Chapter 219: The Arithmetic of Fear (1)

Chapter 219: Chapter 219: The Arithmetic of Fear (1)

Chapter 219: The Arithmetic of Fear (1)

The atmosphere at Bastion One was dark and gloomy.

Envoy Thalis Corwyn stood on the landing platform. After breathing the familiar air for the first time in six weeks, he almost gagged on it.

Four hundred atmospheric processors ran under this Bastion. They pulled the air through eleven stages of filtering and pushed it back out clean, and every citizen here had been told their whole life that this was the cleanest air a human being could breathe.

The cleanest air? It was not.

Three days ago, he stood in that garden where he breathed the cleanest air possible. There’s always a first time for everything and now, he knew the difference.

’This air tastes like metallic ash compared to it,’ Corwyn thought.

’It has always tasted like this. I simply had nothing to compare it to.’

The physicians took him first.

He was kept in the white room. A room where they scanned him for Bone density, nerve function, mana channel integrity, residual foreign magic, alien pathogen, mind controlling parasites, etc.

"We found nothing that can be considered harmful," the senior physician said at last, setting down her instruments. "There was not a fracture, no residual mana, not even a residue of any torture on you."

"I know," Corwyn said. "I have told you. They healed it after."

"Corwyn." She said it gently. Gentle can be worse. "You have been on a hostile posting for six weeks. You have not slept properly in nine days and you also attended a funeral for ten children."

"They broke seven of my fingers."

"Your fingers are perfect."

"Yes! That is what I am trying to tell you."

She moved her hand and wrote something on her chart. He sat there and watch her write it. He knew what she was writing.

Elder Isolde Renwick believed every word of him.

She was sitting across a scarred wooden table in a a cold room. She sipped some herbal tea and listened each and every word without interrupting.

She heard him talk about what happened in the alley. The sudden frost, the girl who walked through the shadows and breached his artifact, the room where he was tortured and the healing, which did not let him die.

When he finished, she poured herself a cup she did not drink.

"You believe me," Corwyn said.

"Of course I believe you."

"These physicians do not."

"These physicians are looking for evidence," Isolde said.

"And I am looking at the person who walked into the Bastion 7 in these tense times and came out unscathed. What do you think the chances of that happening are, Thalis? People who go into a place like that and see what you saw do not get returned. Not with all their fingers."

She turned the cup a quarter turn on the saucer.

"You came home because he wanted you to come home. Which means everything you are about to say in that chamber is something he wants said."

Corwyn went cold.

"That does not make it untrue."

"No," Isolde agreed. "That is what makes it clever. This man is thinking so far ahead that it is hard for me to see where in the future it will lead us."

She was seventy-one years old and she had not slept in three days either.

In these three days, she was doing fuel audits, requisition holds, procedural challenges, maintenance review, etc. She had spent some favors she had saved for years and now, she had spent them on a debt owed to an unknown organization.

And there was one more thing, sitting in a file with her signature on it.

Six weeks ago she had told the Senate that the Bastion Seven anomaly was buried under thirty tons of Miasma and no longer a concern.

She had put her name on that. In writing.

’And now I must explain how a dead squad became ten Level 100s,’ she thought, ’without explaining how I know.’

---

The scene changed to the Senate Chamber, which held about 400 seats. But they just used 90 of them today.

Corwyn was brought at the speaker’s rail and told the truth about what had happened to him at Bastion 7. Not only because he had promised to, but also because he could not see any of his lies working in this scenario.

"Strike Team Zero is alive," he said.

"All ten. I saw four of them myself at a distance of six feet. Every one of them has crossed the hundredth threshold."

The chamber turned silent. A silence that spoke volumes.

After a few moments of silence, Senator Aurelio Vast rose from the third bench.

A man, fifty years of age. Smooth, unhurried and being reasonable were his strong perks. A politician, who was never accused of corruption.

He was not infected. He had simply looked at the situation some years ago and decided which side of it paid better.

"Envoy Corwyn," Vast said warmly. "Before anything else. Thank you."

Corwyn blinked.

"Thank you?"

"You went where none of us would go. And you came back here with the truth. If it was anyone else, they would have come back with something uncomfortable." Vast turned to address the chamber with his effortless voice.

"I was working under false reports for the last six weeks. And today, you have brought the true information at real personal cost."

He let that settle.

"Ten combatants at the hundredth threshold. In a seceded Bastion. Commanded by a Level 200 Valor who has already declared himself outside our law."

He spread his hands.

"I have argued for two months that we could not act without confirmation. I was right to argue it. We have confirmation now."

Corwyn stood at the rail and felt the floor tilt.

’He is not fighting me,’ Corwyn thought. ’He is thanking me. He is standing there thanking me and using every word I say as the reason. A reason to mark Bastion 7 as a threat.’

’I was the pretext. I have been the pretext the entire time. And I walked in here like a fool. They used me!’

He was used by both the boy and this Senator for their own agendas.

Isolde Renwick rose.

"Senator Vast speaks of confirmation," she said. "Let us confirm the rest of it, then. Ten Level 100 combatants. Three Level 200 Valors. One injured. A wall that has never been breached in a hundred years."

She looked around the chamber.

"What size fleet do you imagine survives that?"

"The Third and Ninth are fully provisioned," a Hawk said from the far bench.

"The Third and Ninth are twelve thousand men who have never fought anything above Level 60," Isolde said.

"You will send them at Helion Goldmane. He will be standing on his own wall. Do you know what a Valor does to a landing formation on open ground, Senator? I have read the reports from the First Bastion War. I doubt any of you have. They are not long. They did not need to be."

Somebody coughed.

"You will lose the fleet," Isolde said.

"In an afternoon, you will lose your entire fleet to Helion Goldmane. Then, you will have no fleet and the neutral Bastions will be watching us start it."

Vast waited a beat.

Then he said, mildly:

"Then send a bigger fleet. A fleet big enough to devour the Sun itself!"

And then the chamber murmured. Some prick actually laughed. But that was enough for Isolde to understand.

The argument had been sound, but she had lost the room.

They had forgotten that Helion had accepted his transfer to Bastion 7 due to personal shackles binding him. He was not the man to be devoured by a large number of ants.

He was the Sun itself.