks because Trascion would no longer be an uncontested conquest; if Mr. Altez has put together a strong enough fleet, it might even turn into a Kaleknarian defeat.”
“Right,” Cherran said. “Everything I’ve seen—the infighting in PanGal, the possibility the mobilizations are not linked to the Trascion crisis, this assassination—points to a deep divide in the Kaleknarian leadership. I do not believe that the Kaleknarians on Trascion have authorization to start a war with us, especially if it looks like it will be a defeat for them.”
“Perhaps,” Harrison said. “However, you should also consider the fact that the Kaleknarians have been busy putting together a collaborationist government on Trascion, and they will be finished before we arrive. They may have the authorization—and the inclination—to protect their work there, unless we are able to destroy their control centers.”
“Mr. Harrison,” Gunther said, “you had better explain the collaborationist system to our domestic advisors.”
Considering that his position as Ambassador meant that he probably should know such things, Cherran was glad not to be included in the group of those who needed an explanation, even if he definitely did. Sometimes he wanted to get an uplink implant, like Shuping. She was never blindsided by anything.
“Right,” Harrison said. “It is a nasty piece of work. The Kaleknarians destroy a planet’s infrastructure upon arriving and evict people from major cities, so for most families, your only options are to slowly starve and dehydrate in the newly-created slums, under constant threat of Kaleknarian attack, or become a ‘collaborator,’ in which case the Kaleknarians provide you with food, water, and safety. Oh, and they also implant devices in the heads of you and your family that monitor your every action and can terminate your life instantly if the Kaleknarians feel so inclined. It’s highly efficient because they have no need to go out and force anybody to partake in it; it is completely optional so long as you don’t mind starving or occasionally being bombed.”
The description sent a shiver down Cherran’s spine. He silently promised never to sneer at Meltian bureaucracy again.
“For obvious reasons, the locations of the control centers that oversee the collaborators are top-secret,” Harrison said. “However, the MRSIS already has a certain special operations asset in place that could identify these control centers and obliterate them—all without implicating the Meltian Republic. Once the control centers are destroyed, the Kaleknarians will suddenly be confronted with several million Trascionese people whom they armed to supplement their own military, but suddenly have no obligation to be loyal to them. Add a Meltian fleet to the mix, and the Kaleknarians will be climbing over each other to get out of there.”
“You speak of a special operations asset,” Gunther said, “yet would it not be more expedient to utilize the Trascionese Jacobin chapter as I suggested in our previous discussion?
“Mr. President, with all due respect, we have already pursued this course of inquiry,” Harrison said. “We cannot simultaneously prosecute and attempt to enlist the aid of the Jacobins.”
“You assume that they are a singular organization,” Gunther said. “On the contrary, the political branch you are pursuing and the paramilitary branch that has a chapter on Trascion operate quite disparately, a fact I know because I have been in contact with the latter.”<
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Gunther pressed a button on the conference table, and a large screen embedded in one of the room’s walls switched on to display a wavy-brown-haired human man in a formal, ash-gray uniform. Buckled to his belt was what appeared to be a gold-hilted sword—an actual metal blade, not a Phase Sword of the type favored by the old GG’s Cavalieri. The background was dominated by a bombed-out office building of some description.
“Good afternoon, Meltian Cabinet.” The man made a short bow. “My name’s Mars Keagan. I am a co-director of the Trascionese Jacobin chapter, and it is my pleasure to speak to all of you—except, of course, for Director Harrison. Mr. Harrison, it is distressing to see you still in power after letting all those children die in Telahmir today.”
“Don’t try to deflect blame from yourself, Jacobin.” Harrison turned to Gunther. “I told you they would not want to work with us.”
“They don’t seem to want to work with you, Ryan,” Gunther said.
“Because I plan to bring them to justice,” Harrison said.
“Please,” Gunther raised a hand to stop Harrison’s complaints. “Mr. Keagan, what can you tell this Cabinet about the Kaleknarian control centers?”
“Mr. President, the control centers are the cornerstone of the Kaleknarian occupation and thus our primary target,” Keagan said. “We believe there are roughly ten of them scattered among the Kaleknarians’ hundred-odd regional bases.”
“So you don’t know where they are,” Harrison said.
“Admittedly, not at the moment,” Keagan said, “but we are working on it.”
“As are my operatives,” Harrison said, “who have the added benefit of not being under investigation for aiding terrorist organizations.”
“Though perhaps they should be,” Keagan said.