The primary entrance to the Franklin capitol was a large, open arch that led into a rotunda from which, if you looked up, you could see the shoes of the global representatives, because on the highest level of the “slipper” was the legislative chamber, which boasted a lovely, sloping roof and a transparent floor which looked down into the rotunda. It was my understanding that it wasn’t until the construction that someone pointed out that the transparent floor meant visitors could look up and see the underwear (or not) of the legislators wearing open leg coverings like skirts and kilts, at which point piezoelectric opaquing elements were added to the floor at considerable additional expense. Someone also neglected to consider the fact that a large room whose walls were entirely composed of transparent elements might turn into something of a greenhouse during warmer months, leading to several early heat prostration events before the air-conditioning to the legislative chamber was improved.
Another thing no one had considered: that placing one’s global legislative chamber at the very top of a transparent building might make it uniquely vulnerable to attack from above. But then, with the exception of a single incursion by the Conclave right after the Colonial Union’s attack on their fleet at Roanoke, Franklin, as one of the core planets of the Colonial Union, hadn’t been meaningfully attacked by an alien species in decades. And by the Colonial Union itself, never. Why would it have been? It was a constituent part of the Colonial Union.
Until, possibly, today.
“We’re down,” Powell said to me. That meant that the three of them had landed and were heading toward the capitol rotunda, bristling with weapons and general menace. The idea was for them to draw the capitol security force—such as it was—to them, and to cause a lockdown of the legislative chamber, sealing all 751 representatives inside the room.
Which was where I was going.
I signaled to the Tubingen, the CDF ship on which I was stationed, that I was ready to begin. The Tubingen was currently floating directly above New Philadelphia. Normally Franklin’s planetary sensors would have spotted the Tubingen after it had skipped in literally (and dangerously) close to the planet’s upper atmosphere. The problem was that the planet’s sensor apparatus—from its satellites to its ground stations—were designed, installed, and still largely operated by, the Colonial Union. If the Colonial Union doesn’t want a ship to be seen, it won’t be. Someone would have to be looking directly for it to see it. And why would they be looking directly for it if the sensors didn’t say it was there?
The Tubingen acknowledged my hail and reported that it would begin in ten seconds, and that I should keep clear the beam. I agreed with this and acknowledged the warning. The capitol building was directly below me now. My BrainPal lit up a column that represented the incoming beam. If I were to wander into the path of the beam I might be uncomfortable just long enough for my brain to register the pain before I was turned into a floating pile of carbon dust. That was not on my schedule for the day. I kept myself well clear of its path.
A few seconds later my BrainPal visualized the high-energy beam, pulsing on and off faster than my eye could register, vaporizing a three-meter hole in the roof of the legislative chamber one micrometer at a time. The goal was to create the hole without shattering the roof or vaporizing the legislators directly below the beam. At this juncture of the mission we didn’t want anyone dead.
Path cleared, I thought. Time to make an impression.
“Here we go,” I said out loud, found the hole, and dove for it. I waited for the last few seconds to deploy my nanobots into a parachute form, braking with an abruptness that would have killed an unmodified human body. Fortunately, I don’t have an unmodified human body.
As it was, I dropped through the hole with enough velocity to make an impression, and to make my combat unitard stiffen to protect me from the impact.
There was a thump, and a mess, and a general cry of confusion as I seemingly appeared from nowhere. I raised myself up from impact position, looked at the elderly gentleman stunned to see me, and smiled. I had landed on the speaker’s podium, directly behind his desk, exactly where I had planned to. It’s nice when a bit of political theater such as the one I was about to attempt starts out so well.
“Speaker Haryanto,” I said, to the startled man. “A genuine pleasure to meet you. Excuse me for just one second.” I reached behind me, took the drone off of my back, and activated it via my BrainPal. It whirred to life and rose directly above my head. While it was doing so, I looked down through the floor—the speaker was wearing pants and had opted to keep his podium transparent, though tinted—and saw Powell, Lambert, and Salcido, weapons up, drones deployed, cautiously being encroached on by capitol security. They weren’t in any particular danger, or at least any that they couldn’t handle.
That done, I unstrapped my Empee, placed it on the speaker’s desk, and invited myself to the microphone, into which Speaker Haryanto had been intoning mere seconds earlier. I had my BrainPal pop up the notes I made earlier, because I knew I would have to give a speech.