NOVEL NEXT Chapter 90: Tactical Option
0937h. TAF-Wednesday.
Once the cross-galaxy teleconference was completed, Jirani wasted no time in transitioning to a discussion of military strategy.
He made no mention of Marja's recovery. People got injured, they healed.
Then it was back to the business of war.
All the key military commanders coordinating the defence of Saltilla were required to participate in the War Conference, whether in person or via commslink.
As part of the ongoing efforts to suppress the Gimma Ashby insurgency and to maintain internal order, key Saltillan Intelligence and Home Affairs officers were also requested to tune in via commslink. This included Intelligence Apparatchik Alan Grimmersby, Saltilla Intelligence Underapparatchik Cenian Hughes, and Saltilla Home Affairs Underapparatchik Tenton Jorges-Ross, amongst others.
As the small meeting room filled up, Marja took to her feet and shifted all the way to the edge of that cramped space, so crowded it had become.
The air turned humid and stuffy, and she started to sweat underneath the collar of her inner suit. Still, the PDF Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels kept streaming in, until there were perhaps twenty people all crammed into a place that maybe five people could sit comfortably in.
At the opposite side of the table, Commander Mzeeka was exchanging small-talk with Brigadier General Bentil Pilix, the two of them seemingly unaffected by the sweat and general stuffiness of the place. Everyone was sweating, everyone smelled bad, but no one was complaining.
These were all military people, Marja realized. Discomfort was their bread and butter.
As someone who had grown up in environments that were comfortably spacious—as someone who was familiar with being waited on by a legion of servants—being stuck in such a cramped space with no way out made her feel excruciatingly claustrophobic.
She felt herself beginning to hyperventilate. She squeezed her eyes shut, attempting her Fafas*. It was difficult not to feel unequal to the title of Deputy Marshal Allied Forces.
*[Her breathing exercises, taught to her as part of her education on Abuna Yem'ata.]
Jirani called for everyone's attention. Marja ignored him and kept her eyes closed, pushing herself further into the corner and hugging her arms across her chest, where Hobbes pulsed.
"I apologize for having to delay the move-out plans," Jirani began. "I know the troops are already waiting at their designated muster points, but there were some unexpected delays on the administrative side."
"Unexpected delays?" someone scoffed. "Ahman, we're fighting a kakking war! Commander Mzeeka, do you not understand the gravity—"
"Major General Goggins," Jirani intoned. The entire room became even more suffocating. Marja had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
Compulsion.
The air was squeezing her to death.
Marja had almost forgotten what being subjected to Jirani's compulsion was like. As one of her many mentors, he'd utilized the compulsion matrix to discipline her twice in her youth, and both times had been marked indelibly in her memory. Once for skipping history class, once for skipping her morning meditation.
Not for the physical pain, though there was a lot of it. She was compelled to run halfway to the edge of her consciousness, compelled to hang on a bar until her arms felt like falling off.
No, the really memorable thing was feeling both mind and spirit grinding to dust.
Eventually, Marja realized that Jirani's affinity for the compulsion was just abnormal. Having been a bit of a disobedient brat in her childhood, Marja had been subjected on many occasions to compulsion-induced punishments from a wide selection of Golden grade mentors.
No other person used the compulsion in such a domineering way as Jirani.
Marja opened her eyes and coughed raggedly, now feeling as though she was on the verge of suffering a full-on panic attack, wondering if she should tell Jirani to ease off—
The pressure lightened. It was back to regular old humidity. Jirani met Marja's eyes for the briefest second before returning his attention to the bald man standing across the table from him, the Major General Goggins who had so rudely called him out.
He was doubled over, heaving raggedly, threads of saliva connecting his lips to the steel-tiled ground.
"Major General. You spoke out of turn," Jirani smiled, peeling his wizened lips back like a chimpanzee to reveal a mouth full of artificial teeth, perfect and gleaming.
"And I'll appreciate if the rest of you keep your comments to yourself until the AAR*," he said. "Unless anyone else wants to share an opinion?"
*[After Action Review—in military lingo, this is used to designate the practice of reviewing an operation or exercise after its completion, to come up with learning points and other avenues of improvement.]
Silence.
The top brass were cowed.
