The Fight for Peace (3 page)

Chapter 3

PRIME MINISTER BYRAN VASQUEZ

COMPROMISES

“You didn’t stay to hear the deliberations,” Byran said to Arinna when she arrived in his office.

“No. I wanted to see how Corianne was doing,” Arinna said.

“How is she?” Derrick asked from where he stood by the windows.

“Doing far better than I would expect considering what she’s been through.” Arinna paused, gaze sweeping between Derrick and Byran even though her expression remained unconcerned. Byran knew her though, and read the tenseness underlying the relaxed pose. “So what was the decision?”

Byran spoke when Derrick made no move to, although they’d sat through the long afternoon side by side. “Miralda for her confession and cooperation, not to mention the note from David Eldridge in her hand when she was arrested, will remain under a rather genteel imprisonment in an estate far from anything. The remaining members of MOTHER will be under house arrest here in Prague for the foreseeable future. However, Danielle is being released due to lack of concrete evidence.” Byran couldn’t keep the distaste out of his voice.

“That is ... unfortunate,” Arinna said. She opened her mouth to speak, stopped herself with a quiet laugh. “I was going to offer to have her watched, but I guess that depends on what they decide to do with me?”

“Well, the majority of Parliament would like to see you removed,” Byran said matter of factly. “They didn’t appreciate that you helped MOTHER hide the war. It makes your assertion that you did not approve of what they did and tried to direct them to return power to Parliament rather difficult to confirm.”

Arinna frowned, her gaze resting on the view outside of the window. The lack of an answer or a defense bothered him. “That is what you called me here to tell me?” she asked, tone just as conversational as before. Byran was beginning to doubt he understood her as well as he thought he did.

“No. The FLF has contacted me, via a man delivering a letter before you ask how,” he said in response to her sharp glance and tried not to feel injured that it was toward Derrick and not him. “They would like to discuss a serious peace treaty.”

Arinna snorted, looking away again. “There is a line we haven’t heard before.”

“They are offering us peace!” Despite his intentions, frustration rose to the surface.

“Yes, and that worked out so well for David,” Arinna said dryly.

Byran glared at her. “You took out a very important weapons depot. They are serious now.”

“Are you certain?”

“Are you asking me to question them or you?”

It was Arinna’s turn to fire a heated look. “Why am I here, Byran?” she asked. “According to you, Parliament has asked for my removal. If you want my opinion on the FLF and this newest peace offering, I would say don’t trust them. If you want me to hand over the Guard ... I’ll think about it but I need to speak to Captain Vries first.”

By the windows, Derrick shifted uneasily but withheld any comment. Which irritated and bothered Byran most of all. Derrick hadn’t been the same since his father’s death, since Byran was elected Prime Minister, maybe since his return from Crystal City. Byran needed his friends now when he faced pulling together a nearly unraveled Europe. He needed both of them.

“I said that was Parliament’s recommendation. Not that I was going to follow it,” Byran said, sitting with the weight of too much responsibility on his shoulders.

Arinna regarded him with an evaluating stare. Something warmer touched her eyes. “You don’t need me if they truly want peace.”

“I don’t trust them either,” Byran said with a frown. “What is that old saying, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?’ Derrick, you lived with them for two months. You have the most experience of anyone in Europe with the FLF and how it thinks at this point. Say something, dammit.”

Derrick took a breath, paused, and let it out with a sigh. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Some help you are,” Byran grouched. “Fine, we’ll talk about that after. First I have something to say to both of you. The real reason why I asked you here,” he said pointedly to Arinna.

“Derrick, I know you feel I conned you into being Secretary of Defense. I’m sorry. I need you though. I don’t know anything about the military and of all the people in Europe, I trust you implicitly to tell me what to do here and when I’m doing something wrong. Which is why I want to thank you for giving me your father’s letter.” Byran pulled it from a desk drawer and set it on the table. “Did you read it?” he asked Arinna.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Good. That will make this easier. Derrick, I want you to be Secretary of Defense because I need you, but I don’t want you to replace your father. I hated the man. If anything, I want you to emulate Arinna. She was the liaison with the Guard before she became the Lady Grey. Be an advocate for the Guard as much as for what Europe needs.”

Byran paused, hating that tears came to his eyes as he forced out the last, “Dammit, if it means you must do as she has done and fight in order to lead, I accept that. I know your loyalty and love is with the Guard. Just remember Europe needs, I need, you too.”

“And you,” Byran continued looking at Arinna before Derrick could collect himself enough to reply. Arinna flinched under his hotter gaze. “Enough of this bullshit that you are not military or officially in charge of the Guard. I’m bloody well in charge of everything and your superior, whether or not you bother to acknowledge that, and I appoint you leader of the armed forces. I suppose I’ll have to swear you in to make that official, but I’ll need Captain Vries to guide me through it.”

Arinna stared at him, lips parted and without words for a minute. “You are serious? But Parliamen
t—
”

“Doesn’t have a friggen clue what is best for Europe or they would have been doing their job and noticed MOTHER and that we were still at war three years ago. They put me in charge and I’m making the final decision. If they don’t like it, they can vote me out. But I’ll damn well do what is best for Europe until that day.”

Arinna chuckled. “I almost think you’ve gone insane. Really, Byran, I don’t know what to say.”

“Obviously neither does Derrick. Still,” Byran said.

“Shit. I want to hug you,” Derrick finally spat out.

That pulled Byran to his feet, opening his arms for his oldest friend. They held each other tightly for a moment, both close to tears and too choked to speak when they stepped back. Byran had to clear his throat before he spoke again.

