by Terry Mixon
Hell, just to be thorough, she should probably make certain that Harry sent a copy to the United Nations. That would make getting out of this deal really, really difficult.
Then she’d convince Molly to try the sarcophagus out. Brenda had explained what would happen, but she wasn’t sure the other woman had believed her. She’d find out when she woke up in a few hours.
This would really bind the Families to the alliance. She’d also share everything she passed to the US with them, adding in other tech and historical details that the US couldn’t be trusted with.
With all that done, she returned to the Virginia base. She cleared one of the gate rooms and had Victor dial the base in New Zealand.
The gate activated, which showed that the receiving end was intact and functional, but there was only a pocket of space on the other end. It looked like the ceiling to the gate room there had collapsed.
The New Zealand base was a total loss, though with a little bit of work, they might be able to extract the last gate and set it up somewhere else. Honestly, that was almost all that they’d found in the base that was worth recovering, unless the computer system proved functional. She hoped it did, because that would give her a fully operational base that would turn Harry green with envy.
Brenda waved Victor to close the gate and then had him dial Volunteer World. She knew there was a battle taking place, but she should be safe enough inside the caves. She needed to interface with Jess and find out how her people could assist in the fighting there.
Once the gate cleared, she made her way through and found out that Jess wasn’t in the caves. On the crown of the hill, she spotted Jess standing next to Sandra Dean, both women beside a rock outcropping.
“How’s it going?” she asked the blonde scientist as she walked up.
“It looks like we’ve won the battle, but the war still up in the air,” Jess said as she turned toward her.
“Perhaps a little bit better than that,” Sandra said grudgingly as she put her rifle away. “We’ve routed the forces around the hill, and they’re retreating. We took out a couple of aircraft that the Asharim sent out, but a third one picked up their leadership and took them back into the city.
“At this point, the best we can do is bring the Volunteers in, along with whatever other troops we can find, and push forward. If we’re going to take the gates inside that city away from the Asharim, it’s going to take blood, sweat, and tears.”
Brenda looked at the rotting city in the distance. “Fighting is never pretty. Is Commander Krueger okay?”
Jess frowned a little at that but nodded. “He’s busy, but he came through fine.”
She relaxed a little at that and changed the subject before the other woman could follow up. “I’ve got a little good news on my end, though some bad, too.”
She filled the two women in on the deal she’d made with Queen.
“It sure seems like you got the crappy end of the deal,” Sandra said with a genuine laugh. “You might get a good bit out of it, but you’ve got to work with Queen for five years? Sucks to be you.”
“Nothing worthwhile ever comes without some pain,” Brenda agreed. “It also sucks that the New Zealand base is gone, though it’s certainly probable that we can recover the gate if we dig down and disassemble it.”
She looked around. “Weren’t you hosting a couple of heavy-worlders? Where are they at?”
Jess frowned and began looking around. “I’m not sure. Sandra was watching them before she came over to tear a strip off of me. I don’t believe that they ran off, though. Both of them gave their word. They’ll be around here somewhere.”
Interested in finding out the answer to that mystery, Brenda followed Jess and Sandra as they searched the hilltop, finally locating the two heavy-worlders locked in a conversation with an alien unlike anything she’d ever seen before.
The wounded male had kind of a dark-grayish skin with a rough texture and vaguely humanoid facial features. He lay on a cot inside a large tent with the two heavy-worlders sitting on either side of him. They were conversing in the heavy-worlder language.
“I can’t decide if this is good news or bad news,” Jess said. “Let’s go find out.”
33
Queen smugly walked through the security checkpoints and into the White House. The Secret Service agents outside the oval office must’ve been informed about his change in status, because they were watching him more closely than usual. Fine by him.
The secretary to the president gestured for him to proceed in, and he did so. The handover between the Secret Service agents outside the Oval Office and those inside went smoothly. At no time did they leave Queen without one of their number ready to deal with him should he decide to cause trouble.
He wasn’t inclined to. Nothing he could do or say would change the outcome of this meeting, so he might as well embrace his future. Everyone had been fired at some point. That was just part of life. Often, such things were stepping stones to more prestigious posts, ones that were more satisfying, or ones that led to more power.
Queen had to admit that while being the secretary of state had been a prestigious position, it certainly hadn’t been an easy task. It was a thankless job, if one was honest. And thankfully, in just a very few minutes, it would be someone else’s problem.
George Blankenship rose from his desk and gestured toward the comfortable seats, surprising Queen a little. He’d expected the man to take his resignation and send him packing with no fanfare.
“I understand this isn’t the high point in our relationship, Josh,” the president said as he settled into his seat. “I take no pleasure in having to do this. Honestly, I can’t see how anyone could have done a better job in your position, right up until the end.
“I wish you hadn’t put me into a position that made me choose between you and the safety of the United States. I know the Chinese pissed you off—hell, they pissed me off too—but you should’ve just let the spaceport matter drop. In the end, that’s what got you.”
