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Page 8.
4. Memory
 “I don’t know how it happened,” said Thanar Valk. He dabbed the back of his head furiously, pudgy hands warding off imaginary monsters of sweat in the air around him. “We learned of the air crash just today.”
The enormity of the event rocked Jared’s mind. He looked at Valk and wasn’t drunk anymore. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes, actually, quite sure. I got my orders straight from Center House, only an hour ago. I only met you with lucky timing.”
“Good work,” Jared said while mentally still holding the grimy, sweaty little police officer at arms’ length. “I assumed you are bringing me my orders.”
Valk nodded, gulping, and reached into his coat. “Here.” He handed over a black plastic envelope sealed with Cyrus Mbe’s private seal.
Holding the envelope in one hand, Jared quickly scanned the seal with a small pocket isocounter. The scan showed that the seal was intact and authentic. He noticed that Valk bristled almost unobtrusively.
Mbe—the new acting president! Jared tore the letter open. Mbe was Exterior President—the Delegate to the UGO. Chao had been actual president of the City or Nation.
“Why is there not an election scheduled for a new Interior President, Commander Valk?”
“I can only guess, Fallon. Mbe considers the national situation so critical and serious, given the threats from Raskia and the aliens, that he is assuming the total presidency. No more dual magistrates. He has seized power, and nobody can stop him.”
Jared was shocked, but hesitated to question his boss. Was this a coup? What would a reasonable person call this? Suddenly, Mbe had become the most powerful man in the human-centric universe. Jared felt especially pained, because Cyrus Mbe was his superior, which made this a delicate situation. As an educated citizen, as a trained and loyal military officer, he instantly felt a pang at the loss of the checks and balances built into the republic millennia ago. Having one man in charge of everything could only lead to dreadful consequences. He hadn’t expected this of Mbe, whom he barely knew. Jared was assigned directly on the staff of Commander Bowman. Bowman in turn was the primary military advisor and attaché on Mbe’s staff at the Starmeer (the ancient parliament, now also the United Galaxy Organization external government of what everyone acknowledged was already a commercial and cosmopolitical empire in all but name).
Mbe’s letter read: “Lieutenant Fallon: Dear Colleague: I regret to inform you of the death of Interior President Liew Chao of Mercury Free Port City. Mr. Chao, a leader of nations, died yesterday morning in a plane crash of unknown cause over the savannah near Rodinburgh, MFPC. This information is classified and not to be released to or discussed with anyone. The bearer of this message is Rear Admiral Vodir Llewdollyn of the Home Fleet, Port Authority Division. (Picture below). He can be trusted.”
Jared glanced up. Valk quickly said: “I have been appointed Admiral Llewdollyn’s adjutant. I know, it’s crazy. I’m with the federal police, but right now everything is in flux.”
Jared shook his head and kept reading Mbe’s message silently: “Your orders are to immediately bypass Trans-Space Station I and proceed directly to the restricted Port Authority space base in the Olympia Sector of the Old City. Be advised that Mercury City is in crisis. Confidentially, let me tell you that there have been three attempts of my life in the past two days. I believe a Raskian assassination ring operating out of the city’s foreign quarter has launched a strong offensive. They are the ones most likely responsible for President Chao’s death, which I am preparing to announce as an assassination. We will bring you under the tightest security. From the landing base, please move directly to the UGO Assembly Hall. The General Assembly is due to start bogus hearings on ‘Mercurian imperialism and murder’ at midnight tonight, led by the Ankh and by the Raskians colluding together while we have an enormous alien threat on our borders. I will meet with my entire delegation staff after the Assembly adjourns.
“Of necessity, I will be taking some exigencies with the system to ensure its survival in the struggle against the Ankh and the Raskians, among others. Since I have the power to transfer members of my own staff to the interior staff, and though that has never been done before because there has never been a situation like this, I will announce some promotions and dual interior-exterior posts.
“Remember, please, that this is a trying time for us all. Our nation must survive. The threat is that grave. Not only are we faced with the enemy without, but we have lost our president. The death of a leader of nations is a death of nations. In the present danger to our nation, and in the personal danger to us all, we must draw close together and fight as one to overcome the assassins and religious fanatics.
“I am assigning you directly to my personal staff, effective immediately. You are relieved of your billet with the Mercurian Star Fleets, and you will answer only to me, directly, until further notice.”
