by Alec Saracen
Lho watched him for several seconds. “How long?”
“Until it's safe. Then come straight back, if you want. Just leave until then. Please?”
“Not one day longer than I have to,” Lho said fiercely. “Do you hear me, Gumeigo? I'll be back.”
“I hear you,” Zhai said, with obvious relief. He gave Lho a grateful, melancholy little smile. “Thank you, Lho. For everything.”
Lho inclined her little head, and Zhai turned his attention to the rest of his audience.
“I apologise for putting you all through this. This mission was a shoestring operation from the start, and despite the circumstances, not one of you has disappointed. You’re consummate professionals, and I was extraordinarily lucky to have you.” Zhai broke off, clearly struggling to keep his composure. “I wish you nothing but the best,” he went on, his voice growing hoarse. “There are troubled times coming, and it's people like you who will see the human race safely through them. My time is over, but yours is just beginning. It's been a privilege. Thank you all.”
He stepped back to signal that he was done. The staff seemed too shellshocked to react, so Grey Hawk took matters into her own hands and began to clap. Zhai turned to her, his expression at first severe, as if he thought she was mocking him, but it soon dawned on him that her approval was genuine. He gave a small bow of thanks.
The others joined in, even Nouridh-Salter, still looking like he'd just been punched in the gut. In the middle of it all, Zhai stood still, with tears in his eyes.
28
The exodus from the embassy was swift. Within four hours of his bombshell, the packing was done, and the cars set out for the space elevator.
At the terminal, the goodbyes seemed to take an age. Umbiba offered a gruff handshake, the closest thing to a breach in professionalism the steadfast soldier had ever shown him. Tetaine promised to send Zhai regular news digests on the Coalition's internal politics, and demanded to be kept up to date on what was happening on Tor. Fleischer tried to apologise for proving the Coalition had been behind the attack on Landing, and conspiratorially whispered in his ear that she’d ‘forgotten’ to clean out some of the Coalition’s Torian accounts.
Lho refused to say goodbye. “It's not goodbye,” she kept insisting, no matter what he said. In the end, Zhai agreed, and waved her off with an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. She would not return to the Coalition with the rest of them, instead planning to wait in safety on the other end of the space elevator. Nothing Zhai could say would sway her on that either.
At last it was Harod's turn. Outside the terminal's windows, the rain was lashing down harder than ever, making an indecipherable blur of Macard’s night lights, and as Harod began to speak, a peal of thunder interrupted him.
“Well,” Harod said, as the thunder faded. “Here we are.”
“Here we are,” Zhai echoed. Under the flat fluorescence of the terminal lights, Harod looked older than ever, drained and sallow.
“Sure I can't convince you to change your mind?”
“I am.”
“You want to go through with this.”
“I do.”
“You can still call it off.”
“I know,” Zhai said.
He watched the last spark of hope in Harod's sunken eyes fade.
“You always were a bloody idiot, you know that? Even at Alleker.”
Zhai chuckled. “I can't say I disagree.”
“Survive this,” Harod demanded. “This isn't going to be the last time I see your face.”
“Is that an order?”
“Something like that.” Harod drew himself up. “I am technically the ambassador now.”
Zhai smiled. “I'll do my best, then, Ambassador.”
Harod tried to smile back, but his lips couldn't quite manage it. A sudden expression of anguished doubt came over his face, and he seized Zhai in a crushing bear hug.
“Twins, I wish I could do the same,” he said into Zhai's ear. “I just can't do it, Zhai. I can't.”
“I know,” Zhai said truthfully.
They pulled apart then, and Harod picked up his suitcase.
“Bet we'll meet again,” he said.
Zhai felt a hard lump swell up in his throat, and a heat behind his eyes. “How much?”
“Let's just say – bragging rights.”
“You're on.”
Harod extended his free hand, and Zhai shook it. His eyes met Harod's once more. Then they parted, and Harod strode away at pace, trailing the rest of the embassy behind him like frozen chunks bobbing in the wake of an icebreaker.
