by S. H. Jucha
“I have two questions for you, Admiral, before you go,” Nemea Lorne said. When Alex nodded to her, she continued. “What are your intentions after we outfit your ships? We’re arming you to such an extent that you could become the ruler of New Terra.”
Alex held up his hand to quiet the room from the outburst. “It’s a fair question,” he said. “Assemblywoman Lorne, you should know that I have enough power to do that now if that was my intention, but it isn’t. When my city-ships are completed and we are outfitted, we will be leaving New Terra and only returning on invitation of your government. The people who depend on me need your help only temporarily. It is my belief that, at this time, New Terrans and Méridiens are not suited to mix as one people—perhaps in a few decades or more.”
Alex could tell that the answer was not what Lorne had expected. She was still considering his response when he asked, “Did you not have a second question, Assemblywoman Lorne?”
“Yes, thank you, Admiral. What are your plans if Clayton Downing remains in place?”
“Intriguing question, Assemblywoman Lorne,” Alex replied. “I hope we don’t have to find out.”
The meeting broke up. The Representatives were anxious to discuss the ramifications of Maria’s announcement and the information they had received. Before Alex’s group left, Renée gave Maria a final hug, whispering in her ear, “You will make a great President, Maria. Your world needs someone like you.”
-8-
Alex’s plan to publish the information necessary to undermine Clayton and his accomplices began with asking Christie to contact her producer. Hours later, Christie commed Alex back and told him her producer wasn’t taking her calls. As an alternative, Alex contacted other media houses but gave up after eight companies cut the connection when he announced his name. It became apparent the opposition had moved first, blocking the distribution of any future chats with his sister or any other avenues that might enable a broadcast.
A few ticks passed then Tatia, her thoughts clearly disjointed, said,
Alex said dryly. He laid out the challenge they faced and requested her “insight.” It was code for Tatia to consider all ideas fair game.
Alex could imagine the algorithms undergoing reprioritization in Julien’s core, applying Tatia’s strategy.
Julien sent.
* * *
After Julien outlined the methods he would employ to spread their presentation, applying Tatia’s approach, Alex sat back and considered his good fortune. The Méridiens he had rescued a year ago had recommended excellent New Terran crew to him. They had become invaluable as the obstacles stacked up against them, and Tatia had become vital.
Alex smiled as he recalled contacting Tatia in the midst of her hand-to-hand defense training. She had set up a workout area in a storage room on the lowest deck where she could practice combat techniques with Andrea, who had requested the sessions. The Captain had hoped to incorporate the strategies of one-to-one combat techniques into their encounters with the silver ships.
Méridiens and New Terrans had soon joined the training sessions to observe and, later, to participate. One day, Tatia had finished a session with a rather burly New Terran tech. As the man limped off the training mat, an observer had called out that the Commander needed a greater challenge … someone the Admiral’s size. Tatia had responded that the sessions were about tactics, techniques, and speed, not size. That’s when Étienne had stepped onto the mat, nodding gravely to Tatia. She had glanced at Alex, who gave her no indications of his thoughts. During the session with the tech, she had noticed the Admiral quietly entering the room with Étienne and Alain right behind him.
Tatia had begun Étienne’s session by demonstrating blocking techniques to him. When she felt he was ready, she had told him to block her strike. Then Tatia had thrown a lightning-fast roundhouse punch at Étienne’s shoulder. But he hadn’t blocked her punch … he simply hadn’t been there. That was the point where Tatia often taught slow learners the mistake of not explicitly following her instructions. She had struck quickly with a leg sweep that hadn’t connected with Étienne and had spun on the ball of her foot and shot out the other foot in a back-kick to Étienne’s chest. He hadn’t been there, either.
Tatia had tried unsuccessfully many times to strike Étienne as he had spun and danced out of her way. When she had him pressed into a corner, she had struck with a straight punch to his shoulder. Étienne had slipped aside, slapping her fist past him. His technique had thrown Tatia slightly off balance, and Étienne had stepped behind her, tapping her quickly and cleanly on the back of her neck, then had danced back to the center of the mat.
Breathing heavily, Tatia had straightened up, hands at her side, and had given Étienne the same grave nod he had first offered her. Étienne had returned her nod but had also worn a cheeky smile on his face that mirrored the ones she had often seen on his crèche-brother’s face.
