The Coalition Man

by Alec Saracen

  A countdown appeared in Grey Hawk's vision. They had three seconds. Two. One.

  The experience of the pod's burners kicking in was something no sim could prepare her for. The acceleration jammed her brain into her feet. An incredible pressure squeezed her skull as if it were being pinched between two enormous fingers, ignoring her neural dispersal and cranial strengthening and dampening fluid and all the other little tricks meant to keep her brain from liquefying.

  Someone was whooping in her ear. Grey Hawk could only manage a wordless moan. Her vision was fading, not because her eyes were malfunctioning but because her optic nerve was being flattened by the pressure. The sound of an endless tsunami washing back and forth in her head filled her ears. She could feel the weight of every strand of hair on her head.

  Slowly, the forces eased. Grey Hawk glanced at the display. She was still accelerating at a tremendous rate, but the initial burst was done. She checked her velocity and winced at the profusion of digits. As the deafening roar of her own blood subsided, it was replaced by the howl of the pod's boosters. Grey Hawk imagined the blinding annihilation trail she was leaving behind her. Antimatter engines were ludicrously expensive for anything bigger than a pod or a missile, so any orbital pursuers would likely be stuck with ionic rekenon thrusters. The threats were lasers, point defence arrays, and missiles.

  The antimatter thrusters cut out entirely, leaving her in eerie silence. The pressure instantly melted away, and her head cleared almost as quickly. A sudden hiss and jolt of manoeuvring thrusters told her that her course was being adjusted to disguise her approach. There was no way they hadn't seen her, but now the stealthed design of the pod and the sudden absence of energy signatures should help her coast past the defences as sensor arrays hunted fruitlessly for her.

  At least, that was the idea.

  She checked her coordinates. Her predicted splashdown point was thirty kilometres off the coast, with another fifty klicks until she could reach any of the major cities. Their first port of call was Landing, where intelligence suggested it would be easier to hide. The government would know exactly what had happened. The pattern of a V-ship dropping into realspace, launching dozens of harmless missiles, and fleeing could only mean one thing: there were Liberators on the ground. No government in the galaxy wasn't chilled by that thought.

  The silence was calming. She was sealed in a metal coffin screaming through space at phenomenal speed, yes, but if she could abstract that into long strings of digits and icons crawling across a display, it didn't seem so bad. With the engines no longer firing, it was almost serene inside the pod.

  She listened to her music, and now she found she could pay attention to it. It was a live recording, with a real orchestra playing a melody written by an AI. Something about the blend of reality and falsity appealed to her. Grey Hawk closed her eyes once again, and let the low swirls of the music envelope her.

  “Nearing atmo,” Red Wolf said a few minutes later. “Everyone still alive?”

  “You know it,” Blue Wasp purred.

  “I am,” Blue Bull said.

  “And me,” Grey Hawk said dreamily.

  “Our contacts will have a safehouse ready,” Red Wolf said. “We'll all receive messages directing us there. Stay unseen. Stay safe.”

  Down into the atmosphere they plunged, and suddenly noise returned with a vengeance, roaring like a hurricane around the pod. It began to shake and shiver, buffeted by its sleeve of ignited air, and a massive burst of deceleration pounded at Grey Hawk's brain. The last of the antimatter was annihilated, producing immense reverse thrust. To observers on the ground, they would be coming in like four rivers of lightning, blazing meteoric trails across the night sky. Those still awake in Landing and Macard and Ossaile would be watching them, wondering at the significance of these four strange lights. A canny few would know the truth.

  Liberation was coming.

  The pressure built. The noise mounted. The planet neared. Grey Hawk lost track of time, fading in and out of consciousness. She'd been told to expect that, which hadn't helped. Her thoughts were jumbled, overlapping, cycling back into each other. She couldn't understand the displays, so thick was the fog clouding her mind. More than once she thought she must be dreaming. The juddering of the pod didn't even register any more.

  And then, at last, one almighty jerk roused her again as the final parachute deployed, and seconds later the pod hammered into the ocean. Grey Hawk struggled back to consciousness. The pod sank rapidly before the flotation devices kicked in and brought her back to the surface, leaving the pod bobbing on the waves. A video feed of the world outside popped up, and Grey Hawk stared blearily at the sea of stars shining overhead. Despite the punishing journey down and the long swim ahead of her, elation buoyed her.

