Desperate Measures Chapter 54

Chapter Fifty-Two

Julia clasped her hands behind her and stared at the holographic Atlantic stretching in front of her in search of something approaching true calm.

The loss of the Hunter ship in May had been a staggering reversal, one that rendered an incredible amount of previous effort and planning pointless. It frustrated her, but she didn’t want to see a pattern in it.

Accepting certain truths necessitated realigning her carefully developed plans and stratagems for her and the UTC’s future.

She clenched her teeth so hard they hurt. She welcomed the cleansing pain; welcomed

anything

to distract her from harsh reality.

The loss of the artifacts on Chiron shouldn’t have bothered her as much as it did.

They had not been under her control, and the forced self-destruction and loss of so many resources could be used to weaken her rivals in the Core, especially the man most directly responsible for the debacle, given his recent attitude.

That should have made her happy, but messages sent shortly before the destruction of the facility had revealed something terrifying.

The Last Soldier and the Warrior Princess were responsible.

The timing should have been impossible. Their toy presented a threat in the Solar System, but not light-years away. That was what she’d assumed.

That was what the entire Core had assumed.

Questions swirled in her mind. Had they jumped to the HTP and traveled through it? That seemed impossible given Core HTP surveillance, but the alternative—that they used the drive to travel more than four light-years—set her heart racing.

The details of how they had done it were irrelevant. The only thing that was important was knowing they

could

.

Julia bowed her head and closed her eyes. Fleeing the Solar System seemed pointless now, but there were still advantages to be gained, even with the enemy following her.

“How far do I need to run?” she whispered.

Holographic representations of the members of the Core surrounded their meeting table, every man and woman in the room eyeing the others with suspicion. Crisis threatened their great work, and it was now time to come together. The only person not present was Julia, her distance from Earth making direct participation in the meeting impractical.

“Our enemies are circling us!” shouted Farad, a vein in his face bulging. “How do you intend to make up for your mistakes, Shoji?”

Shoji snapped his fan shut, smiling slightly at the other man. “I think you’re overreacting to relatively minor losses.”

“Minor losses?” Ivan adjusted his tie and patted it, then stared at Shoji. “There is no such thing as a minor loss when it comes to the Hunters. You were primarily responsible for this. And now the government knows about the Elite program.”

“I choose to view the useful intelligence concerning the jumpship’s true mobility a mitigating trade-off.” Shoji shrugged and leaned back. “And I do not think panic is warranted. Knowing about the Elites and knowing what we have planned for them are two separate things.”

Constance let out a quiet, long sigh. “Panic is never warranted, but adjustment after failure is. We have lost Sophia, and we have sacrificed other tools to delay our enemies. Julia’s choice to remove herself from Earth, while understandable, is frustrating, but it introduces complications.”

Farad scoffed. “It’s also convenient.”

Shoji raised an eyebrow, his smile growing. “Don’t be so mysterious, Farad. Please enlighten us.”

“It’s not impossible that she led our enemies to Sophia for her own reasons.”

Some of the Core members exchanged knowing looks. Others seemed annoyed, but no one was surprised.

Shoji waved a hand. “It’s not impossible, and if we’re honest, we all have our ambitions. There was nothing to be gained by Julia leading the government and the Last Soldier and the Warrior Princess to Alpha Centauri. I’ve been investigating something for a while, concerning surprising secrets of ours getting out. I’ve long felt we’ve been missing something.”

Constance stared at him, her gaze somehow both soft and accusatory. “Investigations are nice.

Discoveries

are better.”

With a flick of his wrist, Shoji unfolded his fan and waved it in front of him. “This has been bothering me for a while. We’ve suffered more losses and reversals in the last couple of years than we have in decades. The Last Soldier and the Warrior Princess are strongly motivated, yes, and they have the aid of some of the more vexing elements of the government opposing us, but that alone doesn’t explain their success.”

“Enough with the mystery, Shoji,” Farad growled.

“Spit…it…out.”

Shoji gave him a lopsided smile. “A dog will hunt whatever its master wants, but it requires a scent.”

“You’re saying Julia has betrayed the Core?” Farad narrowed his eyes.

“If I recall, you’re the one who accused her of that.” Shoji shook his head. “And no, I don’t believe she has betrayed the Core, regardless of what might have happened with Sophia. Of all of us, she and Sophia are the two who have suffered most under the relentless assault of the Last Soldier and his allies.”

Ivan’s brow lifted. “Sophia’s dead,” he pointed out. “I’d argue she suffered more.”

“Of course.” Shoji tittered, his laugh and face not matching the seriousness of the occasion. “But my point remains. Individual losses, reversals, and personnel deaths might be dismissed as internecine squabbles, but we’re now worried enough that we’ve begun to discuss these matters on a regular basis. We try to deceive ourselves by saying we have another plan, but our resources aren’t infinite.” He hid his face behind his fan. “I think we now have to face a grave possibility.”

