The Unincorporated Future (57 page)

So he stood up and straightened his suit, then walked over to the full-length mirror to check his entire persona. He looked grave and glad, suitable to match Trang’s new world-view and presumably vaunted self-image. The fire in the hearth crackled as shadows flickered across the room’s old stones. Appropriately somber, thought Hektor, who took a deep breath as the door to his private study opened. Trang came in escorted only by Tricia Pakagopolis, who also looked happy to see the grand admiral. She stayed at the door as Trang and Hektor approached each other and both gave the appropriate formal bow. Hektor barely had time to register the fact that as Trang rose from his bow, all two feet of his ceremonial sword came out of his sheath, rotated on its hilt, and in a blindingly swift upward motion, entered Hektor’s lower jaw and penetrated his brain from below, the point punching through the top of the skull.

How, what—?
were the only thoughts Hektor’s damaged brain could drudge up as Tricia began to scream for help and run toward Trang. With speed equal to its entering, the sword was removed, leaving a now shocked and damaged Hektor standing exactly where he’d been, while the sword of Samuel Trang swung round again, slicing through the President’s head from ear to ear, ending all his thoughts forever. Trang then pivoted and took Tricia Pakagopolis’s skull just above the ear with a powerful stroke that came from the shoulders and the hips. She first fell to her knees and then toppled over next to Hektor.
Fitting,
thought Trang as he used the corner of Hektor’s jacket to wipe what little blood there was off his sword. He then stood back up, returning the weapon to its sheath.

Trang was pleased. The sword had been a best-case scenario, but he’d assumed the chances of getting close enough to use it without a phalanx of Gretchen Arbieter’s trigger-happy goons would be effectively zero. Still, he’d dutifully replaced his useless ceremonial blade with one that was the near pinnacle of the swordsmith’s art and then practiced two moves over and over again while going over contingency plans for when Zenobia would have to take over. Worst-case scenario would have had Zenobia bombarding the Presidential retreat from the frigate in orbit. Zenobia had not liked the “worst case” plan and agreed to it only as a last resort. Fortunately, it hadn’t come down to that.

Trang viewed the two bodies.
The incredible arrogance of the man,
he thought.
To be allowed entry into the President’s office, armed and alone, without so much as a bodyguard?
For some reason, an image of Sergeant Holke sprang to mind, and the thought that had Holke been Sambianco’s bodyguard, Trang wouldn’t have gotten within a city block of the guy.

Right on time, by Trang’s clock at least, Gretchen Arbieter stormed into the room, gun drawn, eyes blazing at the two bodies lying next to each other on the hardwood floor. One look at what was left of their scalps told her that both deaths were permanent.

“Your grandson’s alive,” Trang said calmly.

“Wh-what?” said Gretchen, shocked into inaction on the verge of shooting Trang where he stood.

“Your grandson is Zachary Augustus Arbieter, yes?”

Gretchen eyed the admiral with deep suspicion. “He lived on the Moon with my son after the divorce,” she said abstractedly. “But he died with everyone else.”

“Not quite. We conducted a joint rescue operation with the Alliance. Some of the Alliance Lunar operatives found a hole and dived in till the worst was over. They took twenty-five UHF citizens with them. They didn’t have to—in fact, it was a stupid thing to do from a spy’s point of view. But they did it; we found them, and your grandson was one of the twenty-five.”

“Sigmund?” she said hopefully, asking after her son.

Trang gave the briefest negative shake of his head.

“How do I know you’re not lying to save your treacherous life?”

“Maybe I am,” admitted Trang. “Maybe I know that your grandson’s favorite ice cream is vanilla steak by other means. Maybe I know you used to sing to him old Beatles songs in German so he wouldn’t forget how to speak it. It worked, by the way. Maybe I learned his pet name for you is Gretgret by some other nefarious means. Or maybe … just maybe, I’m telling the truth.”

“You could have figured that out some other way. There must have been records.”

“Agent Arbieter, all of those records were made inaccessible by the avatars weeks before I decided to kill the President.”

“And you think saving my grandson excuses your assassination?”

“Your grandson is not yet saved.” He saw her brows knit together in anger. “I will not harm him in any way, and neither will anyone who serves under me, even if you blow my head off right now, Agent Arbieter.”

“You’re giving me permission to shoot you?”

“No, I’m giving you something that has for far too long been robbed from the citizens of the UHF. I am giving you the freedom to choose. If the war resumes, the chances of your grandson surviving—or anyone surviving, for that matter—are near zero. We must change or we, and by that I mean the whole damned race, might never recover.” Trang pointed his sword sheath tip at the bloody remains of Hektor Sambianco. “You worked for him. What do you think would’ve happened to your grandson if he’d lived?”

With glacial slowness, Gretchen Arbieter lowered her gun. “What do you need me to do?”

UHFS
Gremlin
High orbit of Earth

Zenobia Jackson had to restrain herself from running up to the shuttle and hugging her superior officer. She’d been almost certain she would never, ever see him again.

“I should’ve known you’d pull it off, sir,” she said with a crisp salute.

“I got lucky,” he answered, returning the salute and descending the rampart. “Let’s go to a secure room.” A few minutes later, they were in the frigate’s intelligence assessment unit, now used for storage, since the advanced data systems that made them function were no longer allowed in UHF ships.

“What happened, sir?”

“Hektor’s dead.”

Zenobia let out a whoop.

“Great speech, by the way. Went over quite well.”

