Arun felt useless, stuck in his chair, which was clamped to the speaking platform. Rather than scramble out in an undignified fashion, he waited for the incoming grenade. Just before it hit the Hummer’s life-support tank, Aelingir stretched out a hand and caught the grenade. She crushed it to powder in her powered fist.
“General, do you require assistance?” The query came via Barney from Major Exreag, who was waiting outside with his security detail of Littorane Marines.
“Negative,” Arun replied. “It’s just someone making a point. For now.”
A commotion was brewing in the sector of the Assembly from which the grenade had been thrown.
“Don’t listen to the Hummer,” called out a voice. “The Hummers are not who you think they are.”
“Quiet!” shouted someone near the first speaker.
A flood of argument erupted.
Ask the Hummer who it really is!
Remember your discipline!
Shame on you.
Arun sounded the tone, calling the Assembly to order, but it made no difference. Only when Admiral Kreippil swam to the rebellious segment of the Assembly did the voices silence.
“Let her speak,” said Kreippil, who had positioned his bulk in front of a Littorane Naval officer. “We brought this individual from my world. The being in the tank was and remains the Mouthpiece of the Gods. If there is criticism to be made, then I wish to hear it. And if I regard your words to be disrespectful, I will ensure you pay the price.”
Arun identified the Assembly Member as Captain Surasim, the Littorane commander of a missile destroyer. She didn’t bow her head in submission as Arun expected. Instead, she unstrapped herself from her perch and advanced a short distance into the interior of the chamber before pointing her tail tip at the Hummer.
“That creature – which you call the Mouthpiece of the Gods and many here refer to as a Night Hummer – I prefer to call it a White Knight. The Night Hummers are a faction of White Knights. They may live now in the gas giant Euphrates but their ancestors came from Athena. They’re using us as pawns in their political games, so they can emerge from behind the shadows and claim the Imperial Citadel for their own.”
Kreippil shoved Captain Surasim back toward her perch. She shouted hurriedly: “Isn’t that so, General McEwan?”
Damn! How had Surasim learned about this? Or was this guesswork, fishing for a reaction from Arun, just as he had done with the Emperor?
A deathly silence stifled the Assembly as every member watched Arun’s reaction. He had to reply, and it had to be the truth. Or, at least, his version of the truth.
“I do not know for sure,” he said, which was just about accurate. The Emperor had neither confirmed nor denied Arun’s assertion about the origins of the Night Hummers. “But I have suspicions that match your own.”
Furious arguments broke out, rapidly escalating to kicks and punches. Major Exreag’s Littorane Marines, suited up for battle, streamed inside the chamber, forming a protective perimeter around the speakers, just in time to stare down an angry mob of human Marine officers who had been headed for Arun.
“Heed the words of Admiral Indiya,” Arun shouted. “Whatever our course of action, we must be unified in its pursuit. If we splinter now, then everything we have fought for will be lost.”
His words did nothing to calm the enraged Assembly. The Littorane Marines kept its members from harming one another, but that was not the same as keeping order.
“I call a recess for ninety minutes,” said Arun. “You will all leave in peace, and reflect upon your responsibilities to those you represent before returning.”
— CHAPTER 47 —
Arun wanted to pace.
Never had being stuck inside this chair frustrated him as much as now.
Even if his legs were restored, they still wouldn’t be able to pace up and down the stores compartment that had been reserved for Arun’s private use, conveniently close to the Assembly Chamber. There was no gravity, and the pseudo-walking allowed by charged boots was not the same as pacing.
Knowing this was no help at all: he wanted to pace.
The first session of the Human Assembly had nearly ended in violence. Everyone was looking to him for a solution, and he had sixty minutes in which to find one. If he didn’t, then it didn’t take Tremayne’s visions of the future to see that the Human Legion would be dashed upon the rocks of the Cull. Just as that veck in the Imperial Citadel was probably hoping.
The organic planning computer wrapped around his mind had gotten him out of holes in the past, but the cogs would not turn this time. If they did, it would only be to tell him to accept the Cull, an answer that his planner mind had given consistently for years now.
