The End of All Things: The Fourth Instalment

by John Scalzi

  “Walk us through it, Ambassador,” Rigney said.

  “At Khartoum, we secured a high-value prisoner, a Commander Tvann of Equilibrium.” A very slight smile crossed Abumwe’s face. “The best way to describe him is as the Equilibrium equivalent of you, Colonel Rigney. Someone who is very well connected and often at the center of Equilibrium plans.”

  “All right.”

  The ambassador nodded in my direction. “During interrogation, Lieutenant Wilson here got Tvann to reveal Equilibrium’s most recent plan, which begins with the attack on the Tubingen above Khartoum.”

  Colonels Rigney and Egan looked over to me. “‘Interrogation,’ Lieutenant?” Egan said to me.

  I understood the implication. “The information was not secured under torture or duress,” I said. “I used misdirection and false information to convince him that it was in his interest to cooperate.”

  “What false information?”

  “I told him we were going to obliterate every major Rraey city and industrial site on four different planets because we believe the Rraey are the primary movers behind Equilibrium.”

  “Are they?”

  “I don’t have the data to speculate,” I said. “If you were asking me to go with my gut, I’d say the Rraey government offers clandestine logistical support that’s difficult to prove. Certainly the Rraey wouldn’t mind if we were out of the way. Even if they are offering support, however, going after the Rraey at this point won’t make a difference in the immediate plans of Equilibrium. Equilibrium is and should be our primary concern at the moment.”

  Egan nodded and looked back to Abumwe. “Continue,” she said.

  “Khartoum is one of ten colonies who conspired to declare independence from the Colonial Union. The plan was to do it simultaneously and in doing so give the Colonial Union too many targets against which to effectively retaliate. The longer it took us to respond to the event, the more colonial worlds would be inspired to also declare independence. The idea here is that dissolution of the Colonial Union would succeed in part because the CU would lack the resources to deal with the mass exodus.

  “However, Colonel Tvann convinced the government of Khartoum to announce its independence early, arguing that it could act as the catalyst for the dissolution of the Colonial Union alone, and that Equilibrium would effectively serve as Khartoum’s defense forces. That would benefit both Khartoum and Equilibrium, which wanted to be seen as an ally to the newly independent colonies.”

  “That didn’t work out,” Rigney said, dryly.

  “No,” Abumwe agreed. “In fact, Equilibrium’s true plan was to attack any CDF ship which responded—which it did with the Tubingen. The attack, whether it was seen by the Colonial Union as directed by Khartoum or by Equilibrium, would result in a massive response by the CDF—which it did. We sent twenty ships to Khartoum.

  “Equilibrium did this for the specific purpose of massively militarizing the Colonial Union response to our planets declaring independence. The next planet or planets which declare will not receive a visit from a single CDF ship as they would have done before. Instead the CDF will send a fleet to any planet, with the specific intent of overwhelming any independence movement from the beginning.” Abumwe stopped for a second and looked at Egan and Rigney curiously. “Is this Equilibrium assessment accurate?”

  The two colonels looked uncomfortable. “It might be,” Rigney said, eventually.

  Abumwe nodded. “Equilibrium, through its own strategy of misdirection and false information—and its campaign to establish the Colonial Union as an unreliable source of truthful information, aided by the fact that the Colonial Union is, in fact, deeply censorious of news between colonies—plans to encourage the nine remaining planets in the original independence scheme to stick to their plan and jointly announce. It will promise logistical and defense support, which it has no real intention of providing except for its own purposes, as it did over Khartoum. This will happen as soon as practicably possible. And of course the CDF will respond.”

  “And then what?” Egan asked.

  “Once the Colonial Union is fully occupied with this independence movement and has committed a substantial amount of its military force and intelligence capabilities to quash it, Equilibrium attacks.”

  “Attacks the fleets over the rebellious colony planets?” Rigney said. “That’s just stupid, Ambassador. Equilibrium can be effective with sneak attacks but their ships and armaments can’t stand up to a prolonged battle.”

