by Nick Webb
But he’d get their respect. They’d come to regret treating him like an annoyance. But first, win the election in a landslide. Then repel this supposed invasion of Earth—or prove that it was all a big lie by the military to keep the population riled up and sideline him. And then figure out this Barbara Avery shit. Then they’d respect him.
The door opened—no, slammed open—and Sukarno burst in.
Sepulveda wheeled around. “Arjun, what the hell—”
“Turn the monitor on. UENC. Now.”
Now? His chief of staff never spoke to him like that. And turn on United Earth News Channel? They hated him—only ever ran negative shit. “Not UENC. What the hell is—”
Sukarno pushed past him and waved the monitor on, and raised his voice to speak to the wall. “Play UENC.”
The screen snapped to life, and on it, carnage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Irigoyen Sector
Bolivar
Potosí City
Carnage was not a word Senator Cooper used often. The opportunity just didn’t come up all that often.
But now, as she realized that the piece of wreckage hanging from one of the rafters overhead wasn’t building wreckage, but rather human wreckage, the word crossed her mind. What was the word for that piece of wreckage?
Arm. It was a human arm.
She still couldn’t hear. Her vision was rather narrowly focused straight ahead, almost like a tunnel. She couldn’t feel any pain, but something just felt . . . wrong in her leg. Her rational brain told her that she was suffering from shock, and that she was most likely severely injured.
A face appeared over her. Human? Of course human. What else would it be, here on Bolivar? It was yelling something at her, reaching down to touch her shoulder. It still didn’t feel like her own.
Whose face was that?
Proctor. That name swirled to the surface. Proctor’s . . . son? No, nephew. He was likely trying to get her to safety. His companion appeared next to him, the former IDF Intel officer. Liu. She remembered her. They most likely were trying to get her to safety. They were most likely trying to get her to safety. Goddammit, it was hard to think straight. They were most likely trying to get her to safety. Where was her Secret Service? She’d been under their protection for the past month, ever since she’d won her party’s flash primary election. She was just steps from the presidency of United Earth. In fact, if Sepulveda suddenly dies, it would be her, by UE law.
And now this.
Hadn’t she survived assassination attempts in the past? Her memories were a muddle of images and events, most of which she wasn’t sure were real—dreams, most likely.
She nodded, and reached an arm up. They pulled her into a sitting position. She looked around and saw a sea of bodies. Body parts, rather.
And lots of blood. More than she’d ever seen.
They were fussing over her leg. Liu tore off her shirt and started wrapping it around the bottom of her thigh.
“We’ve gotta go! It might be a double tap!” said Liu, yelling in Cooper’s ear. The yell was like a whisper.
Double tap? Then she remembered various intel briefings she’d had at points in the past. A favorite tool of terrorists was to bomb a target, wait twenty minutes for the first responders to arrive, then bomb again. Double the carnage.
They pulled her to her feet and she slung an arm over one of their shoulders each. As they hobbled out of the ruined hall of the community center, she recognized the faces of her security detail, one by one, as they passed. Each was lifeless. Several of their eyes were still open. Good god.
Her vision was swimming.
“We’re losing her,” said Liu. “Senator! Stay awake!”
“Trying,” she slurred.
“Danny, carry her.”
She felt herself being picked up. And then a cloud of white. Another bomb? The fog rolling in? Why was there fog in a community center? Oh. She was passing out. Strange sensation, that. Being aware of passing out, and yet here she was.
***
When she awoke, it was in a small infirmary. Very small. She knew enough to know it was not ground-based.
“Where am I?”
Liu stood next to her, working on the auto-med equipment. “The Crimson Phoenix. My and Danny’s ship.”
“Are we in space?” Her speech still felt slurred.
“No. We’re still at the spaceport.”
“Take off. Now.”
“But Senator, we still need clearance from ground control—”
“Do it. Now.”
Liu looked at her helplessly. “But the interlocks—”
Senator Cooper stared her down, reaching over to grab her arm. “Before it’s too late. For both of us.”
Liu stared back at her, then said. “You think whoever did this . . .” She stopped. Her eyes glazed over for a few seconds, and then she was back. “Okay. I told him. He’s going to pull out from the dock, fines be damned.” She shook her head. “There goes our dream of paying this thing off early.”
Senator Cooper reached out to touch her elbow. “Don’t you worry about that.” She paused a moment, thinking. “Ah. You kept your Valarisi. Bet the military wasn’t too pleased about that.”
Perfect. They both still have their companions, she thought. That would be a massive boon, to have access to the proto-Ligature.
“None too pleased, ma’am.”
“As for paying off the spaceport fines, well, I’ll handle it. Consider this a formal job offer.”
“Offer?”
“Yes, Ms. Liu. You’re IDF Intel?”
“Former.”
“Training is current though? And you have your own ship. That’s good enough for me. Secret Service just showed me how important my protection is to them. They’re fired. You’re hired. Any questions?”
Liu looked at a loss for words.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Senator, I don’t think the Secret Service will just let me be your security, they’ll say—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what they say. They dropped the ball and almost got me killed.”
