by Nick Webb
The lead alien repeated. “Unt’unt’wa.”
She nodded, slightly bowed again, and left the room.
We are one. It’s the only way we’ll survive. I hope to God they understand that.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Irigoyen Sector
Bolivar
Shovik-Orion City
The trip to Shovik-Orion City was far shorter than it would have been in a shuttle, owing to the fact that they were in the Crimson Phoenix and ascended high enough out of the atmosphere to really gun the engine. Five minutes later, they were already in reentry.
Fiona was down below with the senator.
How’s her leg? Is she going to be able to walk into the Shovik-Orion offices with us, or do we need a wheelchair?
He waited for Fiona’s response. If she was already in conversation with the senator it would be a minute, as she was not terribly good at carrying on both a verbal and a mental conversation at once.
It’s fine. I doped her up pretty good, and the bleeding is stopped.
Good.
He watched the indicator for the hull temperature and made sure it was in normal reentry parameters. Something the ship was doing for him anyway—the thing was idiot-proof—but at least it gave him some vague sense of control over their situation. Ever since the Valarisi companion’s voice had nearly shouted his head off about the danger in Teatro Civil, he’d felt . . . unsettled to say the least. Bombings do that to you, he supposed.
I FELT SOMETHING THAT I CAN ONLY DESCRIBE AS AN ECHO.
What? He asked the companion.
YOUR THOUGTS. YOU JUST THOUGHT ABOUT THE BOMBING, AND HOW I KNEW TO WARN YOU.
Goddammit, I hate it when you do that. No reading minds!
THEN STOP THINKING SO LOUDLY.
Touché.
Fine. What do you mean, an echo?
AN ECHO. SOMETHING I’VE FELT IN THE PAST. NOT ME, BUT MY PEOPLE. BUT SINCE MY PEOPLE ARE MOSTLY GONE, THE ECHO IS JUST THAT. AN ECHO. A FLEETING FEELING THAT I’VE FELT SOMETHING BEFORE. WHATEVER THAT ECHO IS, MY PEOPLE HAVE FELT IT BEFORE. AND THERE WAS MALICE IN THE ECHO. THE ONLY WAY I COULD FEEL THE MALICE WAS BECAUSE OF THE ECHO ITSELF. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
I’m not sure I do. You felt malice, okay. But you’re saying you could only feel the malice because of the echo?
He wasn’t entirely sure what the companion meant, but feeling the concepts it was communicating rather than hearing actual words helped some.
YES.
You think there was someone, or maybe several someones, in that crowd, that the Valarisi had come in contact with before?
NOT JUST CONTACT. MIND TO MIND. LIGATURE. THE OLD LIGATURE THAT ONCE WAS BUT IS NO MORE. THE NEW LIGATURE IS JUST A SHADOW OF THE OLD. I DO NOT KNOW IF THE ECHO IS BECAUSE THE NEW LIGATURE IS SO NASCENT, OR BECAUSE THE ECHO WAS ONCE CONNECTED TO THE LIGATURE BUT REMOVED ITSELF.
Well. That’s a mystery, ain’t it? And certainly no coincidence that this echo was on Bolivar at the same time as the Senator’s visit.
PERHAPS NOT.
We should tell Fiona.
SHE HAS ALREADY BEEN INFORMED.
Ah.
AND DANNY.
Yeah?
THERE IS STILL AN ECHO. I FEEL IT. THE MALICE IS LESS, BUT THERE IS STILL AN ECHO.
Wait. You mean—the senator?
DANNY. THE LIGATURE, BOTH THE NASCENT PROTO-LIGATURE AND THE LIGATURE THAT WAS, WERE BASED ON META-SPACE. META-SPACE IS, BY NATURE, HIGHLY UNLOCALIZED. THE WAVELENGTHS ARE FAR TOO LONG TO PINPOINT TO ONE LOCATION. SO THE SENATOR MAY BE A SOURCE OF THIS ECHO. MAYBE NOT. MAYBE IT IS SOMEONE ON THE GROUND. IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO TELL.
What’s a way you can be sure?
Silence for a moment, as if the companion were deep in thought.
