by Alec Saracen
Violet nodded fervently. Zhai didn’t like the zealous glint in her eye. “From you, people will believe it. It could help Tor heal. Better to know someone else blew up Landing than to think it was your own people. And besides, it's the truth. Isn't it?”
“Yes,” Zhai said quietly. “It is.”
“So will you do it?”
The truth, he thought. Finally, after all these years, Gumeigo Zhai addresses a world – a galaxy – and tells them the plain, unvarnished truth. No lies. No spin. No slant.
The Coalition would despise him. He would be the great traitor. The defector. They’d come to kill him, and the people he cared about. The cost could be immense.
But it was the truth.
Zhai looked over at Ceq, who was pulling her bloodied shirt back down over her sealed wound. He knew she had been listening to every word that had been spoken. Her eyes, still damaged but far from blind, found his.
And an instant before he gave his answer, Ceq smiled.
*
Thirty seconds after they'd pulled back onto the roads, one of Violet's people looked up from his watch.
“Company,” he said urgently. “APC on our tail. Not one of ours.”
“Peck,” Zhai said.
Grey Hawk glanced across at him, then turned to Violet. “You got a turret on this thing?”
“Exterior only,” Violet said. She looked Grey Hawk up and down properly for the first time. “Hey, are you a Liberator?”
“I think I'm freelancing at the moment,” Grey Hawk replied, and wrenched open the side door. Rain flooded in as she clambered out, swinging herself up onto the roof of the vehicle as it screeched round a corner. She dug her remaining fingers into the metal, clawing her way up, and pulled herself into the turret seat, eyeballing the APC in pursuit.
At least this part wasn’t complicated.
*
“My name is Gumeigo Zhai, former Coalition ambassador to Tor,” Zhai shouted over the noise of the engine and the gunfire. Violet, filming him through her watch, gave a thumbs up. “Right now, I'm in the back of an armoured car, under attack by people who want to silence me.” With uncanny dramatic timing, a spray of bullets rattled against the rear of the car, making Zhai flinch. “I might not survive the night,” he went on, over the dull chatter of the turret, “and if I don't, I leave this message behind. The antimatter attack on Landing was not carried out by President Chang, or Marshal Cadmer, or any Torian. It was the work of a group of Coalition agents, part of the Developist or Revanchist factions bent on expanding the Coalition. I repeat, the Coalition bombed Landing, hoping to prop up Chang’s pro-Coalition government and trying to undermine ResTore and the Torian independence movement.” A muffled explosion went off outside, and Zhai gritted his teeth and hung onto his strap as the car swerved. “I saw conclusive evidence with my own eyes. I have resigned my position and renounced my Coalition citizenship in protest.” Violet made a wrapping-up gesture, and Zhai wiped a trickle of rainwater from his eyes. “Do not blame your own people for Landing,” he said. “Blame the Coalition. Though my faction was innocent, I refuse to be a part of an organisation that murders thousands to further its political agenda. Remember this: the blood of those who died in Landing is not on Torian hands, but on the hands of the Coalition, the Developists and the Revanchists. That's the truth.”
Violet cut the video there. “Excellent. Excellent stuff.”
“That was perfect, boss,” Sam said. “Everyone'll believe that.”
“Why wouldn't they?” Zhai grunted. “It's the truth.”
They were all thrown hard to the left as the driver wrenched the car round a corner. On the screen showing the feed from the front cameras, something large and burning loomed, and the driver barely had time to swerve around it. Only after they were past did Zhai realise it had been the flaming hull of a downed jet.
Violet said something inaudible, and Zhai cupped his ear. His hands were grazed and bleeding, he belatedly realised. “What's with the Liberator?” Violet repeated.
“Strange times, strange bedfellows!” Zhai called back, and Violet's teeth gleamed white under the fluorescent lights.
*
The APC didn't have the manoeuvrability to dodge the wreckage of the jet. Instead, it just smashed straight through it in a cloud of sparks and smoke, shunting a ruined engine halfway across the street. Grey Hawk clung on tightly to the turret, wondering what the hell she could do to stop it without explosives.
