Chapter 18

At dusk the next day, Sash knocked on the door of Colette's apartment. She let him in and they embraced. “We’re ready to go,” she told him without delay.

I followed the two out of the apartment, and we walked to the elevator.

“So who are we going to talk to, exactly?” I asked when we were aboard.

Colette answered. “This is the advisory council Sash told you about. Recruiting you to the cause has been part of our comprehensive strategy to evict Atlas for good, and to return self-determination to the people of Gaia. Now that you’re here, you’ll get to meet the members of the council. They can meet you, you can hear from some of them, you can look at our plan, and help us figure out how best to move forward and implement it.”

“You know, I don’t understand something. Why don’t you guys just shut the Atlas facility down? I mean, you’ve got some soldiers of your own, right? Just go in there and…and…nationalize the place. Shut it down. I don’t understand the problem.”

The two looked at each other, and Colette deferred to Sash on that one. “No, you don’t,” Sash replied in his sonorous yet gentlemanly tone. “Firstly, the government does not have a military force per se, not in the sense that you and I think of when we say military. Not in the sense that you saw at the Atlas facility yesterday: companies of combat-experienced troops, who are properly trained and equipped for battle.”

The elevator reached the ground floor, and we stepped out. I walked with them through the small marble lobby. Through the glass doors I could see a black, levitating car waiting outside, a tough-looking dude standing near it with the door open. Boy, these intelligence folks got some nice treatment.

Sash hadn’t stopped talking to admire the travel accommodations, however. “We do have a global peace-keeping force, the CPSD, but they are glorified police. They’re average-Joe crime fighters, and they can handle riots. But they’re not soldiers. They don’t know the first thing about combat, infiltration, exfiltration, all the rest of it. And our military hardware inventory is…slim pickings.”

We stepped through the lobby doors out into the warm sunshine. I took a deep, full breath of that tangy Gaian air as I approached the car. The tough guy nodded deferentially to Colette, and she got in. I climbed in behind her. Sash followed me, and the door thudded shut behind him. It was a small limo, with a pair of seats facing each other. I had seated myself next to Colette, and Sash settled in across from us.

As the car set into motion, Colette spoke up. “We’ve never had the need for a military, Sean, because Gaians aren’t at war with each other. The entire planet was settled at pretty much the same time, based on agreements already hammered out back on Earth. There’s really no one here to fight.”

“Except outside aggressors,” Sash added ominously.

“Except outside aggressors,” Colette nodded in acknowledgment. “Actually, this is the perfect segue into the conversation I wanted to have with you on the way over, Sean.” She turned her body to face me better, to command my full attention which, quite honestly, didn’t require any extra effort on her part. “As I mentioned, we’re meeting with the council. Our primary focus right now is to get rid of Atlas and the troops that protect them, because they are killing our children, destroying our economy, and wrecking our environment. As Sash indicated, military force is not an option for the Gaian government. And even if they had the soldiers and equipment they needed to occupy the facility, we would then have to face waves and waves of reinforcements from Earth. We just can’t sustain that kind of conflict. So we’re having to resort to…unconventional tactics. We have…engaged in some acts of sabotage, to at least slow them down or to try to make staying here more hassle than it’s worth.” Colette glanced over at Sash. “But everybody agrees that even that is not a long-term solution.”

I looked at him too, and his eyes said as much. “Yeah, that’s a tough one,” I said. “You’d have to do a helluva lot of consistent damage to make it not worth their while. I mean, rimonium is rare, and a huge revenue source. Especially since Atlas is the only provider. They can’t even keep up with the demand, and they have a total monopoly on the market. They can charge whatever they want, and they do. I’m sure your little escapades have cost Earth manufacturers a pretty penny. I don’t see how you could sabotage Atlas out of here. You would need total occupation to put it to rest.”

Colette nodded approvingly. “Yes, that’s the kind of expertise we need from you. We have a lot of strategies we’re considering, and many of them are being concurrently explored and implemented, right now. But we’re making educated guesses about a lot of things. I believe that you can fill in a lot of those blanks for us. Show us their vulnerabilities – financial, logistical, social. And keep us from making costly and needless mistakes.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Colette looked over fraternally at Sash. He blandly returned her gaze, and she focused back on me. “Let me fill you in on some of the background, so you don’t walk into that meeting cold.” She took a moment to collect her thoughts, a moment completed by a deep inhalation, then she plunged in. “The Gaian government is a weak, spineless body that is sweet-talked, cheated and bitch-slapped by Earth on a regular basis.” The harshness of her words, especially from an insider, surprised me. “We kow-tow to their every demand. Earth lures us into all kinds of trade agreements and other treaties that always end up benefiting Earthlings and hurting Gaians. And if you ask the government why they tolerate this, they will give you a nice-sounding but bullshit answer. The real reason is because Earth has a military and we don’t, and our government is scared of provoking it.”

“You see,” Sash interjected, “Gaia does not enjoy political cohesion across its population.”

“I’m getting to that,” Colette told him. She turned back to me. “When Gaia first negotiated these mining rights with Atlas, it was…a joke. The government basically gave our whole farm away. The economic and environmental damage took effect the day Atlas started mining. Local political disarray notwithstanding,” she said for Sash’s sake, “Gaians were pretty well united about this being a really bad deal. The government recognized its mistake, and tried to get it reversed. Atlas laughed them off the map.

“And then our kids started getting sick. And dying. Very ugly, painful deaths.” Her voice trembled slightly as she said it; this one hit too close to home. “Our doctors finally pinned it down: they were dying from the traces of rimonium leaking into the groundwater. Gaians were furious, terrified – and rightly so – and they demanded that something be done.

