by Alec Saracen
“The scene was your choice, then?” Zhai said. Alarm bells were not yet ringing, but the campanists were limbering up. He could see the course of the conversation laid out like a map, and he didn't like where it led. “A particular interest of yours?”
Chang stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pale grey jacket. The movement brought the collar of his shirt down far enough for Zhai to see a telltale square strip of slightly discoloured skin on Chang's neck. He'd been using stim-patches, which meant he probably hadn't slept since Zhai's arrival. “It should be an interest of everyone's.”
“Bloody stupid war,” Zhai said, trying to draw more out of Chang. If he wanted to play Diplomacy By Heavy-Handed Symbolism, he would find a keen opponent in Zhai. “Two ancient empires smashing themselves to pieces, and for what? Ideals which they compromised, wealth which they squandered, land which they devastated.”
“Power,” Chang said. “Security. Chetis virtually ruled Home until the Red Days. Volma was never the same again. Can you put a price on hegemony?”
Zhai gazed up at the shattered ruins of Calce, the final and arguably greatest disaster of a war overflowing with worthy competitors. “Eighty million lives should cover it,” he said.
As he said it, he realised that he'd made a tactical mistake, and so did Chang.
“I guess the Coalition knows all about paying its way with blood,” the governor said. His tone was changing, easygoing informality fading fast. “Even before Megereth, before the World War. How much you've changed over the centuries, and how much you've stayed the same! From a pack of old wizards in a tower in the mountains to an alliance of twenty planets, and you're still calling yourselves 'the Coalition for the Defence of Humankind'. Bullshit.”
Zhai blinked at the curse, which Chang had delivered in accented Qienchuan rather than Chetic. He had carelessly allowed Chang to manoeuvre him into the awkward position of either defending the historical honour of the Coalition or conceding the argument, neither of which appealed to him. With a flash of the Zhai of thirty years ago who had defied the baying mob from the balcony of the Naro embassy, he sprang to the Coalition's defence.
“An arrogant name,” he said, “but a true one. It was the Coalition which trained the Twins. It was the Coalition which fought and died with them at Megereth.”
“And it was the Coalition which tried to rule the world from behind the scenes for a thousand years.”
“And if it had disbanded, and the V-able had become nothing more than tools of states? The Red Days would have been the end of the line for humanity. The Red One would have wiped us out without the Coalition to lead the defence.”
“'Leading the defence',” Chang mused. “Strange way to put it. The Coalition knew the Red One was returning for years, and they kept it secret. Only the Low People knew ahead of time, and if the Coalition hadn't needed their foundries for the Evacuation, they wouldn't have been told either. You know, it's almost as if the Coalition saw their opportunity to reestablish themselves as the masters of humanity, and took it. They saved the human race... selfishly.”
“Is the Second Separation selfishness to you?” Zhai said. “95% of all V-able across the galaxy died from the sheer metaphysical shock of what the Coalition did at Megereth. I'd call that self-sacrifice. The FPA profited handsomely from it.”
Chang didn't reply for a moment. He turned to Zhai, tearing his eyes away from his horrible painting at last. He looked a different man, as if the real Chang had been unsheathed. “There are some who believe that the death of the V-able was an unintended side-effect of the Second Separation. That the Coalition didn't see it coming.”
“It was what happened the last time,” Zhai said. “The First Separation had the same effect. They were ripping our universe further away from the Void. They knew their own lives were the cost.”
“Not the only cost,” Chang said. “You forget Kadera. Two billion Kaderans, the blood price for the separation. Unwillingly sacrificed so that the rest of us would live.”
Zhai knew the exact party line for that one. He'd argued both sides of it at Alleker's Forum of Ideas during his university years, but his own position was firm. Kadera had been necessary.
“Evacuating all of Home was impossible, even with the Low People's help,” he said, then paused, suddenly aware that he was repeating his old argument word for word thirty-six years later. “By every metric, Kadera was the most expendable continent. Economically backwards, disease-ravaged, war-torn. It was terrible, but necessary. It saved the rest of us.”
