Colony Administrator’s Office, New Prometheus
Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge
4454.2.6 Interstellar
Callie and the older Prometheans met in Lira’s old office and ran their first morning meeting, or at least the first official one. They’d been meeting clandestinely for several months, although most of that had been about who to approach, who to avoid, and who would join them once their opposition was in the open.
They had access to data now. Callie had already reviewed the night’s security footage, but she shared the highlights with the others, including the meeting Janus had in Ivan’s office.
“Should we arrest them?” Bennini asked.
“We don’t want to escalate things,” Wilbegarth answered. “They still control the armory.”
“That’s what I’m worried about!” Bennini said. “Who’s to say they don’t suck out the air and take the colony back?”
“Someone might die,” Callie said. “Breaks Cult rules. Janus isn’t that stupid.” Bennini’s face reddened because he understood exactly what Callie was saying about him, and she didn’t care. “Same reason we can’t just take the armory from them.”
“So, what do we do?” Dufresne said, picking at his nails. Technically, he worked for Callie, and she’d always found him to be the most nervous of the three, but it was his paranoia that had kept them below dome admin’s notice long enough to stage the coup.
“We move faster than them,” Callie said. “We know that if he still believes the compartmentalists are dangerous when the Alignment comes, nothing will stop my brother from boarding that sub and heading below the surface. It doesn’t matter that we locked down the warehouse and the accounts. He and Lira will find a way.”
“That only leaves us six days,” Wilbegarth said. He was the planner, the one with the most experience, and Callie relied on his advice the most. “The borehole will still be dangerous but navigable before that. Call it four days to be safe.”
“Everything’s in position,” Callie said. “We can have our first meeting with the comp representatives tomorrow.”
Bennini gave her a knowing look, and Callie suppressed her disgust for the man. “What I don’t get—”
“Don’t start on her,” Wilbegarth warned.
“What I don’t get,” Bennini said, looking at the older man defiantly, “is why Ms. Invarian here is betraying her brother. That comp kid have you that wrapped around his robot finger that you’d turn against kin?”
“First of all,” Callie said, “You could fill a noosphere with the things you don’t understand.”
Bennini turned red and balled his fists. “If you think I’m so clueless, why am I a part of this little conspiracy?”
“Because you’re not an idiot,” Callie said, “You’re just average. Most people are. You’re petty and a liar, and you like to hide things from the people around you, but that makes you a perfect pressure gauge for the rest of the colony.”
Bennini’s eyes took on a dangerous cast, but she wasn’t worried; he was a brute, but he was also a coward. “Why don’t you answer my question instead of insulting me?”
“Glad to,” Callie said. “I’m not betraying my brother. We both want the same thing: to keep our family and our people safe. We just don’t agree on how to do it,” she said, finishing softly.
“If Red Donnika was still alive, he’d be right,” Dufresne said, tapping his left heel.
“He would,” Wilbegarth agreed.
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“Then I guess we’re lucky Ryler killed her,” Callie said calmly. She glanced at Bennini. “I’m sure my brother feels betrayed right now, and that’s going to make him stubborn and dangerous. We just need to show him he doesn’t need to go through with it.”
“And then what?” Bennini asked. “You think he’ll just roll over, maybe take up a job in maintenance working for you?”
“He might,” Callie said. She’d never known Janus to be power-hungry, only endlessly controlling when he was scared. “More likely hydroponics or field research. Maybe he’ll just retire. If anybody’s earned it, he has.”
***
Janus and Lira watched Callie and the Prometheans from across the forum as the former revolutionaries and now leaders of the colony made their way through the crowd. Callie looked happy, charismatic, and hopeful, every bit the revolutionary leader she’d been on Irkalla while Janus and Team Invarian had been exiled to Krandermore.
“What do you think they’re planning?” Janus said to Lira wordlessly over their comm-to-comm link.
Lira glanced at him, blue eyes glowing bluer with electronic inlays. “Not violence. Callie’s too smart for that.”
Janus crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.
