“Risks must be taken,” she told him. “All of this is built on risk and chances and hope.”
“All of this,” ban echoed. “And what would this be, Minister Lestroud? What are you attempting to build?”
“The fall of the Intendant and the birth of a new Sivar nation,” Amelie said flatly. “A nation without slaves, without murders.
“A nation my people could proudly stand side by side with against the enemies that hide in the darkest void.”
She was watching Loreck’s eyes. She wasn’t sure how much of what she and the Intendant had discussed had been made public—or how much of it Rode had leaked to the Broken Chain. The upward glance ban took at her words told her ban knew something.
“The Builders,” ban finally said.
“The Rogues, at least,” Amelie confirmed. “If we don’t fight them, you’ll all burn. Right now, your people have managed to make yourselves a distraction we didn’t need. If we have to suppress the Governance to deal with our main enemy, that won’t go well for you.”
She wasn’t entirely sure how Isaac would go about that, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t leave much in terms of shipbuilding infrastructure anywhere in Sivar space.
“If you can salvage a government we’re prepared to negotiate with from the Governance, then you can save a lot of lives. Mostly Sivar lives, if that matters to you.”
“Even if you focused solely on the Keys of War and are entirely immune to our weapons, our governed worlds would suffer,” Loreck said quietly. “I am not one of those who think we can fix our nation without changing how the Sivar and the other races interact. Neither is my leader.”
Ban shook ban’s head.
“There are some who do believe that.”
“We won’t permit that as a solution,” Amelie replied. “Not and make the alliance we both want.”
“You are very demanding for a woman with nothing,” Loreck said calmly. “And if I told you that wasn’t acceptable?”
“I’d note that doesn’t seem to be your decision,” she said.
Loreck laughed.
“Perhaps not,” ban agreed. “My decision is whether to send you to my sister at all.”
Amelie blinked.
“Your sister?”
“Ban do not transmit lineage,” Loreck pointed out. “Even if she were younger, I would concede any claim to her for that alone. But she is wiser than I, in my opinion.”
Ban rose.
“Come, Minister.”
“Where are we going?” Amelie asked.
“It is far too risky for me to send a message,” the Siva told her. “But driving over to surprise my sister for supper? Even the Knives of the Eyes are unlikely to question that.”
47
Leaving a message for the Kond was thankfully as easy as a preplanned set of chalk marks left on the alley wall before joining Loreck in ban’s car. Staying invisible in that vehicle was harder than it had been in the Kond’s work truck, but variable-tint windows helped.
Still, Amelie spent the entire drive deep into what looked like a middle-class suburb of vaguely pyramidical houses slumped as low as she could manage in the back seat of the six-wheeled vehicle. Hopefully, the tinting worked, because the vehicle was designed for people over thirty centimeters shorter than her, and there was only so much slumping she could manage.
Garages looked much the same the galaxy over apparently and she finally relaxed, a little, as Loreck parked the car.
“Come with me,” ban ordered. Ban led the way to a small side room that could have just as easily been an office or a breakfast nook, and then left her there.
She’d been hoping for something a bit more definitive and waited for at least ten minutes before realizing that whatever Loreck was doing, it was going to take a while. Unfortunately, her tablet had nothing even remotely resembling signal on the planet, now that Watchtower and the relay system they’d set up at the embassy were gone.
It was hardwired into her translator and she’d actually disabled all of its wireless signals. It still gave her a clock and let her add notes from her conversation with Loreck into the local database.
That took her at least ten minutes, but she was still waiting. The door had been closed behind her. It might even be locked, not that Amelie was really feeling restrained by that.
She’d be in a lot of trouble if she had to shoot her way out of a Broken Chain safehouse. Amelie didn’t think she was being held prisoner, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
After she’d been waiting for forty minutes, she tested the door to make sure it wasn’t locked. It swung open easily and silently, and she found herself facing a young—she thought, at least—Siva leaning against the wall across the corridor.
“Do you need something?” he asked quickly. “I can get you a drink or something, but we need you to stay out of sight from the windows.”
“I’m waiting on—”
“I know,” the youth told her. “You can leave if you want, but I don’t see any way that could work for anyone. They should be here for you soon.”
Amelie snorted at the alien with the armored head.
“Get me some water?” she asked. “I’ll be cooperative for a bit longer.”
“They talk, and they talk, and they talk, but they know you’re waiting,” he promised. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”
He went for the water anyway, clearly trusting her to stay in the dinette on her own. With a chuckle, Amelie took a seat and waited.
The kid didn’t bring her water. Loreck did and ban came alone.
“Well?” Amelie asked ban, taking the delicate ceramic cup ban carried.
“Drink up, assuming your throat gets dry from talking like ours do,” ban replied. “Then follow me.”
Ban led the way deeper into the house, past a window where the youth she’d just met was entirely coincidentally suddenly measuring what looked like a drunken hybrid between blinds and curtains against the glass, blocking any view into the house.
