Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise

“I asked a question,” her superior reminded her.

“I believe I have the basic issues under control,” she said confidently, raising her glass and taking a cautious sip of almond liqueur to cover her moment of hesitation.

“The basic issues,” Blumlein echoed, and smiled. He held out his glass and a moppet hastened to refill it. Hoechst shuffled slightly in her chair and ran a finger under the shoulder of her gown. She smiled back at him, although she was anything but relaxed.

An invitation into her superior’s parlor for an evening’s entertainment was normally public recognition, a sign of favored status within the clade. But a private invitation, to dinner for two, was something else again. The only people who’d see her were their bodyguards, private secretaries, and the service moppets, all of whom — apart from the secretaries — were disposables who counted as nothing in the sparse social networks of the ReMastered. What could he have in mind? Special orders? It certainly wasn’t a seduction attempt — his tastes lay notoriously in other directions — and she couldn’t see herself being important enough to cultivate for other reasons. One thing every ReMastered acquired early was a sensitive nose for relative status, and this discreet assignation simply didn’t make sense from any angle she could think of. Unless he had, for some inexplicable reason, decided to assess her for the role of his public partner, a remarkable if knife-edged honor.

“I’d like you to recap the basic issues, Portia. In your own words and in your own time, if you please.”

“Oh. Well.” Portia shook herself. Idiot! She cursed. What else could it be about? “ Scott failed miserably on Moscow. Or rather, he succeeded inappropriately. The result was, well, not what we anticipated. Sixteen ubermenschen dead, not to mention the loss of an entire client world that was less than eighteen months from open phase-two restabilization — that was a major setback in its own right. Worse, the weapons tests — the causality-violation devices his puppets were testing — have probably attracted the attention of the Enemy. Bluntly, he failed on two levels; his treason against his own kind failed, and worse, the weapons tests also failed catastrophically, leading to the loss of the system. It was, all told, a disaster, and Scott knew he would attract unwelcome attention if he could not provide a compensatory positive outcome.”

“Hmmph.” Blumlein grunted, something approximating a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. On the stage behind her, three or four moppets were performing some sort of erotic dance: Portia angled her chair so that she could watch sidelong, while keeping her attention on the planetary overdepartmentsecretary. “Juggling on the tightrope over the abyss is a long and honorable tradition, I suppose.” He smiled, not unkindly. “What long-term plans did U. Scott intend to pursue?”

“I think he was going to take over New Dresden, but he didn’t leave any written records.” Portia sniffed. “Not surprising.” His attitude encouraged her to return the smile as a peer — a gamble, but one that might bring serious advancement if it paid off.

“Absolutely.” Blumlein’s expression turned chilly. “How could he possibly have been so stupid?”

She shrugged, dismissively. “Scott has — well — never lacked for self-confident ambition.” You can say that again. A brief flashback: lying in bed listening to him rant, plans to create his own clade, bring about the unborn god, steal whole worlds from the flock. “I worked closely with him for several years, when we were younger. It’s probably a good thing time ran out on him; he wasn’t keeping his eye on the fine detail, and if he’d gotten his plan past the second stage, the consequences could have been even worse than the slow-motion disaster he’s left us with.”

Blumlein put his glass down, leaned closer, his pupils dilating slightly. Portia mirrored his gestures, becoming the confidante. “Tell me what Scott was working on in that sector,” he said quietly. “And what you think you might have done with it in his stead.”

“The—” Her eyes swiveled sideways.

The overdepartmentsecretary caught her glance and nodded. “They won’t remember any of this tomorrow,” he said.

“Good. I’d hate to be responsible for spoiling such well-trained dancers.”

“I thank you for your attentiveness to my estate, but would you mind returning to the matter in hand? We don’t have all evening.” There was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before, and Portia cursed silently, nodding.

“Very well. Scott’s official task was to take over Moscow and divert it to serve the purposes of the Defense Directorate by developing munitions types forbidden to us by the Enemy. Then he was to prepare Moscow for assimilation. His agents infiltrated the government of Moscow quite effectively using only routine puppetry and a modicum of bribes. But in addition to the official project plan he paid special attention to their Defense Ministry. This paid off with the entire attack plan for the system’s deterrent force, at which point Scott started getting ambitious. He got the lot — go codes, stop codes, waypoints, and insertion vectors for every possible target — and when the Zero Incident occurred that data was safely filed away in his office.”

“Ah.” Blumlein nodded and smiled, his expression thawing. “And now.”

“Well.” She considered her next words with care. “I trust the copies of the go codes and stop codes arrived at your office satisfactorily. And Moscow itself is a nonissue, thanks to the failure of certain technological initiatives. But there’s still the issue of how to clean up after Scott’s little adventure. Not to mention the issue of how you want to deal with the leverage this situation places in your hands with respect to the neighbors.”

Blumlein nodded carefully. “In your assessment, how good was Scott’s final plan?”

“The general theory is audacious — nobody has ever done anything quite like it before — but the substance I wouldn’t touch with a pointy stick.” The words came out automatically. “He got sloppy with Moscow, sloppy enough that he left loose ends dangling. Exfiltration witnesses, basically, but it could all unravel from there if somebody with enough time and resources got their hands on the details and backtracked to find out where the bodies were coming from, or going to.”

She took a breath. “And while the basic scheme was interesting, his second-stage scheme relied too much on synchronicity — and took enormous risks. What makes it worse for us is that he’d actually begun to implement it. The moves against the Muscovite diplomatic team, for example — they’re already in progress, if not completed. We can’t tell until the telegrams come in, but my guess is that they’ll succeed, and they’ll make every chancellery within a hundred light years shit themselves. Not to mention what will happen when the High Directorate finds out. To take a whole planet for himself, then use its weapons of mass destruction to set himself up as an interplanetary emperor — it’s insanely audacious, I’ll grant you that. But his plan relied on the bystanders believing that a bunch of democrats would willingly do what he wanted. And I think it was only wishful thinking that made him contemplate such a dependency.”

“Then that brings me to my next question.” Blumlein paused for a moment, looking thoughtful, then snapped his fingers; a moppet minced forward, knelt to present a small silver box atop a velvet cushion. He took the box, flipped the lid open, and removed the inhaler within: “Dose?”

“Thank you kindly, no.”