by Alec Saracen
This would be an excellent place to murder someone.
No assassination attempt emerged. Instead, they were conducted to an elevator, which after a long ride up deposited them in an elegant marble hall. An enormous electric chandelier hung overhead, illuminating dozens of portraits of Torian and Alliance statespeople that frowned down from the walls. Taking pride of place above a curved double stairway was an enormous painting of Nile Weaver, still the FPA president as far as Zhai knew. He wondered what odds Gael would give that someone had stabbed him in the back already. Couldn’t be too long.
The secret service stayed in the elevator, leaving the nine of them alone. Nine became seven when Weiv made a curt gesture to his assistants, who scurried off through a side door. There were no windows, Zhai noticed. He had no idea how high up they were. The tallest building in the government district was about twenty storeys, but they could be anywhere within it. Judging by the obsessive security maintained by the Torian government, they were probably exactly in the middle, protected on all sides – if they were indeed in that building.
The emptiness of it was disconcerting. The hall in which they stood seemed to be designed for a constant bustle of bureaucrats, lined as it was with doors and passageways, but it was silent. He shot a glance at Harod, who was frowning as he looked around. Harod caught his eye and shrugged. Clearly he had been here before as well, though it had presumably been less desolate then. Had they cleared out the entire building to preserve the secret of Zhai's presence? That sounded like exactly the kind of thing an Alliance government might do, especially one so concerned with information control as Tor's.
Weiv looked up from his watch. “We're expected, Ambassador. Please, follow me.” They climbed one of the twin staircases and came to a wide antechamber, its walls lined with padded seats. “I'm afraid everyone else must remain outside.”
Zhai flashed a warning glare at Ceq, who he could tell was about to object. “Naturally,” he said to Weiv. “My deputy, however, hears what I hear.”
Weiv looked sideways at Harod, who smiled back with an exaggerated unctuousness that made Zhai want to kick him. “As you wish,” he said after a moment, “but of course the final decision rests with the Governor.”
“Naturally,” Zhai said again.
The others took seats, Tetaine's creaking under him, but Ceq remained standing. She was unarmed, of course, which limited her lethality less than one might think. As the doors swung open, Zhai glanced back to see her staring after him, her face set into hard, worried lines.
Weiv led the way into the inner sanctum. It was obviously a situation room. Its off-white walls were ready to burst into life as screens at a moment's notice, though at the moment all they displayed was a long succession of emblems. The Alliance's triangular seal alternated with Tor's circular counterpart, as if the room's occupants needed reminding of their loyalties. Perhaps they did.
Dominating the room, under an array of circular white ceiling lights, was a long wooden conference table with twenty-two chairs. Six were occupied, all of them clustered down the far end. Despite the lack of people, tall jugs of water sat in a line all the way down.
At the head of the table was Cowden Chang, dressed in a simple short-sleeved white shirt which seemed chosen to emphasise his bulging biceps. To his right was a brown-skinned woman Zhai didn't recognise, presumably his Deputy Governor, and the place to his left was empty. The next two places down were occupied by Parys Hactaur and Aliven Cadmer, both in full military uniform. Persylla Domoulos and another man, white-skinned and white-haired, sat in the last two chairs.
Six pairs of eyes swivelled towards them. Instantly, Zhai felt the tension in the room. He could almost hear the echoes of arguments past. They were quiet now, but that would change.
Governor Chang stood up, revealing his imposing height. His smile radiated warmth. “Ambassador Zhai! Welcome. Please, take a seat.” He looked to Harod. “Your deputy is welcome too, of course.” Still smiling, he gestured again to the seats. Zhai took his place next to the snow-haired man, opposite Harod. Weiv filled the empty place further up the table. Domoulos, next to Harod, offered Zhai a terse little smile.
Zhai was wary of reading too much into table placements, but Domoulos being separated from Chang by the two soldiers while Weiv sat at his side was ripe for interpretation. It could be Chang signalling to Domoulos that the Alliance's star was fading – or it could all be for Zhai's benefit. Or a coincidence. Zhai added it to the political calculus metastasising in his mind.
