The Tau Ceti Agenda

November 1, 2388 AD

Tau Ceti Planet Four, Moon Alpha (aka Ares)

New Tharsis Peninsula

Sunday, 1:35 PM, Earth Eastern Standard Time

Sunday, 9:35 AM, Madira Valley Standard Time

Elle sat in her apartment atop the mountain Capitol Building looking out the window at the Madira Valley. The small table for two near the eastern wall was set with a standard place setting and was filled with the typical Sunday brunch array that she and Scotty had enjoyed for ages. The view of the Jovian in the moring light of Tau Ceti was casting brilliant violets and reds across the trees below. The view was absolutely breathtaking. Elle welcomed the Sunday brunches where she and Scotty would sit alone and talk freely. There was usually no need for her mask, and she usually left standing orders with her guards that there would be no interruptions while they were spending their Sunday morning together.

"You haven't touched your eggs, Sienna. Is everything okay?" Scotty sipped at some juice and then wiped his mouth with the corner of his napkin. "The pastries are quite delicious this morning." He made an attempt to be humourously pompous. Elle showed him only the slightest hint of amusement. She was preoccupied and mostly annoyed by it.

"I hadn't expected there to be two U.S. supercarriers attacking that Oort facililty. What the hell was that about? And using our own bomb to destroy the Phlegra before it hit Luna City was inspired."

"I've said all along we needed to get rid of Moore. A plan of his no doubt," Scotty said around a mouthful of blueberries and cream-filled pastry. "How this will sway the election is hard to calculate. I looked at it briefly last night. Too many coefficients in the model just can't be narrowed down. Especially now with the last word we have of this impeachment vote. I sure didn't see that coming."

"Models are never exactly right. But these are just anomalies that can be dealt with," Elle said. "The last word I have from our troops is that the facility has been completely lost. That gives the U.S. a QMT portal to Tau Ceti if they can figure out how to connect to us and hack our security system. I'd better have extra firewalls put in place." Elle wasn't really talking to Scotty, more just thinking aloud to herself.

"I can take care of that." Scotty nodded.

"No. I'll do it."

"Okay." Elle's voice seemed to take a different tone. A tone she used for emphasis, one she knew that Scotty didn't like. It was a tone she had when she was about to make a tough decision—usually the type of decision where people ended up dying.

"How did she escape, Scotty?" Elle slammed a fist against the table, rattling the dishes. Her rapid mood shift was something that she knew Scotty had seen over the years when it was necessary for her to shift from the cool, calculating genious statesperson to the hard warrior terrorist. Scotty had often warned her of creating a bipolar or even split personality problem, but Elle never took his comments seriously.

"What? Who?"

"You know damned well who. That CIA agent that managed to slip on board the Phlegra. The one that had infiltrated the Tangier family since the Exodus. The one that destroyed the jaunt drive of the battle cruiser at the last minute. The one who almost stopped our plans dead in their tracks. She was zip-tied to an examining table for God's sake. How did she escape?!"

Scotty leaned back in his chair and took a long, deep breath and then exhaled through his lips, making a motorboat sound. Elle watched his reaction closely for any signs of a poker face. Scotty had been at the poker-faced lying politician game as long as or longer than she had, so she didn't expect to catch any tells.

"I don't know. You should ask the doctor." He finished the last bite of a croissant.

"Of the sixty-seven crew returned on the snap-back, Dr. Ross was the only one of them that was dead. Had the ship not been on an extreme skeleton crew, the casualties would have been horrendous when she sabotaged the jaunt drive." Elle glared at Scotty a moment longer. "Ross had knife wounds to the head."

"I didn't realize. I went straight to the transport and came here after the teleport."

"Where did she get a knife, Scotty?"

"Again, Sienna, I'm not sure what this is about." Scotty sat cool and calm in his chair. "She was good."

"Not that good. We scanned her and she was completely naked and immobilized. She had help."

"What are you saying, Sienna?"

"Scotty, I love you. And . . ." Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she inhaled to gain her compsure. "I . . . can't believe you could betray me like this. How long we've worked through our plans and how much we've sacrificed together for you to do this."

Elle reached under the table and pulled the railpistol from its hiding place. She thumbed the biometric ID tab, and the ready light turned green. She looked into her longtime lover's eyes as she brought the weapon up slowly. It had to be done.

"Don't do this, Sienna."

"Tell me the truth, Scotty. The truth."

"I, uh." Scotty cleared his throat. "I couldn't let you kill all those people, Sienna. Plan or not. Long-term or not. That would have been mass murder, and I couldn't let you bear the weight of that on your shoulders."

"Scotty." Elle sounded defeated and continued to cry. "I told you when you signed on to this that we had to sell our souls and that we were going to Hell."

"Don't give me that scapegoat religious nonsense. Do you truly think that knowing your soul will burn in Hell forever is justification enough for you to do whatever you want in this life? It's okay, I'll be punished for it in the afterlife," he said mockingly. "I have a son and three grandchildren and seven great-grandchilderen living in Luna City. You didn't think to warn me of your plan, so how are we in this together?"

"I was sparing you the heartache, because you couldn't have warned them if you knew."

"Bullshit. I could have managed it some way or the other. Even still, that doesn't justify it or make you, us, immune from murder on such a massive scale."

"We have all made sacrifices, Scotty."

"You know as well as I do that this plan has required us to live in Hell on Mars and at Kuiper Station and at Triton and even at times on Earth. That was our sacrifice, our Hell, Sienna. There is no need in making it Hell for innocent bystanders. For millions of innocent bystanders." Scotty leaned forward and slapped his palms on the table. "It has been Hell enough to live with the hundreds and thousands, tens of thousands of lives we have taken for the long-term betterment of mankind. There wasn't a point in letting that many people die just to sway this election, which I still argue is only a minor part of our plan anyway. I did this for you, Sienna. So if you have to take another life to protect your little Hell, then do it."

"Scotty . . ."

"Sienna, I love you. I did this for you."

"I love you too, Scotty." Elle pulled the trigger. The round entered between his eyes just above the bridge of his nose, splattering the back of Scotty's head across the south wall of her apartment, leaving red and gray matter drooling down the transparent wall. Scotty's gaze never left her as he crumpled sideways to the floor.

Elle sat the pistol on the table and then continued to sob softly into the palms of her hands. Scotty had lied to her and repudiated her plan once now and that meant he would do it again. It had to be done.