“I don’t want you to spy on Sensus anymore,” Solomon said.
Kos nodded. Through hydrogen fog his bright eyes could see her.
“But I am grateful for what you’ve learned. The Sentinels are crucial. It’s reassuring to me that they’re being proactive and taking action of their own accord.”
Kos purred. “They are mighty.”
“Yes.”
He looked about the habitat, happy to see his precious acolytes enjoying the frivolities of human life. Their conditions had been quite Spartan in Ulro. Here they interacted with every piece of monotony as if it were an ingot of painite.
Kos was looking at him, thin whisps of nebulous matter trailing from her etheric body. She looked anxious.
“What’s the matter?”
“We will stop spying on the terrorist.”
“Don’t call him that.”
She stooped in shame.
“It’s all right. You look like you want to tell me something.”
“He’s awake. The guards are retreating.”
“Leave the guards. I want him protected. Just respect his privacy.”
Kos nodded. Solomon thanked her, and contemplated ways of intercepting their particle signal transfers while heading to Sensus’s home. The general was quiet when Solomon entered. He didn’t even stand to greet him. He sat at his desk reading a datapad. There was an additional chair in the office, against the wall and to the right of the general. Solomon strode plainly in his view and sat in that chair.
“Be angry with me all you like, but don’t show me disrespect.”
Sensus tossed the datapad onto the desk. “I’ve attached myself to you, for good or for ill. Do you understand what that means, Sol? It means that even if you turned out to be a traitor, a fanatic worshiper of the Tangent Lords, it would be more damaging for me to disavow you than to go down with you.”
“That’s one hell of a speculation.”
“I sit on the council, Sol. Every day, for hours at a stretch. I know these people and how they think. I know the duke, most of all. He won’t miss a single chance to discredit me. Do you know that he wants the Harbingers off of Albion? You’re not helping me build a case against him.”
Solomon scoffed. “That will never work. And you know it.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is the world you urged me into, Sol.”
Solomon was about to protest, but Sensus put up his hand.
“I made the decision to go along with it. I’m accountable for my own choices. But you’re not helping me. I need you to operate in a more conventional manner for now. Show the council that you can be accountable...”
“You mean predictable. Passive.”
“I mean stable and sensible.”
Solomon sighed. “I can manage that for a while.”
“Manage it until I can get you into a position where you’re useful. And, where you can operate freely as you see fit. I want you to continue your work, Solomon. I believe in it. Trust me. And conduct yourself in an exemplary manner.”
“You think we have time...”
Sensus stood, pounding his fists on his desk as he did. “No! We don’t have time, Solomon. The Surge are coming on top of everything else, and Salamanca is choosing now to vie for us to be expelled from Albion. I need you on my side, and I need you to get it together now. Because, Solomon, we do not have time.”
“Trust is a two-way street, old friend.”
Sensus sat back down. “I’ve given you plenty.”
Solomon felt his jaw tightening. He hated everything that coming back to Albion meant for him. But Sensus was right, and this sort of perception was one of the reasons Solomon wanted Sensus in charge. But he wasn’t in charge. He had the duke to overcome before the council would look to him as their head.
He nodded. “Alright, Sensus. I’ll behave.”
“Thank you. So. Where have you been this whole time?”
“Oak.”
“Just Oak?”
“Well, I went to the bathroom once or twice.”
“Mm hmm. I have two questions then. What did Eno show you, and since when did she start acting this way?”
“She showed me... I’m still working on that. But Omri activated a dormant subsystem.”
“A subsystem? After all your talk of Eno being the key, I’m surprised to hear you call this new behaviour of hers a subsystem. It seems to me, going along with the logic you presented us, that subliminally guiding the crew to some mysterious endgame would be her primary function. Any old computer program can run a ship, afterall.”
“Not this ship. But regardless, Eno is more. She’s aware, and not in the way the Sentinels are. She’s a living computer consciousness.”
“I’m not seeing the difference.”
“She’s not an organic mind transferred into a synthetic housing. She was born as she is.”
Solomon watched his friend closely. Sensus was a shrewd man, and while he felt strongly and had the power of belief well harnessed, Solomon had noticed long ago that there was a cold skepticism that seemed to take the helm when Sensus felt out of his depth. It was a double-edged knife, and Solomon hoped to guide it into the flesh of their foes.
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“How do you know that?”
“I learned it on Bindhu Prime.”
That tidbit seemed to have an impact, as Sensus’s brow became slightly less wrinkled.
I was right to make you General, Solomon thought. And command was wise to agree.
“It’s time to start revealing details, Sol. I’m going to stick my neck out for you, and I want payment in advance.”
“Allright. I suggest we get some food and find a more comfortable place to sit.”
“I like it here.”
“I know. But there’s a better place.”
“Let me guess.”
“She can create a space where I can show you where I’ve been and what I’ve learned, and showing is always better than telling.”
“I agree, but I’m not ready for another session with Eno just now. We’ll schedule a time, though. For now, I think it best we play along with the council. I’m going to insist on a military tribunal, but I’ll allow council members to be present.”
Solomon held back a smile. “Smart move. We’ll learn who even cares about me that way. That will be useful.”
“I’m going to need to build rapports with as many of them as I can. I don’t think of Salamanca as an enemy, but he’s definitely an obstacle.”
