The Coalition Man

by Alec Saracen

  She was still watching it when the door opened behind her. She turned to see Zhai standing there.

  He was in charge of Tor's foreign affairs now, he told her, in the embryonic Hactaur administration.

  “Chang survived, believe it or not,” he said, with a rueful smile. “They pulled him out of the rubble. He'll get a fair trial. Twins, what a spectacular political headache that’ll be. Cadmer's dead, at least. Assassinated by his own officers. I think Rose was involved, though Violet won't let on.”

  Grey Hawk, now sitting on the bed, nodded. “Violet survived, then?”

  “Oh yes. Very much so - getting shot seems to have made her even more alive, somehow. She's very insistent that she not be left out of anything, even when she should be in hospital.”

  “And Ceq?”

  Zhai grinned. “She'll be fine. Made of tough stuff, that woman.” His expression turned more serious as he looked at her bandages. “But what about you?”

  “I'm alive,” Grey Hawk said. “Couldn't ask for much more than that after being shot in the head.”

  Zhai grimaced. “I can only apologise for that. If I'd known Sam was—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “But that's in the past now.”

  Deep shadows of pain darkened his face, and Grey Hawk raised a hand. “No apology necessary,” she said.

  “I don't agree. I owe you my life, and in return, my assistant nearly took yours.”

  Grey Hawk glanced around the room. “Sounds like I owe you mine too.”

  Zhai shook his head. “That's just repayment.”

  “Then we'll call it even.”

  “Even. I can live with that,” Zhai said, smiling.

  Over the next ten minutes, he filled her in on the political situation. Jon Weiv had disappeared and was probably dead, while Chang's allies had been systematically mown down during the chaotic night of violence in Macard. With Cadmer and his inner circle dead, power had fallen to Parys Hactaur almost by default, and she was rapidly establishing her interim government.

  “We've got aid coming into Landing from all over the place,” Zhai said. “The Confederation, other independent worlds nearby, Liberation – even the Coalition, for all the good it'll do them.” He chuckled under his breath, without humour.

  “The Coalition? Really?”

  “Well, it was mostly my doing,” Zhai admitted, “but aid is aid, no matter the source. The Coalition's stock is falling fast galaxy-wide, though. Whisper it quietly, but we might have completely stopped the accession of any new worlds. Turns out blowing up cities makes your brand a little bit toxic. Who knew?”

  Grey Hawk's lips twitched. “No regrets, then?”

  “Oh, hundreds,” Zhai said. “Thousands. More than I can count. But defecting isn't one of them.”

  “I'm happy for you,” Grey Hawk said, and meant it.

  Zhai looked embarrassed. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  “You're welcome.”

  “So what's next for you?” Zhai asked briskly, obviously uncomfortable. “Back to Plenty, I assume? You wouldn't believe the trouble I had getting Hactaur to let your people in. She thought I was insane. Very much of the 'Liberation are a pack of crazed terrorists' persuasion, I'm afraid.”

  “Well, can't win them all. Yes, I'm going back. Tomorrow, in fact.”

  Zhai's expression changed. “So early? I won't see you again. I'm leaving tonight.”

  “For where?” Grey Hawk asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “The Coalition,” Zhai said. “Unfinished business.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I intend to be. I'll have Ceq with me, at least. I think she might actually want to keep me alive again.”

  Grey Hawk winced. “I'm sorry. That was my fault.”

  “No,” Zhai replied, “it was mine. In fact, I'm grateful. Some things should be out in the open. It's better this way. Ceq and I have – an understanding.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes. Good.”

  In the silence that followed, Ceq looked at Zhai, and Zhai looked back.

  She considered the strange, flawed, many-sided man in front of her. They would always be far apart politically, so distant they could barely hear each other shout, and before long they would be physically far apart as well. For as long as he lived, Zhai would stand in opposition to Liberation, an icon of the system they strove to destroy. The enemy. The adversary. Co-existence should not have been possible.

