A Bullet to the Head

The holographic ticker ran its endless loop above Sector 56’s main thoroughfare: COALITION POLLS SURGE—VALDRIS/MERK UNITY TICKET EXPECTED TO SWEEP REGIONAL PARLIAMENT. The letters burned neon-blue against the perpetual rust-colored sky of Kepler-442b. The three suns never quite managed to pierce the industrial smog. This smog had accumulated over two centuries of strip-mining the planet’s lithium cores.

Zara Valdris watched the headlines from her penthouse office, forty floors above the masses who would cast their votes tomorrow. Her fingers drummed against the transparent aluminum window. It was a nervous tic she’d developed since agreeing to this devil’s bargain with Thane Merk.

Magnanimous, the press had called him. A statesman rising above petty differences for the greater good of Kepler-442b.

She knew better. Everyone knew better.

Merk was the kind of man who measured progress by the height of the walls around his compounds. He spoke of “genetic purity” in boardrooms. Meanwhile, his security forces disappeared entire neighborhoods that asked too many questions about the missing water rations. His Libertarian Coalition had governed the planet for twelve years through a combination of corporate deregulation and systematic terror.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. She was the former Centrist Governor who’d once stood for measured progress and interplanetary cooperation. Now, she was sharing a political bed with a fascist. This person wanted to turn Kepler-442b into a fortress planet, sealed off from the Galactic Trade Consortium.

But Merk was right about one thing: neither of their movements could win alone.

Her aide, a nervous young man whose augmented eyes constantly shifted between data streams, cleared his throat. “Governor Valdris, the final polling data…”

“I know what it says, Martinez.” She turned from the window. “Seventy-three percent for our coalition candidate. The question isn’t whether we win tomorrow. The question is what we’ve unleashed.”

Commander Rask Torven was their joint candidate—Merk’s choice, naturally. He was a former military enforcer. He made his reputation in the Outer Rim conflicts. There, “pacification protocols” was military-speak for wholesale slaughter. His campaign slogan had become a planetary meme: “A bullet to the head, and thieves stay dead.”

The crowds loved it. Three months ago, petty crime had been the number one concern in the polls. It was just ahead of water shortages and unemployment. Now, Torven promised summary executions for anyone caught stealing even a food ration. His approval ratings soared among the frightened masses crammed into the vertical slums of New Geneva.

Valdris had watched the recordings of his rallies with growing horror. Twenty thousand voices chanting for blood, their faces lit by the glow of enforcement drones circling overhead like mechanical vultures.

What can go wrong? she asked herself, the question that had haunted her sleep for weeks.

Everything. Everything could go wrong.

The door chimed, and Merk himself entered without waiting for permission—another reminder of the power dynamic in their unholy alliance. He looked exactly like what he was. He was a man who’d grown fat on other people’s suffering. His surgically-enhanced face was frozen in a perpetual expression of cold calculation.

“Tomorrow we make history, Zara.” His voice carried the slight accent of the old colonial families. These were the ones who’d arrived on the first generation ships and claimed the best mining rights. The later waves of immigrants were the darker-skinned families from Earth’s overcrowded continents. They were relegated to the processing plants and tunnels.

“History,” she repeated. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

Merk laughed, a sound like grinding metal. “You’re having second thoughts. I can see it in your eyes. That old Centrist guilt, the belief that politics should be about compromise and human dignity.” He moved to her window, gazing down at the city below. “Look at them, Zara. Really look.”

She followed his gaze. Even from this height, she could see the crowd gathering in Liberation Square for Torven’s final rally. A sea of bodies pressed together, their individual faces blurred into a single mass of barely-contained fury.

“They don’t want compromise,” Merk continued. “They want someone to blame. Someone to punish. They want simple answers to complex problems, and they want those answers written in blood. Torven gives them that. We give them that.”

“And when the killing starts?” Valdris asked. “When Torven decides that ‘theft’ includes political dissent? When the bullet-to-the-head policy expands to anyone who questions the state?”

Merk’s smile was a thin line. “Then we’ll have order. Real order. And both our movements will benefit from the stability.”

The holographic ticker shifted to a new story: TORVEN PROMISES “FINAL SOLUTION” TO CRIME PROBLEM—MILITARY TRIBUNALS TO REPLACE CIVILIAN COURTS.

Final solution.

The phrase sent ice through Valdris’s veins. She’d studied the old histories, the cautionary tales from Earth’s bloody twentieth century. She knew where such language led.

“This is madness,” she whispered.

“This is politics,” Merk corrected. “Raw, honest politics stripped of your pretty lies about human nature. People are animals, Zara. They always have been. The only question is whether we’re going to be the ones holding the leash.”

After he left, Valdris stood alone in her office. The first of Kepler-442b’s three suns began to set. It painted the sky in shades of blood and brass. Martinez had left the final polling data on her desk. It included not just the seventy-three percent for Torven. There was also the breakdown by demographic.

The numbers told a story that made her stomach turn. Torven’s support was strongest among the unemployed miners and displaced factory workers. It also came from families who’d watched their neighborhoods decay while the colonial elite grew richer. They weren’t voting for fascism because they were evil—they were voting for it because they were desperate.

And she had helped make this possible.

The irony was perfect, in its way. The moderate, reasonable voice of centrism allied with the far right. Together, they created something far worse than either could have achieved alone. Her respectability had laundered Merk’s extremism, while his base had provided the numbers her civilized movement could never muster.

Tomorrow, Torven would win. Within a month, the first executions would begin. They would be broadcast live across the planetary networks. This served as a warning to anyone who might consider taking a loaf of bread to feed their family. Within a year, the definition of “theft” would expand to include possession of banned books. It would also include unauthorized gatherings and criticism of the government.

And it would all be legal, constitutional, democratically mandated by the will of the people.

Her personal communicator buzzed with an encrypted message from her former chief of staff. He had resigned in protest when the coalition was announced. “The ships are still leaving for the Centauri colonies. There’s room on the next transport. Please, Zara. Before it’s too late.”

She looked out at Liberation Square, where Torven’s rally was now in full swing. Even through the soundproof glass, she could feel the vibration of twenty thousand voices chanting for blood.

A bullet to the head, and thieves stay dead.

But who, she wondered, would decide who the thieves were?

The second sun was setting now, and the crowd below looked like a vast organism, pulsing with collective rage. Tomorrow they would vote, and she would win everything she’d thought she wanted.

And in winning, she would lose everything that had ever mattered.

The final message on her holographic display was from Torven himself, sent to all coalition leadership: VICTORY CELEBRATION TOMORROW NIGHT. BRING YOUR APPETITES. THE FEAST IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.

Valdris closed her eyes. She tried to remember what her old mentor had told her about the road to hell. This was the mentor who’d taught her about the sacred responsibility of democratic governance.

Something about good intentions.

She looked down at the crowd baying for blood in the square below. At that moment, she realized her intentions hadn’t been good for a very long time.

They’d just been expedient.

And tomorrow, the votes would be counted. When Torven took power, she would learn the true cost of expedience. In a democracy, the people had voted to end democracy itself.

The third sun disappeared behind the mountains, leaving Kepler-442b in darkness.

The real darkness, she knew, hadn’t even begun.