AT ONE POINT, IN OUR PAST, BEFORE YOUR AUNT DESTROYED MY PEOPLE, WE HAD FAR MORE CAPABILITIES THAN WE CURRENTLY DO. THE SWARM CORRUPTED SOME OF THOSE ABILITIES. PERVERTED THEM. BUT BEFORE THE SWARM, WE COULD MOVE FROM BEING TO BEING BY MERE TOUCH. WE COULD FEEL THE THOUGHTS OF ANOTHER BEING, UNCONNECTED TO THE LIGATURE, BY MERE TOUCH.
And you can’t do that now, you’re saying. You can’t just have me go shake the senator’s hand.
ACTUALLY, MY PEOPLE HAVE RECENTLY REDISCOVERED THIS ABILITY.
But I just touched her! I carried her into the ship!
INCIDENTAL CONTACT. BUT WHEN YOU DID TOUCH HER, EVEN INCIDENTALLY, I FELT . . . NOTHING. THE SENATOR’S MIND IS UNUSUALLY DISCIPLINED.
A politician? With a disciplined mind?
INCREDIBLE, I KNOW.
Heh—his companion was learning sarcasm.
And in the past, that’s how you reproduced? By touch?
YES, IF THEY WERE WILLING.
Wow. Sounds kinky.
IT IS NOT ANYTHING LIKE WHAT YOU ARE THINKING, DANIEL PROCTOR.
It used his full name. Must be mad at him, or embarrassed.
It continued.
WHEN THE SWARM CONTROLLED US, THIS PROCESS WAS INVOLUNTARY. WHEN A SWARM-INFECTED PERSON TOUCHED YOU, THE SWARM VIRUS PASSED INTO YOU, AND MADE YOU . . . A FRIEND, IS HOW THEY WOULD SAY IT. A NEW CORRUPTED VALARISI WAS BORN UPON THE INTRODUCTION OF THE VIRUS INTO THE NEW INDIVIDUAL, AND THEY WERE BOTH UNDER THE FULL CONTROL OF THE SWARM. THE VALARISI WAY IS DIFFERENT. THERE IS CONSENT. THERE IS INVITATION. AND BY THAT MIRACLE, THE INTRODUCTION OF A SMALL AMOUNT OF MY BEING INTO ANOTHER ALIEN BODY, A NEW INDIVIDUAL VALARISI IS BORN.
Riiiiight. A small amount of your being? Like I said. Kinky.
OH GOD.
Danny snickered out loud, both at the childish jokes and at the fact that his companion had learned enough about human mannerisms, vocabulary, and humor to be able to curse like that.
Okay, we’re going to have to hit pause on this racy conversation. We’re there. Docking at the Shovik-Orion Corporate Headquarters spaceport. Cross your fingers everybody. If all goes well, we’re walking out of here with our ship free and clear, and Senator Cooper gets—whatever it is she came for.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sol Sector
Earth
New York City
UE Executive Shuttle
“That cunning little twat.” President Sepulveda threw his data pad against the side door of the shuttle. Sukarno reached down to pick it up and hand it back, but he wasn’t done. “Who the hell needs a mysterious maybe-dead-maybe-not zombie Avery in the background when we’re dealing with someone just as diabolical?”
“Sir? Are you claiming she . . .” Sukarno trailed off, as if not wanting to believe.
But it was true. It had to be. “Look for yourself. Look at the instapoll numbers.”
Sukarno waved Sepulveda’s data pad back on. His eyes bulged slightly. “Remarkable.”
“See? Her numbers skyrocketed. I was leading by ten. Now I’m trailing by five. There’s no way in hell this wasn’t planned. Botched assassinations just aren’t a thing, Arjun.”
Sukarno looked skeptical. “Aren’t they?”
Sepulveda made a scoffing sound. “If someone is going to off a president and has the means and the brains to get around security, then they’ve got the means to finish the job. No. This was all her. Come off as some goddamn hero, escaping assassination attempts, making herself look like a threat to the shadowy figures behind the scenes that half the electorate dreams and obsesses about. Make it look like she’s a woman of the people, and that the bad guys are out to get her. Of course she’s behind this. And going missing too? Amping up the suspense? Of course she’s behind it. You just watch—she’ll turn up later today or tomorrow, and the galaxy will breathe a sigh of relief and send her poll numbers even higher.”
Sukarno was reading further news reporting. “According to this, she was actually injured.”
