by Matt Levin
Most of the officers that made up the joint chiefs were huddled in small conferences, while others read reports on their wrist terminals. They snapped to attention as soon as she walked in. “Madam Prime Minister,” the most senior admiral, an aging man with a thick, grey-speckled mustache, said with a salute.
“At ease, Philip,” she grinned. Philip Eswan had been the commanding officer of the Union’s flagship for decades until he retired to serve on the joint chiefs committee. She always had a soft spot for him.
“We weren’t expecting you for another hour, ma’am,” a balding, thickset man said from the other side. General Owen Yorteb: a marine general for most of his career who had earned accolades during the war with the Horde a decade ago. Brusque, but Tricia still appreciated his honesty.
There were about a dozen other officers who had served in the navy or the marines for longer than she had been in politics, plus a couple of agency heads with the security clearance to be in the room.
“To be honest, I just wanted to get away from my staff,” Tricia said, taking a seat in the chair closest to the bunker door. The others sat down. “Did the system burn down while I was away?”
“We don’t have much to report, really,” Philip Eswan said. She thought her earlier comment had made him grin, but it was impossibly hard to tell behind the mustache. “More Horde and Junta exchanges, mostly centered on Calimor. But both sides are still holding back. It seems more like border skirmishes than a real war.”
“Have either of them shown any interest in our research base out on Bitanu?” she asked. Not that either of them could do much, of course, with the Junta having nothing more than a dozen or so older warships and the Horde having even less than that. Still, Tricia liked avoiding violence as a general rule. Except when it was necessary.
“None, ma’am.”
“Well, that’s good. No need to get too concerned about a few people shooting at each other on that lifeless desert of a planet.”
Owen Yorteb frowned. “We may have to pick a side someday, ma’am.”
Tricia shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when it comes. I’m not particularly keen on getting overextended into another war on the frontier.”
When she had first become prime minister, working with the joint chiefs had been the part of the job that stressed her out the most. She had, after all, probably stared down more than a few of them from the seat of her old starfighter.
It was an unusual career path: civil rights lawyer to rebel guerrilla to prime minister. She had taken up arms against the Union back in her youth, when she thought it served only as a puppet of the financier class. That was before an attempted coup, before anti-coup loyalists had sought to strike a bargain with the rebels to restore the Union back to power. She had delivered the bulk of the rebel forces. In their gratitude, the Union loyalists installed her as prime minister.
Her background hadn’t exactly ingratiated herself with the joint chiefs. Slowly, however, a grudging sense of respect developed between her and her military advisers. And now, thirteen years on, she had to admit that she preferred their company to her staff or other politicians. She pulled a cigarette out of her jacket’s breast pocket, and Philip leaned forward to light the end.
If the joint chiefs had any reservations about her, however, they had quickly learned the strength of her resolve. She had spent her first years in office authorizing an operation to take out the remnants of the rebels she had used to fight alongside. Then, when the settlers out on Ikkren launched an unprovoked attack on the Union’s outer rim settlements, she had ordered an orbital strike on the attackers’ base of operations. Any questions about her iron will wafted away alongside the ashes of the vaporized city.
The Union military’s rules of engagement were very clear about the use of nuclear bombardment as a tactic: the use of nuclear weapons was permitted, although they could not be used preemptively. And with Tricia having spent plenty of time on the other side of the Union war machine, respect for the military’s no-first-use policy was one of the few times she liked playing by the rules.
“We’ve also been going through the intel from the refugees,” Philip said. “It appears a rogue force calling itself the Hegemony expanded aggressively throughout human space, attacking other colonized systems and bringing them under their control, until they eventually returned to conquer Earth. The refugees weren’t the first to fall under Hegemony attack, but so far they were the only ones who thought about coming all the way to Natonus as a means of escape.”
Tricia nodded slowly, drinking in the information. “Any chance this Hegemony could pose problems for us?”
“Maybe down the line, but it isn’t likely right now,” Philip continued. “Our long-range scanners have been sweeping space ever since we picked up the Preserver, but it looks like they weren’t being followed.”
“And we’re far enough away from the rest of human space that it would take more than a century for anyone to reach us,” Tricia said.
“But,” Owen interjected, “we shouldn’t rule out any possible threats. Including the newars.”
Newars? Tricia thought briefly, before immediately realizing it was a combination of ‘new’ and ‘arrivals’. Typical military compulsion to turn everything into a portmanteau.
“You think the sleepers pose a threat to us?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“They have 40 million to our system’s 350 million. You have to admit, the numbers alone make it look like an invasion,” Owen said. “And,” he continued, “we have no idea whether they’re telling the truth about themselves. All the intel they provided was also written by them. What if they’re being completely dishonest? What if their pods are full of Hegemony soldiers, and they’re just masquerading as refugees?”
“That...seems unlikely,” Tricia said. The Union fleet had surveyed the Preserver thoroughly. There wasn’t even a single laser cannon on its exterior. If you wanted to invade a system, an unarmed sleeper ship was probably the worst way to do so.
