“And the Confederate Marine Corps have dropped thermonuclear devices on Mars? Am I correct,” Imprimatur Rhossily said, “or is that just space gossip?”
“No, Imprimatur… That is correct. It was believed that a show of resounding force was necessary as a precaution to avoid further conflict. I am sure that you understand,” the ambassador said, with a hint of steel to her voice.
“I understand perfectly, Ambassador,” the Imprimatur of Proxima said, gesturing for them to walk on, taking a set of steps that led up to a white-walled terrace and a set of grand wooden doors into the palace.
And the line of waiting cyborgs.
Solomon heard Jezzy’s sudden intake of break as he was already stepping forward, one hand falling to his side where his Jackhammer was slung.
“Lieutenant!” It was the ambassador, putting a warning hand out and lightly touching Solomon’s arm.
The cyborgs weren’t attacking. They weren’t even raising their weapons or looking in their direction. Instead, Solomon saw that the four man-machine things, each with the same variety of body parts recast in chrome and steel, stood stock still in front of the doors, gazing out over Proxima.
“Ah, yes. I suppose they can look a little alarming to the untrained eye…” the imprimatur was saying with a small smile. “But really, Ambassador, there is no need for your man to worry.”
Your man? Solomon raised an eyebrow behind his helmet. I am a military commander, not a hired servant!
“Yes, most alarming, I have to admit,” the ambassador smoothed over the momentary tension. “I have never seen their like. Is it a new type of tactical suit that Proxima has developed?” she said lightly, and Solomon could hear the heavy layers of subtext there.
Solomon didn’t know if the ambassador knew all about the Message, and the Ru’at, but he thought that it was likely that she did. She would probably, in the very least, know that he and his squad had been sent here to neutralize NeuroTech precisely because it was churning out murderous machines like these.
But so far, the general populous didn’t know that cyborgs were being used on the battlefields, against the Confederate Marine Corps, he realized. Did the Imprimatur of Proxima know?
“No, not a tactical suit, although similar, I suppose…” The imprimatur led the way up the steps and past the silent, watchful cyborgs as the doors opened soundlessly in front of her. “Proxima wouldn’t dream of developing tactical suits when we already have the sworn protection of the good Marine Corps.” The imprimatur managed to nod at Cready in recognition, and he inclined his head back.
“What a load of lies,” he heard Jezzy whisper over their squad channel.
“Probably, but we don’t know yet,” Solomon murmured under his breath.
“Then why not staff your palace with Marines, like I have?” he heard the ambassador say lightly as they walked through a grand hallway with a high, arched ceiling and a checkerboard floor. Distant windows at the other end of the room let in the bright Proxima sunlight from an internal courtyard. Two wide staircases of stone led up and out to the right and left.
“Oh, well… Proxima is very proud of our resourcefulness,” the imprimatur said with an icy smile, leading them to a small wooden table and chairs, where carafes of wine and water, and a small selection of fruits and sweet pastries, sat.
“Please, take a seat, Ambassador, and I will get seats for your honor guard…”
“No need, ma’am,” Solomon murmured respectfully as he stood at the ambassador’s shoulder, with the rest forming a line behind him.
“As you wish.” The imprimatur nodded gracefully.
“You were saying, Rhossily, about Proxima’s resourcefulness?” Ambassador Ochrie looked up to ask. Solomon noted that she didn’t make a move to touch either the wine, water, or food. Wise woman, he thought.
“Oh yes. Well, I mean sustainability, of course. The cost in fuel, time, and effort it would require to bring a complement of Marine guards all the way out here to Proxima and then ship them back and have them replaced all the time seems ridiculous.” The woman smiled.
“Of course, you know that the Confederacy would reimburse Proxima for any bills associated…” the ambassador began.
“But still, it offends my sense of balance. When one of our very own Proximian companies here offered us these warriors, who are built from our own processed metals, with the bodies of our own Proximians, then it seemed a much more…” She drew an imaginary circle in the air between them. “…complete solution.”
