Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1)

by Parker, Gavin E

  They laughed.

  “How’s that going,” said Bobby.

  “It’s sort of ordinary, at the moment. He was always the unofficial Mayor of Mars Town anyway. I guess this just makes it official. Or not official, depending on your point of view. There was some dodgy business over at the garrison yesterday. Our security people were supposed to take the place over but something happened and someone got killed.”

  “I heard about that on the streams.”

  “It’s awful that someone got hurt but I think it’s all over now.”

  “How about you? How’s the law?”

  “It’s good. I’m working mostly for my dad, taking on the odd thing here and there.”

  “And your personal life?”

  Christina grimaced. “My private life? Private, I guess?” she offered.

  “You can do better than that,” Bobby teased.

  “Well, I’m still a spinster, if that’s what you mean. What about you? Still breaking hearts?”

  “No, I’m a spinster too.”

  “I thought you were all partnered up. Back on Earth. It didn’t work out?”

  Bobby shrugged. “You know. The war. She had to travel a lot for her work. It kind of . . .” his sentence trailed off.

  “What was her name?”

  “Askel Lund. She’s an engineer. One of the top development people at Helios, actually.”

  “Askel,” said Christina. “It’s a nice name.”

  “It is a nice name,” said Bobby. “Shall we order?”

  Christina was determined to find out about Askel. She thought of Bobby like a younger brother and instinctively wanted to look out for him. There had been rare occasions when she had imagined what it might be like if she and Bobby were a couple. He was a good man and certainly not hard to look at. But that was an idle daydream. Christina was too down-to-earth for a livewire like Bobby and besides, it would just be weird.

  “So Askel travels a lot?” said Christina as they ate.

  “She does,” said Bobby, between mouthfuls.

  “She sounds like just your type.”

  Bobby paused. “Do I have a type?”

  Christina thought. “I guess not. What I mean is that you’re a doer. You go places, you do things. It sounds like she is too, so it seems like it should have been a good match.”

  “Askel’s a great gal, and we got on really well together. But we both had lots of work commitments and we were based in different countries. It was a strange time, with a war going on and all that.”

  Christina surveyed Bobby’s face as he ate. He seemed rattled.

  “So it was just the war that came between you, then?”

  Bobby put his cutlery down. “Are you my mum?” he asked. He tried to make it sound playful but the underlying irritation seeped through.

  “I just want you to be happy, Bobby. Am I prying?”

  “You are, a little bit.”

  “I’m sorry.” They carried on eating but Christina still couldn’t let it go. After a few moments she said, “What about when the war was ending? You didn’t think about getting back in touch with her?”

  “Look,” said Bobby, “Askel’s great, right? She’s terrific, she really is. She’s a great person, she’s incredibly talented, good at her job and she’s beautiful too. War is a strange time. I’d finished my tours and was being let go from the army. My moment in the sun was over. Askel’s star was rising higher and higher and I knew I just had to let her go. I always knew I was going to come back here and I couldn’t see Askel in some backwater like Mars. It’s just not where she belongs. I could see how it was going to end up so I had to walk away.” He looked sad and thoughtful. “She was . . .” he began, but he didn’t finish the sentence.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” said Christina.

  “It’s okay,” said Bobby. “I guess everything has a way of working out in the end so . . .” He paused. “I’m sure it was all for the best.”

  Christina looked at Bobby sympathetically, nodding. “If you love her, set her free,” she said, absentmindedly.

  Bobby looked at her with a screwed-up face. “Did you just say that?” he said.

  Christina snapped upright and she caught herself. “No!” she said. “I absolutely did not. You just imagined it.”

  They carried on eating.

  C H A P T E R 1 6

  Outrage

  “If I offered you a million bucks would you sell me that skirt you’re wearing right now?”

  “For a million bucks, yes, I think I would.”

  “But I mean right now. You can’t change or send out for a replacement. You take it off here, now, and hand it over.”

  “I think I still would for a million.”

  “Okay, here’s the thing, it’s not even that. For a start, it’s not a million, it’s cost plus ten percent. How much was the skirt?”

  “I don’t want to . . .”

  “How much was the skirt, Lorene?”

  “It was a hundred and twenty dollars. On sale.”

  “Okay, a hundred and twenty dollars plus ten per is a hundred and thirty-two dollars. Let’s call it a hundred and forty. If I came to your office, ripped your skirt off and left a hundred and forty dollars on your desk, how would you feel?”

  “And you’d love to do that, wouldn’t you?”

  Farrell smiled. “This isn’t about me, it’s about you. How would you feel?”

  Lorene thought. “I don’t know. Violated, I guess. Robbed?”

  “Exactly!” Farrell jabbed the air with his finger. “Violated and robbed. It’s not a trade unless both parties agree. Robbery. Exactly!”

  “However, if you were going to take my skirt unannounced I’d rather you left a hundred and forty dollars than didn’t.”

