The Coalition Man

by Alec Saracen

  Zhai grimaced at the carnage on the car's screen. Deadly force was now the default response to any overt anti-government activity, including peaceful protest – though no protests were peaceful any more. ResTore's hand had been forced, and their clever information war was only so much help in the face of armed conflict. They were fighting back guerilla-style, striking hard and quickly in small groups before fleeing the cumbersome revenge aimed their way by a military that was clearly in way over its collective head. Bodies were piling up on both sides, though the rebels always seemed to evade large-scale combat.

  Thank the Twins for Salmi, Zhai thought. He suspected it would be much worse without her invisible interventions on the rebels' side.

  “Any word from Ceq?” he asked Sam, who was intent on his watch, as usual. It struck Zhai that he never had any idea exactly what Sam was up to. It looked productive and helpful, whatever it was, but for all Zhai knew he could have been writing poetry or leaking Coalition secrets to the Republic.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Zhai nodded. He'd expected no more. He was prepared to swallow his pride and ask Grey Hawk for Thier's location instead of Ceq, who had sent a brief missive reporting the mission's success before going dark. It was gnawing at him that she was in the company of Grey Hawk and Thier, both of whom were probably trying their level best to turn Ceq further against him. He harboured vague notions of winning Ceq back somehow, but deep down he knew that she'd rejected the real Zhai, shorn of all his masks and outer layers. He'd lost her for good.

  “Sam,” he said suddenly. His assistant glanced up, wary of his tone. “You always knew about Naro, didn't you? Before you ever met me?”

  His assistant looked back at him levelly. He and Ceq weren't exactly close, but they seemed to get on fine. Did he know how Ceq had reacted?

  “Of course I did.”

  “And it never put you off?”

  Sam, looking faintly embarrassed, stared down at his watch. “No,” he said. “If anything, it was the other way round.”

  “How so?”

  Sam sighed and looked up again, this time making rare full eye contact. “Because I respected what you did. You saved the Coalition. If Naro had been handled wrong, other planets would have seceded. The whole thing could have collapsed. The Coalition. Not only did you prevent that, but you turned it into a political win for the Solids...” He shrugged. “I wanted to work for that man.”

  Zhai grunted. “A man who covered up mass child abduction.”

  “A man who rescued the most important political organisation the human race has ever produced,” Sam said sharply, with more than a shade of the ideologue in his voice. “Boss, we both know that without the Coalition, the human race is doomed, and without the Consolidationists, the Coalition is doomed. You saved them both, and we all owe you for it. Least I can do to thank you is manage your emails.”

  Zhai smiled, but the brightness in the young man's eyes chilled him. When he watched old footage of himself on Naro, vehemently defending the honour of the Coalition, he saw that same passionate glint in his own eyes, a record of a spark that had long since faded away. Zhai didn't like the notion that he was a political hero, because he damn well knew better. Sam's stark view of the Coalition and the Consolidationists was exactly the same reductive bullshit Zhai had once believed and parroted, and what good had come of that? What might Sam do in the name of the Coalition and the Solids if given the chance?

  Trying to put off the inevitable, he gazed out of the window as they approached the city. Once again, the only other cars on the road were on their way out of Landing. The checkpoints were abandoned or destroyed. Chang had apparently redeployed every available soldier to Landing, which struck Zhai as a subtly clever move. If he was afraid of a military coup – which he should be – ensuring that only his personal troops were in the capital was a good way to protect himself.

  That was only assumption. The truth of who was in command of what was beyond Zhai. His best guess was that Chang was dictating the highest levels of strategy and that Cadmer and Hactaur were operating on a more detailed level, obeying instructions while rattling their sabres at one another. Was the mass military presence on the ground in Landing Cadmer's response to Hactaur's show of force with the flyover last night? One explanation among many. Whatever power struggles were raging in Chang's cabinet, Zhai could only draw conclusions from the observed effects, like trying to analyse a stone dropped into a pond by the rippling of the water. Except it was a big fucking pond, and there were hundreds of stones, and he could hear the rumbling of the landslide.