  “They won’t be attacking our fleets,” Abumwe said. “They will be attacking the Earth.”

  “What?” Egan said. She pushed forward in her seat, now intensely interested.

  Abumwe glanced over to me and nodded. I connected my BrainPal to the theater’s presentation system and popped up a visual of Earth, and above it, several dozen starships, not to scale.

  “Equilibrium acquires ships by pirating them,” Abumwe said. “The Colonial Union has lost dozens over the years. The Conclave and its constituent states have lost even more.” She pointed into the graphic. “What you see here is a representation of all the Conclave-affiliated ships that we know have been taken and have not, as yet, been destroyed in battle. There are ninety-four shown here and we have to assume our estimate is low.

  “According to Commander Tvann, the Equilibrium plan is to skip these ships into Earth space, destroy the planet’s defense, communication, and scientific satellites, and then target hundreds of major population areas with nuclear warheads.”

  “Nuclear warheads,” Rigney said.

  “Where the hell are they getting nukes?” Egan said. “Who still uses them?”

  “Tvann indicated that many of them came from the stores of planets now aligned with the Conclave,” Abumwe said. “The Conclave doesn’t allow their use as weapons, so they’re supposed to be dismantled and the fissionable material disposed of. It was a trivial matter for Equilibrium to insert itself into that process and come away with warheads and fissionable material.”

  “How many are we talking about?” Rigney said. “Warheads, I mean.”

  Abumwe looked at me. “Tvann didn’t know all the specifics,” I said. “The ones he seemed to consider standard yield would be the equivalent to three hundred kilotons. He said there were several hundred of those.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “They could do the same damage without nuclear weapons,” Egan said. “At this point in weapons technology, using nuclear weapons is only a step up from using the longbow.”

  “The point is to use the nuclear weapons,” Abumwe said. “Not just for the immediate devastation, but for everything else that follows.”

  “When the Romans defeated Carthage, they salted the ground there so nothing could live or grow there anymore,” I said. “This is the same concept, writ large.”

  “Equilibrium would be slitting their throat by doing this,” Rigney said.

  “If you can find their throats to slit them,” I pointed out.

  “I think we would be motivated, Lieutenant.”

  “Colonel, you’re missing the important thing here,” Abumwe said.

  “And what is that, Ambassador?” Egan asked.

  Abumwe gestured up toward the image floating there. “That every one of the ships tasked to the attack is originally from the Conclave. We are meant to believe this is an attack not by Equilibrium, but by the Conclave. We’re meant to believe the Conclave has decided that the only way to deal with humanity—to deal with the Colonial Union—is to destroy the source of its soldiers and colonists once and for all, so we can never get it back, either by force or negotiation. This is meant to be the earnest of the Conclave’s intent to wipe us from the universe forever.”

  Rigney nodded. “Yes, all right.”

  “We would blame the Conclave, refuse its denials, assume it was behind Equilibrium all along,” Egan said. “We’d go to war with the Conclave. And we’d be defeated.”

  “Inevitably, yes,” Abumwe said. “We are
far too small to take it on directly. And even if all the colony worlds stopped fighting us for independence—or we crushed all their attempts at independence—it would still take us time to fully convert to the colonies being the well from which we draw our soldiers. And meanwhile elements of the Conclave would be agitating for our destruction, because whether the Conclave attacked us or not, we would now be a clear and present danger to it.”

  “We’d lose in a fight with the Conclave,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean the Conclave would win.”

  Abumwe nodded. “It wouldn’t simply be about us attacking the Conclave. It would be the internal stresses the Conclave would face in being obliged to obliterate us permanently. It goes against every reason the Conclave was founded in the first place. It would be antithetical to the goals of General Gau.”

  “Not to mention that of the Conclave’s current leader, Hafte Sorvalh,” I said. “And she would be criticized relentlessly if she refused to deal with us. And no matter how capable she is—and she’s very capable—she’s not General Gau. She won’t be able to keep the Conclave together through her own sheer force of will like the general could. It will fracture and die.”

