The Far Shores (The Central Series) (3 page)

Alex was fascinated
despite himself. He and Katya talked all the time, but she was guarded when it
came to her past, always subtly directing the conversation elsewhere when the
subject came up. Alex had the same sort of reticence, mostly because he
couldn’t remember enough of his past to discuss it.

“We weren’t as sneaky as
we thought. You know how it goes. Telepath that wasn’t supposed to be there,
running a detection protocol our shields weren’t rated for. Not long after we
got to the house, everything went to shit, and we had all sorts of company. Did
our best to run, then when that didn’t work, we tried to fight. Of course,
forty to three is no kind of odds, and they didn’t have much trouble subduing
us. Held on to me and the senior of the two assassins. Fed the other guy to the
dogs. Worst thing I’d ever seen, at the time. Almost pissed myself watching it.
Took the two of us back to the house and locked us in separate cells in the
basement, made sure I could hear while they asked him all sorts of questions
for the next couple days. I was so freaked out by the time they opened my door
that I had already decided to tell ’em everything I knew and hope that they’d
make it quick.”

Alex shuddered, but
Katya continued on indifferently, her voice level and slightly distant.

“The mission leader beat
me to it. They already knew everything they needed to know, and didn’t figure
on getting anything useful out of a trainee, anyway. But that cartel head took
the attempted assassination personally, I guess. Wanted revenge, and I seemed
like as good a place as any to start. They didn’t even bother to ask any
questions.”

Katya went silent,
watching the dark sky with an intensity that seemed misplaced. Alex waited as
long as he could, unable to stop his hands from shaking or dispel the queasy,
sick feeling from his gut.

“What happened?”

“What? Oh. Exactly what
you’re thinking. Worse, probably,” Katya said, giving him a ghastly smile. “You
want the ugly details?”

“Not really,” Alex said,
shaking his head. “But I’ll listen, if you want to tell me.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass.
Not really what I’m trying to get at,” Katya said, relaxing her pose, releasing
her legs to swing over the edge of the roof again. “Point is, when Anastasia
tracked me down three days later, I was all sorts of messed up. Kind of shit
they don’t fix when they put you back together in the hospital. Ana had me
brought back to her house, and Timor slept on the floor next to my bed. Took
weeks before I slept through the night without waking the whole house
screaming. I thought I would never be able to go back out in the field again.
Shit, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go outside again. Anastasia must have
known it, too, because she came to see me every day, but she didn’t ask me to
do anything for a couple months. Eventually, I pulled it back together, and she
asked me to go back to school, finish training, kill for her, all that. So I
did. Freaked me out at first. Everything did. But I did it anyway.”

“Why? I mean, weren’t
you...”

“Scared? Sure. But it
was all like Ana told me – I could stay in my room for the rest of my life, if
I wanted, let my brother and Ana look after me. But I still wouldn’t be safe.
Because nowhere is really safe, when it comes down to it, and when the shit
that scares you is in your head,” Katya said, tapping her temple with a finger,
“there’s no running away. Even if I locked the door and never came back out, all
I’d be doing is shutting myself up with it.”

“I get that,” Alex said
slowly, turning it over in his mind. “But couldn’t you have done
something...safer?”

“Sure. I always thought
I’d be a great accountant,” Katya said, grinning. “But Ana needed me. It was a
way for me to protect her, and Timor – the people I care about. I realized that
it was a way to protect myself, too, to be strong and capable. To make it so
that no one could hold power over me.”

“I, uh, I don’t follow.”

Katya sighed in
exasperation.

“It’s like this – doing
what I need to do, even though I’m scared that bad things might happen, that’s
being brave. But to have bad things happen, to experience that kinda shit and persevere,
that doesn’t make me feel brave, it makes me feel fucking
invulnerable
.
When the worst has already happened, Alex, there’s nothing else to be afraid of.
All they can do is kill me.”

“That seems bad enough
by itself.”

“Maybe. Matter of
perspective.”

Alex gave it some
thought, glad the night was warm and windless.

“If that’s true,” he
asked, staring at his hands, “then why I am so nervous?”

“We all get nervous,”
Katya said reassuringly. “Nervous is normal. It’s natural to have an aversion
to experiencing pain or mortal danger, after all. But that isn’t the same as
being frightened. Nervous is a biological reaction to stress. A little fear
keeps you alive. Being afraid, though – that’s a choice.”

A thoughtful silence. At
the horizon, the sun had begun its daily rebirth, staining the edge of the sky
blood red.

“Okay,” Alex said
finally. “Point taken.”

“Good.”

“Still don’t think I can
sleep, though.”

“That’s fine,” Katya
said, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “Plenty of time to sleep when
you’re dead.”

***

“Our reality is war,” Gaul said
sternly, surveying the Committee-at-Large with cold pink eyes. “Whatever our
aspirations, whatever ambitions we aspire toward or principles to which we
adhere. Despite my desire – which I know many of you hold in common – to
provide the next generation with a world more peaceful than the one we were
given, the threats we face to today remain grave and implacable.”

There was muttering from
the center of the Hegemony camp, where the recently elected Lord North held
sway. Gaul ignored it.

“Times have changed.
Central is not immune, and our homes are no longer isolated from the danger
outside. The conflicts between the cartels have not abated – in fact, they are
now enflamed from outside, by an enemy who knows us intimately – the Anathema
have returned from their long exile. You are aware of this, ladies and
gentlemen of the Committee, for too many of your number were cut down during
their violent return to Central.”

Too many, or not
enough? I think we could have stood the loss of a few more of the old bastards.

