Regenesis

Dicey was what it seemed to her: there was a procedure by which the remaining Councillors could unanimously declare a Bureau seat could not be filled within the likely span of an emergency–but the sticky point was that “remaining Councillors” had to include Khalid, who naturally wouldn’t vote to unseat himself…except he hadn’t gotten seated, not officially, and needed a majority of living Councillors to beseated.

That was an interesting point of law, but it was also a real kink in the situation for Khalid. He’d alienated everybody. He was on a collision course with constitutional law–and that wasn’t a major point with most CITs, who didn’t understand it; but it was a nasty situation for Khalid on the one hand and for the constitution on the other.

You could think it’s just a document,she wrote to her successor, in the small hours of the morning, but it’s more. It represents a real point of consensus we haven’t got now, and a lot of people were willing to give up things they wanted so they could get that agreement. It was a point in human history where all of Union agreed to a set of priorities, and now we’ll either prove that agreement still binds everybody, or we’ll prove somebody with enough guns can run everything at any given moment; and that means no peace, even for them.

I never got excited about studying law–until we are a few missile launches away from not having any law at all.

We’ve got to get that consensus back. That means we’ve got to be able to tell people the constitution still works, and make them believe it. That’s why the forms matter. People have to see things done by the rules. We’ve got to make people feel safe again and make them believe that compromises are going to be binding.

Unfortunately people in Khalid’s own Bureau haven’t done anything to stop him.

His Bureau was taking his orders–or, at least, took them far enough to launch that missile. There hasn’t been another. Maybe that means that’s all they had, or all they can get to.

Maybe it means it even shocked people in Defense.

It should have. I hope it did.

She put in a once‑a‑day meeting with the reporters at the airport, who said the broadcasts were having a lot of trouble getting out at Novgorod and they weren’t sure about Planys; but they were still getting out intermittently there and fairly consistently in other places. People were sending bits all over the net, and Defense was trying to block it, but Defense couldn’t stop what other Bureaus ran. So that was doing some good.

She tried to improve her sleep patterns; she still found herself awake at night and napping on her arms on her desk, after being up at 0500h. She finally took to her proper bed in the thought that if she could sleep at all, at any time, she ought to, no matter what else was going on in the world, and no matter how worried she was about Ya

She’d just about gotten to that nowhere state, all the same, when Florian’s voice said, “Sera. Sera, forgive me, but there’s a report Defense has just moved in on Planys. They’ve shut down all communication. We terminated accesses.”

Damn, she thought.

But she wasn’t wholly surprised.

And she had no doubt they’d be after whatever they could get, Library, all of it–but they hadn’t likely gotten anything. System had taken measures, that fast. They had it set up for Planys, for particular operations inside Reseune, for Strassenberg, for ReseuneSec offices in Novgorod: one System‑level irregularity, and System needed to be reset from Reseune Admin. One code, out of Base One, and it nuked accesses at any other given base until codes were reset.

That had happened, probably at the first probe they made into System. She was ahead of them that far.

She shoved herself up on one arm, and the other, and found the edge of the bed, raking hair out of her eyes and trying simultaneously to ask herself if there was any other thing she needed to think of, if they’d just lost Planys.

There wasn’t anything to do, was there? They’d known they could lose it, that fast, because a Defense installation was snuggled up against it, and Defense installations had guns and a lot of electronics, and they’d probably spent years preparing themselves to crack System.

That part hadn’t worked. She felt good about that.

“Tell Admin,” she said, and Florian called Catlin on com and told her to tell Chloe, while Ari was pulling on her boots. “Tell the Councillors,” she added. That was a new priority on their notification list, but they kept the Council, such as it was, as informed as Admin, where it regarded move’s by Defense. “I’ll be over there. I’ll go talk to the reporters. I’ll take calls from anybody on the ‘notify’ list.” She took a twist in her hair and jammed the skewer in slantwise. Which hurt, but she was in a hurry.

Joyesse showed up. “Coat,” Ari said. “Please.” And, “Florian? How did they do it?”

“There were already Defense perso

“Anyone hurt?”

“ReseuneSec in uniform we’re roughed up,” Florian said as they entered the hall. Joyesse brought the coat and Ari turned and slipped it on. “That’s the last information we have. It may have gotten worse, but they have their standing orders.” Go to plainclothes, offer no resistence, destroy any records you can, those were the instructions. “Physical records they’ve undoubtedly got, undoubtedly some manuals. And the prior codes. They’ll be going over those with every expert they have, looking for some forgotten app they can still get into. They won’t find one.”

“Good. Then that’s gone by the book.” They reached the front door and Theo let them out.

“Catlin is talking with Chloe in Admin,” Florian said, and then pressed the com into his ear, intent on something for an instant. He suddenly stopped walking–and nothing distracted Florian. She stopped, there in the hall, among the paintings.

“Sera,” he said, “there’s a plane requesting a landing.”

Her heart leapt up in hope.

“It’s Defense, sera.” Florian was still listening. “General Awei, Klaus Awei, requesting permission to land, courier jet. Air Traffic Control requests Admin advice.”

“Permission granted,” she said. There was little else they could do; let automated defenses kick in and start something, or let that plane land. Military courier. If it landed instead of shooting, Defense was talking, and talking–that, she could do something with, even if it delivered a threat. “How far off?”

“How far off?” Florian asked ATC, having relayed her prior instruction; and he reported: “Fifteen minutes, sera.”

“Get a bus.”

“Sera, it’s dangerous.”

“The airport has tu

“Yes, sera,” he said, and started relaying that information to Catlin and then to the Transport Office, which ran the buses.

BOOK THREE Section 6 Chapter v

SEPTEMBER 8, 2424

0932H

The bus had gotten to the Wing One doors by the time they met Catlin there–Catlin carrying a rifle/launcher and Florian with only a small pistol. The two exchanged nods, a signal of some kind, the bus door opened, and Ari started to board. Florian interposed an arm between her and the door, saying, “The plane is coming in now, sera. Wait a moment.”

She stopped, and stood beside the bus, looking where Florian and Catlin looked. In a moment she saw a black dot in the east, across the river, coming in on the course most planes from Novgorod used.