As Zhai stood watching them go, he saw Lho look back. At this distance, with his eyes still recovering from the flash, he couldn't see her expression. He didn't need to.
When they had gone, he stayed standing there for a while, letting the crackling terminal announcements wash over him. Both Ceq and Sam had the sense not to say a word. At last, he turned away, and headed back to the car.
He felt like something within him had been carved out and hauled away, leaving behind a gaping empty space where it had been. With that came a certain clarity, as if some old congestion had finally been cleared away, suddenly leaving startling breathing room. It felt good.
The rain intensified further still on the way back to the embassy. Other cars were indistinct blurs of lights, flashes in the dark. Zhai watched them with a detached lightness of thought. He had once cut the ribbon on some expensive new mining operation or other on a moon of Lao Dao, where the gravity had been less than a third of standard, and that ballooning sense of weightlessness was his closest analogy to how he felt now. Back then, it had been disappointing to return to his usual elephantine self. He’d almost considered trying to lose weight.
Without warning, the car slowed, then stopped. It started up again, inching along feet behind another car. Zhai stirred, looking around in confusion. They had run into traffic, which shouldn't have been possible on Macard's tightly controlled road network.
Unless someone had set up roadblocks.
“What the hell is this?” he muttered, craning his neck to see down a street which had been blocked off by two nose-to-nose police cars. Emergency lights flashed a couple of hundred metres further down, and VTOLs hung overhead like hungry vultures. The traffic crawled along, even the alternate routes thoroughly congested, and took them out of sight.
“Something big,” Grey Hawk said. “Try the news.”
Sam flicked the car screen onto TruthTeller's feed and dialled up the volume.
“–from the incident, which has not yet been reported through government channels. Our viewers are warned that the footage may be disturbing,” TruthTeller said, and then in a rare moment of editorialising, added: “Though it seems to me that all our footage is disturbing these days.”
The video they showed was shakily shot from an apartment window a few floors above the incident, the image blurred by the rain. An official-looking black car had skidded off the road and broken the spine of a street light, the remains of which lay sparking in the gutter. Something else had taken a huge bite out of one side of the car, a smoking hole framed by jagged shards of broken metal.
“Explosive,” Grey Hawk said. “High-powered grenade launcher, at a guess. That was an armoured car.”
Zhai glanced up. A discreet armoured car meant VIPs. “You're sure?”
“Definitely.”
Most of the car's windows had been shattered, though one was still intact. As the camera zoomed in, Zhai could see spider-web cracks radiating out from where bullets had been deflected away. The whole scene was strobe-lit in red and blue by the emergency vehicles which had pulled up alongside, forming a protective circle around the stricken car, and as Zhai watched, hurrying paramedics hauled someone from the wreckage. They were obviously dead, their white shirt stained almost entirely crimson by blood.
Their face came into the light, and just before someone threw a blanket across her face, Zhai recognised Lipal Sarma-Phung, her li
feless eyes staring up into the pouring rain.
“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “Sarma-Phung.”
“That was a hit,” Grey Hawk said. Ceq leaned closer, squinting, her face right next to the screen. “Targeted assassination, clear as day.”
The medics were pulling out other bodies now, all of whom looked like security personnel. As the first one was dragged free, someone had the presence of mind to erect a portable security shroud over the car, blurring the air and hiding it from the camera.
“We have no confirmation, but this video appears to show that Vice-President Lipal Sarma-Phung is dead,” TruthTeller said. The footage looped back to the start. “The attack on her car occurred approximately twelve minutes ago, and we await further details. Witnesses reported hearing an explosion followed by sustained gunfire–”
Zhai shook his head. “Twins. This is bad. It could have been anyone. ResTore survivors, Chang, Cadmer, Hactaur, Peck...” He glanced at Grey Hawk. “Hell, I'd have suspected Liberators if the last one on the planet wasn't sitting next to me.”
“I could ask Violet Hactaur,” Sam suggested.
