Chapter Eighteen
Lith entered Cheloi’s office with a perfunctory buzz.
“You wanted to see me?”
Cheloi didn’t even look up. Her fingers were flying over the keys at her console and she examined the resulting flimsy with a critical eye even as she stifled a yawn.
“Close the door.”
She didn’t need to look up to see her driver’s hesitation, could almost hear the cautious questioning in the way the door slid shut. She scowled and made one more modification before reprinting the flimsy and nodding with satisfaction.
“Here,” she said, sliding the slip across the desk. “Take this and go pack.”
“Go…pack?”
“Don’t take everything. Just enough to make it look like you’ll be gone one or maybe two nights. Then meet C-C Rep Kodnell’s entourage. They’re leaving in thirty minutes.”
Cheloi didn’t want to look up. She busied herself checking that what she’d written was already queued for transmission to the central data centre. She looked for, and failed to find, dust on the console’s slim keyboard. She noticed the coolness of the metal-topped desk beneath her wrists and even glanced at the subtly rippled matte surface. But she knew she was delaying the inevitable. Eventually, she knew, she would have to raise her head.
She looked up and their gazes clashed.
“What’s going on?” Lith asked, her eyes bright with tension.
“You’re leaving.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Cheloi bit her lower lip then, with a sigh, rose from her chair and walked around the desk. Lith turned to face her.
“It’s not safe here any more,” Cheloi told her. “You need to get out while you can.”
“Cheloi—”
Was that the first time she had used her name? Or perhaps it was the first time she had said it normally, without mindless passion or bitter censure. Whichever it was, it sounded wonderful on her tongue, and she wanted to hear it again and again until the universe died.
But not her mission name.
“Laisen,” she interrupted gently, the words leaving her mouth before she could pull them back. “My name’s Laisen Carros.”
“What?” Lith’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
Cheloi could tell this was all going too fast for her. Which was good. She had the feeling that if Lith kept up with her current maelstrom of thoughts, she’d dig her heels in and refuse to leave.
“You’ve got to leave,” she repeated, picking up the flimsy and shoving it into Lith’s stiff hands. “I can’t,” complete my mission, “command this territory and protect you from Koul at the same time. He has to make another move soon but I can’t afford to think about that, so I’m getting you away from him. C-C Rep Kodnell has agreed to take you to the Five’s spaceport. From there, I’ve requested priority clearance to Laeyek Omni B. I’ve told everyone your mother is dying.”
Lith was still looking dazed, although a spark of spirit was beginning to reassert itself. Cheloi could see its embers springing to life behind her eyes. She grabbed her aide by the shoulders.
“Lith, you need to go,” she told her urgently, not giving her time to think. “I’ve made up a story and cleared passage off-planet, but this will be the only chance you have before this whole territory gets blown to oblivion.”
“Why would it get blown into oblivion?”
A short, humourless bark of laughter escaped from Cheloi’s mouth. Why? Because this was the end of things. Because she had organised everything on a hair-trigger and couldn’t even guarantee she herself would get out alive.
“It would take too long to explain.” Already, she thought she could hear the rush of precious seconds as they trickled through her fingers. “From Laeyek, get to the Fusion as fast as you can,” she said in a low urgent voice. “The Perlim will be asking questions after this and you don’t want to get caught by them.”
Lith’s eyes widened as her brain reached conclusions she wasn’t meant to reach. Cheloi cursed to herself.
“You’re Fusion too, aren’t you?”
Cheloi knew she paused for too long.
“I—yes.”
She didn’t give Lith time to reply. With fierce hands, she captured her face and kissed her, softening only when she felt those soft, generous lips part for her. If there was only one moment from her life she could live over and over, Cheloi thought, this would be it.
She poured every drop of love, longing and regret into that embrace. She wanted to deepen the contact, hold that body against hers, feel Lith’s heat warm her own nervous too-cold body, but there was still too much at risk. The door was only closed, not locked, and nothing prevented someone from entering. Not Rumis. And, more dangerously, not Koul.
With reluctance, Cheloi pulled away.
“You’ve got to go. Now,” she said huskily.
Lith lifted fingers to her lips, now flushed and a little swollen.
“What about you?”
Cheloi knew what she was asking but chose deliberately to misinterpret the question. “Lith love, I can’t think clearly when you’re around. There’s something I must do and I can’t do it while you’re here. Do you understand?”