“Maybe,” Owen conceded, “but it’s my job to consider all the outcomes. And plan for the worst-case scenario.”
Tricia regarded the general in contemplative silence, running her hand across her face. She certainly had gotten the feeling that Isadora was hiding something from her, but at the time she had chalked that up to nerves. Or the lingering effects of coming out of cryosleep. Probably both.
She had to admit that there was some logic to what he was saying: they had no way to verify anything about the refugees’ story. Even if the Preserver had nothing more than a few lockers’ worth of handguns, the Union simply couldn’t know for certain that the pods were not secretly filled with soldiers. Her people had gone through the Preserver’s databanks, but who’s to say they hadn’t been altered in transit?
On top of all this, the consequences if the new arrivals actually did have ulterior motives could be disastrous. They should have known that other humans would eventually come to the Natonus System. Somehow, the weight of figuring out how to deal with the refugees had fallen on her shoulders. If she made the wrong choice, if she didn’t take the possibility of an actual threat seriously enough…
Her wrist terminal beeped, interrupting her thoughts. Normally she would have ignored it, but the call was marked as priority one. Damn it all, she thought, opening up a comm channel.
“Ma’am,” one of her aides said, “I have news about the ballot measures.”
She had punted on the question of settlement charters, putting it up to a public referendum. The electorate would vote on each Union world separately. It wasn’t how they’d do things normally, but the situation was further from normal than the system had ever seen.
The aide’s face darkened. “The results for all six settlement charters just came back…”
CHAPTER 5
* * *
The small splotch of color on the poster hanging on Nadia Jibor’s wall had always helped her with the oppressive neutrality of life aboard a starship. E
ven back on Earth, a lot of her work with the St. Louis-based refugee resettlement agency had been in towering offices, with most of her fieldwork spent on spacefaring stations. After a while, she’d stopped being able to tell the difference between all the ships, stations, and offices where she had worked. Claustrophobic, harsh white corridors and grey machinery had a way of blending together in her head.
The poster was one of the few belongings she had packed. It showed a breathtaking vista of the Hajigak Pass, right through Afghanistan’s Baba Mountain Range. Just looking at the landscape, and its swelling greens and browns and blues, made her feel the enormity of her family’s journey.
Both sets of grandparents had lived in a small village somewhere in the Hajigak foothills, before war and drought had forced them across Earth to the Twin Cities. And then her parents, missing the wide open spaces of their youth, moved out to a farmstead in western Kansas. All she had known in her childhood was endless wheat fields that seemed to stretch out to the ends of the planet.
She wondered if, at any point in her family’s long odyssey—one that had crossed countries, continents, and now the galaxy—anyone had ever felt as wholly unwelcome as she did now.
Six settlement charters for the refugee population had gone up for public ratification. Six settlement charters had all been voted down. In a personal message from the Union prime minister, she at least had tried to feign some kind of apologetic tone. “Turnout was uncharacteristically low” or “the opposition was just better mobilized” were her excuses of choice. The reasons didn’t really matter. It was abundantly clear that the people of the Natonus System—or at least, those who lived under Union jurisdiction—had no desire to welcome Nadia and her people.
She sank back into her bed unit. Nadia had taken up residence in the Exemplar, a survey ship docked in the Preserver’s hangar she had requisitioned for her settlement efforts. Soon enough, she figured, she’d be setting out for the undeveloped wilderness of whatever planets they could find to settle. It didn’t feel worth it to take up residence in a room aboard the Preserver.
Nadia turned her attention to another wall decoration: a cross-stitch her mother had made for her of Fussilat 34, Nadia’s favorite verse from the Qur’an. Nadia had never maintained the same level of religious conviction as her parents, and they had accepted that, but she still valued knowing at least a little about their traditions. Her mother’s cross-stitch had a way of comforting Nadia in her darkest hours, as though her mother were giving Nadia a thick, warming hug even though her physical body was still in cryo.
Letting out a ponderous sigh, Nadia again pulled up the file she had been working with on her wrister. A holographic display shot out, showing a bulleted list of the research she had been working on for the past few days.
Nadia had left her last meeting with the other crew members in frustration. When the computer had first thawed her out, she couldn’t help but view their arrival in Natonus as the dawn of a new beginning. But the failed settlement charter votes and Russ beating his war drums had since tempered such hopes.
Especially if Russ had Isadora’s ear. He’d use the settlement charter vote to push her further toward an aggressive posture. But even a basic level of education showed just how flawed Russ’ approach was: if they came in looking for a fight, they’d get one for sure.
But even still, she had to admit that Russ had done his work and knew how to communicate effectively for a political audience. In Nadia’s experience, intuition or calls for righteousness rarely swayed politicians. They needed calculating logic. And so calculating logic she would give them.
Nadia closed the file on her wrister and headed out of her cabin. The Exemplar comprised three sections: a port wing filled with working offices, a physical rec room, and a meeting room; a central hub with a cockpit up front and the engine room in the rear; and a starboard wing with four crew cabins and a canteen. She passed by the other empty cabins, took a right, and then descended a staircase down to the aft airlock below the engine room.
