“Rikard, we don’t have a chance against the peacekeepers.”
“No. We don’t.”
31
Pynn compound
S AM WATCHED THE GUARD’S PUBLIC announcement alongside Merton Bayfield, her estate manager. Supreme Admiral Bastian Grandover was a rigid monolith inside the GPM, standing beneath the statue of Johannes Ericsson. He recited the Guard’s new standing orders with the zeal of a lobotomy patient. He wasn’t the same man who treated her with disdain. She heard disgust and reservation in his tone; surely, he realized this was a horrifying mistake. But did Celia Marsche and her allies give him a choice?
“Will they do it, Merton? Will all those soldiers come back to Earth to kill Solomons?”
“My brother served five years on Pinochet during their civil war. I’m afraid this is the sort of thing peacekeepers live for.”
“Ninety percent of peacekeepers were born on Earth. Yes? That means they were raised among Solomons. They’ll be killing the people who maintain their homes.”
“True. But they will be following orders, Samantha. Peacekeepers who do not obey their superiors become outcasts the rest of their lives. Their families lose face and leverage. You’ve not lived among us long enough to appreciate what that means.”
Sam waved off the holowindow. “My family is gone, so I don’t have to appreciate it. Michael is my world, and they want to kill him. For what? Because he’s made a life here? Because he thought maybe he didn’t have to be a second-class citizen again? Grandover says he’s a threat to the Chancellory. How? The only thing he wants is a voice and his name on a deed.”
Merton was a small Chancellor, three inches shorter than Samantha. Yet he carried his chin high, a man who commanded the room. Sam thought it an impressive feat. Merton sat behind the desk in his office massaging his beard while hearing her out. He nodded.
“Michael’s goals make perfect sense. The Solomon Treaty symbolizes an antiquated philosophy. But when men are faced with the specter of extinction, they cling to the oldest traditions, lest they lose all hope. Kill those who ask to be their equals, and they restore the illusion of hope. They can live with the blood.”
“I don’t agree.” Sam paced the office. “Chancellors who’ve spent their whole lives on Earth go out of their way to avoid blood. They send their children to the colonies to kill indigos a hundred light-years away. They hire Solomons and mercs to do their dirty work here instead of meeting their enemies face-to-face.”
Merton flexed a brow. “Point taken. Assuming you’re correct, how might one use that weakness as leverage?”
“Organize. Find a few powerful Chancellors willing to go public. Those Chancellors pull in their allies. And so on. We make a stand before the peacekeepers arrive.”
“And what of Grandover’s order to arrest any Chancellor supporting the Solomon movement?”
Sam saw an opening. “He only said they’d arrest anyone harboring or collaborating with Solomons. He didn’t say anything about trying to stop an invasion.”
“I see. And you have a force capable of resisting the UG?”
“Maybe. Where I grew up, people routinely banded together to voice opposition to every kind of injustice. They marched in the streets, sometimes by the millions. Once in a while, they even overthrew governments.”
“Volatile world, you describe. Were they ever at peace?”
“Everywhere at once? No.”
“But we were on this Earth. For centuries, no less. Harmonic perfection. Chancellors will see peacekeepers as the tool to restoring that perfection.”
Sam took his point. “They will see. But not yet. How long before those battalions secure the cities?”
Merton swiveled in a high-back, cushioned chair.
“Interesting question. I don’t believe the Supreme Admiral offered a timetable. I’m not familiar with military protocol in regard to troops.”
“You don’t need to be. If they left their Carriers this minute, how long would the journey to Earth take?”
“Depends. If you’re talking about the closest colonies – Brasilia Major, Cairns, Marianas – four standard days. But the outlying systems – Boer, Kyriokos, New Riyadh – fourteen to fifteen days. The problem is, Grandover did not specify where these battalions are stationed. Nor do we know when he issued the orders. The troops might be well on their way.”
“Still, it gives us time. Yes?”
“Time for what, Samantha? Do you have dangerous ideas?”
She desperately needed Pat to counsel her on the madness swirling through her synapses. Was this even practical?
