I stepped out onto a landing platform overlooking a bright vermillion sunrise marred by huge spires of skyscrapers. I knew from news articles and statistics these towers stood over six hundred meters and housed at least a hundred thousand people each. I’d seen holovids of Manhattan in films, news blogs, pictures of art and festivals, but to experience the vastness of the city, the sensations of the breeze, the smells, the sky …
“It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?” The soldier at my side nodded towards the brilliant horizon, so unimaginably magnificent, so miraculous. I’d never understood its astonishing beauty until this moment.
I couldn’t find words for a time. I stood and stared in awe. Fifteen billion people on Earthside lived with this sunrise every day of their lives and took it for granted. I sensed the vastness of the galaxy had amassed resources on this rock to create something unique and precious. Something worthy of saving.
D’Anton had said many times how I would usher in a change, how I’d be the salvation of humanity. I doubted the path of my life was what he intended, but it made no difference. The task of navigating this war had come to me, and I accepted this was my purpose. The universe had dragged me here against all odds and shoved me into the gap between these two species. I was the bridge.
A crushing weight of responsibility settled in my guts and squeezed my heart. The Marine took my arm and pulled me towards an elevator. “Sorry, ma’am. No time for sightseeing today. The UN special session begins in an hour. You have an appointment with the Chairman, now.”
I could hardly speak as he led me to the cramped little steel box. At the door a low tone indicated a problem. “Access denied. Unidentified passenger. Please remove all obstructions over the Ident in your right arm.”
I’d heard this sim message before on Nugene. Certain doors in the station wouldn’t open for me. Unlike the rest of humanity, I lacked an Ident implant. My birth had never been officially registered.
The Marine looked at me sideways, at my bare arms, my shimmery purple sleeveless dress. There was no obstruction over my wrist, and he knew it. “This is Colonel Mason escorting the Royal Emissary for the Gran. Can I get an Ident override, please?” He’d spoken low into his sub vocal comm, but I heard him well enough.
If the DC doubted my origins, my Ident problem clarified the situation. Every human born Earthside or Colonial had an Ident. People couldn’t live without it – couldn’t even enter most buildings and doorways.
A few seconds passed and another tone issued. The door slid open and my escort pulled me into the elevator, his arm around my elbow. I could tell by his eyes and respiration that I bothered him … in a good way. His gaze trailed up my dress to rest on the creamy white swell of my breasts pushing out the top of the tight-fitting fabric. Gradually he met my eyes, not a hint of embarrassment for having checked me out so thoroughly.
The Colonel smiled. “The Emissary is secure, floor number one ninety-nine.”
The display flicked from 350 to 199, and the elevator dropped. I grasped onto the Colonel and he smirked as he held me, the poor, stupid clone who’d never been in an ultra high-speed skyscraper elevator. Seconds later our momentum arrested and the door slid open with another tone sound. “Floor One Ninety Nine.”
The Colonel and two other soldiers ushered me out into the hall and past a receptionist whose face could not hide her shock at seeing me hustled around by armed soldiers in full battle gear. A few more gawking faces met my advance until we reached a hallway secured by two more guards. The Colonel requested another Ident override to get me through the door.
Inside, I found an elegant room with a glossy black floor, a stainless steel mantle with some kind of abstract black and white art hanging above it, and thirty meters of sheer alumiglass stretching from wall to wall. A spectacular view loomed, hundreds of high-rise towers spearing the glowing horizon across Manhattan. A sixty-something man in a black suit with immaculate white skin and slicked back hair stood before the view puffing on a little metal pipe – an odorless vaporizer. I’d heard of wealthy, affluent people who could afford to blow credits on expensive gadgets like vapos, who didn’t care about the steep envirofees, but I’d never met one.
The Colonel addressed the lone man in front of the window. “The Emissary has fifty minutes before she’s due at the UN special session. We require five minutes for transport. You have forty five, sir.”