The question was answered for her as the car took one last hard right, tore across an open business park, and skidded to a halt in front of a large under-development store, all bare breezeblocks and clear tarpaulins whipping in the wind. Grey Hawk used her momentum to roll from the roof of the car, landing on her feet and raising her rifle. She tried to fire at the APC as it entered the business park, but she had her broken index finger on the trigger, and it took a precious half-second to switch to her middle finger. Behind her, Violet's people were pouring out of the car and heading for the store's entrance. Grey Hawk finally opened fire, backing away as the APC bore implacably down on her, but even her rifle couldn't penetrate that armour.
It dawned on her that the APC wasn't going to stop.
She turned and ran, following the others inside. The store was pitch-black, but as she crossed the threshold one of Violet's people fired a flare that arced towards the distant ceiling and exploded, casting a red glare over everything. Behind her, the APC charged straight through the doors, taking half the front windows with it, and pulled a sharp handbrake turn into the empty metal shelving of the store with a deafening crash.
“Hold them back!” she heard Violet yell. “Liberator, with us!”
She pushed through the troopers after Violet and Zhai, and before she had caught up to them the gunfire began, its harsh flicker illuminating the depths of the cavernous store. Casting a glance back, she saw the flash of a grenade toss two of Violet's troops aside like ragdolls.
They plunged deeper into the store, down aisles of empty shelves, hurdling those which the APC had knocked down like dominoes. Zhai was slowing them down badly, barely able to run at all. At the front of the store, she could hear yells and screams over the gunfire. If she had to guess, it wasn't going well for Violet's people.
“Down here,” Violet said, and kicked open a door at the back. They entered an empty stockroom, though it was lit by orange emergency lights. “Move it, Ambassador!”
“I'm not a fucking ambassador any more,” Zhai wheezed. Gunfire rattled after them, and warnings flashed in Grey Hawk's eyes as two bullets thudded into her abdomen, failing to penetrate at that distance. She slammed the door shut behind them, and more shots followed them.
Violet looked back with furious eyes. “Where the fuck's my team?”
Dead, Grey Hawk knew, but she said nothing.
Ceq said it for her. “If Peck's following us, they're dead.”
Violet growled wordlessly and shoved Zhai towards another door, this one locked with a keypad. “Eight two nine one four four!” she shouted, taking up a position next to Grey Hawk with her submachine gun at the ready – but the clang of bullets on the door muffled the middle numbers. Zhai, at the keypad, hesitated.
“Eight two–” he began.
Violet snarled in frustration and shouldered past him to enter the code herself. Both doors opened simultaneously, and Grey Hawk fell back, plastering the door to the storeroom with suppressing fire. Ricocheting bullets whined all around her, and to her left Ceq stumbled back, her gun clattering to the floor and her hand on her shoulder, blood oozing between her fingers.
“Go!” Grey Hawk shouted, pushing her after Zhai, Sam, and Violet, who had disappeared down a flight of unlit stairs behind the other door, and followed them, slamming the door shut after them.
Violet sprang back up the stairs. “The lock! It doesn't–”
Too late, Grey Hawk lunged for the lock on the door just as it was smashed open, and she leapt back, emptying her magazine up the stairs as bullets
whipped through the air around her. She got at least one of them, maybe two. Turning, she saw Violet clutching her stomach, her gun hanging uselessly from its strap, and Grey Hawk hustled her down the stairs, ducking low and using her bulletproof back as a shield for Violet. They rounded a corner in the gloom and came to another door, which Zhai and Sam were frantically trying to open.
“Lilac!” Violet shouted, her voice tight with pain. “Let us in! Hurry!”
There was an agonisingly long pause before the door slid open. The five of them bundled through into what looked like somewhere between a security office and a command centre, its walls alive with glowing screens. At the far end, behind an empty conference table, Lilac Hactaur whirled away from her console, concern jumping off her blue-lit face.
“Vi, what–”
Grey Hawk heard little more, because she was already heading back to confront the pursuers.
