“Their numbers multiply every time you say that,” Alisha stated blandly, and she had to fight a grin when he flicked the side of her knee.
They lapsed into silence after that, but the quiet only lasted for a minute at most.
“Dammit!”
Another voice came from the next room. Alisha looked expectantly towards the door that led into the office. The door was still open, and Paige did not sound the least bit pleased with whatever was going on in there.
“Exciting things?” Alisha asked mildly, hauling herself up from the sofa to head into the kitchen instead.
“Paige and Maya are in there with Suedermann,” Joshua replied, tipping his head back enough that he could just barely get an upside-down look at her as she filled the electric kettle. “They’re trying to get back onto the holo network. See if they can at least get some of the basics back up and running.”
“I thought the network was completely down,” Alisha replied as she turned the mocha machine on and started puttering around the kitchen.
“Kind of,” Joshua replied, and then he wrinkled his nose once he realized how phenomenally unhelpful that was. “Less that the network’s entirely down, and more that it’s kind of…blocked. They’re trying to unblock it. I mean, undoing everything without being able to see the code of the initial upload would be a miracle, but if everyone just gets messaging back, then at least we won’t have entire districts panicking because they don’t even know what’s going on.”
Alisha hummed a low note in acknowledgment and there was a clunk of mugs as she got them out of the cupboard. “People were already doing that even before the blackout,” she pointed out, more to herself than to Joshua.
“Sounds like it’s not going very well,” she observed blandly as she poured chocolate into a mug, while some more slightly incoherent profanity poured out of the office. She kept pouring until the amount of syrup gathered in the bottom of the mug was likely enough to rot her teeth upon contact, and then she added just a little bit more.
“That’s why I’m in here,” Joshua replied sagely. “Well out of the line of fire should anyone start throwing anything.”
“Don’t tempt me!” Paige shouted from the other room.
“You’re not leaving this room,” Suedermann informed her flatly, putting an end to that argument before it could even begin.
Alisha snorted out a laugh as she started pouring mocha over the chocolate. “Well,” she mused after a moment, “at least we still have electricity.” She took a sip of her mocha. “It could be worse.”
“Don’t jinx anything!” Joshua warned her.
As Alisha headed towards the next room, she knocked her knuckles against the table as she passed, nonchalantly offering, “Bad luck canceled,” over her shoulder.
Commander Ekks’s Office, Spire, Estaria
The room was quiet.
Almost too quiet.
Ekks half expected someone to come barging into his office to interrupt him, to tell him that what he was about to do was too much. But he supposed he knew that wasn’t going to happen; he had handled that issue already.
Instead, he was just waiting for one person to arrive.
It didn’t take long before his secretary informed him over his communicator, “Commander, General Yarrow has arrived.”
“Let her in,” Ekks instructed, and he sat taller and straightened his uniform. The door to his office opened just a moment later.
Yarrow was no-nonsense when she entered. Stiff-backed and purposeful, she strode towards the desk. She was holding the black box in her hands: nondescript but with three separate locks on the front of it. She nodded once to Ekks, but otherwise offered him no greeting as she placed the box down.
She keyed in seven digits for the number lock, and a small pad slid out. She pressed a fingertip to it, letting it scan her fingerprint and check her body temperature. Finally, once it made a high-pitched beep, Yarrow rattled off her identification number followed by her authorization code.
The box clicked open.
Yarrow kept one hand on the box, looking at Ekks critically from across the desk. “Commander Ekks,” she began seriously, “the use of this console means you will be authorizing the entire fleet for the use of deadly force, as the fleet commanders see fit. Are you aware of everything this entails?”
“I am aware,” he confirmed, folding his hands together on top of the desk.
“And you are prepared to accept the responsibility of whatever else happens from this point onward?” she asked.
“I am prepared,” he replied.
Yarrow paused for a moment longer before she turned the box to face him and pushed it across the desk towards him. She stepped back after that, pulling her gloves from her pocket as she did and tugging them on.
Ekks reached for the box and pushed the lid up. There was a small console inside, deceptively simple considering the task it had been designed for.
Ekks had to type in three codes, and he had to confirm each one twice. And finally, it was done. He closed the box and pushed it back across the desk to Yarrow.
“Good evening, General,” he offered pleasantly, folding his hands on his desk once again. As an afterthought, he tacked on, “Thank you for your time.”
She eyed him for a moment before she drew in a slow breath and sighed it out once again. Whatever it was she wanted to say, she kept it to herself, and Ekks felt no need to ask her to speak her mind. Her opinion, after all, was irrelevant.
She picked up the box and left after just a moment of lingering. Ekks waited until his door slid closed behind her before he sagged back in his seat, his hands falling to his lap. He let his head fall back against his seat, and he observed the paint job on his office ceiling for a moment.
For such a big step, it had felt so…small.
He had been expecting it to feel more momentous. With some reluctance, he sat up straight once again and pulled his communicator from his pocket.
He knew the number he needed to call off the top of his head, and it rang only twice before Raj Ghetti answered it.
