by Peter Grant
“But it is out of touch with us! This is the first time we’ve heard from it, or from him, in almost a year! What if I – if we – don’t agree with what Dave’s doing?”
“That’s irrelevant. We handed him the responsibility, remember? He’s taking the ball we gave him and running with it. We have no right to complain, even if we don’t like the direction he’s going or what he has in mind – which he hasn’t told us anyway except in the broadest possible outline, obviously for fear the Bactrians might learn enough to cause problems for him. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with his intentions.”
She struggled to find words. “I – I don’t...”
“Gloria, you’re feeling left out, ignored, slighted at being excluded from the decision-making process. I don’t blame you for that – it’s only natural after having held such authority – but you’ve got to understand and control that reaction. It’s wrong. You no longer have any authority, because the Council of the Resistance is defunct. You mustn’t try to oppose Dave just because he’s exercising his authority. He doesn’t even know you’re alive.”
“The Council may be defunct, but I retain the title and authority of its Chair and I won’t let anyone take that away from me! Dave doesn’t know you’re alive either, remember? You’re his father, not to mention his senior in rank! How do you feel about him issuing orders to you?”
Jake’s brow furrowed in concern. “Gloria, in the absence of a Council you have no authority. Period. That’s just the way it is. We admire and respect you for all you’ve achieved, and we’ll continue to listen to your advice, but you never had the right to issue orders on your own – only in the name and with the consent of the Council. As for Dave issuing orders, I can hardly object. I’m under military discipline, as he is, and we both understand the situation.”
“And you don’t mind that?”
“That’s irrelevant. I’m a prisoner of war – not to mention blind! There’s damn all I can do to further our cause from in here. It’s up to him and his little band now.”
“And how can he and a handful of soldiers hope to accomplish all he’s laid out?”
“I don’t know, and neither do you, but he obviously has a plan in mind. It’s up to him.”
She struggled for a moment to find more objections that would hold water. “You may – may! – be right, but it grates me to be ignored like this!”
Jake softened his tone. “He’s not doing it deliberately, Gloria. He’s doing his best from hundreds of light years away, without any opportunity to co-ordinate his actions with you or any of us. There’s nothing you can to do influence events from in here. Even if an opportunity arose to do something, unless you know what he’s up to, anything you do might interfere with his efforts. He wants you – he wants all of us – to stay out of his way. Under the circumstances, I think he’s right.”
“Well, I don’t!” She depressed the button once more. “Persephone to Charon, are you still there? Over.”
“Charon to Persephone, still here, over.”
“Persephone to Charon, thank you. Please acknowledge Mercury’s order. Have you already passed all the information previously agreed? Over.”
“Charon to Persephone, yes, I have. Over.”
“Persephone to Charon, that’s good. Please additionally inform Mercury that we will attempt to comply with his wishes unless circumstances make that impossible or inadvisable. In that case Persephone reserves the right to take whatever steps she deems necessary at the time. She will do her best to liaise with him if possible, but if this is not feasible she will act on her own initiative and authority as she sees fit. Over.”
“Charon to Persephone, understood, Ma’am, but I respectfully point out that the Council of the Resistance no longer exists. Your authority died with it. Furthermore, anything you say or do is affected by your status as a prisoner of war. By definition, you’re under duress. On both counts, that means Mercury’s order is binding on the Resistance. I’ve already so advised our surviving members on the outside. Over.”
“Persephone to Charon, I have not surrendered my authority as Chairperson of the Council even if it’s currently non-functional. I will act in terms of that authority if necessary. Mercury doesn’t have the right to take that away from me. Over.”
There was a pause, then, “Charon to Persephone, I respectfully submit you’re wrong about this, and I will advise Mercury of the facts of the matter and my opinion. Over.”
Gloria bit her lip to avoid saying something that would disrupt relations with their most reliable outside contact. She settled for, “Persephone to Charon, understood. Please advise Mercury of my position as I’ve stated it to you. Over.”
“Charon to Persephone, will do. Anything else? Over.”
“Persephone to Charon, negative. We’ll circulate this news to the others, and –”
She paused as Jake tapped her arm. “I want to say something to him,” he whispered.
She depressed the button again. “Sorry about that. Stand by for Peleus.”
Jake bent over the microphone. “Peleus to Charon, please tell Mercury that I agree with his position on current and future plans. I do not agree with Persephone’s view that she retains her authority as Chairperson of the Council even though it’s now defunct, but I’m not in a position to do anything about that because she isn’t subject to military discipline. I urge him to try to coordinate with her as often as he can to avoid complications. Furthermore, in my capacity as senior surviving military officer of the Resistance on Laredo, I confirm all Mercury’s orders, current and future, unless and until I instruct otherwise. Finally, Operation Phoenix is to be pursued with all possible urgency. Pass that on to all our remaining cells, please. Over.”
Gloria fumed as he spoke. She’d been sorely tempted to interrupt the transmission to prevent him continuing, but knew that if she’d done so she would have destroyed her relationship with Jake. He could order everyone else in the camp to ostracize her – or worse, if it came to that.
