A Greater Interest: Samair in Argos: Book 4

by Michael Kotcher

  “Wasn’t there another way?” – No, the rioters weren’t interested in talking.

  “Why didn’t you attempt a peaceful solution?” – No, they didn’t want a peaceful solution.

  “How could you murder those people?” – They gave me no choice! They were willing to kill themselves and the two hundred thousand others on that colony all over something that should have been settled by talking, not bullets.

  “This has to stop,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.

  “Mister President,” Shayenne Laurent, one of his senior proconsul, said from the doorway in front of him. “It’s your wife, sir.”

  He hadn’t thought he could feel worse. But now Nikolas suddenly felt himself grow cold and Laurent’s voice seemed flat, almost muted. “What about my wife?”

  “She’s issuing a press statement, Mister President.” Shayenne walked over to the wall display and brought up the live feed.

  He turned his haggard gaze from the tabletop over to the display. The sinking, acidic feeling in his stomach warned him that this news would another shovelful of misery to an already overflowing day.

  The image of Liaana Montenegro appeared on the screen. She was dressed in an elegant and expensive purple suit, exquisitely tailored, her makeup and hair expertly applied, in a word, she looked perfect. Of course, Nikolas knew that his wife was beautiful, as did everyone who saw her, but he didn’t marry her just because she was a pretty face. She was the driving force behind his campaign and one of his most important advisors. But she was going straight to the press on her own and that worried him, not that she was speaking to them; no she was a smart and capable woman and had spoken in front of the press on numerous occasions. It was just that he had never been in a crisis like this before and she had never jumped to the press on her own like this, not without consulting anyone.

  “Thank you all for coming here. I’m going to make a statement, but I will not be answering any questions at this time. The President is working to resolve this crisis and my time is extremely limited.” The whirring of cameras and other various recording devices could be heard over the sound of the murmuring pack of reporters. “This heinous attack on various members of the government is inexcusable. This cowardly cyber assault on the government by this terrorist cannot stand. Extreme measures must be taken to bring him and his cronies to justice. After that, or perhaps while that is going on,” she corrected, looking down at her notes, “We will be working to secure the data servers and communications networks in the system.”

  Liaana paused here, giving the group of reporters a stern look. She continued. “Now, I know all of you and the citizens at home are concerned about the content of this data download as much as the breach of security.” She paused here again, while the reporters murmured amongst themselves. It was clear that none of them actually cared too much about the breach of security, if that’s what this could actually be called. “I can assure you that these claims from the data uploads will be investigated and anyone guilty of wrongdoings and illegal activities will be brought to justice.”

  “What about your husband, Ma’am?” one of the reporters shouted.

  Liaana Montenegro drew herself up and glared at the reporter for interrupting her. “My husband, your President, is not guilty of any crimes or wrongdoing. You’ll note that of all the clips, digitals and messages in that… terrorist’s cyber attack, there is only one concerning the President. And that incident has already been discussed and investigated in exhaustive detail. Over two hundred thousand lives were saved that day. I fully support my husband, the President,” she repeated, “and his actions on that day. But for now, I believe that Goris Hana cannot be allowed to profit from this act of terrorism.”

  She paused again and looked out over the crowd of reporters. “Thank you.” She started to step away from the podium and there was an explosion of chatter from the reporters.

  Nikolas nodded, feeling a warm glow. Damn, I love that woman. “But the question still remains, what do I do about this situation?”

  Sending in Commodore Saroyan with his ships and the Marines seemed to be the most obvious answer. But he’d gone down that road once already and he was still sick about it. And there was no way of knowing how many of the people on the fueling station were actually complicit in this act of terrorism, to use Liaana’s term.

  “Well, that’s certainly a rousing endorsement,” Koton Xiv observed sardonically, his voice coming through as a monotone from his translator pack. Unlike many of his zheen brethren, he absolutely refused to speak in the Galactic Standard language, though he did know how. It wouldn’t do to not understand when someone was speaking in a foreign language, but he felt that there were going to be times when he needed to think and speak in his native tongue and didn’t need the distraction. Also, having the translator pack, in his earlier political days, caused his opponents to underestimate the “uneducated bug”, causing them to make mistakes and say things in his presence they didn’t think he would be able to understand. Which was foolish, really, since the translator pack could pick up their words and then convert them to his language with no problem.

  “I think it does help us,” Shayenne replied. “At least as far as the First Lady showing solidarity.”

  Koton hissed. “Touching, really. But it does nothing to raise outrage about Hana or the fact that he’s disrupting these talks, or that he just shot this administration in the foot with this data attack.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Shayenne mused, touching her lips with her fingers.

  “What we need to do is get the Commodore and his troops over to that fueling station and put an end to this,” Koton said. He buzzed. “But the President won’t do it. He doesn’t have the guts.”

