Manifest Fantasy Chapter 104: Poker Face

Henry steadied his mind and body as the dragon lowered itself for Carvus, folding a foreleg and dropping its shoulder to the snow like a horse to its rider. The Leuarch casually stepped down off its back, as if it were no big deal.

He strolled forward, relaxed and clearly satisfied with swinging his dick around.

“It has been some time since last we met.” Carvus let the silence linger a moment. “Have you at last made your peace with necessity?”

Assuming Armstrong had launched the missiles the second Henry hit the transponder, it’d still be a good thirty minutes before they got here. Stalling that long was a tall order, but he could pull it off so long as he played his cards right. The catch was that Carvus would clock him the moment he started running his mouth just to kill time, which meant he couldn’t half-ass it – he had to actually entertain the offer.

He looked back at his team and raised a hand, signaling them to hold.

Then he stepped forward to address Carvus, opening with just enough disdain to make it clear where he stood, but not enough to outright piss him off.

“I’ll level with you. I didn’t waste more than a minute on it.” He stared the man down, which turned out to be a lot easier when he wasn’t on top of a dragon. “How seriously did you expect us to take that offer in the first place?”

Carvus ignored the jab. “Not with great confidence, though I had thought there was matter enough in it to warrant consideration beyond a mere minute.” He pointed a finger at Henry. “You are not ignorant of the disparity between us. Few of your people are, Captain. What prospect appeared to you so favorable that my offer merited no further thought?”

The argumentative part of Henry’s brain wanted to counter, maybe use Korth Varren as an example of what could happen to Nobian cities. After all, modern countries didn’t need the numbers of old to flatten a city, but something in him suspected that Carvus already understood that.

So Henry held his tongue. All things considered, it was better to let the Leuarch continue his monologue and see what fell out of his mouth.

Carvus took the silence as leave to go on. “Formidable your people are; that much I readily grant. Your vehicles contend with Tier Eight creatures as readily as most armies contend with common beasts, and your aircraft I should judge the equal of Tier Nine. Yet what is Tier Nine to Tier Ten? We of the Nobian Empire have brought the Elemental Dragon and its brood beneath our authority! What power have you to oppose the like?”

The guy was uncomfortably right. Based on the Apache’s performance against the Sentinel Lindwyrm and the Abrams’ against the Vorikha Apex, Henry would’ve come up with the same estimate himself.

But he was wrong about one thing. They did in fact have options that could contend with Tier Tens: a shitload of cruise missiles. And if that didn’t work, then nukes would.

As much as Henry wanted to wipe the smug off the Leuarch’s face with that, though, he kept it behind his teeth. Tipping his hand on the one card that actually scared him wasn’t worth a cheap shot at the guy’s ego. Besides, Carvus probably wouldn’t even buy it without seeing one go off, and hopefully General Harding would keep it that way.

Henry instead let the point stand and circled back to the one thing that actually nagged him. A guy with five dragons and a ring of shooters didn’t stand around in the snow giving speeches if all he wanted was bodies. He’d have given the order already.

The only reason Carvus stuck around now had to have been because he needed something from Alpha Team; something he couldn’t otherwise get without them. What that something actually was, Henry couldn’t quite tell at the moment. But at the very least, he took comfort in knowing that the Nobians preferred them quiet over dead.

“If you’re that powerful, why bother talking? Why are we still standing here?” Henry gestured, spreading his arms wide. “We both know you’re not the type of person to gloat for the sake of ego, so what do you really want?”

“The Empire would have your people stand clear of any war we might wage against the eastern nations.” Carvus folded his hands behind his back. “When last I came before you, I asked rather more. Sonara’s friendship I would have had you abandon; the principles by which your machines are governed I would have had you divulge. Since that time, matters have altered.”

He raised his right hand, palm facing up in a gesture toward the Elemental Dragon. “Greater concessions I might reasonably demand than any I sought before. Instead, I place before you terms more favorable than those I offered when the Empire’s position was weaker.”

“Alright,” Henry said. “Let’s hear them.”

Carvus laid it all out. “Whatever conflicts may hereafter arise between the Empire and the eastern kingdoms, let your people remain strangers to them. Upon those terms, your people shall receive a portion of the relics and magical knowledge that shall come into the Empire’s possession. You remain in this realm in pursuit of magic; of that I have long since concluded. If Sonara has offered such things in return for your friendship, then they bargain with possessions they are not long to retain. Stand apart from the conflict, and when those same spoils pass into the Empire’s keeping, your people shall receive a portion greater than Sonara could ever have bestowed.”

Henry knew damn well what Carvus was trying to do, and the worst part was that it was already a fait accompli. He weighed the pros and cons as seriously as he could, obvious as the answer was. Short of war, this was the best deal the U.S. was going to get. It wasn’t the most honorable move, though, nor was it his to make.