“So you said,” Queen said as he took a seat. “I’ll admit that my response was probably too forceful in hindsight, but I’m not going to apologize for doing what I thought was right for the United States of America.”
He smiled at the president. “I’d imagine that whoever you pick as my successor is going to have quite the hot potato on his or her hands. My actions are certainly not going to make their jobs any easier.”
“Probably not,” Blankenship admitted. “We came into this as friends, and I want us to leave the same way. I understand that you’re angry with me and I regret that. That doesn’t mean that we can’t work together again at some point. I’m sure that you’ll land on your feet.”
Queen chuckled. “I will. In fact, I’ve already accepted a position that I’ll move into as soon as I hand over my resignation and you accept it. It’s something of a step down, but the prospects for personal growth are truly impressive. I suspect that I’ll look back on this moment with a degree of fondness, once a certain amount of time has passed.”
He reached into his jacket, pulled out the envelope with his resignation in it, and handed it to the president. “You’ll find everything in order. Just your standard everyday mutually agreed-upon resignation so that I can pursue other goals in life.”
Blankenship opened the envelope and scanned the resignation letter, nodding when he finished the brief missive. “Everything is in order. As of right now, you are no longer the secretary of state of the United States. I thank you for your service. If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly are you going to be doing now?”
“I think I’ll just keep that to myself for the moment,” Queen said with something of a smirk. “Let’s just say that it’s going to be rewarding on a number of fronts.
“By the way, speaking of rewarding, I think you should know that one of the last things I completed in my official position was an agreement with Brenda Cabot and her associates.
“It’s something that I’
d been working on for quite some time, nailing down the specifics of exactly how they could assist us in understanding the Asharim technology while at the same time benefiting from association with the United States. I left a copy of it in my files for my replacement.”
The president frowned. “Why would you do that? We already have an agreement with that Humanity Unlimited company and their alliance for substantially the same thing.”
“Our agreement with Humanity Unlimited does have a number of the same sorts of clauses and requirements, but they don’t have the same level of knowledge that Brenda Cabot and her associates have. They’ve been working with this tech and the knowledge of the Asharim for a thousand years.
“Tell me, would you rather trust a startup company to solve the problems in space or the people that have been here as long as the ones ruling China right now?”
Blankenship stood and scowled down at Queen. “What exactly did you promise them? What precisely are we getting from them?”
Queen stood slowly and smiled at the president. “All I can say is that I only bartered things that you’d previously approved—and I have that in writing, mind you. I can’t say that it’s been a pleasure working for you, Mr. President, but it has certainly been educational.”
“Get the hell out of my office, you little piece of crap. Whatever you did, I’ll undo it.”
“Good luck with that. Everything I had was looked over by the department lawyers and is ironclad. I’ve made certain that a copy of the agreement was shared with the members of the alliance, too. Here’s a pro tip for you: if you’re going to fire someone, don’t leave them time and access to cause you mischief.
“Oh, and by the way, you asked about where I was going to be working? Brenda Cabot is my new boss. Irony there, right? With any luck, when you start negotiating with them in earnest to try to do anything else, I’ll get to be their front man. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
With a laugh, Queen headed for the exit, leaving the president cursing behind him. Time to go see what the future held.
Jess cleared her throat. “Did I miss anything good?” she asked in the heavy-worlder language, though she was now sure that the name wasn’t accurate. The Peret spoke exactly the same tongue, so it might be the language the Asharim used to converse with their slaves so they didn’t have to sully their own language. The same was likely true for what they’d thought was the Asharim written language. She’d have to ask to be sure.
Kerrick Vidar turned toward her and shook his head. “Discussing issues like these is rarely a good thing for anyone involved.”
His daughter shook her head. “You miss her inflection, Father. She was speaking about interesting rather than good or bad.”
The man smiled slightly. “Ah. My mistake. In that case, you could say that Lastark, my daughter, and I have had quite an interesting discussion. As one might imagine, the subject of the Masters came up.”
The wounded alien nodded slowly. “I confess that I did not believe you when you said that humans had fought for the Masters, but they know far too many things about the Masters for this to be anything but the absolute truth.
“Their legends match with many of ours, but they are not always congruent. Their tales of the cruelty that the Masters have displayed toward their slaves is one thing that has not changed. He tells me that you are negotiating with his people. What exactly do you hope to gain by some reunification with humans that are former slaves of the Masters?”
“I don’t think you quite understand where I’m coming from,” Jess said, finding a chair nearby, placing it at the foot of the cot, and sitting. “I’m not negotiating with them because they’re human. I’m negotiating with them because I believe that we can be allies and both benefit from sticking a finger in the eyes of the Masters.
“Frankly, the same is true of your people and mine. We don’t have to be blood enemies. What would you do if you didn’t have to fight and die for the Masters? What kind of lives would you have? Isn’t that something worth fighting for?”