  She was on Tor.

  7

  A dizzying wall of heat hit Zhai the instant he stepped off the spaceplane. It wasn't even a sunny day. The concrete flats of Macard's airport were dour and colourless under an indifferent grey sky which promised no rain, and yet Zhai felt like he'd just wandered into an oven. It was an unpleasantly dry, harsh heat, the kind that wilted everything exposed to it.

  I'm not going to like this planet, he thought.

  “Twins,” Harod muttered behind him. “It's even worse than I remember.”

  Zhai took a couple of experimental steps to get used to the gravity, which was 1.1 normal. The heat made it feel like at least 1.3. The air seemed normal enough, at least, perhaps slightly more oxygen-rich than usual.

  At the bottom of the mobile stairs was a royal blue carpet, lined on one side with ceremonial Alliance troops in full black dress regalia. Zhai shot them a look of sympathy as he descended. They were all visibly sweltering under the heavy fabric. Zhai himself had steadfastly refused to wear any smart fabrics, a decision he stood by even as the sweat started to trickle down the back of his neck. He’d rather sweat than wear a fake suit.

  Jon Weiv, waiting for him at the end of the carpet, had apparently come to the same conclusion. Even at ten paces Zhai could recognise the cut of a real suit, which was the same pale grey as the sky. Weiv was an ugly son of a bitch, but a well-dressed one. He didn't look quite as bad as he had in Tetaine's images, at least. In a certain light, the squat broadness of his face could be almost rugged. His hair was different, too, now cut into an inoffensive short-back-and-sides, though his awful pointed beard remained.

  Nobody was playing the Coalition anthem, Zhai noted. Fair enough. He wouldn't play it for himself either. In fact, there were none of the usual trappings: no press at all, no band, no observers. That alone told Zhai that Tor still considered itself an Alliance world – for now. Welcoming him properly and publicly would have been tantamount to a declaration of independence, and the prospect of the Alliance regaining the planet and looking unkindly on separatism was evidently feared enough by the government that they weren't taking the risk just yet.

  “Ambassador Zhai,” Weiv said. His handshake was government standard-issue. “Welcome to Tor. I trust your trip down was comfortable?”

  Zhai glanced at the gleaming silver spaceplane which had whisked them down from the desolate spacedock. He had expected to spend hours in the usual luxurious private crawler on the space elevator, but instead the government had rapidly arranged a space-to-ground craft for Zhai's entire entourage. Zhai had received the message loud and clear: we need to talk right now.

  “Yes, most comfortable,” Zhai said. His face slipped automatically into his best diplomatic smile, simultaneously completely genuine and obviously false. It wouldn't do to stick to one end of the spectrum. “Somewhat faster than I was expecting, I must say.”

  Weiv smiled back, nervously. The hint of real emotion undercut the whole thing, giving away too much for no gain. Zhai suspected he could handle Weiv with ease. “We thought it best to meet with you as soon as possible. Governor Chang would very much like to hear your thoughts on several issues.”

  Zhai heard not the words but the message t
hey disguised: “What the fuck is going on, you pack of warmongering maniacs?”

  “Of course,” Zhai said. “I understand completely.”

  Weiv gestured to a trio of long black cars drawn up not far away. “The Governor is convening a special meeting as we speak. I apologise for springing this on you so soon, Ambassador, but you understand our position.”

  Zhai tweaked an eyebrow by a couple of millimetres. “Do I?”

  “Oh, yes,” Weiv said, as if he thought he was saying something very clever. “I believe you do.”

  Presumptuous fool, Zhai thought. “Very well. Shall we?”

  In the end, only Sam, Ceq, and Harod accompanied Zhai to the Governor's official residence. Umbiba, though shorn of his androids, was deeply unhappy about being left behind to secure the embassy. As soon as they'd hit Tor's orbit, word had come through from Coalition agents on the ground that they had secured 'acceptable' premises. What that entailed, Zhai had no clue, but if 'acceptable' was the best they could do, he was concerned.

