The Kassa Gambit

It was a good question. The answer couldn’t be just to kill him. Patrol boats were not cheap.

“They almost vaporized the rest of the Launceston along with me. Maybe they wanted to kill several birds with one stone?” Maybe Captain Stanton did more than just turn his nose up at League armbands. Maybe the man was part of the secret resistance. It was about the level of irony Kyle had come to expect.

“We don’t have a mutual defense treaty with Kassa,” Rica pointed out. “Legally, we don’t have a casus belli. An attack on one of our vessels would give us justification.”

That was insanity. “There are ten thousand corpses on Kassa, killed by aliens. Did they really think they’d need a law to start a war?”

Rica smiled, a sad little smile of disappointment. “Our friends often seem to underestimate emotional reactions. I used to think they were just arrogant.”

In all this time, Kyle had never considered the possibility that the League was working for the aliens. It was simply too incredible.

“I’ve met the prime minister, Rica. He’s a human being. He can’t be working for aliens. Nobody would sell out their own species.”

“When did you meet him?” Rica was surprised, as he should be. Detectives didn’t usually keep company with prime ministers.

“About five years ago, when he was just the mayor. Stopped him for a minor traffic violation. I didn’t ticket him, not even a warning. He told me to let it go, and I did. Shortly after that, my career took off.” And his life had gone into the toilet.

Rica looked at him quizzically. “You let him go? But why?”

Kyle felt his face flush. “Because I knew he would kill me if I didn’t. He had something to hide; something worth killing for. I’ve spent five years looking for it, investigating every crime committed on that day, from missing person reports to shoplifting charges.”

“Exactly what day was that?” Rica asked, out of professional habit. Whenever a crime was brought up, the prosecutors asked the same questions: when was it, where were you, did anybody see you there?

Usually, people could barely remember what they had for breakfast the previous day, but this date was stamped into Kyle’s memory, indelible as an acid burn.

“The second of August, 785.”

“Well, I can alibi the prime minister then.” They both smiled at the irony. “From two until four, he was giving a speech to the attorney’s office. I specifically remember making a notation in my daily journal: this is the end of my career advancement. I should have gone into private practice then, but I couldn’t bear to let the thugs win that easily.”

“What?” The vision was clear in Kyle’s mind. Checking his watch just before he stepped out of the patrol car, so he’d know what time to put on the incident report. The data tablet had a clock on it, of course, but he’d learned his lesson by then. You don’t let a machine do your job.

“I thought I could do more to protect civil liberties from the inside. So I stayed at my desk, even while —”

Kyle interrupted him. “What time did you say the speech was?”

“From two until four. With a social hour afterwards. Why, what time did you stop him?”

The glowing green digits of his watch hovered before Kyle’s memory.

“Three forty-eight. In the afternoon.”

Frowning, Rica tapped at his comm unit and showed the results to Kyle. On the tiny display, there was his personal planner entry for that date: PM Speech, 2–4. Notes: WTE!!! end of cr advnce!

“One of us must be mistaken.”

Kyle had spent years investigating the events of that day, checking for crimes that could have been committed in the hours before he had stopped Dejae. He had assumed Dejae was running from somewhere he shouldn’t have been. It had never occurred to him to search for where Dejae was supposed to be.

“I was in fear for my life, Rica. I remember what time it was.”

“When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth, however improbable.” Rica grimaced. “There must be two Veram Dejaes. One was bad enough.”

Kyle shook his head in dismay. “A twin brother? How much does anyone know about Dejae’s past?”

“Not as much as we should.” Rica shrugged. “He only came on-planet ten years ago. He was wealthy then, and he got wealthier fast. That buys a lot of secrets.”

“Why bother to hide something like that?” Since when was having a twin brother worthy of state secrecy?

“A good question, Lieutenant. One of many I have never seen a satisfactory answer to. We’ve sent investigations to his previous planet of residence, Baharain, but they came back with nothing suspicious. Whether they were bought, fooled, or League agents from the beginning, I can’t say. It didn’t seem important. Altair politics are extremely public, with well-crafted checks and balances. One man can’t corrupt the system, not even the prime minister.”

“Unless we let him,” Kyle said, thinking about how Captain Stanton had knuckled under to a piece of paper. Even Prudence had.

“What could compel the people of Altair to turn their political security over to a man they hardly know, one that isn’t even a native? What kind of threat could make us give up our clumsy, slow, ineffective, but extremely democratic system?”

It was Rica’s favorite kind of question—rhetorical. They both knew the answer.

An alien invasion. The threat of annihilation at the hands—or legs, or claws, or whatever you called spider appendages—of inhuman monsters.

“He’ll ask for emergency powers,” Rica said. “He’ll get them. Then he’ll simply never release them. As long as the threat of alien attack remains, we’ll go along with it, until we can’t remember how things used to be different.”

Kyle had seen Kassa firsthand. If the choice was between that and Dejae’s absolute rule, even Kyle would choose Dejae.

“The aliens are real,” he warned Rica. “They must be in some kind of collusion with the League, but they’re real. Kassa was bombed by lots of ships, too many to not be accounted for. Not even the League can be hiding a private fleet.”

“Stipulated, Lieutenant. But now we know Veram Dejae is not real—or at least, not what he seems.” Rica reached into his pocket, pulled out several credit sticks, and dropped them into Kyle’s hand. “You need to go to Baharain and find out why there are two Veram Dejaes. That’s our only lead.”

Rica didn’t know about the blue data pod. Kyle didn’t have it on him; he’d stashed the thing in case he got caught trying to connect with Rica. It was too late to bring it up now. But there was something he could ask about.

“There’s a ship involved. The Ulysses, captained by a woman named Prudence Falling. I can’t tell if she’s an agent or a hapless civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Tapping at his comm unit again, Rica shook his head in warning. “Fleet records say she claims to be from a place called Strattenburg. That’s an impossible one hundred hops Out. A rather obvious fake identity. The League is getting sloppy.”

Kyle nodded in agreement. It was the same conclusion he had reached. He understood he would never see her again, except to kill or be killed. Asking Rica about her had been a sentimental weakness, a childish hope that she might be what he wanted her to be. What she had been when her voice had come out of the vacuum of space and saved his life.

On his side.

“Not so sloppy they can’t kill you, Lieutenant. Be careful. But don’t contact me again. It’s too dangerous.”

Nobody was ever really on your side. Life was something you went through on your own. Kyle walked away from the bus stop, alone, as always.