Chapter 25
“Tells it like it is? The rat tells you what you need to hear to feel justified in your rage! A day ago you thought he was an existential threat to the Coalition! What the fuck do you mean you’re coming around on the kid?” Petrova raged into the phone. She didn’t, couldn’t, understand how, but everything was unraveling. Thorne was winning them over. Less than a day before, she’d met with every coalition chairperson to cement their concern about Zachary Thorne.
Now, some kind of switch had flipped and they were, she shuttered, starting to like the guy. She didn’t listen to the response from her terminal, she knew what that fuck from GenesisCorp was about to say. She ended the call and catapulted the terminal into the wall of her office. It shattered and fell to the floor in a splattering of plastic pops as the pieces erupted back into the room.
That was her third call of the day, and all three had ended the same way. Yes, Anya, he’s dangerous, but maybe we’re the ones seeing things wrong, did you ever think about that? Mindless drivel, and she was astounded that her peers had failed to see through him. When she’d rallied them a day ago, they were all strong; vehement in their denial of his power. Now, though, they seemed to think his ascension was inevitable, and they all better get on board before they became prey instead of predator. How had the most powerful people on the planet suddenly become subject to the whim of a child? No one had said anything, but Petrova felt something was off. You don’t just change your mind on someone like Thorne in a day, she reasoned. Had he bribed them? Threatened them? Petrova didn’t know, but she was damn sure going to find out what had changed.
Five more calls to make, but she wasn’t sure she could rally herself to finish them tonight. She owed Olie a call, but after a brief consideration, Petrova realized that a conversation with her lover at this time might be catastrophic. The last conversation hadn’t gone so well; not bad, but Olie was tired of Petrova’s nomadic routine. Olie wanted Petrova to be home and watching the feeds with her all the time; she didn’t understand why Petrova needed to be gone. “It’s for us, love,” she’d tried to explain, but Olie could care less about the money or the luxurious standards of living that Petrova financed.
For Olie, it was about the time and the presence. Something to be admired, Petrova supposed, but she couldn’t understand it. The matriarchs of her family line wouldn’t allow her to understand it. Petrova was a killer; a winner. Winners didn’t have time to spare for love, even if they wanted to make it. To love was to invite weakness; a lover was something that would inevitably be used against her.
One day, maybe even soon, my love. Petrova was glancing out the window, a lock of her golden-white hair curled in her fingers while she watched the sun set over the sparkling spires of Valhalla. Transport vehicles twinkled in the sky as they sprinted past her building and the bright Neon colors of advertising screens began to pop into life among the towers. She sighed and released the spin of hair as she redirected herself.
She pushed Olie from her mind and considered the remaining players that she needed to contact. So far, Titan Industries, Data Dominion, and GenesisCorp all rebuked her with one bullshit excuse or another. What Petrova couldn’t grasp, and it was such a simple business concept: Thorne represented an existential threat to their way of living, so why had their support suddenly flipped to him? Thorne wasn’t going to create some grand revolution for the working class or even for the middle class, that wasn’t the threat. Thorne was a self interested narcissist who played only for himself and had made clear a plan to usurp the power of the Coalition. That was the threat. Thorne was going to take everything they’d worked for and blow it up for his own sadistic enjoyment. Then, he’d mop up the pieces, stacking his own riches the whole time.
Rather than defending their honor, or, more curiously, their money, the coalition was going to sleep; waiting for Thorne to take over. If one more of the people that she thought were rational told her that they’d decided to test Thorne’s theory of the Coalitional Progression through Unification, she might just lose it entirely. She had built this Coalition alongside these people. She knew them, their weaknesses, their ambitions. And yet, they were falling for Thorne like he’d cast a spell over them. No, not a spell—something else. Something she hadn’t accounted for. Who did they think would get to sit atop this unified coalition? Something told her that they wouldn’t be as thrilled to be subservient to Thorne in a couple of months after they saw how he treated his subordinates.
Petrova snarled at the shattered remnants of her hand terminal as she squeezed her right thumb into the ball of her fist. She heard the knuckle pop and then calmed a little as she felt the distracting pain in her thumb. She’d have to get another terminal to continue her work. “Yora! Another terminal, immediately!” she demanded through the closed office door. She heard Yora shuffling from the lobby where she kept court and the presently the dwarvish woman entered Petrova’s office wielding a lustrous new hand terminal, still fresh in its unopened package.
“For you, madam Petrova,” Yora offered, holding the box out for Petrova to seize. Her head was bowed and she appeared to be evaluating a stain on the tip of her flats as she waited for Petrova to take the terminal from her. Petrova reached for the terminal and then hesitated, her hand hovering inches from Yora’s, which now trembled slightly at having held the box for longer than a few seconds.
She hated and loved this woman. Yora was one of the few relics of the old school that Petrova was raised in. Yora would have made a fine, well, whatever she wanted to be, really. Instead, she’d spent the last 40 years of her life working for Petrova’s mother, and now Petrova. She felt pity at the wasted potential, but fortunate that Yora had chosen her family to devote her life to. By the same token, though, Yora was as tough as they came. Yora didn’t let bullshit slide, not even Anya Petrova’s. Consequently, Petrova sensed that Yora had more to say.
