I ignored the question and delivered the punch line. “The aliens have attacked Olympus Kri and New Copenhagen. They’ll come here next.”
“Aliens?” He looked back over his shoulder, giving the camera a nervous glance.
“Are you lying to me, Harris?” the man asked.
I did not answer.
“Are they the same aliens as before?” He did not sound like he believed me. He sounded like he was humoring me, allowing me a chance to pitch my shit, so to speak.
“Yes,” I said, though, come to think of it, that was only an assumption. We didn’t really know if the Avatari were behind the last attacks.
“Think you can beat them?” he asked.
“Beat them?” I repeated, stunned that I had not anticipated such an obvious question. “I just want to outrun them.”
Silence. I was not sure if my message was getting through. I watched him cycle through several emotions—suspicion, doubt, fear, then more suspicion. When he finally spoke, he asked, “Why would they come here?”
“Look, we really don’t have a lot of time,” I said.
“Then start answering my questions,” the man demanded.
“They’re taking back planets,” I said, stating the obvious.
Apparently, that was enough for him. He moved to the next question. “Got any proof?”
I knew that question was coming; and the answer was no. Without virtual Sweetwater and his video feed of the destruction, I had nothing to show. Because I had not prepared for one obvious question, every last person on Terraneau might die, and that included me.
“Maybe I should leave,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t have any proof,” I said. “The mission’s a bust, and I might as well head home.”
The man laughed. “An act like this doesn’t get you in with Doctorow.”
“You’re right,” I said, throwing up my hands. “You are exactly right. The problem is, I don’t have anything more to give you. I shouldn’t have bothered you, I’ll just leave.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“So I’m a prisoner,” I said.
Looking exasperated, the interrogator sat and stared at me, slowly shaking his head. After a few seconds, he said, “We’re all friends here. I’m trying to help you.”
“So why do you need the guards?”
“What?”
“Why do you need armed guards if you are trying to help me?”
“You’re a dangerous man, Harris. We all know that.”
“Look, you’re out of your depth,” I said.
I did not mean to offend the bastard, but obviously I had. He yelled at me, but I didn’t listen. He ranted, and spit flew from his lips. If I had been an average prisoner, he might have turned off the camera and had his guards beat me; but I was a prisoner who came with an implicit threat. For all he knew, I had an armada circling the planet.
Not knowing what else to do, the man simply stormed out, and my interrogation room once again became a prison cell. Time passed slowly. I sat in my metal chair and glared up at the camera in the ceiling, occasionally giving it a one-finger salute.
At some point I climbed out of the chair and stretched out on the table. Since there was nothing else to do, I caught up on my sleep.
The sound of the door woke me from my nap, but I remained on my back on the table, my fingers laced together over my chest. My shoulders and neck felt stiff.
“You’re awfully calm for a harbinger bringing tidings to a doomed planet,” Doctorow said.
Like the revitalized city in which he lived, Ellery Doctorow had a new face. Gone were the long hair and beard, replaced by a square-cut coif in which the white hairs had been dyed coal black. He wore a navy blue suit, tailored to make his shoulders look wide and his waist look small. He’d been dressed in a suit the last time I saw him as well. Gone were the days of fatigues and ponytails.
Doctorow entered the interrogation room alone. He might have had a dozen bodyguards outside the door, but he entered the interrogation room alone.
“Have a seat, and I will tell you about the end of the world,” I said.
The comment earned me an enigmatic smirk.
As I climbed off the table and returned to my seat, Doctorow pulled a chair close. He sat there, stroking his chin while staring at me, apparently deep in thought. Finally, he said, “You say you’re here because the aliens attacked two other planets.”
“New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri,” I said.
“Both planets in the Orion Arm,” Doctorow noted.
“Liberated planets,” I said.
“Yes, yes, you defeated the aliens on New Copenhagen. I’m guessing that you rescued Olympus Kri the same way you rescued Terraneau. That much of your story makes sense to me.”
“They’re coming here next,” I said.
“So you say,” Doctorow said. “Why would they come here? Olympus Kri and New Copenhagen are in the Orion Arm. Why jump from the Orion Arm all the way to a planet in the Scutum-Crux Arm? Wouldn’t Earth be the logical next stop?”
“Olympus Kri was the first planet we liberated after the war,” I said.
“I thought you came here first,” Doctorow said.
“I wasn’t involved. Olympus Kri was already in the works before they transferred me here.”
Doctorow nodded to show that he accepted the explanation. “So we’re the third planet in line …if their advance is chronological.” He spoke in a flat tone that would veil both belief and skepticism equally. He sat very still, his hands on his lap, his eyes meeting mine.
“Did you come here to organize an army?” he asked.
I shook my head. “An evacuation.”
“An evacuation?”
“There’s no point even trying to fight,” I said, and I told him what had happened on Olympus Kri. I explained about the destruction and how Freeman and I had hidden in an underground power station during the attack.
Doctorow listened to my story, his face a mask hiding whatever emotion he felt. When I finished, he summed it up by stating, “So you propose we evacuate the planet.”
“We’d need to contact Andropov and—”
“Andropov? Are you here in concert with the Unified Authority?” he asked, sounding suspicious. “I thought you were at war with them.”
“They declared war on us,” I said.
“You stole their ships,” Doctorow said.
“They sent us out here for target practice. This is ancient history; we don’t have time …”
“Absurd. Everything you have said is preposterous,” Doctorow said.
“I see, then your only other choice is to take your people underground.”
“I will need some time to think it over,” Doctorow said. Though he tried to hide it, I could tell that he had already made up his mind. “Do you have any evidence to prove what you are saying?”
“No,” I said.
“So I have to trust you. I have to take your word on blind faith?”
“That just about sums it up.” I had never lied to him, at least no times that I could think of on the spot.
He responded with an elegant laugh. “Walk by faith,” he said, a vestige from the religious life he had abandoned. “Here’s my theory. I think New Copenhagen and Olympus Kri are just fine. The Unified Authority may have taken those planets away from you, but I suspect the people are safe.
“What happened, Harris? Did the Earth Fleet crush you again?”
I had told him the truth, and he called me a liar. Maybe the truth was on both his side and mine. The Earth Fleet had indeed just served us a bloody defeat. Had any of our ships survived the attack at Olympus Kri?
“You’ve got it wrong,” I said, though perhaps he didn’t.
“You want us to evacuate our cities and send everyone underground,” Doctorow continued. “Wasn’t that how you won the last one; you invited the U.A. Marines into an underground garage, then you buried them?”
“Bullshit,” I said.
I expected Doctorow to tell me to watch my language; but now that the Right Reverend was president, bad language no longer seemed to concern him. “Interesting strategy you have there, Harris, persuade your enemies to go underground and bury them—”