A Connecticut Yankee in SecGen Liu's Court

OCTOBER- 2504. NEW BOSS, NEW RULES.

“He’s nice, I suppose,” Marcus Akinsanya put fingers to his chin and stared at the ground in a universal gesture of contemplation. “Secretary-General Liu. He asked me to call him Jimmy, can you believe that? He's the Secretary-General of the United Nations, for God's sake. Feels weird to call him Jimmy.”

“Look, boss,” Jess, the Embassy intern, shrugged. “I don't know why you're bouncing this off me. You wanted somebody to fix the printer, yeah?” She looked up from the side of the device. “Well, that's done. I'm not here to negotiate on behalf of the United States, Mr. Ambassador.”

“No, Jessica, you're here to learn.” He shrugged. “It's good experience.”

“I'm here because you know my mom.”

Well, she's right, Marcus frowned. “Honesty will get you far, Jessica, but tactful honesty will get you further.”

“Look, if you think it's weird that your boss wants you to call him Jimmy, why are you fine with asking me to call you Marcus?”

“Well, see, it's.” He paused. “It's different.”

“How? He's your boss, you're my boss. Plus, you're, like. Older than him, I think.”

“Okay, Jessica. First names, sure. But Jimmy? It's…”

“What, like, a normal person name? Do you want him to be named like, 'Cornelius', or, like, 'Maximillian', or— ooh, good one.” Her eyes lit up. “'Liam'. That's real old timey. You ever met a Liam?”

“Jessica, I'd— I'd call him Jim, I guess. Jimmy's just too personal.”

“Is that why you don't call me Jess? Even though you were at my disaster of a seventh birthday party because my mom dragged you along—”

“Yes.” He shuddered. “All that glitter confetti. You just don't need it.” He picked up a tissue and blew his nose. “I think there's… still a little in there, actually.” He swore he saw sparkles in the snot.

“It's okay. Mom's crazy. So what's Jimmy like? Other than that.” The undergrad intern ever so slightly slumped down into one of the office's immaculately padded visitor's seats.

“Really? After all that, you're going to… you know what, nevermind. Jim, well, he's exactly like you see him on the net. He's… folksy. We'll go with folksy.”

“Didn't he like, go to Harvard?”

“McGill. Canadian Harvard.” He shook his head. “Yeah, I think it's a bit of an act too. But he's good at it, if it is.”

“Okay, so. His dad is on the board of Nakos, y'know, a Martian company, grows up bouncing between Melbourne and here in Bradbury, he goes to Canadian Harvard, and he still talks like a bogan? What's up with that?” She shook her head. “Dude's a poser. Or just really, really, like, terminally Australian.”

“Well,” Marcus turned to the desktop coffeemaker on his office's mahogany— the real stuff, not imitation— countertop, pouring himself a mug. Two sugars, one cream, never decaf. “Remember, he did lose a fistfight to a streetlight once.”

“Pfft. Yeah.” She shook her head, staring out the window at the lake that was once Gale Crater, the still reddened stone of Sharp's Peak Island rising out in the distance. “How the hell did he beat Fiorenzano with that video floating around?”

“Everybody does stupid stuff in college, especially if they're drunk. And I think you know that, young lady. I think you know that full well.”

“You know what,” She tried to protest, but couldn't find the grounds, a fist balling in reaction. “Fair. Agh. Fair.”

“Besides.” The Ambassador took a sip from his coffee, staring out at the island and the air traffic over the city. “Doves are a dying breed.”

---

Marcus really hated that his closest contact in the Minervan Embassy was a shrink.

Dr. Newroz Mannerheim was that quintessential Minervan: patriotic, intelligent, even-keeled, and a little bit short. The only thing she wasn't was military, or ex-military, or anything of the sort. Doctor Roz, as many knew her but few called her to her face, had grown up in a Kurdish-Finnish family in the city of Marshall, an industrial center of the Canaveral Republic. In any room of six Canaveralites, one could find seven soldiers, but Roz had seemingly found a way to lower that average by about one and a half.

Coming out of high school, she'd told her parents she was about to do the unthinkable: go to postgrad school instead of signing up. She emerged an accomplished therapist, authored several books on PTSD, basing her work on studies of veterans of the Maybe War, and found herself an advisor to the Cabinet, a member of the Cabinet, and eventually a Special Ambassador for Arms Control. They'd butted heads about a decade and a half ago, and he'd come to know her as a force to be reckoned with during the Landigal Summits on Arms Reduction. He also had come to know he had to pace himself around her. She had the stronger liver.

