Chapter Sixteen

“Yes, you got their attention with the door stunt, so thank you for that.” Geraint said. “I’m just giving them the information we have, but I’ll be sure to tell you all if anything changes.”

Mairin nodded, apparently satisfied, and went back to whispering furtively with Panagos. Geraint didn’t have time to worry about that – there was too much else to worry about. He needed to take control of this situation as the Speaker, but Mairin had wrested that from him already. He liked her well enough, as Garden delegates went, but if anyone needed to be in charge right now it was certainly not her.

He returned to his device, tapping out the details with Security Chief Palomo. He had started with the pertinent details: “President dead, seems to be a murder.” and was trying to frame the rest of the situation in a way that might induce less panic and fury once Asa received word. She was presumably asleep right now, but he could hardly ask Security not to wake her. The consequences of this would not wait.

Once he had sent off his missive, there was only a small delay before the reply from Palomo:

Received. Do not attempt to leave – will wake Ms. Ko.

Perfect, he thought. He was in no position to leave, and neither were the rest of them, but that was not necessarily a positive. For all that he tried to quell the panic, Geraint could not escape the thought that somebody in this room had tried to assassinate the King. How, he could not say, but if their goal was to eliminate the entire line of succession…

That was the other thought that would not leave him. For all his discomfort the first time around, and his desperation to be rid of the role, he was technically the President again. If there had been a Vice President, if the King had made his decision only hours earlier, he would not be in this situation. But once again he was forced to wield authority that he did not earn and did not want. But somebody had to.

He called everyone together on one of the benches and surveyed the group. There was Panagos and Lars, Sofia and Sai, Kei and Isidor, and Mairin. All in varying states of shock. They needed a direction.

“Security are making decisions, and probably reviewing footage. What matters now is that we remain calm and do what is asked of us. As of six minutes ago, I am the President again. This is still a session, which means I set the rules for debate. Since I am also Speaker, I can have you barred from the chamber if I agree with myself – and that can have consequences for your careers here later down the line. So please refrain from making unsubstantiated accusations,” here he looked at Mairin and Panagos, sulking like children, “or from panicking unnecessarily.”

“Speaker,” Sofia said, “It’s hardly illogical to panic in this situation. There could be a killer in here.”

“Or out there,” Isi added.

“Please!” the Speaker said forcefully, “Ms. Hanmer is right that this is exactly what we want to avoid. We need to wait this out.” He stressed his last three words with gestures before turning his back on the group. Someone began to speak, and some primal frustration took hold of Geraint. He threw the device in his hand, hard, against the chamber wall. It slammed into it with a crack. Everyone shut up after that.

“I – I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

It was true. Geraint was not a man who lost his temper, but right now he was more scared than he’d ever been. He went over to pick up his device, everyone watching him in dead silence. Circling the corpse in the room’s centre, he picked up the device and turned it over. He had cracked the glass screen, but it was otherwise operational. That was good – he didn’t know if the delegates’ devices could connect to Security in the same way. He had a message from Palomo:

Please provide a list of the chamber occupants as well as any who left the chamber less than two hours ago.

He obliged, recalling that Marcia Kouris from Earth: Herald had left not so long ago. Perhaps she was still awake – perhaps she had heard the alarms and would come to help. If she could open the shutter…

But no. Geraint knew he had to follow the rules. Normally he would do so without question – rules were good, rules provided structure that base humanity otherwise lacked – but the normally impressive chamber was feeling smaller and smaller every minute. And the corpse loomed larger in his mind.

Someone was dead. The King was dead. The first President of Audacity had been killed, and it had happened under his stewardship. He did not feel materially responsible for the murder, of course, but whatever the motives of the killer (still__in this room?the lingering thought whispered), they had happened because of this Parliament’s actions.

The delegates weren’t talking any more. They were sitting, looking at one another in deep silence, running equations in their heads. Geraint couldn’t help himself – he ran the same equations.

Kei had tried to run when the shutters closed, but unlike Mairin, Geraint didn’t think that was proof of anything. Everyone was in a heightened state, and with the red lights and the alarms, he might well have tried to run too. But it was well-known that her corporation had just lost a high-profile vote because of the King’s tiebreaker. From what he overheard, that failure could spell the end of Nano Dex’s presence aboard the station. Could she – or Isi Zhukov, for that matter – be desperate enough to pull a stunt like this?

Lars was clearly angry at King Aenos, but Geraint didn’t think he could have planned this. Not that he wasn’t capable – they had all seen his deductive power at work minutes ago. But that revelation had clearly come to him in the moment, and the murder (if Mairin was right, and it really was poison) was premeditated.

Who could have thought up a plan like this? The Carmen group were smart and capable, and their augments or machine-types meant you were never quite sure how capable they were. Some kind of slow-acting poison applied to the King’s skin on a handshake might have worked. And if Sai had carried it it wouldn’t have affected their non-organic body. Geraint remembered that Sai and Sofia sat apart during the meeting, isolating the machine from more than six feet away.

It wasn’t enough to go on. But there was Mairin. And Novus Ordo Seculorum had more than enough history and means to make this happen. Not only that, but their leader had recently resigned in shame. Had she left Mairin with instructions to make the King pay?

The only person Geraint could begin to trust was Panagos. The old man had always been loyal to the King, as far as he knew, and could not imagine how he would do something like this. Lastly, there was Lady Kouris. She was in a situation similar to Panagos – a close advisor, an ascendant, and well liked. But she was close to Lars, too, and his eureka moment had come not long after she exited the chamber. And not long after that, the King was dead. Geraint tried to make the pieces connect, but he couldn’t see it.

