Flashpoint (Book One of the Drive Maker Trilogy) Page 5

  “You’re dressed, sir.” The guardsman seemed surprised.

  Cherran struck a pose. “How do I look?”

  “Dapper, sir.”

  Cherran tilted his head to the side in an expression of surprised pleasure as Shuping moved out into the hallway in front of him. “I like this guy.”

  The guardsman smiled, but it was tight-lipped. “Follow me, sir. We need to get to a secure location.”

  He took off at a brisk walk down the hall, Cherran and Shuping following behind. Cherran’s suite, along with the suites of the other ambassadors, and the actual chambers of PanGal were aboard the Samuel Gunther Space Station (named for the president of the Meltian Republic) in orbit above Meltia. However, each of PanGal’s five members was allowed to dock a single ship to the station in which to hold secure conferences. Cherran assumed they were headed to the Meltian ship.

  “So, what’s going on?” he asked.

  “Not here,” the guardsman said.

  Cherran turned to Shuping; unless whatever was going on was some kind of government secret, there should be something in the news about it on the interplanetary network, which Shuping could access easily through her uplink implant.

  Shuping looked like she was staring down a Ferosian garfland intent on eating her.

  Not good, then.

  As Cherran suspected, their guardsman led them to a conference room inside the Meltian docked ship, the MRS Ulterior Motives. In the center of the room was a table screen displaying a map of the galaxy with the territory of each of the five powers in a different color, arbitrarily oriented so that the Liberated Territories occupied the top, the Kaleknarian Empire was on the left, the Meltian Republic the right, the Coalition of Developing Worlds on the very bottom, and the comparatively tiny Selecian Consortium just a dab below the center.

  Near the ceiling, a series of screens displayed the uniformly rumpled heads of the five other members of the Meltian Republic Cabinet, plus President Gunther himself.

  “Good morning, Cherran,” Gunther said.

  “Morning, Mr. President,” Cherran said. According to the letter of Meltian law, the whole point of the Cabinet was to act as an advisory group for Gunther, but Gunther had set a strong precedent of seeking consensus in his Cabinet throughout his presidency, which often made Cherran feel like he had more power in his advisory role in the Cabinet than in his actual job as ambassador in PanGal.

  “I’m glad you found time out of your busy schedule to join us,” Meltian Republic Special Intelligence Service Director Harrison said. He was the only one aside from Cherran to be sporting full Galactican business attire.

  “Well, you know,” Cherran said, “it takes a lot of beauty sleep to keep this charm engine purring.”

  Shuping shook her head. One of the other Cabinet members—Resources—smiled, and Cherran winked back at her. He had no idea what her real name was, nor Health’s, nor Economy’s, but they seemed okay with being called by their advisory capacity, and it was much easier to remember at any rate.

  “We appreciate your humor, Cherran,” Gunther said, “but we have serious business to discuss. I have no idea what any of you have heard on the interplanetary network, but I’ve asked Mr. Harrison to prepare a brief rundown of what we have established as fact.”

  Harrison glanced at something below the screen. “Yes, for those of you who were not involved, our Republic has guaranteed the independence of Trascion since the 11,801 ST Trascionite Accord, in return for their pledge not to sell trascionite to the Kaleknarians.”

  Cherran looked helplessly at Shuping.

  “Trascionite is a key component in flip drives,” Shuping whispered. “Trascion is an important supplier, so the accord cut off Kaleknar from a large fraction of the galaxy’s trascionite.”

  “Two hours ago,” Harrison said, “the Trascionese government reported that a Kaleknarian fleet had flipped into their space and demanded their surrender. After negotiations failed, a battle broke out between the Kaleknarians and the Trascionese militia one and a half hours ago. The Kaleknarians emerged victorious, and by half an hour ago, MRSIS sources on the ground—along with roughly 1,700 interplanetary network videos—confirmed that Kaleknarian transports were landing on the surface. The Kaleknarian government has not responded to communications, so their broader ambitions are unknown. However, noting the large-scale mobilization within Kaleknarian space that our Operation Galactic Resolve was intended to respond to, some within my organization believe this is a prelude to war.”