A chime from the hatch announced that someone wished to see him.
Indiya, he supposed, who meant well but they had discussed the Cull to death over the last two days, and every time he saw Indiya, his heart asked why it was not Xin who stood beside him to face the universe and its intractable dilemmas together.
He sighed and instructed Barney to open the hatch.
But it wasn’t Indiya. Arun felt a little flutter in his heart when he saw Tremayne float through. What was that he was feeling? Hope… sorrow… anger? All of them in one powerful bundle, he supposed.
“Arun, may I speak with you?”
To talk with this woman… no good could possibly come of that. He didn’t know what he felt about her, other than that she was supremely distracting. And this was the worst moment in his life to be distracted.
“Don’t shut me out,” she said. “For the sake of our friendship, for what we once meant to each other, hear me know.”
He’d vaguely acknowledged her presence, but now for the first time he looked at her properly, and was struck by how old she had grown. The scars and burn marks on her face had been softened by proximity to the features touched not by combat injuries but by age. Her eyes had dimmed somewhat, but retained their distinctive violet hue. Arun could see beyond the superficial detail of eye pigmentation and recognize the passionate spirit that still burned behind those eyes. The young Springer had burned with optimism and verve – it was how she won her name – and despite all the Arun and others had done to stifle her, she still had her special belief that she knew how to make a difference.
Maybe she still could. Arun was clean out of ideas.
“Come on, stop wasting time, Arun,” she said, the light behind her eyes beginning to glow. “You know damned well I’ve never played the ‘we used to be lovers’ card before now. Hear me out.”
“Of course.” He tried to smile. “You’re still my friend…” He wanted to call Springer by her old name, but she had insisted long ago that her old life was over, and in her new life her name was Tremayne.
“Is this compartment secure?” she asked.
“Yes.” Arun frowned. “Unless Indiya was lying to me. She said this compartment had the most watertight cyber security and anti-eavesdropping systems a freak could devise.”
The mention of the admiral’s name was like a slap to Tremayne’s face. “What, don’t you trust her?” he asked.
“No. But I don’t think we have an alternative.” She hesitated and bit her lip.
Despite the weighty dilemmas pressing upon him, Arun felt the pull of intrigue at this sight. Whether she called herself Tremayne or Springer, hesitation and uncertainty were not in her nature.
She took a deep breath and spoke what was on her mind. “I guess some secrets need to stay secret, even from those you love the most. It took a few decades to figure that out, but I managed in the end. I didn’t have a choice.”
Arun reached out and touched Tremayne gently on her arm. His gesture surprised him more than her, he suspected. It was the barest touch, but it felt good to connect, even by this gossamer thread, to his oldest ally. “Tell me, my friend. But tell me quickly. We don’t have much time.”
“Scuttlebutt says the first session of your Assembly went so badly, you w
ere lucky to get out alive. Was it really that bad?”
Arun shrugged. “Pretty much. Graz of all people showed more passion than anyone. He nearly won me over. I would guess a majority of the Assembly would vote to take our chances and continue the war. They don’t get a vote. They get a say, to which I will listen, but then I decide.”
“And you would rather pay the price of the Cull to buy peace. Is that so?”
“I don’t know, Phaedra. Graz makes a good case. I want to agree with him. If I look at it in terms of cold logic – the way my planner brain does – the Cull catches only a tiny proportion of the civilian population. If we continue the war, far more would die than would ever be caught by the Cull. Even if we win a fight against the rest of the Trans-Species Union, unlikely as that sounds, so many more would die. Logic says it would be madness to reject the Emperor’s offer. But I hate the Cull with every fiber of my body. I would rather die than accept it, but… my decision is not all about me. What I say in that Assembly over the next few hours affects the destiny of dozens of species. Trillions upon trillions of individuals are relying upon me, and I no longer have…” Arun looked away suddenly.
