Orion
Our helicopter landed on Montoya Island at 7:30. Our vehicle escort arrived at the base entrance in the center of the forest at 7:39. We made it down the elevator and through the base, yet when we entered the Council Hall at 7:45, everybody else was there, a whole 15 minutes before we were scheduled to start.
The tension that was enveloping the Council could be felt from a mile away. Only five members traveled with Jax to Cincinnati following the news that we were being spied on, and only Gardner and I came by choice. Weaver was out in the city as the HQ was attacked, and Gardner has already set the stage to pin the five deaths on me, so no one is off the chopping block. Everybody will have something to prove, and everyone will try to steer us towards something with the hope of appealing to Jax, but there’s no indicator of what will happen given Jax’s unusual gloominess following the attack has been impossible to decode. Gardner will do his usual play of riling up everyone’s anger to spur Jax, and by extension everyone else, into taking action, but it’s a tossup if it will work or not. He’s always been particularly vulnerable to incited anger, so I can only hope for our and my sake that it doesn’t work so I can put forward my peace deal. Either way, I’m not leaving this unbruised. It’s just another step backward.
Jax took his seat first on the oversized 12-sided table. Gardner followed and sat between him and Amir. Weaver traveled to the left side of the table and took the seat between Lucio and Washington. The last three empty chairs stood side to side opposite of Jax. I walked around the rest of the Council and sat in the middle, bordered by the hole left by Keanu and Paris. Everyone’s eyes followed me as I took my seat, then gradually turned back to Jax.
“Everyone got the damage report on Eclipse?” Jax started. The seven people who weren’t in Cincinnati nodded their heads. “Good. I hope this serves as a good lesson for the three of you who have still refused to nominate emergency replacements. If Keanu and Paris could fall that easily, there’s no telling what they would have done to the rest of you, so thanks for not showing up.”
Based on the expressions in the room, nobody could tell what he meant by that.
“I have my own report I think I should bring up,” Rohan said. “I finished my examination of the six transport trucks that were left behind, and these people covered their tracks very well. There was nothing left in the front seats or in the back, no legible fingerprints on any surface, and nothing to extract DNA from. There’s virtually no sign that they were even there. All of the license plates are also the same and were wrapped in reflective tape to block scanners in the city. Based on the Cleveland neighborhood we’ve narrowed down their house to be in, there’s nowhere that those trucks could have been stashed away, so they most likely have a larger base outside of the city.”
“Great. Very useful input, Rohan. So the only thing that we know about them is that we don’t know anything about them?”
“I… guess so, but it’s still important that we—”
“Did you do your sweep on the car's surface as well?”
“We checked the doors and windows, yes. The places where touching tends to happen.”
“People can also tend to do their ‘touching’ away from the doors and windows. Did you consider that?”
“It’s not that we didn’t consider it, it’s just—” It’s just that you were in a hurry so you could try to impress him.
“Finish your ‘examination’ tomorrow. There’s no time for this. Has anybody here finished reading through Keanu and Paris’ records?”
I was about to speak up, but Chen, the Council’s lowest-ranking member, beat me to it. “I have.”
“Do either of them have extended family that could replace them?”
“Paris has two adult brothers named Ivan and Logan, and his father has been serving a life sentence for more than a decade. No record of any uncle or nephews. Keanu had a son out of wedlock with a girlfriend from college, but he can’t be older than 11. His father is in a nursing home, but he has a surviving grand-uncle with a ‘reasonably aged son’ named Gino.”
“Gino is his grandson,” I corrected. “The grand-uncle’s son died of a heroin overdose last year.”
“Right. But that’s two candidates to replace Paris and one for Keanu.”
Jax took a long sigh and leaned back in his chair. “We’ll task the people to find them later. As for now, it’s on the ten of us to deal with the aftermath of the Eclipse attack. There’s clearly military-grade power behind them, but we know very little. I’m open to suggestions.”
And with that, the floodgates opened. All nine of us attempted to speak up first, melding into a sudden burst of noise that jolted everybody in the room. For a brief second, all of their intentions tried to overlap each other’s in volume, building to a crescendo of yelling that was shot down upon Jax shouting, “STOP! One at a fucking time! Jesus!” Everyone stopped instantly, exchanging bitter glances across the table. “Weaver, you first.”