It was strange thinking of his little sister as the enemy. On one hand, he was proud of what she’d managed to achieve. This sixteen-year-old scrap-of-nothing girl had managed to pull the political rug out from under Lira, of all people, and she’d done it without Mick or Syn detecting her. He wondered how much the older Prometheans had helped her and how much of their participation was symbolic. She must have been working on this for months, while Janus thought their opponents were all on the surface or scattered throughout the Reef.
The synthetic material of his suit creaked. He and Lira were in their aspirant gear, both for protection and as a reminder of all they’d accomplished on these people’s behalf. Guilt wouldn’t be enough to sway the crowd, not after months of conspiring behind their backs, but an aspirant knew that sometimes victory balanced on the finest of edges.
“You think the story about the boyfriend is true?” Lira asked.
“Yeah,” Janus said. “Probably. That’s not why she’s doing it, though.”
“She’s a teenage girl, Janus.”
“And this isn’t a YA holo-show. Callie would only do something like this if she really believed in it. Wilbegarth might have swayed her. I don’t think for a second that some Cult boy is the only reason.”
“But it could be part of it?”
Janus shrugged. “Callie’s driven, stubborn, and brilliant. She’s still a teenage girl.”
“And you’re okay with all that?”
Janus was decidedly not okay with any of it. It brought up emotions he hadn’t felt since he got fired from his job at the recycling plant and his drunk uncle was thrown in jail. He felt like a failure, but he also knew from experience that his feelings about himself didn’t match his capabilities. “Let’s just stop these people from hurting us or themselves out of ignorance and good intentions.”
Janus would have been the first to admit he didn’t know the colony as well as he should, but standing in the forum felt like he’d traveled to a parallel universe. Where before there had been warmth or at least courtesy for his status as an aspirant, now there was resentment, fear, and guilt.
“It’s not their fault,” Lira said, seeing how it affected him.
“I know,” Janus said. There were people in the forum who knew him personally, but even they were staying away. He knew what that meant. They were afraid talking to him would brand them as loyalists, leading to their persecution by the new majority. “We’re outsiders,” he said, baring his teeth.
An old man pointed at them across the room, and people who’d been willfully ignoring them started turning their way.
“Why are they standing there, suited up?” someone asked loudly like they were an actor in a play. “Are they trying to intimidate us?”
Lira frowned. “We’re not—”
Janus put a hand on her shoulder.
“But…”
Janus shook his head. “It’s a setup. Trust me. I know.”
He also knew doing so went against everything the privileged Primer and occasional pugilist believed in, but she trusted him enough to disengage.
The two of them walked away.
***
“We should tell them,” Ryler said, looking up from the feed they had into New Prometheus.
“Janus will stop them,” Nikandros said.
“What if he doesn’t?” Ryler asked, his chest aching from the turmoil he felt over what they were allowing to happen.
Nikandros looked at him with the guarded expression he’d worn since Ryler went against his wishes on Krandermore. Ryler knew he was being tested, just as he knew he should be tested. “It happens tomorrow,” the architect said. “Our doctrine states that Janus will sense the danger and feel compelled to act or that his influence will have provoked another outlier who will act in his place.” He looked at the screen, watching Janus and Lira withdraw before the mob.
“Maybe,” Ryler said. “Or maybe you’re hedging your bets. Losing one outlier is better than letting the Reef know we’ve compromised their security.”
“Good,” Nikandros said, patting his shoulder, genuine pleasure crinkling his face. “Never take religious drivel at face value. But we still won’t tell them because I am hedging my bets, and if the doctrine is flawed, we’ll still go to the Core on our own.”
That was the most warmth Nikandros had shown toward him in the year since they’d returned to Lumiara, which gave Ryler hope that he hadn’t been cut off from the great plan that would restore their people to the galaxy. He’d sacrificed so much of his life for that purpose already.
He hoped it would be enough to comfort him if Nikandros was wrong and Janus, along with every inhabitant of New Prometheus, wound up dead.