by Alec Saracen
“So, how long until war with the Confederation?” Gael said cheerfully, breaking the glum silence. “We should open a book on it.”
Harod snorted. “Cold war or hot?”
“When they write the history books, they'll say today was when the cold war began,” Zhai said.
Gael nodded. “No bets taken there, boys. Ten suns gets you eight that there's some kind of border clash by, let's say, one-seventy. Ten gets you twenty that we're in open war by then.”
“Eleven years,” Zhai said, stroking his beard with the tip of his thumb. He'd be seventy then, if nothing killed him first. “Hell, I'll take those odds. A thousand suns on open war. Sam, make a note.”
“A thousand on war,” his assistant said. Sam's watch was projecting its holographic screen onto an angled panel on his desk, which even at this distance Zhai could identify as his labyrinthine gambling records. With slender fingers, Sam made the adjustment. “Oh,” he said, looking up, “you won three hundred off Ken Oostmann.”
Zhai frowned. “Did I? What for?”
“The government collapsed on Bukushira last week. You bet it wouldn't make it to the next election?”
“Oh, yes. Well, he deserved to lose money on that one.”
“And you say I have a problem,” Harod said, smiling. “Is that your retirement plan? To replace your pension with betting on politics?”
Zhai shrugged. “It's just money.” Though he was ten thousand up on the year to date. “Maybe I'll try my hand at punditry.”
“'And now, for a considered opinion on the cabinet reshuffle, we go to our chief political analyst, Gumeigo Zhai,'” Gael intoned. She’d been honing her pompous impression of Zhai for forty years. “'Well, Jon, they’ve probably got at least three brain cells between them.' 'Thank you for your incisive commentary, Gumeigo...'”
Harod snickered, and Zhai allowed himself a smile.
Gael was laughing herself now. “Oh, please do it. Go somewhere like Budushtey, where they really are all idiots. Send me video.”
“They'd probably arrest you as a spy as soon as we go to war with the Confederation,” Harod said. “Go the other way. The FSN, or Siren.” His eyes lit up. “Oh, Star City! Go to Star City!”
“I'm not going back to Star bloody City,” Zhai said. “A man can only stomach so much neon. And the FSN? I might as well join Liberation.”
“Now, that's not a bad idea,” Gael said. “Maybe you're not too old for the Liberator treatment. Cut away that fat old carcass of yours, give you all the shiny new cybernetics… I always thought you'd make a good terrorist.”
Zhai snorted. “We've all thought about blowing up a few choice targets. Star City, for one.” He heaved himself out of his chair and crossed over to the drinks cabinet built into the wall. “To hell with it. I'm having a fucking drink, and so are you three.”
“I don't drink, boss,” Sam reminded him.
“Really? Well, Sam, when you find the time, engage in some vice or other and send the bill to my office,” Zhai said, clunking three heavy glasses down on the table. He had remembered Sam’s abstinence, but he’d spent several years trying to change his young assistant’s mind on the subject. The boy worked too hard. “You're a smart kid, I'm sure you'll think of something.” He poured two fingers – using his own fat digits as a benchmark – of copper brandy into each. The bottle had been a parting gift from shrewd old Audry Dance of the URSS when they'd been posted to Morin together, eight or nine years ago. It hailed from one of the oldest and most storied distilleries on High Summer, so old that the founding date curled across the bottle was in Anno Separationis instead of After Evacuation.
Zhai passed the glasses around and raised his own. “Here's to the Free Planetary Alliance, then. It was never free, it doesn't have any planets any more, and they're not allied. A worthy enemy, and one we'll wish we hadn't killed.”
Gael echoed the gesture. “To the Consolidationists that come after us, the poor bastards. May they eventually claw back a majority before the Devvies run the galaxy into the ground.”
“And to the pulverised remains of our careers,” Harod finished. “It was good while it lasted.” They clinked glasses, and drank.
It was excellent stuff. Audry knew how to pick her brandy.
“Oh, and to the crew of that one fighter,” Gael said, nodding towards the screen, which still displayed the scoreboard. “How unlucky can you get?”