Gaul agreed with
Rebecca, who was somewhere in the crowd, soothing tempers and steamrolling
opposition, but he didn’t let that show.

“We have lost friends
and family. Operators working for the Academy fell alongside cartel members
defending their homes. An Auditor gave her life and another...”

The crowd rustled, and
it wounded Gaul. He was no empath – in general, he refused to borrow those
protocols from the Etheric Network – but he could feel the outrage, the
contempt directed at him, a surrogate for Alistair’s betrayal. How could he
have not known? How could he go on as Director when his hand-picked Chief
Auditor had turned on him? The room whispered the same questions he asked
himself.

If Rebecca hadn’t been
there, he probably would have lost them. As it was, all she could do was create
space for him, and he plunged into it before they could formulate objections.

“...turned his back on
us. We have suffered, and worse, the enemy knows exactly how badly they have
hurt us. They will be back, ladies and gentlemen, let me assure you – they will
be back. To finish the rest of us. Those who resist will die. The rest will
find worse fates in the flesh pits and the forced evolution chambers of the
Outer Dark.”

Gaul could see confusion
and worry ripple through the room, and took satisfaction from that. These were
words, after all, that they had planned to aim at him, part of their
anticipated denouncement, which he had telepathically purloined.

“This is not the
future.” Gaul pointed at the back door of the Committee chamber, and the
massive rosewood doors were pushed open. Alice Gallow, reeking of cordite and
spattered with blood, led the way, followed by a handful of people, the
traumatized remainder of the once proud Lat Cartel. Xia shut the door behind
them, while Alice cheerfully led the survivors in their tattered clothes to the
Committee floor. “Ask the Lat Cartel, or what is left of it – the rest is gone,
a victim of a sudden Anathema incursion in Thailand and Burma. Only swift
action on the part of our depleted corps of Auditors halted the slaughter.”

The murmuring around him
and the man’s own vanity gave him away. North meant to stand, intended to
object. But he was concerned with arranging his coat, and that gave Gaul one
last opening.

“Or, you can ask Lord
North about Tajikistan. The Fahim Cartel is not in attendance, I note. We took
the younger members of the cartel into protective custody last week, so at least
the cartel isn’t a total loss.”

North’s eyes blazed at
Gaul, but that didn’t shake him at all. On the contrary, it was satisfying to
get a rise out of North.

“Lord Martynova of the
Black Sun might have something to say on the subject as well, I would imagine.”

Josef Martynova, grey
and hunched but still imposing, hesitated, his hands twisting around the golden
head of his ebony cane. Gaul didn’t need any empathic help to know that he was
struggling to control the impulse to turn and request his daughter’s approval.

The poor, arrogant man.
Such a humiliating predicament his elder daughter had put him in. It was
probably the only thing about Anastasia Martynova that Gaul liked.

“I have not yet had time
to inform my father of the sad fate of the Costa Cartel,” Anastasia said,
standing at her father’s side, resting her hands deferentially on his shoulder
while she came to his rescue. “We are still investigating last week’s events in
Central America, but that is no matter. The Black Sun Cartel concurs with your
assessment of the risk we face, Director. We would hear your proposal to address
our current circumstance – would we not, father?”

Aha. An immediate
reminder of why he despised and feared Anastasia Martynova – her father wasn’t
the only one she intended to rescue.

“Indeed,” Josef growled
with difficulty, his hard eyes daring anyone to speak against him. “It is as my
daughter says. Speak.”

The grumbling on the
Hegemony side of the room grew, but they were still too conflicted, North’s
rule too uncertain to organize resistance. Particularly with Rebecca Levy
strolling the room, soothing some tempers while enflaming others.

“I am aware of the anger
that some of you feel regarding my failure to secure Central, but I urge you to
consider – the attack did not occur due to a failure of my foreknowledge. Rather,
it occurred because an attack is the inevitable end of a strategy of endless
fortification. A strategy that this body insisted upon over the last decade. No
fortress is impenetrable.”

“You mean you saw the
assault coming, sir? You were aware of the attack before it happened?”

Lord Stockly of the
Hegemony, spittle flying from an enraged mouth. Lost both a wife and a child in
the attack.

“Not in the sense that
you have inferred. If you review the minutes of our previous session, however,
you will find that I urged the consideration of the inevitability of such an
attack, at each and every meeting for the better part of fifteen years. I
provided you with warnings, ladies and gentlemen. You, in return, tied my hands
and restricted the resources available to the Audits department. You committed Central
to an unsustainable course, and then expected success nonetheless.”

He waited for the crowd
to swallow that admittedly bitter pill. A number of Committee members were simply
angry, of course, but he could see some genuine distress on a number of
important faces. His words were finding their mark.

“We are still waiting to
hear your proposal, Director.”

Anastasia Martynova’s
voice was gentle, humble, the absolute antithesis of her character. A helping
hand when he least wanted one.

“As you say. It is time
for a change, as I suspect many of you came here today to demand. We cannot
continue to operate in the manner we have until now. Therefore...”

Gaul paused, and across
the field of his vision, a readout displayed likely votes, the colors and
shading indicating the potential for resistance and the intensity of it, supplemented
by empathic data that Rebecca Levy uploaded to the Network in real time.
Numbers shifted gradually in his favor, the room moving toward the pale-green hue
of acquiescence, but not nearly fast enough.

“...I propose an Emergency
Powers Act, which would provide me with the authority and resources needed to
defend Central from outside assault, to purge the Anathema from our midst, and
to remove the threat of the Outer Dark.”

“How is that a change
from current policy?” North asked, his nose in the air. “Your mandate already
includes much of this. How would your defense of Central differ from what has
already proved insufficient?”