Crisis on Isis

Excerpted from The Guardians of Peace by Jeffrey Caminsky, published by New Alexandria Press.

from Chapter 3

Seated at the conference table, George McKenzie felt his heart sink. The squabbling had gone on for the better part of the month and showed no signs of stopping. But he was tired—tired of fighting this battle all alone. And tired of grappling with his own doubts, his own fears. He had nothing to go on but faith in their cause, and in their commander. And faith, it seemed, was in short supply these days. He was one of a dwindling number of friends the Admiral still had among the Inner Sanctum. He was even starting to wonder whether the Chancellor might be harboring second thoughts about the matter, as well.

The sun, low in the crisp, morning sky, cast a warm glow into the inner office. Looking smaller and frailer than McKenzie had ever noticed before, Irene McGinnis, the Chancellor, peered out through the large bay window onto the gardens, damp from the winter rains. She seemed preoccupied, as if paying no attention to the bitter argument raging among her most trusted advisors.

“I’m telling you, it is a catastrophe in the making!” thundered Reginald Ross, the energetic young Minister of State. “Mark my words. History will not be kind to us, Irene. To have come so close—so very close, indeed—only to waste our chance like this. If it weren’t so tragic it would be downright laughable.”

“And to top it all off,” agreed David Henderson, the Chancellor’s Chief of Staff, “we can’t even breathe a word of this. Every way we look, we’re simply cut off. Confront the problem publicly and we start a panic.”

“Ignore it,” continued Ross, “and we may be little more than accomplices to our own destruction.”

“And let’s not forget who’s standing in the wings,” added Hender¬son, “just waiting for us to stumble. He may have changed his tune in the last month—he can’t undercut us now, without going after his own flesh and blood, thank God for small favors. But his stock across the aisle has risen fast in the last few weeks.”

“Well, David, you don’t have to explain the facts of life to the Chancellor.”

“No, Reggie, there’s where you’re wrong.” The Chancellor turned and walked back toward her bickering senior advisors, her eyes set like granite. For the first time in ages, McKenzie thought, it was the Irene McInnis of old returned to them. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to spell it out completely for me. Because, you see, I’m just a foolish old woman. And I’m not about to let this one slip by me because I’m not as quick on the uptake as I used to be. So please explain yourself, if you would.”

Now it was Ross’ turn to feel the gnawing of uncertainty. But his misgivings weren’t about whether he was actually right or wrong. It was so clear to him. So simple, so inevitable, and so devastatingly logical. His only real doubt was whether he would win this battle for the Chancellor’s ear. For the first time, he sensed the depth of her own feelings in the matter.

“A number of things disturb me, Madam Chancellor,” Ross said, his eyes hard and uncompromising. “His refusal to meet with us, I suppose we could ascribe to temperament— although, as you recall, I predicted that he would stand us up again, today. His refusal to answer any of our questions— ”

“Any of your questions,” the Chancellor corrected, with a wry smile.

“It does not appear that he is forthcoming about his plans, his schedules, or his intentions,” Ross continued. “And that makes me extremely concerned about the direction he is taking us.”

McInnis walked to a large chair beside the fireplace, and bade her senior advisors to do likewise. “You know what I think, Reggie? I do believe that you are jealous. You and David both. And I think this whole episode is nothing more than resentment over the fact that he cancelled your project to refurbish the New Alexandria without troubling to let you and your friends from Highland Technologies talk him out of it.”

“Madame Chancellor—!”

“Oh, put your eyeballs back in their sockets, Mr. Minister,” laughed McInnis. “I have seen more jealousy these past few weeks than I have in my whole career. And that includes,” she continued, her eyes full of mischief, watching for the Minister of State’s reaction to what she had to say, “more than a decade in Covington, watching the Terran Senate in their annual backstabbing rituals, grubbing for Federal money and preening for the cameras. I have no illusions, Reginald Ross—not about you, not about me, not about anyone involved in any aspect of any government, anywhere in Creation.”

“Have you forgotten exactly who his uncle is?”