Loreck opened the door to what was definitely a closet and then tapped a concealed button. Coats and racks of shoes slid aside, revealing a steep ladder leading down into the ground.
“Suspicious-looking, I know,” ban conceded. “But we need full security for this, and there are few better insulators against unexpected listeners than dirt and concrete.”
“Lead the way,” Amelie said. “I look forward to meeting your sister.”
“Believe me, Minister Lestroud, the feeling appears to be mutual.”
The ladder was long enough and designed for people with different-enough anatomy that Amelie was in noticeable discomfort before finally extracting herself from it into a dimly lit…hole.
There was no better description for the bare earth walls that surrounded her. It looked like something had just dug a thirty-foot-deep hole from the house and expanded it a bit at the bottom. There was a single electric light providing illumination, and there wasn’t even a visible exit.
Amelie wasn’t claustrophobic, but this was a bit much.
“Loreck?” she asked cautiously.
Instead of answering her, ban shoved ban’s arm into one of the dirt walls, revealing that one to be much looser than it looked, and hit some kind of control. The wall ban was poking at slid away from them and to the side, exposing that the “wall” was just several inches of dirt on some kind of backing.
The other side was a slightly more solid-looking tunnel with several electric lights leading to what was much more clearly a door.
That door was a heavily shielded monstrosity, clearly designed to prevent signal leakage.
“This way, please, Minister,” Loreck told her. Even the vault door slid open easily at ban’s touch.
The other side of that was much more solid-looking. Metal and stone had been worked in as walls and floors, clearly designed to muffle sound and radiation and resist bombardment.
“The bunker pre-dates the neighborhood above,” Loreck told her.
“We destroyed most of the accesses to hide it and drilled up when the neighborhood was built.” Ban shook ban’s head. “Locating which house to buy was apparently a project. That was my bana’s task, though. Ban never had good things to say about that.”
That would have been Loreck’s ban parent. The third member of a ban family unit would usually be the one buying the house, from what Amelie understood, so that made some sense.
“Where was the bunker originally accessed from?” she asked as she followed ban deeper into the structure. It was larger than she expected, and they’d clearly come in on the top floor.
It was clearly old, with obsolete systems by even Sivar standards, but it was all in working order. If nothing else, she had to wonder how they powered it.
“The First and Final Citadel, via a concealed train system that is long destroyed now,” Loreck replied. “We have a geothermal plant about two hundred meters further down, and some parts of the structure obviously go that deep.” Ban shrugged. “Most of it is up here. It was a final secret retreat for the family, and it served its purpose.”
“This bunker is why the Dynasts still exist?” Amelie said.
“Not alone, but it is certainly the centerpiece of what power we have. Right under the Intendant’s nose.”
There were very few people in the bunker, which made sense. Outside of an active combat situation, Amelie couldn’t see any reason why they’d have many people there. Most of the people there would presumably be communications people supporting the Dynast.
Loreck led her into a central briefing room that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Republic or Confederacy military base. There were half a dozen Sivar of all three genders in the room.
As Amelie entered, everyone looked at her and then looked at a female Siva standing behind a table that looked like it had been freshly cleared of papers and maps.
“Minister Amelie Lestroud,” the Siva said, bowing ever so slightly. “I have heard many things about you, some fascinating, some disturbing. Have a seat.” She gestured to a chair across from her.
“From the amount of time it took me to end up here, I’m guessing that Loreck filled you in on everything we talked about,” Amelie noted.
“Ban did,” the Siva agreed. “As did our mutual friend in the Citadel.” She smiled. “My name is Silleck. Loreck is my younger banner. We are the current generation of the family that once ruled the Sivar Governance.”
“You are the Dynast,” Amelie concluded.
“You didn’t hear that term from us,” Silleck noted. “But yes, that is the technically accurate but currently meaningless title I could claim.”
The other Sivar in the room bristled, but Silleck waved for them to relax.
“The Governance as it was under the Dynasty is already dead,” she snapped. “The Governance as it is under the Intendant is no worse in many ways, though I doubt any Dynast would have turned aside your offer of alliance as readily as the Intendant did.
“Tell me, Minister Amelie…just how badly is the Governance’s fleet outclassed by yours?”
“Badly,” Amelie said quietly. “Watchtower’s Captain was under orders to avoid a major confrontation with your fleet. Her taking the orbitals above Aris wouldn’t have served anyone and would have left a lot of Sivar dead in space.”
“But your ship could have defeated the forces arrayed against her?” Silleck asked.
“I don’t know the full extent of the forces that were deployed against Watchtower,” Amelie admitted. “But outside of a surprise ambush at short range, there is nothing in the Governance’s line of battle that represents a material threat to a Republic capital ship on anything resembling even terms.”
The Dynast seemed content with that. Amelie knew she was probably exaggerating. The Sivar couldn’t have stopped Watchtower retreating, but she suspected an outright battle between the battlecruiser and the planet’s fortifications would have ended poorly—for everyone.
“You didn’t come directly to us,” she noted. “You sought us out, presumably having already made other allies here on Aris. We haven’t seen Watchtower since she left orbit. What happens next, Minister?”