“You think the Core is threatened,” Ivan replied. “Not individuals, but all of us, but you don’t think the true threat lies with the Last Soldier and the Warrior Princess?”

“That accurately summarizes my beliefs.” Shoji lowered his fan, revealing a sinister cast to his face. “We’ve had our differences ever since we pledged to work together those long decades ago, personal, ideological…” His gaze flicked among other members until it rested on Constance. “Aesthetic. But the eventual accretion of history means we must rely on one another until we’ve achieved our mutual goal. It was a blink of an eye in our lifetimes that we were close to not only achieving our well-earned immortality but cementing the necessary control of the UTC. I can’t be the only one who now wonders if it's unraveling. Yes, some of it can be attributed to arrogance on the part of our members, but I suspect there is someone else out there, someone with surprising knowledge of the Core, not the Last Soldier or the Warrior Princess, or even the ghosts that play at protecting the UTC from people like us.”

“Then who?” Farad demanded.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be so worried.” Shoji leaned back, his playful smile gone. “I think Julia is wise to put some distance between her and Earth. This is a critical time, and we must make calculated gambles now, even if they risk exposure. It is time we

take back

what it is ours.”

Every movement, every quiver of Shoji’s mouth, was by design. They were tools from a long-forgotten dream to be a performer, weaponized now to manipulate others.

His driver opened the back door of his flitter. Shoji stepped onto the parking platform, stopping for a moment to take in the forest of towers surrounding him in Tokyo. He didn’t like leaving his favorite city, let alone the idea of leaving Earth, but Julia’s worries had shifted from mere paranoia to outright prescience.

Shoji sighed and headed toward his door, waving dismissal at his driver. The Core stood on the precipice now, threatened by an enemy that should have been no more than an afterthought and bolstered by something else, a hidden hand far more wearisome than the myopic fools in government law enforcement and intelligence.

Farad’s concerns over Julia weren’t unwarranted, but it was no longer time to fight amongst themselves, not until they had stabilized the situation. Their divided power would make them easier to eliminate otherwise.

All they needed to do was keep their heads.

His door slid open and he entered his outer garden, a glorious cacophony of mixed flowers and scents, sweet and revolting. There might not be any order to the garden to the untrained eyes, but he’d spent his time picking out the greatest contrasts for the best combinations.

That was the essence of existence, life, and the soul. Nothing glorious existed that wasn’t a balance of other factors.

Shoji leaned over. One of the corpse flowers planted amongst the roses would bloom soon. Delightful.

“Hello, Shoji.”

His brow lifted in surprise and he straightened, turning toward the impossible voice—Julia’s.

She stood there, her hands folded behind her back. A flower petal protruding through her leg betrayed her holographic nature.

Shoji let out a delighted laugh. Julia might not be there in person, but her holographic projection meant she was close. She’d managed to fool him with her stories of fleeing to another system. It was rare that anyone deceived him so thoroughly.

“Hello, Julia.”

She smiled. “Voiceprint confirmed. Message will now begin.”

Shoji’s smile faded. There was no fun in a recorded holographic message. It also was unnecessary.

Julia clucked her tongue. “These are desperate times. I realize that now. Far more desperate than they might seem. Our enemies circle us, hungry and salivating, and our advantages are slipping away. The AI, the jump drive…” She shook her head. “Those should be

our

tools, not those of the lesser beings populating the government.”

Shoji sighed. Although he didn’t know how Julia had managed to get a holographic message keyed to him inside one of his homes, it was proving dreary and self-important.

In other words, it was standard Julia.

“We’ve aided each other throughout the years,” Julia continued. “And I believed we would have a common cause for some time. I allowed myself on rare occasions to believe you might be someone who could be preserved in my new order.”

Shoji frowned. The woman dared to imply he was an enemy, after all the help he’d given her. He wouldn’t deny that he wouldn’t pledge his undying loyalty to her, but he’d looked the other way despite her obvious involvement in Sophia’s death.

“I will admit to desperation,” Julia explained, gesturing in front of her. “And a small amount of trepidation. Critical plans of mine have failed, and that means I can’t continue to allow loose ends that threaten my future and that of the UTC.”

A harsh, acrid scent infiltrated his nose. It didn’t fit his perfect garden of light and dark.

He threw back his head and laughed. A man stretched out his hand for immortality and ended up poisoned in his own garden.

There was a beauty to that symmetry.

Julia frowned. “This didn’t need to happen, but you went too far when you tried to assassinate me. I’m sorry, old friend. I’ll remember you fondly in my new order.”

Shoji stopped laughing. He’d interfered with Julia’s plans, but he’d

never

gone so far as to send anyone after her. Someone had made a bold move at his expense.

His lungs turned to fire. He fell to his knees and doubled over, hacking up blood.

Shoji died as he had lived.

With a smile on his face.