*
Zhai collapsed against a wall, gulping down stinging lungfuls of air, soaked with rain and sweat. Part of him knew that, having been spared injury, he should be helping Ceq and Violet, but the energy simply wasn't there. He watched Lilac rush to her sister's aid as Violet fell into a chair, her gun clattering noisily on the table. Sam helped Ceq into another chair, the leather instantly stained red by her blood.
From the stairway came a cacophony of gunfire. Fighting stabs of exhaustion and pain, Zhai heaved himself up and staggered over to Violet.
“Give me the watch,” he said. The gunfire snatched his words away.
“What?”
“Watch!” he shouted, gesturing to his own. “We have to upload the video before–!”
He jerked his head towards the door. Violet nodded, her face contorted with pain as Lilac tried to stem the bleeding with her jacket, and slipped the watch from her bloody wrist and handed it to Zhai.
Lilac looked between them. “What video?”
Violet's laugh decayed into a bubbling groan. “You'll see.”
“Give it to me, boss, I'll do it,” Sam said, grabbing the watch from Zhai and striding over to the command console.
Lilac, on the verge of panic, shook her sister's shoulder. “Vi! What's happening?”
“'s'all coming out now,” Violet mumbled. She caught Zhai's eye and grinned. “All out in the open, right, Ambassador?”
Zhai peeled off his ruined suit jacket and tried to staunch Ceq's bleeding. “Right.” If they survived the next few seconds.
The gunfire had been audibly getting further away, and as Sam started the video, it stopped dead. Into the sudden, crushing silence, Zhai heard his own voice speak.
“My name is Gumeigo Zhai...”
On the video, he looked a mess. His hair was plastered to his head, his clothes were drenched and torn, and his face was beyond haggard – but he could see something else in there, a dark, steely core of determination behind his eyes which he had never seen before in any footage of himself. He had seen it in others. Like Thier.
He watched himself speak – he didn't listen, because he knew what he would say – but watched as the old, obese Qienchuan man in the wet suit told the truth. There was no doubt about it. In the back of that armoured car, under attack, his life in the balance, he had tapped into a genuineness he had thought was beyond him.
“I repeat,” video-Zhai said, “the Coalition bombed Landing,” and it was impossible not to believe him.
Lilac stared at the screen in shock. “The Coalition?”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, and five pairs of eyes turned towards the door. Either it was Grey Hawk, or they were all dead.
*
Grey Hawk walked back into the command centre and threw down her cargo, which crumpled into a heap on the floor, moaning and coughing blood.
“This her?” she said to Zhai.
Zhai edged towards the body on the floor, followed by Sam.
“That's Peck, all right,” he said, after a moment. He looked up at her. “You killed the rest?”
Grey Hawk nodded.
Peck was dying, slowly. Grey Hawk's bullets had caught her in the chest and stomach, neither lethal on their own, but the woman writhing on the floor was running out of blood. It pooled around her in a spreading crimson circle.
“It was the work of a group of Coalition agents, part of the Developist or Revanchist factions,” the recording of Zhai playing on every screen across Landing said, and Peck let out a harsh, gurgling laugh.
Her ice-blue eyes, staring out from a mask of blood, fixed unwaveringly on Zhai. Most of her blonde hair had been stained scarlet. “Well played,” she managed, before trailing off into a spluttering cough. Blood misted in the air. “Well fucking played.”
Zhai looked down at her with something approaching pity. “This isn't a game, Peck. You never got that, did you? Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of you.”
Peck grinned, displaying bloody teeth. “Same old Gumeigo Zhai. Lying to the end. Just like on Naro.”
Zhai shook his head. “This is the truth.”
“The truth?” Peck's face twisted into a mask of agonised rage. “You bombed Landing! You did it, and you're blaming us to claw back the power you lost!” A hacking cough made her convulse, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. “Fucking monster! Fucking murderer!”
Zhai stepped back towards Grey Hawk, his face hidden from her.
Oh, no, she thought numbly. Impossible.
“It – wasn't you?” he said.
“No, it fucking wasn't us!” Peck screamed, and Grey Hawk believed her. She had nothing to gain by lying. She'd be dead within a minute either way. Zhai looked back at Grey Hawk with confusion and mounting horror in his eyes.
