CHAPTER 3
Heinlein
Krycek Estate
Northern Hemisphere
“Good morning, sir!” the steward bot said, in a cheery, synthesized voice. It rolled to a stop in the grass. “There is an aircraft approaching the estate.”
Zander Krycek didn’t look up. It was a beautiful summer day, and he was spending the morning down in the dirt, pruning his roses. “Are you sure?” Air cars, VTOLs, and other aircraft passed close to the property from time to time. Sometimes the machines confused rude pilots with potential visitors.
The steward bot bobbled a little, gyroscopically stabilized on one large wheel. “According to telemetry, the vehicle’s trajectory will take it directly over the house. It is decelerating and descending.”
This was enough to give Zander pause. “I see,” he said, standing up. At 197 centimeters tall, he towered over the robot. “Let’s go see who they are, shall we? Head out to the front yard and wait for them. If they land, ask them what they want and tell them to wait. I’ll be out momentarily.” He started to walk away, but paused. “Jerkins, if you detect weapons, send an emergency signal at once.” This would cause the house to go into full lockdown mode.
“Of course, sir,” the robot said, just as cheerily, before rolling away.
Zander didn’t get many visitors. He lived out his exile on Heinlein quietly, not socializing very much. Given his controversial reputation, there were many who wanted nothing to do with him. He’d written several books, given a few interviews, and occasionally imbibed in the services of a high-end courtesan agency, but rarely did anyone bother to come to his home. It was unusual.
He had enemies, back home on Ithaca. They’d left him alone for all these years, but in the back his mind, he wondered if today was the day they’d come for him. Such a thing had always been a possibility, albeit an unlikely one. Traveling across interstellar space to kill someone was almost always more trouble than it was worth.
Nonetheless, he activated his home’s defense system and retrieved a personal weapon. He checked to ensure his pistol was loaded; of course, it was. He studied the weapon for a moment. The beautifully engraved emblem on the grip always caught his eye. It was the presidential seal of the Colony of Ithaca, from back when there was a president.
When Zander was president.
Armed and smiling humorlessly, Zander made his way through his home. Pausing in the foyer, he brought up the security feed on a small display. Jerkins was waiting in the yard, its boxy blue body standing out against the dark green of the rich Terran grass. The unmistakable whine of engines could be heard now, if only barely, through the well-insulated walls of Zander’s home.
Cameras locked onto the aircraft and zoomed in as it circled around the estate, descending toward the front yard. It was an ungainly looking craft, with a blunt nose housing a cluster of sensors and antennae, held aloft by a pair of circular, ducted rotors in place of wings. Wind buffeted the lawn and Jerkins as the helicopter adjusted the pitch on its rotors, lowered its landing gear, and settled onto the lawn.
Zander frowned. It took a lot of work and maintenance to keep this particular species of bluegrass growing on this part of Heinlein. He was tempted to go out there and tell the interlopers to get the hell off his lawn, but he waited. As the aircraft’s engines spun down, Jerkins approached, rolling across the grass to the side of its fuselage. The steward bot came to a stop as doors to the helicopter’s passenger compartment slid open. A set of steps unfolded, and a tall man stepped out onto the grass.
The security cameras automatically zoomed in, linked with a feed from Jerkins’s optics. Facial recognition software scanned its database and attempted to identify the visitor, but Zander didn’t need the machines to tell him who he was. Even after all these years, there was no mistaking Erasmus Starborn. Shaking his head, Zander opened the door and stepped outside.
It had been fifteen years, or more, since he’d seen this man. Then-Lieutenant Starborn had been with Zander from the beginning, serving him faithfully through the overthrow of the king and the colonial civil war that followed. He had been a trusted intelligence officer and advisor after Zander assumed the presidency. He looked older, despite the life-extending miracles of space-age medicine. His blonde hair, which he’d always kept cropped very short, was longer now, and he had a beard.
“Mr. President,” the visitor said, extending a hand.
“Ras,” Zander replied, his mind full of questions. He took the offered hand and shook it firmly. “My God man, it’s been how many years?”
“Almost twenty standard years, sir.” He studied Zander’s home for a moment. “It seems like you’re doing all right for yourself.”
Zander chuckled. “I had assets put away when I left. It was enough to set me up here.” His tone lowered slightly. “You’ve come all the way from Ithaca, I assume?”
“I have.”
“I’m certain you didn’t travel so far to admire my home. What do you want, Ras?”
“Sir, the situation back home has been steadily worsening since your departure.”
“I told you it would.”
“None of that was up to me. In any case, I was sent here to find you. I have a message for you.”
“From who?”
Ras took a deep breath. “From your daughter, sir.”
Zander’s heart fell into his stomach. He knees grew weak. Sensing the changes in his vital signs, Jerkins rolled over and grabbed his arm, ensuring he wouldn’t fall. “Adisa?” he asked. “She sent me a message?” She’d been a child when he’d been ousted from office. Friends of her late mother had sent her into hiding as Zander was sent into exile. He’d long since come to accept that he would never know her, and now she sends a message?