They were all running the same calculus, he knew. Perhaps they were even factoring him in. He was neutral, but there was no denying that he had gained the most in the short term. He was President again, and it didn’t matter how much he claimed he didn’t want it.

Sofia stood, and started to pace the floor. Lars cleared his throat, and the breaking of the silence made them all turn to look at him anyway.

“Should…” he stuttered in the smallest voice Geraint had heard, “Should we move the…” he pointed a trembling finger at the body.

“Where?” Mairin shrugged.

“Just…off to the side or something. So it’s not in the middle.”

“Security might not want us to move it,” she replied. “In case there’s something to see when they get here. Any update, Mr. President?” she turned to Geraint with a slight sneer.

“Yes, actually,” he said, looking down at his device. “They say…yes, they say not to interfere as much as possible, and to…hm. To keep an eye on each other.”

Nobody said anything to that.

Now that the worst of the panic had died down, and everyone was deep in thought, Geraint found himself able to push aside the questions of who and ask why. Why would anybody aboard the station want to kill the King? Perhaps it was another Herald agent who found out the same secret that Lars did. He wandered over to Lars, who jumped slightly to see Geraint behind him.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “It’s going to be fine.”

Lars nodded, and Geraint got the sense he hadn’t really heard. He tried again. “What you were saying about the cover-up…”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Lars mumbled miserably.

“No, I think it does,” Geraint said. “It matters a great deal.”

Lars finally turned to look at Geraint. The poor lad was a wreck, maybe more than anyone else, and his lip trembled as he tried to speak. “Why?”

“Because your faction is now leaderless. I know there’ll be another King waiting on the ground, but he’s not up here. And somebody will need to step up.”

Lars gave a short, hollow laugh. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Speaker, I’m not a natural leader.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I encourage you to not count yourself out too soon. Knowing what you know, after all. How did you work it out?”

“You believe me?” Lars said. He seemed surprised.

“I do. I mean, it’s both incredible and wholly credible at the same time. And I’m trying to think of days where I’ve talked to somebody directly on your Earth. I believe I always went through the King or his team – I put it down to wanting to be in control, but I think you’re right.”

Panagos had overheard and was coming over to argue – Geraint had seen that look many times before, and was more than ready. “Lord Panagos, I understand that he -“

“He was the King, and he will be the King forever more under God alone,” Panagos said with a fury burning behind his eyes, “and the lies this Scion spouts will not leave this room.”

“How are you going to stop that, pal?” said Isi from a few rows behind, where he had holed up with Kei. “When Security comes to let us out, why wouldn’t we share this with everyone else?”

“Hell,” said Kei before Panagos had a chance to respond, “since we’re the only people who didn’t come to this station loaded with ridiculous secrets, why don’t we just leak everything we know about everyone?” Now she looked to the other side of the room, at the Carmen delegates or Mairin – or possibly at all three, since they were huddled together.

Geraint thought about yelling them down again, but Kei’s mention of secrets put him on edge. One of the last things he had originally wanted was that factions might start keeping things from one another. Now that Herald had shown they were more than capable of doing so, he found it easier to believe that Kei had discovered other secrets. In his opinion, perhaps it was best that those did come out. After all, they didn’t know how long they would be stuck there, but even after Security let them out they would all have to learn to live together. So he stayed silent.

In the wake of that silence, Panagos spluttered a little more. “You cannot hope to threaten us with this slander! Particularly without evidence!”

“True,” said Kei, “Although – for what it’s worth – it seems like it would be pretty easy to prove or disprove. Do you have any news articles about the station? Have any of you given interviews for your media? About the launch, about the King’s election, about any of this?”

Isi jumped in – the two had clearly talked this over already. “But that doesn’t matter, because we won’t blackmail you. We’re clearly no good at it. So we’ll just make sure everyone knows, instead. No back-and-forth or quid pro quo. It’ll leak, and that’s all. Deal?” he smiled.

Panagos sank to the ground, but clearly still had a little fight left in him. “Nobody will believe you. And spouting outlandish lies just after an event such as this,” he gestured to the body still lying on the floor, “merely frames you as confused at best, or malicious at worst!”

“Well, you have a point there,” Isi said, looking to Kei and scratching his head in a pantomime of defeat, “except like my colleague says, it’ll take about three seconds to prove one way or another. And looking between you and your colleague,” he pointed to Lars, watching all this take place with wide eyes, “I’m going to bet on the kid.”

Isi winked at Lars and turned back to talk to Kei, apparently done with Panagos. Geraint was impressed – he knew Isi was a worthy opponent, but didn’t expect him to believe in such concepts as transparency. He made a mental note to check on him after this about those other secrets.

His device bleeped, and he picked it up, making sure to avoid the crack in the screen as he swiped upward to read the message. It was from Security Chief Palomo, and it was short.

We are outside. Come to eastern door.

“Everyone!” he called. “Security is here.”

There were a chorus of “thank goodness” and “about time” as the delegates gathered their things and followed to the eastern side of the chamber. Geraint knocked on the shutter, which rang loud and clear.

“Hello? Ms. Palomo?”

“Yes, Mr. Evanson,” a muffled voice came from the other side, “Is everyone safe in there?”

Geraint looked around to a sea of nods, some more shaky than others. “We’re all a little stirred-up, but we’re safe. Would you be able to let us out, please?”