Alcohol is a social lubricant, and any embassy worth its salt knew that. The Minervan Embassy's ambassadorial residence certainly was. A stunning, majestic building in its sheer practical minimalism, it was curiously at home in the city of Bradbury, if it stood out on Embassy Row. Like most Minervan government buildings, it was clearly inspired by the architecture of the Martian settlers that had laid the first boots on Minerva— the first boots in another solar system— so many centuries ago, and the only real tells of its Minervan nature were its tasteful restraint in decor and its grand, majestic size. The settlers who had founded Bradbury had been constrained to build underground for decades, under the domes for at least a century, and had only freely emerged onto the surface of Mars in the last two hundred and seventy years. The Minervans had dared to ask— what if our ancestors had never needed to hunch their backs and duck their heads? Their answer was magnificent, and grand, and perfect for the new, green Mars that their forebears had only started to see for a few years before setting course for a strange and beautiful new world.

Of course, she'd cornered him near the water cooler, and intercepted him just before he was about to grab a glass of pineapple water for himself. “Marcus! So glad you could make it.” She smiled, a warm invitation to ignore the fact that she was standing just far enough away and in just the right place that it'd be rude of him to continue on to hydrate himself, but would rather have to come much closer to the bar if he wanted to talk. Smart. She wanted to keep his inhibitions low and his words flowing. Much more likely to reveal something actionable that way. She was the kind of person who never did anything accidentally, and the glint in her eyes said she knew he knew what she was doing, and that was what she appreciated about him.

“Doctor Mannerheim.” He returned the smile. A smile was a funny thing. Any other animal species would take bared teeth as a threat. It seemed to Marcus that only diplomats remembered their roots among humans these days. “Funny running into you here.”

“Oh, Marcus, you know it's Roz to you.” She shook her head, holding out a glass. “Care to try it? It's a 2493, from a vineyard not too far from my hometown. Good year.”

“Oh, so you've suddenly softened your stance on wine?” He chuckled, taking hold of her offering. “I thought you hated it.”

“I do,” she shrugged. “But the Embassy is trying to push Canaveral wine. Something about prestige, I think. Get us in the same sentence as California, Elysium, and France.” She sipped her glass, nearly gagging. “I just hate grapes, honestly. Mmm. The taste of prestige.”

“Ringing endorsement.” He eyed the red in his glass. It had a nice enough fragrance. It looked, and smelled, distinctly like fine wine, something that anywhere on Minerva was not particularly known for, let alone Canaveral. Perhaps they'd turned the page. The North Coast wouldn't be happy to hear that. At least it was Minervan. Getting anything across the trade border was expensive enough. Nobody'd be paying top dollar for Minervan wine that had only just become decent. A taste confirmed it. It was fine. Good, even, with a nicely balanced range of flavors and tones that was a sharp contrast to the usually overwhelmingly bitter, dry taste of Minervan wine.

“So you guys finally figured out how to make a proper red, huh?”

“So I've heard. I never got the taste for yours, so I wouldn't know.” She shrugged. “So, should we skip the pleasantries?” She cocked her head, eyebrow raised. It didn't seem like anyone was in earshot. Of course, you could never really be sure these days, and never in these settings. Embassies were haunting grounds for spooks of all stripes, and he usually knew better than to ask even the ones on his side what they were doing. At least the station chief was friendly. He'd never met any of the Minervan ones, but he had not heard glowing reviews of Federated Republics Military Intelligence's open-armed hospitality.

She stood up, dramatically stumbling, her wineglass spilling on Marcus' jacket. He held back a curse and shot her a momentary, annoyed glare as she passed him some napkins to help clean it up, the closest one to his view scribbled over in her scrawled, messy handwriting.

SQUYERS POINT STATION, 1930 THURSDAY, ALONE.

No surprise. She wouldn't have pulled him aside for a talk about how much she hated wine. He'd already heard that sermon.

“I'm so sorry,” she said, pushing more napkins his way, mopping up some of the spill herself. He couldn't help but think it unlikely that anyone from the UN delegation at the event, a social mixer for the 2504 Joint Trade Summit, would have pitched in to clean up their own mess in any way but performatively. Maybe somebody who wasn't born into politics, but that was a sum total of perhaps five of the many UN guests here. There was staff for that. They'd make a show out of helping out the waiter they'd called over and call it a day. They wouldn't dare risk a wine stain on the edge of their dress like the one Roz had by the time she stood up. And they certainly would not apologize to the barkeep.

