by Matt Levin
The most important thing was to make sure her parents had a home to come out to. And even if they would be ruined by the hypothetical news, they would understand, in time. Maybe even grow to be proud of what Nadia had done. Or had tried to do.
The Exemplar had decelerated enough to allow them to unbuckle from their seats. Nadia took a deep breath and turned to face the other two. “There’s still time,” she said. “You could both probably use your jetsuits to fly down to the ground safely.”
For Nadia, it felt like she had spent the entire week-long trip from Ikkren trying to convince Boyd and Derek not to accompany her. Once she had come up with her plan, she realized it was practically a suicide run. Putting herself in the line of fire was an acceptable risk, but she had no desire to drag her two friends along with her.
The two men exchanged glances. “Haven’t we been over this before?” Boyd said, cocking a grin. “We’re all in. We’ve committed so much to the settlement efforts. We’ll do everything we can to see it through.”
It had seemed that the harder Nadia tried to convince Boyd and Derek that they’d be better off jumping ship, the harder they had maintained their commitment to go through with her plan. She had eventually given up trying to dissuade them, but she figured she might as well give them one more chance for a graceful exit before there truly was no turning back.
“I couldn’t go back to Ikkren after abandoning the project,” Derek said. “For better or worse, my people and yours are now linked.”
Nadia grinned. No matter what happened, it would be good to have their company up to the end. Looking down, she saw that the ship’s computer was now estimating ten minutes till landing. Time to prepare.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s make sure the missile scrambler is ready to go.”
CHAPTER 39
* * *
To Isadora’s surprise, it was Katrina Lanzic at the door, flanked by two militiamen. “They’re saying the Union forces are about to land,” Katrina said, making little effort to conceal the frown on her face. “That’s our cue to join the others in the bunker.”
Isadora gathered her belongings in a satchel, since she had no idea when she’d be able to return to the office. Then she joined the other four in the hallway and headed for the closest turbolift.
“We haven’t talked much since you arrived,” Katrina said as they walked.
“I’m not sure what there is to say,” Isadora said. “Clearly, diplomacy has failed.”
“Sabotaged from the start, I’d say,” Katrina countered. If the two militia members felt awkward as they listened to the two women’s back-and-forth, neither showed it. “At this point though, I’m not sure arguing with you will change your mind,” Katrina continued.
Only took a few months, Isadora thought. “I’m surprised to hear you say that,” she said.
“It’s been a long road, but I’ve come to understand that you’re the one calling the shots. Even if I disagree with a substantial amount of the decisions you’ve made, I can at least see the logic behind them.”
Isadora arched an eyebrow. All it took was the impending arrival of the Union military to turn Katrina sentimental.
“The problem,” Katrina continued, “is that you aren’t the one calling the shots anymore.”
They had arrived at the turbolift shaft. One of the militia members pushed a button, and the lift descended to the tunnels below.
“I beg to differ,” Isadora said.
“All you’ve been doing is giving speeches the last few days,” Katrina said. “And although no one’s invited me to any of the planning meetings, I can guess what’s happening: Russ Kama has been making the final decisions, not you.”
Isadora didn’t bother confirming Katrina’s suspicions, and she couldn’t shake the fact that she had been feeling the same thing. After all, she had been surprised when it was Katrina, not Russ or Riley, that came to get her and accompany her to the subterranean bunker. But it made sense that Russ and Riley were already down there. They were practically the ones running the show. Isadora was just a figurehead.
She was taken aback at how bitter the voice in her head sounded. It was probably just the stress. The worst thing about barreling toward a catastrophe was the feeling that you didn’t have any power to avert it.
But didn’t she? Was she not still in charge?
The elevator settled, and the two militia members led them down a series of corridors toward the bunker.
“You need to assert yourself,” Katrina hissed as they approached the entrance to the bunker. “Your security advisers are just that: advisers. And right now, they’re marching the rest of us to a war we can’t possibly win.”
Isadora paused at the entrance to the bunker, resting a hand on the concrete wall as she collected her thoughts. “Ma’am?” one of the militia members said.
“I’ll be right in,” Isadora said. “I just need to clear my head.” The two guards and Katrina exchanged glances. “I’ll be right in,” Isadora repeated herself, more forcefully this time. The trio got the hint and entered the room without her.
She struggled to think past all the anxiety, the dread, the hopelessness. She took three deep breaths, trying to force her raging emotions aside with each successive inhale and exhale. Once her mind was as empty as possible, she tried to let her thoughts naturally land wherever they may.
Why hadn’t she passed along the file detailing General Owen Yorteb’s involvement with the Offspring to Tricia? While Isadora had been in transit to Calimor, sending any messages on her wrister might have given away her position. But now, the Union knew exactly where she was.
Russ had been skeptical of the entire Union government from the get-go, and he was correct that the Offspring infiltration of the government might extend well beyond the general. But Tricia had never given Isadora any reason to doubt her personally. It was even possible that Tricia hadn’t been the one to order Union troops into their embassy back on Obrigan. What if that, too, was the work of the general? Either way, there was nothing left to lose. And maybe something to gain by giving Tricia the benefit of the doubt.
