The concrete walls of his small cell were tall and bare, meeting the ceiling where a metal grid covered the eternally shining lights above. The room was cold and damp, and there were no comforts in it—just a bedroll to sleep on and a hole in the ground to relieve himself in; that was his entire universe now.

Namir All looked up as he sensed someone approaching his cell through the long, dark corridor leading to it. He squinted in the harsh light of his cell, trying to make out who it was. There was something familiar about the silhouette walking through the shadows outside...

“Hello, All,” Minister of the Interior Tomar Felt said. “How are you doing?”

Namir threw a string of expletives in her direction. “Have you come to gloat?” he wheezed through hard lips.

“Hardly,” Minister Tomar said. “I’ve come to make you a deal.”

He looked at his former boss in confusion, assuming this was one of her interrogation tactics, though not understanding how it was intended to work.

“Have you ever wondered how you came to get the position as my First Assistant?” she asked with a dangerous smile. “You were vetted by the Committee for Jerrassian Security. My secret police. Do you really believe they missed all your contacts with the JLF?”

He just stared at the Minister of the Interior, not knowing quite what to say.

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“But you took it a bit too far,” she continued. “You were just supposed to get rid of Chairman Patek for me, not kill a quarter of a million civilians with a dirty bomb.”

She grabbed the iron bars separating his cell from the corridor outside and leaned toward him.

“I have a deal for you that I think you’ll enjoy, “ she said, her voice low, almost like a whisper. “You see, in the near future, a clerical error will be made by the Committee for Jerrassian Security, and you’ll be lost in the system. Such things happen in this great nation of ours.

Now, the question is, where will you be after you’ve disappeared? You could be rising as smoke above an unnamed crematorium—or you could be working for me. What do you say?”

“Obviously, you give me no choice,” Namir replied. “What is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to attack the Terran Federation. I want you to drive them off from Jerr. You already have the organization you need in place. I can provide you with the resources and intelligence you need. All I want you to do is redirect the Jerrassian Liberation Front from attacking the People’s Council to targeting the Sunguard and the Terran Federation.”

Namir All smiled at the irony of the situation. The question was, who was using whom?

“Do I have free rein to carry out the attacks as I see fit?” he asked Minister Tomar.

“For the most part,” she replied. “But no more radiological bombs. If you need to kill Jerrassians to achieve our goals, feel free to do so, but keep it within limits. I don’t want to see any more weapons of mass destruction.”

Those were terms Namir could accept. As the Minister of the Interior turned to walk away, he began to whistle a happy melody—one he was sure sounded quite different to the ears of a Terran.

With friends in high places, life would be good indeed.