Christopher Evans - Omega

Owain stood at the cabin window with Rhys, staring down at the diminishing outlines of Orford Ness as we flew away into the gathering dark.

The door opened, and two MPs came into the cabin, escorting Carl Legister and Marisa.

Legister was either under arrest or protective custody. Marisa looked guardedly at Owain, but neither she nor her husband said anything as they were seated on the sofa. Both MPs remained, flanking the doorway, submachine guns in their hands. The weapons could be used with near impunity: the Nimbus was triple-skinned, its fuselage reinforced with arched trusses like massive ribs, its deep-set. The entire craft was designed to withstand damage from anything short of an armour-piercing shell.

Legister looked both calm and implacable, staring unemotionally at TV footage of a Befreiungtag parade, held in Breslau each spring to commemorate the final extinction of the Nazi state. Marisa had perched herself at his side, but there was a space between them and they did not touch. She continued to look down into her folded hands. The usual strident music accompanied the footage, though Rhys had reduced the sound to normal levels.

Within a minute of their arrival, Giselle Vigoroux entered. She crouched down next to Marisa and they began a whispered sisterly exchange. It came to me that Marisa must have fled to Giselle after leaving Owain’s quarters. I saw Marisa listen before shaking her head. Giselle nodded and straightened.

“Are we all being confined here?” Rhys asked her with a degree of puzzled umbrage.

“We’ll let you out soon,” Giselle told him.

She exited as briskly as she had come.

Legister and Marisa sat like mannequins. Rhys, sensing the polluted atmosphere, came up close.

“She the one you were seeing?” he murmured, though he obviously knew.

I nodded.

“Pretty.”

“She’s lucky to be alive,” I made Owain say. “For a while I thought I’d murdered her.”

Involuntarily he moved back a little. “You’re joking.”

I shook his head. “I’ve been getting these violent urges. You were right to run away.”

Both of us were keeping our voices low, our backs turned to Marisa and Legister. But I knew they were watching us.

“You had a rough time,” Rhys said sympathetically. “Battlefield trauma’s a real syndrome, even if the military won’t admit it.”

“I’m possessed.”

This was Owain. It was the first time he had actually acknowledged that his thoughts and actions were not always his own; and yet he would not accept my presence as something distinct from himself. How could this be, if he knew of my life?

The door opened again and one of Sir Gruffydd’s staff entered.

“You’re needed,” he told Rhys.

“We’ll talk more later,” Rhys whispered, but it was clear he wanteut. When the door closed behind him Owain felt abandoned.

He made the mistake of catching Carl Legister’s eye.

“Sit down, major,” he said, indicating one of the armchairs opposite.

Owain didn’t move.

“Please.” He made the word sound like an order. “I want to talk to you.”

Rhys had thrust the TV control into Owain’s hand on leaving. I was tempted to turn up the volume again, to drown him out. Marisa was still looking into her lap.

“I’m so sorry,” I said softly to her.

“I want to talk about your father,” Legister said.

“What?”

“I think it’s time you knew the whole truth about what happened to him.”

I could feel Owain growing fiercely defensive. “I know what happened to him.”

“The full story, major. You’ve only ever been told the official version. It’s somewhat, shall we say, restricted.”

He wasn’t concerned about Marisa. It was as if she was no use to him in the present situation and could be discounted

“Come,” Legister insisted, indicating the armchair opposite him.

Owain took a step back.

“What are you afraid of, major?” Legister said with weary disdain. “I’m unarmed. We’re guarded. Aren’t you a seeker after truth?”

“I wouldn’t expect to hear it from you.”

“You have no interest in your father’s fate?”

“My father died while doing his duty.”

“Along with millions of others. I take it you were told the attack was launched by renegade militia making use of devices acquired after raids on abandoned missile facilities.”

Owain didn’t say anything, but neither did he turn away.

“Did you know your father was a member of the so-called Pazis?”

Angrily Owain said, “My father was no pacifist!”

Legister mimed surprise. “Of cour he wasn’t. Not at least in the popular sense of being a coward or a conscientious objector. But that’s not how the term is applied in official circles. Rather, it refers to a loose association of officers and civilians throughout our territories who favour negotiated settlements rather than continuing escalation. Most desire a permanent end to hostilities. A few even have as their ultimate aim the restoration of civilian, even democratic, rule.”

Legister’s sneering tone made it sound like a ridiculously idealistic aspiration.

“Are you suggesting my father was a subversive? A traitor?”

“My dear major,” he said emolliently, “I’m not suggesting that he was in any way deficient in his duties. But his record also indicates that he was a humane man who did not believe in unnecessary sacrifice.”

Was this a compliment or merely a means of winning Owain’s consideration?

“Colonel-General Blaskowitz was a more recent member of the fraternity. No doubt you’re aware of what happened to him.”

As usual he was giving nothing away but words. Then it came to me: Legister himself had similar sympathies. He’d been trying to negotiate with the Americans, and had been kept in the dark about the plan for using Omega.

“Ever since we began this entire enterprise,” he went on, “the bane of our existence has been our inability to stabilise our borders. And, of course, the problem of trying to meld the many constituent tribes of the Alliance into one harmonious whole against all the xenophobic instincts of our species. A utopian project, perhaps. Certainly a Herculean one.”

All this was remote from Owain’s own experience. It also sounded like a politician’s gloss on what had been military necessities.

“The Middle East presented a particularly intractable problem. Sixty years ago it was believed that the Jewish Question had been settled humanely by the mass evacuations to their ancestral homeland. But it bred equally virulent forms of domestic nationalism within the federated territories. In the Slavic lands we have a convenient wasteland for demarcation, in North Africa the desert expanses. But not in Palestine and Mesopotamia, despite our best efforts at homeland creation.”

His tone was that of a wearily exasperated parent, of someone whose boundless charity had been spurned.

“A festering wound on a sensitive frontier, Jews and Muslims and Christians in bitter unending conflict, even amongst themselves. Even with occupying armies. Too many symbols of religious and nationalist pride, too much history of strife. It became clear it was never going to go away. But the example of the east, how the very devastation of its territories was creating a cordon sanitaire, proved an inspiration to our strategic planners. Why don’t you sit down, major?”

Already I was beginning to anticipates gloss on might say. I made Owain sit. Marisa, whose head was still down, looked like she wished she were anywhere but here.

“The nuclear attack on Palestine was orchestrated by senior figures within the Alliance,” Legister stated. “It was they who supplied the weaponry, they who selected the targets. A means of reducing troublesome provinces to a radioactive desert that could more easily be policed while bolstering their own authority in the inevitable outrage that would follow.”