by Dani Kollin
Trang saw the sergeant nod in slight agreement till he caught himself and reverted to his barely suppressed murderous rage. “How she feels about you, I suppose, is the more important question.”
Sandra nodded. “Right now, she’s rather annoyed and very concerned. She was on the verge of ordering her fleet into battle, just itching to fight the Battle of Earth.”
Trang smiled. “Funny, that’s what we’re calling it too.”
“It does seem obvious. In regards to your question, I think she likes me, but if I died, she’d be satisfied with the consolation prize of wiping you out of existence.” With that, Holke smiled contentedly. It was not comforting.
“You wish to discuss the fate of the solar system—” Trang looked around the bay of his massive ship, at the snipers, at the concerned and angry faces, at himself. “—in my landing bay?”
“We can always go into the shuttle, if you wish.”
* * *
An hour later, Trang and Sandra were sitting at a portable table outside her shuttle. The chairs were functional, and the device on the table was doing its job of obscuring their lips and garbling their voices. There was nothing to eat or drink on the table. There was nothing to record their conversation either. Historians would never forgive this lapse.
“Let me see if I understand this,” Trang began. “You want to surrender.”
“Oh, for the love of Justin,” said Sandra, “no. We don’t want to surrender; we want to leave.”
“Leave what?”
“The solar system,” answered Sandra.
“Does your side know this?” asked Trang incredulously.
“The only thing ‘my side’ knows is that you started murdering us in the hundreds of millions. They’re scared out of their minds that you’re so crazy, you have to be put down. They aren’t even fighting for freedom anymore.”
“They’re fighting for survival,” said Trang. In longer than he cared to admit, he looked at the war from the Alliance’s point of view.
“Both sides are,” said Sandra. “That’s dangerous. When both sides are reduced to fighting for survival, they can and will do anything. Admiral Black is positive she can defeat you.” Sandra looked at Trang directly. “Can you defeat her?”
Trang was struck by how many people had asked him that question over the years, but he never would’ve guessed this woman would be one of them. He looked into his heart, deciding she should have an honest answer. “Yes,” he said with absolute conviction, “yes, I can.”
“Should you?” she asked for the second time in a day.
“It beats the alternative.”
“Wrong. I just gave you an alternative.”
“You expect me to believe that the Alliance is just going to—” Trang paused, searching for the words. “—go away?”
“Why not? Admiral Trang, what does the UHF want? What are you ultimately fighting for?”
“Security,” he said. “The solar system is too small to have it be divided into competing political groups. This war has surely proved that.”
“I completely agree. But we were not fighting for security. We were fighting for freedom. The Alliance forgot something that I remember very well. You see, I was once an American.”
“What does the fact that you come from a defunct and dysfunctional civilization have to do with the matter at hand?”
“I’ll tell you.”
Sandra’s good cheer was starting to annoy Trang. Not because he was against cheer, but because hers was so damned infectious. He’d already found himself on numerous occasions during the conversation lost in her words. He’d prided himself on objectivity and distance, and now he was feeling almost too close—too interested. Still, it was his duty to listen, to judge. And so he would.
“You know what made America great for the time it was great?”
“It had a large land mass with abundant resources and a well-educated and motivated population—well, until the last seventy years. It had weak neighbors and some outstanding leaders in the beginning.”
“All of that’s nice—and well done on the history, by the way—but it’s not what made America great. What made my former home great is that it was made up of people who were willing to run away.”
“Run away?” repeated Trang, desperately trying to understand.
“Run away, get the hell out, find someplace better. America was mostly made up of people who had enough will to leave where they were and find someplace better. Most people are not willing to do that. They’ll stay where they are and make the best of it. Why do you think the Outer Alliance did as well as it did? It’s made up of the same sort of people who started America. You know: contentious, obnoxious, stiff-necked bastards.”
Trang did not seem to hear the self-deprecating humor and began to smooth the veins that had popped up on both sides of his skull. “You’ve been planning to make your people run away for over a year?” he asked.
“No,” answered Sandra with a smile filled with disappointment. “I was hoping to create a peace between the UHF and the OA. After Jupiter and Mars, I was hoping both sides would realize that we were risking the end of the human race or near enough, anyways. I tried to have Hektor killed, but he kept on escaping. I was willing to let him have a lot just to get a ten-year truce. In that time, I figured I could’ve gotten close to a hundred million settlers away. After the rest of the Alliance realized it was possible, they would have followed. But Hektor refused every single offer.”
“Well, c’mon, Ms. O’Toole. You were trying to kill him,” offered Trang.
“It’s not like he was giving me kitten licks, Admiral. It’s war; at some point, you should try to make a deal or it just becomes pointless slaughter.”
Trang’s eyes flashed in sagacity. “So that’s what this is about.”
For the first time since she’d been aboard the Liddel, Sandra truly met Trang’s eyes with her own. “I can’t make a deal with Hektor, Admiral.”
Trang did not mistake the meaning of those words. But he could not quite allow himself to think where that path lay. “What makes you think you can make one with me?”
“Because I know that you’ll at least listen.”