  “Ceq's responded,” Sam said, without looking up. “We've got their location.”

  “About time,” Zhai said, though he was rather relieved that Ceq had spared him having to ask Grey Hawk. The Liberator had enough power over him already. “Let's go.”

  Their navigation software took them the long way round, circling the outskirts of Landing and working its way slowly inwards, street by street and corner by corner. Entire multi-block areas were now out of bounds, blocked off by tanks and patrolled by armoured troops, and even outside those areas in lockdown, VTOLs swept the sky. Thick cloud cover had rolled in over the morning to create a bulging grey backdrop to the day, and the air was stickier than ever. It was a perfect atmosphere to amplify any itch or irritation, both literally and metaphorically. Zhai could imagine the nervy, trigger-happy conditions among the government troops all too well.

  Even when driving only in designated 'safe zones', Zhai still heard occasional bursts of gunfire and explosions, and from time to time a few VTOLs would swoop down to cover some hotspot of rebel activity. At one point, he saw one lurch out from between two buildings, trailing smoke and flying erratically, and wobble off northwards as four more took its place. A thin coat of dust had settled over the city since the rain, testament to the ongoing destruction.

  As long as Cadmer and Hactaur were nominally on the same side, Zhai reflected, ResTore stood no chance. In a one on one fight with the government, even with Liberators on their side, they would be crushed. If the situation suddenly morphed into a four-way free-for-all, that was a different story.

  He mentally ranked the combatants. As far as he could see, it went Hactaurs-ResTore-Cadmer-Chang. Still, part of him wondered if Thier and ResTore might just be a risk worth taking. Thier was practically a madman and Zhai didn't even know who would run the planet if he walked his talk and refused executive power, but he had a feeling that a military government, even a temporary one, was becoming a more and more dangerous proposition as the violence intensified. Whatever government wound up in power, the issue was far from settled.

  Thier's latest holdout was a derelict gym not far from the evacuation towers, part of a small business park that looked like it had been mid-redevelopment for at least a decade. The area was devoid of guards or obvious ResTore troops, no doubt so that the government had no inkling of his location, but Zhai knew he would have a dozen hidden guns trained on him as soon as he stepped out of the car.

  “Boss,” Sam said, as the car rolled into the open parking lot, “I should stay in the car and set it to just drive around the city. Looks less suspicious than staying here.”

  Zhai glanced sideways at his assistant. “Really?”

  Sam nodded earnestly. “Can't be too careful. Don't worry, I'll stay nearby, ready to pick you up ASAP. I think it's safer this way. If they've tracked the car, it's only me and not you who's at risk.”

  “All right,” Zhai said, after a moment's thought. Going in alone would make him look more selfless to Thier, he reasoned, which could only be a good thing. He opened the door. “Thanks, Sam. Stay safe.”

  Sam flashed a tight smile his way before turning his attention back to his watch. “You too, boss.”

  The car pulled away as Zhai got out, leaving him alone in the parking lot. He hurried over to the gymnasium, painfully conscious that Thier could have him shot at any moment if the mood took him, but he reached the door intact. Ceq met h
im in the gloomy, dilapidated reception area, still wearing her body armour. She looked angry, which meant she was worried about him.

  “You shouldn't have come out here without me,” she hissed, as she ushered Zhai through a set of double doors and into a narrow corridor. Armed guards were stationed at every corner, their only uniform seeming to the looks of distrust they gave him.

  “I survived, didn't I?” Zhai replied.

  “This is a war zone!”

  “This whole planet is going to be a war zone before long. I'm not safe anywhere.”

  “Twins,” Ceq said, shaking her head. “Don't make me risk my neck if you're just going to walk into danger as soon as I'm gone.”

  “You're free to quit any time.”