“Commander Ekks,” Ghetti greeted smoothly. “I trust you’re calling to give me good news?”
“I’ve done what you asked of me,” Ekks confirmed, leaning his weight onto one of the arms of his chair. “From here, it all depends on how trigger-happy some of the fleet commanders decide to be.”
“And you’re certain there won’t be any backpedaling?” Ghetti asked. “You know I will be most displeased if we’ve come so far only to have it all fall apart at the last moment. A great many people would be displeased, in fact.”
His tone was mild as he said it.
Pleasant, even.
As if he was discussing a particularly unique cloud.
“I’ve handled the only one who tried to push back hard enough to be a concern,” Ekks replied, just a note of irritation slithering into his voice. While it was almost certain that Ghetti noticed it, he made no efforts to bring it up. Ekks’s ire, after all, was of no consequence to him.
Ghetti hummed a low note, skeptical but at least acknowledging what Ekks was saying. “If you’re certain,” he sighed. “Will there be anything else, Commander?”
“If I may, sir, might I recommend a vacation?” Ekks suggested dryly, drumming the fingers of his free hand against one armrest. “Somewhere in the inner system, of course. I’ve been led to believe that things in the outer system are going to get rather turbulent in the near future, after all.”
Ghetti chuckled in reply, a low, rumbling sound. “Perhaps I will,” he mused. “Regardless, you’ve done good work, Ekks, assuming you can keep it up. We’ll be in touch.”
The line went dead almost immediately after, and Ekks blinked at his communicator for a moment, before slumping back in his seat once again and rolling his eyes. That had been some impressively faint praise.
Still, it was better than the alternative.
He shoved his communicator into his jacket and dragged one hand dow
n his face. For a moment he simply sat there, as the light from the window gradually shifted across his desk. Finally, he levered himself back up to his feet and headed towards his office door.
He was done for the day, he decided. It was time to head home and pour himself a goddamn drink.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aboard The Empress, Outer System
Brock’s attention was pulled by a flashing button on his console unit.
“Hey Ruther, man, I gotta go. Looks like something has come up.”
“Okay, no problem, friend. Talk to you soon. I’m off shift in twenty minutes.”
Brock held up his hand in a wave at the screen. “Alrighty,” he confirmed, his thoughts already in another place. He closed the connection with the Zhyn flagship.
“What you got, Emma?”
Emma responded over the cockpit intercom. “Oz is just decrypting the message now, but it looks like we’ve been able to intercept a signal to the Estarian fleet.”
“Oh,” Brock noted, swiveling around his console chair to see if Crash was registering any of this. Do we know what it says yet?”
“I believe Oz is telling Molly what it says now.”
Just then Molly arrived in the cockpit, looking a little disheveled, as if she’d been trying to catch a nap as they waited. “The Estarian fleet is on its way,” she announced. Joel bowled in behind her.
“It sounds like they’ve been given full authorization to engage with what they’re terming the enemy, and anyone who stands in their way.”
There was a deadly silence in the cockpit for a moment as they processed the information.
Brock was the first to acknowledge the implications. “That means that if we stay here, we’re mincemeat.”
Molly shook her head in dismay. “Don’t they realize that the Zhyn ships will destroy them in a heartbeat?”
Joel dragged a hand down the lower half of his face. “Clearly not.”
“Unless that is what the Northern Clan wants?” Molly mused, pacing over to one of the console chairs and sitting down. She spoke slowly, as if thinking her way through it. “If the Estarian ships are obliterated by the Zhyn, for instance, they will then have the support to declare war on the Zhyn Empire. If they’re destroyed by the ARs, then they pretty much write a ticket to do whatever they want.”
Joel scratched his head. “But say they do declare war on the Zhyn Empire, they’d have no chance of winning.”
Joel could see the cogs turning as Molly thought the situation through. “I guess it depends on your definition of win. If the Federation needs to wade in to keep the peace, it could be exactly what they want to get special trade agreements and reparations from them. Not only that, but all the while it gives them a stronger hold on power domestically.”
Brock spun around in his chair. “You’re kidding me? This is all about some fucked up group deciding that they want more power? These are real lives that are going to be ended. We’re going to be ended! Does that count for nothing?”
Molly shook her head grimly. “I’m afraid not. It’s just how these people work.”
“Well then what are we going to do?” he asked, waiting for Molly to give them the magical solution that would get them out of the situation.
“I don’t know,” Molly muttered, getting up out of the chair. “I need to think.” And with that she wandered back out of the cockpit as if in a daze.
Spire Memorial Hospital, Estaria
Something was beeping. Not quietly. Not subtly. It was loud and grating and constant.
He was trying to sleep, goddammit.
Vero squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, as if that might somehow drown out the insistent, shrill beeping. It made no difference, and he clenched his fists in the sheet beneath him.
“Romero?”
The voice was quiet, almost nervous. But familiar. It was coming from somewhere beside him.
But that didn’t make any sense.
He lived alone.
