9.1 – Grey Politics

E-UNIT · VOLUME 9 · GUESTS AND GHOSTS

CHAPTER 216

Pi hit Salaska's desk with both hands. Everything on it moved, including him. Her voice stayed flat, but the words themselves carried everything the tone didn't.

"I am done watching you wave a carrot at us. What more do you want? The terms were zero terrorist attacks from Black Voltage, sustained. We held it for a full week. This is not a fluctuation."

The office was circular, as it always was, white walls, golden-framed pictures running in rows, bookcases built to follow the curve of the room in dark brown wood. The national flag dominated the far wall: blue, white, and red bars set at an angle, the golden gazelle centered and formal in the middle.

Tau sat beside Pi, her eyes moving between the guards at even intervals.

The guards had reached for their weapons the moment Pi's hands hit the desk. Salaska raised one hand. They stood down and became furniture again. He settled his gaze on the grey of Pi's eyes.

"She's intelligent enough not to touch a president in his own office while he's housing her entire operation." He lowered his hand. "Correct?"

"I am grateful for the arrangement you've given us."

Pi didn't sit back down.

"But you don't need to perform the fiction that we're the only party benefiting from this deal. The zero we sustained was not luck and it was not simple. My sisters spent three months building the infrastructure that made it possible. I arrived and found it ready because of their work. Those same sisters are now inactive."

Salaska rubbed the edge of his short beard. "So you didn't hold the zero after all." The sound of his fingers against freshly cut hair was the only thing filling the silence. "The attack reached you directly. How do you present those numbers to me when your own force is the thing that broke the streak?"

Pi's eye twitched once. "Why do you think we were the target? We lost our entire police force, not a single E-UNIT survived the last hack wave, which came through our own telecommunication infrastructure. We need more units. Without them, we cannot operate. Without operation, we cannot honor the terms we signed. That's the sequence you're looking at."

Salaska accepted a paper from his vice president, who had moved to his side on silent feet across the thick red and gold carpet. He read it briefly and handed it to Pi.

Pi caught it and processed it in one pass. Her face moved through something and landed back on unreadable.

"Is this—"

"The cost of purchasing the E-UNIT army from Elysium." Salaska answered before she finished. "Count the zeros. I could have rebuilt the bridge your captain destroyed in her last engagement with that money. I could have done it in gold."

Pi looked at him steadily. "What are your conditions for releasing some units? This isn't a question, we need them."

Salaska looked past Pi and Tau toward the double doors behind them. The gap at the bottom was glowing faintly purple. "Tell her to come in."

Delta entered without waiting for Pi's instruction.

‘She was already listening.’ Salaska looked at the three of them. "You look different from the standard E-UNIT. I saw several of the orange one running across the rooftops this morning. Are you a specialized class?"

"G-Bots," Pi said. "Do you want a demonstration?"

Salaska pointed at Delta. One of his guards raised a pistol and aimed it at her head. Salaska looked at Pi. She returned the nod. He tapped the desk twice, calmly.

Bang.

The shot hit Delta squarely in the forehead. She didn't move. She didn't flinch. She looked down at the bullet where it had fallen from her face, picked it up, and dropped it on the desk. Salaska handed it to the nearest guard. The row of them removed their dark glasses in a sequence. There was one word for their expressions.

"Sir." One of them held it up to Salaska's eye level. "It's a coin."

Salaska pointed at Tau. The guard redirected the pistol toward the orange android. Two taps.

Bang.

The bullet hit Tau between the eyes. The copy took several steps back, the frame glitching heavily before it collapsed and dissolved entirely into a scatter of pure orange energy moving through the office air.

One of the guards reached toward the drifting orbs, they evaded the hand easily, not fast enough to seem alarmed, fast enough to not be touched. Then they drew back together, the silhouette filling in with detail, until a fully functional Tau was standing in the same position she'd occupied before.