“So, pleasantries that was not.” He nodded. “Business, then?” It was time to keep up appearances. He was reasonably confident nobody in the Embassy knew about the regular, off-the-books contact he had with her. Backchannels were part of the job and critical to the peace, after all. The trick was not getting caught using them when you were not explicitly asked to. Neither the President of the United States nor the Secretary-General, his two bosses, wanted a rogue Ambassador deciding America’s part in United Nations foreign policy without their input. He was the mouth, not the brain.

Yet sometimes, we say things without thinking. Sometimes we just need to blurt something out. Honesty comes most freely from the mouth when the brain is not involved, after all.

His job was tactful honesty, sure, but sometimes the regular kind was necessary. Especially now. He could see it in her eyes. Roz didn't know what to make of the new Secretary-General and his aggressive takes on foreign relations. Was it all just bluster? She was probably the best at reading people out of anyone he knew. If she didn't know, who did? Liu was new. He'd taken office a few short weeks ago. Every member of the Minervan military he'd passed by at this party looked either on edge or freshly fallen off it, either sweating bullets or glaring daggers.

The Maybe War was a fading memory, a revenant terror only haunting the likes of his and Roz's generation— though it seemed to him that some of them lost no sleep to spectres, even while people like her were kept eternally awake by even the shape of its shadow.

“Yes, business,” she nodded. “I'm aware that your new administration seeks to ramp up defense expenditures, with dreadnought construction on the docket. Can you get me in touch with your Arms Control guy? Normally I'd just talk to them, but I'm aware the office is vacant as of last Tuesday. If you could help me figure out who I should speak to, it would be an incredible help. I know you and Special Ambassador Britell were close friends, perhaps you could help me track down his successor and get our offices in touch.”

“Unfortunately,” Marcus sighed. “I'm afraid that not even he knows who his replacement is.”

“Acting, then?”

“Tell you what,” Marcus nodded. “I will keep you posted, Dr. Mannerheim.”

She gasped. “You don't even have a temporary—…” A shake of the head. “Do you think that's short term or long term?”

“Short term,” I hope.

“Well, keep me posted, then.” She sighed. “I would hate to think all that work we did at the Summit would go to waste. We have to talk Landigal compliance. Without it, none of this works.”

“You mean all that work I did, editing out the second space you kept putting after every sentence?”

“Marcus,” She glared. “We were having a moment. All this professionalism, and courtesy, and you just. Inject your terrible grammar opinions. Good work.”

“Newroz, you got mediocre wine on my nice jacket.” He smiled. “You know, I've always thought that the real accomplishment at Landigal was that we spent days in a room together without killing each other.”

“I hate it when you're right. It's annoying.” She grimaced. “Stop doing that.”

---

The office of James Liu— no, Jimmy Liu— was as perplexing as the man himself. Maybe, Marcus thought, he really was some backwater bogan. At least, that's what he probably would have thought if he hadn't known the name from the annals of power. His father Harlan Liu and his Nakos Precision had wrung the Procurement Office dry on the Hoplite-Six soldier systems contract. Of course, it was just one of the many Procco budgetary failures that resulted from the military-industrial complex's many disparate companies fighting for every last drop of funding, scarce as they were, at the expense of every other— but it was a masterclass in lawfully defrauding the government. As a result, Nakos had squeezed in every expense they could into the cost-plus monster of a contract, and Liu, then the chief of contracts for the company, had made the bean counters regret their life choices. That'd earned him a spot on the Board when he'd retired, and he had always been pushing his son towards politics. Now little Jimmy sat in a glass-facaded office with a gorgeous view of Unity Square. Harlan's ambitions had never seemed to know defeat against the bureaucracy of Bradbury.

Except, perhaps, in one way. It was his son sitting behind that desk, his son's tasteless decor. Harlan had always wanted 7305 Unity Square for his own. He'd burned too many bridges for it.

“Fan of rugby, Mr. Secretary-General?” Marcus pointed to an oblong ball on the man's shelves, near a stand holding an acoustic guitar.

“Ah, nah, that's an Aussie rules ball,” the leader of the Free Worlds shrugged. “My father was never a fan. Tried to stop me from playing. I told him to, ah… well, I've been told it's not polite, what I said. Didn't much care at the time, I was a kid who'd just gone off to uni. Started a club team at my school. That ball's from the game I broke my arm in,” he smiled. “And please, Jimmy. It's just Jimmy. All friends here, yeah?”

Didn't he break his arm fighting a streetlamp? Marcus knew that Jimmy had to know the video was out there. Did he just break a lot of arms or is he trying to cover for being an idiot?

