The old guard, p.17
The Old Guard, page 17
“The consequences of misuse would be… severe.”
She left the room without another word, taking her terrifying jammer with her and leaving the two Adamantines staring out the window in something close to shock.
“She could just… cut off their import license,” Lorraine finally said. “Would that be as bad for FBIT as I think?”
“I’m not sure what percentage of their operations involved crossing United Worlds borders, but I imagine that would not merely hurt them financially but actually stop many operations for an extended period,” Vigo replied. “A permanent suspension would probably destroy them.”
They traded a long glance.
“I begin to understand why the United Worlds manages to keep their tech to themselves,” Vigo finally concluded.
“That woman was terrifying.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“No word from Devine?”
Lorraine shook her head as she stepped out of the car behind Jarret. “Not since last night,” she admitted. “I suspect he had something to do with the Commissioner tracking us down, but whatever he went to sort out, it seems to have taken up his attention.”
The exterior of the Great Hall of the Grand Assembly was thrown into stark relief in the equatorial sunlight. The plaza was paved in white marble, lined by a colonnade of columns of different stone. One column per member system of the United Worlds—and Lorraine didn’t even need the plaza’s tourist information system to guess that each column was made of stone brought from a different world.
There was some symbolism, she suspected, to the fact that Ambassador Humphrey was waiting for her by the pillar built from Greenhall stone.
He gave her a slight, unnecessary bow as she approached, and she picked up the same peppery scent of his cologne.
“Ambassador. Thank you for joining me today,” she told him.
“Even if I hadn’t thrown my support behind you, Your Highness, this is the most important vote the General Assembly will have on our Kingdom in our lifetimes, let alone the duration of my posting here,” he pointed out. “I have to be here.”
“Is everything arranged?” She glanced back at Vigo. Devine had been handling most of the logistics of their interactions with the Assembly, and without him, she wasn’t sure who would have that information.
In hindsight, she should have borrowed a secretary from Goldenrod’s admin department.
“We have a secured section in the observation galleries, arranged by UWAS,” Vigo told her. “No presentation today?”
Lorraine shook her head and glanced at Humphrey.
“Unless you know something I don’t, Ambassador?” she prodded him.
“The Speaker will allow for someone to ask questions if they want, but if they were going to ask, something would have been prearranged,” he admitted. “This is really just a vote. The UWN squadron we’re asking for is more important to them than our entire nation and… well, a single squadron isn’t that important to the Assembly.”
“I hate that part,” she admitted. “But it’s what makes this possible at all.”
“Agreed. It’s not a bad sign that no one has prearranged a question,” Humphrey told her. “It’s also not a good sign. It just… is.”
“I know. Lead the way, Tamir. I think you know the Assembly better than I do.”
“Of course.”
The observation galleries of the Grand Assembly were massive balconies, with the individual pods for the system delegations above and below them. Large screens were positioned to bring the current speakers into focus, and a link feed provided all anyone could want for contextual information and updates on the official debate.
As Lorraine’s Guard led her into the secured gallery, the Great Hall was stunningly silent. The sound design of the cavernous structure muffled any discussions taking place as the Representatives returned to their seats and prepared for the afternoon’s work. The observation galleries themselves were sparsely occupied—another painful sign of just how unimportant her plea was to humanity’s eldest star nation.
Even the audience and media didn’t care. Someone in the crowd, she was sure, was working for her uncle’s faction and relaying the results back to the Kingdom of Adamant. There were enough solid nos on her list to suggest that someone had put a degree of effort into frustrating this vote.
Possibly more than she knew. There had been so little time. She hadn’t run into active opposition, but with only four days to corral votes…
“Thousand and sixty-eight Representatives in the Hall,” Humphrey said silently in her head. “More than I expected, to be honest. I wish it was because they thought we mattered. I…”
Lorraine waited for him to finish the thought, but he remained silent.
“You think they’re here because our enemies have mustered them,” she guessed.
“FBIT is powerful here. We have no ally of similar weight, I’m afraid, even if we could claim the SCF itself as in our corner.”
And Lorraine remembered Devine telling her he’d been warned about doing too much for her. The Fund was neutral in their favor, for now, but they were determined to be neutral.
“Representatives of the People of the United Worlds, I call this session of the Grand Assembly to order,” Bartholomew Melle Ó hEaghra’s voice boomed across the Hall, his image suddenly large on all the screens and feeds.
“Welcome back, my friends. We have a rather busy schedule set before us, but we’re mostly used to that, aren’t we?”
The sound design should have muffled the chuckle that answered his joke. The fact that it was audible in the main feed told Lorraine it was at least partially artificial. A fascinating realization about the Assembly and Ó hEaghra himself, she suspected.
“First on the agenda,” the Speaker noted. “Four days ago, Pentarch Lorraine Adamant of the Kingdom of Adamant came before this august body and requested our intervention under the terms of the Stability Convention.