  In the cool gloom of the car, Zhai sat opposite Weiv in a private section, sequestered from the rest of the vehicle by an opaque and soundproof screen. The airport rolled silently past the window. Nothing else was landing or taking off.

  “Is this weather typical for Tor?” Zhai asked.

  Weiv nodded. “Oh, yes.” Then, clearly embarrassed at his own curtness: “But you must be used to these temperatures, of course.”

  Zhai held Weiv's gaze, gauging whether it had been stupidity or malice that had made Weiv bring up Zhai's home world. He decided to press him on it rather than laugh it off. “You are aware, presumably, that I have not set foot on Xanang in over fifty years?”

  Weiv coloured. Ah. Stupidity. “Um, I simply meant–”

  Zhai waved the non-apology aside. “I spend most of my time on Armenaiakon and Megereth Station, Mr Weiv. The former is temperate, the latter is a space station. I'm afraid I'm not accustomed to hot worlds.”

  “The wet season will be here before long,” Weiv said, relaxing. “Until then, I'm afraid it's going to be thirty-plus centigrade almost every day.”

  They entered the Macard road system. As Harod had said, it was a rigidly-structured modern city, its streets a neat grid and its cars hooked up to a central network. Zhai had been in a dozen cities just like it across the galaxy. It was bright, ordered, easy to navigate, optimised, and completely devoid of character. At street level, Zhai saw various Alliance brands mixed with the usual fast food places and grocery stores, frequented by people whose clothes and hairstyles were no different to any other cookie-cutter major city.

  There was one notable difference, at least, though not a positive one. On every single street, there was at least one enormous screen on the side of a tall building, all of which were displaying the same slick-looking news channel. Zhai caught sight of the headline: “THIRD-HOTTEST SUMMER ON RECORD”.

  Weiv followed his gaze. “Hmm. Perhaps it is hotter than normal.”

  “Slow news day,” Zhai remarked.

  Weiv didn't rise to the bait. “Evidently.”

  Zhai's own presence on Tor was clearly the government's secret for now, though that wouldn't last long. If their propaganda channels weren't even discussing the war, let alone the surprise arrival of a Coalition ambassador, surely that would just drive news-hungry citizens into the illicit channels. That's Alliance thinking for you, Zhai thought. They grip too hard, and the sand slips through their fingers.

  “The war is public knowledge, I assume,” Zhai said. Weiv shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Of course it is.”

  “And the scale of the Alliance's defeat?”

  Zhai said it off-handedly, but he was watching Weiv like a hawk for his reaction. Tetaine had claimed that the only data runners which managed to get past the Coalition V-forces over captured planets had been headed for the galactic west. If that were true, Tor would be in the dark about the fate of the rest of the Alliance, and if that were true, this was the first Weiv was hearing of it.

  To his credit, Weiv realised that Zhai was probing for a reaction and clammed up. “No comment, Ambassador. You understand.”

  So he kept telling him. “Of course,” Zhai said, but the damage had been done. In the instant before Weiv had thrown his face into emergency shutdown, Zhai had seen his eyes start to widen in surprise. Tetaine had been right. Tor knew that the Coalition occupied the Void over the planet and nothing more. Zhai carefully did not smile as he settled back in his seat. He could almost feel the weight of the power in his hands.

  Knowledge was power. It was an old, conventional aphorism, which made it no less true. Zhai had come in at a major disadvantage, knowing practically nothing about the world whose destiny he was tasked with shifting. Ten minutes' conversation had given him a few weapons of his own. Weiv had tried his hand at the same game when he'd brought up Zhai's past, and all he'd done was told Zhai that the Alliance's intel on him was weak. Xanang and Naro. Was that the best they could do?

  The fog of war was beginning to lift.

  Traffic moved at a constant speed in Macard, locked to about forty kph. Intersections and crossroads flashed past as the car took them deeper into the city centre, a forest of uninspired skyscrapers clothed in glass and metal. Even that was informative. On most worlds, even the most boilerplate cities had more variation than this. Macard didn't seem to have a single building of note.

  It was just so classically Alliance. Total state control had squeezed their world into a perfectly regular box. Zhai was no cheerleader for unchecked capitalism, but at least it kept things fresh. If the Alliance, not the URSS, controlled Zhi Lazh, its skylines would probably be dominated by uniform white tower blocks rather than the wild, looping, chaotic buildings the beach cities were famous for.

