The Tau Ceti Agenda

'You shouldn't be here, Elle; someone could be watching.' He scanned around the office nervously. Abigail was good and had assured him that they were safe, but someday, some group of AICs would marry and build an even smarter one than she was. He couldn't be too careful.

'Relax, Alexander, you've got the dampening field on. Nobody will see or hear a thing. If they do, I'll take care of it.' Ahmi was wearing her mask as usual. She slipped it over her face and then set it down on Moore's desk. Without asking, she picked up the drink and began taking long draws from it. 'I like what you've done with my office.'

'Right.'

'I see you managed to escape an election disaster,' the Separatist leader said, and plopped down onto the president's sofa.

'Yes, I did. It was just an overzealous congresswoman from Nigeria trying to make a name for herself. We all have skeletons, you know, and the lovely Mrs. Amaka Chi didn't want hers to go public. Especially since it would have ruined the Dems for years.'

'So I suppose Hardin gave you the information you needed?' Again Ahmi drank from her tumbler, this time emptying it.

'I knew it was you behind that.' Moore despised the murdering terrorist even if she had been Sienna Madira. In his mind, she couldn't still be that great person. But he had discovered thirty years before that her plan was too embedded to buck with a frontal assault. He had to play along and bide his time. 'What was the deal with Luna City and Disney World for Christ's sake?' Moore asked.

'I had an election to win. If the people of the system saw their beloved Magic Kingdom, the place they grew up fantasizing about, threatened by crazed terrorists, they would turn their attention from their daily pop culture long enough to watch a stalwart hero bounce in and save the day. I knew I could count on my marine. But I hadn't counted on you blowing up my ship before it hit Luna. That was clever. And I don't recall any plans to attack my Oort Cloud facility.'

'I had an election to win,' Moore said, dryly.

'My way would have assured us that Luna City didn't vote against you.'

'My way did assure that Luna City would vote for me.' Moore offered her another drink, but she declined. He topped his tumbler off again.

'Tell my daughter that her father is dead,' Ahmi said out of the blue. There appeared to be a twinge of sadness to her voice. But Moore couldn't be certain.

'What happened?'

'He betrayed me. So, I shot him between the eyes with a railpistol.'

'Sehera will be sad to hear that.' Alexander gulped. She had said it so nonchalantly.

'It was the only logical solution. How is my granddaughter?'

Safe, no thanks to you, you crazy bitch, he thought.

Amen.

'She wants to be a marine.'

'Ha. The apple didn't fall far, did it, son?'

'No,' he said. I'm not your fucking son, he thought.

'Well, kiss her for me. Maybe one day I'll get to meet her.'

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Me either. Too bad you can't just kill her now.

We've talked about that, Abigail.

I know, sir. It would destabilize the Separatists' union beyond recovery. I'm the one who did the simulations. I recall.

Patience. Her day will come.

'So, our plans for Tau Ceti haven't been compromised?' President Moore said, hoping to hurry this meeting along.

'No, darling.' Elle stood and patted Alexander on the head like an elder family member would a child.

'Sehera's gonna want to know what you did with her father's body.' Moore had met Sehera's father once while he was in the POW camp during the Martian Desert Campaigns, but that didn't count as meeting him as much as it did wanting to rip his fucking throat out. But he was his wife's father, nonetheless.

'I spread his ashes over Madira Valley on the planet Ares. Poor Scotty, I'll miss him dearly.' She picked her mask up from the president's desk and slid it over her head, pulling her long, black hair up through the hole in the back of it, tying it into a ponytail.

'I'll let her know.'

'Be prepared, Alexander. You got away with your heroics this time. And you can keep the base in the Oort. I have other means of getting here now.'

'Yes, about that. How did you teleport a ship forward without a quantum connected platform on this end?'

'We all have our secrets, Alexander. You have yours. I have mine. Heroics are good and will win elections, but . . .' She paused and poked Alexander in the chest with her finger. 'You be careful how you interact with my plans. The last person to fuck with my plans just had his ashes spread over a rain forest. Family connections will only get you so far.' She smiled and retracted her gloved finger and then depressed a sequence of buttons on her wristband, activating the QMT projector snap-back algorithm. Then the Separatist tyrant and once-great president vanished with a crackling hiss and a flash of light.