Predication

Steve took time out to do this with me and though RPing with him requires me to be more focused, the results are well worth it. Thanks, Steve!--Maer

Wednesday, 02 Jul 2521
Garden Hotel
Lorngaard, Highgate
1020hrs, local time

I'd left for the Garden Hotel the day after being sprung from custody, citing the need for a walk. The rest of the crew didn't ask any questions and didn't insist on accompanying me. Likely they thought I wanted to be alone and I didn't correct their assumption. I left right after breakfast wearing my usual suspects. I had no idea who waited for me at the Garden Hotel or even if he were still there, but I wasn't going to walk in completely defenseless. So I eyed the outside a moment before going in, noting its courtyard configuration and the number of floors with balconies overlooking the yard. The entrances and exits. The lobby and its inhabitants as I crossed it to the desk.

I was in luck, the manager said. Mr. Tigranova had not yet checked out. Should he call him to the lobby?

"I'll meet him in the courtyard, if you don't mind. He knows me." I nodded at the greenery visible beyond the glass doors of the rear lobby and when the manager finished the call with an affirmative, I went through them to watch who arrived.

I didn't have much to go on. Based on the manager's use of the pronoun, I knew the person I was going to meet was male. Age, appearance, race? Up for grabs. Browncoat? Fed? Civilian or Military? Ditto.

Lex Talionis? my paranoia whispered. You know they're in town. It could be a trap. Leave. Now. Before you're seen.

Shut up.

I wasn't leaving until I had some answers. Throughout this entire business, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was fumbling in the dark, bumping into furniture, searching for the light switch. Once flipped, I would be able to see the room and map it. But not til then. So I took a turn around the columned gallery, just another pedestrian admiring the plantings, and noted the tactical details, when I saw him come through the doors.

He was older than I by about 20 years, maybe 30. Dark skin still unwrinkled, but with lines around the eyes. Tightly curled hair going grey at the temples and tipping the moustache adorning his upper lip. A mouth given equally to frowns and smiles, I saw as he drew closer. He wore a tattered Browncoat and a new pair of the old uniform trousers, khaki with red stripe, overlaid with the coat's dun and brown. I glimpsed a gun belt where his coat parted and saw he walked with his hands clasped behind his back as if in thought. Two second delay, I thought. Fair enough.

"Sir," I said, stepping out from behind a column. "You left word for me."

***

"Walk with me." He gestured to the door of the hotel.

The two of you walk in silence until you reach the protective din of the crowded bazaar outside the spaceport.

"I'm sorry we had to meet in these circumstances. Mr. Carter spoke highly of you, and often, but it was never... necessary for me to see you during operations, and afterward... <sigh> well afterward things were much the same."

***

"I understand," I nodded, looking aside at a vendor's wares. I picked this and that up and continued talking. "He spoke of you and I had the sense that you were his friend as well as his superior." I put down the tchotcke and moved to the next stall. "How close in touch were you in the last 18 months? Did you know he was going to do this?"

***

"I haven't spoken to him directly until recently... There was a sort of 'pow wow' among the leadership such as it is. He was there. Though not as a leader. I didn't know he was going to do ... this. But I am not surprised it was done. Or that it turned out to be him."

***

“Why?” I asked, keeping my voice low and my face on the market. Just two people taking in the sights. Not a couple of spies, retired or reluctant or otherwise. Nope. “I … look, I am not asking you to divulge anything you and the others currently have going. I just … I need to fill in the blanks concerning Mike. You may not have been surprised he’d done this, but I am. Because unlike that day on Beaumonde, I don’t know who I’m dealing with anymore. What was Mike doing this past year? My sources tell me that he broke into PDF records here on Highgate and after capture, faked his death and escaped. Next word I had, he’d been spotted in You Go coveralls on one of You Ge’s tankers nine days later. And somehow between that op and this trial, he’d infiltrated You Ge’s security detail to get close enough to assassinate him. It doesn’t make any sense. I … I know You Ge extended an offer of friendship before the Highgate job. My intel suggests You Ge helped him afterward. Why kill an ally? Or was that the plan from the beginning? How long had Mike known?”

***

"You are asking for a lot of complicated and confusing information. I will answer you quite simply. You Ge was not one of us. And so. Here we are. He has served admirably to achieve our ends, luckily before we served his. The machinations necessary to get one of our people into his circle were more complicated than the orbits of a Verse comet, but clearly not beyond Mr. Carter's abilities. It might not have been possible to cut short You Ge's own plans, were it not for the unexpected and fortunate return of Carter to our arsenal."

