Reason For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 1) (15 page)

The solid oak doors swung open automatically as he approached and Antonio strode into the conference room.  It was an old room panelled in oak from the original Chief Executive Officer’s Residence, moved to its successor, the CEOs Palace and half a dozen other head of state buildings, until it ended here, at the top of the Presidential Tower.  A thick imperial blue carpet covered the floor, an entire wall given over to a real window showing the Zeus skyline and a large ancient oak table dominated the centre of the room.  It was rumoured the table was brought to Olympus with the first colonists, originating at the corporate headquarters of Ambrosia Tech.  Since it had been over fifteen hundred ago, it was not something that could be proved.

At the head of table sat President Marion Klostermair, at one hundred and eighty-three, she was young for such high office and owed much to her Family.  The Klostermair’s sat at the centre of a vast web of powerful alliances.  She was still highly educated and smart as they came.  She may look as though she hadn’t passed thirty, with her long dark hair, but Antonio knew better than to underestimate her. 

Sitting opposite her, at the other end of the table, was Petra Soetemeyer, whose silver hair and deeply lined, face gave tell to her advanced age.  The Secretary of Interior was even older than Antonio, though it was difficult to tell there was only a twelve year gap.  The Commander in Chief had aged better than Soetemeyer and it was clearly a bone of contention for her.  It seemed she would take whatever position contrary to his own, purely out of spite.  She’d sat at the centre of the Pantheon government for almost eighty years, no matter the allegiances that brought someone to the position of President, Soetemeyer would always be given a position of importance in the Cabinet.

Between them, opposite the door, sat Paul Moore, the Secretary of Defence, Antonio’s civilian superior, and Sunkrish Bala, the Secretary of Security.  Both fairly new to their roles and were strong supporters of the President, they could generally be depended upon to back her decisions.  If they would do so if Soetemeyer put up a strong objection, Antonio did not yet know.  Like Soetemeyer, he’d served more Presidents than he really cared to remember, having been Commander in Chief for almost seventy years.

The President rose gracefully from her chair as he entered and smiled warmly at him.  “Admiral Cestari, it is good to see you,” she greeted him with genuine welcome.  As well she might, she was one of those children who had played on his island only a few years ago, a friend of one of his many great grandchildren.  She had known him for most of her life.

“Madam President.”  He greeted her with equal warmth and shook her hand before turning to the others.  Shaking the two men’s hands and nodding to Soetemeyer, who didn’t move from her chair.

“Please take a seat and perhaps you could tell us why you called this meeting.”  The President said, indicating a chair on the side opposite the two Secretaries. 

“Thank you, Madam President, it’s been a very long few days since the attack and it will be good to rest this old body.”  A grunt came from his right and he allowed a sly smile to show towards his old opponent, she glared at him in return. 

Antonio took a moment to arrange himself, linking his datapad to the central holo projector in the table.  “The reason I have asked you all here is to give you a more complete briefing on the incident at Furioso.”

Moore looked at him with a bit of anger.  “Wouldn’t the updates your office sent to me contain all of this?”

“No, Mr Secretary.  They gave you all the relevant data on casualties and rescue operations, along with some details on who committed this atrocity.”

“Yes, Major Carter.”  Soetemeyer interjected.  “One of your hand picked killers, I believe.  Who proved to us all that the faith you showed in her was well deserved.”

“The Secretary of Interior is correct, Madam President.”  Antonio replied, but gave his answer directly to the President.  “As I briefed you all, Major Carter was the perpetrator and yes, she is the best we have ever trained.”  He looked around at his audience.  “What I haven’t told you all is why I have asked you to keep her name confidential and out of the media, why she is so good and why she decided to destroy Furioso.”

“Why not?”  Soetemeyer began and was forestalled by a hand raised by President Klostermair.

“Please let me, Petra.”

Soetemeyer took a deep breath and smiled tightly, not used to being interrupted.  “Of course, Madam President.”