Come to think of it, his bed was supposed to be much more comfortable than whatever slab of concrete he was lying on just then.
Slowly, reluctantly, he cracked one eye open. He closed it again immediately. The lights were too bright, and combined with the white of the walls and the ceiling, it was blinding. A shadow fell over him a second later, and it became apparent that his sister had seen him open one eye, even for such a brief moment.
“Romero!” she hissed urgently, prodding at his shoulder insistently, too cautious to actually shake him.
“Cissy, stoooooppppp,” he groaned, still not entirely awake. His face scrunched when she continued, and finally he opened his eyes. That time, his sister was leaning over him enough to block out the worst of the light.
As he blinked up at her, she stared down at him, eyes wide and worried. Finally, she stopped poking at him like some sort of experiment.
“Romero?” she asked once again, as if she suspected she was looking down at someone else.
“Cicero?” he questioned, in much the same tone. He glanced around, taking note of the guardrails on the bed and the beeping heart monitor beside it. He could feel a tube against his face and a cannula in his nose.
There was an IV in his arm, taped in place.
Hospital. He was in a hospital. But why—?
The memory of the car crash came back to him with almost the same impact as the crash itself. Without even thinking about it, he sat up, so quickly that Cicero had to practically leap away from him.
“Romero, no—” she tried to scold, only to cut herself off when he went still.
He didn’t hurt, at least not quite. Everything just felt…stiff. He hadn’t moved in a while and he could feel it. And he most likely would start hurting soon, once he was disconnected from whatever was dripping into his arm.
“What happened?” he demanded abruptly, like a wind-up doll jerking back into motion.
Cicero wrung her hands together and shifted back and forth on the stiff plastic chair beside the bed. “You were in a car crash,” she informed him, almost matter-of-factly. “There was something wrong with the engine—”
“My car was fine,” he stated flatly, cutting her off. His hands curled into fists against the bed again.
Cicero was watching him fretfully, and he let his hands uncurl and shook his head briefly. “What else?” he asked, already tired again.
“They, uh—the doctors, I mean—took you off life support a few days ago when you started breathing on your own again. And—”
“Out there,” Vero specified, gesturing towards the window with one hand. It was dark out.
Cicero shifted on the chair again. “It’s…been a lot,” she replied carefully, as she picked up the remote for the screen on the wall and turned it on.
As the news played, Cicero outlined everything that had been going on. The blackouts, martial law, the chaos with looting and the rising crime rate as the population panicked, the order for the fleet to keep going.
Vero’s ears rang and his chest felt tight, and for a moment he thought maybe he was going to have a heart attack. But no, that wasn’t it; that would make no sense. He was just so pissed off.
“I need clothes,” he stated abruptly, cutting Cicero off again.
“Well—I mean, I have a bag for you,” she offered tentatively, getting to her feet to fetch the bag from the window seat. “I brought it with me when the hospital first called.”
Vero nodded distractedly in reply and reached for the buzzer to call the nurse. He tapped the button three times in rapid succession and was getting ready for a fourth when a nurse hurried in, looking slightly frantic. Her concern gave way to confusion, though, when she saw that Vero himself was the one to push the button, rather than Cicero.
“You’re awake,” she stated, bemused. “That’s wonderful!” she hurried to add, gathering her composure once again.
“I need to get out of here,” he interrupted quickly, before the nurse could say anything else.
Her expre
ssion flattened with displease. “Senator, I really must—”
“You can’t keep me here against my will,” he reminded her. “I’ll sign whatever waivers I need to sign, but I need to get out of here.”
The nurse spent a moment longer trying to scowl him into submission, without any success. Finally, she heaved an aggrieved sigh and stepped towards the bed to remove his IV line and disconnect him from the various monitors.
He wasted no time in getting dressed while she left to get the relevant paperwork. Within ten minutes, he had signed his discharge forms and was heading towards the elevator with Cicero fretting at his heels.
Senate House, Spire, Estaria
A Senate meeting was well underway when Cicero pulled her car to a halt and parked.
“How did you even know they would be in session?” she wondered, folding her arms and slumping in her seat. She already knew she wasn’t going to be going anywhere until the meeting was over; her brother didn’t exactly have his own car anymore.
“I’ve still been getting the schedule updates on my communicator,” Vero answered distractedly as he got out of the car. “I’ll try to hurry things along,” he assured her before he closed the car door and headed for the door at a brisk walk.
He jogged through the familiar halls at a hurried pace, until the door to the boardroom was looming in front of him. He keyed in his identification number to unlock the door and it slid open.
Almost at once, everyone around the table stopped talking and turned to look at him. There was a beat of silence, and then Zenne managed, “Senator Vero.” Surprised, but quietly pleased all the same. “We weren’t expecting you back for quite some time.”
“Yes, well.” Vero stepped into the room. “As soon as I heard about everything that was happening, I knew I couldn’t waste a second languishing in bed.”
He rounded on the Speaker of the House. “I’m fairly sure I never imagined that you’re the Speaker of the House, correct?”
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