(Photo by Lisa Fotios)

Morning came with some good news, finally. There were no errant signals being sent out by the device in Smythe’s brain and the surgery to extract both it and the cranial mine were a success. The other saboteurs would be similarly scanned over the course of the day and then taken in for surgery, assuming none of them were broadcasting any information back to the fringe.

As he ate breakfast, Chester allowed himself to relax. He didn’t notice until now how tense he’d been ever since the Solar King debacle. If only he’d been able to keep the stupid sample under control. He couldn’t really blame the ape for reacting the way it did. Everything they’d done to it was certainly traumatizing.

He shook his head and felt the muscles in his neck tightening again as he remembered that day.

“Enough,” he told himself. “Stop obsessing. Just move on.”

He took a sip of his tea and forced himself to slow down his breathing.

“One…two…three…four,” he counted as he inhaled. “One…two…three…four,” he said as he exhaled.

He felt his heart rate slowing down as he counted. It was an old trick he’d learned years ago. He didn’t generally like to use it very often, since he found it could make it hard for him to breathe normally afterward but for a short term fix it was fine.

Once he felt calm, he turned his attention back to the problems he was facing.

“The fringe is starting to rebel,” he said while making a note of it on a scrap sheet of paper. Most of the time he took digital notes, but those could be duplicated and stolen far more easily than paper.

“The neural gel needs further improvements. The task of managing more than just a few drones is too much,” he added a note to continue working on developing a node structure to spread out the neural lode. “The Solar King is working, but Tamara isn’t capable of handling the more delicate situations. The Solar King’s son is still missing, and presumed dead, though he might have been captured. And the core worlds won’t survive long without a steady influx of resources from the fringe.”

He set his pen down and looked over the list. It wasn’t entirely correct to say that the core worlds would die without the fringe’s resources, but their economy, their way of life, would certainly fall apart. People would survive, to one extent or another, but there would be war as everyone would be forced to fight for scraps. Ironically, it would be the fringe that would become the technologically advanced region of the solar system then. At least out there they had the means of not only gathering the resources, but also the infrastructure for refining them and manufacturing. The core worlds were too focused on manufacturing that they ignored everything else. Sure, the technology created in the core was better than anything made in the fringe, but that could change.

“It might already be changing,” Chester admitted to himself. “They shot down a crown ship, after all. Their ships aren’t supposed to have that sort of weaponry.”

They also weren’t supposed to know much about neural gel either. The device taken from Smythe’s head was going to be delivered to him later and he was both intrigued and worried by what it might reveal regarding how much the fringe knows about necrology and the Solar King’s experiments.

Knowledge about the Solar King’s reanimated army wasn’t uncommon, but the processes that created them was a closely held secret. Rogue necrologists were far and few between and most of them relied on other, less sophisticated methods that usually were more pharmacological rather than true reanimation.

“And what’s my end goal here?”

It was the question he’d been avoiding asking himself. It was a simple question, really. What did he want? What was he trying to achieve?

“Peace in the solar system?” he mused.

Considering the way things were already going with the death of the Solar King’s son, the sabotaged infrastructure on the core worlds, not to mention the fringe population’s malcontent and the core’s disregard for the fringe, well, could even the Solar King prevent a war from coming?

Even with all of that, peace was what Chester wanted, and it was what he’d enjoyed, more or less, for the last few decades, ever since the Solar King rose to power.

It was only peace in the core.

Chester hesitated. He hadn’t meant to be broadcasting his thoughts to any of the people he was controlling, but that was the problem with having so many minds under his command. Thoughts tended to slip through.

He ordered the saboteur back to work and then closed the connection. They would be getting picked up soon to be scanned and then go in for surgery.

It was quiet in his mind for a time, with only that one thought playing over and over: It was only peace in the core.

The fringe was always a bit rough around the edges. A lot of people tried to blame it on the people who lived there, but in reality, Chester knew, it was because the Solar King kept back the greater technological discoveries from them so that they were always a few decades behind, leaving them dependent upon the core. They were kept busy scrambling to repair and maintain their aging habs, always just a freighter shipment away from starvation, just so that they were easier to control. Fewer people and resources spent on maintaining the fringe meant more for the core.

Was that really the system Chester wanted to maintain?

“No,” he told himself.

In that case, was there really anything he could do to fix the situation?

He thought about the Solar King’s advisors. They were chomping at the bit to be given permission to retaliate against the fringe. They had their armadas, their weapons, their armies, all poised and ready to go.

He thought of the fringe, with their centripetal accelerators, hidden throughout the solar system and ready to rain down planet killing barrages. Those were not the weapons of people who would easily accept any peace. They would want promises, concessions, and rightly so, but Chester knew the pride of the core worlds would not accept such things.

Even if the Solar King refused to go to war, there would be those like the fringe saboteurs who would take things into their own hands. There would be provocations on both sides, and then?

“War.”

The word slipped from his lips and his hands trembled as he attempted to take another sip of his tea. For the first time in decades he felt real terror. Even when he was struggling with the Solar King and the ape sample he hadn’t felt this afraid. Then, at least, he knew what his best options were. Now? Now he had no idea what he ought to do. If he stayed in the core he’d likely have to face orbital bombardment. The royal palace and surrounding areas were likely targets for the centripetal accelerators but would also have the strongest defenses so it was anyone’s guess what the end result would be.

If he fled to the fringe he’d have to leave his status, his identity, behind. That would mean living like everyone else, fighting for scraps while also having to worry about people finding out who he was. The Solar King’s lead necrologist wasn’t likely to find a very warm welcome in the fringe.

“I’m too old for another war.”

It cost him a lot more than he expected to make such an admission. Without frequent genetic repairs, he’d begin losing muscle mass, his metabolism would slow down, and he’d begin to really look his age and feel it too.

Despair was something he hadn’t had to face in a long time but it came back to him with ease. There really wasn’t anything he could do, was there? All the reasons for the coming war, all the hurts and complaints and inexcusable negligence were too old to simply sweep away with a simple declaration by the Solar King. People on both sides would reject such a thing. They’d refuse the peace he offered now. It was too late from the fringes perspective and too undeserved from the core’s perspective.

“I have to try something,” he muttered. He couldn’t just roll over and do nothing. “Tamara?” Chester contacted her over the neural up link.

“Yes sir?” she responded a moment later.

“I’ll be ready to take over the Solar King in a moment. Is there anything I need to know that happened last night?”

“Everything was fine,” Tamara said. “Shipments from the fringe continue to be late, but the aid ships you had him send are making good progress. The fringe leadership sends their condolences for the recent attacks, and even offered a few names for likely individuals who may be involved.”

“Good,” Chester sighed. “Sounds like they’re eager to avoid a war.”

“They also asked for a private meeting with the Solar King for later this afternoon. A lot of the advisors suspect they’re going to use that meeting to declare independence.”

Chester nodded even though he knew Tamara couldn’t see him.

“Thank you Tamara,” he said. “Get some sleep and I’ll see you later in the lab.”

The connection ended and Chester got up to finish getting ready for the day.

“One more day,” he told himself. “I can give them one more day.”