Petrova gently took the terminal packaging from Yora’s hand and dismissed her from the office. Yora stepped to exit the office, but paused at the door, her hand on the knob. She twisted, but did not pull the door open, instead turning her head back to Petrova.
“Is it true about Adrian?” she asked meekly, almost a whisper.
The question surprised Petrova and she sat for several seconds as she decided how to answer. She sighed and slumped in her chair as she brought both hands up to massage her temples. Yora’s eyes widened; it had been a while since she’d seen her employer this disheartened. Petrovas were as stubborn as they came, and generally only displayed this level of anguish when they didn’t have a plan for what to do next.
“Yes, Yora, it’s true. It appears that our new friend Mr. Thorne has sharper teeth than we thought. Adrian is gone.”
Yora let her head drop momentarily. She turned to look at Petrova, her eyes wet with tears, and said “You make sure he died for a reason, Anya.” She turned the handle, left the room, and let the door close gently behind her. Through the frosted glass of the door, Petrova watched Yora’s shadow linger briefly before gliding off back to her work station.
Petrova leaned forward and laid her head down on her desk. In her lap, her hands wrestled with each other without a winner, the occasional pop of a knuckle breaking the silence that hung suffocatingly over the office. Somehow, Thorne was winning, but he was an ego driven and insecure man, so something would break for him soon, it had to. Petrova had options, she knew that, but she didn’t like any of them that had presented themselves so far.
She’d tried talking to the other coalition members, but that had been a miserable failure so far. She could also consider withdrawing Terra Harvest’s support for security operations, but that might alienate her even further. While it was true that without the support of the head of the security commission, Thorne would be momentarily stuck navigating the bureaucracy to install a new chief of security, but he’d probably just say fuck it to the bureaucracy of the coalition and hire some mercenary thug within the hour.
If anything, withdrawing her own security assets would expedite Thorne’s destruction of the coalition. Keeping Ervins in a position that was too big for him might be the best continued play for now; the kid was too inexperienced to know what he was doing and would at least delay Thorne’s ambitions. She just wished she hadn’t been right in placing him there; Morehouse had been a good asset for her, but he was disposable and she’d anticipated Thorne’s violence. The natural successor to Morehouse’s position, while not a Petrova asset, could at least become a Thorne liability.
That’s not enough to win, Anya, and you know it; figure something out. She needed an answer, but the longer the shadows of the buildings grew, the less certain she became that she might figure out a solution that didn’t involve sinking to Thorne’s level. It was time to get back to work. She broke the plastic wrapping of the terminal box and began to extract the new electronics from their packaging. She powered up the new machine and plugged it into her desk terminal to sync up her hard-saved documents.
Within a few minutes the new terminal was up and running and she fingered the machine to find the next contact she intended to call and gauge their Thorne-sentiment. It was an Aerospace and Defense contractor, so she hoped to make in-roads with a common enemy or at least a threat to security motif, but she didn’t know what to expect now, with the way that her other conversations had gone. As she dialed the contact, Yora paged her from her desk terminal.
“Madam Petrova? You have a visitor,” Yora’s voice said through the speaker in her desk.
“Well who is it, Yora?” Petrova barked back into the receiver on her desktop.
Yora did not answer, but Petrova’s office door suddenly slid open and Petrova felt her heart jump as Olie strode into the room.
“What are you doing here?” Petrova almost shouted in excitement. “You’re supposed to be in Elysium Spire or some other socialite’s paradise!” Petrova jumped from her desk and rushed to embrace her wife, and felt an additional sense of relief when Olie squeezed back. When Olie made visits like this, it was a 50-50 split on if she was mad or horny, and Petrova didn’t think she’d been a particularly present partner, as of late, so her money would have been on mad.
“I came because I couldn’t be away from you any longer, Anya,” she said into Petrova’s ear.
After a time, they broke their embrace and meandered over to Petrova’s desk while chatting about Olie’s trip, whether Petrova had had a busy day, and a revelation that was made the night before in one of their feed shows that they followed together.
Olie sat in Petrova’s chair, Petrova in the guest’s chair. Olie put her legs up on the desk and Petrova noticed that she wasn’t wearing any panties. She cocked an eyebrow at her lover. “Oh, so that’s why you came,” Petrova said playfully as she stood and walked around the desk. She grabbed and spun the chair so that Olie was facing her now, and bent over and gently grabbed Olie’s hair, twisting her head to kiss her neck before she dropped down to her knees.
Olie moaned sensually before she giggled and grabbed Petrova’s shoulders, pushing her all the way down between her legs. “Oh, I haven’t come anywhere, yet, my love,” she said, smirking at Petrova.
As she sank to the floor, Petrova’s eyes caught on the terminal on her desk. She’d been about to call Ethan Carter to negotiate the fate of the planet, maybe she should tell Olie to meet her later after she handled a few more meetings. No, she’d dealt with bullshit surrounding Zachary Thorne enough for the night, she needed this. Oh well, Petrova thought to herself as she allowed Olie’s downward push to take her all the way to the floor. My terminal will still work in the morning.