* * * * *
“Senka Vaikyur, I am sorry that your grandson is dead.” Secretary Natoly Marúsh said, with an air of indifference that contradicted his words. There was a clinical quality to his high-pitched voice, when he summoned it. Most of the time it had the raw, whining quality of a child’s. But he was no child, only a man overworked and underpaid, and even more so underappreciated.
“I understand how painful this subject is for you, especially after the tragedy of your daughter’s death,” Marúsh said. “We all feel your loss—and Senior Ekasi Erlenkov was one of our best pilots as you know.” He continued with a farce of sympathy. “His loss was not well received by the public.”
Vaikyur blinked, waiting.
“But,” Marúsh said, all traces of sympathy abandoning his voice, “you must put your grief behind you for a moment and help us to piece together what happened to him at point aico-seven. Perhaps you know something about the area, something about our enemy, some piece of information that has yet to come to light. Please try to think, now. Our sentries and intelligence teams are having a difficult enough time as it is dealing with this new situation.”
Secretary Marúsh had taken a seat across from Senka Vaikyur in the large, plush, black office chair behind his lacquered desk. He was a broad-shouldered man. He had little beetle eyes and a short, upturned nose. His close-cropped hair had turned dark grey. Today, an intent expression had taken hold of his sweaty, round face. Though Marúsh was the Fer-innyera’s Head Secretary, Vaikyur knew that the man was in fact simply Ezáitur’s lacky of the moment and had very little real power at all.
Marúsh was the sort of man who kept a ready arsenal of choice words and expressions designed to make himself come across as competent, efficient, intelligent, calm, and self-confident. But when questioned on subjects outside his limited knowledge, Secretary Marúsh became vague, distracted, and his image of self-composure crumpled mightily under the onslaught of his internal insecurities. Today, however, Vaikyur noticed a change in Marúsh’s usual behavior.
Vaikyur had always been considered a man who was good at reading expressions, and at present Secretary Marúsh appeared worried. Very worried. No doubt about losing his position in the event that he failed to squeeze any new information out of his guest, Vaikyur thought silently. This fear was understandable, since Marúsh was already the sixth Head Secretary to take office under Ezáitur’s leadership.
For the past two weeks, Vaikyur had been expecting this little meeting. At least they had given him some time to mourn his grandson.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Vaikyur shrugged and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. It was no secret he didn’t like Marúsh very much. The defiant air in his gesture conveyed this. “I’ve already disclosed what I know about point aico-seven. It’s on file. I can’t help you any more than that.”
“I am referring, Senka, to some secret information you have that concerns point aico-seven. With additional, ah—” Marúsh fumbled for the right word, “background, we might be able to learn why Ekasi Erlenkov was shot down.”
“I see.”
“His death may be of vital importance to discover why the Orians and their terrorist allies have re-appeared in the Classified Zones. They’re planning something. We think this latest attack is only the beginning.” Marúsh’s fresh look of concern seemed plastered on. The only cracks in his facade were his eyes. Marúsh’s eyes were small, hard, and calculating, and they darted with frank impatience over the Senkaya-Sukura. He could easily assist his manner with drug injections, but more often than not chose not to.
“It’s perfectly clear what the enemy is after. As you say, they want to take over our world and murder all of us,” Vaikyur said in a deadpan voice, with a bright spark of concealed contempt in his eyes. “They are a completely violent people not at all like our own. They have no reason to want to destroy us other than greed and evil.” His tone of voice let anyone know that this was not his private opinion.
“Yes, my dear Vaikyur. I know your real feelings on the subject,” Marúsh waved a hand dismissively.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Vaikyur said in the usual manner of denial of something they both knew to be true.
Marúsh laughed. “Repeat yourself for the recorder now, Vaikyur. I’m not trying to get a confession out of you, and you know that no one wants any harm to come to you. The Fer-innyera is your friend. He trusts that as his Operational Commander, you will continue to do what must be done regardless of your private feelings, as you have done for many years. The Orians are our enemy. Heaven knows how a man like you can respect them. But the Fer-innyera has never found this to compromise your leadership before. He even feels that your respect for the Orians is our best line of defense against them. It is important to know one’s adversary. It makes it easier to defeat him.”
“Yes.” Vaikyur said.
“But, I think it wise you remember that they are terrorists, nothing more, and nothing less. They must be dealt with accordingly. That is their ultimate fate.”