  “Which is Equilibrium’s ultimate goal,” Egan said.

  “Yes,” Abumwe said. “Again, our destruction is part of its plan, too. But we are mostly incidental. We are the lever Equilibrium will use to destroy the Conclave. Everything the organization has ever done, including the destruction of Earth Station, has been part of the drive toward that goal.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about the complete destruction of the Colonial Union being a side benefit,” Rigney said.

  “It should make you angry,” Abumwe said. “It makes me angry.”

  “You don’t look notably angry,” Rigney observed.

  “Colonel Rigney, I’m furious,” Abumwe said. “I also recognize that there are more important things for me to be and do than just be furious.”

  “Ambassador, a question,” Egan said.

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Egan pointed to the graphic. “We know Equilibrium’s plan now. We know that it plans to use our colonies and our standard responses against us. We know it plans to frame the Conclave for the attack on Earth. We know its game, its strategy, and its tactics. Isn’t this now a trap we can easily step out of?”

  Abumwe looked over to me. “There are other complications,” I said. “Tvann suggested to me that if it became clear the Khartoum strategy failed or that we had thwarted their plans with the other nine planets or informed the Conclave of the subterfuge, that Equilibrium may simply attack Earth anyway.”

  “For what purpose?” Egan said.

  “Equilibrium doesn’t appear to be fussy,” I said. “It’ll take half a loaf if it can’t get a full one. What I mean by that is that right now its optimal plan is to distract the Colonial Union, destroy the Earth, frame the Conclave, and let us destroy each other. But if Equilibrium has to take credit for nuking Earth instead, it will. Because it knows that an obviously weakened Colonial Union, an obviously weakened human race, will still force the Conclave’s hand.”

  “You have to appreciate just how many Conclave species hate humans,” Abumwe said. “They hated us before what we did at Roanoke. They hate us even more after it. And some of them blame us for the assassination of General Gau.”

  “We had nothing to do with that,” Rigney said.

  “But we were there when it happened,” Abumwe said. “Us and humans from Earth. That’s enough for many of them.”

  “So you’re saying that Equilibrium is perfectly fine going with a ‘Plan B,’” Egan said, bringing the topic back around.

  “We’re already on Plan B,” I said. “Plan B went into effect the moment Rafe Daquin stole the Chandler and brought back Secretary Ocampo. This is closer to Plan K. Equilibrium has been very good at improvisation, Colonel. It knows its limits in terms of scale and makes them advantages. Taking credit for killing Earth is not the primary goal but it has its own advantages. It means that it has done something no other entity, no other power has ever dared to do: destroyed the planet that gave the Colonial Union its power. If Equilibrium plays its cards right, it could profit immensely from taking credit for killing Earth. It could gain new members and funding. It could become a legitimate power in itself. It could step out of the shadows it lives in now.”

  “No matter what, the Earth is fucked,” Rigney said. “Excuse the language, but that’s the gist of what I’m hearing from you.”

  I looked over to Abumwe. “There is another option.”

  “Tell us,” Egan said.

  “Before I do, a question for the two of you,” Abumwe said. “Are we agreed that the goal here is survival, not a win.”

  “I don’t understand the question,” Egan said.

  “I don’t believe that, Colonel,” Abumwe said, and stared fixedly at Egan. “I think you know very well what I mean. We four in this room can indulge in the luxury of being utterly honest with each other. So we don’t have to pretend that we don’t know that the Colonial Union, as it exists now, is headed for collapse. If we’re not destroyed by Equilibrium or the Conclave, we’ll tear ourselves apart. It’s already happening.

  “We don’t have to pretend that we don’t know the structure and organization of the Colonial Union itself is unsupportable as it’s currently constructed. We don’t have to pretend that there’s any way we get the Earth back into the role it played for us before. We don’t have to pretend that we are not staring our extinction in the face. We don’t have to pretend that any petty victories or side goals are important right now. What matters is that we agree that what we do here now is for the survival of us, of humanity. Not the Colonial Union as it is now. But of our species. We four have to agree to this, or there is simply no point in continuing this meeting.”