Trust your instincts, Isadora told herself, pulling up the file on her wrister. The computer chose me for a reason, she continued, trying to find some way to justify her instincts.
Isadora’s fingers hovered above the SEND button for only an instant. Then she pressed it. For better or worse—even if the prime minister wrote it off as some fabricated gambit from a desperate Isadora—Tricia would hear about her chief general’s duplicity.
Isadora entered the bunker.
The room was small and circular, with desks set up along every edge of the room packed with consoles and terminals. The central projector displayed a holographic image of the settlement and the Union landing force.
The room was bathed in red-orange light far different from the basic fluorescents everywhere else. Probably hooked up to some emergency backup generator, Isadora thought, in case Union bombardment knocks out our entire power grid.
Russ and Riley were huddled over one of the terminals, watching as a controller reviewed the colony’s automated turret system. Katrina stood on the far wall, leaning against the concrete and observing Isadora. The mayor, whose sudden political irrelevance may have eclipsed even Isadora’s, was hunched against the opposite wall. Morris had one arm crossed over his chest while the other frantically rubbed his chin.
“We have a problem,” Russ growled, looking up at Isadora. “It’s Nadia.”
. . .
Nadia, Boyd, and Derek headed back to the anterior of the Exemplar. Near the back of the engine room was a small mechanical device wedged between two panels. It was the missile scrambler Russ had insisted on and Vincent Gureh had installed before Nadia had originally departed the Preserver, in what felt like another life.
At the time, Nadia had shrugged it off as nothing more than an accommodation for Russ’ paranoia. She hadn’t imagined actually having to use it, much less in the present circum
stances.
Boyd inspected the wires running under the scrambler device. “Looks like we’re good to go,” he said, flipping a switch. The device hummed to life.
The trio headed back to the cockpit, where the computer updated them with a five-minute arrival estimate. Derek pulled up a holographic scan of the Union military encampment and New Arcena. It looked like the Union forces had set up on a plateau across a canyon system from New Arcena. They had deployed a line of artillery batteries facing the colony.
Their scans of New Arcena itself showed the colony with its own defensive capabilities that Nadia didn’t recognize. Must be Russ’ doing, she thought. Even if he had pushed them to the brink of war, she had to admire his craftiness. Somehow, he had outfitted a peaceful farming colony with machines of war.
“We’re going to land right there,” Nadia said, pointing to the valley that separated the colony and the Union landing party. She pressed another button on the terminal, showing the range of their missile scrambler. A blue bubble appeared, centered on the location she had indicated, which encompassed both sides’ positions. If either her people or the Union fired off a salvo, the projectiles would fly off harmlessly into the Calimor wastelands.
At least, temporarily. She remembered Vincent’s warning about the scrambler system’s capabilities—it wouldn’t hold up against repeated fire, but it might be enough to buy you critical time—which meant that if both sides focused fire on the Exemplar instead of on each other, they could eventually take her ship out and then go back to killing each other.
It sounded more desperate and less logical the more she thought about it. But she hadn’t been able to reach Isadora, the Union wasn’t responding to her message requests, and she was out of other options.
New Arcena came into view at the edge of the viewscreen. “We’re in the end zone now,” Boyd said, a note of solemnity in his tone.
Even if their vessel was slowing down, Nadia could hardly tell. They shot just overhead the colony, which seemed to turn to lines under them. The roar of their engines from the ground would be deafening, she imagined.
And then the valley was visible. Nadia had never adopted her parents’ religious views, but she found herself praying—not to God, necessarily, but to someone—that it wouldn’t become her grave.
Derek took manual control of the pilot’s station, and the three of them strapped themselves in again. He swerved the vessel around in a tight arc. Nadia nearly slammed into the viewscreen on her right. As Derek circled over the valley, Nadia’s body careened almost as violently back to the left.
And then they slowly lowered to the ground. She heard the mechanical lurch of the landing gear, and the Exemplar finally came to a full rest. The engines died, and everything went silent except for the faint hiss of the air recyclers and the low hum of the missile scrambler.
The computer showed that their maneuver was working, at least for now. Both the settlement’s turrets and the Union artillery had locked onto each other, but both sides’ targeting systems were going haywire.
All three of them looked back and forth between each other and the ship’s computer. The only way for the two sides to go through with shooting at each other would be to focus manual fire on the Exemplar first.
The computer registered the Union artillery units switching to manual, and an alarm system blared throughout the ship. Nadia had expected the Union to do so. If they were willing to attack the settlement, of course they’d be willing to destroy her vessel.
The real test was up next. Is Russ Kama willing to fire on me? she wondered. “Open up a channel,” she said. “General frequency.” Anyone with a comm device in the immediate vicinity—hopefully everyone in New Arcena, as well as whoever was in charge in the Union encampment—would hear her dispatch.
