Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Emil Bellica docked his planet hopper with practiced efficiency.
The central spaceport in the southern hemisphere of Tanalia was a newly constructed building.
He had wanted something erected that would allow easy access to his newly built barracks on that side of the planet.
No frills, smooth lines, fifty-six docking bays ready to transport troops and crops on and off Tanalia.
After gathering the documents he would need for the day into his briefcase, Emil smoothed the lapels of his suit jacket and exited the hopper. Janice had arranged for an assistant to greet him as he entered the spaceport.
The man who was waiting for him, Emil’s name written in big block letters on recycled paper, was typical of the Tanalian conscripts.
Hair just a tad past regulation length, tattoos peeking out under the sleeve of his uniform jacket.
The decades of occupation had done little to completely eliminate the individuality endemic of the planet’s inhabitants.
Emil knew one could only apply so much pressure at once before a bend turned into a break, but still.
You’d think signing up for galactic military service would trigger the desire for a haircut.
The man saluted. Emil vaguely wondered what adding a set of clippers to the standard kit recruits received would cost against the expense of hiring barbers to work each base.
Surely the machines would be less costly than paying for the service?
He made a note to crunch those numbers when he got back to the ship.
Gesturing to the recruit to follow along, he strode out of the spaceport.
Emil knew his ground transportation would be close to the exit.
Janice knew he’d want to be efficiently and silently transported to the base as quickly as possible to discuss security modifications now that the Amplifier was confirmed to be associating with known criminal elements.
Prying updates from the Twins had been a nightmare.
Emil had once again been reminded why he rarely hired subcontractors.
Entirely too many opinions about their own worth
The possibility of common thieves cracking high-level military security wasn’t completely improbable. But it was looking more and more likely that he had a mole. The punishment for treason on Bauder was always death. Emil liked having his facts straight before he wasted valuable resources.
The young man with the floppy paper scurried to catch up with him and guided them toward a waiting vehicle.
It was sleek, discreet, and appointed with everything he would need to finish the morning round of reports before his first meeting.
Once the door was opened for him, Emil slid in, opening his briefcase to get started.
A view screen was tuned to a local station, the weather report presenting the next week’s forecast. He made a mental note to dig his rain gear out of the storage container in his hopper when he returned for the evening.
No sense in wasting time looking for it in the morning when he knew there was a downpour in his future.
He thought back to his last meeting with the Alpertti princess.
The details were still sharp in his mind.
Idealists were so easy to manipulate. You just strike at the heart of their principles, and down they go, falling on their own swords.
Big hazel eyes full of righteous indignation, and absolutely no sense of self-preservation.
Qualities that could be harnessed quite easily by a dissenting element in the population — if they could find the will to organize.
Did that will exist in Tanalia today? It was the question that had been plaguing him since he’d realized her abductors had left behind all his research, not to mention the full tanks of Amplified energy.
The slow burn of a planetary takeover Emil had committed himself to was taking longer than he’d thought.
Despite his careful silencing of dissenting voices, resentment still stewed at Bauder’s presence on the planet.
He couldn’t fathom why they clung to their worthless artistic pursuits, their insistence on individuality of spirit when he had presented them with the far superior path of order, efficiency, and productivity.
The question was, were there enough of them to form some sort of rebellion?
Emil’s thoughts were interrupted when the view screen’s picture started to pixelate.
He gave the top of the view screen a good thump with the flat of his palm.
Sometimes a gentle nudge would fix a technical problem.
It was a time-honored tradition in technical service circles.
That and unplugging something for a few seconds solved most problems in his experience.
His thumping did nothing. The image on the screen had re-pixelated.
Instead of the weather report, he found an image of the Grand Opera House that once stood in the main square of Randelie.
The building had never been restored to its former garish excess, having been rebuilt to his specifications.
Soft music Emil didn’t recognize came from the speakers.
The driver was tapping his fingers in time.
Must be a local folk song. Typical sentimental garbage.
Then, a voiceover started. A steady, clear mezzo-soprano, reminiscing about performances she had seen in the building growing up. Another building, another memory. The voice and the photo faded out, replaced by bold, white text on a black background:
Remember who we are.