“Of course,” Vaikyur agreed.
“What we want to know is, how they might have managed to surpass our flying wildcat fighters in range and agility. They’ve developed a new Falcon fighter. We’re having the Central Aeronautic Lab working out its capabilities as we speak, but we need help from you to figure out what makes their minds tick, and what they might be planning if they ever were to have the advantage. Your experience in their strategy, in their tactics—even in their psychology—is unparalleled, especially given the fact that your own daughter was attached to one of them.”
“One question.” Vaikyur said. “Are we officially afraid of the enemy now?” Vaikyur narrowed his eyes, carefully planning his moves. He realized belatedly that his brusque words were not very elegant. “Last I heard the Fer-innyera was confident that there is no real threat.”
“Of course not.” Marúsh wavered, trying to remember what the official angle was. It was dangerous to forget what the official angle was.
“Then do go on, Vaikyur.” Marúsh instructed; Vaikyur suppressed an inclination to sigh. He found himself suddenly incapable of playing any games.
“All right,” he said, looking Marúsh squarely in the eye. “Background on point aico-seven, was it? All I know is that it’s useless scrubland, desert, and cliffs. Hardly worth all this fuss.”
“The Fer-innyera is worried—”
“About what? Some unidentified threat coming out of that wasteland? You know nothing but desert plants can live out there for long. Ezáitur has other things to worry about.”
“He wants the truth, Vaikyur. No matter how bad it is. For once, he wants the truth.” Marúsh said, and then seemed to cringe. He realized he should not have said “for once”. But, puffed up on his own sense of importance—he had the Fer-innyera’s backing—Marúsh shrugged it off. He knew Ezáitur would understand the indiscretion. It was necessary to make Vaikyur talk.
Vaikyur sighed, sensing that Marúsh had blundered for a reason. Obviously, Ezáitur had made it clear to him that he wanted Vaikyur’s real opinion.
“What do you want me to tell you, Marúsh, that we are one step away from disaster if Orian ever attacks us in full force? I’m no mind-reader. I don’t know any more than you, or more than my own common sense tells me.”
For a moment after Vaikyur finished, silence hung in the air.
Marúsh refused to be daunted.
“Allow me to be candid, my friend.” Secretary Marúsh pushed himself away from the desk and propped his feet on the edge, crossing his legs.
“I think we both know how I feel about you.”
“Amusing, Vaikyur, truly. Care for a smoke?”
Vaikyur didn’t answer.
“Perhaps not.” Marúsh paused, clearing his throat. “The Orians have been looking for something for many years. Some sort of technological device—we’re not sure what. But it’s common knowledge that during F
er-innyera Alton’s leadership, you were a secret messenger, with access to the Top Secret files on the Classified Zones.”
“Yes.”
“At that time a few of these exclusion areas were restricted from military and public access because of the danger of low-grade nuclear bombs, biological attacks, and armed spy planes.”
I certainly hope we’ve established this all by now, Vaikyur thought impatiently. He longed for a stabilizing injection, to numb him through this.
“Yes,” Vaikyur said quietly.
“I’m sure you realize how difficult it has been keeping the areas off limits. We set some up as false military bases and weapons test areas. The civilians don’t really even know.”
“Yes,” Vaikyur agreed, covering old territory once more.
“Well, it helps that the Classified Zones are all remote locations.”
“Isn’t that strange,” Vaikyur said, deadpan once more.
The Secretary stopped for a moment. In a rare moment, his thinking skills and imagination engaged. And, Vaikyur saw, for a moment that Marúsh actually agreed with him.
“That may be something important,” he said out loud, unable to let go of the idea. Vaikyur shifted in his chair.
“Anyway,” Marúsh continued, remembering that his time was well-budgeted. “Some of our younger officers keep asking why we bother keeping the Zones with low radiation levels under exclusion status. There was some talk of opening them up to routine patrols, if not to the public.”
“But of course now we can’t do that.” Marúsh coughed and lit another smokeweed. “Thanks to Ezáitur’s wisdom and foresight, we’ve kept everything under control until now.” Marúsh said, blowing a ring into the air and closing the cap of his lighter with a loud clip.
“Yes.”
“Can you imagine what trouble we’d be having now if the public knew how intrusive the Orians really are in our lives? It’s been so long since they attacked a populated area, that some people consider them a kind of joke.”