At Tatia’s invitation, Étienne and Alain demonstrated their training techniques. People might have been forgiven for thinking that their style was little use in a fight, since the twins never landed a strike, hand or foot, on each other. But the astute had noted that it was a matter of potential success, not actual contact. What had been eye-opening was the speed of their dance. They had been a whirlwind of arms and legs, moving so quickly that they had never appeared to stand still.
When Tatia had called a halt to the demonstration, Étienne and Alain stopped in mid-movement, backing away from each other, their chests heaving for air.
“Could you two judge the outcome of your session?” Tatia had asked.
“Five to three, Commander,” Alain replied. When Tatia had shown her confusion, Alain said, “My twin scored five times over my three. Étienne has always been slightly better for a reason we have never been able to define.”
Both had turned and nodded to Tatia, then left for their cabins and a refresher.
* * *
Wayne, a third-year student a
t Ulam University, was taking a break between classes and sat on a bench under a tree-lined walkway to check his reader. At the top of his comm list, he found an odd message. It held a colorful icon of the Méridien liner Rêveur, accompanied by the text “Another chat with the Admiral.” He thumbed the icon, and his spooler indicated an incoming vid. Wayne glanced up to see three female students approaching, and he took a chance. He wasn’t a popular person, but the Admiral certainly was, especially among the university’s female undergraduates.
“Hey, fems,” Wayne called out, “I have a vid of the Admiral in another chat.”
His invitation couldn’t have worked better. The three young women hurried over to him. Two crowded onto the bench beside him, and the third leaned over his shoulder from behind. Their sense-sprays filled his nose with enticing aromas. The popular sprays were designed to have an engaging effect on males when in close proximity, and Wayne’s heart was hammering from the overload of three different fems so close to him.
Wayne thumbed the vid icon, which now indicated a completed download. It opened with an image of Admiral Racine sitting in his ship’s command chair, which elicited Oohs and Aahs from the young women as they leaned closer for a better look. As the Admiral began speaking, the fems called to several friends to join them. While others joined the viewing, Wayne found himself entranced by the information. When financial statements and graphs began showing, the women expressed moans of disappointments. Much to Wayne’s surprise, he hushed the audience.
“Quiet. Listen to what he’s saying.”
One undergraduate who knew Wayne slightly said, “You’re the finance major, Wayne, so translate.”
For the remainder of the vid, Wayne found himself the center of attention as he explained what the Admiral was showing them. President pro tem Clayton and the Ministry of Space Exploration were defrauding the people with the help of many of the companies involved in the space programs. Effectively, the President had thrown the New Terran-Méridien Pact out the airlock.
Wayne never made his next two classes. When the presentation ended, those who had seen the beginning left, checking their own readers, and those who came late for the start now begged him to play the vid again and keep talking. Wayne, a quiet university finance student, soon became a very popular icon on campus. For a long while, he would never again sit at a meal table without the company of fems.
* * *
In less than ten hours, nearly every adult who cared about New Terran society had downloaded the vid. The SADEs worked diligently to add their vid to new servers as millions of reader requests threatened to crash the original servers. It had been Julien’s projection that a significant portion of the populace might view the vid over the next couple of days, but he had underestimated human curiosity and word-of-mouth communication. Julien, harried as Alex had ever heard him when he was asked the status of the vid downloads that morning, said,
Late in the afternoon, Julien informed Alex that they wouldn’t require a special distribution of the vid to the Assembly members’ readers. The entire government, President pro tem, Ministers, Assembly Representatives, and staff all had probably already viewed the vid.
-9-
The Assembly Speaker recognized Nemea Lorne. The elderly Representative rose and in a fiery speech put forth a resolution that demanded President pro tem Clayton Downing appear before the Assembly and respond to the accusations made by Admiral Racine. The shouts of Downing supporters drowned out the Speaker’s response. After order was restored, the Speaker announced a resolution was on the floor and called for a second. He had his choice of over a hundred shouted “Ayes.” Once order was restored again, the Assembly took a vote, and President pro tem Downing was ordered to appear in front of the Assembly in two days.