  And yet Grey Hawk felt a connection to the fat old man in the chair, the twice-exiled traitor, the consummate liar, and she knew that he felt it too. Though they were very far apart, almost at opposite poles of the universe, they were slowly, gradually, imperceptibly moving towards one another. If they each lived another thousand years, perhaps they would meet in the middle.

  Zhai left soon afterwards, pleading urgent business.

  “It's been a pleasure, Grey Hawk,” he said, looking back with his hand on the door.

  She smiled. “No, it hasn't.”

  “It hasn't,” he conceded. “All right. It's been – an education.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You'll be gone by the time I'm back, but who knows? Maybe we'll meet again somewhere down the line.”

  “Maybe,” Grey Hawk said, then added: “I hope so. Take care, Ambassador.”

  “Take care, Liberator,” Zhai said, with a final smile, and was gone.

  In the morning, Black Horse and Lake accompanied Ceq to the space elevator. Rain drummed relentless on the roof of the car. She saw a hundred signs of rebuilding: burnt-out husks of military vehicles being towed away for scrap, scaffolding springing up around damaged buildings, blocked-off sections of ruined roads being repaved. Tor was coming back to life.

  She spent the space elevator ride at the shielded window, watching Tor recede. First the city fell away, transforming from a forest of skyscrapers to a flat aerial map within seconds, and then vanished behind a mass of cloud. They were through that soon enough, and before long she could see the whole of Tor laid out below her, an unsullied marble, green and blue and grey. Edged with dawnlight, the world curved.

  32

  “You ready for this, boss?” Ceq asked.

  Zhai stared out at the looming shape of Megereth Station, silhouetted against the greenish waters of Armenaiakon's great northern ocean. It was a sight he had seen dozens of times over the years. He had always watched the approach, hanging in the zero-gravity of the observation deck, never missing the opportunity to enjoy the gradual convergence of ship and station and the graceful meshing of their orbits. It was a homecoming ritual that had served him well for decades.

  But today, he wasn't coming home. Today, he was Tor's Minister of Foreign Affairs, paying an official diplomatic visit to a hostile state. Megereth Station had always been both a sanctuary and a nest of vipers to him, but that precarious double existence had been shattered.

  How many friends would have turned against him? How many allies would think of him as a traitor? Even though his defection had turned into a spectacular political boon for the Consolidationists, he knew that wouldn't buy him their sympathy. Especially after Naro, the idea of leaving the Coalition was taboo, virtual apostasy. Zhai felt like a heretic marching into a temple.

  “No,” he said. “I'm not.”

  The approach took longer than usual. It took Zhai a minute to realise that it was because he was aboard a foreign ship. Coalition ships had always been fast-tracked through the security scans. Somehow, the extra ten minutes' wait hit hardest of all. It was the first tangible sense that he was no longer welcome here.

  The whole station knew he was coming. When Zhai stepped out of the hangar, he was instantly confronted with a bevy of hovering camera drones, and the crowd packing the corridors erupted into a storm of noise. Reporters screamed incomprehensible questions at him from behind lines of SSA personnel. Hardline Devvies and Revvies shouted abuse, only to be shouted down in turn by Solids. Zhai stood in the midst of it all, s
eized by a sudden uncertainty as the baying of the crowd filled the air, drowning him in a furious chorus of human voices.

  Captain Umbiba headed the SSA delegation waiting for Zhai. He and Ceq exchanged a nod.

  “We're here to escort you, Minister,” he said, gesturing to his squad.

  Zhai inclined his head. “Thank you, captain,” he called over the noise of the welcoming party. “Shall we go somewhere quieter?”

  A route to the nearest railcab stop had been cleared, though nothing could be done about the crowds of people craning to see the returning traitor at every corner, their oceanic heaving sealed off by human chains of SSA agents. Zhai had known his return would be significant, but he had let himself believe it would be no more than that. Instead, he now seemed to be the focus of the most intense factional hostility in a generation. He had seen Megereth Station like this only once before, in the aftermath of his return from Naro all those years ago.

  Here we go again, he thought.