  “Don't tempt me,” Ceq muttered. She barged through another door, which led into what was obviously a converted changing room. It was now a makeshift command centre. Thier was sitting in what looked like a ripped-out car seat, his face swollen and bruised and one of his lower legs in a thick cast, radiating an immense physical and emotional exhaustion. He was the motionless centre of a hive of activity. There were maybe fifteen people in the room who were constantly forming knots and talking in low, urgent voices, tapping away at their watches, and clustering around a set of projected feeds, Roshi Comet and TruthTeller among them. They moved from one activity to another with a mechanical regularity that reminded Zhai of the clockwork soldiers of the great clock at Alleker University. Thier's wife, Professor Something-Or-Other, was nowhere to be seen. Zhai doubted she was even in Landing. All the universities had suspended teaching days ago, and Thier struck him as the kind of man who would rather suffer alone than risk his family.

  Zhai respected that about him, and as Thier looked up at him with weary eyes, swollen to slits by the beating he'd taken, Zhai couldn't help but admire the man's fortitude. As dangerous as his brand of fanaticism was, nobody could accuse Thier of cowardice – except Thier himself, and he had a strange definition of it. He might baulk at the idea of taking power, but Zhai had a feeling that Thier would throw himself under a tank or self-immolate if it would help his cause. The man had that kind of bravery that bordered on insanity.

  “Ambassador,” he said. His throat was red and raw, and his voice scraped painfully from his lips. “What do you want now?”

  “No room for well-wishers?” Zhai said, smiling. The work in the room hadn't stopped but had definitely slowed, and every eye occasionally shot him that same look of suspicion, as if it had been issued to Thier's inner circle as standard equipment.

  Thier didn't smile back. “Spare me the pleasantries. I'm in no mood.”

  Evidently, Zhai thought. “I was hoping we could talk.”

  “There's nothing more to say.”

  “There's always something more to say, Doctor Thier. My position is unchanged. I want to help you.”

  Thier looked at him for several seconds, and once again Zhai felt like a sounding pole was being cautiously lowered into his mind.

  “I don't doubt that, Ambassador,” he said. The words sounded like they were being wrung from him. “I'm told Ceq's help was invaluable in my rescue. I'm very grateful to her for risking her life to save mine, and to you for risking your personal bodyguard. I'm in your debt. Is this what you want to hear?”

  “I don't want gratitude,” Zhai said, “and this isn't about debt. What I want to hear is something along the lines of, I don't know, 'I acknowledge that our political goals are the same despite our very different reasons for pursuing those goals, and I accept that cooperation, while distasteful, is the best way to secure our mutual aims'. Something like that. I'm sure you wouldn't believe me if I told you that, politics aside, I'd rather you came out this alive, so I won't bother. What I know you will believe is that I'm ruthlessly committed to political gain. I placed my bodyguard and, by extension, myself in danger to help free you. I hope that proves to you just how politically beneficial your survival is to me.”

  “Please don't tell me what I believe, Ambassador,” Thier said, with a sudden edge to his voice.

  Zhai raised his hands in apology. “A poor choice of words. The point stands, though. I've taken risks I didn't have to take, all in the service of keeping you alive and in charge of ResTore. Do you dispute that?”

  Another of Thier's glacial stares, somehow concentrated by the narrow sliver of visible eye, blasted away at Zhai like a polar gale. “No. That is a fact.”

  “Then please, let me help you. Work with me.”

  “First, tell me the truth,” Thier said. Ceq, who had been prowling restlessly around the room, came to a stop behind Thier and looked straight at Zhai, wordlessly issuing him a challenge. “Pro-independence, anti-Coalition parties aren't hard to find on Tor. You're colluding with others. We're not your only option.” Zhai opened his mouth, and Thier raised a hand. “This is all beyond doubt already. Tell me: if you were forced to make a choice between your best alternate option and ResTore, if we are the last two standing in the war for Tor's future, who would you pick? Us or them?”

  Zhai didn't hesitate. “Them.”

