“Edeoria was under his guard, and you see now what he thinks of those he’s sworn to protect. Thousands have been left dead in the most heinous attack on the Tribune since the war. Yet it is not just us. He has taken the Circuit itself hostage! He and the Ceresians have conspired to orchestrate an attack on one of their mining colonies on Kalliope, and while we were distracted by the horrors committed here, he brought us to blame! But I swear upon the Spirit that we had nothing to do with that cowardly massacre. We do not murder innocents. We show them the proper path. Unlike Cassius, who has murdered your beloved Tribune Nora Gressler in cold blood!”
The entire crowd followed the lead of the Earth Whisperer and bent down to touch the floor in reverence after her name was spoken. Sage did the same. She’d never been under the direct command of Nora, but the speech was working. She knew she didn’t belong and still her blood boiled in rage.
“Cassius Vale has used the solar-ark he stole to broadcast these lies,” Benjar continued. “He seeks to shake your faith in us, but we have never been stronger!”
Broadcast, Sage noted. Clearly Cassius had been busy since she’d left, but she had been with him the whole time during and after the attack on Titan. He couldn’t have attacked the asteroid Kalliope, at least not directly. Again, she knew someone was lying, but she was getting used to that enough not to care.
“The Ceresians seek vengeance for what they claim we have done,” Benjar said. “Our executors in the belt have reported that parts of their fleet are mobilizing to attack. They think they can catch us off guard, but we will meet them head-on. Not even the great Cassius Vale can help them, for the Spirit of the Earth guides us!”
He paused, allowing the entire crowd to repeat, “The Spirit of the Earth guides us.”
“Your Tribune stands with you!” he announced. “Prepare yourselves, my people. We will wipe the heretics from the face of the Circuit!”
The hangar erupted into cheers, and Sage imagined that they could be heard all throughout the settlements of the Tribune. The people tired of the Earth Reclaimer War after it went on for years, but the more time that had passed since its ending, the more ready they seemed to dive back in.
Sage knew the feud wouldn’t last long this time. After spending weeks amongst the Ceresians, a small part of her almost felt badly for them. They’d been weakened by decades of reduced trade and the decimation of their robotics industry, all while the Tribune prepared for one last unifying sweep through the Circuit.
Maybe I won’t be able to take Elisha home after I find her, Sage realized. It might not exist.
As the crowd calmed and continued going about their preparations, Sage lingered in her position. Hand Yavortha walked into the room while Benjar was still there. A bloody bandage covered half of his face, and he wore a grimace hard enough to grind stone. He whispered something in Benjar’s ear, and the Tribune’s expression immediately soured.
Sage was too far away to hear what exactly they were saying, but she was able to get the gist of it by reading their lips. They were discussing how to deal with her. Yavortha recommended dispatching executors, which only served to make Benjar angrier. Sage knew why. Most of the executors in the system would likely be occupied with hunting down Cassius.
Their faces got so close together that it was hard for her to make out exactly what was said next. Yavortha responded with a sentence that included the words “secure” and “vulnerable points,” and then “monitor the girl.” Benjar offered an unenthused nod before storming out of the room with his entire honor guard at his side, leaving Yavortha alone to glare across the hangar with his single working eye. He looked equally panicked and enraged.
“Aye, let’s go,” a soldier came up behind Sage and ordered.
She nearly jumped in surprise. She’d been so focused on Yavortha, picturing his fist slamming into her over and over, that she hadn’t heard the man coming.
“We’ve got orders to move.”
She noted how the man’s voice was slightly distorted by his helmet, and hoped that if she mustered her deepest tone to respond, she might sound like a man herself. The armor of each Tribunal soldier was coded, and she was supposed to be male. She also made sure to step up directly beside him as she turned around, to avoid providing him a clear view straight through her visor.
“Yes, sir,” she said in her best tenor.
He nodded in response. As long as she didn’t try to communicate over her personal comms, she figured she’d be fine.
