The End of All Things (36 page)

“The organization known as Equilibrium is dedicated to bringing about the end of the Colonial Union,” Ambassador Abumwe said. “We know this. But we should be aware that the end of the Colonial Union is not the only goal of Equilibrium—indeed it’s not the primary goal. The primary goal is the dissolution of the Conclave, the largest single government this part of space has ever seen. To this end, Equilibrium is using the Colonial Union as a tool, and not just the Colonial Union, but Earth as well.”

Abumwe was speaking from the well of one of the State Department lecture theaters at Phoenix Station. This particular theater could easily seat a couple hundred people, but at the moment held just four: Abumwe in the well, me sitting off to the side, and Colonels Abel Rigney and Liz Egan front row center, facing Abumwe.

Egan’s formal title was Colonial Defense Forces liaison to the Colonial Union’s Department of State, but in the aftermath of Assistant Secretary Ocampo’s betrayal of the CU, she had stepped into the role of ad hoc number two at State, someone trusted by both the secretary of state and the CDF brass. The closer entwining of those two entities should have filled any rational person with a sense of foreboding, but at the moment no one seemed to blink. This was in itself a commentary of the state the Colonial Union was in at the moment.

Colonel Abel Rigney, I think, didn’t have an actual title. He was just That Guy in the CDF: the one that went everywhere, saw everything, advised everyone, and was privy to it all. Honestly, if you wanted to cripple the CDF—and by extension the Colonial Union—all you would have to do is put a bullet into his temple. I suspect entire chunks of the Colonial Union government would simply stop working because no one would know who to talk to without Rigney acting as intermediary.

Officially, Egan and Rigney were mid-level apparatchiks at best. Unofficially, they were the people you talked to when a thing needed to be done, whatever thing it was.

We had a thing that needed to be done.

“You’re saying that what happened at Khartoum is not meant to be a direct attack on the Colonial Union,” Egan said, to Abumwe.

“No, of course it was a direct attack,” Abumwe replied, in the straight-ahead, blunt manner that if you were not smart, you would think was profoundly nondiplomatic. “The act served its own short-term goal in that regard. But its true value to Equilibrium is long term—what it allows the organization to build towards for its ultimate goal: the destruction of the Conclave.”

“Walk us through it, Ambassador,” Rigney said.

“At Khartoum, we secured a high-value prisoner, a Commander Tvann of Equilibrium.” A very slight smile crossed Abumwe’s face. “The best way to describe him is as the Equilibrium equivalent of
you,
Colonel Rigney. Someone who is very well connected and often at the center of Equilibrium plans.”

“All right.”

The ambassador nodded in my direction. “During interrogation, Lieutenant Wilson here got Tvann to reveal Equilibrium’s most recent plan, which begins with the attack on the
Tubingen
above Khartoum.”

Colonels Rigney and Egan looked over to me. “‘Interrogation,’ Lieutenant?” Egan said to me.

I understood the implication. “The information was not secured under torture or duress,” I said. “I used misdirection and false information to convince him that it was in his interest to cooperate.”

“What false information?”

“I told him we were going to obliterate every major Rraey city and industrial site on four different planets because we believe the Rraey are the primary movers behind Equilibrium.”

“Are they?”

“I don’t have the data to speculate,” I said. “If you were asking me to go with my gut, I’d say the Rraey government offers clandestine logistical support that’s difficult to prove. Certainly the Rraey wouldn’t mind if we were out of the way. Even if they are offering support, however, going after the Rraey at this point won’t make a difference in the immediate plans of Equilibrium. Equilibrium is and should be our primary concern at the moment.”

Egan nodded and looked back to Abumwe. “Continue,” she said.

“Khartoum is one of ten colonies who conspired to declare independence from the Colonial Union. The plan was to do it simultaneously and in doing so give the Colonial Union too many targets against which to effectively retaliate. The longer it took us to respond to the event, the more colonial worlds would be inspired to also declare independence. The idea here is that dissolution of the Colonial Union would succeed in part because the CU would lack the resources to deal with the mass exodus.

“However, Colonel Tvann convinced the government of Khartoum to announce its independence early, arguing that it could act as the catalyst for the dissolution of the Colonial Union alone, and that Equilibrium would effectively serve as Khartoum’s defense forces. That would benefit both Khartoum and Equilibrium, which wanted to be seen as an ally to the newly independent colonies.”