“As the intervention she sought required the deployment of a full capital-ship squadron beyond the wormholes that mark the borders of our United Worlds, the decision was put to us, the Grand Assembly.”
That hung in the air for a few seconds before the big man continued.
“The full scope of the request is this: that the United Worlds Navy deploy a battleship squadron, accompanied by appropriate escorts, to the Adamantine System to seek the surrender of Lord Regent Benjamin Adamant, accused of coup d’etat and fratricide. Once that surrender has been secured, a detachment of United Worlds Diplomatic Service observers will remain in the Kingdom of Adamant for six months to act as guarantors for a free and clear election of the next King of Adamant.”
Ó hEaghra’s gaze, magnified massively by the systems of the Great Hall, swept over his colleagues.
“Pentarch Adamant is, of course, with us today,” he noted. “If any of the Representatives of this Assembly wish to speak to their colleagues on this matter or to ask further questions of the petitioner, please advise via your links.”
That call hung in the air for a good thirty seconds of silence. That it lasted that long spoke to both performance and tradition, Lorraine supposed, since every Representative had a neural link that would have let them submit their question in less than five seconds.
“As there is no further discussion, please register your votes.”
Lorraine held her breath. There was no visual tally. While the votes were not anonymous, it was apparently twenty-four hours before who voted for what was released.
“Thank you, Representatives,” Ó hEaghra stated, his tone showing no sign of the results. “With one hundred eighteen abstentions, four hundred sixty-four in favor, and four hundred eighty-six opposed, the petition is denied.
“Moving on to the next item on our agenda…”
TWENTY-NINE
The petition is denied.
Four words. Four words that rendered everything Lorraine had done for six months meaningless.
Dozens of people had died aboard Goldenrod to get her to Earth. Two thousand–plus had died aboard Corsair when her people had killed a battlecruiser for her… so that she could get to Earth. Thousands more had died in the San Ignacio System when Wray had opened fire in a neutral zone guarded by that system’s defenders.
Every hour of every day for six months had been bent toward getting into the Great Hall of the Grand Assembly and getting their help. Now, by a margin of less than thirty votes, it had all been wasted effort.
She wanted to yell. To scream at them for their callousness, for their disdain for anything outside their borders, their arrogance, their oh-so-careful detachment from the people they were abandoning.
Vigo’s hand on her shoulder wasn’t necessary to restrain that urge, but she appreciated it nonetheless.
“Is there any purpose to us remaining here now?” she asked Humphrey, surprised by how calm and level her voice was.
“No.” She saw the Ambassador shake his head out of the corner of her eye. “There are appearances and etiquette and a thousand other rules to this place, but even the Grand Assembly isn’t so inhuman as to expect you to stand here and listen to the rest of the day’s business once they’ve turned you down.
“We can… retreat to the embassy to discuss our next steps?”
“Our quarters in the Dignitaries Complex, I think,” Vigo countered.
He was right, Lorraine knew. She was tentatively prepared to trust Humphrey, but it was guaranteed there were people in the Kingdom of Adamant’s embassy that would still see her as a threat to her uncle.
She wasn’t sure how she could be a threat to her uncle now. She wasn’t sure what their next steps could be.
All she really knew was that she couldn’t stand there and listen to the overly well-meaning prattle of the politicians who had just abandoned her Kingdom to its fate.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Humphrey might not have known Lorraine well, but he was wise enough to take his cue from Jarret and the close detail. No one said a word the entire drive back to their Assembly-provided quarters.
Even Lorraine was deathly silent, barring the screaming in her own mind, until she stood at the door to their apartment.
“I guess the vote is done,” she observed slowly. “When do they kick us out of here?”
“Högvakten will let you know, I imagine, given the security concern remains,” Humphrey assured her. “At least a week. I can help arrange temporary housing after that—or you can return to your ship…”
He trailed off for a few seconds, long enough for Lorraine to open the door and stalk past the Adamant Guard standing watch.
Her people deserved better than her frozen thunderstorm. They deserved to know the truth. They deserved for her to have a backup plan, one that had a chance in hell of succeeding.
“I don’t know if today is the time to talk next steps,” she heard Jarret say behind her.
“We don’t have time at all,” Lorraine replied. She took a seat in the main seating area and was surprised to have Alvarez appear out of nowhere to press a coffee cup into her hand.
“Heard from Palmer,” the Guard told her. “Drink. Everything will still be here in five minutes.”
Lorraine obeyed. The coffee was black as black could be and hot enough that she might have injured herself if she were a touch less genetically engineered.
“I don’t have another plan yet,” she admitted. “But it’s been over six months since my mother’s death. If everything had gone per tradition and constitution, a new King would have been selected by now.”
“Even with the Charon Complex, our news is a hundred and forty days out of date,” Jarret pointed out.
“That channel may close now that your SCF claim is over,” Humphrey warned grimly. “It’s a giant pain, frankly. Some of the information running through there filters down into general news channels, eventually, but we aren’t allowed to run diplomatic couriers through the artificial wormholes. Your uncle could have ordered my relief as his first act and the datawork would still be in transit.