They quickly caught up with a group of soldiers, escaping Yavortha’s gaze. What she had seen him and Benjar discussing was enough for her to know that heading for the brig anytime soon would be suicide. They were going to ensure she couldn’t make a move without alerting all of Edeoria, along with the entire crew of the Ascendant, to the presence of a rogue executor.
The cruiser was too massive to constantly watch every corner, but experience had taught her that they’d keep security heavy by the brig, engines, gravity generator, command deck and fusion core. Getting into any of those places would require her to remove her helmet for a retinal scan.
She’d have to blend in and wait for the turmoil of battle to make her move. That she could do. She knew the Ascendant well enough, so if there were new security checkpoints, she was sure she could find ways to slip around them.
Patience and focus. Not a problem. Those were virtues all executors were trained to cultivate.
23
Chapter Twenty-Three—Cassius
Cassius was led to a holding cell in the Morastus compound on Ceres Prime. It was a tiny room of carved rock sealed by a circular hatch that barely fit more than him through it. A literal hole in the wall.
He didn’t have to sit for long, however, before the entrance popped open and Zaimur stood alone in it.
“That didn’t go as well as expected,” Cassius mused. “Have you come to pay your respects before my execution?”
Zaimur didn’t answer right away. He instead turned and resealed the hatch, ensuring that any guards outside couldn’t hear anything. Cassius subtly shifted his feet to have proper balance. He identified a somewhat sharp outcrop of rock nearby, which he could use to his swift advantage if it came to that.
“Surprisingly no,” Zaimur admitted. “What did you expect going in there?” He stopped a few feet away from Cassius, safely out of harm’s reach. “You would have been of better use to us fighting the Tribune on your own.”
“I already have been,” Cassius said. “My efforts on Titan will accomplish more than that Lakura rat will by striking first.”
“I don’t doubt that, but I was a fool to think they would openly discuss your assistance. Maybe I was a fool to consider it myself…”
“A fool who may just be willing to do what is necessary to survive the coming battle. There are no easy decisions when it comes to war.”
Zaimur’s features tightened. “What about you? Did you hesitate when you did what you had to? When you earned the hate of an entire culture?”
“The entire Circuit now,” Cassius corrected him, grinning. “My people died the day my father surrendered to the Tribune. It was easy for me to sacrifice when I needed to after that.”
“And now you expect me to allow you to do the same with my people?”
“They’re dead either way. The only difference is that I can help you ensure that there is a future for their sons and daughters.”
“Oh yeah? How!” Zaimur barked, moving closer.
As he did, there was a blur of motion. A patch of rock vanished in a haze of pixels, and an arm flew out, grasping him by the throat and hoisting him into the air. More rock dissipated and ADIM was revealed, two flame-red eye-lenses aimed at Zaimur.
“What is this?” Zaimur croaked, his voice muffled by the strong grip crushing his trachea.
Cassius froze momentarily. ADIM had been in this tiny cell, camouflaged the entire time, and he had no idea. Not even a footstep.
“This is ADIM, Zaimur,” he sa
id finally.
“Tell… him to release me…”
ADIM turned toward Cassius, his eyes spinning.
“He’s worried that you’re going to attack me,” Cassius said.
“I’m not… not yet,” Zaimur grated. “But you’re already a dead man if the others have their way…”
Cassius nodded at ADIM and made a flicking motion with his wrist. ADIM let Zaimur crumple to the ground, though he didn’t step back even a centimeter, primed and ready to snap his neck in a heartbeat. The Morastus prince gasped for air.
“He has a weapon, Creator,” ADIM said.
“Relieve him of it,” Cassius replied.
ADIM flipped the reeling Zaimur onto his side. He then yanked a small firearm off Zaimur’s belt and tossed it to Cassius. Cassius caught it and immediately dismantled it. Once it was in pieces, he dropped it to the rocky floor.
“What is this?” Zaimur said weakly, his eyes unfolding over ADIM in wonder. He crawled backwards until his back hit the wall and he could go no further.