The man nodded and flicked his hand towards the door. I watched the Colonel’s eyes and his fluttering heart rate as he retreated and left me alone with a man I recognized as the Chairman of the UN. Interesting. The Colonel’s biorhythms indicated he didn’t entirely trust the Chairman.
* * * *
Chapter 13
The slick Chairman stepped towards me with a fake grin and gestured at a charcoal leather seat to the left. “Thank you for joining me, Angel. Please sit for a moment.” I slid into the cool, slippery leather and enjoyed the feel of it on my fingers and bare legs. Leather seating didn’t exist in space stations or jumpships. I’d seen my share of opulence at the Emperor’s palace, but nothing quite like the feeling of this chair.
The man sat at the matching chair across from me and his eyes trailed over my body. I enjoyed the sensation of power I held over men who found me attractive. I hoped it would give me an advantage – I needed all the help I could get.
“My name is Darrin Reichert. As you know I’m the Chairman of the UN Security Council. Though I believe in the principles and mandate of the UN, in the unity of the world against our common enemy, the Gran, I am also a business man. I see this war from both perspectives.”
“It’s not a war yet, Chairman. I hope to avoid war. What business interest do you have in the possibility of war?”
His eyes sharpened on me, looking past the shiny dress to me, the person beneath the beautiful façade. “This is about tech, Ms. Angel. The Gran have it, we want it. Although we’ve plenty firepower to roast every Cat in orbit, we want more advanced tech. Everything the Gran know, every device, every convenience, and every piece of tech they’ve ever engineered.”
I waited quietly for him to start making sense.
“Ms. Angel, Angelina 6.0 if I recall from your genofile, humanity deserves the biggest guns, best jumpships, and every tech conceivable. The treaty with the Gran was an insane joke. We got nothing but piles of ore and metals in exchange for bioengineered slaves. We can send any idiot with a robot into space to mine ore by the kiloton, why do we need it from the Gran?” He shook his head. “The stupidest deal ever brokered, and it will not continue.”
“That stupid treaty gave Earthside two decades of peace. Now, you face imminent war, and you’re whining about tech? Is that correct?” I could hardly believe the asshole’s arrogance.
“No. Here’s the new deal – the Gran will give us tech, all of it, or eat plasma.” He watched my discerning squint and started laughing. “Hell, I don’t why I’m even talking to you. This is ridiculous.”
I stifled my desire to smack him upside the face and smoothed my hands over my dress. “I am here to learn and report, to restore the peace treaty. You do want to stop this war, yes?”
He speared me with a malicious glare. “As Chairman, I have every reason to participate in the decisions related to this war and dictate its outcome. What I don’t understand is why the hell an experimental clone from Nugene has come to Earthside pretending she runs the fucking world, simply because she’s developed a taste for Cat cock. You are no one. You shouldn’t exist. Why should we be listening to you?”
My instincts were to break every arrogant bone in his body. Instead I breathed in twice and fought to control my adrenaline and unclench my fists. “I am the eyes and ears of the Emperor. My observations will help determine the course of this war.”
“I can’t decide whether to fuck you, kill you, or cut you open to see what that lunatic D’Anton created. You’re not human, that much is certain. Your observations are meaningless. You and I will meet again after those prancin
g pricks at the UN carve a piece out of you. I alone control your military escort and your shuttle offworld. If you don’t follow my instructions to the letter, you will never leave this place alive.”
I held my desire to kill him in check with the last strands of my will power. “Chairman, I didn’t come to Earthside to answer questions. I came to ask them. It’s humanity’s answers, the UN’s answers, that I came for. I came to stop this war. Do the world a favor, and don’t get in my way.”
He waved his hand in dismissal, a smug sneer on his face. “Really, I don’t give a shit why you’re here. You’re nothing but a manufactured piece of ass pretending to be human, pretending anyone gives a damn. I’ll admit you could influence the UN with your swaying hips and seductive smile. That’s the only reason we’re speaking.”
