Doomsday minus 539 Earth days.
“This is an interesting situation. Am I to surmise that an offer is about to be made, one that I would be foolish to turn down? Or have you finally decided to obey the order from your superior to terminate me?”
Novak stood just inside the door, surveying the interior of Nestor Quan’s tiny room. The holding cells had been designed by SecuriTech for short-term occupancy. Built like metal bunkers, they held almost no furniture and precious little technology. A basic toilet and wash basin sat exposed in one corner. Overhead, a securecam concealed inside a recessed light bar monitored each prisoner’s activities around the clock.
This particular prisoner had been a guest of the Warrior Kings for well over a year now, living on borrowed time while Novak negotiated on his behalf with Juno Vargas. Once it became apparent that Quan was cooperating, and that his stay might be a lengthy one, Novak had ordered some amenities brought in. A cot to replace the wooden bench shoved up against the wall. Some exercise gear. Access to a preapproved selection of printed material, and a wall-mounted light screen on which to read it. A towel and a washcloth, along with a container of soap and a toothbrush, all lined up along the edge of the basin.
Not that this signified a softening of anyone’s attitude toward the Stragori. Although he had evidently been cleaned up for Novak’s visit, there were marks on his face that bore silent witness to the payback (with interest) demanded by street justice.
He’d tried to kill one of their own, Steve Bonelli, a fact of which the Kings had been reminding him almost every day. At this point, just the sound of the cell door opening should have sent him cowering into a corner.
Improbably, however, ‘the ninja’ sat perched on the edge of his cot, arms crossed over his chest, feet flat on the floor, and he was staring up at Novak with an expression so smug that it practically begged the other man to smack it off his face.
“Neither one, Quan. I just have a couple of questions.”
“Ah! Are they the right ones?”
“They’re the only ones that matter to me right now.”
“I see. That sounds serious.”
DeWitt came in with a chair. Wordlessly, he positioned it facing the prisoner, shot him a look of distaste, then left.
“You once told me that the Directorate had plans for Humanity, plans that you disagreed with. What were they?”
“Close. Very close. But still not the right one.”
Novak picked up the chair and slammed it down hard. Its legs met the floor with a crack that made his ears ring. Maddeningly, the other man didn’t even flinch. “Dammit, Quan, I’ve got no time to play guessing games with you. The Corvou fleet will be here in just under a year and a half and we’re about to ask the Directorate to help us stay alive. So I need to know now, did their plans include this war?”
Quan’s features shifted into a rare expression of surprise. “The Corvou are swarming? How intriguing.”
Novak dropped onto the chair and leaned forward menacingly. “That’s hardly the word I would use.”
“Disturbing, then … because you’re right, Mr. Novak. Someone did deliberately orchestrate your current situation. However, I assure you it wasn’t the Directorate. My government, if I can still call it that, is dedicated to the preservation of Humanity, not its extinction.”
“And you disagree with that?” said Novak, feeling a sudden chill.
Quan made an impatient sound. “Only with their methods, not their goal. The Directorate are convinced that allowing Humans to attain scientific and technological parity with the rest of the galaxy will bring about the total destruction of your race. I believe they’re dead wrong about that, and am determined to prove it.”
“From inside this cell?”
“It’s a temporary inconvenience,” he replied with a shrug. “Eventually you will see the light, and I will see the light of day. But you mustn’t dawdle, Mr. Novak. The Corvou are coming.”
The Human gritted his teeth. Turn him or terminate him.
Nestor Quan was infuriating, but Novak suspected that he could still be a useful ally — provided he was telling the truth about the Directorate. In a way, their fears made sense. The Stragori saw Humanity as a race of children, and it was never a good idea to let children play with things that they didn’t understand or couldn’t control. They could hurt or even kill themselves.
But that wasn’t what Quan had said.
Novak leaned back in his chair, scowling. “Clarify for me — technological advancement will bring about our destruction how, exactly?”
“Let me out for some fresh air and I’ll tell you.”
Reluctantly, Novak agreed. Shadowed by two strong and silent Warrior Kings, he escorted Quan onto the elevator and punched up their destination.
