CHAPTER 20
ANGELIQUE
EVEREST
“This is not a threat, but please treat my words seriously,” Angelique said as she sat in the command chair of her spacecraft, hailing the now-enemy vessel that moments ago she had entered voluntarily. “We are preparing to exit through the same section of your spaceship we entered through. Please open the air lock door, or we will be forced to open it ourselves.”
The response came back instantaneously. “This is Lieutenant Dan Taylor of the ESS Washington-Mao ship carrier.” The lieutenant over the coms sounded like he was shaking with fear. “Please stand by while I confirm your request.”
“You have two minutes to confirm my request.”
Ship turned on the external lights of the spacecraft and pivoted them around so their weapons faced the hangar door. Ship never entered the room with Angelique; instead he was held in a waiting room while Angelique conversed with the prime minister of the planet.
Almost exactly two minutes later, the lieutenant’s voice came back through the speaker. “Ma’am, your request has been approved. I have Prime Minister Overwood on a secure line. I’m putting him through to you now.”
Angelique watched as the hangar door began to open, noticeably slower than when it was first closed. Angelique hoped that wasn’t intentional.
Callum’s southern drawl came through the speaker. He sounded cheerful, like the two of them hadn’t just gotten into an argument. “Angelique, it was great speaking with you. Before you leave the system, any chance you can leave us a fabricator?”
Angelique waited for the hangar door to open up all the way before responding. She instructed Ship to maneuver them outside of the spaceship carrier. And once they were outside, she responded, “We’re not leaving the system; we’re staying here.”
“I’m a little confused,” Callum said. “I thought you’d be leaving, since after the election, we will no longer be one of your colonies.”
“I want to make a short visit planetside, if that’s okay with you.”
“Angelique, you can visit.” Then there was a long pause, and Angelique thought she heard other voices whispering advice in the background. “I’ll make an official announcement shortly about your arrival. My people will let you know the location I’d like you to be for our first official meeting. It’ll be a photo op, great opportunity for you to speak to some reporters. It won’t be the official ceremony you’re used to. Please don’t mess with the election results. The will of the people has already been decided.”
“Where can I find Ange?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Callum said. “She’s dead. She died a couple years ago now; she was giving the resistance a tour of a fabricator-manufacturing facility when it blew up. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to blast you with this bad news.”
Angelique made a cutting gesture, and the sound feed connected to Callum immediately cut off. She was determined not to believe any of it. The only way to permanently kill an Ange’s Angel was to destroy the android body and go back and wipe the backup units. And there were backup units on the planet that only she and Ship knew about. Backups were created of Ange every three months. “Ship, can you take us to the north pole of Everest? Take us to the hidden backup facility.”
Angelique shook her head in frustration. Things were never as easy as she hoped. She’d planned on coming here and using the resources here to fly over to all the other locations.
“Who’s the Callum guy?” Peter asked her, breaking her out of her thinking. “And what happened while you were gone?”
“From what I’ve gathered, he’s the leader of the winning side of a civil war that happened here. I believe his side wants to leave my colony of worlds.”
“Do you know why he wants to leave?” Peter asked. “Aren’t there benefits, like all the new tech we have with us? From the look of their space platform, I’d say they’re several generations behind on the tech ladder.”
“It’s worse than that,” Angelique said as she looked down toward the giant planet they were orbiting. “Someone on the planet sabotaged all their fabricators. Without a means of advanced manufacturing, they need to go all the way back to basics to bootstrap their way out of it. That could take them centuries.”
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“Don’t we have a fabricator on board?” Unity asked. “We could print another one for them.”
“He asked me for it,” Angelique said, leaving out the fact she’d turned down that request. She hadn’t yet made up her mind on what to do. In one sense, she had a moral duty to at least help them out. They wouldn’t starve without a fabricator, but their people would suffer. She wasn’t sure how desperate they were yet, but she was confident without advanced manufacturing capabilities, fixing any of their existing infrastructure would be impossible. It would impact their ability to generate cheap power and maybe even impact their terraforming projects, which would massively impact the people’s quality of life.