  Cherran rested his hands on the table, staring down at the political map before him. A war with Kaleknar. It was the doomsday scenario: the galaxy’s two greatest military powers facing off in a war which neither could win without terrible loss. Military think tanks had been theorizing about it ever since the Kaleknarians began their rapid post-war expansion, gobbling up the hundreds of tiny states that emerged from the chaotic aftermath of the Order War, but Cherran never expected to see it actually happen.

  Economy, meanwhile, looked incensed. “We were told that Operation Galactic Resolve was a response to the Anniversary Attacks, not Kaleknarian mobilizations.”

  “As was the rest of the Republic,” Harrison said. “Public panic is not conducive to planning for a potential war.”

  “Which, of course, we should avoid if at all possible.” Health looked pointedly at Harrison. “After a decade, our galaxy has barely healed from the Order War.”

  Cherran agreed with Health—his entire family, including his dad, had been killed in the Battle of Sambourloin—but he did not see how avoiding this new conflict could be possible. Trascion may not have been a Meltian planet, but according to Harrison, Meltia had guaranteed its independence, and Cherran could not see the Meltian Republic going back on that pledge.

  Tibaux Altez, the Commander-in-Chief of the Meltian Guard, made the counterargument that Cherran knew was coming. “If you mean to avoid war at the expense of the restoration of Trascionese liberty, then I must join every principled citizen of the Meltian Republic in declining.”

  “Mr. Altez, you should keep in mind that our first duty is to our Republic,” Harrison said. “Though I do believe that forcing the Kaleknarians out of Trascion would deal a grave blow to them, and thus aid Meltia. The Kaleknarians must be desperate in order for them to invade a planet under our protection.”

  “But why now?” Economy asked. “Trascion may be the most plentiful source of trascionite in the galaxy, but the amount of it produced in alternative locations has been steadily climbing since the Trascionite Accord.”

  “Either the Kaleknarians need a lot more trascionite immediately, or they are trying to keep it from someone else,” Gunther said.

  “Trascionese trascionite is an important part of Meltian security,” Resources said.

  “Is there an immediate danger?” Gunther asked.

  “To us?” Altez asked. “Nay—our reserves are as full as they have ever been. To the Trascionese? Absolutely.”

  “Could a surprise attack wipe out our reserves?” Resources asked.

  Altez shook his head. “Not likely. They’re scattered across the Republic.”

  Cherran could feel the Cabinet grasping at straws. He realized that any attempt at peace—or indeed any war planning—was going to rely on ascertaining the Kaleknarians’ motivation for invading Trascion. Were they trying to appease domestic political elements? Planning a surprise attack on Meltia or one of the other powers? Unfortunately, if the reclusive empire was not responding to any bilateral diplomatic channels, that left only one option.

  “PanGal.” Cherran almost laughed at himself as he said it.

  “What, Cherran?” Gunther asked.

  Cherran had told Shuping that he never gave up on PanGal, but that was not entirely true. For almost a year after he became ambassador, he had tried incredibly hard to use PanGal to bind the galaxy closer together, believing every word Shuping said about how he could unite the galaxy again, just like his father had done. By the en
d of that year, he knew that PanGal was too slow, too powerless, and too adversarial for him to succeed even in a hundred years. It would be lunacy to waste his time and effort trying to mend the divided galaxy through PanGal again, but maybe he could use PanGal to prevent it from breaking itself even more.

  “It seems like part of the problem is that you guys don’t know the first thing about why the Kaleknarians are invading.” Cherran eyed the Cabinet. “Well, PanGal meets tomorrow, as I’ve been frequently reminded, so as long as the Kaleknarian delegation does not leave the station in the next few hours, I may be able to have a little chat with their ambassador and get some of that pinned down for you. I might even be able to open the door to some bilateral negotiations.”

  “That sounds like an excellent idea.” Gunther smiled.

  Cherran’s transceiver beeped in his pocket, and he checked it to find a four-word message from Shuping, sent via her uplink implant.