Emil’s eyes snapped to the screen, his every thought consumed by the voice lilting from the speakers. He remembered it well. The screen pixelated, the weather report returned.
“When it rains, it pours, Louise,” the weatherman said to the anchor sitting behind the desk. She tittered mindlessly and reminded the audience to hunt down their umbrellas.
Emil shut off the view screen.
It was now crystal clear to Emil that someone was plotting against him.
He didn’t usually make the mistake of underestimating his opponents.
“Know thy enemy” was practically tattooed on the underside of his eyelids.
He had done his due diligence in researching the crowned Alpertti and the next two in line.
They were weak, sentimental, and overly cautious.
Unwilling to take big swings. Dedicated to public service and personal sacrifice in the name of the greater good.
Emil had thought the same thing was true of Evelyn Alpertti.
It seemed that he was wrong.
The Twins were proving to be a useless expenditure. How hard could it be to find one naive brat flying through this sector of the universe with a bunch of crooks? Emil was seriously considering severing the contract, penalty clauses be damned.
Anika Kahn had approached him with a proposition the night before.
She was deceptively jolly looking when her image filled the screen.
The glowing brown skin of her face was lined with smile marks and deeply grooved crow’s feet.
Her black curls were shot through with silver at the temples, and her plump lips always looked a moment away from a smile.
Her eyes ruined the illusion, if you knew what to look for.
The sparkle in them could disappear in an instant, leaving only steely intensity.
The Witch, indeed.
“Why keep up the pretense of secrecy?” she’d asked. “Come out swinging. Have the Twins take her in public. No one would be able to question your authority, then.”
Emil found this distasteful, not only because the idea seemed to be throwing good credits after bad.
He had spent years cultivating the Tanalian population behind the scenes.
Manipulating a population took time. If you wanted them to buy what you were selling, brute force wasn’t the way to go.
Shows of strength? Absolutely. But beating the spirit out of people was how you spurred revolutions.
Draining it slowly over time, that was how you got compliance.
Still, the proposition was tempting. Tanalia was taking longer to subdue than he had budgeted for.
He had started the project as a much younger man.
While spurts spent in stasis and advances in medical science would expand his lifespan for decades to come, he was starting to feel the years more and more.
A swift show of force might be the right move after all.
Emil groped in his pocket for his communicator and pulled up the contact information for Ms. Kahn. This had gone far enough.
Expand the contract.
Mathias rubbed at the temporary tattoos that peeked out from under his shirtsleeves.
Not a bad look, but he’d probably go with something a little bolder if he ever decided to actually mark up his body.
He couldn’t afford to have distinguishing marks in his line of work.
Spies weren’t supposed to be noticeable.
Nothing about him could linger longer than the job needed it to.
For this job, the tattoos had been perfect. The look of disdain on Emil Bellica’s face when Mathias had picked him up from the spaceport proved his disguise was perfect.
It was tempting to just take the PM out while he was distracted in the transport, end Tanalia’s suffering now, but Mathias had seen the man’s death.
It wasn’t at his hand. Forcing the issue would only end in disaster.
So he kept both hands on the wheel and languidly drove toward the base, maintaining his character.
He’d told Lillian to schedule the transmission for the approximate time he’d have the PM in the car.
He’d walked at a snail’s pace to make sure they didn’t get into the car before the video started playing. Annoying Emil was just a side benefit.
He’d wished he’d worn a pair of those special glasses Aiden was so fond of instead of the contacts that changed his brown eyes to a blue that reminded him of Nannette’s.
A recording of the look he’d caught on Emil’s face from the rearview mirror would have been priceless.
The man’s eyes had been about to bug out of his head. Corvinia would have relished the sight.
Their plan to get under his skin was going to work. Annoyed leaders were reactive leaders, and reactive leaders made mistakes.
Mathias could feel the tide starting to turn on the ground. Emil’s grip on Tanalia was starting to slip. He could feel the situation coming to a head. As soon as it did, he was out. He was finished living for the job, making no lasting memories.
No lingering touches that weren’t designed to loosen lips.
No real relationships.
Corvinia would have to find another stooge to help her with phase two of the plan. Mathias wasn’t going to live like a ghost anymore.
He’d seen it.