John Scalzi - The Last Colony

"She's not dead yet," I said. "And neither are we. Neither is this colony."

"You know we cannot allow Zoe to come to harm," Dickory said, breaking his silent act. I was reminded that he was in actuality the superior of the two Obin.

"Are you going to go back to the plan of killing me and Jane to protect Zoe?" I asked.

"It is to be hoped not," Dickory said.

"What a delightfully ambiguous answer," I said.

"It's not ambiguous," Hickory said. "You know what our position is. What it must be."

"And I'd ask you to remember what my position is," I said. "I've told you that in every circumstance you should protect Zoe. That position has not changed."

"But you have made it substantially more difficult," Hickory said. "You may have made it impossible."

"I don't think so," I said. "Let me make a proposal to the two of you. You have a ship arriving soon. I'm going to promise you thai Zoe will leave with you on that ship. But you have to promise me' that you take her where I am going to ask her to go."

"Where is that?" Hickory said.

"I'm not going to tell you yet," I said.

"That will make it difficult fDr us to agree," Hickory said.

"That's the breaks," I said. 'But I guarantee you where you're taking her will be more safe than here. Now. Agree, and I'll make sure she goes with you. Don't, you'll have to find a way to protect her here, or kill me and Jane trying to drag her away. These are your choices."

Hickory and Dickory leaned in and conversed for several minutes, longer than I had ever seen them converse before.

"We accept your condition," Hickory said.

"Good," I said. "Now all I have to do is get Zoe to agree. Not to mention Jane."

"Will you tell us now where we will be taking Zoe?" Hickory asked.

"To deliver a message," I said.

The Kristina Marie had just docked at Khartoum Station when its engine compartment shattered, vaporizing the back quarter of the trading ship and driving the front three-quarters of the ship directly into Khartoum Station. The station's hull buckled and snapped; air and personnel burst from the fracture lines. Across the impact zone airtight bulkheads sprang into place, only to be torn from their moorings and sockets by the encroaching inertial mass of the Kristina Marie, itself bleeding atmosphere and crew from the collision. When the ship came to rest, the explosion and collision had crippled Khartoum Station, and killed 566 people on the station and all but six members of the Kristina Marie's crew, two of whom died shortly thereafter of their injuries.

The explosion of the Kristina Marie did more than destroy the ship and much of Khartoum Station; it coincided with the harvest of Khartoum's hogfruit, a native delicacy that was one of Khartoum's major exports. Hogfruit spoiled quickly after ripening (it got its name from the fact Khartoum's settlers fed the overripe fruit to their pigs, who were the only ones who would eat them at that point), so Khartoum had invested heavily to be able to harvest and ship for export its hogfruit crop within days of ripening, via Khartoum Station. The Kristina Marie was only one of a hundred Colonial Union trade ships above Khartoum, awaiting its share of the fruit.

With Khartoum Station down, the streamlined distribution system for the hogfruit ground into disarray. Ships dispatched shuttles to Khartoum itself to try to pack in as many crates of the fruit as possible, but this led to confusion on the ground in terms of which hogfruit producers had priority in shipping their product, and which trade ships had priority in receiving them. Fruit had to be unpacked from storage containers and repacked into shuttles; there were not nearly enough cargo men for the job. The vast majority of hogfruit rotted in its containers, delivering a major shock to the Khartoum economy, which would be compounded in the long term by the need to rebuild Khartoum Station—the economic lifeline for other exports as well—and bolster the defenses of Khartoum from further attack.

Before the Kristim Marie docked at Khartoum Station, it transmitted its identification, cargo manifest and recent itinerary as part of the standard security "handshake." The records showed that two stops previous, the Kristina Marie had traded at Quii, the homeworld of the Qui, one of the Colonial Union's few allies. It had docked rext to a ship of Ylan registry, the Ylan beir& members of the Conclave. Forensic analysis of the explosion left no doubt that it was intentionally triggered and not an accidental breach of the engine core. From Phoenix came the order that no trade ship that had visited a nonhuman world in the last year was to approach a space station without a thorough scan and inspection. Hundreds of trade ships floated in space, their cargo unpacked and crews quarantined in the original Venetian sense of the word, awaiting the eradication of a different sort of plague.

The Kristina Mark had been sabotaged and sent on its way, to the place where its destruction could have the most impact, not just in deaths but in paralyzing the economy of the Colonial Union. It worked brilliantly.

The Roanoke Council didn't react well to the news that I had sent Zoe to deliver a message to General Gau.

"We need to discuss your treason problem," Manfred Trujillo said to me.

"I don't have a problem with treason," I said. "I can stop anytime." I looked around the table at the rest of the Council members. The little joke didn't go over well.

"Goddamn it, Perry," Lee Chen said, angrier than I'd ever seen him. "The Conclave is planning to kill us, and you're passing notes to its leader?"

"And you've used your daughter to do it," Marie Black said, disgust creeping into her voice. "You've sent your only child to our enemy."

I glanced over at Jane and Savitri, both of whom nodded to me. We knew this was going to come up; we had discussed how best to handle it when it did.

"No, I didn't," I said. "We have enemies and lots of them, but General Gau isn't one of them." I told them of my conversation with General Szilard of the Special Forces, and his warning of the assassination attempt on Gau. "Gau has promised us that he wouldn't attack Roanoke," I said. "If he dies, there's nothing between us and whoever wants to kill us."

"There's nothing between us and them now," Lee Chen said. "Or did you miss the attack on us a couple of weeks back?"

"I didn't miss it," I said. "And I suspect it would have been much worse if Gau didn't have at least some control over the Conclave. If he knows about this assassination attempt he can use it to get back control of the rest of the Conclave. And then we'll be safe. Or at least safer. I decided it was worth it to take the risk to let him know."

"You didn't put it up for a vote," said Marta Piro.

"I didn't have to," I said. "I am still colony leader, fane and I decided that this was the best thing to do. And it's not like you would have said 'yes," anyway."

"But it's treason," Trujillo repeated. "For real this time, John. This is more than coyly asking the general not to bring his fleet here. You're interfering with the internal politics of the Conclave. There's no way the Colonial Union is going to let you do this, especially when they've already hauled you up in front of an inquiry."

"I'll take responsibility for my actions," I said.

"Yes, well, unfortunately, we will all have to take responsibility for them, too," Marie Black said. "Unless you think the Colonial Union is going to assume youVe been doing this all on your own."

I eyed Marie Black. "Just out of curiosity, Marie, what do you think the CU is going to do? Send CDF troops here to arrest me and Jane? Personally I think that would be fine. Then at lea|pt there'd be a military presence here if we're attacked. The only other option would be that they hang us out to dry, and you know what? That's what's happening already."