Chapter 107: Set Up

  Chloe understood as soon as she saw the looks on Ferrill and Zelph's faces and the senate chamber unfolded around them.

  She'd been set up a second time.

  She'd used her powers again. Used them to launch a preemptive strike against the lawful representatives of the Federal Senate, its Animus Hunters. Used them in the middle of the Senate itself.

  “That was... very foolish of you, Miss Hughes.” Rhetta Ferrill's voice was tight, little more than a whisper. “I suppose you know what has to happen now?”

  Keep fighting, Chloe thought, and probably lose. Zelph could have killed her at any time, right? Now his fellow Animus Hunters rose from where she'd tossed them. She didn't even know if they'd been knocked out or if they, too, had merely feigned defeat to draw her in.

  Even if she won the fight she would lose again, because she'd have to fight her way to wherever Rudy and her parents were, keep fighting to get them out, never stop fighting. Or take over Etemenos, if she could, and lose because she had to become the tyrant everyone had claimed to be so scared of.

  Or surrender and face charges that would suddenly be a whole lot more serious.

  Just like he had when he fought Rudy, Zelph had played her emotions perfectly. The only way she could have won was not to fight at all. Assuming she'd been wrong about the Senate planning to execute her regardless of what she'd actually done.

  Maybe she never could have won. She almost hoped so. It absolved her from screwing up whatever chance she'd had.

  It looked like she wasn't going to be keeping her promises after all.

  Only –

  “I won't surrender unless you promise to let my parents go, Ma'am.”

  “Is that fair, Miss Hughes?”

  “Probably not,” Chloe said. “But it's a fact.”

  “Then we are at an impasse,” Ferrill said. “You refuse to accept lawful judgment unless I do a thing that is itself unlawful, at least where your father is concerned.”

  “Why are you doing this? Both of you? All of you?” Chloe swept her gaze over the senate boxes surrounding the president's office. They could have been mirrors of the Oligarchical boxes for the Etemenos Cup beyond them. She assumed they could hear her, although she didn't see any obvious transmitters in the office or any reaction in the holograms of senate boxes that expanded in response to her observation.

  Because an imperial cannot be allowed to exist, Zelph thought, and another imperial martyr cannot be allowed to shape the course of history.

  “Say it aloud,” Chloe snapped at the Animus Hunter. “Say it to them!”

  His only answer was his bloody grin. She wasn't sure if he was genuinely too hurt to move or just pretending for the benefit of their viewers. It hardly mattered. She'd experienced enough of his mind to know he was as willing to die for what he believed in as he was to kill for it. If he somehow succeeded in wiping every imperial and every noble and every errant from the galaxy, he would surely kill himself to exterminate the last trace of the line.

  Chloe knew him well enough to know she could never understand him.

  “It should not have come to this, Miss Hughes,” Ferrill said. “Errard, I'm sure, intended for you to stand before me a proven criminal, but it was never my wish.”

  “Then why, Ma'am?” Chloe slumped to her knees. “I never would've hurt anybody if you hadn't come after the Mother Goose.”

  “From my perspective, Miss Hughes,” Ferrill said, “I'm sorry to say none of this was even about you.”

  Chloe blinked.

  “You represent, if not a danger yourself, then a potential source of future dangers, both because of your power and because of lingering belief in your ancestral right to rule.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “However, you do not, in my opinion – and understand, Errard and I disagree on this matter –, represent a serious threat to the peace and equality of the galaxy. It was necessary to approach your family, not to apprehend you, but to spur Otto Algreil into action.”

  “You didn't really think,” Zelph asked, “that I would have allowed your Mother Goose to escape so many months ago if it were in the Senate's interests to secure it?”

  Chloe wished she could imagine herself lashing out back then, when the eyes of the galaxy weren’t on her. The truth was, nothing she or her parents could have done would have stopped Zelph from annihilating them.

  She hoped she didn’t shudder so the senators could see it.

  If Ferrill did, she let it pass. Her version of mercy, perhaps.