“So, the Gaian government made a big public show of arbitrarily canceling the Atlas agreement and serving them with legal papers granting them one month to leave Gaia and to take every scrap of waste and property with them. I think they even had the nerve to include a damages clause, something like a billion credits owed to us for the trouble. The whole thing was ridiculous.

“Anyway, within a week, three Earth warships entered Gaian orbit, and one of them deposited that company of Marines you saw, who immediately established a defensive perimeter around the Atlas compound and pointed some very big guns in the direction of our government buildings.

“Well, the Gaian government just peed its pants, and told the diplomatic corps to get back to work, and double-time it. Since then, they’ve been trying to negotiate all kinds of things, from ‘good neighbor’ agreements to trying to get their hands on some of that medicine Atlas has for reversing rimonium poisoning.”

“Koralizine,” Sash reminded me.

Colette nodded. “So the long and short of it, Sean, is that there are a lot of pissed off people here, and a frantic government bureaucracy that doesn’t know how to handle the tough stuff.”

“Or have the capability for it,” Sash stressed.

“So they’re pretty desperate for a solution,” I filled in.

“That’s one way to put it,” said Colette, with a trace of private irony.

As the conversation lulled for a moment, I noticed the sound of sirens outside. Before I could turn to look for their origin, the car took a sudden turn as the driver hit the brakes. Colette and I nearly flew into Sash’s lap. The sirens were screaming now outside the car’s darkened windows. Our car quickly accelerated, juked, then nosedived to a stop. The nearby sirens spooled off, but I could hear more coming in the distance. We could sense a lot of activity outside, and we heard shouts and scuffling, but aside from the flashing lights, we couldn’t see much in the darkness outside.

“What the hell’s going on?” I shouted. Alarm painted the faces of my companions.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Thornbush – ” the driver squawked over the intercom, but he was cut off. The door next to me flew open.

“CPSD! Get out, now!” a voice shouted. Two large-bore weapons were thrust into the limo.

“What the hell is this?” I demanded.

“CPSD! Get out!” The voice was strong, but tense and rapid-fire. “Get out, lie face down on the ground. Keep your hands in front of you!”

“Stop what you’re doing!” Sash shouted. “This is General Amaka!”

A hand grabbed my shirt and tore me out of the car, my legs and ankles painfully striking the car’s doorjamb. My assailant threw me down to the ground, and slammed his knee into my back, choking my sudden cry of pain into a labored gasp. I could hear more threats and arguing going on behind me, then scuffling. My own attacker jerked my arms up behind me, squeezing out another strangled grunt from me, and a strip of material was expertly wrapped around my wrists and yanked tight. The binding gnawed into my flesh, sending waves of sharp pain into my arm.

Colette and Sash were thrown to the ground beside me, followed by our husky driver. Colette’s face was filled with fury. I couldn’t see Sash or the driver beyond her.

“Colette Thornbush,” an authoritative voice said above me. “You are under arrest.”

“You can’t arrest me!” she spat.

“What are you doing?” I hollered at him. “She’s with Gaian Intelligence!”

The cop ignored me. He was speaking only with Colette. “I CAN arrest you, and I am doing so on charges of impersonating a government official, willful destruction of property, and conspiracy to commit these and related crimes. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

I knew the rest of it from movies, but I couldn’t believe it was actually happening to us.

“Stand down, soldier!” Sash ordered. “I am General Amaka, and I am ordering you to stand down. Release us at once.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that.”

“Goddammit, you let us up off the ground right now, or so help me, I will rip your fucking throat out.”

There was a pause. “Please, sir. Don’t make me haul in the both of you. Just keep calm, and we’ll get it sorted out.”

I could hear Sash cursing and threatening, but the way his voice dropped suggested he had accepted the inevitable. Colette had turned her face toward him, and was frantically whispering instructions. “You know what to do,” I heard her finish as they hauled her up to her feet, and took her away.

I stared at Sash’s face. He was caught up in a drama that I had no earthly comprehension of, but somehow he managed to focus on me and offer a word of encouragement. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be alright.”

“What the fuck is going on, Sash?”

“Just keep still.”

I laid there, working my wrists to try to find some relief from the pain, and recovering my breath. My body was hurting everywhere. After about five minutes, we were hauled to our feet and the plastic handcuffs were shorn free. I rubbed my wrists, chafing at the shooting pain worked into them.

“I’m sorry, General,” the cop was saying to Sash. “But I take my orders from the President now.”

“You jackass!” he snarled back. “You are so far out of line, Private, you won’t be wearing that uniform in the morning.” His fiery gaze took in the phalanx of police around us. “I’m gonna eat every one of you guys for breakfast.”

The cop waved a placating pair of hands in front of Sash. “General, you’re free to go. I suggest you get into your vehicle – say nothing more – and be on your way.”

Sash got in the man’s face. “You have just stuck the President’s thumb so far up his ass, he won’t shit for a week, you mealy-mouthed crackpot.”

The cop’s voice instantly jumped in tone and threat, one hand firmly pushing against Sash’s chest. The other afforded a finger pointing at our car, while his voice carried a cold, violent edge. “Get in your vehicle NOW, sir. Get in your vehicle and be on your way. If you say one more word, I will take you down where you stand.”

Sash glared at him. The cop glared back. They stared each other down for several seconds, then the cop broke it and stepped past Sash. “Let’s go, guys,” he said to the rest of the cops. “C’mon, clear out!” All the cops broke off from their various working groups and started saddling back up in their vehicles. Sash and I watched them go without a word, our driver cursing behind us.

Sash finally turned to him. “Let’s go. Get us to the council meeting.” He turned to me. “C’mon. I’ve got some explaining to do.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “I’ll say.”