The End of All Things: The Fourth Instalment Read Online Free Page A

protecting us. To encourage every colony to break free of the Colonial Union.”
    “So why did Commander Tvann do it?” Abumwe asked. “Why did he attack?”
    “Why don’t you ask him?”
    “We have and we will again. But right now I’m asking you. Speculate.”
    Okada laughed bitterly. “Obviously because whatever plans Equilibrium has, they deviate substantially from our own. What they are, I cannot even begin to tell you. All I know, Ambassador, is that I was used. I was used. My government was used. My planet was used. And now all of us are going to pay for it.”
    Abumwe stood up again, less dramatically this time.
    “What’s going to happen now?” Okada asked.
    “We’ll make sure you stay intact,” Abumwe said.
    “That’s not what I meant. I meant, what’s going to happen to Khartoum. What is the Colonial Union going to do to my planet. To my people.”
    “I don’t know, Minister Okada,” Abumwe said. I wondered if he noticed that she gave him his honorific the one time he gave thought to those he was supposed to represent, and not just himself.
    * * *
    “We don’t have a lot of time,” Abumwe said to her current brain trust, which at the moment was Hillary Drollet, her assistant; Neva Balla, the captain of the Chandler ; my friend Hart Schmidt; and me. All of us were crammed into that same small room. “It won’t be long before Equilibrium discovers that their attack has failed.”
    “I don’t think it did,” I said.
    “How do you figure?” Balla said, to me. “The Tubingen isn’t entirely destroyed. The two ships attacking it were. The Rraey attack on our soldiers was likewise countered and the Rraey eliminated, except for our two prisoners. And Khartoum isn’t independent. If anything it’s just signed up for more direct Colonial Union oversight. There are twenty CDF ships on the way here now to make that point.”
    I pointed at her for emphasis. “But, see, that’s the victory condition.”
    “Explain yourself, Lieutenant,” Abumwe said to me.
    “What does Equilibrium want?” I asked the room. “It wants to destabilize and destroy the Colonial Union. And the Conclave, too, but let’s focus on us for a minute.”
    “Right,” Balla said. “And they failed . Khartoum is still in the Colonial Union. It didn’t destroy the Colonial Union.”
    “It’s not just destroy. It’s also destabilize, ” I said. “The CDF is sending ships not just to deal with the Tubingen ’s survivors, but to exert control over a rebellious planet. You said twenty ships, Captain.”
    “That’s right.”
    “When was the last time the Colonial Union committed that number of CDF ships to a colonial world that wasn’t directly under attack by another species?”
    “You’re the one with the computer in your head,” Balla said. “You tell us.”
    “It hasn’t happened in over a century,” I said.
    “We’ve never had the level of uprisings we’re seeing now,” Hart said, to me. He looked around the room. “Harry and I talked to Lieutenant Lee, who led that Tubingen platoon to get the prime minister. She said that all of her previous recent missions were either stopping rebellions on Colonial Union planets or containing them if they’d already begun. That’s new. That’s different.”
    “This goes to my point,” I said. “The Colonial Union is already destabilizing. Bringing in twenty ships won’t help.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Balla said. “I think no one on Khartoum is going to start anything anytime soon.”
    “But the audience here isn’t just Khartoum,” Abumwe said, to Balla, and then looked at me. “That’s what you’re going to say next, isn’t it.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Because it’s not. We know that Khartoum was one of ten colony worlds that were going to jointly announce their independence. Equilibrium got them to jump the gun for its own purposes. I think part of that purpose was to invoke an outsized, military response on our part.”
    “But