  Shayenne scowled at the zheen proconsul. There were times when she wondered how it was that this… curmudgeon ever managed to get himself elected to govern one of the colonies here in the system. She knew that he had connections and some sort of savvy, because the lunar colony he governed, Glacius, despite being an icy, frigid rock, was managing to flourish. His mining project that had taken advantage of sublunar hot springs was a serious feather in his cap and one that had won the trust and respect of his constituents.

  “Don’t say stupid things like that, Koton,” she snapped. “President Montenegro has had to deal with this sort of situation in the past. Just because he isn’t thrilled about sending in the troops to deal with the problem doesn’t mean he’s a coward.”

  “So you’re in agreement with me that the only way to deal with this problem is to send in Commodore Saroyan and his soldiers?” the zheen asked, shrewdly.

  Shayenne eyed him for a long moment. Then she sighed. “Yes, I do think that’s really the only way we’re going to be able to deal with this. Get out from under that toad’s sweaty thumb.”

  “Well, if we are going to do this, can we just get the Commodore to go?”

  She shook her head. “No, blast it all. It would make things simpler, wouldn’t it? But no, the Commodore wouldn’t do that. Not without an order from the President.” She sighed again, rubbing her hand against the back of her neck. “I think that despite everything, Saroyan looks at Goris Hana as a citizen of this star system. If he was some outsider, or part of the Seylonique task force, I don’t think he’d argue too much about it.”

  “Then we’d need a reason for him to not care about his citizenship,” the zheen said. “Something like this, perhaps?” He pressed a control and a new holographic image appeared on the display.

  Goris Hana was there, speaking with another man, a human, the second in command on the fueling station. Tevvis Hinkney was well known in the system as Hana’s right hand man, but it was also well known that the two of them didn’t get on well together. Hana must have had some damning blackmail fodder against him to keep the man in line, Shayenne knew, because the hatred the man held for his boss was easy enough to read for one experienced in looking for subtle nuances.

  “It’s quite simpl
e, Hinkney,” Goris Hana was saying on the playback. He was seated behind a metal desk in what must be his office, though it was hard to tell from the image on the display. It probably wasn’t a hugely important detail anyway. Hana wouldn’t be speaking freely in a place where he knew he would be recorded. “I know the government is trying to pull a fast one on me. They’re meeting with the Seylonies to set up a trade deal. Fine. I’ll accept that, though I’m sure they’re looking for more than just that. They’re looking to find an alternate source of He3 fuel to try and undercut me. That’s the real reason for these talks. I wouldn’t be surprised if on one of those trade missions that went to Seylonique earlier that they snuck an ambassador aboard one of the warships that went to escort them.”

  “Sir,” the man Hinkney replied, frowning, “If I remember right you were among the driving forces behind those trade missions. Now you’re saying that the government is spearheading some massive conspiracy just to cheat you? That seems very unlikely.”

  The fat man considered his XO’s words. “Well, perhaps the government sending an emissary is a bit far fetched. I mean, look at them. Ol’ Monty can barely zip his shoes without four cabinet members helping him. And the proconsuls are just as incompetent. But mark my words. They are looking to remove me and my fuel monopoly from their skies. They don’t like that one such as me has as much power as he does in this system.”

  “Well, I can’t argue that, sir,” Hinkney agreed, shrugging.

  “But we’ve already begun the first stage,” Goris Hana continued. “The popular opinion war. The government will wriggle and squirm, but there’s no hiding the fact that I’ve released a whole nest of snakes in their laps by broadcasting all that dirty laundry. Oh, they’re decrying my tactics as terrorism, bah!” He waved his hands in a shooing motion. “The public’s not going to fall for that nonsense. Oh, there might be one or two outraged citizens, but everyone else is going to want to know why it’s so important to shut me up. And why the government is calling someone who is calling many of their members out on their naughty activities a terrorist. No, this is where we get them off my back.”

  “And the second stage, sir?” Hinkney asked, leadingly. Shayenne tensed unconsciously. Now they were getting to the real point of this little video, she was sure.

  “The second stage is for when they decide they’re going to strike at me,” Hana explained. “The only real card I have left is this station and the fuel itself.”

  “And so, what, sir?”

  “So,” the toad said with a glare, “if they start to get too uppity, I’ll cut them off.”

  Hinkney visibly blinked. Shayenne only sighed. It really was the only other option he had left to try and assert any control over the government. “You’re going to stop fuel shipments to the orbital?”

  Hana smiled, his jowls quivering. “Not just to the orbital, Hinkney. Everywhere in the system. The shipyard. The small moon colonies. And I’m going to lay it all at the feet of the government. ‘Oh, I’m too afraid for my life because of the stance I’ve tried to take against the tyranny of the government,’” he said in a falsetto. “’I tried to stand against them and they’re trying to kill me. This is the only way to fight them.’ And the best part is; it’s the truth!” He cackled, though it came out as more of the gurgle. Shayenne wrinkled her nose in disgust. “So, I’m stopping collection efforts on half of the orbital fuel collectors as of this moment.”

  “Half!”