“That didn’t work out,” Rigney said, dryly.

“No,” Abumwe agreed. “In fact, Equilibrium’s true plan was to attack any CDF ship which responded—which it did with the
Tubingen
. The attack, whether it was seen by the Colonial Union as directed by Khartoum or by Equilibrium, would result in a massive response by the CDF—which it did. We sent twenty ships to Khartoum.

“Equilibrium did this for the specific purpose of massively militarizing the Colonial Union response to our planets declaring independence. The next planet or planets which declare will not receive a visit from a single CDF ship as they would have done before. Instead the CDF will send a fleet to any planet, with the specific intent of overwhelming any independence movement from the beginning.” Abumwe stopped for a second and looked at Egan and Rigney curiously. “Is this Equilibrium assessment accurate?”

The two colonels looked uncomfortable. “It might be,” Rigney said, eventually.

Abumwe nodded. “Equilibrium, through its own strategy of misdirection and false information—and its campaign to establish the Colonial Union as an unreliable source of truthful information, aided by the fact that the Colonial Union is, in fact, deeply censorious of news between colonies—plans to encourage the nine remaining planets in the original independence scheme to stick to their plan and jointly announce. It will promise logistical and defense support, which it has no real intention of providing except for its own purposes, as it did over Khartoum. This will happen as soon as practicably possible. And of course the CDF will respond.”

“And then what?” Egan asked.

“Once the Colonial Union is fully occupied with this independence movement and has committed a substantial amount of its military force and intelligence capabilities to quash it, Equilibrium attacks.”

“Attacks the fleets over the rebellious colony planets?” Rigney said. “That’s just stupid, Ambassador. Equilibrium can be effective with sneak attacks but their ships and armaments can’t stand up to a prolonged battle.”

“They won’t be attacking our fleets,” Abumwe said. “They will be attacking the Earth.”

“What?” Egan said. She pushed forward in her seat, now intensely interested.

Abumwe glanced over to me and nodded. I connected my BrainPal to the theater’s presentation system and popped up a visual of Earth, and above it, several dozen starships, not to scale.

“Equilibrium acquires ships by pirating them,” Abumwe said. “The Colonial Union has lost dozens over the years. The Conclave and its constituent states have lost even more.” She pointed into the graphic. “What you see here is a representation of all the Conclave-affiliated ships that we know have been taken and have not, as yet, been destroyed in battle. There are ninety-four shown here and we have to assume our estimate is low.

“According to Commander Tvann, the Equilibrium plan is to skip these ships into Earth space, destroy the planet’s defense, communication, and scientific satellites, and then target hundreds of major population areas with nuclear warheads.”

“
Nuclear
warheads,” Rigney said.

“Where the hell are they getting nukes?” Egan said. “Who still uses them?”

“Tvann indicated that many of them came from the stores of planets now aligned with the Conclave,” Abumwe said. “The Conclave doesn’t allow their use as weapons, so they’re supposed to be dismantled and the fissionable material disposed of. It was a trivial matter for Equilibrium to insert itself into that process and come away with warheads and fissionable material.”

“How many are we talking about?” Rigney said. “Warheads, I mean.”

Abumwe looked at me. “Tvann didn’t know all the specifics,” I said. “The ones he seemed to consider standard yield would be the equivalent to three hundred kilotons. He said there were several hundred of those.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“They could do the same damage without nuclear weapons,” Egan said. “At this point in weapons technology, using nuclear weapons is only a step up from using the longbow.”

“The
point
is to use the nuclear weapons,” Abumwe said. “Not just for the immediate devastation, but for everything else that follows.”

“When the Romans defeated Carthage, they salted the ground there so nothing could live or grow there anymore,” I said. “This is the same concept, writ large.”

“Equilibrium would be slitting their throat by doing this,” Rigney said.

“If you can find their throats to slit them,” I pointed out.

“I think we would be
motivated,
Lieutenant.”

“Colonel, you’re missing the important thing here,” Abumwe said.

“And what is that, Ambassador?” Egan asked.