  “Not the point at all. It’s a crime. A major crime.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We have to make it right. Not only is it criminal, causing huge distress and damage to Venkdt Corporation and their shareholders, it also affects national security. The world runs on deuterium. All the while we have control over its production we are energy independent. If we are forced to buy our deuterium from an independent state we are no longer energy independent; we are reliant on them. They could withhold supplies, raise prices on a whim, whatever. We would be totally beholden to them and that is not acceptable. Those deuterium processing facilities belong to the USAN. Their value is far beyond their dollar worth.”

  “You haven’t answered the question.”

  “Not up to us. It’s up to the big guy. It’s up to us to advise him. We have to impress on him what is at stake.

  “And we have to give him options.

  “We can give him those; trade embargoes, diplomatic channels and all that. But it’s bullshit. Any trade embargo is going to hurt us far more than it’s going to hurt them. The clever bastards have waited until they didn’t need us anymore. We need that deuterium. What do they need from us? Diplomacy is up the spout too. Our most senior person on that planet is the colonel from the garrison; she was put under house arrest yesterday. We’re screwed - we have nothing to offer him. The only people who have anything they can put on the table are Andrews’ merry band at defence. We’ve got nothing. Nothing.”

  “The meeting has been bumped forward to 14:00 this afternoon. I can get you a teleconference with Andrews before then. Would that be useful?”

  Farrell thought, distractedly. “Yes, it would. Do that. If we present together it won’t look so much like we have nothing to bring to the party. I’ll get behind Andrews and back her up. She’s got guns and shit - that’s the only thing that’s going to get this mess sorted out.” Farrell stared out of the window. “I used to think politics was a noble calling. Debate, reason. People, nations even, talking things out instead of fighting. Finding common ground, compromising, building by common consent. But over the last seven years I’ve come to realise, and this is just demonstrating it all over again, that just being right doesn’t co
unt for shit. You don’t win the argument by making your point better than the other guy, or by persuading people of their logical errors. At base, when it comes down to it, you prevail by punching the other guy harder than he can punch you. And first, if possible.” He looked at Lorene. “We do all the arguing and persuading here, don’t we? And it hasn’t got us anywhere. Andrews is in charge of punching.”

  Lorene was fiddling with her comdev. “Andrews has a window at 12:15. Should I book you fifteen minutes?”

  “Do it.”

  Directly in front of the president’s huge oak desk in the New Oval Office, set back a way, were two leather sofas facing each other over a long coffee table. Adjacent to the sofas were two leather armchairs, at either end of the coffee table. The set up was not dissimilar to a small living room. Cortes liked to have meetings there if they were small enough to allow it. He liked to dispense with formality so people could express what was really on their minds. The sofas helped with that. Cortes sat in one of the armchairs with his back to the desk of office. He was framed by the flag of the USAN on one side and the flag of the President of the USAN on the other.

  On one sofa were Farrell and White. Opposite them was Andrews. Cortes was flipping through the latest intelligence briefings. He looked up. “What can we do?”

  White spoke. “Mr President, at this stage I think we should proceed very cautiously. The Martians, maybe I should just say Venkdt, have timed this very well. There is little here in our favour. Obviously, we have to condemn the Martian actions in the strongest terms now, but in the long run we can deal with them. They can be allies.”

  “So we suck it up?”

  “No, Mr President, we tread carefully with our eyes on the long term. For now we make the right noises about justice and rest of it, but downstream our priority is a stable Mars that we can do business with.”

  “What about you?” Cortes asked Farrell.

  “Mr President, we’re very concerned about the situation. As you know, we are dependent on Martian deuterium. An independent Mars will have control over our ability to produce energy supplies - something which underpins everything we do.”

  “We have other sources of deuterium,” said White.

  “But not enough, and way more expensive. The financial ramifications alone are truly scary. If the Martians decided to push the price of deuterium up, or even withhold supply, it could destroy the economy. That planet is ours, that deuterium is ours. We simply cannot afford to have it under someone else’s control. And this whole thing is illegal, anyway. None of the Venkdt shareholders have agreed to be bought out. We can’t let that go.”

  “I agree, I agree,” said White, “none of this is ideal. But we live in the real world, where it’s messy and ‘good enough’ has to do. Ideally none of this would have happened, and the buyout is morally unsound, we all know that. But let’s work with what we’ve got. Provided the Martian government is stable, and we currently have no reason to suspect it won’t be, we can deal with them as allies. Have them inside the tent pissing out. As long as the deuterium keeps flowing I say let them fly their funny new flag.”

  “You think the most important energy producing region of the USAN should just be allowed to secede?” said Cortes.

  “I would rather that didn’t happen, of course,” said White, “but it has, and we have no remedies open to us. Working with what we have I say we should let the initial impact blow over then work like hell to keep them onside. Get the diplomatic channels working, keep the deuterium flowing. Get an embassy, you know. Hold them close.”

  “No remedies,” Cortes repeated. He jotted something down on his briefing notes. “I thought we were modifying the Aloadae? How’s that coming along?”

  “Work is progressing,” said Andrews.

  “It is?”

  “Yes, Mr President. As you know, Helios are working on modifying the Aloadae for interplanetary travel right now. We could have them in Martian orbit within five months.”

  “What are we going to do, invade Mars?” said White.