Chang waited until Zhai was in the act of sitting down to return to his own chair. Once down, he settled back, flashed a toothy smile at the table, and folded his hands in front of him.
“I'm sure you know a few faces here,” he said to Zhai, “but I'll introduce my team. Deputy Governor Lipal Sarma-Phung.” The woman to his right nodded, confirming Zhai's initial assessment. “Our Home Affairs Minister, Jon Weiv, you've met, of course – then we have Marshal Aliven Cadmer, Chair of the Armed Forces, and Marshal Parys Hactaur, Chair of the Air and Space Forces.” Neither Hactaur nor Cadmer reacted. “Persylla Domoulos, Foreign Affairs Representative.” Domoulos half-raised one of her hands from the table in acknowledgement. “And Emuel Mockhurst, Alliance Intelligence Representative.” Ah. That was the square-jawed man with white hair, who looked gravely at Zhai with glassy green eyes. Another Morette appointment, and another seat way down the table.
Zhai swept his gaze around the cabinet like a lighthouse beacon, making equal eye contact with every one of them. “A pleasure to meet you all,” he said. “I am Ambassador Gumeigo Zhai, and this is my deputy, Harod Nouridh-Salter.” Harod gave a little wave.
“Great,” Chang said, clapping his hands together. “Now that we're all friends, to business.”
Zhai's political instincts told him that Chang's informal breeziness was a method of control. With two powerful military figures to contend with, it made sense. Being loud, cheerful, and talkative gave Chang the initiative.
“Gotta say, Ambassador, you caught us with your pants down” he said, with a grin. “Not a peep from the Coalition since the shooting started. Your blockade dropped into realspace and announced that all interstellar traffic was banned without their say-so, and...” He opened a hand and blew out his cheeks. “Nothing. It's been a brick wall ever since. Nothing in, nothing out. Until you.”
“Yes, communication has been a problem area in the past few weeks,” Zhai said. His strategy was already clear in his mind: obfuscate, let out the truth in uncertain drips and drops, and wait until he could get one-on-one with a few of them before revealing anything else. The familiar energy was already starting to crackle in his blood. This was his element. “I myself have only limited information.”
“Then tell us the basics,” Parys Hactaur said. Her voice was low, borderline husky. She had the same Torian twang as Chang and Weiv did, though somewhat more pronounced. “The war.”
Chang raised his eyebrows and tipped his head towards Hactaur, as if to say what she said.
No avoiding this one. “The Coalition appears to be winning decisively.”
“How decisively?” Hactaur demanded, at the same time as Cadmer and Domoulos started talking.
Chang held up both hands for order. “People, please! Let the ambassador speak. Do him that courtesy. People!”
The room settled down slowly, descending from boiling over to simmering. Chang, back in control, smiled apologetically at Zhai. The Governor was a difficult man to read. Every expression, word, and gesture was intentionally exaggerated, which made picking out what was true and what was false very tricky. It could be entirely fabricated, or just a few selective augmentations to his real personality. Zhai guessed the truth lay more towards the latter. Either way, nobody became an Alliance Governor without mastering the political game – and if they did, it would be a short incumbency.
“Thank you,” Zhai said. “I appreciate that you all want answers, and I will give you as many of them as I can.” An
d Chang was an idiot if he believed that. “In answer to your question, Marshal Hactaur, it appears to be extremely decisive. One-sided, in fact.”
Hactaur steepled her fingers. She wore white leather gloves, an element not shared by Cadmer's uniform. “Is the war over?”
“I'm afraid I don't know,” Zhai said, watching for a reaction. His answer had been intentionally unhelpful despite being true, and as he'd expected, the marshal didn't like that. Her nostrils flared with exasperation.
“Don't tell me what you ought to say,” she said. “Tell me what you feel.”
“Parys,” Chang said sharply. Hactaur glanced his way and reluctantly sat back. She had little patience for Zhai's slow, deliberate tactics, and Zhai had little patience for military artlessness. All the same, he smiled understandingly in reply.