“So, Ambassador. We're on the clock, yeah? Let's get down to it. Make these worlds a better place.” Jimmy smiled, standing up and shaking his hand with a firm grip. Marcus had no clue if he was a predator unfurling fangs or if he was really just a sincere idiot. There were certainly plenty of both at this level of politics. “Whaddya wanna chat about? Spent all this effort, booking a meeting. I know I haven't been easy t'get a hold of… I swear, I got no time for m’self anymore, even. And I thought I was busy as PM.” The Secretary-General sat, and so did the Ambassador.

Are you kidding me? Of course you're busier than the Prime Minister of Australia. You're in charge of the whole damn thing. Marcus nodded. “I believe I put it in the meeting request. Must have gotten lost in the system… but I wanted to speak about a vacant diplomatic position under the Committee for Foreign Relations—”

“Looking to move up in the world, yeah?” He smiled. “S'pose it is a good time for that, no?”

“No, Mr. Secretary-General, it's just—”

“Jimmy.”

“Sorry, Jimmy.” He screamed internally. This man was the leader of the entire United Nations. Yes, Jimmy was in charge. God help us all. “Jimmy. I'm not looking for a promotion, I'm just wondering who's going to fill it. The Special Ambassador for Arms Control position.”

“Oh, that?” Jimmy shuffled a stack of papers on his desk. How quaint. “Yeah, nah, we're leaving that one open for now.”

That was intentional? What?

“I'm sorry, Mr. Se— I'm sorry, Jimmy, what? We won't be appointing an Arms Control ambassador?”

“No, I don't believe so. I mean, go look at what the Minnies are doing on the Frontier. Bloody travesty. They're setting up settlements in our systems. The Landigal Protocols were good and all, and I appreciate the work you did on them,” A glint of knowledge flashed in his eyes. Perhaps the apple and the tree were not as separate as they seemed. “But Landigal only stood as long as the Minnies kept their noses clean, and as long as we kept ours. I'm sure you'll remember my promises on the campaign trail, Marcus.”

There was a smile on his face, but a deadly seriousness underlay it. Marcus knew plenty of people who'd made it in the world by parroting rhetoric for brownie points. He'd pegged Jimmy for the type during his campaign. Face to face with him, though, in the curling of his brow and the determination of his gaze, he'd come to see something possibly even more dangerous— a true believer.

“We won't be pushed around by the Minnies, Marcus. Not anymore. They have been breaking their promises to us for years, but not one minute more. It's time for some backbone, yeah? That's why I haven't appointed anyone, not even a temporary position, and that's why I won't be. Our swords are blunt and battered, Marcus, and without them our words are weightless.” He still sounded like a bogan, sure, but he wasn't talking like one anymore. “I'm putting DRN-277 back on the table. It's stupid— so bloody expensive— but it's symbolic, damnit. It's a big bloody battleship. The only language these people understand. Besides, we need something to lay the foundation to rebuild Elysium Island. You ever been out there? The shipyard, I mean, not the vineyards or the cities or the beach… though, those are nice. The shipyard's in a crock'a shit, though. And we send our old ships there to get maintained, while they can barely keep up with the work— at our biggest yard, public or private, no less!—, they're run by a bunch dumb as dog shit, and their fabricators are falling apart. You know, I've already got a new docket for leadership— and I've got my GA friends finding us a few billion circs extra funding for a full revamp and a new space elevator.” He shook his head. “Bloody travesty, that Elysium. And are we gonna fix it shackled to Landigal? Again, good on ya, but it's just holding us back these days.”

So. Marcus blinked. That wasn't just posturing.

“Once we can maintain our vessels properly, keep them stocked and serviced for long duration, high tempo, we'll start running continuous patrols out into the Frontier— really start showing the Minnies that we take our territorial integrity seriously. I mean, they just put a settlement at Akrotiri, for God's sake, you probably don't even know where that is. Edge of the Draconian Gulf, where the eggheads want to build their bloody big radio telephone or whatchamacallit?”

“Telescope, sir. Radio telescope.” A lump was rapidly developing in his throat.

“Yeah, yeah, you got the gist. Have they been on your case as well? Ah, whatever. Akrotiri, though. It’s so bumfuck the only reason you'd ever settle there is to send us a message. Listen, Marcus, I like you, you're a fine bloke, and I get why you're nervous. Landigal was your thing, you fought real hard for it back in the day. But I made a promise to the peoples of these United Nations, and I will keep it.”

