The Significant (76 page)

      
He yanked her into the dark, short
hallway she had seen out the window. She glanced around briefly to spot an
exit, but when she could not, she focused entirely on the trigger in Colonel
Amori’s other hand. She wondered if she could get it and destroy it before he
could use it against her once more.

      
Pushing the door open with his shoulder,
Colonel Amori brought her into a room that appeared to be a recreation room of
some sort when the facility was in use. There were old tables and chairs and a
broken vending machine in one corner. Sitting on one table, in stark contrast
to the older furnishings, was a new computer, hooked up to several external
drives and two supplemental monitors that were black.

      
On the computer, Isa could see Venus’
mainframe and schematics flashing across the screen with several meters of
slowly-ascending numbers.

      
“How did you access her mainframe?” Isa
asked sharply, planting her feet and pulling against his tugging. He let out a
bark of laughter, yanking sharply to force her forward.

      
“That’s paltry at this point, I should
think,” he said. “I told you, I’ve been able to watch you for some time, all
from Venus’ mainframe.” He turned to her when they were in front of the
computer. “And it’s all thanks to you.” He smiled, gently pulling on the cable
between her restraints to bring her two steps closer. “I was going to thank you
for the information on Dyran, but you must think I’m a moron. I would think,
after everything, you would realize you cannot hide anything from me. I know
all about Saera.” He nodded to the screen of the computer, so Isa turned her
eyes trying, to figure out what she was looking at and how it related to Saera.

      
“This is your test,” he started. “This is
a Charge Burst. It’s been charging for a while now, just to be safe, but it’s
currently aimed at the main power generator for Saera. If it hits that
generator, it will cause a chain reaction through the rest of the facility and
it will destroy the entire city, and all of its inhabitants, as well as
decimating your terraform facilities. I’m not sure if anything will grow after
something so devastating happens underground and rips apart everything on the
surface.” He chuckled darkly at Isa’s controlled expression, even though her eyes
were showing her horror. She watched the numbers increase on the Charge Burst,
trying to recall everything she knew about the weapon. It was an old form of
warfare, attacking from under the ground. As with microbionics, the Charge
Bursts were outlawed in the Alliance with the regulation of military forces.

      
“Obviously, this provides nearly sixty
percent of Tiao’s food,” Colonel Amori continued. “And I doubt you’ll be able
to get anyone to eat the native crops to Tiao, since they have no nutritional
value to humans. So, if it is destroyed, you’re going to be feeding your people
chemical rations.” He lifted the handle with the green button with his other
hand, smiling. “You already know what this does. You have to choose between
them. Either kill your caretaker and make your Syndicate of idiots so
homicidal, the only thing that will stop them is a bullet to the brain, or
destroy the main generator of Saera and annihilate your planet’s food source.”

      
“What is the point of making me do this?”
Isa growled, glaring at Colonel Amori. “If you destroy the food source of the
planet, then Tiao is weakened and not nearly as valuable of a conquest.”

      
“However, if
you
destroy the Syndicate, it will be that much easier for my
brother to take over, once I shut down Venus.” Colonel Amori smiled. “Quite the
conundrum, isn’t it?”

      
“And if I choose neither option?”

      
“You want to leave it in
my
hands?” Colonel Amori asked. “You and
I are far from Anon. I would just destroy the capital and stay with you here
while my brother presumed me dead and attacked Tiao. I would force you to watch
as your entire planet was conquered and your people slaughtered.” His smile
widened. “You make the decision, you have three options—destroy your Syndicate,
destroy Saera, or destroy Anon.”

      
Isa looked between the screen and Colonel
Amori, noting where his hand was on the handle and on the cable restraining
her.

      
In a brief moment, she lunged forward and
her head connected with his, stunning him while she tried to reach for the
handle. He let out a startled cry of pain and rolled away from her, tugging on
the cable and causing her to lose her balance and fall to the ground. His foot
connected with her ribs.

      
“You bitch!” he groaned, holding his
bleeding nose. “Have you learned nothing?! Do you want me to destroy all three
for you?!”

      
He kicked her once more. She tried to
breathe, but her body was already bruised and beaten from his previous attacks
and the pain seared through her.

      
Colonel Amori pulled out a gun from his
jacket and pointed it at her as she tried to catch her breath.

      
“You have ten seconds to make your
decision before I destroy all three.”

      
Isa let out a shaky breath, trying to get
to her feet, struggling against the pain. Colonel Amori angrily yanked her
upright, holding her steady and pushing the barrel of the gun into her chest
sharply.

      
“Make your choice,” he snarled.

      
He released Isa and backed away one step,
keeping the gun pointed at her with one hand raised and his finger on the green
trigger.

      
She stared at him for two long seconds
before turning to look at the computer screen, her mind racing, weighing all
the options. She fought with the urge to turn around and attack him once again.
She was too weak and hurt already to risk not dominating the fight and allowing
the Colonel to destroy both cities and her Syndicate.

