The mottled flush of Okada’s cheeks disappeared, followed by something rather paler. “Excuse me?” he said.
“You heard me, Mr. Okada,” Abumwe said. “You declared your planet independent of the Colonial Union, which was enough to have you labeled a traitor. For that alone you would be looking at the rest of your life in a Colonial Union prison, if they didn’t simply decide to execute you. But then you also attacked Colonial Defense forces. And the CDF doesn’t forgive the deaths of its people. It especially won’t forgive them when it’s clear that you, the prime minister of an entire planet, planned and coordinated the attack with enemies of the Colonial Union.
“The CDF won’t kill you for that, Mr. Okada. What they will do is strip your brain out of your head and let it lie in isolation—horrible, endless isolation—until you tell them every single thing you know. And then when you’re done, you’ll be sent back into that endless isolation.”
Okada’s eyes flickered up to me. I stared back at him, impassive. I knew what my role in the room was, which was to be the silent avatar of every horrible thing the Colonial Defense Forces would do to Okada. It would be an inappropriate time for me to note my own personal objection to the brain removal tactic, which I found frankly criminal.
“The only reason you haven’t already been prepared for this operation is because I, as a courtesy owed to your former station, am offering you a choice,” Abumwe continued. “Tell me everything you know, now. No hesitation, no omission, no lies. Start with your deal with Equilibrium. Share it all, and you will stay you. Or don’t.”
“I didn’t authorize that attack,” Okada began.
Abumwe shoved up from her seat, a look of genuine disgust on her face.
“Wait!” Okada held up a hand, imploringly. Abumwe paused. “We had a deal with Equilibrium, yes. But it was only for defense if and only if the Colonial Union attacked Khartoum itself. A major attack. A single CDF ship in orbit wouldn’t have triggered it.”
“But you hid yourself,” I said. “You and your cabinet.”
“We’re not stupid,” Okada spat at me. “We knew you would come for us. We hid to delay you finding us, and to keep you from destroying infrastructure and creating civilian casualties when you went looking for us.” He turned back to Abumwe. “We always knew we were going to be captured. We knew you would send a single ship for us, because we all know how the Colonial Union like to imply that it only takes a single ship to deal with any internal problem. We wanted to be captured. Our plan was civil disobedience. To act as an inspiration for the other colony worlds who were planning to declare their independence as well.”
“Civil disobedience doesn’t usually include calling in outside forces to act as muscle,” I said.
“It’s one thing for me and my cabinet to participate in civil disobedience,” Okada said. “It’s another thing to leave three hundred sixty million people defenseless against the Colonial Union. Our deal with Equilibrium was defense and deterrence, not aggression.”
“And yet they attacked anyway,” Abumwe said, sitting down again.
“Not on my orders,” Okada said. “The first I knew of it was when your soldiers blasted their way into our bunker and dragged me out.”
Abumwe looked at me. I shrugged.
“I am telling the truth!” Okada protested. “I don’t want my brain in a goddamned tube, all right? I was misled by Equilibrium. By Commander Tvann. He told me his role was deterrence only. Encouraged us to declare independence before the other colonies to set the example—and to make them aware that Equilibrium would protect them like it was protecting us. To encourage every colony to break free of the Colonial Union.”
“So why did Commander Tvann do it?” Abumwe asked. “Why did he attack?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“We have and we will again. But right now I’m asking you. Speculate.”
Okada laughed bitterly. “Obviously because whatever plans Equilibrium has, they deviate substantially from our own. What they are, I cannot even begin to tell you. All I know, Ambassador, is that I was used. I was used. My government was used. My planet was used. And now all of us are going to pay for it.”
Abumwe stood up again, less dramatically this time.
“What’s going to happen now?” Okada asked.
“We’ll make sure you stay intact,” Abumwe said.
“That’s not what I meant. I meant, what’s going to happen to Khartoum? What is the Colonial Union going to do to my planet? To my people?”
“I don’t know, Minister Okada,” Abumwe said. I wondered if he noticed that she gave him his honorific the one time he gave thought to those he was supposed to represent, and not just himself.