“Before you think you are getting off without a hitch, I need you, both of you, to make me one promise. You must swear that you’ll both survive. Don’t tell me you can’t guarantee that,” Byran growled as both hesitated, glancing at each other. “I know it is dangerous. I know what I am giving you permission to do. For God’s sake, you nearly died a few days ago, Arinna. I don’t even want to talk about what happened in Tashkent. I’m still mad at you. But I’ll take back everything I said unless you promise. This is as important to me as saving Europe.”

A tear slid down Arinna’s cheek. “I swear, Byran. We made it this far. We just need to go a little longer.” Her glance fell on Derrick. He nodded.

“I swear too, Byran. If I go with the Guard ... it’ll only be if I’m really needed,” Derrick said, voice rough. “Thank you. I think you know what this means to me if anyone does, but I know you don’t understand.”

“So, with that out of the way,” Byran said, feeling like he’d fought all of Parliament and now very much needed a drink. “What about the FLF offering peace?”

“Did you see much in the way of weapons in Crystal City?” Arinna asked Derrick.

Derrick shook his head, pulling a chair from along the wall to sit next to Byran’s desk. “No. They had guns, some tanks, enough weapons and soldiers to defend the city, but I didn’t see anything that appeared to be a weapons depot. The sections of the city I wasn’t allowed in appeared related to technology, computers maybe and government offices. Unless they stored bombs in the basement, I didn’t see much of a stockpile at all.”

“No planes?” she asked. Derrick shook his head again. “That gives us an advantage. Maybe this was a big depot for them ... but I just don’t know. I think it will take me a lot more than a signed piece of paper to believe in truce with the FLF. Look at the countries that did sign peace agreements with them. From what Captain Vries saw in South America, Brazil didn’t fare better than Russia, and Brazil was one of the first to agree to peace with the FLF.”

“The soldier who told me about Tashkent made it sound like a big weapons depot. But it doesn’t mean it was the only one. He might not have known about any other. The FLF is pretty tight about the information it lets out. It took quite a lot of drinking to get the tiny pieces of information I managed. Tashkent and another FLF city in North America, supposedly, are the biggest things I learned.”

“Plus the layout of Crystal City and counts of soldiers were useless,” Arinna said with a roll of her eyes.

“Another city?” Byran asked. “In North America?”

“Isle Royale. Yes, it’s real. We found it,” she said to Derrick. He leaned back in his chair.

“But the bombs in the US were nuclear,” Byran said.

“It looks like not all of them. There was a perimeter strike using dirty bombs, especially on the east coast. It made anyone looking for radiation find it,” she said with a shrug as both Byran and Derrick stared at her. “But the bombs on the west coast must have been stronger or spread radiation farther than expected. Based on where crops are growing, the FLF poisoned most of the arable farmland near the city. That is why Jared found workcamps growing food all the way to Central America. We’ve been mapping everything we see off the satellite imagery.”

“You were going to tell me this when?” Byran asked.

Arinna huffed a laugh. “I’m not used to sharing information with the ruling power ... I’ll try harder.”

“Seriously, Derrick, you are going to have to spend time in Guard headquarters and go over everything they are doing, and then tell me, please. Between a second FLF city and the shield technology they have on planes I didn’t know existed, I’m lost.” Derrick laughed in answer.

“I’ll think about letting him in,” Arinna said. “So what are you going to do about the peace offer?” Arinna asked.

“I don’t trust it, but we have to try. I can’t risk them being sincere. I need to, would like to, use the Guard systems to talk to them and make arrangements. When this happens in person, I’d like the Guard to escort whoever goes.”

“Which will be you,” Arinna said. “Yes, of course. I’ll tell Kehm Racée, the Chief Communications Officer, to set up whatever you need. When you go, you will be under Guard protection, of course.”

“Good. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Byran asked with a smile. “I think we should make a habit of this. Especially since we are currently at war.”

They ended the meeting there, Byran preferring to stay amused at what Captain Vries’ reaction would be when Arinna told him that she was now officially in charge of the Guard and that Derrick was joining as well. It kept him from worrying that he’d just agreed his two closest friends could go to war.

Arinna met him at the entrance to Guard Headquarters later that evening. She gave him the tour, walking the hallways together as they had when they’d both worked in embassies. Only then they’d been flirting. Now between the two of them, they controlled Europe.

“What are you thinking of?” she asked, pausing in an empty hallway.

“That when we were running around Madrid and I was trying to get you to sleep with me, I never would have imagined we’d end up here,” he admitted.

She smiled, one more tender than he’d seen in months, at least not since the summer and parties with him and Derrick acting inappropriately for her benefit. “Probably a good thing. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have wanted to know how crazy things would go.”

It was when she was introducing him to the Chief Communications Officer in Command that Derrick and Captain Vries joined them. Byran was still in awe of the computers, massive video monitors, and satellite links. Kehm pulled up images of both Crystal City and Isle Royale.

“What else are you looking for?” Derrick said, nodding toward images flickering on a smaller monitor.

“Another potential resistance front,” Jared said. “The refugees I met in South America were going somewhere.”

“Not being alone ... that would be nice,” Byran said. Behind him the door to Command slid open.

“Prime Minister, I would like to formally introduce you to the three Lieutenants, Farrak Assad, Gabriella Faronelli, and Kieren O’Dell,” Arinna said as the three officers entered. “Lieutenants, meet your Prime Minister. I want you to be familiar enough with each other to help immediately if needed.”

“You promised,” Byran said to her.

“I might be busy!” Arinna said with a laugh. “Nothing dire.”

Jared cast the two of them a glance, but when he spoke it wasn’t about the referenced promise. “I think everyone is here. Shall we get started?”

It took everyone a minute to organize. Byran faced Arinna with Captain Vries by his side while the Guard officers stood in a circle around them. Arinna repeated the enlistment oath without the need for prompting.