The Fight for Peace (31 page)

Chapter 34

PRIME MINISTER BYRAN VASQUEZ

WAR REPORTS

Byran’s hand shook as he read the report. “Please tell me you have a more positive outlook on this than I do,” he said roughly to the Chief Communications Officer.

Kehm’s face was pale, but he shrugged as if unconcerned. “The boy should live and we haven’t heard from North America yet.”

That news made Byran feel worse. He rubbed his eyes, mostly because he didn’t want to see Kehm’s face as he asked why.

“The pilot had to return because of a storm. That put her about five hours behind. The earliest we should get a report from the eastern assault would be around noon our time. That is if Captain Prescot turns Sergeant Picerno back to Europe immediately.”

Byran groaned. “Not until tonight then. If we are lucky. How am I supposed to give a speech about this?”

“You tell them the truth,” Kehm said, taking the report. “This year makes a decade of fighting. Trying to end it ... we knew it would be hard and risky. This is just the beginning. We’ve put two FLF cities under siege. Victory, or defeat, will take days at least, weeks more likely.”

Byran knew that. Arinna and Derrick, along with Captain Vries, had explained what they intended in detail, outlining possible failures as frequently as the chances of victory. They’d wanted permission, his at least if Parliament felt too torn to make one. He’d agreed to it, knowing he risked everything, not just his political career, which was admittedly in jeopardy anyway. But he risked the lives of his friends and he risked Europe. And dammit, he didn’t know if he’d made the right choice, but there was no going back.

Kehm’s gaze had fallen from him to the reports in his hand. He held them reverently as if the message was sacred. They weren’t just Byran’s friends risking their lives, but Kehm’s too.

Byran squeezed Kehm’s shoulder. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything comforting to say. “Send me word when you hear.”

“I will,” Kehm said. “I’ve sent a dactyl back to Crystal City. The situation is tenuous enough there that I wanted a report as soon as possible. Prime Minister, if you wanted some good news, Lieutenant O’Dell reports that incursions on the border have dropped to nonexistent.”

“Great. I’ll close with that. Hopefully it will be all anyone remembers.” Byran turned to leave, his gaze falling on the scrolling text of the sole monitor on in Command. “You are still looking for a satellite?”

“I ... might have found one.” Kehm’s hesitation kept Byran from shaking the man in frustration for what he hadn’t said. “Barely any life and I’m not sure which country launched it. Japan or North Korea are my best guesses. I half think the battery will die before I get access to it. But I’ll try.”

Byran blinked away hope. It was too fragile to rely on anyway. “Good luck,” he offered simply before leaving. He was late for his Cabinet meeting anyway.

“When is the press conference?” Sari Abuje asked.

She was the first to speak after Byran used the members of his administration as a trial run for his afternoon speech. He sat in his chair at the head of the table with a sigh. “That bad?”

“It’s at two and the news is dark, but we can work on the phrasing,” Isabella said in answer to Sari.

“Phrasing,” Robert Cairns said, leaning back in his chair. “It will take a lot more than playing with words to make it sound like we are not on the verge of defeat.”

“Focus on the fact that we haven’t been defeated and the Guard overcame several big obstacles. Praise our fighters,” Nicola Lennon said, tapping a pencil on the table.

“Don’t hide that you are worried,” Isabella suggested. “Don’t make it the biggest statement, but false confidence is not what Europe needs and won’t win you any support.”

“It would help if we’d heard back from Captain Prescot. One fight going poorly and the other unknown is a tough situation,” Robert said.

“If it is the toughest thing I have to say in the next few days, I’ll consider myself lucky,” Byran replied.

He didn’t mean to be gloomy or grumpy, but it was better to purge it from his system now. Before he had to stand in front of Prague to tell them that the safety of their future felt more uncertain today than it had three days before, and that he was responsible for it.

“I say that if information is delayed from North America due to a storm because the Guard is fighting despite disadvantages in communications, done to keep those advantages out of the hands of the FLF, it again shows what our troops are capable of. They will overcome and find a way around the hurdles we face. We will prevail,” Sari said.

“Do you want to give the press conference?” Byran asked her. The small gathering laughed, but Byran was only half kidding. Sari and Nicola had a natural positive spin that he wasn’t feeling.

“I’m afraid it has to be you,” Sari said, the kindness in her eyes indicating she knew it had been a serious offer.

She was right. Not just because he’d created this mess. But because if he wanted to lead Europe, he needed to lead it. Danielle had caused enough of a rift in the populace. Managing from the background would widen that distance, creating a truer comparison between him and MOTHER.

Isabella followed him to his office as the meeting broke up. Byran walked beyond his desk, standing at the windows to gaze from the tidy roofs of Prague to the ruins of the castle above them.

“Destruction, rebuilding, fears of worse ... that isn’t what I want for our children,” he said as Isabella leaned against him. “But what type of future they will have if we fail here frightens me more.”

“You didn’t mention Derrick in the report,” she said, avoiding his brooding.

“He is fine. Or was when the dactyl left Crystal City with the FLF army two hours out and more FLF fighter planes than we have in the air. Derrick isn’t a fighter pilot!”

“You are thinking the worst,” she said, kissing his shoulder, which made him realize how tense what he’d said made him. He leaned forward and rested his head against the glass. “Fight the battle you know and let Derrick and Arinna and the rest of the Guard fight the one they are good at. That is what you need to do,” she said, slipping from his side to walk briskly across the large office.

“Where are you going?”

“To get you lunch – and a beer.”

“I have a speech in an hour. Shouldn’t we be going over ‘phrasing?’“

Isabella waved a hand. “You know what to say, you just haven’t thought of it yet because you are too worried. Treat it like when you were first running for election in Spain and there were attacks in the USA. Give yourself some distance, have a beer, and you will be fine.”

