The End of All Things: The Fourth Instalment (5 page)

“I think it’s something to do with the planets that are planning to announce their independence,” I said.

“I agree,” Abumwe said.

“Okay, that’s great,” Balla said.
“What, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Isn’t that why you questioned those Rraey and the prime minister?
To find those things out?”

“We found out a lot,” I said.
“Just not that.”

“Maybe you should try again.”

“You might be right,” I said.
“Specifically, I want to try another pass at Commander Tvann.”

“You going to still try to be his friend?”
Abumwe asked.
“I don’t see that being a very effective tactic.”

“The point of the first session wasn’t to make him my friend.
It was to make him not fear me.”

“And what do you plan to do now?”
Balla asked.

“I’m going to introduce him to something he actually
might
fear,” I said.

* * *

“I don’t know what these are,” Commander Tvann said, when I handed him a printout.
We were back in the same room.
I was beginning to get tired of the room, to be entirely honest about it.

“That’s a printout of targets the Colonial Defense Forces is planning to hit sometime very soon,” I said.

Tvann handed it back.
“I don’t read your language, and I’m not sure why you would want to show me confidential information in any event.”

“Because in a way you were the inspiration for the list,” I said, and handed him another printout.
“Here, this one might be more readable for you.”

Tvann took the list and read it.
He read it a second time.
Then he set the printout on the table between us.

“I don’t understand,” he said to me.

“It’s simple enough,” I said.
“You are Rraey.
The Equilibrium crew who you commanded were all Rraey.
The crew which you commanded, which took the
Chandler
and killed its crew, were Rraey.
The base from which Equilibrium operated until Rafe shot it up and rendered it unusable was formerly a Rraey military base, until your species abandoned it and the system it was in.
You are seeing a pattern here, I trust.”

“It’s a false pattern.”

“It could be,” I admitted.
“However, the top brass of the Colonial Defense Force doesn’t think so.
They’re pretty well convinced at this point that the Rraey—your government—is actively involved with Equilibrium.
It’s not the only one, to be sure.
We have enough evidence of that.
But time and again we see Rraey participation in ways we don’t see other species participating.
It is, shall we say, statistically significant.”

“You and the Conclave drove millions of us out of work and out of our homes,” Tvann said.
“Of course you will see lots of us involved in Equilibrium.”

I smiled.
“It might interest you to know that’s the very rationale Specialist Lau gave for joining up.
And I’m not saying it’s wrong.
I am saying it’s not an argument that’s going to convince the CDF that your government isn’t offering material assistance to Equilibrium.”

I pointed to the printout.
“So the CDF has decided to act.
Equilibrium is difficult to find—it’s designed to be that way, I know—so we’ve decided to stop looking and to go straight to the source, as it were.
Those are the first-wave targets we’re going to hit on the Rraey worlds.
Mostly military and industrial sites, as you can see, but also shipping and processing sites.
The plan is to make it more difficult for you to equip and assist Equilibrium.”

“You’ll also destroy our infrastructure and cause millions to starve.”

“Our analysts agree with the first.
Not so much to the second.
That will happen with the second wave of targets, however, if Equilibrium keeps up its attacks.”

“If Equilibrium keeps hitting you after your first set of targets, then it should be obvious that the Rraey are not equipping us.”

“Like I said, we know the Rraey aren’t the only ones chipping in with Equilibrium.
But we think it’s the primary one.
And aside from the value of snapping off that primary supply line, we think it sends a fine warning to everyone else: You may be using Equilibrium to destroy the Colonial Union, but we’re still strong enough to take you down with us.”

“When will you do this?”

“The thinking is there’s no reason to wait,” I said.
“The operation is in motion as we speak.
In fact some of the ships that were being tasked here at Khartoum are being reassigned to this.
It’s become the CDF’s top priority now.”

“It’s genocide.”

“I think you might be surprised at how little you and I differ in this opinion, Commander Tvann.
But I have to tell you that I’m not the one you need to make that argument to.
This is a discussion that’s taking place far above either of our heads.”

“No,” Tvann said.
“You wouldn’t have come to me with this if there was nothing you wanted from me.”

“I do have something I want from you,” I agreed.
“I want you to tell me Equilibrium’s strategy for Khartoum and the other colonies.
Tell me and convince me that this is something we can better direct our attention to than that list of targets.”
I pointed to the printout again.
“You have no reason to trust me but I will make you this promise regardless: Help me convince them and I will do everything I can to shift their focus.”

“What
can
you do?”
Tvann said.
“You’re a lieutenant.”

“I am,” I said.
“But I am an unusually well-placed lieutenant.”

Tvann was silent, and, I suspect, skeptical.

“Commander,” I said.
“Let me be clear.
The Colonial Defense Forces has made a decision.
It’s going to hit something, and it’s going to hit something hard.
And what it’s going to hit is whatever is directly in front of it.
Right now, that’s the Rraey planets.
You know that the CDF is weaker than it used to be.
But the Rraey are weaker even than that, and when the CDF hits your people, it’s going to knock them back as close to the stone age as possible.
A lot of your people are going to suffer.
The only way this doesn’t happen—the
only
way, Commander—is if we have something else to hit instead.
Give me something else they can hit.
Help me, Commander.”