“I’m going to save him, Merton.”
“What do I need to know, Samantha?”
“If I tell you what I’m thinking, you’ll be implicated. Won’t you?”
Merton drew a pipe from within his suit.
“Only if I directly act on your behalf.”
“And since you’re not an employee, they’ll consider you a … a co-conspirator. Yes?”
He lit the pipe and took a small puff. His nose crinkled, as if the poltash was off.
“It would be bad for business. Worse yet, my family will notice.”
If the thought bothered him, Merton gave no outward sign. Sam didn’t want to compromise his holdings. Not only were they tied into her own, but he offered his services back when most EM’s thought the Pynn name was toxic. She owed the man.
Sam took a deep breath and plunged forward.
“What’s the current value of all my assets?”
He set his pipe on the desk and studied Sam.
“Based on NAC or Collectorate valuations?”
“Global exchange.”
She expected him to open a holocube, but he didn’t.
“As of three days ago, 4.2 billion creds. Given the new crisis, I anticipate a ten percent slide in the short haul.”
The numbers were a product of Merton’s strong financial management. He wasn’t going to like what she was concocting.
“Thank you, Merton. I need to think.”
As she started out, he said, “Don’t think too long, Samantha. The valuation will be sliding hourly.”
Exchange. Assets. Valuation. Leverage.
These words became part of her daily calculus since inheriting the Pynn descendancy. For a while, she took a strange pleasure in the power they implied. They dominated conversations with other Chancellors, especially those who considered her too feeble-minded to compete among the elite. The words themselves were commodities, given value if practiced with verbal discipline. She chose them as carefully as she did her collection of fifty saris, finding the right one to fit each context. Now, Sam loathed the words.
She stepped out onto the south balcony and took stock of the immaculate rose garden designed into a pair of figure-eights. The pink and white combinations reminded Sam of her mother, Grace, who grew the same colors in their front yard in Albion. Sam never thought about Grace except when she saw the roses. Even her face seemed to be fading into a mist.
Sam mumbled. “You never taught me anything. Did you, Mom? You just repeated Daddy’s commands.”
Walter, on the other hand, was omnipresent, the ghost she couldn’t dismiss if she tried. Dead on his feet, drenched in blood, killed at Jamie’s hand. Torturing an enemy in the lake house while Sam tended the woman’s bullet wounds. Demonstrating how to make incendiary bombs. Running with Sam through the swamps of Louisiana training alongside militias. Freezing her heart in order to kill human quarry.
“Hear me, Pumpkin,” he told her on the drive to her first hunt, a week after she turned fourteen. “You can’t appreciate what it means to be a Chancellor until you have taken human life. Stare in their vacant eyes and realize what you have stolen from them. Trust me. You will never fear an enemy and you will enter every battle knowing your leverage.”
“You mean I’ll never lose?”
He laughed. “Lose? Pumpkin, the possibility of losing is what thrills a Chancellor. For every winner, ther
e’s a loser. Yes? The key is you do not begin with a loss. When we cross the IDF, you will be challenged immediately. I expect my daughter to win.”
Somehow, his rationale made sense. She felt no compassion or confusion when Walter removed their victim from the trunk. He was a frail, perplexed man with a sloppy beard and no clothes other than his briefs. It was early February. A rare ice storm was forecast to push through that night. The man bolted as her father ordered, but he never had a chance. After all, this was Dacha.
Sam remembered the moment when she caught up to him, crouched against the base of a tree. Every whimper, every plea for mercy. He claimed to have a son. He said he loved his mother. When she raised the pistol and aimed, he tried another strategy.
“I know this isn’t you,” he begged, his hands extended outward. “You’re a good person. I know you …”
She put one slug through his heart and the second, after a slight nudge of the weapon, between his eyes. Exactly as Walter trained her. And he was right about something else.
The eyes. Whatever story the man once told, Sam took it from him in full. He was a non-entity, as if he were never born.
They ate steak and baked potato for supper and never talked about it again.