“Cornelius Cook is a great many things,” the Chancellor replied coldly. “He is, in my estimation, the shrewdest member of the Opposition. He is also a rogue, an opportunist, and a political chameleon. He will say or do anything for partisan advantage. And he is now, poor soul, finding his chickens coming home to roost in a flock, ever since his nephew assumed command of the Interstellar Navy. He cannot attack our preparations for defense without looking like an ingrate and an idiot. But he cannot make people forget about his loud and windy opposition to funding the Navy in the first place without attacking our preparations as somehow inadequate. It is, Mr. Minister, a politician’s nightmare—and frankly, I don’t think Senator Cook is worth one jot of bother at the moment, whatever the opinion polls might show.”

“If he gets wind of the cancellation— ”

“Well, Reggie, I’m certainly not going to tell him.”

“It will come up in the annual budget....”

“Mr. Minister,” the Chancellor scoffed, “by next year’s budget report, I fully expect that we will all be heroes—and the last thing the Opposition will want to talk about is whether we managed to spend quite all of the money we twisted arms hither and yon getting the Senate to authorize. Either that, or we will not be troubling ourselves very much about partisan politics, because we’ll all be dead at the hands of a Terran invasion force, or rotting away in some Terry prison awaiting trial for treason.”

“And what about his nephew? Can you be sure of his real reasons for the cancellation? And don’t you think he’s likely to leak this whole business, if only to pass a crumb to his own flesh and blood?”

Smiling sweetly, the Chancellor leaned forward, her dainty hands folded demurely across her lap, her steel-blue eyes skewering the soul of her Minister of State.

“Minister Ross,” she began quietly. “Among your responsibilities are state security, and in that capacity I have full confidence that you will bring to my attention anything that might pose a threat to our young and fragile Republic. But before you continue, I wish to share something with you.

“I have met and worked with thousands of men over the years. I have been impressed by few, and have admired fewer still. For your future reference, you should know that Admiral Cook happens to be the bravest, most honest man I have met in my lifetime. And I will hear nothing said against him in my presence.

“I don’t know why he scotched the renovation project. He hasn’t seen fit to share it with me—and I, for one, am reluctant to take up his time just now, dealing with what is, in the final analysis, largely a matter of politics. It would have been splendid, if he could have joined us today. I am sure that we all would have found whatever he told us to be positively exhilarating, if a little on the daunting side. But I am also quite unwilling to trouble him about the matter. For you see, Mr. Minister, I understand what it means for him to have the weight of a world crushing down upon his shoulders. And I will do nothing—nothing!—to increase that weight by so much as an ounce.”

Ross flushed a deep crimson and took a deep, bitter breath.

“Now, have I made myself sufficiently clear?”

“Yes, Madam Chancellor,” he replied.

“And was there anything else you wished to say on the subject?”

“No, Madam Chancellor.”

As proudly as they could, Henderson and Ross took their leave, and left the Chancellor’s office to walk down the Grand Hall, toward the Ministry of State. The Chancellor waited until the door had closed behind them before sinking back into her chair and closing her tired, misting eyes.

“I’m too old for this, George,” she sighed, her voice hiding the hint of a quiver. “I should be off somewhere, tending my garden and spoiling my grandchildren.”

“It should be over in a few months, Irene,” McKenzie said softly. “You can hang on until then. If you can still make the likes of Reggie Ross feel like a naughty schoolboy caught peeking up a little girl’s dress—well then, I’d say Old Ironpanties hasn’t lost all that much, over the years.”

McInnis opened her reddening eyes and smiled. “It’s been years since I’ve heard that name.”

“I’m sure they still fit, you know. Granted, you’re a bit older than that sunny, ravishing lass of years past. And I fancy you may have drooped a bit here and there. But you really haven’t gained all that much, near as I can tell. And you still have the prettiest legs of any girl in town.”

“Oh—stop it, George!” the Chancellor sniffed, hoping very much that he would do nothing of the kind.

“I don’t know how we’ve come this far,” he whispered. “But nobody else could have kept it all together. And I don’t know anybody else on this planet who can keep us all pulling in the same direction.

“Just hang in there, Irene. A few more months, that’s all we need. Then, you can finally be glad you waited all these years to finish your memoirs.”

The Chancellor closed her eyes and nodded, wishing to heaven that she could just crawl into her nice, warm bed and sleep for a hundred years.


© 2012 by Jeffrey Caminsky