  Percival would be proud.

  “That might work,” Harrison said, “but I would prefer to rest the security of the Meltian Republic on something a little firmer than your chat.”

  Cherran was mildly incensed by Harrison’s dismissal of his diplomatic skills, but then again, in Cherran’s years as ambassador, PanGal had done precious little to inspire confidence in it as a conflict-resolution tool.

  “Right,” Economy said. “Did the Trascionese government escape the Kaleknarians?”

  “Unfortunately, they did not,” Gunther said. “However, the Trascionese chapter of the Jacobin organization has already begun to collect soldiers and materiel from the defeated Trascionese militia. Mr. Harrison neglected to mention this, but they have signaled to us their intent to lead a resistance against the Kaleknarian occupation.”

  “I ‘neglected’ it because it was irrelevant,” Harrison said. “As we speak, the MRSIS is working to track down and arrest members of the Jacobins’ political branch in connection to the Anniversary Attacks. We cannot prosecute the Jacobins with one hand and aid them with the other.”

  “I agree,” Altez said. “Mr. Harrison, if your sources can obtain for me a more complete picture of the composition of the Kaleknarian fleet, that should aid me in assembling a fleet of our own over Meltia to respond to it, should the need arise.”

  “I’ll get my agents on that,” Harrison said.

  “Speed is of the essence, Mr. Altez,” Gunther said. “That is why I recommended using the Jacobins. How quickly can your fleet be ready?”

  “It should almost certainly be set for deployment by Treaty Day,” Altez said.

  Gunther nodded. “That is quicker than I anticipated. It should be acceptable.”

  “What should be told to the public about the weapon?” Altez asked.

  Cherran leaned slightly forward. There was only one weapon in the Meltian Guard’s arsenal that was qualified to be called “the weapon”: a wonder-weapon that the Galactic Government had developed in the final days of the Order War. Nobody outside of the highest ranks of the Meltian Guard knew how it worked, but there were videos of it destroying entire cruisers in a single shot.

  “Don’t mention it,” Gunther said. “If they press you, say that we believe the situation is not yet dire enough for it to be deployed.”

  Yet. Cherran was somewhat relieved by Gunther’s pronouncement, but at the same time, the Meltian Guard did not even consider hauling out the weapon to resolve minor disputes. The fact that it was on the table at all meant that Altez and Gunther were ready to leverage every asset in the Meltian arsenal in a total war against the Kaleknarian Empire.

  Which just meant that his diplomacy had to succeed.

  The smell of incense filled Taylor’s nostrils.

  It was the same smell that Hezekiah had worn just before the Anniversary Attacks, but when Taylor opened her eyes, she was alone on a long and empty beach. The sand around her was rough and red-pink and almost as flat as the murky ocean stretching away from her into the distance.

  The waterline curved away from her, suggesting that she was in some kind of bay, and following that line far into the distance in either direction led to a structure. Far to her right as she faced out toward the bay was a small city, or at least something that resembled the skyline of one. Far to her left was a more humble structure, that could have been a rocky outcropping or a squat complex—she couldn’t tell for sure, given the distance.

  Her attention was sucked toward a slim metal rectangle lying on the sand in front of her: a Free Space Optical or FSO transceiver, if she was not mistaken. Nearly every Meltian citizen carried some form of one in order to connect to the interplanetary network, but it was not something she would expect to find on an apparently uninhabited beach. Taylor stooped to pick it up, and the device turned on at her touch. She held it to her ear.

  A howl tore through her, sinking its claws into her mind. It was not an animal noise, much less an intelligent one. More like the howl of the air rushing out of a starship through a hull breach, only she was both the starship feeling the wound in its side and the terrified crew member feeling the water boil off her eyeballs as she was sucked into the void of space. At the same time, she had the strangest feeling that this blood-freezing cry was trying to tell her something—a thousand somethings—but most importantly:

  The Drive Makers are in danger.

  Taylor pulled the device away from her ear, and it almost felt like the transceiver had literally sunk tentacles into her skull, which she was now ripping out one by one.