  The station was pulsating with a heightened, angry energy. Zhai could taste political lightning on the air, and it was distinctively Coalition-flavoured. The age-old enmity between Consolidationists and the Developist-Revanchist axis had spilled over, infecting the whole station with mutual loathing. Matter and antimatter were brushing up against one another, flirting with annihilation. He wondered how coming back to Megereth Station looked to the rest of the Coalition. To the Devvies, it was confirmation that he and Sekkanen had conspired to undermine them, with Zhai's defection in response to 'Peck's' bombing of Landing the ultimate, unanswerable move. To the Solids, he was returning as hero and traitor simultaneously. He saw hatred of all stripes in the faces of the crowd.

  That was the real nature of the Coalition, Zhai thought. That was the glue holding the whole damn thing together: hatred, and the endless struggle for supremacy, for votes and motions and polls, for arbitrary numbers that were higher than other arbitrary numbers. He saw it with startling clarity. Without hate, there was no Coalition.

  Zhai kept his head high and his eyes locked straight ahead as he marched through the crowd, shutting out as much of it as he could. He heard a crunch behind him at one point and turned to see Ceq with her hand outstretched and a shattered egg oozing from her fingers. In the crowd, a frantic scuffle broke out around the man who had thrown it.

  “Good catch,” Zhai said.

  Ceq shook her hand in irritation, trailing sticky strings of albumin. “I miss the bullets,” she muttered.

  They made it to the nearest railcab stop. Three of Umbiba's people formed a secondary line of defence and the rest of them piled in. The doors slid shut, and they zipped away into the depths of the station, leaving the fury of the mob behind.

  “Twins,” Zhai said into the sudden silence. “I knew it would be bad, but that bad?”

  “Things are tense, Minister,” Umbiba said. Zhai couldn't help but smile at the big man's understatement.

  “I don't doubt it. Well, my apologies for making your life difficult, captain.”

  “That's all right, Minister.” Furtively, Umbiba returned a small portion of the smile. “Difficult is - engaging.”

  “Yes, I don't suppose the SSA gets much opportunity to manhandle us lot,” Zhai said. “Well break some faces and enjoy it while you can, captain. Nothing lasts forever. Trust me on that one.”

  As if he'd suddenly decided he'd been too cordial, Umbiba's face stiffened back into a mask of professionalism. “As you say, Minister.”

  Minister, Zhai thought, as the railcab approached its destination. The word didn't seem right attached to him. 'Ambassador Zhai' was a familiar figure, the sweep of his nature and influence sharply delineated by experience. 'Minister Zhai' was a brash new interloper, a wild card, a stranger of unknown power and uncertain agendas, even – especially – to Zhai himself. He had made something new of himself, but what? He was off the map now, and that made him dangerous. The old rules were gone, and the new rules were yet to solidify. Right now, Zhai had the most lethal political weapon of all primed and ready in his hands: flexibility.

  The part of the station near Sekkanen's office was quiet, though not empty. Hushed figures stood against the walls to watch him pass, and here almost all the faces were familiar. Gael Yoqué, Elimia Cossingley, and Dom Balphe were among them. His eyes moved from face to face. Balphe looked away almost immediately. Cossingley lasted a couple of seconds longer before she glanced at her shoes. Gael alone returned his gaze unflinchingly, holding it until he had passed. Zhai and Gael had always been able to read each other like open books, but now Zhai found her eyes less eloquent, her thoughts more obscure. The connection was fading.

  And, at last, Zhai stood outside Sekkanen's office. Umbiba and his troops had already peeled off, hovering a few metres back. Only Ceq was at Zhai's shoulder now.

  “Ready yet?” Ceq whispered.

  “Ask me in ten years,” Zhai said, and stepped forward.

  Kaudorang, Sekkanen's secretary, let him through without a word. For the first time in his life, Zhai was walking into that office without an appointment. He had no schedule to fit himself into. Sekkanen knew he was coming, had known since the moment his ship had dropped out of the Void, but he was uninvited. She was going to see him whether she liked it or not, and everyone on the station knew it.