  Egan and Rigney looked at each other. “We agree,” Egan said.

  “And this agreement will be supported how?” Abumwe said. “If we are agreed that we are talking about survival, are we also agreed that we do what it takes to allow survival to happen?”

  “Ambassador Abumwe,” Rigney said. “Tell us your plan. We’ll tell you how we can make it happen.”

  “Very well,” Abumwe said.

  * * *

  “Thank you for attending this meeting,” Abumwe said, to the representatives of the nine colonies who were planning, in what they believed to be secret, to announce their independence.

  “‘Attend,’ hell,” said Harilal Dwivedi, the representative from Huckleberry. “We were just about dragged out of our beds and forced to be here.” Several of the other representatives nodded in agreement.

  “I do apologize,” Abumwe said. “Unfortunately time is of the essence. I am Ambassador Ode Abumwe.”

  “Why are we here, Ambassador?” asked Neida Calderon, of Umbria.

  “Representative Calderon, if you would look around at who else is here among you, I think you will have a good idea why you are here.”

  The low-level muttering and complaining cut off abruptly. Abumwe was now very definitely the focus of all their attention.

  “Yes, we know,” Abumwe said.

  “Of course you know,” Dwivedi spat. He was clearly of the “when cornered, attack” school of rhetoric. “You have the prime minister of Khartoum in custody. I can’t imagine what you’ve done to him.”

  Abumwe nodded to me. I went to a side door in the State Department conference room we were in and opened it. “Come on in,” I said.

  Masahiko Okada walked out and sat down at the table with the representatives. They stared at him like he had three heads.

  “Any more surprises, Ambassador Abumwe?” Calderon asked, after she stopped staring at Okada.

  “In the interest of saving us all time, allow me to be brief,” Abumwe said.

  “Please do,” Calderon said.

  “Each of your worlds is planning to jointly announce your independence from the Colonial Union. The fact that each of y
ou is in this room right now should indicate our awareness of your plans. We are also aware that each of your governments has been in discussion, either individually or severally, with an entity called Equilibrium, which has shared information with you and has, we believe, offered each of you protection against the Colonial Union when you declare your independence.”

  Dwivedi opened his mouth to speak; Abumwe hit him with a hard stare. “This is not the moment to offer up excuses or rationalizations either for your desire for your independence or your fraternization with Equilibrium. We don’t have time for it, and quite bluntly at the moment we don’t care.”

  Dwivedi closed his mouth, clearly annoyed.

  “Equilibrium has been deceiving each of your governments,” Abumwe continued, and motioned to Okada. “In a moment Minister Okada here will detail to you how Equilibrium deceived him and his government and attacked a Colonial Defense Forces ship with the intent to pin the blame—and the punishment—on Khartoum and its government, for the purpose of galvanizing your governments into action. Not for your purposes, representatives. Not for the freedom you believe you seek. But for its own agenda, of which your planets and their fates are mere stepping-stones.

  “With that in mind, the Colonial Union is making a request of each of you.”

  “Let me guess,” Calderon said. “You don’t want us to declare our independence from the Colonial Union.”

  Abumwe smiled one of her very rare smiles. “In fact, Representative Calderon, we very much want you to.”

  Calderon looked uncertain for a moment and glanced around at the other representatives, who were equally confounded. “I don’t understand,” she said, finally.

  “We want you to declare independence,” Abumwe said again.

  “You want us to leave the Colonial Union,” Dwivedi said.

  “No.”

  “But you just said you want us to declare our independence.”

  “Yes,” Abumwe said, and held up her hand before Dwivedi could complain further. “We do not want you to leave the Colonial Union. It is dangerous for each of us. But we ask each of you to follow through with your plan to declare independence. We need for Equilibrium to believe that your planets are going to go through with the plan you’ve already arranged.”