by David Bruns
“Steady, Marine, we’re about to enter the lion’s den,” Graves replied. Two young men swaddled in robes and head scarves nodded at Graves and pulled aside the tent flap. They motioned for Estes to remain outside.
“It’s okay,” Graves said.
The tent was large enough that he could walk through the flap without bowing his head. The interior was dark and surprisingly cool. He found himself in a spacious anteroom, complete with comfortable chairs and throw pillows. At the far end of the room was another doorway, this one guarded by a single young women. She was dressed in a paramilitary uniform with a beret and the symbol of Cassandra on her shoulder. She eyed him as he approached. Although he saw no weapons, Graves suspected this woman knew how to handle herself in a fight.
“I’m here to see Corazon Santos,” he said.
“The Corazon will see you when she is ready, General,” came the surly reply.
The Corazon, Graves noted. Maybe that was not her given name? A useful piece of intel.
A muffled call from behind the curtains interrupted his intelligence gathering. The young woman parted the doorway material and a short conversation in rapid-fire Spanish followed. He cursed not putting on his data glasses before he’d entered. He could have used the translator function.
The young woman held the curtain open for him. He imagined her hissing at him as he brushed past her.
The interior room was spacious and simple. A rough altar faced the door, with a golden image of the New Earth Order gleaming in the soft light. The room was bare of any furniture, but thick rugs covered the floor and a pile of pillows was stacked in the corner.
A woman knelt in front of the altar, her back straight, head bowed. When Graves cleared his throat, she stood to acknowledge him. For a woman who had just walked 4,500 kilometers from Panama to Fort Hood, she moved with surprising ease and grace. She held out her hand. “I am Corazon Santos. Thank you for meeting me, General Graves.”
Her voice was soft and musical, but with an unmistakable timbre of command. Graves was unable to distinguish if her accent was Spanish or Portuguese, but it had an exotic quality to him.
Corazon Santos was nearly as tall as Graves, with flowing silver hair and skin with the color and luminosity of beaten copper. She was lanky, with broad shoulders and angular features that softened when she smiled as she was doing now. He guessed her age to be about the same as his own fifty years.
“Welcome,” Grave said, “on behalf of the United States government.”
“Her blessings be upon you, General. She forgives you for what you have done. She knows it was necessary.”
Graves froze. Although the destruction of the Neo space station had been visible from the planet, the UN had adopted a cover story of an industrial accident that the media had bought.
Maybe not.
His face tightened in a smile and he said nothing.
“You are surprised I am not angry?” Corazon said.
“I’m surprised about a lot of things, Ms. Santos.”
“Call me Cora, please.”
“So Corazon is your real name?” Graves pressed.
“It’s the name I’ve taken—is there a difference?” She winked at him. In spite of himself, Graves liked her.
“We don’t know much about you,” Graves said.
She walked to the pile of pillows and selected two of the larger ones, dragging them back to the center of the room. “I am merely a servant, a handmaiden to Cassandra.” She studied Graves’s face, her gaze suddenly intent. “You know about the baby?”
“Yes, of course.” He knew Elise Kisaan was pregnant and under the protection of Anthony Taulke’s council, but how that tied back to the Neos was anyone’s—and everyone’s—guess. Since the announcement of Kisaan’s pregnancy more than half a year ago, more digital time had been spent on the nature of the pregnancy than on any other topic he could remember. The second coming of Cassandra, the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning, every angle had been examined in the minutest detail.
“She came to me in a vision, you know,” Cora continued, her demeanor serious. Her gaze strayed to the altar and the golden image. “The original Cassandra was a construct.”
A construct? According to his intel reports, the original Cassandra wasn’t a person at all. She was an AI, a program developed to control the minds of her followers through tattooed implants. Graves should know—he was the one who had killed the bitch.
But a pregnant Elise Kisaan had escaped. Graves’s thoughts flashed to the final image of Remy Cade’s last stand in the reactor room of the Neo space station. He’d given his life to free his beloved Elise.
“So I’ve been informed,” Graves said finally.
“The child is Cassandra made flesh. She will live again.”
Graves decided he’d had enough religious doublespeak for one sitting. He started to rise. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Cora, and my troops will do everything we can to make your stay with us comfortable—”
“You were in my vision.”
Grave sat back down. “Pardon?”
Cora reached across the distance between them and took Graves’s hand. Her fingers were long and thin, thick with calluses, but gentle.
“I came here to find you, General.”
Graves snorted. “You and a hundred thousand of your closest friends, you mean.”
Her fingers tightened. “The moment is coming when you will choose, William. You will choose to help me, to protect me and all that I believe in.”
Graves’s throat went dry and he jerked his hand back. He struggled to his feet. “I assure you, Ms. Santos, my allegiance is to the United States government and no other institution.”
Cora kept her seat, her legs curled up under her haunches, her teeth white in the shadow of her face. Her dark eyes locked with his.
“Her will be done.”
Chapter 3
Anthony Taulke • Mars Station
If he ever remodeled the council chamber on Mars Station, he would make sure that seating for the chairman—his chair—was elevated above the others so as to give him a slight psychological advantage over visitors to the council—and the other council members too.