  “The elder Mr. Algreil, you see, has been planning his little coup for some time. Had he been allowed to strike at the time and place of his choosing, he might actually have become a danger.” Ferrill shook her head. “If we were to acquire your services, however, those plans would be put in jeopardy. The Oligarchical scheme was based on Etemenos's heavy reliance on mechanical systems to attack electronically, and capital ship fleets to evade by seizing control of the world-city's shields. If convinced of the justice of our cause, you, Miss Hughes, would have been a line of defense he could neither suborn nor deactivate. And if we were cold-blooded enough to repeat the Kalder-Black Prometheus experiments on an imperial subject rather than a noble one – well!”

  This time, Chloe did shudder. She’d hate to meet the person who wouldn’t. Unfortunately, she already had.

  “Of course,” Ferrill continued, “we never actually intended to recruit or vivisect you. As soon as Algreil committed himself to the field, your role in this drama ought to have been over.”

  Zelph's smile slipped at that, but he didn't contradict Ferrill with either words or thoughts. Again, the thoughts he had forced on Chloe allowed her to know his mind even as her own ached trying to comprehend him. He might be devoted to a private war to level the galactic playing field, but he was also a believer in the very system that had placed Ferrill in its highest post. He could sacrifice his honor playing her enemy, but never his beliefs actually opposing her.

  “We knew Algreil was tracing your father's ship,” Ferrill said, “but we did not expect him to move as quickly against you – or, depending on your perspective, for you – as he did. As I told your mother, it is pointless for me to apologize for the ensuing chain of events. No apology I could offer would suffice, save to say that I truly believe the sacrifices you've been forced to make were necessary.”

  “That wasn't your decision to make, Ma'am,” Chloe said.

  “It was the decision I had to make, Miss Hughes. This was a chance, not to bring one rogue oligarch to justice as Morgan Kalder-Black and his Promethean superweapons were, but the entire Oligarchical system and the corrupt senators who propped it up. Otto Algreil was always a man to use tried and true methods on a grand scale: the consortium, the backroom deal, the swindle. I knew that if he tried to bring down the government and failed, he would take them all with him.

  “It may be cold comfort to you,” Ferrill added, “but what has happened here will remove the vestiges of the imperial era that prevented the Senate from correcting many injustices. In time, this step will even allow us to redress the wrongs done to hybrids.”

  Chloe wanted to believe the president. Even if she had, it wouldn't have been enough to forgive her. Considering that Ferrill had just admitted her willingness to lie, entrap and, even if indirectly, destroy anyone who stood in her way, belief seemed downright naive.

  Besides:

  “I don't get it, Ma'am,” Chloe said. “You already won. Otto Algreil lost his war. You captured him. You could have let Rudy or Admiral Avalon win the Etemenos Cup, save my dad, and us fly off to freedom, the same as you claimed to want to.”

  “I'm afraid it's not that simple, Miss Hughes.” Ferrill's hand slid across her desk and a dozen of the senatorial box holograms expanded. Federal marines in dark green armor stood in the doorways, rifles pointed at stunned senators and their guests. The only person Chloe recognized was one of the guests, the oligarch Georg Marchess.

  There was no sound, but Chloe projected her mind into the box where the gangly oligarch stood, sputtering.

  “– an outrage!” Georg's eyes bugged out as he stared at the guns. “I'm a hero of the Federated Stars, not a traitor! What the hell is Ferrill trying to pull?”

  “We intercepted a message from this box, Mr. Marchess,” the marine officer said, “as well as several others. You, along with three dozen members of the Senate, have been attempting to broadcast information to the insurrectionist Otto Abeir Algreil and his fleet for the past half hour. We will be apprehending him and your daughter shortly, assuming they surrender the battleship Pacific Resolution and do not insist on its destruction.”

  Chloe snapped her attention back to Ferrill and Zelph.

  The president must have recognized her confusion, because she said, “While the senators have watched our confrontation and the public has watched the Finals of the Etemenos Cup, the elder Mr. Algreil initiated the final phase of his coup. Unfortunately for him, we were quite aware of his intentions.”

  Chloe knew her dad had been imprisoned with Otto Algreil. If the oligarch had gotten loose, Jack Hughes would have, too. If he fought again, like she had, the Victor's Boon Rudy or Admiral Avalon won couldn't save him, either.

  If Rudy fought alongside his brother...

  Ferrill, it seemed, was about to win a clean sweep.

  And Chloe was about to lose the same.