She took a turbolift back up to the main Preserver deck and headed to the conference room. Vincent Gureh was coming down the opposite hallway. He wore a soft smile on his face, and muttered a hello. She returned the smile and opened the door for him.
Isadora was already inside, brewing coffee again. Ever since their first crew meeting, Isadora had faithfully brewed mugs for all four of them, which only further endeared her to Nadia. She had fond memories of her mother making coffee for their family back in their farmstead on Earth. Her father was always reading some anachronistic print newspaper, and he would summarize the news for her while the smell of brewing coffee wafted through the house.
For Nadia, coffee felt like home and family. Isadora placed the mug in front of her, no doubt unaware of the emotional meaningfulness for Nadia. Then she took a mug to Russ, who had also arrived early. Nadia supposed the room didn’t feel totally familial.
She caught Russ glaring at her from across the table. She had spent most of her professional career dealing with people like Russ: the kind of people who always argued for the most “practical” option while ignoring the fact that making sure ordinary people had adequate housing and were happy with their circumstances had a kind of practicality as well.
It hadn’t gotten any less frustrating.
“I’m not going to mince words,” Isadora said to start off the meeting. “The results of the settlement charter vote are a major setback for us.”
Normally, Isadora’s voice had a comforting mixture of warmth and sternness. The kind that let you know she was there to both take care of you and fight for you. But the usual warmth was gone today.
“We had to know this was coming, ma’am,” Russ said. “It’s just like I said: they see us as invaders.”
Even if Nadia found Russ’ views distasteful, she shared some of his cynicism regarding the Union. Sure, it had presented itself as a democratic trading bloc, but Nadia was more interested in what the primers had left out: the Union’s lack of care that its most impoverished citizens had fled to the outer rim to pursue a better life, its sustained push for frontier development, the wars it had fought against the same frontier settlers it had driven away in the first place. Trading bloc or not, the Union looked far more like an empire from Nadia’s perspective.
“We need to double down on the strategy I advocated for last time,” Russ continued. “If they aren’t going to allow us to settle peacefully, we need to be prepared to do so by force.
“I say we set up connections with the black market, offer whatever it takes to secure weapons and ship defenses, and thaw out as many people with military experience as we can. I don’t think the Union has the appetite to stop us if we settle somewhere in the wilderness on some of their planets.”
And there it was. “Respectfully, I think there’s another way,” Nadia said. “And it will leave us safer.”
She saw Russ’ mouth twitch, but Isadora intervened before her security adviser had time to respond. “I’d like to hear Nadia’s thoughts,” Isadora said.
“We don’t have permission to settle on six planets,” Nadia said. “But I’m not sure that changes anything. We still have three to work with.”
“We went over this last time,” Russ interjected. “Enther’s in the middle of a civil war, and everything we know about Ikkren says the only people there are violent and notoriously hostile to outsiders.”
“That still leaves one,” Nadia said.
“Calimor?” Russ scoffed. “The entire planet’s a graveyard. And what’s left is being carved up by Horde raiders and the Junta military. Our best bet is still settling someplace like Sarsi, stocked with black market supplies, and with enough people to defend ourselves.”
“That would still leave millions in cryo aboard the Preserver,” Nadia countered. “And if things really do come to blows with the Union, having so many aboard this one ship would be fatal. The Union could threaten to destroy the ship in a single missile strike.”
; Russ stammered out a jab at her—what did she know about security contingency planning, after all—but Isadora silenced him with her palm. “I think we can all see the merits to Nadia’s suggestion,” Isadora said. “But Russ is correct. The planet is nearly inhospitable.”
It was true: Calimor had no natural oxygenated atmosphere, unlike the majority of Natonus’ worlds. But they had the technology to adapt. “There are still remains of the last settlement efforts,” Nadia said. “Large, domed spice-growing plantations. A decade ago, the Calimor spice operation was hugely profitable. We can start it back up.”
“That was before the most recent war,” Russ said.
“Luckily, all we have to deal with is small-scale border skirmishes then,” she shot back, cocking a slight grin. Nadia could almost feel the confidence surging through her veins. She came into this meeting knowing what to expect. And she had shown she could go toe-to-toe with Russ.
“I see all your points,” Isadora said, resting her head in her palm, “but surely you can see the inherent riskiness of your plan.”
“Of course I can. But it’s our best and only option right now. We can make a home in this system. And it starts on Calimor,” Nadia said.
Russ glared at her but stayed silent. Vincent quietly indicated his agreement with Nadia. Isadora circled the rim of her coffee mug with her finger, lost in thought. “I am inclined to agree. And since you’re running point on our settlement efforts, I am further inclined to put you in charge of an expedition.”
“The Exemplar is ready to go,” Nadia said.
“If you need a crew, I can work on compiling a list of dossiers for the kinds of people you might need on your trip,” Vincent offered.