General Dahlstrom, the National Security Council’s senior briefing officer, stood as the lights came up.
“Madam President,” she said, “Gentlemen, ladies, that was the last transmission monitored by our ICLI station on Mars. Since about ten hundred hours our time yesterday there has been no further transmission from the Llalande system—only the usual open-channel carrier wave. We still have a visual of the Chamber of the Eye, but there’s been no activity that we can make out.”
“Then the rebels haven’t destroyed the Builder FTL unit,” President Katharine LaSalle mused aloud. “That’s one good break for us, at least.”
Dahlstrom nodded. “Yes, Madam President. However, our xenosoc analysts believe that it would be extremely unlikely for them to damage the unit in any case. The Eye is as sacred to Geremelet’s faction as it is to the High Emperor.”
“Right,” Admiral Knudson, the head of the Joint Chiefs, said. He was a brusque, hard-bitten man with long service in the Naval Space Forces. “Part of their campaign, remember, was to liberate the Eye from the evil offworlders.”
“Just what the hell happened out there, anyway?” the President demanded.
“The situation is…complicated, ma’am,” Samantha Van Horne, Director of Central Intelligence, said. She gestured at the empty wallscreen. “It’s hard enough to get good intel on human opponents, let alone aliens. In this case, we have only the tiniest glimmer of how the Ahannu think and, in particular, what they think of us.”
“They can’t still be thinking of us as escaped slaves,” General Karl Voekel, the Aerospace Force representative of the Joint Chiefs, said. He gave David Billingsworth, the SecState, a hard look. “The State Department has been working on that issue for the past five years!”
“This is hardly the time for recriminations,” Billingsworth said. He looked across at Warren Boland, the Secretary of Science. “Besides, we worked with what DepSci gave us.”
Boland shrugged. “As Samantha said, it’s tough reading nonhumans or guessing how they’ll react to anything we do.”
“Every report coming through my data feed indicated that relations with the God-Emperor and his court were good and getting better,” Billingsworth said.
“Its court,” Dahlstrom reminded him. “The Ahannu have no sex.”
“It must make their Saturday nights damned boring,” Haslett observed dryly. “No wonder they’re so riled up. In any case, this—this Destiny Faction, as they call themselves, appeared to be a minor nuisance, nothing more.”
Voekel chuckled. “Jesus, General, a minor nuisance? It’s a damned civil war, and it’s been brewing for years! How did we miss it coming?”
“It’s not exactly a civil conflict,” Van Horne said. “The Ahannu God-Emperor seems to be waiting to see whether it should openly support Geremelet’s horde. It hasn’t come out with a public disavowal, at any rate.”
“So is the Destiny group working for the Emperor?” the President asked. “Or against it?”
Billingsworth shook his head. “We just don’t know, ma’am.”
“Our best reports suggest that the Destiny Faction is independent of the Ahannu government,” Van Horne added, “but that the imperial court is tolerating it and possibly even helping it along privately.” She shrugged. “Maybe the God-Emperor is just letting Geremelet do what the Emperor itself can’t do.”
“Playing both ends against the middle,” Haslett said. “With us as the middle.”
“Something like that,” Billingsworth said. “Now that the Legation compound has been overrun, we have to assume that the God-Emperor will bring Geremelet into the government formally and probably adopt Geremelet’s foreign policy as well.”
“Do we know what that will be?” President LaSalle asked.
“No, ma’am, but we can take a guess. Geremelet’s faction came to power on the platform that humans were renegade slaves…uh, what was the word?”
“‘Sag-ura,’” Van Horne told him. “It means, roughly, ‘foreign slaves.’”
“Right. They don’t have the technology to strike at Earth, of course, but that’s probably just rhetoric. What they do want is us off of Ishtar, permanently.”
“Ishtar for Ishtarans,” Knudson said with a sneer. “Is that it?”
“Basically, Admiral, yes. They feel they were shamed as a people by appearing inferior to us technologically. Remember, they still think of us as their property, slaves or pets that they domesticated thousands of years ago. If we’re not around to remind them, they can feel better about themselves.”