Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) by Gavin E Parker

would be
that.”
    “Where would
that leave us?”
    Philips piped
up.  “That would leave us in a very tricky position indeed.  We’d be
forced to join a - I don’t think I’m being melodramatic
here - a revolution that we want no part of, or we’d be left
sharing an inhospitable planet with an opposing force - I’m
sorry about the language, but .  . .”
she shrugged and pulled a ‘what can you do?’ face, “. . . an
opposing force who, frankly, we are no match for.”
    Karjalainen
thought.  “Venkdt wouldn’t give us any trouble.  But our position
would be very difficult.”  His remark hung in the air.  “What are we
going to do about it?”
    “We’re
already looking into what we can do to stop the plebiscite ever happening.
 Legal, practical, those sorts of things,” said Oatridge.  “And if we
can’t stop it we’ll campaign rigorously for a ‘no’ vote.”
    Even at his
advanced age, and at the extreme end of his ill health, it was still possible
to pick up the ‘what am I paying these people for’ vibe that was flowing from
Karjalainen into the room.  With great effort he moved his head again to
look at Oatridge.  He shaped his words deliberately.  “If you
campaign, you legitimise the election.  And you make us look like damned
fools, because the result will be ‘yes’ and anyone can see that.  I’ll ask
again: what are we going to do about it?”
    Strich and Philips exchanged glances, glad that
Karjalainen was locked onto Oatridge and wouldn’t have the energy to turn his
head toward them.  Oatridge was too professional to panic but he did not
have an answer.  He looked into Karjalainen’s old and watery eyes. 
“I don’t know, sir.  I think we’ll have to play this one by ear.”
    Karjalainen
closed his eyes.  Whether it was tiredness or exasperation the three did
not know, but after a quick and wordless conference they took it as their cue
and left the room in silence.
     
     
    Maya Foveaux
was watching the sunset from her window.  Unusually for a Martian building
the headquarters of Venkdt Security was mostly above ground.  It had been
expensive to build and was difficult to maintain but the architect thought, and
persuaded her client, that it was important that a security division should be
able to literally oversee that which it was protecting, and that the protected
be able to look up to see their protector.
    The window in
Foveaux’s office was short but very wide, and it framed the Martian sunsets
beautifully.  When her workload allowed it Foveaux would take a few
minutes to stand and watch.  It calmed her and gave her some time to think
and reflect.
    With the
light fading she turned away from the window and returned to her desk. 
Glancing at her terminal she noticed three new emails had arrived in the short
time she had been away.  One was an addition to a tedious chain that had
been going back and forth all day.  She didn’t really know why she was
copied into that one.  Some officious type probably thought their dubious
argument would somehow carry more weight if the boss was copied in.  They
were wrong.  At the back of her mind Foveaux had marked them down
sycophantic, indecisive and unconfident.  The other two emails were from
her ex-partner and Charles Venkdt.
    Maya opened
the one from the ex first , partly to get it out of
the way and partly because it would be trivial, where the one from Venkdt was
more likely to be important.  Venkdt had only contacted her directly a
handful of times before.  At the moment the ex, despite her best efforts,
was contacting her daily.
    She glanced
over the salutation and the first line and immediately got a sense of what the
email was about.  It was the same self-pitying, pleading begging for
forgiveness and reconciliation that she had seen in previous emails.  She
stopped reading and quickly composed her reply:
    “Please do
not contact me again.”
    She hit
‘Send’ and immediately forgot