"Excellent," Jirani said, lowering his eyes to the screen of his table-mounted tablet and steepling his fingers before his face. "Priority points. Firstly, I'm axing the sortie. Recon reports that the Chimerae aren't entrenching any position. It's likely they're just shuttling around on their Earthborers, as suggested by the satellite imaging subsidence-reports. I need additional confirmation on whether they're physically connecting the subterranean Mining Tunnels to the Saltillan Underground—Home Affairs and Intelligence, you should be best placed to feed this info back to me."
"We'll get someone on it, Commander," a voice responded over commslink. Marja recognized the tone—smooth, cultured, refined—and knew the voice belonged to none other than Intelligence Apparatchik Alan Grimmersby.
"Good, do it immediately," Jirani instructed. "Secondly, the troops already mustered will be pushed out on recon missions. What I need are exact relative coordinates for the purposes of the Tactical Option*. Marshal Grimmersby, can the plans be prepared in the next hour?"
*[Tactical Option: the general designation for the ability of certain Golden grades to 'nuke everything in that vicinity'.]
Dark-eyed Phyllis Grimmersby, who had kept his silence all throughout the call with Karl Mentzer and Ms. Patel, replied: "I suppose."
A certain dissatisfaction wormed its way into his tone. The way he had said it, the way he sat, the way he was silent—all of this bespoke a thinly-veiled unhappiness. Something told Marja that much of his unhappiness was pointed at the fair-complexioned man he was sitting beside, the Brigadier General Bentil Pilix.
Perhaps he disagreed with having the Mayorship transferred from him to General Pilix. Perhaps he questioned the wisdom of a Jegorichian becoming Mayor of Saltilla.
Phyllis has never been good at reading the room. I'm beginning to suspect that he isn't a Silver grade at all, Marja thought, breathing a little easier now that she saw someone having a worse day than she was.
"Major General Goggins, your estimate?" Marshal Grimmersby inquired, raising his eyes to the bald man standing stiffly across the table.
"Ninety minutes," Major General Goggins replied tersely, his bald pate gleaming with sweat under the overhead lighting. His face was still sallow from Jirani's use of the compulsion.
"You do that," Jirani said, nodding. "Tenton, you're on the call?"
"I'm here, Commander," Saltilla Home Affairs Underapparatchik Tenton Jorges-Ross replied, his voice particularly percussive-sounding over commslink. "I have Research Apparatchik Perova Chesterman with me here as well."
"How are we looking on power and oxygen?" Jirani asked.
"Oxygen concentration is reaching critical levels. All power has rerouted to Facilitator and Power Magnifier-stations for the conversion of carbon monoxide to oxygen, but we're sitting at about 35% available-power-store for the whole city and rapidly decreasing as we speak," Tenton reported in a flat monotone. "Perova? Care to comment?"
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
A woman started speaking through the commslink, taking her cue from Tenton: "It's as Tenton said. The majority portion of available-power-store is taken up by Primary conversion-crews on water and oxygen production schedules, with hardly any left over for essential medical services and rescue teams. It's bad. It's really bad."
"Tenton," Intelligence Apparatchik Alan Grimmersby called over commslink, "did the Ninsei spokesperson—Tatsuma, I think his name was—did he come back on the previous ask?"
"I'm sure you know, Alan. Tatsumo's flooding my inbox. He wants Ninsei factories to be given a cut of the available-power-store," Tenton returned. "But… we're spread thin enough as it is. I rather not risk it."
"How will the cost of the Tactical Option show up on the available-power-store?" Jirani inquired. "How many shots do we have, essentially?"
"We don't really have any leeway," Perova said, her voice raising in pitch. "We need time for the ceiling to be sealed, and the Primary conversion-crews need—"
"Give me a number," Jirani pressed, his voice lowering dangerously. This was war—what did he care for the lives of the Saltillan citizenry?
His only priority was securing the Transportation Gate.
"I-if considering… b-based on the Green Book figures you sent over, I mean… a-about three shots…" Perova stammered.
"Not enough," Jirani said. "Say we reroute all available-power-store from the rescue efforts and Primary conversion-crews. Say we cut all allocations to emergency services. How many shots?"
"No, we can't!" Perova blurted. "The number of people who will die—"
"Tenton, shut her up. You tell me what's the upper bound," Jirani said, cutting off Perova mid-tirade.
Shuffling sounds over the commslink. Then, Tenton's voice: "I think ten or eleven."
"Fine," Jirani said. "Marshal Grimmersby, we'll work on a basis of six, so keep in mind those parameters when drafting your recon plan. Let's move on to allocations…"
***
A rough schedule was agreed upon. Reconnaissance teams would be dispatched no later than 1600 hours.