“You knew,” Sam said from the balcony’s edge. “You knew what I had to be. Didn’t you, Daddy? You knew what would happen if I went soft.”
She tapped her amp and opened a holocube. Merton grinned.
“That wasn’t long,” he said.
“How much will it cost to buy an army?”
32
Danielson Outpost
W E CAN TRY TO RIDE THIS OUT and hope they don’t discover us,” Matthias told his Solomon brothers and sisters, who remained shell-shocked over the news of their inevitable demise. “But we must not kid ourselves. We are enemies of the Guard, and the Guard does not negotiate.”
The youngest man in the room, an 18-year-old utilities surveyor from Tampa Bay, lost his cool. He flailed madly as he shouted.
“That’s why those cudfruckers never lose. They blast everyone to dust then say, ‘problem solved.’ It’s worked for a thousand years, so the Chancellors expect we’ll be easy to take down. Not me. Not this guy! They won’t bury me like some sand-dragging indigo running around with sharp sticks.”
Matthias signaled for quiet as disparate voices created chaos.
“Thank you, Carlos. I’m sure everyone here agrees with the sentiment. No one wishes to die. Where we need to find common ground is with our strategy.”
“Strategy?” Carlos Rivera all but spit at the word. “It’s obvious. We have to take the fight directly to them. We have to hurt them at the start so they have no choice. They’ll have to negotiate.”
Michael had yet to say two words to Carlos, though they were the youngest Solomons here. This guy was a hothead, and Michael saw what happened to reckless hotheads on both Earths. Still, nothing Carlos said seemed out of bounds.
He rose. “If I can throw in my ten cents?”
“Go ahead, Michael,” Matthias said. “We’ll hear from everyone.”
“Carlos, dude, you ain’t wrong. I’ll tell you that. How many of you ever seen peacekeepers up close in combat?”
Rikard, who was on Seneca two years ago with Michael and Sammie, raised his hand. No one else.
“I’ve been there twice,” Michael continued. “Both times, they came to my rescue, so I was mighty damn impressed. That was some cool shit. Until it weren’t. They slaughtered dudes like fucking machines. In three days, they turned a guy I used to call a friend into one of them. He wasn’t the same anymore. Even said he wanted to kill.
“You see, that’s the mindset. They’re killers through and through. If you ain’t a Chancellor, your life ain’t worth a nickel. Look at us. We don’t look like them, we ain’t built like them. Compared to those assholes, we’re … well, we’re hobbits.” He responded to the instant confusion. “Long story about those guys. Guess my point is: We go head-to-head with those fuckers, we’re dead. They won’t give a shit. We need a plan like nobody’s had in a thousand years. Any ideas?”
Maya Fontaine raised her hand. “Are we sure the Chancellory will go along with this?” Amid murmurs and rolled eyes, she continued. “Hear me out, please. I have no love for these people. They’ve brought more misery to my life than you’ll ever know. However, we must take into account numbers. There are six hundred million Chancellors on Earth, and ninety million of us. Yet the civil war has been fought by a few descendancies. Most Chancellors live without fear of repercussion, just as ninety-five percent of Solomons have never participated in the equity movement. I have to wonder: Where do the majorities stand?”
Quizzical eyes turned to Matthias and Rikard, who responded.
“You’re asking if we put our case to the people, will they form a wall between us and the Guard?”
“Or,” Carlos interjected, “will they step aside so the Guard can throw us against a wall and shoot us?”
Raimi Inhofe laughed, but he didn’t intend to be funny.
“I have to say it, folks. Just about every Solomon I’ve ever known goes along to get along. And the Chancellors? They’re scared out of their wits. They’re a dying people and they know it. They give an inch, and they take a few more years off their future.”
Maya’s tone darkened. “Are you suggesting we have no allies?”
“Reliable? No.”
Michael wagged a finger. “But how many do we actually need? If we had the right Chancellors on our side … you know, the ones pulling the biggest strings … we might have a shot.”
“And what freaks of nature will defy their own Chancellory?”