The view from the roof of the EIS Ops building at dusk was a mosaic of grays and browns, made up of crumbling factories and boarded-up warehouses separated by littered alleyways and lengths of cracked and broken pavement. It was anything but impressive. Nonetheless, as he strolled over to the railing and then along it in the cooling air, Quan was gazing around him with undisguised appreciation.
“So, this is your Zone,” he remarked. “Your kingdom, so to speak.”
“So to speak,” Novak echoed softly.
Quan halted abruptly and looked down. “Is this building coming under attack?” A note of anticipation had crept into his voice.
Novak turned his attention downward as well. Four young males in dark clothing were slipping carefully from shadow to deepening shadow along the street. A hunting pack, he guessed, headed toward a structure where they knew girls nested, hoping to catch one of them before she could reach safety. He cast his glance farther and noted two more packs. One was comprised of five girls stealthily prowling the length of a garbage-strewn alley, and the second was a group of three, possibly boys, racing across a nearby intersection. And they did all appear to be converging on the block where the EIS HQ was located.
“It’s Friday,” he explained, “and there are most likely nests on the first floor of this building. Singletons have until dusk to reach their nest. If they’re outside when the sun touches the horizon, they’re fair game.”
“Fair game for what?”
As if on cue, an angry female shriek erupted out of sight below them and was quickly muffled. Instantly, the street filled with running footsteps as the pack of boys carried off their catch and the pack of girls pursued them, bent on freeing her and inflicting some damage on her captors. Novak let his gaze drift to the wall of a structure across the road and saw two Warrior Kings observing the scene. Making sure no rules were broken. Ready to intercede if things got out of hand. Because, as he then explained to Quan, it was a sport, after all, a way for Ineligible teens to vent some of their mounting frustration at being trapped in an oppressive social hierarchy.
“This ‘sport’ looks rather serious to me. Does it have a name?”
“The participants call it ‘pumping seed’,” Novak replied.
“So, if the boys are able to elude the girl’s would-be rescuers…?”
“Once they have her inside their nest, she’s theirs to play with for the weekend. The same is true if a pack of girls capture a singleton boy. Which they do more often than you might think.”
“And this happens every Friday, you say.”
“Every week without fail,” Novak confirmed.
“I’ve lived on your world for decades, and I had no idea such a thing was going on.”
“That’s not surprising. None of the Eligibles want to be aware of it, and the Ineligible kids don’t talk about it. For most of them, a nest in the Zone is the only private retreat they’ll ever have, and pumping seed is the only way they can release their pent-up rage at the system without making things tougher for their families.” In response to Quan’s interrogative stare, he continued, “The Relocation Authority has a history of shipping malcontents and troublesome Ineligibles out of the urban districts to the Industrial Zones. ‘Bad apples’ make the compliant Eligible population nervous.”
The other man’s face lit up with comprehension.
“All right, Quan, you’re out in the fresh air. Now tell me how the Directorate thought we Humans would be destroyed if we achieved technological equality with the other races,” Novak reminded him.
“Of course. The answer is already in your records. If I were you, I would examine the timing and impacts of the pandemics that began afflicting your planet in Earth year 2091, and the plague that began decimating your colonies in 2384. An analysis of that data would, I believe, prove extremely enlightening. You can put someone on the task immediately. I’ll be happy to wait out here for the results.”
—— «» ——
“Thank you for meeting with me at this late hour, Madame Supreme Adjudicator.”
Lynette Ellenshaw, Dennis Forrand’s hand-picked successor as the High Council representative for Americas, was a solidly built woman in her sixties, with light brown skin, a no-nonsense approach to life, and eyes and hair that changed color on an almost daily basis. Right now, they were both emerald green.
As she followed Juno Vargas through the door of the clean room in the Chief Adjudicator’s basement, she remarked, “The last time I sneaked out of my home close to midnight, I was twenty years old and we were eloping. I’m not fond of cloak and dagger, Juno. What’s going on?”
“I’ve come into some very sensitive information that you urgently need to know. Please, have a seat.”