“Now there's the Coalition I know,” Chang said. His eyes had turned to flint. “Doing unspeakable things because they've convinced themselves they have to. What if the Coalition had revealed the Red One's return before it happened? United Home against it? They had already scouted enough worlds to support the entire global population, and with all industry working on the prefab cities, the infrastructure would have been there.”
“Time,” Zhai said. “There wasn't time.”
Chang shook his head. “I don't believe that. There's always a way. Kadera was left behind as the blood sacrifice deliberately. The Coalition made its calculations, and they picked those two billion – two thousand thousand thousand people – to die.”
Zhai's throat was dry. “Even if you're right, what if the Evacuation had been completed? How would we have defeated the Red One without the Kaderan sacrifice? Home would still have burned, and the colonies too, and we'd have had no way to stop it. What the Coalition did at Megereth was the only way.”
“You're very sure of that,” Chang said. “But we're no experts on the Void. Who's to say there wasn't another out?”
“If there was, they would have found it.”
“Would they? Or were the Coalition arrogant enough to believe they had the only answer, and two billion Kaderans paid the price?”
The question hovered like a bird of prey riding a thermal. Abruptly, Chang turned and stalked over to his desk, almost flinging himself into his chair. Rather than let himself be led around, Zhai remained standing, looking up at the devastation of Calce and trying to compose himself. Defending the Coalition's record was a thankless task even for a true fanatic, which Zhai wasn't. He should have tried harder to derail Chang's line of attack and pushed to disassociate himself from the Coalition and Chang from the Alliance. He should have made them just two men, shorn of symbolism and historical baggage – but he hadn't.
The one part of the painting which Zhai could find no fault with was the sun. It had a tangible weight to it, seeming to sink lower and lower every time he looked, as if sagging under the strain of the terrible war it had illuminated for so many years. Zhai thought of that same sun now, bloated, bloody, and dying, the final casualty of the Red Days. The Red One's parting shot. He had seen footage from the ruined, lifeless surface of Home, whose sky was dominated now by the aged sun's swollen mass. It had always been a faint dream of his to visit one day, wrapped in a pressure suit, and set foot on humanity's ancestral world, just to be there for one day. Just to go home.
Right, he thought. New plan.
He turned Chang's way and headed to the desk, ignored the chairs in front of it, and instead went to the other side of the room and started examining the painting furthest from the door. It depicted – what else? – Bhumem Lappha's inauguration as the first president of the Free Planetary Alliance on a cold Morette winter day.
“This is an old debate, Governor,” Zhai said. “The Coalition has done terrible things, and we can only hope they were necessary. I suppose we'll never know.”
Chang didn't reply. Zhai looked over to see him staring at the backs of his hands, which were laid flat on his desk. Zhai's appraisal of Chang was shifting from moment to moment. What did he want? Just political survival? His arguments against the Coalition sounded real enough, but nothing was certain. Chang was lying somehow, hiding his true intentions. He had identified a nerve in Zhai and struck it hard. Though neither of them had mentioned Naro, its spectre tainte
d the atmosphere, like ink swirling through clear water. That was the real purpose of bringing up Kadera and the Second Separation. It was Naro writ large. Dark deeds in the name of a greater good.
“We've got better things to do than argue about the past,” Chang said at last. “What's done is done. Let's argue about the future instead. But there's one lesson I've learned from my history, Ambassador. The Coalition always wins.”
That was the moment Zhai’s alarm bells started clanging, a whole cathedral of them. He looked guardedly at Chang. It could have been his imagination, but he fancied that a rare flash of honesty passed between them. Chang had tipped his hand, and Zhai belatedly saw the stakes he was playing for: survival. Not ideals, or pragmatism, or any real personal gain. Chang was fighting for his life.
And the Coalition could save him.
“So it seems,” Zhai said. This was what he'd feared. Chang was willing to surrender his world to the Coalition. He was pragmatic enough to sacrifice some power to keep the rest. A stupider opponent might have overreached, tried to keep Tor independent to maximise their own power, but not Chang. He was too clever, too opportunistic.
