by Dani Kollin
“I’m no hero, little one,” she said, hugging the child tightly. “I’m just one woman trying to do the best she can.”
“That’s what heroes always say!” wailed Katy. “You have to promise me you’re coming back. You have to promise me, please!”
J.D. hugged Katy once more, stood up, and walked away without saying another word. Katy was in too much shock to notice the tears rolling freely down the face of her mama Bo, the grand admiral of the Outer Alliance and the Alliance’s best chance to achieve victory.
The Triangle Office
Sandra was sitting across from Tyler Sadma. On the coffee table floating between them were the possible election dates. It was decided that when a sufficient number of refugees from Jupiter and the asteroid belt were integrated into the fabric of the outer planets, new elections would have to be held. So much had happened that new representation was desperately needed in order to let the will of the governed be expressed. Hektor’s ruling by fiat with an Assembly that was literally on ice was not an example they wanted to emulate. But of course, the devil was in the details. The biggest one being when exactly to hold the election, followed by how to adjudicate votes of those still suspended, followed by whether or not to elect a new Vice President or have the Assembly choose one. And of course, the perennial question: Was it time to hold a constitutional convention or, at a minimum, set a date?
While they were in the midst of figuring out the nuts and bolts of Alliance politics, Sandra’s DijAssist informed her of a low-priority message. Sergeant Holke knew better than to interrupt her when she was with any dignitary, much less Tyler Sadma—unless it was an emergency. But if it was not an emergency, why interrupt her—and with a low-priority signal, to boot. Because of the nearly successful coup, little oddities like the one that was occurring now tended to make her jumpy. She asked Tyler if he wouldn’t mind waiting for a moment, and he readily acquiesced. She then took advantage of her newly integrated internal VR matrix and touched both her index and pointer fingers to her temples and scanned for any anomalies. She could find none in the immediate vicinity, so she decided to scan the outer one. She almost laughed when she realized what had the good sergeant flummoxed. She lingered a moment at the sight of the sergeant—one of the most fearless individuals she knew—looking so decidedly nervous and uncertain. She quickly returned to her physical body.
“Yes, Sergeant Holke,” she said pleasantly.
Before Holke could say a word, the voice of an insistent child could be heard over the DijAssist. “Tell her it’s important! Tell her it’s me! Go on, tell her.”
“Uh, Madam President, I, uh, have a, uh … situation here.”
Sandra actually saw Tyler Sadma trying to hold back a laugh as the sergeant attempted to explain why his normally very strict security protocol about not interrupting the President unless in case of dire emergency had been so easily breached. And not at the gunpoint of a battalion of UHF assault marines or by the threat of imminent decapitation by the razor-sharp claws of one of Al’s nightmares, but rather by the unbending tenacity of a six-year-old girl.
“Send her in, Sergeant,” Sandra said, giggling.
“We can continue this conversation after lunch, Madam President,” Tyler said. “They have fish sticks at the Congressional cafeteria, and if I don’t get there on time, the damn Neptunian delegation eats them all.” Sandra smiled at the excuse but accepted it. Katy flew into the room, ignoring the Speaker of the Congress altogether—even as he gave her a very cordial half bow—and into the outstretched arms of the President of the Outer Alliance.
“You have to save her!”
“Save who, Katy?” asked Sandra, the previous moment’s amusement wiped away by the obvious terror in Katy’s voice.
“Mama Bo!” screamed Katy, and then broke down into a mass of sobs.
Sandra held the crying girl to her bosom, rocking her back and forth. “Admiral Bl—, Mama Bo is fine, Katy-coo. I just talked to her an hour ago.”
“But she won’t be, Granny Sandy. She’s not coming back.”
Sandra stopped hugging the child and held her at arm’s length, studying her intently. “What do you mean, ‘She’s not coming back,’ child?”
“I know it! I just know it!”
“But how, Katy?”
“Because I’m not going with her.”
Sandra’s brow shot up. “She is not taking you?”
Katy shook her head vigorously.
“Hmm…,” mumbled Sandra, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “But she took you to Mars.” It had been whispered almost as an afterthought.
“Hello-oh!” said Katy, enough of the six-year-old emerging to sound annoyed at the density of the adults around her. “And she didn’t promise. If she was coming back, she would always promise, and she didn’t. She didn’t, and she’s not coming back. She has to, she has to.” Katy crumpled once more into the President’s warm embrace. Sandra knew that J.D. would burn the Earth to its mantle for the child now weeping in her arms. The fact that J.D. had altered a well-known pattern gave the President pause.
Sandra pulled Katy into her once again and then held the child’s chin in her hand so they were looking eye to eye. “Little one, I am the President of the Outer Alliance. I am the one who first talked to the angels. You came to me because you think I can do something, and I can.” Sandra’s smile was wan but warm. “You can ask me for one thing, child, this one time and I wi—”
“She has to come back, she has to come back. Say she’ll come back,” pleaded Katy.