  “Half,” the toad said with a decisive nod, which produced waves in the movement of his jowls. “That should get their attention. I will show them who they are really dealing with. And if they try anything more, I’ll shut down more. All of the collectors if I have to. They’ll break.”

  The vid paused. Shayenne looked up at her zheen counterpart and felt a slow smile spread over her face. “I think we might have found the pretext we need to get Saroyan to help us.”

  “Yes,” Koton replied in a whisper. Then his voice came up to more normal levels. “We must get him to secure the fuel collectors, even if that means physically sending out ships and technicians to do it. Goris Hana will try and strangle this system to maintain his level of influence. He will fail.”

  “Where did you get this?” the President demanded a short time later after having viewed the vid.

  “I have an arrangement with Mister Hinkney,” the zheen proconsul replied. “He has been passing information to me for over a year now. He sent this to me two hours ago.”

  Nikolas watched the part toward the end again where Goris Hana announced his intention to shut down the fuel supply. Then he straightened his shoulders and nodded. “Very well. There’s nothing for it. We need to send the Commodore and his ships out to the gas giant to secure the fuel collectors. If he encounters any resistance, he has my authorization to use any means necessary to deal with it. In fact,” he said, pressing a control and activating the communications. A moment later, the dark-skinned image of Commodore Saroyan appeared on his display. “Commodore.”

  “Mister President,” the man replied. “How can I help you, sir?” He was all business, but that was hardly a surprise. Ever since this whole mess with Goris Hana, the Navy had been geared up and ready, but the Commodore wasn’t willing to simply send in his troops without either a direct threat, or Presidential order. It was clear that even through his stoic mask, he was hoping that the order was coming.

  Nikolas pressed a control. “Commodore, I’m sending you a file just for context about the situation.” He paused for a moment as he saw the naval officer receive it and then view it on another display screen. His face hardened as he watched the vid until he finally turned back to his president. “I see you share my outrage at this, Commodore.”

  “He means to strangle this system!” Saroyan fumed. “How could he possibly think that he could get away with this?”

  “He thinks he’s untouchable,” the president replied. He shrugged. “And up until now, I haven’t had a good enough excuse to slap him down hard.” He gestured. “But thanks to this, I do now.”

  “Indeed, Mister President,” the commodore replied. “My forces stand ready.”

  “I didn’t doubt that, Commodore,” Nikolas said with a nod. “I need you to send your ships to the gas giant and secure the fuel collectors in the atmosphere.”

  “Understood, Mister President. That will require sending Marines to take actual platforms and tech teams to make sure they’re cut off from the fueling station, to prevent any signals from causing them to either malfunction or self destruct.”

  “Do what needs to be done, Commodore. You have my full support on this.”

  The Navy officer nodded. “Very good, sir. With your permission, I will get started.”

  “Go, Commodore. Get it done.”

  “Colonel, I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but we’ve got a lot of activity from the Ulla-tran Navy ships,” Lieutenant Colonel Paxton reported, his voice coming over the internal comms, sounded puzzled and slightly worried.

  Gants looked up from a report he’d been reading about onboard food supplies, grateful for the distraction. “What sort of activity, XO?”

  “Several of the corvettes and one of the frigates have altered course and are heading off at high speed away from the planet,” the younger officer said. “But they’re not heading in the direction for home, either, in case you were worried, sir. They appear to be on a vector for the gas giant where the fueling station is in orbit.”

  Gants snorted. “After that vid message that came out a few hours ago, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised.”

  “There are also two freighters at the orbital that are showing increased power to their drives. Looks like they’re powering up.”

  “Not two of ours, I take it.”

  “No, sir. Local ships.”

  “I’m coming out,” Gants said, getting up from his desk and heading out of the ready room and onto the Flag Bridge.

  “Colonel on the bridge!” a yeoman shouted and everyone s
tiffened.

  “As you were,” he called and they all went back to their jobs. The two Army troopers on either side of the ready room door straightened, as their principle walked out into the command deck. Gants walked over to the main sensor area where five operators and an officer were consulting their displays while Paxton oversaw them.

  “Sir,” Paxton said, gesturing to the display. The icons for the warships were accelerating hard away from the orbital and the planetary orbit, heading out system. “There they go.”

  “They’re going for the gas giant,” Gants replied. He peered at another display. “What do you think of those freighters?”

  “Best guess, sir,” a young leytenant in charge of the division said, turning to face his commander, “Is that they’re troop transports. I’d say that they’re loading up their soldiers and are going to secure either the fuel collectors, or the fueling station itself.”

  Gants nodded slowly. “You’re probably right about that, Leytenant. I would think that after that little display, the President has decided to kick some ass and take control of the situation.”

  “Which might present us with an opportunity, sir,” Paxton said.

  Gants considered that, then nodded again. “Yes, I agree.” He turned to the comms officer. “Ensign, get Councilor Chakrabarti on the line, then transfer the call to my ready room.”

  “Aye, Colonel.”

  “You have the bridge, XO,” he said, heading back for the door to his ready room.