She made it sound easy, but Byran had never told her that the information he’d used to win so many votes had come from Arinna and that the distance he’d felt from that conflict, despite worries the fighting would eventually come to Spain, had been because she hadn’t been there. This time he knew he wouldn’t hear from Arinna. Byran nearly called his wife back to ask for two beers, but he didn’t need public intoxication while on duty added to his list of sins.

“We fight not just for our future or that of our children,” Byran said an hour later, glancing to Cerilla and Santi who stood on stage to his right. “But for freedom for many people in the world, and they join us in this battle. We will find other allies. We will forge new alliances. We will rise out of the darkness of the last decade.

“It is true some of those fighting are more than soldiers to me. They are my good friends.” Byran’s voice fell on that with barely the breath to speak the words. He closed his eyes a moment, refocusing enough to continue. “I worry for them as any parent or friend does of their soldier in this war. But I know why they fight. The cause is worth the cost, whatever the total.

“If I were better in battle, I would be by their side.” Byran paused, this time with a smile. “But I have never been as good with a sword as the Lady Grey, or as good a shot as Lieutenant Eldridge.” The statement won quiet laughs. “Nor am I a pilot like Captain Vries. I am a politician and I will be here as long as you will keep me. I will stand with you and fight to create a better Europe, a new Europe. We did not submit to the FLF’s demands a decade ago when they tried to obliterate our governments. Together we will not let them take away our present or our future. Not when we can stand together and create a better one. There will be elections again. There will be peace.”

“See,” Isabella told him as they left the small stage, “I told you that you would know what to say. You always have.”

He pulled her close, kissing the top of her head. “Because you gave me the ideas.”

He went home, doing his best to pretend it was a normal night. But as dinner ended and the kids fought over school work, he barely kept himself from pacing.

“Just go,” Isabella told him with a look as fond as it was exasperated. “I know your mind is on the reports. So go and find out. Just promise me that you will tell me what they say as soon as you are home.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. Even though he’d leapt to his feet, so the words were a little late compared to the action.

Isabella laughed, pulling closed his coat. “Yes. One of us needs to be here to make certain the kids actually go to bed. This war, I’ll do that. The next one, you stay home.”

“Now I have two reasons to hope there isn’t another!”

Byran found Kehm alone in the dark Command Center. “No word?” he asked.

“I would have called,” Kehm said, distracted by what he typed on the monitor.

“I wasn’t home the last half hour,” Byran pointed out. That won a dry smile from Kehm. “Any luck on the satellite?”

“Maybe? We’ve run it through a few of the tech. I think I can get a signal, but it won’t last long. I’m running another search ... just to make sure I didn’t miss something, including anything the FLF might be using and hiding.”

“I knew tonight would be nerve wracking, but you have a way of making it so much worse than I expected.”

Kehm snorted at that, tolerating Byran’s restless pacing. Which was more than Byran could say for his family. His anxiety would have dissolved the kids into fighting and irritated Isabella, and Byran was in no mood to be helpful. He could appreciate why she so willingly sent him away.

Byran teetered between wondering why he had come and asking for a cot, knowing that if it got much later he’d end up staying until dawn to see if Captain Vries sent his next report, when word came from the hangar a dactyl had landed. Rubbing sleep from his face, Byran stood from where he’d settled at Arinna’s empty desk. Kehm snapped off his monitor, looking no better than Byran felt. The wait for the pilot to walk from the hangar to Command felt to stretch longer than the hours Byran had been pacing at headquarters.

If Byran thought the Sergeant’s expression would tell him the state of affairs in North America, he quickly rejected the idea. He didn’t want them to be as exhausting as the pilot looked.

“The shield is holding after initial difficulties,” Sergeant Marina
Picerno stated. “Fighting is light from the city.”

“And outside?” Kehm asked.

Marina paled, which dropped Byran’s stomach into his shoes. “Very intense from what I saw. We missed taking out a military port. They have some armored ships with heavy weapons and some long-range tanks shooting at the transports from either side of the bay.”

Kehm frowned. “Any aircraft?”

“No, not while I was there. The airport at Thunder Bay was destroyed.”

It was good news, but something in Marina’s phrasing nagged Byran. “You said ‘from what you saw.’ You were there over four hours.”

Marina shook her head, sending loose wisps of brown hair that had fallen from the bun at the back of her neck swaying. “Captain Prescot had me fly recon for most of it. There was some movement to the south coming to help the city. She ordered me to make the route difficult by removing bridges and chunks of highway. It’ll slow down anything trying to reach Isle Royale whether or not someone is running patrol.”

Byran could hear Arinna’s logic in the statement. If there was any good news that night, it was that she had a good grasp on the problems she faced and actively worked to minimize them before they grew worse. Which meant she feared they’d grow worse.

“Thank you, Sergeant. Any word on the Argentinians?” Marina shook her head at Kehm’s question, the fleeting worry crossing her face answer enough. “Get some sleep. I’ll send your replacement to Isle Royale,” Kehm told her.

When she left, Byran and Kehm stared at each other a moment. “I don’t feel any better,” Byran finally admitted.

“Do you feel worse?” Kehm asked.

Byran snorted. “I would say I don’t know if I can feel worse, but why tempt fate?”

It was when he was home, sitting in the dark of his office that wasn’t the office in his old flat that the changes, fears, and exhaustion fully hit him. The desire to cry, get drunk, and curl up in bed not to leave it for a few days rushed over him.

He was still struggling with that urge when Isabella paused in the doorway. “You are home. I ... thought I’d heard something but wasn’t sure.” She padded closer without turning on the light sensitive to the turbulent depression roiling in him without him needing to speak. “Is the news that bad?” she asked after a quiet minute.