“Charon to Peleus, copied and will comply, over.”
“Finished?” she asked Jake ominously.
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“Thank you,” she said icily. “Persephone to Charon, let’s hope Mercury gets in touch again soon. That’s all from our side. Over.”
“Charon to Persephone, I’ve no idea when the next contact will be. I’ll convey your additional information to Mercury’s messenger. This is Charon, signing off.”
As Gloria put the cap back on her pen, she snapped, “I hope you’re satisfied! What is this ‘Operation Phoenix’, anyway?”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis; and no, I’m not satisfied if you’re going to get all pissy about this,” Jake retorted. “Sorry, Gloria, but you’re way out of line.”
“I refuse to accept that! As its surviving Chairperson, I can reconstitute the Council anytime I please!”
“No, you can’t. It was never a statutory body. President Wexler established it as a temporary team of advisers to his office, and he personally selected its members. After his death we kept his Council in being as a symbol of civilian control over the military, but that was always a temporary stopgap until we could hold elections again under our pre-war Constitution without any outside interference. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“And if I decide to reconstitute the Council anyway? What if I ask you to be a member?”
“You can’t, Gloria, and I’d refuse any such offer as being invalid from the start.”
She gaped at him in utter astonishment. “You can’t mean that!”
“Gloria, there is no Council anymore! It no longer exists! Get used to that!”
“I absolutely will not accept that! I retain my authority as Chairperson, and I’ll use it if necessary against anyone who tries to stop me!”
“And just how will you do that? Who are you going to issue orders to? Who’s going to obey them? I promise you, none of the Resistance will. They take orders through ou
r military chain of command alone – meaning me at the top on-planet, and Dave off-planet. Also, remember Dave’s second order to the Resistance. Disobey that, and you’ll make yourself a target.”
She stared at him, aghast. “Do you mean to tell me you’ll issue orders to kill me?”
“No, I won’t. After all we’ve been through together, you know better than to ask that. However, the rest of the Resistance will know of Dave’s order by now, and those here in the prison camp will know of it as soon as I tell them later this morning. I don’t know which of them might decide to act against you, but I’ve no doubt that if your actions violate Dave’s orders, one or more of them probably will.”
She thrust herself to her feet. “In that case, you can tell them from me that I refuse to be subject to a military authority I’ve never sworn to accept! I won’t be bound by your notions of the right thing to do. If I see a better way forward, I’m damn well going to take it!” She stormed out of the room without waiting to offer him the guidance and support of her arm.
As Jake gathered up the readers, returned them to the shelf and replaced the pot in its drainage dish, he was deeply troubled. He gathered up the notepad and pen she’d left behind and felt his way slowly down the passage, counting doors with his fingertips until he came to his room.
~ ~ ~
“D’you think she means it?” The speaker was a tall, thin man wearing a faded utility uniform.
Jake heaved a sigh. “I honestly don’t know, Major Tredegar. I wish I’d understood before how frustrated she was feeling at having lost her former position of authority. Of course, none of us had any certainty that we’d survive our assault on Banka, and none of us expected to end up as prisoners of war like this. Prior to that fight the Bactrians had executed every prisoner they took. I still don’t know what caused them to change that policy, but it’s at the root of our problem today. If none of us had survived Dave would have pretty much a free hand. As it is, we’re going to have to figure out a way forward. I don’t want anything to happen to Gloria because of this – out of respect for her husband, if nothing else.”
“If Brigadier-General Aldred were still alive, you know he’d throw his authority behind your son as well, Sir, and order his wife to do the same,” Lieutenant Kubicka pointed out.
“Yes, but he died in the assault on Banka – right in front of her, as it happened.”
Sergeant-Major O’Connor mused, “I wonder if that has anything to do with the vehemence of her reaction last night, Sir? Perhaps she feels that because she nearly died with him, and was part of his final assault, she’s got the right to continue his work, even though his authority was military rather than civilian.”
“I just don’t know, Sergeant-Major.” Jake considered a moment. “I suppose all we can do right now is to try to assure her that we continue to respect her as an individual, even though her official position expired with the Council. Do please make that last point clear if she tries to persuade any of you to support her. We can’t allow her to divide us.”
“Of course not,” Major Tredegar agreed vehemently, “particularly given that Dave is at last in a position to move ahead with plans to take the war to Bactria. New ships, new weapons, new crews – he’s got some very ambitious plans. I hope he’s not reaching too far.”
“He’s got to reach as far as he possibly can, Sir,” Sergeant-Major O’Connor pointed out. “With only fourteen survivors of the group he led from this planet, he’s going to have to hire a hundred mercenaries for every one of them if he’s to get anywhere. I’ve no idea where he’s going to find enough trustworthy people, let alone the money to hire them, and that’s without even thinking about ships and missiles.”
Jake nodded. “It’s a tall order, but his message sounded confident. The Resistance ended up like an old, worn-down, broken knife. He’s planning to forge a new blade for it – for us.”
“I just hope he doesn’t try to rescue us, to add us to his forces,” Lieutenant Kubicka said in a worried tone. “He can’t know about the trap the Bactrians have prepared for him if he does.”