“My fleet will move to rescue the prisoners taken by the Intendant.” Amelie shrugged. “In the absence of any change, they will reduce the defenses of several systems on their approach to Aris, devastate the defenses in this system and demand the release of our people.
“The Intendant will probably realize that while we can destroy the First and Final Citadel, we can’t assault it on the ground, and hold our people hostage. A negotiation will ensue, though I am not convinced that the Intendant can be safely negotiated with.”
“That sounds like a situation that should eventually result in you getting what you want,” Silleck said. “With you outside the Citadel, the Intendant loses his strongest bargaining chip, and you, personally, are probably more easily extracted from the City.
“Our mutual friend’s assistance in allowing you to escape seems to have already given you all that you need. So, what do you want?”
“I refuse to allow a slaving expansionist autocracy to fester on my flank while I fight a war against a fleet of self-replicating genocidal machines,” Amelie said flatly. “The Governance as it currently stands is an offense to all that is right and just, and I intend to bring it down.
“Beyond that, I want to get my people out of the First and Final Citadel, and I would like to end this conflict and reform the Governance without a war that will see tens of million of Sivar and their slaves killed.”
She held Silleck’s gaze.
“You know every argument I can make,” she told the Siva. “Either from Loreck or from our mutual friend in the Citadel. I have made allies among the helots and tributes, and I know that my fleet will deliver defeats that will create a moment of weakness on the part of the Intendant.
“Even with that moment, I don’t think the rebels among the helots and tributes can overthrow the First and Final Citadel on their own. I don’t believe that you can overthrow the First and Final Citadel on your own.
“But combined, you might just be able to change the Governance’s fate.”
The briefing room exploded into streams of rapidly spoken Sivar. There were too many speakers talking far too quickly for her translator to follow, and she winced at its confused attempt to translate the argument.
“Enough!” Silleck bellowed. Her voice silenced her subordinates and she faced Amelie across the table. Sivar faces didn’t move enough to smile, but there was a spark to her eyes that Amelie suspected she understood.
“It was my ancestors who created the Governance and the tribute program and the helots,” she told Amelie. “But my ancestors called themselves the First and Final Dynasty, so I think we can all agree that their predictions for the future were incomplete at best.
“We were the first to unify Aris and we believed we would rule forever,” Silleck summarized, mostly for Amelie’s benefit. “We encountered other races when we left our world, and we were convinced that our rule of Aris was righteous because we had the strength to take it.
“So, our rule of other worlds was righteous for the same reason. Living as ordinary people has helped change my and my banner’s view of that. My father’s, too, I believe, though he kept his silence on that point.”
“We cannot continue to enslave entire worlds,” Loreck, the banner in question, said. “It is a toxin that has sunk into the bones of our government and is destroying our people. It weakens us, it blinds us and it hurts us as a people.
“To be willfully ignorant of the harm we have done requires us to poison our own minds,” ban continued. “It must end. The Governance might survive, but the structures must change and the tributes and helots must be freed.”
“I don’t even require them to go home,” Silleck said dryly. “Many of them were born here, just as I was, and many of our people were born on the governed worlds. We must find ways for all of us to live together as equal par
tners in a future.”
“Surely, we must stand as first among those partners,” one of the other Sivar demanded.
“Maybe,” the Dynast hissed. “But we must earn that status—and the first step to doing so is to recognize how much harm we have done and work to undo it.”
“Will you fight with us, then?” Amelie asked.
“Can you commit them to fight with us?” Silleck replied. “I speak for the Broken Chain, the organization that serves my family. There are others.”
“I am organizing a…convention, let’s call it, with help from one of the rebel groups,” Amelie told her. “There are things I can offer you all that I will not offer any group on its own. The more of you are present when I make that offer, the better we all are.”
“I will come,” Silleck said instantly. She glanced around the room, cowing her subordinates with her eyes. “If you are prepared to tell me where, I can bring others. There are few rebels among the Sivar I do not know.”
“If there is a way I can contact you, I can return to my other allies and make the arrangements,” Amelie promised.
Silleck nodded and gestured to one of her aides. A wristband-style communicator appeared from nowhere.
“To avoid problems, this only links to one channel and is highly encrypted,” she told Amelie as she passed it over. “For now, I suspect you should keep it concealed.”
“I was told such devices were banned for helots, and that seems to be most people’s assumption of what I am.”
“Exactly.” Silleck looked around. “It is decided. Walk with me,” she told Amelie.
Mildly concerned, Amelie followed the Dynast out of the conference room. Loreck was already moving to corral the other Sivar, making sure the two women were alone.
“We’ll take you out a different way. Tell Kond Asselis that the Green River Farm is going to need to up its chlorine budget for next year by twenty percent,” Silleck told Amelie with a soft chuckle. “It’s not a code,” she said as Amelie looked at her in concern.
“It’s just a piece of information that no one outside our little semi-secret covert business venture will know.”
Crusade (Exile Book 3) Page 30