  She stood at her window, her hands clasped behind her back. The office felt colder and emptier than ever before. Zhai steeled himself and set out, his footsteps the only sound. The journey across the room seemed to take an age.

  Sekkanen didn't bother with the security shroud. Nor did she look at Zhai when he took up his place next to her at the window. For a while, they stood side by side in silence, watching Armenaiakon slowly rotate beneath them. It was night on the part of the world below them. Armenaiakon's settlements were dim clusters of light, scattered haphazardly across the planet's black surface.

  “No more lies, Hilde,” Zhai said. Sekkanen didn't react. “Do me that courtesy. We have nothing to hide from each other any more.”

  Sekkanen's jaw tightened. “There's always something to hide.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Are you here to boast about your lack of secrets, Zhai?”

  “No. I'm here because we both have debts to one another. Think of this as settling up.”

  “Hm.”

  Even right next to him, so close he could smell the amber of her perfume, Sekkanen was as cold and distant as the stars wheeling beyond the window.

  “I owe you my career,” Zhai said. “Everything I've done has been possible because of your support. You trusted me. You believed in me. Thank you, Hilde. Truly, thank you.”

  Sekkanen stood still for three seconds, then turned smartly to face Zhai. “You seem to have washed your hands of that career.”

  “I made some terrible choices, but they were my choices. You helped me to achieve my goals. I now realise that those were the wrong goals. That doesn't change the fact that you helped me.”

  “No,” Sekkanen said. “I suppose it doesn't. You're welcome.”

  Now it was Zhai's turn to look Sekkanen's way. Her face was an ice sculpture, exquisite and motionless.

  “But I'm owed something other than thanks,” he said.

  “And what would that be?”

  “An explanation. A defence. An apology. Give me something, Hilde. Anything but a denial.”

  “You came all this way for that?”

  “I will have what I'm owed,” Zhai said quietly. “I will have the truth here and now – or the whole galaxy will have it tomorrow.”

  Sekkanen’s lips barely moved as she spoke. “Threats do not become you, Zhai.”

  “How interesting that you jump to calling the truth a threat. Does it threaten you, Hilde?”

  “I thought you were better than this.”

  “You thought I was more like you than I am. I'm happy to say that you're wrong.”

  “Is that so?” Sekkanen said, affecting disinterest.

  Zhai
sighed. “All right, I’m boring you. Let's cut the shit. I'm going to ask you a question with two possible answers. One of them will end this conversation immediately. The other will keep it going for a little while.”

  “Ask.”

  “Did you order the bombing of Landing?”

  Sekkanen turned away again, fixing her gaze on Armenaiakon. Its reflection glittered green in her eyes.

  “I did,” she said. Zhai had been braced for the blow, but it had struck like a hammer all the same. A false denial would have been easier to stomach. “And you know precisely why I did it.”

  “To prevent war,” Zhai said. “To save lives in the long run. I know. Sam said the same.”

  “What happened to Sam?”

  “Dead.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “I expected as much.”

  “I wanted him alive, believe me. He was young. He could have come back.” Zhai exhaled, remembering the sudden gleam of panic in Sam's eyes as he'd turned away from Zhai for the final time. “But you, Hilde… I think it's too late for you.”

  “Too late for me to lapse into moral weakness like you? Too late for me to prioritise emotion over reason? Too late for me to sacrifice millions to save thousands?” Sekkanen's voice remained icily level. “I did what was necessary. I will apologise for nothing.”

  “I know you won't.”

  “Then why come back? What did you expect to achieve?”

  “I had no expectations,” Zhai said, “but a little hope.”

  “And what did you hope to achieve?”

  “To make you see what you've become.” Zhai looked at her eyes once more, knowing nothing in them would ever change. They were as hard and immutable as diamonds. “But I think I made a mistake. You can already see what you are, and you like it.”

  Sekkanen inclined her head. “Astute.”

  “You're no saviour, Hilde,” Zhai said, in calm, measured tones. “You're a murderer.”

  “Murder would be sparing Landing and dooming us to war.”