“Well, I suppose if the admiral thing doesn’t work out, I could always be your speechwriter.”

“And you were right about the sword.”

Zenobia’s eyes went to the blade in question.

“I can’t believe he let me get that close.”

“I can, sir. He never really respected the military. We were just tools to him. He was so busy planning
how
he was going to kill you, it never really occurred to him that you could do the same.”

“Well, luck favored us more than we deserve, Zenobia. I was able to kill Tricia at the same time.”

Zenobia whistled. “That must have made things easier.”

“Almost didn’t,” laughed Trang. “Gretchen Arbieter came about a picosecond away from blowing my head off.”

“Did you do it?” she asked quietly.

“Tell the lie the avatars gave us?” Trang said with equal gravity. “Yes.”

“I never would’ve thought that among those avatars we let go, one of them was her grandchild’s.”

“And I never would’ve thought to use that information,” added Trang. “The one they call Allison came up with the plan.”

Zenobia’s face grew dark. “Still don’t trust ’em, sir. I’m not surprised that an avatar’s good at lying.”

“She’s not the one who told that lie to a grandmother and had to watch hope reignite in the woman’s eyes.”

“Sir, I’m sorry. That must have been near impossible.”

Trang removed the medals breastplate from his jacket and dumped it onto the console. “Admiral Jackson, I’m responsible for the deaths of countless humans and just assassinated my own President by my own hand. I think a little lying for the cause can be justified.” Then Trang sighed. “But you’re right, it wasn’t easy. After that, it was cleaning up. I had Gretchen bring the rest of the Cabinet to the study. It appears that Irma Sobbelgé had been arrested for protesting my planned assassination and was under an emergency death sentence. The only reason they hadn’t killed her was they were waiting for the right time. To exploit her death at the hands of an Alliance assassin or some such drivel meant to instigate.”

Zenobia’s lips pursed outward as she nodded slowly. “The Mistress of Lies had a conscience?” Zenobia said, only half joking. “After everything that’s happened, that might be the hardest to believe. How’d the rest of the Cabinet take it?”

“Funny you should ask. When I gathered them in the room, I asked who could support the coup. Apparently, Franklin Higgins IV had more backbone than I gave him credit for. He called me traitor and told me to do my worst.”

“Was he serious?”

“I can’t say if he was. I shot him as soon as he said it.”

“And the other two?”

“Luciana Nampahc will play ball. As for Irma, she came up with the cover story that’s about to break.”

“Really, I can hardly imagine.”

“It appears that our dear Minister of Internal Affairs was so against our bold President’s plan for peace that she tried to engineer a coup. Sadly she succeeded in killing the President and the Minister of Justice and had poor Irma arrested and on her way to be executed. Luckily, Luciana was able to warn me just in time and with Gretchen Arbieter’s help was able to kill the traitor.”

“But that means that Hektor Sambianco will die a hero.” Zenobia was deeply offended. Like her boss, she had read the captured UHF records and like her boss had reluctantly come to believe them. They jibed with too many other little things she’d spent years ignoring.

“Yes, he will die a hero and quite a noble one at that. He died trying to end a war he didn’t start at his moment of greatest courage. I imagine,” Trang said with an oddly wistful smile, “he’ll be remembered as a great man after all.”

“That’s so very wrong, sir.”

“Zenobia, I just lied to a grandmother that her beloved grandchild is alive.”

“But that was for a purpose.”

“This lie will serve a purpose too. A President martyred for peace makes that peace worthy and sacrosanct.”

“I guess that leaves one more question.”

“Yes?”

“Who’s President?”

Trang now smiled demurely. “About that speechwriting job.”

DID WE JUST WIN?

—Alliance Daily News

DID WE JUST LOSE?

—
Alliance Daily Star

Via Cereana
Ceres
In orbit around Saturn

Sandra O’Toole and J. D. Black were sitting comfortably in J.D.’s shuttle as it left the AWS
Warprize II,
making its way back to the Presidential landing port of the Via Cereana. Both the President and the grand admiral were happily silent, not having much to do and taking advantage of the fact. Neither of them knew it, but their respite had been purely manufactured by J.D.’s subordinate officer, Fatima Awala. The communications officer had ordered the combat major who outranked her not just in fact but also in years of service to go as slowly as possible in order to give both their superiors as much time as possible before being deluged in the necessary responsibilities of their victory. The major had simply saluted Awala as if she had every right to order him around, which when it came to caring for the Blessed One, in a certain sense she did.

So it was only when J.D. was sitting, not thinking about anything at all, that an annoying question suddenly popped into her head. She slowly eased herself into a more erect posture in her chair and regarded Sandra curiously.

“Out with it,” chided Sandra.

J.D. chuckled. “I realize this may seem odd coming from me…”

Sandra waited patiently.

“But did Hektor really have to die? Which is to say, the enemy you know…”

Now Sandra straightened in her chair. “You’re right. I can’t believe that you of all people are asking that question. Especially after watching that little jig you did at the news of his death.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I never said I wasn’t happy about it; I’m talking strictly from a strategic perspective. With the information that we gave Trang, he could’ve blackmailed Hektor into behaving like a good peace-loving President. I know Hektor. He would have hated every single moment of it, but his sense of personal survival would have compelled him to play along. A coup attempt was risky, Sandra. And the more I think about it, the more I realize just how much. It could have gone balls-up in a thousand different ways.”

“Yes, it could’ve. And you’ll have to trust me on this, it was discussed ad infinitum.”

“With
whom
?”