Sandra took the girl’s hand and put it on her own heart. “Katy, Mama Bo will come home.” When Sandra saw the tear-streaked face looking up at her, she decided then and there to add some more words of assurance with all the certainty she could muster, with a certainty that would get laws passed and rally whole peoples to win impossible victories.
“I promise,” she said, and then softly began to sing.
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise.
Sleep, pretty baby, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby
As Sandra sat rocking the child back and forth in her arms, humming gently into her ear, Katy, emotionally spent and physically exhausted, finally collapsed into a deep sleep. And Sandra started to change her plans. The fleet would soon be leaving and now she’d be going with it.
8 Hairsbreath
UHF battle fleet
High orbit of Mars
“Admiral, it’s confirmed,” said his sensor officer, the excitement barely contained. “The Alliance fleet is on the move.”
Trang’s smile exuded confidence. “Let me guess: They’re heading here.”
“It’s still too early to be sure, sir, but it would appear that way. They’re heading for Jupiter, and it’s the route they took the last time, Admiral.”
“Well, we’re not going to be here,” Trang said with dry humor. “Prepare the fleet to break orbit. If they want us, they can come and get us.”
“Sir,” asked the XO, “what destination should I give the fleet?”
“Tell ’em”—Trang’s smile brightened considerably—“tell ’em we’re going home.”
Alliance battle fleet
En route to Jupiter
“To the woman who kicked my ass today,” said J.D., holding up a glass toward her second-in-command amidst a wave of cheers heard throughout the Otter’s wardroom.
Suchitra bowed her head politely. “You’re being unduly harsh on yourself, sir. After all, I did have the bulk of the heavy ships.”
“But you did not fall for a single one of my ploys or let me prescribe your actions. You controlled the battle.” J.D. looked at Suchitra with obvious pride. “You even knew what I was going to do.”
Suchitra nodded, eyes brimming not only with the adulation but also with the knowledge that J.D. had been correct, Suchitra had known what her commanding officer was going to do.
“So, nu?” said J.D. borrowing one of R
abbi’s oft-used phrases. “How did it feel? What was it like knowing what your opponent was going to do, knowing down to your soul?” There was about the question the aura of release, a discarding of loneliness. J.D. had had the gift of battle prescience for so long that she’d almost given in to thinking that perhaps it truly was a blessing, that perhaps the moniker she’d been saddled with was deserved. She was now especially thrilled to find out it wasn’t, that it could be taught and that the Alliance could now go on without her.
“It felt,” said Suchitra, “like the universe was standing still, and for the first time I saw how it all worked.”
J.D. nodded, smiling empathetically. “Yes,” she whispered. “Just like that.”
“I’ve been in battles before and I’ve even outguessed my opponents, but it was never so clear, never like this. You’ve always felt that … it wasn’t learned?”
J.D. nodded.
“I guess you really were sent from the gods themselves.”
“If that’s the case,” answered J.D., now shaking her head, “then those gods must really like you as well.”
The compliment caused Suchitra to blush, but given the woman’s dark skin and the low light of the room, only J.D. could tell.
“Don’t get too confident, Admiral. I’m pretty sure the gods talk to Trang as well.”
Suchitra looked like she was going to argue, but stopped. “I think they do too. It’s only fitting that we must earn our freedom if we’re to be worthy of it.”
“No matter the price,” J.D. said, once again raising her glass.
Suchitra hesitated, knowing exactly what price the Blessed One was referring to and what part Suchitra herself had agreed to play in it. The young admiral raised her glass and answered her warlord. “No matter the price.”
* * *
Sandra O’Toole was in the New Alliance One but not quite on it. She was enjoying herself in the ship’s rather impressive Neuro net with an avatar she now thought of as a friend. It didn’t hurt that as her body was resting in her quarters, watched over and protected by the ever-vigilant Sergeant Holke, her mind was on a tropical beach, drinking Bahama Mamas with Gwendolyn.
“So you’re on this ship because a little girl asked you to?”
“Not quite,” corrected Sandra. “I’m on this ship because a little girl showed me something I hadn’t quite seen before.”
“Really?” Gwendolyn seemed surprised. Then laughed as she reflected on how Dante, an impossibly young forty-one years of age and never having been twined with a human, had upended all of avatarity’s preconceived notions—especially those of his mentor, Sebastian—in his quest to bring the two races together. “Actually,” she said, sipping happily at the drink, “it makes perfect sense.”
“You know, Gwenny,” using the nickname she had taken to calling her one true friend amongst the avatars, “we think we’re so damned smart, but every now and then, we’re reminded of how little we actually know. So yes, I’m on this ship because of the prescience of a little girl who was wise enough to let me know that I needed to be.”
“You were always good at listening to children, Sandra—yours and ours.”
“Gwenny, there’s no such thing as your children or our children; they’re just children. And like all children, their minds are wonderfully uncluttered.”
“Which is why you’re here. But why are you here?”
“To keep a friend from doing something really stupid.”
“Hopefully not something that might lose us the war,” asked Gwendolyn with growing concern.
“Worse,” answered Sandra drowsily, “something that could help us win it.”