Ellenshaw settled warily onto one of the dark blue loveseats. Juno crossed to the other side of the glass-topped, wrought iron coffee table and sat down facing her.
Novak’s signal-jamming device had been activated and set on the table as a precaution.
Drawing a long breath, Juno began, “In a little less than a year and a half, Earth will be coming under attack from an enormous fleet of alien ships. It’s a race called the Corvou, and they have declared war on all of Humanity. They won’t be coming to defeat us or enslave us — according to my source, they’ll be coming to wipe us out, from orbit.”
“You’re joking!” She began to laugh, then abruptly stopped. “You’re serious?”
“Dead serious, Lynette. In a few days, a top secret report will be filed with Space Installation Security about a first contact gone wrong on the far side of Sector Five. It was with the Corvou. And before you ask, my source was on site when it happened and is completely reliable.”
Her head tilted, Ellenshaw narrowed her gaze. “A report like that should have been filed immediately. It should already be in the hands of SIS.”
“I asked my contact, as a favor, to delay the transmission until I could speak to you about the matter and you could quietly give advance warning to the High Council. Once comm channels open at this end, we both know how quickly the news will spread. Earth’s government will need to have a plan in place before that happens. Otherwise, global chaos is pretty much guaranteed.”
“Did your contact happen to tell you who was responsible for this botch-up?”
“Scapegoating won’t work with these aliens, Lynette. The Corvou apparently don’t recognize individual culpability, either in themselves or in others. They’ve made it clear that as far as they’re concerned, every Human has mortally insulted them, and every Human must die. So, handing over a guilty party to them for punishment isn’t going to head them off. Daisy Hub has secured a promise from the Nandrians to back up our own forces in battle with the Corvou armada in Sector Five, but even with SIS and every ship in the Fleet involved, the best they can hope to accomplish is to slow the enemy down. Once the Corvou break through, trying to defend our home world will be a waste of time and resources. If we’re to save the Human race from extinction, getting as many of our people as possible away from Earth is really our only option. That’s what the High Council needs to understand.”
“And that’s a shame,” Ellenshaw said with a sigh, “because there is absolutely no way we can evacuate three billion people in a calm and orderly fashion in just a year and a half. I once ran that calculation as a thought experiment. If you’d like to hear the figures I came up with…” She pulled a compupad from the inside pocket of her jacket and worked the keypad for a moment. “Here they are. It would mean moving more than six million per day, and that’s a physical impossibility. So let’s be a little more realistic. Going flat out, with three thousand ships each carrying an average of two hundred or so passengers and their belongings and making two runs a month to our farthest colonies, over a span of eighteen months we would be able to evacuate twenty or so million. That’s not even one third of the currently identified Eligibles on the planet.”
Of course, the Council would insist on saving ‘the best and brightest of Humanity’ first, Juno reminded herself. However, one thing at a time.
“In that case, would it not make sense for us to increase the size of our fleet by asking one of the alien races to loan us additional ships and crews?”
The Supreme Adjudicator’s features acquired a speculative expression. “Just one? I think we should send a distress call to all the member worlds on the Galactic Great Council.”
“That might not be prudent.”
Eyes widening, Ellenshaw remarked, “Oh? Why not?”
Juno chose her next words carefully. “Because I have reason to believe that one or more of the races represented on the Great Council would actually prefer it if Humanity were annihilated. Whoever this enemy may be, they have clout with the Council. So much, in fact, that they were able to get a galaxy-wide order issued to keep us unaware of the correct protocol to follow when interacting with the Corvou. I have a confidential source for this information, by the way, and it’s completely reliable as well.”
“You’re saying we’re on our own, then? There’s no one we can trust to help us?”
“With an evacuation? My contact recommends we call on the Stragori.”
Ellenshaw gave her a disbelieving look. “The hated Stragori? You really think they’ll answer a cry for help from a world where they’re obviously not welcome?”
“I don’t know. But if we never ask, we’ll never find out, will we? Best case scenario, they recognize how dire our situation is and take pity on us in spite of the way we’ve treated them. Worst case scenario, they refuse to help, leaving us no worse off than we are right now.”