Zhai looked, then turned away. The sight of the Coalition V-navy, visible on the screen now as a scattering of grey dots in the Void's bruise-coloured fog, tweaked a nerve buried somewhere deep within Zhai. How many of the thousands of V-able men and women packed into those cramped metal spheres were there because of what he’d done? Because of Naro?
“Turn it off, Sam,” he said. “We've all seen enough.”
Sam tapped his watch, and the smartpaper turned into a fake window, fed by a camera on the station exterior. The bluish glow of Armenaiakon slowly wheeled past.
Zhai exhaled. He was determined not to think of Naro today. “If we start drinking to the dead,” he said, “we're going to run out of booze first.”
Harod's smile faded. “How many will die in the whole bloody business?” he said, fingering the rim of his glass. “How many digits? Six? Seven? Eight?”
“Let's call it 'too many' and leave it at that,” Gael said. “That's the way of things. Blood’s the price of change. We just know it'll be more blood their way than our way.”
Zhai grunted and downed the rest of his brandy. “And it's their way or the highway.” He went to the cabinet again and selected a cheaper bottle. The New Bondlock whisky was still a hundred suns a bottle, but it was an insult to Audry's brandy to drink it like he wanted to.
Harod watched him with some concern. There was something about the proud strokes of his cheekbones and those sunken eyes that made him look as if he were constantly peering disapprovingly over archaic spectacles. “Little early to drink yourself into the grave, don't you think?”
No, he should have started a couple of decades ago, Zhai thought. As he started pouring, across the room Sam glanced down at his watch and stiffened.
“Boss,” he said, “you're going to want to hear this.”
Zhai raised an eyebrow as he set the bottle down. “Am I, Sam? Right now I want to hear my arteries crusting over.”
“It's from Hilde Sekkanen. To you. Personally.”
“Is it an invitation to a suicide pact? Tell her I'll think about it,” Zhai said, though secretly he was interested what the de facto Consolidationist leader had to say. She was surely going to retire, now that the Consolidationist project had been so thoroughly wrecked.
Twins, he thought, what if she wants me to take over?
“She'll see you in her office at 1310,” Sam said. “And she just says – 'make arrangements'?”
He looked up quizzically, too fresh to understand what it meant. Zhai, meanwhile, took a moment to process the age-old code phrase, and choked on his whisky when he did.
“What?” Harod said, as Zhai coughed and spluttered and wiped whisky from his beard. “'Make arrangements'? Is that exactly what she said?”
“Yes?” Sam ventured, suddenly looking his age. He was a very young man in a very old organisation. “What does that mean?”
“It means our boy's got a job,” Gael said. She sprang up and clapped Zhai on the back, half in congratulation and half to help clear his throat.
“A job?” Sam said. “As in, an ambassadorial posting?”
Harod nodded, grinning his head off. “Though the Twins know how. Where the hell is she sending you?”
“I don't know,” Zhai said. A stealthy sense of elation crept up on him. A job! With the First Circle lost, Sekkanen had little political leverage left, but somehow she'd managed to swing him an ambassadorial posting. A career which had been dead, buried, memorialised, and quietly forgotten ten minutes ago had suddenly sprung back to life, punched its way out of the coffin, and clawed its way through
the dirt to fresh air.
Even if it were another internal Coalition job, it'd be a hundred times better than rotting away on Megereth Station while the dance of diplomacy left him sitting partnerless on the galactic sidelines. He hadn't run an internal posting since the Naro debacle all those years ago, but that couldn't sink his rapidly rising spirits. Even being the Coalition rep on a dump like Keening or Hechileng would be a blessing.
“Wait,” he said. “1310?” He checked his own watch. “It's 1300 now!”
“Better get going,” Harod said, smoothly plucking the whisky from Zhai's grasp. “Might have to run.” He glanced down at Zhai's obese bulk. “Have fun with that.”
Zhai cursed in Qienchuan and turned to Sam, who was tangled in his jacket as he hurried to put it on. “Reserve a rail cab and get hold of Ceq, wherever she is. Let's go, let's go!”