***

I walked beside Winfield in silence a bit, going through what he’d said.

“What about Miranda? Is that part of your agenda, too? Mike told me some of what’s been planned. I told him it couldn’t be done. Not completely. The atmo there is still too variable, the effects still too strong. Anyone going there is just begging for a lobotomy.”

I sighed and slid a look at him.

“And yet, he must have asked to go there. I doubt Gibbons thought of it himself when hashing out the terms of Mike’s sentence.”

***

"The Miranda idea has been around since the original Wave. I've spoken to one of the crew who sent it. And she thought it might be possible to revisit the planet. But, of course, the dangers you speak of are known to us as well. That is one reason they sent Harbinger there. I am told we have you to thank for their return as well." He smiles gently. "Miranda is really part of a greater strategy. For us at least... The Reavers need to be dealt with, destroyed, cured, or flushed out of Blue Sun System. Miranda is part of that strategy. But, strategy is only part of it. Miranda plays a domestic role, as well. There are many who won't be satisfied with winning our independence, they want to win the war. A war that we can't win so long as we need to watch our backs, so long as Miranda is in hands of the Reavers. There simply is no war plan that doesn't include Miranda in phase 1."

***

"Is Mike part of Phase I?" Like dominoes falling to reveal their design once tipped, things were starting to fall into place. "If so, how long? How long has he been in on it?"

***

The conversation stops momentarily as Winfield leads you past a group of Browncoats who stop and shake both of your hands. Then when you reach a chain link fence overlooking a group of War era fighters, he grips the fence and speaks.

"There won't be a phase 1 or a phase 2. Miranda is not part of any war effort, because there is no war effort... We have what we came for, and we are not going to condemn our grandchildren to a lifetime of digging out from the rubble of another war. Miranda is for domestic purposes. When there is a call to attack the Alliance. We can say, 'subdue Miranda.' Then we can talk. If they won't go there, they have to shut up, at least for a bit. If they do go..."

***

"And if they do go?" I gripped the fence and faced him. "Please. If I'm going to Miranda, I need be perfectly clear where Mike stands, where you and the Resistance stands... so I know where I stand."

***

He scans your face to see if you are serious about going there. "They still serve. They serve as a reminder of what the Alliance did, its ultimate attempt to make us 'perfect'. Pictures sent back showing our people fighting the Reavers, or dying in their sleep, or simply burying the dead will serve that. If they actually disrupt the Reavers or win, all the better. If they clean the land so settlers can repopulate Miranda, safely, all the better. They serve us...

"And this is our gift to them. To go out fighting. To keep fighting if they need to. To live as we made them live. For people like Mike, and maybe for people like you. Although…"

***

"Although?" Here it comes. The other boot. Head or ass, it's coming.

***

"When you were captured, Carter made a good case for your... conversion. I wasn't convinced. You may notice you did not get sent on many missions. I wasn't convinced you were prepared to do what was needed of you. Don't get me wrong, the intelligence you provided was very much appreciated. But you were never used to your full potential. The potential Carter saw in you. You still have a conscience. And for an assassin that is baggage one can't afford to carry. But, it means that Miranda is not necessarily where you need to go. There is no place for the assassins in this new order. But there is a place for people of conscience." He walks down the fence line, his fingers trailing him ticking off the holes as he walks. "In the revolutionary handbook, the first thing you do after winning, is kill your co-conspirators. They can't be trusted. We decided that was something we couldn't do. So what is to be done with them? We wanted to avoid a Thermidorian Reaction. Miranda offers an honorable alternative. I think, consciously or not, Carter knows this.

"Miranda is a self-selected exile. A retirement home for those who sold their souls for the revolution."

***

“That part I understand. Although it's not a rest home for the feeble or weak. That planet could kill you in your sleep.”

***

“I think he knows that too. Perhaps he wants that.”

***

And there it was. Finding out why Mike did what he did no longer mattered. Not at this juncture. What mattered was where he was going. Winfield had the right of it. Miranda was the only place Mike and others like him could go. I could appreciate the cleverness of it. As a means to contain the inherent threat assassins posed, Miranda was the perfect vehicle to keep them occupied until the world was either pacified or it overwhelmed them. Either way, threat neutralized.

The mathematics of war is brutal and unforgiving and has little accommodation for conscience. I put my forehead to the fence, gripped the links, and knew what I had to do.

Forgive me.

I let go and turned to Winfield.

"When does he leave?"

***

Go back to: Timeline Season Four, April 2521 to Dec 2521

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