Jared read the letter twice more, then folded it and jammed it into his pocket. For Mercury FPC, the situation had gone from bad to dreadful, and much worse was yet to come. Jared was sure of it. Still, in the back of his mind he thought: here is a way out of Lyxa’s claws for me. His earlier billet in the city was as a member of Lyxa’s official state guard. It was a nebulous portion of the star fleet that her dynastic house effectively owned and operated. At least he’d be free of that now, but he could only think his situation was going from bad to awful. The General Assembly was the same thing as the ancient Starmeer, now the external branch of Mercurian government, and Mbe was now President of both. Something about all this seemed suspicious to Jared, maybe because he’d already seen so much intrigue going on around him.
Valk said: “The President on occasion refers to himself by the new title of Leader, having consolidated his various positions.” He added urgently, “My orders are to accompany you to Mercury City. There, I’m to transport you to our Safron Geneff Police Station in the Dome, then transfer you to the Assembly Hall under tight security.” Valk looked around. “Is there another cot? I’ve been traveling and I’m a bit tired.”
“I think there’s a cot that comes out of the wall. There—under the light.”
“Oh, yes, here it is.” Valk tried to pry the panel out of the wall. “It seems to be stuck.” His stubby body struggled against the unyielding panel. Jared got up to help him, and together they eased the creaking bed out of the wall. They stood back silently. The bed was covered with dust. The metal had rusted away into a red, crumbly frosting. Llewdollyn shrugged. “This ship—a wreck. It looks as though it’s been in storage for a few decades.”
Jared sat back down on his window bunk. “Class M hauler, isn’t it?”
Valk smiled coldly. “No. It looks like one of the old Class A ships. 3090’s. They still use them occasionally. We have had ten of them in storage at Safron Geneff since the early 4500’s.”
Jared wrapped his arms around his knees. “They must be about the oldest ships we have.”
Valk sat down and mopped his neck again. “No. It’s about a median age.”
“You’re joking. What about those new supercarriers we hear about—Clusterkings?”
Valk shook his head and said: “The average battleship is five hundred years old. That means a battleship used in Aldeb space. For the Galaxy, I think the figure is about a thousand years. One ship came from the other side of the Galaxy ten years ago, from one of the rim Fleets, thirteen centuries old.”
Jared laughed hysterically. “But that means we should be a thousand years behind the Raskians—or the aliens, for that matter.”
Valk nodded. “I know the Comptroller of the Home Fleet. He told me the figures one night when we were all drunk. It seems incredible, doesn’t it? But when you consider that we have about a million ships in the field, and that each takes a billion credits to build, and that a battleship really doesn’t age—nor is it built to age—I guess the empire keeps going.”
Jared pursed his lips. “Would you call us an empire?”
Valk bundled himself up by the window in his black cloak, and smiled. “I used to worry about that word. Mercury City is a republic. But there’s only one word for an empire, and that’s empire. There’s nothing really wrong with that. It’s been a long peace.”
Jared nodded, also sitting back. Stella slept peacefully in the other cabin.
The ship plodded on through space. Valk’s hauler had disappeared from the window, as had TS I. Space hung cold and glorious in the glass.
Jared felt drowsy and withdrew to the cabin, where he slipped into bed beside his djia. He felt overwhelmed. He thought of home, of many years ago, when he’d had a father and a mother and had gone to the arena at the Olympia House to watch the ball games. His parents had been a poor, austere family of old republican stock, completely opposed to the gladiatorial fights of the prisons.
Jared put his face in his hands. What he felt was nothing. He felt nothing. His entire being was nothingness. Nothingness propelled him back to old dead, lost memories.
His family lived on a small street called Eye Street. Eye Street had glittered in the snow on cold winter nights. The snow had come from the coast and rubbed the meadow towns white. In the summers the streets were dark and warm. Small boys had run through the dusky meadows and pressed their noses against the fence at the space base near Oudangad and watched bright ships float weightless into space. Space: So vast and cold but warmly swirling with stars, so beautiful to fly in.
As an adolescent, Jared told people he was from Lesht, one of the new middle-class suburbs. That drew smiles. To say he was from Oudangad would draw howls of laughter. He’d had his eyes set on the military academies. His father had shaken his head. His father was dead now, gone with the summer nights. His mother was gone now, dead with the stars and moths of those summer nights. They were gone, face-down, deep in the meadows of memory and dreams, and so was the president. As Jared Fallon slept, he dreamed of good but wistful memories.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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