First among peers. That’s how it should be.
He glared down the long table at the United Nations ambassador, a portly Spanish man with a pencil-thin mustache and an annoying habit of rolling his r’s unnecessarily. “What do you mean declaration of independence?” Anthony demanded.
Over the course of the last few minutes, the ambassador’s initial haughty demeanor had evaporated, leaving only a sweaty man in an ill-fitting black suit. “LUNa City has put forth a declaration of independence. They claim they deserve status as a separate nation in Earth’s government, not as a UN-run colony.” The r in the word run trilled, grating on Anthony’s nerves.
“And this has what to do with the He-3 shipments I need for my freighters?” Anthony said.
“They claim the He-3 is theirs to sell on the open market. They see it as a bargaining chip.” He offered a weak smile.
Tony Taulke, seated at Anthony’s right hand, sat up from his normal insolent slouch. “Let me handle this, Pop. I think we need to inject some reality into this situation.” He grinned as he said it, as if they shared some secret joke about the term reality.
Anthony pursed his lips in thought. Decades of corporate maneuvering told him the LUNa City He-3 embargo was only a symptom of a much larger problem. He needed that fuel for his fusion reactors and everyone knew it. Someone was targeting his interests, someone who wanted him to fail. The same someone he suspected was behind the New Earth Order.
Possibly someone in this very room, on this very council.
He scanned the faces, looking for a clue.
Viktor Erkennen, the scion of the R&D giant Erkennen Labs and his oldest friend in the world. Viktor was too busy playing with his latest gadget to care about corporate politics. Elise Kisaan, swollen with pregnancy. Her past connection w
ith the Neos made her the obvious choice, but Anthony had her under constant surveillance. Besides, with her due date drawing near, why start this fight now?
Xi Qinlao and her niece Ming, the two halves of the Qinlao family. Xi had her own Earthside issues to deal with—that was next on the agenda, in fact—and Anthony doubted she had the juice to pull off this kind of maneuver.
Ming. His eyes stopped on the young woman slumped in her maglev chair and sought out her vacant gaze. She stared back dully. In many ways, Ming had been responsible for forming the current council structure by bringing in Elise Kisaan as a prisoner, but at great cost to her own health. The radiation poisoning she’d endured in capturing Elise had left permanent damage to her body. In the intervening months, her hair had grown back in patches and the skin grafts on the right side of her face had slowly merged with her real flesh to make her look presentable. But she was a far cry from the beautiful, vibrant young woman he’d once thought of as a surrogate daughter. These days she mostly whirred around the halls of Mars Station in her maglev chair, slumped to one side and staring straight ahead in complete lack of interest.
His heart went out to her. He owed her much and she owed him her seat on this council.
The traitor certainly was not Ming.
And that left Adriana Rabh, the matron of interstellar finance and another longtime business associate of Anthony’s. Her dark eyes regarded him coolly as her red-tipped fingernails rapped a light tattoo on the tabletop.
Yes, Anthony thought, if anyone in the room—besides Anthony himself—could pull off this kind of political maneuver, it would be Adriana. A punch required a counterpunch.
“Adriana,” he said. “I think we have a problem that only you can fix.”
Her carefully sculpted eyebrows hitched. “How so?”
“We have an opening for ambassador to Earth.”
The Spanish man heaved a sigh of indignation. “Mr. Taulke,” he began.
“You’re fired,” Anthony said. “It’s time the council protected our own interests with the UN and stopped this silly game you are playing with my plans.”
“Might I remind you, sir, that I am a duly elected representative of the United Nations—”
“I accept,” Adriana said, her cool voice cutting through the ambassador’s bluster. “Might I suggest we delay any sort of public announcement until I have made the trip back to Earth? The former ambassador can make the trip with me.”
The motion received unanimous approval, and Anthony pulsed a quick message to station security to put the former ambassador in a secure room with no access to communications.
“I think that will do nicely,” he said to the room at large as the protesting Spaniard was escorted out of the chamber. Strangely, he no longer seemed to be rolling his r’s.
Anthony waited until the door had closed and his retinal display told him the room was secure again before he energized the holographic display in the center of the council. The solar system in miniature sprang up from the center of the table.
The first MOAB units, mining operations in a box, were just reaching the Kuiper Belt and had targeted their initial asteroids for samples. Another exploratory mission was operating on Titan. The Callisto colonization team was in training and designs for the orbital ring to be installed over the Jovian moon’s colony were almost complete. Here on Mars the three domes were complete and manufacturing lines up and running, but they lacked enough skilled engineers to run all the lines for all shifts.
Their expansion plans were well underway, but to Anthony’s mind, the holographic image showed the weakness of the council’s strategy: their very long supply lines.
Without food, fuel, and skilled labor from Earth, all his grand plans for the outer planet projects would wither on the vine. First the LUNa City He-3 supply issue starved his growing fleet of spacecraft, then the typical foot-dragging by the UN on personnel quotas for his Mars Station.
And that line of reasoning brought him to his least favorite topic: the weather back on Earth.
