The Kassa Gambit (17 page)

It was a hideous tool, anyway.

Choosing a credit stick from a different off-world bank than the one he had paid for the room with, he rented a ground car. Too far away from the spaceport, he might draw attention using non-Altair credits. He didn’t have a whole lot of those in the anonymous variety.

As prime minister, Dejae had introduced a government plan to reimburse people for stolen credit sticks. Of course, this meant they would have to register their sticks first, thus allowing the government to track every purchase, exchange, and transaction.

Civil libertarians howled and authoritarians cheered, as they always did, every time this subject came up throughout history and the
okimune
. And, as always, the issue was decided by the same factor: human laziness. Registering every single transaction was a pain in the ass. Anonymous sticks owed their birth to the lawyers, but they owed their continued existence to the fact that they were just easier to use. There were always some floating around, and there always would be.

As a young cop, Kyle had sided with the government in trying to outlaw anonymous sticks. As a League opponent, he had trembled in fear of the power such a move would give them. As a fugitive, he was immensely grateful the efforts had failed. The innate sloth that allowed the League to advance was, in this case, its most effective resistance.

A man not on the run for his life might have reflected on the irony. Kyle filed the thought away for another day, when hopefully he would be such a man.

Standing around outside the skyscraper, he waited for lunchtime. It wasn’t really a skyscraper. It was anchored to the ground. The original Altair charter, in a fit of nostalgic superstition, had forbidden the use of grav-plating in constructing residences. The rule had stuck, and Altair society had spread out over the ground instead of clumping up in the sky. The biosphere of the planet consisted of thoroughly harmless moss and algae that produced a pleasantly breathable atmosphere. There was nowhere you couldn’t build a house, if you wanted to.

But people like living in groups, so towns and cities formed naturally. You could still go out to the marshes and build yourself a cabin on a plain of flat rock covered in dull green moss, next to a silent sea with nothing but dull green algae in it, but who would want to do that? Kyle had adapted to a life of isolation, but not so much that he found such a prospect palatable.

Kyle preferred the orderly arrangement of civilization. Even while he was plotting to prevent the
too
orderly arrangement of civilization. Moderation was the key. That’s why he was wearing a fake beard, absurdly hip clothes from three years ago, and waiting on a fellow plotter.

Ricarada Baston. Slim, dapper, officious-looking. Probably drank fruity drinks when he went out to the bars, which would be only on holidays. His clothes weren’t hip, but they weren’t out of date, either. He strode purposefully across the plaza, carrying on a one-sided conversation over a headset.

Kyle tailed him to a nearby fish-and-chips shop. The cheapest of the cheap; vat-grown meat and vegetable material deep-fried in synthetic oil. Rica made plenty of money as a government prosecutor. He could eat lunch anywhere, even at those fancy restaurants that grew actual fish in tanks and real plants in hydroponic chambers. Kyle had never figured out if Rica ate junk food because he was cheap, making a political statement about solidarity with the poor, or merely oblivious to the difference.

Getting in line behind him, Kyle ordered the wasabi tuna. He didn’t know what a tuna was supposed to be, but it was bland enough to make the burning spice tolerable. Right now he needed something to make him feel concrete sensations, something to anchor his emotions in this new reality.

“Is the fettuccini good?” he asked Rica, a random stranger striking up a meaningless conversation. Except that fettuccini wasn’t on the menu.

“Not here,” Rica replied, and moved on, ignoring him.

Kyle sat by himself in the corner, where he could watch every entrance. Rica only finished half his meal, then abruptly walked out.

The anti-League conspiracy didn’t have a lot of protocols. Kyle wasn’t sure what the signal meant, but the tuna was bad enough that he didn’t care. They hadn’t changed the frying oil in days. Resisting the urge to write somebody a health-code ticket, he tossed the food into the garbage and left.

Rica was waiting for him outside, at a bus stop. Kyle sat down next to him on the bench. The noise of the street would make long-range eavesdropping difficult, assuming anybody was watching. Rica must assume no one was, or he wouldn’t dare to be here.

