“When did you move here?” I asked.
“This is our new capitol building,” Doctorow said, the friendly smile never leaving his face.
“For Norristown?” I asked.
“For all of Terraneau,” Hollingsworth said.
“Now you’re the governor of the planet,” I said. “Congratulations on your promotion.”
“We all have our ambitions, General,” Doctorow said in a booming voice. “You want to conquer Earth. My plans are not nearly so grand. I’ll settle for rebuilding Terraneau.”
The small crowd that had gathered around us chuckled . . . everybody but me.
We adjourned to the assembly room. It reminded me of the capitol building on Earth, only in miniature. The men Doctorow had assembled to help him run his utopian planet were the inquisitors; I was the criminal.
We entered a three-story auditorium in which a lectern and a couple of seats waited on a stage at the bottom of the well. Doctorow led the way down the stairs, bounding each step with energy I would not have expected from a man in his sixties, his excitement unmistakable.
He led me to the stage and asked me to take a seat. Behind us, extending out like a small wall, stood the type of raised bench that judges use in courtrooms. The stand rose a full eight feet above the stage, and Doctorow sat behind it, leaving me alone on display.
The audience quietly assembled along the tiers of the auditorium. Were they Doctorow’s appointees or elected officials? How had so many changes happened so quickly? I’d only been gone a week. Doctorow must have started the ball rolling before I left. Maybe that was why he’d wanted me off his planet so badly.
Hollingsworth sat the meeting out, leaving me to the lions . . . the bastard.
Once everyone was seated, Doctorow started the meeting by congratulating me on my safe return. He assured me that the “assembled body” had been briefed about the circumstances of my departure and that the meeting was nothing more than a briefing. “We’re simply curious about what you found,” he said, sounding so specking diplomatic. He must have seen himself as cordial, but his demeanor made me think of a rancher giving a steer a friendly pat before leading it to the slaughterhouse.
Instead of letting me speak, Doctorow invited the gallery to ask questions. Not a moment passed before five or six people stood in place, signaling that they wanted the floor. Doctorow called each of them by name.
“General, you left to find your fleet. Did you find it?” asked the first man.
“Yes,” I said.
“Was it destroyed?” the man continued.
“No. I returned on the
Salah ad-Din
, one of the ships from the fleet.”
Back when the Unified Authority ran the galaxy, every planet had security stations monitoring nearby space. If a ship broadcasted in within a couple of million miles of that planet, the equipment detected the anomaly and tracked the ship. Judging by the nervous twitters filling the room, I got the feeling that the
ad-Din
had slipped into Terraneau space unnoticed. Doctorow would have that problem fixed. He’d make it a priority.
“The
Salah ad-Din
, General, isn’t that a fighter carrier?” the man continued.
I nodded.
“Is there any particular reason you chose to return in a fighter carrier, General?” he asked, the first strains of hostility beginning to sound in his voice.
“Are you asking if there was a reason other than its being a ship capable of traveling through space?” I asked.
“I am trying to ascertain why you chose to travel in one of the largest and most aggressive ships in your fleet when you returned to Terraneau. Are you trying to send us a message, General Harris?”
Arguments broke out throughout the gallery.
Doctorow spoke up from behind me. “Please. We are getting ahead of ourselves. Give the general a chance to explain what he found on his mission.
“I apologize for this outburst,” Doctorow said, holding his right hand over his heart to show his sincerity. “Please, tell us about the status of your fleet.”
The well of the auditorium was three stories deep, with rows forming rings around the stage. Only the area directly behind me was blocked off.
I felt no fear facing down these politicians . . . these nouveau-bureaucrats. That these men and women had promoted themselves to a planetary council meant nothing to me. What did I care about glorified postmen pretending to be governors and heads of states? When I came to Terraneau, these people lived in fear like rabbits cowering in a warren, and now they’d made themselves kings. What a joke.