“What I feel,” he said, “is that the war is effectively over.”
Chang nodded, as casually as if he'd just been told his lunch was ready. “Ambassador, in your own assessment, what is the Coalition's goal in this war, and will it be achieved?”
Zhai exhaled slowly. This was a difficult one to navigate. The Coalition's spectacular victory made joining them look too seductive. At some point he would have to undermine that image. Might as well start now. Let them fear the Coalition military but doubt their organisation.
“Bearing in mind that I can only interpret policy based on the results I see,” he lied, “and with the caveat that my interpretation may be completely incorrect – I would suggest that the goal of the war is the complete political annihilation of the Alliance.”
He expected either uproar or silence. He received the latter. A deathly stillness descended over the situation room as the information was digested and the nascent foundations of political plans and machinations were laid in seven minds. He could almost hear the gears starting to turn.
“You answered only one part of the question, Ambassador,” Domoulos said quietly. “Will the Coalition succeed in our – annihilation?”
Zhai looked down at the table. A shadow of his own fat face was reflected back at him from the waxed wood. “Yes,” he said, raising his eyes. “I believe it is beyond doubt.”
He watched their reactions. Like a complex stately dance, eyes met and parted, swivelling to new partners, exchanging significant looks and moving on, tracing invisible labyrinths in the air. Zhai was watching seven of the most powerful people on the planet preparing for a political tidal wave, and the scramble for high ground was about to begin.
Of particular note was a long look shared by Cadmer and Hactaur. What it meant, only they could say – and they might well disagree – but Zhai suspected that he had just seen a seed start to germinate. Whether its flower would be collusion or civil war was a question for better botanists than him.
Domoulos and Mockhurst, meanwhile, studiously avoided each other's eyes, which was the wrong move. It simply confirmed to Zhai that they were on the same page. They were representatives of a central government which would never again exert control over Tor, and their personal futures were decidedly murky. Mockhurst's position was stronger, assuming he had reliable underlings in the Torian intelligence community. Domoulos was on thin, thin ice.
It was the silence of seven people who knew that they would not all survive the next few months.
Chang coughed, shattering the spell. All eyes turned to him. “Thank you, Ambassador,” he said, “for your honesty. How long will the blockade last?”
“I don't know,” Zhai said.
“Every day that trade is shut down, we lose trillions,” Weiv said mournfully. Zhai was taken aback by the figure for a moment until he realised that Weiv was talking in Alliance marks rather than Republic suns. “That doesn't help anyone.”
Zhai opened his hands sympathetically. “I agree entirely. Interstellar travel will be restored as soon as possible, probably as soon as the fighting is over. The Coalition has no desire to see Tor suffer – quite the contrary.”
“Funny way of going about it,” Aliven Cadmer muttered, speaking for the first time.
Zhai looked over Mockhurst towards the marshal, who glared back from narrow eyes. “No pain, no gain, Marshal.”
“And yet it always seems to be other people's pain and the Coalition's gain,” Cadmer replied. “Tor's bleeding, Ambassador, and you're holding the bandages out of reach.”
“I don't have any to give,” Zhai said. Cadmer interested him. He seemed to care more about Tor itself than the rest of the table did, which made him dangerous. Self-interest was the easiest motive to deal with. Real belief was another matter. We've got ourselves a patriot, he thought. “The Coalition will relax these restrictions soon, I promise,” he went on. “It would be madness not to. Until then, however, Tor will have to make do, and I'm sure it's capable of standing on its own two feet.”
He was seeding the conversation with subtle hints that Tor should consider itself independent, though not so subtle that Chang could miss them. The governor was watching Zhai intently, an inquisitive look in his eye.
“Question,” he said. “Bayard must have fallen first, yes?”
“Yes,” Zhai said. In an instant, he mentally followed the unfolding line of enquiry to its inevitable conclusion. No getting out of this one either.
Chang nodded. “What is Bayard's current status?”
Lie, Zhai's instincts told him, and he followed them. But then again, they always told him to lie.