Sepulveda rolled his eyes. He held up two sets of curled quotation mark fingers. “Injured. Right. How exactly?”
Sukarno shook his head. “Doesn’t say. And her Secret Service detail would never allow that information to be made public, unless she said it in public herself. B
ut the reporter who wrote this said he saw her bleeding from the leg.”
Sepulveda turned to stare out the window at the passing buildings on the way to Interstellar One. “Fake. Easily faked.” He mulled over the news and his most recent problem of trying to figure out who put the note in his office. “Someone really doesn’t want my presidency to continue, Arjun.”
Sukarno held up the data pad. “According to this, about fifty-five percent of humanity, sir.”
“Heh,” said Sepulveda, in a half-hearted attempt at a chuckle. Sukarno wasn’t one for wry wit at his expense. “What’s eating you, Jun?”
“Oh, nothing. Just the fact that I had to cancel about a dozen meetings for you today so you could make this trip. SecDef was livid you blew him off. Imam Kalafi was more understanding, but I could tell he was a little pissed too. Your government needs you, John. You can’t just go gallivanting off at a moment’s notice like this. Too much going on right now. Next month? When the campaign really picks up? Sure. Now? Uh uh.”
The greatest president in UE history gallivants whenever he damn well pleases. But he held that thought to himself. First he had to become the greatest before he could say it out loud with a straight face. “Jun—” Sepulveda began.
“It’s not too late to turn back, Mr. President. Really. We’ve got governing to do. Let the politics figure itself out for now. That’s what your political team is for.”
“No. There’s something going on here. Something deep, Arjun. And if I don’t find out, well, let’s just say that I’d rather be running the government for the next four years and two months than just the next two months—or two days, for that matter.”
“That bad?” Sukarno stared him down, as if daring him.
“I feel it in my gut, Arjun. This Avery business. It’s just . . . off. And the fake assassination attempt?”
“My god. You’re serious. Fake?”
Sepulveda held up a hand. “Serious. Assume for the moment that Senator Cooper didn’t arrange this. It’s still too sloppy for a professional hit job. Unless the person doing it wanted her to live, and therefore give her a poll boost. And this same person could have arranged for the note in my office.”
“But why? To get in your head?”
Sepulveda shrugged, and turned back to face his chief of staff. “Maybe. I mean, look at me now. Off to some IDF space station in the Britannia system instead of where I belong: on the campaign trail.”
“Leaving aside for the moment that where you belong is running the government, are you going to tell me the real reason why we’re making the detour? I thought planning a campaign stop on Bolivar right after the assassination attempt was a little tempt-fatey, and I can only begin to understand the politics of it, but going to a mostly-uninhabited gas giant along the way? Does it have to do with your conversation with Oppenheimer this morning?”
“It does. And—” He looked up toward the cockpit at their pilot and copilot. Then back at the row of Secret Service officers seated behind the transparent titanium barrier enclosing the presidential office in the shuttle. “I don’t know who’s listening right now.”
Sukarno pursed his lips, as if in quiet frustration. “Sir, with all due respect, if you can’t trust your Secret Service, who can you trust?”
“Fine. Donnelly Station. Out in the Lagrange point two of Calais’s orbit around the Britannian sun. It’s not so much a station as it is a data collection center. It turns out, according to what Oppenheimer told me this morning, every IDF ship, when it is in one of the solar systems of United Earth, has a constant data stream set up with a central data storage and processing center. It basically collects all sensor data, video feeds, communication, everything. All happening in the background, automatically.”
Sukarno was nodding his head. “Okay. So you think one of the IDF ships that was around Britannia when it died might have seen something? Something related in some way to Avery?”
Sepulveda tapped his head and pointed at Sukarno. “Exactly. Not only that, but it received data streams from countless IDF collection points on Britannia itself.” He glanced back out the window and saw that they’d arrived at Avery Station, the giant IDF spaceport tower at the edge of Manhattan Island where Interstellar One was docked, sticking out from the middle of the tower like a giant spoke. And named, of course, after the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Ah.” Sukarno started to unbuckle his restraint and stand up, as the shuttle was about to dock with Interstellar One. “And since Avery was a former president, and entitled to continuing Secret Service protection, you think that surveillance video of her residence might be there?”