Ellenshaw considered for a moment. “All right, let’s say we ask them, and the Stragori are able to loan us another few hundred vessels. Let’s even say that they’re capable of transporting all the remaining Eligibles off-world. Setting aside the question of where in Earth space we’re going to put all those people, that still leaves us with a huge problem. Ineligible doesn’t mean stupid. Sooner or later, that 98% of the population is going to twig to what’s happening, and when they do, we’ll have rioting in every district on the planet. It will be pandemonium.”
Smiling privately, Juno cleared her throat and said, “If I may make a couple of observations, Madame Supreme Adjudicator?”
“Please, observe away!”
“First, since even just using the word ‘evacuation’ will no doubt cause widespread concern, it seems to me that the Council might be able to delay the inevitable by telling people instead that the Relocation Authority and the Space Installation Authority are accelerating the colonization program and are therefore posting more Eligibles off-world.”
“I can see problems with that in the wake of Angel of Death, but do continue.”
“Considering how targeted the urban news feeds are already, and how different they are from the information going out to the Ineligibles in the Industrial Zones, it should be a relatively simple matter to keep the truth of the situation from getting out to the Ineligibles residing in the urban districts … and after all, aren’t those the only Ineligibles the High Council really needs to worry about?”
Ellenshaw gave her an appraising look. “You sound more like Dennis Forrand every time we speak.”
“And that brings me to what Forrand himself would be doing right now — attacking the root of the problem, which, as you’ve defined it, comes from the fact that we have two classifications of people on Earth, one privileged and one not. If we had just one, if everyone were simply Human, we could hold a lottery to determine who goes and who stays.”
It wouldn’t be an honest lottery, of course. That would be too much to hope for. However, as Forrand had taught her, small victories did eventually add up.
The older woman leaned back thoughtfully in her seat. “You’re talking about abolishing the Ineligible designation? I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about that myself a few times over the years. Right now, however, I think that it would be a very hard sell. We’re about to hit the High Council with news of an impending planetary threat, and your suggestion involves implementing a massive social change on the eve of that crisis. Even though you may be right about this plan minimizing the chaos, quite honestly, I don’t think the High Council will go for it. I think they would rather take a more certain and direct approach, supplementing our fleet of space craft with alien ships and beefing up Security on the ground to quell any civil unrest resulting from the evacuation process.”
Forrand and Ellenshaw had grown up together. They had been good friends for many years. Clearly, he had trusted her, since he had personally paved the way for her to succeed him on the High Council. Did Juno trust his faith in her? As much as I need to, she reminded herself silently. Mentally crossing her fingers, she said, “Speaking hypothetically, what if there were a powerful incentive for the High Council to make that social change?”
Ellenshaw’s expression morphed once more. “Speaking hypothetically,” she repeated deliberately, “what kind of incentive do you suppose that might be?”
“A quiet but convincing demonstration of public solidarity, involving every political union on the planet.”
“Nonviolent, I would hope.”
“With that many people involved, no guarantees could be given. But I can say with certainty that it would be as peaceful as possible, with no lasting harm coming to any of the High Councilors or their families.”
“It sounds like something Dennis Forrand might have conceived.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“And, still hypothetically, of course, if the work had begun years ago, when do you estimate this incentive might be ready to implement?”
“After years of preparation, it should be fairly soon. A month from now, perhaps.”
Ellenshaw leaned forward, her expression taut. “We don’t have that long. What’s the earliest possible date?”
Juno pretended to think hard for a moment. “Two weeks, and that’s cutting it perilously close.”
The older woman’s demeanor relaxed once more. “I can work with that. All right, then. It’s an interesting concept. Definitely something to keep in mind. Meanwhile, I think it would be worthwhile to relay both of your observations to the High Council the next time I meet with them. I’ll be sure to let you know how they respond.”
“Thank you. I would appreciate that, Madame Supreme Adjudicator.”
As she got to her feet to leave, Ellenshaw turned and remarked, “Should the hypothetical become necessary, understand that I would be holding you to your unspoken promise, Chief Adjudicator.”