  She cast the metal rectangle into the water.

  “Mwa?”

  Taylor spun around to find Ciro’s mua’er sitting behind her, its long, flat tail shifting the sand behind it back and forth. The little creature had a plaintive look that reminded her distinctly of a time, months ago, when it had brought her a toy that Ciro bought for it, wanting to play, and she had turned it down. Only this time there was an intelligent gleam in the mua’er’s eyes as they beseeched her to pick up the gift it was presenting to her.

  Another transceiver.

  “No!” Taylor shouted. “Get away from me!”

  The incense smell faded.

  Taylor shivered violently in her bed aboard the MRS Kindred Spirit.

  She had lived through a multitude of nightmares since the Order War—most centering around the people who died as a result of her exploits, but some abstract—yet nothing had ever chilled her as deeply as that howl. Perhaps that was because it did not seem like a dream at all. There were no fuzzy images hacked together by her sleeping brain; it was all indelibly burned in her memory.

  The Drive Makers are in danger.

  That was the point of the dream, if it could be called that. She suspected the “drives” in question were flip drives, but even then it did not make much sense. Taylor did not know any flip drive makers. Perhaps the flip drive manufacturing industry in general was experiencing financial difficulties, but that seemed like an odd thing for a dream to point out.

  Taylor laughed at herself: “point out”? Had an imaginary FSO transceiver scrambled her brain enough for her to believe that her nightmares were trying to convey information to her? And economic information at that.

  Then again, this was certainly an exceptional dream—and she was a telekinetic. Taylor smiled at herself, shaking her head, but once the crazy thought had latched on, it refused to let go.

  Before fighting the Galactic Government in the Order War, Taylor had worked for it as a member of the Cavalieri, the GG’s telekinetic special forces. In those days, the most experienced and powerful telekinetics became “Senior” Cavalieri, largely separating themselves from the rest of the organization. The Seniors’ combination of secrecy and power spawned a wealth of rumors about their abilities—most of them fantastical—but one of the most persistent rumors was that they commanded some form of telepathy.

  Taylor was never a Senior, but before the war she believed she was on the track to become one. She had been using her telekinesis in the MRES for ten year
s since then, making it likely that she had obtained that level of mastery, and was now communing with someone or something telepathically.

  Or maybe it was just a dream.

  Most of the Senior Cavalieri perished in the war, but Taylor knew of one who had switched sides like her, and now led the Telekinetic Guard—Meltia’s Cavalieri—based out of Telahmir: Joseph Moore.

  Since she was going to be in Telahmir anyway, Taylor decided she would pay him a visit. If it turned out she was not unlocking the mystical powers of an earlier age, perhaps he could recommend some sleep medicine to her.

  Taylor sat up and swung her legs out of her narrow IES-issue bed… just in time for her cramped quarters to sound the low tone that indicated someone was waiting at the door. She cautiously stepped over her nearly-repaired SX-7 to open the door, and was immediately struck by the smell of Hezekiah’s incense. She reflexively cringed.

  “Sorry—did I surprise you?” Hezekiah was standing on the inside of the Spirit’s barrel, perpendicular to and below her. He retained his crisp, handsome style, though he now wore IES black instead of MRES blue.

  “No, sorry. Bad dream,” Taylor said.

  “About me?” Hezekiah smiled.

  Taylor’s face darkened a shade. “Not exactly. What can I do for you?”

  “We’ve arrived in Meltian orbit. The captain wanted me to get you. We’re meeting in a control boat in launch bay starboard-two, the MRS Inside Job.”

  “Thank you. Give me ten minutes, I’ll be right there.” Taylor shut the door.

  Though the Kindred Spirit was much larger than her MRES frigate, it had over two hundred crew members, meaning that her individual quarters were significantly more cramped than she was used to. Still, she managed to not only wash up and throw on one of the provided IES uniforms and her Newface, but also grab an energy bar from the Spirit’s cafeteria before joining Brook, JP, Hezekiah, and an IES pilot in the control room of the Inside Job with seconds to spare on her ten-minute promise.