Fifty-seven

 

The secondary conference room felt crowded even though Noelle DeRicci stood in it alone. Popova had coordinated every mayor, every acting mayor, all the members of the United Domes Council, and all the heads of law enforcement all over the Moon, and put them on visual, with their names underneath the images (thankfully). Some of the faces floated like the Peyti clone faces had, and DeRicci wanted to swat them away from her.

Instead, she stood awkwardly like a schoolgirl waiting for a date, her mouth dry and her hands shaking.

“First,” DeRicci said loudly, trying to get their attention, “I need you all to be alone in your rooms. I need you to shut off all of your links except emergency links, and I need your word of honor that you have done so. I don’t have time to check, but believe me, I will know if you failed, and I will know rather quickly.”

She sounded ominous. She felt ominous, and all alone.

Popova worked in an alcove off the conference room that had its own secure link, so DeRicci could tell her if something went wrong. Normally a high-level tech would be inside the room, making sure everything worked smoothly, but the high-level techs that DeRicci had on staff were working with Flint, trying to find all of the Peyti clones on the Moon.

She was terrified they would miss one.

She was certain they would miss one.

She waited as various people turned away from their cameras or clearly waved a hand, instructing someone to leave the room. Her heart pounded.

As the faces turned back to her, she said, “I’m sorry to be so harsh, but we have a situation that makes Anniversary Day look like practice.”

Nods, responses to the affirmative, and some folks who didn’t move at all.

“Do any of you have lawyers in the room with you?” she asked. She initially was going to ask if they had any Peyti on staff, but she decided against it. Too obvious, too easy a warning.

She heard a few yeses.

She cursed silently. She had already told them to clear the room, and they’d left lawyers in there. She had been around government long enough to know that some government officials didn’t think of lawyers as people—which was why she asked the question.

She had hoped no one had made that mistake. The fact that a group of them had made her mad.

“Get them out,” she said. “I know they are supposed to be good at this confidentiality stuff, but what I’m about to ask you to do will automatically put them in an ethical quandary. Better that they leave the room. You don’t want them to hear what I have to tell you. It’ll be bad for the future of your administrations.”

She had thought of that as her excuse. too, even though it wasn’t strictly true. She wasn’t sure she had the legal authority to do what she needed to do, but the government lawyers and the lawmakers would back-date everything if she was successful, and crucify her if she was not. It didn’t matter if lawyers were in the room.

She just didn’t want Peyti in the room.

“Okay,” she said after a moment. “Are we alone?”

She got a lot of yeses, didn’t see any noes, even if there were any, and decided to proceed.

“Okay,” she said. “That situation I was talking about, it’s going to happen today. We have to work together to stop it, and we cannot miss. If we miss, thousands, maybe millions, maybe tens of millions will die. Am I being clear?”

Faces going gray, closed eyes, a few moans.

“I’m going to give you a plan of action, I’m going to give you a timeline, and if any of you deviate from that timeline by as much as one second, we are all doomed, am I clear?”

“Are you going to tell us what this situation is?” Dominic Hanrahan asked. Of course, he’d be one of the first to slow everything down. He was so afraid of everything, so afraid of being blamed for everything, and such a victim.

She took a breath. She was still angry at him for his comments the day before. (Just the day before? It felt like weeks ago.)

“Yes,” she said. “Then I’m going to tell you what we all are going to do. I’m going to give you a very short time frame in order to act because once this information gets out, and it will get out, we will lose. After this conference ends, I will send you coordinates of where the potential attackers were last seen. You will use a jammer in the area where those attackers are. You will shut off all links, including emergency links. You will shut off foreign links. You will shut down every communication system, including your own. Am I clear?”

“What the hell are you afraid of, DeRicci?” asked Dmitri Tsepen, the mayor of Glenn Station. She gave him a hard look. He didn’t seem to be drunk today, which was a good thing, since she probably had him dismiss his very competent assistant.

“You’ll understand in a few minutes,” she said.

Her gaze met that of Diane Limón, the acting mayor of Armstrong. Beside her, in a different bubble, was Olympia Hobell, chief of the Armstrong police department, and DeRicci’s old boss in the First Detective Unit, Andrea Gumiela. So just judging from Armstrong, Popova had doubled up on the security forces, making sure the people in charge knew what was going on, and the people who could actually do something knew as well.

“I cannot stress how important this is,” DeRicci said. “I also need to emphasize now that some of your actions today might result in civilian casualties. That can’t be helped. If you cannot deal with it, then you need to bring in someone who can right now. Is that clear?”

She expected to lose half the mayors right there. Her gaze met Hanrahan’s. He had gone gray but he hadn’t moved. Tsepen actually looked awake. Terrified, but awake and ready to act.

Olympia Hobell hadn’t moved. Neither had Andrea Gumiela. They watched with a coldness that DeRicci recognized in herself.

They would deal with the collateral damage later. They would do what they needed to do.

DeRicci wished she personally knew everyone of these people she was talking to. She wished she knew if she could trust them.

Surprisingly, though, she knew many of them, and she knew they’d do what they could.

That was all she could ask.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to give you the timeline first, and I want you to keep track of it. Back it up, do what you must, but do not lose it. You must follow it. Am I being clear?”

Everyone nodded. Or so it seemed. It was hard to tell with the damn floating heads.

“I am telling you the timeline first,” DeRicci said, “because this situation is so big and so difficult that I expect it to stun you for a few minutes. You have to plan for that, and figure out a way to set aside your emotional reaction. If you do not, you might harm everyone in a domed community on the Moon.”

“That’s everyone,” said a woman she didn’t recognize. “We all live in domed communities.”

“Yes,” DeRicci said. “I know.”

Her words hung for a moment.

She took a deep breath. “Pay attention, because we don’t have a lot of time to implement this, and the longer it takes to get you all on board, the greater the chance we have of losing everything.”

She steeled her shoulders. She had to communicate clearly as well. This was on her as much as it was on them.

“Okay,” she said. “Here we go.”