“Of course. As I would hold you to yours,” Juno replied.
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 538 Earth days.
Hearing the sound of the clean room door opening, Juno glanced up and saw Angeli enter, looking only a little the worse for wear. Clearly, Novak had gone easy on her. Juno wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or disappointed by that.
The visitor strolled over to one of the padded armchairs and settled herself onto it.
“I’m sorry to be late,” she said. “Novak didn’t release me until seven o’clock this morning, and I had to stop at my apartment for a shower and a change of clothes. And a bite to eat,” she added, a note of resentment creeping into her voice. “Three days and all they gave me was water. I was starving.”
Juno made no response, just continued thoughtfully drinking her strong, red rooibos tea. Meanwhile, Angeli was looking at the silver tray on the glass-topped table and realizing, as Juno had intended, that there would be no sharing of beverage today. The floral patterned ceramic pot was smaller than usual, and the only available cup and saucer were already in use.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, Angeli raised questioning eyes to the Chief Adjudicator’s face.
“You weren’t expecting me to return?”
“Oh, I knew you would return,” Juno said at last. “I’m just not expecting you to stay.”
“Why not?”
Leaning forward, Juno carefully replaced her cup and saucer on the tea tray. “Because we’re activating the general strike ahead of schedule and you’ll need to let everyone know as quickly as possible, so they have some time to prepare. Tools drop at noon, Greenwich Mean Time, fourteen days from now.”
Angeli leaned forward as well, anticipation tightening her features. “We’re going directly to phase three? Why? What’s happening?”
“The Reformation is happening,” Juno replied pleasantly. “More than that I am not at liberty to discuss.”
The other woman reared back in disbelief. “Not at liberty to discuss?” she echoed. “We’re family, Juno. You’ve been sharing secrets with me for the past twenty-seven years. Suddenly you’re not at liberty to discuss?”
“Some secrets have to stay at the highest levels of the EIS. It’s the nature of the business. You knew that going in.”
“But we had a plan, and an activation timetable that gave everyone plenty of advance notice. If you’re suddenly shortening it, people are going to have questions, and I’m the one they’ll be looking to for answers. What am I supposed to tell them? Because ‘I’m not at liberty to discuss it’ is simply not going to fly.”
Juno paused to consider. “All right. Tell them that a window of opportunity has opened up, and we have to change our timing to take advantage of it.”
“A window of opportunity? That’s rather vague, isn’t it?”
“It’s all anyone needs to know right now.”
“And if that doesn’t satisfy them? If they demand specifics?”
“They won’t, not if you’ve done your job as well as I know you can.”
Her expression hardened. “Well, I’m not satisfied. I’ve worked too hard on this, Juno. I have a right to know.”
“A right to know?” came the tart response. “I see there’s been a misunderstanding. Let me clarify things for you. Dennis Forrand had a plan. You may recall that before sharing it with me, he sent you out of the room. Clearly, he didn’t feel that you had a right to know. When he passed away, it was entrusted to me and became my plan. At that point, you were already working as my executive assistant. I shared the practical details with you. That was what you needed in order to do your job, and it was all that you had a right to know. I will tell you this much, and it’s more than I should: the Reformation is now part of a larger plan, one that requires an accelerated timetable.”
Angeli stared at her for a moment. “All right, then,” she murmured. “I’ll begin notifying contacts right away. And thank you for setting me straight, Madame Chief Adjudicator.”
Without another word, Angeli stalked out of the room.
Watching her go, Juno felt a nagging unease at the back of her mind. She knew she’d done the right thing, keeping Angeli out of the loop. They were both related by blood to Dennis Forrand, and Juno was committed to keeping his family — her family — safe. However, as she’d told Novak earlier, Angeli was a loose cannon. Which way would she roll? Would she swallow her resentment and follow orders? Or would she exercise her own judgment and deviate from the plan?
Only time would tell.
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 537 Earth days.
“There’s definitely a correlation,” declared Naguchi. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
“We weren’t looking for one before,” Novak pointed out, leaning over the scientist’s shoulder for a better view of the computer screen. “What have you found?”