The alien shook his head. “I cannot envision a future such as you describe. My people have been slaves for centuries beyond measure. This freedom that Kerrick speaks of is a foreign concept to us. Something almost incomprehensible.”
“It doesn’t have to be a mystery forever,” Vera said softly. “Our people were once as downtrodden as yours. Once the Masters abandoned us, it took us lifetimes to learn how to be as free as we are.
“The children are the ones that teach you. The ones that are born after the hold of the Masters is broken. They see life in a different way than you. Or they will. All you have to do is imagine a future without the Masters and help us bring it into being.”
Jess smiled slightly. It looked as if the heavy-worlders had made up their minds about the Masters. Excellent. She still didn’t know what that would mean in the long term, but it was better than fighting them to the death.
As if reading her mind, the woman turned to face Jess. “And before you believe that means that we have decided to take your side against the Masters, I caution you against thinking that. We still need to see and speak to one of the Masters, and then we will take what we learn back to the high priest. He will make that decision, as is his right.”
Jess held a hand up signaling her acceptance. “I don’t want to rush things, but I’m allowed to feel somewhat hopeful. My partner is fighting the Asharim down below, trying to capture one of them so that we can all speak and learn of them, but I’m uncertain how that will turn out.
“Now, I have a side question. Until we spoke with the heavy-worlders, we assumed that the language we were finding and speaking was the Asharim tongue. You both speak it but say it isn’t the language they use. Does that mean it’s a specific language for dealing with their slave races?”
“It is,” Kerrick said. “And the scrap of written language that I’ve seen is also used for the same purpose. The Masters were never ones to sully themselves with the lower beings. Even knowing how to converse with slaves was a black splotch on them. They reserved that for their own lower social classes. No slaves are ever allowed to learn their own language.”
That was when a group of men made their way into the tent carrying someone on a stretcher. Jess turn to watch them, trying to see who’d been injured, and saw Harry walking beside the group.
He spotted her and changed direction toward her. “Good news. One of the pilots survived the crash of their air car because it got hung up in a tree. He’s hurt, but unless some type of internal injury kills him, he’ll probably make it.”
Her mouth partly open in surprise, Jess stood and walked over to where the soldiers were securing the new patient/prisoner. Based on the images she’d seen, this was definitely an Asharim: tall, slender, and, even injured, arrogantly sneering at everyone around him.
Seen this way, he didn’t seem that much of a threat, but she wasn’t fooled. These people had mastered technology far beyond anything that humanity had dreamed of just a few years ago. Even having fallen from their pinnacle of achievement, they still had access to things she could barely imagine, even with the download in her brain. It wouldn’t do to underestimate them.
As she was staring down at the alien, Kerrick Vidar stepped up beside her. “He looks smaller than I expected.”
In spite of the gravity of the situation, Jess laughed before she could slap a hand over her mouth to smother it. The corner of his mouth curled upward, showing that he’d known what his words would cause her to do.
His daughter smacked him on the arm before turning to Jess. “If he survives, we will question him. You can of course be present and ask your own questions. He is after all your prisoner, as is my father. As I am under truce bond, I will not press my case too strongly.
“I will say that you have met many of the expectations we have set for you, and that will weigh in your favor when we speak to the high priest. If what I expect to hear comes to pass, I believe my old friend will decide that we do not follow the Ma
sters any longer.”
“Fool,” the wounded Asharim said, his voice weak and cracking. “As if we care whether you decide to follow us or not. All are our slaves and will serve us.”
Jess shook her head slightly. This was going to be a very informative question-and-answer session. She doubted the Asharim would give them any useful information, but his words would probably convince their other prisoner to help them. All she had to do was get this guy on a roll.
34
Harry quickly became bored trying to follow Jess’s questioning the alien. He didn’t even speak the language. Since Jess was focused on the Asharim prisoner, he stepped back without saying anything and went off in search of Krueger.
He found the man at the bottom of the hill directing the troops in securing the area against further incursions. There were a lot of dead aliens scattered across the landscape, and based upon a few sheet-covered bodies at the base of the hill, his forces hadn’t gotten off completely unscathed.
“What’s the damage?” Harry asked softly once he was next to the other man.
Krueger dipped his head slightly. “Surprisingly light, but not painless. Seven killed, twenty-three injured in one form or another. We’re evacuating the wounded through the gate to Freedom Express right now. They’ll perform triage there and get the very worst of the injured taken to better facilities as quickly as possible.”
Considering the number of people that they’d been fighting and the number of bodies he was looking at on the field, that was a remarkably low casualty count. Still, Krueger was right.
Every single one was painful in its own way. Somebody’s mother, father, sister, brother, wife, or husband would get the worst news of their entire lives shortly, and they’d be broken.
Harry had done those kinds of notifications before. When any member of his company had died, he made the notification in person if he could. If not, he followed up in person as soon as he could possibly do so. His people deserved that.