“We get news weeks or months before we get official instructions. It’s been weird the last few years.”
“But the Regent has access to FBIT’s communications,” Jarret argued.
“Not officially.” The old man spread his hands. “The irony is that Benjamin would likely find it easier to order me killed than fired right now. I’m watching my back carefully, I promise.”
Lorraine stared down into her coffee cup. She needed a next step, an answer that wasn’t a vague concept rattling around her battered skull. She had at least four of those—but when one of the more reasonable options was spend the next decade training as an underworld assassin to kill the man herself, she knew her planning had gone awry.
“We need to brainstorm options,” she heard herself say. “I wish I had some.”
“I think you all need to rest, honestly,” Humphrey said. “You’ve been running and working for months, preparing for this. And now the UW has fucked us. I have a few levers to pull. Nothing that’s going to get a battle squadron,” he admitted, “but I might be able to keep our channel through the Complex open for a bit longer.
“For now, I’d say we meet tomorrow and do that brainstorming, Your Highness.”
The Ambassador seemed to have faith that this wasn’t over yet. Lorraine wasn’t sure she shared it, but she appreciated it.
“Thank you, Humphrey,” she said quietly. “We’ll do that. I just…”
“My dear Pentarch, I have hitched myself to your course,” he told her in answer to the question she hadn’t asked. “This effort may have failed, but by working on it at all, I suspect I have firmly added myself to Benjamin Adamant’s better off dead list… and if there is one thing I must admit about your uncle, it is that he never leaves things undone!”
Lorraine had recovered from the initial shock, she thought, and was beginning to poke at possibilities to research when Alastair Devine finally returned.
Her Guards told her he was on his way in, though she noted with amusement that they didn’t ask if they should send him in. They knew how things were going, and if her boyfriend had lost access privileges, she’d have told them.
Or they’d have known without her saying a word. They did live in her back pocket, after all.
It was a sign of how things had changed that none of the Guard accompanied him into her room. She’d spent little time in the space the Assembly had provided that hadn’t been, one way or another, in the bed, but she was appreciating the desk and information systems at that moment.
She didn’t need her people looking over her shoulder as she assessed and rejected idea after idea. The expansive desk and its capable holoprojectors let her set up a complex virtual array of files and data points… none of which were helping answer either the long-term or the short-term questions.
“Where were you?” she growled as Alastair entered. That was a short-term question that could be easily answered. One thing off of her list.
“Talking to people,” he told her. He didn’t close as much distance as she’d have expected, stopping and leaning against the wall next to the door. “I didn’t expect to miss the vote. I’m sorry.”
“Did you expect it to fail?” Lorraine asked. She’d counted on having him there, providing a moral support she hadn’t realized she’d been leaning on until it wasn’t there.
“I didn’t know. It was too in question to be sure, so I started pulling levers,” he admitted. “Some of them took more effort than I was expecting.”
“Like those with the TIE Commission, Special Agent Devine?” she said. That was… No, it was fair. He’d been lying to her all along.
He winced.
“That one was surprisingly easy to pull,” he replied. “They’d already been hearing the rumors of what your crew had been talking about. Making sure enough of the detailed stories got told in the right restaurants required little more than a message to Chief Roman and a quiet hint to a couple of old friends.
“As for Special Agent…” Alastair stared out the window for a long moment. “That tells me that Felicia Gordon knew bloody well what I did and decided there was going to be a cost. She’s the one who used that, I’m guessing?”
“You’re dodging the question,” Lorraine pointed out. “But yes.”
He nodded firmly.
“I do work for the United Worlds Diplomatic Service,” he said plaintively. “But they don’t really talk about some branches of it. Like the United Worlds Extraterritorial Surveillance Corps. UWESC is tasked to keep the Diplomatic Service’s personnel safe, at all costs. We… do a few other things, too.”
“Covert ops.”
“That’s a very broad category, but what I did for UWESC and the Diplomatic Service fell under it, yes,” he confirmed levelly. “And when I’d done too much and burned out too hard, they lent me to the SCF for what I was told would be a temporary placement.”
He shrugged.
“Everything I told you was true, Lorraine; I just didn’t give details that could get me in a lot of trouble.”
“And now?” she demanded.
“Now…” He trailed off, meeting her gaze in a way that sent sparks down her spine. “Now you’re asking, and I have reasons to be completely honest with you.”
Lorraine bit her lower lip and looked at him. He was in a similar outfit to the one he’d worn on her date, though something about it suggested that he had been wearing a suit jacket over it earlier.
It was also rumpled enough that he might well have changed into it shortly after leaving the previous evening.
“Also, we don’t have time to have a fight over my deceptions, and coming clean seems the fastest way to get moving,” he confessed.
“So far as I can tell, I have all the time in the world right now.”
