“Your brother, Lady Nadashe, revealed to us that your family knew about Dr. Roynold’s work,” Grayland said. “He told us that just before he died, torn apart by that shuttle that crashed into your new tenner. We didn’t know what he meant at the time. But then we had a conversation with Lord Claremont here, and he knew what your brother was talking about, because he’d seen her early work. He knew what it said, and he also knew it was wrong.”
“It is wrong,” Marce agreed. “The math was sloppy. I haven’t seen her latest work yet, but if she’s still suggesting a Flow shift, then she never corrected her initial errors.”
“But you wouldn’t know that,” Grayland continued, to Nadashe. “So you and your family worked from the assumption that End would become the new center of the Interdependency. You worked so that when it happened, you, and not the House of Wu, would be the ones to control Flow access. You promoted rebellion on End, sent your brother Ghreni there to administer it, developed an agricultural virus to exacerbate it, and blamed it on the House of Lagos to cover your tracks and to get back at an enemy house.”
“Here at Hub you pushed for military aid to End’s duke and then used pirates to take those weapons for your family, pushing the duke to more desperate action,” Marce said. “And you kept the pressure on for more military intervention by planning and executing terrorist attacks here and in the rest of the Interdependency.”
“That’s a lie,” Nadashe said.
“We have Che Isolt in Guard custody, Lady Nohamapetan,” Grayland said. “Your man at customs and immigration. He gave you up almost immediately. He told us how he identified and acted as a go-between between you and immigrants from End. How you would either use them or frame them for the terrorist events. He even told us about the attempt yesterday. How he gave an unwitting immigrant a transmitter that hacked into the shuttle through a maintenance program and sent it into your own ship. Do you know why he gave you up so easily?”
“Because he found out you intentionally killed your brother to make it look like an attack on the Nohamapetans,” Marce said.
Grayland nodded at this. “Apparently fratricide was too much even for him. Although he did approve of you attempting to frame the House of Lagos for all of this. He said it was a clever move.”
“The House of Lagos isn’t happy about it, however,” Marce noted.
“No,” Grayland agreed. “No, they are not. And neither are we, Lady Nadashe. About any of this.”
There was dead silence around the table as the entire executive committee stared at Nadashe Nohamapetan.
“I am grieved that you would believe any of this, Your Majesty,” Nadashe began.
“Oh, cut the shit, Nadashe,” Grayland said, irritated. “It’s over.”
“No, Cardenia,” Nadashe said, and there were several gasps as she used the emperox’s personal name, in a flagrant breach of protocol. “It’s not over. Perhaps for me. Not for the House of Nohamapetan.” She took her tablet, which she had kept in her hand this entire time, and tossed it onto the table. She pointed at it. “The minute your lackey here put Hatide’s report in my hand, I sent a message to the Prophecies of Rachela. The troopship with ten thousand marines and all their equipment and weaponry. By the time you showed up and started your tirade, the bridge crew had locked itself in and begun moving the ship toward the Flow shoal. It was already positioned for immediate transfer. In less than fifteen minutes the Rachela will be through and on its way to End. It’s too late to stop it.”
Grayland glanced over to Korbijn, who grabbed her own tablet, leapt up from the table, and started making calls. Then she turned her attention back to Nadashe. “Your bridge crew can’t stay there forever.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Nadashe said. “They’re not the only ones I have with us. I’ve been working on this for years. When the Rachela comes through to End, we’ll control the system. We’ll control its imperial station first, and if my brother doesn’t control the surface of the planet by then, we’ll control it soon enough. Then it’s simply a matter of waiting, isn’t it? Now we can defend the exit shoal to End easily enough. We’ve planned for that. And when the Flow streams shift, we’ll start negotiations.”
“You don’t understand,” Marce said. “Roynold was wrong. There’s no shift coming. There’s a collapse coming. Every single Flow stream is disappearing in the next decade.”
“Excuse me, what?” said Upeksha Ranatunga.
“That’s why I’m here,” Marce continued. “My father confirmed it. We confirmed it with data taken from ships coming to End. It’s all shutting down. All of it. End is about to be as isolated as every other system.”
“That’s your interpretation of the data,” Nadashe said.
“It’s already happening,” Grayland said. “The stream from End to Hub is already closed. The stream from Hub to Terhathum is next. Your family’s home system, Nadashe. Your home system.”
Nadashe shook her head and smiled. “No. And it doesn’t matter anyway.” She pointed at Marce. “If he’s correct, then billions are about to die. End is the only system in the Interdependency with a habitable planet. Every other system is man-made habitats. They’ll last for years or even decades. But eventually they’ll fail. They’ll all fail. Except for End. Which the House of Nohamapetan will control, if it doesn’t already.”
The door to the room opened again and four imperial guards came through and marched toward the executive committee table. Hibert Limbar followed behind them.
Nadashe looked at them, and then at the emperox. “Are those for me?”
“Yes, they are,” Grayland said.
“Let me give you a piece of advice, Cardenia,” Nadashe said, as the guards crowded around her. “Keep me alive and treat me very well. The end of the Interdependency is coming one way or another. However it comes, the House of Nohamapetan is going to be there, waiting for its tribute. It’s not going to look kindly on you if something happens to me.”
“We’ll keep it in mind,” Grayland said. “In the meantime, thank you for your service on the executive committee. You’re dismissed.”
Nadashe laughed, stood up from the table, and walked out, accompanied by the guards. The entire executive committee watched her go.
Then when she was gone, Upeksha Ranatunga cleared her throat. “I want to get back to this thing about the Flow streams collapsing in a decade.” She looked at Marce and Grayland. “Is it true?”
“It’s true,” Marce said.
“And you’re only telling us now?” Ranatunga said, disbelieving.
Marce heard Grayland sigh, saw her glance over at him for just a moment, and then turn to Korbijn, who was returning to the table.
“The Prophecies of Rachela is gone,” Korbijn said. “Through the Flow shoal. On the way to End.”
“It’s only ten thousand marines,” Marce said. “And there can’t be that many more at the imperial station there. You have hundreds of ships and hundreds of thousands of marines.”
“All of them have to go through the bottleneck of the Flow shoal,” Grayland said to him. “A few ships and weapons are all they need to defend it.”
“You seem sure about that.”
Grayland laughed, bitterly. “How do you think the House of Wu became the imperial house a thousand years ago, Lord Claremont? We did the very same thing here. In the space above Hub. Controlled the shoals and made everyone who wanted to come or go through them pay a price. We made them pay, Lord Claremont. Just like the Nohamapetans plan to make anyone going to End pay. And at the end of it, they’ll be the new emperoxs, or so they believe.”
“Then seal off End entirely,” Korbijn said. “If the Nohamapetans want to self-exile, let them.”
“It’s not that simple,” Marce said.
“Why not?”
“Because Nadashe was right,” Grayland said. “There’s only one system that will support human life on its own once the Flow collapses. And that’s End. We can prepare every system for the collapse. Give them everything we can to last as long as they can. But it’s End where humans will survive when everywhere else has gone dark. We need that planet. We need to get at least some people from every system in the Interdependency to it.”
“And it’s the Nohamapetans who stand in our way,” Marce said.
“Yes,” Grayland said, nodding.
“So what do we do?” said Upeksha Ranatunga, after a minute. “What do we do now?”