He strode out of his office as quickly as he could without completely sacrificing his dignity, trailing Sam in his wake, unable to suppress a grin.
2
“Why are we stopping?” Zhai demanded. On the wall map of Megereth Station's labyrinthine rail links, their icon was skewing off sideways and away from the First Circle offices on the rim. “Delays?”
“Picking up Ceq,” Sam said, without looking up from his watch. Its reflected screen glinted blue and white in Sam's eyes. “Hopefully.”
“What do you mean, hopefully?”
“I think she was asleep.”
Of all the possible things Ceq could be doing in her time off, sleeping was probably the least of many evils. It might, however, make him late for his appointment with Sekkanen, a prospect that still terrified Zhai. Sekkanen was pragmatic to a fault, but he knew from experience that terrible retribution awaited those who failed to conform to her iron schedule. Being late to see Sekkanen was to dice with death, and Zhai had just been resurrected. Sekkanen gave, and she took away.
The rail cab slid smoothly into place. To Zhai's relief, Ceq appeared around the corner as the door hissed open. She was wearing her awful smartsuit, as usual, currently configured to look like a loose black tracksuit. She ambled into the cab, yawning, and Zhai immediately punched the close-doors button.
“Can we stop for breakfast?” Ceq said, as the car plunged into the dark inner transit routes of the station.
“No.”
“Just takeaway. A sandwich.”
“No,” Zhai snapped. “And for God's sake, put something a bit more formal on.”
Ceq shrugged and fiddled with her watch, a smile playing on her lips. The smartsuit shifted, lengthened, loosened, and changed colour, turning into a ridiculous faux-Ocran toga. She stood about seven inches taller than Zhai, and on her dark, muscular form, the ancient garb looked imposing. On the other side of the cab, Sam sneaked a glance up.
“Very funny,” Zhai said, as if it weren't. “Come on, Ceq, something with a bit of class. I know that's difficult for you.”
Ceq grinned and switched the setting again. This time, the smartsuit divided in half, turning into black trousers and a charcoal pullover, which was at least nondescript.
“Better?”
Zhai looked her up and down, having to crane his neck for the former. “Acceptable.”
“Great.” Ceq ran her fingers through an inch of tightly curled black hair. “So, what's the rush?”
“Appointment with Hilde Sekkanen,” Sam said. “We're going offworld.”
Ceq looked blank.
“Sekkanen. Sekkanen. You must know who she is,” Zhai said. “Surely. You've met her at least twice. Hilde Sekkanen? Basically ran the entire Coalition for twenty years? My boss?”
Ceq scratched her jaw. “What does she look like?”
“Short, pale, grey hair? Eyes like mining lasers?”
Ceq considered, then shrugged. “Maybe I'll know her when I see her.”
“She knows you, you know,” Zhai said, shaking his head. Sometimes, Ceq was just screwing with him, but more often she genuinely had no idea about or interest in whatever he was talking about. “Twins. How can you not know her? Watch the fucking news, Ceq. Do you even know we're at war?”
She brightened. “Oh, yeah, I heard that. We're winning, aren't we?”
“Yes,” Zhai said, “and it's a disaster.”
“Bet against us, did you?”
Zhai sighed. He wondered how much breath he'd spent over the years explaining galactic politics to Ceq. Probably enough to fill a hot air balloon or two, and none of it had ever sunk in. “All right, look. It's simple,” he began, trying to boil it down to the barest bones possible. “If we win the war, we’ll probably conquer the Alliance, and if we do that we’ll end up with a long border with the Confederation and a reputation for warmongering. Eventual outcome: war with the Feds, and everything goes to shit for everyone.” He cast about for a metaphor which might appeal to Ceq. “It's like – we've just won a boxing match against an old rival. Good, right? Except by winning, we've qualified for the title bout, and our next opponent punches hard enough to give us irreparable brain damage. Even if we win. Which we might not.”
“But you can survive brain damage,” Ceq said, with maddening logic, “and you'd have a shot at the champ. Lots of people would take that.”