A sudden grinding sound followed by several distant crashes indicated that the ship had torn free from the interlocked moorings holding the ship down.
“How much are we talking here?”
“How much do you need to pay this ship off?”
“Oh, I think it’s about—”
“Great. I’ll pay that.”
Liu did a double take. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Ms. Liu, something you’re going to discover about Senator Cooper. She never, ever plays around. I’m not in this race for the fun of it. I’m going to be the president of United Earth. But to do that, I need to live until at least the election. And that’s where you come in. Deal?”
She watched as a suite of emotions passed over the woman’s face. It was nearly inscrutable, but, expert politician she was, she knew exactly what this woman wanted.
She was bored. Former IDF Intel agent? Now flying cargo around? Please.
“I mean, sure, except Danny and I can’t do it all on our own.”
She waved off her concerns with a hand, which she just then noticed had a few bits of metal embedded in the back of it. Little dried streams of blood marked their entry points. “Of course. We’ll still have Secret Service. They may even need to ride along with us. But as far as I’m concerned, you’re in charge. At least until the election. Deal? Then we’ll have to figure out a more permanent arrangement.”
“Okay.” Liu nodded. “Well. I guess what they say about you is right.”
“And what’s that?”
“That it would take getting crushed by a moon to kill you. They say you’re made of some strong shit. Is it true? You were about to die of cancer?”
“Death’s door, honey.”
“And?”
“And? And I pulled through.” She chuckled. “Took some drastic measures from a team of docs out on Sm
olensk, most of it experimental. It hurt. A lot. But when I woke up? I was a new woman.”
Liu nodded solemnly. “I went through something similar after I nearly died in an assassination attempt on Bolivar.”
“So we’ve both got war stories. Now. Is my leg patched up?”
Liu glanced at the auto-med station. “You had a pretty deep laceration from some shrapnel. I pulled it out, rinsed with wound solution, and wrapped it up nice and snug. You should be good until you can get to a real doctor.”
“Perfect.” She flexed her leg a little. It felt much better. “Damn. Where were you when I had stage four hundred breast cancer? Could have saved me some time.”
The ship intercom buzzed and Danny Proctor’s voice sounded in the medical cabin. “Uh, Senator, we’re clear of the spaceport, and no sign of pursuit by anyone. Except they’re threatening me with some pretty hefty cussing and fines for what we just did.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Proctor, I’ll handle that.”
He continued, “My wife informs me that you’re our new client. You got an idea of where we should be heading? I don’t like just hanging out circling the spaceport.”
“You say you want to pay off this ship? Who owns it?”
“Shovik-Orion, ma’am. The big military contractor that—”
“I’m aware of what Shovik-Orion is, Mr. Proctor. I chair the senate’s budget committee, and I’m very familiar with the fact that nearly ten percent of tax revenue flows straight into their coffers, the bastards. Very well. They happen to be headquartered right here on Bolivar. Get us to Shovik-Orion City. Let’s have a talk with their CEO, shall we?”
Liu interjected. “Uh, ma’am, I bet there’s a massive investigation starting right now about this bombing. Shouldn’t we stick around for the authorities to—”
“Ms. Liu, I am the authority here. Don’t worry, we’ll be back and answer all of the local police chief’s questions, and we’ll get back together with my staff—those who survived. But for now, our brief excursion serves four purposes. Get your ship paid off. Find out who’s trying to kill me. Go missing for awhile and therefore dominate the headlines a little longer—no publicity is bad publicity. And four, get me away from my staff so I can have time to figure out how this happened without tipping off anyone on the inside.”
Liu nodded, understanding Cooper’s meaning. Good. She was already feeling very confident in her decision to hire her. “You don’t trust your staff.”
“I don’t trust anybody, dear. Least of all an office full of career congressional staffers and interns who rotate in and out of my office every year. I’m pretty sure I can be confident in my chief of staff, one or two longtime advisors, and that’s about it. Now. Let’s go have a talk with the head of Shovik-Orion and get a big discount on your ship.”
She continued to herself, among other things.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Savannah Sector
Nova Nairobi, High Orbit
ISS Independence
Sickbay
Admiral Proctor watched Ensign Decker’s chest rise and fall with reassuring regularity. Luckily, the man hadn’t needed breathing assistance, and his status had been stable since the first hour or so after the Valarisi had been stripped from his body.
“Doctor, I want some answers. Why did it happen? What’s the medical reason for his coma? What happened to him when he was separated from his companion?”
The doctor shrugged. “I’ve run a battery of tests, and so far they’re either inconclusive or indicate that everything is perfectly normal with him. Except the fact that he’s unconscious.”
“So is it the Valarisi effect on brain chemistry?”
“Again, no idea. His brain chemistry, of course, lines up perfectly with someone in a coma, but the cause? It would help if I knew something about Valarisi—I guess it’s not physiology. Chemistry? They’re basically a virus, right?”
“No. Not a virus. Though their cells have the ability to design and construct viruses as needed for whatever task they need. It’s complicated, to be sure.”