Executive mansion
Lake Geneva
Earth
Hektor Sambianco waited alone by the shore of the lake. As alone as Gretchen Arbieter would allow. He was fairly certain that his conversation would be private, which was the best a person in his position could hope for. As he looked over the lake at the ruins of the former capital of the UHF, he let out an irritable grunt. His bitter mood was at least momentarily subdued by the appearance of an approaching figure.
“Hello, Sam.”
“Mr. President.” Trang threw a brief but correct salute. “Mr. President, I’m afraid I owe you an apology.”
“Really?” answered Hektor. “Well, this should be interesting.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t take your warning concerning the avatars seriously and delayed implementing them. That little dereliction of duty ended up costing me ships and men and has left the fleet weakened before an unrelenting enemy who’s as ruthless and heartless as any in the history of the human race.”
“Admiral,” answered Hektor with a one-sided grin, “given my rather poor track record in the military department, I’m not ashamed to say you were justified. In fact, there’s reason to suggest that we may not even have been in this mess if I’d listened to you sooner.”
“I don’t think so, Mr. President. It seems pretty obvious the OA had been waiting for just the right opportunity to unleash the Avatar Plague. I’m only glad it wasn’t worse. And let’s face it, as bad as it was, it could’ve been a lot worse.”
“On that we can agree. So why don’t we make this deal? I won’t bring up the Avatar Plague if you don’t bring up the Third Battle of the Martian Gates. And to sweeten the deal, what say you fight your battles however you want and I’ll just shut the hell up.”
Trang smiled amiably and bowed. “This stiff-necked martinet gratefully agrees, Mr. President.”
Deal done, they passed the minutes looking out over the poisoned water of Lake Geneva. “I’m sorry to hear about your wife, Sam,” Hektor said. “She was a good woman. Not what you would call a political animal, but kind and to the point. By Damsah’s left nut, I really liked her for that.”
“Thank you for saying that, sir. I know she would’ve appreciated hearing it.” Trang looked down and his face suddenly grew hard. “What really gets me is that my wife dies, and her Damsah-forsaken father goes untouched. Ten billion people are murdered in a week, and that SOB doesn’t get a hair on his head touched.”
Hektor’s lips twisted up. “I can still have him killed, Sam. Tricia’s just itching to kill someone. Hell, she might even do that one herself.”
Trang remained eerily silent.
Damsah, thought Hektor, truly awed, bastard’s actually thinking about it!
After a brief respite, Trang shook his head and sighed. “It’s tempting, Mr. President. More tempting than you can possibly know, but if there is an afterlife, well … I’d never hear the end of it.”
“Don’t suppose you would,” confirmed Hektor, and then continued gazing out at the river. A moment later, a thought occurred to him. “You know, I could always have his government contracts examined instead.”
Trang laughed. “I think the crooked son of a bitch might prefer to be killed!”
“Always leave something for the future,” advised Hektor. After a moment, he turned to his battle admiral. “She’s coming here, isn’t she?”
“Yes, Mr. President. The Merciless One’s coming home.”
“You know, she used to be my greatest ally. When she was head of legal for GCI, we were unstoppable.”
“Oh, she’s stoppable, Mr. President.”
“You really think so, Sam?” asked Hektor, his voice unable to hide the doubt.
“I will win, Mr. President. Our back’s against the wall and we’re fighting for our very lives. If we lose, I’m convinced she’ll destroy us utterly.”
“You believe that.”
“Absolutely, Mr. President.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why do you believe that?”
“Because when I win, it’s exactly what I’m going to do to them. Destroy their Damsah-forsaken worlds, settlement by bloody settlement. For the survival of us all and for the ten billion they murdered, they all must die.”
As Trang’s brooding figure looked out over the waters, Hektor allowed a half smile
. It might not be necessary to have this man killed after all.
UHF fleet
High orbit around Luna
Trang looked at the data coming in over the portable holo-emitter bolted to the useless holo-tank in the middle of the command sphere. If he thought it was demeaning or a bad omen that the Battle of Earth, the final and most important confrontation of the whole terrible war was being planned on what was essentially a child’s toy, he didn’t let it show. If anything, he had a grim confidence in the ingenuity displayed by his fleet, which had been infectious. A recent comment of his was already making the rounds and inspiring the fleet. “When the Alliance realizes that we won using nothing more powerful than DijAssists and an abacus or two, we won’t have to shoot the bastards; they’ll die of embarrassment.”
In the three weeks since the Alliance fleet had left Saturn, Trang practically invented and then taught a way of decentralized ship control that gave his ships 85 percent of the control they had with the old systems. It had taken endless hours of drilling and sleep deferred with drugs. But his spacers were willing to work as they’d never worked before. They were no longer fighting for incorporation or for majority. They were no longer even fighting for victory. Every person in Trang’s fleet understood that they were fighting for nothing less than survival. If they failed, their homes and loved ones would be left at the mercy of a woman who’d shown she had none, having already destroyed one planet, and at the bloodstained hands of another, who’d unleashed the Avatar Plague and nearly destroyed a civilization. They were under no illusions what would happen if they lost.