“Somebody set my bed on fire,” Kyle said. He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands, looking down at the clean, white concrete.

Rica was having a subdued conversation on his headset. “Did they make you?” He said it so naturally it took Kyle a minute to realize Rica was talking to him.

“I don’t think so.” If they had suspected him, they wouldn’t have sent him out to Kassa in the first place. “I think somebody upstairs just doesn’t give a rat’s ass about whether I live or die.”

“Why do housecleaning, unless you’re expecting company?” Rica was being really cryptic with his codes, and Kyle was annoyed by it. He was still tired. Not just from having his sleep disturbed last night, but from all of it. The trip home in close confines with Rassinger, the cloak-and-dagger games with Prudence, the whole disaster on Kassa. The last five years.

Then it occurred to him that Rica’s obtuseness was a code in itself. The danger level must be high.

“Yes,” Kyle said, “we’re expecting company. But not the in-laws.”

“I don’t put a lot of stock in rumors.” Meaning that Rica must have already heard some.

Kyle didn’t know how to communicate the full impact of his message in code, so he said it outright. “They’re not rumors. I saw.” A curious choice of pronouns. Why was he still trying to protect Prudence and her crew?

Rica scanned the streets for a moment. A pointless gesture. If they were under surveillance, Rica wouldn’t be able to detect it. All he would accomplish by looking for watchers would be to alert them that he was about to say something important. You’d expect a prosecutor to know these things.

“Tell me.”

“I got to Kassa after it happened. But they left some nasty surprises for me. Then I found a real surprise. A ship, fighter-craft sized, lying in the snow. I don’t think I was supposed to find that. It’s not human, Rica.”

Rica pursed his lips in disapproval. “Fleet headquarters is sealed up tight. No news in or out. Leaves are canceled. The prime minister will be making a speech tonight.”

Kyle understood his disappointment. Everything was happening exactly as it should. Rica wasn’t the kind of man who appreciated it when his opponent made no mistakes.

But they had made one. “They sent me there
before,
Rica. The League dispatched me to Kassa days before the attack happened. And then Rassinger showed up, right on schedule.” He and Prudence had orbited the planet many times, looking for radio signals from survivors. They hadn’t seen the distress beacon from the fighter ship until hours before Rassinger arrived. And it was a strong signal—the
Phoenix
had found it with no trouble.

“Why send you at all?”

It was a good question. The answer couldn’t be just to kill him. Patrol boats were not cheap.

“They almost vaporized the rest of the
Launceston
along with me. Maybe they wanted to kill several birds with one stone?” Maybe Captain Stanton did more than just turn his nose up at League armbands. Maybe the man was part of the secret resistance. It was about the level of irony Kyle had come to expect.

“We don’t have a mutual defense treaty with Kassa,” Rica pointed out. “Legally, we don’t have a
casus belli.
An attack on one of our vessels would give us justification.”

That was insanity. “There are ten thousand corpses on Kassa, killed by
aliens
. Did they really think they’d need a
law
to start a war?”

Rica smiled, a sad little smile of disappointment. “Our friends often seem to underestimate emotional reactions. I used to think they were just arrogant.”

In all this time, Kyle had never considered the possibility that the League was working
for
the aliens. It was simply too incredible.

“I’ve met the prime minister, Rica. He’s a human being. He can’t be working for aliens. Nobody would sell out their own
species
.”

“When did you meet him?” Rica was surprised, as he should be. Detectives didn’t usually keep company with prime ministers.

“About five years ago, when he was just the mayor. Stopped him for a minor traffic violation. I didn’t ticket him, not even a warning. He told me to let it go, and I did. Shortly after that, my career took off.” And his life had gone into the toilet.

Rica looked at him quizzically. “You let him go? But why?”

Kyle felt his face flush. “Because I knew he would kill me if I didn’t. He had something to hide; something worth killing for. I’ve spent five years looking for it, investigating every crime committed on that day, from missing person reports to shoplifting charges.”

“Exactly what day was that?” Rica asked, out of professional habit. Whenever a crime was brought up, the prosecutors asked the same questions: when was it, where were you, did anybody see you there?