Weaver picked up his messenger bag off the ground and set it on the table. He pulled open the front pocket and took out a stack of papers. “We made front-page headlines on every media outlet last night. Every major and local news station had a correspondent waiting outside. Today, the New York Times front page reads, ‘Unanswered Questions Loom Over Eclipse’s Coverup of Fire and Suspected Explosions.’ The Associated Press wrote, ‘Journalists Blocked and Employees Refuse Questions After Mysterious Eclipse Fire.’ On CNN, it’s ‘Chaotic Scene Outside Ohio Eclipse HQ as Hundreds Evacuate Raging Fire.’ Fox News? ‘Eclipse Building Burns After Two Explosion and Gunfire, Man Falls Out of Window.’ The Cincinnati Enquirer's top headline is ‘Fire at Eclipse Following Alleged Explosions and Gunfire Leaves One Dead.’ If the rest of you think that those invaders are our biggest threat currently, you are mistaken. Things like this don’t stay swept under the rug forever. People will remember this for years as long as that building stays in the skyline, and so too will investigators. The city government, we can fend off. But if coverage continues and the state or federal government feels obligated to stick their paws in the business of Eclipse, that’s a court battle we won’t win. We don’t need to focus on starting a war; they already got what they wanted, and they don’t need to come back for us. If we really want to protect the organization and stay under the radar, all of our focus needs to go towards containing the media. No war, no wasted resources.”
The Council looked at him with unease, then to Jax. He didn’t react. “Lucio, you’re next.”
Lucio swiped away Weaver’s messenger bag from in front of him. “The attention span of the American populace lasts two days, and then everybody forgets there’s a story. There have been studies on this. And the notion that the city—which wasn’t anywhere near the building and was never affected by it—will have life-lasting memories of yesterday is absurd. Only a couple employees got hurt, and none of them were in any serious mortal danger. They will move on eventually, and this will sweep itself under the rug. But the work doesn’t end there simply because society continues to allow us to exist. You make all of this talk about how the damage led to insistent press coverage, yet you’ve glossed over the reason why. We were attacked, and there are two empty chairs at this table and three less of our security because of it. They brought the attention to us, killed members of our Council, and made off like thieves. This isn’t about wasting resources; this is justice. Death among the Council has never been something to be taken lightly. We know the area they live in, and we know their tactics. All we need to do is find them and finish the job.”
And there we have it. Two minutes of discussion, and we’re already leaping to war.
Jax quietly absorbed Lucio’s monologue, then moved on. “Duke.”
Oh, great. Duke took a breath before his mouth unloaded. “Split them up, encircle them, and wipe them all out. Lucio is right; the killing of Councilmembers has never been a light business, and it must be dealt with accordingly. Our manpower failed in Eclipse because they took strategic advantage of an unplanned defense. We’re the planners now; we have the upper hand. There’s obviously a separate base nearby where they keep their army and supplies hidden; we just have to look. We can issue a manhunt throughout Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland, and making effective use of our paramilitary, we will have them cornered within weeks. We lay siege wherever they hole up and take them down piecemeal. In a blink, the threat is gone, and Keanu and Paris are avenged. Easy.”
Jax glared at him, unphased by his generous framing of what a statewide manhunt would be like. “Rohan.”
If there’s anybody who would have a bag of tricks for this after his report on the transport trucks failed…. “First, a manhunt using a few hundred people to scour a 45,000 square mile state would take unthinkably long and likely never draw results. You can’t simply order a search of that breadth like you’re cleaning a room. You need a plan, and that plan has to start with what we know. We have their neighborhood, and expanding our surveillance into that region will give us their home. From there, we work our way up the ladder until the location of their main base is revealed. A few well-placed bombing runs and a mopping up of their remains, and the job is done. No lengthy war required.”
Jax gave an exhausted sigh. “Washington?”
“Alright. First, I’ll acknowledge the points Weaver and Lucio made. The media and the American people are not the same. Citizens with regular jobs will eventually forget about the fire, but journalists will not. But we don’t need to divest all our attention to fending them off. The Eclipse project is a liability for us, and it always was. Not a cent of what we spent on it has been made back with a meaningful profit. If one thing is certain, it’s that that company needs to go away if we want to keep eyes off of us. That being said, it’s certainly possible that there’s a secret base of operations for the people who attacked us, but after the show they put on yesterday, do you think trying to wipe them out all in one counterattack is going to go well? We could very well be equal militarily. Divide and conquer is the key strategy here. If we lure out their forces in small numbers and then wipe them out piecemeal, they’ll eventually be weakened enough to no longer be a threat. At that point, we either enter peace negotiations or kill the rest of them.”
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“Amir. Next.” He’s getting closer to Gardner. Shit.
“Hmm. Your Eclipse point does seem reasonable. Shutting it down at this stage may be the most viable option for protecting our privacy and resecuring our finances. But the military solution is not an extensive manhunt all over the state, nor does it lie in direct military conflict; it lies in deception. Yesterday was indisputably a battle that we lost. We are in a weak position in their eyes. We need only to come to them. If they show themselves and meet face to face, thinking we are negotiating peace, then the next step is easy. If they are not done with by then, we disappear and lure them somewhere else. As this cycle continues, they will be whittled down severely, and when the last of their forces are in sight, we finish them.”
And here it comes. Jax turned to his right. “Gardner.”