As he began to speak, it occurred to him that since he had left Megereth Station before the First Circle had approved Bayard's request to join the Coalition, he could still tell the truth in a thoroughly misleading way.
“Bayard is – well, the last I heard before leaving for Tor, they were acting independently.”
He held out a slim hope that nobody would pick up on that ambiguity. Domoulos was the one who dashed it. Even so, he had successfully avoided revealing that Bayard was now a Coalition member world.
“'Acting independently', Ambassador?” Domoulos said. She cocked her head and brushed a stray strand of hair from her brow. “Perhaps you could clarify. Has a declaration of independence from the Free Planetary Alliance been issued by Bayard?”
“It has,” Zhai admitted.
“And therefore it would be reasonable to say that the disintegration of the Free Planetary Alliance has already begun.”
Zhai paused, then conceded defeat. “It would.”
Domoulos nodded, keeping her face carefully blank. She'd already betrayed her loyalties. Nobody but true believers used the Alliance's full name unless they were being ironic. “Thank you, Ambassador.”
If she had any sense, she'd be suddenly discovering a long-lost streak of Torian patriotism. Unfortunately for her, her voice let her down. Zhai always had difficulty distinguishing the individual accents of the FPA core worlds, but as much as Domoulos was clearly trying to affect a neutral/High Summer-ish accent, she couldn't hide the Alliance lilt. She had grown up at the heart of the Alliance, and it was obvious.
Good luck, Representative, he thought. You'll need it. Especially because you've just demonstrated that your job no longer exists.
“Yes, thank you, Ambassador,” Chang said, standing up and leaning over the table. “We're very grateful that you agreed to come here at such short notice.”
And just like that, Chang had decreed that the meeting was over. Zhai had already dumped a political grenade into his lap in those few minutes, and the governor had evidently heard everything he felt was necessary to plan his initial response.
Zhai felt that he should stand as well, though he was about a foot shorter than Chang. That was the signal for everyone else around the table to rise in a chorus of chair squeaks. “Just doing my job, Governor,” he said, with a smile.
“And now it's time for us to do ours,” Chang said, glancing round the table. “You've given us a lot to think about. We'll need time for our own discussions on how to move forward.”
“Take as long as you need,” Zhai s
aid magnanimously. Though you certainly seem to be in a hurry, he thought. “Contact us when you're ready.”
Chang nodded, first to him, then to Harod. “We will.”
Zhai left the room with eyes boring into his back. As soon as the door clicked decisively shut behind them, he let out a long, slow breath.
“Twins,” Harod muttered.
Ceq looked happier now that she had eyes on Zhai again. “How'd it go, boss?”
“Save it for the car,” Zhai said shortly. There was zero chance that the room wasn't bugged. “Where are Fleischer and Tetaine?”
“Our car just arrived,” Sam said, without looking up from his watch. “They're checking it out.”
“Good,” Zhai said, as the antechamber's other doors opened to reveal a couple of the spooks from the parking lot. “Let's get to the embassy.”
That was the last word spoken until they stepped out of the elevator, deep underground once again. Zhai could feel the grey numbness of mental fatigue slowly pooling in his brain. He spent the elevator ride staring blankly at a single shred of lint on the shoulder of Harod's jacket.
As Sam had promised, their car was waiting, a discreet dark green model with opaque windows. Tetaine and Fleischer were waiting for them inside. As soon as the doors slid shut behind them, Fleischer held up a hand, eyes fixed on her watch.
“We're secure,” she said, after a few seconds.
Zhai waited until the secret service men stepped back, then slumped in his seat. Between the situation room and the car, the adrenalin rush of the meeting had rolled back like a time-lapse video of the tide going out, taking most of his energy with it.
“Fucking hell,” he said.
Harod grunted in agreement. “That was brutal.”
Zhai shook his head wearily. “I just killed two or three people. Not literally, Ceq.” Ceq, who had been about to ask, shut her mouth. “Hell, maybe more. Did you see the looks they were giving each other?”