Tremayne held Arun’s hand. “It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to pretend Xin doesn’t exist for my sake. I know you miss her. It’s as if there’s an empty hole standing beside you. A Xin-shaped hole that’s annoying the hell out of me because even her absence looks so frakking beautiful. It’s just bad timing that she’s so pissed at you now.”
“Even Pedro seems to be avoiding me.” He tightened his grip on Tremayne’s hand. “He should have been speaking at the Assembly. Mountain Root had to fill in for him.”
“Well that’s where you’re wrong.” Tremayne pulled her hand away. For a moment, Arun thought she was angry with him, but she was filled with something other than rage. She was bursting with a Springer-style excitement, the kind that couldn’t be tethered by holding hands.
“Pedro’s not been avoiding you, he’s been busy with me,” she explained. “The Khallenes rejected your invitation to the Assembly as well. Well, guess what? They’ve been occupied with me too. You should trust your friends more, Arun. After all we’ve been through, you should have learned that by now.”
“All right, then. Help me! I need you like never before.”
She grinned, and he was transported back to those simpler days in the Novice dorms beneath Detroit.
“Logic and passion war in you, Arun. The heart versus the mind. You’re like a case study from a course in psychology. You have to choose one or the other, and it’s cutting you up because there’s no escape. Both options are equally intolerable. Yet still you must choose.”
Eyes blazing, she came in close and whispered into his ear so quietly that he had to wait a moment for Barney to interpret her words and replay them inside his head.
“What if there was a third option…?”
— CHAPTER 48 —
The second session of the Assembly was a disaster.
After the first session, Arun had held little hope it would be otherwise, but even he was struck with horror at how quickly the attempts by the initial speakers to debate the issues ground down in recrimination. Accusations hurled across the chamber of treachery and dishonor.
I should never have agreed to this idea of an Assembly, he thought. There were too many secrets to begin with and now… now I’m holding the biggest secret of them all.
He trod a thin line between being seen to allow debate and allowing the leadership of the Legion to tear itself apart. In a sense, all of this was pointless; a distasteful charade playing out before Arun announced decisions he had already made. This was politics, not decision-making. Even though he loathed Tawfiq, the Emperor, and the Night Hummers with such all-encompassing revulsion, he was surprised to find room in his breast for a similar level of hatred directed at all things political. He would rather face an impossible tactical position on the battlefield of war than operate another second in the arena of politics. But he couldn’t give up yet. To do so would be to dishonor so much sacrifice.
Finally, when he could stomach no more, he hit the buzzer, calling the chamber to order. But the Assembly was too far gone to settle now. Reluctantly, Arun opened a comm link to Major Exreag.
“Major, please enter and restore order.”
The Littorane Marines invaded the chamber. When they had made their show of strength at the end of the first session, they had been met with distaste, but now for many the reaction was fury.
Why are they here?
Is this a coup?
“I have invited the security detail for your own safety,” said Arun before the accusations grew wilder. “It is abundantly clear that no consensus on this issue is possible. I sought a clear mandate from you, not for myself, but for those who come after us – the civilian authorities who will one day replace the Legion Council as the governing authority of the Human Autonomous Region. That mandate is not forthcoming. Members of the Human Assembly, I am ready to make my decision.”
“Wait!”
Arun knew that voice instantly. He turned his chair and saw Xin erupt into the Assembly Chamber, resplendent in her Lieutenant-General’s dress uniform, and flanked by her staff officers. She had broken house arrest, transferred from Lance of Freedom to Holy Retribution, passed through a ship on tight security lockdown, and intimidated Major Exreag’s and his Marines to stand aside and permit her entry.
No one moved to stop her. No one dared, least of all Arun.
He ached with love for this magnificent woman.
Arun cleared his throat and hardened his feelings. He could not afford to be her lover at this juncture, nor the father of her child. He could only be General McEwan. “You have no place here,” he told her. “You have been relieved of your responsibilities pending your hearing.”