“No place is an island, Imprimatur,” the ambassador countered. “Proxima’s self-reliance is admirable, but why make your challenges any more difficult than they already have to be?” Solomon realized that there was something much more important being discussed here, under the surface. Was the Confederate Ambassador warning the imprimatur to show her allegiance to the Confederacy? To not go it alone?
“The Confederacy is like a powerful, well-oiled machine.” The ambassador drew another imaginary circle, copying her opposite number. “And it can lend its strength to all of its members.” She then drew a much larger circle in the air around the first. “You can think of it like cogs in that machine, all working together to make life easier for all of humanity.”
“What a poetic and inspiring take on Confederate policy,” the imprimatur said a little stiffly. “But is it not better for each of those cogs in the machine, as you so eloquently describe it, if they can all at least pull their own weight? No cog wants to be dragged down by any others.”
That is what this place is all about, Solomon realized. That is why Proxima has always been called a sort of heaven… All of the pieces of evidence, from the missile satellites to the parklands and the perfect hex-gridded layout of Proxa, jumped out to Solomon’s mind. They believed in a certain complete wholeness and balance, of everything working in accordance with its parts, and of their planet as a whole being entirely self-sustaining.
Which makes sense for a colony world so far from the home world, Solomon thought. Proxima had to generate its own energy, feed its own people, and it was only sensible too that it could defend itself.
But Solomon also knew that what they were talking about was a sort of treason.
Proxima believes that it can go it alone, and the imprimatur has said as much, he considered. They wanted to be self-reliant, and that meant self-governing.
A free Proxima, independent of the Confederacy.
“Tell me, Ambassador, have you ever heard of a man called Malcom Jekkers?” the imprimatur said, pouring herself a glass of water and sipping it slowly as she stood in front of them.
Malcom Jekkers… Solomon shot a look at Jezzy beside him. They certainly had heard of Malcom Jekkers. In fact, Solomon remembered looking into the old man’s eyes as he had helped him to tunnel out of Titan’s collapsing ice-tunnels.
He had been a prisoner of the Confederacy, sentenced to a life of mining for promoting Proximian independence. And he had been shot by—apparently—Martian dissidents. Although those same Martian dissidents had apparently blown up the ice mine and fired on their own demagogue leader Father Ultor… Solomon knew that there was a mystery there. Someone had started this war, and he was ready to bet that it was NeuroTech, sparking the conflict and then selling its murderous weaponry wherever it could.
“Yes, of course I do,” the ambassador said, sounding a little shaky and finally discombobulated by Imprimatur Rhossily’s even-minded charm. “I was there, at Titan, when…”
“When the Confederacy seized Father Ultor and Imprimatur Valance of Mars,” Rhossily stated heavily.
“Martian separatists were behind the attack,” the ambassador countered.
A few choice moments of silence from Imprimatur Rhossily spoke volumes that words never could, before she cleared her throat and set her glass of water down once again. “Anyway. On that day, a man named Malcom Jekkers, a Confederate prisoner, was killed. As you know, he was imprisoned by the Confederacy for supposedly seditious lit
erature…” Solomon saw Rhossily’s jawline harden a little as her carefully manicured composure cracked just a fraction. “Whatever books that Jekkers might have liked to read, he was in fact an architect. An actual architect. He was the one who helped design the Proxima we see today.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with whether Proxima wants Confederate protection or not,” the ambassador cut to the chase.
A frown from her opposite number. “Jekkers believed in whole systems. His thinking was a thing of beauty and peace. Every system—be it a city or a family household or an entire colony world—has to be able to meet its needs internally to be able to be strong enough to meet others externally, if you see what I mean. It’s a very Buddhist idea, actually.”
The ambassador didn’t answer.
“It is a great loss to all of humanity that Malcom Jekkers died on the frozen surface of Titan,” Rhossily said at last, standing up a bit straighter. “I will have my people show you to your rooms, as well as your guards, where you can be rested. We will meet again this evening over a formal state dinner. I have already invited a host of local thinkers and business leaders from Proxa, who are all dying to meet the Ambassador of Earth.”