“There have been four pandemics. Each one broke out just as we were poised to make leaps forward in the fields of science and technology. In the first three cases, all quite devastating, the disease organism was identified as being extraterrestrial in origin. It was naturally presumed that our own explorers must have brought it back with them from space. Research and development went on the back burners for up to twenty years each time, while we focused on curing the infected, killing the virus, and placing every aspect of our space program under close scrutiny, testing and improving it in order to prevent a recurrence of the problem.”
“So, simply stated, each time we reached a certain level of skill or knowledge and were about to rise above it, we got sick and had to stop?”
“Essentially, yes. You can call me a cynic, but I very much doubt whether the timing was coincidental.”
Novak had to agree. “If you’re right, then our progress was being monitored somehow,” he reasoned grimly. “That’s the only way they could have known when to pull us up short. What about the fourth pandemic?”
“It was the one that jumped species, necessitating the slaughter of tens of millions of domesticated animals. In 2320, a mutated strain of one of the earlier viruses re-emerged. It raced through an urban district and several Industrial Zones in Indo-Asia, then spread quickly to Pacifica, and from there to Americas. One and a quarter billion Humans were infected. That was one third of the population at the time. By then, however, our pharmaceutical industry was so robust from dealing with the previous three outbreaks that effective treatment was developed and made available almost immediately. The survival rate was 82 percent. Fewer than a quarter-billion died, almost all of them Ineligibles. Compared to the death rates of the other pandemics — and I can hardly believe I’m saying this — it was no big deal. We were forced to euthanize every family pet in three of the five political unions on the planet, but other than that, it hardly set us back at all.
“And then, in 2384, along came Angel of Death. The plague wiped out nearly half of our colonies and killed more than five million, all of them Eligible this time. And since the Relocation Authority only lets our best and brightest go out into space, and most of the advanced research and development tends to happen out there as well, the loss was a crippling blow.”
“You think the Eligibles were being targeted?”
“Looking at each pandemic’s point of origin and contagion vector, I’d say it was a definite possibility. Wherever Angel of Death broke out, the casualty rate among those infected was close to one hundred percent. If anyone had brought it back to Earth, I shudder to think what the consequences would have been.”
The taste of bile was slowly rising at the back of Novak’s throat. “This is what Quan wanted us to find out, Nayo: that Humanity has been under attack for the past three hundred years by an enemy determined to prevent us from achieving equality with the other races.”
“You know,” Naguchi began uncomfortably, “Quan did tell you that he was out to sabotage his own government’s plans for Humanity. What if the enemy you’re talking about is the Stragori Directorate?”
“I don’t think it is. These pandemics have reduced our numbers by more than half, and Quan specifically said that the Directorate is dedicated to the preservation of Humanity, not its extinction.”
“A statement that could be interpreted in several different ways. Just think about this, Barry. We know that the Directorate does not have the full backing of the Stragori population, so it’s safe to assume that the radicals, at least, are actively opposed to its policies and its plans. We also know that there have been Stragori spies living among us for a long time. Who better to keep an eye on our progress? And you may recall that Quan also told you the Directorate has been purposely holding us back.”
“Yes, by buying up and warehousing the work of our best scientists, to prevent us from being destroyed by someone else. His words. And when I asked him to specify who that was—” Novak straightened up, muttering a curse under his breath. “That sneaky bastard spent nearly an hour on my roof and never answered the question.”
Naguchi tossed him a weary glance. “Was it the right one?”
“I thought it was.”
“Well, whether it’s the Stragori or one of the other races, someone out there seems determined to undermine our progress,” he concluded, blanking the screen. “Considering what else is going on, I almost hate to bring this up, but if one or more of the alien races are plotting against us, shouldn’t someone be reporting it to the High Council so they can register an official complaint with the Galactic Great Council?”
Novak paused, recalling the suspicions that his and Vargas’s contacts had privately shared with them about the Great Council. If those suspicions were correct and the Council was behind Earth’s current problem with the Corvou, it might also have been behind the pandemics, a thought Novak found deeply troubling…
…because the Great Council wasn’t just another gang, or a rival intelligence organization. It was the aliens’ governing body, commanding the forces and resources of at least fourteen worlds, every one of them more highly advanced than Earth. Humanity would have to have an ironclad case and an army of allies backing them up before they could even think about presenting a challenge. It was an op that would require months, if not years, of careful preparation — years they would not have if the Corvou won the coming war.