Marcus nodded. “I understand, Mr. Secretary-Gener—”

“Marcus, for crying out loud. We're all friends here. It's just Jimmy.” Just Jimmy shook his head. “And you look like you're about to have a heart attack. Take a breath, mate. It's just one arms treaty and a little bit of hardball. We're not going to war.” He tented his hands on his desk after a glance at his watch, sucking in a breath between his teeth. “Ah, 'fraid that's all the time we have today, mate. A pleasure. Think you could do me a favor? Turn on the TV over there on your way out, and leave the door open. The Habs game is on, and I want to get that in before my Military Staff Committee meeting.”

Marcus stood up, a forced smile on his lips. “A pleasure, Jimmy.” He walked over to the large screen on the wall, knowing full well the Secretary-General had a remote, or could just use his desk terminal. “Right channel?” He raised an eyebrow as he clicked the display on.

“Yeah yeah. That's the one.” Marcus started to walk away.

“Aw, bugger me, bit quiet though. Think you could give it a few clicks?”

Marcus' eyes widened, back turned to the Secretary-General's crocodile smile. He turned around and nodded. “Of course, Jimmy.” He pressed the volume up button a few times. Jimmy shoved his thumb up. “Little more.”

“Yeah, nah, that's too much.” Marcus tapped it down a few notches.

“Ah, there ya go. Thank you, Marcus.” A nod, followed by a groan. “Oh, fuck me sideways. Four-nil? It's fucking Toronto!”

Walking out down the hallway, a shiver of sharks clad in white, blue, and green dress uniforms passed by. Their teeth had been pulled under the last administration, but a new set was growing in, there was blood in the water, and it was time for the feast.

---

“Entering: Squyers' Point.” The announcer's voice, a bellowing timbre, filled the Sage Line subway car. It was pre-recorded, not synthesized; a tinge of that old-world charm on the Red Planet. “The doors will open on the right side of the train.”

Marcus was glad that he didn't stand out in a crowd. He had been blessed from a young age with exceedingly average features; his only real aberration from the norm was perhaps two extra inches in height and a bit more curl to his hair. He was short for Mars, sure— eye level with most women here, anyways— but Bradbury, on average, was not entirely a Martian city. He could be anyone, as long as they weren't from here.

The car slowed to a stop as the doors to Squyers' Point Station slid open. It was a pretty station, one of the newer ones from the expansion program that he had to remind himself wasn't new. It was new when he was young. Now it was simply normal, or perhaps he was old. Flowing curves hewn out of orange Martian rock carved great arches that looked almost like the ribcage of some great dragon of ancient legend, mixed in with the off-white composite paneling of modernity. It was a grand hall that utterly dwarfed the size it needed to be, and that made him think it looked more at home on Minerva than Mars. Perhaps that was the point. The old Silver Line stations were spartan and utilitarian. Back then, Mars' most vicious fight was against the elements for the paltry victory of survival. Now, she clashed with her mother and her daughter for prestige, for culture, and for a dominant grasp on the tiller of history.

Of course, as he looked over towards the column holding the train schedules, he had to remind himself that the rock wasn't actually orange, that they'd simply painted that in to evoke the sands of the great desert this world once had been, that like many things in this new world it was saccharine and plaster, that a quick glance towards the screen's cleverly hidden mounting bracket would— well, once hidden, anyways, when he was a young Department of State staffer, when the side panel had been there and the marble-like flooring hadn't lost its luster— a glance at the space behind the screen would very clearly belie the greyness of the basalt.

“You're late.” A hand tapped his shoulder, and he could tell it was a bit of a reach. He spun towards her, and his eyes widened. “There you are, Roz.” He sighed, tapping his watch. “Three minutes.”

“Tsk. No excuse." She shook her head. “Got your dazzler?” She pointed to a necklace that looked just slightly bulkier than most. Privacy dazzlers weren't illegal, but they were considered suspicious— so most high-end ones were disguised as other articles of clothing. He nodded. He wouldn't be taking off his Whalers ballcap anytime soon, and not just because they'd just captured the Cup for the first time in eight and a half decades— the first time at all, really. The brim was just a bit thicker than it should be— because its tiny thin dazzler projector was covering his face in a randomly scrambling pattern, invisible to the naked eye, to confuse the dumb-AI algorithms that ran facial recognition on the city's cameras.

“Of course I have it, Roz. You know me better than that.” He pointed to his hat.

“Really? A—” She raised an eyebrow. “I mean, I should have figured.”

“It's the only sport we actually have for ourselves. Everything else is Bostonian.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” She groaned. “Let's go. I found a great spot in Overlook Park.”

