Abumwe was speaking from the well of one of the State Department lecture theaters at Phoenix Station. This particular theater could easily seat a couple hundred people, but at the moment held just four: Abumwe in the well, me sitting off to the side, and Colonels Abel Rigney and Liz Egan front row center, facing Abumwe.
Egan’s formal title was Colonial Defense Forces liaison to the Colonial Union’s Department of State, but in the aftermath of Assistant Secretary Ocampo’s betrayal of the CU, she had stepped into the role of ad hoc number two at State, someone trusted by both the secretary of state and the CDF brass. The closer entwining of those two entities should have filled any rational person with a sense of foreboding, but at the moment no one seemed to blink. This was in itself a commentary of the state the Colonial Union was in at the moment.
Colonel Abel Rigney, I think, didn’t have an actual title. He was just That Guy in the CDF: the one that went everywhere, saw everything, advised everyone, and was privy to it all. Honestly, if you wanted to cripple the CDF—and by extension the Colonial Union—all you would have to do is put a bullet into his temple. I suspect entire chunks of the Colonial Union government would simply stop working because no one would know who to talk to without Rigney acting as intermediary.
Officially, Egan and Rigney were mid-level apparatchiks at best. Unofficially, they were the people you talked to when a thing needed to be done, whatever thing it was.
We had a thing that needed to be done.
“You’re saying that what happened at Khartoum is not meant to be a direct attack on the Colonial Union,” Egan said, to Abumwe.
“No, of course it was a direct attack,” Abumwe replied, in the straight-ahead, blunt manner that if you were not smart, you would think was profoundly nondiplomatic. “The act served its own short-term goal in that regard. But its true value to Equilibrium is long term—what it allows the organization to build towards for its ultimate goal: the destruction of the Conclave.”
“Walk us through it, Ambassador,” Rigney said.
“At Khartoum, we secured a high-value prisoner, a Commander Tvann of Equilibrium.” A very slight smile crossed Abumwe’s face. “The best way to describe him is as the Equilibrium equivalent of you, Colonel Rigney. Someone who is very well connected and often at the center of Equilibrium plans.”
“All right.”
The ambassador nodded in my direction. “During interrogation, Lieutenant Wilson here got Tvann to reveal Equilibrium’s most recent plan, which begins with the attack on the Tubingen above Khartoum.”
Colonels Rigney and Egan looked over to me. “‘Interrogation,’ Lieutenant?” Egan said to me.
I understood the implication. “The information was not secured under torture or duress,” I said. “I used misdirection and false information to convince him that it was in his interest to cooperate.”
“What false information?”
“I told him we were going to obliterate every major Rraey city and industrial site on four different planets because we believe the Rraey are the primary movers behind Equilibrium.”
“Are they?”
“I don’t have the data to speculate,” I said. “If you were asking me to go with my gut, I’d say the Rraey government offers clandestine logistical support that’s difficult to prove. Certainly the Rraey wouldn’t mind if we were out of the way. Even if they are offering support, however, going after the Rraey at this point won’t make a difference in the immediate plans of Equilibrium. Equilibrium is and should be our primary concern at the moment.”
Egan nodded and looked back to Abumwe. “Continue,” she said.
“Khartoum is one of ten colonies who conspired to declare independence from the Colonial Union. The plan was to do it simultaneously and in doing so give the Colonial Union too many targets against which to effectively retaliate. The longer it took us to respond to the event, the more colonial worlds would be inspired to also declare independence. The idea here is that dissolution of the Colonial Union would succeed in part because the CU would lack the resources to deal with the mass exodus.
“However, Colonel Tvann convinced the government of Khartoum to announce its independence early, arguing that it could act as the catalyst for the dissolution of the Colonial Union alone, and that Equilibrium would effectively serve as Khartoum’s defense forces. That would benefit both Khartoum and Equilibrium, which wanted to be seen as an ally to the newly independent colonies.”
“That didn’t work out,” Rigney said, dryly.