Antonio sat calmly and waited as the President turned to him.  “So, Admiral, why have you kept this from us and why have you decided to give this information to such a select audience?”  The question was given firmly and without any condemnation.

“It is all of a rather sensitive nature for more than one reason, but first let me update you all with the latest on the situation itself.”  The President frowned slightly for a moment before nodding for him to continue.  “Currently, the casualty figures have now gone above twenty thousand people, with a further ten thousand still unaccounted for.  We have completed our search of Furioso.  No more people, alive or dead, will be found there.  The missing will be scattered around the area in a vast number of life pods, the majority of which will be recovered with no more loss of life, though some will have failed due to poor maintenance.”  There was a hiss from his small audience at that admission.

“I realise you are all surprised at me saying that,” he continued.  “However, I am not here to sugar coat anything.  Major Carter tore a large hole in us and showed us just how vulnerable we are.  I already have groups drawing up new procedures for all of our space borne assets, along with notice that the hammer will come down on anyone who does not implement them fully.

“That is for the future.  To continue, many of the missing will never be found as their bodies would have been lost into space or for all intents and purposes vaporised in the explosion.”  Pressing a button on his datapad, Antonio brought up a full representation of the station.  “This is Furioso as it was before the attack.”  He explained showing a pristine version.  “This is the station as of twelve hours ago.”  The picture changed to show the same station, except it now had rents in its outer skin radiating out from one of the bottom corners.  That corner was gone.  It was now a massive rupture, looking as though some monstrous space creature had taken a bite out of it.  Hundreds of ships surrounded the broken hulk as the week long rescue operation continued.

“Furioso is unsalvageable,” Antonio said simply.  “The structure is too badly damaged.  It would cost less and take less time to build it from scratch.”

“That’s somewhat worse than your original estimates, Admiral.”  Bala stated.

“True, Mr Secretary.  It wasn’t until the engineers could get all the way in that we found how deep the damage went.”

“What about the R&D facilities?”  Moore asked.

“Rosso is gone, Mr Secretary.  We do have the hourly data backups.  What we don’t have are any of the prototypes and over fifty percent of the staff are dead or missing, mostly dead.  We can begin to transfer the projects to other sites, though that is a much longer term plan.  We need time to assess the best places and people to send them to.”

“What of Major Carter?  Please tell me she didn’t survive this, this travesty.”  President Klostermair said with something akin to horror.

“No, Madam President.  Of that we can be sure.  We have clear footage from the security cameras showing her taking over the Reactor room, activating her programs, clearing out the engineers and then simply sitting down.  I have personally viewed the footage.  It seems to me, she sat and waited to die until the Reactor exploded.”

“What?  Why would she do that?”  Moore said in disbelief.  “Is Bacc turning out suicide bombers now?”

“It’s not as simple as that, Mr Secretary and that is the reason for this briefing.  Major Carter had a family.  A husband she loved and two young children.”  A press of a button on his datapad caused the image of Furioso at the centre of the table, to change to that of a tall dark haired man, a young blond girl and a younger brown haired boy.  “On the morning of the incident, barely nine hours before, a four person Zeus PD fire-team entered Major Carter’s home and her family were killed.”  The President gasped in surprise, even Soetemeyer looked taken aback by that statement.

“It is impossible to know what precisely happened.  What we do know is this was a kill squad hired to eliminate Thomas Doherty, Carter’s husband.  Our best estimate of what happened next is, the children were caught in whatever crossfire occurred and Carter killed the Zeus officers.  I knew this woman.  I know her training and experience.  There is no conceivable scenario, where such a small team would have a chance of succeeding against her.”

He paused and he could see the four others look at each other.  Antonio knew such a kill mission was not unusual, each of those at the table had organised such things, included himself.  The children were a blunder unforgiveable in such matters, though it was known in rare instances.  In those cases, the instigator was quietly dealt with if possible and if too powerful they would be shuffled off elsewhere by their own Family and allies, so they could not repeat such a mistake.