As Tommy Novotny, Novak had led the Warrior Kings to victory over half a dozen other gangs for control of the Zone in New Chicago, first defeating and then absorbing them, until only the Kings remained. Rex Regum, literally the king of the Kings, was a strategist. That was probably why Forrand had chosen him to head up EIS Ops. Now, as Barry Novak, he knew that it was never a good idea to attack from a position of weakness, especially if it involved opening up a second front while still battling for one’s life on the first one.
“This isn’t the time, Nayo. I promise you, once the current crisis is past, we’ll pursue this. We’ll run down the truth and we’ll broadcast it and keep broadcasting it until appropriate action is taken. But not right now. Right now, we have an identified enemy bent on wiping us out and a planetful of people to save. That’s where we need to focus our attention.”
“Ignore the enemy that’s been systematically wounding us until we’ve taken care of the one that’s intent on killing us?” Naguchi’s quick, sharp motions as he shut down the computer spoke volumes. “Are we at least going to ask the Great Council to help us in this endeavor?”
Reluctantly, Novak replied, “We are not.”
“Well, I hope you know what you’re doing, Barry.” And with that, the scientist got up from his chair and walked out of the room.
Novak was hoping so too, although he didn’t see how the current situation left him much choice. Proving the Great Council’s complicity in the attempted genocide of the Human race wasn’t going to be easy, especially since it had been the sharing of Gate technology by that same Great Council that had first made it practical for Humanity to explore deep space. Far from holding Earth back, they had apparently wanted Humans to go out among the stars.
At least, that had been what they wanted back in 2230 C.E. To Novak’s knowledge, not counting an under-the-table deal Earth High Council had made with the Nandrians a few years earlier, none of the races represented on the Great Council had given Earth anything remotely technological since then. What if they’d changed their minds about helping Humanity?
Or about letting them live off-world?
Or about letting them live, period?
Inwardly, Novak shivered. This was not the sort of thought that he wanted to take to bed with him that night.
—— «» ——
Doomsday minus 535 Earth days.
“She’s back, boss.”
Novak looked up from his light screen and saw DeWitt leaning through his office door.
“Madame Vargas?”
“Nope. Her shadow, the one you questioned a few days ago. She insists she has to talk to you.”
“Take her to the conference room on the sixth floor.”
“Are we giving her tea?”
“I’m giving her five minutes of my time. That’s more than enough.”
There were eight comfortable chairs evenly spaced around the plastiplex-topped table in the middle of the room, but Angeli was on her feet and pacing when Novak finally walked through the door.
She spun to face him. “You were right,” she blurted before he had a chance to speak. “You’ve been right all along, and I’ve been an idiot. Juno Vargas is plotting a coup.”
He tried to look shocked. “Really! What makes you say that?”
“She’s set an activation date for the general strike, giving people only a couple of weeks to prepare. When I pressed her for a reason, she finally told me that the Reformation isn’t the actual plan. It’s part of a greater plan, one that she refuses to talk about, even with me. What else could she be up to?”
Novak knew the answer to that. It would have been easy enough to read her in, but she was presenting him with an opportunity he simply couldn’t pass up.
“You would know better than I would what she’s capable of,” he told her, rearranging his features into an expression of concern. “Does she realize that you’re onto her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. Then here’s what I want you to do. Go back there and follow her orders like a good soldier, but keep your eyes and ears open and let me know anything you’re able to find out about her plans.”
She frowned, clearly uncomfortable with this new role in the organization.
“I’m not suggesting that you should spy on your boss,” he assured her. “Don’t go planting listening devices or rifling through drawers. That’s the kind of stuff that will get you caught. Just pay me a visit every once in a while and share what you’ve learned. As you did today.”
“All right,” she promised, her lips falling into a straight, thin line. “That I can do.”