Nadia pulled up the notes on her wrister, leaned forward so that her mouth was close to the ship’s transmitter, and cleared her throat. She had pictured giving this speech so many times on the flight over. She had always imagined she’d be more nervous, even terrified of the dozens of gun barrels and missile launchers pointed at her right now. Instead, all she was feeling was a sense of serenity.
She had seen wondrous landscapes on both Calimor and Ikkren, and become friends with both Boyd and Derek. She could be happy with all they had accomplished and experienced together.
“I am Nadia Jibor of the refugee survey vessel Exemplar,” she said, trying to give herself an air of gravitas. “I don’t know what has caused everyone here to rush blindly into war,” she began, “but I do know that would be a mistake.”
. . .
Tricia saw Owen Yorteb narrow his eyes upon hearing about the incoming ship. “Reinforcements?” the general asked.
“The approaching vessel’s transponder signature matches that of the refugee survey vessel Exemplar,” Philip Eswan said. It made sense that the ship would return to the fold, but what could Nadia Jibor hope to accomplish?
“Their trajectory suggests they are heading straight for our forces. They’re overshooting the settlement,” Philip reported.
“It could be a suicide attack,” Owen said, the pitch of his voice raising in alarm. “We should shoot it down!” He slammed his fist on the terminal.
“Wait,” Tricia said, holding up a hand. On the holographic readout of the landing zone below, she saw the Exemplar fly right over New Arcena before circling the valley between their landing force and the colony. “Is she just trying to get front row seats to the shitshow?” Tricia asked, baffled.
“They’re activating some kind of missile scrambling system,” Owen said. “Our artillery units have lost their target locks on the newar defense batteries.”
“That just means they can’t fire back at us either,” Tricia said. “I want to see what the Exemplar—”
Tricia was cut off as a voice boomed out of every open transmitter in the CIC. “I am Nadia Jibor of the refugee survey vessel Exemplar,” Nadia said. “I don’t know what has caused everyone here to rush blindly into war, but I do know that would be a mistake.”
Tricia rolled her eyes. There wasn’t some master plan. The settlement team leader was just throwing herself between the two sides like some dumbass wannabe martyr. Instead of getting yourself blown up to prove a point, Tricia thought, maybe you should convince your boss to see reason and come to the negotiating table.
As if by some strange coincidence, Tricia’s wrist terminal chirped. Looking down, she saw that it was a message sent by none other than Isadora Satoro. Tricia blinked rapidly in succession, making sure she wasn’t just imagining it.
“Hold position,” Tricia said to her officer corps. “No one make any dumb moves. There’s a message I need to take in my office.”
Philip and Owen exchanged confused glances, but agreed not to do anything without her approval. She excused herself and headed for a small command office adjacent to the CIC. The room was mercifully insulated from all the beeping, alarms, and chattering that would have distracted her. If Isadora wanted to come to terms—and assuming she wasn’t a complete moron, no other action would make sense at this point—Tricia wanted to have a clear head while she negotiated with the refugee leader.
The message itself only consisted of a single line: I thought you would like to see this. That, plus an attached file. Tricia furrowed both her eyebrows in confusion and opened the attachment.
It couldn’t be a virus—Tricia’s terminal included the best cybersecurity safeguards that existed in the Natonus System—but she couldn’t figure out what else it could be. If it was a statement of surrender, Isadora could have sent it in her message.
The file opened, spitting out countless lines of holographic text. It took a few seconds for Tricia to realize that it was a list of numbers. Financial transactions, specifically.
Then she noticed that it was all going through a single source: the Syndicate. So Isadora, while the survival of her first and only settlement in the system was under grave threat of destruction, had sent her...evide
nce of a money funneling scheme?
Slowly, however, Tricia started seeing a pattern. The transactions were all in service of a small number of organizations: the Natonus People’s Alliance, or the Solar Communities First Association, or...
Or the Natonus Offspring.
That last one sent her eyebrows to the top of her forehead. Owen had led a task force to investigate the Offspring and had concluded that they were probably nothing more than a small cohort of radical dimwits. Had he just done a sloppy job? That wasn’t like the general.
As Tricia continued to speed through the file, she started to appreciate just how gravely Owen had misled her about the Offspring’s potency. Not only were they just as powerful as the other nativist organizations, they were the umbrella group.
It went even deeper. The Offspring had invested massive amounts of money into a flood of anti-refugee propaganda just before the settlement charter referenda. And the Offspring had poured money into every member of the renegade caucus in Tricia’s party that had broken off in opposition to her overly lenient treatment of Isadora’s people.
As Tricia was wondering just how involved the Offspring had been in the system’s recent political developments, she discovered why Owen had done such a sloppy job investigating the organization. In truth, he had done an excellent job.
Yorteb, Owen, the document read at the bottom.
CHAPTER 40
* * *
“There are other ways forward,” Nadia said, continuing with her speech. She glanced at Boyd and Derek, receiving supportive nods from both. “Ever since I began my efforts to resettle my people in this system, I have tried to reach out to others and form alliances. We respected the Union’s decision to bar us from settlement on their worlds, and instead focused on Calimor. We have established trade relations with both the core worlds as well as the people of Ikkren.