Her driver, her heart, nodded.
“Get packed. Avoid everyone as much as you can. Don’t say a word, not even to Rumis. Get in that skimmer and don’t look back until you’re safe in Fusion space.”
“I’ll find you,” Lith promised in a half-whisper as Cheloi shepherded her to the door.
“I know,” Cheloi said, because she didn’t want to lie. She looked once more into those eyes, burnt the image of their warm intensity and bright intelligence into her brain, then pushed her out the door. And, with a swallow, returned to work.
Day 1,573 of the War:
“This is preposterous!” Koul exclaimed.
Yes it was. Even Cheloi could see that. But it was her preposterous, so that made it all right.
Kodnell had left two days ago, taking Lith with him, and Cheloi had waited those two days before springing her trap. She had been watching the transport nets and knew the moment her aide set foot in the Five. Lith must have told the C-C rep a good story on the way down because she snagged a top-priority transport off-planet, cleared a lull in the storms and was away. Even Cheloi, as territory commander, didn’t have the authority to endorse such a high-speed mode of flight. There was still the faint chance that Lith might be intercepted by the Perlim military and somehow sent back to Menon, but Cheloi was betting that her driver was smart enough to get off the military transport when it touched down at its first stop and make her own way back to the Fusion, regardless of the transit passes she had in her possession.
“Which part are you referring to exactly, Koul?”
With Lith free and on her way home, Cheloi could get back to concentrating on the task at hand. She felt it again, that cool surge of power that settled in her, sharpening her senses and clearing her mind. Her doubts, her conscience, would come back later and haunt her. It always did. But for now, she was a highly-trained organic piece of weaponware with her target in sight.
“Putting Vanqill in charge of half the sectors is bad enough,” Koul spat, “but putting his subordinate—a Senior Major—in charge of the other half is sheer madness.”
They were back to their routine, she, Rumis and Koul sitting around the table in one of the smaller briefing rooms, as she prepared the orders for the major offensive.
“If you disagreed with the plan, you had a chance to object during our briefing with Rep Kodnell,” she pointed out calmly.
“The plan at that time did not specify command by junior officers. This is not the way the Perlim operates.”
He was correct. Which was why Cheloi had ensured Kodnell’s orders were laser-proof before he left.
“And which way would you rather the Perlim operate, Koul?” she asked calmly. “The way it has done for the past several years? The entire Empire bogged down in one war on one atmospherically unstable planet?
“I’ll admit that Kodnell may not have described the plan to such a level of detail but his orders were clear. I ran my plans regarding deployment and resource allocations with him before he left, and he’s confident that the major objectives of the strategy can be achieved as I’ve ordered.”
Her dark gaze drilled into his. “Koul, let me ask you this. Do you have confidence that this plan, as it stands, will achieve our major objectives?”
There was a slight risk he would say no. Cheloi could see the flaws herself. And Kodnell hadn’t really agreed with what she was planning to put in place. That was an outright lie. But she made sure Koul saw her share a light breakfast in the canteen with the Rep before he departed, playing up her newfound camaraderie with the man who had made her life on Menon such a misery. She smiled at his jokes and even knocked her cup lightly against his before taking a sip. Hopefully, that convinced Koul that, rather than being in opposition, she and Kodnell were now bosom buddies, almost as if they’d been hatched from the same egg.
But was it enough?
If Koul used his brain instead of his eyes…. If he turned around and point-blank refused to carry out the madness she was about to unleash….
Her second-in-command was good friends with a couple of other commanders, relationships that preceded her posting, and if he expressed his discontent more widely, planted the seed of doubt in their minds, she would be at a distinct disadvantage. She was banking on the rigidity of Perlim military training, the perception of Central Control as the ultimate in military authority and her perceived cosiness with Kodnell, to carry the initial part of the plan through. What happened after that, when boots actually hit the battleground, was another matter.
She held her breath, watching him as he thought. He fidgeted and exhaled sharply. Once, he looked at her with such loathing, she felt almost at home. After long drawn-out minutes, he conceded.
“Kodnell has a stellar reputation within Central Control. He is an exemplary tactician.”
She decided to throw him a bone. “It’s a unique situation, Koul.” She softened her voice. “We’re not just dealing with the Menon problem any longer, and we can’t afford to linger on this forsaken planet.”