I started to contradict him and he snapped his fingers to interrupt me. “If you wish to return to your beloved fleabags in one piece, you’ll do exactly as I say. Parade through the UN special session with your cock-sucking mouth shut. Shake your ass, flash some cleavage, and tell them how great it is to hump Cats. Nothing more. If you utter a word about this controversial bullshit over Nugene’s clones, I’ll see every ounce of your genetically enhanced body diced up and donated to science. I might save a piece of your tight little butthole to wear as a souvenir cock ring.”
I was awestruck by his, vulgarity and audacity. I couldn’t form words to answer him.
He pointed his finger at me and gritted his teeth in menace. “Make damn sure the Emperor gets my message – give us a working sample of every tech the Gran possess, or we’ll continue to fry Gran colonies and mining asteroids until there’s nothing left to burn with our plasma cannons. Those are the only terms I offer. The UN has no part in this. Admiral Ackerman and I run the show.”
He stood and straightened his suit, as if our conversation was over. I slipped out of my seat and moved in with a head full of murder.
He didn’t budge an inch. “Pray we never meet again, Angel. You have no place here, and the UN windbags have no control over the Admiral, the DC fleets, or this war. Keep your pole-smoking lips shut and get the fuck offworld as fast as you can. Go back to your striped friends and wrap your cock holster around a fat Cat dick. That’s where you belong.”
I found him insane, yet comical and fascinating in the scope of his presumptions. After facing three meter tall predators with searing hot cutting torches, I was not easily intimidated by a slick old man with a filthy mouth.
I moved closer, a few centimeters away. My fists clenched, prepared to lash out and snap his fat, lecherous, neck. “Chairman, if you hinder my visit or my return, I will rip out your spinal column with my bare hands. Those are my terms, a promise between you and me.” My hands twitched with the strength to rend and tear his bloated flesh.
The Chairman laughed in my face and a strange flicker stuttered around the outline of his hair and shaking body. I realized then why I hadn’t caught scent of him or his vapo, or heard his heart beat thumping. A deceptively crafted holovid – the man wasn’t in the room personally. I’d been talking to a holographic image designed to look like a real person. He’d been testing me, baiting me. He probably feared what I was capable of, and hadn’t risked my temper by being in the same room with me while he tried his best to shove me over the edge of self-control.
* * * *
Chapter 14
Seconds after the Chairman’s holograph dissipated to leave me alone in this strange high-rise room, the door slid open and in walked my Marine escort. “Ms. Angel, the UN council will see you now.”
He escorted me to the elevator, and down to the fifty second floor. After stewing on the Chairman’s incendiary words, an idea gradually formed. The Chairman feared me … what I might do or say, if I was calm and rational. That entire conversation had been a carefully calculated attack to make me angry, off-balance. But what did he fear from me?
Nugene and the attack on the Gran. The truth.
As we stepped into a massive room with a high-arching ceiling, and semicircular seating filled with the political leaders and representatives of Earth’s major nations, I stopped and grabbed the Marine by the arm. “What is your job?”
“I’m your security detail, ma’am.”
“Are you truly my security, or are you a DC soldier?”
He looked at me funny. “Well … I’m both at the moment.”
I shook my head and glanced around the room full of people that were staring at me. “If certain things are brought to light in this session, I will make powerful enemies. I must return offworld to the Emperor in forty seven hours. If not, the Emperor will consider my absence an act of war. I need security – not soldiers who take orders from someone else. Which are you, Colonel?”
He was too quiet for a few seconds, then slowly answered me. “I am your security detail. My orders are to protect you and ensure you don’t stray from approved areas on your visit. I will take you where you need to go, and back to where you came from.” He glanced at the two Marines who flanked me silently, then back at me. “Orders have been known to change from time to time, Ms. Angel. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
Fuck.