Jake couldn’t resist a glance towards where he knew the window lay, even though he couldn’t see the hilltop beyond it. They all knew where the hidden missile batteries and laser cannon were sited, ready to ambush any rescuers. Their surviving colleagues on the outside had watched them being emplaced, and plotted their positions.
“He’ll know about it as soon as Charon’s news reaches him,” he pointed out. “That’s another reason I instructed Charon to pass the word to accelerate Operation Phoenix. If an opportunity arises, we want as many people as possible to be ready for action.” He stretched as he rose from the table around which they were sitting. “All right. You now know as much as I do. Pass the word to your people as discreetly as possible. It’s going to be frustrating as hell sitting here twiddling our fingers and toes while waiting for something to happen, but that’s all we can do right now.”
Neue Helvetica: April 20 2851 GSC
NEW GENEVA, CAPITAL CITY OF NEUE HELVETICA
Dave nodded to the receptionist at the front desk of the Laredo Embassy. “Morning, Sally. How are things?”
“Fine, Mr. President. And you?”
“All parts taking an even strain,” he said as genially as possible. He’d long since accepted that trying to get her to use his name instead of his title was a losing battle. He still didn’t feel like a President, even though he’d unwillingly fallen heir to the title and position the year before. At least her efficiency compensated for her punctiliousness.
As he passed her desk she added, “Mr. Baumgarten said he needed to see you, please, Mr. President.”
“Very well, I’ll stop at his office on the way to mine.”
The Head of Security was at his desk. He was a man of medium height, powerfully built, dressed in a tailored business suit. Dave frowned as he saw him. He was cleaning a disassembled pulser laid out on his desktop.
“What’s up, Mike?”
The man looked up, then came to his feet. “Morning, Sir. We have a problem.” He nodded at the door, and Dave closed it behind him before sitting down.
“What is it?”
“You remember the watchers we noticed last week, Sir? They’re back – twice as many of them as before. I’ve just come from the local cop shop, where I greased a couple of palms and got them to run our surveillance pictures through their database. Five came back with matches. Seems they’re minor operators for the Gesellschaft.”
“That’s the umbrella organization for organized crime here, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Its name translates as ‘The Society’. It’s something like the Cosa Nostra used to be on Old Home Earth.”
“Huh. I thought they existed only in movies and cheap novels.”
“No, they were real enough. They probably still exist in some form. That sort of organization never completely goes away.”
“All right. What do we do about them?”
“That’s the problem. My contact warned me to tread carefully. If this has been ordered from high up in the Gesellschaft, they’ll have cover. They own some city politicians, and they can afford to pay the cops a lot more than their salaries to look the other way. Since I’m paying him to give me information on the side, I guess he’s living proof that at least some of them are on the take.”
“Yeah. The problem remains; why are they here? This is a relatively quiet neighborhood. There’s no likely target here but us, and only one source would be willing to hire the Gesellschaft to keep an eye on us.”
Mike seemed to hesitate, then make up his mind. “It might not be just surveillance. There have been cases where other crime groups – gangs, families, even internal Gesellschaft rivals – have been wiped out. I mean, no survivors. According to my contact, each time it seems his bosses didn’t much care. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish’ was the way he put it.”
“So you think we might be in their sights?”
“I can’t think of an
y other reason why they’d be here, Sir.”
“I agree. Who’s in charge, and where do we find them?”
Mike’s eyebrows shot up. “May I remind you that you’re an accredited diplomat now? If you take the law into your own hands, you’ll endanger your entire Embassy’s diplomatic status. That’s what got the entire staff of the Bactrian consulate expelled as persona non grata last year, after they tried to mess with you.”
“You’re right, of course.” Dave’s voice was uncompromising. Despite his words, Mike knew he wasn’t about to let the matter rest.
“Er… Sir, you hired Argos to provide embassy and residential security. We’re quite happy to do anything of that nature, including defending your premises and people against intruders, but…”
“I won’t ask you to do anything that violates local laws. I know Argos is bonded and insured in the Lancastrian Commonwealth. If you did anything like that, it’d cost you millions in local fines and probably lead to the Lancastrian authorities shutting you down, even though Neue Helvetica is many light-years away from the Commonwealth.”
“That’s about the size of it, Sir.”
“I presume you’re still willing to gather information for me?”
“Of course, Sir, particularly if it involves potential threats to your security.”
“Good. Here’s what I want to know…”
~ ~ ~
“Sorry I’m late,” Dave apologized as he stepped into the conference room. “Something came up.”
“We reckoned it was something like that, Sir,” Captain Bill Deacon replied with a smile. He was sitting next to his brand-new wife of only three days, the Embassy’s press secretary Elisabeta, who was leaning against him.
“You two look just as sickeningly happy as Tamsin and I must have looked last year,” Dave told them with a mischievous grin as he sat down next to his wife. She chuckled as the newly-weds blushed simultaneously. “Any news from Manuel, Elisabeta?” Her brother had been instrumental in getting them all off Laredo the year before, despite all the Bactrian occupiers could do to stop them.