Gardner side-eyed me before starting. “The Eclipse raid didn’t need to be the failure that it was.” For God’s sake. “We had them in the exact place we wanted them while gathered on the top story. The fault lied in execution. I agree with Amir’s sentiment that a direct military standoff isn’t what we need. We only need a new point of leverage. My suggested starting place: that business they worked with to rob Eclipse. Linda will know where to find them, and there, we hold them hostage and wait for the others’ arrival.”
At that point, I couldn’t stay quiet. “So your genius plan to win the conflict is to do exactly what we did that started it?”
“Yes. But we will be in control of the situation this time, and preferably when you aren’t there.”
“Piss off. You spawned the idea to hold Percy and Finn hostage with all of our men gathered in one place, and the direct, natural result was a fucking bomb placed under our feet. You’ve already sacrificed Keanu and Paris; who else are you willing to lose by doing this again?”
“Sacrificed? Okay, Orion. What would you have done instead? What’s your grand solution to this?”
I looked around the table to find every eye on me. “Alright. Well, there seems to be a predisposition in all of you that a full-scale military retaliation is the only natural conclusion to this. The Gemini must still be fresh in the minds of some of you. Traps of ours have worked before, so you simply want to do them again. But these people are not the Gemini. We’re in uncharted territory, and the last thing we need is old war strategy and more of our men getting killed. We will certainly cross paths with these people again at some point, but for now, we have to put a stop to this hysteria before more of you get picked off.”
“Really? You’d rather we do nothing after they killed five of our men?”
“If you think they walked into that building with any intent to target the organization, then with all due respect, you’re a fucking idiot. Two people—two people—snuck inside the building to bug employee computers and then leave.”
“Come on, you bought that story from them?”
“Yes! Because it makes sense! If they were anything like us, they wouldn’t hide out in a fucking Cleveland suburb stealing money from a charity. The ones who pulled that off and the ones who attacked us are two separate forces, and the latter did not need to become involved until you provoked them. And that bomb wouldn’t have been set below us if you had just handed them Finn and Percy and let them leave. You can’t start a fight in the dark. What we should have done was let them out peacefully so we could bide our time and strike later, but you directly decided against that.”
It was a risky move pinning all of Jax’s poor decisions on Gardner, but I knew nobody would call me out for it.
“My plan, you ask?” I continued. “It’s to do what we should have done. We make peace and bide our time. They kept the radio their leader used to talk to Jax, so I contacted them yesterday with an offer.”
Gardner jumped. “Contacted? Are you insane?”
Rohan joined Gardner’s chorus. “Orion, you can’t be serious!”
So did Duke. “You waited until now to say anything?”
Before it got too loud, Jax shut them down once again. “Quiet!”
“As I was saying,” I resumed, “I gave them a deal for preemptive peace. Of the three and a half million we lost from Solaris, they will find a way to pay us back with four million. In exchange, we part ways. No manhunt, no raiding their house, no bombing runs, no guerrilla warfare, and no more hostages. And if you all are still dead set on revenge for something that wasn’t their fault, then we can figure out a plan later. But now, we need to rebuild. Our current pace financially is unsustainable, and it needs to be fixed as quickly as possible. If it requires abandoning Eclipse, so be it. But no more dragging our feet.”
“Valuable work is going on in Eclipse,” Lucio railed. “We can’t just throw that away like it’s nothing.”
“The employees have just been given a month of PTO,” Washington rebutted. “It’s safe to say that the company has run its course. It’ll take a lot of restructuring, but the project can be revived somewhere else.”
“Jax?” said Gardner. “What’s it gonna be? Does Orion’s ‘plan’ sound like a good idea to you?”
Everyone looked at Jax. He stared off in the distance for an extended moment as we awaited a response. “The point of Eclipse was to maintain anonymity to the public while raising enough money to continue our development on a bigger budget. That’s no longer possible with the name in every newspaper. Eclipse is a dead end.”
“But is only $4 million enough compensation for that damage? Remember that they’re the reason we have this level of attention at all.”
“We’ll be saving tens of millions by ending our funding of Eclipse. Your rhetorical manipulation isn’t nearly as impressive as you think.”
Gardner winced, trying hard to hide his shock at being put down so effortlessly. “But they killed Keanu and Paris! Shouldn't th—”
“And whose fault was that, Gardner?”
Holy shit. Gardner fell dead silent, continuing to stare at Jax.
Rohan turned to face me across the empty chair between us. “What makes you think this is going to work? What possible guarantee do we have that they won’t break your offer when it suits them?”
“When it ‘suits them?’” I scoffed. “When the fuck is it ever going to ‘suit them’ to directly attack us again? We have nothing that they want, and they don’t know where we are. What are they going to do?”
“They pivoted between two of our companies back-to-back. They very well could know where we are, and we’d have no idea.”