“You know,” she said, taking in the ambiance of the station as they walked for the stairs out. “I kind of feel bad for Leafs fans.”

“Why?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn't think a patriotic Minervan like you would ever feel bad for Canadians.”

“Well, the curse,” she shrugged, her face bathed in the ephemeral orange and purple glow of a coffee advertisement playing on the staircase's screen-walls. “Hockey and basketball, so Raptors fans too, I guess. Centuries of losing, relocation, winning, homecoming, back to losing.”

“Well, that, and… I didn't think you cared about Sol's sports.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Not back when we first met, but while we were working on Landigal you talked so much about those fucking Whalers that I gave it a watch. It's good in the offseason. Even if I never really got the taste for hockey, specifically.” She shrugged. “When I have a choice, I watch RBL. Go 'Nauts.”

“Never got a taste for Minervan basketball, myself. It looks weird when everybody's short.”

“6’7” is not short.” Hazel eyes, sharp as daggers, stared up at Marcus.

“It is for basketball. The Boston Celtics beat the Canaveral Astronauts in the paint any day.”

She crossed her arms. “No NBA player could ever shoot a 3 under 1.1 g. Brick after brick.”

“No, Roz,” he said, stepping out into the waning light of a distant sun, in a jungle of concrete, composite, and glass on a planet that had once been a lifeless desert. “It’s happened. Remember ‘91?”

“The Torontos game? Raptors-Vipers? That fucking joke of a game?” She laughed. “Everybody lost, Marcus. I lost forty-eight fucking minutes of my life that I'm never getting back. I’ve been dead inside ever since I watched that game. A crime against basketball.” She shook her head. “Besides, they played that in 1.05. Not full Minervan gravity.”

“Oh, big deal. Point oh-five g.” He shook his head. “Are we done ranting about Toronto? Either of them. The one in Baikonur Republic can't be much better.”

“No, it sucks,” she shrugged. “But I may be biased.”

“Right, Marshall hates Toronto.”

“Yup. Get your Minervan city rivalries down, big man. They're important.” She looked around, smiling slightly as they walked towards the park. “You know, this part of the city, where the skyscrapers start to thin out towards the lake, it reminds me of home.”

“Yeah, Marshall's a lot less dense, right?”

“Most Minervan cities are. We never needed domes.”

“Kind of like New London these days, too.”

“Homesick?” She stood in front of the crosswalk, waiting for the graphic on the asphalt's baked-in screen to give her the go-ahead to cross.

“A bit.” He shook his head. “I've been here for a long time, for one job or another. I've gotten… a bit used to this place.”

“I still haven't. But I go back home a lot. Plus, I mean… I'm not going to lie, I still fumble around a little bit. The gravity here screws with me.”

“Yeah, I remember tripping a bit the first time I came here. Felt like Superman most of the time, though.”

“Yeah,” she chuckled. “It does feel pretty cool.” She put a slight bounce in her step to illustrate as the sidewalk told her to start walking. The drivers in the cars didn't seem that amused. Marcus saw a set of eyes roll from behind a windshield. Freakin' tourists, they must have thought.

As the rows of skyscrapers gave way to low-rises, boardwalks, beaches, and parks, the Lakefront District at Squyers' Point came into full view. It was placid, gorgeous, and utterly at war with the rest of the city's image; an attempted rebuke to the hustle and bustle of the busiest city of the entire system, where people like him and people like her made deals and choices and decisions that would be forever marked on the pages of history.

Overlook Park was a quiet nook of green space on an outcropping with a name as honest as it comes. It was a park, and it sure overlooked. Sharp's Peak rose from the waters, a final bastion of unterraformed land kept intentionally barren of life. The bench she had picked out had a gorgeous view of it all, in the shelter of a transplanted oak. He took a look down, and a plaque at the tree's base read:

DONATED BY THE VETERANS OF THE DDK-795 USS CONNECTICUT FIRST CLASS PETTY OFFICER'S ASSOCIATION IN MEMORIAM OF THOSE LOST

QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET

JANUARY 9 2472

“So, you see why I picked it.” She placed a hand on his shoulder.

“What, the isolation, distance from possible onlookers, avoidance of security cameras—”

“Well, yeah, but, I figured this would mean something to you.”

“Why, because of Connecticut? Am I really that one-dimensional to you?” He couldn't tell if he was actually annoyed.

“Look, I thought you'd find it thematically appropriate, to talk about this in a place that honors the memory.”