Michael shared a wistful glance with Rikard and Matthias. When Rikard nodded, Michael took a chance.
“A lot of you aren’t from the eastern quadrant, but maybe you’ve heard of Finnegan Moss?” A few nods, more eye rolls, and Matthias leaning in, whispering to Rikard. “Some us of here saved the man’s life a while back. We’ve been working with him. He sympathizes with the movement, and he has connections everywhere.”
Carlos interrupted. “Was he Guard?”
“Yes, but … he’s not onboard with how they operate. He regrets his tour of duty. Yeah, yeah. I know you got doubts. But look, I can count the number of Chancellors I’ve ever trusted on one hand. Probably the same for you. Finnegan, I trust. And I know there’s gotta be more like him. Like Maya said, there’s six hundred million on Earth. We only need a few. They’ll do the rest.”
Michael thought he’d struck an optimistic blow, but neither Rikard nor Matthias smiled. What did I miss?
“OK,” Carlos said. “Let’s say you’re right and we get these people on our side. Then what? Are they gonna walk into the GPM and make the Admiralty rescind their orders? And even if they do, what about the assassins? We don’t know who organized them or what they look like. At least with the Guard, we can see the red armor from a mile away.”
Matthias stopped Michael from responding.
“Actually, Carlos, we have a name. It’s a Chancellor well-known to just about everyone. Celia Marsche.” The room thickened with dread. “Empress of the North herself. A friend who pilots for a fixed attainder overheard her Chancellor talking. The man was at the GPM during this.” He turned to Michael. “Same conference your Sam attended. Celia Marsche was behind it all.”
Michael’s heart skipped. “And Sam? Is she …?”
“I asked about her. All the Chancellors returned home safely.”
Carlos dropped a cynical laugh. “Because when push comes to shove, Chancellors stick together. Sorry, Michael. They’ll never help us. This Moss character … he’s been playing you. Don’t be surprised if your Chancellor bedmate does the same.”
The rage ignited. Michael balled his fists.
“Say it again, you mother …”
“Michael, no.” Maya stepped between them. “Carlos was never taught how to be a man. Were you, Carlos?”
Carlos stepped
back, hiding behind an indignant scowl.
“I’m man enough for you, Maya Fontaine.”
“And for my blade?”
That drew considerable laughter, a response Michael didn’t expect. He and Carlos retreated.
“Enough.” Matthias regained control of the room. “One thing I know with certainty: If we aren’t unified, we’re good as dead. I want to hear from everyone. Your thoughts about building Chancellor allies, or any other strategies. In two weeks, the Guard will have full control of the planet. Anything we do must happen before then. I know we’re not military experts, but we are the backbone of this society. That has to count for something. Yes?”
The debate raged for another hour, with little progress. Yet Michael sensed which way the winds were shifting. Allies or not, direct combat seemed unavoidable. The only outstanding questions: Against whom? When and where? How much blood would have to spill to change hearts and minds?
Before they wrapped discussion, the oldest of them – Rasheeda Hoshmani – made clear the stakes.
“If we fail,” she told them, “the Solomon Treaty will be rewritten, and our people will become little more than indentured servants. They will punish us until their last generation dies off.”
Michael didn’t know whether Rasheeda was exaggerating, but she caught everyone’s attention. The room fell into stark silence. It felt like the perfect moment for someone to deliver a rousing motivational speech, but Michael decided he wasn’t the guy. He remembered his first conversation with Finnegan Moss, who pointed out that Michael wasn’t actually a Solomon, at least not by birth. Standing here with twenty-nine people who were, Michael felt solidarity but also an undercurrent of distance.
“I’m a man,” he told Finnegan to explain his loyalty to the Solomons. “I should never be held second to anyone. This is a fight we can win.”
Michael still clung to a modicum of hope, though it was being sorely tested. The toughest test arrived minutes after the meeting concluded when he pulled Rikard aside and asked about a confusing moment.
“What were you and Matthias talking about when I was telling everyone about Finnegan?”
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 81