* * *
Alex interrupted his conversation with Mickey and Eric to respond. He had been reviewing their progress in recruiting contractors. Many of the companies had completed partner agreements with the banks and were finalizing negotiations with Mickey and Eric over their choice of Méridien technology. However, not a single contractor had committed to an agreement with House Alexander. According to Mickey, they were afraid the government would step in, squash the contract, confiscate the technology, and penalize the company. Alex could hardly recognize the world he had returned to as his own.
“Admiral Racine,” Nemea Lorne said, “the Assembly has summoned Downing to appear before the Hall in two days. You are also summoned to appear at the same time.”
Alex asked.
“Downing will take the floor to respond to your distributed vid. You will have an opportunity for rebuttal. Then the Assembly will ask questions of either of you until the session is closed by a majority vote. We will debate the testimony received, examine the evidence, and choose to either affirm Clayton’s election or elect another President pro tem. If we choose the latter, candidates will be nominated, reviewed, and voted on by the Assembly.”
“Admiral,” Pritchard interjected, “this process has never happened before, so we have no idea how long it will take.”
What Alex couldn’t see were the stunned expressions the two Representatives exchanged over Nemea Lorne’s desk, wondering what political force had been unleashed on their world.
* * *
Two days later, Alex landed with a full escort on Prima’s shuttle runway. No Strikers had lifted to engage his shuttle while Sheila and her Daggers kept watch, and no TSF troopers met him to escort him to Government House. For the ride to the Assembly, Julien had hired a civilian transport with a seating capacity of thirty-six. When the hover-transport settled to the ground beside the Assembly Hall, Tatia led twenty armed crew off first, who ended up face-to-face with forty armed TSF troopers led by a Colonel.
When Alex stepped off the transport, the Colonel announced, “Admiral Racine, you are under arrest. Your people will stand down, and you will come peacefully or we will use force.”
“You do know, Colonel, that I was summoned to this meeting by the Assembly,” Alex replied.
“I have my orders, Admiral. Will you come peacefully?” the Colonel demanded.
“One question first, Colonel. Since when do TSF orders supersede our Assembly’s summons?” Alex asked.
The question stumped the Colonel. He was following his General’s orders, which were very specific and stated clearly that he was to brook no arguments whatsoever. But the Colonel, like the Captain Alex had encountered at the shuttle terminal, was a moral man and a New Terran patriot. He believed in the rule of law, and the Admiral’s words reminded him of the law he was breaking, but he needed a way out; he needed a good excuse.
Alex could see the indecision in the Colonel’s face and body language. He had the upper hand and decided to show it. “Colonel, you might look above you.”
The Colonel glanced up to spot news drones hovering over the group. When they had arrived, the Colonel couldn’t say, but they had probably recorded his exchange with the Admiral, including the Admiral’s critical question. However, it was still not enough to force him to disobey his orders.
It was at this moment that the Assembly Hall’s side exits opened and Representatives poured out into the morning sun. They pushed their way through the lines of troopers with imperiousness, and the troopers belatedly cleared way for their world’s foremost personages.
“There you are, Admiral,” Assemblywoman Lorne called out. “We’re about to start our session. We thought you might not be coming.” She walked up to Alex and hooked an arm in his and guided him through a corridor of the Representatives. “All you people with weapons can stay outside a
nd play,” Nemea commanded. At the Hall’s doors, she noted that three of Alex’s people had followed them, Renée de Guirnon and the twins.
Alex sent a quick message to Tatia to stay with the transport.
Alex sent Tatia an image he had recorded during her training sessions. Her body was a blur of action. Only her face was recognizable as she took down an opponent. Alex added a flare of bright white light behind her image.
* * *
Renée and the twins were offered seats in the Hall’s visitor gallery, but Étienne politely ignored the attendant’s directions and accompanied Alex onto the Assembly’s dais. Downing was already seated in one of the ornate chairs on the opposite side of the platform. Two huge TSF Sergeants stood behind him.
Alex offered Downing a Leader’s greeting, hand over heart and a nod of the head. The President pro tem stared back coldly, hatred burning in his eyes, and Alex returned Downing’s black stare with a generous smile.
The Assembly was brought to order, and the Speaker of the Hall announced President pro tem Clayton Downing. Clayton’s oratory was as refined and powerful as Alex remembered. He did a thorough job of besmirching Alex, Julien, and the Méridiens. What he didn’t do was present a single fact to refute Alex’s claims that he’d broken the Pact and subverted government funds.