“If you're trying to get me to tell you, I'm not going to.” He shook his head. “Let's just… get to business, okay, Roz? Please don't push this tonight.”

“Marcus, I can tell it's something—”

“Dr. Mannerheim.” He glared at her. “Stop. I'm not your patient.”

“Alright.” They sat there in silence for a second. “I am your friend, though.”

“Friends? Then tell me. Was the wine thing really necessary, Newroz? The spill?”

“No, I just hate that jacket.” She huffed. “And the last thing I wanted to do is actually finish that glass.”

“It looks dignified!”

“It makes you look like an English professor, Marcus. Elbow patches?”

“They're classic! Refined!”

“Oh, shut up.” She laughed. “You looked like an old man! Well, okay. You are an old man.”

“I'm fifty-three, Roz. Middle aged. And you're only a year my younger.”

“Well, then. Can't have a middle aged man looking ancient. You at least look fine now.”

“Got all this out of your system? I thought you wanted to talk about important things.” He snapped his fingers, gesturing for the bench, and sat down.

“Yeah, I do.” She took a seat next to him, drumming an olive-tan finger against the faux-gold cladding of the necklace dazzler. “Jimmy. Is he going to fuck this up for everybody?”

“I don't know, Roz.” He blinked, staring off into the distance. “Jim— ugh, now you got me doing it. Liu. Liu’s convinced that the only way you guys will ever listen to us is if we show strength. Whatever that means.”

“That certainly doesn't sound good.”

“He's about to pull out of Landigal, Roz. Hell, he already has. He just didn't tell anybody.”

She blinked, staring down at her shirt, a concert tee from the Polar Shepherds 2474 Falling Sideways Tour. Those were better times, when the peace at least looked like it could last, perhaps if you squinted. When it sounded like it would hold, as long as you didn’t listen to the lyrics.

“So, there goes that. All that work.” She blinked.

“Yeah. So much for feeling appreciated.”

“Just, completely withdrawing?”

“He's not appointing an Arms Control ambassador, and he's not holding the Procurement Office to any of the regulations.”

“So compliance in writing only. If even.”

“Lip service, yeah. I'm sure he'll admit it eventually. But for now, the new dreadnought is going to happen, and a whole lot more. He's saying you guys are encroaching on our space in the Frontier.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The sovereignty debate in the Cetan Triangle isn't settled. Everybody knows that.”

“It's settled to him.”

“Does he even have the authority to do that?”

“Yeah, he does.”

“You tried to talk him dow—”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

They sat there in silence for some time, watching the sun creep ever so slowly across the Martian sky.

“So what do we do from here?” She cocked her head in inquisitive worry.

“Well, I… I think we have to find a way to get the Administration to admit it. Pulling out of Landigal, well, it's inevitable. I can't do anything about that. He has the authority, and a lot of support for his agenda.”

“That's unfortunate.”

“No kidding. But if we can get them to admit what they're doing, we might be able to rally some support against it.”

“Big risk. Could start an arms race.”

“Like the one that's starting now? You guys just got out of a modernization cycle.”

“Hm.” She grimaced. “That was planned way before this—”

“So was ours. Been in the works since Hessert. Doesn't matter, we should call it what it is.”

“So everything we did with the Protocols, they just failed, then?”

“Roz,” he put a hand on her shoulder. “You know better than anyone else that it wasn't for nothing. We couldn't stop it, but… we delayed it, at least. And constrained—”

“I know.” She cut him off. “Just, let me feel like shit for a moment.”

“Fair.” He sighed. “I already had my time to process this.”

She sighed, taking her moment, gritting her teeth. “We need to get our governments to talk to each other. If not about the weapons, at least about the causes.”

“Yeah.” He looked to the lake. “Why Akrotiri, though?”

“Huh?” She turned to face him.

“Oh, just. Something he said stuck with me. I only knew what he was talking about because NASA's been on my case about it, but I guess the vultures have started circling. I bet it'll be his big talking point for the next few months, though.”

“Yeah?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Minervan colonists settled at Akrotiri recently. You know, over in 1221a Draconis?”

“Hang on, that's in… the middle of nowhere, right?” She frowned. “Really had to think there.”

“The edge of nowhere, actually. It's your last stop before the Gulf, nothing past there for ages. But I'm telling you, this is brewing up into a real disaster. NASA, ESA, CNSA… They had this consortium that’s building a… gosh, it had a funny name… Oh, right. 'Excessively Large Radio Space Telescope'? Yeah, something like that. Anyway, it's part of the whole SETI thing. Talkin' to aliens.”

