I started walking around inside the embassy, checking pretty much every room on my way, searching for the old Republic envoy. No one was having weird thoughts about my aimless roaming around, since I was the head of security. An initial scan of the building at the beginning of my service here was a pretty normal thing after all.
While I was walking in the corridors, I noticed a rather old man standing at a corner and watching me. At first, I ignored him; but I slowly got suspicious of him after a while. It was looking like he was contemplating my murder in his head.
I directly approached him. He did not move, or averted his gaze.
"Can I see your ID, sir?" I asked him. He silently reached to one of his pockets, and got his ID chipcard out.
That was the man I was looking for. The retired envoy, Eren Schulze.
"We need to talk." I told him.
"I know." he said. "Come inside."
He lead me to an empty office. There was a table and a few chairs, but the walls were completely covered with bookshelves. Those shelves were almost full, I could barely see the wall behind.
"You seem to read a lot, mister." I said.
"There is nothing better to do when the Republic sends you here and then forgets about your existance for decades." he said. "Reading is not simply a pastime, those books taught me a lot."
"Why do you have so many hardback copies, though?" I asked him as I took one of the books. "You could easily find the electronic versions of all these."
"The books one reads can tell a lot about that person." he said. "I don't read just any book I come across."
I examined the book I took from the shelf. It was titled '2061: Odyssey Three', written by Arthur C. Clarke.
"A sci-fi fan, huh?" I said.
"Please put that book exactly where you took it from." Eren said. "You wouldn't want to mess the order of the series, or..."
"Or?"
"Or I will mess with the order of your digestive organs." he said. I knew he was exaggerating, but he was looking dead serious. I put the book back.
"Anyway..." he said. "How much do you know about me?"
"I... only heard of you just now. I heard you were an envoy." I answered.
"You only heard of me just now, because I was forgotten here on this planet." he said. "But that's how things were supposed to be. The truth is, I was never really an envoy. I'm... more of a spy. But lately, things started not going very well."
"In what way?"
"You see, after the war was declared, I could no longer easily get in contact with the Federation members. And besides, if I was discovered while I was doing something suspicious, this would make the Alliance hate the Republic. So I had to retreat from my intelligence gathering duty... just when I was about to uncover something important. Or, at least... This is what I believe."
"Uncover what?" I asked.
"That part is where you come in, so listen carefully. I think the Federation is developing, or have already developed, a superweapon." he said.
"What? How!?" I asked.
"You see... Ukraine, Korea, Turkey and Japan all left the Federation at the same time. Do you know what those countries have in common?" Eren asked me.
"No." I said.
"They all border the Alliance territory." Eren said. "Those four countries suddenly leave the Federation, and begin an anti-war propaganda. Is this coincidence? I don't think so."
"What is going on then?"
"The Alliance and Federation have been fighting a trade war for many years now, which was seriously damaging the economy of major Federation countries. I say that they were fed up with this, and finally came up with a solution."
"What kind of solution?" I asked.
"A forceful solution." he said. "However, there is an important detail. The Federation, although superior to both the Alliance and the Republic combined, would NEVER want to fight a war on Earth's surface. And I belive this was the cause of concern of those four countries; they would be the first ones to burn down to ashes. Even if they won the war, it would leave everything in ruins, including their own cities and industries; and nobody would want that."
"That much makes sense." I said.
"The Federation easily antagonized the Republic to start a war, since the Republic doesn't have any territory on Earth." Eren said. "But to bring the Alliance to heels, they need something else. Something so powerful that the Alliance wouldn't even be able to strike the Federation territories before begging for peace."
"Does this conclude that they possess a superweapon that would make the Alliance bow to them?" I asked. I had lots of doubts.
"I've been eavesdropping a lot, you see... The Federation certainly has something to make short work of the Alliance AND possibly the Republic should they decide to use it, and the Alliance believes this as well; but they have their hands tied. If they open war, they are probably done for; so they are just trying to delay the inevitable by not joining the war on our side. Shame... We could have a better chance of survival if we just worked together."
"Hold on." I said. The realisation hit me pretty hard. "So you are claiming that the Federation basically has plans to take over the whole Solar System by brute force!?" What he was saying was sounding like a crazy conspiracy theory.
"They always had." Eren said. "I am just claiming that they took this opportunity to make it real."
"What does the Republic officials say about this?" I asked.
"On the international side, they stay silent, because the Federation shouldn't know we are suspecting. On the internal side, they just want more information; and that is why you were sent here. This is too big of a danger to ignore."
"So... I am the spy now." I said.
"Right on point, Commander, right on point." Eren said.
"I have no training or experience with these intelligence gathering matters." I said. "How am I going to be able to help the cause?"
"You will have lots of opportunities to get close to key people around here." Eren said. "Even the Alliance could know more than we do. Just have your eyes and ears all over the place, and we will catch something hopefully. But, in case we are not successful, there are more... active ways of eavesdropping. Those that require some body strenght. Things that I couldn't handle myself..."
He sighed, looked around a bit, and continued.
"But look at it on the bright side, if we succeed, we can pull the Alliance to our side with the evidence."