Trang knew he was betraying his President by not throwing the woman off the ship without a suit, but he also was gaining valuable insight into the mind of the enemy. She was no fool, and he’d be one if he didn’t hear her out all the way through—that much he knew.
“Go on,” he said evenly.
“The Avatar Plague sealed it for me.”
“You mean the plague you started.”
“Admiral, you can choose to believe what you’ve been fed or you can use this valuable time to ascertain whether or not I’m lying to you. I assure you any statements I make here, I will back up with enough evidence to make even your most suspicious naysayers sick to the point of puking. Will you listen to me?”
Trang took a deep breath and nodded slowly.
“So we sat back and watched our two enemies, the UHF and Core avatars kill each other. We were dismayed. But only after the fact did I realize the destruction you experienced was practically inevitable. Both you and the Core avatars had leaders who valued security over everything else. But when you won, we were hoping to now make some sort of deal. I mean, after all, we were not killing you; we were doing our level best not to even threaten you. And what did Hektor do? He somehow convinced you all that this plague was entirely of our making. Think about it, Admiral. We both had avatars living amongst our peoples. We both had the same choices, opportunities, and dangers. But somehow, your choices ended up being our fault.”
“That’s not fair,” said Trang. “Our intelligence is sketchy, but apparently, ‘our’ avatars were led by a self-obsessed nut job willing to do anything to achieve his own limited ends.”
“As were ours,” said Sandra. “But we did something about him that did not involve us destroying each other, and I certainly don’t blame the UHF for what Sebastian or Al in all hi
s numbers did. Hektor chose to blame us, and the UHF has once more chosen to believe him.” Sandra sighed, “With the Avatar Plague, I realized that we can’t do this gradually over decades. We’re just too different now. If the human race is to survive—both our branches—we must separate. But Hektor won’t take that deal. He’d rather rule over a million starving humans on a devastated Earth reduced to a dark age we may never recover from, and call it victory. If it costs forty billion lives, what does he care?”
“He’s just trying to win.”
“No, Admiral. It’s you who are just trying to win. Hektor is trying to destroy. And Admiral, you know in your heart we won’t be, can’t be destroyed. But you can win. If your goal is security, you can have the solar system. For us, it’s just not worth it.”
Trang smoothed out a vein on his forehead and thought about what the OA President had said. She hadn’t lied to him outright—which is to say she believed what she was saying. She also hadn’t tried to buy him off or truly subvert him. She’d told him the truth as she knew it and was prepared to present evidence where controversy or agitprop existed in order to back up her understanding of the truth. More important, he knew that as sure as the sun shone this woman would do what she said. That she’d already done so was clear by virtue of the fact that she was now sitting across from him, discussing the fate of billions while hundreds of thousands sat around the two of them, waiting to tear into one another, waiting to die. If she really did leave, taking billions with her, really did separate, then what indeed would he be fighting for? Pissing rights? Too many had died already for such folly. Sam Trang put his fingers once more to his forehead, but the veins were now gone. He put his hands in his lap.
“Ms. O’Toole. I am prepared to listen, but it’s critical that you don’t misconstrue my listening as anything but that: just listening.”
Sandra nodded slowly. “Agreed.”
“In that case, please spell out the basics of this deal you propose.”
“We declare an immediate truce. Your forces don’t go beyond the orbit of Mars; we don’t go beyond the orbit of Jupiter. The asteroid belt is neutral territory.”
“We would need Jupiter’s hydrogen if this is going to work.”
“That can be negotiated. Small teams from both sides can extract and freeze hydrogen and propel the blocks, if the details can be agreed to. In two to three years, those who wish will leave the solar system. We already have the ability to do so. The truth is, humanity could’ve left centuries ago, but the nature of the incorporated system is such that it’s counterproductive to leave and so kept everyone in system. You can’t collect dividends across stellar distances.”
“You’re telling me everyone in the Alliance will just go?”
“Of course not,” laughed Sandra. “Quite a few will stay. Honestly, I figure only about a billion or so will actually leave. The ones who stay behind will have to agree to abide by the rules of incorporation. They’ll be given full pardons and seventy percent of their own shares, minimum.”
“Bullshit. We didn’t even offer our own people that deal.”
“I suggest you do,” said Sandra. “I’m offering you the solar system, and you’re arguing percentages? Where in space are we having this conversation?”
“On the landing bay of my flagship,” said Trang.
“Which is in orbit around the Moon, waiting for an Alliance attack to begin,” added Sandra. “All in all, I think I’m being insanely generous.”
“I see your point,” agreed Trang, lips turned slightly upward. “How do we know you won’t use the time to arm and come back when we don’t have numerical advantage?”
“How do we know you won’t do the same? We can send observers, but the truth is, once both sides stop trying to kill each other it will be almost impossible to get them to start again for a generation or two.”
“I just can’t see your people being willing to leave,” Trang said with some worry. “I won’t lie—it would present a bit of a sticking point. It is, after all, the crux of the deal.”