They were all silent and it took Soetemeyer to break it.  “OK, I can see why Zeus PD is pushing the terrorist angle and why you have gotten behind that with Carter’s response on Furioso.  In a way I can even understand what she did.”  She looked over at Secretary of Interior Bala.  “What I can’t understand is, why the Police sent just four people to attack the home of a Major in the Legion Commando Devil’s, while she was on leave.”  She spat with vehemence at the man who was ultimately responsible for the Police Forces across the Pantheon.

Bala bristled visibly in response.  “I am not aware of any such operation.”

“Madam Secretary.”  Antonio interrupted.  “I will need to answer that.”  All eyes were back to him, curious as to why he interjected at a point that could have removed some of the blame from the Legion.  “Zeus PD checked her file. We can confirm that, we have a record of them accessing it.”  Their eyes widened at that admission, normally such checks were kept unrecorded.  Antonio almost smiled as he could see them now practically on the edge of their seats, waiting for the next hammer to drop.  Not physically of course, these people were well used to hiding what they thought.  He’d learnt to read people very well in over four hundred years of life.

“What they saw,” he continued.  “Is the service record of Lieutenant Eleanor Doherty, Major Carter’s cover identity.  This showed an experienced diplomatic pilot who, while an excellent pilot, had almost no ground combat training or experience.  A four person team would have been sufficient for who they thought Carter was.”

He deliberately paused at that point and waited to see who would ask the obvious question.  Secretary of Defence Moore could not help himself and leaned forward.  “OK, I’ll ask.  Why did she have a cover?  That’s not standard, even for the Devils.  Is that why you wanted to keep her identity as the perpetrator hidden?”

“Quite correct, Mr Secretary.  This does bring me to the next point.  I’ve told you why she did it and now I need to tell you how.  This is a level thirty clearance and only nineteen people outside this room are aware of it.”  Antonio’s jaw tightened.  “My apologies, it is eighteen now that Major Carter is no longer with us.  Her own husband was unaware of this and he didn’t even know her name wasn’t Eleanor, Thomas Doherty knew her only as her cover identity.

“The reason for this is that Major Carter is the only survivor of the Prometheus Program.” 

President Klostermair, Moore and Bala looked at him blankly.  Only Soetemeyer reacted.  “That was a failure, a pure waste of billions of Sovereigns!”

The President looked at the both of them.  “What are you talking about?  What is Prometheus?”

“It was a pipe dream, a white elephant that predates even the Admiral here and myself.”  Soetemeyer answered her with passion.  “It was shut down over a century ago and I only uncovered it twenty some years back.”  She turned to Antonio.  “If you think for a moment you can use this as an excuse to re-start that black hole of an idea, forget it.  I will use every means at my disposal to ruin you.”

Antonio held his hands up in surrender.  He knew Soetemeyer had dug into Prometheus.  What he hadn’t expected, was for her to react in quite that way.  He may be the Commander in Chief and Patriarch to one of the most powerful Families in the Pantheon, but he knew just how much damage she could do, if they went to war against one another.

“Hold on Petra,” he said, using her name for the first time in decades.  “I have no intention of doing that and I agree with you completely.”

Soetemeyer held her glare on him for a few more moments before nodding and turning to the President, who was visibly running short on patience.  “Over one hundred and thirty years ago, it was decided, with the advances in medicine and our knowledge of DNA, we would be able to create a superior soldier.  Project Prometheus was born.  It began with just a few embryos but there was an instability that they could not account for.  None survived to full term, so they increased the number of embryos, less than one in a hundred survived.

“Not being able to find the source of the instability, they pushed on regardless.  The same instability they found in the foetuses was present in the babies.  They died in their hundreds.  Whoever was sponsoring Prometheus did not want to admit failure, so they continued.  The records I found account for over twenty thousand children that did not live beyond five years old.”