“I’m guessing you didn’t respond?” Peter asked. “You left it ambiguous as to whether you had a working fabricator?”
Angelique nodded. “They weren’t expecting me here for a long, long time. So they know something has gone wrong. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
“Let’s keep it a secret that we have a fabricator,” Peter said. “There is nothing worse than revealing all your cards.”
“I disagree,” Unity said, finally finding her voice. “There are people on that planet. We have a moral duty to make sure this planet is safe and viable over the long term. Even if they leave your colony of worlds, Angelique, if they need a fabricator, we have to give them a fabricator.”
Angelique considered Unity’s statement. She was right in a way, but Peter was also right. She wanted to disagree with Unity, but she also didn’t want to sound like a ruthless dictator. She needed to show compassion for the people. But she also wanted to show there were consequences for leaving her coalition. If she let these people leave without any repercussions, then what was to stop any of the other colonies from doing the same thing?
Peter spoke before Angelique had a chance. “You’re right, Unity, if these people need help, we are obligated to help. But it doesn’t mean we have to tell the leaders of the country that … I haven’t met this Prime Minister Overwood character, but he sounds like a wannabe dictator. With people like him, it’s best to keep all your cards close to your chest. The fabricators are the biggest negotiating chip we have. It’s probably best we don’t bring it out until we understand exactly what we’re dealing with.”
“I agree,” Angelique said. “From the sounds of it, the people here aren’t in any immediate danger. So we have time.”
“As long as we agree,” Unity said, looking a little happier with the situation. “I just want to make sure politics doesn’t get in the way of genuinely helping other humans.”
Angelique didn’t like the characterization that she might play politics with other people’s lives. But she let that comment go. She knew that Unity was right. Looking at everything from the big picture, they were there to help them. And that’s what she was going to do.
“This election that he doesn’t want you to be involved in,” Peter asked. “What is it about?”
“Well, currently the planet is still one of my colonies. But the election they’re holding also includes a referendum on whether they stay or not. Technically they can’t simply vote on something like this. But personally, if it’s what the planet wants, then we’ll have no choice but to go with their wishes.”
Peter nodded his head, listening to what was just said. “What if you run for office, Angelique? What if you run against him?”
“I can’t. Separation of power and all that. But …” Angelique scratched the back of her head. She thought through the consequences of what she was about to propose. There wasn’t technically a law against it. But it might almost be considered an abuse of power. “You could run.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Surely I’m disqualified because I wasn’t born there?”
“It’s not like what you’re used to in the United States. There’s no requirement for being born on the planet since a lot of our colonies have spread throughout their star system, but there is a requirement to be a citizen. But since I’m the head of state I can make you a citizen.”
“Is that legal?”
“Technically, but it’s the first time I would have used my powers to enact a law that congress didn’t first approve.” Angelique shook her hands in a gesture that said maybe, maybe not. “It’s a legal grey area.”
“Would I win? I don’t have the same name recognition as you.”
“We’re the first humans from another planet to visit here in centuries. I’m almost confident everyone will know who you are within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Just landing us now,” Ship said as he touched their spaceship down on the snowy ground. They were on the north pole, far away from any other people on the planet. “I’m pinging the beacon now. We need to keep pinging it for the next eight hours to get a response.”
The security protocols were such that in order to get a response from the hidden base, the request codes needed to be sent multiple times an hour for at least thirty-eight hours. The exact amount of time was random. This was to ensure someone sweeping the planet for a hidden base couldn’t just send out a bunch of drones to send out signals in random directions around the planet. It ensured the only people getting into the base were those who knew where it was. It was also buried deep inside of a rock and made of a material that any wide-area scan wouldn’t notice anything obvious.
Angelique had designed it that way so that if, in the unlikely scenario where someone had a rough idea of the bunker’s location and the codes to active it, they would hopefully assume their information was wrong after not receiving a message back in a few hours.
This of course wouldn’t stop anyone from digging up the bunker. But again, no long-term secret base was immune to compromise.
“Angelique, while we wait for a response,” Ship said, “we should start running through the messages we intercepted while in orbit. It might give us a bit of context around what happened here.”