“You think they're out there?”

“No, not a chance. I think we'd have met 'em by now. Think that's the prevailing consensus at NASA, too, but half of them want to use it to study some neutron stars or something, I don't know. You're the doctor, Roz, it all went over my head.”

“I'm a. Doctor of psychology and a licensed therapist.”

“I got my polysci Bachelor's at UCONN and walked, so, ah, apologies for thinking you're the smart one. Don't you have three PhD's?”

She laughed. “Two of them are honorary. I'm not going through that torture again.”

“That’s still pretty cool, though.” He cracked a smile.

“Yeah, but the work was the rewarding part.” She shook her head. “So why does our colony being there mean the Fuckoff Big Radio Telescope people get mad?”

“Look, the report came across my desk a week ago. I haven't really had time to do anything but skim, there's so much stuff to take care of—”

“Marcus, aren't you the Ambassador to the United Nations?” She raised an eyebrow and shook her head, tongue clicking disapprovingly. “Should know these things!”

“Look, we're short-handed. As it turns out, there's more problems than solutions these days, and the State Department still hasn't approved my hiring recs.”

“Do more with less, Marcus.” That, at least, got a chuckle out of him. “But why are they getting on your case?”

“Well, basically, the telescope is this big, giant radio receiver, right? It's very sensitive. It's listening for any radio signals that come across the Draconis Gulf, right? And it's not all looking for little grey men, either. There's plenty of natural stuff that gives off radio.”

“I know that, Marcus. So they're worried about interference?”

“Yeah, basically. It's super sensitive, and people are… loud, in terms of radio signals. So a colony there, transmitting into the void, would destroy this pristine environment for radio astronomy.”

“That sucks. Can't they put it somewhere else?”

“Akrotiri is in the system closest to the edge of the Gulf that's ever been charted. It's a habitable planet, too, perfect for the support infrastructure necessary for the telescope. They need a huge backend investment to build and position this thing, and they need to do it radio silent. We've been dumping signals out into the great beyond for centuries, but Akrotiri is untouched. They could build it somewhere else, but, well, they're already halfway done building it there. They only noticed the colony when they turned on some of the segments and saw noise. It's pretty small, but plenty loud.”

“What system is this in again?”

“1221a Draconis.”

“Still going by its Gleise number, huh?”

“Too unimportant for a name. Planet only got one because it's habitable.”

“Well, it's about to get extremely important, it sounds like.”

“Unfortunately.”

“I think I remember that from somewhere, though. The name sounds familiar.”

“Yeah, the colonization project had been announced for quite some time. Calvados Republic is running the project, so nobody over here ever thought it would actually happen.”

“Calvados? In Leeuwen?”

“Is there another Calvados?”

“No, but color me shocked.”

“You’re shocked? It's your country.”

She sighed. “They’re a recent addition. And a special case… tourist trap. And so far, all their projects have been nothing but pipe dreams and bluster— I wouldn't have even thought they could successfully colonize anywhere. They talk about it all the time and never do anything. They're small, and out of the way…”

“Chip on their shoulder?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. It's a beautiful planet with a special economic policy to attract UN tourists, that's what drew so many settlers. There's just not much reason to care about it otherwise. Too bad their government hasn't gotten the memo. They made Unitary Republic status twenty years ago and act like they're the center of the universe ever since. The only real valuable thing they have? A very good slip-path to Akrotiri. Which until now was an express train to nowhere.”

“But we all just made it somewhere.”

“Yeah.”

Marcus stood up, stretching his arms, and walked to the railing at the edge of the outcrop. Roz followed, eyes heavy with thought and the prophetic burden of history weighing down every step she took. Her steps didn't feel so light anymore.

“It's funny,” he cocked his head, staring out into the distance at Sharp's Peak. “Akrotiri was only ever valuable in the first place because nobody goes there.”

“Yeah.”

“We've got it all, Roz. Witches' brew. Unrestricted arms expansion, unlitigated, overlapping border claims, and a perfect little flashpoint just waiting for a spark. We really, really fucking whiffed it.”

“Marcus.” She glared, concerned. “We didn't. We did what we could—”

“I know.”

“That's the… first time I've ever heard you—”

“Yeah. I know.” He turned away from her. “I’m over it. We work the problem.”

She nodded. “I understand. I'll… I'll pass the information along. We get them to the table.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

“Of course, Marcus.”

“See you soon?” He looked over his shoulder, a glimmering wave across his eye.

“Hope so.” She put a hand on his back, nodded, and walked away.