“Stow it, Arun. I know I took liberties with an order, but I only did so because I was following your commands and not the admiral’s. I get it. Now you get this, McEwan. Just in case you are trying to kid yourself that you’re too important to be anything other than the big commander, let me remind you that I’m carrying your daughter. She will be born in a few months, and if I were sitting in your chair I would not even contemplate signing an agreement whereby she could be handed over for execution if she’s unlucky enough to be selected for the Cull. Don’t think like a general, think like a man. And what kind of a man would ever willingly see his own daughter put to death?”
No kind of a man at all. Arun believed that with all his spirit, but despite the strength of his feeling, Arun kept his dangerous reply inside his head. Instead, he tried to communicate his confidence to her through his expression. Trust me! Please, Xin, trust me now. It’s not how it seems.
It worked. It actually worked. He could see Xin’s shoulders relax, marveled as hope touched her eyes.
But even his hinting was too dangerous, especially in such a public venue. He couldn’t take the chance that the Emperor might be watching. Arun hardened his features, and watched the gut-wrenching sight of Xin’s hope die away, to be replaced with horror and disgust.
He loved and admired her, but she made his life so endlessly difficult. This had been their story for the past 136 years.
Arun turned from Xin and her entourage near the entrance to address the chamber, while a bio-ident panel rose out of the front of his chair. “I, General Arun McEwan, on behalf of the Human Legion, and with authority over all worlds of the Human Autonomous Region, agree to be bound by the terms of the Treaty of Athena.” Ignoring the shouts of ‘traitor’, ‘blasphemer’, and ‘we have been betrayed’, Arun peered into the bio-ident panel, and rubbed a little saliva from his mouth to verify his DNA.
“Later today, I expect the other Military Council members to add their bio-idents to the treaty. I give mine now, because before then the Emperor has insisted upon a symbolic gesture of our continued fealty to the Empire, and this gesture may prove fatal to me. We are now vassals of the Empero
r. No longer slaves, but still not entirely free. Not yet. Not today.”
The security guards watched the Assembly members closely, but there was no dissent. Arun had chosen for them. There could be no going back now. Most of the members were military field commanders – if there was to be trouble it would be planned and not implemented until the moment of maximum effectiveness. He would have preferred a brawl to this icy tension.
He looked behind, but Xin had already left.
“Who here opposes this treaty?” he asked. “Make yourself known.”
A hush came over the chamber. Its members glanced nervously at each other, but none spoke. Did they really expect him to execute any dissenters? He hadn’t realized trust had broken so completely.
He tried a different tack. “Captain Surasim, you expressed your reservations earlier with a grenade. Please come forward and assist me in my next task. I give you my word that it is not to punish or embarrass you, but I wish your services because your feelings on the treaty are clear, and so those here present know you are not my stooge.”
Surasim reluctantly allowed herself to be brought to the speakers’ platform where Kreippil placed a prisoner hood over her head. Arun had been inside a similar hood when the Hardits had snatched him. He shivered at the memory of what the Hardits had done to him once they removed the hood. All the same, he knew that the captain could only see or hear what the hood was programed to allow. Unlike Arun’s hood, this one did not cover Surasim’s snout, permitting her to speak, but she would see nothing, and hear only Arun’s voice.
Arun asked Barney to activate a series of virtual screens, projections of light that appeared at several locations within the chamber, displaying the same image so that all there could see it clearly; all except the hooded Captain Surasim.
The youthful faces of human Marine Cadets stared out from the screens, the projection arranged so that no matter the position of the observer, the faces always appeared to stare directly at them. There were seventy-two in all, arranged in a grid: the survivors of two years’ worth of cadets who had been rushed to the frontier in 2565, mobilized with such speed that they had temporarily escaped the Cull. Most of them had served with Arun since the very first day of the Human Legion, when it was no more than a rabble of stragglers aboard Beowulf. He doubted any of the survivors had forgotten that the prospect of facing the Cull selection still hung over them. Certainly the Emperor had never forgotten. Springer’s face was there, so young and hopeful, in contrast to the bitterness that had accumulated in Tremayne’s breast. Xin was there too, the image taken before that night on Antilles when they had first made love.
War Against the White Knights Page 30