  Thier shook his head slowly. “You're a difficult man to understand, Ambassador. Even your honesty feels like it serves a greater lie. Maybe you told me that because you thought it would make me respect your truthfulness, sacrificing a lesser piece in exchange for a stronger position on the board – and maybe it was just the truth, as requested. But you understand my concern, Ambassador. How I can trust anything you say or do? How can I know that there are no more layers of deception to peel away? Maybe risking your life for me is noble, and maybe it's self-serving in the most insidious way. Where does the act end and the truth begin? How can I know, Ambassador? How can I know?”

  Zhai listened to Thier's spiel with mounting irritation. “What do you want from me?” he said. “Platitudes? I don't have an answer for you. Yes, you're not my first choice, but I'm hedging my bets. My help is genuine. Take it or leave it.”

  “What right do you have to use the word 'genuine'?” Thier said.

  Zhai's eyes narrowed. His patience, which had yet to recover fully from the battering it had suffered at the dinner party the night before, splintered.

  “To hell with this,” he snapped. “Ceq, let's go.” He turned on his heel and was almost at the door when Thier called after him.

  “Ambassador! I apologise. That was – unnecessary.”

  Zhai paused at the threshold, then turned back. The room had gone very quiet.

  “Accepted,” Zhai said. Thier nodded, with what looked like real remorse in his eyes. “But how can I be sure that's a real apology, Doctor Thier? Maybe you're sacrificing a piece for position.”

  Thier let out a deep, heartfelt sigh. He really did look utterly drained, and Zhai wondered if he'd slept at all since his rescue. He didn't look like he had.

  “I take your point, Ambassador,” he said. He ran a hand down his face as he spoke, rendering the words barely audible. “I take your point.”

  “Let me help you,” Zhai said, after a moment. “That's all I ask. Work with me until I can't help you any more. Even the Liberators are willing to do that much, and they're Liberators.”

  “Yes, you have a penchant for strange alliances, don't you?”

  “There's nothing strange about them.”

  “There we differ, I think.”

  “Achieving mutual goals by cooperating–”

  “–with your ideological enemy,” Thier finished. “Perhaps that comes naturally to you, Ambassador. Not to me. Allies are allies, enemies are enemies. You'd have me believe you're neither, and both at once.”

  “That's the world we live in,” Zhai said. “If we want to survive it, we have to be flexible.”

  “And bend to its whims. Compromise. Corrode our ideals in the name of results. I know what you're saying, Ambassador, and I don't like a word of it.”

  “With respect, Doctor Thier, it doesn't matter what you like.”

  “No,” Thier said quietly. “I
suppose it doesn't.”

  Someone had muted the news feeds. The only sound was the whirring of a small printer unit in the corner, which was churning out stacks of ResTore flyers.

  Thier looked down at his hands, which were clasped in his lap. Zhai could see his right index finger uncontrollably tapping the back of his left hand, a tic he'd never seen before. It wasn't something he'd have overlooked.

  “I accept your offer of help, Ambassador,” he said quietly, without looking up. “We can work together, for the moment.”

  Zhai let out a long, slow breath. A certain tension seemed to bleed out of the room as fifteen people who had been still as the grave allowed themselves to move once more.

  “Thank you,” he said. Thier looked up with weary, defeated eyes, and Zhai felt a stab of guilt. He had no desire to force Thier into compromising his ideals, as misguided as they were. It felt somehow like vandalism. Thier was something rare, a psychological work of art that Zhai would rather observe at a respectful distance rather than interfere with, but that line had long since been crossed.

  “You have what you want,” Thier said, in a low, bitter voice. “Now get out of town, for both our sakes.”

  Zhai had never had a welcome to wear out, but he knew when to make an exit. He considered mentioning Salmi's aid to ResTore, but his instincts told him not to surrender that information unless he had to. If Thier had turned him down flat, he'd have considered it. “We'll talk later,” he said. “Until then.”

  Thier twitched a hand in acknowledgement. Zhai gave him one last look, hoping it would say everything – or anything – that his tongue couldn't. Then he turned, and left, with Ceq padding after him and thirty eyes boring into his back.

  “Where's Grey Hawk?” he said, after they turned the first corner. From his watch, he sent a message to Sam, recalling him and the car.