The ambassador stood formally, offering a graceful nod to her counterpart as Solomon suddenly had a thought.
“Names,” he said out loud.
“Lieutenant?” Ambassador Ochrie said through the corner of her mouth.
“I will need a list of names of all those expected to attend, for security purposes against possible threats to the ambassador’s life, you understand…” he intoned heavily towards Imprimatur Rhossily. He saw a flash of hatred cross her eyes then, and in that moment, he knew that she had no intention of pledging allegiance to the Confederacy.
“Of course, Lieutenant. Anything for the safety of the ambassador,” Rhossily said, before turning on her white heels and clipping out of the room.
Ochrie waited for the woman to fully disappear into the side rooms before she turned and raised an eyebrow at Solomon. “You and I will need to talk, young man.”
“She has no intention of siding with the Confederacy,” Solomon argued with Ochrie in the ambassador’s large, two-room apartment in the imprimatur’s palace. Although he and the rest of the Outcasts should be next door in their much more basic but still very comfortable suite of rooms, he had followed the ambassador in here along with Lance Corporal Ratko to set up the interference devices.
The room itself was what Solomon might have described in his former life as a golden egg. There were oil paintings on the wood-paneled walls that Solomon thought must be worth millions, and every piece of furniture from the table to the chairs to the small desk under the bay windows had to be antique. The windows led out onto a tiny balcony that overlooked the internal courtyard, but both Solomon and Ambassador Ochrie stood in the center of the room, away from prying eyes.
The only other additions to the golden egg were the tall, thin black metal tripods scattered around the edges of the room, looking like mounts of a camera shoot. These were the interference devices that Ratko carried, turning them on to create a zone of statically-charged particles that would interfere with any listening, viewing, or scanning devices, before Lance Corporal Ratko had returned to their shared room, leaving Solomon and Ochrie to talk.
“Not yet. But when she sees that her dreams of Proximian independence are futile…” Ochrie argued.
“You heard her. It’s too deeply ingrained. This Malcom Jekkers helped to create the dream, and Rhossily reveres him almost like a saint!” Solomon pointed out. “But you’re right in one way, Ambassador…”
“Oh please, do lecture me on statecraft, Lieutenant Cready…” Ochrie said caustically, pacing the room.
“That Rhossily is a dreamer. She’s a utopian,” Solomon said. “She’s not like the Chosen of Mars, who have an axe to grind with the Confederacy. She’s protecting NeuroTech because she thinks they are going to help her Proximian dreams come to fruition. But they won’t.”
“Why do you say that?” the ambassador said.
“NeuroTech is supplying the Chosen of Mars and tried to supply even the Marine Corps with its cyborg weapons. It just wants to make money, and it will turn on Proxima just as soon as it’s offered a better price…” Solomon reasoned.
“How can you be so sure?” Ochrie shook her head. Solomon knew that what he was asking was too much to hope for in their position—to drive a wedge between Imprimatur Rhossily and the company that had offered her protection.
Solomon shrugged. “Because I used to be very good at bargaining with people in much stronger positions than me,” he said, remembering all the years he had traded secrets and stolen artifacts from one group of criminal mobsters to another, and sometimes stealing them back and selling them back again in another direction…
“Rhossily will never outright agree to capitulate to Confederate dominance,” Solomon stated, “but if we can make her see that NeuroTech—our mission here, after all—are going to ruin her dreams of Proximian independence, then she might act for us anyway.”
“Your mission, Lieutenant Cready. You came here to hound NeuroTech for war crimes, I know that. I came here to try and stop the war spreading to Proxima,” Ochrie said, sitting down with a loud groan into one of the very comfortable-looking antique chairs.
“We can do both.” Solomon smiled. He had taken off his helmet to speak to her more privately, and now he reached over to tap his helmet on the side of the temple.