His role here being that of a mere messenger, how was he to drag this out any further? Nothing came to him, so he blurted out the first thing that did. “You know I don’t speak for my government.”

Carvus scoffed. “You are more a fool than I thought, Captain. Your government holds you in sufficient esteem to heed your counsel. To whose hands, then, should I have committed the offer? Had your deaths been my object, I should have loosed the dragon upon you without another word and left your government to dispatch another envoy in your stead, bearing terms far harsher than those I have seen fit to extend today.”

Well, there went the first strike. Playing dumb only had so much road left before Carvus saw through it, so he needed something more compelling. He looked back at his team, realizing his next play the moment his gaze landed on Sera and Kel.

“I’ll be straight with you. The Nobian Empire hasn’t exactly been conducive to honesty, or to any kind of moral dealing, for that matter.” Henry kept his tone level. “How are we supposed to trust an empire of slavers? What guarantee do we have that you’ll honor your deal? How’s my government supposed to know you won’t just stab us in the back after you’re done with the Sonarans?”

Carvus scoffed. “And from whom did you learn this? The Sonarans? You have dwelt amongst them long enough that I almost wonder whether you know where their account ends and your own begins. They have every cause to paint us monsters, just as we have every cause to paint them faithless schemers. I should be astonished were it otherwise.

“But let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that you remain wholly unconvinced. Then set aside trust altogether and consider interest. We know well enough what your people are capable of. Your engines have proved that much already. A war against you would be dearly purchased, and to what advantage? Your settlement upon the Grenden Plains is scarcely worth the cost of reducing it. Contained, it serves our purpose well enough. Tell me, then – which course would any sensible government prefer?”

The guy had an answer for everything, every one of them solid. Left without a counter of his own, Henry turned to their resident anthropologist. “Doc, what do you think?”

Doc didn’t sugarcoat it. “He’s not wrong, unfortunately. On the morality of it I’d quarrel with him all day – it’s a rather grotesque thing to be asked to sign off on. But that’s a separate question from whether the terms are sound.” He gave a small, conceding tilt of the head. “If we genuinely haven’t anything that threatens the dragon, then, setting the ethics aside, what he’s put forward is reasonable. Arguably generous.”

Carvus pressed him. “Well, Captain – which shall it be?”

Henry was in the midst of thinking up a response when his headset crackled. Most of it came through as garbled noise, the signal chopped to hell by the mountains or the cold or both, but one fragment punched through clean: “…fifteen mikes…”

That was the only part he needed, but damn, was fifteen minutes a long way off. That was a hell of a long time to fill when he was already scraping the barrel for things to say.

Pressed for it, Henry put on his best poker face and decided to find out how solid Carvus’s hand actually was. “Say we do have something that can threaten the dragon. What’s your offer then?”

Carvus made no effort to hide his impatience. The breath he pushed out through his nose carried more contempt than any insult could have. “A pitiable claim, Captain. The poorest I have yet heard, mayhaps. You dishonor both yourself and the reputation you have earned by stooping to so desperate a bluff.

“Even were I to grant your claim, what then?” He gestured toward the dragon hatchlings. “What we have accomplished once, we shall accomplish again.”

Surprisingly, the dragon reacted to that. It frowned, lowered its head – almost in shame, maybe – then glanced back toward the rune system as though it were trying to point at something.

Hold on, did the creature actually understand them? More importantly, why’d it even react in the first place? Either this was a meaningless tic, some coincidence that didn’t mean a damn thing, or Carvus had badly oversold how well his subjugation magic actually worked.

Given the oddly precise timing and the pointedness of the dragon’s movements, Henry had to lean toward the latter. And if that was the case, then he didn’t need to risk getting his team caught up in a cruise missile strike that wasn’t even guaranteed to kill the dragon. He could put the strike on the facility instead, break whatever leash it ran on, and gamble that the freed dragon would be grateful enough not to turn on them.

Henry had his play now. What he didn’t have was the fifteen minutes it’d take the missiles to show, so he stalled again, doing the best he could with his dwindling options. “You sure you can pull it off twice? Baranthurian infrastructure doesn’t grow on trees. Neither do Tier Tens. How much do you figure it costs to keep just one of them on a leash?”

Alas, he’d pushed his luck one time too many. Carvus heard the stall for exactly what it was.

“I grow weary of your ceaseless inquiries. You’ve no intention of reaching an accord. You mean to stall, do you not?”

Henry scrambled for a save, but Carvus had already moved on.

“I shall take your silence for confirmation.” Carvus turned and walked back toward the dragon, laying a hand against its leg. “Kill them.”