“God, are you serious? We were watching them, you fucking dunce! Do you think there’s some grand conspiracy at play to bring us down that started with stealing money from an obscure charity in Cleveland and then immediately escalated to a highly publicized invasion of our largest fucking investment? Your mental gymnastics could win a goddamn Olympic medal!”
“Orion, enough,” Jax interrupted.
Weaver quickly filled in the void of silence. “It’s also important for us to remember that this went sideways for them as well. If any of you saw the audio and video recordings, it was clear that they weren’t interested in armed conflict with us, nor did they intend for press coverage. They used silenced weapons, protected employees from the fire, pulled that elevator trick to see if you’d shoot at them, and even tried to intimidate you into releasing the hostages. The leader of the assault was also right above the bomb before it went off, and the cameras on the floor below got disabled. How do we even know they were the ones who set the bomb in the first place?”
“You think there’s a chance they didn’t?” Lucio sniped. “They scoured the entire building up to the top floor, so they obviously knew everybody was above. Not to mention nobody else was on that floor, and the weapons rooms were right there.”
“The cameras were disabled on the first three floors, and there are no cameras in the garage, the elevators, or the stairwell. Anybody could have snuck up there undetected and planted the bomb.”
“Yes, one of their own men could have done that. Which they obviously did.”
“Look, the point is that neither side got what they wanted out of that attack. They narrowly escaped losing several of their men and had to evacuate the building by elevator with multiple trips. They almost left the building with several casualties; we just got unlucky. It doesn’t need to be escalated, and by forcing them to pay us back for our greater damages, we maintain a position of leverage and officially keep them in their place. I think Orion’s deal makes sense.”
Gardner rejoined the conversation. “Bullshit, they got exactly what they wanted. We lost our two major points of leverage and five important men, and responding with a $4 million surcharge against that kind of military power is nothing but a damn slap on the wrist. We need a show of strength and integrity, not cowardice and compromise. I know that doesn’t tend to be in your ballpark, Weaver, but this Council is majority rule. I think the decision here has already been made; the majority has expressed an intent to retaliate against these people in full force using what we already know about them. And by planning in advance, we will surely overpower them this time and retain our superiority in this state. Our men are up for a rematch, so let’s give them one.”
Gardner looked to Jax for approval. The others followed suit for an indication of where to stand. Jax looked back to Gardner, seemingly unphased. “You have a fucking deathwish. Whimsical fantasies of magically finding people and killing them heroically doesn’t ‘retain superiority’ for anyone.”
“Jax, this isn’t a fantasy. We have a framework between us to swiftly put an end to them; how could that not be the natural response to what they did to us?”
“You have a ‘framework’ to stretch us out thinner, and what they ‘did to us’ is irrelevant. Keanu and Paris knew the risks when they came to Cincinnati, and they chose to lead the negotiating with their leader. It’s nobody else’s fault. You can keep bitterly complaining about them, but I am not going to be the one who starts a fucking war over this.”
The shock that reverberated through the room after that was electric. Nobody, not even me, expected Jax to suddenly support the anti-war position. Everybody miscalculated, especially Gardner.
Jax glanced at me after a thorny silence, and I felt the first tinge of hope that I’d known in a long time.
“Okay,” I began. “I gave them the offer early this morning. They were given 32 hours to collect the money, and they will deliver it to us at the end of Brightwood Street, East Cleveland, tomorrow at 4:00 PM. We’ll need a decent number of people there to stand guard, but not too many. Seven, at most. We take the money, leave, and the chapter is closed.”
Jax glared at me. “And if they don’t find the money?”
“They will. If they’re as bold as they’ve shown themselves to be, they will find a way. Trust me.”
Jax darted eyes around the table and took a breath. “We’ll put it to a vote then. All in favor of Orion’s plan, raise your left hand.”
Jax, having never experienced a non-unanimous vote, kept his head facing ahead towards me and peaked around for the hands to go up.
Weaver’s hand raised first. Then came Amir’s. Washington’s hand reluctantly followed. As did Duke’s. Chen glanced at Jax and then the other four hands being raised, and put up his as well, casting the majority vote. Rohan sat idly with his head down. Lucio and Gardner, being immediately next to and out of sight of Jax, stayed idle as well, Lucio smugly crossing his arms and Gardner staring into space.
With only Washington, Chen, and Duke’s hands in view of Jax, he made the unusual move of looking to his side to check everybody else, visibly uneasing Gardner. Jax’s hand raised up as well.
“By vote of 6–3, the decision is made. Orion, you’ll have your seven men at the meeting place in East Cleveland, 4:00 PM tomorrow to collect the four million. We will reconvene at 12:00 PM the next day to discuss what comes next. I will talk to our security leaders and inform them of the situation. As for now, we are officially adjourned. I will see you all on Sunday.”
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