Zander looked up at the slowly darkening sky as he regained his composure. Clouds had been rolling in all afternoon, and a cool wind was blowing in from the mountains to the north. He stood up straight, his steward bot backing out of his personal space. “Yes, well, I expect it’ll rain soon. Please, come in. We have much to discuss.”
The study was a large, cozy room, lit by large bay windows on the south side. The floor, several bookcases, and the desk were all made of native Heinleinian oak and hickory hybrid. A holographic globe, showing a 3D image of the planet and its satellites hummed quietly against the wall. As the two men sat down, Jerkins rolled in and asked if anyone wanted refreshments.
“Scotch, neat.” Zander didn’t imbibe often, but he needed a drink just now. “Care for a drink, Ras? It’s local, thirty years old.”
“Just tea, please, if you have it.”
“I have Assam and Sencha,” Jerkins replied.
“I have not heard of these.”
“Assam is black,” Zander explained, “and Sencha is green. They call them Ebony and Emerald back home.”
“Ah, I see. Sencha, then, please.”
“Scotch and Sencha,” Jerkins confirmed. “Just a moment.” The robot pivoted around and rolled out of the room.
“That’s a fine machine you’ve got there,” Ras noted. “I’ve never seen a robot with such good speech recognition and cognition.”
“It’s all right, as long as you don’t expect too much. Still, cheaper than hiring a human staff.”
“I would like to think that you were well served by human staff, at least for a while.” Ras had been one of Zander’s aides as a young lieutenant, when Zander was himself a colonel in the Royal Guard. He saw great leadership potential in the young man, and took him under his wing. He’d promoted him to major and kept him in a trusted position after becoming president.
“You certainly had more initiative than Jerkins,” Zander mused, as the steward bot rolled back into the room. “Though, I couldn’t help but notice your absence at the end.” His tone had changed. The room felt a little colder.
“I did what I could, sir,” Ras said, looking down into his tea. “For what it’s worth, I helped convince them to let you go into exile. They wanted to hang you, and I told them that would have started another civil war.”
Zander sipped his scotch. “You were probably right about that. How’s your boy, by the way? Jeb, right?”
“Grown, with kids of his own. I’m a full colonel in the Guard now. Counterintelligence.”
“Oh? Do they know you’re here?”
Ras smiled. “Not exactly.”
“I always did know you’d go far. Let’s get down to it, then. Please show me this message from my daughter.”
“Of course,” Ras said, reaching into his jacket pocket. He retrieved a small holographic projector and placed it on the desk. “You should know that I have not seen the message. It’s encrypted and can only be unlocked with your biometric data. Just place a thumb on the pad on the projector, and it should play automatically.”
Hesitating for just a moment, Zander downed the rest of his drink and put his thumb on the pad. The holographic projection above the device flashed a red icon, then a green one. “Access granted,” a synthesized voice announced. The icon disappeared and was replaced with a three-dimensional projection of a young woman with black hair, brown eyes, and skin the color of mocha.
“Adisa,” Zander whispered. She looked so much like her mother, there was no mistaking her. His little girl was all grown up.
“Hello, Father,” the woman said as the message began. “I know this must come as a shock to you. It’s not easy for me, either.” She looked down, briefly, a sadness in her eyes. “First, let me prove to you that it is really me, by telling you some things only I would know. First, my name is actually a boy’s name, but despite mother’s protests, you thought it was pretty and insisted upon it. And second…when I was small, you would tell me a story every night. You wouldn’t let my nanny do it, and you wouldn’t let me just watch a show. You would tell me about the Adventures of Princess Adisa, and her journeys from one magical planet to the next. You made it up as you went along, but I loved it. You only stopped after mother died.”
Zander struggled to not tear up. It had been so long he’d almost forgotten.
“For much of my life, I was told that you were a madman. The Butcher of Sargusport, the man who destroyed an entire city. The war criminal who had to be deposed.”
The old man looked away from the projection for a moment, even though Adisa couldn’t see him. He had indeed ordered the destruction of Sargusport, via a nuclear artillery round, but the decision hadn’t been one he’d made lightly. It had haunted him ever since.
“I tried to find objective analysis of you, of what you did. It wasn’t easy. Much of the truth has been erased, replaced with propaganda. Since your exile, you’ve been blamed for many things that are not your fault: the current strife, the economy, the poverty, all of it. You’ve been a convenient scapegoat for the Council government. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I never got to know you, father. I don’t believe that you’re the monster you’ve been made out to be. I still remember my father, smiling as he told me stories, even making sound effects.”
Zander fought back tears once again.