Which was true, but not for the reasons he thought. As Kodnell briefed the officers on the state of the empire that last afternoon, it was as if the Fusion had sent Cheloi a message written in the clusters of stars on the projected stellar maps.
The Empire is on the edge of toppling. It is poverty-stricken and overextending its reach.
The harrying of the Fusion at the border of imperial space was a directive to her. Even the underground gossip nets that Kodnell mentioned were probably another facet of Fusion infiltration.
We’re here, we’re distracting them. Move in and shut down the Nineteen.
“If we have to take an unconventional approach to win this war, then I’ll do it.” She glanced at her adjutant. “There’s still the Fusion border waiting for us. I’m sure that will be the next campaign. And, before that, I think we all want to go home. For myself, it would be nice to see the stars clearly again.”
Koul didn’t agree. Cheloi could see that clearly. He loved it in the thick of war, wielding his authority as if it were a bludgeoning sword. She wondered what it was that motivated him to such excess. An imbalance in his brain chemistry? A traumatic childhood? She wished she knew. Whatever it was, he loved it on Menon, where a planetside conflict offered more visceral pleasures than a silent space battle.
Despite his feelings, Koul knew what was expected of him. “Of course. Home.” His voice was deadpan.
Looking to the other side of the table, she saw the exhaustion in Rumis’s eyes and knew the keenness with which he missed his family. She had to end this, not only for the Fusion, but also for the Perlim pawns who deserved better. People like Rumis, whose only crime was to be born on the wrong side of the galactic divide.
“The change in the command chain will only be temporary, and it will only be for a week. That will give the regular commanders enough time to absorb Vanqill’s lessons, then take over and execute them across the territory.”
Koul had good instincts. Cheloi could see in his changing expressions that he knew there was something wrong with the plan. But his mentor and champion, Kodnell, had signed off on it so that must mean everything was okay. In the Fusion, such doubts would have led to open discussions, but this was the Perlim Empire. Not even the Emperor expressed doubts. And if the Emperor didn’t do it, then his mere subjects didn’t do it either.
Cheloi knew enough about the textures of silence to know the moment when Koul segued from disagreement to resignation. She turned her attention to her adjutant. “Rumis, is everything prepared?”
He nodded. “The orders have been drawn up and sealed. Couriers are standing by to deliver them this evening.”
“Three weeks,” she said, looking from one man to the other. “That’s all it will take to determine whether we succeed or fail in this endeavour. And I personally think I will succeed.”
The use of the personal pronoun didn’t escape Koul and the edge of one lip curled. She had meant it as a small, privately grim joke. He took it as yet another sign of her rampant egotism.
“There’s just one more thing, Senior Colonel.”
“Yes, Koul?”
“You’re moving our local battalions out as well.”
“Yes.”
Rumis spoke up, his handsome face creased with worry. “If Colonel Grakal-Ski is thinking what I think he is, then I agree with him on this point, Colonel. Leaving our base undefended isn’t a wise move.”
“Vanqill already analysed and cleared the immediate vicinity, as you know.” What they didn’t know was the background discussion. Her cajoling of Vanqill. Her twisting of him, drawing on every gram of loyalty he had toward her, every drop of gratitude, until he agreed that HQ was one small patch of the Nineteen that needn’t be crawling with as many Perlim as standard protocol warranted. “Central Control wants a clear victory without supplying further soldiers. The only logical choice is to deploy what we can spare.”
“But can we spare our own battalions?” Rumis pursued.
“It’s a single explosive offensive,” she explained. “Kodnell made that very clear. Besides, you’ve been overseeing the armament upgrades along the rim, haven’t you Rumis?”
Her adjutant nodded.
“We have top-line tracking and missile defenses,” he added. “And our HQ-wide mute shield is impervious.”
“If the rebels decide to attack anyway,” Koul began.
“If the rebels attack, they’ll be throwing themselves against a wall of ballistic defence.” Cheloi made her voice crisp. “And that’s even if they can pinpoint our exact location. If they survive the initial onslaught, they’ll need interstellar-grade munitions to blow a hole in the shield. They don’t have it. If they break through, they need numbers to even begin matching our remnant. They don’t have those either. Although,” she paused, “I concede you may have legitimate concerns regarding our defence grid. Why don’t the both of you tour the circumference this afternoon? If you find a weakness, report it immediately and I’ll rescind orders to mobilise the base’s troops.”
Koul’s eyes narrowed. “Rescind completely?”