I did not want to kill these men, not if I could avoid it. I’d killed far too many Marines already, and saved too few of them. I knew this man. He wasn’t a faceless combatant trying to kill me.
My Marine escort led me to a table and graciously pulled out my chair to see me seated, then fanned out behind me. Felt like security and protection, but it also felt like I might be under arrest.
The Chairman caught my eye from where he sat at the front row of politicians and power brokers. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the UN, Ms. Angel, Emissary of the Gran is present, and we now convene this special session of the UN council. As a precaution, I must remind everyone we are under jurisdiction of the UN security forces, in a wartime session. Everything that transpires today is classified and will not be disseminated to the media. Each member in the council is held to the non-disclosure provisions signed upon entering this room. Violators may be subject to arrest, asset forfeiture and prosecution.”
He paused and let his words sink in. The uncomfortable looks on many faces made the situation clear. The Chairman had made damn sure nothing would leave this room. I wondered if there was any point to speaking the truth – seemed the Chairman held control of the council.
The Chairman nodded, an acknowledgement of his supremacy over the room. “And now the session will begin.”
A black man to the far right of the Chairman’s table spoke up. “My name is Doctor Philo Vale, delegate from South Africa, and I speak for everyone present when I say we are pleased to meet you, Angel.” The man looked to be in his fifties or sixties with a touch of grey along the sides of his tightly cropped hair. The Doctor looked to me with warm eyes. “How fortunate we may hear from someone with so much direct experience among the Gran. You bring a uniquely human perspective. Please tell the council what remarkable tale led you to us.”
I caught the Chairman’s suspicious eyes and decided this question merited a simpler answer.
“Mr. Vale, I was on Nugene Station, near Jupiter, when the Gran took me captive. I quickly learned to speak their language and eventually found favor with the Royal family as a sort of pet for the Prince. He was young then and has since grown to full maturity. The Prince graciously agreed to take me as mate to free me from captivity. He and the entire royal family have been dear friends. They have proven beyond doubt that the Cats are so much more than the savage animals they are perceived to be. They Gran are intelligent, beautiful, loyal creatures with a well-developed sense of honor.”
I waited for the accusations, the implications, but the man merely smiled, seemingly fascinated by my story, not a hint of malice or sarcasm in his demeanor. “What a blessing, Angel, to have seen things no man can know, to experience the culture of these remarkable creatures. Though I could keep you all day with talk of the Gran that is not why we’re h
ere. Please, Angel, give us your assessment of the current situation.”
I wondered why the Chairman wasn’t running this show, why he wasn’t handling this line of questioning. Instead of opening my big mouth and making a mess, I decided it wise to get what I came for.
I looked around the room and then let my eyes land on Mr. Vale once more. “I didn’t come to give you a military briefing on the Gran. They have many war ships. Their ships are capable of destroying the stealth fleets of the DC. This I have witnessed. The DC know this. I am here to learn why the DC have chosen war over the peace treaty that served between the Gran and Humanity for two decades … until now. I came in hope we can stop this war and negotiate a new treaty.”
Mr. Vale sent a sharp glance towards the Chairman and another man to his right, someone I hadn’t noticed before, Admiral Ackerman.
The Chairman put a hand on the Admiral’s shoulder. “Though it is unusual for the council to answer questions in an official wartime inquiry, in the interest of peace, Admiral Ackerman will engage Angel in open discussion.”
The Admiral glanced around the room until his sweeping gaze finally landed on me. “Angel, when we spoke I made very clear the DC’s position. Humanity will no longer cater to slave-traders. We are finished with that part of our history. If the Cats want to talk a new treaty, one that doesn’t involve human slaves, then we may have common ground.”
I answered without hesitation. “You mean clones, don’t you, Admiral? The DC secretly authorized Nugene to create and sell dumbed-down human clones specially designed for docility and back-breaking asteroid mining. I have seen the worker drones, and I know how misleading it is to call them ‘human slaves’ – they are something less than human.”