She’d spent weeks during her time on the ISS Warrior, thirty years ago during the Second Swarm War, intensively studying Swarm matter and how it exerted control over humans. Valarisi matter was different in many ways, but it was essentially the same thing.
“If I could just get my hands on some and run some scans—”
Proctor shook her head. “All the Valarisi in the galaxy are currently swimming in a pool on Kyoto Three. And I doubt Admiral Oppenheimer will allow any access to it beyond the science team that he undoubtedly has studying it.”
“Well, can we get some of the results from that team? If I knew more, there’s a chance I could do something more to help Decker.”
“Doubt it. The whole project is classified. Highest level of compartmentalization. I only know the location of the Valarisi pool because . . .”
She trailed off. She only knew the location because at the beginning of the purge, when her companion was still ever-present, it told her where its people were being taken. And then, silence. It simply stopped. She’d searched deep within her for signs of it, but it was like a switch had been turned off and the Valarisi disappeared.
“Admiral?”
“Sorry. I only know because Oppenheimer himself slipped up during a news interview, and a million people heard about it before the news network could correct the error. By then it was too late.”
It was half true, at least. Oppenheimer had slipped up, but that’s not how she knew.
“Anyway, please let me know if his status changes,” she said, not adding, because I’m the one that put him here.
She could see a scoreboard in her mind’s eye. There were two numbers. On the left were all the people that were dead because of her—her bad decisions, hell, her good decisions—and the final digit was caught between two numbers, depending on which way Decker went. The number on the right? All the people she’d saved. Most of the time she was absolutely sure that the number on the right outweighed the number on the left, by many orders of magnitude.
Other days she wasn’t so sure.
She left sickbay, aiming for the conference room one floor above. Qwerty was still in a marathon session with the Eru, making his first attempt at deciphering their language.
The doors opened for her, and her jaw nearly dropped when she looked inside.
Qwerty was standing on the table. His arms were outstretched, including some fingers. But what made her struggle to contain her surprise, and laughter, was the sight of two smaller mechanical arms strapped to his midsection.
“Mr. Qwerty. What—?”
“Ah! Admiral! Your chief engineer was kind enough to print me off some under-arms. I owe him a beer, because man did he do it in record time.”
“Record time? You’ve done this before?” She noticed the Eru across the table were conferring amongst themselves, their words seemingly punctuated by gestures using all four arms.
“Well not under-arms, but I’ve printed off mechanical limbs before—don’t ask, long story involving hazing at the academy—and it took me hours.” He lowered his arms, and the under-arms sagged down to match. “Now then. Would you like to see a demo?”
“Of your arms?”
“Well, of my best Eru impression. Mind you, the accent is probably terrible, but—okay, here goes.” He held his arms back up, and the under-arms swung upward to match. He then held out one finger. “Unt’oo.” He held out a second finger. “Oowat’oo.” A third finger. “Erat’oo.”
He counted off nine numbers, and when he reached ten he lowered all his fingers and a single finger on his right under-arm extended itself. “Oppit’oo.” Then another regular finger. “Patwit’oo.”
The Eru were nodding along, nodding not just their heads, but their outstretched hands. Proctor wondered if the head nod was an Eru mannerism, or simply copied from the few humans they’d met.
“Okay, Admiral, you ready? I’m at fifteen. Here’s six
teen.” A single under-arm finger still extended, he lowered all the fingers on his real hands. “Unt’wa.” Another finger. “Oowat’wa.” He continued for some time, until he’d extended the fourth under-arm finger.
“And so forth and so forth,” he said, lowering all his fingers and arms. “Now watch this.” He pointed to himself, and said, “Unt’unt’wa.” He glanced at Proctor. “Me. Or I. Or mine. Not sure yet. But what’s interesting is that it’s a combination of the words one, and sixteen, which I’m surmising to them means that I am a singular part of a whole, which to them is represented by sixteen. Isn’t that fascinating?”
Proctor nodded along, but impatiently. “Extremely interesting, Mr. Qwerty. Tell me, when can you ask them if they can help us defend against the Findiri?”
“Now that is a complicated question, ma’am. Weeks?”
“We don’t have weeks, Mr. Qwerty. The Findiri are here. One of our planets is destroyed. The next could come any day. Any hour. We need their help now.” She wanted to throttle Oppenheimer. They were this close to being able to ask for their assistance, before Decker was stripped of his Companion.
On a whim, she reached out to the void that was left by her own companion. I need you. Please.
Silence, of course. Nothing but silence for nearly two months. Had it died? Had it left her body by some other means?
“Well ma’am, I’ll sure as hell try.”
“Thank you, Mr. Qwerty. Anything you need, the Independence is at your disposal.” She turned to the Eru she supposed was their leader. It was the same one she’d conversed with through Ensign Decker during the heat of the battle. She bowed slightly, hoping he’d understand it as a sign of respect, then turned to leave.
But she stopped, and turned back. She pointed at herself. “Unt’unt’wa.” Then she raised her arms, and as best she could, indicated to all of them, everyone in the room. “Unt’unt’wa.” She repeated herself, moving her hand in a sweeping circle across everyone, and then at herself. “Unt’unt’wa.”