Usually, people could barely remember what they had for breakfast the previous day, but this date was stamped into Kyle’s memory, indelible as an acid burn.

“The second of August, 785.”

“Well, I can alibi the prime minister then.” They both smiled at the irony. “From two until four, he was giving a speech to the attorney’s office. I specifically remember making a notation in my daily journal:
this is the end of my career advancement.
I should have gone into private practice then, but I couldn’t bear to let the thugs win that easily.”

“What?” The vision was clear in Kyle’s mind. Checking his watch just before he stepped out of the patrol car, so he’d know what time to put on the incident report. The data tablet had a clock on it, of course, but he’d learned his lesson by then. You don’t let a machine do your job.

“I thought I could do more to protect civil liberties from the inside. So I stayed at my desk, even while—”

Kyle interrupted him. “What time did you say the speech was?”

“From two until four. With a social hour afterwards. Why, what time did you stop him?”

The glowing green digits of his watch hovered before Kyle’s memory.

“Three forty-eight. In the afternoon.”

Frowning, Rica tapped at his comm unit and showed the results to Kyle. On the tiny display, there was his personal planner entry for that date:
PM Speech, 2–4. Notes: WTE!!! end of cr advnce!

“One of us must be mistaken.”

Kyle had spent years investigating the events of that day, checking for crimes that could have been committed in the hours before he had stopped Dejae. He had assumed Dejae was running from somewhere he shouldn’t have been. It had never occurred to him to search for where Dejae was
supposed
to be.

“I was in fear for my life, Rica. I remember what time it was.”

“When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth, however improbable.” Rica grimaced. “There must be two Veram Dejaes. One was bad enough.”

Kyle shook his head in dismay. “A twin brother? How much does anyone know about Dejae’s past?”

“Not as much as we should.” Rica shrugged. “He only came on-planet ten years ago. He was wealthy then, and he got wealthier fast. That buys a lot of secrets.”

“Why bother to hide something like that?” Since when was having a twin brother worthy of state secrecy?

“A good question, Lieutenant. One of many I have never seen a satisfactory answer to. We’ve sent investigations to his previous planet of residence, Baharain, but they came back with nothing suspicious. Whether they were bought, fooled, or League agents from the beginning, I can’t say. It didn’t seem important. Altair politics are extremely public, with well-crafted checks and balances. One man can’t corrupt the system, not even the prime minister.”

“Unless we let him,” Kyle said, thinking about how Captain Stanton had knuckled under to a piece of paper. Even Prudence had.

“What could compel the people of Altair to turn their political security over to a man they hardly know, one that isn’t even a native? What kind of threat could make us give up our clumsy, slow, ineffective, but extremely democratic system?”

It was Rica’s favorite kind of question—rhetorical. They both knew the answer.

An alien invasion. The threat of annihilation at the hands—or legs, or claws, or whatever you called spider appendages—of inhuman monsters.

“He’ll ask for emergency powers,” Rica said. “He’ll get them. Then he’ll simply never release them. As long as the threat of alien attack remains, we’ll go along with it, until we can’t remember how things used to be different.”

Kyle had seen Kassa firsthand. If the choice was between that and Dejae’s absolute rule, even Kyle would choose Dejae.

“The aliens are real,” he warned Rica. “They must be in some kind of collusion with the League, but they’re real. Kassa was bombed by lots of ships, too many to not be accounted for. Not even the League can be hiding a private fleet.”

“Stipulated, Lieutenant. But now we know Veram Dejae is not real—or at least, not what he seems.” Rica reached into his pocket, pulled out several credit sticks, and dropped them into Kyle’s hand. “You need to go to Baharain and find out why there are two Veram Dejaes. That’s our only lead.”

Rica didn’t know about the blue data pod. Kyle didn’t have it on him; he’d stashed the thing in case he got caught trying to connect with Rica. It was too late to bring it up now. But there was something he could ask about.

“There’s a ship involved. The
Ulysses,
captained by a woman named Prudence Falling. I can’t tell if she’s an agent or a hapless civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time.”