He had to go.
Chang's gaze dropped back to his hands, motionless on the desk. “Tomorrow, I'll address Tor, and declare independence. And then, Ambassador, Tor will begin its journey towards joining the Coalition.”
Zhai stayed silent. What was there to say?
He hadn't failed, not yet. Chang was one man, and the levers of worlds required more hands than his alone. With his decision, the governor had made powerful enemies. Aliven Cadmer and Parys Hactaur were the obvious ones, both of whom would be stripped of power by Torian accession to the Coalition. Tor's armed forces would be turned over to central Coalition control, which Zhai suspected would not go down well with the marshals. He had potential allies there.
And, of course, there was Grigori Thier. Secession from the FPA would be popular. Retaining the same government despite independence would not be. Immediately discarding that independence to join the Coalition would be a tough sell even for a political peddler like Chang. The apparatus of any new Torian state would retain enough of the old FPA to rig any election they saw fit, so the inevitable referendum wouldn't be an obstacle – but popular resistance would. Meeting with Thier was looking increasingly vital.
All this flashed through his mind in a heartbeat, political plans and contingencies and roadmaps to the new paradigm unfolding into the distance all around him. It was refreshing, in a way. His mission had suddenly been clarified, as if he'd been fiddling with a telescope and had finally focused it properly.
Chang had to go. Simple as that.
“You're invited to the announcement ceremony, of course,” Chang went on. He sounded less than enthusiastic about it. His guard had dropped a fraction. Without quite knowing how he knew, Zhai recognised that Chang had agonised for hours over his decision.
Chang was a survivor, but perhaps he also truly valued Tor's independence. Perhaps, Zhai thought, he resented the Coalition for being his best hope for keeping his job – and his life.
In a flash, a dozen pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in Zhai's mind. For all Chang's physical strength, he was weak. Chang was not without principles. They just weren't strong enough.
He believed in Tor. He had grown up here, after all, far from the Alliance core worlds which gave him his orders. The only thing stopping him from proudly guiding Tor to its independence was that weakness. The urge to survive at all costs. Independence was dangerous, not just to Tor but to Chang. He would have enemies on all sides. Furious Alliance loyalists, agitators who saw him as the old regime personified, avaricious Coalition schemers, internal backstabbers. Far safer to seek protection under the aegis of the Coalition. At the very worst, that second-hand trickle of power and legitimacy would save him from being strung up from a lamppost. Coalition coups were far more measured affairs. They involved a better class of necktie.
Chang would sacrifice Torian independence to save his own hide, and he knew it. That weakness undercut all his strength. Tall, athletic, muscular, holding the power of life and death over an entire planet, and weak. Zhai could see it in his eyes, now that he knew what he was looking for. Frailty. Vulnerability. Guilt. Fear.
They made him a dangerous man. He had everything to lose.
Zhai inclined his head. “Thank you, Governor. Or,” he added, watching for the subtle answer of Chang's eyes, “should I say Mr President?”
Chang laughed, almost under his breath. The idea appealed to him, Zhai could tell that, but it almost sickened him at the same time. President Chang was no great statesman. He was just another lackey of another higher power. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”
Zhai crossed over to his desk and stood in front of it. Chang rose, seeming smaller now, and shook Zhai's proffered hand.
“Congratulations on your independence, Governor Chang,” Zhai said formally. And I'm going to bring you down, he didn’t say.
“Thank you,” Chang said. “May it be the first moment in a long and beneficial alliance.” I know, his eyes replied. Do your worst.
13
It was Tor's independence day.
Everyone knew it. The giant building-mounted screens all over Macard had been blaring about Chang's 'mystery' announcement all morning – a critical moment in the history of our great planet seemed to be the party line, and Grey Hawk had heard the exact phrase a dozen times now. The illegal channels were buzzing with talk. TruthTeller was cautious, painting Torian independence as risky but a reasonable response to a dire situation. Roshi Comet, meanwhile, was dancing on the grave of the FPA. His leitmotif of the day was an off-key trombone version of Advance, Our Free Alliance.