Adisa took a deep breath. It was apparent she had recorded this message in one take, and didn’t seem to be reading off a script. “That is not the purpose of this message, though. I wouldn’t have sent Colonel Starborn so far just to say hello. I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the situation here on Ithaca, so included with this message are detailed files, and Colonel Starborn should be able to answer any questions you might have. The short version is, the situation is grim. After your departure, the Council was never able to maintain control over the entire colony. The southern region is, for all practical purposes, fully autonomous, and doesn’t recognize the authority of the Interim Government. In fact, they have prospered more, and many of our citizens resent them for it.”
That made sense. The southern region had a smaller population and vast mineral wealth. It was more rural, and the inhabitants tended to be less trustful of the central government. This went back many, many years.
“The economy is struggling, and there are some troubling signs that we may be facing a total economic collapse. We’ve been experiencing runaway inflation and the dinar is all but worthless, despite the price controls the Council has implemented. There are shortages everywhere. People are going without medicine, and some are even going without food. There is talk of using this emergency to implement a command economy fully controlled by the Council, of having the government seize farms and manufacturing facilities to ensure quotas are met.”
Zander frowned. Many of the people involved in the revolution were idealistic, passionate, and economically illiterate. Such a move would start a civil war.
“The Council is growing desperate and afraid. They fear there might be yet another revolution, one that sees them overthrown, backed by the Southern Autonomous Zone. Their side has the population advantage, but that doesn’t mean victory. They always find someone to blame for the failure of their plans. Usually it’s you, father, but sometimes it’s also greedy corporatists or Southern militants or even the native population.
“They’re desperate, Father, and they’re afraid. They have sent envoys to the Orlov Combine.”
Dear God, Zander thought to himself. The fools have all gone mad.
“No one else will back the Council now, and the Combine promises technological investment that will solve the shortages of critical resources. They claim to be the most efficient planners in all of inhabited space. A colonial referendum is being drawn up, and Colonel Starborn’s sources have told him that the results of that vote have been decided ahead of time. Already our networks are being bombarded with pro-Combine propaganda, promising a new age of cooperation and prosperity. You and I both know the truth, Father. If that treaty is signed, then Ithaca will be nothing but a client state, and all who oppose their rule will be killed.
“The situation is dire, but all is not lost. There are many of us opposing them, and even though we are extremely outnumbered, we are pursuing advantages of our own. As I record this, I’m attempting to set up a meeting with the native Elders, to ask for their support. They don’t respect the Council, though, and they don’t respect me. The only human they truly respect is you, Father. You’re the one who brought them to the negotiating table and got them to agree to the peace treaty.”
He was quite proud of that fact. He’d written a book about it. The king, when he was young, had blundered into a war with the alien inhabitants of the world, turning over centuries of peaceful coexistence. It had fallen to Zander to strike at them hard enough to bring them to the negotiating table. It worked: They signed the peace treaty, the first such interspecies agreement in living memory.
“I’m asking you to come home, Father. I know there are many who will oppose you, but if anyone has a chance of uniting the opposition against the Council it’s you. You have many supporters even today. Without your help, I fear war is inevitable, and I don’t believe it’s a war that we can win.
“I await your reply. I know you’ll do the right thing.”
The message ended, and the image of Adisa disappeared.
Ras spoke up after a moment. “I know it’s a lot to take in, sir.”
Zander ignored him. “Jerkins, another scotch. Bring the bottle.”
“At once, sir,” the robot said, and rolled off.
“This is a hell of a thing to drop at a man’s feet, Ras.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures. You and I both know what will happen to the colony if the Combine comes in. If you need some time to think about it, please take it, but time is of the essence.”
“I’ll go,” Zander said, as Jerkins handed him another glass of scotch.
Ras blinked a few times. “Just like that, sir? It will be dangerous.”
Zander smiled. “Ras, you don’t go from being an officer in the Colonial Guard to dethroning a king to being appointed president of the colony if you’re prone to hesitating. In any case, retirement is dreadfully dull. I’ve written books, I’ve traveled, I’ve given talks, and now I live with a robot and prune my roses. Returning home might be dangerous, but this will kill me.”
“It’s good to have you back, sir,” Ras said, smiling.
“I’ll need a few days to get my affairs in order. Do you have a ship?”
“No. A convoy of free traders came through, and we hitched a ride on one of them under assumed identities. I tried to keep everything as low profile as possible. We will need to find another way home.”
“I see. How many people did you bring?”
“There are three of us. I told the others to let me initiate contact with you alone.”
Zander nodded. “We’ll need a ship, then. How much money do you have at your disposal? We’re going to need a lot.”
“It shouldn’t cost that much to charter a ship, should it?”
“I don’t intend to book a berth on some tramp freighter, Ras. We may need fire support. I want to hire a privateer.” He sipped his scotch again. “One last thing…does she know?”
Ras was quiet for a moment. “No. We never told her. There are rumors, but the Council has made an effort to quash them. It’s the stuff of conspiracy kooks now.”
“Good. Good. It may be time that she learned the truth.” He never imagined he’d get to see Adisa again. He found himself wondering what she was like. What kind of woman had she become?