“He wants the universe to be a better place, but he doesn’t understand that it will take work to make it that way. I haven’t said this to anyone, but I wanted to leave Albion. The narrative is that I needed to, but I wanted to, Sensus. We were floating through the stars like some cruise ship, enjoying our decedent lives while entire worlds around us were choking on their own cinders.”
“We did what we could to help, Sol. We took on refugees, ran defensive operations, mediated when we could. Unless you feel we held back...”
“Of course we held back! Sorry.” Solomon stood and looked at the small kitchen in Sensus’s quarters. There was a tea kettle on his induction stove. “Mind if I make myself some tea?”
“I do.” Sensus stood. “What will you have?”
Solomon sat back down. “Chamomile. Thank you.”
Sensus activated his stove, bringing the water in his kettle instantly to boil. He looked through his cupboards. “I have Haq’Tayun. It’s like chamomile.”
“Is that a Tarkalean blend?”
Sensus took a small tin out of his cupboard and read the sticker on the back. “Yup.”
“That’ll do. Thank you.”
A moment later he was sipping from an earthenware mug, feeling the edge taken off his anxiety. “When will my hearing be?”
“This afternoon. I’ve had the tribunal on standby. I want to get it over with.”
“I’m glad someone does.”
“I’m sure the duke wanted to hold off until the consensus was against you, or to keep it looming as a threat. Right now, it would appear to suit our purposes if we delayed it, and I fear it would turn into a drumhead.”
“It’s a waste of time, so let’s get on with it.”
Solomon felt patronized by the way Sensus then leaned forward, placing his hands on his desk with a dramatic display of patience.
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said.
Solomon summoned a smidgeon of radiance to keep his tea hot. “What do you mean? You have an angle.”
Sensus smiled parentally and shook his head. “No. It's not all politics, Sol. You can use this as a chance to vindicate yourself, which I know you don’t see as important. But if you take away any reason the council members think they have to doubt you, you might just get a few of them to listen.”
“I’ll think on that.”
“Good. You’ll have half a day to do so.”
Half a day. It seemed like half a second. And what was Red Orak doing while Solomon considered how to pander to the council?
Outside he could feel disparity. In the cold of space, the heat of stars howled lupine to this radiant man.
It will all be different when the team returns, he thought.
His own journey through Ulro came to his thoughts. How it hurt to find himself there. How it hurt to be a shard of what he was. How it hurt for each shard to be crammed in those rank shells with so many other personality fragments. And the soft blue symbol watching him reassemble, he thought her a friend. Perhaps he should have killed her? But she was of Briah, lost like him, and in a figurative way she’d been equally splintered. And so he tried to help her put her pieces back together. If only it could have been done.
What made him anxious now was the vast distance between him and the team. They had a guide, yes, but Solomon worried over them as a father would.
A father…
His third came back in a box, his first in an urn. And when the war they fought was lost, he became a prisoner, a victim of a foreign law. What he became thereafter knew no law but rage. These truths he found in Ulro, as the wall between his flesh and spirit was melted away.
So far. So far.
Solomon felt like a giant before his sojourn. After he felt less than a protozoa. The vastness of Briah is not a thing one can comprehend unless they return to it with open eyes. He was a changed being, once a schismatic man, now a Marque figurine so carefully glued after a fall. The stars put him back together, reaching from far away into a dangerous place, and Solomon was grateful. He was grateful and he was afraid, and that mixture brewed into anger.
“You’re above this,” he told the Shadow Children while they shrouded his ingress from the airlock.
“You are sacred.”
“I am not.”
“We owe you everything.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“Do not send us away from you.”
“I never will. But I will feel guilty if you’re love for me holds you back from the glory you deserve.”
“We don’t want glory. We are shadows.”
Solomon let fall a tear.
In the hearing, Solomon suffeted far more greatly than he ever did in Ulro. He feigned remorse for his unceremonious departure, lied apologies and expressed lessons being humbly learned. Only when recanting the alarming means he used to defeat a detachment of Kybalion scouts did he let any real feeling show.
“So,” said Section Chief Yonto, “you obliterated an invading force in a derelict city hours since evacuated?"
"Yes sir." The word 'sir' tasted like.piss.
Yonto sighed. "Unfortunately, the Harbingers who witnessed the event all perished in the defeat at La Mancha. Had you any evidence...”
“Aren’t you going to question me?” asked a voice.
A male figure of slim form leaned nonchalantly in a chair. Those around him were surprised, as they had thought the chair empty. He wore a darkstone cloak and was hooded.
“And who is me?” asked Yonto.
The man stood, lowering his hood to reveal an angular skull sheathed in pale hyperfiber plating. He spoke with a voice that both warmed hearts and chilled spines. “I witnessed Solomon detonating the illegal munitions.”
Amid the hushed whispers filling the chamber, Yonto was singularly unmoved. “Uh huh. Got proof?”
“I saw the event in its entirety. I was there with the purpose of observing him.” He extracted a Kuszmaul Tombstone data rod from a vent above his ear and brandished it. “The footage is stored on this chip.”
Yonto grunted. “Very well. You may approach the tribunal, Mr.-”
Solomon finally recognized the man as one whom few had seen, and he himself had only on a few, feverish occasions.
The Sentinel flourished. “S-1001 Needle, at your service.”