She smiled confidently, knowing she had out-thought his potential reservations months ago. He just didn’t know it. “Completely, Koul. You have my word. Our battalions will remain here. I’ll even hold back all the couriers until I hear from the both of you.”
It was done. The defence systems had been deemed adequate by her two reluctant officers. The couriers had been despatched. The offensive would begin at dawn. Vanqill had already received his orders via secured comms that afternoon and, effusively grateful yet more than a little arrogant, had divided his subordinate officers by sector and sent them off to their various assignments all over the Nineteen. The other Colonels would be puzzled by the strange influx of Green Sector officers until they received their orders. By then, it would be too late. Vanqill’s men were already there, the orders were clear, and the offensive was scheduled to begin within half a day. If she survived the action as a Perlim officer, then she knew the way she executed the strategy would result in an extremely uncomfortable military inquiry somewhere down the line. But she had no intention of still being on Menon in three weeks’ time.
Cheloi rested against the rock in the mute bubble halfway up the inner slope of the mountain and watched the fuzzy globes of stars jiggle through the field’s interference.
There should have been blood pounding through her veins, sending tingles of excited anticipation to the ends of her fingers, spinning her head with the momentary rush of it all. There was a vestige of intellectual satisfaction, the feeling of pride from a plan slowly executing as it should, but it was swamped by a soft cloak of sadness she had never felt before.
It was Rumis.
He had stopped before exiting the briefing room that morning.
“I haven’t seen Lith for a couple of days,” he said, puzzled.
“She had a family emergency,” Cheloi answered. “She asked me not to tell anyone about it, but her mother’s dying.”
Rumis’ eyes darkened with sympathy and Cheloi could have happily killed herself in that moment for being able to lie so well, so consummately, to the person she valued above all else.
“This bloody war,” he said, with feeling, and she knew he was thinking about his sister’s wedding and the betrothed that he had not had time to vet. “Do you think she’ll make it home in time?”
“I don’t know. Rep Kodnell was kind enough to smooth passage for her once I told him her situation. I don’t think a driver is a critical resource for me right now.”
“No, of course not,” Rumis answered, but he was distracted. Lith had treated him with respect and affection and Cheloi knew he was eager to pursue a deeper relationship with her driver. She saw the wheels turning in his head as he wondered how he could track her and when she would be returning.
Too late, Rumis. I got there before you.
He finally nodded briskly. “Well, I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I’m sure she will.”
It was Koul.
The problem with Koul was that he had potential. She could have matched him hate for hate, viciousness for viciousness but she knew his type too well. In a perverse way, she had a strange affection for him. He had come closer to killing her than anybody else had across dozens of worlds. And if it hadn’t been for a miscalculation on his part regarding Lith, he would have succeeded. He was intelligent and fiercely loyal and she could even ruminate on what it would be like to work with him rather than against him all the time. What a shame that he was such a loyal cog in the Perlim Empire’s set of decaying wheels, twisted into a psychopath by a governing structure that didn’t deserve to exist.
If Koul had been born in the Fusion, what would he be now? If that fire, steadfastness and ambition had been channelled in a different, healthier and more open environment, who would he be now?
It was Vanqill.
Cheloi had used him like a pair of boots and was about to discard him just as easily. She had taken his energy and enthusiasm and twisted it to suit her own ends. Would any future historian understand that she had targeted Vanqill almost from the moment she arrived in the Nineteen? She had closely observed him, quizzing him at meetings, inviting him for command presentations, soliciting his opinion, so she’d have a better idea of the material she had to work with and how she could deform it to her will.
He looked to her as a mentor and a commander, singularly unashamed to put such trust in a woman. That one fact, especially within the Empire, was a rare and precious gift. And she was using it to betray, not only him and his soldiers, but the entire Perlim effort.
It was Lith.
A few years ago, she might have discarded Lith’s sensibilities as a sign of weakness. Ignored them. But now, she wasn’t sure. It was as if, along with her enticing scent, some of Lith’s own ethics had rubbed against her, irritating her with prickly and uncomfortable thoughts. Her time with Lith had turned the faint doubts about her job into something more concrete and distasteful at a time when she could least afford such qualms.
When she finished this, if she lived, she was finally getting out, like she and Eys once promised they would do. Maybe it was twelve years late, but it was better than nothing.
Until that time came, however, there were still one or two more distasteful things she had to do.