Abumwe gestured up toward the image floating there. “That every one of the ships tasked to the attack is originally from the Conclave.
We
are meant to believe this is an attack not by Equilibrium, but by the Conclave. We’re meant to believe the Conclave has decided that the only way to deal with humanity—to deal with the Colonial Union—is to destroy the source of its soldiers and colonists once and for all, so we can never get it back, either by force or negotiation. This is meant to be the earnest of the Conclave’s intent to wipe us from the universe forever.”

Rigney nodded. “Yes, all right.”

“We would blame the Conclave, refuse its denials, assume it was behind Equilibrium all along,” Egan said. “We’d go to war with the Conclave. And we’d be defeated.”

“Inevitably, yes,” Abumwe said. “We are far too small to take it on directly. And even if all the colony worlds stopped fighting us for independence—or we crushed all their attempts at independence—it would still take us time to fully convert to the colonies being the well from which we draw our soldiers. And meanwhile elements of the Conclave would be agitating for our destruction, because whether the Conclave attacked us or not, we would now be a clear and present danger to it.”

“We’d lose in a fight with the Conclave,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean the Conclave would win.”

Abumwe nodded. “It wouldn’t simply be about us attacking the Conclave. It would be the internal stresses the Conclave would face in being obliged to obliterate us permanently. It goes against every reason the Conclave was founded in the first place. It would be antithetical to the goals of General Gau.”

“Not to mention that of the Conclave’s current leader, Hafte Sorvalh,” I said. “And she would be criticized relentlessly if she refused to deal with us. And no matter how capable she is—and she’s very capable—she’s not General Gau. She won’t be able to keep the Conclave together through her own sheer force of will like the general could. It will fracture and die.”

“Which is Equilibrium’s ultimate goal,” Egan said.

“Yes,” Abumwe said. “Again, our destruction is part of its plan, too. But we are mostly incidental. We are the lever Equilibrium will use to destroy the Conclave. Everything the organization has ever done, including the destruction of Earth Station, has been part of the drive toward that goal.”

“I don’t know how I feel about the complete destruction of the Colonial Union being a
side benefit,
” Rigney said.

“It should make you angry,” Abumwe said. “It makes me angry.”

“You don’t look notably angry,” Rigney observed.

“Colonel Rigney, I’m furious,” Abumwe said. “I also recognize that there are more important things for me to be and do than just be furious.”

“Ambassador, a question,” Egan said.

“Yes, Colonel.”

Egan pointed to the graphic. “We know Equilibrium’s plan now. We know that it plans to use our colonies and our standard responses against us. We know it plans to frame the Conclave for the attack on Earth. We know its game, its strategy, and its tactics. Isn’t this now a trap we can easily step out of?”

Abumwe looked over to me. “There are other complications,” I said. “Tvann suggested to me that if it became clear the Khartoum strategy failed or that we had thwarted their plans with the other nine planets or informed the Conclave of the subterfuge, that Equilibrium may simply attack Earth anyway.”

“For what purpose?” Egan said.

“Equilibrium doesn’t appear to be fussy,” I said. “It’ll take half a loaf if it can’t get a full one. What I mean by that is right now its optimal plan is to distract the Colonial Union, destroy the Earth, frame the Conclave, and let us destroy each other. But if Equilibrium has to take credit for nuking Earth instead, it will. Because it knows that an obviously weakened Colonial Union, an obviously weakened human race, will still force the Conclave’s hand.”

“You have to appreciate just how many Conclave species hate humans,” Abumwe said. “They hated us before what we did at Roanoke. They hate us even more after it. And some of them blame us for the assassination of General Gau.”

“We had nothing to do with that,” Rigney said.

“But we were there when it happened,” Abumwe said. “We and humans from Earth. That’s enough for many of them.”

“So you’re saying that Equilibrium is perfectly fine going with a ‘Plan B,’” Egan said, bringing the topic back around.

“We’re
already
on Plan B,” I said. “Plan B went into effect the moment Rafe Daquin stole the
Chandler
and brought back Secretary Ocampo. This is closer to Plan K. Equilibrium has been very good at improvisation, Colonel. It knows its limits in terms of scale and makes them advantages. Taking credit for killing Earth is not the primary goal but it has its own advantages. It means that it has done something no other entity, no other power has ever dared to do: destroyed the planet that gave the Colonial Union its power. If Equilibrium plays its cards right, it could profit immensely from taking credit for killing Earth. It could gain new members and funding. It could become a legitimate power in itself. It could step out of the shadows it lives in now.”