“Good idea. I'll do it myself.” Zhai brought up his watch and sent an urgent encrypted message Violet's way. His last five had gone unanswered. Without her, he had no idea what was happening with the Hactaur coup. For all he knew, Chang could have discovered their plot and arrested or executed the lot of them in the days since the independence celebrations. If he hadn't ordered Sarma-Phung's death, then Violet and the rest of the intelligence service had a lot to answer for. The window of opportunity for the Hactaurs was likely going to be very small indeed.
Whatever Salmi was doing, Zhai found he trusted her.
The embassy felt utterly empty when they returned. It was a dead office, its political lifeblood stilled, leaving it cold and tomblike. That evening, Zhai found it difficult not to speak in hushed tones.
The weather hid the space elevator from view. All Zhai could see from the windows now were smears of light behind a solid sheet of water. There was nothing to do but wait for the official channels to report Sarma-Phung's death, or for Violet to respond. Neither seemed forthcoming.
Time passed. The four of them exchanged few words. Ceq spent most of her time sat cross-legged in the middle of a long couch, her eyes closed, tapping her fingers on her knees in time to the music only she could hear. Grey Hawk stood at the window, occasionally thrown into sharp relief by a flicker of lightning in the clouds, her livid burns visible even through the gel packs.
Sam sat by Zhai, for once with nothing to attend to on his watch.
“Boss,” he said, after a time.
Zhai, who had been chasing the same thoughts in circles in his head for half an hour, glanced at him. “Yes?”
“Do you really feel responsible for Landing?”
Zhai studied the young man's serious face, noting the anxious lines around his jaw. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“Even though it was Peck?”
“It wasn't just Peck.” Zhai saw that wouldn’t be enough for Sam, and sighed. “You can't just blame individuals. She was following orders. Insane orders that she should have refused, but we can't blame her and her alone. But I won't just lay it on the Devvies and the Revvies and wash my hands of it. We're all playing the same game, and it was the game that hit Landing. Peck may have detonated the bomb, but maybe...” Zhai trailed off, staring at the screen. TruthTeller was playing live footage of Landing in ruins. Firefighters and masked, helmeted rescuers were picking through rubble, searching for wounded survivors they all knew were already dead. “Maybe I'm just as guilty as her.”
“No, you're not, boss,” Sam said firmly. “How can you say that?”
“Because I played my part. I helped keep the Devvies out of power. I helped radicalise them. I helped perpetuate all the Coalition's age-old bullshit, and look where that landed us. What's the difference between pushing a button and forcing someone into a situation where they believe all they can do is push that button?”
“All the difference in the world,” Sam said, with the chin-jutting certainty of youth.
Zhai chuckled. “Maybe. I'd like to believe that. I did, once. Maybe when you're my age you'll see things differently.”
Sam looked at him with an expression Zhai couldn't read. “Are we going to kill her?”
“I doubt it'll be us,” Zhai said. “But someone should. And I'm sure someone will. She has it coming.”
That, at least, seemed to satisfy Sam.
After what seemed like an age, Chang issued his official statement.
He looked wilder than ever before – not in his clothes or his hair, which were in fact smarter than usual, but in the hunted aspect of his eyes, in the white-knuckled way he gripped the podium. His voice, too, was strange. He had the look of a man with a handful of sand, closing his fist tighter and tighter as the grains slipped through his fingers.
“My fellow Torians,” he began, “today, we are betrayed.”
Zhai's fears for the Hactaurs were suddenly ratcheted up a few notches. He checked his watch once more. Still nothing from Violet.
“It is my sad duty to inform you that Vice-President Lipal Sarma-Phung, a tireless defender of Torian liberty and a dedicated servant of the people, has been murdered.” Chang's voice was steady, but his eyes were dark with a grief Zhai could tell was unfeigned. “It has become clear that there is a traitor at the highest level of government, a traitor who ordered the murder of the Vice-President and who orchestrated the Landing atrocity, all in a futile attempt to rob Tor of its freedom and return it to the slavery of the Alliance.”