The officers administering the defense plan rushed out the meeting room, leaving behind Jirani, Marja, and Saltilla War Underapparatchik Jake Harrison.
Underapparatchik Harrison exchanged some final words with Jirani regarding the War Apparatchik's efforts to obtain greater military support from Jegorich—something that required him to physically attend a special Cabinet Meeting of some sort—then made himself scarce, leaving Jirani alone with Marja.
"Special Cabinet Meeting?" Jirani chortled, no sooner than Underapparatchik Harrison had left. "Man's a coward and a malingerer. He hasn't showed his face since the worst of the General Strike."
Marja plonked down on a chair, exhausted.
"You okay?" Jirani asked, raising his eyebrow, wondering if he should call for someone to take Marja back to the Infirmary.
"I... I am," she said.
"You were in really bad shape. The assassins were Lebensraum, I'm almost certain," Jirani returned.
"Things are moving too fast," Marja muttered, lowering her forehead to the table. "I feel dizzy."
"Hearing all that about Ortrud coming must have given you quite a shock," Jirani said, his tone seeming to Marja all weird all of a sudden.
"... What is it, Ji? You know I hate it when you fish around like that. Just say what you mean to say," Marja snapped, speaking into the table.
"Something big has happened," Jirani said, leading his thin form against the backrest of his plastic chair. "You know that second of yours? He went rogue. AWOL."
"B-Betelgeuse Sakar?" Marja sounded, her head shooting up from the table. "D-didn't I give him a promotion?"
"Marja, you manage to achieve such baffling heights of stupidity sometimes," Jirani sighed, raising his hand to massage his temples. Marja blushed and hung her head.
"The man, Sakar, I've seen what kind of a person he is," Jirani continued. "He was there when I was trying to extract you from Lent Hospital, and I can tell he's someone with a keen sense for survival. Rather reminds me of a cockroach, he does."
"T-then, the formal complaint—"
"Without Sakar, it had no legs to stand on anyway," Jirani nodded, interrupting Marja. "But the fact that Old Karl is willing to commit to a rapprochement with Pabani*… it means two things that I can think of. Firstly, Caturdhara is selling off Saltilla."
*[Pabani Choudury, current head of the Choudury family and the CEO of Caturdhara Industries.]
"Look, Ji, Pabani might be repositioning. Now that the Chimerae have shown up on the doorstep, they don't want to make trouble," Marja asserted. "They'll resume the fight against Lebensraum once Saltilla is secured."
"... Decent observation," Jirani said, regaining his feet and pacing the room. "The presence of the Chimerae elevates this from an inter-corporate squabble to a Democratic matter. Which brings me to my second point: Karl can't guarantee that the Democratic Council* won't catch wind of the problems in Desert."
*[The Democratic Council is the organ that elects the Hierarch—the highest-ranked official in the Democracy.]
Marja folded her arms over her chest. Desert was important as the location of a Transportation Gate and a large source of Polonium and Bismuth.
But was that really something the Democratic Council cared greatly about? It was just one among hundreds of Frontier worlds.
Her eyes glazed over as she cycled through her eidetic-feeder-neuroimplant's information storage. What was it that she had missed?
Jirani turned to look at Marja. He supposed that an isolated childhood took its toll, made her rather insensitive to the politics that ran the Democracy.
"You heard Ms. Patel's comment about the speed at which the Arbitration Court was processing Saltilla's formal complaint?" Jirani said. "I think the evidence you tendered—the evidence regarding Lebensraum putting its interests above Democratic interests—I think this threatens his position, politically speaking."
"But—"
"But his reaction in and of itself is strange," Jirani continued, talking over Marja, mumbling almost to himself. "Because the only person that makes that evidence hold up in court is Betelgeuse Sakar, who, as of last week, has gone AWOL. You can be sure that Karl knows this. He always knows. The question is, why not just send one of his Contractors after him? Very strange. Very strange indeed."
"Ji…" Marja said, then trailed off.
"Marja, you need to get into contact with Sakar," Jirani said, turning suddenly to Marja. "He's our only hope of grabbing Old Karl by the balls. If they're reacting like this—sending Ortrud over just because of evidence seconded by some deserter, evidence in a complaint that's going to be withdrawn anyway…"
"... Then it means Lebensraum's political position is not as strong as we think it is," Marja finished the thought, finally putting two and two together.
Indeed, such an overreaction bespoke political weakness. Lebensraum was sending Ortrud in a bid to head off any assertion of corporate partisanship.