“As I said, this is ADIM. Don’t worry, he won’t harm you unless I ask him to.”
Zaimur used the craggy wall to pull himself to his feet. Once there, he reached with one hand toward ADIM. The android wasted no time gripping him by the wrist and holding his arm outstretched.
Zaimur kept calm. He looked to Cassius and whispered, “May I?”
It was the first time Cassius had seen another human look upon ADIM with anything but dread or disgust. The Ceresians had spent centuries living amongst lesser androids, so he wasn’t surprised.
“Go ahead.” Cassius patted ADIM on the back and took a step backwards. “ADIM, it’s all right.”
ADIM let go and stood still as Zaimur’s fingers grazed his faceplate. The Morastus prince circled his way around, ogling every part comprising an android more advanced than any he’d possibly ever seen. ADIM rotated with him to ensure that he was continuously placed between him and Cassius.
“Remarkable,” Zaimur said. “You constructed this marvel?”
“I learned what I could from the rubble of Lutetia and then, yes, I did,” Cassius said, unable to mask the tinge of pride in his tone. He’d never had the opportunity to show ADIM off before to someone who understood.
“And he responds only to you?”
“He responds to himself. He heeds my counsel, because we are the closest things left in each other’s existences to family.”
Zaimur grasped ADIM’s arm and raised it to his face. He leaned in close to get a good look at one of the barely discernible blue lights running along the edge of a protective plate. “These are all holo-emitters, aren’t they? That’s how he got the jump on me?”
Cassius could barely hold back his enthusiasm. It wasn’t often that he met someone who shared his affinity for mechanics. “With modifications, yes. He can shroud himself in any image.”
“Even a man’s?”
Before Cassius could say anything, ADIM rendered himself to look exactly like Zaimur. The prince jumped back as he came to look upon his own façade, but he recovered quickly.
Was that an attempt at being playful? Cassius wondered.
“What I could accomplish with one of these,” Zaimur admired.
“His name is ADIM,” Cassius corrected.
“Yes. With this, ADIM.” Zaimur turned to Cassius. His face was bright with excitement. “You must show him to the others. There is no doubt they will believe that you are truly no longer a servant of the Tribune after they see him. I know Yara will. Her ancestors dedicated their lives to robotics. By the Ancients, after she sees ADIM, she may just bow down and call you a god.”
Cassius chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be a sight? Yet, there is a fine line between reverence and envy.”
“True.”
“And what about your father? I could blow up New Terrene and he’d still have me hanged. He made that painfully clear.”
“Yes, him.” Zaimur exhaled. “The tired old man should’ve been dead weeks ago, but he keeps on fighting. I should’ve sent him to the Keepers back when I had the chance. Now, it’d just look bad. But I’m his only heir. Once he’s gone, I’ll be in full control of the Morastus Clan. Then we can decide if you can actually help us, or if you’d be better off dead.”
ADIM’s attention snapped toward Zaimur. Cassius wrapped his hand around the android’s arm. “Relax, ADIM. I’m sure he didn’t mean that.”
Zaimur backed all the way against the wall again, nervously tittering. “Of course. My apologies.”
“So you don’t believe I can help you either?” Cassius asked.
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t come without gifts to offer. ADIM, show him the last recorded imagery of the Vale Protocol.”
“Are you certain, Creator?” ADIM checked in rather than obliging right away.
“I am.”
ADIM stuck out his palm, and as pixels of light from his holo-emitters began forming imagery above it, Cassius continued.
“I’ve served at every level of the Tribunal military,” he said. “I have known their minds. Bumped heads with their leaders. And I have seen their fleet laid out before me. Look.”
ADIM’s projection morphed to display the entirety of the Circuit. Tiny red blips blinked throughout it, with the largest cluster of them in the orbit of Jupiter.
Zaimur’s brow knitted as he watched the map rotate. “What am I looking at?”
“This shows the location of every Tribunal ship within the last twenty-four hours. Freighters, fighters, frigates… even the New Earth cruisers.”