The loss of control of his Lazarus weather nanites still stung. He turned to Elise Kisaan, his gaze automatically falling to the cryptokey bracelet she wore. She was the failsafe, a living firewall against Anthony Taulke taking action on his own creation.
Separate Elise from the key and the weather on Earth would spin out of control. He could have challenged her when she’d come to him as an offering from the mysterious Cassandra, but he’d chosen to follow the oldest of business rules: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
He invited Elise to join the council—and the decision to cede a modicum of power to this fanatical religious zealot had haunted him ever since.
She carried a child of which he knew nothing. He’d heard the rumors, of course. The Neos claimed the child was the second coming of Cassandra, a messiah figure. If the first Cassandra had been destroyed in the space station explosion, she had made plans for her return—so the reasoning went. Elise was Her vessel, the YourVoice commentators said, always emphasizing the holy She.
Cassandra was not dead, the Neos claimed, the baby was Her will made flesh.
Anthony eyed Elise. The pregnancy had not been easy for Elise Kisaan. Her tall, lithe frame was hunched and swollen with the child, and her face was haggard. Her light brown skin formed into dark bags under her eyes and her cheekbones poked painfully from her drawn face. Straight black hair showed streaks of gray and hung listlessly over her shoulder.
“Our weather patterns are holding?” he asked finally.
Elise nodded. “Her will be done. The expected migration is already beginning.”
Anthony stopped the smirk that threatened to crease his face at the use of the religious phrase. These Neo fanatics were a joke—a joke that had managed to outwit him so far, he reminded himself sternly.
“And when will She deign to enlighten us as to the long-term plan?” he asked in as neutral a tone as he could manage.
Elise’s enigmatic smile infuriated him. “All will be revealed in time,” she said.
The expected answer, but galling nonetheless. He and Viktor had generated a model based on the initial weather changes already. Their best guess was that Cassandra had put in a program to organize the planet Earth into zones by latitude, but the true nature of the reshaping of Earth still escaped them.
In the end, it didn’t matter. He was planning his own takeover of the weather well before Cassandra’s long-term plans went into effect. But to do that, he needed the assistance of Qinlao Manufacturing.
He zoomed in on the holographic display to show Earth. A regularly-spaced pattern of red dots surrounded the planet. “That brings us to our next agenda item. Xi, please update us on the communications satellite network.”
It was much, much more than just a new comms network. Anthony had secretly contracted with Xi to produce a next generation of weather-altering nanites and the satellites to deploy and control them. Rather than broad weather patterns, he would be able to make it rain on a single city block with pinpoint accuracy. The United Nations would finally see the real benefit of working with a genius like Anthony Taulke. With his new technology, he would finally bring home his long-sought promise of true climate control for the benefit of humanity. He would be the savior the Earth had needed for so long.
And Elise Kisaan and her blasted Neos would be cut out of the picture—for good.
Xi Qinlao’s holographic image shifted in her chair. Her voice projected over the speakers. “I’m sorry to say, we are behind schedule due to some unexpected manufacturing delays.”
“Delays?” Anthony let his frustration show. “What sort of delays?”
“There was a fire in one of our manufacturing facilities. The entire structure was destroyed.”
Tony leaned over to his father. “Pop, shift the manufacturing up here. No matter what it is, we can manage—”
“No,” Anthony cut his son off. No one else on the council besides Xi and Viktor knew of the true nature of the
project Qinlao was handling for him and they needed to keep it that way. He couldn’t risk Elise and her Neos finding out. Or Adriana and Tony, for that matter.
“What will it take to get back on schedule?” he asked Xi.
The woman’s elegant face wrinkled in a scowl. “There is no more ‘on schedule,’ Anthony. That was my premier manufacturing facility and it is gone. The backup site needs a complete upgrade. That’s a month of work, at the least.”
Anthony took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He didn’t have that kind of time. Viktor met his gaze and gave a little shrug of his heavy shoulders.
“Very well,” he said, growling to show it was anything but. “Let me know the revised schedule as soon as you have it. I think that concludes our meeting—”
“I have another issue,” Xi said. Her face in the holographic image sharpened, and there was a slight mismatch in the synchronization between her lips moving and her voice that Anthony found irritating.
“I move that we remove Ming Qinlao from this council,” Xi said.
“I second the motion,” Elise said immediately.
Anthony sat dumbfounded. In her current condition, Ming was unable to add much to the proceedings, but she was a reliable vote for Anthony when he needed it. And she was under his protection. They all knew that. “On what grounds?” he asked finally.
“She has no real role here,” Xi continued. “My dear niece needs to recuperate properly from her ordeal. She needs rest.”
“I am the rightful CEO of Qinlao Manufacturing, Auntie.” Ming’s quavering voice did not help her case.
“Then you should come back to your home and claim your office.” Xi’s challenge held an edge of contempt. “Or are you afraid of that vote, too?”
“I am not afraid of you,” Ming said, but to Anthony her tone suggested otherwise.
“I demand a vote,” Xi replied, her words directed at Anthony.
Anthony did a quick vote count. Xi and Elise wanted Ming gone. It was settling a score for both of them, plain and simple. He could rely on Viktor to side with him and Adriana and Tony would follow his lead.