At that moment, the door burst open.
It was a TAF CFC in an oxygen mask, saluting crisply: "Commander, Deputy Marshal. Subsidence reported in the Western Quadrant—high-def feeds show that its a Chimera Earthborer!"
Jirani and Marja shared a fraught glance. The Chimerae had made it into Saltilla, faster than they anticipated.
***
[Saltilla Southern Quadrant, Vines Apartment-Block, Povaduran Services-rented apartment…]
"—You said in your report you engaged him. Which means he escaped," the voice said, full of age and severity and canny wisdoms.
"He did," Tenor Ravelash said, staring through his organic eye at the transceiver-screen, the screen set on the glass table before him.
A Perceptor eye-prosthesis had been fitted into his other eye-socket, but it sat dead and unpowered. Tenor hadn't had time to get used to it.
All around him was darkness. Power to residential areas had been cut a long time ago.
The man that Tenor was talking to was none other than the Presbyter of the Mentzer Family. Karl Mentzer. His was a name that shook worlds and toppled regimes.
And it appeared to Tenor that this person seemed very displeased with him.
"It reflects badly on your performance," Karl Mentzer said.
"As it should," Tenor replied. He could still feel the phantom pain. The pain of the moment Betelgeuse Sakar had tore open his eyeball. When so little of your original body was left, the pain you felt from organic injury was amplified.
The pain wasn't merely physical. It was the pain of emotional and spiritual loss. His eye. The Apollonian gift. One of the only things left over of Tenor Ravelash, as he had been born, and therefore that much more precious—
"But there were key gaps with the information I was supplied," Tenor continued. "The target demonstrated physical strength comparable to peak-performance Hollow or White grades. He had an obvious affinity for the compulsion. These were the factors contributing to my failure."
Try as he might to talk around it, however, the fact was that Tenor had let Betelgeuse Sakar escape. That was the way Lebensraum's performance review committee would see it.
Such a failure afforded Lebensraum the right to terminate his employment relationship. Unfortunately for Tenor, one did not simply leave Lebensraum.
A Lebensraum employee was likely to come into contact with confidential information relating to Lebensraum's galactic operations, after all.
Under the terms of Tenor's employment contract, termination meant Repurposification, and for someone in Tenor's position, Repurposification usually involved lobotomy. He'd heard that Lebensraum's in-house churgeons tended to be quite liberal in their cutting, that they often bid amongst themselves for the opportunity to acquire neocortex-samples for their personal laboratories.
"The performance review committee may, however, take into account remedial efforts," Karl Mentzer said. "A second chance, if you will."
"Allow me to clarify, sir. The primary objective is now to hunt down and kill Betelgeuse Sakar?" Tenor inquired, unwilling to keep it so vague.
"You can refer to the instructions sent to Ms. Burrell," Karl Mentzer returned. He wasn't going to give a direct answer if he didn't need to. "There will indeed be a reshuffling of priority-objectives."
"Sir, if I succeed, then I will be able to continue my employment?" Tenor pressed.
"As I've said, it's something the performance review committee will take into account. That is all."
With that, the call went dead.
Tenor sat in silence for several minutes, then raised a metal finger and stopped the recorder he'd set up beside his transceiver. He wasn't able to get anything useful.
He leaned back on the blacksteel reinforced chair, the chair groaning under his weight.
Truth be told, Tenor had already made plans to escape his corporate masters. He commissioned a base to be set up and furnished at Consus*, even before his flight to Desert. A single call and he could be fifty light-years away before the week was out.
*[A habitable super-Earth, the closest Transportation Gate-bearing planet to Desert.]
But two things kept him here in Saltilla.
First, for all the risk that he took, Lebensraum paid well. Extremely well.
If what Karl Mentzer implied was true—if Tenor still had a chance of continuing his employment with Lebensraum—then perhaps it might be worth it to see the mission through.
Second was the fact that the man, Betelgeuse Sakar, had taken away his eye.
It was a thing Tenor counted amongst his most precious possessions. A cathexis-object, a mind-stabilizer.
Call it what you will, but no one had ever taken anything from Tenor Ravelash without cost.
Ideas were already forming within Tenor's mind, materializing from out of the darkness of the apartment. Plans, methods, tactics. There was more than one way to skin a cat.
He might have an unusually powerful affinity for the compulsion, but the Nullifier-Brace protects me.
And I still have my informer.