Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1)

by Parker, Gavin E

  The business had faired so-so. It was not a resounding success due mainly to its dependence on manufactured goods. The real money (just ask Venkdt) was in raw exports. Mars was rich in minerals like silver, iridium, palladium and most importantly deuterium. Venkdt extracted these and shipped them off to Earth, making huge profits. Over time it became clear that Hjälp Teknik, despite its reticence, had to get into the minerals game if it was going to survive, but it found it difficult to compete with the mighty Venkdt Mars Corp.

  Hjälp Teknik had gone into the deuterium market. Deuterium was five times more abundant on Mars than it was on Earth, and far more than five times easier to extract. Deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen, was essential fuel for the nuclear fusion reactors which generated the great bulk of the power used on Earth, particularly in the USAN. It underpinned the whole of USAN society and was essential to it. As such it was literally worth more than gold and had been a key driver in the early settlement of Mars.

  Hjälp Teknik diversified, moved into minerals and expanded a little, but was always in the shadow of Venkdt. Venkdt had been the only game in town for almost a hundred years and, despite some jitters when Hjälp Teknik first arrived, happily remained so. The research station, latterly the garrison, had not been in competition with Venkdt and benefited greatly from the improved facilities that came in their wake. Once it was clear that Hjälp Teknik was not a major threat Charles Venkdt was happy to affect a collegiate stance, proclaiming that everyone had to stand together in the great adventure of the new frontier. In private, he was more reticent. Venkdt was a little rattled that there was competition in his backyard and, although he was always very polite in public, deep in his heart he knew that he hated Jack Karjalainen. He hated the hippy-drippy attitude. He hated the lofty high moral stance, which he thought was a sham, and he hated the way Jack Karjalainen just knew he was right. Right, with moral certainty, about his beliefs. Right about his business decisions. Right about every damn thing he ever did. It rankled with Venkdt, who knew that he himself was filled with flaws. That was true honesty; looking in the mirror and knowing what an ass you could be. Looking at your customers, and knowing what asses they could be. And standing back, looking at the whole goddamned big picture and knowing that it was all a huge, juddering, wrong-headed mess. To see the world as it is, faults and all, and to make practical steps at working with all the inefficiencies, the greed, the malice and the sheer stupidity, and get it to somehow work - that, to Charles Venkdt, was truly noble. Pretending that everything was perfectible and that the good people were being held back by the bad people, who just needed to be understood and helped to become all they could be, seemed naive and irritating.

  Karjalainen, with his unshakeable belief in his own rightness, had always seemed taller than he was. No longer. He was now a shrunken husk of the man he used to be. If he had been able to stand he would have appeared even shorter than his hundred and seventy six centimetres. He was propped up in his bed with pillows, and the bed was surrounded by monitoring machinery, some of which was connected to him by thin cables but others of which were working remotely. He was sleepy, by this late afternoon, and his eyelids hung heavily over his slow moving eyes. A breathing tube was taped to his face, running from his nostril over an ear and out of sight. A shaft of light from the Plexiglas skylight lay on the lower half of the bed and the reflection from the stark white sheets filled the room with a low glow. Distantly, Karjalainen heard a muffled discussion between two voices coming from outside the room. One voice was a nurse. The other was one of his legal advisers. He couldn’t make out the words, but the rhythms and tone were clear. His rep was asking and becoming insistent while the nurse was denying, but her resolve was fading away. There were two final syllables from the adviser character, delivered staccato like a one-two punch, followed by short pause and one syllable from the nurse. After that, the door opened and three figures quietly and slowly slipped into the room.

  Oatridge came to the head of the bed while the other two remained at the foot. They stood in silence, heads slightly bowed, as if Karjalainen were already dead and they had come to pay their respects. Oatridge coughed, very quietly and deliberately. Karjalainen lifted his heavy eyelids and swivelled his eyes toward Oatridge without moving his head. He swallowed, using a great deal of concentration to do so, and spoke.

  “Well?”

  “Mr Venkdt informed the meeting that he was going to hold a plebiscite, asking the entire Martian population whether they would like to secede from the USAN,” replied Oatridge.

  Karjalainen frowned and turned his head away to the side. “On whose authority does he think he’s acting?”

  “No one’s. He’s decided to do it independently.”

  Karjalainen thought. “And what are we going to do about it? Have you informed the garrison?”

  “I’m not sure what the garrison would be able to do, sir. Venkdt’s own security division more than outmatches them.”

  “So he holds his election, gets his result. What then?”

  Oatridge took a breath. “I guess he would announce the secession and that would be that.”

  “Where would that leave us?”

  Philips piped up. “That would leave us in a very tricky position indeed. We’d be forced to join a - I don’t think I’m being melodramatic here - a revolution that we want no part of, or we’d be left sharing an inhospitable planet with an opposing force - I’m sorry about the language, but . . .” she shrugged and pulled a ‘what can you do?’ face, “. . . an opposing force who, frankly, we are no match for.”