An hour later I emerged from the room.
Hart was waiting for me, along with a pair of CDF soldiers waiting to escort Tvann back to the brig.

“You got everything you needed?”
he asked.

“What, you weren’t out here recording?”

“After you mocked me for it the last time I decided there were other things I could be doing with my time.”

“Yes, I think I got everything I needed.”
I nodded to the soldiers, who entered the room.
I motioned to Hart to walk with me.

“He didn’t catch on.”

“That I was bluffing about the Rraey targets?
No.
I sold it well enough.
It helps that it was exactly the sort of thing the CDF would do.”

“So now what?”

“So now we go tell Abumwe,” I said.
“And then, I suspect, we head back to Phoenix Station and tell a whole bunch of other people.
And then maybe find a hole to hide in.”

“Why?
I thought Tvann told you what Equilibrium is planning.”

“He did,” I said.

“Well?
And?”

I stopped and turned to look at my friend.
“And if everything he told me is true, Hart, then we’re all kind of magnificently fucked.”

I started walking again.
Hart stayed stationary, staring at me as I walked away.

PART TWO

“The organization known as Equilibrium is dedicated to bringing about the end of the Colonial Union,” Ambassador Abumwe said.
“We know this.
But we should be aware that the end of the Colonial Union is not the only goal of Equilibrium—indeed it’s not the primary goal.
The primary goal is the dissolution of the Conclave, the largest single government this part of space has ever seen.
To this end, Equilibrium is using the Colonial Union as a tool, and not just the Colonial Union, but Earth was well.”

Abumwe was speaking from the well of one of the State Department lecture theaters at Phoenix Station.
This particular theater could easily seat a couple hundred people, but at the moment held just four: Abumwe in the well, me sitting off to the side, and Colonels Abel Rigney and Liz Egan front row center, facing Abumwe.

Egan’s formal title was Colonial Defense Forces liaison to the Colonial Union’s Department of State, but in the aftermath of Assistant Secretary Ocampo’s betrayal of the CU, she had stepped into the role of ad hoc number two at State, someone trusted by both the secretary of state and the CDF brass.
The closer entwining of those two entities should have filled any rational person with a sense of foreboding, but at the moment no one seemed to blink.
This was in itself a commentary of the state the Colonial Union was in at the moment.

Colonel Abel Rigney, I think, didn’t have an actual title.
He was just That Guy in the CDF: the one that went everywhere, saw everything, advised everyone, and was privy to it all.
Honestly, if you wanted to cripple the CDF—and by extension the Colonial Union—all you would have to do is put a bullet into his temple.
I suspect entire chunks of the Colonial Union government would simply stop working because no one would know who to talk to without Rigney acting as intermediary.

Officially, Egan and Rigney were mid-level apparatchiks at best.
Unofficially, they were the people you talked to when a thing needed to be done, whatever thing it was.

We had a thing that needed to be done.

“You’re saying that what happened at Khartoum is not meant to be a direct attack on the Colonial Union,” Egan said, to Abumwe.

“No, of course it was a direct attack,” Abumwe replied, in the straight-ahead, blunt manner that if you were not smart, you would think was profoundly non-diplomatic.
“The act served its own short-term goal in that regard.
But its true value to Equilibrium is long term—what it allows the organization to build towards for its ultimate goal: the destruction of the Conclave.”

“Walk us through it, Ambassador,” Rigney said.

“At Khartoum, we secured a high-value prisoner, a Commander Tvann of Equilibrium.”
A very slight smile crossed Abumwe’s face.
“The best way to describe him is as the Equilibrium equivalent of
you,
Colonel Rigney.
Someone who is very well connected and often at the center of Equilibrium plans.”

“All right.”

The ambassador nodded in my direction.
“During interrogation, Lieutenant Wilson here got Tvann to reveal Equilibrium’s most recent plan, which begins with the attack on the
Tubingen
above Khartoum.”

Colonels Rigney and Egan looked over to me.
“‘Interrogation,’ Lieutenant?”
Egan said to me.

I understood the implication.
“The information was not secured under torture or duress,” I said.
“I used misdirection and false information to convince him that it was in his interest to cooperate.”

“What false information?”

“I told him we were going to obliterate every major Rraey city and industrial site on four different planets because we believe the Rraey are the primary movers behind Equilibrium.”

“Are they?”

“I don’t have the data to speculate,” I said.
“If you were asking me to go with my gut, I’d say the Rraey government offers clandestine logistical support that’s difficult to prove.
Certainly the Rraey wouldn’t mind if we were out of the way.
Even if they are offering support, however, going after the Rraey at this point won’t make a difference in the immediate plans of Equilibrium.
Equilibrium is and should be our primary concern at the moment.”

Egan nodded and looked back to Abumwe.
“Continue,” she said.

“Khartoum is one of ten colonies who conspired to declare independence from the Colonial Union.
The plan was to do it simultaneously and in doing so give the Colonial Union too many targets against which to effectively retaliate.
The longer it took us to respond to the event, the more colonial worlds would be inspired to also declare independence.
The idea here is that dissolution of the Colonial Union would succeed in part because the CU would lack the resources to deal with the mass exodus.