“The Orians play games with us, Marúsh.” Vaikyur said. “The civilian attacks are just a cover-up. A distraction. A red herring. They do it to divert our forces from their true targets. Bombs out in an open field, polluting a lake halfway across the planet—random acts of violence and destruction, directed against us, but not at us. Who can understand their minds, and what they hope to accomplish? At the least, they haven’t provoked open war, or attacked large cities in several years.
“Only this time, they circled northern Inen. We didn’t even see them coming, and they could have easily taken out half of the city before we could shoot them down. But they left the city in peace. They obliterated my grandson’s patrol unit and drove him outside the city, into the Northwestern Sea. Why?” Vaikyur wondered. “Believe me, Marúsh, if I knew the answers myself, I would rest easy at night.”
Marúsh hesitated a moment.
“Aico-seven was never attacked.” Marúsh said, shaking his head in thought. “I checked our files on it. The Orians once used the sea cliff as a landing area for a massive failed attack on Inen.” Marúsh went on. “I’ve also been informed that there were a number of disappearances in that same area years later. Alton’s secret intelligence found out that the area had potentially toxic levels of radiation and restricted the area. Some say it was because so many planes disappeared there without a trace.”
Vaikyur listened but did not comment.
“The Orians never returned. We had planes watching the area for years, but there hasn’t been any activity in the area for over fifty years.” Marúsh continued. “Now, there isn’t a single person alive who would believe that that rocky cliff is a suitable place to build a military base. It would be an ideal location for weapons testing, either nuclear or biological—if the area weren’t so close to the capital, only fifty nariars away. It’s just lucky that no appreciable sign of radiation contamination has ever reached Inen from there.” Marúsh tapped his smokeweed.
“Yes, it is.” Vaikyur agreed, silently struggling to maintain his composure.
“What I don’t understand is this. The Orians dropped a deep-ground probe outside Inen. We found it shortly after Vaikyur-Erlenkov went down. It was sending out a seismic wave, obviously searching for something underground. Frankly, we’d never seen anything like it. Far more advanced than the last probe we found.”
“The one in the classified military relics warehouse.” Vaikyur nodded. “I was informed of all of this a few days ago.”
“Do you know what they’re hoping to find?”
“The location of our top-security shelters. Most likely.” Vaikyur said.
“Ezáitur was concerned that might be it.” Marúsh said. “But he feels there may be more to it.”
Vaikyur kept silent, his arms crossed over his chest, just staring as if in amazement at Marúsh.
“We can understand the threat that their new advance in technology poses to our security, and we are working hard to deal with that situation. We also suspected that they were trying to determine whether or not we had any evacuation shelters ready. We suspect that they may be planning a major offensive strike against us. But we have faith in your abilities, Vaikyur, and in our lines of defense. We need to be certain, however, that there is no hidden threat in this latest assault. And the connection to point aico-seven is puzzling. Why did the Orians drive your grandson’s fighter out over the Northwestern Sea?”
“He’s a good pilot. He survived longer than his unit.” Vaikyur said. “I suppose they were headed in that direction. The Orians, of course, don’t know that the area is a Classified Zone.”
“Yes,” Marúsh said. Suddenly, he leaned forward furtively as though about to impart some great secret, “I must confide in you.”
“Confide? Confide what?”
“Ezáitur is aware of Alton’s security secrets, of the nano-implant technology that has been lost to our government science. He is aware that you have some knowledge of this, and of secret information that details the origins of the war against Orian. He has no doubt that you are a loyal Tiasennian. But he may attempt to break you, Vaikyur, one of these days, just to jog your memory.” Marúsh leaned back.
“I can’t tell him what I don’t know.” Vaikyur replied.
“Or remember?” Marúsh laughed. “My son cried at the news of Vaikyur-Erlenkov’s death.”
Vaikyur’s eyes flashed.
“But I’m sure that the boy will get over it.” Marúsh continued. “We haven’t got anyone to replace you. Cooperate, if you can. Nothing will happen to you if you cooperate.”
“Personally, I want nothing more than to punish the bastards for all that has happened.” Vaikyur said, and for the first time, with real emotion.
Marúsh stared at him. “That’s what we all want, Vaikyur.”
It is not the strength but the duration of exalted sensations which makes exalted men.
–Nietzsche
Chapter Four