      
If the Syndicate were to be controlled to
the point of having to be killed to be stopped, leaving only Isa alive, it
would leave her without support and would raise suspicions among the Alliance,
which would, in turn, cause others to doubt the strength of Tiao. That would
limit the amount of aid Isa could get in retaliating against Gihron. However,
if Anon was destroyed, millions of lives would be lost, along with the symbol
that was the capital of Tiao. The most lives would be lost if she did nothing.

      
If she were to allow the Charge Burst to
destroy Saera, then about one-hundred thousand lives would be lost, and
millions of credits that went into developing the greenhouses that developed
food. While it would make real food more expensive, there were rations to fall
back on, and Dyran was on its way to becoming the next site for terraformed
greenhouses.

      
The gun against her chest pushed hard,
breaking her out of her trance.

      
“Five,” Colonel Amori started. “Four.”

      
Isa turned to the computer and looked
over the screen, trying to see if there was any way she could minimize the
damage. She saw there were seven generators on the screen, the main one, the
one that would cause the chain reaction, highlighted and targeted for attack.

      
“Three.”

      
Isa lifted her hand, allowing her fingers
to brush one of the other generators and change the target site before she
pressed the launch button.

      
The numbers on the screen stopped
ascending and then went into rapid decline as Colonel Amori let out a
triumphant laugh.

      
“I knew it,” he declared. He stepped
forward and tapped the top of one of the secondary screens twice to turn it on.
“You chose the life of your lover and your Syndicate over the lives of your
people.” He nodded to the screen that showed a map of the power grid in Saera.
“You believe that your rule is better than any humans? You let personal
interest guide you to kill over one-hundred thousand people on your planet, as
well as doom your people to starve. You even prided yourself on how you believe
humans should have basic rights to food, but you destroy your own food supply
to save the man you fuck, and those idiots that do whatever you say.”

      
Isa watched the power grid light up with
a red, flashing error symbol and went through a mental map of the city. The
generator that had gone into catastrophic failure was on the far north side of
the city, a place that was still very under-developed.

      
The grid beeped several times, and then
the generator that had been attacked went completely offline, causing alerts to
flash everywhere about an explosion in the city.

      
“What?!”

      
Colonel Amori took a step forward and
stared at the screen, realizing that the generator that had blown up had not
been the one he intended.

      
He turned to the first screen, seeing
which generator was highlighted. He tried to shove Isa out of the way to start
another charge when Isa jumped at him, pushing him to the ground and wrapping
her bound wrists around his neck, pulling them taught, rolling Colonel Amori on
top of her, trying to strangle him. However, Colonel Amori turned over and
pulled her with him, angrily jabbing his elbow back into her bruised stomach.
She gasped, the breath and strength immediately leaving her.

      
In that time, Colonel Amori untangled
from the cable and went to the computers, starting a second Charge Burst.

      
Isa turned her body quickly, still on the
floor, and kicked his legs sharply, forcing him back to the ground, where she
climbed on top of him and tried to smash her restrained fists against his face.
He dodged the blow and sat up quickly, grabbing her hair with one hand and
shoving his fist deep into her diaphragm. That time, Isa almost passed out from
the pain. Her eyes rolled and she let out a pained groan.

      
Colonel Amori flipped her to her side and
banged her head against the floor twice before getting to his feet once more
and going to the computer.

      
Isa did not even have the breath to yell
at him to stop.

      
She watched in horror as the map lit up
with warnings and errors, before the central generator went dark and the error
reading “Danger! Catastrophic Failure” flashed across the screen.

      
Three other generators went dark and
Isa’s eyes slid shut, a different, sharper pain spearing her body.

      
For two days, Isa was confined to the
small cell with a screen secured over the window in the door. The screen played
a constant stream of news, discussing the horrors of the destruction in Saera.

      
The words of the news reports cut into
her like knives.

      
“There
has been no word from the Syndicate as to the cause of these horrendous
explosions…”

      
“Over
one-hundred thousand workers, engineers, and scientists were killed in the
explosions that destroyed Saera…”

      
The information was painful. She could
not sleep around the noise and the pain in her chest. After two days and
several runs of the same news with very few developments, Colonel Amori showed
up in the cell, turning off the screen.

      
“I plan to return you to Anon, now,” he
said darkly, crouching next to her as she remained on the ground, her eyes
half-lidded. “Do you want me to drug you to keep you from misbehaving, or will
you be a good Elite and come quietly?”

      
Isa turned her exhausted eyes on him.
Slowly, she lifted her wrists and extended them, showing her compliance.

      
“There’s a good girl.”

      
She was silent and cooperative as she was
taken back to Anon. She did not bother to note where they had been for four
days, or what time they had left and when they finally returned to the capital.
Her exhausted eyes projected images of the generators flashing before going
blank on the screen. Her ears were ringing with the horrible news on Saera, the
number dead, and the silence of Venus and the Syndicate. Her body was pulsing
with pain at her bruised and battered ribs and back.

      
Even if she had the strength to move, she
knew she would be unable to.

      
The sun was setting when they pulled into
the garage of Anon Tower. The car parked and turned off. Colonel Amori got out
immediately. Isa remained still, staring blankly ahead.

      
Colonel Amori walked around the car and
opened her door.

      
“Come on,” he coaxed, his tone annoyed.