Sandra narrowed her eyes and leaned forward slightly. “I know my people, Admiral. They will stay and fight to the death to protect their loved ones. But once the threat of shadow auditing and extermination is ended, they won’t have that great a reason to stay, not with an entire galaxy calling out to them.”
“Shadow auditing?” asked Trang with concern.
“I have some things you need to look at. I can send it or you can come or you can send someone you trust.”
“Is that the next step?”
“If you don’t want a battle, yes, Admiral, that would be the next step.”
Trang nodded his agreement. “Then I propose we take the next step … if only to listen.”
A knowing grin appeared on Sandra’s tired face. “If only to listen,” she agreed.
“On a personal level, Ms. O’Toole—and this is a confession of sorts, I suppose—I must tell you how much I had wanted to fight this battle.”
“I know, Admiral.”
“The best I ever got out of Admiral Black was a draw and a tactical retreat, and she forced me to retreat from Ceres. But I have her measure now.”
“Funny, you know she said the same thing about you.”
“She may be right,” admitted Trang.
Sandra was taken back by his honesty and rewarded it with appreciative smile. Trang knew that smile; it was of respect.
“But,” he continued, “I don’t have the right to risk a single life under my command—let alone the billions of lives that would be affected—just to see if I can beat her. I have enough blood on my hands. If the admiral and I really need to see who has the biggest dick, we can find a field and shoot at each other with no one else to suffer. Besides,” he said, getting up from the table, “if this doesn’t work out, it’s not as if we can’t start killing each other tomorrow.… I wasn’t at all sure I’d be able to say this when you first boarded, but it has been a real pleasure getting to meet you, Ms. O’Toole.”
“And you as well, Admiral.”
AWS Warprize II
“Admiral, it’s your shuttle,” said Fatima.
“Is it giving the proper call sign?” asked J.D.
“No, Admiral,” answered Fatima, alarmed, “it’s not giving any call sign at all.”
“Thank Allah,” said J.D. in obvious relief. “Launch shuttle three. The crew’s been briefed on the proper procedure.”
“At once,” Fatima said, not at all understanding, but suddenly hoping and not caring why.
It took an hour for the shuttle to be cleared, and when it was, J.D. was the first to greet it. She saluted Sandra as she exited. “How did it go, Madam President?”
“We have a chance, Janet. We have a tiny, tiny chance. I need the fleet to pull back three hundred thousand kilometers directly opposite the course of something; he said you would understand.”
“Directly opposite our projected course of Earth intercept,” J.D. said. She gave orders to Fatima, who transmitted them to Jasper Lee to send to the fleet. “Can he do this?”
Sandra shot J.D. a look. “Is that hope or disappointment?”
“I have no desire to win here, to get the honor of enslaving or killing billions of my fellow humans. I’ll do it if I have to, but only if there’s no other choice.”
Sandra’s smile warmed a part of J.D.’s heart she’d reserved for only two other people. One of them was dead, and the other was probably ready to kill her if she wasn’t hugged to death first.
“I’m so proud of you at this moment, Janet, and the answer is, yes, he can do this. We need to send him all the data we have on UHF operations. Especially the stuff Hektor hasn’t been sharing. Make sure Dr. Wong’s little enterprise is at the top of that list. He’ll be sending a special visitor to pick it up.”
* * *
An hour later, a UHF shuttle landed in the loading bay of the AWS Otter. An Alliance honor guard was present, and attention was called as Zenobia Jackson stepp
ed out from the shuttle into the midst of her enemy. If she felt that everyone in sight should be shot as traitors, she did not let it show, but rather strode forcefully to Suchitra Kumari Gorakhpur and gave a perfect salute, which was perfectly returned.
“Admiral Jackson,” said Suchitra in crisp, clear tone that easily carried in the small landing bay, “welcome to the Alliance War Ship Otter.” Even though she’d been warned by both the President and the grand admiral to be proper, Suchitra could not help emphasizing the word Alliance.
Zenobia, who’d been given equally clear warnings to “play nice,” let the comment slide. “That was good work you did the last time you were out here, Admiral. It couldn’t have been easy taking over like that. I regret you being on the wrong side.”
Suchitra gave a polite bow. “That’s what we say about you, Admiral. You’re a Belter, after all. Why’d you join the other side? We would have won the Long Battle if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Because I swore an oath and still felt bound by it when the war broke out, and thank Damsah you didn’t win the Long Battle. I was—” Zenobia stopped. “Is that”—Zenobia pointed to the holo-projection of Allison standing in the background—“an avatar?” The question had been asked with such venom and the word used with such disdain that Zenobia had effectively condemned with the force of her emotions an entire race to pejorative status.
“Yes,” answered Suchitra. “As you know, we have a pact with avatarity, and she’s the representative of the Alliance avatars and the personal—”
“Get it out of here,” snarled Zenobia.
“It has a name,” retorted Allison.
“It is a murderer!”
“That’s funny, coming from the people who brought us Alhambra, Jupiter, and the Belt—calling us murderers.”
“Allison,” Suchitra said in a restrained but forceful voice, “you are ordered to get out of my landing bay, now!”