“He's lost it,” Ceq said. Zhai had to concur. Chang's mask was slipping fast, and when he looked into the camera, his eyes roiled.
The president slammed a hand down on his podium. “I charge former Marshal Aliven Cadmer with murder and treason,” he said.
Zhai exhaled in relief.
“Cadmer?” Grey Hawk said.
Sam looked over, confused. “We know Cadmer didn't do it, though.”
Zhai didn't respond, distracted by the mental dance of possibilities. Chang either knew Cadmer was innocent of Landing or didn't know it. If the former, he was framing Cadmer to save his own skin. If the latter, he was working from false information. And, he thought, who gives the president his information? The intelligence service. And who benefits from Cadmer being taken out of the equation? The Hactaurs. And what's the link between the intelligence service and the Hactaurs?
He looked down at his watch the instant that a message from Violet appeared. It was a handful of words, unsigned.
Tonight. Stay safe.
“There will be nowhere to run,” Chang was saying. “I call on anyone who knows the location of Aliven Cadmer to arrest him immediately as an enemy of all Torians. His treachery will not go unpunished.” He leaned in closer still, his eyes wide with fury. “Justice will be done on Tor! Justice will be done! Do you hear me, Cadmer? Wherever you are, know this: you – will – pay!”
Abruptly, Chang stalked away from the podium, and the camera lingered too long before cutting to the presidential seal. That had not been planned.
“It's happening tonight,” Zhai said into the silence. He looked to the window and the city beyond, wondering what Macard would look like in the light of dawn. It would not be the same.
Lho had probably cooked ten thousand meals for Zhai over his lifetime, but he knew his way around a kitchen. With her leftover ingredients to hand, he spent a pleasant hour cooking, eventually producing three bowls of pork noodles. It helped settle him, he found, and by the time he made his way to the main room, bowls balanced precariously on his arms, he was calmer than he'd been for a long time. War was coming, but not until after dinner.
As Zhai, Ceq, and Sam tucked in, Grey Hawk flicked between TruthTeller and the government channels. The government had little else to say. TruthTeller, meanwhile, seemed caught in two minds.
“Cadmer may be the guilty party,” they s
aid at one point. “Equally, Chang may simply be accusing an easy target for his own reasons. Without further evidence, we cannot know for sure which of them is to blame – or, indeed, if either of them is to blame. However, it remains clear that President Chang is–”
The screen cut to black.
Zhai looked up from his bowl. “What was that?”
Grey Hawk flicked from channel to channel. Black screen followed black screen. “Signal problem?”
“The net's down, boss,” Sam said, holding up his watch wrist. “Completely gone. No signal at all.”
“Even the official channel's gone,” Grey Hawk said. “There's nothing.” Her eyes unfocused for a second. “He's right. There's nothing left.”
Zhai looked from one to the other. “What, the entire net is down?”
Grey Hawk nodded. “Most governments have a kill switch for the planetary net. I think Chang's just thrown his.”
Twins, why had he not seen this coming? Even Salmi couldn’t overcome the entire net being torn down. Zhai thrust his bowl to one side and hurried to the window, squinting down at the city below through the rain, where he soon saw what he was looking for.
“The public screens are still functioning,” he said, pointing. “Look. That's the government channel.”
Grey Hawk materialised at his side. “You're right. They must be wired directly to their broadcasting base. Old-school.”
“So he's shut down all voices but his own,” Zhai said, shaking his head. “Of course he has.”
“Those screens are on the inside and outside of nearly every building in Macard,” Grey Hawk said. “And if there’s nothing else to see…”
Ceq, still on the sofa, laughed. “Welcome to the Chang show, everybody.”
Forty minutes later, they heard the first explosion.
They watched from the window as distant orange bursts scorched the streets. The rain muffled most of the noise, leaving only dull, delayed thuds. The gunfire was barely audible at all, sounding like staccato bursts of raindrops.