Zaimur mustered the courage to approach ADIM again. “How could you have that?”
“I helped program the emergency protocols that have been frustrating your people since the end of the war. Making their ships impossible to rob or steal.” Cassius pointed to Jupiter. “You see how they are amassing here? After I released their secret about Kalliope, they amassed at that position.”
“784 fighters housed by 124 frigates,” ADIM calculated. “The New Earth cruiser Ascendant also operates between twenty and forty fighters itself. Additional combat mechs and short-range transports are impossible to calculate.”
“And more will come from Earth under the command of Tribune Cordo Yashan,” Cassius explained. He moved toward the projection of Earth and indicated the fleet there. “Whether they are dispatching those ships to search for me or to conquer the rest, I couldn’t be sure, but I’d wager that with that amount of firepower, they could do both. I placed firewalls in their way when I was last on New Terrene, but the Tribunal engineers are not completely inept. My ability to see their moves will likely be erased by the next time I board my ship. But I’ve seen enough now to predict their first move.”
“Even if every clan sends everything they have from throughout the belt, we won’t stand a chance,” Zaimur realized, his tone grim.
“Not alone. The Tribune has been waiting too long to end this. But the Ceresians will listen to your clan when it comes to war. So allow me to aid you from the shadows. Let your people think that I’ve died for all I care, because I have no desire to shepherd weak men any longer. I will advise you in secret, and when our victory is won, you will stand as their hero.”
Zaimur took another lap around the map, surveying the locations of all the Tribunal ships. He was halfway around when he froze and frowned. “They may all listen to me, but my father won’t,” he said. “He’ll think I’m being ‘impetuous’ just like Yara, the old bastard.”
“I’ve known my share of impulsive men, Zaimur, and you are not one,” Cassius said. “You are just shrewd enough to see what I see.”
“And what’s that?”
“That this war cannot be won ship for ship. If your father stands in the way of doing what must be done, we may not have time to wait for the blue death to run its course.”
Zaimur’s eyes narrowed and he took a step toward Cassius before ADIM halted him. He gathered his breath. “Are
you asking me to do what I think you are?”
“I’m not asking you to do anything.”
“He’s my father, Vale. I won’t just—”
“I knew your father. I fought your father. The man I saw in that room is a broken shell. He’ll sit around deliberating while the Lakura Clan is slaughtered and the Ceresian fleet weakens. I came here seeking him out, but Zargo is in no state to lead. You are.”
Zaimur blinked. His grimace faded, and in his face Cassius saw a man seized by visions of a grand future. Then he shook his head and repeated, “He’s my father.”
Cassius put on a consoling voice, practiced by years of dealing with Caleb and his inability to get funding for special projects on Earth from the Tribune. He’d thought he’d forgotten it, but a father never forgets.
“Zaimur, your dad was gone the moment he caught that disease,” he said. “He’s dead already.”
Zaimur opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Lines of tension pulled at his face.
“Just ensure that my execution is a farce,” Cassius said, “and ADIM will ensure there is nobody standing in the way of your climb to the head of the Morastus Clan. Once you have the ear of Ceres, we will see this war to its end. I’ll give you everything I have on the Tribune, and so much more.”
Zaimur stared into ADIM’s fire-red eyes and then swallowed hard. “Say I was to throw some credits at your executioners so that they go easy and let you incapacitate them. Say I then personally execute a hologram of you while the real you walks free. What’s in it for you, Cassius Vale? After all this, you’d return right back to the shadows you fought so hard to escape?”
“For now, freeing the Circuit from the Tribune’s reign will have to suffice.”
“I wouldn’t expect any more from you.”
Cassius extended an open palm and held it there, a Ceresian gesture he’d learned when as an executor he’d studied how to defeat them. “So, Zaimur Morastus, do we have an agreement?”
He could tell just by Zaimur’s expression that he had him. The moment he met him, Cassius recognized the man’s unresolved disdain for his father. Cassius had spent years harboring those very same feelings about his own.
The Circuit: The Complete Saga Page 44