“That, or something. Anything that would let us confirm that she is, in fact, dead.” He started to stand up, but the SAIC had opened the door and leaned his head in. “Sorry sir, we’re going to have you sit tight for a few minutes for an extra security sweep.”
“Of Interstellar One?” he replied, exasperated.
“Yes sir. Given the attack on Senator Cooper last night, we’ve raised the threat level. I’m personally overseeing all security sweeps of every location you’re scheduled to be in.”
“Raised the threat level? Wasn’t it already at red or something? You know, because of the imminent war? What’s above that?”
He could see that the SAIC was trying heroically not to roll his eyes. “Just bear with us for another minute or so, sir. I’ll be right back.”
Sepulveda held up a hand. “Danforth, wait. Did you—you know?”
The Secret Service chief sighed. “No sir. But to be perfectly honest, it hasn’t been at the top of my list today. I promise I’ll get right on it once Interstellar One takes off and I have a minute to breathe.” He didn’t even wait for a reply.
Sepulveda sighed after the door closed again, and motioned for his chief of staff to sit back down.
“I could ask around the agency to see if there’s someone you’d like to replace him with, sir.”
He waved him off. “No. No, he’s fine. Leave the man alone. I asked him to find some kind of video surveillance of inside the presidential office. They don’t record the inside for very good security reasons. But there’s gotta be something.”
“Are you sure you want to distract him from his job of keeping you safe on Bolivar?”
“Arjun, there’s not an ice cube’s chance in hell that I’m the target of whoever masterminded that attack, whether it was Cooper or someone else. Me campaigning on Bolivar will be the safest place in the universe for me right now, what with all the high alerts and condition reds and all that shit. And you mentioned the politics. This is perfect. Maybe even enough to blunt her polling bounce. See, right now she’s getting the empathy vote. People feel both sorry for her that she’s a target, and attacked themselves since an attack on her is an attack on them. But I swoop in, make a show of presidential strength with all the trappings of the office, pledge to get to the bottom of it, walk around without a bullet-proof vest on, get in front of the cameras while I check in on the wounded policemen, and bam, we’re back to a dead heat.”
Sukarno shrugged. “Great. You and your political team handle the optics and strategy. I’ll just keep your government running, okay? Did I mention it’s not too late to change your mind? And on the off-chance you haven’t, I still think we should double up your Secret Service detail like the SAIC wanted.”
“Unnecessary.” He didn’t want to be managed. Shepherded around like a glass doll.
“Best to be on the safe side, sir.”
“I’ll think about it, all right?”
That seemed to satisfy him. “Okay, sir.” And the chief returned his gaze to his data pad.
“Right.” His mind drifted back to Mrs. Dolworth’s class’s poster. “President S. He’s pretty good!” Pretty good presidents were never the target of assassinations. Pretty good presidents didn’t need the highest threat level of security.
No one remembered pretty good presidents. They remembered the truly awful, and
the truly great.
And he was going to be remembered, dammit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Irigoyen Sector
Bolivar
Shovik-Orion City
“Right this way, Senator.”
The woman sent to meet them on the landing pad was a no-nonsense, let’s-get-down-to-business businesswoman. No small talk. No surmising about the next day’s weather. Danny understood her to be the vice president of something or other—he really wasn’t following the long list of credentials that she rattled off as if she were verbally flashing her resume. The two heavily armed security guards flanking her fell into step behind the group as they made their way toward the entrance.
“I thought you should know, Senator. A system-wide alert has gone out on all security channels to be on the lookout for you and any potential kidnappers.” She eyed Danny and Fiona with a neutral expression, raising a single eyebrow.
“Oh, them? My own personal security that I’ve recently hired, given the failures of the so-called professionals.”
“I see. I suppose they have credentials? Not that I don’t believe you, Senator. It’s just that, if there were a group that were actually taking you hostage, I’d fear that you were made to say things under duress.”
“Stop.” Senator Cooper turned and pointed at Danny and Fiona. “You two. Head back there towards the ship. Twenty steps. That’s right. Right past those guards.”
Danny and Fiona looked at each other.
She’s serious, Danny thought at her.
Yeah. What’s the harm though?
They walked back past the guards, counting the steps, stopped, and then turned back around to face the Senator, the Shovik-Orion vice president, and the two guards.
“There. You see? No duress. Now get me the fuck to the CEO.”
