Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 Notes: Back to Elanus, yaaaay! Have some internecine coup plotting :)

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

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Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two

 

Restaria, thankfully, was a problem that could be put on ice for now—literally, if Elanus wanted to. Maybe a nice icy stasis bath would help clarify xir new situation to xir, but Restaria wasn’t the type to fight xir own battles either. Xe worked best in the shadows, an unseen opponent. When confronted face to face, xe almost always ran or sought assistance from someone else, Elanus and particularly Kieron being cases in point. So right now, xe could sit in the modified call he’d created in the empty storage room off the docks and fucking like it. Elanus had more pressing problems to deal with.

The biggest, much as he hated to even think about it, was Moreno. President Emilio Moreno was an institution on Gania, as crooked as he was beloved. Everyone knew he was for sale and no one really cared because a), the people in power got their way, and b), this was Gania and it had worked like that since the penal colony was founded. His great, great, great grandmother was the architect of one of the biggest ponzi schemes the galaxy had ever seen—she’d auctioned off entire, nonexistent planets and their insubstantial natural resources, for fuck’s sake. These weren’t dumb people.

Moreno had stayed in power by cozying up to everyone in just the way they liked best, making just enough promises to keep them on his side, and ignoring the plight of everyone he didn’t care about. It all came down to measuring the odds, and Elanus was a little ashamed to say that he’d turned a blind eye to it for a long time.

“People can become used to anything,” Xilinn said on the second night into Kieron’s recovery as Elanus shared some of his reluctant plans with her. He was startled at how good it was to have another adult to talk to, actually, one who didn’t have the same preconceptions about him that a Ganian would. “On Trakta, we let ourselves be ruled by archaic religious laws that have only served to reduce the satisfaction of our people, but it happened because our leaders successfully preyed on fear. Here, your leaders prey on greed.” She sighed. “It’s so much easier to take advantage of humanity’s weaknesses than shore up their strengths, it seems.”

“It is.” And yet…Elanus was in a position to do just that. He’d already purified the Regen units in the hospitals and removed all traces of Elfshot Disease from the treatment centers. In a few months, that would start to make statistical waves. He could claim credit for it…or…

“Do you want to rule Gania?”

“Fuck no,” Elanus said before he even really processed the question. “I mean—” He coughed into his hand. “No. I don’t think I’d make a good leader.”

“Why not?” Xilinn asked calmly.

“I don’t have the temperament for it.”

“What temperament does a leader of Gania need to have?”

“Tolerance for insane amounts of bullshit,” Elanus said. “The ability to gladhand. A personality that could win over a rock. The kind of money that makes other people’s money irrelevant so that you don’t have to kowtow to them, and yeah, that I’ve got, but the rest of it…no, there’s no way. I’d never be able to keep that up, not even knowing it was better than the alternative. It would just…kill me, Xilinn, it would kill me and then I’d never get to marry Kieron and that would be a damn shame.”

Xilinn smiled and shook her head before asking, “Who would make a good leader, then?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Anyone except who we have now.” But that wasn’t true, and the longer Elanus thought about it the plainer the answer became.

“Someone you know,” Xilinn said, looking out the window with a peaceful expression. “So that you could trust them, or as close as you come to it. Someone with the ability and reputation to rally the people behind them. Someone who would appeal to both the lower and upper classes, with the strength of character to go through with their promises. Someone who had a strong connection to the press and could drum up support, and of course…” She glanced at him and smiled. “Someone whom you’d like to owe you a favor, perhaps.”

“How are you so good at this?” Elanus asked with genuine awe. “How are you—I had no idea you were so good at reading people, you’ve never even met the ones you’re talking about, how did you figure all of this out?”

She laughed. “Oh, Elanus. I was in a four-way marriage for years! Do you think a relationship like that has a chance of lasting if you aren’t in close emotional connection to your partners?” Her smile faded. “I suppose that’s the real reason it ended the way it did. We lost our connection. After Zakari’s death, I just—I couldn’t move on. Perhaps if I’d had time to come to grips with the closure Kieron provided us, but my spouses were so ready to date other people and reopen our quad, and I just—I couldn’t do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Elanus said. “I don’t know the first thing about relationships, in all honesty, but I can’t see myself moving on easily if I lost Kieron, so…I think I know a little bit about how you feel.”

“You’re basically responsible for a coup as a result of wanting to rescue Kieron, I think you understand more than a little bit, Elanus.”

He heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I do. Shit.” Ugh, there was so much he needed to handle now. Moreno needed to be blackmailed into resigning—not hard given the incredible amounts of dirt Elanus had on him—and Restaria needed to be declared missing, or better yet, dead. Dead would be nice.

Then he had to woo Caria Jayde into accepting the run for president, with his backing of course, and persuade Fritz that giving her positive airtime would make his own star go from rising to shooting. He’d have to help plan a fucking campaign, ugh, and make sure her platform included new provisions for the integration of refugees and systemic reviews of all public programs to cut back on the pork. It was going to be so much work.

Good thing he had two darling daughters to help him with it. “Catie,” Elanus called out. “Lizzie.”

They came on over the intercom almost instantly. “Yes, Daddeee?” “Yes, Elanus?”

“How would you girls like to learn how to manipulate the political system of an entire planet?”

“Sounds fuuuuun!” Catie said.

Lizzie wasn’t so quick to buy in. “Would Kee like it?” she asked.

“Maybe not, but he’d know it was a necessity,” Elanus said. “This is how we take down the people who tried to get him killed.”

There was that low, dark hum again. It made Elanus want to shudder. “Show me,” Lizzie said.

Excellent. It was time to get to work.