  “What an efficient city,” Zhai said.

  Weiv brightened. “Yes, we're very proud of Macard. If a city can be run better than this, we're yet to see it.”

  Zhai resisted the obvious question about which non-Alliance cities Weiv had visited. “It certainly looks very functional,” he said. He miscalculated that one, at least to his own ears – it came out sounding closer to the veiled-insult end of the spectrum rather than polite-compliment – but Weiv didn't seem to notice. Zhai wondered if Macard's city planning fell under his jurisdiction somehow. Home Affairs was a notoriously variable position in FPA local administrations, sometimes irrelevant and sometimes a sprawling behemoth of an office with fingers in every pie. Early indications were that Weiv's sat somewhere in the middle. He had reach, and yet he'd been packed off to pick Zhai up from the airport without fanfare.

  “Oh, yes, we take functionality very seriously,” Weiv was saying, before launching into a long explanation of the urban planning committees which 'tirelessly endeavour' to make Macard a better place. After a few minutes of Zhai nodding politely, Weiv seemed to realise he'd switched into domestic-politics mode and finished rather abruptly.

  Fortunately, by then they had reached the heart of government, a sprawling district of plazas and wide, empty avenues. The Alliance enforced an Ocran-inspired style across most of its governmental buildings, replete with generic columns, lots of marble and marble-esque materials, and statues. Zhai recognised some as replicas of famous statues lost during the Evacuation or locked away in Coalition art hoards, while others were clearly newer designs. He had to suppress a derisive snort at the statue of Bhumem Lappha, which stood five metres high and depicted the Alliance's first president in a masculine, heroic, hands-on-hips pose cribbed from Sephezzi's famous regnal portrait of Maldis II. The more Zhai thought about it, though, the more apt it seemed. Maldis II had been among the most rapacious and militaristic Chetic emperors, and Lappha was the closest thing to a conqueror since the Evacuation. Unless Lockley fucking Satterkale decided to hire a sculptor. The Devvies would lap it up, too, he thought.

  Security gates and screenings awaited them as they drew closer to the organs of power. They hadn't even had an ob
vious police escort, Zhai noted, although he was sure that they were being covered discreetly. The car itself had the telltale clunkiness of a heavily armoured vehicle, and the windows were clearly bulletproof, but it still seemed borderline irresponsible to Zhai – not just for his own sake, but for Weiv's. Were they that certain of their car network's security, or of their hold over Macard? He suspected it might be a different story in Landing.

  The car swerved left into a tunnel, where they met another electronic checkpoint, and then continued down into subterranean roads lined with harsh white lights. Zhai tried to keep track of the turns they took. As far as he could tell, they swept around in a wide, descending arc. It was almost a minute before they came to a final security gate. The end of the tunnel was obviously designed as a killzone, and Zhai could see covered recesses in the walls which indicated weapons positions. It had a historic feel to it, as if they had just rolled up to the portcullis of a mighty castle whose defenders were taking aim through their arrowslits. They were just missing the cauldron of boiling oil.

  “Very thorough,” Zhai said, though he doubted that the full procedure was followed every time. More likely, they were trying to impress him.

  “Security is paramount,” Weiv said. The car pulled up, and Weiv opened the door.

  They emerged into a cavernous parking lot, the glare of fluorescent lights chasing away every shadow. Maybe two dozen other black cars were strewn across it, never closer than a few lengths from each other. A forest of square concrete pillars extended into the distance on every side.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember this,” Harod said. Zhai turned to see him clambering out of the other side of the car. “Fifty metres of granite overhead, right?”

  “Yes,” Weiv said, blinking. “You've been here before?”

  Harod chuckled. “Am I so obvious?”

  Weiv's follow-up question was interrupted by the second car, which rolled up behind them and disgorged six suit-clad secret service types. Weiv's own personal assistants, a duo of harassed-looking young men, had sat with the rest of his entourage, and they were conferring in hushed tones by a pillar a couple of metres away. Ceq cracked her neck and eyed the silent spooks. Zhai could tell what she was thinking. He was thinking it himself.