Regenesis

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter viii

JULY 26, 2424

1201H

“She’s done it,” Justin said to Grant. They’d gone to the dining room of their apartment to have a cup of coffee and do a little work on the manual…but they hadn’t gotten any work done. The minder had had the communication stream from Ari’s apartment, which carried the background of what was going on in Admin, and the last a

…Since Ari had taken Denys out.

“She’s done it,” Grant said quietly. “And four people are going to hospital. No word about the dead.”

“Not so bad a casualty list for a revolution, though, as revolutions go,” Justin said, feeling shaky. He was thinking about Jordan, hoping he was all right. But Ari had said not to use communications for a while. So he had another sip of coffee and a bite of buttered toast.

“Worried?” Grant asked him.

“Worried that it’s not just Reseune she’s taking. That it’s Ya

“Not just happens,” Grant said. “It’s on the news, now. Definitely assassination. High tech assassination.”

“I’ll bet Khalid had rather it wasn’t on the news.” Justin said. So Ari that suddenly, after what she’d said on election night–good God, just lastnight–had risen up this morning, taken out Hicks, and taken over ReseuneSec.

And the sum total of everything set tottering sent a little cold chill wafting across his nerves. It wasn’t that he mourned the fall of the current administration of ReseuneSec, which had slammed him into more than one wall and shot him full of drugs…he didn’t exactly mourn for Hicks’ fate, whatever it was, since Hicks had been Giraud’s aide in those days, and Hicks’ orders had been at least at fault in the incident in recent memory. ReseuneSec had always had an uneasy feeling about its workings, and he wasn’t sorry.

He was, however, upset about Ari’s involvement in it…for one thing, he didn’t want hisAri involved in killing people. Denys–that had been a case of self‑defense, and her guard had done it. He wasn’t sure what this was, or how many cold‑blooded decisions would need to be made, how many extra‑legal ones, and he’d have wished, if it was going to be done, that Ya

If that was so, Ya

He and Grant were nominally in charge of Alpha Wing, her base of operations. They were trusted. They were also a target, if young sera made a misstep. And trust could shift in a heartbeat.

She’d talked about going to Novgorod. About sending Amy ahead of her. Exposing herself to the same kind of hazard that had already taken out a newly elected Councillor of Defense. She’d be risking everything, and she hadn’t been able to trust ReseuneSec, who was currently protecting Ya

And do what? Get Lynch, of Science, to appoint herProxy Councillor, when she was barely old enough to vote?

Get in front of the media and start another war of words with Vladislaw Khalid–who probably had just had his rival assassinated?

What did she have for assets? Her bodyguard, two of them eighteen and the other two, thank God, at least senior security, former instructors, but it was the eighteen‑year‑olds who ran things. Besides that she had a handful of teenagers, a household staff and thirty ReseuneSec agents, not one of whom was much over teen‑aged themselves.

What had she said at the party? That there was almost nobody to remember the history, nobody alive who knew how it had been, and why things had happened, and why choices had gone the way they had? Everybody else but Ya

Flaw in the first Ari’s plan. Or its brilliance. From his position, storing his own share of the old knowledge, he didn’t know which.

Damned sure her enemies in the wider world were going to notice that something had changed inside Reseune. Give them a few hours, and they’d notice. Orders were going to go out to ReseuneSec units around the world and in near and far orbit and outbound on starships.

New director. New voice. New policy.

God, he hoped she’d thought of the smaller details.

BOOK THREE Section 5 Chapter ix

JULY 26, 2424

1208H

Couldn’t get the daily reports out of Chloe. Couldn’t communicate. Ya

That was downright worrisome. It was so worrisome Ya

That tore it. He’d tried the ordinary room phone, in the failure of every single high‑end piece of electronics he owned, equipment that should have been able to call in armed intervention, and now couldn’t. He was down to trying to remember his own office phone number.

And when he was sure he had, thatcall didn’t go through. There was just a stupid robot informing him, as if he couldn’t guess, that the call had failed.

There were several things that could explain it. One was that Reseune had fallen off the face of the planet.

The other was that an eighteen‑year‑old with the opinion she couldrun things had taken it into her head to try and just nuked everything that depended on Base Two and Three: the list of what specifically it would nuke was extensive.

He tried the general Reseune phone system, and when that failed, he tried the last useful number he remembered, from the fact he had a boat and occasionally, before the world had gone crazy, hadtaken a few days off and used it. The number got the general river port operator.

“This is Ya

“ Admin’s all shut down, ser. Wing One, Admin, Alpha Wing. All shut down.”

Damn.

“Can you find anybody to run up the hill–physically, can somebody just take a ear up there and find out what’s going on?”

It was embarrassing. It was downright fucking embarrassing. He was exposed as hell: anycasual monitoring by the hotel staff, let alone Defense experts, could pick up the call he was making, and he had finally, just before things had gone to hell, tracked down Councillor Jacques. Jacques hadn’t been answering any of his calls, though at least his office had been answering the phone…and consistently saying Jacques was out of the office, and no, they had no word yet when he would return. Could they know the nature of the business so the Councillor might call back?