I no longer gave a damn about getting along with the Right Reverend Colonel Ellery Doctorow, governor of Norristown and apparently emperor of Terraneau, or with the pompous men and women who made up his choir, so I told it to them straight. “The Enlisted Man’s Empire controls twenty-three planets and thirteen fleets. The empire has not attacked Earth, but no one is ruling the possibility out.”
The initial silence that filled the auditorium pushed in on my eardrums like the pressure from a deep-sea dive. Pandemonium replaced silence. Half the representatives stood to ask questions. When Doctorow did not call on them, they started shouting.
“Are you saying the Clone Navy is preparing to attack Earth?” Doctorow asked.
The room went quiet.
Unsure how I could have stated it any more clearly, I said, “No, I did not say that. I simply stated that attacking Earth is an option.”
A woman ran down the stairs shouting, “But you can’t do that! That would be an act of aggression. The clones would be declaring war on their—”
“Let me make this clear to you,” I said, raising my voice so it would be heard above the din. “We did not break off from the Unified Authority, they abandoned us. We owe them nothing.
They
abandoned their clone military.
They
abandoned their outworld territories.
They
discarded their fleets.”
My comments were greeted with a scared silence.
“You say you have twenty-three planets in your empire? Did you conquer them, or did they join willingly?” Doctorow asked, shattering the hush.
He didn’t understand. He was so lost in his vision of a perfect society that he could not comprehend anyone’s rejecting his views. He resented any outside authority, and he instinctively believed that everyone else felt the same way.
“No one held a gun to anyone’s head,” I said, not entirely sure that was the case. I hadn’t asked.
The meeting lapsed into some form of order—even chaos runs out of energy. The wildfire conversations burned out, and I explained the situation as I understood it, leaving out one small detail—that our forces were infested with U.A. assassins.
“Is it still your goal to conquer Earth?” Doctorow asked, his voice solemn and flat.
I turned and looked up at him. From his lofty seat, Doctorow stared down on me, the light forming shadows across his face. The shadows added grim punctuation to his solemn expression.
“I am not the one who would make that decision,” I admitted.
“I’m sure you’re an important man in your empire,” Doctorow persisted, then he dredged up ghosts from a distant conversation, and asked, “Do you want revenge?”
Revenge? I’d spent the last week concerned with survival.
“Conquering Earth makes no sense. Why declare war on the Unified Authority? Why fight a war at all?” Doctorow asked. “The Unified Authority is not your enemy.”
“I would not call them my friends,” I mumbled in a voice that no one else would hear.
“You came in a fighter carrier. Do you plan to force us to join your empire?” Doctorow asked.
“No,” I said. I felt an odd sense of defeat. I had not come expecting a warm welcome, but this mix of fear and hostility caught me off guard. “You’re welcome to join, I suppose,” I said. And there it was, I had reverted back to acting like a guest on Doctorow’s planet.
“We’ll consider your offer, General Harris, but I don’t expect the people of Terraneau will want to join you.”
“No, I suppose not,” I said. I hadn’t really offered them membership. In truth, Terraneau was far more trouble than it was worth.
The auditorium had become so quiet that I could hear people breathing. “My vote will be against any form of treaty,” Doctorow told the auditorium. “I will resign before I sign a treaty with the clones or with the Unified Authority, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that Terraneau remains a neutral planet.”
“Not even for protection?” I asked, more out of curiosity than concern.
“General, men like you bring wars upon yourselves,” Doctorow said, sounding so damn sympathetic as he condemned me with his words. “We don’t need protection. Take away the armies and the battleships, and we won’t need to protect ourselves.
“Nations, empires, armies . . . we don’t want any of that on Terraneau. We’ll vote on your offer, General Harris, but I can tell you the outcome already.”
“You probably can,” I agreed. I didn’t care. With a government like this, Terraneau would make an unreliable ally at best.
“My vote is for you to take your Marines and go away,” Doctorow continued.