"What—" A guard stepped forward and stood between Tau and Pi, looking at Tau closely. He tapped her head. She turned to him and closed her face mask. She was smiling. Her eyes found Pi's from across the room.

Salaska pointed at Pi. The same guard pressed the pistol against her temple, barrel touching grey hair. Two taps on the desk.

Click.

The guard looked at the pistol. Then below it. The magazine was gone. Tau held it out to Pi. Pi took it and handed it back to the guard without comment. He pressed it back into the grip and returned to the president's side, confusion present in each step.

Salaska nodded slowly.

"I see. You're an upgraded class. That's why they can't be mass-produced, there's something inside you that the standard E-UNIT doesn't carry." He folded his hands. "I won't ask for the specifics. But I have two conditions that follow from what I just saw."

Pi covered her face.

"What?" Salaska tilted his head. "I haven't said them yet."

"What are we supposed to do with five E-UNITs?" She lowered her hands. "You shut down the small factory we were running, which was already too slow, and now you're holding the army as leverage. If we lose the five units you give us, what comes after that? Nothing."

He stood up sharply. "You read minds."

"I calculate probable outcomes." She climbed onto the chair to raise herself to a more useful height. The chair expressed its opinion about this. "And the second condition is G-Bots operating directly in the streets. I can see how you arrived there. But we need E-UNITs that can absorb the attrition, we can't be the units doing that work."

"They are far too expensive to treat as expendable." Salaska raised his voice. "Do you have any idea what a single unit costs? Predict the total bill and tell me what you see." He sat back down. "But I understand the position you're putting forward. I'll reopen the factory on a limited basis, spare bodies only, to serve the five active units and your G-Bots."

Pi looked back at Delta. Delta looked at the wall.

"We need more than five." Same register. Still on the chair.

"This is not a negotiation." He glanced at Delta. "We didn't ask for your assessment."

"You're right, the safety of civilians shouldn't be subject to negotiation at all. So why are you making it one?" Pi sat back down. The chair expressed itself again. No one acknowledged it. "Do you want the attack numbers to climb back? Because when they do, the E-UNIT won't be the only target this time."

Salaska pinched the bridge of his nose. "Six."

"Embarrassing."

"Ten." He stood and extended his hand across the desk. "Don't make me regret this. I had separate plans for those shells."

‘Fourteen thousand E-UNIT shells. Reaper's sale. All of them sitting somewhere, waiting for us to earn them back one at a time. I will brief 02 about them soon.’ "That sounds concerning out of context." She shook his hand.

"Don't do that." He sat back and exhaled at length. "Your captain was considerably easier to negotiate with. Consider being more like her."

"I thought this wasn't a negotiation."

"Everything is, given sufficient pressure." He took a paper from his desk, drank from a water bottle, and held the paper out. Pi took it and scanned it.

"Intelligence material on SourceCode." She looked up. "How do you have this? We ran every available search and came back with nothing."

"You're not the only people who take the E-UNIT's wellbeing seriously." He opened a floating screen. "You care about them as sisters. I care about them as a significant investment that occasionally comes to my office and hits my furniture." He gestured at the screen. "Our V.C.I. will be in contact with your team."

"Thank you." Pi moved toward the door and stopped partway through.

"Don't ask anything." Salaska didn't look up.

"Why are you maintaining a relationship with a country that funds a terrorist group operating inside your own capital?" She turned to face him.

"Because they're going to lose control of that group and swallow the consequences directly." He kept his eyes on the screen. "Elysium is a new country, very young politically. They don't understand yet that managing a rogue faction is the worst decision you can make. I'm waiting for them to learn it themselves."

"I am not the only one who can read ahead." Pi turned back to the door and walked through, Delta and the Tau copy behind her.

Salaska looked at the doorway after they'd gone.

"If I could read ahead, I wouldn't have agreed to that meeting." He gestured at his vice president, who produced a set of cases with physical documents. "Now. Back to the primary matter. Contact the captain, she's our access point inside Elysium."

❦ G-BOT PI ❦