  Cortes lifted a hand and gestured for White to back off. “What would that do for us?”

  “It would focus the minds of the Martians. It would demonstrate that we take this issue very seriously.”

  “It would needlessly escalate -”

  Cortes cut White off. “What do you think, Farrell? Overkill?”

  “Mr President, I think a prominent demonstration of USAN power would be very useful. If it’s possible.”

  “It’s very possible,” said Andrews.

  “Okay,” said Cortes, “we have two of our most powerful ships in orbit around the planet. They know we mean business. What next?”

  Farrell spoke. “Our most senior person on the planet, Colonel Katrina Shaw, can step up and negotiate on our behalf. The Aloadae will provide the big stick she needs when she’s talking softly to them on our behalf.”

  “Shaw. What’s she doing for us now?” said Cortes.

  “She’s under house arrest since they took control of the garrison on Monday.”

  “Goddammit!” said Cortes. “So who do we have up there, anyone?”

  “At the moment, Mr President, no, we don’t have anyone.”

  “Jeez,” said the president. “Okay, so we bring our big guns in and somehow reactivate Colonel Shaw. What next? What if they don’t play ball?”

  “I think we all agree, Mr President,” said Andrews, “any threat or deterrent has to be credible. There would be no point sending the Aloadae to Mars if we didn’t have a military strategy to go with them. If the provisional Martian government refused to accede to our demands we could take the deuterium processing plants and all other ancillary facilities by force. Remember, Mars has no military capability to speak of. They have a security service with a few lightly armed transports and a handful of small arms. It would be a simple matter to capture the vital areas and implement control over them.”

  “Okay,” said the president, “so maybe we’re bluffing, but it’s a credible bluff. We could realistically, by force of arms, retake the planet quickly and with minimal casualties. That’s what you’re saying?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Mr President.”

  “Okay, let’s continue with this train of thought. What next? We have all the vital facilities we need, we’ve taken control. What then? What about the population? The vote was emphatic. How would we maintain order when we have just crushed a hugely popular government? We could win the war with barely a shot being fired; how would we win the peace?”

  “While the vote for independence was very strong,” said Farrell, “it wasn’t absolute. Some voted against it. Jack Karjalainen, the other leading industrialist on Mars, was opposed. There were others too, enough for us to form a government there.”

  “Karjalainen. Why do I know that name?”

  “Probably from the oldest son, Mr President. He was something of a war hero. Wrote a book about it, too.”

  “That’s right. I gave him a medal, didn’t I?”

  “I believe you did, Mr President,” said White.

  “So you’re saying we could install Jack Karjalainen as a friendly president if we have to put boots on the ground?”

  “Not him, Mr President,” said Farrell, “he’s ill. Dying, actually. His son Anthony is set to take over the family business. We could maybe do business with him.”

  “It’s way too early to be talking about boots on the ground and installing governments and the rest of it,” said White. “Unauthorised elections, compulsory buyouts, it’s all illegal, we know that. But how’s it going to look sending in the army to capture USAN territory? To have English-speaking soldiers firing on other English-speaking soldiers. Maybe even kids from the same home town, who knows? How’s that going to look?”

  “Relax,” said Cortes, “it’s never going to come to that. But we have to plan as if it might. Audrey’s right; a threat with no credibility is no threat at all.”

  “We are sending the wron
g message here,” said White. “How can we complain about them running elections when we haven’t had one here in nine years?”

  Farrell and Andrews froze momentarily and looked to Cortes for his reaction. His eyes narrowed and he stared coolly at White, who was staring coldly back.

  “You know, Gerard, that the introduction of the Restrictive War Measures here in the USAN was an absolute necessity given the unprecedented security issues which arose during the war. I took the step of suspending elections with the heaviest of hearts, and I did it in the best interests of this great nation that we all love. I would prefer it if you didn’t compare the actions of a loyal and dedicated president with those of self-interested renegades who are threatening the very stability which we’ve strived so hard to protect over the last seven years.”

  Frost hung in the air.

  “I apologise, Mr President.”

  Cortes held White’s gaze for a few long seconds before returning to Farrell. “Anthony Karjalainen. He’s someone we could work with, you think?”

  “He’s reasonably unknown but he was close with his father, and his father was very vocal in his opposition to independence. When Anthony takes control of the family business he will have a big stake in Mars. He has employees and other assets and he would be a credible political leader. I’ll see if we can feel him out and get some further intelligence. But I think so, if it came to it.”

  “Good. So we have a worst case plan. Take back what is ours and install a local government. We give the Martians independence but on our terms. That’s the credible threat and it gives us plenty of room to negotiate anything up to and including that. When the Aloadae are in orbit we have the upper hand and we can negotiate through Colonel Shaw. It sounds good to me, what do we think?”

  “It sounds very good, Mr President,” said Andrews. “Militarily all we are waiting for is for the Aloadae to be in shape to make the trip. Helios assured me they would be able to do it within four months. Let’s call it six, plus another month and a half for the journey. We can start talking about it now. When you’re condemning the Martian actions you can talk about the task force which will be setting off for Mars soon. As soon as they know we’re coming they’ll have pause for thought.”