Applause broke out in the auditorium. A woman rose to her feet, nodded, and clapped her hands. More representatives stood and joined her. Pretty soon, every person on every tier had risen to their feet and begun to applaud Doctorow’s statement. The sound echoed through the well, drowning everything else out.
I did not hate these people, but I did not care what became of them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
What should I have called it? An interrogation? An inquisition? Doctorow might have described it as a hearing, but that sounded too benevolent by my book. I was glad when it ended.
As we drove away from the government center, Hollingsworth asked a question that came so out of the blue that it took me aback. He asked, “What if it came to a choice between her and us?”
“You sound like a jealous girlfriend,” I said. “The relationships do not overlap. She’s my girl, you’re my Marines. It’s completely different.”
Night had fallen over Norristown. Streetlights blazed, as did lights in windows and headlamps on cars. Just a few short months ago, nothing but fires and flashlights had lit the city after dark, now it sparkled.
“Not all that different,” Hollingsworth said. Now that I had returned, he had not once bothered using the word, “sir.” “You screw her. You screw us. It’s a different kind of screwing, but you’re still screwing us.”
If I’d been driving, I would have pulled over and hit the bastard. We could have had it out with our fists. It sounds primitive, but it’s better than letting things fester. A couple of black eyes, a bloody nose, and maybe some bruised ribs, and we would get on with our lives. Unfortunately, he was driving.
I worked with what I had. I pulled the corner of my collar and held it out for Hollingsworth to see. “Listen here, you self-pitying waste of speck. See these stars? You may not like it, but these stars make me a more important person than you. You got that? You’ve got a bird and I’ve got stars and that means you will either show me respect or I will throw your ass in the brig.”
He did not speak for several seconds. Finally, he said, “Sorry, sir.”
“Get this through your skull, Hollingsworth, I did not start the war with the Unified Authority. If you haven’t figured that out, it’s time that you did. They sent us out here to use us for target practice. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.” He stared straight ahead as if driving through hazardous traffic instead of empty streets, his hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel.
“I wasn’t the one who started the war. So if you are going to blame me for something, blame me for saving the specking fleet.”
This woke him from his stupor like a slap across his jaw. He looked at me, and said, “Begging your pardon, General, but the way this Marine sees it, Admiral Warshaw saved the fleet when he started up the broadcast zone.”
“Who came up with the idea of salvaging broadcast equipment in the first place, asshole? Who came up with the idea of hijacking those self-broadcasting battleships?” I asked.
Hollingsworth went back to staring straight ahead. He did not answer my questions.
“By the way, I hope you don’t plan on staying on Terraneau,” I said. “Your pal Doctorow told me to pack up my Marines and leave.”
More silence.
This was not how I wanted the conversation to go. When we left the meeting, I had half expected we could have a friendly conversation. I thought we might stop somewhere to talk over a couple of beers. As I saw Hollingsworth seething with anger, I realized that friendly conversation would never happen. He and I would never be friends.
“Turn up here,” I said, pointing to a road that headed to the northern edge of town.
“I thought you wanted to head to base,” Hollingsworth said.
“I changed my mind,” I said. I told myself I was being logical, that Hollingsworth could order the men to pack; but logic had nothing to do with my decision. I felt alone, and I wanted reassurance.
I knew the way to Ava’s house like I knew the scars on the back of my hands, and I told Hollingsworth every turn well in advance.
“Do you want me to send a jeep for you, sir?” he asked, as I climbed out.
“No, Colonel, I think I’ll find my own way back to the base,” I said.
He saluted and drove away.
I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I had to laugh. I had just traveled across three galactic arms only to find myself stuck in a suburb without a phone or a jeep. Maybe Ava was working late, maybe she was having dinner at a friend’s house, maybe she was spending the night in the girls’ dorm. She might arrive any minute or be gone all night.
The house was completely dark. I tried the door, but it was locked. For no real reason, I knocked again. No one answered. I walked to the edge of her front porch, sat, and waited. Time passed. Night turned to early morning.