  Karjalainen thought. “Venkdt wouldn’t give us any trouble. But our position would be very difficult.” His remark hung in the air. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “We’re already looking into what we can do to stop the plebiscite ever happening. Legal, practical, those sorts of things,” said Oatridge. “And if we can’t stop it we’ll campaign rigorously for a ‘no’ vote.”

  Even at his advanced age, and at the extreme end of his ill health, it was still possible to pick up the ‘what am I paying these people for’ vibe that was flowing from Karjalainen into the room. With great effort he moved his head again to look at Oatridge. He shaped his words deliberately. “If you campaign, you legitimise the election. And you make us look like damned fools, because the result will be ‘yes’ and anyone can see that. I’ll ask again: what are we going to do about it?”

  Strich and Philips exchanged glances, glad that Karjalainen was locked onto Oatridge and wouldn’t have the energy to turn his head toward them. Oatridge was too professional to panic but he did not have an answer. He looked into Karjalainen’s old and watery eyes. “I don’t know, sir. I think we’ll have to play this one by ear.”

  Karjalainen closed his eyes. Whether it was tiredness or exasperation the three did not know, but after a quick and wordless conference they took it as their cue and left the room in silence.

  Maya Foveaux was watching the sunset from her window. Unusually for a Martian building the headquarters of Venkdt Security was mostly above ground. It had been expensive to build and was difficult to maintain but the architect thought, and persuaded her client, that it was important that a security division should be able to literally oversee that which it was protecting, and that the protected be able to look up to see their protector.

  The window in Foveaux’s office was short but very wide, and it framed the Martian sunsets beautifully. When her workload allowed it Foveaux would take a few minutes to stand and watch. It calmed her and gave her some time to think and reflect.

  With the light fading she turned away from the window and returned to her desk. Glancing at her terminal she noticed three new emails had arrived in the short time she had been away. One was an addition to a tedious chain that had been going back and forth all day. She didn’t really know why she was copied into that one. Some officious type probably thought their dubious argument would somehow carry more weight if the boss was copied in. They were w
rong. At the back of her mind Foveaux had marked them down sycophantic, indecisive and unconfident. The other two emails were from her ex-partner and Charles Venkdt.

  Maya opened the one from the ex first, partly to get it out of the way and partly because it would be trivial, where the one from Venkdt was more likely to be important. Venkdt had only contacted her directly a handful of times before. At the moment the ex, despite her best efforts, was contacting her daily.

  She glanced over the salutation and the first line and immediately got a sense of what the email was about. It was the same self-pitying, pleading begging for forgiveness and reconciliation that she had seen in previous emails. She stopped reading and quickly composed her reply:

  “Please do not contact me again.”

  She hit ‘Send’ and immediately forgot about it as she opened the last email, the one from Venkdt.

  “Ms Foveaux

  I would like to meet at the earliest opportunity to discuss matters arising from a proposed plebiscite taking place within the next few months. The plebiscite exists in something of a legal grey area, which may lead to some unrest. I would like to brief you in full on our plans, and provide you with any additional resources you may need to ensure that the operation runs smoothly and with any disruptions held to a minimum.

  Please liaise with my assistant to arrange a time. I look forward to seeing you soon.

  Charles Venkdt”

  Maya closed the email and fired off one to her assistant, asking that the meeting be set up as soon as possible. Any prior arrangements were to be shifted to make way for the meeting with Venkdt. That was to be the number one priority.

  Maya shot a look back over her shoulder. The sun had disappeared below the horizon.

  C H A P T E R 6

  The Old Order

  It was early evening at the hospital. The outpatients and admin staff had left for the day and the clinics were over. It was calmer and quieter than the bustling day shift. Bobby had come through the transport bay, where he’d left his cab, and he was approaching reception. When he got there no one was at the desk, though he could hear a voice coming from the back office talking on a comdev.

  As he waited he looked around. The reception area was clean and mostly white. The lighting was tastefully subdued and he could hear, just around the corner, a machine busily polishing the floor. He looked at the floor in reception; spotlessly clean. He wondered if this area was deliberately kept to a high standard in order to create a good impression on people just like him, or if it genuinely reflected a commitment to high standards throughout the hospital.

  The receptionist appeared. “Hello, sorry about that, can I help you?” she said.

  “I’m here to see Jack Karjalainen,” said Bobby.

  The receptionist scanned her terminal. “Is he expecting you?” she asked as her eyes moved down the screen.

  “I don’t have an appointment, if that’s what you mean,” said Bobby.

  The receptionist looked up. “Mr Karjalainen only takes visitors by appointment, I’m afraid. If you want to leave your details I can let his people know, and we can maybe arrange something for another day?”

  “I’m his son.”

  The receptionist took a closer look at Bobby’s face. She half-recalled him from somewhere but couldn’t quite place him. “Is this the first time you’ve visited?”

  “Yes, it is. I’ve been away.”

  She gestured to an area on the reception desk. “Could you just hold your comdev over here for me, please?”