“We have to stop that broadcast,” he said. On the other side of the room, Ceq jerked out of her seat.
“But if it wasn't her–” Grey Hawk said, and the world went black.
30
The sound of the gunshot almost deafened Zhai. His heart seized up, and he instinctively cowered as Grey Hawk's body flopped limply to the ground next to him, grey matter leaking from the gunshot wound in the side of her head.
“Oh God,” he whispered, and someone firmly pressed hot metal into the back of his head.
“Sorry about that, boss,” Sam said.
“Sam?” Zhai said blankly.
“You'll want to take that gun and throw it in the corner, Lilac,” Sam said. “Slowly. One hand. And you don't want to try anything either, Ceq.” Nobody moved, and Sam’s voice rose to a scream. “Do it!”
Lilac unhooked the submachine gun from Violet's shoulder and tossed it into the corner, her eyes wide with confusion.
“What the fuck, Sam,” Ceq said softly.
A gurgling laugh came from the floor, and Zhai looked down.
“Oh, this is too good,” Peck gasped. Through his state of shock, Zhai saw that she was very pale, bone-white. “Kill him, kid. Kill the fucker. Kill him!”
“That’s enough out of you,” Sam said, and shot her in the head.
Zhai flinched again as the gunshot echoed around the room, but Sam soon had the pistol back to his head. Peck lay lifeless on the floor, her eyes staring at the ceiling. “What the fuck are you doing, Sam?” he demanded. “What are you doing?”
“Finishing this,” Sam said evenly. He pushed forward with the gun, and Zhai stumbled forward over Peck's body, towards the tables and the screens. His face looked back on all sides, but the earnest expression on his doppelgangers' faces was far from the horror he knew was on his own. The mirrors were malfunctioning.
“It was you,” Zhai said, barely able to get his tongue to work. “It was you, wasn't it, Sam?”
“Landing?” Sam's voice had a cold edge to it that Zhai had never heard. “Yes. Or at least, I delivered the bomb. One of our local agents planted it.”
Ceq shook her head in disbelief. Zhai took a chance and turned around to face Sam, expecting a bullet in the head. None came. Sam levelled the pistol at Zhai's forehead, his eyes bleak
ly empty.
“To discredit the other factions,” Zhai said slowly, all the pieces slotting into place in his mind like sarcophagus lids slamming shut. “This was Sekkanen's doing, wasn't it? We secretly bomb Landing, leaving just enough evidence to make it look like it was Peck, and we publicly blame the Devvies and the Revvies.”
Sam nodded. “They’re discredited, and we get a solid shot at winning back a majority in the First Circle.”
“And nothing they can say will make them look any better, because I defected over it.” The savage irony of it stabbed at Zhai. “Me. The least principled man in the whole damn Coalition.”
Sam's smile was thin-lipped and cold. “Right. You played your part perfectly.”
A terrible thought struck Zhai. “Tell me Harod wasn't involved in this.” Please, Harod, he thought. Not you too.
“Harod? He wasn't. He was never part of the plan,” Sam said, and Zhai closed his eyes in relief. “You're the only reason he was ever on Tor, boss. Sekkanen only gave him to you because we knew he wouldn't cause problems.”
The poisonous petals of the truth unfurled in Zhai's mind. Now he saw Sekkanen's long game. She led an army of young fanatics, a whole new network constructed in secret, woven between the decaying spokes of the old Solid political machine. Sam had never just been his assistant. He had been Sekkanen's instrument, her tool. Her way of controlling Zhai. Pluck one strand of the web, and others shiver in distant sympathy, all dancing to the spider's tune.
“'Boss',” Zhai said quietly. “It sounds like I've never been your boss.”
“You're still my boss, even when I've got a gun to your head.” A strange look entered Sam's eyes. “I did this for you, boss. This is what you'd have done thirty years ago. There was a time when you'd do whatever you had to for the Consolidationists. That passes with age – I get that. I don’t blame you for it. That’s why it falls to people like me.”
Zhai shook his head. Everything was unfolding with the crystalline relentlessness of a nightmare. “You knew how I'd react to everything.”