FreeSpeak was exploding with talk about the impending declaration and its implications. Some were convinced that Tor was joining the Coalition. A few brave prophets claimed it was joining the Confederation. Others, fearing reprisal, refused to believe the Alliance was truly dead. Passions flared up into textual shouting matches and flame wars. Tor was saved. Tor was doomed. Tor would never be the same again. Tor would never change.
Roshi Comet was running a constant counter on his feed, ticking down second by second towards Chang's scheduled speech. A cartoonish lit fuse crawled towards a round bomb labelled 'FPA'. Grey Hawk kept Roshi Comet as a tiny window in one corner of her vision, most of which was occupied by sixteen different feeds from various remote cameras she had planted on buildings all around the wide, tree-lined plaza where Chang was delivering his address. A temporary stage had been constructed overnight at one end of the square, and apart from a ten-metre exclusion zone staffed by heavily armed police, the rest of the plaza was packed with spectators.
She had initially deployed twenty-five cameras, a third of which had been found and destroyed by government security teams. She had expected them to get at least half. The rooftops were completely inaccessible for a block around the plaza, dominated by snipers and frequently buzzed by military VTOLs. Chang's choice of venue was risky, but the government was taking precautions.
Grey Hawk had been forced into a crowded café nearby, where she was very slowly drinking hot chocolate by the front window and pretending to watch the propaganda channel on the screen overhead. Instead, she was watching her own cameras, and worrying. The government security was too tight for her to stay out of sight anywhere useful, which meant that the best she could do was react to any attack rather than outright prevent it.
I really hope your people are up to it, Chang, she thought moodily, and stirred the dregs of her lukewarm chocolate. She didn't even like the stuff any more. Something in the Liberator conversion process – the rewiring in her head, or maybe the removal of her digestive system – had seriously screwed with her taste buds.
“You all done with that?” a waitress chirruped in her ear, already reaching for Grey Hawk's cup. Instinctively, she twitched it away, and the waitress's hand froze mid-grab.
“No,” Grey Hawk said
, and smiled, hoping she hadn't done something wrong. The teenage waitress mumbled an apology and backed away, leaving Grey Hawk to wonder whether it had been the speed of her movement or some miscalculation in her smile that had spooked the girl. She wasn't used to hiding what she was. There was always a tell. Her stealth systems could fool cameras, but not people.
She was distracted by a brass fanfare and a hush on the audio feed. Governor Chang emerged onto the stage from an armoured car behind it, bounding up the steps and strutting to the podium with exaggerated confidence as the crowd – his crowd – cheered. He was playing not just to the audience but to the historians, and his cheek-to-cheek smile gave him a roguish handsomeness that would look great on the recording.
He was followed up by a few figures Grey Hawk recognised: Lipal Sarma-Phung, Jon Weiv, and lastly, Gumeigo Zhai, who was visibly sweating already in the oppressive heat. The three of them stood together at stage left. Chang was surrounding himself with tempting targets. But, Grey Hawk thought longingly just one well-aimed missile...
The audience's ecstatic reception rolled on. Torian flags and banners waved in the sun as the governor held up his hands for a silence that took twenty seconds to arrive, a twitch of annoyance at the corner of his mouth surfacing for a millisecond on Grey Hawk's zoom feed. Bet they'll edit that one out, she thought. Doubtless the crowd in the square was preselected for enthusiasm, but apparently they were too enthusiastic. The whole artificial scene was absurd to Grey Hawk's eyes, like a political rally scene in a bad movie. This wasn't what belief looked like.
“People of Tor!” Chang cried out, finally bludgeoning the crowd into silence. His face, perfectly groomed into aesthetic dishevelment, loomed large on every street corner in Macard. “The hour of destiny is at hand!”
It was going to be one of those speeches.