  Bobby complied and the receptionist read from her screen. “Robert Harvey Karjalainen.” She scanned further down the screen. “And you are indeed Mr Karjalainen’s son.” She let out a low hum as she thought to herself. “Well, Mr Karjalainen’ other son Anthony, your brother, is the only person allowed to visit Mr Karjalainen unannounced so,” she thought, “I guess it would be alright for you, too?” It was phrased like a question, but Bobby decided to hear it as a statement.

  “That’s great,” he said. “Thank you so much. Which way is it?”

  The receptionist hesitated, then pressed a key on her terminal. “Your comdev will take you right to it.” Bobby thanked her and started to walk away. The receptionist muttered ‘Robert Harvey Karjalainen’ to herself, and only then did the connection click into place. “Are you Bobby Karjalainen; the Bobby Karjalainen? The commander?” she excitedly called after him.

  Bobby turned and shrugged with an easy smile. “I guess I am,” he said.

  “Very pleased to meet you, sir,” the receptionist said as he turned back and continued walking.

  Jack Karjalainen was sleeping when Bobby entered the room. He approached his father taking slow, measured steps and took a seat by the head of the bed. He listened to his father’s slow and shallow breathing as he looked at the man he had for so long despised. Beneath his hatred there remained the stubborn stump of love. He was saddened to see his father reduced to this. As a teenager he had often fantasized about his father being in this sort of position; weak and helpless, and close to death. In those fantasies he would tell his father what he really thought of him. He would use the most cutting words he could, and he would attack at what he thought were the weakest points in his father’s emotional armour. He would hurt the man, the way he felt he had been hurt by him. Now he just felt sorry. Sorry that he was old, sorry that he was suffering and sorry that he was going to die. Most of all, he was sorry that the old man had been such an asshole that he had managed to alienate his own son in the last few years of his life. He was sorry, too, that due simply to his intransigent personality he had not been able to allow for his son being of a radically different disposition to his own. They were very dissimilar people. He should have just accepted that. Instead, he clashed with Bobby at every turn and made things miserable for both of them.

  And now here they were.

  Karjalainen’s head was facing Bobby. He coughed and rolled his tongue around his dry mouth like he was searching for something. After a few minutes he opened his eyes and fixed them on Bobby. Bobby stared back, and smiled.

  “How did you get in here?” said Karjalainen.

  “I’m family,” Bobby replied.

  Karjalainen closed his eyes. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “I am here, Dad. I couldn’t not come. You know that.”

  Karjalainen waited. “I know that, do I? So you still know what I think?”

  Bobby let it go. “How’ve you been? You’re not looking so good.”

  “I’ve been better. I’m comfortable.”

  Bobby nodded.

  “You’ve seen Anthony?”

  “Yes. I’m staying at the house.”

  “He’s happy with that?”

  “I don’t know about happy, but that’s where I am.”

  Karjalainen grunted and opened his eyes again. “You shouldn’t have gone over there, Bobby,” he said.

  “To the house?”

  “You know what I mean. Always the wise guy. You shouldn’t have gone to war. You let us all down.”

  Bobby nodded. It was what he had expected. “It’s done now. Didn’t you do a few things you shouldn’t have, in your time?”

  “Not the same.”

  “It’s all over now. I’m back, and I wanted to see you.”

  “You’re not in the will if that’s what you mean.”

  Bobby shrugged. “That’s not what I mean. You know it, too.”

  Karjalainen stared at him, then closed his eyes again.

  “I just wanted to see you again, Dad. That’s all.”

  Bobby couldn’t tell if his father had heard the last remark, or if he had drifted off to sleep. Maybe he was just faking it to avoid dealing with the situation. The truth was that Karjalainen, in spite of everything, loved his son and Bobby, in spite of everything, loved his father. They were both too bloody minded to admit it.

  Eventually it seemed that Jack Karjalainen actually was asleep. His breathing was once again slow and sha
llow and his mouth hung open, his dry old tongue lolling out of it. Bobby sat with him for another hour, and kissed him on the forehead before leaving.

  Bobby had never liked the Hjälp Teknik Building, even when he was a child. As he strolled down the over-lit corridors he remembered countless occasions when he had come to work with his father and had to wait around in bright, airless rooms while the adult world went about its occult business.

  He found the conference room easily, though it had been more than ten years since he had last been there. It seemed much smaller than he remembered it. On entering he saw Anthony seated at the far corner of the tables that were pushed together in the centre of the room. He was deep in conversation with a late middle-aged woman. As they noticed Bobby they immediately stopped talking and drew slightly apart, and a ripple of paranoia planed across Bobby’s consciousness. As if to cover, the woman quickly stood and held out a hand. “Bobby!” she said. “It’s so good to meet you again!” She was full of smiles and firm handshakes.

  Bobby looked to Anthony and said, “Hello,” then back to the woman, who was finally letting go of his hand.

  “I’m sure you don’t remember me,” the woman continued. “The last time we met you were about,” she gestured, “this high!”

  Bobby tilted his head quizzically.

  “My name’s Toni Philips, Toni with an ‘I’,” she said. “I’m one of your father’s legal team. Well, I’m the head of your father’s legal team.” She glanced at Anthony. “It still feels weird saying that! You used to play in my office, from time to time, when you were little. Do you remember?”