“Rhossily forwarded the list of invited guests to our channel,” Solomon was saying, “and on it is the name of none other than Augustus Tavin, the CEO of NeuroTech.” Solomon grinned. He remembered Tavin well, the thin, acetic sort of a man who had wanted Solomon and Karamov tortured in front of Brigadier General Asquew when they had been captured by the Chosen of Mars at the start of the war.
“Me and my Outcasts will be able to apprehend him tonight, and when we do, we’ll force NeuroTech to hand over all cyborg technology, and Rhossily will have to comply with us when she sees that it’s Tavin that we want, and not Proxima at all.”
It is also a way that I will be able to fulfill my mission and not put my Outcasts in any more danger, Solomon thought proudly. He knew that if it had come to running through the streets and trying to infiltrate NeuroTech’s headquarters, then more good people of his would die—like all those Ganymede surface that he’d seen die.
Like Matty Sozer died, he remembered. And it had been his fault. His doing.
Now that Solomon Cready was a full Marine and a first lieutenant, he intended to bring all of his people out alive from every mission he went into. And he had found a way to do it, without anyone spilling any blood.
Or at least, that was the plan, anyway…
“You’re seriously expecting to waltz up to this Augustus Tavin and simply place him under arrest, and that will be the end of it? The end of the civil war?” Ochrie said wearily, rubbing her temples.
“If it might work, Ambassador, then I am honor-bound to attempt it…” Solomon said seriously.
Ambassador Ochrie, clearly did not feel the same level of confidence that Solomon felt. “Well, it sounds to me, Lieutenant Cready, that you are the one with utopian dreams here…”
15
Command Override
The imprimatur’s dinner was, indeed, formal.
“If I had known it would be this bad, I would have asked the warden for a dress uniform,” Solomon joked to Jezzy, who stood beside him in the entrance foyer.
It was early dusk, which on Proxima meant the high burn of soft pink clouds, racing towards a purpling sunset. The palace had been transformed from an already impressive and spacious Mediterranean villa into what could be best described as a fairy grotto.
Discrete but bright, clear white lights sparkled charmingly from their occulted positions underneath the many trees and scented bushes of the grounds. Strings of more lights raced up the columns and along the balconies—not in a
gaudy, festive way, but one that allowed the gathering dark to settle here and there in comfortable, intimate corners where you would imagine small and private talks taking place.
The inside of the palace was awash with a softer sort of light—from actual candles, Solomon saw, hanging in sconces and atop vast crystal candelabra that had been lowered from their places in the ceilings. Every room was bedecked with cut flowers, filling the large hallways, lobbies, dining rooms, and greeting rooms with a light fragrance, and from one alcove, a trio of Proximian musicians played perfectly-tuned and soothing string instruments.
The Outcasts stood in two lines as before, on either side of the lobby door that led into the grand dining room, having been given ‘spaces of honor,’ as the imprimatur had declared—taking up obvious guard positions in place of their own cyborg guards.
It was a gesture of Proximian trust, Solomon considered, but he was also very aware that every door and archway that led out of the palace was staffed by a team of four silent cyborgs, and that the imprimatur had insisted that the Confederate Marines not carry any weapons at any time during the dinner.
“Yeah, she wants to show that she trusts us, but that she’s also able to have us surrounded by actual armed cyborgs at all times…” Solomon muttered over their Gold channel, earning a dark harrumph of disgust from Arlo opposite.
Arlo Menier… Solomon let his eyes slide to the large Frenchman. He wondered how long their truce would last, and whether Menier was indeed the changed man that he now presented himself to be. There had been a time when Arlo Menier had promised to kill him, before the Battle of Ganymede.
Can one man really change so much? Solomon wondered. He hoped so. The heavens knew that he hoped that he had changed.
I am not the same young man responsible for the death of his best friend, he thought. He wished. Matty Sozer had trusted him. Kind of.
He had also betrayed me. Solomon felt an echo of all of that old anger, hurt, and resentment rise in him, and it tasted bitter in the back of his throat. Solomon had thought that maybe he was beyond these feelings of guilt and shame now—that he had become someone else.
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