Zhai grunted in agreement. Ceq's brutalist intelligence was plain to see, though her refusal to care about politics or history was incomprehensible to him, not least because she was a politician's bodyguard. She was right, though: people were obsessed with the immediate future and apathetic about the long-term. Worse, some would knowingly sink their own ship out of bloody-minded principle.
'Bloody-minded principle' had always summed up the Revvies all too well. Ever since Naro, it looked worryingly like it summed up the Devvies too.
God, had he done this? Had he been the one to set the course, all those years ago, that was just now dashing them onto the rocks? Or was it self-flagellating narcissism to imagine that a pebble like him could divert the grand river of politics?
Twins, he thought. He really was a piece of work.
The rest of the journey passed in silence. To distract himself, Zhai watched his assistant and bodyguard. Sam, squinting through a mess of curly brown hair, was hunched over as he juggled schedules, lists, messages, and itineraries on his watch. If he'd stood up straight, he'd have been as tall as Ceq, though half the width. He was handsome in a youthful, unfocused kind of way. All the ingredients of attractiveness were there, but Sam had no time to play chef.
Ceq, meanwhile, had all the time in the world, but simply didn't care. Where Sam's features were narrow and delicate, hers were hard and sharply defined, with high cheekbones that pushed her eyes up slightly too far and a nose and jaw with a jutting edge to them. Combined with her blue-grey eyes, densely curled hair, and dark skin, there was clearly genetic engineering in her bloodline. Where Sam was of old Dovish extraction and Zhai was Qienchuan through and through, Ceq's heritage was anyone's guess, including hers. She was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, listening to music over her military-grade aural implants, tapping her foot to keep time.
They were remarkable young people. Sam had a savant-level ability to compress raging torrents of information into a manageable stream. Most of his work for Zhai was invisible. He was just there in the background, quietly oiling the gears of Zhai’s life. Ceq, meanwhile, was his sword and shield, a woman-shaped thesis on violence, grandmaster of the use of judicious personal force. He owed her his life.
The unpleasant realisation that their combined age was less than his own stole over him. How had everyone become so young? It wasn’t bloody fair.
They made it to the nexus nearest Sekkanen's office at 1309 and hurried down the corridors. Here, they were significantly wider and better-lit than they were around the Spider, the central tangle of machinery at the heart of Megereth Station's web. Approaching Sekkanen's office, they passed the door to Zhai's old stomping ground, now occupied by some other young Solid on the First Circle.
The station's
corridors were deserted. No doubt everyone was deep in strategy meetings after the political earthquake of the video release, probably clustered around tables and desks. That was where the real moving and shaking happened. Physical meetings were more the territory of the veterans, whose discussions relied more old relationships and the material diplomacy of tea, coffee, and alcohol. The younger generation were content with seeing each other on screens, but they'd come around in time, just as their forerunners had. It had taken Zhai years to absorb the analogue art of the diplomat, and even now it was more instinct than theory.
At 1310:48, they entered the antechamber of Sekkanen's office. Kaudorang, Sekkanen's gaunt secretary, glanced up at Zhai, made him wait a moment, and then nodded him through. Kaudorang mistakenly believed that proximity to power made you powerful, and it made him impertinent. Zhai offered a thin smile as he passed. It went unreturned.
Sekkanen had retained the same office for four decades. By rights it should have gone to someone in the First Circle after she hit her term limit, but nobody had ever dared try to turf her out. Her intransigence had become tradition. Lockley Satterkale and Kavale La Langio, her Devvie and Revvie opposite numbers, both now refused to vacate their own First Circle offices despite having exhausted their two terms. That was Hilde Sekkanen in a nutshell. She stayed put, and the world recalibrated itself to work around her, whispering apologies for any inconvenience caused.
She used the office purely symbolically. Its walls were plain white, save for the long window looking out over the shimmering blue marble of Armenaiakon below, and her furniture was limited to a desk and three chairs. The wintry sparseness of it always made Zhai shiver. That, and the fact that Sekkanen kept the temperature a few degrees lower than on the rest of the station.