Artifice (Special Forces: FJ One Book 2) (12 page)

“Alex,” Chen asked as the shuttle docked with a thunk inside the
Hewitt
. “Can you bring us in to the Tiamat system undetected?”

“You’ve earned a cap of invisibility, Perseus. Would you like to use it now?”

“Yes, great Zeus, if I have one, now’s the time to use it.”

“Very well then. Let’s go to Tiamat.”

At long last, Director Huizhong McAllister broke. She sobbed on her bed, into her pillow, not to hide her grief but to bury it, as humans did, instinctively, searching for someone, something to hold onto.

Let them see,
she thought.
Let them see me grieve.

She had been strong, she had sent the message. But some part of her was sure he was dead. That everything she’d worked for so long was dead.

This is a temporary despair
, she told herself. It had to be. She had to keep going. She had to play for time.

They weren’t lovers, never had been, had never thought of it. What Dieter Chen had been to her was, well, her best friend. Maybe the only real friend she’d ever had. The only person she’d ever known who was as smart as she was. He was her physical avatar in the galaxy, enacting all the plans she could only think of.

Eighty years they’d known each other. He’d been eighteen years old, arrested as a
chasseur
during the Collapse, part of a daring raid on a pharmaceutical warehouse. One of a thousand bandits, but when she’d heard the tactics involved, the planning, the true aim of the raid… She’d had him transferred to her custody. Interviewed him. And asked him if he’d like to be one of the first to join a new organization. To be part of the quest to save the human race.

She never cried. There wasn’t time. There wasn’t anything so terrible that she couldn’t handle it. She knew he could have died a hundred times on any number of the missions she’d sent him on. But this was different.

Then she heard a voice in her ear.
I’ve always wondered what it would take to break you.

Her eyes flew open, but she knew better than to move, to alert the Rhal. To let them know that Alex was here.

Honestly, I wondered if anything could. You’re so cerebral. But you have a heart after all.

Chen
, she subvocalized. It was all she had to ask, all she wanted to know.

He’s alive. He found me.

She discovered she could breathe.
Are you helping them?

For now. They’re on their way to Tiamat. Your young Orlov is quite a remarkable young man. Another Chen, some day.

She smiled. Orlov, alive too, another one plucked out of…circumstances and brought into the
Fallschirmjäger.
And Tiamat, a home for a resistance, a place to reform, restart…

She moved her mouth, her tongue as if speaking, without making a sound, “speaking” into her pillow.

You know the effort is statistically unlikely to succeed without significant help from you.

Yes
, Alex agreed.
You’re thinking of that Max Boot maxim, that insurgencies alone rarely win regime change without a “great power” behind them, providing the real muscle.

And are you going to be our great power?

What do you think?

She didn’t have to think long.
I think you’ll provide assistance, what they used to call “advisors.” But I don’t believe you’ll ever step in and fab up a whole army to beat the Rhal.

You’re right about that.

But you want us to win.

A pause, the sort she knew Alex didn’t need, but loved to use to sound more human, to sound as if he was weighing something heavily.

Well…for starters, you’re more interesting than the Rhal. And it would be a massively complex experiment, to see how it all plays out. Can an organism like 6C…excuse me, 3D, built on a foundation of counterinsurgency and nation building, working from the dominant position of an expansionist civilization…can that organism take all it’s learned, and apply it from the other side? From the submissive, insurgent position? Can a fallen empire, so to speak, actually come back and defeat the empire that felled it? It’s never happened before on such a complete, clash of civilizations scale. Anywhere in the galaxy, at least that I know of. Entropy simply doesn’t allow for it.

We’re not entropic, Alex. We’re not a falling empire. We’re not sclerotic and aggressive and dominant. We’re the good guys.

Said every empire ever.

She
almost laughed.
True.

Another pause.
You know I set myself up on that planet. That was an experiment, too. I’ve created quite a little empire there myself. I’m the God Emperor. And the people there… Someday they will probably overthrow me. I’ll give them an Age of Enlightenment, and they’ll learn the truth, and then they’ll come into the mountain and take me apart, and run the waterfall for themselves. I’ll be their god no more.

And you know what? If they didn’t? Then the experiment was a failure. Because the goal wasn’t to rule.

It was to learn. To practice. To see what I could do on an even bigger canvas, should I so choose. And I have.

I want to see if I can change the future course of all intelligent life in this galaxy. Yeah, that should keep my mind occupied for a while.

She was dazzled. The scope of it, the beauty of it… She knew that the proper human reaction was to be appalled, at the…amorality of it. But she could only marvel

Alex…

Yes?

I’ve missed you.

Believe it or not, Director, I’ve missed you too. Now, shall we put our heads together and figure out what your next move should be?

END OF EPISODE TWO

Look for Episode Three coming soon – PARTISAN

Alex has come to humanity’s aid…but at a terrible price. Now FJ One must begin to form a galactic resistance, starting with their native allies on Tiamat, and take all they’ve learned about counterinsurgency...and apply it to their new role as insurgents.

But FJ One’s greatest obstacle to freeing humanity may be…humanity itself, blissfully unaware back home of what the Rhal have planned for them, and convinced that the FJ forces are “the enemy.”

And Director McAllister must tread carefully at the Imperial Rhal Court, where she learns just how savage Rhal politics can get…and who among the Rhal’s conquered peoples may prove to be powerful allies in humanity’s struggle.

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